The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson Burnett

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СКАЧАТЬ on the moor. It was not the first motherless lamb he had found and he knew what to do with it. He had taken it to the cottage wrapped in his jacket and he had let it lie near the fire and had fed it with warm milk. It was a soft thing with a darling silly baby face and legs rather long for its body. Dickon had carried it over the moor in his arms and its feeding bottle was in his pocket with a squirrel, and when Mary had sat under a tree with its limp warmness huddled on her lap she had felt as if she were too full of strange joy to speak. A lamb—a lamb! A living lamb who lay on your lap like a baby!

      She was describing it with great joy and Colin was listening and drawing in long breaths of air when the nurse entered. She started a little at the sight of the open window. She had sat stifling in the room many a warm day because her patient was sure that open windows gave people cold.

      “Are you sure you are not chilly, Master Colin?” she inquired.

      “No,” was the answer. “I am breathing long breaths of fresh air. It makes you strong. I am going to get up to the sofa for breakfast. My cousin will have breakfast with me.”

      The nurse went away, concealing a smile, to give the order for two breakfasts. She found the servants’ hall a more amusing place than the invalid’s chamber and just now everybody wanted to hear the news from upstairs. There was a great deal of joking about the unpopular young recluse who, as the cook said, “had found his master, and good for him.” The servants’ hall had been very tired of the tantrums, and the butler, who was a man with a family, had more than once expressed his opinion that the invalid would be all the better “for a good hiding.”

      When Colin was on his sofa and the breakfast for two was put upon the table he made an announcement to the nurse in his most Rajah-like manner.

      “A boy, and a fox, and a crow, and two squirrels, and a newborn lamb, are coming to see me this morning. I want them brought upstairs as soon as they come,” he said. “You are not to begin playing with the animals in the servants’ hall and keep them there. I want them here.” The nurse gave a slight gasp and tried to conceal it with a cough.

      “Yes, sir,” she answered.

      “I’ll tell you what you can do,” added Colin, waving his hand. “You can tell Martha to bring them here. The boy is Martha’s brother. His name is Dickon and he is an animal charmer.”

      “I hope the animals won’t bite, Master Colin,” said the nurse.

      “I told you he was a charmer,” said Colin austerely. “Charmers’ animals never bite.”

      “There are snake-charmers in India,” said Mary. “And they can put their snakes’ heads in their mouths.”

      “Goodness!” shuddered the nurse.

      They ate their breakfast with the morning air pouring in upon them. Colin’s breakfast was a very good one and Mary watched him with serious interest.

      “You will begin to get fatter just as I did,” she said. “I never wanted my breakfast when I was in India and now I always want it.”

      “I wanted mine this morning,” said Colin. “Perhaps it was the fresh air. When do you think Dickon will come?”

      He was not long in coming. In about ten minutes Mary held up her hand.

      “Listen!” she said. “Did you hear a caw?”

      Colin listened and heard it, the oddest sound in the world to hear inside a house, a hoarse “caw-caw.”

      “Yes,” he answered.

      “That’s Soot,” said Mary. “Listen again. Do you hear a bleat—a tiny one?”

      “Oh, yes!” cried Colin, quite flushing.

      “That’s the newborn lamb,” said Mary. “He’s coming.”

      Dickon’s moorland boots were thick and clumsy and though he tried to walk quietly they made a clumping sound as he walked through the long corridors. Mary and Colin heard him marching—marching, until he passed through the tapestry door on to the soft carpet of Colin’s own passage.

      “If you please, sir,” announced Martha, opening the door, “if you please, sir, here’s Dickon an’ his creatures.”

      Dickon came in smiling his nicest wide smile. The newborn lamb was in his arms and the little red fox trotted by his side. Nut sat on his left shoulder and Soot on his right and Shell’s head and paws peeped out of his coat pocket.

      Colin slowly sat up and stared and stared—as he had stared when he first saw Mary; but this was a stare of wonder and delight. The truth was that in spite of all he had heard he had not in the least understood what this boy would be like and that his fox and his crow and his squirrels and his lamb were so near to him and his friendliness that they seemed almost to be part of himself. Colin had never talked to a boy in his life and he was so overwhelmed by his own pleasure and curiosity that he did not even think of speaking.

      But Dickon did not feel the least shy or awkward. He had not felt embarrassed because the crow had not known his language and had only stared and had not spoken to him the first time they met. Creatures were always like that until they found out about you. He walked over to Colin’s sofa and put the newborn lamb quietly on his lap, and immediately the little creature turned to the warm velvet dressing-gown and began to nuzzle and nuzzle into its folds and butt its tight-curled head with soft impatience against his side. Of course no boy could have helped speaking then.

      “What is it doing?” cried Colin. “What does it want?”

      “It wants its mother,” said Dickon, smiling more and more. “I brought it to thee a bit hungry because I knowed tha’d like to see it feed.”

      He knelt down by the sofa and took a feeding-bottle from his pocket.

      “Come on, little ‘un,” he said, turning the small woolly white head with a gentle brown hand. “This is what tha’s after. Tha’ll get more out o’ this than tha’ will out o’ silk velvet coats. There now,” and he pushed the rubber tip of the bottle into the nuzzling mouth and the lamb began to suck it with ravenous ecstasy.

      After that there was no wondering what to say. By the time the lamb fell asleep questions poured forth and Dickon answered them all. He told them how he had found the lamb just as the sun was rising three mornings ago. He had been standing on the moor listening to a skylark and watching him swing higher and higher into the sky until he was only a speck in the heights of blue.

      “I’d almost lost him but for his song an’ I was wonderin’ how a chap could hear it when it seemed as if he’d get out o’ th’ world in a minute—an’ just then I heard somethin’ else far off among th’ gorse bushes. It was a weak bleatin’ an’ I knowed it was a new lamb as was hungry an’ I knowed it wouldn’t be hungry if it hadn’t lost its mother somehow, so I set off searchin’. Eh! I did have a look for it. I went in an’ out among th’ gorse bushes an’ round an’ round an’ I always seemed to take th’ wrong turnin’. But at last I seed a bit o’ white by a rock on top o’ th’ moor an’ I climbed up an’ found th’ little ‘un half dead wi’ cold an’ clemmin’.” While he talked, Soot flew solemnly in and out of the open window and cawed remarks about the scenery while Nut and Shell made excursions into the big trees outside and ran up and down trunks and explored branches. Captain curled up near Dickon, who sat on the hearthrug from preference.

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