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

beginning to feel rather tired with her long walk.

"I'm afraid I was very often naughty, Milly. I used to get into great rages and scream, till everybody was quite tired out. But Aunt Emma was very good to me, and took a great deal of pains to cure me of going into rages. Besides, it always did naughty children good to live in the same house with great-grandmamma, and so after a while I got better. Take care how you go, children, it's very steep just here, and you might soon tumble over on your noses. Olly, take care! take care! where _are_ you going?" Where, indeed, was Olly going? Just the moment before the little man had spied a lovely flower growing a little way off the path, in the middle of some bright yellow-green moss. And without thinking of anything but getting it, off he rushed. But oh! splish, splash, splish, down went Olly's feet, up splashed the muddy water, and there was Olly stuck in a bog.

"Father, pull me out, pull me out!" cried the little boy in terror, as he felt his feet stuck fast. But almost before he could speak there was father close beside him, standing on a round little hump of dry grass which was sticking up out of the bog, and with one grip he got hold of Olly under his arm, and then jump! on to another little hump of grass, jump! on to another, and there they were safe on the path again.

"Oh, you black boy!" cried father and mother and Milly all together. Was there ever such a little object! All his nice clean holland frock was splashed with black mud; and what had happened to his stockings?

"I've got mud-stockings on," shouted Olly, capering about, and pointing to his legs which were caked with mud up to his knees.

"You're a nice respectable boy to take out to dinner," said Mrs. Norton. "I think we'll leave you on the mountain to have dinner with the sheep."

"Oh no, father," pleaded Milly, taking Olly fast by the hand. "We can wash him at Aunt Emma's, you know."

"Don't go too close to him, Milly!" exclaimed Mrs. Norton, "or you'll get as black as he is. We shall have to put him under the pump at Aunt Emma's, that's quite certain. But there's nothing to wash him with here, so he must just go as he is for a bit. Now, Olly, run along and your feet will soon dry. Father's going first, you go next, just where he goes, I'm coming after you, and Milly shall go last. Perhaps in that way we shall get you down safe."

"Oh, but, mother, look at my flower," said Olly, holding it up triumphantly. "Isn't it a beauty?"

"Shall I tell you what it's called, Olly? It's called a butterwort, and it always grows in boggy places; I wouldn't advise you to go after one again without asking father first."

It was a very different thing going down the mountain from climbing up it. It seemed only a few minutes before they had got almost to the bottom, and there was a gate leading into a road, and a little village of white houses in front of them. They walked up the road a little way, and then father opened a big gate and let them into a beautiful garden full of rhododendrons like the Ravensnest garden. And who was this walking down the drive to meet them? Such a pretty little elderly lady, with gray hair and a white cap.

"Dear Aunt Emma!" said Mrs. Norton, running up to her and taking both her hands and kissing her.

"Well, Lucy," said the little lady, holding her hands and looking at her (Lucy was Mrs. Norton's Christian name), "it _is_ nice to see you all here. And there's dear little Milly, I remember her. But where's Olly? I've never seen that small creature, you know. Come, Olly, don't be shy. Little boys are never shy with Aunt Emma."

"Except when they tumble into bogs," said Mr. Norton, laughing and pulling Olly forward, who was trying to hide his mud-stockings behind his mother. "There's a clean tidy boy to bring to dinner, isn't he, Aunt Emma? I think I'll take him to the yard and pump on him a little before we bring him in."

Aunt Emma put up her spectacles to look at Olly.

"Why, Olly, I think Mother Quiverquake has been catching hold of you. Don't you know about old Mother Quiverquake, who lives in the bogs? Oh, I can tell you splendid stories about her some day. But now catch hold of my hand, and keep your little legs away from my dress, and we'll soon make a proper boy of you again."

And then Aunt Emma took one of Milly's hands and one of Olly's, and up they went to the house. But I must start another chapter before I begin to tell you what the children saw in Aunt Emma's house, and of the happy time they spent there.


CHAPTER V

AUNT EMMA'S PICNIC

Instead of taking them straight into the house, however, Aunt Emma took the children up a little shady path which very soon brought them to a white cottage covered with honeysuckle and climbing roses.

"This is where my coachman's wife lives," said Aunt Emma, "and she owns a small boy who might perhaps find you a pair of stockings, Olly, to put on while your own are washed."

Olly opened his brown eyes very wide at the idea of wearing some other little boy's stockings, but he said nothing.

Aunt Emma tapped at the door, and out came a stout kind-looking woman.

"Mrs. Tyson, do you think your Johnny could lend my little nephew a pair of his stockings while we get his own washed? Master Olly has been tumbling into a bog by way of making friends with the mountains, and I don't quite know how I am to let those legs into my dining-room."

"Dear me, ma'am, but Johnny'll be proud if he's got any clean, but I'll not answer for it. Won't ye come in?"

In they walked, and there was a nice tidy kitchen, with a wooden cradle in the corner, and a little fair-haired boy sitting by it and rocking the baby. This was Johnny, and Olly looked at him with great curiosity. "I've got bigger legs than Johnny," he whispered solemnly at last to Aunt Emma, while they were waiting for Mrs. Tyson, who had gone upstairs to fetch the stockings.

"Perhaps you eat more bread and milk than Johnny does," said Aunt Emma, very solemnly too, "However, most likely Johnny's stockings will stretch. How's the baby, Johnny?"

"She's a great deal better, ma'am," said the little boy, smiling at her. Milly and Olly made him feel shy, but he loved Aunt Emma.

"Have you been taking care of her all the morning for mother?"

"Yes, ma'am, and she's never cried but once," said Johnny proudly.

"Well done! Ah! there comes Mrs. Tyson. Now, Olly, sit up on that chair, and we'll see to you."

Off came the dirty stockings, and Mrs. Tyson slipped on a pair of woolen socks that tickled Olly very much. They were very thick, and not a bit like his own stockings; and when he got up again he kept turning round and round to look at his legs, as if he couldn't make them out.

"Do they feel funny to you?" said Mrs. Tyson, patting his shoulder. "Never you mind, little master; I know they're nice and warm, for I knitted them myself."

"Mother buys our stockings in the shop," said Olly, when they got outside again; "why doesn't Mrs. Tyson?"

"Perhaps we haven't so many shops, or such nice ones here, Olly, as you have at Willingham; and the people here have always been used to do a great many things for themselves. Some of them live in such lonely places among the mountains that it is very difficult for them to get to any shops. Not very long ago the mothers used to make all the stuffs for their own dresses and their children's. What would you say, Milly, if mother had to weave the stuff for it every time you had a new dress?"

"Mother wouldn't give me a great many new dresses," said Milly, gravely, shaking her head. "I like shops best, Aunt Emma."

"Well, I suppose it's best to like what we've got," said Aunt Emma, laughing.

Indoors, Olly's muddy stockings were given to Aunt Emma's maid, who promised to have them washed and dried by the time they had to go home, and then, when Mrs. Norton had covered up the black spots on his frock with a clean pinafore she had brought with her, Olly looked quite respectable again.

The children thought they had never seen quite such a nice house as Aunt Emma's. First of all it had a large hall, with all kinds of corners in it, just made for playing hide-and-seek in; and the drawing-room was full of the most delightful things. There were stuffed birds in cases, and little ivory chessmen riding upon ivory elephants. There were picture-books, and there were mysterious drawers full of cards and puzzles, and glass marbles and old-fashioned toys, that the children's mother and aunts and uncles, and their great-aunts and uncles before that, had loved and played with years and years ago. On the wall hung a great many pictures, some of them of funny little stiff boys in blue coats with brass buttons, and some of them of little girls with mob-caps and mittens, and these little boys and girls were all either dead now, or elderly men and women, for they were the great-aunts and uncles; and over the mantelpiece hung a picture of a lovely old lady, with bright, soft brown hair and smiling eyes and lips, that looked as if they were just going to speak to the two strange little children who had come for their first visit to their mother's old home. Milly knew quite well that it was a picture of great-grandmamma. She had seen others like it before, only not so large as this one, and she looked at it quietly, with her grave blue eyes, while Olly was eagerly wandering round the room, spying into everything, and longing to touch this, that, and the other, if only mother would let go his hand.

"You know who that is, don't you, little woman?" said Aunt Emma, taking her up on her knee.

"Yes," said Milly, nodding, "it's great-grandmamma. I wish we could have seen her."

"I wish you could, Milly. She would have smiled at you as she is smiling in the picture and you would have been sure to have loved her; all little children did. I can remember seeing your mother, Milly, when she was about as old as you, cuddled up in a corner of that sofa over there, in 'grandmamma's pocket,' as she used to call it, listening with all her ears to great-grandmamma's stories. There was one story called 'Leonora' that went on for years and years, till all the little children in it--and the little children who listened to it--were almost grown up; and then great-grandmamma always carried about with her a wonderful blue-silk bag full of treasures, which we used to be allowed to turn out whenever any of us had been quite good at our lessons for a whole week."

"Mother has a bag like that," said Milly; "it has lots of little toys in it that father had when