Tommy Tregennis. Mary Elizabeth Phillips
was no sleep for the culprit; the evening light coming in at the window mocked his misery. The sea was going down now, and in the distance he could hear the laughter of the children who still played on the widening sands; the very children who, to-morrow, would laugh at him, Tommy Tregennis, because his trousers was tore.
He decided that he would leave for school before breakfast as Mammy had advised, and run very fast all the way. But even so, Tommy was five now, and when you are five years old you no longer sit on the window-seat in Miss Lavinia’s school-room. When you are five your legs are supposed to be so long that you can be given an ordinary chair at the long, narrow table.
Of course it was very grand to be promoted from the window-seat; it meant one was definitely growing up. In spite of the promotion Tommy often had regrets, for the outside world, as viewed from the window, was most attractive. The window opened on to Miss Lavinia’s back-garden, and there were always sparrows, and often cats; bees in the summer, too, and the gay colours of the flowers. The window-seat was very low (that was why it was your place when you were only four) and it would have been so easy to sit down there backwards. But a chair was quite another matter. That meant standing on a spindle first, then stretching upwards before you turned round and sat; and detection would seem inevitable.
There was the new game, too; the game in which you all lay flat on the ground in a ring and blew at the bonfire in the middle, having first of all piled it up with leaves and sticks (pretending leaves and sticks, of course). And you sang all the time. Then you crawled nearer and nearer to the centre until Miss Lavinia said: “Take care, Tommy; suppose you should burn!” and you wriggled hurriedly back to your place in the ring.
But for such games trousers must be entire. Tommy broke down utterly and sobbed beneath the bed clothes.
Mammy must still be standing in the doorway for now and again he heard a heavy tread up the alley. “Evenin’,” a hearty voice would say, and “G’d evenin’,” Mammy would reply.
Then there came a much lighter step, and through the open window Tommy heard another voice which caused him to still his sobs and sit up in bed, his hands tightly clasped and his little chest heaving under the flannelette nightshirt.
“Good-evenin’, Miss Lavinia.” This was exactly what Tommy had feared.
“I’ve just had to put my Tommy to bed. He’s tore his trousers on the rocks, and I cannot mend they to-night. He must come early to school to-morrow and bide still all day, so that the children won’t laugh at him. Yes, thank you, Miss; if he may go back to the window-seat that’ll be fine, and Billy Triggs can have his chair, then they children won’t see.”
When these arrangements had been made Miss Lavinia said “Good-night” and her footsteps died away round the corner.
The evening light grew dimmer and dimmer. Grotesque shadows lengthened in the room and Tommy was still wide awake. At last he could bear it no longer.
“Mammy, Mammy!” he cried; but there was no response.
A second call, however, brought her to the foot of the stairs, for he distinctly heard her toe hit the stair-rod at the bottom that held the linoleum in place. So he knew that she was really listening and called once more. “Mammy, Mammy, don’t let anyone have me!”
“But who should want you, Tommy Tregennis?”
“I don’t know, Mammy,” he shouted back in his lusty, young voice. “I don’t know, but I thought if you was in the kitchen some one might come up the stairs and get I.”
“But who should want to take you away, Tommy Tregennis? Who should want a little boy as tears his trousers when his Daddy’s away at sea?”
There it was again! Even a fly, unpardonably late in going to bed, was buzzing on the window-pane, “Tommy’s tore his trousers; Tommy’s tore his trousers!” Finally the moon looked in at the window laughing at his grief, and Tommy fell into a troubled sleep.
Many hours later he was wakened by the striking of a match and a flare of light. Mammy was putting the kettle on the spirit-lamp at her bedside, and by this Tommy knew that Daddy was home again. Rubbing his eyes he sat up and looked anxiously at the foot of his cot. He saw that the torn trousers were no longer there. He gave a deep sigh of relief; it was true then; he had feared that it was perhaps only a dream. But they were not there, so now he knew that the odd little red-haired man who danced in the moonlight had really taken away those dreadful trousers to make them into tiny coats for the ten little boys and girls whom he invariably left at home on his nights out.
Sleepily Tommy watched his mother’s movements. When she had poured water into the tea-pot he crept into the big bed, and as soon as Daddy came the feast began. Some potato and gravy from the cold pasty oozed out of Tommy’s share and fell upon his nightshirt. It was too good to be left, so Tommy licked vigorously making very sure that none was wasted. Quickly the midnight meal ended.
“Now, ma handsome,” said Mammy (she must have forgotten about the trousers), “skip back to bed like a fly in a jaboon.”
So Tommy skipped. Daddy blew out the candle, and soon their regular breathing testified that all three slept.
CHAPTER II
AFTER all Tommy Tregennis had breakfast at the proper time the following morning; and although he left home a little earlier than usual it was with no intention of hurrying. Rather did he choose to swagger slowly through the crooked streets, while every now and again he bent ostentatiously to pick up a stone to throw at a sparrow, or a lamp-post, or an old tin in the gutter. It did not matter in the least what he aimed at, sparrow, post or tin, for never by any chance did he hit it; but it mattered greatly that those children who had laughed last night, laughed while he was sobbing in bed, should know that there was no need for him to stand upright unless he cared to do so. Without shame he could now assume any attitude he chose. For Tommy Tregennis wore a new pair of trousers!
Tommy himself had not known of their existence, but weeks before, at night while he slept, Mammy had planned and cut and sewn by the light of the kitchen lamp. With puckered brow, and tightly compressed lips holding two or three pins, she had spread her old green coat carefully on the kitchen table, smoothed out every wrinkle, and upon it placed a piece of newspaper which bore some resemblance to the shape of Tommy’s legs.
The first plan was faulty; the curve of the arm-hole interfered. The newspaper pattern was taken up, Mammy’s mouth held more pins and her frown grew deeper. It was only after much anxious thought that she decided finally that it was possible to cut a strip from a sleeve of the coat and join it to the top of the trousers in such a way that when Tommy’s jersey was well pulled down the seam would not show. So the pattern was pinned on more firmly, the first cut was made half-an-inch from the edge of the paper, and after that there was no drawing back.
As Mammy planned and pinned and cut and sewed in the yellow light of the lamp the silence of the little kitchen was only broken by the fall of a cinder now and again, and by the steady ticking of the clocks.
One clock stood on the chimney-piece, a canister on either side, and beyond each canister a china dog with staring yellow eyes. It was the chimney-piece clock that told the time. Nailed to the wall, to the left of the fireplace, with long slender chains dangling and throwing shadows in the lamplight, hung a cuckoo clock that was Tommy’s most cherished possession. All day and all night it ticked steadily through the hours, but as the hands never moved it was not considered trustworthy more than once a day; this was at five minutes past twelve, when (at any rate on Saturdays and Sundays) Mammy would look up to the wall, and say: “Deary me, five minutes past twelve; my dear soul, why ’tis time to put on the potaties!”
As the clocks ticked, and the cinders fell, and the oil in the lamp burned low, Mammy’s deft fingers moved very busily, and her thoughts were very busy too. They carried her