作者：Mrs. Humphry Ward
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Milly and Olly试读：
Dedication
To F.A., In the name of the children of Fox how, this revival of a child’s story written twenty-seven years ago, under the spell of Rotha and Fairfield, is inscribed by the writer.
Preface
After many years this little book is once more to see the light. The children for whom it was written are long since grown up. But perhaps the pleasure they once took in it may still be felt by some of the Millys and Ollys of to-day. Up in the dear mountain country which it describes, the becks are still sparkling; “Brownholme” still spreads its green steeps and ferny hollows under rain and sun; the tiny trout still leap in its tiny streams; and Fairfield, in its noble curve, still girdles the deep valley where these children played: the valley of Wordsworth and Arnold—the valley where Arnold’s poet-son rambled as a boy—where, for me, the shy and passionate ghost of Charlotte Brontë still haunts the open door-way of Fox How—where poetry and generous life and ranging thought still dwell, and bring their benediction to the passers-by. “Aunt Emma” in her beautiful home, unchanged but for its vacant chairs, is now as she ever was, the friend of old and young; and the children of to-day still press to her side as their elders did before them. The parrot alas! is gone where parrots may; but amid the voices that breathe around Fox How—the voices of seventy years—his mimic speech is still remembered by the children who teased and loved him. For love, while love lasts, gives life to all things small and great; and in those who have once felt it, the love of the Fairfield valley, of the gray stone house that fronts the fells, and of them that dwell therein, is “not Time’s fool—”
“Or bends with the remover to remove.”
Mary A. Ward.September 18, 1907.
CHAPTER IMaking Plans
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“Milly, come down! come down directly! Mother wants you. Do make haste!”
“I’m just coming, Olly. Don’t stamp so. Nurse is tying my sash.”
But Master Olly went on stamping, and jumping up and down stairs, as his way was when he was very much excited, till Milly appeared. Presently down she came, a sober fair-haired little maiden, with blue eyes and a turn-up nose, and a mouth that was generally rather solemn-looking, though it could laugh merrily enough when it tried. Milly was six years old. She looked older than six. At any rate she looked a great deal older than Olly, who was nearly five; and you will soon find out that she was a good deal more than a year and a half wiser.
“What’s the matter, Olly? What made you shout so?”
“Oh, come along, come along;” said the little boy, pulling at his sister’s hand to make her run. “Mother wants to tell us something, and she says it’s a nice something, and I kissed her like anyfing! but she wouldn’t tell me without you.”
Then the two children set off running, and they flew down a long passage to the drawing-room, and were soon scrambling about a lady who was sitting working by the window.
“Well, monkeys, don’t choke me before I tell you my nice something. Sit on my knee Olly. Now, Milly, guess—what have father and I just been talking about?”
“Sending Olly to school, perhaps,” said Milly. “I heard Uncle Richard talking about it yesterday.”
“That wouldn’t be such a nice something,” said Olly, making a long face. “I wouldn’t like it—not a bit. Boys don’t never like going to school. I want to learn my lessons with mother.”
“I know a little boy that doesn’t like learning lessons with mother very much,” said the lady, laughing. “But my nice something isn’t sending Olly to school, Milly. You’re quite wrong—so try again.”
“Oh, mother! is it a strawberry tea?” cried Milly. “The strawberries are just ripe, I know. Gardener told nurse so this morning. And we can have tea on the lawn, and ask Jacky and Francis!”
“Oh, jolly!” said Oliver, jumping off his mother’s knee and beginning to dance about. “And we’ll gather them ourselves—won’t you let us, mother?”
“But it isn’t a strawberry tea even,” said his mother. “Now, look here, children, what have I got here?”
“It’s a map—a map of England,” said Milly, looking very wise. Milly had just begun to learn geography, and thought she knew all about maps.
“Well, and what happens when father and I look at maps in the summertime?”
“Why,” said Milly, slowly, “you and father pack up your things, and go away over the sea, and we stay behind with nurse.”
“I don’t call that a nice something,” said Olly, standing still again.
“Oh, mother, are you going away?” said Milly, hanging round her mother’s neck.
“Yes, Milly, and so’s father, and so’s nurse”—and their mother began to laugh.
“So’s nurse?” said Milly and Olly together, and then they stopped and opened two pairs of round eyes very wide, and stared at their mother. “Oh, mother, mother, take us too!”
“Why, how should father and I get on, travelling about with a pair of monkeys?” said their mother, catching hold of the two children and lifting them on to her knee; “we should want a cage to keep them in.”
“Oh, mother, we’ll be ever so good! But where are we going? Oh, do take us to the sea!”
“Yes, the sea! the sea!” shouted Olly, careering round the room again; “we’ll have buckets and spades, and we’ll paddle and catch crabbies, and wet our clothes, and have funny shoes, just like Cromer. And father’ll teach me to swim—he said he would next time.”
“No,” said Mrs. Norton, for that was the name of Milly’s and Oliver’s mother. “No, we are not going to the sea this summer. We are going to a place mother loves better than the sea, though perhaps you children mayn’t like it quite so well. We’re going to the mountains. Uncle Richard has lent father and mother his own nice house among the mountains and we’re all going there next week—such a long way in the train, Milly.”
“What are mountains?” said Olly, who had scarcely ever seen a hill higher than the church steeple. “They can’t be so nice as the sea, mother. Nothing can.”
“They’re humps, Olly,” answered Milly eagerly. “Great, big humps of earth, you know; earth mixed with stone. And they reach up ever so high, up into the sky. And it takes you a whole day to get up to the top of them, and a whole day to get down again. Doesn’t it, mother? Fräulein told me all about mountains in my geography. And some mountains have got snow on their tops all year, even in summer, when it’s so hot, and we’re having strawberries. Will the mountains we’re going to, have snow on them?”
“Oh, no. The snow mountains are far away over the sea. But these are English mountains, kind, easy mountains, not too high for you and me to climb up, and covered all over with soft green grass and wild flowers, and tiny sheep with black faces.”
“And, mother, is there a garden to Uncle Richard’s house, and are there any children there to play with?”
“There’s a delightful garden, full of roses, and strawberries and grapes, and everything else that’s nice. And it has a baby river all to itself, that runs and jumps and chatters all through the middle of it, so perhaps Olly may have a paddle sometimes, though we aren’t going to the sea. And the gardener has got two little children, just about your age, Aunt Mary says: and there are two more at the farm, two dear little girls, who aren’t a bit shy, and will like playing with you very much. But who else shall we see there, Milly? Who lives in the mountains too, near Uncle Richard?”
Olly looked puzzled, but Milly thought a minute, and then said quickly, “Aunt Emma, isn’t it, mother? Didn’t she come here once? I think I remember.”
“Yes, she came once, but long ago, when you were quite small. But now we shall see a great deal of her I hope, for she lives just on the other side of the mountain from Uncle Richard’s house, in a dear old house, where I spent many, many happy days when I was small. Great-grandpapa and grandmamma were alive then. But now Aunt Emma lives there quite alone. Except for one creature, at least, an old gray poll-parrot, that chatters away, and behaves as if it were quite sensible, and knew all about everything.”
“Hasn’t she got any pussies, mother?” asked Olly.
“Yes, two I believe; but they don’t get on with Polly very well, so they live in the kitchen out of the way—”
“I like pussies better than pollies,” said Olly gravely.
“Why, what do you know about pollies, old man?”
“Pollies bite, I know they do. There was a polly bited Francis once.”
“Well, and pussies scratch,” said Milly.
“No, they don’t, not if you’re nicey to them,” said Olly; who was just then very much in love with a white kitten, and thought there were no creatures so delightful as pussies.
“Well, suppose you don’t make up your mind about Aunt Emma’s Polly till you’ve seen her,” said Mrs. Norton. “Now sit down on the rug there and let us have a talk.”
Down squatted the children on the floor opposite their mother, with their little heads full of plans and their eyes as bright as sparks.
“I’ll take my cart and horse,” began Olly; “and my big ball, and my whistle, and my wheelbarrow, and my spade, and all my books, and the big scrap-book, and—”
“You can’t, Olly,” exclaimed Milly. “Nurse could never pack all those up. There’d be no room for our clothes. You can take your whistle, and the top, and the picture books, and I can take my dolls. That’ll be quite enough, won’t it, mother?”
“Quite enough,” said Mrs. Norton. “If it’s fine weather you’ll see—you won’t want any toys. But now, look here, children,” and she held up the map. “Shall I show you how we are going to get to the mountains?”
“Oh yes,” said Milly, “that’ll be like my geography lesson—come, Olly. Now mother’ll teach you geography, like Fräulein does me.”
“That’s lessons,” said Olly, with half a pout, “not fun a bit. It’s only girls like lessons—Boys never do—Jacky doesn’t, and Francis doesn’t, and I don’t.”
“Never mind about it’s being lessons, Olly. Come and see if it isn’t interesting,” said Mrs. Norton. “Now, Milly, find Willingham.”
Willingham was the name of the town where Milly and Oliver lived. It is a little town in Oxfordshire, and if you look long enough on the map you may find it, though I won’t promise you.
“There it is,” said Milly triumphantly, showing it to her mother and Olly.
“Quite right. Now look here,” and Mrs. Norton took a pencil out of her pocket and drew a little line along the map. “First of all we shall get into the train and go to a place called—look, Milly.”
“Bletchley,” said Milly, following where the pencil pointed. “What an ugly name.”
“It’s an ugly place,” said Mrs. Norton, “so perhaps it doesn’t deserve a better name. And after Bletchley—look again, Milly.”
“Rugby,” said Milly, reading the names as her mother pointed, “and then Stafford, and then Crewe—what a funny name, mother!—and then Wigan, and then Warrington, and then Lancaster. Ox-en-holme, Kendal, Wind-er-mere. Oh, mother, what a long way! Why, we’ve got right to the top of England.”
“Stop a bit, Milly, and let me tell you something about these places. First of all we shall get out of the train at Bletchley, and get into another train that will go faster than the first. And it will take us past all kinds of places, some pretty and some ugly, and some big and some small. At Stafford there is an old castle, Milly, where fierce people lived in old days and fought their neighbours. And at Crewe we shall get out and have our dinner. And at Wigan all the trees grow on one side as if some one had come and given them a push in the night; and at Lancaster there’s another old castle, a very famous one, only now they have turned it into a prison, and people are shut up inside it. Then a little way after Lancaster you’ll begin to see some mountains, far, far away, but first you’ll see something else—just a little bit of blue sea, with mountains on the other side of it. And then will come Windermere, where we shall get out and drive in a carriage. And we shall drive right into the mountains, Olly, till they stand up all round us with their dear kind old faces that mother has loved ever since she was a baby.”
The children looked up wonderingly at their mother, and they saw her face shining and her eyes as bright as theirs, as if she too was a child going out for a holiday.
“Oh! And, mother,” said Olly, “you’ll let us take Spot. She can go in my box.”
Now Spot was the white kitten, so Milly and mother began to laugh.
“Suppose you go and ask Spot first, whether she’d like it, Olly,” said Mrs. Norton, patting his sunburnt little face.
CHAPTER IIA Journey North
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Milly and Oliver lived at Willingham, a little town in Oxfordshire, as I have already told you. Their father was a doctor, and they lived in an old-fashioned house, in a street, with a long shady garden stretching away behind it. Milly and Oliver loved their father, and whenever he put his brown face inside the nursery door, two pairs of little feet went running to meet him, and two pairs of little hands pulled him eagerly into the room. But they saw him very seldom; whereas their mother was always with them, teaching them their lessons, playing with them in the garden, telling them stories, mending their frocks, tucking them up in their snug little beds at night, sometimes praising them, sometimes scolding them; always loving and looking after them. Milly and Olly honestly believed that theirs was the best mother in the whole world. Nobody else could find out such nice plays, or tell them such wonderful stories, or dress dolls half so well. Two little neighbours of theirs, Jacky and Francis, had a poor sick mother who always lay on the sofa, and could hardly bear to have her little boys in the room with her. Milly and Oliver were never tired of wondering how Jacky and Francis got on with a mother like that. “How funny, and how dreadful it must be. Poor Jacky and Francis!” It never came into their, heads to say, “Poor Jacky’s mother” too, but then you see they were such little people, and little people have only room in their heads for a very few thoughts at a time.
However, Milly had been away from her mother a good deal lately. About six months before my story begins she had been sent to school, to a kindergarten, as she was taught to call it. And there Milly had learnt all kinds of wonderful things—she had learnt how to make mats out of paper, blue mats, and pink mats, and yellow mats, and red mats; she had learned how to make a bit of soft clay look like a box, or a stool, or a bird’s nest with three clay eggs inside it; she had begun to add up and take away; and, above all, she had begun to learn geography, and Fräulein—for Milly’s mistress was a German, and had a German name—was just now teaching her about islands, and lakes, and capes, and peninsulas, and many other things that all little girls have to learn about some time or other, unless they wish to grow up dunces.
As for Milly’s looks, I have told you already that she had blue eyes and a turn-up nose, and a dear sensible little face. And she had very thick fair hair, that was always tumbling about her eyes, and making her look, as nurse told her, like “a yellow owl in an ivy bush.” Milly loved most people, except perhaps John the gardener, who was rather cross to the children, and was always calling to them not to walk “on them beds,” and to be sure not to touch any of his fruit or flowers. She loved her father and her mother; she loved Olly with all her whole heart, though he was a tease, she loved her nurse, whom she and Olly called Nana, and who had been with them ever since Milly was born; and she loved Fräulein, and was always begging flowers from her mother that she might take them to school for Fräulein’s table. So you see Milly was made up of loving. And she was a thoughtful little girl too, tidy with her dress, quick and quiet at her lessons, and always ready to sit still with her fairy-book or her doll, when mother was busy or tired. But there were two things in which Milly was not at all sensible in spite of her sensible face. She was much too ready to cry when any little thing went wrong, and she was dreadfully afraid of creatures of all sorts. She was afraid of her father’s big dog, she was afraid of the dear brown cow that lived in the field beyond the garden, she was afraid of earwigs. I am even ashamed to say she was afraid of spiders. Once she ran away as if a lion were behind her from a white kitten that pulled her dress with its frolicsome paws to make her play with it; but that, Milly would tell you, was “when I was little,” and she was quite sure she was a good deal braver now.
Now what am I to tell you about Olly?
Olly was just a round ball of fun and mischief. He had brown hair, brown eyes, a brown face, and brown hands. He was always touching and meddling with everything, indoors and out, to see what was inside it, or what it was made of. He liked teasing Milly, he liked his walks, he liked his sleep in the morning, he liked his dinner, he liked his tea, he liked everything in the world, except learning to read, and that he hated. He could only do one thing besides mischief. He could sing all kinds of tunes—quick tunes, slow tunes, and merry tunes. He had been able to sing tunes ever since he was quite a tiny baby, and his father and mother often talked together of how, in about a year, he should be taught to play on the piano, or perhaps on the violin, if he liked it better. You might hear his sharp, shrill little voice, singing about the house and the garden all day long. John the gardener called it “squealin’,” and told Olly his songs were “capital good” for frightening away the birds.
Now, perhaps, you know a little more about Milly and Olly than you did when I began to tell you about them, and it is time you should hear of what happened to them on that wonderful journey of theirs up to the mountains.
First of all came the packing up. Milly could not make up her mind about her dolls; she had three—Rose, Mattie, and Katie—but Rose’s frocks were very dirty, Mattie had a leg broken, and Katie’s paint had been all washed off one wet night, when Olly left her out on the lawn. Now which of these was the tidiest and most respectable doll to take out on a visit? Milly did not know how to settle it.
“‘I can’t do without my toys, Nana’”
“I think, Nana,” she said at last to her nurse, who was packing the children’s trunk, “I will take Katie. Mother always sends us away when we get white faces to make us look nice and red again; so, perhaps, if I take Katie her colour will come back too, you know.”
“Perhaps it will, Miss Milly,” said nurse, laughing; “anyhow, you had better give me the doll you want directly, for it is time I packed all the toys now. Now, Master Olly, you know I can’t let you take all those things.”
For there was Olly dragging along his wheelbarrow heaped up with toys with one hand, and his cart and horse with a box of bricks standing up in it with the other. He would not listen to what Milly said about it, and he would scarcely listen to nurse now.
“I can’t do without my toys, Nana. I must do mischief if you won’t let me take all my toys; I can’t help it.”
“I haven’t got room for half those, Master Olly, and you’ll have ever so many new things to play with when we get to Ravensnest.”
“There’ll be the new children, Olly,” said Milly, “and the little rivers and all the funny new flowers.”
“Those aren’t toys,” said Olly, looking ready to cry. “I don’t know nothing about them.”
“Now,” said nurse, making a place in the box, “bring me your bricks and your big ball, and your picture-books. There, that’s all I can spare you.”
“Wait one minute,” said Olly, rushing off; and just then Mrs. Norton called nurse away to speak to her in the drawing-room. When nurse came back she saw nobody in the nursery. Milly had gone out in the garden, Olly was nowhere to be seen. And who had shut down the trunk, which was open when she left it? Me-ow, sounded very softly from somewhere close by.
“Why—Spot! Spot!” called nurse.
Me-ow, Me-ow, came again; a sad choky little mew, right from the middle of the children’s trunk. “Master Olly and his tricks again,” said nurse, running to the box and opening it. There, on the top, lay a quantity of frocks that nurse had left folded up on the floor, thrown in anyhow, with some toys scattered among them, and the frocks and toys were all dancing up and down as if they were bewitched. Nurse took out the frocks, and there was the children’s collar-box, a large round cardboard-box with a lid, jumping from side to side like a box in a fairy tale; and such dreadful pitiful little mews coming from the inside! Nurse undid the lid, and out sprang Spot like a flash of lightning, and ran as if she were running for her life out of the door and down the stairs, and safe into the kitchen, where she cuddled herself up in a corner of the fender, wishing with all her poor trembling little heart that there were no such things in the world as small boys. And then nurse heard a kind of kicking and scuffling in the china cupboard, and when she opened it there sat Olly doubled up, his brown eyes dancing like will-o’-the-wisps, and his little white teeth grinning.
“Oh! Nana, she did make a funny me-ow! I just said to her, Now, Spottie, wouldn’t you like to go in my box? and she said, Yes; and I made her such a comfy bed, and then I stuck all those frocks on the top of her to keep her warm. Why did you let her out, Nana?”
“You little mischief,” said Nana, “do you know you might have smothered poor little Spot? And look at all these frocks; do you think I have got nothing better to do than to tidy up after your tricks?”
But nurse never knew how to be very hard upon Olly; so all she did was to set him up on a high chair with a picture-book, where she could see all he was doing. There was no saying what he might take a fancy to pack up next if she didn’t keep an eye on him.
Well, presently all the packing was done, and Milly and Olly had gone to say good-bye to Fräulein, and to Jacky and Francis. Wednesday evening came, and they were to start early on Thursday morning. Olly begged nurse to put him to bed very early, that he might “wake up krick”—quick was a word Olly never could say. So to bed he
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