“The Golden Lion?” I repeated.
“It’s the new Public,” my hostess explained. “And it stands right in the way, and handy for the workmen, as they come back from the brickfields, as it might be today, with their week’s wages. A deal of money gets wasted that way. And some of ’em gets drunk.”
“If only they could have it in their own houses—” I mused, hardly knowing I had said the words out loud.
“That’s it!” she eagerly exclaimed. It was evidently a solution, of the problem, that she had already thought out. “If only you could manage, so’s each man to have his own little barrel in his own house—there’d hardly be a drunken man in the length and breadth of the land!”
And then I told her the old story—about a certain cottager who bought himself a little barrel of beer, and installed his wife as barkeeper: and how, every time he wanted his mug of beer, he regularly paid her over the counter for it: and how she never would let him go on “tick,” and was a perfectly inflexible barkeeper in never letting him have more than his proper allowance: and how, every time the barrel needed refilling, she had plenty to do it with, and something over for her money-box: and how, at the end of the year, he not only found himself in first-rate health and spirits, with that undefinable but quite unmistakeable air which always distinguishes the sober man from the one who takes “a drop too much,” but had quite a box full of money, all saved out of his own pence!
“If only they’d all do like that!” said the good woman, wiping her eyes, which were overflowing with kindly sympathy. “Drink hadn’t need to be the curse it is to some—”
“Only a curse,” I said, “when it is used wrongly. Any of God’s gifts may be turned into a curse, unless we use it wisely. But we must be getting home. Would you call the little girls? Matilda Jane has seen enough of company, for one day, I’m sure!”
“I’ll find ’em in a minute,” said my hostess, as she rose to leave the room. “Maybe that young gentleman saw which way they went?”
“Where are they, Bruno?” I said.
“They ain’t in the field,” was Bruno’s rather evasive reply, “ ’cause there’s nothing but pigs there, and Sylvie isn’t a pig. Now don’t imperrupt me any more, ’cause I’m telling a story to this fly; and it won’t attend!”
“They’re among the apples, I’ll warrant ’em!” said the Farmer’s wife. So we left Bruno to finish his story, and went out into the orchard, where we soon came upon the children, walking sedately side by side, Sylvie carrying the doll, while little Bess carefully shaded its face, with a large cabbage-leaf for a parasol.
As soon as they caught sight of us, little Bess dropped her cabbage-leaf and came running to meet us, Sylvie following more slowly, as her precious charge evidently needed great care and attention.
“I’m its Mamma, and Sylvie’s the Head-Nurse,” Bessie explained: “and Sylvie’s taught me ever such a pretty song, for me to sing to Matilda Jane!”
“Let’s hear it once more, Sylvie,” I said, delighted at getting the chance I had long wished for, of hearing her sing. But Sylvie turned shy and frightened in a moment. “No, please not!” she said, in an earnest “aside” to me. “Bessie knows it quite perfect now. Bessie can sing it!”
“Aye, aye! Let Bessie sing it!” said the proud mother. “Bessie has a bonny voice of her own,” (this again was an “aside” to me) “though I say it as shouldn’t!”
Bessie was only too happy to accept the “encore.” So the plump little Mamma sat down at our feet, with her hideous daughter reclining stiffly across her lap (it was one of a kind that won’t sit down, under any amount of persuasion), and, with a face simply beaming with delight, began the lullaby, in a shout that ought to have frightened the poor baby into fits. The Head-Nurse crouched down behind her, keeping herself respectfully in the background, with her hands on the shoulders of her little mistress, so as to be ready to act as Prompter, if required, and to supply “each gap in faithless memory void.”
The shout, with which she began, proved to be only a momentary effort. After a very few notes, Bessie toned down, and sang on in a small but very sweet voice. At first her great black eyes were fixed on her mother, but soon her gaze wandered upwards, among the apples, and she seemed to have quite forgotten that she had any other audience than her Baby, and her Head-Nurse, who once or twice supplied, almost inaudibly, the right note, when the singer was getting a little “flat.”
“Matilda Jane, you never look
At any toy or picture-book:
I show you pretty things in vain—
You must be blind, Matilda Jane!“I ask you riddles, tell you tales,
But all our conversation fails:
You never answer me again—
I fear you’re dumb, Matilda Jane!“Matilda, darling, when I call,
You never seem to hear at all:
I shout with all my might and main—
But you’re so deaf, Matilda Jane!“Matilda Jane, you needn’t mind;
For, though you’re deaf, and dumb, and blind,
There’s someone loves you, it is plain—
And that is me, Matilda Jane!”
She sang three of the verses in a rather perfunctory style, but the last stanza evidently excited the little maiden. Her voice rose, ever clearer and louder: she had a rapt look on her face, as if suddenly inspired, and, as she sang the last few words, she clasped to her heart the inattentive Matilda Jane.
“Kiss it now!” prompted the Head-Nurse. And in a moment the simpering meaningless face of the Baby was covered with a
