CHAPTER VII

Freda and Daffy in Trouble

DAFFY was getting sleepy. Suddenly Freda called to her in an excited whisper:

"She's gone, and Jane went first. Come on, and don't make a noise."

Softly they sped along the passage, down some stairs to another long passage, through a green baize door, past several rooms, and at last they came to the right one.

"He may be here already," said Daffy fearfully. "I'm a little afraid."

"He won't come till he wants a bed," said Freda reassuringly; "and grown-up people never go to bed till it's quite dark."

They found the room empty, but Daffy kept glancing out of the window, with her heart beating fast. It was dusk in this big room. The creepers outside the window tapped against the window-panes, as if they were hands that wanted to come in.

She and Freda were not very clever at making up a bed, and when she pulled a corner of the sheet towards her, Freda pulled it away again. It seemed as if they could not get it smooth and straight.

Then an owl hooted outside the window, and Daffy gave a little scream.

Freda was hotly indignant with her.

"You're a coward, that's what you are! And you'll make Nurse come down upon us, if you don't take care. I wish you weren't so clumsy! Do be quick! I think I hear him coming!"

That quickened Daffy. She did not want to see that dirty ugly old man coming into the dusky room. The pillows were thumped into their cases, the blankets and coverlet drawn tight over the big bed and tucked under the mattress, then Daffy slipped out of the room, thankful the task was over. Freda locked the door and took the key to bed with her; even her bold heart did not wish to have the old man prowling about over the house in the middle of the night.

They snuggled down into their beds again, rejoicing that they had not been seen by any one. Daffy dropped off to sleep quickly in spite of her rough blanket. Freda lay still with wide awake eyes. She trembled when, later on, Nurse came into the room with candle in hand. She stood over the children's beds for an instant, and Freda breathed quickly. Would she see there was no sheet?

But Nurse passed on, muttering to herself as she sometimes did, and Freda caught the words:

"Poor fatherless children, and their mother bored at having to think about them!"

Then Freda burrowed her head into her pillow, and sleep soon came to her.

The next morning was bright and sunny. But there was no sunshine in the nurseries, for Nurse had quickly discovered the absence of pillow-cases and sheets, and her wrath was great. Jane was called, and the children questioned, but Freda and Daffy maintained a stubborn silence.

Nurse took hold of Freda by the shoulders and shook her.

"Not one morsel of breakfast shall you have until you've told me what you've done with your sheet, you naughty child!"

Then Freda lost her temper. She flung the key down on the floor in front of Nurse.

"Go and find out for yourself; I shan't tell you! I hate you!"

And even mild-tempered Daffy echoed: "Yes, go and find them, Nurse. You always call us naughty before you know!"

Nurse seized the key.

"Jane, sit them on those chairs till I come back."

The little culprits were taken to the day-nursery. Jane seated Bertie at the breakfast-table, then went to fetch the porridge.

"Freda, do you think she'll find him in bed?" whispered Daffy from her high-backed chair.

"I don't care if she does," said Freda, with hot angry cheeks. "I hope he'll kick her."

Nurse was a long time coming back. They heard her hasty steps along the passage, and voices and doors opening and shutting. Then they heard their mother's voice calling to Purling, and their hearts quaked and thumped.

"They've found him asleep," said Daffy, "and now they're wondering who he is. Oh, Freda, I do wish we hadn't done it."

Shortly afterwards the door opened and Jane came in with the porridge. She looked very excited. Behind her was Nurse, and their mother, with her hair braided down her back, and clad in her blue silk dressing-gown.

"Here they are, ma'am, and it beats me how they dare to do such things! There's nothing they won't be up to, but when it comes to harbouring thieves and vagabonds, then I say nothing but a sound whipping will do them any good!"

"Freda and Daffy, get down from those chairs. Now what do you know about this? Somebody has been sleeping in one of our spare rooms; he has left this behind him, but taken away a good many things that did not belong to him. The gardener says he met an old tramp coming down from the house at six o'clock this morning, and he told him he had been sleeping at the house as a guest!"

Mrs. Harrington held out a piece of notepaper, evidently a sheet that was on the writing-table, for it bore the Harrington crest upon it, and the address, "The Hall, Douglas Cross."

In shaky writing across it, were these words:

"My thanks to the yong ladies. A very good nite."

Freda looked at Daffy, and Daffy looked at Freda.

"Speak," said their mother sharply. "What have you been doing?"

"May we tell you alone, Mums?" said Freda. "Nurse doesn't understand. We did get the bedroom ready for him, and told him how to get to it, but—"

"There, ma'am," said Nurse angrily. "Now what do you think of that? They're beyond me altogether! It's a mercy we were not all murdered in our beds!"

"You had better give them their breakfasts and send them to me. I must get to the bottom of it. Those Sheffield plate candlesticks and ivory trinket boxes are a real loss. I shall have to put it into the hands of the police."

Mrs. Harrington left the room as she spoke, and then ensued a very bad half-hour for Freda and Daffy. Nurse could scold like nobody else. They were only allowed dry bread for their breakfast, and were not allowed to speak to one another. When they were sent to their mother's room, Freda carried a little box under her arm; she was defiant, Daffy indifferent. Nurse's scoldings had always that effect on them.

"Mums won't scold like Nurse; we couldn't hear anything worse," Daffy said, as they walked along the passages to their mother's room.

Mrs. Harrington was sitting by her open window having her breakfast; she always took it in her bedroom. She never had understood her little daughters. She disliked finding fault with any one, and the loss of her husband had affected her so deeply that she felt nothing else mattered. Now she looked at them with a perplexed frown upon her face.

"Come in, and tell me quietly why you have been behaving in this extraordinary way."

Freda was only too ready to be spokeswoman.

She opened her box, and produced a slip of paper which she laid upon her mother's lap.

"You see, Mums dear, Bertie gave us the room. It belongs to him now, doesn't it? And Daffy and me are trying to be good and to do what the Bible tells us. And you know when Jesus Christ will stand at the door of heaven to let everybody in, He'll ask us if we've taken a stranger in, and given drink and food to the hungry and thirsty, and a lot of other things. If we haven't done it, we shall have to be goats, and if we have, we are sheep. And the sheep go inside heaven and the goats are shut out. And Daffy and me want to be the sheep."

Her mother looked at her gravely.

"I see. You explain very clearly. Go on!"

"Well, then, you see we had to find a stranger to take in, and an old man passed along the road, and we were sitting on the wall, and we asked him if he would like to have a bed for the night. We didn't know he was a wicked thief, and we told him how to get to the bedroom up the steps to the balcony, and Daffy and me couldn't get any sheets for him, so we took one of ours, and that's why Nurse found it out and was so angry."

Mrs. Harrington was looking at the paper upon her lap. She read it out aloud:

"I give to Freda and Daffy one of my bedrooms in this house for somebody that God wants to stay here.

"BERTIE HARRINGTON."

"Now who told you that this house belonged to Bertie?"

"Long ago," said Daffy softly, "Nurse told us that Bertie was much more important than us, because, if Daddy died, this house would belong to him."

"You haven't waited long to take advantage of your father's death," said Mrs. Harrington, rather bitterly.

Freda and Daffy hung their heads in shame.

"Now pay attention to me," their mother continued, in her slow quiet tones; "this house does not belong to Bertie till he is twenty-five years old. It belongs to me till then, and I forbid you to ask any one to stay in it unless you have my permission. Until you understand the Bible better, you are not to act out its precepts without asking grown-up people if it is right for you to do so. I believe there is a verse about heaping coals of fire on your enemy's head. Do you think you ought to do that?"

"I feel I would like to do it to Nurse," said Freda, with emphasis. In imagination she saw Nurse's cap and hair in flames, and considered it would serve her right.

"Exactly. You don't understand that a great deal of the Bible is figurative language."

"What is that, Mums?"

"Oh, I can't explain," said Mrs. Harrington, yawning. Then she roused herself to speak sternly. "That old tramp decamped with a good many valuable articles of ours. You put temptation in his way, and if the door had not been locked outside, he would have stolen much more. Who did that?"

"I locked the door, Mums," said Freda.

There was silence.

"Well, for children, I suppose you managed as wisely as you could. Now go back to Nurse, she will know how to punish you. And never do such a thing again. I thought I told you not to encourage beggars when I sent that boy away the other day."

"Nurse will be so fearfully angry," said Daffy.

"You deserve her to be. It was doing it secretly that must be punished. I will not have you grow up deceitful children."

"But Nurse thinks everything wicked," wailed Freda; "she wants us to have no fun at all."

"You don't want fun when your father lies dead in a foreign land," said Mrs. Harrington sharply.

Then she relented as she saw the forlorn look on the little girls' faces.

"There's right fun and wrong fun, and the Bible ought not to be turned into fun. Never. Now go back to the nursery."

Freda and Daffy crept out of their mother's room. Nurse was waiting for them, and did what she very seldom did now, she gave them each a sound whipping, and put them to bed.

And Freda and Daffy were two very unhappy little girls for all that day. They felt that from the grown-up people's eyes they had behaved badly; but they wondered if God looked down from heaven and understood better than Nurse.

"We'll ask Dreamikins about it," said Daffy; "but she never seems to get punished for anything."

"That old stranger ought to be punished, not us," said Freda. "We gave him a nice bed and food, and he stole Mum's candlesticks and other things."

"Nurse makes out the bed and the food weren't ours to give him," said Daffy. "She treats us as if we're thieves."

"Perhaps we are," said Freda thoughtfully.

Her busy brain was hard at work. She felt shaken in her self-confidence.

It was two or three days later that Fibo asked them to tea, and though Nurse was almost against their going, their mother said they might do so.

Dreamikins greeted them with her usual joyous welcome.

"Cherubine and me have been longing to see you. I've had a beautiful stranger staying in my bed, and Fibo liked him so much he stayed two days."

"Oh!" groaned Freda. "Everything is all right with you. We took in a stranger who was a thief, and Nurse hardly thinks us out of disgrace yet, though it was days and days ago!"

They began to compare their experiences, and then somehow or other they found themselves pouring it all out to Fibo, and Daffy asked him when he had heard all:

"Now do you think we were any wickeder than Dreamikins? What's the difference between us?"

"Why," said Dreamikins, "I've got an A.M. for my uncle, and you have a H.D. for your nurse. That's what makes the difference."

"Now look here," said Fibo, rousing himself, as he saw Freda's and Daffy's anxious faces. "I think I must give you all three a good talking to, because none of you are quite as wise yet as we grown-up people. Astonishing, isn't it? Now come and sit down, and we'll be thoroughly comfortable before I begin."

The little girls sat in a circle upon the grass round Fibo's chair, then Dreamikins insisted upon having Grinder and Drab.

"It'll do them good to hear you, Fibo dear, and after we've all listened hard, you must give us one choc each for good behaviour. Cherubine is going to listen too. I know she'll say 'I told you so!' when she hears you."

"Now then, here we go. First of all, I must remind you that those words were addressed to grown-up people, not to children. If you look in your Bibles, our Lord was speaking to His disciples."

"Oh, Fibo dear," said Dreamikins reproachfully, "can't children be disciples?"

"Yes, they can, but they are not able to do everything that grown-up people do. And this taking in of strangers is not for them, because they don't own a house or a bedroom; nor is food even, if taken from the kitchen, theirs to give, as B.B. and E.E. know."

"But," said Freda eagerly, "we did think the house and bedroom belonged to Bertie; Nurse said it did, and we got him to give it to us, only Mums says it belongs to her."

"Yes; you see, you made a mistake; that's where you showed you were not quite wise enough to manage such a big undertaking. The fact is, though none of you like to hear it, you mustn't act on your own. Ask advice of older people."

"I always ask Cherubine," said Dreamikins, smiling.

"Yes, but you would do better to ask me," said Fibo.

Dreamikins put her head on one side, then she held up one small finger. "Hush, Fibo, Cherubine is speaking."

Fibo was quiet at once, but he looked straight at his small niece with rather grave eyes, and she gave a little wriggle.

"Oh well, Fibo, she says she'll tell me to ask you sometimes, and you know I did ask you about the room, didn't I?"

"Yes, you did, but it was just a chance you didn't bring along a thief into the house. You wouldn't have known the difference. Now I'll tell you a beautiful way you can carry out our Lord's wishes. What is it He wants you to do?"

"To give drink to the thirsty and feed the hungry," said Daffy.

"To take strangers in and visit the sick," said Freda.

"And give clothes to the naked and visit in prison," said Dreamikins.

"Very well. Now I know several good people who take ragged children in; they feed and clothe them and give them houseroom, and nurse them when they're sick, but they can't do this without money. Now, if you have a collecting box, and put some of your loose pennies in, I will send up the box to them when full, and then you will be feeding these children, and clothing them, and taking them in as strangers with your money."

"Oh, but that would be so dull, Fibo dear," said Dreamikins.

The children's dismayed faces made Fibo laugh.

"And that wouldn't do it all; it wouldn't be visiting in prison," said Freda.

"Well, I know people who visit in prison, and that can't be done without money; you could have a box for that. You see, if you really feel you can't wait till you're grown-up to do these things, you can get some people to do it for you; that's what I mean."

"It isn't a bit the same," said Dreamikins. "And lots of children don't grow up; you know they don't; and then we shall be goats."

Fibo looked at his niece with a funny little smile, then he said suddenly:

"Perhaps you could do one or two of the things now, without waiting till you turn into wiseheads."

"Oh, do tell us," cried Freda and Daffy together.

"I think you could go and visit somebody sick. Mrs. Daw was telling me to-day of a dear old body who is in bed with very bad rheumatism. She used to be our laundress. She lives quite alone, and would be cheered up if you went to see her."

Dreamikins clapped her hands; but Freda and Daffy looked unhappy.

"Nurse wouldn't let us. She never will let us do a single nice thing."

"Oh, we'll manage Nurse. I'll tackle her."

"Will you really?"

Hope sprang up in their hearts.

"And what else?" they asked.

"I'm only a clumsy man, but I believe you can all use the needle. If we could have a little sewing party one day in the week, you could make clothes for some poor little kids who have none to wear, and I would see that they got them all right. But we should have to get Annette to cut the clothes out, and show you how to do them. I'm no good at that sort of thing."

"We don't like sewing," said Dreamikins, looking at her little friends; and Freda and Daffy both agreed with her.

"Of course, if you only want to do what you like—" began Fibo.

"We'll do it, Fibo dear, only you must tell us some most erciting stories all the time we work, and we must have an extry good tea after, to make up."

"I don't know that you need rewarding for doing good," said Fibo quietly.

"No, that we'll get inside heaven," said Dreamikins thoughtfully. "Perhaps we might try those two things."

"Yes," said Freda decidedly; "if Nurse lets Daffy and me do it, we will."

"And we can ask Mums," suggested Daffy.

Then they all brightened up, and Fibo said he wouldn't talk any more, not till next time; and then the little girls had a romp in the garden together till tea came, and they enjoyed themselves as they always did, and Freda and Daffy went home comforted.

"I always like," said Freda, "to feel there's something in front of us; and now there is."