Black, White and Gray Part 17

"Perhaps I have and perhaps I haven't," said Philippa recklessly; "I'm tired of threading beads. Let's go out and see how Dennis is getting on."

On the whole, in spite of some sulky moods and one or two fits of temper, Philippa's visit pa.s.sed off extremely well, and Maisie was quite sorry when the time came to say good-bye. She and Dennis watched the carriage drive away, and waved their hands to her as long as it was in sight.

"She's been quite nice nearly all the while," said Maisie; "I wish she had stopped longer."

She spoke sincerely, for just now Dennis was so absorbed in his jackdaws' house that she felt she should miss Philippa and be rather dull.

"Can't I help you?" she asked, as she followed him to the corner where the jackdaws' house was being put up. It was not much to look at yet, but there were some upright posts, and a roll of wire netting, and some thin lathes of wood and a good deal of sawdust about, so that it had a business air.

"Well, you see," said Dennis, "girls always hurt their fingers with tools, but perhaps you shall try to-morrow. It's too late now. Doesn't it seem a waste, when you're doing something you like, to go to bed and sleep all night?"

"But if you didn't," said Maisie, "you couldn't go on with it, because it's all dark."

"I don't know that," said Dennis; "Tuvvy says it's light all night part of the summer.--There's the tea-bell; we must go in."

"I shouldn't like to be out in the night," said Maisie, with a little s.h.i.+ver, as the children ran towards the house, "when everything's in bed, and it's all so quiet and still."

"Everything isn't in bed," said Dennis. "There's owls, and glow-worms, and bats, and--"

"But they're none of them very _nice_ things to be with," said Maisie hesitatingly; "and then there are bad people out at night, who get into houses and steal things, as they did at Upwell, don't you remember?"

"Oh, you mean thieves," said Dennis; "but as far as they go, it's better to be out of doors than in the house. The policemen are out all night as well as the thieves, so it wouldn't matter a bit."

"Well, you won't forget," said Maisie, quitting the subject of thieves, which was an unpleasant one to her, "that to-morrow morning I'm to help you with the jackdaws' house."

Dennis did not forget, and the following day Maisie was supplied with a hammer, and began her work with great zeal, but alas! two minutes had not pa.s.sed before the heavy hammer came cras.h.i.+ng down on her chubby fingers instead of on the nail she was holding. It was a dreadful moment, not only because of the pain, which was severe, but because she felt that it stamped her inferiority as a girl for ever. She looked piteously up at Dennis with her fingers in her mouth, and her eyes full of tears.

"There!" he began tauntingly, but seeing Maisie's round face quiver with pain, he stopped, threw down his tools, and knelt beside her on the gra.s.s.

"Does it hurt much?" he said. "Come in to Aunt Katharine."

Maisie suffered him to lead her into the house without saying a word, for she wanted all her strength to keep from sobbing. The poor fingers were bathed and bound up, and after she had been kissed and comforted, Aunt Katharine said that on the whole she thought Maisie had better not use hammer and nails again. Maisie thought so too just then, but presently, when the pain went off, she began to feel sorry that she was not to help with the jackdaws' house any more. Certainly, as Aunt Katharine pointed out, she could watch Dennis at his work and give advice; but as he never by any chance took any one's advice but Tuvvy's, that would not be very amusing.

"You can hand me the nails, you know," said Dennis, as she sat with a sorrowful face on Aunt Katharine's knee, "and after the jackdaws are in, you can always help to feed them." And with this she was obliged to console herself.

CHAPTER TEN.

ONE WHITE PAW.

The jackdaws' house got on slowly, and this was not surprising, as Dennis had a way of pulling his work to pieces and doing it all over again. Maisie grew impatient sometimes, for at this rate she thought the jackdaws would not be settled in their home until summer was over.

"Hadn't you better let Tuvvy finish it off?" she said one day, when Dennis had spent a full hour in trying to fix a perch to his satisfaction; "it wouldn't take a real carpenter more than half an hour."

Dennis made no answer at first to this taunt. Maisie was only a girl, who did not understand, so it did not matter what she said. Whistling softly, he tried all manner of different positions for the perch, but none pleased him. After all, it would certainly be necessary to have Tuvvy's advice, but that was quite another matter to letting him do the work.

"I shall have to go and see Tuvvy," he said, carelessly throwing down the piece of wood he held; "perhaps Aunt Katharine will let you go too.

You could stop at old Sally's, if you didn't want to go into the barn."

As it happened, Aunt Katharine wanted to send a pudding to old Sally, who had been ill, and she gladly gave Maisie leave to go with Dennis, so Peter in attendance, and the pudding in a basket, the children set out the next morning directly after their lessons.

Maisie was pleased to make this visit, and it was such a very bright fresh June morning, that everything out of doors seemed to be as happy as herself as she danced along, with Peter jumping and barking at her side. The sky was as bright blue as the speedwell in the hedges; the leaves on the trees, not old enough yet to be dark and heavy, fluttered gaily in the wind, and made a light green s.h.i.+mmer everywhere. The fields were still dressed in yellow and white, for none of the farmers had cut their gra.s.s, and in the woods the deep purple hyacinths still lingered, though these were nearly over. It looked a very happy, bright, flowery world, with everything in it fresh and new, and nothing old or sad to think about.

Maisie had not much to trouble her either that morning, but there was one little sad thought which would come creeping out of a corner in her mind sometimes, and that was the fate of the grey kitten. She wondered now, as she checked her pace to a walk, and rebuked Peter for snuffing at the pudding, whether old Sally might have heard something about it from Eliza. There was always a faint hope of this, but it grew fainter with each visit, and Dennis thought it quite silly to put the question at all. Nevertheless Maisie made up her mind, with a quiet little nod to herself, that she would not forget to ask to-day.

Sally and Anne were talking so very loud inside the cottage, that it was a long while before the children could make themselves heard, and it was not until Dennis had battered on the door with his stick that it was slowly opened.

"Lawk, mother!" cried Anne, "it's the young lady and gentleman from Fieldside.--Come in, dearies, and sit ye down."

Old Sally was sitting in the chimney corner wrapped in a shawl, her brown old face looking a shade paler than usual. Anne set chairs for the visitors next to her, and drew closely up herself on the other side of them, prepared to join in the conversation as much as allowed by her mother, who was a great talker, and always took the lead. The two old lilac sun-bonnets nodded one on each side of the children, as old Sally began plaintively:

"Yes, I've lost my appet.i.te. I don't seem as if I could fancy nothing just lately. I'm tired of the food--it's taters, taters, taters, till I'm fair sick on 'em. Seems as if I could have a bit of summat green, it'd go down better. There was a gal brought me a mite of turnip tops t'other day. 'Twarn't on'y a morsel, so as I could hardly find it in the pot when it was biled, but it give a relish, like."

"Aunt Katharine's sent you a pudding," shouted Maisie, taking it out of the basket.

"And sech a cough as _I've_ had," put in Anne, seizing the opportunity to speak, while her mother warmed the end of her trumpet at the fire; "I expect it's a sharp touch of influenzy."

"I seem to get weaker every day," resumed old Sally, presenting her trumpet for Maisie's use. "I crawled down to the gate, and couldn't hardly get back this morning."

"Why don't you have the doctor?" asked Maisie.

Sally shook her head.

"I've never taken no doctor's stuff in all my days," she said. "Anne there, she's had a deal, poor child; but 'twouldn't do _me_ no good."

Dennis was beginning to make impatient signs, and Maisie knew he would not stay much longer, so in spite of Anne, who was preparing to speak, she shouted hastily down the trumpet, "Has your daughter Eliza found the kitten?"

It was answered as she expected, by solemn shakes of the head, both from Sally and Anne, in the midst of which the children took their leave.

"Please the Lord to send the rain and make the greens grow," were old Sally's last words. But there did not seem much chance of rain yet, for the sun was still s.h.i.+ning splendidly, and as the children entered the shadowy barn, Tuvvy's dark figure was lighted up by a ray which came straight through the little window. Maisie seated herself modestly in the background on a chopping-block, while Dennis asked his questions, for she was rather in awe of Tuvvy, though she liked the barn very much, and found plenty to interest her. High up among the rough rafters over her head there were so many cobwebs hanging about, that it puzzled her to think where all the spiders were who had spun them. There were no spiders now, but there were ma.s.ses of cobwebs in every nook and corner, some of them waving in the dimness like flimsy grey veils, others spread about in such strange shapes that they almost seemed alive. No doubt bats lived up there, Maisie thought, and she even fancied she could see them clinging to the wall, dusky and shadowy as the cobwebs themselves.

She turned her eyes with a little shudder, for she did not like bats, to the floor of the barn, and this was much more cheerful to look at, for it was covered with pretty light yellow shavings all in curls and twists. More continually floated down to join them from Tuvvy's bench, where he was planing a piece of wood for Dennis; they were exactly like the flaxen hair of Maisie's favourite doll. Her serious gaze wandered on to the end of the barn, which was almost filled up by a great machine something like a gigantic gra.s.shopper. It looked terribly strong with its iron limbs, although it was at rest, and she felt half afraid of it, though she had often seen it before. What was it, and why was it there?

She could easily have put this question to Tuvvy, but Maisie seldom asked questions. She had a habit of turning things over in her own little mind, and wrapping fancies round them, until she had quite a collection of strange objects in her small world. She would have missed these very much, if they had been exposed to daylight and turned into facts, and in this she was quite different from Dennis; he always wanted to know the reason why, and to have the meaning of things made quite clear to him.

She was not left long, however, to wonder about the big machine, for Tuvvy, giving a sudden wag of his head towards it, said: "The elevator's my next job, soon as hay harvest's over. Wants a lick o' paint."

"How jolly!" exclaimed Dennis, turning towards it with admiration and envy. "I say, won't it just take a lot of paint! What a jolly job!"

"I wish you had it then, master," said Tuvvy grimly. "'Tain't the sort as pleases _me_. It don't give you no credit when it's done, and the paint splashes you awful. It's what I call a reg'lar comical sort of a job."

"I should _like_ it," said Dennis with deep conviction, still staring at the elevator. "What colour shall you paint it?"

"Gaffer said 'twas to be a sort of a yaller," said Tuvvy; "but it don't make much odds. There, master," he continued, as he finished his planing, "that's what you want, and I'll stop to-morrow as I pa.s.s, and give a look at the perches."

Dennis would gladly have stayed much longer to go fully into the painting of the elevator, and other like subjects; but he had been warned not to take up much of Tuvvy's time, so he unwillingly started home with Maisie, clutching his piece of wood under his arm. Until they reached the village, he was so lost in thought that he did not utter a word, but then, coming to a sudden standstill, he exclaimed: "Why shouldn't we paint the jackdaws' house!"

Maisie was struck by the brilliancy of the idea. She stopped too, and gazed at Dennis with admiration.