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in the evening to meet their papa and kiss him and dance around him
and drag off his overcoat and look in the pockets for packages,
or they were crowding about the nursery windows and looking out
and pushing each other and laughing--in fact, they were always doing
something enjoyable and suited to the tastes of a large family.
Sara was quite fond of them, and had given them names out of books--
quite romantic names. She called them the Montmorencys when she did
not call them the Large Family. The fat, fair baby with the lace
cap was Ethelberta Beauchamp Montmorency; the next baby was Violet
Cholmondeley Montmorency; the little boy who could just stagger
and who had such round legs was Sydney Cecil Vivian Montmorency;
and then came Lilian Evangeline Maud Marion, Rosalind Gladys,
Guy Clarence, Veronica Eustacia, and Claude Harold Hector.
One evening a very funny thing happened--though, perhaps, in one
sense it was not a funny thing at all.
Several of the Montmorencys were evidently going to a children's party,
and just as Sara was about to pass the door they were crossing
the pavement to get into the carriage which was waiting for them.
Veronica Eustacia and Rosalind Gladys, in white-lace frocks
and lovely sashes, had just got in, and Guy Clarence, aged five,
was following them. He was such a pretty fellow and had such rosy cheeks
and blue eyes, and such a darling little round head covered with curls,
that Sara forgot her basket and shabby cloak altogether--in fact,
forgot everything but that she wanted to look at him for a moment.
So she paused and looked.
It was Christmas time, and the Large Family had been hearing many
stories about children who were poor and had no mammas and papas to fill
their stockings and take them to the pantomime--children who were,
in fact, cold and thinly clad and hungry. In the stories,
kind people--sometimes little boys and girls with tender hearts--
invariably saw the poor children and gave them money or rich gifts,
or took them home to beautiful dinners. Guy Clarence had been
affected to tears that very afternoon by the reading of such a story,
and he had burned with a desire to find such a poor child and give her
a certain sixpence he possessed, and thus provide for her for life.
An entire sixpence, he was sure, would mean affluence for evermore.
As he crossed the strip of red carpet laid across the pavement
from the door to the carriage, he had this very sixpence in the
pocket of his very short man-o-war trousers; And just as Rosalind
Gladys got into the vehicle and jumped on the seat in order to feel
the cushions spring under her, he saw Sara standing on the wet
pavement in her shabby frock and hat, with her old basket on her arm,
looking at him hungrily.
He thought that her eyes looked hungry because she had perhaps had
nothing to eat for a long time. He did not know that they looked
so because she was hungry for the warm, merry life his home held
and his rosy face spoke of, and that she had a hungry wish to snatch
him in her arms and kiss him. He only knew that she had big eyes
and a thin face and thin legs and a common basket and poor clothes.
So he put his hand in his pocket and found his sixpence and walked
up to her benignly.
"Here, poor little girl," he said. "Here is a sixpence.
I will give it to you."
Sara started, and all at once realized that she looked exactly
like poor children she had seen, in her better days, waiting on
the pavement to watch her as she got out of her brougham.
And she had given them pennies many a time. Her face went red
and then it went pale, and for a second she felt as if she could
not take the dear little sixpence.
"Oh, no!" she said. "Oh, no, thank you; I mustn't take it, indeed!"
Her voice was so unlike an ordinary street child's voice and
her manner was so like the manner of a well-bred little person
that Veronica Eustacia (whose real name was Janet) and Rosalind
Gladys (who was really called Nora) leaned forward to listen.
But Guy Clarence was not to be thwarted in his benevolence.
He thrust the sixpence into her hand.
"Yes, you must take it, poor little girl!" he insisted stoutly.
"You can buy things to eat with it. It is a whole sixpence!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]