Miss Mouse and Her Boys

'And Archie?' inquired the little girl.

'Oh, he can do whichever he likes,' said Pat. 'I daresay he'll stay with us. He's been once or twice with Jus while my throat was bad, you know, but I don't think he cared about it much.'

And so it proved. When they got to the Crags', Bob, as well as his grandmother, was on the look-out for them, old Nance's face lighting up with pleasure.

'Are you glad to see us again?' asked Archie. 'I hope you've got some stories for us. If you know so much about fairy things, Nance, why don't you manage to get us nice fine days for our half-holidays?'

The old woman smiled.

'It's a fine day for me when I see your faces, Master Archie,' she replied, 'and that you know well enough. But to be sure the weather has been contrary the last week or two. Come in, come in, missie dear – there's some of my little cakes all ready. Won't you come in too, Master Justin, before you go off with Bob? I've been fearing you might have got cold when you were here last week; it was such a very wet day.'

'No fear,' said Justin amiably. 'Bob and I aren't made of sugar or salt, are we, Bob? I'll come in for a minute, thank you, Nance, but we mustn't be long, or we'll have no fun. It gets so soon dark now, and papa's vexed if we don't all go home together.'

'To be sure,' said the old woman, 'and quite right too. You'll never find me wanting you to do anything your dear papa and mamma wouldn't like, my dears.'

So saying she led the way into her quaint little kitchen, all tidied up and bright as the children always found it – the cakes and a large jug of milk set out as before on a small table near the pleasantly glowing fire.

'Are you coming with Bob and me, Archie?' Justin inquired. 'Pat's a donkey – no use asking him.'

Pat took this uncomplimentary speech very calmly. Archie hesitated.

'Come along,' said Justin, 'that's to say if you're coming,' for having made away with at least three of the tempting little cakes, he was now in a hurry to be off.

'Don't go, Archie,' said Rosamond, speaking low, so that the elder boys could not hear, and her words decided Archie.

'I'd rather stay here, thank you, Jus,' he said. 'You've got Bob, so you don't really need me.'

'You are a softy,' said Justin as he ran off, but Archie, backed by Pat and Rosamond, did not care.

'Now, Nance,' said Pat, when most of the cakes and milk were disposed of, 'we're ready for your stories.'

The old woman had drawn a stool to the fire and was sitting there facing it, the reflection casting a pleasant glow on her sunburnt cheeks and keen bright eyes. She was always a nice-looking old woman, but just now she really looked quite pretty.

'How fond you are of the fire, Nance,' said Archie; 'do you have one all the year round?'

'Mostly so, Master Archie,' she replied. 'You see old folk like me grow chilly. It's not often I feel too hot, even in the midsummer days. And here on the moorside there's always a breeze more or less. Yes, I love my bit o' fire, Master Archie – you're about right there, but all the same I'd rather face cold than be choked in a town and have no fresh air, like some poor things have to bear their lives.'

'Nance,' said Miss Mouse suddenly; she had been sitting silent watching Bob's granny, 'it's so funny, it seems to me that when you stretch out your hands to the flames they give a little jump towards you and then dance up the chimney ever so much higher than before. Are you a sort of a fairy, dear Nance?'

Pat glanced at the little girl half uneasily. He knew that some of the people about called Mrs. Crag a witch, and 'uncanny,' and words like that, just because she was a stranger and different in her ways and looks from her present neighbours, and he was afraid that Nance's feelings might be hurt by little Rosamond's question.

But it was not so – on the contrary the old woman seemed pleased, and smiled brightly.

'You must have a bit of the fairy knowing yourself, missie dear, to have noticed it,' she said. 'I've been told I get it from my grandmother, who had fairy ways, there's no denying. And no harm in them either, if one doesn't think too much of them, or fancy oneself more than one is. But I've always had a kind of luck, hand-in-hand with troubles, for troubles I've had, and many of them, in my long life. More than once when I've thought they'd be too much for me there's come a turn I had little hope of. Maybe the good people aren't gone so far as we think, after all,' and old Nance smiled at the idea.

'Tell us some story of your good luck,' said Pat suddenly. 'It's always so nice to hear a story from the person it really happened to.'

Nance considered. Then she suddenly slipped her hand inside the front of her bodice and drew out a tiny little chain; it was only a steel chain, but very finely worked, so that it looked more like a silver thread, and on it hung a tiny coin with a hole in it through which a ring had been passed. She held it out for the children to see.

'Oh what a weeny, weeny little sixpenny, or threepenny – which is it?' exclaimed Rosamond.

'It's neither, missie dear,' the old woman replied. 'It's a lucky penny, and if you like I'll tell you the story of how I came by it.'

'Oh do, do,' said all three together; Archie adding, 'Did you really get it from the fairies, Nance?'

'You shall hear,' she replied, smiling, and then they all settled themselves to listen.

'When I was a little girl,' she began, 'you'll remember, my dears, that my home was on the edge of a moor, something like this, but wilder and far larger and farther away from any village or town – railways I needn't speak of, for such a thing hadn't even been dreamt of in these long-ago days,' and the far-away look came into the old woman's eyes as she stopped speaking for a moment.

'Is it a hundred years ago since you were a little girl?' asked Miss Mouse.

Nance smiled again.

'Not quite,' she replied, 'though none so far off it either. But long ago as it is, I remember that first part of my life so well, so clear and distinct it seems sometimes that I could fancy it much nearer than things that happened a few years back only. I was an orphan, like my poor Bob now, and I lived with my granny, same as Bob lives along wi' me. 'My granny had come of – ' here Nance hesitated, but went on again – 'after all there's no shame in it,' she said – 'she'd come of gipsy-folk, and when her husband died – he was a steady, settled sort of man, a gardener at some big house, but he died young – she was that lonely and lost-like, she went back to her own people with her little son, and he married among them, so I'm three parts gipsy, you may say. Both father and mother of mine died too – there's many that dies young among our people, and some that lives on and on till you'd think death had forgotten them, and that was the way with my granny. But she wasn't so very old when the feel took her that she'd like to settle down again, she'd got into the habit of a home of her own while her husband lived. So one time when the vans were passing near by where had been her little place, she takes a sudden thought that she'd like to see the fam'ly again, and what did she do but she carried me in her arms and walked some miles to the big house. The Squire was dead, but his lady was living in the Dower House hard by, and the young Squire – none so young by now – was at the hall with his wife and children. And they were pleased to see her and kindly sorry for her troubles, and the Squire said she should have a cottage if there was one to be had, if she'd settle down near them. For my grandmother, for all her gipsying, was a clever, useful woman, as good as a doctor for the cures and comforts she could make with her knowledge of herbs and wild growing things, and where she once gave her faithfulness she'd never draw it back again. So it was fixed that she should make her home there again, though her own folk were none best pleased to lose her.

'At first we lived in two rooms in the village, but granny felt choked like, and she found a bit of a place on the moorside which had once been used for the gentry to eat their lunch in when they were out shooting, and the Squire was very kind and did it up for us quite tidy, and there we lived, though it was sometimes harder than any one knew; for all we had was what granny made by odd days' work here and there, and by selling her dried herbs and drinks she made of them. But as I got bigger the quality at the big house were very kind to me – it was seldom granny needed to buy clothes for me, and the housekeeper taught me nice ways about a house, so that when the time came I was ready for a good service. That's neither here nor there, though, that came afterwards; the time I got my lucky penny I was still a slip of a child, nine or ten at most.

''Twas haymaking – a beautiful dry haymaking, hot and sunny, I remember well. Granny was out with the best of them, hard at work early and late. I went to school in the village, but there wasn't much schooling that week or two. 'Twasn't so strict as now – an hour or two in the morning and then we'd be told we might all run home, to help while the splendid weather lasted. Grandmother worked for the Squire; I was always sure to find her about the fields and have my bite of dinner with her, and then the little ladies and gentlemen would have me play with them at what they called "haymaking," though it was a funny kind enough – more tossing and tumbling and laughing and shouting than any help to the haymakers. But we did enjoy it.

'Well there came an afternoon that my granny was off working in a field a good bit farther away than usual. She told me in the morning not to go after her, for she didn't care for me to walk so far in the hot sun – she was very careful of me, poor dear – and she'd asked the housekeeper if I might have a bit of dinner at the big house, seeing that the young ladies and gentlemen wanted me to make hay with them in what they called their own field, a paddock just outside the kitchen garden. And there I found them, and a rare good play we had that afternoon, finishing up with a nice treat of cakes and milk when we were too tired and hot to play any more.'

'Were the cakes like those you make for us?' asked Rosamond.

Nance nodded, well pleased.

'You've guessed it, missie,' she said. 'They're the very same. 'Twas there I learnt to make them. And then I was starting to go home when I heard a cry from Miss Hetty, the youngest and sweetest, to my thinking, of all the young ladies. "My ring, oh my ring, with the blue stone," she called out. "My birthday ring! I've lost it. I pulled it off and was trying if it would swing on a blade of grass – oh, do help me to find it – my dear little ring."

'Poor Miss Hetty – she'd only had the ring since her birthday the week before, when her mamma had given it her, telling her to be sure not to lose it, for it was one that had been a long time in the family. So no wonder she was vexed about it. How we did hunt for it – we searched and we searched where we had been playing, though feeling all the time there was scarce any use looking for so small a thing in such a place. And Miss Hetty cried till her eyes were all swollen at the thought of having to go home to tell her mamma. And when I went back to my granny and told her about it, it was all I could do not to cry too.

'Granny had her own thoughts about most things.

'"Go to bed, lovey," she said, "and I'll wish a wish for you into your pillow and see what'll come of it."

'And sure enough the next morning I'd a strange dream to tell her.

'"Granny," I said, "this was the dream that came out of my pillow. I thought I was standing on the moor watching the sun set, and I kept looking at it and the beautiful colours in the sky till my eyes seemed to be full of them, and whichever way I turned there was little suns dancing about – on the ground and everywhere. And then I caught sight of an odd-looking figure stooping down as if looking for something. It was a little old hunch-backed man, and I knew without being told that he was one of the good people. All of a sudden he stood straight up and began throwing things at me for me to catch – it was the little suns! They came flying towards me, red and yellow and all colours, but like soap-bubbles they melted before I could catch them, till at last, to my great delight, I did catch one and held it tight in my hand, when it felt firm and hard, like a round coin.

'"'I've got it,' I cried, and the old man laughed.

'"'Keep it,' he said, 'it's not everybody that catches a lucky penny. And maybe it'll help you to get back missie's ring for her,' and with that I awoke. But oh, granny," I went on, "it can't be all a dream, for look here," and I held out my hand to her, "I have got something – see I've got a real little piece of money."

'And that very coin is the one I've worn round my neck for all these many, many years.'

'What did your granny say?' asked the children breathlessly.

'Not very much,' Nance went on, 'she smiled and told me I was a lucky girl, and I must think on what I'd been told by the old man in my dream. And so I did. Before the sun was any height in the sky, long before the young ladies at the big house would be stirring, I was up at the paddock again searching for the ring. And granny told me what to do. I was to put the lucky penny as near as I could guess in the very centre of the field and then to walk round it in widening circles, always looking carefully downwards while I said this rhyme to the good people —

Here's my lucky penny, take it an ye will,