Hoodie

This special Sunday afternoon their mother was not with them. They went and returned under Martin's convoy, and till about half way on their way home again all went satisfactorily. Then unfortunately occurred the first ruffle. Maudie had been walking on in front with little Duke, Hoodie and Hec, each with a hand of Martin, behind, when Maudie stopped.

"Martin," she said, "may Duke walk with you a little? He says he's tired."

"Of course, poor dear," said Martin; "come here, Master Duke, and you, Miss Hoodie, go on a little with your sister."

Hoodie let go Martin's hand readily enough.

"Wonders will never cease," thought Martin, but alas, her rejoicing was premature. Hoodie let go her hand, but stood stock still without moving.

"No," she said deliberately, "I won't walk with Maudie. Why can't Hec walk with Maudie, and me stay here?"

"Because he's such a little boy, Miss Hoodie dear, and I daresay both he and Master Duke are getting tired. They've had a long walk you know."

Martin was forgetting her own advice to Maudie. He who stopped to reason with Hoodie was lost indeed!

"And so has me had a long walk, and so you might daresay me is tired too," returned Hoodie, standing her ground both actually and figuratively. Two fat little legs apart, two sturdy little feet planted firmly on the ground, there she stood looking up defiantly in Martin's face, armed for the fight.

"Was there ever such a child?" thought poor Martin. Maudie's words had indeed been quickly fulfilled – here already was a case in which the taking-no-notice system was impossible – the child could not be left by herself on the high-road, where according to present appearances it was evidently her intention to stay unless – she got her own way!

"Well, my dear, I daresay you are tired too," said Martin soothingly, "but still not so tired as poor little Duke. You're ever so much bigger you know. Think what tiny little feet your brothers have to trot all along the road on."

"Mines is tiny too. I heard you saying them was very tiny to Mamma one day. And them's just as tired as Duke's; 'cos I'm bigger, my feets have more heavy to carry. I will have your hand, Martin, and I won't walk with ugly Maudie."

"But you must, Miss Hoodie," said Martin, attempting firmness and decision as a last resource.

"But I mustn't, 'cos I won't," said Hoodie.

Martin glanced back along the road despairingly. Several groups of the country people on their way home from church were approaching the little party as they stood on the footpath.

"Do come on, Martin," said Maudie; "it is so horrid for the people to see such a fuss. And then they say all about that we are all naughty. Look, there's farmer Bright and his daughters coming. Do come on – you'll have to let Hoodie walk with you, and Hec'll come with me."

"Miss Hoodie," said Martin once more, "you are to walk on with Miss Maudie, do you hear?"

"Yes," said Hoodie, without moving an inch, "I hear, but I won't walk with ugly Maudie."

The Bright family were fast approaching. In despair Martin turned to Hoodie.

"I am obliged to let you walk with me, Miss Julian," she said, solemnly, "because I cannot have every one in the road see how naughty you are. But when we get home I shall speak to your Mamma, and ask her to let you go walks alone. You make us all miserable."

Hoodie took Martin's hand and marched on.

"I should like to go walks alone, werry much," she said, amiably, to which remark Martin did not make any reply.

The Bright family passed them with a friendly word to Martin, saying something in praise of the nice appearance of her little charges. And Hoodie smiled back to farmer Bright, as if she thought herself the best and sweetest-tempered of little girls. Then when they were out of sight, she suddenly dropped Martin's hand.

"I don't want to walk with you. You're an ugly 'sing too," she said. "I like to walk belone, but I would walk with you if I said I would."

And on she marched defiantly, well in front of the whole party. And again poor Martin murmured to herself, – "Was there ever such a child?"

What was Hoodie saying to herself on in front where no one could hear her?

"They don't love me. They like me to be away. Nobody loves poor Hoodie. Hoodie can't be good when nobody loves her. It isn't Hoodie's fault."

And through her babyish brain there ran misty, dreamy ideas of something she would do to make "them" all sorry – she would go away somewhere "far, far," and never come back again. But where? This she could not yet settle about, but fortunately for the peace of the rest of the walk her cogitations kept her quiet till they were all at home again.

Martin's threat of speaking to Hoodie's mother was not at once carried out. And Martin herself began to think better of it when at tea-time Hoodie behaved herself quite respectably. The naughty mood had passed again for the time, it seemed.

Sitting round the table in the intervals of bread-and-butter and honey – for it was Sunday evening, "honey evening" the little boys called it – the children chatted together pleasantly. Martin's story had greatly impressed them.

"Weren't you frightened at first when you saw the big, big doggie, Martin?" said Maudie.

"Might have been a woof," remarked Duke, whose ideas had a knack of getting so well lodged in his brain that it was often difficult to get them out again.

"But there are no wolfs. I told you so before," said Maudie.

"No," said Duke, "you toldened Hoodie so. You didn't tolden me."

"Well, dear Duke, what does it matter?" said Magdalen, with a slight touch of impatience in her tone. "You heard me say it, and you do go on and on so about a thing."

Hoodie looked up with a twinkle in her eyes.

"Peoples always calls each other 'dear' whenever they doesn't like each other," she remarked.

Maudie flashed round upon her.

"That isn't true. I do like Duke – don't I, Duke? And Hec too – don't I love you dearly, Hec and Duke?"

The two little boys clambered down from their chairs, by slow and ponderous degrees, and a hugging match of the three ensued.

"Children, children," cried Martin, "you know it's against the rules for you to get down from your chairs at tea. Miss Maudie, dear, you shouldn't encourage it."

"But Hoodie said unkind 'sings to Maudie, and we had to kiss dear Maudie," said the little boys. "Naughty Hoodie," and they glanced round indignantly at Hoodie.

A hard look came over Hoodie's face.

"Always naughty Hoodie," she muttered to herself. "Nobody loves Hoodie. Nebber mind. Don't care."

"Little boys," said Martin, "you must go back to your seats and finish your tea. And don't call Miss Hoodie naughty for nothing at all but a little joke."

Hoodie gave a quick glance at Martin.

"Martin," she said, gravely, "if there is no woofs now, is there any grandmothers?"

"Any grandmothers, Miss Hoodie?" repeated Martin. "How do you mean, my dear? of course every one has a grandmother, or has had."

"Oh!" said Hoodie; "I didn't know. And is grandmothers always in cottages?"

"Oh, you silly girl," said Maudie, laughing; "of course not. Don't you remember our grandmother? She was here two years ago. But I suppose you're too little to remember."

"Don't laugh at her for not understanding, Miss Maudie," said Martin; "besides, don't you remember your grandmother's address is Parkwood Cottage? Very likely she's thinking of that."

"Yes," said Hoodie, "I was 'sinking of zat. I want a grandmother in a cottage. Grandmother in a cottage would be very kind, and there is no woofs."

"Oh no, Miss Hoodie, there are no wolves," said Martin; "all the wolves were sent away long, long ago. Now, dears, you must have your hands washed and your hairs brushed to go down to the drawing-room."

Hoodie was very quiet that evening. Her father noticed it after the children had gone up to bed again, and said to her mother that he was in hopes the child was going to turn over a new leaf. And her mother replied with a smile that she had been speaking to her very seriously that morning, and was glad to see how well the little girl had taken it. So both father and mother felt satisfied and happy about the child, little imagining the queer confused whirl of ideas at that very moment chasing each other round her busy brain.

For Hoodie did not go to sleep till much later than the others, though she lay so still that her wakefulness was unnoticed. Under her pillow, wrapped up firstly in a piece of newspaper, over that in the clean pocket-handkerchief Martin had given her for church, were three biscuits she had got at dessert, two pieces of bread-and-butter, and one of bread and honey, which unobserved she had "saved" from tea. What she meant to do with these provisions was by no means clear, even in her own mind. She only knew that the proper thing was to have a basket of eatables of some kind, provided for a voyage of discovery such as that on which she was resolved.

"The little Hoodie-girl in the picture has a bastwick, and Martin had a bastwick when she was a Hoodie-girl," she said to herself dreamily. "I will get more bead-and-butter to-morrow and then I can go. After dinner-time Martin wented when she was a Hoodie-girl. I will go after dinner-time too. The grandmother in the cottage will love Hoodie and there is no woofs. Peoples here doesn't love Hoodie."

And so thinking she fell asleep.

The next morning happened to be rainy. Hoodie ate her breakfast in silence, and what she did not eat she quietly added to the contents of the pocket-handkerchief parcel. Martin noticed her fumbling at something, but thankful for the quiet state of the atmosphere – otherwise Hoodie's temper – thought it wiser to make no remarks. For after all it was a very April sort of sunshine; and two or three times before dinner there were signs of possible storms – once in particular, when the little boy had got Prince up into the nursery to play with them and Hoodie insisted on turning him out.

"Him's not to come in here," she said; "Hoodie won't have him in here no more."

"Really, Hoodie," said Maudie, "this isn't all your room. Why won't you let poor Prince come in? It was only yesterday you were crying because he wouldn't come."

"'Cos I loved him yesterday and I don't love him to-day," replied Hoodie coolly.

"And how would you like if people spoke that way to you?" said Maudie virtuously. "Suppose we said we wouldn't have you in the nursery 'cos we don't love you to-day?"

"Don't care," said Hoodie. "You can't send me out of the nursery. I'm not a dog. But if I like I can go of my own self," she added mysteriously. "And if peoples don't love me I sall go."

Maudie did not catch the sense of the last few words, but Prince, being in his own mind by no means partial to the nursery, where the children's affection expressed itself in clutches and caresses very unsettling to his nerves, had taken advantage of the discussion to go off "of his own self," and in the lamentation over his running away, no more was said, and it was not till afterwards that the elder girl remembered her little sister's threat.

But through dinner-time the hard, half-sullen look stayed on Hoodie's face, and again poor Martin shivered with fear that another storm was coming. Somewhat to her surprise things got no worse – not even when a message came up-stairs from "mother," that Maudie was to be ready to go out a drive with her at two, did Hoodie's rather curiously quiet manner desert her.

"I don't care. Nobody loves me," she repeated to herself, but so low that no one heard her.

"It'll be your turn next time, you know, Hoodie dear. Mother never forgets turns," said Magdalen consolingly, as, arrayed in her "best" white alpaca trimmed with blue, and white hat with blue feathers to match, she ran into the nursery to say good-bye to the stayers-at-home.

"And Miss Hoodie will be good and help me with the little boys, won't you, Miss Hoodie dear?" said Martin. "There's some ironing I do want to get done for your Mamma this afternoon, if I could leave you three alone for a little."

"Susan may stay with them," said Mrs. Caryll, who just then came into the nursery to see if Maudie was ready. "It is too damp still for the boys to go out, but Hoodie can play in the garden a little. She never catches cold and she will be the better for a run – eh, Hoodie?"

No answer. Mrs. Caryll turned to Martin with a question in her face. "Anything wrong again?" it seemed to say.

Martin shook her head.

"I think not, ma'am," she said in a very low voice, "but really there's no saying. But I think she'll be all right once you're started with Miss Magdalen."

Mrs. Caryll said no more. She took Maudie by the hand and left the nursery, only nodding good-bye to the little boys as she passed through the doorway.

"Good-bye, darlings," said Maudie. "I'll bring you back something nice for tea."

"Dood-bye, dear Maudie," called out Hec and Duke in return. Then they flew – no, I can hardly use that word with regard to their sturdy little legs' trot across the room – they trotted off to the window to see the carriage as it passed the corner of the drive and to kiss their little hands to Mamma and Maudie. And Hoodie remained determinedly looking out of the other window, from which no drive and no carriage were to be seen.

"Nobody calls me darling. Nobody cares for Hoodie," she said to herself. "Nebber mind. Hoodie will go far, far."

When Martin called to her a few minutes afterwards, to put her hat and jacket on for the run in the garden, which her mother had spoken of, she came at once, and stood quite still while her nurse dressed her. The submission struck Martin as rather suspicious.

"Now Miss Hoodie, my dear," she said, "you'll not go on the grass or where it's wet. Just run about on the nice dry gravel for half an hour or so, and if you see the gardener about, you may ask him to show you the rabbits."

Hoodie looked up in Martin's face with a rather curious expression.

"I won't run in the grass," was all she said. Martin let her go off without any misgiving. For all Hoodie's strange temper she was in some ways a particularly sensible child for her age. She was quite to be trusted to play alone in the garden, for instance – she might have been safely left within reach of the most beautiful flowers in the conservatory without any special warning; not one would have been touched. She was truly, as Martin said, a strange mixture and contradiction.

She had made her way half down the staircase, when she suddenly remembered her basket.

"Oh, my bastwick," she exclaimed. "I was nearly forgetting my bastwick," and up-stairs again she climbed to the cupboard, in one dark corner of which she had hidden it. Luckily it was still there; no one had touched it; so feeling herself quite equipped for the journey, Hoodie walked out of the front door, crossed the gravel drive, and made her way down a little path with a rustic gate at the end leading straight out on to the high road. When she got there she stood still and looked about her. Which way should she go? It had turned out a beautiful afternoon, though the morning had been so stormy. The road was nearly dry already, the sky overhead was blue, save here and there where little feathery clouds were flying about in some agitation; it might rain again before night, for though not exactly cold, there was no summer glow as yet, and the sunshine, though bright, had a very April feeling about it.

Hoodie stood still and looked about her, up and down the road. It was a pretty, peaceful scene – the broad well-kept highway, bordered at one side with beautiful old trees just bursting into bloom, and across, on the other side of the low hedge, the fresh green fields, all the fresher for the morning's rain, in some of which already the tender little lambkins were sporting about or cuddling in by the side of their warm woolly ewe-mothers.

"I wish I was a lamb," thought Hoodie, as her glance fell on them. Then as she looked away beyond the fields to where in the distance the land sloped upwards into softly rising hills, a flight of birds attracted her attention. How prettily they flew, waving, now upwards, now downwards, like one long ribbon against the sky. "Or a little bird," she added. "If I was up there I could see so nicely where to go, and I could fly, fly, till I got to the sun."

But just then the sound of wheels coming near brought her thoughts down to earth again. Which way should she go?

She must pass through a wood. That was the only thing that at present she felt sure of, and there was a wood she remembered some way down the road, past Mr. Bright's farm. So down the road Hoodie trotted, her basket firmly clasped in her hand, her little figure the only moving thing to be seen along the queen's highway. For the cart to which the wheels belonged had passed quickly – it was only the grocer from the neighbouring town, so on marched Hoodie undisturbed. A little on this side of farmer Bright's a lane turned off to the left. This lane, Hoodie decided, must be the way to the wood, so she left the road and went along the lane for about a quarter of a mile, till, to her perplexity, it ended in a sort of little croft with a stile at each side. Hoodie climbed up both stiles in turns and looked about her. The wood was not to be seen from either, but across a field from the second stile she saw the tops of some trees standing on lower ground.

"That must be the wood," thought Hoodie, and down she clambered again to fetch her basket which she had left on the other side. With some difficulty she hoisted it and herself up again, with greater difficulty got it and herself down the steps on the further side, and then set off triumphantly at a run in the direction of the trees she had seen.

So far she was right. These trees were the beginning of a wood – a pretty little wood with a tiny stream running through the middle, and little nests of ferns and mosses in among the stones and tree-stumps on its banks – a very pretty little wood it must be in summer-time with the trees more fully out and the ground dry and crisp, and clear of the last year's leaves which still gave it a desolate appearance. Hoodie's spirits rose. She was getting on famously. Soon she might expect to see the grandmother's cottage, where no doubt the kettle would be boiling on the fire to make tea for her, and the table all nicely spread. For already she was beginning to feel hungry; she had journeyed, it seemed to her, a very long way, and more than once she eyed her basket wistfully, wondering if she might eat just one piece of the bread-and-butter.

"The little Hoodie-girl in the picture didn't, and Martin didn't," she said to herself. "So I 'appose I'd better not. And perhaps if the woofs saw me eating, it would make them come."

The idea made her shiver.

"But Maudie said there was no woofs," she added. "Maudie said there wasn't no woofs. But I wish I could see the cottage."

On and on she made her way, – here and there with really great difficulty, for there was no proper path, and sometimes the big tree-stumps were almost higher than her fat, rather short legs could either stride across or climb over. More than once she scratched these same bare legs pretty badly, and but for the resolution which was a strong part of her character, the queer little girl would have sat down on the ground and burst into tears. But she struggled on, and at last, to her delight, the trees in front of her cleared suddenly, and she saw before her a little hilly path surmounted by a stile. Hoodie clapped her hands, or would have done so but for the interference of the basket.

"Hoodie's out of the wood," she said joyfully, "and up there perhaps I'll see the cottage."

It happened that she was right. When she reached the stile, there, sure enough, across another little field the cottage, a cottage any way, was to be seen. A neat little cottage, something like the description Martin had given of her grandmother's cottage, which, jumbled up with the picture of long ago Red Riding Hood the first, on the nursery walls, was in Hoodie's mind as a sort of model of that in quest of which she had set out on her voyage of discovery. This cottage too had a little garden with a path up the middle, and at each side were beds, neatly bordered, which in summer-time no doubt would be gay with simple flowers. Hoodie glanced round the little garden approvingly as she made her way up to the door.

"It's just like Martin's cottage," she thought. "But the Hoodie-girl in the picture was pulling somesing for the door to open and I don't see nosing to pull. I must knock I 'appose. I am so glad there's been none woofs."

Knock – knock – no answer. Knock, knock, knock a little louder this time. Hoodie began to wonder if the grandmother was going to be out, like the one in Martin's story – no – a sound at last of some one coming to open.

CHAPTER III.

LITTLE BABY AND ITS MOTHER

"Polly put the kettle on,And let's have tea."

The latch was lifted from the inside, and there stood before Hoodie – not an old woman with either "big" or little eyes, not a "grandmother" with a frilly cap all round her face, such as she had been vaguely expecting, yet certainly not a "woof" either! The person who stood in the doorway smiling down on the little girl was a very pretty and pleasant-looking young woman, with a fresh rosy face and merry eyes, and a sleeping baby in her arms!

For the first moment Hoodie was too surprised to understand what she saw.

At last, "I want my grandmother," she said. "You aren't my grandmother. I thought this was her cottage."

The young woman smiled again.

"No, Missy, you must have made a mistake. But your grandmother doesn't live in a little cottage like this, Missy, I'm sure. You must have quite come out of your road. Whose little lady are you?"

Hoodie shook her head.

"I want to live with my grandmother," she replied. "I don't want to be anybody's little lady. I've come such a long way – I know the cottage should be aside a wood, just like this. And I'm so tired and firsty."

The quiver in her voice told that the self-control was coming to an end. The young woman's sympathy awoke at once.

"Poor dear," she said. "Tired, of course you must be tired. Come in, dearie, and sit you down, and you shall have something to drink and to eat too, if you please. What would you like?" she went on, after she had established Hoodie on a funny little arm-chair by the fire – a chair bought last fair-day by her husband in his extreme delight at being the possessor of a fortnight old baby – "what would you like, Missy – a cup of milk – or some tea? Kettle's boiling, and 'tis just upon tea-time."

"What a nice little chair," said Hoodie, making the observation that first came into her head before replying to the questions asked her, as was a habit of hers. "What a nice little chair! It just fits me," turning her fat little body – to confess the truth, a rather tight fit – and the chair about together, like a snail congratulating itself on its shell.

"Yes, Missy, and you're the first as has ever sat in it. It's to be for baby, the dear, as soon as she's old enough to sit up in it. But about what you'd like to drink, Missy?"

"I were going to tell you," said Hoodie, with a touch of her usual authoritative manner. "I were going to tell you. I'd like tea – proper tea on a table, 'cos I've got my bicsits and 'sings in my bastwick, and we could put them out nicely. And if it's so far away to my grandmother's perhaps I'd better stay here and fancy you're her" – she glanced up in the young woman's face with such a queer, half-puzzled, half-comical look in her eyes that her new friend really began to wonder if the child was quite "right" in her head – "it would seem more like it, if we had proper tea on a table. But asides that, I'm so firsty I'd like a cup of milk first – just cold milk belone you know, to take away the firsty. Martin sometimes gives me a drink of milk like that just afore tea when I'm very firsty, even though she says it spoils my tea."

"But I don't think it'll spoil your tea to-day, Missy," said the young woman, as she fetched the cup of milk. "You've come a long way, you see," she added, with a view to drawing Hoodie out as to her home and belongings.