"Poor little things!"

"You may well say so," continued Aunt Judy. "It was just what everybody said who saw them at the time. When they went about with their widowed father in the country village where 'they lived, even the poor women who stood at their cottage door-steads, would look after them when they had pa.s.sed, and say with a sigh:-

"'Poor little things!'

"When they went up to London in the winter to stay with their grandmamma, and walked about in the Square in their little black frocks and c.r.a.pe-trimmed bonnets, the ladies who saw them,--even comparative strangers,--would turn round arid say:-

"'Poor little things!'

"If visitors came to call at the house, and the children were sent for into the room, there was sure to be a whispered exclamation directly among the grown-up people of, 'Poor little things!' But oh, No. 6! the children themselves did not think about it at all. What did they know,--poor little things,--of the real misfortune which had befallen them! They were sorry, of course, at first, when they did not see their mamma as usual, and when she did not come back to them as soon as they expected. But some separation had taken place during her illness; and sometimes before, she had been poorly and got well again; and sometimes she had gone out visiting, and they had had to do without her till she returned; and so, although the days and weeks of her absence went on to months, still it was only the same thing they had felt before, continued rather longer; and meantime the little events of each day rose up to distract their attention. They got up, and dined, and went to bed as usual. They were sometimes merry, sometimes naughty, as usual. People made them nice presents, or sent for them to pleasant treats, as usual--perhaps more than usual; their father did all he could to supply the place of the lost one, but never could name her name; and soon they forgot that they had ever had a mamma at all. Soon? Ay, long before friends and strangers lead left off saying 'Poor little things' at sight of them, and long before the black frocks and c.r.a.pe-trimmed bonnets were laid aside, which, indeed, they wore double the usual length of time."

"And how old were they?" asked No. 6, in a whisper.

"Four and five," replied Aunt Judy; "old enough to know what they liked and disliked from hour to hour. Old enough to miss what had pleased them, till something else pleased them as well. But not old enough to look forward and know how much a mother is wanted in life; and, therefore, what a terrible loss the loss of a mother is."

"It's a very sad story I'm afraid," remarked No. 6.

"Not altogether," said Aunt Judy, smiling, "as you shall hear. One day the two little motherless girls went hand in hand across one of the courts of the great Charity Inst.i.tution in London, where their grandmamma lived, into the old archway entrance, and there they stood still, looking round them, as if waiting for something. The old archway entrance opened into a square, and underneath its shelter there was a bench on one side, and on the other the lodge of the porter, whose business it was to shut up the great gates at night.

The porter had often before looked at the motherless children as they pa.s.sed into the shadow of his archway, and said to himself, 'Poor little things;' for just so, during many years of his life, he had watched their young mother pa.s.s through, and had exchanged words of friendly greeting with her.

"And even now, although it was at least a year and a half since her death, when he saw the waiting children seat themselves on the bench opposite his door, the old thought stole over his mind. How sad that she should have been taken away so early from those little ones! How sad for them to be left! No one--nothing--in this world, could supply the loss of her protecting care.--POOR LITTLE THINGS!--and not the less so because they were altogether unconscious of their misfortune; and here, with the mourning casting a gloom over their fair young faces, were looking with the utmost eagerness and delight towards the doorway,--now and then slipping down from their seats to take a peep into the Square, and see if what they expected was coming,--now and then giggling to each other about the grave face of the old man on the other side of the way.

"At last, one, who had been peeping a bit as before, exclaimed, with a smothered shout, 'Here he is!' and then the other joined her, and the two rushed out together into the Square and stood on the pavement, stopping the way in front of a lad, who held over his arm a basket containing hares' and rabbits' skins, in which he carried on a small trade.

"They looked up with their smiling faces into his, and he grinned at them in return, and then they said, 'Have you got any for us to-day?'

on which he set down his basket before them, and told them they might have one or two if they pleased, and down they knelt upon the pavement, examining the contents of his basket, and talked in almost breathless whispers to each other of the respective merits, the softness, colour, and prettiness, of--what do you think?"

At the first moment No. 6, being engrossed by the story, could not guess at all; but in another instant she recollected, and exclaimed:-

"Oh, Aunt Judy, do you mean those were the rabbits' tails you told about?"

"They were indeed, No. 6," replied Aunt Judy; "their grandmamma's cook had given them one or two sometime before, and there being but few entertaining games which two children can play at alone, and these poor little things being a good deal left to themselves, they invented a play of their own out of the rabbits' tails. I think the pleasant feel of the fur, which was so nice to cuddle and kiss, helped them to this odd liking; but whatever may have been the cause, certain it is they did get quite fond of them--pretended that they could feel, and were real living things, and talked of them, and to them, as if they were a party of children.

"They called them 'Tods' and 'Toddies,' but they had all sorts of names besides, to distinguish one from the other. There was, 'Whity,' and 'Browny,' and 'Softy,' and 'Snuggy,' and 'Stripy,' and many others. They knew almost every hair of each of them, and I believe could have told which was which, in the dark, merely by their feel.

"This sounds ridiculous enough, does it not, dear No. 6?" said Aunt Judy, interrupting herself.

No. 6 smiled, but she was too much interested to wish to talk; so the story proceeded.

"Now you must know that I have looked rather curiously at hares' and rabbits' tails myself since I first heard the story; and there actually is more variety in them than you would suppose. Some are nice little fat things--almost round, with the hair close and fine; others longer and more skinny, and with poor hair, although what there is may be of a handsome colour. And as to colour, even in rabbits' tails, which are white underneath, there are all shades from grey to dark brown one the upper side; and the patterns and markings differ, as you know they do on the fur of a cat. In short, there really is a choice even in hares' and rabbits' tails, and the more you look at them, the more delicate distinctions you will see.

"Well, the poor little girls knew all about this, and a great deal more, I dare say, than I have noticed, for they had played at fancy- life with them, till the Tods had become far more to them than any toys they possessed; actually, in fact, things to love; and I dare say if we could have watched them at night putting their Tods to bed, we should have seen every one of them kissed.

"It was a capital thing, as you may suppose, for keeping the children quiet as well as happy in the nursery, at the top of the London house, in one particular corner of which the basket of Tods was kept.

But when grandmamma's bell rang, which it did day by day as a summons, after the parlour breakfast was over, the Tods were put away; and it was dolls, or reasonable toys of some description, which the motherless little girls took down with them to the drawing-room; and I doubt whether either grandmamma or aunt knew of the Tod family in the basket up-stairs.

"After the affair had gone on for a little time, the children were accidentally in the kitchen when the rabbit-skin dealer called, and the cook begged him to give them a tail or two; and thenceforth, of course, they looked upon him as one of their greatest friends; and if they wanted fresh Tods, they would lie in wait for him in the archway entrance, for fear he should go by without coming in to call at their grandmamma's house. And on the day I have described, two new brothers, 'Furry' and 'Buffy,' were introduced to the Tod establishment, and the talking and delight that ensued, lasted for the whole afternoon.

"n.o.body knew, I believe; but certainly if anybody had known how the hearts of those children were getting involved over the dead rabbits'

tails, it would have been only right to have tried to lead their affection into some better direction. What a waste of good emotions it was, when they cuddled up their Tods in an evening; invented histories of what they had said and done during the day, and put them by at last with caresses something very nearly akin to human love!"

"Oh, dear Aunt Judy," exclaimed No. 6, "if their poor mamma had but been there!"

"All would have been right then, would it not, No. 6?"

No. 6 said "Yes" from the very depths of her heart.

"AS IT SEEMS TO US, you should say," continued Aunt Judy; "but that is all. It could not have seemed so to the G.o.d who took their mother away."

"Aunt Judy--"

"No. 6, I am telling you a very serious truth. Had it indeed been right for the children that their mother should have lived, she would NOT have been taken away. For some reason or other it was necessary that they should be without the comfort, and help, and protection, of her presence in this world. We cannot understand it, but a time may come when we may see it all as clearly as we now see the folly of those children who so doted upon senseless rabbits' tails."

"Oh, Aunt Judy, but it was still very, very sad."

"Yes, about that there cannot be a doubt, and I am as much inclined as anybody else to say, 'Poor little things' every time I mention them. But now let me go on with the story, for it has a sort of end as well as beginning. The Tod affair came at last to their grandmamma's ears."

"I am so glad," cried No. 6.

"You will not say so when I tell you how it happened," was Aunt Judy's rejoinder. "The fact was, that one unfortunate day one of the Tods disappeared. Whether it lead been left out of the basket when grandmamma's bell rang, and so got swept away by the nurse and burnt, I cannot say; but, at any rate, when the children went to their play one morning, 'Softy,' their dear little 'Softy,' was gone. He was the fattest-furred and finest-haired of all the Tod family, and the one about whom they invented the prettiest stories; he was, in fact, the model, the out-of-the-way-amiable pattern Tod. They could not believe at first that he really was gone. They hunted for him in every hole and corner of their nursery and bed-room; they looked for him all along the pa.s.sages; they tossed all the other Tods out of the basket to find him, as if they really were--even in their eyes-- nothing but rabbits' tails; they asked all the servants about him, till everybody's patience was exhausted, and they got angry; and then at last the children's hope and temper were both exhausted too, and they broke out into pa.s.sionate crying.

"This was vexatious to the nurse, of course; but her method of consolation was not very judicious.

"'Why, bless my heart,' was her beginning, 'what nonsense! Didn't the children know as well as she did, that hares' and rabbits' tails were not alive, and couldn't feel? and what could it signify of one of them was thrown away and lost? They'd a basket-full left besides, and it was plenty of such rubbish as that! They were all very well to play with up in the nursery, but they were worth nothing when all was said and done!'

This was completely in vain, of course. The children sat on the nursery floor and cried on just the same; and by-and-by went away to the corner of the room where the Tod-basket was kept, and bewailed the loss of poor 'Softy' to his brothers and sisters inside.

"As the time approached, however, for grandmamma's summoning bell, the nurse began to wonder what she could do to stop this fretting, and cool the red eyes; so she tried the coaxing plan, by way of a change.

"'If she was such nice little girls with beautiful dolls and toys, she never would fret so about a rabbit's tail, to be sure! And, besides, the boy was sure to be round again very soon with the hare and rabbit skins; and if they would only be good, and dry their eyes, she would get him to give them as many more as they pleased. Quite fresh new ones. She dared say they would be as pretty again as the one that was lost.'

"If nurse had wished to hit upon an injudicious remark, she could not have succeeded better. What did they care for 'fresh new' Tods instead of their dear 'Softy?' And the mere suggestion that any others could be prettier, turned their regretful love into a sort of pa.s.sionate indignation; yet the nurse had meant well, and was astonished when the conclusion of what was intended to be a kind harangue, was followed by a louder burst of crying than ever.

"It must be owned that the little girls had by this time got out of grief into naughtiness; and there was now quite as much petted temper as sorrow in their tears; and lo! while they were in the midst of this fretful condition, grandmamma's summoning bell was heard, and they were obliged to go down to her.

"You can just imagine their appearance when they entered the drawing- room with their eyes red and swelled, their cheeks flushed, and anything but a pleasant expression over their faces. Of course, grandmamma and aunt immediately made inquiries as to the reason of so much disturbance, but the children were scarcely able to utter the usual 'good morning;' and when called upon to tell their cause of trouble, did nothing but begin to cry afresh.

"Whereupon their aunt was dispatched up-stairs to find out what was amiss; and then, for the first time, she heard from the nurse the history of the Tod family, the children's devotion to them, and their present vexatious grief about the loss of a solitary one of what she called their stupid bits of nonsense.

"Foolish as the whole affair sounds in looking back upon it, it certainly was one which required rather delicate handling, and I doubt whether anybody but a mother could have handled it properly.

Grandmamma and aunt had every wish to do for the best, but they hardly took enough into consideration, either the bereaved condition of those motherless little ones, or their highly fanciful turn of mind. Yet n.o.body was to blame; the children spent all the summer with their father in the country, and all the winter with their grandmamma in London; and, therefore, no continued knowledge of their characters was possible, for they were always birds of pa.s.sage everywhere. Certainly, however, it was a great mistake, under such circ.u.mstances, for grandmamma and aunt to have broken rudely into the one stronghold of childish comfort, which they had raised up for themselves."

Aunt Judy paused, and No. 6 really looked frightened as to what was coming next, and asked what Aunt Judy could mean that they did.

"Were they very angry?"

"No, they were not very angry," Aunt Judy said; "perhaps if they had been only that, the whole thing would have pa.s.sed over and been forgotten.

"But they held grave consultation upon the subject, and made it too serious, in my opinion, and I dare say you will think so too.