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  A CHRISTMAS MORALITY




  [Illustration: Remember my ears are so quick I can hear the grass
  grow. _Frontispiece._]




  [Illustration]

  LITTLE PETER

  A Christmas Morality
  for Children of any Age

  By LUCAS MALET
  AUTHOR OF 'COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE' ETC.

  [Illustration]

  WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS BY PAUL HARDY

  LONDON
  KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
  1888




  TO
  CECILY
  IN TOKEN OF AFFECTION
  TOWARDS HERSELF, HER MOTHER, AND HER STATELY HOME
  THIS LITTLE STORY IS DEDICATED
  BY
  HER OBEDIENT SERVANT

      LUCAS MALET




CONTENTS.


  CHAPTER                                                        PAGE

     I. Which deals with the opinions of a Cat, and the sorrows of
        a Charcoal-burner                                           1

    II. Which introduces the Reader to an Admirer of the Ancient
        Romans                                                     19

   III. Which improves our acquaintance with the Grasshopper-man   36

    IV. Which leaves some at Home, and takes some to Church        50

     V. Which is both Social and Religious                         68

    VI. Which attempts to show why the Skies fall                  84

   VII. Which describes a pleasant Dinner Party, and an
        unpleasant Walk                                            95

  VIII. Which proves that even Philosophic Politicians may
        have to admit themselves in the wrong                     115

    IX. Which is very short because, in some ways, it is rather
        sad                                                       132

     X. Which ends the Story                                      143




_ILLUSTRATIONS._


  'Remember my ears are so quick I can hear
  the grass grow'                                      _Frontispiece_

  'What will happen? please tell me'                  _To face p._ 10

  'Go to bed when you are told'                            "       34

  'You all despise me'                                     "       66

  Going to Church                                          "       72

  Lost                                                     "      110

  Waiting                                                  "      120

  Found                                                    "      138

  The Charcoal-burner visits Little Peter                  "      150




[Illustration: Little Peter.]

CHAPTER I.

WHICH DEALS WITH THE OPINIONS OF A CAT, AND THE SORROWS OF A CHARCOAL
BURNER.


The pine forest is a wonderful place. The pine-trees stand in ranks
like the soldiers of some vast army, side by side, mile after mile, in
companies and regiments and battalions, all clothed in a sober uniform
of green and grey. But they are unlike soldiers in this, that they are
of all ages and sizes; some so small that the rabbits easily jump
over them in their play, and some so tall and stately that the fall
of them is like the falling of a high tower. And the pine-trees are
put to many different uses. They are made into masts for the gallant
ships that sail out and away to distant ports across the great ocean.
Others are sawn into planks, and used for the building of sheds; for
the rafters and flooring, and clap-boards and woodwork of our houses;
for railway-sleepers, and scaffoldings, and hoardings. Others are
polished and fashioned into articles of furniture. Turpentine comes
from them, which the artist uses with his colours, and the doctor in
his medicines; which is used, too, in the cleaning of stuffs and in a
hundred different ways. While the pine-cones, and broken branches and
waste wood, make bright crackling fires by which to warm ourselves on a
winter's day.

But there is something more than just this I should like you to think
about in connection with the pine forest; for it, like everything else
that is fair and noble in nature, has a strange and precious secret of
its own.

You may learn the many uses of the trees in your school books, when
men have cut them down or grubbed them up, or poked holes in their
poor sides to let the turpentine run out. But you can only learn the
secret of the forest itself by listening humbly and reverently for it
to speak to you. For Nature is a very great lady, grander and more
magnificent than all the queens who have lived in sumptuous palaces and
reigned over famous kingdoms since the world began; and though she will
be very kind and gracious to children who come and ask her questions
modestly and prettily, and will show them the most lovely sights and
tell them the most delicious fairy tales that ever were seen or heard,
she makes very short work with conceited and impudent persons. She
covers their eyes and stops their ears, so that they can never see her
wonderful treasures or hear her charming stories, but live, all their
lives long, shut up in the dark fusty cupboard of their own ignorance,
and stupid self-love, and self-satisfaction, thinking they know all
about everything as well as if they had made it themselves, when they
do not really know anything at all. And because you and I dislike fusty
cupboards, and because we want to know anything and everything that
Nature is condescending enough to teach us, we will listen, to begin
with, to what the pine forest has to tell.

When the rough winds are up and at play, and the pine-trees shout and
sing together in a mighty chorus, while the hoarse voice of them is
like the roar of the sea upon a rocky coast, then you may learn the
secret of the forest. It sings first of the winged seed; and then of
the birth of the tiny tree; of sunrise and sunset, and the tranquil
warmth of noon-day, and of the soft, refreshing rain, and the kindly,
nourishing earth, and of the white moonlight, and pale, moist garments
of the mist, all helping the tree to grow up tall and straight, to
strike root deep and spread wide its green branches. It sings, too, of
the biting frost, and the still, dumb snow, and the hurrying storm,
all trying and testing the tree, to prove if it can stand firm and
show a brave face in time of danger and trouble. Then it sings of the
happy spring-time, when the forest is girdled about with a band of
flowers; while the birds build and call to each other among the high
branches; and the squirrel helps his wife to make her snug nest for the
little, brown squirrel-babies that are to be; and the dormice wake up
from their long winter sleep, and sit in the sunshine and comb their
whiskers with their dainty, little paws. And then the forest sings of
man--how he comes with axe and saw, and hammer and iron wedges, and
lays low the tallest of its children, and binds them with ropes and
chains, and hauls them away to be his bond-servants and slaves. And,
last of all, it sings slowly and very gently of old age and decay and
death; of the seed that falls on hard, dry places and never springs up;
of the tree that is broken by the tempest or scathed by the lightning
flash, and stands bare and barren and unsightly; sings how, in the end,
all things shrink and crumble, and how the dust of them returns and is
mingled with the fruitful soil from which at first they came.

This is the song of the pine forest, and from it you may learn this
lesson: that the life of the tree and of beast and bird are subject to
the same three great laws as the life of man--the law of growth, of
obedience, and of self-sacrifice. And perhaps, when you are older, if
you take care to avoid that spirit of conceit and impudence which, as
we have already said, gets people into such trouble with Nature, you
may come to see that these three laws are after all but one, bound for
ever together by the golden cord of love.

Once upon a time, just on the edge of the pine forest, there lived a
little boy. He lived in a big, brown, wooden house, with overhanging
eaves and a very deep roof to it, which swept down from the high 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.

[Illustration: 'WHAT WILL HAPPEN? PLEASE TELL ME.' _Page 10._]

The charcoal-burner stretched out one long arm and pointed away into
the forest, and