CHAPTER I

Fidgets

"AUNTIE, what does 'ruthless' mean?"

"Why do you wish to know, Hecla?"

"I saw it in a book."

"You shall show me the passage by-and-by. Just now you have to work."

Hecla was hemming a small pocket-handkerchief, with red edges. She liked doing this, because it was for "Chris," but she did not love work for its own sake. She liked nothing which meant sitting still.

Hers was a rather curious name. She had been born in Iceland, under the shadow, so to speak, of Mount Hecla. That was why she was so called.

She sat at a small table in the middle of the room, with her back to the window, and Miss Storey, a slender, small, middle-aged lady, was near the fire. At Miss Storey's feet lay a fine black Persian cat, fast asleep; and in the window hung a gilt cage, the canary within ever hopping from perch to perch, except when it stopped to feed or to sing.

Sunshine streamed full upon the cage and upon the draped white curtains. It was a sunny day, but very cold, and patches of snow in the front garden told of a recent fall.

Miss Storey kept very upright and very still, and her small delicate fingers scarcely seemed to move as they knitted. But Hecla was neither upright nor still. She was a restless little mortal; quite as restless as the canary in its cage. She too was slim, and also rather tall for her age; and she had an anxious way of wrinkling her forehead, as if trying to do something beyond her power. She wore a brown holland pinafore over a brown stuff frock, and her hair hung in limp rats' tails down her back.

"Auntie, why does Chris learn Latin, and me not?"

"You may perhaps learn Latin some day, my dear. It is not necessary for you at present."

Hecla managed five stitches in silence.

"Auntie, isn't it most dreadfully cruel of the blackbirds to eat worms? Why don't they eat crumbs—that would be ever so much nicer? I do think it's cruel, don't you?"

"No more cruel than it is of Hecla to eat mutton."

Another pause. Hecla pushed her needle in and out.

"Auntie—"

"Go on with your work, dear."

"I'm going. Auntie—"

"My dear child, you will finish much sooner if you do not talk. Try now!"

Hecla did try. She screwed her forehead into all sorts of shapes, huddled herself into a bunch, and asked no questions for nearly two whole minutes. Her chair kept up a gentle creaking.

"You need not fidget, Hecla."

There were no sounds for quite thirty seconds. Then she forgot. Out went one foot and the other curled itself round the leg of her chair. Her elbow sprawled over the table, and down went a reel of cotton. It rolled away, so of course she had to run after it; and when she came back and plumped into her chair—crash followed.

"My dear Hecla!"

"Oh, auntie, it's my work-box! I'm so sorry!"

"Pick it up carefully. Then you must try to be quiet."

Picking up the fallen box and putting its contents straight was easy. But to be quiet—there lay the difficulty. Do what Hecla would, and try as she might, it always seemed as if the one impossible thing for her was to keep still.

"I've done one whole side of my handkerchief, auntie." She jumped up—and bang! again. Down went her chair, backwards.

"Hecla!"

"Oh dear! Things will tumble so, auntie."

"Not unless they are made."

"I didn't try—truly, I didn't!" Hecla's forehead was all over crinkles.

"No, dear. But did you try not?"

Hecla was not sure. She brought the handkerchief to her aunt, and stood waiting while Miss Storey put on her glasses. But you must not suppose for a moment that Hecla stood still and upright, like a soldier. Nothing of the sort! First she balanced herself on one leg, and then she balanced herself on the other; now she clasped her hands behind her back, and then she stretched them high over her head; next, she gave a skip, and pranced round to the back of Miss Storey's chair.

"Stand still."

Hecla said "Yes," and danced back.

"It is not badly done. One more side, and Elisabeth shall take you out."

That brought another prance. "Oh, I do like going out, and I love going with Elisabeth."

"But you must do as Elisabeth tells you."

"Oh yes, of course, auntie."

She sat down, began again, did six stitches, and sighed. "They are such long sides!"

"I wonder what you would feel if you had all round a great sheet to hem. I did that when I wasn't much older than you are now."

Hecla was deeply interested. She put down her work, and gazed earnestly at Miss Storey.

"Weren't you much older than me, auntie?"

"I was just ten years old."

"Ah, but I'm only eight and a half. I'm 'xactly eight and a half."

"Eighteen months is not so very much difference."

Privately Hecla thought the difference enormous. She felt that at ten years old she would be very nearly grown-up. But she only asked, "What made you hem the sheet? Was it—for punishment?"

"No, not at all. The sheet had to be hemmed, and I wanted to help my mother."

Hecla considered the question with knitted brows. She felt convinced that her aunt must have been an extraordinarily good little girl, far superior to all little girls whom she had known, especially superior to herself. Hecla was most anxious to be good, and her great desire was to please everybody; but the idea of hemming even one side of anything so vast as a sheet—that simply lay outside the world of things possible!

"Weren't you obliged to do it?" she inquired hopelessly.

"No, certainly not. I used to get up in the early morning, and get a piece done before breakfast."

More and more astonishing. "Not in winter, auntie."

"Yes, in winter."

Hecla gave it up as a hopeless case. She was generally wide-awake enough at night, but profoundly drowsy in the morning—at least, in winter mornings.

"I shouldn't like to have to hem a sheet. It would take me—oh, I think a whole, whole year."

"Not unlikely, at your present rate."

Hecla understood, and felt ashamed. She picked up the handkerchief which lay at her feet and set to work anew. Silence actually lasted for nearly five minutes, by which time she felt that she was almost rivalling Miss Storey's past goodness.

It was a fair-sized room in which they sat, crowded with heavy old-fashioned furniture. Each chair, not in use, stood rigidly with its back against the wall, only never touching it, for fear the pretty paper might be rubbed or scratched. The semi-grand piano—on which nobody ever played, for Hecla practised on another—was laden with handsome old china and framed photographs, always arranged in the same manner. On the mantelpiece were a number of valuable vases, placed in a row. An ornamental corner bookcase held many handsome calf-bound volumes, each of which had invariably the same neighbours.

Miss Storey and her sister disliked changes. They had lived here all their lives, seldom going away even for a short time; and they did their best to keep everything both inside and outside the house exactly what it had always been. That, at least, was Miss Storey's aim; and whether Miss Anne felt the same or not, she seldom differed from her sister.

Until the coming of little Hecla, some eighteen months before this date, nothing had disturbed the even tenor of their lives since Miss Storey's girlhood. Everything in the house had gone steadily on, as if by clockwork—like the aged timepiece in the hall, which never was known to lag behind or to run ahead.

Nothing and nobody under that roof had ever been in a hurry, or afflicted with fidgets. Certainly not Miss Storey, or Miss Anne Storey, or the elderly servant who had done most of the work, or the stolid young girl who helped her, or the silent old charwoman who sometimes came for a day's work, or even the dignified Persian cat. All had gone on calmly, smoothly, placidly.

But when their only sister died, leaving one little girl alone and friendless, it became their duty to take her. And they did not hesitate. They determined at once to have the child, though they—especially Miss Storey—felt that it would be a trial.

And it no doubt was a trial. Though they were very fond of the child, she worried them a good deal, without in the least meaning to do so.

Miss Storey was not really old. Many a woman of her age is still active and vigorous, and even young, and Miss Anne was many years the younger of the two. Still, they had lived so long in one particular way, that it was not easy for them to change.

And with the coming of little Hecla, an eager, affectionate, talkative, restless child of seven, accustomed to be made much of and to get her own way more than was perhaps wise, things were a good deal altered. It could not be otherwise.

For years and years the sisters had lived in quiet, and had had everything about them neat and regular and orderly. All at once, into the midst of this placid household came a little fidgety sprite, never for a moment still, never, if she could help it, for a moment silent, always on the go, always wanting to do something fresh, perpetually asking questions, never putting anything away into its right place, unable to write without scattering ink-spots, unable to kiss them without rumpling their nice white frills. It really was something of a trial at first even to Miss Anne, and it was a very great trial to Miss Storey. Not even eighteen months of it had made the elder sister grow used to the new state of things.

Do what they might, they could not shape the child into their own ways. She really was on the whole a good little girl, anxious to do what was right. But she forgot words of reproof almost as soon as they were spoken; and it seemed as if she positively had to dance and skip and prance and fidget and chatter the whole day long without a break.

Perhaps the aunts had done much the same in their childhood, and had forgotten; or, if Miss Anne remembered, she never said so. Perhaps they had been naturally less restless. There is a great difference between different children, just as there is a great difference between different grown-up people.

Hecla never for a moment dreamt what a trial her presence in the house was to her Aunt Millicent. She knew that she was always being told not to fidget, but she supposed that to be only because she had to learn to be proper and quiet.

Sometimes she wondered why the aunts liked to sit so still, and to move so slowly; and why she might not jump up and down and race round and round just as often as she felt inclined. But she never questioned in her little heart their real kindness and love; and it never so much as came into her head that she could be a trouble to either of them.