Spring in a Shropshire Abbey

Bess seemed lost in a brown study. “A penny for your thoughts, miss,” I said.

“Mum,” replied Bess, dreamily, “I am thinking and thinking – ”

“Yes, dear?”

“What is the use of London?”

The subject is rather large, I urged. But Bess had the sharp, incisive intellect of a quick child, and stood firm to her opinion.

“I don’t see,” she said, “that noise, shows, and smart people make use. Why should poor children be taken to London? If the grown-ups want it, they had better go there by themselves.”

“My dear little person,” I said, “even the youngest of others must sometimes do disagreeable things, even in the twentieth century.”

But this was a hard matter for an only child to understand, and Bess would have none of it.

At the same moment, we heard the noise and rattle of the approaching train, and our discussion broke off abruptly. A second later the train had stopped, and the guard alighted and opened a first-class compartment, and proceeded to lift out little Hals. Bess dashed up breathless. The children were too excited to embrace each other. They only rushed to each other, took each other’s hands, and went on dangling them, and blushing like two rose buds. Whereupon so, Prince Charming fell with a yelp to the ground. Happily, I was by to pick up and console the poor little puppy. A quiet, nice-looking young woman came out, bearing in her arms a host of packages and rugs. In a minute or two Hals’ luggage was collected, and we walked down across the buttercup field to the old Abbey, whilst swallows flew overhead, and sunshine chased purple clouds across the sky.

HALS ARRIVES

“Fräulein is not here?” I heard Bess say to Hals.

“No,” answered Hals.

“Then,” whispered Bess, “I shall be able to pray to-night. For all God lives so far, I think He can understand a girl sometimes.”

“That’s handy,” agreed Hals, shortly.

“Yes,” answered Bess; “He knew what I wanted at Christmas all of His own accord, and now He has left out Fräulein, and He couldn’t have done better, even if He had been papa.”

To this, Hals made no answer, but both children danced with glee. Then followed tea, and two hours afterwards, bed.

When my little girl was in bed, I went up and found her, and said the last good-night. Her eyes shone like little stars, and she put her arms round my neck.

“Mum – Mum,” she said, so I went quite close. “I thought,” said my little maid, “when I had got Prince Charming, that I never could want anything else, but I do now want something bad – bad.”

“Yes?” I answered.

“Is there nowhere,” pursued my little girl, “where one can buy a brother? I want one so bad.”

The children and I passed a happy week – a week of golden sunshine. Miss Weldon went off and spent the time with a cousin at Hereford, and I was left alone with lad and lass. We read, and talked, and played. There were no lessons, but I told them “lovely stories.” Beautiful old legends, pretty tales from history, and I read aloud from Hans Andersen, and parts of Charles Kingsley’s delicious “Water Babies.”

“I think,” said Bess one day as I closed the book, “that I love Tom best of all as a little sweep.”

“Yes,” said Hals, “for he was so game, running across the moor all by himself. When I am a man, I hope I shall never be afraid. I am sure my father never is.” Then, after a pause, he added, “Some day I shall be a soldier, and fight the king’s enemies.”

“So shall I,” said Bess.

But this Hals would not allow. “Girls cannot fight,” he assured me, gravely. “They can only scratch. Besides, boys cannot fight girls, so it wouldn’t be fair.”

“Then I must fight girls,” said Bess, sadly; “but I’m afraid that wouldn’t be much fun, for girls mostly pinch, and run away.”

The weather was beautiful during Hals’ stay with us. The Shropshire fields and woods seemed all under an enchanter’s wand. Blue mist lay on the Wrekin and on the Clee. Sunshine glowed all the day, and in the evening, glorious sunsets, and tranquil twilights. After tea, we sometimes took Jill, the little pony, and the children rode one behind the other along the lanes. All the hedges were redolent with honeysuckle, and great pink sprays of the most exquisitely lovely of all flowers, the wild dog-rose, curled over branch and stem; whilst larks sang over green seas of rippling wheat, which moved in broad waves over stormless, summer seas.

WE MEET THADY

Far away I showed the children one evening the Brown Clee, the land of witches and romance to Shropshire youth. No rain fell, no tempests gathered. It was June, and the perfection of June weather. Sheets of buttercups glistened in the meadows, moon-daisies nodded in the upland grasses, and over disused lime-kilns blew beds of rosy thyme and rock-roses, whilst here and there, on the outskirts of forest lands, we found the sweetest of all wild flowers – pale butterfly orchises, with their strange sweet perfume, which, as Bess said, made you long to live, only in afternoons. Thady one day joined us in one of our expeditions. He got up from a bush suddenly as we were passing – bare-legged, jovial, courteous, as only an Irish lad can be.

“The ‘top of the morning,’ mam,” he cried, and his face lit up with a simultaneous smile.

“It is afternoon,” I laughed.

“Whatever the hour or the season, ’tis only well I wish yer,” he replied, with the spontaneous politeness of the Celt.

“Have you anything pretty to show us?” I asked.

“Yes,” repeated Bess, “show us something pretty.”

“Well,” said Thady, looking down, “it’s getting late, I’m thinking, for seeing sights; most that’s young is getting fledged. But I know a field where there’s a lot of little leverets, soft as down, pretty as kittens.”

So we followed on. I led Jill, with Bess riding on a boy’s saddle, and Hals followed behind. We passed a wild, rough field, with the steep pitch of the Edge Wood on one side, and the view of a great stretch of country up to Shrewsbury, and beyond. To the west we saw Caer Caradoc and the Long-mynd sleeping in purple haze. Then we passed through a hunting wicket, and went into another rough-and-tumble field, with rampant thistles, full of old disused lime-kilns, and sheep-nipt bushes of thorns.

“What lovely places to play in!” cried Bess, enthusiastically. “Perhaps real gnomes and goblins live there, and if we stayed till the church-tower clock struck twelve, we might really see them in red caps. The sort, mamsie, that you and I know. Perhaps,” she added, “then they might bring us gold. You know they do.”

“Begorra!” cried Thady, indulgently, “if yer was to come here at midnight, yer couldn’t count them for jostling, the leprechauns and such like gentry. They be plentiful as faiberries in Muster Burbidge’s garden in August.”

At this Hals said gravely, “I should like to come and see them one night, although I have never heard my father speak of them. I don’t think he knows many goblins at Westminster.”

“Westminster,” retorted Thady, magnificently, “is a poor place for meeting anything but common men and women.”

Then we walked on in single file, for I had to guide the pony with care, for the pitches on each side of the path were steep and slippery. In one part of the field there was a large round clump of white dog roses, such as are often to be found in waste places, with brilliant yellow stamens and bronze-coloured stalks and buds.

“I think ’tis here as you’ll find, missie, the little yellow fluffs at home,” said Thady.

Evidently in the innermost recesses of the rose bush there was a fine scent of something very good to the canine mind, for Mouse pricked up her ears, sniffed boisterously, and began to move her tail like a fox-hound drawing a covert. Then with a great swirl and pounce, she darted right into the brake, bending and breaking all by her weight, and brought out in her mouth a little ball of fluff. The poor little creature screamed in terror, almost like a child.

I rushed forward. “Mouse, Mouse!” I cried, “drop it, drop it!”

THE LITTLE HARE

Mouse looked at me reproachfully out of her topaz eyes, held it, but allowed me to pass my fingers between her great jaws and to release the little captive. Great was my delight to find that poor little puss was quite unhurt, only very wet with my dog’s saliva.

I sat down, and Thady lifted off Bess from the pony, and then the children flocked round to see the long-eared little creature I was holding in my arms.

“Isn’t it pretty?” I said, and held up the little tawny ball of fluff. “Look what lovely brown eyes it has, and what tender shades of buff and fawn are in its long ears.”

“Let us take him home,” cried Bess, enthusiastically.

“But,” I asked, “how about Tramp and Tartar? They would not be gentle like Mouse.” And I added, “It was lucky that they did not come with us this afternoon. They would not only have caught the little leveret, they would have killed him, too.”