Two Maiden Aunts Part 4

'I never heard they were aunts,' said G.o.dfrey doubtfully; 'Biddy said just angels.'

'Who is Biddy?' asked Angel, to escape from the difficulty.

'She takes care of me and sometimes of my papa,' said G.o.dfrey readily.

'She takes care of everybody that you angels aren't taking care of.

She took care of her father till the angels did it instead, and then she went to church and promised to take care of Corporal O'Roone till the angels got him too. I would rather go back to Biddy, but if I can't I suppose I must go up the ladder with you to my papa.'

It was a queer sort of muddle altogether, and Angel hardly knew whether she felt more like laughing or crying over it. She sat down in the window and drew G.o.dfrey towards her.

'Dear,' she said, 'you have made a mistake. I am not that sort of angel. I hope they take care of you and me and all of us here on earth, as well as where your papa is. But I don't want you to go away.

I want you to stay here and be happy with me.'

G.o.dfrey looked at her steadily through his lashes.

'What are you?' he asked abruptly; 'are you a lady?'

'Yes, I think--I hope so,' said Angel.

'Last night I thought you were a white witch, like the ones in Biddy's stories,' said the child, 'and I wanted you to make wings for me. Are you sure, sure you can't? I want to go back.'

His lips began to quiver, and Angel drew him close to her.

'I can't send you back, dear,' she said tenderly; 'couldn't you try to be happy with me? I want to love you very much.'

'Does _he_ live here?' asked G.o.dfrey abruptly.

'Cousin Crayshaw do you mean?' asked Angel, in some alarm. 'No; he comes to see us and help us, and tell us what to do.'

'I shall kill him next time he comes,' said G.o.dfrey, calmly; 'I shall hold on to his leg and bite him till he dies.'

'Oh, no, I'm sure you won't!' said Angelica, in dismay; 'no angels will want to be near you, G.o.dfrey, if you wish such unkind things as that.'

'Won't you want to be near me?' asked G.o.dfrey doubtfully.

'I shall be very unhappy,' said Angel, and she added quickly, 'but by-and-bye we can talk about everything. Come down and have breakfast and see your other aunt.'

G.o.dfrey looked at her steadily again for a minute, then he suddenly put his little hand in hers.

'I will go with you,' he said, and Angel kissed him with all her heart and led him downstairs. He was very quiet while he ate his bread-and-milk under the eyes of both aunts, and with Penelope making constant excuses to pop in and out of the room; but his great eyes took note of everything, and now and then he asked some quick question or said decidedly what he liked or did not like. He was very quick, Angel thought, as she watched him, nothing seemed to escape him, and his thoughts flew faster than she could follow. He would be very clever, she said to herself, and her heart failed her a little, for she was not clever, she knew. She was slow at understanding things, afraid of deciding quickly; would she ever be able to guide any one else? She thought about it that afternoon, when Betty had taken her nephew out for a walk and she was busy darning his stockings. They were in dreadful holes, and Angel, as she sat in the parlour window seat with the basket by her side, remembered what she had heard about the way boys wore out their clothes. It made her think of the plans she and Betty used to arrange in their schooldays for mending Bernard's things and taking care of him when he should come home. How little she had dreamt that the mending would be done for Bernard's son! G.o.dfrey had not talked about his father, and Angel had asked no questions and had checked Betty and Penelope. If he should confide in them and tell them about his West Indian home, she would wait and let him do it in his own good time. Just now, everything was strange to him, and she wanted to let him take it in and get used to it all; she could not look for him to love them and be at home with them quite yet. You see, if she was not very quick, she was a very patient person, this Angel; she was content to wait and let her flowers grow, and trust to sun and rain to do the work, without wanting to help by digging them up every day or two to see how the roots looked. And so she sat and thought her gentle thoughts in the creeper-framed window, until she began to wonder where Betty and G.o.dfrey were, and decided to go and meet them. She went down the road, where the wind blew fresh across the common, past one or two cottages, with a word here and there to the children playing at the doors, till she came in sight of the old 'Royal Oak,' the village inn, standing back from the road. In front of the inn was the tree which gave the name both to the house and the village, a n.o.ble old oak, hollow inside and propped up with iron supports, but still green above.

A tree with a history it was, a tree which could have told many a tale, if it could have spoken, of generations who had pa.s.sed away, while still its leaves budded fresh and green spring-time after spring-time, and dropped in a russet carpet when the November frosts touched them with cold fingers. But there seemed to be some unusual excitement going on about the oak to-day; a little crowd was collected beneath it: Mr. Collins the innkeeper, and the men and maids, John Ware the miller, pretty Patty Rogers, Nancy's elder sister, Nancy herself, who was always in the forefront when anything was going on, two or three women from the cottages, and, what startled Angel most, Betty, with her shady hat tumbling down her back, gazing up anxiously into the tree, but not G.o.dfrey. Angel quickened her steps and looked where they were looking, and as she drew nearer she heard a chorus of voices.

'Come down, come down, G.o.dfrey, dear G.o.dfrey, you naughty, naughty little boy, come down!'

'Come down, young master; the bough's rotten, 'twon't bear you.'

'Oh, bless him, he'll break his neck, the wood's just tinder! I can't look at him.'

And here Nancy, who loved to have anything, bad or good, to tell, caught sight of Angel and came flying to meet her.

'Oh please, Miss Angelica,' she panted, 'the young gentleman's up the tree and he won't come down nor they can't fetch him, and Mrs. Taylor says he's safe to break his neck, miss--nothing can't save him.'

And then came Betty in a flood of tears.

'Angel, tell him to come down, tell him to come down; he won't listen to me; he'll be killed, he'll be killed!'

'Safe to be!' echoed all the women, as Angel reached the group.

Naughty G.o.dfrey was up the tree in a place that certainly seemed unsafe enough. He was astride upon a bough that did indeed look fearfully rotten, and, though the men below would gladly have gone after him, no one heavier than the slim little boy could have climbed up there in safety.

'The wonder is how he got there, not being a cat,' remarked Ware the miller, who was of a rather dismal turn of mind, 'but he'll want nine lives if he's to get down with a whole skin.'

Angel turned pale as she looked up at him, but she called to him quietly, 'G.o.dfrey, come down at once.'

G.o.dfrey looked down at the sound of her voice, and she thought he looked rather scared.

'I'm going to stop up here,' he said.

'No, you are to come down,' said Angel gravely.

He made a little movement as if he were coming, resting his toe for an instant on a lower bough. As he did so the rotten wood snapped and the branch came down at Angel's feet, leaving G.o.dfrey astride on the bough above, with his feet dangling, while his own seat cracked dangerously.

There was a fresh chorus from below.

'The bough's breaking; come down, sir, come down!'

'No, don't move, sir, it'll break if you do; don't stir for your life!'

'G.o.dfrey, keep quite still'--this was from Angel. 'Betty, don't cry; please all of you be quiet, you startle him.'

'Right for you, Miss Angelica,' said the innkeeper; 'hold your tongues, you stupids, if you can. Get into the house and fetch a couple of mattresses and put them here, and look alive about it, will you?'

'You'd best stand a bit back, Miss Angelica,' said the miller, 'else you'll have young master on your head, and there'll be two of you. I'd go up after him if it wouldn't come hard on my wife and six children, one in arms. One must mind one's neck a bit when one's a father, missy.'

'I'd be up after him this minute if the bough'd bear me,' said the innkeeper doubtfully.

Angel answered none of them. She stood still with her white face raised to the little figure in his dangerous position over her head.

He was frightened enough himself now, clinging tightly to the cracking bough and looking fearfully down at the ground beneath him.

'Don't look down, G.o.dfrey,' called Angel encouragingly; 'sit quite still, and we will help you directly.'

At the same moment Peter Rogers came suddenly pus.h.i.+ng through the group with a rope in his hand, He said not a word but went up the tree like a squirrel.

''Taint no good, Pete,' the miller began, 'the bough won't bear you.'

Angel clutched his coat.

'Be quiet,' she said almost sharply; 'we can't do anything; be quiet.'

Every one obeyed her, and held their breath as Pete climbed to the higher boughs above G.o.dfrey, which, though slender for his weight, looked safer than the dead ones. He fastened the rope where it seemed secure and dropped the end down to the little boy.