The Adventures of Herr Baby

"Isn't it sweet, Fritz?" said auntie.

"Yes," said Fritz, "but it's rather dirty, auntie, isn't it?"

Fritz was very, what is called, practical. The "it" that auntie was speaking about was an old picture, hanging up on the wall at the side of the door. It was the portrait of a little girl, a very little girl, of not more than three or four years old. She had a dear little face, sweet and bright, and yet somehow a very little sad, or else it was the long-ago make of the dress, and the faded look of the picture itself, beside the baby-like face that made it seem sad. You couldn't help thinking the moment you saw it, "Dear me, that little girl must be a very old woman by now or most likely she must be dead!" I think it was that that made one feel sad on first looking at the picture, for, after all, the face was bright and happy-looking: the rosy, roguish, little mouth was smiling, the soft blue eyes had a sort of twinkling fun in them, though they were so soft, and the fair hair, so fair that it almost seemed white, drawn up rather tight in an old-fashioned way, fell back again on one side as if little Blue-eyes had just been having a good run. And one fat, dimpled shoulder was poked out of the prim white frock in a way that, I daresay, had rather shocked the little girl's mother when the painter first showed her his work, for our little, old, great-great-grandfathers' and great-great-grandmothers', children, must have had to sit very, very still in their very best and stiffest frocks and suits when their pictures were painted, poor little things! They were not so lucky as you are nowadays, who have only to go to the photograph man's for half an hour, and keep your merry faces still for a quarter of a minute, if your mothers want to have a picture of you!

But Blue-eyes must have had some fun when her picture was painted, I think, or else that little shoulder wouldn't have got leave to poke itself out of its sleeve, and there wouldn't have been that mischievous look about the comers of her mouth.

"Isn't it a little dirty, auntie?" said Fritz.

"Wouldn't your face look a little dirty if it had been hanging up in a frame for over a hundred years?" said auntie, laughing, at which Fritz looked rather puzzled.

Then auntie's eyes went back to the picture again.

"It is sweet," she said, "very, very sweet, and so perfectly natural."

All this time, as I told you, Herr Baby's whole mind had been given to the shiny glasses. Suddenly the sound of his aunt's voice caught his ear, and he looked up.

"What is it that is so 'weet, auntie?" he said.

"The picture over there, dear. Hanging up by the door. The little girl."

Baby looked up, and in a moment his eyes brightened.

"Oh, what a dear little baby!" he said. "Oh, her is 'weet! Auntie, him would so like to kiss her."

"You darling!" said auntie, her glance turning from the sweet picture face above to the sweet living face beside her. "I wonder if you will ever learn to paint like that, Baby. I should very much like to copy it if I could have the loan of it. It would be sure to be very dear to buy," she added to herself. "But we must hurry, my little boys," she went on. "I was tempted to waste time admiring the picture, but we must be quick."

Fritz and Lisa turned away with auntie, but Baby waited one moment behind. He pressed his face close against the shop window and whispered softly,

"Pitty little girl, him would like to kiss you. Him will come a 'nother day. P'ease, pitty little girl, don't let nobody take away the shiny glasses, for him wants to buy them for mother."

Then, quite satisfied, he trotted down the street after the others, who were waiting for him a few doors off.

"Were you saying good-bye to the picture, Baby?" said auntie, smiling.

"Yes," said Baby gravely.

Auntie soon found the office where she was to hear about the house they were thinking of taking. The little boys stood beside her and listened gravely while she asked questions about it, though they couldn't understand what was said.

"Him wishes the people in this countly wouldn't talk lubbish talk," said Herr Baby to Fritz with a sigh. "Him would so like to know what them says."

"I want to know if we're going to have a house with a garden," said Fritz. "That's all I care about," and as soon as they were out in the street again, he asked auntie if "the man" had said there was a garden to the house.

"There are several houses that I have to tell your grandfather about," said auntie. "Some have gardens and some haven't, but the one we like the best has a garden, though not a very big one."

"Not as big as the one at home?" said Fritz.

"Oh dear no, of course not," said auntie. "It is quite different here from at home. People only come to stay a short time, they wouldn't care to be troubled with big gardens."

"I don't mind," said Fritz amiably, "if only it's big enough for us to have a corner to dig in, and somewhere to play in when Lisa's in a fussy humour."

"Mine child," said Lisa mildly. Poor Lisa, she was not a very fussy person! Indeed she was rather too easy for such lively young people as Fritz and Denny.

"And do you want a garden, too, very much, Baby?" said auntie.

Baby had hardly heard what they were saying. His mind was still running on the shiny jugs and the blue-eyed little girl.

"Him wants gate lots of pennies," he said, which didn't seem much of an answer to auntie's question.

"Lots of pennies, my little man," said auntie. "What do you want lots of pennies for?"

But Baby would not tell.

Just then they saw coming towards them in the street two very funny looking men. They had no hats or caps on their heads, so the children could see that they had no hair either, at least none on the top, where it was shaved quite off, and only a sort of fringe all round left. Then they had queer loose brown coats, with big capes, something like grandfather's Inverness cloak, Fritz thought, and silver chains hanging down at their sides, and, queerest of all, no stockings or proper boots or shoes, only things like the soles of shoes strapped on to their bare feet. These were called sandals, auntie said, and she told the boys that these funny looking men were monks, "Franciscans," she said they were called. They all lived together, and they never kept any money, and people said – but auntie thought that was not quite true – that they never washed themselves.

"Nasty dirty men," said Fritz, making a face. "I shouldn't like to be a Franciscan."

"Not in winter, Fritz?" said Baby. "Him wouldn't mind in winter when the water are so cold. Lisa," he went on, turning round to his nurse, "'member – when the werry cold mornings comes, him's going to be a Frantisker – will you 'member, Lisa?"

"But what about the pennies?" said auntie, laughing. "If you are a Frantisker, Baby, you won't have any pennies, and you said just now you wanted a great lot of pennies."

Baby looked very grave.

"Then him won't be a Frantisker," he said decidedly.

After that he spoke very little all the way home. He had a great deal on his mind, you see. And his last thought that night as he was falling asleep was, "Him are so glad him asked the little pitty girl to take care of the shiny jugs."

Funny little Herr Baby! How much was fancy, how much was earnest in his busy baby mind, who can tell?

A few days after this, they all moved from the Hotel to the pretty house with a garden which auntie had gone to ask about. It was a pretty house. I wish I could show it to you, children! It had not only a garden but a terrace, and this terrace overlooked the sea, the blue sunny sea of the south. And from one side, or from a little farther down in the garden, one could see the white-capped mountains, rising, rising up into the sky, with sometimes a soft mist about their heads which made them seem even higher than they were, "high enough to peep into heaven," said Baby; and sometimes, on very clear days, standing out sharply against the blue behind, so that one could hardly believe it would take more than a few minutes to run to the top and down again.

There were many interesting things in this garden – things that the children had not had in the old garden at home, nice though it was. It was not so beautifully neat as the flower part of the garden at home, but I do not think the children liked it any the less for that. The trees and bushes grew so thickly that down at the lower end it was really like a wilderness, a most lovely place for hide-and-seek. Then there was a fountain, a real fountain, where the water actually danced and fell all day long; and all round the windows of the house and the trellised balcony there were the most lovely red shaded leaves, such as one never sees in such quantities in the north. And in among the stones of the terrace there lived lizards – the most delightful lizards. One in particular grew so friendly that he used to come out at meal-times to drink a little milk which the children spilt for him on purpose; for the day nursery, or school-room, as Celia liked it to be called, opened on to the terrace too, though at the other end from the two drawing-rooms and grandfather's "study," and the windows were long and low, opening like doors, so that Lisa had hard work to keep the children quiet at table the first few days, for every minute they were jumping up to see some new wonder that they caught sight of. Altogether it was a very pretty home to spend the winter in, and every one seemed very happy. Bully and the "calanies" were as merry as larks, if it is true that larks are merrier than other birds, and Peepy-Snoozle and Tim, mistaking the bright warm sunshine for another summer, I suppose, got in the habit of being quite lively about the middle of the day as well as in the middle of the night, instead of spending all the daylight hours curled up like two very sleepy fairy babies with brown fur coats on, in their nice white cotton-wool nests.

There was so much to do and to think of the first few days that I think Baby forgot a little about what he had seen in the old curiosity shop. Auntie, too, was too busy to give any thought to the picture which had so taken her fancy, though neither she nor Baby really forgot the dear little face with its loving, half-merry, half-sad blue eyes. But auntie had to help mother to get everything settled; and of course there was a good deal to explain to the strange servants, for neither Peters nor Linley the maid knew "lubbish talk," as Baby would call it, at all, and it was very funny indeed to hear Peters trying to make the cook understand how grandfather liked his cutlets, or Linley "pounding" at the housemaid, as Fritz called it, to get it into her head that she didn't call it cleaning a room to sweep all the dirt into a corner where it couldn't be seen! Peters was more patient than Linley. When Linley couldn't make herself understood she used to shout louder and louder, as if that would make the others know what she meant, and then she used to say to Celia that it really was "a very hodd thing that the people of this country seemed not to have all their senses." And however Celia explained to her, she couldn't be got to see that she must seem just as stupid to them as they seemed to her! Peters was less put about. He had been in India with grandfather, so he said he was used to "furriners." He seemed to think everybody that wasn't English could be put together as "furriners"; but he had brought a dictionary and a book of little sentences in four languages, and he would sit on the kitchen table patiently trying one language after another on the poor cook, just as when one can't open a lock, one tries all the keys one can find, to see if by chance one will fit. The cook was a very mild, gentle man; he had a nice wife and two little children in the town, and he was inclined to be very fond of Herr Baby, and to pet him if ever he got a chance. But that wasn't for a good while, for Baby was at first terribly frightened of him. He had a black moustache and whiskers and very black eyes, and they looked blacker under his square white cook's cap, and the first time Baby saw him through the kitchen window, the cook happened to be standing with a large carving-knife in one hand, and a chicken which he was holding up by the legs, in the other. Off flew Herr Baby. A little way down the garden he ran against Denny, who was also busy examining their new quarters.

"Oh, Denny, Denny!" he cried, "this is a dedful place – there's a' ogre, a real tellable ogre in the house. Him's seen him in one of the windows under the dimey-room. Oh, Denny, Denny, p'raps him'll eaten us up."

Denny for the first moment was, to tell the truth, a little bit frightened herself. Common sense told her there were no such things as ogres, not now-a-days any way, at least not in England, their own country. But a dreadful idea struck her that this was not England; this might be one of the countries where ogres, like wolves and bears, were still occasionally to be found. There was no telling, certainly; but not for a good deal would Miss Denise Aylmer, a young lady of nine years old past, have owned to being frightened as long as she could possibly help it.

She caught Baby by the hand.

"What sall we do?" he said; "sall we go and tell mother?"

Denny considered.

"We'd better go and see again," she said very bravely. "You must have made a mistake, I think, Baby dear. I don't think there can be any ogres here."

Baby was much struck by Denny's courage. His hand slipped back a very little out of hers.