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THE BOY FROM GREEN GINGER LAND




[Illustration: QUITE A LITTLE CROWD GATHERED TO WATCH MICKY.]




                           THE BOY FROM GREEN
                               GINGER LAND

                                   BY
                            E. VAUGHAN-SMITH
                     AUTHOR OF ‘CRAGS OF DUTY,’ ETC.

                               Illustrated

                                 LONDON
                    WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO., LTD.
                       PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C.

                             [Illustration]

                        PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
                   WELLS GARDNER, DARTON AND CO., LTD.




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                                  PAGE

       I. THREE CHILDREN AND A DOG                              1

      II. FIR-TREE COTTAGE                                     11

     III. THE FEUDAL CASTLE                                    24

      IV. SUNDAY                                               40

       V. A VISIT TO MARY                                      49

      VI. DIAMOND JUBILEE JONES                                58

     VII. TRIALS OF PHILANTHROPY                               71

    VIII. DIAMOND JUBILEE’S SUPPER                             89

      IX. BAD NEWS                                            105

       X. OMNIBUS NUTS                                        122

      XI. THE SPARE ROOM BLANKETS                             135

     XII. TROUBLES                                            151

    XIII. GONE!                                               167

     XIV. GREEN GINGER LAND                                   186

      XV. MICKY AT THE FAIR                                   201

     XVI. EMMELINE TALKS THINGS OVER                          215

    XVII. DIAMOND JUBILEE IS ADOPTED FOR THE SECOND TIME      235




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

    ‘QUITE A LITTLE CROWD GATHERED TO WATCH MICKY.’

    ‘KITTY GAVE SUCH A BOUND OF DELIGHT THAT SHE NEARLY UPSET HER TEA.’

    ‘IT WAS LOCKED AND BOLTED, TOP AND BOTTOM.’

    ‘“OH, WHAT _SHALL_ WE DO?” SHE SOBBED.’




THE BOY FROM GREEN GINGER LAND




CHAPTER I

THREE CHILDREN AND A DOG


‘Emmeline, it’s your turn to choose a game to-day. What story shall we
do?’

‘No, Micky; it’s your turn,’ put in his twin sister Kitty. ‘Emmeline
chose the day before yesterday.’

‘I know it’s my turn really, Kitty, but gentlemen always let ladies
choose,’ said eight-year-old Micky with dignity. ‘I’d very much _advise_
“Swiss Family Robinson,” because it seems such a splendid opportunity,
now the curtain-rods are down, to use the short ones as sugar-canes;
and Mary’s so sorry we’re going away to-morrow that she won’t be cross
even if the paint does get a little kicked off the bath when it’s being
wrecked.’

‘Micky, I think it’s horrid of you to talk of Mary’s being sorry like
that,’ said Emmeline—‘just as if you didn’t care a bit about our having
to leave the home of a lifetime, and the only real friend who has been
with us since we were babies, to go and live with an aunt who doesn’t
care for us!’

‘How do you know Aunt Grace doesn’t care for us? She’s always very jolly
when she comes here, and she never forgets birthdays,’ said Micky, who
had a sense of justice. ‘She sends such sensible things, too—postal
orders, or steam-engines that really work, or real good books of
adventure. _She_ never gives you poetry-books.’ This last was a sore
point with Micky just then, for his godmother had recently presented him
with a gilt-edged volume of ‘The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth,’
for which he had been expected to write a laborious round-hand letter of
thanks.

‘Presents are all very well, but they don’t prove that a person loves
you,’ said Emmeline; ‘and as to her being jolly when she comes here, she
never stays more than a day or two at a time, and always seems in a great
hurry to get back to London again. Do you think, if she had really cared
anything about us, she would have left us a whole year after darling
mother died before offering to come and look after us?’

This was rather out of Micky’s depth, so he prudently changed the
subject. ‘Well, let’s get started with the game,’ he said, ‘else we
shall have to get tidy for tea before we’ve even been properly wrecked.’

But Emmeline was not to be put off so easily. ‘Micky,’ she demanded
solemnly, ‘how can you be so taken up with story-games when we’re as good
as _living_ a story ourselves?’

The twins’ eyes sparkled. Anything savouring of romance was as the breath
of life to them, and Emmeline was really rather impressive when she
talked in that grave way.

‘How do you mean?’ asked Kitty, eagerly.

‘Why, what I have just been saying,’ replied Emmeline. ‘Here are we,
three orphans, left to the care of a worldly aunt——’

‘But are you quite sure she’s worldly?’ asked Kitty, looking alarmed.
Kitty was not altogether clear what ‘worldly’ meant, but from the way
Emmeline pronounced the word it sounded like something very bad.

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Emmeline. ‘I remember once, when mother and I spent
a night with her in London, and she and her friend kept talking about a
ball they had just been to.’

‘But balls aren’t wrong, are they?’ asked Kitty. Emmeline was twelve, and
Kitty regarded as a great authority on all questions of morals.

‘I don’t know that they’re exactly wrong,’ acknowledged Emmeline, ‘but
they are a great waste of time. When I’m grown up I never mean to go to
them, but shall spend all my time working for the poor. Besides, it isn’t
only her going to balls that makes me think Aunt Grace worldly, but the
way she dresses and—everything. I quite expect that when we know more of
her we shall find her just like one of the fine ladies one reads of in
books.’

‘Will she be cruel to us, do you suppose?’ asked Kitty with zest. She did
not really believe that merry, good-natured Aunt Grace could be cruel,
any more than she really, at the bottom of her heart, believed in a
romance of Micky’s about a certain blood-thirsty burglar who lived in the
spare-room wardrobe, but it made life more exciting to pretend to herself
that she did.

‘Of course not. What a silly question, Kitty!’ exclaimed Emmeline
impatiently. ‘I dare say she will be too busy with parties and so on
to bother herself much about us, but she’ll be quite kind—at least,
to us. Punch is the only one I feel at all doubtful about.’ She flung
herself down on to the hearthrug, and rested her head against that of a
fox-terrier who was lying there half asleep, and who gave a little growl
of remonstrance at being disturbed. ‘We hadn’t got him when she was here
last, you see, so we can’t tell what she’ll think of him. I shouldn’t
a bit wonder if she didn’t let us bring him to Woodsleigh, or even if
she does, she’ll keep him chained up all day, poor darling! People who
think much about clothes never do like dogs, except just silly little toy
things.’

Micky and Kitty broke out together in a chorus of indignation and horror.

‘If they are so horrid as to chain Punch up in the kennel all day I shall
jolly well stay out with him and keep him company!’ shouted Micky.

‘Oh, Emmeline, you don’t really think there’s any danger of Aunt Grace
not letting darling Punch come?’ said Kitty, almost in tears.

‘Well, I hope not,’ said Emmeline; ‘anyhow I’ve written to her about
it, so till we’ve had time to get her answer there’s no use worrying
any more.’ There was not, but the very suggestion that Punch might have
to be left behind had cast a gloom upon the party—a gloom which did not
altogether lift even when the brilliant idea struck Micky that the brooms
in the housemaid’s cupboard, if placed upside down and balanced against
the wall, would make excellent palm-trees for the Robinsons’ desert
island.

On the whole, Emmeline was the happiest of the three just then, for,
grieved as she was at leaving Mary and possibly Punch, the prospect of
going to live with her aunt was not altogether without its secret charm
for her. The good little girl who had such a beautiful influence on her
worldly relations played a prominent part in several of her favourite
books, and it was that part which Emmeline pictured herself playing with
regard to Aunt Grace. She would have been ashamed to express this idea
in so many words even to herself, far more to the twins, but it none the
less reconciled her a good deal to the new life which lay before them.

Emmeline Bolton had always been a child of the type whose virtue
specially appeals to nurses. All the grown-up people, indeed, who had
ever been brought much into contact with her agreed in considering her a
very good girl. In some respects she deserved their favourable opinion,
for she was truthful, obedient, and conscientious by nature, but perhaps
the fact that she had never been very strong had more to do with her
reputation for goodness than she herself or anyone else quite realised.

The child lived in an atmosphere of warm and constant approval which was
not altogether wholesome. Such had been the state of affairs two years
ago, when all three children had fallen ill of measles. Micky and Kitty
had had the disease lightly, but with Emmeline it took a serious form.
For two days and nights she had lain delirious, and there came a moment
when Mary, believing her to be unconscious, had sobbed out to the trained
nurse: ‘I always had a feeling that the dear child was too sweet and good
to be long for this world!’

This presentiment proved a groundless one. As Emmeline grew better the
words which she had heard in her half-delirious state came back to her,
and she dwelt on them constantly. Just at first they frightened her a
little, but when she had become quite strong and well again she ceased to
be alarmed, and only felt pleasantly elated at being too good to be long
for this world. It almost—though not quite—made up for having straight
brown hair and a pale peaked face instead of golden curls and glowing
cheeks like the twins, who were so pretty that people in the street
sometimes turned round to look after them.

If Emmeline’s mother had lived she would probably have perceived that
the child was in grave danger of growing into a little Pharisee, and she
might have done something to check it, but she had become very ill almost
as soon as the children had recovered from the measles, and had died
less than a year later. After her death the children had gone on living
at the old home at Eastwich, a great East Anglian town, under the joint
charge of Mary and Miss Rogers, their daily governess. The arrangement
was never intended to be more than a temporary one, for their aunt, Miss
Bolton, who was also their guardian, wished them to go and live with her
at Woodsleigh, a place some twelve miles distant from Eastwich, as soon
as she regained possession of a cottage there, which had been left her
by her father, but let for several years past. Mary was to go to her own
home to keep house for a brother, so that to-morrow, when her children,
as she always called them, went to begin their new life with Aunt Grace,
she would have to be left behind at Eastwich