Читать книгу Goblin Island - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 3

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I am the Author’s daughter, and my name is Jean. But for a long time Jack and Jill would only call me the Girl, just as they would only call father the Author. When they spoke of us together they called us the Enemy, for they declared war on us even before we went to Strongarra.

Being an author’s daughter, of course I tried to write stories too. I knew all about father’s books and helped with many of them, and I always longed to write a book of my own. When I met the Colquhouns I was writing a novel, but it was a secret even from father, for I felt very shy about it. But before long my interest in the children from the island, and in the mysteries of Strongarra, grew so strong that I left the novel alone. I watched the story of Peggy Colquhoun and Somebody Else to the very end, and it seemed to me that instead of trying to write a novel I might make a story out of the things I had seen really happening.

Jack and Jill found this story the other day, and read it before I knew they had it. Their motto is—“All’s fair in love and war,” and in their dealings with us they have always carried it out very thoroughly. If they regard some one as an enemy that is an excuse for any conduct. Peggy has scolded and lectured them on the subject many times, but without effect.

It was not till quite lately that Jill really made friends with me, so she and Jack were not at all ashamed of themselves when I found them reading my story. They pretended to be very indignant at some parts of it, but were eager to be allowed to read the end, all the same.

A great deal of the story I only heard afterwards, for being the Author’s daughter and one of the Enemy, much was hidden from me. But I heard it all in time, some from Peggy, some from Don, and some from Red Riding Hood and little Boy Blue.

Of course several of these names were nicknames, but once I had seen Sheila in her scarlet cloak and hood, or Robin in his blue overall, I understood them well enough. As for Jill, her name was Grizel, but she was born just a year after Jack and they were such constant companions that every one called them Jack and Jill.

When we went to Strongarra, Peggy had for two years taken the mother’s place in the household. She had been at a boarding-school when Robin was born and their mother died, but when she was eighteen she came home to keep house for her father, and to mother the little ones.

Soon after she came home from school, their father died. From the tales I heard in the village, he must have been a fine man. From him undoubtedly came Robin’s restless nature, and Jack and Jill’s daring and adventurous dispositions. Peggy and Sheila must have been more like their mother. Their father taught Jack and Jill to swim and ride and fish and climb, but he would not have them sent to school. Time enough for that later, he said. So, in deference to Peggy’s prejudices in favour of education, they went to the manse three times a week for lessons with the old minister, Dr. Kerr, and spent the rest of their time out of doors.

When the father died, the guardianship of the family passed to Malcolm. He was two years older than Peggy, and was already studying at the university, for he was to be a doctor. By his advice, and much against Peggy’s wish, an aunt was asked to come and live at Strongarra, to give Peggy lessons in housekeeping, and to give an air of responsibility to the household. Peggy protested that it was unnecessary, but Malcolm insisted that he could not live and work comfortably in the city, if the house was left in charge of a girl of eighteen, no matter how clever she was.

So Miss Colquhoun came to live with them, but it was Peggy who ruled the house and managed the children.

But a year later, in the autumn, their grandmother was stricken with paralysis, and Miss Colquhoun hurried away to nurse her. The illness left the old lady so helpless that her daughter could not leave her, and Peggy willingly took up the management of the house, and asked no other protection than Old Mother Hubbard. Everything went so easily and pleasantly that Malcolm had no cause to worry. He paid them occasional visits, and was always greeted with such praises of “Mother Peggy,” that she blushed with pleasure.

So during the winter she kept house at Strongarra, and Malcolm ceased to talk of looking for a housekeeper. Old Mother Hubbard—she had been nicknamed at the same time as Red Riding Hood and Boy Blue—had lived with them for years, and under her care nothing was likely to go wrong.

It was in the spring of the next year that father and I went to Strongarra. Malcolm Colquhoun was twenty-two, and Peggy twenty. Jack and Jill were thirteen and twelve, Red Riding Hood was ten, and Boy Blue six. There had been another sister and brother, Helen and Jim, who came between Peggy and Jack, but they had been drowned in a boating accident on the loch just before Robin was born.

As for me, I was just twenty-one and had kept house for father for the last year, for, like Peggy, I was motherless. We lived in London, as father liked to keep in touch with people and to be near his publishers. But we generally spent the summer months in the country, and most often in Scotland.

Father and I were constant companions. I helped him in his work, acting as his secretary, and taking down stories from his dictation and then typewriting them. It kept me very busy, but without the work I might have been lonely. Don, my only brother, spent most of his time in Edinburgh. He had been studying medicine there for years, and was now walking the hospitals. I was very proud of him, but I did not often see him. However, my work for father gave me plenty to do, though I had not four little ones to look after like Peggy Colquhoun.

To be sure, there was the Mystery. I had to look after her while we were at Strongarra, but she was very good and gave very little trouble. She was quite content to be left alone for a good part of each day while I worked for father, and when I was tired of work I went to have a chat with her.

In the spring of that year we had never heard of the Colquhouns, and did not know there was such a place as Strongarra. But one day father told me he meant to look out for a country house in Scotland where we would spend the summer and work on a new story. The Mystery—it is Jack and Jill’s name for her—was looking pale, and would be the better for the change. About the same time Malcolm Colquhoun and a lawyer friend of his went down to Strongarra with very grave faces to have a talk with Peggy.