Part 37 (2/2)

Bax. ”I was quite an old girl when she was a little thing in pinafores.

She was such a nice little girl.”

”I shouldn't wonder if she was always nice,” said Noel, ”even when she was a baby!”

Everybody laughed at this, except the existing baby, and it was asleep on the waggonette cus.h.i.+ons, under the white may-tree, and perhaps if it had been awake it wouldn't have laughed, for Oswald himself, though possessing a keen sense of humour, did not see anything to laugh at.

Mr. Red House made a speech after dinner, and said drink to the health of everybody, one after the other, in currant wine, which was done, beginning with Mrs. Bax and ending with H.O.

Then he said--

”Somnus, avaunt! What shall we play at?” and n.o.body, as so often happens, had any idea ready. Then suddenly Mrs. Red House said--

”Good gracious, look there!” and we looked there, and where we were to look was the lowest piece of the castle wall, just beside the keep that the bridge led over to, and what we were to look at was a strange blobbiness of k.n.o.bbly b.u.mps along the top, that looked exactly like human heads.

It turned out, when we had talked about cannibals and New Guinea, that human heads were just exactly what they were. Not loose heads, stuck on pikes or things like that, such as there often must have been while the castle stayed in the olden times it was built in and belonged to, but real live heads with their bodies still in attendance on them.

They were, in fact, the village children.

”Poor little Lazaruses!” said Mr. Red House.

”There's not such a bad slice of Dives' feast left,” said Mrs. Bax.

”Shall we----?”

So Mr. Red House went out by the keep and called the heads in (with the bodies they were connected with, of course), and they came and ate up all that was left of the lunch. Not the buns, of course, for those were sacred to tea-time, but all the other things, even the nuts and figs, and we were quite glad that they should have them--really and truly we were, even H.O.!

They did not seem to be very clever children, or just the sort you would choose for your friends, but I suppose you like to play, however little you are other people's sort. So, after they had eaten all there was, when Mrs. Red House invited them all to join in games with us we knew we ought to be pleased. But village children are not taught rounders, and though we wondered at first why their teachers had not seen to this, we understood presently. Because it is most awfully difficult to make them understand the very simplest thing.

But they could play all the ring games, and ”Nuts and May,” and ”There Came Three Knights”--and another one we had never heard of before. The singing part begins:--

”Up and down the green gra.s.s, This and that and thus, Come along, my pretty maid, And take a walk with us.

You shall have a duck, my dear, And you shall have a drake, And you shall have a handsome man For your father's sake.”

I forget the rest, and if anybody who reads this knows it, and will write and tell me, the author will not have laboured in vain.

The grown-ups played with all their heart and soul--I expect it is but seldom they are able to play, and they enjoy the novel excitement. And when we'd been at it some time we saw there was another head looking over the wall.

”Hullo!” said Mrs. Bax, ”here's another of them, run along and ask it to come and join in.”

She spoke to the village children, but n.o.body ran.

”Here, you go,” she said, pointing at a girl in red plaits tied with dirty sky-blue ribbon.

”Please, miss, I'd leifer not,” replied the red-haired. ”Mother says we ain't to play along of him.”

”Why, what's the matter with him?” asked Mrs. Red House.

”His father's in jail, miss, along of snares and night lines, and no one won't give his mother any work, so my mother says we ain't to demean ourselves to speak to him.”

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