"I'll keep him off! Trust me!" gasped Madge, breathless with running, as she posted herself in front of the logs, waving her stick like a battle-axe. Her courage was undeniable, and fortunately her strength was not put to any proof, as the butcher, hearing terrified cries, stepped outside the yard and whistled to his dog.

"There! it has turned round! It is running back to its master! Barton is there, so he will take care that it doesn't follow us again. I dare say it would not have bitten, though," said Madge soothingly, as Betty sobbed on her shoulder.

John came up at this moment, and they both tried to push the heavy logs away, but could not move them an inch, even with all their strength.

At one time it really seemed as if Betty must remain there all night.

"It's no use pulling any more," panted Madge, scarlet from her efforts.

"I shall run up to Papa's workshop and get his little axe. Then I can chop away the log enough for her to get out."

Possibly Betty was terrified by the prospect of having an axe wielded by alarmingly energetic but unskilled hands too near her foot. At all events she not only dried her tears at this suggestion, but twisted her ankle so actively about that it slipped out of the crack as mysteriously as it had gone in. There was no harm done, except various bruises which had been chiefly caused by her efforts to escape.

In spite of some natural disappointment at not having any occasion to exhibit her powers as a woodcutter, Madge congratulated her sister heartily on getting loose, and the three children returned towards the house. Miss Thompson was looking for them in the garden. They ran up to her, concluding that as usual they were late for tea and she had come to remind them of it.

"For once you are wrong," she said. "At least it is just tea-time, but that was not why I was trying to find you. Now wash your hands, brush your hair, and go to the schoolroom. There you will find three visitors."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE VISITORS.

The children were far quicker than usual in carrying out Miss Thompson's directions and preparing themselves for tea. They were exceedingly curious to see the visitors, who, contrary to all custom, seemed to have been shown into the school-room instead of the drawing-room. And yet they were also a little shy, so that there was none of the usual crowding at the doorway in trying who should enter first. The younger ones very contentedly stood aside and allowed Madge to take the lead without a murmur.

An elderly person, in a large black velvet bonnet, sat with her back to the window, a very gaily-dressed little girl standing by her side. The children looked vacantly from one to the other, wondering why they had come.

"Well, Madge!" exclaimed Miss Thompson, "how much longer are you going to stand there before you speak to Mrs. Winter, who has come all the way from Churchbury to bring you a present?"

"Of course it's Mrs. Winter!" cried Madge, who had really been completely mystified by the presence of the best black velvet bonnet, so unlike the rather shabby straw hat in which Mrs. Winter had helped to search for the missing brown bag.

"And this is Mrs. Winter's grandchild," continued Miss Thompson. "Her name is Ann--"

"Is that Ann?" cried three excited voices; and the children pressed eagerly forward to have a good look at the little girl who, though scarcely older than themselves, was frequently left in charge of a real shop.

Ann was a large solid-looking girl of thirteen, in a red cashmere frock that was hardly as bright as her plump cheeks. Her hair had evidently been plaited very tightly overnight, so that it stood out in a frizzled ma.s.s all round her head. The whole effect was very large and bright.

"I have brought you a new pet," said Mrs. Winter addressing Madge; "something you have seen before, but it looks rather different now."

She opened a large basket that was on the floor beside her, and lifted out a pretty tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat.

"What a love!" cried Madge. "Is it the kitten we found in the cellar?

But it looks quite big and fat now, only the colour is the same."

"Ah, it's wonderful what care and good feeding will do for any animal!"

observed Mrs. Winter. "You remember how scared the poor creature was at first? Well, now she is so tame that she will sit on my shoulder.

Just see."

While the cat exhibited two or three little tricks, such as standing on her hind legs to eat a bit of bread, Mrs. Winter explained that she had always intended to make a present of the pretty creature to the young lady who had been so frightened by her in the cellar.

"So, this being early-closing day in the town, I borrowed Mrs. Smith's pony-trap and drove out, bringing little Ann with me for company," she said.

"And Mrs. West wishes you to rest and have some tea before you return,"

added Miss Thompson. "So let us all sit down at once, and p.u.s.s.y shall have a saucer to herself in the corner of the room."

When tea was finished the children asked permission to show Ann their gardens, and pick her a bunch of flowers before she returned to the town. Mrs. Winter preferred sitting indoors in the shade, until her grandchild was ready to start.

It must be owned that as long as they were in the schoolroom Ann had proved disappointingly dull. Instead of enlightening them on her method of keeping shop when she was left in sole charge, she sat stolidly munching cake, and hardly replying when she was spoken to by Miss Thompson. In point of fact poor Ann was rendered desperately shy by being dressed up in all her finest clothes to come on this important visit. All the way to Beechgrove her grandmother had been warning her that she must behave beautifully if they were asked to go inside the house, and the consequence was that the poor girl was almost afraid to speak, for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. But when once in the garden her shyness of the young ladies rapidly faded away.

"Do you ever climb trees or sail boats in ditches?" inquired Madge, when they had at last got on easy conversational terms with their visitor.

Ann explained that there were only a limited number of trees in Churchbury, and that the police forbid any interference with them. "Of course some of the children sail their boats in the gutters after a storm," she added; "but Mother wouldn't like us to do that. She always makes us keep ourselves to ourselves."

"But here it's quite different!" broke in Madge. "We do just what we like, only there is rather a fuss if we tear our clothes very badly.

You might begin on an easy tree."

"Perhaps she would like to see the pigs and cows first?" interposed Betty, who could not help noticing that their guest showed some natural reluctance to risk the red cashmere frock among unknown and probably p.r.i.c.kly branches.

Ann had been afraid to say that she did not at all wish to climb trees, but she eagerly grasped at this chance of a reprieve, and they all set off towards the pig-sty. Now the young Wests always regarded the little farmyard over which Barton presided as far the most interesting part of Beechgrove. If their mother had visitors she invariably took them to see the greenhouses, a dull sort of entertainment, as it seemed to the children. Certainly some people would stand for half an hour in front of a row of pots asking questions and reading the names on wooden labels. It seemed incredible that they should derive amus.e.m.e.nt from this monotonous performance, so the children concluded that they did it merely because some such absurd custom was demanded by good manners of all guests. Now, looking at the pigs was quite a different affair.

There was some pleasure to be got out of that, and as Ann stood on tiptoe to peep over the wooden door of the sty they felt convinced that they were giving her an unusual treat.

Unfortunately, one has to be accustomed to pigs to appreciate them properly. When a gigantic old sow was at last lured out of her sleeping apartment by a shower of acorns, artfully thrown against her flabby sides, the Wests shrieked with delight because she was followed by her whole family.

"I never saw them all out before although they are nearly a month old,"

observed Madge, wishing delicately to impress upon the stranger that she was unusually lucky.

"We never saw them all out before," echoed John. "You see there are three in the trough, and one all sticky who has just crawled out, that makes four. Then there are five squeezed up in the mud behind the sow's back and two under her snout, so you can see the whole eleven at once. She had thirteen, but two of them were squashed to death the first day. Barton found them both flat; he says she must have slept on top of them by mistake. Our sows generally do when they have a lot of children."

"Do you notice that little black one with a white patch under his right eye?" inquired Betty, feeling that it was now her turn to do the honours of the pig-sty. "We call him Spot. He is such a little love, only horribly greedy. That is why he is in such a mess, he will crawl in the trough and get covered with milk. Sometimes Barton brings him outside for us to pat. I wonder if we could possibly get him for ourselves if we poked the sow off with sticks so that she shouldn't push through the door when it is opened?"

"Oh, don't try! Please don't open the door!" begged Ann. "I couldn't bear to have those horrid smelly creatures coming after me. I know I should scream if they got loose!"

"Don't you like pigs, then?" This inquiry came in tones of astonishment from all three children.

"Like them? No! They smell that horrid it quite upsets me!" Poor Ann's disgust was so genuine that she quite forgot to speak as correctly as she had succeeded in doing up to this point.

It was in vain that the Wests pointed out how baby pigs are quite as pretty as kittens or puppies when they roll playfully over on their mother's fat sides. Ann only held her nose and turned away her face; even when Spot went through the most ridiculous antics, pulling his little brother Whitey all about the sty by his tail, she expressed no admiration.

"Well, if you really don't like them I suppose we had better go and see the cows," said Madge rather impatiently. It is always disappointing, and gives very unnecessary trouble, when visitors will not share one's own tastes. Madge had relied on the pigs as an enormous attraction to a town child, and she was proportionately irritated when the entertainment failed. "I suppose you don't think cows dirty?" she asked with elaborate politeness.

No, Ann had no objection to cows. On the contrary, she knew a milkman who kept some cows on the outskirts of the town, and she sometimes went there and had a tumbler of new milk for a treat. To be sure she felt a little timid when Madge pushed a cabbage into her hand, and told her to feed a large red cow with particularly sharp horns. The children had a habit of each adopting a cow and feeding it themselves when there were any cabbages or pea-stalks to spare. Every cow, of course, had a name.

"That red one is quite new. She only came on Sat.u.r.day," observed John.

"So we haven't yet settled who she is to belong to, and that is why you can feed her. But we are going to call her Spiteful, because she shakes her head so crossly and has such very sharp horns."

This was rather a formidable introduction to a cow, and it is not to be wondered at that Ann soon incurred the scorn of the other children by dropping her cabbage on the ground and retiring behind the railings.

She afterwards accused Spiteful of having tried to bite her.

"Well, if you don't care for feeding the animals perhaps you would like to play in the hay-loft?" said Madge with calm patience.

"Oh, yes! That is just what I should like!" cried Ann eagerly. A loft seemed to present fewer possibilities of danger than any of the other places of amus.e.m.e.nt to which they had yet taken her.