'I'VE BROUGHT MY HOUSE WITH ME, LIKE A SNAIL'

The interest of listening to mamma's story had made me for the time almost forget about Miss Trevor's present. But as we got close to the Hut and saw George coming to meet us, it rushed back into my mind again.

'I say,' he called out, as he caught sight of us, 'it's past tea-time; Hoskins wanted us to begin without waiting for you, but I wouldn't. She said she was sure you were having it up there with those people,' and he nodded his head in the direction of the big house.

'Oh no!' said mamma, 'I like tea at home best, my boy.'

And 'Oh no!' I joined in;' I was really in a hurry to get back, Dods, for I have something very interesting to tell you. And you mustn't call them "those people;" they are very nice indeed and _very_ kind. They're going to send----'

'Wait till we are at tea to tell him all about it,' interrupted mamma.

'It will take some time, and I see Esme and Denzil peeping out impatiently.'

Tea, you see, had become rather a settled sort of meal, even for mamma, though she and Geordie and I had a sort of little dinner or supper, I scarcely know which to call it, later in the evening. But _nursery_ meals had of course to be given up at the Hut, as there was no nursery to have them in, so Esme and Denzil did not think five o'clock tea a small affair by any means. And whether it was that the being so _very_ close to the sea had sharpened our appet.i.tes, or that Hoskins and Margery between them made such very good 'plain cakes,' I can't say, but I certainly don't remember ever having nicer teas or enjoying them more than at the Hut.

'Well,' began Geordie, after we were all seated comfortably at the table, 'what is the interesting thing you have to tell about, Ida? Has it anything to do with the--our tenants,' he went on, with a tone of satisfaction in his voice; 'I may call them _that_, for that's what they are.'

'Yes, of course it has,' I said. 'You might have guessed that much without being a--what is it you call a man witch--oh yes, a wizard, as you knew mamma and I were there this afternoon, and I began to tell you they were going to send us something. It's the jolliest thing you ever saw, Dods--isn't it, mamma? Do help me to describe it.'

Between us we managed to do so pretty well, and I could see that Geordie was really very pleased about it. But he was in one of those humours that boys have more often than girls, I think--of not showing that he was pleased--'contradictious,' Hoskins calls it, and of trying to poke out something to find fault with or to object to.

'Hum, hum,' he kept murmuring; 'yes, oh yes, I know the sort of thing.

But there's one point you've forgotten, Ida, and mamma too, haven't you?--where is this wonderful chair affair to be kept?' and he looked round the table in a provoking sort of way. 'It won't _always_ be fine dry weather, and certainly it wouldn't get in at the door here by your description, even if we had any room for it to stand in.'

I suppose my face fell, and I think mamma, who is as quick as lightning to understand one's little changes of feeling, was rather vexed with Geordie, who is--or _was_ rather--he has got out of those half-teasing ways wonderfully, now that he is older--tiresome sometimes, though he is so good, for she said quickly--

'We shall find some place or plan something about it. Don't be afraid, Ida dear. It is a beautiful present. Geordie will thoroughly appreciate it when he sees it.'

'Is it big enough to hold both Denny and me together?' asked Esme.

'It's big enough to hide you, so that you couldn't be seen at all, you small person,' said mamma laughing.

I felt sure mamma would plan something, so that we need not feel we had got a white elephant in the shape of a garden chair. All the same, Geordie's objection did worry me a little. I kept wondering, when I woke in the night, where we _could_ keep Miss Trevor's present, and hoping that we should not have to send it back after all.

I need not have done so, for when it arrived, as it did the next morning, it was even more complete than we had known. It was enveloped in a huge waterproof cover, looking like a miniature van or waggon, as the gardener, sent with it, slowly pushed it along! And he explained that, for eight months or so of the year, it would be quite safe outside. For there were also rollers--I don't know exactly what to call them--strips of wood you could roll _it_ on to, to keep the wheels from the damp of the ground, if it _was_ damp, though, as the man said, when he had told us all this and shown us how to slide the wheels into the grooves, 'it's really never for to say damp or wet in the pine woods. If it was wheeled into a good sheltered place, I'd undertake to say it'd be safer and drier than inside most coach-houses or stables.'

He was an Eastercove man, I should explain, and of course he thought there was no place in the world to compare with it!

There was another addition to the belongings of the chair, which we had not known of, and that was a hot water tin which fitted into the footstool, in the same neat, compact way which everything belonging to it did. Really a very good thing, for of course any one sitting still out-of-doors may get cold feet, even though it is not winter or wintry weather.

Geordie stood with his hands in his pockets admiring it all, without a fault to find; not that he wanted to find one, I feel sure. He was in a much cheerier humour this morning, and perhaps he was feeling a little sorry for having wet-blanketed my pleasure at all, the night before.

Mamma called us all away from our new toy at last. Geordie had to set off to Mr. Lloyd's, and for me, alas! it was one of the days on which I had to act governess to the little ones. I did not mind Denzil so much, though he was--I don't mind if he sees this--I am afraid I must say he still is, _very_ slow at lessons.

But he cannot help it, not altogether, anyway, and I do think he generally does his best, and when you know that of any one, you can be much less particular with them, can't you? Besides, once he _has_ 'taken in' anything thoroughly, he does not forget it, which is a great comfort to a teacher.

It was Esme who tried me the most. Such a flibbertigibbet (that is one of Hoskins's queer words, and mamma does not like me to use them much, but it is so expressive) you never saw. If you got her to give her attention, or thought you had, and were feeling quite pleased and even proud of it, as she sat there with her bright eyes fixed on the map, we'll say, while you were pointing but how big Russia was, and how tiny England seemed with the sea all round it, all of a sudden she would say something like this--

'Ida, _did_ you see that girl just in front of the school-children in church?' (Geography, I think, came on a Monday morning.) 'I couldn't make out if the ribbon on her hat was green or blue, or both shaded together.'

And then if I scolded her and begged her to think of her lessons and not of people's hats in church, she would explain in the funniest way, that thinking of the sea, which sometimes looks blue and sometimes green, and sometimes you don't know which, had made her remember how puzzled she had been about the girl's hat.

Upon which Denzil must come in with his remark, very wise and proper of course--

'_I_ think,' he said, 'that Esme and n.o.body, shouldn't think about hats and ribbins and things like that in church--never. _I_ think it'd be much better if ladies and girls dressed all like each other, like men and boys, when they go to church.'

'Oh, indeed,' said Esme; 'and who was it that was in a terrible fuss about his tie not being knotted up the right way only last Sunday as ever was, and----'

'Esme!' I exclaimed, horrified, 'where _did_ you learn anything so vulgar--"last Sunday as ever was"? What would mamma say if she heard you?'

'It was Margery that said it,' replied Esme, not the least put out; 'and I thought it sounded rather nice, but I won't say it again if you'd rather I didn't. _Is_ it nonsense, Ida, about men and boys never thinking about their clothes? Geordie can't bear his best hat to be touched, and I've noticed gentlemen, big ones, I mean like papa--looking as cross as anything if they couldn't put their hats safe. _I_ think they fuss more on Sundays in church than any other time.'

'Well, don't talk any more about it just now,' I said, 'or you will never get your geography into your head.'

But it was already too late. There was very little use trying to call back Esme's wandering wits once they had started off on an expedition of their own, and I really began to fear I should have to tell mamma that I was very little, if any, use as the child's governess.

About this too, as things turned out, I need not have worried. It is curious how very seldom what we vex ourselves about before it happens does come to pa.s.s! I suppose this should show us the harm and uselessness of fancying troubles, or exaggerating them.

We were very busy and happy that afternoon, I remember, when George came back from Kirke, in arranging the wonderful chair. We settled it near the porch, and to please us, as it was really a very fine, almost warm day, mamma said we might have tea there, and that she would sit in the chair with Esme on the stool, and the little table hooked on for their cups and plates. I made tea on a little table in the porch, and Dods and Den handed it out. It was rather a squash, but we didn't mind. Mamma looked so comfortable under the awning, which we had drawn out, as we wanted to try everything; the only mistake was having the hot-water bottle in the footstool filled; poor mamma was obliged to ask to have it taken out, as she said she was afraid her feet were really nearly getting boiled, and of course it was not cold enough weather to require it.

After tea was over and the things taken away, mamma said she would stay where she was for a little and finish a letter to papa, in which she would tell him all about her movable 'boudoir,' as she called it. She really seemed to have taken a great fancy to it, which I was very pleased at, for of us all--though she never said or seemed to think so--it was certainly mamma who had had to give up the most of what she was accustomed to, when we came to live at the Hut.

Esme and Denzil ran down to the sh.o.r.e to play, and Dods and I strolled round a little. I remember all about that evening, even without looking up in my diary. I think I was telling him the story mamma had told me, of when she was a little girl, and the bathing machine, and papa saving her, and we had walked up a short way behind the house, to a part of the path, or road--it was a road, though a small one--from where you could see a bit of the drive from the lodge to the big house.

Suddenly something came in view--the queerest-looking thing you ever saw, like a van, and yet not like one, more like a small omnibus, only all over the top it was b.u.mped out into all kinds of shapes, so that it looked like a gypsy's basket waggon, with a cover over.

'What can that be?' I said to Geordie.

And we both stared hard, as the thing slowly made its way along.

'The Trevors must have queer things sent to them,' I said. 'It isn't the railway van from the station, and yet, if it was travelling pedlars or anything of that kind, they wouldn't have let it in at the gates.'

Geordie did not speak. He has better eyes than I--I have always been a little near-sighted--and he stood there gazing before him with an odd expression creeping over his face. He saw--what I did not--a head, or part of one, poked out of the window at the back of the strange vehicle.

'Geordie,' I said at last, 'what are you staring at so? What _do_ you think it is? Oh!' as I suddenly caught sight of a new feature in the mystery, 'I do believe the thing is coming down _here_, and not going to the big house at all.'

For there was a side road out of the drive just about the part that the strange carriage or waggon had now got to, which led in our direction.

'Yes,' said Geordie, turning to me, and speaking very slowly and distinctly, though there was a twinkle in his eyes, which rather spoilt the solemnity of his tone, 'you are right, Ida. I will tell you what it is--it is the _balloon_.'

Now indeed it was I who stared!

What could he mean?

Did balloons come in vans, and what had we to do with them? It was not for a moment or two that I remembered our joke about Taisy,--that she meant to astonish us by coming down in a balloon or something wonderful and original of that kind, from her mysterious hints in her letter to mamma.

And then I seemed to understand it all, almost better than Dods did. It quite took my breath away.