Jeremy and Hamlet/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
THE PICTURE-BOOK
I
SEPTEMBER 1 was Mary’s birthday, and it had always something of a melancholy air about it because it meant that the holidays were drawing to a close. Soon there would be the last bathe, the last picnic, the last plunge across the moor, the last waking to the sharp, poignant cry of the flying, swerving gulls.
Then in strange, sudden fashion, like the unclicking of a door that opens into another room, the summer had suddenly slipped aside, giving place to autumn; not full autumn yet, only a few leaves turning, a few fires burning in the fields, the sea only a little colder in colour, the sky at evening a chillier green; but the change was there, and with it Polchester, and close behind Polchester old Thompson stepped towards them.
Yes, Mary’s birthday marked the beginning of the end, and, in addition to that, there was the desperate, urgent question of present-giving. Mary took her present-giving (or rather present-getting) with the utmost seriousness. No one in the whole world minded quite so desperately as she what she got, who gave it her, and how it was given. Not that she was greedy; indeed, no. She was not like Helen, who guessed the price of everything that she received, and had what Uncle Samuel called “a regular shop mind.”
It was all sentiment with Mary. What she wanted was that some one (any one) should love her and therefore give her something. She knew that Uncle Samuel did not love her, and she suffered not, therefore, the slightest unhappiness did he forget her natal day; but she would have cried for a week had Jeremy forgotten it. She did not mind did Jeremy only spend sixpence on his gift (but he was a generous boy and always spent everything that, at the moment, he had) so that she might be sure that he had taken a little trouble in the buying of it.
Jeremy knew all this well enough and, in earlier years, the question of buying had been simple, because Cow Farm was miles from anywhere, the nearest village being the fishing cove of Rafiel, and Rafiel had only one “shop general,” and the things in this shop general were all visible in the window from year’s end to year’s end. Mary, therefore, received on her birthday something with which, by sight at least, she was thoroughly familiar.
Now this year there were new conditions. The nearest village with shops was St. Mary’s Moor, some six miles away. It was there that the purchase must be made, and in any case it would be on this occasion a real novelty. Jeremy tried to discover, by those circumlocutory but self-revealing methods peculiar to intending present-givers, what Mary would like. Supposing, just supposing, that some one one day were to die and, most unexpectedly, leave a lot of money to Mary, what would she buy? This was the kind of game that Mary adored, and she entered into it thoroughly. She would buy an enormous library, thousands and thousands of books, she would buy a town and fill it with sweet shops and then put hundreds of poor children into it to eat as much as they liked; she would buy Polchester Cathedral and make father bishop. This was flying rather too high, and so Jeremy, somewhat precipitately, asked her what she would do were she given fifteen shillings and sixpence. She considered, and being that morning in a very Christian frame of mind, decided that she would give it to Miss Jones to buy a new hat with. Mentally cursing girls and their tiresome ways, Jeremy, outwardly polite, altered his demand to: “No; but suppose you were given five shillings and threepence halfpenny” (the exact sum saved at that moment by him), “and had to spend it for yourself, Mary, what would you get with it?”
She would get a book.
Yes, but what book? She clasped her hands and looked to heaven. Oh, there were so many that she wanted. She wanted “The Young Stepmother” and “Dynevor Terrace” and “The Scottish Chiefs” and “Queechy” and “Sylvie and Bruno” and “The Queen’s Maries” and—and—hundreds and hundreds.
Well, she couldn’t buy hundreds with five and threepence halfpenny, that was certain, and if she thought that he was going to she was very much mistaken; but at least he had got his answer. It was a book that she wanted.
The next thing was to go into St. Mary’s Moore. He found the opportunity ready to his hand because Miss Jones had to go to buy some things that were needed for the family the very next afternoon. He would go with her. Mary thought that she would go too, and when Jeremy told her, with an air of great mystery, that that was impossible, she looked so self-conscious that he could have smacked her.
The journey in the old ramshackle omnibus was a delightful adventure. It happened on this particular afternoon that all the Caerlyon farmers and their wives were going too, and there was a “fine old crush.” Hamlet, fixed tightly on his lead, sat between his master’s legs, his tongue out, his hair on end, and his bright eyes wicked, darting from place to place. He saw so many things that he would like to do, parcels that he would like to worry, legs that he would like to smell, laps that he would like to investigate.
He gave sudden jerks at the lead, suited himself to the rolling and jolting of the bus so that he should be flung as near as possible to the leg, parcel or lap that he most wished to investigate. Jeremy then was very busy. Miss Jones, who was a good woman and by now thoroughly appreciated by all the members of the Cole family, including Jeremy himself, who always took her under his especial protection when they went out anywhere, had in all her years never learnt that first of all social laws, “Never try to talk in a noisy vehicle,” and had a long story about one Edmund Spencer, from whose mother she had that morning received a letter. She treated Jeremy as a friend and contemporary (one of the reasons for his liking of her), and he was always deeply interested in her histories; but to-day, owing to the terrific rumblings, rattlings and screaming of the bus and to the shrieking and shouting of the farmers and their ladies, he could only catch occasional words, and was not sure at the end of it all whether Edmund Spencer were animal, vegetable or mineral. His confusion was complete when, just as they were rattling into St. Mary’s one and only street, Miss Jones screamed into his ear, “And so they had to give her boiled milk four times a day and nothing else except an occasional potato.”
The omnibus drew up in front of the Dog and Rabbit, and every one departed on their various affairs. St. Mary’s was like a little wayside station on the edge of a vast brindled, crinkled moorland, brown and grey and green rucking away to the smooth, pale, egg-shell blue of the afternoon sky. The sea-wind came ruffling up to them where they stood. What storms of wind and rain there must be in the winter! All the houses of the long straggling street seemed to be blown a bit askew.
Jeremy and Miss Jones looked around them, and at once the inevitable “general” sprang to view. Miss Jones had to go into the hotel about some business for the rectory, and telling Jeremy to stay just where he was, and that she wouldn’t be more than “just five minutes,” vanished. Having been told to stay where he was, it was natural of him to wander down the street, inspect a greasy pond with some ducks, three children playing marbles and two mongrel dogs, and then flatten his nose against the window of the “general.”
Inspection proved very disappointing. There seemed to be nothing here that he could possibly offer to Mary: bootlaces, cards of buttons, mysterious articles of underwear, foggy bottles containing bulls’-eyes, sticks of liquorice, cakes of soap, copies of Home Chat and The Woman’s Journal, some pairs of very dilapidated looking slippers, some walking-sticks, portraits of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales, highly coloured. …
None of these. Unless, possibly, the Royal Family. But no. Even to Jeremy’s untrained eye the colour was a little bright; and old Victoria. … No, Mary wanted a book. He stared up and down the street in great agitation. He must buy something before Miss Jones came out of the inn. He did not want her to see what it was that he bought. The moments were slipping by. There was nothing here. The two half-crowns and the threepenny piece in his tightly clenched palm were hot and sticky. He looked again. There really was nothing! Then, staring down the street towards the open moor and the eventual sea, he saw a little bulging bottle-glass window that seemed to have coloured things in it. He turned and almost ran.
It was the last shop in the street, and a funny, dumpty, white-washed cottage with a pretty garden on its farther seaward side. The bottle-glass window protected the strangest things. (In another place and at another time it might not be uninteresting to tell the story of Mr. Redpath, of how he opened a curiosity shop in St. Mary’s, of all places! and of the adventures, happy and otherwise, that he encountered there.)
In the shop window there were glasses of blue with tapering stems, and squat old men smoking pipes, painted in the gayest colours, and pottery (jugs to drink out of), and there were old chains of beaten and figured silver, and golden boxes, and the model of a ship with full sails and a gorgeous figure-head of red and gold, and there were old pictures in dim frames, and a piece of a coloured rug, and lots and lots of other things as well.
Jeremy pushed the door back, heard a little bell tinkle above his head, and at once was in a shop so crowded that it was impossible to see t’other from which. A young man with a pale face and carroty hair was behind the very high counter, so high that Jeremy’s nose just tipped the level of it.
“Have you got such a thing as a book?” he asked very politely.
The young man smiled.
“What sort of a book?”
“Well, she said she wanted ‘Queechy’ or ‘Sylvie and Bruno’ or—I’ve forgotten the names of the others. You haven’t got those two, I suppose?”
“No, I haven’t,” said the young man, quite grave now.
“Have you got any books?” said Jeremy breathlessly, because time was slipping by and he had to stand on his toes.
“I’ve got this old Bible,” said the young man, producing a thick, heavy volume with brass clasps. “You see it’s got rather fine pictures. I think you’d better sit on this,” he added, producing a high stool; “you’ll be able to see better.”
“Oh, that’s very nice,” said Jeremy, fascinated by Moses twisting a serpent around his very muscular arm as though it were a piece of string. “How much is this?”
“Eight pounds and ten,” said the young man, as though he’d said a halfpenny.
“I think I’d better tell you at once,” said Jeremy, leaning his elbows confidentially on the counter, “that I’ve only got five shillings and threepence halfpenny.”
The young man scratched his head. “I doubt if we’ve got any book,” he began; then suddenly, “Perhaps this will be the very thing—if you like pictures.”
He burrowed deep down in the back somewhere, and then produced two or three long, flat-looking books, dusty and a faded yellow. He wiped them with a cloth and presented them to Jeremy. At the first sight of them he knew that they were what he wanted. He read the titles: one was “Robinson Crusoe,” another “The Swiss Family Robinson,” the third “Masterman Ready.” He looked at “Crusoe,” and gave a delighted squeal of ecstasy as he turned over the pages. The print was funny and blacker than he had ever seen print before; the pictures were coloured, and richly coloured, the reds and greens and purples sinking deep into the page. Oh! it was a lovely book! a perfect book! the very, very thing for Mary.
“How much is it?” he asked, trembling before the answer.
“Exactly five shillings and threepence halfpenny,” said the young man gravely.
“That is strange,” said Jeremy, almost crowing with delight and keeping his hand on the book unless it should suddenly melt away. “That’s just what I’ve got. Isn’t that lucky?”
“Very fortunate indeed,” said the young man. “Shall I wrap it up for you?”
“Oh, yes, please do—and very carefully, please, so nobody can guess what it is.”
The young man was very clever about this, and when he emerged from the back of the shop he had with him a parcel that might easily have been a ship or a railway train. Jeremy paid his money, climbed down from his stool, then held out his hand.
“Good-bye,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll come again one day and look at the other things in your shop.”
“Please do,” said the young man, bowing.
He went out, the little bell tinkling gaily behind him, and there, coming at that very moment out of the hotel, was Miss Jones.
II
We all know the truth of the familiar proverb that “Distance lends enchantment to the view,” and it was never more true of anything in the world than of parcels.
All the way back in the ’bus the book grew and grew in magnificence simply because Jeremy could not see it. He clutched the parcel tightly on his knees and resisted all Miss Jones’s attempts to discover its contents. Back in the rectory, he rushed up to his bedroom, locked the door, and then, with trembling fingers, undid the paper.
The first glimpse of “Robinson Crusoe and the Footmark on the Sand” thrilled him so that the white-washed walls of his room faded away and the thin pale evening glow passed into a sky of burning blue, and a scarlet cockatoo flew screaming above his head and the sand lay hot and sugar-brown at his feet. Mystery was there—the footprint in the sand, and Crusoe with his shaggy beard and peaked hat, staring. …
Feverishly his fingers turned the pages, and picture after picture opened for his delight. He had never before seen a book with so many pictures, pictures so bright and yet so true, pictures so real that you could almost touch the trees and the figures and Crusoe’s hatchet. He knelt then on the floor, the book spread out upon the bed, so deeply absorbed that it was with a terrific jolt that he heard the banging on the door and Mary’s voice:
“Aren’t you coming, Jeremy? We’re half through supper. The bell went hours ago.”
Mary! He had forgotten all about her. Of course, this book was for her. Just the book for her. She would love the pictures. He had forgotten all about. …
He went down to supper and was bewildered and absent-minded throughout the meal. That night his dreams were all of Crusoe, of burning sands and flaming skies, of the crimson cockatoo and Man Friday. When he woke he jumped at once out of bed and ran on naked feet to the book. As a rule the next morning is the testing time, and too often we find that the treasure that we bought the day before has already lost some of its glitter and shine. Now it was not so; the pictures had grown better and better, richer and ever more rich. The loveliest pictures. …
Just the book for Mary. It was then, standing half stripped before his basin, pausing as he always did ere he made the icy attack with the sponge, that he realised his temptation. He did not want to give the book to Mary. He wanted to keep it for himself.
While he dressed the temptation did not approach him very closely. It was so horrible a temptation that he did not look it in the eyes. He was a generous little boy, had never done a mean thing in all his life. He was always eager to give anything away although he had a strong and persistent sense of possessions so that he loved to have his things near him, and they seemed to him, his books and his toys and his football, as alive as the people around him. He had never felt anything so alive as this book was.
When he came down to breakfast he was surprised to find that the sight of Mary made him feel rather cross. She always had, in excess of others, the capacity for irritating him, as she herself well knew. This morning she irritated him very much. Her birthday would be four days from now; he would be glad when it arrived; he could give her the book and the temptation would be over. Indeed, he would like to give her the book now and have done with it.
By the middle of the day he was considering whether he could not give her something else “just as good” and keep the book for himself. He wrapped the book in all its paper, but ran up continually to look at it. She would like something else just as much; she would like something else more. After all, “Robinson Crusoe” was a book for boys. But the trouble was that he had now no money. He would receive threepence on Saturday, the last Saturday before Mary’s birthday, but what could you get with threepence? Five shillings of the sum with which he had bought Mary’s present had been given him by Uncle Samuel—and Uncle Samuel’s next present would be the tip before he went to school.
That afternoon he quarrelled with Mary—for no reason at all. He was sitting under the oak tree on the lawn reading “Redgauntlet.” Mary came and asked him whether she could take Hamlet for a run. Hamlet, as though he were a toy-dog made of springs, was leaping up and down. He did not like Mary, but he adored a run.
“No, you can’t,” said Jeremy.
“Oh! Jeremy, why can’t I? I’ll take the greatest care of him and those horrid little boys are gone away now and”
“You can’t because I say you can’t.”
“Oh, Jeremy, do let”
He started up from his chair, all rage and indignation.
“Look here, Mary, if you go on talking”
She walked away down the garden, her head hanging in that tiresome way it had when she was unhappy. Hamlet tried to follow her, so he called him back. He came, but was quite definitely in the sulks, sitting, his head raised, very proud, wrath in his eyes, snapping angrily at an occasional fly.
“Redgauntlet” was spoilt for Jeremy. He put the book down and tried to placate Hamlet who knew his power and refused to be placated. Why didn’t he let Mary take Hamlet? What a pig he was! He would be nice to Mary when she came back. But when she did return that face of hers, with its beseeching look, irritated him so deeply that he snapped at her more than before.
After all, “Robinson Crusoe” was a book for boys. …
Two days later he had decided, quite definitely, that he could not part with it. He must find something else for her, something very fine indeed, the best thing that he had. He thought of every possible way of making money, but time was so short and ways of making money quickly were so few. He thought of asking his father for the pocket-money of many weeks in advance, but it would have to be so very many weeks in advance to be worth anything at all, and his father would want to know what he needed the money for; and after the episode of last Christmas he did not wish to say anything about presents. He thought of selling something; but there was no place to sell things in, and he had not anything that any one else wanted. He thought of asking his mother; but she would send him to his father who always managed the family finances.
He went over all his private possessions. The trouble with them was that Mary knew them all so well.
Impossible to pretend that there was anything there that she could want! He collected the most hopeful of them and laid them out on the bed—a pocket-knife, three books, a photograph frame (rubbed at the edges), a watch chain that had seemed at first to be silver but now most certainly wasn’t, a leather pocket-book, a red blotting pad—not a very brilliant collection.
He did not now dare to look at the book at all. He put it away in the bottom of the chest of drawers. He thought that perhaps if he did not see it nor take it out of its brown paper until the actual day that it would be easier to give. But he had imagination as, in later years, he was to find to his cost, and the book grew and grew in his mind, the pictures flaming like suns, the spirit of the book smiling at him, saying to him with confidential friendship: “We belong to one another, you and I. No one shall part us.”
Then Helen said to him:
“What are you going to give Mary on her birthday?”
“Why?” he asked suspiciously.
“I only wanted to know. I’ve got mine. Every one knows you went into St. Mary’s and bought something. Mary herself knows.”
That was the worst of being part of a family. Every one knew everything!
“Perhaps it wasn’t for Mary,” he said.
Helen sniffed. “Of course, if you don’t want to tell me,” she said, “I don’t care to know.”
Then he discovered the little glass bottle with the silver stopper. It had been given him two years ago on his birthday by a distant cousin who happened to be staying with them at the time. What any body wanted to give a boy a glass bottle with a stopper for Jeremy couldn’t conceive. Mary had always liked it, had picked it up and looked at it with longing. Of course she knew that it had been his for two years. He looked at it, and even as Adam, years ago, with the apple, he fell.
III
Mary’s birthday came, and with it a day of burning, glowing colour. The first early autumn mists were hanging like veils of thinly-sheeted bronze before the grass wet with heavy dew, the sky of azure, the sea crystal pale. In the mist the rectory was a giant box of pearl. The air smelt of distant fires.
On such a day who would not be happy? And Mary was perhaps the happiest little girl in the kingdom. Happy as she was she lost much of her plainness, her eyes sparkling behind her glasses, her mouth smiling. Something tender and poignant in her, some distant prophecy of her maturity, one day beautifully to be fulfilled, coming forth in her, because she felt that she was beloved even though it were only for an hour. She was lucky in her presents; her mother gave her a silver watch, a little darling, quite small, with the hours marked in blue on the face, and her father gave her a silver watch chain so thin that you thought that it would break if you looked at it, and in reality so strong that not the strongest man in the world could break it. Aunt Amy gave her a muff, soft and furry, and Helen gave her a red leather blotter, and Uncle Samuel sent her a book, the very “Dynevon Terrace” that she wanted—how did he know? And Miss Jones gave her a work basket with the prettiest silk lining inside you ever saw, and a pair of gloves from Barbara and—a glass bottle with a silver stopper from Jeremy!
It seemed that she liked this last present best of all. She rushed up to Jeremy and kissed him in the wettest possible way.
“Oh, Jeremy! I am so glad. That’s just what I wanted! I’ve never seen such a darling. I’ve never had any silver things to stand on my table and Gladys Sampson has such a lot, and this is prettier than any that Gladys has. Oh! mother, do look! See what Jeremy’s given me! Father, see what Jeremy’s given me! Isn’t it pretty, Miss Jones? You are a dear, Jeremy, and I’ll have it all my life!”
Jeremy stood there, his heart like lead. It may be said with truth of him that never in his whole existence had he felt such shame as he did now. Mean, mean, mean! Suddenly, now that it was too late, he hated that book upstairs lying safely in his bottom drawer. He didn’t want ever to look at it again.
And Mary. She must know that this was his old glass bottle that he had had so long. She had seen it a hundred times. It is true that he had rubbed it up and got the woman in the kitchen to polish the silver, but still she must know. He looked at her with new interest. Was it all acting, this enthusiasm? No, it was not. She was genuinely moved and delighted. Was she pretending to herself that she had never seen it before, forcing herself to believe that it was new? He would keep the book and give it to her at Christmas. But that would not be the same thing. The deed was done now. The shabby, miserable deed.
He did everything that he could to make her birthday a happy one. He was with her all the day. He allowed her to read to him a long piece of the story that she was then writing, a very tiresome business because she could not read her own script, and because there were so many characters that he could never keep track of any of them. He went blackberrying with her in the afternoon and gave her all the best blackberries. But nothing could raise his spirits. The beautiful day said nothing to him. He felt sick in the evening from eating too many blackberries and went to bed directly after supper.
IV
The days that followed could hardly help but be jolly because the weather was so lovely—still, breathless days, when the world seemed to be painted in purple and blue on a wall of ivory, when the sea came over the sand with a ripple of utter content, when the moon appeared early in the evening, a silver bow, and mounted gently into a sky thick with stars, when every sound, the rattle of carts, the barks of dogs, the cries of men, struck the air sharply like blows upon iron. Yet, though the world was so lovely and every one—even Aunt Amy—was in the best and most contented tempers, something hung over him like a black, heavy cloth. His pride in himself was gone. He had done something shabbier than even the Dean’s Ernest would do.
He continued to see Mary with new eyes. She was a decent kid. He looked back over the past months and saw how much more decent she had been to him than he had been to her. She had been irritating, of course, but then that was because she was a girl. All girls were irritating. Just look at Helen, for instance! Meanwhile he never glanced at the book again. It lay there neglected in its paper.
One day Mary received in a letter a postal order for ten shillings. This was a present from a distant aunt in America who had suddenly remembered Mary’s birthday. Filled with glee and self-importance, she went in to St. Mary’s with Miss Jones to spend it.
That evening when Jeremy was washing his hands there was a knock on his door and Mary’s voice: “May I come in?”
“Yes,” he said.
She came in, her face coloured with mysterious purpose. In her hands she held a paper parcel.
“Oh, are you washing your hands, Jeremy?” she said, her favourite opening in conversation being always a question of the obvious. The red evening sunlight flooded the room.
“What is it?” Jeremy asked rather crossly.
She looked at him pleadingly, as though begging him to save her from the difficulties of emotion and explanation that crowded in upon her.
“Oh, Jeremy, St. Mary’s was lovely, and there was a man with an organ and a monkey, and I gave the monkey a penny and it took it in its hand and took off its cap. … Miss Jones has got a cold,” she added, “and sneezed all the way home.”
“She always has a cold,” he said, “or something.”
“And it goes straight to her face when she has a cold and makes all her teeth ache—not only one of them, but all. She isn’t coming down to supper. She’s gone to bed.”
Still he waited, striving for politeness.
“I’ve got something for you,” Mary suddenly said, dropping her voice in the sentimental manner that he hated. Then, as though she were ashamed of what she had done, she took the parcel to the bed and undid the paper with clumsy fingers.
“There,” she said, “I got it for you because I thought you’d like it.”
He looked at it; it was a book: it was “Swiss Family Robinson”: it was a companion to his “Robinson Crusoe.” He stared at it: he could say nothing.
“You do like it, don’t you?” she asked, gazing at him anxiously. “It’s got lots and lots of pictures. There was a funny shop at the end of the street and I went in with Miss Jones and the man was very nice. And I thought it was just what you’d like. You do like it, don’t you?” she asked again.
But he could only stare at it, not coming forward to touch it. He was buried deep, deep in shame. There came a rattle then on the door and Helen’s voice:
“Mary, if you’re in there with Jeremy, mother says you’re to come at once and have your hair brushed because it’s five minutes to supper.”
“Oh, dear, I’d forgotten.” And with one last glance of anxiety towards Jeremy she went.
Still he did not move. Could anything possibly have happened to prove to him what a pig he was, what a skunk and a cur? Mary had bought it with her own money, five and threepence halfpenny out of ten shillings.
He did not touch the book, but with chin set and eyes resolved, he went down to supper. When the meal was finished he said to Mary:
“Come upstairs a minute. I want to speak to you.”
She followed him tremulously. He seemed to be clothed in his domineering manner. How often, especially of late, she had determined that she would not be afraid of him, but would dig up from within her the common sense, the easy companionship, the laughter that were all there for him, she knew, could she only be at her ease! She even sympathized with him in thinking her so often a fool! She was a fool when she was with him, simply because she cared for him so much and thought him so wonderful and so clever!
He didn’t like the book! He was going to thank her for it in the way that he had when he was trying to be polite, and didn’t find it easy. She followed him into the bedroom. He carefully closed the door. She saw at once that the book lay exactly where she had placed it on the bed—that he had not even opened it. He regarded her sternly.
“Sit down on that chair!” he said. She sat down.
“Look here, you oughtn’t to have given me that book. You know that Aunt Lucy sent that money for you to spend on yourself.”
“I thought you’d like it,” she said, pushing at her spectacles as she always did when she was distressed.
“I do like it,” he said. “It’s splendid. But I’ve done something awful—and I’ve got to tell you now you’ve given me that.”
“Oh, Jeremy! something awful! What is it?”
He set his jaw and, without looking at her, made his confession.
“That day I went in with Miss Jones to St. Mary’s I was going to buy you a present. And I did buy you one. I went into that same shop you went to and I bought ‘Robinson Crusoe’ just like the one you bought me. When I bought it I meant it for you, of course, but when I got home I liked it so much I kept it for myself and I gave you that old bottle instead—and then I didn’t like the rotten book after all and I’ve never looked at it since your birthday.”
Mary’s pleasure at being made his confidante in this way was much greater than her horror at his crime. Her bosom heaved with gratified importance.
“I’ve done things like that, Jeremy,” she said. “I got six handkerchiefs for Miss Jones one Christmas, and I kept three of them because I got a terrible bad cold just at the time.”
“That’s not so bad,” he said, shaking his head, “because I gave you an old thing that I’d had for years.”
“No,” she interrupted; “I’ve wanted that bottle ever so long. I used to go up to your room and look at it sometimes when you were at school.”
He went to the drawer and produced “Robinson Crusoe” and gave it to her. She accepted it gratefully, but said:
“And now I shall have to give you back the bottle.”
“Oh, no, you won’t.”
“But I can’t have two presents.”
“Yes, you can. I don’t want the old bottle, anyway. I never used it for anything. And now we’ll each have a book, so it won’t be like a present exactly.”
She smiled with pleasure. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re not angry.”
“Angry?” he repeated after her.
“Yes,” she said, getting up from the bed where she had been sitting. “I thought you were when you asked me to come up here.”
He looked at her puzzled. She seemed to him a new Mary whom he had never seen before.
“Am I often angry?” he asked.
“Not angry exactly; but I get frightened that you are going to be cross, and then I say the silliest things—not because I want to, but because I want to be clever, and then, of course, I never am.”
He stood staring at her. “Am I as beastly as that?” he asked.
“Oh, you’re not beastly,” she reassured him. “Never—you’re not,” forgetting her grammar in her eagerness; “but I’m afraid of you, and I’m fonder of you than any body—lots fonder—and I always say to myself, ‘Now I’m not going to be silly this time,’ and then I am. I don’t know why,” she sighed. “But I’m not nearly as silly as I seem,” she ended.
No, she wasn’t. He suddenly saw that, and he also suddenly saw that he had all this time been making a great mistake. Here was a possible companion, not only possible, but living, breathing, existing. She was on her own to-night, neither fearful nor silly, meeting him on his own level, superior to him, perhaps, knowing more than he did about many things, understanding his feelings. …
“I say, Mary, we’ll do things together. I’m awfully lonely sometimes. I want some one to tell things to—often. We’ll have a great time next holidays.”
It was the happiest moment of Mary’s life. Too much for her altogether. She just nodded and, clutching “Robinson Crusoe” to her, ran.