Читать книгу Tommy Tregennis - Mary Elizabeth Phillips - Страница 6

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AT breakfast the following morning the Blue Lady looked up from her pilchards. She was eating slowly for pilchard bones are many in number and very small. “Dorothea,” she asked, “what about this cycling tour? Do you want to go on to-day, or wouldn’t it be rather nice to stay here for one more night and just enjoy Draeth?”

“I should love it!” the Brown Lady replied.

Mrs. Tregennis was summoned. No, she didn’t think the young gentleman would at all mind having the chair-bed again; he’d slept very well indeed and had been quite comfortable. As for her, well, she’d be delighted for the ladies to stay.

Thus it was settled, and they stayed.

The tide was high that morning, and they pulled slowly up the beautiful West River. After lunch they took photographs of Tommy at play on the sands, and sat on the rocks reading. In the evening they bathed for the second time that day, and went to bed at night completely under the spell of Draeth.

The next morning it was arranged that they should stay yet one more night, and it ended in the young gentleman sleeping on the chair-bed in his sitting-room for a week. Then, however, the ladies were obliged to leave. By the end of the week they had planned to reach Padstowe after cycling all round the Cornish coast, and had arranged that luggage should be awaiting them there at the Salutation Inn where they had already engaged rooms.

The evening before they left the ladies went into Mrs. Tregennis’s bedroom to hear Tommy say his prayers. He was kneeling in the cot, and by judicious pressure made the mattress rise and fall in such a way that his petitions were more broken than is usually considered quite reverent.

“Please God take care of Daddy, ’n bring the fishes, ’n Mammy, ’n keep me good, ’n——”

A sudden somersault choked the rest. “I’ve got a sweet, Miss!”

The opening of the right hand disclosed a hot, melted chocolate cream, whose pink inside now filled up the lines of the small, fat palm. After much licking brown and pink disappeared, but an uncomfortable stickiness was left behind. The Brown Lady brought a sponge and towel and washed the stickiness away.

“Tommy,” said the Blue Lady, “when you waken in the morning a wooden horse called Dobbin will be downstairs under the kitchen table. That’s his new stable.”

“Who be it for?” asked Tommy all thought of sleep dispelled.

“Well, it might be for Jimmy Prynne.”

“Mammy, Mammy,” with even more than customary vigour, “is the Dobbin that’s goin’ to be under the kitchen table for Jimmy Prynne?” Then with a catch suspiciously like a sob, “Jimmy Prynne doesn’t wipe his nose with a hankycher; he sniffs does Jimmy Prynne.”

“Oh, my dear soul,” replied Mammy, in the doorway, “I haven’t got no Dobbin. ’Tis a grand thing for Jimmy Prynne if he’s goin’ to have a horse for to ride. He’ll be like the quality will Jimmy Prynne.”

“Mammy,” brokenly, “do you think as sometimes Jimmy Prynne’ll lend his wooden horse to me?”

“Tommy Tregennis,” said the Blue Lady, throwing her arms round the dejected figure still kneeling on the bed, but no longer bobbing up and down. “Tommy Tregennis, if you go tightly to sleep, now at once, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if that wooden horse turned out to be for you, and not for Jimmy Prynne at all.”

At once Tommy lay down in bed and screwed up his eyes. Then, rubbing his forehead, “There ain’t no sleep there,” he said.

So the Blue Lady held one hot hand in hers, and sitting on the side of the cot sang many a nursery rhyme.

“Hush-a-bye, baby,” was sleepily demanded a second time.

“Hush-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green,

Thy father’s a nobleman, thy mother’s a queen;

Thy sister’s a lady and wears a gold ring,

And Johnnie’s a horseman, and rides for the king.”

“Was the horse called Dobbin?” Tommy asked, but before the answer came he was riding a kicking wooden steed in the wonderful land of dreams.

Later in the evening Tommy’s Ladies bought Dobbin. Mrs. Tregennis said that no fisher-child in Draeth had ever before possessed such a toy. It was dapple-grey and very strong; it moved on wheels and was high enough from the ground for a boy of five to sit astride, slip his feet into the stirrups, and so prepare to set out on great adventures.

Tommy was downstairs in his night-shirt at five o’clock the next morning. He sat on Dobbin’s back, kissed his carmine nostrils, poked his glassy eyes, and wished to waken up the Prynne household to show Jimmy Prynne his treasure and assert to him emphatically that Dobbin was his, Tommy’s, and his alone.

From this course, however, his mother dissuaded him. She told him that as yet the horse did not belong to him; until it had been given to him, he was certainly not justified in calling it his own.

“Perhaps after all,” Mrs. Tregennis demurred, “it may be for some other little boy in Draeth.”

“No, Mammy, no; the ladies said it was to be for me if I slept tight. They said so, Mammy, they said it was mine.”

To make quite sure of ownership, however, Tommy hurried up the two flights of stairs and with both clenched fists hammered on the bedroom door. “My ladies, my ladies; is the Dobbin for me?”

He returned to the kitchen triumphant, and convicted Mammy of lack of faith.

When breakfast was over Tommy led Dobbin proudly up and down the alley by the real leather reins. Three—then four—five—six—seven children followed the horse and his master.

WHEN BREAKFAST WAS OVER, TOMMY LED DOBBIN PROUDLY UP AND DOWN THE ALLEY.

Then Jimmy Prynne stepped forward: “Tell ee what, Tommy Tregennis, ’ll give ee two cherries to ride him wanst down.”

This bargain was concluded.

Ruby Dark parted with three treasured rusty pins for the privilege of herself leading Dobbin three steps, one pin for each step. Although she made her strides as long as possible her turn was soon over, and other contracts were entertained.

In half-an-hour’s time the Tregennis household was richer by three rusty pins, one screw, one length of stamp-edging, one dead rose, a parrot’s feather and a piece of string.

After lunch that day the ladies left. Tommy smiled until they had turned the corner, then a sudden despair seized him and he screamed with grief. Dobbin’s placid, glassy stare irritated him so much that he hit him full in the face with his open palm. Afterwards in a fit of remorse he flung his arms around the wooden neck and sobbed bitterly into the flowing mane. Ten minutes later he and Dobbin slept together on the kitchen floor.

The house seemed strangely quiet to Mrs. Tregennis when the ladies had gone. No other visitors had become so much a part of the household.

A few days later the three gentlemen also left Draeth, and Mrs. Tregennis prepared her house for the winter months. All the ornaments from the sitting-rooms were wrapped up in paper and put away in a box under the bed. The curtains and blinds were washed and folded carefully to be in readiness for the spring; the Brussels carpet upstairs was well swept and overlaid with newspapers; the velvet mantel-border was turned up and brushed, and it, too, was swathed in a paper covering. The best knives, spoons and forks were folded separately in tissue paper and locked away in the cupboard underneath the stairs.

When all these preparations were complete Mrs. Tregennis realized that winter was indeed upon them.