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

he was a little boy. She lets us look at it on our birthdays. Can you tell stories, Aunt Emma?"

"Tell us about old Mother Quiverquake," cried Olly, running up and climbing on his aunt's knee.

"Oh dear, no!" said Aunt Emma; "it's much too fine to-day for stories--indoors, at any rate. Wait till we get a real wet day, and then we'll see. After dinner to-day, what do you think we're going to do? Suppose we have a row on the lake to get water-lilies, and suppose we take a kettle and make ourselves some tea on the other side of the lake. What would you say to that, Master Olly?"

The children began to dance about with delight at the idea of a row and a picnic both together, when suddenly there was a knock at the door, and when Aunt Emma said, "Come in!" what do you think appeared? Why, a great green cage, carried by a servant, and in it a gray parrot, swinging about from side to side, and cocking his head wickedly, first over one shoulder and then over the other.

"Now, children," said Aunt Emma, while the children stood quite still with surprise, "let me introduce you to my old friend, Mr. Poll Parrot. Perhaps you thought I lived all alone in this big house. Not at all. Here is somebody who talks to me when I talk to him, who sings and chatters and whistles and cheers me up wonderfully in the winter evenings, when the rains come and make me feel dull. Put him down here, Margaret," said Aunt Emma to the maid, clearing a small table for the cage. "Now, Olly, what do you think of my parrot?"

"Can it talk?" asked Olly, looking at it with very wide open eyes.

"It _can_ talk; whether it _will_ talk is quite another thing. Parrots are contradictious birds. I feel very often as if I should like to beat Polly, he's so provoking. Now, Polly, how are you to-day?"

"Polly's got a bad cold; fetch the doc--" said the bird at once, in such a funny cracked voice, that it made Olly jump as if he had heard one of the witches in Grimm's "Fairy Tales" talking.

"Come, Polly, that's very well behaved of you; but you mustn't leave off in the middle, begin again. Olly, if you don't keep your fingers out of the way Polly will snap them up for his dinner. Parrots like fingers very much." Olly put his hands behind his back in a great hurry, and mother came to stand behind him to keep him quiet. By this time, however, Polly had begun to find out that there were some new people in the room he didn't know, and for a long time Aunt Emma could not make him talk at all. He would do nothing but put his head first on one side and then on the other and make angry clicks with his beak.

"Come, Polly," said Aunt Emma, "what a cross parrot you are. One--two--three--four. Now, Polly, count."

"Polly's got a bad cold, fetch the doc--" said Polly again while Aunt Emma was speaking. "One--two--six--seven--eight--nine--two--_Quick_ march!"

And then Polly began to lift first one claw and then the other as if he were marching, while the children shouted with laughter at his ridiculous ways and his gruff cracked voice.

Then Aunt Emma went behind him and rapped gently on the table. The parrot stopped marching, stuck his head on one side and listened. Aunt Emma rapped again.

"Come in!" said the parrot suddenly, quite softly, as if he had turned into quite another person. "Hush--sh--sh, cat's got a mouse!"

"Well, Polly," said Aunt Emma, "I suppose she may have a mouse if she likes. Is that all you've got to tell us? Polly, where's gardener?"

"Get away! get away!" screamed Polly, while all his feathers began to stand up straight, and his eyes looked fierce and red like two little live coals.

"That always makes him cross," said Aunt Emma; "he can't bear gardener. Come, Polly, don't get in such a temper."

"Oh, isn't he like the witches on the broom-sticks in our fairy-book, Olly?" cried Milly. "Don't you think, Aunt Emma, he must have been changed into something? Perhaps he was a wicked witch once, or a magician, you know, and the fairies changed him into a parrot."

"Well, Milly, I can't say. He was a parrot when I had him first, twelve years ago. That's all I know about it. But I believe he's very old. Some people say he's older than I am--think of that! So you see he's had time to be a good many things. Well, Polly, good-night. You're not a nice bird to-night at all. Take him away, Margaret."

"Jane! Jane!" screamed Polly, as the maid lifted up the cage again. "Make haste, Jane! cat's in the larder!"

"Oh, you bad Polly," said Aunt Emma, "you're always telling tales. Jane's my cook, Milly, and Polly doesn't like cats, so you see he tries to make Jane believe that our old cat steals the meat out of the larder. Good-bye, Polly, good-bye. You're an ill-natured old bird, but I'm very fond of you all the same."

"Do get us a parrot, mother!" said Olly, jumping about round his mother, when Polly was gone.

"How many more things will you want before you get home, Olly, do you think?" asked his mother, kissing him. "Perhaps you'll want to take home a few mountains, and two or three little rivers, and a bog or two, and a few sheep--eh, young man?"

By this time dinner was ready, and there was the dinner-bell ringing. Up ran the children to Aunt Emma's room to get their hands washed and their hair brushed, and presently there were two tidy little folks sitting on either side of Aunt Emma's chair, and thinking to themselves that they had never felt quite so hungry before. But hungry as Milly was she didn't forget to look out of the window before she began her dinner, and it was worth while looking out of the window in Aunt Emma's dining-room.

Before the windows was a green lawn, like the lawn at Ravensnest, only this lawn went sloping away, away till there was just a little rim of white beach, and then beyond came the wide, dancing blue lake, that the children had seen from the top of the mountain. Here it was close to them, so close that Milly could hear the little waves plashing, through the open window.

"Milly," whispered Aunt Emma when they were all waiting for pudding, "do you see that little house down there by the water's edge? That's where the boat lives--we call it a boathouse. Do you think you'll be frightened of the water, little woman?"

"No, I don't think so," said Milly, shaking her little wise head gravely. "I am frightened sometimes, very. Mother calls me a little goose because I run away from Jenny sometimes--that's our cow at home, Aunt Emma, but then she's got such long horns, and I can't help feeling afraid."

"Well, the lake hasn't got horns, Milly," said Aunt Emma, laughing, "so perhaps you will manage not to be afraid of it."

How kind and nice Aunt Emma looked as she sat between the children, with her pretty soft gray hair, and her white cap and large white collar. Mrs. Norton could not help thinking of the times when she was a little girl, and used always to insist on sitting by Aunt Emma at dinner-time. That was before Aunt Emma's hair had turned gray. And now here were her own little children sitting where she used to sit at their age, and stealing their small hands into Aunt Emma's lap as she used to do so long ago.

After dinner the children had to sit quiet in the drawing-room for a time, while Aunt Emma and father and mother talked; but they had picture-books to look at, and Aunt Emma gave them leave to turn out everything in one of the toy-drawers, and that kept them busy and happy for a long time. But at last, just when Olly was beginning to get tired of the drawer, Aunt Emma called to them from the other end of the room to come with her into the kitchen for a minute. Up jumped the children and ran after their aunt across the hall into the kitchen.

"Now, children," said Aunt Emma, pointing to a big basket on the kitchen table, "suppose you help me to pack up our tea-things. Olly, you go and fetch the spoons, and, Milly, bring the plates one by one."

The tea things were all piled up on the kitchen table, and the children brought them one after another to Aunt Emma to pack them carefully into the big basket.

"Ain't I a useful boy, Aunt Emma?" asked Olly proudly, coming up laden with a big table-cloth which he could scarcely carry.

"Very useful, Olly, though our table-cloth won't look over tidy at tea if you crumple it up like that. Now, Milly, bring me that tray of bread and the little bundle of salt; and, Olly, bring me that bit of butter over there, done up in the green leaves, but mind you carry it carefully. Now for some knives too; and there are the cups and saucers, Milly, look, in that corner; and there is the cake all ready cut up, and there is the bread and butter. Now have we got everything? Everything, I think, but the kettle, and some wood and some matches, and these must go in another basket."

"Aunt Emma," said Milly, creeping up close to her, "were you ever a fairy godmother?"

"Not that I know of, Milly. Would you like me better if I had a wand and a pair of pet dragons, like old Fairy Blackstick?"

"No," said Milly, stroking her aunt's hand, "but you do such nice things, just like fairy godmothers do."

"Do I, little woman? Aunt Emma likes doing nice things for good children. But now come along, it's quite time we were off. Let us go and fetch father and mother. Gardener will bring the baskets."

Such a merry party they were, trooping down to the boathouse. There lay the boat; a pretty new boat, painted dark blue, with a little red flag floating at her bows, and her name, "Ariel," written in large white letters on the stern. And all around the boathouse stretched the beautiful blue water, so clear and sunny and sparkling that it dazzled Milly's eyes to look at it. She and Olly were lifted into the boat beside Aunt Emma and mother, father sat in the middle and took the oars, while gardener put the baskets into the stern, and then, untying the rope which kept the boat tied into the boathouse, he gave it a good push with one hand and off she went out into the blue lake, rising up and down on the water like a swan.

"Oh! mother, mother, look up there," shouted Olly, "there's the mountain. Isn't that where we climbed up this morning?"

Yes, there it was, the beautiful green rocky mountain, rising up above Aunt Emma's house. They could see it all so clearly as they got farther out into the lake; first the blue sky, then the mountain with the little white dots on it, which Milly knew were sheep; then some trees, and in front, Aunt Emma's house with the lawn and the boathouse. And as they looked all round them they could see far bigger and grander mountains than Brownholme, some near and green like Brownholme,