A Pair of Clogs, Amy Walton [the little red hen read aloud .TXT] 📗

do you?" continued Jackie.

"N-no," said Mary.

"What are you crying for, then?"

If she could only tell him!

"Is it anything about the Secret?" asked Jackie.

No answer.

"I expect it is," he went on in an excited whisper. "But you ought to tell me, you know, however horrid it is. Is it horrid?"

Mary nodded. There was comfort even in that, though she must not say anything.

Jackie leant eagerly forward. Splash! Fell a great rain-drop on the tip of his nose, and a pelting shower quickly followed. Patter, patter, fell the fast-falling rain on the leaves above the children's heads, sprinkling Mary's yellow hair and Jackie's best velveteen suit.

"We must go in," he said; "all the others have gone. _Won't_ you just tell me first?"

"I can't tell you," said Mary mournfully. "And I don't want to go in. I should like to stop here always."

"Well, you couldn't do that, you know," said Jackie gravely. "There's no roof, and you'd get wet through, and hungry too. Come along."

He gave her hand a gentle pull, and prepared to descend. As he cautiously lowered one leg, a woman with a shawl over her head came running down the nut-walk; it was Maggie, the new school-room maid.

"Why, there you are, Master Jackie," she said; "we've been looking everywhere for you. You're to come in out of the rain this minute, please. And have you seen Miss Mary? Marcy me, my dear, where did you get yon?"

She pointed excitedly to the little shoe which Jackie still held.

"Mary gave it me," he answered.

Without further ceremony this strange woman seized the shoe from him, and with trembling hands turned it over and looked closely at the wooden sole. Then she clasped it to her breast, and with a sudden light in her eyes exclaimed:

"I knew it. I felt it was her. Heaven be praised!" and before Jackie had at all regained his breath, she had rushed away down the nut-walk, and was out of sight.

Mary, who had remained unseen, looked down from the tree.

"Isn't she an odd woman?" she said. "Do you think she's mad? Or perhaps those are Yorkshire ways."

"If they are," replied Jackie much ruffled and discomposed, "I don't like Yorkshire ways at all. What business has she to cut away like that with my shoe?"

There was something mysterious altogether about Maggie's behaviour, for when the children reached the house they found that the others were full of excitement and curiosity. She had been seen to rush wildly in from the garden with the little shoe hugged to her breast, and now she had been talking to mother alone for a long while. But soon tea-time came, all manner of games followed, and the school-room maid was forgotten in more interesting matters. Even Mary was able to put away her troubles for a little while, and almost to enjoy herself as she had been used before they began. She was to stop at the White House that night, because it was still wet and stormy, so she resolved not to think of the chickens or Perrin or Seraminta just for that one evening. It would be time enough to be miserable again when morning came.

Everything went on merrily until Jackie's guests were all gone away.

"What shall we do now?" he said, yawning a little, for there was still an hour to be filled up before bed-time. Just as he spoke Mrs Chelwood came into the school-room.

"Children," she said, "would you like me to tell you a story?"

Nothing could possibly be better, and the offer came at the right moment when things were feeling a little flat; the children received it joyfully, and gathered round their mother eagerly, and yet with a certain seriousness, for it was an honour as well as a delight to have a story from her--it happened so seldom.

"This is a story," began Mrs Chelwood when they were all settled, "which I have only just heard myself, and it is a true one. It has something to do with one of Jackie's presents to-day."

"I wonder which?" said Jackie, rubbing his knees.

"You shall hear," said his mother. "Now, listen.

"Once there was a poor mother who lived far away from here in the north of England, and worked in a factory. She had only one child, which she loved so fondly that it was more than all the world to her, and though she had to work very hard all day, it seemed quite light and easy for the child's sake."

"Why didn't the father work?" asked Agatha.

"The father was dead."

"Was it a boy or a girl?" asked Patrick.

"And what was its name?" added Jennie.

"It was a little girl," said Mrs Chelwood, "and she was called Betty."

"But Betty isn't a name," objected Agatha, "it's short for something."

"In the north it is used as a name by itself," replied Mrs Chelwood; "many of the children there are christened Betty, and so was this little girl, though she was very seldom called so."

"Why?" asked Mary.

"Because the people in the village had given her a nickname. They called her `Little Clogs.'"

"What a frightful name to give her!" said Agatha. "What did they do it for?"

"Because she was so proud of a tiny pair of shoes which someone had made for her. They were exactly like that one Mary gave Jackie, and they are properly called `clogs.'"

"They're not a bit like the clogs Mrs Moser, the charwoman, wears," said Agatha.

"If you interrupt me so often I shall never finish my story," said her mother. "Well, this poor mother couldn't take her child with her into the factory, so she used to leave her with a friend close by, and fetch her after her work. But one evening when she went as usual there was no baby to be found--she was gone!"

"Where?" said Mary. "No one knew. She had been stolen away, or lost, and on the door-step, where she had been playing, there was one little clog left."

"Who had stolen her?" asked Mary anxiously.

"They heard later that a fair-skinned child had been seen with gypsies on the road to London, but that was not till long afterwards. For years the mother heard no news of her, and wandered up and down the country with the one little clog in her hand seeking her: she felt sure she should know her again, though all this time the child was growing up, and was a baby no longer. But the mother never quite despaired, and she had a feeling that somehow the little clog would help her in her search: on its wooden sole, as well as on that of the lost one, she had scratched two letters--BM.

"So the time went on and on. It was seven long years after she had lost her child that the mother heard of a situation in a place called Wensdale, and went there to live. Now you can tell me the mother's name."

"Why, of course, it must be Maggie," said Jackie, who had been staring fixedly at Mary for the last two minutes with his mouth wide open; "and that's why she caught hold of my shoe and--"

"Let me finish the story," said Mrs Chelwood, "and then you shall talk about it as much as you like. In this very place there was a little girl living at the vicarage who had been left in the garden there by gypsies seven years ago. She had a funny little shoe with her when she was found, and had kept it ever since; and now, perhaps, you know who that little girl is."

"It's me!" cried Mary, starting up--"it's my shoe--and I saw the letters--and I don't belong to the gypsies after all, and--"

"My dear," said the squire, putting his head in at the door, "I'm too muddy to come in, but you'll all be glad to hear that we've caught those rascals and they're all in Dorminster jail."

Mrs Chelwood hurried out of the room, and the children all began to talk at once, to ask questions, to exclaim, to wonder if the gypsies would be hanged, and so on. Presently, however, it was found that Mary had strange and dreadful experiences to relate. A silence fell upon the others until she had finished, and then they looked at her with a sort of awe.

"So our chickens won't be stolen," she repeated, "and that dreadful Seraminta can't take me away."

"It's a tremendously puzzling thing though," said Jackie reflectively; "here you've got two mothers, you see, and two names. How will you manage, and where will you live?"

"She's only got one _real_ mother," cried Patrick.

"And one _real_ name," said Jennie.

"And shall you mind," continued Jackie seriously, "about not being grand? You're not Lady anything, you see, but just `Betty.'"

"I don't want to be grand any more," said Mary earnestly, "and I don't mind anything else one bit, now I don't belong to the gypsies."

"How glad your last mother--no, I mean your first mother--must be," said Agatha, "that someone made you that Pair of Clogs."

This was only one of many and many a conversation amongst the children on the same subject during several following weeks. And what a wonderful subject it was! Surely never had such a strange thing happened in a quiet village as this discovery of Mary's mother, and as to Mary herself, she was now surrounded by an air of romance which was more interesting than any story-book. If she could only have remembered a little about that time she passed with the gypsies! But none of Jackie's earnest appeals to "try hard" produced any results, for all that part of her life was wiped as clean out of her memory as when one washes marks off a slate with a sponge. It was all gone, and when she looked back it was not Seraminta and Perrin and the donkey-cart she saw, but the kind faces of Mr and Mrs Vallance and her happy, pleasant home at the vicarage. And yet, though her earliest recollections were of these, she did not in truth belong to them; they were not her people, and sunny Wensdale was not her place; Maggie was her mother, and cold, grey Haworth on the hillside was her real home. It was, as Jackie had said, a most puzzling thing, and the important question arose--would Mary have to go away? It was wildly irritating to be shut out from all the talks and conferences which were always going on now between Mary's two mothers and Mrs Chelwood. The children felt that it was more their concern than anyone's, but they were told nothing, and the air of the school-room was so full of excitement and curiosity that Fraulein was in despair. The slightest noises in the house during lesson time now seemed to carry deep meaning--perhaps only a bell ringing, or some one shutting the door of mother's sitting-room, but it was enough to make Jackie put down his slate-pencil and look at Mary with an awestruck and impressive gaze. She would give