The Girls Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886 | Page 8

is very unsuitable, Fairy, and I think it is a pity you cut up that quilt for it; but come and help me to finish this smock, you idle child, do."
"That dreadful smock! and I know Jack will never, never, never put it on, though we have pricked our fingers over it for weeks. And John will be angry, and insist, and Jack will be in a passion, and refuse, and instead of having a nice happy birthday, poor old Jack will be miserable. Mother, let's give him the smock to-night, and have the row over before to-morrow. Run and get me my thimble, Charlie, please, and Willie, thread my needle for me, and I'll soon help mother to finish this ugly smock," said Fairy, seating herself with a business-like air as she folded up the shaving-case in some silk paper.
"Well, it is not a bad plan, Fairy; we will give Jack the smock when he comes in this evening," said Mrs. Shelley.
"Yes; and I'll keep my present till to-morrow, and that will put him in a good temper, before we start for our picnic," said Fairy, stitching away with great energy. An hour later, just as the smock was finished and the boys were gone to get tea ready, the shepherd entered at the gate carrying a quantity of wheatears threaded on crow-quills. He looked vexed, and Mrs. Shelley, who could read her husband's face like a book, asked what was the matter.
"Why, again Jack has forgotten to attend to those traps for the wheatears; when I did them myself I caught a hundred in one day; now I leave them to him I get perhaps eighteen to twenty, because he is too lazy to dig out the turf and make the traps properly; here are only ten brace this evening, and they are as plentiful as sparrows just now."
"John, you are a greedy man, and Jack is not lazy; he does not approve of killing birds; he thinks it is cruel, that is why he has not seen to the traps, so you must not scold him about it, will you?" said Fairy, looking up into the shepherd's grave face, as she stroked the white breasts of the wheatears.
"You had better see to the traps yourself, John; there is always a fuss about them every summer since you gave them to Jack to attend to. You know, as Fairy says, he is so fond of birds, and he knows so much about them too, that he can't bear snaring them."
"Knows so much about them! I should think he did. Why Mr. Leslie says if Jack had only the means of getting himself some good books, he would be a first-rate ornithologist, which means a man learned in birds, John," said Fairy.
She had always called the shepherd John since she could speak, and Mrs. Shelley and John were quite content that she should do so, as he was not her father, though Fairy persisted in calling his wife mother, to Mrs. Shelley's secret joy. They were both greatly attached to their foster-daughter; as for the shepherd, he never contradicted her in anything, and though over-strict as his wife thought with his own boys, he never seemed to think Fairy could do wrong, and had never been heard even to rebuke her in the mildest way since he found her; and when Mrs. Shelley remonstrated with him, as she sometimes did, he excused himself by saying she was not his own child, so he did not feel the same responsibility about her.
Luckily for Fairy, Mrs. Shelley did not humour her and look upon her with the same excessive admiration the shepherd and the boys did; they regarded her as a superior being, and thought her way of queening it over them perfectly right and natural. Mrs. Shelley loved the child she had been a mother to tenderly, and was proud of her beauty and cleverness, and yet, while she constantly impressed on her boys that Fairy was a lady by birth and therefore in a very different position to any of them, and, moreover, might any day be claimed by her own parents and taken into her own sphere, she insisted on the same obedience from her as she expected from her own children.
"Jack had far better become a man learned in sheep than in birds, seeing he is to be a shepherd. I can't see the use of all the learning Jack gets hold of; it can't do him any good," said the shepherd.
"Oh! you dear, good old shepherd, I believe you think the world was made for sheep, and shepherds the only useful people in it," exclaimed Fairy.
"I think if Jack learns his business and his Bible and Prayer-book, he will do very well without any other learning.