SUCH A HAPPY AFTERNOON.

————

IT was the afternoon of the Golden Wedding-day. All the seven families of children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren had arrived at Bickley, the great dinner-table had been set, and the great dinner eaten. The grandfather had tried to count the numbers, and had failed, and half-a-dozen at least of his grandsons had tried to help him, always with the same result, that everybody clamoured so, and had so many suggestions to make, that nobody ever got to the end.

Grandmamma sat smiling and silent at the top of the table. It would have been useless for her to try to get a word in, and she certainly did not try. At last, when everybody had spent all the breath there was, it occurred to somebody to say to her,—

"Perhaps you can tell us, Grandma! You look very knowing!"

"I wrote all the names," she answered demurely.

"Oh, aye! So you did," said grandfather; for there was a lull, and his voice could reach the top of the long, long table. "Pity we did not think of that before."

"Why, Grandfather?" asked some one.

"Saved a lot of breath," answered the old gentleman with a twinkle.

"Then how many are there?" asked Claude Champion, who was seated by Mrs. Forde's side, as the greatest stranger. "Can you tell us now?"

"I wrote fifty names," said Mrs. Forde, smiling.

"And there are fifty here?"

"Yes; all have come."

She glanced down the long lines of faces, to where even her tiny great-granddaughter sat in her mother's lap, looking as happy as all the rest.

"Let us go into the garden," she said, rising. "There will be shade under the elms, and I have promised my baby of babies to see her namesake, Daisy."

She stretched out her arms to the youngest of the party, receiving her from her pretty young mother, and led the way to the lawn, where the shadows had already begun to lengthen enough to afford a delightful shade for those who felt inclined to rest there.

She herself, however, took her great-grandchild to the iron fence which separated the smooth lawn from the little meadow, and called, "Daisy, Daisy, where are you?"

How the baby turned her head, looking this way and that, when she heard her own name.

But there was another gentle creature, who understood even better than the baby. At the sound of her mistress's voice, the Alderney cow turned her head from the sweet grass and walked towards them, followed by her calf, till she drew up at the fence and put her head over the top expectantly.

"Give baby to me, Grandmamma," said the baby's mother, "while you see to 'your' Daisy; she seems to expect something."

Mrs. Forde acknowledged that the cow did expect something. When her hand was free, she put it into a little bag she carried, and produced from a soft piece of paper three or four small carrots!

"There, Daisy!" she said. "You must have your treat as well as the rest of us!"

Then turning to the little boy who sat on the stile watching them, she added,—

"Georgie, go into cook, and ask her for that cake I looked out for you. This is my Golden Wedding-day, you know."

Just then the troop of grandchildren came down the path close to them, on their way to the farmyard, that wonderful attraction which had been saved "till after dinner" by everybody.

Margaret gave her baby to the nurse and accepted the offer of a rest in the hammock; for proud young mothers find that, however delightful it is to show off their treasures, it is very fatiguing!

As she rested there, listening to the voices going farther and farther away, the cawing of the rooks in the elms overhead soothed her into a sort of dreamy reverie. She fell to musing about the leafless trees in which they built their nests in the spring, and how she had heard that the same rooks came back to the same trees—year after year. Then she thought,—

"And is there any place like home, winter or summer, for any of us? I do not wonder the rooks come back again to their old haunts."

After that, Margaret's moralizing ended in dreams for about a minute, and when she opened her eyes again, the light wind was stirring the chestnut leaves all round her, and her husband's voice was saying,—

"Why, Margaret, I had quite lost you! The rest are all off to the farmyard, feeding the donkeys and chickens and ducks and drakes, as if it were the business of life! Will you come too? It is no fun without you, and to-day we must have all the fun we can!"

"All gone, are they?" she asked, springing out of her hiding-place, well pleased to be wanted.

"I think so. I interrupted one of the Reigate boys begging his mother to let him climb or something. And I passed Dorothy tying on her hat in a great hurry; she was nearly crying, because she said the rest had gone without her."

"Poor little girl! But I daresay she will catch them. Do you know, Harry, even to this day I cannot bear to be left behind. Perhaps you do not know that feeling?"

Harry looked at her with a comical glance of mingled love and admiration, and they sauntered back to ask what the more sedate members of the party were going to do. But nobody would acknowledge to being sedate to-day. And in spite of the heat, they all decided to follow the fortunes of the young ones; for whatever interested them, would interest those whose hearts were always young.

"Where's Jack?" asked that young gentleman's mother, perhaps somewhat doubtfully.

She had not confessed to any one that up in a certain bag she had actually brought a second suit of clothes for her son, in case the first should by any misfortune come to grief.

Now what Jack was doing was this. He had reached the farmyard the first of any one. And just reserving enough wits to turn up his trousers, he gave a great jump into the soft, springy straw which he saw in the middle of the enclosure, deciding while he was in mid-air that it was like jumping on the best spare room bed while the maids were making it!

"Ugh! Oh!" But Jack had not counted on its being so very—very—soft, and springy, and warm—and ugh—wet!

He plunged in and out with more speed than generally fell to the share of the best spare room bed; and his only hope was that no one had seen his disaster. He rushed into the doorway of a friendly cow-house, while he recovered his breath and could have time to decide what to do.

He peeped out; the rest were coming in at the gate of the yard, and were already calling the hens to be fed. Then no one "had" seen him, that was his greatest hope.

But what to do? He looked down at his clothes. Surely they were not so very bad! And yet—what was this constantly increasing impression of damp and cold behind him, and this odour which met his olfactory nerves whenever he turned his head down to his own shoulder?

"I'll go right away home to Reigate," he said; "there's nothing else for it. It serves me right, for being so careless. I always 'do' get into a scrape, try as hard as I will. It's because I'm so thoughtless, mother says, but then—ugh! I wish they'd have done with those everlasting chickens; I shall be kept here all day. As if I'd never seen a farmyard before! I suppose they'd put some clean straw over there, to make it look nice for the Golden Wedding-day—ugh!"

He was quite right about the party bidding fair to stay there all day. There were so many things to see, dear to the hearts of suburban children!

There was Gipsy, the beautiful dog, with her puppies, who resented the chickens drinking her dish of milk. There was the favourite cock, who looked as if he were just going to accept the corn from Eddie's hand, and then walked off with a supercilious kind of air, which seemed to say, "Don't you wish you may catch me, young sir?"

All this Jack saw through a peep-hole in the cow-house, but he was very weary of his situation. He was too impatient to be philosophical, or he would have considered that they must get tired some time, and then he could slip out. Instead of that, his busy brain was planning some brave, wonderful way of escape. If only he could devise something splendid to do!

He looked up and down and around. If he could once get to the station, he shouldn't mind anything or anybody there, he thought; he would just get into an empty carriage and—

But when his plans had matured as far as that, he thought of his mother, and of her anxiety at his disappearance; he thought of the party, which would be utterly spoilt should one be missing, and his heart misgave him.

Then the thought of his disaster swept over him afresh. No, he could not face the jeers of his boy cousins, nor the pitying looks of his girl cousins, nor the raised eyebrows of some of his aunts and uncles. No, he must risk the anxiety of other people, and save himself the inevitable disgrace.

Again he looked up. All around the cow-house were apertures for ventilation; he thought he could squeeze through one of these, and so away.

He sprang on the manger, and in another moment, his lithe form was holding on to the rafters, and he was already half-way through.

"Safe!" he muttered as he let himself lightly to the ground, but there he stopped.

"I'm doing a cowardly thing, I do believe," he said, half aloud. "I'm actually running away from what I ought to bear, and leaving other folks to the annoyance of my fault! That's what I should call cowardly in any one else. Well—"

He stood still and looked round. Close to him a goose and her goslings were sporting in and out of a favourite gutter, beyond them some country children were driving home a goat from the common.

Jack had made up his mind.

He gave a flying leap across the gutter and brought up in front of the cottage girl.

"I say—" he began.

"Yes, sir," she answered, looking somewhat slyly at his hot, bashful face.

"I say; I've got into a mess,—see here," he added, turning round.

"Oh my!" said the girl expressively.

"Could you just go into the farmyard and ask 'em to tell you which is my mother?"

The girl looked doubtful.

"She's a nice sort of woman, with grey stuff in her bonnet, and a grey dress,—anybody 'ull tell you!"

"What am I to say?" asked the little girl, still doubtfully.

"Tell her Jack wants her! He's gone indoors. He's got into trouble—as usual. Tell her that."

He turned off, and hurried to the house, while the cottage girl did his bidding as well as she could. Among the forty or more people who stood about watching the cows or feeding the chickens, she had great difficulty in finding which was the "nice" woman whom Jack had described. But she was a straightforward little girl, and she felt very sorry for the poor young gentleman's trouble; so she waited till she saw a lady who suited her ideas, and then she spoke,—

"Please, mum, are you 'Jack's' mother?"

"Yes, that I am!" said the lady in the grey bonnet.

"Then he's tumbled down somewhere, and he wants you, ma'am; he's gone indoors."

"Not hurt?" asked his mother with a sinking at her heart.

"Oh dear no, ma'am!—Only in a mess," said the country girl, and moved off towards home.

"Thank you, very much," said Jack's mother gratefully. And as she hastened back, that extra suit flashed across her with intense relief.

"You 'are' a dear mother!" said her boy as, clean and fresh, he stood dressed, all but his socks and boots which were ready for him. "I do think you 'are' kind, never to even reproach a fellow. Well, it's like mothers—that's all I can say!"

"I am glad you came to me, my boy," she said, putting her arm round him. "Mothers are generally the best friends to go to!"

Meanwhile, the rest had left the farmyard and were making a call at the Dairy Cottage, that picturesque spot which in winter seemed the most snowy of any spot round, and in summer the most leafy.

It was cool and leafy now, but while the elders looked at the butter and cream, and admired the cleanliness of everything, the young people sought the outhouses behind, where a certain donkey was known to reside.

Here Jack, who had but just joined the party, and was in front of the others, recognised his friend of just now, the little girl who had helped him so kindly.

"Good afternoon!" he said, unconcernedly, with his ready wit, always knowing the best thing to do at the moment, though he did get into scrapes so often,—"Good afternoon!"

"Good afternoon, sir," she answered, blushing, on seeing who it was, and inwardly wondering at the transformation.

"I'm much obliged to you for carrying that message," he said frankly. "I couldn't thank you then—but I wanted to afterwards, and didn't know where you lived."

"Oh, I live here," said the girl, surprised.

As the rest crowded out after the donkey and her foal, he added, "I wanted you to have this. Mother said I might, if I saw you. I haven't anything else!"

He put into her hand his cherished four-bladed knife, which he had had for a whole month in his possession, without its being either broken or lost.

"Ah no, sir," said the little girl; "I'd—"

But Jack was half across the meadow, and the only wonder was he did not fall into a wide ditch full of water in his eagerness to escape her thanks.

When he put his hand in his pocket that night to get his knife to cut something, he made a wry face at the thought that it was gone. But after an instant, he said to himself,—

"Well, that was a brave little girl, and I'm glad she's got it! When I think that I sent her among fifty gentlefolks, with only a grey dress and her own kindness to guide her, I think I may say she was a very brave little girl,—considering all things!"

Those who did not care for the donkey, or who had had their turn on his back, amused themselves with the turkeys, which were the especial charge of the dairy-woman.

Her little children were at the very moment feeding them with some bread.

At last, the children began to think that there were other pleasures to be found nearer home.

Something had been hinted about some surprise at four o'clock, and as that time drew on, all the party began to collect on the lawn again.

When the clock on the stable rang forth its four strokes, two labourers, looking very shy, came over the soft grass, and touching their caps to the grandfather said,—

"Please sir, the hay's ready for the young ladies and gentlemen."

"Hay!" shouted the boys. "Where, where?"

"I have had a field reserved on purpose for this day," said their grandfather. "I thought there could not be a greater pleasure—"

"Where?" asked everybody, for they had not noticed any grass cut on their way to the farmyard.

"It is a field I rent on the other side of the lane. You can reach it in a moment through the garden gate."

"Grandfather, you will come and show us," said Lily Archer, putting her arm through his, and leading him down the garden.

"You don't want 'me,'" said the old gentleman, smiling.

"Indeed we do," she answered earnestly. "You and Grandmamma seem the nearest I have to-day."

Tears glittered in her eyes, which had been so bright and happy but a moment before. She was thinking of her own loneliness, without father or mother, the sole representative of those who were gone before.

Claude, who was walking by her, guessed just a little of this from her words. And when her grandfather only squeezed her arm sympathisingly, he said,—

"You would like them to be here, and I am sure I should too. You must miss them more than ever to-day!"

That little speech was the most comforting thing, Lily thought, which had been said to her for many a long day.

And yet was she selfish, that it was not only that her parents missed the Golden Wedding-day, but she so wanted them to share in her happiness, and to give their blessing to the step she had taken only this very morning?

Almost the whole party collected in the hay-field, with the exception of an aunt and three children who were left behind. Even grandmamma was enticed to accept a very carefully prepared hay seat, and her husband came and sat down by her side, drawing Lily to another seat near.

"How lovely it is!" she said.

"I think it is," answered the old gentleman.

"It is the happiest day I ever spent," said Claude.

"The haymakers were up almost before it was light, turning the hay over, as we had a shower yesterday, and I was afraid it would be damp. But it is not in the least."

"No, indeed," said Claude; "I never saw a nicer hay-field. I'm going to help those boys build a gigantic house. Will you come and visit us presently, and give your approval?" he added, turning to Lily.

"'If' I approve," she answered, smiling archly.

"Of course; we do not want you to be insincere! But we really are going to build a magnificent castle."

He went off, and Lily sat with her grandparents under the shady elms by the hedge, well content.

By-and-by one and another of the uncles and aunts gathered round, while their own boys and girls, or their nephews and nieces, made fresh hay seats for them, till there was quite a circle.

"Are all here?" asked the grandmamma. "For I cannot count my fifty."

"All but two or three of the little girls who have some project or other. I left them sitting demurely on a seat in the garden, only anxious for us to leave them, I fancy," said one of Mr. Forde's home-daughters.

"Oh yes, so they were! I remember now, and they had got hold of their Aunt Rachel, and were whispering to her earnestly. What could they be wanting?"

"Oh, if Rachel was there," said Miss Forde, "it will be all right." (Rachel was the other home-daughter.)

So they forgot for a while about the little girls who were with Aunt Rachel, and gave themselves up to the pleasures of the hay, watching Claude and the boys rearing up the highest hay-castle that ever had been seen, or the younger children copying them in their smaller measure.

When the grand erection was finished, Claude and his friends, the Reigate boys, came to fetch Lily Archer, and any of the others who could be persuaded to move, to see it.

"I 'do' approve," smiled Lily.

"Of course you do," said one of her cousins. "You'd have been a girl of egregious taste if you hadn't."

"What a long word!" answered Lily. "Are you sure you said it right? I have heard of egregious blunders, but not so often of egregious taste! Perhaps you are thinking of the blunder I should have made if I had dared to disapprove?"

The boys laughed; anything that Lily said or did was always right in their eyes.

Meanwhile, Aunt Rachel had been taken to a certain very private verandah, and there had had a very private request made her—

"May we go and see Cook?"

"Is that so very particular," she asked, "that all those preparations of secrecy should have to be made?"

"Oh, hush, Auntie!"

"There is no one near; the rest are so far-away in the hay-field, that if you were to shout, they could not hear."

"But if any one guessed, it would spoil our fun!"

"Guessed that you were going to pay Cook a visit?"

"Well—yes, Auntie, because, in the first place, we're her favourites—Elsie and I."

"Oh, are you? But even then—"

"And in the second place," interrupted Ethel eagerly, "we want Cook to let us do something—"

"Oh, I see now. But do you not think that Cook is busy?"

"If she is, we'll not ask her—there, Auntie, we promise you. We can soon tell whether Cook is busy, because if she is, she's so snappy!"

"Is she?"

"Yes; she's very fond of us, but if she's snappy, she's not at all nice."

"I should think not," said Aunt Rachel, laughing. "I don't know anything that's nice to be snappy except gingerbread."

"Oh, Auntie!"

"What?"

"You've guessed!"

"Guessed what?" she asked, looking puzzled.

"Hush!" whispered Frank. "It was only an accidental coincidence. If you don't say any more, girls, auntie will be quite in the dark."

Having thus gained the permission that if cook were not busy, they might visit her, the little girls ran off, followed closely by Frank, who promised faithfully to be very quiet and only sit and watch them, did cook permit them to carry out their plans.

"Bless your little hearts!" was her greeting, by which the children understood that she was not snappy.

"We've come to see you," announced Frank boldly, while Ethel and Elsie wished he had said that they had come for something else too.

"That's very kind of you," said cook. "I thought some of the young ladies and gentlemen would pay me a visit to-day!"

"Did you?" asked Elsie. "Well, we wanted to see you, and we wanted—if you weren't busy—to ask you a 'great' favour."

Cook looked so far from being snappy that they ventured to whisper in her ear.

"Gingerbread!" she echoed. "Why, my dears, they've got heaps and heaps for tea!"

The little girls' countenances fell.

"But there," added cook, "it ain't the stuff, but the fun of making it in my kitchen that you want! I see that. Here, Jane, come along (to her little daughter, the kitchen maid), just you get out the flour, and the treacle, and the spice, and the butter. Oh! Deary me, to think of beginning cooking again in my clean kitchen!"

"It 'is' clean," said Frank. "I like this kitchen the best of any I go into. It's the cleanest."

Jane giggled, but cook accepted the compliment quite calmly.

"You should ha' seen it this morning, when some one tore her dress on a nail, and came slopping the milk all over my floor."

Jane bent her head, colouring, and Frank could not help smiling. Cook pretended to be so very unconscious of who it could have been.

But the girls were by this time deep in the gingerbread, and Frank began to tire of what was to be seen inside, so he sauntered into the yard, and burst out laughing so loud that cook ran out to see what the fun was.

"Here's a new kind of puppy!" said Frank.

But by the time the gingerbread snaps were baked, cook was getting very busy indeed over the tea, and Frank, who had come back again from the yard, decided that it would be wiser for them all to disappear, as cook was now getting decidedly snappy.

So the little girls, with many grateful thanks, and with many instructions to the maids to put what they had made on the tea-table without any remark, hurried off to the hay-field, where already long tables were groaning beneath the weight of tea, coffee, cakes, fruit, ham, chickens, eggs, and dainties too many to be counted.

Everybody was moving to the table, and they were only just in time before the grace was said by their dear grandfather, standing bareheaded under the blue sky.

The two little girls watched those four plates of gingerbread snaps with anxious eyes. Yes—people did take some, and took some a second time! But, what spoilt their fun most was, that Frank kept on begging people to try them, and pressed them so earnestly upon Aunt Rachel, with such knowing winks, that they were afraid their secret would be out, and they covered with confusion.

But people were too busy to notice any two little girls of the party, and just then a diversion occurred in some one asking their grandmother whether those were not swallows wheeling about overhead?

"Yes," she answered; "we have a great many of them. And as we have finished tea, if you will draw round a little nearer to me, I will tell you something very curious that happened under our own eaves. It taught 'me' a great lesson."

"You, Grandmamma?" echoed several voices.

"Yes. You all know, I daresay, that swallows come to live here in summer, and then on a day near the middle of September they all fly back again to warmer climes. No matter what they are doing, when the call comes,—that mysterious call which only they understand,—off they go, and we see them no more till the next April.

"You know how the swallows make nests for themselves up under the eaves, and I have heard they sometimes bring up two broods in the same year.

"Now it so happened that a year or so ago, one pair had their second brood rather late in the season. And before the poor little nestlings were able to fly, the call came to the swallows to go south.

"What do you think the little father and mother did? They left their little nestlings to starve, and flew away themselves to the warm countries! When the blacksmith came to mend the gutter the next spring, he found the little dead things huddled together in the forsaken nest. And when I heard it, I underlined that text in my Bible which I have always loved, that speaks of God's love as contrasted with a mother's love, great as that is—'Yea, they "may" forget, yet will I not forget thee.'"

There was a moment's pause in the large circle, and then Margaret looked up from hugging her baby, and said softly,—

"That is a very sad story, Grandmamma."

"Yes, it is," answered Mrs. Forde, taking her great-granddaughter's tiny hand, and smoothing it up and down tenderly, "but it is well for us to be reminded sometimes!"

"Reminded?" asked Margaret.

"That God says, '"I" have loved thee with an "everlasting" love!'"

Then there was a stir in the circle. Claude and the Reigate boys went back to their castle, while the bare mention of the blacksmith had been quite enough for some of the children. It was still light, so ever so many of them asked permission to pay a visit to the forge before going home.

"Good afternoon, Grandfather!" said Jack, roguishly. "It will be almost evening before we come back!"

The little ones ran to the wall to watch the party on its way to the village, only wishing they had been fortunate enough to be allowed to go with them; for after all, what is so entrancing to the childish mind as an unhindered peep into a forge?