The Brownies
by
A little girl sat sewing and crying on a garden seat. She had fair floating hair, which the breeze blew into her eyes, and between the cloud of hair, and the mist of tears, she could not see her work very clearly. She neither tied up her locks, nor dried her eyes, however; for when one is miserable, one may as well be completely so.
“What is the matter?” said the Doctor, who was a friend of the Rector’s, and came into the garden whenever he pleased.
The Doctor was a tall stout man, with hair as black as crow’s feathers on the top, and grey underneath, and a bushy beard. When young, he had been slim and handsome, with wonderful eyes, which were wonderful still; but that was many years past. He had a great love for children, and this one was a particular friend of his.
“What is the matter?” said he.
“I’m in a row,” murmured the young lady through her veil; and the needle went in damp, and came out with a jerk, which is apt to result in what ladies called “puckering.”
“You are like London in a yellow fog,” said the Doctor, throwing himself on to the grass, “and it is very depressing to my feelings. What is the row about, and how came you to get into it?”
“We’re all in it,” was the reply; and apparently the fog was thickening, for the voice grew less and less distinct–“the boys and everybody. It’s all about forgetting, and not putting away, and leaving about, and borrowing, and breaking, and that sort of thing. I’ve had Father’s new pocket-handkerchiefs to hem, and I’ve been out climbing with the boys, and kept forgetting and forgetting, and Mother says I always forget; and I can’t help it. I forget to tidy his newspapers for him, and I forget to feed Puss, and I forgot these; besides, they’re a great bore, and Mother gave them to Nurse to do, and this one was lost, and we found it this morning tossing about in the toy-cupboard.”
“It looks as if it had been taking violent exercise,” said the Doctor. “But what have the boys to do with it?”
“Why, then there was a regular turn out of the toys,” she explained, “and they’re all in a regular mess. You know, we always go on till the last minute, and then things get crammed in anyhow. Mary and I did tidy them once or twice; but the boys never put anything away, you know, so what’s the good?”
“What, indeed!” said the Doctor. “And so you have complained of them?”
“Oh! no!” answered she. “We don’t get them into rows, unless they are very provoking; but some of the things were theirs, so everybody was sent for, and I was sent out to finish this, and they are all tidying. I don’t know when it will be done, for I have all this side to hem; and the soldiers’ box is broken, and Noah is lost out of the Noah’s Ark, and so is one of the elephants and a guinea-pig, and so is the rocking-horse’s nose; and nobody knows what has become of Rutlandshire and the Wash, but they’re so small, I don’t wonder; only North America and Europe are gone too.”
The Doctor started up in affected horror. “Europe gone, did you say? Bless me! what will become of us!”
“Don’t!” said the young lady, kicking petulantly with her dangling feet, and trying not to laugh. “You know I mean the puzzles; and if they were yours, you wouldn’t like it.”
“I don’t half like it as it is,” said the Doctor. “I am seriously alarmed. An earthquake is one thing; you have a good shaking, and settle down again. But Europe gone–lost–Why, here comes Deordie, I declare, looking much more cheerful than we do; let us humbly hope that Europe has been found. At present I feel like Aladdin when his palace had been transported by the magician; I don’t know where I am.”