Read Ebook: Grandmother Dear: A Book for Boys and Girls by Molesworth Mrs Crane Walter Illustrator

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Ebook has 877 lines and 56679 words, and 18 pages

Sylvia lost in the Louvre

"Whose Drawer is this?"

Under the Apple-Tree

"Zwanzig--Twenty Schelling, that Cup"

In the Coppice

"Good-Bye again, my Boy, and God bless you!"

"I hope it isn't Haunted"

MAKING FRIENDS.

"Good onset bodes good end." SPENSER.

"Well?" said Ralph.

"Well?" said Sylvia.

"Well?" said Molly.

Then they all three stood and looked at each other. Each had his or her own opinion on the subject which was uppermost in their minds, but each was equally reluctant to express it, till that of the others had been got at. So each of the three said "Well?" to the other two, and stood waiting, as if they were playing the old game of "Who speaks first?" It got tiresome, however, after a bit, and Molly, whose patience was the most quickly exhausted, at last threw caution and dignity to the winds.

"And I think so too," said Sylvia, "Don't you, Ralph?"

"Ye-es," said Ralph. "I don't think she's bad for a grandmother."

"'For a grandmother!'" cried Molly indignantly. "What do you mean, Ralph? What can be nicer than a nice grandmother?"

"But suppose she wasn't nice? she needn't be, you know. There are grandmothers and grandmothers," persisted Ralph.

Sylvia smiled. "Yes, exactly," she replied. "She would almost do for a fairy godmother, if only she had a stick with a gold knob."

"Only perhaps she'd beat us with it," said Ralph.

"Children," said a voice at the door, which made them all jump, though it was such a kind, cheery voice. "Aren't you ready for tea? I'm glad to see you are not very tired, but you must be hungry. Remember that you've travelled a good way to-day."

"Only from London, grandmother dear," said Molly; "that isn't very far."

Molly looked up with some puzzle in her eyes at this.

"Not so young as you have been, grandmother dear?" she repeated.

"Hush, Ralph. Don't begin teasing her," said Sylvia in a low voice, not lost, however, upon grandmother.

"And what were you all so busy chattering about when I interrupted you just now?" she inquired, when they were all seated round the tea-table, and thanks to the nice cold chicken and ham, and rolls and butter and tea-cakes, and all manner of good things, the children fast "losing their appetites."

Sylvia blushed and looked at Ralph; Ralph grew much interested in the grounds at the bottom of his tea-cup; only Molly, Molly the irrepressible, looked up briskly.

"Oh, nothing," she replied; "at least nothing particular."

"Dear me! how odd that you should all three have been talking at once about anything so uninteresting as nothing particular," said grandmother, in a tone which made them all laugh.

"Molly!" said Sylvia reproachfully, but Molly was not so easily to be snubbed.

It was grandmother's and aunty's turn to laugh now.

"Only," Molly went on, "Ralph said perhaps you'd beat us with it, and I said no, most likely you'd turn us into frogs or mice, you know."

"'Frogs or mice, I know,' but indeed I don't know," said grandmother; "why should I wish to turn my boy and girl children into frogs and mice?"

"If we were naughty, I meant," said Molly. "Oh, Sylvia, you explain--I always say things the wrong way."

"It was I that said you looked like a fairy godmother," said Sylvia, blushing furiously, "and that put it into Molly's head about the frogs and mice."

"The wrong end and beginning and middle too, I should say," observed Ralph.

"Yes, grandmother dear, I always do," said Molly, complacently. "I never remember stories or anything the right way, my head is so funnily made."

"When you can't find your gloves, because you didn't put them away carefully, is it the fault of the shape of the chest of drawers?" inquired grandmother quietly.

"Yes, I suppose so,--at least, no, I mean, of course it isn't," replied Molly, taking heed to her words half-way through, when she saw that they were all laughing at her.

Grandmother smiled, but said no more.

"What a wool-gathering little brain it is," she said to herself.

They had never seen their grandmother before, never, that is to say, in the girls' case, and in Ralph's "not to remember her." Ralph was fourteen now, Sylvia thirteen, and Molly about a year and a half younger. More than seven years ago their mother had died, and since then they had been living with their father, whose profession obliged him often to change his home, in various different places. It had been impossible for their grandmother, much as she wished it, to have had them hitherto with her, for, for several years out of the seven, her hands, and those of aunty, too, her only other daughter besides their mother, had been more than filled with other cares. Their grandfather had been ill for many years before his death, and for his sake grandmother and aunty had left the English home they loved so much, and gone to live in the south of France. And after his death, as often happens with people no longer young, and somewhat wearied, grandmother found that the old dream of returning "home," and ending her days with her children and old friends round her, had grown to be but a dream, and, what was more, had lost its charm. She had grown to love her new home, endeared now by so many associations; she had got used to the ways of the people, and felt as if English ways would be strange to her, and as aunty's only idea of happiness was to find it in hers, the mother and daughter had decided to make their home where for nearly fourteen years it had been. They had gone to England this autumn for a few weeks, finally to arrange some matters that had been left unsettled, and while there something happened which made them very glad that they had done so. Mr. Heriott, the children's father, had received an appointment in India, which would take him there for two or three years, and though grandmother and aunty were sorry to think of his going so far away, they were--oh, I can't tell you how delighted! when he agreed to their proposal, that the children's home for the time should be with them. It would be an advantage for the girls' French, said grandmother, and would do Ralph no harm for a year or two, and if his father's absence lasted longer, it could easily be arranged for him to be sent back to England to school, still spending his holidays at Ch?let. So all was settled; and grandmother, who had taken a little house at Dover for a few weeks, stayed there quietly, while aunty journeyed away up to the north of England to fetch the children, their father being too busy with preparations for his own departure to be able conveniently to take them to Dover himself. There were some tears shed at parting with "papa," for the children loved him truly, and believed in his love for them, quiet and undemonstrative though his manner was. There were some tears, too, shed at parting with "nurse," who, having conscientiously spoilt them all, was now getting past work, and was to retire to her married daughter's; there were a good many bestowed on the rough coat of Shag, the pony, and the still rougher of Fusser, the Scotch terrier; but after all, children are children, and for my part I should be very sorry for them to be anything else, and the delights of the change and the bustle of the journey soon drowned all melancholy thoughts.

And so far all had gone charmingly. Aunty had proved to be all that could be wished of aunty-kind, and grandmother promised more than fairly.

Though grandmother did not in general wear spectacles--only when reading very small print, or busied with some peculiarly fine fancywork--nothing ever seemed to escape her notice.

"Molly, my dear, what are you staring at so? Is my cap crooked?" she said. Molly started.

"What is the matter, dear?" grandmother was beginning to exclaim, when she was stopped by feeling two arms hugging her tightly, and a rather bread-and-buttery little mouth kissing her valorously.

"And the stories would be beautiful if I told them--eh, Molly?"

"We'll see," said grandmother. "Anyway there's no time for stories at present. You have ever so much to think of with all the travelling that is before you. Wait till we get to Ch?let, and then we'll see."

"I am glad you think so, grand-daughter dear; and now, what about going to bed? It is only seven, but if you are tired?"

"But we are not a bit tired," said Molly.

"We never go to bed till half-past eight, and Ralph at nine," said Sylvia.

The word "bed" had started a new flow of ideas in Molly's brain.

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