Little Peter (Musaicum Christmas Specials). Lucas Malet
middle gable like the wings of a hen covering her chickens. The wood-sheds, and hay-barn, and the stable where the brown-eyed, sweet-breathed cows lay at night, and the clean, cool dairy, and the cheese-room with its heavy presses were all under this same wide sheltering roof. Before the house a meadow of rich grass stretched down to a stream, that hurried along over rocky limestone ledges, or slipped away over flat sandy places where you might see the little fishes playing at hide-and-seek or puss in the corner among the bright pebbles at the bottom. While on the shallow, marshy puddles by the stream side, where the forget-me-not and brook-lime and rushes grow, the water-spiders would dance quadrilles and jigs and reels all day long in the sunshine, and the frogs would croak by hundreds in the still spring evenings, when the sunset was red behind the pine-trees to the west. And in this pleasant place little Peter lived, as I say, once upon a time, with his father and mother, and his two brothers, and Eliza the servant-maid, and Gustavus the cowherd.
He was the youngest of the children by a number of years, and was such a small fellow that Susan Lepage, his mother, could make him quite a smart blouse and pair of trousers out of Antony's cast-off garments, even when all the patches and thin places had been cut out. He had a black, curly head, and very round eyes—for many things surprised him, and surprise makes the eyes grow round as everybody knows—and a dear, little, red mouth, that was sweet to kiss, and nice, fat cheeks, which began to look rather cold and blue, by the way, as he stood on the threshold one evening about Christmas time, with Cincinnatus, the old, tabby tom-cat, under his arm. He was waiting for his brother Antony to come home from the neighbouring market-town of Nullepart. It was growing dusk, yet the sky was very clear. The sound of the wind in the pine branches and of the chattering stream was strange in the frosty evening air; so that little Peter felt rather creepy, as the saying is, and held on very tight to Cincinnatus for fear of—he didn't quite know what.
'Come in, little man, come in,' cried his mother, as she moved to and fro in the ruddy firelight, helping Eliza to get ready the supper. 'You will be frozen standing there outside; and we shall be frozen, too, sitting here with the door open. Antony will get home none the quicker for your watching. That which is looked for hardest, they say, comes last.'
But Peter only hugged Cincinnatus a little closer—thereby making that long-suffering animal kick spasmodically with his hind legs, as a rabbit does when you hold it up by the ears—and looked more earnestly than ever down the forest path into the dimness of the pines.
Just then John Paqualin, the charcoal-burner, came up to the open door, with a couple of empty sacks across his shoulders. Now the charcoal-burner was a great friend of little Peter's, though he was a queer figure to look at. For his red hair hung in wild locks down over his shoulders, and his eyes glowed red too—as red as his own smouldering charcoal fires—and his back was bent and crooked; while his legs were so inordinately long and thin, that all the naughty little boys in Nullepart, when he went down there to sell his sacks of charcoal, used to run after him up the street, shouting:—
'Hurrah, hurrah! here's the grasshopper man again! Hey, ho! grasshopper, give us a tune—haven't you brought your fiddle?'
But when Paqualin got annoyed, as he sometimes did, and turned round upon them with his glowing eyes, they would all scuttle away as hard as their legs could carry them. For, like a good many other people, they were particularly courageous when they could only see the enemy's back. You may be sure our little Peter never called the charcoal-burner by any offensive names, and therefore, having a good conscience, had no cause to be afraid of him.
'Eh! but what is this?' he cried, in his high cracked voice as he flung down the sacks, and stood by the little lad in the doorway. 'Remember my ears are so quick I can hear the grass grow. Just now I heard the best mother in the world call her little boy to go indoors, and here he stands still on the threshold. If you do not go in do you know what will happen, eh?'
'No; what will happen? Please tell me,' said Peter.
'WHAT WILL HAPPEN? PLEASE TELL ME.'
The charcoal-burner stretched out one long arm and pointed away into the forest, and sunk his voice to a whisper:—
'The old, grey she-wolf will assuredly come pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat over the moss and the stones, pit-a-pat over the pine-needles and the fallen twigs and branches, pit-a-pat out of the wood, and—snap!—like that, catch your poor Cincinnatus by the tail and carry him off to make into soup for her little ones. Picture to yourself poor Cincinnatus in the wolf's great, black, steaming soup-pot, and all the wolf-cubs with their wicked, little mouths wide open, sitting round, with their wooden spoons in their hands, all ready to begin.'
Peter retreated hastily into the kitchen, cat and all, and took up his stand rather close to his mother.
'Is it true, mother?' he said. 'But where do the wolves buy their wooden spoons, do you think—in the shop at Nullepart?'
'Nay, how should I know?' said Susan Lepage, as she stooped down and kissed the child, and then looking up kindly nodded to the charcoal-burner. 'You must ask the old she-wolf herself if you want to know where she buys her spoons, and her soup pot too for that matter. She is no friend of mine, little one.'
After a moment's pause, she added:—
'You will stay to supper, John Paqualin? My husband and sons will be in soon, and there is plenty for all, thank God. You will be welcome.'
But Paqualin shook his head, and the light died away in those strange eyes of his.
'Welcome?' he said. 'The pretty, false word has little meaning for me. And yet perhaps in your mouth it is honest, Susan Lepage, for you are gentle and merciful as a saint in heaven, and the child, here, takes after you. But, for the rest, who welcomes a mad, mis-shapen, half-finished creature on whom Nature herself has had no mercy? Master Lepage will come in hungry. Will he like to have his stomach turned by the sight of the hump-backed charcoal-burner? No, no, I go home to my hut. Good-night, little Peter. I will tell the grey wolf to look elsewhere for her supper.—Ah! I see wonderful things though sometimes, for all that I live alone and in squalor. The red fire and the white moon tell me stories, turn by turn, all the night through.'
And with that he swung the empty sacks across his back again and shambled away into the growing darkness.
'A good riddance,' muttered Eliza, as she set the cheese on the table. 'It is an absolute indignity to ask a respectable servant to wait at table on a wild animal like that.'
But Susan Lepage sighed as she turned from the doorway.
'Poor, unhappy one,' she said. 'God gave thee thy fair soul, but who gave thee thy ungainly body?'
Then she reproved Eliza for her conduct in various matters which had nothing in the world to do with her remarks upon the charcoal-burner. Even the best of women are not always quite logical.
Meanwhile little Peter had sat down on his stool by the fire. For a little while he sat very still, for he was thinking over the visit of his friend John Paqualin. He felt rather unhappy about him, he could not quite have said why. But when we are children it is not easy to think of any one person or one thing for long together. There are such lots of things to think about, that one chases another out of our heads very quickly. And so Peter soon gave up puzzling himself about the charcoal-burner, and began counting the sparks as they flew out of the blazing, crackling, pine logs up the wide chimney. Unfortunately, however, he was not a great arithmetician; and though he began over and over again at plain one, two, three, he always got wrong among the fifteens and sixteens; and never succeeded in counting up to twenty at all. Nothing is more tedious than making frequent mistakes. So he got off his stool, and began hopping from one stone quarry in the kitchen floor to the next. Suddenly he became entangled in Eliza's full petticoats—she was whirling them about a good deal, it is true, being in rather a bad temper—and nearly tumbled down on his poor, little nose.
'Bless the child, what possesses him?' cried Eliza.
Peter