CHAPTER IV

It was dusk when he wakened. Lady Aileen’s callers had departed some time ago, and Lady Aileen herself had departed to take a twilight drive, which was a thing she was fond of doing. The servants were enjoying themselves in their own fashion in the kitchen, and all the house seemed very quiet.

It seemed so still to Piccino when he slipped off his chair and stood on his feet rubbing his eyes, that for a moment he felt a little frightened. He was so accustomed to living in a hovel crowded with children and only partitioned off from the donkey, that Lady Aileen’s villa seemed enormous to him. It was not enormous, but it seemed so. He looked round him and listened.

“Nobody is here!” he said. “Everybody has gone away. Nicola has gone away.”

He certainly did not want Nicholson, but his sense of desolation overwhelmed him.

And then, as he stood there, there came a sound which seemed to alter everything. It came through the window, which was open, and which he ran towards at once. It was the voice of the friend who had come to him the night before—the dog who lived in the fine kennel at the gate, and wanted human things so much, and was so unhappy.

Piccino listened to him a moment, and his breath began to come quickly. He turned round and went to the door. It was not locked—Nicholson had not thought of that. It was easy enough to open, and when he had opened it he made his way quickly towards the stairs.

He did not go out at the big front door at which he had been brought in. That was shut, and he knew he was too little to open it, but he remembered the side entrance into the garden, out of which he had slipped when he went to the girl who looked like Maria. He found it again and passed through it, and was out among the flowers in a moment, running quickly down the broad drive to the gate.

How the dog jumped and yelped and covered him with caresses when he reached the kennel! He knew his small bed-fellow again well enough. Perhaps, too, he liked the fragrance of the garlic, which was still as perceptible as ever. The two embraced and rubbed against each other, and tumbled affectionately about, until Piccino was quite dirty enough for the bathtub again. But there was to be no more bathtub if he could help it. He wanted the dog to come with him, though, and help him to find his way; and he fumbled and struggled with the chain and collar until his friend was loose, and, finding that nothing held him, began to race up and down in breathless rapture and run in circles, darting like a wild thing.

“Come,” said Piccino, “come with me. I am going home.”

He did not realize the number of chances there might be that he would be caught and carried back into bondage. He was not old enough to think much of that, but he just knew enough to teach him that it was best to keep in the shade when he saw any one coming. He trudged along, keeping under trees and near walls, and he was clever enough to do it until he turned off the highway which led through the city. He passed by houses and shops and villas and gardens, but at last he turned into the road which sloped up among the olive vineyards, into the hills. Then he felt that he was at home. He did not know that he was still miles and miles away from Ceriani; he only knew that the big trees and the little ones were familiar things, that when he lifted his face he could see the sky he knew so well, and that the wind that blew softly up from the sea among his curls was something he seemed to have been far away from during these last strange two days. These things made him feel that Ceriani must be near.

He was used to running about and being on his legs all day, or he would have been tired out long before he was. When he did begin to be tired he sat down on the grass, and the dog sat with him. In their own way they talked to each other. Then they would get up and trudge on.

They had rested and trudged on many times before he began to be really discouraged. But his legs were so short, and in time he began to feel as if Ceriani was too far away! Stars were beginning to come out, and he suddenly realized that he was very little, and it had taken the big carriages of the _forestieri_ quite a long time to return to San Remo after their picnic. He sat down suddenly and began to cry.

“We can’t find it!” he said to the dog. “We can’t find it!”

The dog looked very much grieved. It is probable that he knew quite well what Piccino said. He shook his head until his ears made a flapping noise. Then he pushed close to Piccino and kissed him, lapping the salt tears off his soft cheeks as they rolled down. He knew he could have found the place all by himself, and got there without any particular trouble, but he could not leave his friend, and such a little friend, too, by the roadside. So he pressed close to him and looked sympathetic, and kissed his tears off cheeringly.

“We can’t find it!” wailed Piccino. “Maria! Maria! Maria! Ma-ri-a!”

Up the curve of the road below there toiled a donkey dragging a cart. It was one of the little peasant carts, floored with a lattice-work of ropes, and there were three people in it. They were a boy and two very young men. They had been to a _festa_, and the boy was fast asleep, and the two young men were in very good spirits. They had been dancing and enjoying themselves, and had had so much wine that they were not quite sure of what they were doing. They alternately sang songs and made jokes and laughed at each other. One of the favorite jokes was about a pretty peasant girl they had both been dancing with, and as it chanced, her name was Maria. After a good deal of such joking they had both been silent for a while, being a little stupid with the wine they had had, and quieted a little by the motion of the cart as the donkey jogged along with it. It was very peaceful in this place, with the gentle wind from the sea, and the occasional rustle of the olives, and the stars shining sweetly above the many shadows.

“What are you thinking of, Pietro?” said one to the other at last, with a little laugh.

“Maria! Maria! Ma-ri-a!” wailed Piccino, a few hundred feet above them.

They both burst out laughing at once.

“Of Maria! Maria!” said Alessandro. “The very trees call out to you!” And they found this such a beautiful joke that they laughed until the very donkey was afraid they would roll off the cart.

By the time they stopped they were close to Piccino, and, whether because she wanted a rest or from some queer instinct, the donkey stopped too.

“Maria!” cried Piccino. “_Voglio andare a casa! Voglio an-dar-e!_”

“It is a child,” said Pietro. “It is lost!” They had had wine enough to be good-natured, and ready for any adventure. Pietro got out of the cart and rather unsteadily went to the side of the road, where Piccino sat crying with his dog.

“Who are you?” he said, “and what are you doing here?”

Piccino answered him with sobs. He was not so clear as he thought he was, and Pietro and Alessandro laughed a good deal. They thought he was a great joke—all the more when they saw how he was dressed. Their heads were not clear enough to permit them to quite understand what was meant by the childish rambling and disconnected story about the _forestieri_ and the water and Nicola and the donkey, but they found out that somehow the young one lived near Ceriani and wanted to get home to Maria. They themselves lived not far from Ceriani, and if they had been quite sober might have put this and that together and guessed something of the truth; but as it was, it happened to seem enough of a joke for them to be inclined to carry it out.

“Let us take him in the cart as far as we go,” said Alessandro. “He can find his way home after we leave him. Perhaps he will talk to us about his Maria. She may be prettier than the other one.” And so he was lifted into the cart, and the dog trotted joyfully by the donkey’s side. The two probably talked to each other confidentially, and everything was explained between them as far as the dog could explain it. At all events, he could explain the loneliness of living in a kennel with a chain round your neck, and grand people passing you, laughing and talking, and taking no notice, however much you jumped and whined and begged to have a pat and a word, and not seeing that you loved everybody.

Piccino sat in the cart and leaned against Pietro or the boy, and enjoyed himself. He answered questions about Maria, and did not know why his rescuers laughed at everything he said. Maria seemed a very mature person to him, and he did not know that the young men’s impression that she was a pretty young woman was not the correct one. Pietro had some good things he had brought from the _festa_ in a paper, and he gave him some. That he was such a pretty, soft, rabbit-like little thing, made things pleasant for him even when he was picked up from the roadside by two young peasants full of cheap wine. They laughed at his disconnected babbling, and thought him great fun, and when he was sleepy let him cuddle down and be comfortable.

He was very fast asleep when they wakened him, having reached the end of their journey.

“Here!” they said, shaking him good-naturedly enough, “you can find your way to Maria now.”

He stood unsteadily in the road where Pietro put him, rubbing his eyes, and feeling the dog greeting him again by jumping at him and kissing him.

“Where is Maria?” he said, sleepily.

Pietro and Alessandro were sleepy too by this time; they had almost had time to forget him while he was asleep.

“Go on and you will find her,” they said. “Ceriani is near here.”

When he saw the donkey led away Piccino was on the point of crying because he was to be left, but before he quite began he saw by the light of the moon, which had risen since he fell asleep, a familiar tree—a big-twisted and huge-trunked olive he had sat under many a time when he had strayed down the road with Maria. It made his heart begin to beat fast and his rising tears dry in their fountain. It was true! He was near Ceriani! He was near home! He could find it! He began to run as fast as his short legs could carry him. The white villa and the grand _signori_ who had joked about him all day, the bathtub and Nicola and the dreadful _pasta_, seemed as far away now as Ceriani and the donkey had been this morning. The tears that had dried for joy suddenly began to rise again for joy. He did not know anything about it himself, but it was joy which made him begin to choke—this beautiful little savage peasant who had been taken away to a world so much too grand for him.

He ran and ran, and at every yard he saw something that he knew, and felt that he loved it because he knew it. The late moon shone down on him, a little white figure running eagerly; the trees rustled as he passed.

“Maria! Maria!” he said, but he did not say it loud, but softly.

And at last he had reached it—his own dear hovel which he seemed to have left a thousand years ago. He stood and beat on the door with his little soft fists.

“Maria! Maria!” he said, “open the door! I have come home. Let me in!”

But inside they slept the heavy sleep of wornout peasants and of tired childhood. They could not have heard him even if he had been able to make more noise. His child hands could make very little. They slept so heavily that he could hear them.

And there he stood in the moonlight, thumping on the old door, unanswered. And the dog stood by him, wagging his tail and looking up at him with such a companionable air that he could not feel he was alone, and actually did not begin to cry. At all events he had got home, and was among the hills again, with the trees growing close around him, and Maria and the donkey.

His whimper lost itself in a sudden sense of relief. Yes, there was the donkey in her stable, and the door would keep nobody out.

“The donkey will let us in,” he said to the dog. “Let us go in there.”

And a few moments later the donkey was roused from her sleep by something soft stumbling against her as she lay down, and, being a donkey with a memory, she realized that a familiar friend had come to her at this untimely hour, and she knew the little voice that spoke, and the little body which cuddled against her side as if she were a pillow, and being also affectionate and maternal, she did not resent the intrusion by any unfriendly moving.

And in the early, early morning, when Rita opened the stable door and let in a shaft of the gold sunlight which was lighting up the darkness of the olive-trees, the first thing it shone upon was the beautiful, tired little travel-stained figure of Piccino, who lay fast asleep against the donkey’s gray side, his arms around her neck, and the dog’s body pressed close and lovingly against his own.

* * * * *

Upon the whole, Lady Aileen was not very much surprised and not at all disturbed when it was found that he was gone. She sent some one to Ceriani, and when the news was brought back to her that he was discovered there, she only laughed a little. In fact, she had found it too tiresome an amusement to undertake the management of a lovely little wild animal, to whom civilization only represented horror and dismay. She sent Rita some money—not too much, but enough to make her feel quite rich for a few weeks. For the rest, she only remembered Piccino as part of an anecdote it was rather amusing to tell to those of her friends in London who were entertained by anecdotes.

“He thought we were savages or mad,” she used to say. “I think he might have borne anything, perhaps, but the bathtub. He said that we ‘put him in water!’”

THE CAPTAIN’S YOUNGEST

THE CAPTAIN’S YOUNGEST

There never were another like him, that’s certain. I’ve seen a good many young gentlemen in my day, being in the army, and under officers as was what you may call swells, and had families of their own, some of them, but I never saw a young gentleman as could hold a candle to Master Lionel; no, nor as were fit to black his boots, for the matter of that. And I knew him, too, from the time he were a young gentleman in long clothes, being carried about in his ayah’s arms, and many’s the time I’ve carried him myself, and been proud to do it. I had no children of my own, though I’d always been taken with them. I wasn’t a married man, and knew I never should be, for that matter, after curly-headed little Maggie Shea died of the fever that blazing hot year when the disease was like a plague among us. She’d given me her promise only a week before; and I never saw the woman I wanted after her. Sometimes I’ve thought I was fonder of the children because of it. She had been fond of them, and like a little mother she was to the seven that were sisters and brothers to her. And there was a sort of reason Master Lionel was more to me than the rest. I’d known his father, Captain Dalgetty, in his best days, when he first came out to India with his regiment at the time of the Mutiny, and won such a name by his dare-devil bravery and determination. That was before he offended his crusty old father by marrying pretty Miss Rosie Terence, the drunken old Irish major’s daughter, who had nothing to her fortune but her dimples and her big blue eyes and black lashes, except the coaxing ways that drove the whole station wild with love for her. It _were_ said as Miss Rosie’s mother sent her out to her father to make a match, but if she did the old lady must have been terribly disappointed, because no sooner did the captain’s father hear of the marriage than he sent for his lawyer, and sat down then and there and made a will cutting the poor fellow off with a shilling, and leaving all his money to hospitals and churches.

[Illustration: “I POLISHED AWAY AT THE CAPTAIN’S SABRE”]

So the captain and Miss Rosie began life on love and short commons; and, neither of them understanding economy, made a good many mistakes, as might have been expected. They didn’t know how to contrive, and they got into debt, and when the children came and expenses grew heavier they lost spirit and patience, like a good many more, and let things go their own way. The captain lost his temper and the mistress grew careless and fretted, and when the young master was born—the one as I’m telling about—things were about as bad and as comfortless as they could be. Not wishing to say a disrespectful word, or a harmful one, I _must_ say as I’d even thought the captain were getting tired of his love-match, for he was aging uncommon fast and his temper was getting uncommon sharp, and now and then Mrs. Dalgetty and him would have words, as would end in him striding out of the bungalow, leaving her crying and worriting among the children. I can’t say even as he were over fond of the children, or that they were over welcome when they came—six girls, one after another—though they were pretty little things, all of them. But when Master Lionel were born it struck me as he _were_ rather better pleased than he had been before, for he were the first boy.

Well I remember the day the captain came out of his quarters and told me about his having made his appearance rather unexpected.

I had been so long with them, and there were so many little things I could do as was a help, that I’d got into the way of doing them; and I happened this morning to be polishing about, and sees the captain coming out, looking half-way pleased with something or other; and when I drew myself up and saluted as usual, says he:

“Rabbett,” says he, “there’s a change in the programme this time.”

I drops my swab in a minute and draws up and salutes again.

“What, sir?” says I. “Boy, sir?”

“Yes,” says he. “Boy, and a fine little fellow too.”

So in the course of a week I smartens myself up a bit more than common, in honor of the occasion, and goes into the house and gets the ayah to let me have a look at the young gentleman as he lay in his cradle in the nursery, next to the mistress’s room. They was rather fond of me in that nursery, I may say, and it wasn’t the first time I’d been there by many a one. But though I stepped light enough for fear of wakening the little fellow, somehow or other he did waken that very minute. As I bent over his cradle he opens his eyes, and he actually stares at me as if he was asking me a question or so. At least it looked that way to me, and then, as sure as I’m a living man, he does something with his face as if he was doing his best to laugh; and when I laughs back and lifts his bit of a red hand, he opens it out and lets it lay on mine, quite friendly and sociable.

I won’t say as he knew what he were doing, but I will say as he looked as if he did. And from that minute to the last hour of his life Master Lionel and me was friends fast and firm. Not being a family man, as I have said before, I took to him all the more, and I’m happy to say he did the same by me. When he got big enough to be carried out by his ayah I used to meet the woman, and take him off her hands whenever she would let me; which was often enough, because she knew both the captain and Mrs. Dalgetty knew I was safe to trust. I’d take him off into the shade and walk about with him—him a-layin’ his cheek against my red coat, sometimes laughing at the jokes I’d make with him, suiting them to his size, and sometimes a-staring up at me serious, but both of us always understanding each other and being cheerful, whatever was a-goin’ on betwixt us. The fact was that I got that there used to him, with nursing him so much, that when he’d have a little choke or a disturbance of any kind, I got to be as handy as a woman about settling him and turning him over and patting his back, and though it may sound like a exaggeration to outsiders, I must say as I saw clear enough he had his own way of thanking me and showing me his gratitude for any small favors of the kind. Ay, and many an hour I’ve thought how it might have been if little Maggie Shea had got through that blazing summer—many and many an hour as I walked up and down, him nestling up against me as my own flesh and blood might have done, but never would.

So we began by being fond of one another, and we keeps on a-bein’ fond of one another, and what’s more, we gets fonder and fonder of each other as we grows older.

And such a boy as he were, and such ways as he had! There weren’t no end to him, he were that manly and handsome and well-grown and ready, by the time he were seven or eight year old. People as never looked at a child looked at him and was took by him, and the ladies at the station run wild about his beauty. Tall he was and well set up, and with a way of carrying himself a brigadier-general might have been proud of. And a fine-cut face, and a big, brave black eye as looked at a man as if he was equal to leading a regiment; and yet was thoughtful and loving, and had a softness, too, when he was talking to a friend. And that quick he were to notice things as others of his age would never have seen. Why, he was only six years when one day, as he was standing by watching me at work, he looks up at me all at once and says he:

“Rabbett,” he says, “my mamma is very pretty, isn’t she?”

“Well,” says I, “Master Lionel, I should say she _were_!”

“I thought so,” he says; “I thought everybody must think she was pretty, just as I do, only I am very fond of her, you see.” And he rather puzzles me by looking at me again in a wistful, questioning sort of way.

“Just so, Master Lionel,” I answers, “just so, sir.”

“Yes,” he goes on, “I am very fond of her, and—and I suppose my papa is very fond of her, too.”

Being a trifle upset by this, I polished away at the captain’s sabre for a minute or so, and even then I could only say:

“Yes, sir; nat’rally, sir, of course.” For the truth were as things had been getting worse and worse, and the tiffs had been growing into rows—rows as couldn’t go on without being heard in a bungalow, where walls was thin and rooms not over far from each other. And what he had heard the Lord only knows, but it had been a-workin’ in his innercent mind and troubling him, and he was coming to me for comfort, and that I saw in his fine, loving, wistful black eye, and in his handsome little chin, as was not quite steady.

“Yes, of course, he is very fond of her,” he said, “and she is very fond of him; because people who are married—people who are married always are, aren’t they, Rabbett?”

“Ah, sir,” says I, “that they are; there ain’t nothin’ like it.”

“No,” he says, his little face trying to keep itself steady, “and I’m very glad of—of that—I’m very glad of that.” And quite sudden he faces round and walks off, a-holding his head up like a field officer. But well I knowed why he’d gone. Something had hurt his little heart and set him to thinking, so that he could not manage his looks even before Rabbett. And, gentleman as he was, he was not willing to let it be known what his child’s trouble was.

When the family began to grow up the regiment was ordered back to England; and I came back with them, you see. The captain was not rich, and as the family expenses got bigger, year by year, money got scarcer with him, and they couldn’t live as they did before; and so, somehow—I think it was because I liked the children, and especially my young master—I fell into a way of being part valet, part waiter, part man-of-all-work for the captain and his.

That wasn’t all. The captain’s fine way—for he was handsome still, and a gentleman born, and no mistake—brought him fine friends; and his fine friends brought him debt, because he was obliged to keep up with them. Everything was badly managed, because Mrs. Dalgetty, as I said, knew nothing about managing; so the servants ran wild, and were nothing but trouble and expense, and there were nothing but struggling to keep up, and threatening to break down, from day to day.

“The captain is worse than ever,” Mrs. Dalgetty would say, sometimes, when things looked bad, and she had a crying fit on. “And Rose is so expensive, and the other girls are growing up. I wish Lionel was older. He is the only one who seems to feel for me at all.”

The real truth were, as Lionel were that sweet-natured he felt for them all; and I must say as they couldn’t help being as fond of him in their way as he was of them in his.

“Rabbett,” says he to me once, when they was all going out—he was about nine years old then, or thereabout—“Rabbett, if you would like to see Rose before she goes, just stand in the passage, when I go into the drawing-room with her cloak and handkerchief. She has just sent me for them.”

Now my young master loved his mother dearly, but he loved Rose even better; he was allers talking to me of her beauty.

So says I, “I would like to see her.” And he runs up-stairs, quite pleased, and is down again in a minute.

“I’ll leave the door open,” he says. And in he goes, with the cloak over his arm, and does leave it open, quite wide enough for me to see through.

Miss Rose was standing by the fire, and beautiful she looked, in her grand evening dress, and so like what her mother had been that it gave me quite a start. There was a gentleman at her side, a-laughing and talking to her, and when Master Lionel goes in this party turns toward the door, to look at him, and I sees his face, and I gives a start again, for it were Captain Basil Roscoe.

Now I knew sum’at of Captain Basil Roscoe, you see, and that’s what made me give a start. If ever there was a villain, and he to be called a gentleman, Captain Basil Roscoe were one. I knew things of him that he little guessed; we servants get to know many queer things. I felt, when I sees him, as if I saw a snake.

“Here comes the wrap,” says Captain Basil, and he held out his hand, as if he meant to put it on for himself, but Miss Rose laughs and stops him.

“No,” says she. “Lionel wouldn’t like that. Would you, Lionel? He always puts my cloak on for me.”

The captain drew back a bit, and gave the boy a sharp glance, but Miss Rose did not see it, for she was bending down to have the cloak put over her white shoulders, and Master Lionel was a-folding it around her, as pleased as could be, laughing, too, boy-like, but, for all that, doing it as deft and graceful as if he’d been born to it.

And then, when it was done, Miss Rose put her little hands on the shoulders of his jacket, and kissed him half-a-dozen times, so coaxing and merry and happy that I could not bear to think the time would ever come when life would look harder to her than it did just then—going out to a grand ball, in a pretty dress, and with her lover by her side.

Unless it is true that the devil shrinks from and hates them as has no sins of their own, I should like to know why it was that Basil Roscoe were so ready in taking a dislike to a innocent-faced boy, as never harmed or differed with him; for nothing is more certain than that from the first he did take a dislike to Master Lionel. It struck me, once or twice, as he not only couldn’t bear the sight of him, but that, if he had had the chance, he would not have been sorry to do him a harm. His sneering manner showed it, and his ill-looking, handsome face showed it, apart from a hundred other bits of things. Master Lionel himself found it out soon enough.

“Rabbett,” says he, private and confidential, “he doesn’t like me and I don’t like him, and I wish he wasn’t so fond of Rose. I never did him any harm, you know, Rabbett.”

Natural enough, his spirit is hurt about it, and he takes it a bit hard. But he never says much about it, until one night he comes to me, and I sees he is wonderful quiet, and after a while I made bold to ask what ails him. And the minute I asks him I sees, by the look in his eyes, that what ails him is something uncommon.

“It’s something about Rose,” he says, “and it’s something about Captain Roscoe.”

A slight huskiness comes in my throat, as makes it necessary for me to clear it.

“Oh!” I says. “Indeed, sir?”

“Yes,” he answers. “As I was coming here I passed him, standing at the corner of the street with a gentleman, and they were both talking aloud, Rabbett, and laughing. And they were talking about Rose.”

Knowing the man so well, and having heard so much of his villany, my blood fairly boiled at the thought of what he might have been saying; but I made up my mind to speak quietly.

“Did you hear what they said, sir?” I asked. “Are you sure it was her they were speaking of?”

“Yes,” says he, “sure, for I heard the gentleman say, ‘What? Pretty Rose Dalgetty?’ And then Roscoe answered, ‘Even she might get tiresome.’ And they both laughed. Rabbett”—and he turned his troubled, questioning boy’s face to me, as if he was just awakening to some sort of bewildered fear, and wanted help—“what did he mean when he said she might get tiresome? And what made them laugh as they did? They were laughing at her—my sister Rose.”

“No gentleman would have done it, sir,” I answered, not knowing what else to say.

[Illustration: “MISS ROSE PUT HER HANDS ON HIS SHOULDERS”]

“I know that,” he says. “But what did they mean? You are older than me, Rabbett, and perhaps you can understand more than that it was not what a gentleman would have done.”

But of course I could not tell him that. If it meant nothing worse, it at least did mean as Miss Rose’s lover had so little respect for her that he could bandy her name among his companions with something like a sneer; so I tried my best to lead him away from the subject. If he’d been an ordinary kind of young gentleman, and he so very young yet, I might have managed it; but being the little fellow he was, the suspicion that his sister had been somewhat slighted stuck to him, and settled itself deep in his mind, and made him thoughtful beyond his years.

And this was far from being the end of it. Little by little I began to hear a whisper here and there, even among the men, about what people said of Captain Roscoe being so friendly with the Dalgettys, and partic’ler with Miss Rosie. There was not one of them but said that it would do the pretty young creature no good, if it did her no harm, to be so ready to let him be attentive. He had been such an open rascal in his time, and his character was so well known, that no careful mother would have let her daughter be seen with him, and he was only tolerated in his own set, and among those who were as bad as himself. But Mrs. Dalgetty was too thoughtless and indifferent to see the wrong in him, or to be troubled by what she heard, and the captain was rarely at home; so Miss Rose was left to herself, and, of course, did as any other innocent girl would have done, fell in love with a handsome face, and believed in it.

But at last so much was said by outsiders that something came to the captain’s ears as must have roused him, for one evening he comes up to the house in a towering rage, and shuts himself up with Miss Rose and her mother in the parlor, and has a tremendous row, and makes them both cry, and ends up by forbidding them to speak to Roscoe again.

But though Mrs. Dalgetty gave in, as she always did when the captain gave his orders, of course Miss Rose would not believe anything against her lover. Things had gone so far by that time that she would have stood out for him against the whole world; and as she dared not openly disobey her father, she fretted until she lost her pretty color and bright spirits, and went about the house looking ill and wretched.

But the matter was not put an end to, as you may imagine. Once or twice, in going from the house to the barracks, I found Captain Basil Roscoe loitering about not far from the street’s end, and more than once I could have sworn that I passed him at dusk with a familiar little figure clinging to his arm. And one night Miss Rosie calls her brother to her, as he was going out on an errand, and, as she bends over him in the doorway, slips a note into his hand, crying pitifully.

“You will take that for me, won’t you, dear?” she says. “He is waiting in the square for it, and he does want it so—so much.” And she kisses him, and gives a little sob and runs up-stairs.

I don’t think it could have been more than three minutes after that when he comes to me, all pale and breathless with running, and lays that there note on the table.

“She wants me to take it to him, Rabbett,” he says, “and she was crying when she asked me, and—what must we do?”

It is not to be expected as we two hadn’t talked things over, being the friends we were. I got up and took the note from the table, making a resolution all of a sudden.

“If you’ll stay here, sir,” I said, “I’ll take it myself.” And take it I did, and found the rascal waiting, as Miss Rose had said he would be. He gave a black enough scowl when he saw it were me, and it certainly didn’t die out when I spoke to him.

“Sir,” says I, “I’ve come here on a poor errand, and I’ve come unwilling enough, God knows. I’ve got a note in my hand here—a pitiful little letter from a trusting, innocent girl to a man who, if he does not mean her harm, surely cannot mean her good, or he would not be leading her to meet him, and write to him in underhand ways. And I’ve been making up my mind, as I came along, to make a appeal to that man, as surely he’ll listen to if he has a man’s heart in his breast. She is scarcely more than a child, sir, and she knows nothing of the world. Leave her alone, and she may be a happy woman; go on as you’ve begun, and it will be death and heartbreak to her, and her wrongs will lie at your door.”

He stands there and looks at me, and by the light of the lamp we was standing under I sees his handsome, devilish face, sneering and triumphing and scorning me, as if I was a worm in the dirt under his feet.

“My good fellow,” he says, “you are a little too late. Hand me that letter, and be off, before I find it necessary to help you. How you got hold of the note I don’t know, but I _do_ know it was never given to you to deliver, and that I should be well warranted in kicking you back to your quarters, for your deuced impudence and presumption.”

But I held to the letter tight.

“Very well, sir,” I answers, respectful, but firm as a rock. “This letter goes back to the house, and before night is over the captain will have read it himself, and can judge for himself what is best——”

I didn’t finish, for the next thing I knew was that he strode up to me and grasped hold of me by my collar, and the minute I saw what he meant to do I felt I had made a mistake in bringing the letter at all, and in fancying that any appeal could touch or move him. There was a struggle between us, but it did not last long; he being strong and lithe, and so much the younger man, gave me no chance; and it were scarcely three seconds before he threw me on the pavement, and leaving me there, a trifle stunned, walked off with the letter in his hand.

I knew things must be pretty bad then. He would never have been so desperate and determined if he had not meant to do his worst, and when I made my way back I felt sick with fear. Master Lionel was sitting by the bit of fire in the grate when I opened the door, and he turns round and looks at me, and changes color.

“Rabbett,” he says, “there is blood on your face.”

“Perhaps so, sir,” I says. “I’ve had a fall.”

And then I sits down and tells him all about it; about what I had meant to do, and what I had done, and I ends up by asking him what he thinks we had better do, now that my plans had failed.

“Master Lionel,” I says, “it would seem a dreadful hard sort of thing to do, if we spoke to the captain.”

He turns quite pale at the thought of it.

“Oh, no,” he says, “Rabbett, I wouldn’t do it. He would be so angry with Rose, and even with mamma. You remember my telling you what he said before.”

I remembered well enough, and a pretty hard thing it was to say, even if it had been said in a passion, and not half meant. He had threatened to turn Miss Rose out of doors if she spoke to Roscoe again. He must have heard something bad enough, to have been so roused.

“Well,” I ventures, “what can we do, sir?”

“Watch,” says he. “I can think of nothing else to do just yet, Rabbett. I will watch Rose, and you shall watch Roscoe; and if the worst comes, and we must tell papa, we must. I suppose, Rabbett, that Roscoe will try to run away with Rose, as Farquhar ran away with that pretty Miss Lewis?”

“Yes, sir,” I answers, “I’m afraid he will. But he is a worse man than Farquhar; and if Miss Rose goes away with him, I’m afraid he’ll treat her hard enough when he tires of her, as such men as him always tires of young ladies.”

“It would be better, Rabbett,” says he, fixing his dark eyes solemnly on the fire, “it would be better that Rose should die. I know that.”

“I am afeard, sir,” says I, “that you are right.”

God knows how he had learned to understand, but understand he did, and he were that sad and wise about it that my very heart ached. He had seen an old enough side of life, had Master Lionel, living among the set he did, but he were a young gentleman as nothing could spoil, his nature were that fine-grained.

We kept our watch faithful all that week and part of the next, but we found out very little, though we had our suspicions, Master Lionel and me, as things were going on pretty badly in a secret way. But at last the very worst thing as could have happened burst upon us all at once.

I was up at the house one evening, doing something or other for Mrs. Dalgetty, when of a sudden I heard a tremendous loud ring at the doorbell; and, going in a hurry to answer it, the captain himself strode past me into the hall, all in a flame with the wine he had been drinking and the passion he were in. I had seen him in towering enough tempers often before, but I had never seen him look as he did then. It was my impression he were pretty near mad; indeed, I thought so then, and have thought so since. How could he have done what he did that night, unless he had not been quite himself?

“Rabbett,” says he, “where’s Miss Rose?”

“In her own room, sir,” says I, wishing with all my heart that I could have told him she were not in.

“Rabbett,” says he, “where’s Mrs. Dalgetty?”

“In _her_ own room,” says I, “lying down, a-trying to get rid of a headache.”

“Then,” says he, “go and tell Miss Rose to come down to me at once.”

I think I must have looked upset, myself, when I knocked at Miss Rose’s door to deliver the captain’s message, for the minute the words were out of my mouth she turned quite pale and scared-looking, and began to tremble.

“Oh, Rabbett,” she says, the tears coming into her great, pretty dark eyes, “is anything the matter? does he look angry?”

“I must say, miss,” I answers, “as he seems a bit more pepperyer than common, but I hope it’s nothing much.”

“Oh, Rabbett,” she says, beginning to cry, and wringing her poor little helpless hands, “I know it is something dreadful. I daren’t go down. I am so frightened.”

But she were obliged to go down, and go down she did, a-trembling all over, and out-and-out faint with fear. She had always been a timid little affectionate creature, and the captain were pretty hard to face when his temper were up.

I am not ashamed to confess as I stayed as near within hearing distance as I could, without positively eavesdropping. I own up as I had my fears as to what the end of it all would be, knowing the captain were drove too wild to be wise, or even reasonable, and I wanted to be near enough to see Miss Rose when she came out of the room, and say a comforting word to her, if she seemed to need one.

But she came out of the room in a different manner to what even I had expected. The minute she went in I heard the sound of Mrs. Dalgetty crying and the captain storming, and for a quarter of an hour after the storm fairly raged. The captain stamped and swore, Mrs. Dalgetty sobbed, and tried to put in a word now and then, but Miss Rose seemed to be too much stunned to speak. I never heard her voice after the first few moments, and at last the door opened again, and she came running out, her beautiful dark eyes wide open, her innocent face as white as death. She did not see me, but ran past where I stood, up to her own bedroom, and there was that in her look as brought my heart into my mouth, and, queer as it may seem to you, the first thing I thought of was Master Lionel.

“There’s harm been done,” says I to myself, “deadly harm, and no one can undo it but one as loves her, and that she’s fond of herself in her girl’s way; the one as she needs now is that there fine little fellow as was almost like a little lover to her.”

And when she came down I feels surer of it than ever; for in three minutes more she did come down, with her hat and jacket on, ready to go out. And her face was even whiter than before; and when she sees me she holds out her hand, her eyes looking big and bright with a dangerous sort of shine.

“Good-by, Rabbett,” she says. “I am going.”

“Miss Rose,” says I, “where are you going to?”

Then she smiles sad and bitter, and a bit hard.

“Ask papa,” she answers. “He ought to know. He sent me away. I don’t exactly know myself, unless—unless one person in the world loves me well enough to take me.”

“Miss Rose,” I breaks out, “for God’s sake don’t go to Basil Roscoe!”

She dragged her hand away from mine, and her eyes flashed fire.

“You all hate him!” she cried; “but I have chosen him before all the world. Papa said I must choose, and I have chosen. I am going to Basil Roscoe!”

And before I could speak another word she had darted out of the door, all on fire, and desperate, as one might say, and was gone.

I knew it would be of no use speaking to the captain. Since he had as good as turned the poor innocent creature out of house and home, he was not the one to go to for help. When he was cooler he would see his mistake, and repent it bitter enough; but just now to go to him would only make him madder than ever.

Well, just at that very minute in come Master Lionel. There might have been some sort of a fate in it. He jumps up them stone steps, two at a time, and bangs at that open front door, clean out of breath, and looking wonderful like his sister, in his excitement.

“Where’s Rose gone to, Rabbett?” he says. “I have just seen her walking fast—almost running—down the street, and she would not stop for me. What has been the matter?”

I ups and tells him. I weren’t afeard of doing it. I knew him to be that there ready and brave and affectionate.

“Rabbett,” he said, in a jiffy, “come along with me.”

“Master Lionel,” I asks, “where to?” For the fact were my head weren’t as clear as his, and I were a bit bothered as to what would be the best thing to be done first.

“I am going to Captain Roscoe’s lodgings,” he answers, as steady as you please.

And so, if you’ll believe me, off we goes, out into the street, him a-keeping step beautiful, as he always did, but not saying a word until at last I speak to him.

“Master Lionel,” I says, “what are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking,” he answers, his dark eyes shining, “about what I am going to say to Roscoe.”

But it weren’t so easy to find Roscoe. We did not know exactly where his lodgings were, and so we had to inquire in first one place and then another. The people we fancied could tell us knew nothing definite, when we went to them; and when we got the name of the street, it were hard to find. But we did find it at last, after a great deal of trouble and a great deal of delay, which was worse. The delay was what upset us, for both of us felt pretty certain that Captain Basil Roscoe would lose very little time in getting Miss Rose away out of the reach of her friends, if he once found her willing to go with him.

By the time we reached the end of the street where he lived, Master Lionel were that worked up and excited that he was growing paler and paler, and his eyes were like lanterns in his face, and he caught hold of my hand and held it hard and fast.

“Rabbett,” he says, “what if we should be too late?”

“I can’t think such bad luck could happen to us, sir,” I answers him back.

And then it were—just at that instant—as his sharp young eyes spied something out ahead of us, for he drew his hand away, and started running, just throwing back a word or so to me.

“There’s a carriage before the door,” he said, “and they are getting into it.”

He were up that street like a deer, and in half a minute I were with him; but when I comes up, all out of breath, he were on the carriage-step, holding the door open; and, what’s more, holding at bay the black rascal who stood near, sneering and raging at him by turns. “Rabbett,” he cries out, “help me to hold the door open. No—go to the horses’ heads. Now, Rose, get out.”

I went to the horses’ heads, as I would have done if the captain himself had give the order, instead of “The Captain’s Youngest.” It made my heart ache, too, to hear the ring in the little chap’s voice, so like his father’s, and then to remember what the captain might have been—and what he were. Even the driver were struck all of a heap by the youngster’s pluck, and were so busy looking at him that he let me take my stand, without a word against it.

“Look here, mate,” he says to me, “here’s a rum go!”

“It’s bad enough,” says I. “Perhaps you’ll oblige me with them reins?”

“If you don’t come down from that step,” says Roscoe, saying every word slow, as if he was trying to hold himself back from striking the boy a blow as would kill him, “you impudent young devil, I will take the whip from the box there and cut you to pieces!”

Then Miss Rose bends forward. It is my impression as the cruel, murderous sound in the fellow’s voice was something she had never heard before, and it frightened her.

“Don’t speak to him in that way, Basil,” she says. “Oh, Lionel, dear, you shouldn’t have come. You must go back. You must, indeed. I shall never come home again, Lionel.” And she burst out crying.

“I shall go back, Rose,” says the boy, “but you must come with me. Rabbett and I came to fetch you, and we shall not leave you.” And then he looks at Roscoe square. “I am not afraid of your cutting me to pieces with your whip, sir,” he says. “Rabbett will see to that. But,” and the fire blazed up in his voice and his face and his eyes, as grand as if he had been the captain himself, “if I had come alone I would not have left this carriage door unless Rose had come with me. You might have used your whip, but you couldn’t have made me do that.”

“Am I,” says Roscoe, panting with the passion he dare not let out, “am I to throw you into the street under the horses’ hoofs, you impudent young devil?”

But Master Lionel’s back was turned to him. He was pleading with his sister.

“Rose, dear,” he says, “come home with me. You will come home with me, I know.” And he caught hold of her hand.

God knows how it all happened—I don’t. If I had only been quick enough to see in time, the captain’s youngest might have been alive this day, a brave young fellow, such as the captain had been in those first days in India—a brave, handsome young soldier, as would have been a honor to his country, and a stanch friend yet to me.

But that weren’t to be. Just as he stood there, his foot on the carriage-step, a-holding his sister’s hand, the passion in the heart of the rascal watching him broke forth. He caught him by the shoulder, there were a short struggle as the boy tried to free himself, and before I could reach them he had whirled him away from the door—with greater force than he intended, I’ve tried to believe. The frightened horses lashed out their hoofs and sprang forward, struggling over the child’s very body as he lay stunned under their feet.

Scoundrel as he was, I never could make it look square to myself as the man meant the harm he did. His face was out and out deathly, as he leaped forward to save him as quick as I did myself. But we were both too late. We could only drag at the reins, and stop the horses in time to prevent the wheels passing over him—that were all.

We had him out in a minute, and Miss Rose was out of the carriage, kneeling on the pavement by him, and the driver was down off his box.

“Great God!” says Roscoe, “I never meant to do him such a harm. He’s dead!” And he shuddered all over, with fear, perhaps, as much as anything else.

But he weren’t dead, and he hadn’t even fainted, though he were stunned at first. I had lifted him in my arms, and he lay against me, panting a bit, and stone-white, all but for a stain of blood on one temple. It weren’t his head as was so badly hurt, it were his side, where one of the horses had lashed out and struck him. And as sure as I’m a living man, in a few minutes he opens his eyes and lays hold of his sister’s hand.

“Rose,” he says, “will you—go home—with me—now?”

She knelt over him, wringing her hands, and sobbing as if her heart would break. She would not let her lover come near her. When he tried to speak, she shrank away, shuddering.

It’s my belief as what she had seen in his face during the last ten minutes would have broke her faith in him, even if the young master had met no hurt. And now she were that terrified that she were as helpless as a child.

“Is he much hurt?” she kept saying. “Rabbett, oh, Rabbett! let me take him home to mamma. Put him into the carriage.” And then she turned upon Roscoe, fierce and wild. “Go away,” she cried out. “You have killed him! Go away, and never let me see you again!”

There were a dreadful house when we took him home. Mrs. Dalgetty went out of one faint into another, as she always did when she were frightened. The servants ran backward and forward, doing nothing, the children crowded round us, crying, and the captain looked on at all we did like a man in a dream.

He were hurt and bruised and broken that bad—poor little fellow!—that when the doctor came, and were beginning to go to work on him he looks up at me with his bright, troubled eye, and says to me:

“Rabbett, please take hold of my hand.”

I were that near breaking down and sobbing out loud that I were ashamed of myself. It were a comfort to me, in many a day after, to think I had took hold of his hand, and that he had asked me to do it.

And when the hard job was over, the doctor put his hands into his coat pockets, and stands looking at him for a minute or so, and then he turns to me and beckons me out of the room.

“Sir,” I ventured to say, “Master Lionel—will he——” But I could not finish, somehow. I meant to say, “Will he get over it?”

“No,” says he. “I am very sorry to say it; but he will not.”

Will you believe me as the words struck me like a slung-shot. Not having no family of my own, and never having clung to nothing on earth as I had clung to that there generous, neglected little fellow, just at that minute I felt as if I’d got a blow as was too hard to stand up against. I couldn’t face it straight. When I had been lonely in my way, he had been lonely in his, and we had been a help and a comfort to each other in ways as outsiders never understood.

“Sir,” I puts it to him, quite hoarse when I gets my voice back, “when——” And I couldn’t finish that question neither.

“Well,” he answers me back, “I am afraid before morning.”

I went back to the room and stayed there all night.

It seemed a strange sort of thing that at the very last him and me was together alone, as we always had seemed to be. He had coaxed Miss Rose to go to bed; he would not rest until she went; and when she bent down to kiss him, he says to her, in a whisper, quite bright and cheerful: “Don’t cry, Rose. It’s all right.”

And then the captain gets tired, and begins to doze, and Mrs. Dalgetty falls asleep on the sofa; and so Master Lionel and me was left together; me watching him, and listening to the clock ticking; him lying quiet, with his eyes shut.

But toward daybreak he gets a bit restless, and stirs, and the next thing I sees him looking at me, quite wide awake.

“Rabbett,” says he, in a bit of a hurry, “open the window.”

And when I goes and does it, and comes back, he puts out his hand.

“Rabbett,” he says, “I’m very fond of you;” and something wistful comes into his eyes, and I sees a faint gray shadow creeping up over his face. “I was always fond of you, and I always shall be fond of you,” says he. “Don’t let my hand go, Rabbett.”

And the next minute the gray shadow has changed his brave, handsome, childish face all at once and altogether. He gives me a innocent, bright look—just one, as if he were wondering why I shook so—and shuts his eyes. He would never open them again on me, as was so fond and proud of him in my poor way. When they opened again he would see something brighter than the morning sky, as was just growing red and golden before the east window.

* * * * *

Of course they fretted over him for a while, finding out most likely as he’d made himself dearer than they’d thought before he were gone. They could not have helped missing him if they had been more careless than they were. Sometimes I fancied the captain was checked a bit and sad, and blamed himself in secret, but his days of being open and soft-hearted was over, and it were hard to tell. I know it was a long time before he forgave Miss Rosie, though for her sake the matter was hushed up, and no one but themselves knew exactly how the accident happened. Miss Rose could never bear the sound of Basil Roscoe’s name again, and she married a good man a few years after, and made him a good wife. So the poor little fellow as gave his life for her did not lose it for nothing, though, if you were to ask me which of the two—but, there, it’s not for me to take on myself to argue out! But he were only a boy to them—only a child. They didn’t know him as I did, and so after a while their grief died out, and in a year or so he was half forgotten.

[Illustration: “AND I SHALL ALWAYS BE FOND OF YOU, RABBETT”]

But it weren’t so easy for me. His handsome little face and his pleasant ways is as clear to me to-day as they ever was. When I sit lonely over my fire of a winter’s night—and I am a lonely man, things being as they are and the years going on—I think of him for hours in a way of my own, and make a sort of dream of him. I think of him as he lay in his cradle and we made friends when he wasn’t but a week old. I think of him as he was, with his little soldier ways about the quarters, carrying himself as military as if he’d been twenty; a-helping me in one way and another, and finding out he might be confidential, though I wasn’t nothing but a private and him a officer’s son. I think about him as he looked when he came to me in his innercent trouble that night and told me about his sister’s lover. And then I see him lying there, with the light from the east window falling on him, and I hear him saying:

“I am very fond of you, Rabbett. I always was fond of you, and I always shall be fond of you. Don’t let my hand go, Rabbett.”

Ay—and that ain’t all. I make a picture of what might have been. I sees him grown into a young man—a handsome, smart young officer—and make a picture of some beautiful young girl, and tells myself what a pretty love story they would have had betwixt them, and what a lover, and what a young husband he would have been! Why, there’s been nights when I’ve even seen little children like him, and thought they would have been fond of me, as he was. It’s made me forget where I was, and when I’d be roused up by something or other I’ve found myself choke up with something as might almost have been my heart in my throat, to think as it were only a sort of dream after all. And the captain’s youngest lies out under the stars in the churchyard, the wind a-blowing over the snow as lies on a grave as is only the grave of a child.

LITTLE BETTY’S KITTEN TELLS HER STORY

LITTLE BETTY’S KITTEN TELLS HER STORY

I am Betty’s kitten—at least, I was Betty’s kitten once. That was more than a year ago. I am not a kitten now, I am a little cat, and I have grown serious, and think a great deal as I sit on the hearthrug, looking at the fire and blinking my eyes. I have so much to think about that I even stop to ponder things over when I am lapping my milk or washing my face. I am very careful about lapping my milk. I never upset the saucer. Betty told me I must not. She used to talk to me about it when she gave me my dinner. She said that only untidy kittens were careless. She liked to see me wash my face too, so I am particular about that. It is always Betty I am thinking about when I sit on the rug and blink at the fire. Sometimes I feel so puzzled and so anxious that if her mamma or papa are sitting near I look up at them and say:

“Mee-_aiow_? _Mee_-aiow?”

But they do not seem to understand me as Betty did. Perhaps that is because they are grown-up people and she was a little girl. But one day her mamma said:

“It sounds almost as if she were asking a question.” I was asking a question. I was asking about Betty. I wanted to know when she was coming back.

I know where she came from, but I do not know where she is gone, or why she went. She usually told me things, but she did not tell me that. I never knew her to go away before. I wish she had taken me with her. I would have kept my face and paws very clean, and never have upset my milk.

I said I knew where she came from. She came from behind the white rose-bush before it began to bloom, and when it had nothing but glossy green leaves and tight little buds on it.

I saw her! My eyes had only been open about two weeks, and I was lying close to my mother in our bed under the porch that was round the house. It was a nice porch, with vines climbing over it, and I had been born under it. We were very comfortable there, but my mother was afraid of people. She was afraid lest they might come and look at us. She said I was so pretty that they would admire and take me away. That had happened to two or three of my brothers and sisters before their eyes had opened, and it had made my mother nervous. She said the same thing had happened before when she had had families quite as promising, and many of her lady friends had told her that it continually happened to themselves. They said that people coming and looking at you when you had kittens was a sort of epidemic. It always ended in your losing children.

She talked to me a great deal about it. She said she felt rather less nervous after my eyes were opened, because people did not seem to want you so much after your eyes were opened. There were fewer disappearances in families after the first nine days. But she told me she preferred that I should not be intimate with people who looked under the porch, and she was very glad when I could use my legs and get farther under the house when any one bent down and said, “Pussy! Pussy!” She said I must not get silly and flattered and intimate even when they said, “Pretty pussy! poo’ ’ittle kitty puss!” She said it might end in trouble.

So I was very cautious indeed when I first saw Betty. I did not intend to be caught, but I was not so much afraid as I should have been if she had not been so very little and so pretty.

Not very long before she went away she said to me one day, when we were in the swing together:

“Kitty, I am nearly five o’clock!”

So when she came from behind the white rose-bush perhaps she was four o’clock.

I shall never forget that morning, it was such a beautiful morning. It was in the early spring, and all the world seemed to be beginning to break into buds and blossoms. There were pink and white flowers on the trees, and there was such a delicious smell when one sniffed a little. Birds were chirping and singing, and every now and then darting across the garden. Flowers were coming out of the ground, too; they were blooming in the garden beds and among the grass, and it seemed quite natural to see a new kind of flower bloom out on the rose-bush, which had no flowers on it then, because the season was too early. I was such a young kitten that I thought the little face peeping round the green bush was a flower. But it was Betty, and she was peeping at me! She had such a pink bud of a mouth, and such pink, soft cheeks, and such large eyes, just like the velvet of a pansy blossom. She had a tiny pink frock and a tiny white apron with frills, and a pretty white muslin hat like a frilled daisy, and the soft wind made the curly, soft hair falling over her shoulder as she bent forward sway as the vines sway.

“Mother,” I whispered, “what kind of a flower is that? I never saw one before.”

She looked, and began to be quite nervous.

“Ah, dear! ah, dear!” she said, “it is not a flower at all. It is a person, and she is looking at you.”

“Ah, mother,” I said, “how can it be a person when it is not half as high as the rose-bush? And it is such pretty colors. Do look again.”

“It is a child person,” she said, “and I have heard they are sometimes the worst of all—though I don’t believe they take so many away at a time.” The little face peeped farther round the green of the rose-bush, and looked prettier and prettier. The pink frock and white frills began to show themselves a little more.

“Get behind me,” said my mother; and I began to shrink back.

Ah! how often I have wondered since then why I did not know in a minute that it was Betty—just Betty! It seemed so strange that I did not know it without being told. She came nearer and nearer, and her cheeks seemed to grow pinker and pinker, and her eyes bigger and bigger. Suddenly she gave a little jump, and began to clap her hands and laugh.

“Ah,” she said, “it is a little kitty. It is a surely little kitty.”

“Oh, my goodness!” said my mother. “Fts-fts-ftss! Fttss-ffttssss!”

I could not help feeling as if it was rather rude of her, but she was _so_ frightened.

But Betty did not seem to mind it at all. Down she went on her little knees on the grass, bending her head down to peep under the porch, until her cheek touched the green blades, and her heap of curls lay on the buttercups and daisies.

“Oh, you _dee_ little kitty,” she said. “Pretty pussy, pussy, puss! Kitty—kitty! _Poo_ ’ittle kitty. I won’t hurt you!”

She made a movement as if she were going to put out her dimpled hand to stroke me, but a side window opened, and I heard a voice call to her.

“Betty—Betty!” it said, “you mustn’t put your hand under there. The pussy is frightened, and it makes her cross, and she might scratch you. Don’t try to stroke her, dearie.”

She turned her bright little face over her shoulder.

“I won’t hurt her, mamma,” she said. “I surely, surely won’t hurt her. She has such a pretty kitty; come and look at it, mamma!”

“Ffttssss-ss!” said my mother. “More coming! Grown-ups this time!”

“I don’t believe they will hurt us,” I said. “The little one is such a pretty one.”

“You know nothing about it,” said my mother.

But they did not hurt us. They were as gentle as if they had been kittens themselves. The mother came and bent down by Betty’s side and looked at us, too, but they did nothing which even frightened us. And they talked in quite soft voices.

“You see, she is a wild little pussy,” the mother said. “She must have been left behind by the people who lived here before we came, and she has been living all by herself and eating just what she could steal—or, perhaps, catching birds. Poor little cat! And now she is frightened because, evidently, some of her kittens have been stolen from her, and she wants to protect this one.”

“But if I don’t frighten her,” said Betty, “if I keep coming to see her and don’t hurt her, and if I bring her some milk and some bits of meat, won’t she get used to me and let her kitten come out and play with me after a while?”

“Perhaps she will,” said the mother. “Poor pussy, puss, pussy, pretty pussy!”

She said it in such a coaxing voice that I quite liked her, and when Betty began to coax, too, she was so sweet and so like a kitten herself that I could scarcely help going a trifle nearer to her, and I found myself saying “Mee-ow” quite softly in answer.

And from that time we saw her every day ever so many times. She seemed never tired of trying to make friends with us. The first thing in the bright mornings we used to hear her pretty child voice and see her pretty child face. She used to bring saucers of delightful milk to us two or three times a day. And she always was so careful not to frighten us. She would just call us, “Pretty, pretty pussy! Pretty kitty puss!” in a voice as soft as silk, and then she would put the saucer of milk near us and go away behind the rose-bush and let us drink in comfort and peace.

We thought at first that she went back to the house when she set the saucer down, but after a few days, when we were beginning to be rather less afraid, we found out that she just hid behind the rose-bush and peeped at us through the branches. I saw her pink cheeks and big, soft, pansy eyes one day, and I told my mother.

“Well, she is a well-behaved child person,” mother said. “I sometimes begin to think she does not mean any harm.”

I was sure of it. Before I had lapped three saucers of milk I had begun to love her a little.

A few days later she just put the saucer down near us and stepped softly away, but stood right by the rose-bush, without hiding behind it. And she said, “Pretty pussy, pussy!” so sweetly, without moving towards us, that even my mother began to have confidence in her.

About that time I began to think it would be nice to creep out from under the house and get to know her a little better. It looked so pleasant and sunshiny out on the grass, and she looked so sunshiny herself. I did like her voice so, and I did like a ball I used to see her playing with, and when she bent down to look under the porch, and her curls showing, I used to feel as if I should like to jump out and catch at them with my claws. There never was anything as pretty as Betty, or anything which looked as if it might be so nice to play with.

“I wish you would like me and come out and play, kitty,” she used to say to me sometimes. “I do so like kitties! I never hurt kitties! I’ll give you a ball of string.”

There was a fence not far from the house, and it had a sort of ledge on top, and it was a good deal higher than Betty’s head, because she was so very little. She was quite a little thing, only four o’clock.

So one morning I crept out from under my porch and jumped on to the top of that fence, and I was there when she came again to peep, and say, “Pretty pussy.” When she caught sight of me she began to laugh and clap her little hands, and jump up and down.

“Oh, there’s the kitty,” she said. “There’s my kitty. It has come out its own self. Kitty, kitty, pretty, pretty kitty!”

She ran to me, and stood beneath me, looking up with her eyes shining and her pink cheeks full of dimples. She could not reach me, but she was so happy because I had come out that she could scarcely stand still. She coaxed, and called me pretty names, and stood on her tiptoes, stretching her short arm and dimpled hand to try to see if I would let her touch me.

“I won’t pull you down, pussy,” she said, “I only want to stroke you. Oh, you pretty kitty!”

And I looked down at her, and said, “Meeiou,” gently, just to tell her that I wasn’t very much afraid now, and that when I was a little more used to being outside instead of under the house, perhaps I would play with her.

“Mee-iaou!” I said, and I even put out one paw as if I was going to give her a pat, and she danced up and down for joy.

My dear little Betty! I wish I could see her again. I cannot understand why she should go away when I loved her so much, and when everybody loved her so much.

Oh, how happy we were when I came down from the fence. I did it in three days. She brought some milk and coaxed me, and then she put it on the grass close to the fence and moved away a few steps, and looked at me with such a pretty, imploring look in her pansy eyes that suddenly I made a little leap down and stood on the grass, and began to lap the milk and even to purr! That was the beginning. From that time we played together always. And oh, what a delightful playmate Betty was! And such a conversationalist! She was not a child who thought you must not talk to a kitten because it could not talk back. She had so many things to tell me and show me. And she showed me everything, and explained it all, too. She had a playhouse in a box in a nice grassy, shady place, and she told me all about it, and showed me her teacups and her dolls, and we had tea-parties, with bits of real cake and tiny cups with flowers on them.

“They don’t hold much milk, kitty,” she said, “but it’s a dolls’ tea-party, so you must pretend, and I’ll give you a big saucerful afterwards.”

I pretended as hard as ever I could, and it was a beautiful party, though I did not like the Sunday doll, because she looked proud, and as if she thought kittens were too young. The everyday doll was much nicer, though her hair was a little tufty and she was cracked.

How Betty did enjoy herself that lovely sunny afternoon we had the first tea-party in the playhouse! How she laughed and talked, and ran backwards and forwards to her mamma for the cups of milk and bits of cake. I ran after her every time, and she was as happy as a little bird.

“See how the kitty likes me now, mamma,” she said. “Just watch, it runs every time I run. It isn’t afraid of me the leastest bit. Isn’t it a pretty kitty?”

I never left her when I could help it. She was such fun. She was a child who danced about and played a great deal, and I was a kitten who liked to jump. We ran about and played with balls, and we used to sit together in the swing. I did not like the swing very much at first, but I was so fond of Betty that I learned to enjoy it, because she held me on her knee and talked. She had such a soft, cosey lap and such soft arms that it was delightful to be carried about by her. She was very fond of carrying me about, and she liked me to lay my head on her shoulder so that she could touch me with her cheek. My pretty little Betty, she loved me so!

She used to show me the flowers in the garden and tell me which ones were going to bloom, and what color they would be. We were very much interested in all the flowers, but we cared most about the white rose-bush. It was so big and we were so little that we could sit under it together, and we were always trying to count the little, hard, green buds, though there were so many that we never counted half of them. Betty could only count up to ten, and all we could do was to keep counting ten over and over.

[Illustration: “I DID NOT LIKE THE SWING AT FIRST”]

“These little buds will grow so big soon,” she used to say, “that they will burst, and then there will be roses, and more roses, and we will make a little house under here and have a tea-party.”

We were always going to look at that rose-bush, and sometimes, when we were playing and jumping, Betty would think she saw a bud beginning to come out, and we would both run.

I don’t know how many days we were so happy together, playing ball, and jumping in the grass, and watching the white rose-bush to see how the buds were growing. Perhaps it was a long time, but I was only a kitten, and I was too frisky to know about time. But I grew faster than the rose-buds did. Betty said so. But oh, how happy we were! If it could only have lasted, perhaps I might never have grown sober, and sat by the fire thinking so much.

One afternoon we had the most beautiful play we had ever had. We ran after the ball, we swung together, Betty knelt down on the grass and shook her curly hair so that I could catch at it with my paws, we had a tea-party on the box, and when it was over we went to the rose-bush and found a bud beginning to be a rose. It was a splendid afternoon!

After we had found the bud beginning to be a rose we sat down together under the rose-bush. Betty sat on the thick green grass, and I lay comfortably on her soft lap and purred.

“We have jumped so much that I am a little tired, and I feel hot,” she said; “are you tired, kitty? Isn’t it nice under the rose-bush, and won’t it be a beautiful place for a tea-party when all the white roses are out? Perhaps there will be some out to-morrow. We’ll come in the morning and see!”

Perhaps she was more tired than she knew. I don’t think she meant to go to sleep, but presently her head began to droop and her eyes to close, and in a little while she sank down softly and was quite gone.

I left her lap and crept up close to the breast of her little white frock, and curled up in her arm and lay and purred, and looked at her while she slept. I did so like to look at her. She was so pretty and pink and plump, and she had such a lot of soft curls. They were crushed under her warm cheek and scattered on the grass. I played with them a little while she lay there, but I did it very quietly, so that I should not disturb her.

She was lying under the white rose-bush still asleep, and I was curled up against her breast, watching her, when her mamma came out with her papa, and they found us.

“Oh, how pretty!” the mamma said. “What a lovely little picture! Betty and her kitten asleep under the white rose-bush, and just one rose watching over them. I wonder if Betty saw it before she dropped off. She has been looking at the buds every day to see if they were beginning to be roses.”

“She looks like a rose herself,” said her papa, “but it is a pink rose. How rosy she is!”

He picked her up in his arms and carried her into the house. She did not waken, and as I was not allowed to sleep with her I could not follow, so I stayed behind under the rose-bush myself a little longer before I went to bed. When I looked at the buds I saw that there were several with streaks of white showing through the green, and there were three that I was sure would be roses in the morning, and I knew how happy Betty would be and how she would laugh and dance when she saw them.

I often hear people saying to each other that they should like to understand the strange way I have of suddenly saying “Meeiaou! Mee-iaou!” as if I was crying. It seems strange to me that they don’t know what it means. I always find myself saying it when I remember that lovely afternoon when we played so happily, and Betty fell asleep under the rose-bush, and I thought how pleased she would be when she came out in the morning.

I can’t help it. Everything was so different from what I had thought it would be. Betty never came out in the morning. Oh, dear! oh, dear! she never came out again!

I got up early enough myself, and it was a beautiful, beautiful morning. There was dew on the grass and on the flowers, and the sun made it sparkle so that it was lovely to look at. I did so want Betty to see it! I ran to the white rose-bush, and, sure enough, there were four or five roses—such white roses, and with such sparkling drops of dew on them!

I ran back to the house and called to Betty, as I always did. I wanted her to come.

But she did not come! She was not even at breakfast, eating her bread and milk. I looked for her everywhere except in her bedroom. Her bedroom door was closed, and I could not get in.

And though I called and called, nobody seemed to take any notice of me. Somehow, something seemed to be the matter. The house was even quieter than usual, but I felt as if every one was busy and in trouble. I kept asking and asking where Betty was, but nobody would answer me. Once I went to her closed bedroom door and called her there, and told her about the white roses, and asked her why she did not come out. But before I had really finished telling her, my feelings were quite hurt by her papa. He came, and spoke to me in a way that was not kind.

“Go away, kitty,” he said, “don’t make such a noise; you will disturb Betty.”

I went away waving my tail. I went out into the garden and sat under the rose-bush. As if I could disturb Betty! As if Betty did not always want me! She wanted me to sleep with her in her little bed, but her mamma would not let me.

But—ah, how could I believe it!—she did not come out the next day, or the next, or even the next. It seemed as if I should go wild. People can ask questions, but a little cat is nothing to anybody unless to some one like Betty. She always understood my questions and answered them.

In the house they would not answer me. They were always busy and troubled. It did not seem like the same house. Nothing seemed the same. The garden was a different place. In the playhouse the Sunday doll and the everyday doll sat and stared at the tea-things we had used that happy afternoon at the party. The Sunday doll sat bolt upright and looked prouder than ever, as if she felt she was being neglected; but the everyday doll lopped over, as if she had grieved her strength away because Betty did not come.

I had made up my mind at the first tea-party that I would never speak to the Sunday doll, but one day I was so lonely and helpless that I could not help it.

“Oh, dear!” I meeiaoued, “oh, dear! do you know anything about Betty? Do you? do you?”

And that heartless thing only sat up and stared at me, and never answered, though the tears were streaming down my nose.

What could a poor little cat do? I looked and looked everywhere, but I could not find her. I went round the house and round the house, and called in every room. But they only drove me out, and said I made too much noise, and never understood a word I said.

And the white rose-bush—it seemed as if it would break my heart. “There will be more roses, and more roses,” Betty had said, and every morning it was coming true. I used to go and sit under it, and I had to count ten over and over, there were so many. It was such a great rose-bush that it looked at last like a cloud of snow-white bloom. And Betty had never seen it!

“Ah, Betty! Betty!” I used to cry when I had counted so many tens that I was tired. “Oh! do come and see how beautiful it is, and let us have our tea-party. Oh, white rose-bush, where is she?” They drove me out of the house so many times that I had no courage; but one morning the white rose-bush was so splendid that I made one desperate effort. I went to the bedroom door and rubbed against it, and called with all my strength:

[Illustration: “I LEFT HER LAP AND CURLED UP IN HER ARM”]

“Betty, if you are there!—Betty, if you love me at all, oh, speak to me and tell me what I have done! The white rose-bush has tens and tens and tens of flowers upon it. It is like snow. Don’t you care about it? Oh, do come out and see! Betty, Betty! I am so lonely for you, and I love you so!”

And the door actually opened, and her mamma stood there looking at me, with great tears rolling down her cheeks. She bent down and took me in her arms and stroked me.

“Perhaps she will know it,” she said in a low, strange voice to some one in the room. She turned and carried me into the bedroom, and I saw that it was Betty’s papa she had spoken to.

The next instant I sprang out of her arms on to the bed. Betty was there—my Betty!

It seemed as if I felt myself lose my senses. My Betty! I kissed her and kissed her and kissed her! I rubbed her little hands, her cheeks, her curls. I kissed her and purred and cried.

“Betty,” said her mamma, “Betty, darling, don’t you know your own little kitty?”

Why did not she? Why did she not? Her cheeks were hot and red, her curls were spread out over the pillow, her pansy eyes did not seem to see me, and her little head moved drearily to and fro.

Her mamma took me in her arms again, and, as she carried me out of the room, her tears fell on me.

“She does not know you, kitty,” she said. “Poor kitty, you will have to go away.”

* * * * *

I cannot understand it. I sit by the fire and think and think, but I cannot understand. She went away after that, and I never saw her again.

I have never felt like a kitten since that time.

I went and sat under the white rose-bush all day, and slept there all night.

The next day there were more roses than ever, and I made up my mind that I would try to be patient and stay there and watch them until Betty came to see. But two or three days after, in the fresh part of the morning, when everything was loveliest, her mamma came out, walking slowly, straight towards the bush. She stood still a few moments and looked at it, and her tears fell so fast that they were like dew on the white roses as she bent over. She began to gather the prettiest buds and blossoms one by one. Her tears were falling all the time, so that I wondered how she could see what she was doing, but she gathered until her arms and her dress were full—she gathered every one! And when the bush was stripped of all but its green leaves, I gave a little heartbroken cry—because they were Betty’s roses, and she had so loved them when they were only hard little buds—and she looked down and saw me, and oh! her tears fell then, not like dew, but like rain.

“Betty,” she said, “kitty, Betty has gone—where—where there are roses—always.”

And she went slowly back to the house, with all my Betty’s white roses heaped up in her arms. She never told me where my Betty had gone—no one did. And no more roses came out on the bush. I sat under it and watched, because I hoped it would bloom again.

I sat there for hours and hours, and at last, while I was waiting, I saw something strange. People had been going in and out of the house all morning. They kept coming, and bringing flowers, and when they went away most of them had tears in their eyes. And in the afternoon there were more than there had been in the morning. I had got so tired that I forgot, and fell asleep. I don’t know how long I slept, but I was awakened by hearing many footsteps going slowly down the garden walk towards the gate.

They all seemed to be people who were going away. And first there walked before them two men who were carrying a beautiful white and silver box of some kind on their shoulders. They moved very slowly, and their heads were bent as they walked. But the white and silver box was beautiful. It shone in the sun, and—oh, how my heart beat!—all my Betty’s snow-white roses were heaped upon and wreathed around it. And I sat under the stripped rose-bush breaking my heart. She had gone away—my little Betty—and I did not know where; and all I could think was that this was the very last I should ever see of her; because I thought there must be something which had belonged to her in the white and silver box under the roses, and because she was gone they were carrying that away, too.

Oh, my Betty, my Betty! and I am only a little cat, who sits by the fire and thinks, while nobody seems to care or understand how lonely and puzzled I am, and how I long for some kind person to explain. And I could not bear it, but that we loved each other so much that it comforts me to think of it. And I loved her so much, that when I say to myself over and over again what her mamma said to me, it almost makes me happy again—almost, not quite, because I’m so lonely. But if it is true, even a little cat who loved her would be happy for her sake.

Betty has gone—where there are always roses. Betty has gone—where there are always roses.

HOW FAUNTLEROY OCCURRED

_AND A VERY REAL LITTLE BOY BECAME AN IDEAL ONE_

HOW FAUNTLEROY OCCURRED

_AND A VERY REAL LITTLE BOY BECAME AN IDEAL ONE_