The Strange Story Book. Mrs. Lang

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СКАЧАТЬ he appeared. Just as he was making for his cream-can, his quick eye detected Miss Golightly. In a moment he was on the top of the cage tugging away at the handle, while Miss Golightly inside rushed round and round, banging herself about so that I thought the cage would get knocked over. Sir James, finding his efforts with tooth and nail were unsuccessful, bestowed a further inspection on the cage. He soon discovered the door which opened easily to his skilful touch. Miss Golightly sprang out with a graceful bound – poor little captive, set free by as gallant a knight as ever sat at Arthur's table.

      The two squirrels stood quite still for a moment. Then Sir James led the way through the open window, closely followed by Miss Golightly. I rushed to the library. From there I could see the two little forms making for the beech avenue. I was delighted. My joy, however, received a decided check when Sir James reappeared alone, half an hour afterwards. He went at once to the cream-can and in solitary splendour ate nearly all the wedding breakfast. Had he already deserted the little English bride he had so bravely rescued? Sir James resumed his daily visits to the cream-can, but he never said anything about the bride. To be sure, he always took away a tribute when he went home, but as he was in the habit of doing this, we could not feel certain that it was intended for anybody but himself.

      It was about a fortnight later that a servant came to my room and said, 'Sir James is at the window.' I went at once to the drawing-room and, to my surprise, saw, not Sir James, but the little bride. She was redder in colour than Sir James, and had much bigger hands. I was enchanted, and still more so when a few minutes later the good Sir James himself arrived on the scene, and it was certainly charming to see the two little squirrels side by side on the window-sill. Both the Quiqui people have often come since then, but Lady Quiqui has never to this day learned the secret of the cream-can. Sir James himself always performs the opening ceremony, and he then retires and allows his lady to dine. When he thinks that she has had enough he comes back and she goes away home, and he feasts on what is left.

      Sir James seems content with this arrangement and never fails to give Lady Quiqui first choice of all the good things. This is the more touching as he is rather a greedy little man. Greedy, generous, and brave; and all of us, who know him, realise the fascination of the good Sir James.

E. A. C.

      RIP VAN WINKLE

      West of the river Hudson, and at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, lies one of the oldest European villages in the United States of America. It was built by some of the earliest Dutch settlers, who were so anxious to have everything nice and tidy as it would have been at home, that they brought a large supply of bricks and weathercocks from Holland to make it, and you would never have guessed from the look of the houses that you were in the New World.

      In course of time the snows of winter and the heats of summer began to leave their mark on the surface of the bricks, and the cottages that were not well cared for showed signs of wear and tear. In one of the shabbiest of them there dwelt while New York was still a British Colony a descendant of one of the old fighters, called Rip van Winkle. Rip was one of those delightful people who are never too busy to listen to your troubles or to sympathise with your grievances, and if you were short-handed in the hay-field or had no one to grind the corn, you might always count on him. But if men and women loved him, children adored him. He made the best toys, flew kites when there really seemed no breeze to lift them from the ground, and bowled over a larger number of ninepins than the cleverest of them all. As he passed through the fields or the village street, the children ran out of the houses and gathered about him, till you might have thought that the days of the Pied Piper of Hamelin had come back. And if a child was ill or a snowstorm heavier than usual was raging, there would be a knock at the door, and Rip's cheerful pink face would enter, with tales of ghosts and witches and Indians, which, like all the very nicest things, were a joy and a terror in one.

      Yet, for some reason which few persons and certainly none of the children could understand, Rip's wife did not seem to appreciate him as highly as his friends did. When he came home in the evening and was burning to tell her how he had spent all day sitting on a wet rock above a splendid pool in the river, and how very cleverly he had caught all sorts of big fish, she would point to some logs which needed splitting for the kitchen fire. When he began to relate how the gale of last night had blown down Farmer Gilpin's stone wall, and that it had taken both of them all the morning and afternoon to set it up again, she would ask him how it was he had never perceived the gap in his own fence. And if she inquired why the plums in the orchard had not been gathered, but had fallen rotting to the ground, she did not seem content with his answer that good-wife Barker had run out of thread, and could not go on with her spinning till he fetched her a supply.

      'Everyone's business but your own,' she replied bitterly, to which Rip, though he never got cross, would murmur with a downcast face that his farm was the worst bit of land in the country and would grow nothing but weeds. And that of course he could not have guessed that the cow which was feeding at the other end of the field would have spied the hole in the hedge, and have eaten all the cabbages in the garden; and if ever he planted any seed, the rain was sure to wash it out of the ground before it had time to take root.

      Now it must be admitted that Mrs. van Winkle had some grounds for complaint, for though she did nothing but grumble, she worked hard to feed the children, not thinking it necessary however to mend their clothes. They were the oddest sights in the cast-off garments of their father and mother, or of anyone who took pity on their ragged condition; and the oddest of all was young Rip, whose coat tails if not held well up or pinned across him in front, trailed on the ground behind him like a lady's train.

      Still the children were, in spite of the drawbacks, as happy as kings. They did not want to be made clean and tidy, and they were so used to hearing their mother scolding – scolding all the day long – that they would have quite missed the sound of her tongue if it had ever stopped.

      But there was no danger of that.

      Except Rip, the only person who minded Mrs. van Winkle's ill-temper was Rip's inseparable companion, his dog Wolf. As soon as he entered the house, his tail instead of being carried proudly in the air, fell between his legs; and far from jumping about and putting his muddy paws on your knees as a happy dog always does, he would sneak into the darkest corner, and try to escape notice.

      As the years went by, things grew worse and not better. Rip spent less and less time at home and was generally to be found sitting on a bench in front of the inn telling some of his old stories or discussing with other idle men the actions of the Government of which none of them knew anything, and which generally were over and done with weeks before. These gatherings were presided over by Nicholas Vedder the landlord, who said little but smoked his pipe and looked wise.

      For a while Rip was left in peace and enjoyed himself; then one day his wife broke in upon the peaceable company and scolded them for their idleness till they all fled in different directions. After that Rip went there no more, but whistled to Wolf, and, taking down his gun, went up into the mountains.

      On a fine autumn morning, the two friends went off as usual, and climbed to one of the highest peaks of the Catskills. At length, quite exhausted, Rip threw himself down a on green knoll almost on top of a cliff, and watched the sun sinking slowly in the West. The Hudson river, bounded with woods, could be seen on one side of him; a deep stony glen was on the other; and all about him the stillness seemed in itself to bring rest and peace. But the lengthening shadows gave him warning that he must retrace his steps at once, unless he wished to be barred out of his house, and heavily he rose to his feet and whistled to Wolf, when he heard a voice crying 'Rip van Winkle!'

      He looked round with a start, but as he saw nothing but a crow flying home to bed, he thought his ears must have deceived him. He turned again to the path, when a second time the cry sounded, 'Rip van Winkle! Rip van Winkle!' and at the same instant Wolf gave a howl, and his hair stood up as if something terrible was in the neighbourhood. Rip followed the direction of the dog's eyes, which were fixed with an expression of fear СКАЧАТЬ