Milly and Olly, Mrs. Humphry Ward [ebook e reader .TXT] 📗

looking at the strawberries, you give just one look at the mountains. Count how many you can see all round."

"One, two, three, five," counted Olly. "What great big humps! Should we be able to touch the sky if we got up to the top of that one, mother?" and he pointed to a great blue mountain where the clouds seemed to be resting on the top.

"Well, if you were up there just now, you would be all among the clouds, and it would seem like a white fog all round you. So you would be touching the clouds at any rate."

Olly opened his eyes very wide at the idea of touching the clouds.

"Why, mother, we can't touch the clouds at home!"

"That comes of living in a country as flat as a pancake," said Mr. Norton. "Just you wait till we can buy a tame mountain, and carry it to Willingham with us. Then we'll put it down in the middle of the garden, and the clouds will come down to sit on the top of it just as they do here. But now, who can scramble over that gate?"

For the gate at the other end of the garden was locked, and as the gardener couldn't be found, everybody had to scramble over, mother included. However, Mr. Norton helped them all over, and then they found themselves on a path running along the green mountain side. On they went, through pretty bits of steep hay-fields, where the grass seemed all clover and moon-daisies, till presently they came upon a small hunched-up house, with a number of sheds on one side of it and a kitchen-garden in front. This was Uncle Richard's farm; a very tiny farm, where a man called John Backhouse lived, with his wife and two little girls and a baby-boy. Except just in the hay-time, John Backhouse had no men to help him, and he and his wife had to do all the work, to look after the sheep, and the cows, the pigs, the horse, and the chickens, to manage the garden and the hayfield, and to take the butter and milk to the people who wanted to buy it. When their children grew up and were able to help, Backhouse and his wife would be able to do it all very well; but just now, when they were still quite small, it was very hard work; it was all the farmer and his wife could do to make enough to keep themselves and their children fed and clothed.

Milly and Olly were very anxious to see the farmer's children and looked out for them in the garden as they walked up to the house, but there were no signs of them. The door was opened by Mrs. Backhouse, the farmer's wife, who held a fair-haired baby in her arms sucking a great crust of brown bread, and when Mr. and Mrs. Norton had shaken hands with her--"I'm sure, ma'am, I'm very pleased to see you here," said Mrs. Backhouse. "John told me you were come (only Mrs. Backhouse said 'coom'), and Becky and Tiza went down with their father when he took the milk this morning, hoping they would catch a sight of your children. They have been just wild to see them, but I told them they weren't likely to be up at that time in the morning."

"Where are they now?" asked Mrs. Norton. "Mine have been looking out for them as we came along."

"Well, ma'am, I can't say, unless they're in the cherry-tree. Becky! Tiza!"

A faint "Yis" came from the other end of the garden, but still Milly and Olly could see nothing but a big cherry-tree growing where the voice seemed to come from.

"You go along that path, missy, and call again. You'll be sure to find them," said Mrs. Backhouse, pointing to the tree. "And won't you come in, ma'am, and rest a bit? You'll be maybe tired with walking this hot day."

So Mr. and Mrs. Norton went into the farmhouse, and the children went hand-in-hand down the garden, looking for Becky and Tiza.

Suddenly, as they came close to the cherry-tree, they heard a laugh and a little scuffling, and looking up, what should they see but two little girls perched up on one of the cherry-tree branches, one of them sewing, the other nursing a baby kitten. Both of them had coloured print bonnets, but the smaller had taken hers off and was rolling the kitten up in it. The little girl sewing had a sensible, sober face; as for the other, she could not have looked sober if she had tried for a week of Sundays. It made you laugh only to look at Tiza. From the top of her curly head to the soles of her skipping little feet, she was the sauciest, merriest, noisiest creature. It was she who was always playing tricks on the cows and the horse, and the big sheep-dogs; who liked nothing so well as teasing Becky and dressing up the kittens, and who was always tumbling into the milkpail, or rolling downstairs, or losing herself in the woods, without somehow ever coming to any harm. If she and Olly had been left alone in the world together they _must_ have come to a bad end, but luckily each of them had wiser people to take care of them.

"Becky," said Milly, shyly, looking up into the tree, "will you come down and say how do you do to us?"

Becky stuck her needle in her work and scrambled down with a red shy face to shake hands; but Tiza, instead of coming down, only climbed a little higher, and peeped at the others between the branches.

"We came down to the house when fayther took the milk this morning," said Becky. "We thought maybe we'd see you in the garden. Only Tiza said she'd run away if she did see you."

"Why doesn't Tiza come down?" asked Olly, looking hard up into the tree. "I want to see her."

Thump! What was that rattling down on Olly's head? He looked down at his feet very much astonished, and saw a bunch of green cherries which Tiza had just thrown at him.

"Throw some more! Throw some more!" he cried out, and Tiza began to pelt him fast, while Olly ran here and there picking them up, and every now and then trying to throw them back at Tiza; but she was too high up for him to reach, and they only came rattling about his head again.

"She won't come down," said Becky, looking up at her sister. "Maybe she won't speak to you for two or three days. And if you run after her she hides in such queer places you can never find her."

"But mother wants you and her to come to tea with us this afternoon," said Milly; "won't Tiza come?"

"I suppose mother'll make her," said Becky, "but she doesn't like it. Have you been on the fell?"

Milly looked puzzled. "Do you mean on the mountain? No, not yet. We're going to-morrow when we go to Aunt Emma's. But we've been to the river with father."

"Did you go over the stepping-stones?"

"No," said Milly, "I don't know what they are. Can we go this evening after tea?" "Oh yes," said Becky, "they're just close by your house. Does your mother let you go in the water?"

Now Becky said a great many of these words very funnily, so that Milly could hardly understand her. She said "doos" and "oop," and "knaw," and "jist," and "la-ike," but it sounded quite pretty from her soft little mouth, and Milly thought she had a very nice way of talking.

"No, mother doesn't let us go in the water here, at least, not unless it's very warm. We paddle when we go to the sea, and some day father says we may have our bath in the river if it's very fine."

"We never have a bath in the river," said Becky, looking very much astonished at the idea.

"Do you have your bath in the nursery like we do?" asked Milly.

"We haven't got a nursery," said Becky, staring at her, "mother puts us in the toob on Saturday nights. I don't mind it but Tiza doesn't like it a bit. Sometimes she hides when it's Saturday night, so that mother can't find her till it's too late."

"Don't you have a bath except on Saturday?" said Milly. "Olly and I have one every morning. Mother says we should get like shock-headed Peter if we didn't."

"I don't know about him," said Becky, shaking her head.

"He's a little boy in a picture-book. I'll show him you when you come to tea. But there's mother calling. Come along, Olly. Tiza won't come down Becky says."

"She's a very rude girl," said Olly, who was rather hot and tired with his game, and didn't think it was all fun that Tiza should always hit him and he should never be able to hit Tiza. "I won't sit next her when she comes to tea with us."

"Tiza's only in fun," said Becky, "she's always like that. Tiza, are you coming down? I am going to get baby out, I heard him crying just now."

"May you take baby out all by yourself?" asked Milly.

"Why, I always take him out, and I put him to sleep at nights; and mother says he won't go to sleep for anybody as quick as for me," said Becky proudly.

Milly felt a good deal puzzled. It _must_ be funny to have no Nana.

"Will you and he," said Becky, pointing to Olly, "come up this afternoon and help us call the cows?"

"If we may," said Milly; "who calls them?"

"Tiza and I," answered Becky; "when I'm a big girl I shall learn how to milk, but fayther says I'm too little yet."

"I wish I lived at a farm," said Milly disconsolately.

Becky didn't quite know what to say to this, so she began to call Tiza again.

"Swish!" went something past them as quick as lightning. It was Tiza running to the house. Olly set out to run after her as fast as he could run, but he came bang up against his mother standing at the farmhouse door, just as Tiza got safely in and was seen no more.

"Ah, you won't catch Tiza, master," said Mrs. Backhouse, patting his head; "she's a rough girl, always at some tricks or other--we think she ought to have been a boy, really."

"Mother, isn't Becky very nice?" said Milly, as they walked away. "Her mother lets her do such a lot of things--nurse the baby, and call the cows, and make pinafores. Oh, I wish father was a farmer."

"Well, it's not a bad kind of life when the sun shines, and everything is going right," said Mrs. Norton; "but I think you had better wait a little bit till the rain comes before you quite make up your mind about it, Milly."

But Milly was quite sure she knew enough about it already to make up her mind, and all the way home she kept saying to herself, "If I could only turn into a little farmer's girl! Why don't people have fairy godmothers now like Cinderella?"


CHAPTER IV

OUT ON THE HILLS

Milly and Olly, and the four little Westmoreland children, had a very pleasant tea together in the afternoon of the Nortons's first day at Ravensnest. Bessie and Charlie certainly didn't talk