Part 3 (1/2)
”Don't you _wish_ that the other Carews could come to our birthday party?” wistfully said Clary, the only girl among Doctor John Carew's ”seven little pickles,” as he called them.
”They would come like a shot if Uncle George would allow them, I know,”
observed Mark, the second Carew boy, with the red hair that was always so handy to fire off a joke about.
”Hum! perhaps so. The weather's getting coldish, and they'd be glad to come, if it was only to warm themselves a bit!” Oliver's eyes rolled significantly at Mark's head, the owner of which, with an angry whoop, made a dive at the speaker. There was an uproar in the play-room on the spot. Five Carew boys, pursued by the furious Mark, leaped, laughing and shouting, over chairs and stools, and even across the table.
”Wait till I catch one of you, that's all!” panted Mark, stumbling over a stool which Chris mischievously pushed in his way.
”Wait, sir! Oh, certainly, sir!” teasingly said Chris, bowing almost in two while Mark ruefully rubbed his s.h.i.+ns.
”Oh, boys, don't quarrel! Let us sit quiet and talk about the other Carews!” Clary plaintively pleaded. ”Don't you think we could somehow get them to my birthday party?”
The little sister was tucked away in the old rocking-chair in a corner, safely out of the way of the line of march of her wild brothers. She was a frail, small mortal, with long, smooth, yellow hair and anxious blue eyes, just the apple of everybody's eye in the Tile House.
”Father and Uncle George have never spoken to one another for three whole years. Everybody in Allonby Edge knows that, and so do you, Clary!
Is it likely that the other Carews would be allowed to come to your birthday party--is it now, I ask?” Oliver, the eldest, put his hands in his pockets, and stood with his back to the empty fireplace, secretly flattering himself that even Father could not strike a more manly att.i.tude.
It was Sat.u.r.day--a pouring wet Sat.u.r.day--and the boys were house-prisoners. They had struggled through every indoor game they knew, starting with a pillow-fight before the beds were made, to the tearful wrath of old Euphemia, who kept Dr. John Carew's house because the sweet-faced Mother, whom the children adored so, was ill and frail most of her days.
When in the pillow-fray a bolster burst and the feathers thickly snowed the staircase and hall, Euphemia's wrath boiled over, and the boys, with Clary also, were sternly hustled upstairs to the play-room, there to be locked in until the dinner-bell should release them. Peace at any price Euphemia was determined to have.
”You don't think they can get into mischief locked in--there's the window, you know, Euphemia,” nervously said Mother. It was one of the poor lady's particularly bad days, and she was shut up in her own room.
”No, mem, there's no fear. Not even such wild little reskels as ours would climb out o' that high window, an' there ain't no other outlet save it be the chimney. Not that I'd be surprised to see 'em one after another creep out o' the chimney-pot black as black!” Euphemia, with her head in the air, walked off muttering.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
However, as the morning wore on and a wondrous quiet reigned at the top of the house, where the boys were engaged in painting fearsome animals and golliwogs on the jambs of the mantelpiece, Euphemia relented.
”Mary Jane,” said she to the good-tempered, red-elbowed help in the kitchen, ”you take up this plate o' gingerbread to the children. Pretty dears, they must be nigh starving!” And a goodly heap of gingerbread chunks travelled upstairs to the play-room, the door of which was unlocked.
It was over this welcome interruption that a wonderful new game was hatched.
”Clary, tell us about the mountain railway,” said Oliver, seating himself on the edge of the table to munch contentedly.
His little sister had spent the previous winter with her ailing Mother in the Alps, at an hotel built on purpose for sick folk as high up in the air as was possible. And the boys were never tired of listening to her descriptions of the life so far up in the clouds and snows that the sun was nearly always s.h.i.+ning hotly.
”I shouldn't mind being sick myself if it was only just to wear those funny snow-boots and walk over the hard snow up and down the mountain-sides,” said Mark, reaching out for another piece of gingerbread.
”Oh, I'd like the tobogganing--the 'luging,' Clary calls it. Fancy spinning down in the moonlight!” cried one of the smaller boys, Johnny.
”No! Give me the riskiest of all--that queer railway up and down the great mountain. Tell us about it again, Clary,” urged Oliver.
”That's called the funicular!” Very proud of being able to say the long word, Clary propped up her every-day doll beside her in the rocking-chair and, folding her mites of hands, proceeded to explain.
”It's quite a little young railway, y' know. It's only to take people up to the hotel on top of the Mont, where Mother and I lived last winter.”
Then she told the boys how the little train toiled up the sheer face of a great mountain to the clouds. And it had to descend, also, which was worse far. Clary shuddered and hid her blue eyes as she described that coming down, while the eyes of the boys fairly bolted over the mere thought of a journey so full of risks and perils.
”It must have been prime!” calmly observed Chris, always to the front if danger were in the air. ”What did you think about, Clary, when the funicular came jolting down the steps hewn out for it in the steep mountain? What did it feel like? Come now, tell us,” persisted Chris curiously.