IT was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe, nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a small girl, and a smaller girl, and a small boy. An aunt belonging to the children occupied one corner seat, and the further corner seat on the opposite side was occupied by a bachelor who was a stranger to their party, but the small girls and the small boy emphatically occupied the compartment. Both the aunt and the children were conversational in a limited, persistent way, reminding one of the attentions of a housefly that refuses to be discouraged. Most of the aunt's remarks seemed to begin with "Don't," and nearly all of the children's remarks began with "Why?"The bachelor said nothing out loud. "Don't, Cyril, don't," exclaimed the aunt, as the small boy began smacking the cushions of the seat, producing a cloud of dust at each blow.
"Come and look out of the window," she added.
The child moved reluctantly to the window. "Why are those sheep being driven out of that field?" he asked.
"I expect they are being driven to another field where there is more grass," said the aunt weakly.
"But there is lots of grass in that field,"
protested the boy; "there's nothing else but grass there.
Aunt, there's lots of grass in that field."
"Perhaps the grass in the other field is better,"suggested the aunt fatuously.
"Why is it better?" came the swift, inevitable question.
"Oh, look at those cows!" exclaimed the aunt.
Nearly every field along the line had contained cows or bullocks, but she spoke as though she were drawing attention to a rarity.
"Why is the grass in the other field better?"persisted Cyril.
The frown on the bachelor's face was deepening to a scowl. He was a hard, unsympathetic man, the aunt decided in her mind. She was utterly unable to come to any satisfactory decision about the grass in the other field.
The smaller girl created a diversion by beginning to recite "On the Road to Mandalay." She only knew the first line, but she put her limited knowledge to the fullest possible use. She repeated the line over and over again in a dreamy but resolute and very audible voice; it seemed to the bachelor as though some one had had a bet with her that she could not repeat the line aloud two thousand times without stopping. Whoever it was who had made the wager was likely to lose his bet.
"Come over here and listen to a story," said the aunt, when the bachelor had looked twice at her and once at the communication cord.
The children moved listlessly towards the aunt's end of the carriage. Evidently her reputation as a story-teller did not rank high in their estimation.
In a low, confidential voice, interrupted at frequent intervals by loud, petulant questionings from her listeners, she began an unenterprising and deplorably uninteresting story about a little girl who was good, and made friends with every one on account of her goodness, and was finally saved from a mad bull by a number of rescuers who admired her moral character.
"Wouldn't they have saved her if she hadn't been good?" demanded the bigger of the small girls. It was exactly the question that the bachelor had wanted to ask.
"Well, yes," admitted the aunt lamely, "but I don't think they would have run quite so fast to her help if they had not liked her so much.""It's the stupidest story I've ever heard," said the bigger of the small girls, with immense conviction.
"I didn't listen after the first bit, it was so stupid," said Cyril.
The smaller girl made no actual comment on the story, but she had long ago recommenced a murmured repetition of her favourite line.
"You don't seem to be a success as a story-teller,"said the bachelor suddenly from his corner.
The aunt bristled in instant defence at this unexpected attack.
"It's a very difficult thing to tell stories that children can both understand and appreciate," she said stiffly.
"I don't agree with you," said the bachelor.
"Perhaps you would like to tell them a story," was the aunt's retort.
"Tell us a story," demanded the bigger of the small girls.
"Once upon a time," began the bachelor, "there was a little girl called Bertha, who was extra-ordinarily good."The children's momentarily-aroused interest began at once to flicker; all stories seemed dreadfully alike, no matter who told them.
"She did all that she was told, she was always truthful, she kept her clothes clean, ate milk puddings as though they were jam tarts, learned her lessons perfectly, and was polite in her manners.""Was she pretty?" asked the bigger of the small girls.
"Not as pretty as any of you," said the bachelor, "but she was horribly good."There was a wave of reaction in favour of the story;the word horrible in connection with goodness was a novelty that commended itself. It seemed to introduce a ring of truth that was absent from the aunt's tales of infant life.
"She was so good," continued the bachelor, "that she won several medals for goodness, which she always wore, pinned on to her dress. There was a medal for obedience, another medal for punctuality, and a third for good behaviour. They were large metal medals and they clicked against one another as she walked. No other child in the town where she lived had as many as three medals, so everybody knew that she must be an extra good child.""Horribly good," quoted Cyril.
