Little Miss Peggy: Only a Nursery Story
"Would I could paint the serious brow, The eyes that look the world in face, Half-questioning, doubting, wondering how This happens thus, or that finds place."
CHAPTER I
A BREAKFAST PARTY
"Henry was every morning fed With a full mess of milk and bread."
"No," said Peggy to herself, with a little sigh, "the naughty clouds has covered it up to-day. I can't see it."
"Miss Peggy," came nurse's voice from the other side of the room, "your breakfast's waiting. Come to the table, my dear, and stand quiet while Master Thor says the grace."
Nurse spoke kindly, but she meant what she said. Peggy turned slowly from the window and took her place among her brothers. She, and Thorold and Terence, the two oldest boys, sat opposite nurse, and beside nurse was Baby, who required a great deal of room to himself at table, baby though he was. He had so many things to do during a meal, you see, which grown-up children think quite unnecessary. He had to drum with a spoon, first in one fat hand and then in the other; he had to dip his crust first in nurse's cup of tea and next in Hal's jug of milk to see which tasted best, and there would have been no fun in doing either if he hadn't had to stretch a long way across; and besides all this he felt really obliged now and then to put his feet upon the table for a change, one at a time, of course. For even he, clever as he was, could not have got both together out of the bars of his chair without toppling over. Nurse had for some time past been speaking about beginning "to break Master Baby in," but so far it had not got beyond speaking, and she contented herself with seating him beside her and giving him a good quarter of the table to himself, the only objection to which was that it gave things in general a rather lopsided appearance.
At the two ends sat Baldwin and Hal. Hal's real name, of course, was Henry, though he was never called by it. Baldwin, on the contrary, had no short name, partly perhaps because mamma thought "Baldie" sounded so ugly, and partly because there was something about Baldwin himself which made one not inclined to shorten his name. It suited him so well, for he was broad and comfortable and slow. He was never in a hurry, and he gave you the feeling that you needn't be in a hurry either. There was plenty of time for everything, for saying the whole of his name as well as for everything else.
That made a lot of brothers, didn't it? Five, counting baby, and to match them, or rather not to match them – for five and one are not a match at all – only one little girl! She wondered about it a good deal, when she had nothing else more interesting to wonder about. It seemed so very badly managed that she should have five brothers, and that the five brothers should only have one sister each. It wasn't always so, she knew. The children at the back had plenty of both brothers and sisters; she had found that out already. But I must not begin just yet about the children at the back; you will hear about them in good time.
There was a nice bowl of bread-and-milk at each child's place, and as bread-and-milk is much better hot than cold, it was generally eaten up quickly. But this morning, even after the grace was said, and the four brothers who weren't baby had got on very well with theirs, Peggy sat, spoon in hand, gazing before her and not eating at all.
"What's the matter, Miss Peggy?" said nurse, when she had at last made Baby understand that he really wasn't to try to put his toes into her tea-cup, which had struck him suddenly as a very beautiful thing to do; "you've not begun to eat. Are you waiting for the sugar or the salt, or can't you fix which you want this morning?"
For there was a very nice and interesting rule in that nursery that every morning each child might choose whether he or she would have salt or sugar in the bread and milk. The only thing was that they had to be quick about choosing, and that was not always very easy.
Peggy looked up when nurse spoke to her.
"Peggy wasn't 'toosing," she said. Then she grew a little red. "I wasn't 'toosing," she went on. For Peggy was five – five a good while ago – and she wanted to leave off baby ways of talking. "I was wondering."
"Well, eat your breakfast, and when you've got half-way down the bowl you can tell us what you were wondering about," said nurse.
Peggy's spoon, already laden, continued its journey to her mouth. But when it got there, and its contents were safely deposited between her two red lips, she gave a little cry.
"Oh!" she said, "it doesn't taste good. There's no salt or sugar."
"'Cos you didn't put any in, you silly girl," said Thor. "I saw, but I thought it'd be a good lesson. People shouldn't wonder when they're eating."
"Peggy wasn't eating; she was only going to eat," said Terry. "Never mind, Peg-top. Thor shan't tease you. Which'll you have? Say quick," and he pulled forward the sugar-basin and the salt-cellar in front of his sister.
"Sugar, pelease," said Peggy. "It's so 'told this morning."
At this Thor burst out laughing.
"What a Peggy-speech," he said. "Sugar's no warmer than salt."
"Yes," said Baldwin, solemnly, from the other end of the table. "'Tis. There's sugar in toffee and in jam, and they're hot, leastways they're hot to be made. And there's salt in ices, for mamma said they're made with salt."
"What rubbish!" said Thor. "Nurse, isn't it rubbish? And when did you ever see ices, I'd like to know, Baldwin?"
"I did," Baldwin maintained. "Onst. But I'll not tell you when, if you say rubbish."
"It is rubbish all the same, and I'll prove it," said Thor. "You know that nice smooth white sugar on the top of bridescake? – well, they ice that to put it on – I know they do. Don't they, nurse?"
"They call it icing, to be sure," nurse replied. "But that's no proof that ices themselves mayn't be made with salt, Master Thor, for when you come to think of it ices have sugar in them."
"To be sure they have," Thor cried, triumphantly. "Nurse has proved it – that sugar's no warmer than salt," which was not what nurse had intended to say at all.
But now Peggy, who all this time had been steadily eating, looked up again.
"Peggy was wondering," she said, "what's clouds. Is clouds alive?"
Thor was all ready with his "you silly girl" again, but this time Terry was before him.
"They can't be alive," he said. "They've got no hands, or feet, or mouths, and noses, and eyes, and – "
"They has noses," said Peggy, eagerly. "Peggy's seen them, and they has wings – the little ones has wings, they fly so fast. And p'raps they has got proper faces on their other sides, to look at the sun with. I've seen shiny bits of the other sides turned over."
"Yes," said Baldwin, solemnly again, as if that settled it, "so has I."
"But they're not alive, Peggy, they're really not. They fly because the wind blows them," said Terence.
"Oh!" said Peggy, with a deep-drawn breath, "I see. Then if we all blowed very hard at the window, if we all blowed together, couldn't we blow them away? I do so want to blow them away when they come over my hills."
But when she had said this she grew very red, just as if she had told something she had not meant to tell, and if any one had looked at her quite close they would have seen that there were tears in her eyes. Fortunately, however, no one had noticed her last words, for Thorold and Terence too had burst out laughing at the beginning of her speech.
"Fancy us all blowing out of the window together," they said. And they began puffing out their cheeks and pretending to blow very hard, which made them look so funny that Peggy herself burst out laughing too.
"I'll tell you what," said Thor, when they were tired of laughing, "that reminds me of soap-bubbles, we haven't had any for such a time. Nurse, will you remember to let us have