Part 4 (1/2)

”Very unlikely!” he muttered.

And how he had shoved it back into his pocket without noticing----

”_Very_ likely!” he said--to himself this time.

So what did he do, when he had heard all about it, but promise to whack Pete Bolton with his stick the first time he got him. And Sarah began to cry all over again, saying that Pete had no mother and couldn't be expected to know any better.

”Well,” said he, ”that's as may be! But anyway, I'll be a father to Pete the next time I catch him. I'll teach him to let little girls alone.

I've dealt with heaps of Pete Boltons before! Oh, often! Don't you trouble, little girl!”

And he actually got his hat and walked home with Little Sarah, growling all the time. I don't know what he gave her. But, anyway, what he said to her mother made the poor woman so happy that she nearly forgot to be ill. And on Monday I noticed that Little Sarah had new whole shoes and so had her brother Billy. So something must have happened, and though nothing was said, I can pretty well guess what.

So can Hugh John--and you too, my dear Diary. Only we won't tell. But the ”Compulsory Man,” who makes boys attend school, descended on wicked Pete Bolton, and then the schoolmaster fell on him, so that Pete became a reformed character--this is, so long as he was sore. Then, of course, he forgot, and began playing truant again.

Only after that he let Little Sarah alone. Because, you see, he never knew when, in a narrow lane, he might meet a big man, pulling at a big mustache, and carrying a very big stick. Because the sermons that big man preached with his stick were powerful, and Pete Bolton did not forget them easily.

The End--moral included free of charge, as Hugh John says.

IV

MISS POLLY PRETEND

_End of June._

Of course there ought to be a story in all this--the story of my life. I have a Relative who can spin you the story of anybody's life if you only tell him what number of shoe he wears. Only I am just a little girl, and have neither been murdered nor married--as yet. So in my life there are no--what is the word?--ingredients for the pudding. Yes, that is it.

So it must just come anyhow, like things tumbling out of your pocket when you hang head down from a tree or haystack which you are climbing.

All the same I will try always to put one story or one subject into a chapter, though these won't be called ”Printed in Gore,” or ”The House of Crime,” or anything like that.

For, you see, the stories the boys read are just stuffed with such things. So it will be rather a change to write about ”The Dirty Piece of Embroidery” and ”The Colored-Silk Work-basket.”

And that reminds me. Often Grown-ups ”give it” to their children for the very identical things they used to do themselves when young. There is a friend of father's down at Dumfries whom he calls Mr. Ma.s.sa. And once we bribed Mr. Ma.s.sa to tell us all about when father was young--he was his earliest and dearest friend--though, by his telling, father pounded him shamefully and unmercifully for nothing at all, even after they had vowed eternal friends.h.i.+p. And do you know, the things that father did when he was a boy--well, he would thrash Hugh John and Sir Toady for _now_!

But I expect that all fathers and most mothers were like that. When _I_ am a mother, I shan't be. Because, having kept a Diary, I shall only have to take it out and see how I felt. Don't you think that is a first-rate idea?

Besides, if it is printed, as Mr. Dignus says that it will be, it is bound to be true, and I shall have to believe it. Oh, just won't my children have a good time! Also Hugh John's. But Sir Toady Lion says he isn't going to have any--being married is ever such a swot, and children are all little pigs.

Well, _he_ ought to know.

Oh, about this Mr. Ma.s.sa? He told us some splendid things about father--how he stood on the top of Thrieve Castle with a stone in one hand and his watch in the other to measure the alt.i.tude, having just learned how. Only he forgot, and let go the wrong hand.

_Smack_--went the watch on the gra.s.s about seventy feet below! And there was he left standing with the stone in his hand. But the watch was ticking cheerfully away when they picked it up, and it is that very same old nursery watch that is hung up there now, and tells us when it is time _not_ to get up.

I don't think I ever knew what it was to have a true friend with a good memory till that moment. And as for the boys and me, we never thought we should like any of father's friends so much. But Mr. Ma.s.sa told us more things that we can cast up to him in time of need than we would ever have wormed out of father himself in a century. Funny how close people get about some things when they get older. Oh, I wish I had been born my own little girl. Then I _should_ have been properly brought up!

However, that is not my fault.

Hugh John says that being naughty is just according as you look at it.