CHAPTER VIII PISKIES STILL LIVE AT PORTHCALLIS

PRESENTLY though, just for a time another shadow fell, for it seemed only a very, very little while before it was time for her mother to leave.

“I wish you could stay all the time, mother,” she whispered eagerly. “Couldn’t you, mother? It would do you good too.”

“But, darling, think of poor Priscilla. She will be wanting me, and I know you wouldn’t like to keep me away from her.”

Loveday was not quite sure of that at the moment, but she would not have said so; and when she thought of pale, suffering Prissy, she tried hard to choke down any selfish feeling, and to be very brave. “But—you will come again soon, won’t you, mother?”

“Yes, darling, very soon; and I expect father will run down to see you in a very little while, and we will always let you know if any of us are coming, so that you can come to meet us. Now, are you going to see me off at the station, or will you stay here and wave your handkerchief to me?”

“Oh, please, I’ll go to the station.”

They all had tea on the beach outside the cottage, and when that was done it was almost time for Mrs. Carlyon to start on her homeward journey. Bessie was to go to the station too, and take Aaron with her; and Mrs. Carlyon felt pretty sure that by the time Loveday had had the double walk, she would be too tired to fret much, or feel lonely, or to do anything but go to bed and sleep.

She was a very brave little woman, on the whole, considering that she was alone in a strange place, and with people who were almost strangers to her. A few tears did force themselves through her lids, but she did not say anything.

“When you get back, darling, you must help Bessie to unpack your box, and you will be able to give Aaron his monkey, then you will be ready for bed, and when you wake up again it will be morning, and you will feel so happy, and there will be so much to see and do, that you will scarcely know what to see and do first. But don’t forget to collect a nice lot of shells for Priscilla.”

Then the engine gave two or three snorts and puffs, and a loud whistle—away moved the train, and Loveday found herself left alone.

She might have shed a few tears more when the train puffed away—in fact, it is pretty certain that she would have if she had not, at that moment, caught sight of the station-master, and remembered his rude laughter about Shanks’s mare. He had not caught sight of her yet, and Loveday was anxious to hurry away before he did, and in her eagerness and hurry she quite forgot about her tears and her loneliness; and then it was such fun to watch the ducks and geese on the green, and to make them run at one, and stretch their necks and scream, that she was soon laughing instead of crying; and when they got back there was a boat drawn up on the beach, and that was very exciting, for Mr. Lobb had come back with a big catch of crabs and lobsters, and Loveday, after being introduced to him, was for quite a long while perfectly fascinated, watching the creatures trying to get out of the great lumbering crab-pots which he had brought them home in.

“I wish now, missie, as yer ma hadn’t a-been gone, for she could have took home two or three of these, and welcome to ’em.”

“Oh, I wish she hadn’t,” said Loveday earnestly. “Father loves lobsters and crabs; he would have been so glad—so would Geoffrey.”

“Well, look here now,” said John Lobb good-naturedly. “Bessie’ll bile these presently, and then if she’ll pop one or two into a basket, I’ll take them up and post ’em, and your pa’ll have ’em in time for his breakfast in the morning.”

At which Loveday was full of gratitude, and thanked her new host very heartily and prettily.

So Bessie hurried in to attend to her fire, and as a cold wind was blowing in from the sea, she bade the children follow her.

“A big catch of crabs and lobsters.”

“Now I’ll unpack my box,” thought Loveday, and, Bessie having unstrapped and unlocked it for her, she began. There was a little white chest of drawers in the room, and a big cupboard built into the wall, so that she had plenty of room for her belongings. Her little frocks, though she had quite a lot of them, took up a very small space indeed, but two of her sun-hats covered one shelf of the cupboard, and she had to take another shelf for her best one and her red and blue bérets. Her boots and shoes she arranged very neatly at the bottom of the cupboard—at least Aaron did for her, for by this time he had followed her in, and had grown quite friendly, and he worked really busily until Loveday took out a big monkey and presented it to him, after which he did nothing but gaze at it and hug it with delight, and Loveday, who had been a little shy of offering it to him when she saw how big a boy he was, felt greatly relieved on seeing his pleasure.

“After all,” she said to herself, “he isn’t such a very big boy—he is rather a baby, and I am very glad.”

Then Bessie came to call them to supper, and soon after that Loveday, holding tight to her elephant, was sound asleep in her snow-white room; and Aaron, still hugging his monkey, was snoring contentedly under his gay patchwork quilt.

“A rare lot of wild beasts we’ve a-got in our little bit of a place to-night,” said John Lobb, with a hearty laugh. “’Tis lucky they b’ain’t given to bellowing, or we should be given notice to quit, I reckon!”

When Loveday awoke the next morning, the first thing she noticed was the curious dull roar of the sea. Then she opened her eyes and looked about her. The next moment she was out of bed, drawing back her white curtains to look out at the new, wonderful world without. There was little to see, though, from her window, for the cliff rose sheer up, and between the house and the cliff there was only a little bit of fenced-in ground. It was too close under the shadow of the cold rock for anything to grow in it, and the house, though it kept off the wind and the salt spray, also kept off the sun. To make up for this, John Lobb had a piece of garden ground at the top of the cliff, where he worked when he wasn’t out fishing.

But when Loveday looked out he was in the yard at the back, examining the nets that were spread on the palings to dry. A moment later, Aaron, still clasping his monkey, ran out and joined his father.

“Oh, Aaron is dressed!” thought Loveday. “I ought to be. Why didn’t Bessie call me?”

She put her head out of her bedroom door, and called:

“Bessie! Bessie! Please can I have my bath! I am sorry I am so late,” she added, as Bessie appeared with the bath and the water.

“It isn’t late, Miss Loveday,” said Bessie smilingly. “It has only this minute gone seven by my old clock, and that’s always galloping.”

“Only seven!” cried Loveday. “What are you all up so early for? Is anybody going away?”

“’Tisn’t early for us, miss. My husband is going out all day fishing, and he’s got to catch the tide.”

“There is always something that has got to be caught,” sighed Loveday—“the train, or the tide, or the fish, or the post. But I’m very glad I am up so early, now I am up. I want to go out and see what things are like in the morning. They generally look different then, don’t they?”

“Oh dear,” she said quite apologetically, when presently she came to the breakfast-table, “I am afraid I am very hungry. I hope you won’t be frightened when you see what a lot I eat.”

She really felt quite ashamed of her big appetite, but John and Bessie only laughed, and John said:

“That’s good hearing, missie. Nothing you can do in that way’ll frighten us, seeing as we’m ’customed to Aaron and me.”

John sat at the head of the table, nearest the fireplace, while Bessie sat outside, where she could easily reach the kettle or the teapot on the stove. Loveday’s chair was placed at the end, facing John, while the table was pulled out a little way for Aaron to sit in the window amongst the geraniums and cinerarias. In her heart Loveday wished that she could sit in there, but at the same time she was rather pleased with her own position; it seemed older and more dignified.

After breakfast there came the excitement of seeing off the boat, and then, when that was done, Loveday felt that she really could settle down for a moment and have time to look about her. Aaron was very anxious to see her toys and all the other treasures she had brought with her, for this was a much greater novelty to him than picking up shells or hunting for crabs, besides which Bessie would not let them go alone clambering over the rocks, or paddling in the pools, and she could not go with them for a little while, as she had her house to set straight and the dinner to get.

So they sat on the sands within sight of Bessie, and played with a grocer’s shop that Loveday had brought, and a box of cubes, and a popgun, and a monkey and an elephant, and sundry other things, but to her surprise none of the things pleased Aaron so much as did the books. He turned the pages of her fairy-tales over and over, and gazed at the pictures, and asked questions about them, until at last Loveday grew quite tired of answering him.

“Haven’t you got any books?” she asked at last rather impatiently, for she would have been much better pleased to have had his help in building sand-castles.

“No, I have never had a book in all my life,” he said wistfully. “I didn’t know there was any with picshers in them like these here.”

“Didn’t you?” cried Loveday, scarcely able to believe him. “I wish I’d known it; I’d have brought you one of mine.”

“But I knows some stories,” he said proudly—“lots! All ’bout piskies, and fairies, and giants, and buccas, and——”

“What are buccas?” interrupted Loveday eagerly.

“Why—why, little people, of course,” said Aaron.

Loveday looked at him to see if he was “telling true” or laughing at her, but Aaron was quite serious.

“Are you telling truth or making up?” she asked.

It was a question she was often obliged to put to Geoffrey and Priscilla when they told her things.

“True, honour bright,” said Aaron earnestly, just a little indignant. “Don’t you ever read about buccas in your books?”

Loveday shook her head.

“Are they fairies?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Good ones or bad?”

“Good, I b’lieve,” said Aaron. “I never heard of their doing anybody any harm.”

“Have you ever seen one?” asked Loveday, in a lowered voice.

“No,” said Aaron; “they lives in caves and wells, mostly—so father says—and they’m always digging. You ask father to tell ’ee about them.”

“No, you tell me. I want to hear about them now. Go on.”

“Well, if I tell you one story, you must tell me one.”

“All right,” said Loveday; “go on. It must be about buccas, ’cause I never heard about them before, and—and I don’t think there are any.”

“Aw, hush! Don’t ’ee say such things!” cried Aaron, quite scared. “You’d be sorry if you was to get Barker’s knee, and you will most likely, if you say things like that. They do all sorts of things to folks that ’fend them.”

Loveday felt rather frightened, but she would not let Aaron know it if she could help it.

“I thought you said they were good fairies,” she said half irritably.

“So they are, but fairies never likes folks to say they don’t believe in ’em. That was how Barker got his bad knee.”

“Go on—tell,” said Loveday.

“Well, ’twas like this: Barker, he was a great lazy fellow what wouldn’t work nor nothing, and he laughed at those that did; and when his father said to him that the buccas put him to shame, he said there wasn’t any, and he said he’d prove it: he’d go to the well where folks said they lived, and where they could hear them working, and he’d listen, and he’d listen, and if he heard them he’d believe in them, but not else. So he went to the well every day, and lay down in the grass close by all day long. And he heard the little buccas as plain as plain; they was digging and shovelling and laughing and talking all the time. But Barker, he wouldn’t tell anybody that he’d heard them, and he went every day and lay down by the well to listen to them, and soon he got to understand their talk, and how long they worked; and when they stopped working they hid away their tools, but they always told where they was going to hide them.”

“That was silly!” said Loveday. “There’s no sense in doing that.”

“Hoosh!” said Aaron nervously; “you’d best be careful what you’m saying. One night Barker heard one little bucca say, ‘I’m going to hide my pick under the ferns.’ ‘I shan’t,’ says another; ‘I shall leave mine on Barker’s knee.’”

“Oh!” gasped Loveday, “then they knew his name. Did they know all the time that he was there listening to them?”

“I reckon so,” said Aaron gravely. “Little people knows everything mostly; that’s why you’ve got to be so careful.”

“Go on,” said Loveday eagerly.

“Well, Barker, he was prettily frightened when he heard that, and he was just going to jump up and run away, when whump! something hit him right on the knee like anything, and oh!” groaned Aaron, his eyes big and round with the excitement of his story, “it ’urt him so he bellowed like a great bull, and he kept on saying, ‘Take ’em away; take them there tools away; take your old pick and shovel off my knee, I tell ’e!’ But the little buccas only laughed, and the more he bellowed, the more they laughed. He tried to get up, but ’twas ever so long before he could, and he had a stiff knee all the rest of his life.”

“Did people know why?” asked Loveday.

“Yes, that they did, and everybody was fine and careful after not to laugh at the buccas, for fear they’d get Barker’s knee too.”

“I think,” said Loveday, “I like the piskies best—I mean, of course, I like the buccas too, but I love the piskies ’cause they come and do nice things to help people, and I love the fairies ’cause they are so pretty.”

“There’s a fairy ring up top cliff,” said Aaron, “where they comes and dances night-times. I’ll show it to you some day.”

“Oh, do!” cried Loveday. “We’ve got one near home, too, but I’ve never seen any fairies near it—have you?”

“No, but I haven’t been out at night, and that’s when they come.”

“Come along, dears; I am ready now,” said Bessie, appearing at the door. “Come in and have a glass of milk and some cake, and then we’ll go and look for crabs and things, shall we?”

Loveday and Aaron were on their feet in a moment.

“I must get my bucket and spade if we are going to get crabs and shells,” said Loveday, and dashed into the house, leaving all her toys scattered on the sand.