OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 852, 29 June 1888, Page 6

OUR BOYS & GIRLS.

THE LITTLE GENTLEMEN.

(by lord brabourne.)

' • It was. a cold morning. A few days before the clouds, after looking black and heavy for some time, as if they meant mischief, had • made up their mind that the world below ! wa a looking too green, and that a clothing of White should be laid upon it without further ' delay; ~ So they had let loose the snow which they had long ago stored up for the purpose, and it had fallen steadily upon tho earth until every thing that had been green was hidden and covered up beneath the snowflakes. ! Then the clouds were satisfied, and left off : sending the snow down. The sun shone out and melted it as fast ps it oould, and there would soou have been a green world again if old Father Frost had not interfered. He did so, however, and the sun could not break through the hard coat which he put upon tho snow, so that instead of melting away, it stayed upon the ground, and continued to cover the fields aud the trees, whilst the wind came straight from the north to help the irost to turn the Bnow into ice, and keep the covering tight over the

green world beneath. Cold indeed it was, and little Ella could hardly keep herself warm as Bhe trudged briskly along with her little basket on her arm, and her red cloak wrapped closely round her shoulders to keep off the north wind as well as it could. She was but a small creature to face the wind and cold, but she Was obliged to do so, for how else would her father, old Jasper the woodcutter, get the dinner which she was carrying to him ; and to which, no doubt, ho was looking forward with a pleasure to which the sight of his dearly beloved daughter would have given rise, even if she came empty handed, but which was certainly increased by the knowledge that she brought with her that which would satisfy the appetite which his morning’s work had bestowed upon the worthy old wood-cutter. Cutting down trees in the forest is probably au employment which becomes dull after a certain time, and the dinner-hour which breaks iu upon the work is not the least pleasant time of the workman’s day, especially when the meal is brought to him by his only daughter, which was to be the case with our friend Jasper to-day. He was a quiet, honest man, who lived in a small cottage not far from the forsst in which he worked, and had neither chick nor child belonging to him save his Ella. For you could not call his old sister Christina either a chick or a child, seeing that she was six feet high without her great wooden shoes, which raised her position in the world several inches, and although nobody knew her age, which she had stated to be forty for so many years that she probably believed it, yet she was certainly long past the age of childhood, and had ceased growing for a good while. She was a masterful woman, was aunt Christina, and neither Ella nor her father ever thought of disobeying her for a moment. She had come to live with them when Ella was very little—so little that she did not remember anything that had happened before, aud her own mother was only like a shadow to her ; she coulc not. remomber anything excepting that someone had smiled upon her as only a mother can smile up n a child ; and the mother’s smile of love is the earliest memory of almost every child. Ella’s mother had died when the girl was very young, and aunt Christina had come to live with her brother very soon afterwards. She had had her troubles, poor woman, for she had lost her husband and two sons, and was left alone in the world. This, most likely, was what made her so dull and melancholy, which she certainly was, and it was not easy to be cheerful and lively in her company, for she had a kill-joy look upon her countenance, which, added to tho effect of the dingy blaok dress which she always wore, made her anything but a pleasant companion to those who desired to be gay. So little Ella was not very Borry to slip away from aunt Tina whenever a favourable opportunity occurred, and none could be more favourable than the occasions on which her father’s work was too far off to enable him to come home to dinnsr, but near enough to make it convenient that his daughter should carry it out to him. On this particular day she had set out with great glee, and enjoyed the thought of walking along over the crisp snow, and under the big trees of the forest, more beautiful than ever with their ornaments of frozen snowflakes which hung down from every branch. You may well believe that it was not a very sumptuous repast which Ella had to convey to her father. Woodcutters are not as a rule rich people, and Jasper was no exception to the ordinary lot of his race. Bread and cheese was all he could expect for dinner to-day, and bread and cheese it was which Ella had inside that basket on her arm, with just one bottle of beer with which to wash down the dinner which the good man was beginning to expect with some anxiety. There was a large hunch of bread and cheese for her father, aud a smaller portion for Ella ; and I dare say they oould have managed to get through twice as much if they had had it. They were obliged to be content, however, with what they had, and their forest dinners were usually merry meals, for the father and daughter dearly loved each other, and were always happy when together. So Ella pushed gaily forward on her way, knowing that her father would be expecting her. and not wishing to keep him waiting longer than she oould help. Somehow or other, however, she had not entered the forest quite at the same place as usual, and, whether she was confused or not by the dazzling snow, I do not know, but she found that she was not walking along any regular path, but going rather at random beneath the great trees, though alwayß in the direction in which she knew her father to bo at work. Presently she came to a very large oak-tree, the size of whose roots and branches, and the width of whose trunk showed it to be a tree which had been for ages in the forest and was probably one of the very oldest of all the trees it contained. Ella glanced up at the big brjnches over'her head as sho stood for a moment be* neath this tree, and being rather out of breath after her fight with the wind, she heaved a little sigh as she exclaimed, * Oh dear me, how cold it is, and I don’t seem to be in the right path at all. I hope I sha nt keep father waiting too long for his dinner I To her great surprise, those last words were no sooner out of her mouth than they were repeated by another voice, and not only that, but by a chorus of other voices, just as if there had been a number of different echoes, each trying which could Bay the words most like the tone in which the little girl had uttered them# 4 His dinner I* 1 Mis dinner ! • His dinner T they cried, and then the

voices stopped as suddenly as they had begun. Ella started back in tho greatest astonishment. Whose were these voices ? Where did they come from ? She could not answer either the one question or the other, and for a moment thought that she must be in a dream. She took a step forward, therefore, as,if to make sure that this was nob the case, an d as she did so, she spoke again and said, ‘ I must make haste, anyhow, or I shall never, get to father.’ ‘ Never get to father !’ directly shouted another voice, and again the words were taken up all round, and * Never get to father 1’ rang iu the child’s ears as if repeated by at least twenty people in shrill but not unpleasant tones, and Ella began to feel rather frightened. She summoned up all her courage, however, and said in as firm a tone as she could, * I don t know who says my words after me, but there's no harm in them, I hope, and I must get to father !’ ‘ Must get to father !’ rang out immediately from twenty voiceo, and a perfect scream of laughter followed, which astonished the child still more. Not so much, however, as the next thing which happened. All of a sudden a number of queer little men apDeared on all sides. Some dropped down from the branches, some seemed to spring up from the ground and others to come out of the very trunk of the old oak ; but at any rate, wherever they came from, there they certainly were, and as comical looking little figures as anybody ever beheld. None of them could have been more than three feet high at the most, their arms were very lon° in proportion to their bodies, their legs were bent iu a moat extraordinary fashion, and their heads were of a curious shape ; more like that of an apple-dumpling than anything else I can think of just now. Rut the queerest thing of all was the expression of their faces, which was a mixture of fun, drollery and mischief, which no painter could, have put on canvas, and no words can fitly describe. Their eyes winked and twinkled again with mirth—the very wrinkles on their foreheads seemed to carry a joke with them, the way in which their noses twisted and. turned was beyond measure ludicrous, and their chins wagged in a manner so quaint as would have set the gravest judge off into a laugh in spite of himself. These strange little creatures had uo sooner appeared to the eyes of the astonished child than they began to hop and skip, and dance about her as if they had all gone mad, snapping_ their fingers as they did / so, and indulging in repeated bursts of laughter. (To be continued)