“Omitting the Crystal,” laughed some one; but Babie had more to say, exclaiming, “O mother, Essie says Aunt Ellen says Janet and I are to do lessons with Miss James, but you won’t let us, will you?”
“Miss James!” broke out Janet indignantly; “we might as well learn of old nurse! Why, mother, she can’t pronounce French, and she never heard of terminology, and she thinks Edward I. killed the bards!” For the girls had spent a day or two with their cousins in the course of the move.
“Yes,” broke in Barbara, “and she won’t let Essie and Ellie teach their dolls their lessons! She was quite cross when I was showing them how, and said it was all nonsense when I told her I heard you say that I half taught myself by teaching Juliet. And so the poor dolls have no advantages, mother, and are quite stupid for want of education,” pursued the little girl, indignantly. “They aren’t people, but only dolls, and Essie and Ellie can’t do anything with them but just dress them and take them out walking.”
“That’s what they would wish to make Babie like!” said her elder sister.
“But you’ll not let anybody teach me but you, dear, dear Mother Carey,” entreated the child.
“No, indeed, my little one.” And just then the boys came rushing in to their evening meal, full of the bird’s nest that they had been visiting in their uncle’s field, and quite of opinion that Kenminster was “a jolly place.”
“And then,” added Jock, “we got the garden engine, and had such fun, you don’t know.”
“Yes,” said Bobus, “till you sent a whole cataract against the house, and that brought out her Serene Highness!”
The applicability of the epithet set the whole family off into a laugh, and Jock further made up a solemn face, and repeated—
“Buff says Buff to all his men,
And I say Buff to you again.
Buff neither laughs nor smiles,
But carries his face
With a very good grace.”
It convulsed them all, and the mother, recovering a little, said, “I wonder whether she ever can laugh.”
“Poor Aunt Ellen!” said Babie, in all her gravity; “she is like King Henry I. and never smiled again.”
And with more wit than prudence, Mrs. Buff, her Serene Highness, Sua Serenita, as Janet made it, became the sobriquets for Aunt Ellen, and were in continual danger of oozing out publicly. Indeed the younger population at Kencroft probably soon became aware of them, for on the next half-holiday Jock crept in with unmistakable tokens of combat about him, and on interrogation confessed, “It was Johnnie, mother. Because we wanted you to come out walking with us, and he said ‘twas no good walking with one’s mother, and I told him he didn’t know what a really jolly mother was, and that his mother couldn’t laugh, and that you said so, and he said my mother was no better than a tomboy, and that she said so, and so—”
And so, the effects were apparent on Jock’s torn and stained collar and swelled nose.
But the namesake champions remained unconvinced, except that Johnnie may have come over to the opinion that a mother no better than a tomboy was not a bad possession, for the three haunted the “Folly” a good deal, and made no objection to their aunt’s company after the first experiment.
Unfortunately, however, their assurances that their mother could laugh as well as other people were not so conclusive but that Jock made it his business to do his utmost to produce a laugh, in which he was apt to be signally unsuccessful, to his own great surprise, though to that of no one else. For instance, two or three days later, when his mother and Allen were eating solemnly a dinner at Kencroft, by way of farewell ere Allen’s return to Eton, an extraordinarily frightful noise was heard in the poultry yard, where dwelt various breeds of Uncle Robert’s prize fowls.
Thieves—foxes—dogs—what could it be? Even the cheese and celery were deserted, and out rushed servants, master, mistress, and guests, being joined by the two girls from the school-room; but even then Carey was struck by the ominous absence of boys. The poultry house door was shut—locked—but the noises within were more and more frightful—of convulsive cocks and hysterical hens, mingled with human scufflings and hushes and snortings and snigglings that made the elders call out in various tones of remonstrance and reprobation, “Boys, have done! Come out! Open the door.”
A small hatch door was opened, a flourish on a tin trumpet was heard, and out darted, in an Elizabethan ruff and cap, a respectable Dorking mother of the yard, cackling her displeasure, and instantly dashing to the top of the wall, followed at once by a stately black Spaniard, decorated with a lace mantilla of cut paper off a French plum box, squawking and curtseying. Then came a dapper pullet, with a doll’s hat on her unwilling head, &c., &c.
The outsiders were choking with breathless surprise at first, then the one lady began indignantly to exclaim, “Now, boys! Have done—let the poor things alone. Come out this minute.” The other fairly reeled against the wall with laughter, and Janet and Jessie screamed at each fresh appearance, till they made as much noise as the outraged chickens, though one shrieked with dismay, the other with diversion. At last the Colonel, slower of foot than the rest, arrived on the scene, just as the pride of his heart, the old King Chanticleer of the yard, made his exit, draped in a royal red paper robe and a species of tinsel crown, out of which his red face looked most ludicrous as he came halting and stupefied, having evidently been driven up in a corner and pinched rather hard; but close behind him, chuckling forth his terror and flapping his wings, came the pert little white bantam, belted and accoutred as a page.
Colonel Brownlow’s severe command to open the door was not resisted for one moment, and forth rushed a cloud of dust and feathers, a quacking waggling substratum of ducks, and a screaming flapping rabble of chickens, behind whom, when the mist cleared, were seen, looking as if they had been tarred and feathered, various black and grey figures, which developed into Jock, Armine, Robin, Johnny, and Joe. Jock, the foremost, stared straight up in his aunt’s face, Armine ran to his mother with—“Did you see the old king, mother, and his little page? Wasn’t it funny—”
But he was stopped by the sight of his uncle, who laid hold of his eldest son with a fierce “How dare you, sir?” and gave him a shake and blow. Robin stood with a sullen look on his face, and hands in his pockets, and his brothers followed suit. Armine hid his face in his mother’s dress, and burst out crying; but Jock stepped forth and, with that impish look of fearlessness, said, “I did it, Uncle Robert! I wanted to make Aunt Ellen laugh. Did she laugh, mother?” he asked in so comical and innocent a manner that, in spite of her full consciousness of the heinousness of the offence, and its general unluckiness, Mother Carey was almost choked. This probably added to the gravity with which the other lady decreed with Juno-like severity, “Robin and John must be flogged. Joe is too young.”
“Certainly,” responded the Colonel; but Caroline, instead of, as they evidently expected of her, at once offering up her victim, sprang forward with eager, tearful pleadings, declaring it was all Jock’s fault, and he did not know how naughty it was—but all in vain. “Robert knew. He ought to have stopped it,” said the Colonel. “Go to the study, you two.”
Jock did not act as the generous hero of romance would have done, and volunteer to share the flogging. He cowered back on his mother, and put his arm round her waist, while she said, “Jock told the truth, so I shall not ask you to flog him, Uncle Robert. He shall not do such mischief again.”
“If he does,” said his uncle, with a look as if her consent would not be asked to what would follow.
CHAPTER VIII. – THE FOLLY
There will we sit upon the rocks, And see the shepherds feed their flocks