The Hawthorns | Page 6

lively imagination often causes them to see danger where there is none. These people do not pass such peaceable lives as the first; but there is this to be remembered: the same nature which is so alive to fear will also be easily touched by praise, or blame, or ridicule, and eager therefore to do its very best. It is what we call a `sensitive' nature, and it is of such stuff very often, that great men and heroes are made."
The children listened very attentively to what their father said, and if they did not understand it all they gathered enough to make them feel quite sure that Ambrose had been very brave about the cow. So they treated him for a little while with a certain respect, and no one said "Ambrose is afraid." As for Ambrose himself, his spirits rose very high, and he began to think he never should feel afraid of anything again, and even to wish for some great occasion to show himself in his new character of "hero." He walked about in rather a blustering manner just now, with his straw hat very much on one side, and brandished a stick the gardener had cut for him in an obtrusively warlike fashion. As he was a small thin boy, these airs looked all the more ridiculous, and his sister Nancy was secretly much provoked by them; however, she said nothing until one evening when Pennie was telling them stories.
The children were alone in the schoolroom, for it was holiday time. It was just seven o'clock. Soon Nurse would come and carry off Dickie and David to bed, but at present they were sitting one each side of Pennie on the broad window-seat, listening to her with open ears and mouths. Nancy and Ambrose were opposite on the table, with their legs swinging comfortably backwards and forwards.
All day long it had been raining, and now, although it had ceased, the shrubs and trees, overladen with moisture, kept up a constant drip, drip, drip, which was almost as bad. The wind had risen, and went sighing and moaning round the house, and shook the windows of the room where the children were sitting. Pennie had just finished a story, and in the short interval of silence which followed, these plaintive sounds were heard more plainly than ever.
"Hark," she said, holding up her finger, "how the Goblin Lady is playing her harp to-night! She has begun early."
"Why does she only play when the wind blows?" asked Ambrose.
"She comes with the wind," answered Pennie, "that is how she travels, as other people use carriages and trains. The little window in the garret is blown open, and she floats in and takes one of those big music-books, and finds out the place, and then sits down to the harp and plays."
"What tune does she play?" asked David.
"By the margin of fair Zurich's waters," answered Pennie; "sometimes she sings too, but not often, because she is very sad."
"Why?" inquired Ambrose, ruffling up his hair with one hand, as he always did when he was getting interested.
Pennie paused a moment that her next remark might have full weight; then very impressively and slowly she said:
"She has not always been a Goblin Lady."
This was so unexpected, and suggested so much to be unfolded, that the children gazed speechless at Pennie, who presently continued:
"Once she was a beautiful--"
"Is she ugly now?" hastily inquired David.
"Don't, Davie; let Pennie go on," said Ambrose.
"I want to know just one thing," put in Nancy; "if it's dark when she comes, how does she see to read the music?"
"She carries glowworms with her," answered Pennie; "they shine just like the lamps in father's gig at night, and light up all the garret."
"Now, go on, Pennie," said Ambrose with a deep sigh, for these interruptions were very trying to him. "Once she was a beautiful--"
"A most beautiful lady, with long golden hair. Only she was very very proud and vain. So after she died she could not rest, but has to go flying about wherever the wind will take her. The only pleasure she has is music, and so she always tries to get in where there is anything to play. That is why she goes so often to the garret and plays the harp."
"Why doesn't she go into the drawing-room and play the piano?" asked Nancy bluntly. Nancy's questions were often very tiresome; she never allowed the least haze or uncertainty to hang over any subject, and Pennie was frequently checked in the full flow of her eloquence by the consciousness that Nancy's eye was upon her, and that she was preparing to put some matter-of-fact inquiry which it would be most difficult to meet.
"There you go, interrupting again," muttered Ambrose.
"Well, but why doesn't she?" insisted Nancy, "it