The Ship of Stars | Page 7

years. But Squire Moyle may do something now.
He's a rich man."
"Is that the old gentleman who came to ask father about his soul?"
"Yes; he says no preaching ever did him so much good as your father's.
That's why he came and offered the living."
"But he can't go to heaven if he's rich."
"I don't know, Taffy, wherever you pick up such wicked thoughts."
"Why, it's in the Bible!"
Humility would not argue about it; but she told her husband that night
what the child had said. "My dear," he answered, "the boy must think
of these things."
"But he ought not to be talking disrespectfully," contended she.
One Tuesday, towards the end of September, Taffy saw his father off
by Joby's van; and the Friday after, walked down with his mother to
meet him on his return. Almost at once the household began to pack.
The packing went on for a week, in the midst of which his father
departed again, a waggon-load of books and furniture having been sent

forward on the road that same morning. Then followed a day or two
during which Taffy and his mother took their meals at the window-seat,
sitting on corded boxes; and an evening when he went out to the
cannon in the square, and around the little back garden, saying
good-bye to the fixtures and the few odds and ends which were to be
left behind--the tool-shed (Crusoe's hut, Cave of Adullam, and
Treasury of the Forty Thieves), the stunted sycamore-tree which he had
climbed at different times as Zacchaeus, Ali Baba, and Man Friday
with the bear behind him; the clothes' prop, which, on the strength of its
forked tail, had so often played Dragon to his St. George. When he
returned to the empty house, he found his mother in the passage. She
had been for a walk alone. The candle was lit, and he saw she had been
crying. This told him where she had been; for, although he remembered
nothing about it, he knew he had once possessed a small sister, who
lived with him less than two months. He had, as a rule, very definite
notions of death and the grave; but he never thought of her as dead and
buried, partly because his mother would never allow him to go with her
to the cemetery, and partly because of a picture in a certain book of his,
called Child's Play. It represented a little girl wading across a pool
among water-lilies. She wore a white nightdress, kilted above her knees,
and a dark cloak, which dragged behind in the water. She let it trail,
while she held up a hand to cover one of her eyes. Above her were trees
and an owl, and a star shining under the topmost branch; and on the
opposite page this verse:
"I have a little sister, They call her Peep-peep, She wades through the
waters, Deep, deep, deep; She climbs up the mountains, High, high,
high; This poor little creature She has but one eye."
For years Taffy believed that this was his little sister, one-eyed, and
always wandering; and that his mother went out in the dusk to persuade
her to return; but she never would.
When he woke next morning his mother was in the room; and while he
washed and dressed she folded his bed-clothes and carried them down
to a waggon which stood by the door, with horses already harnessed. It
drove away soon after. He found breakfast laid on the window-seat. A

neighbour had lent the crockery, and Taffy was greatly taken with the
pattern on the cups and saucers. He wanted to run round again and
repeat his good-byes to the house, but there was no time. By-and-by the
door opened, and two men, neighbours of theirs, entered with an
invalid's litter; and, Humility directing, brought down old Mrs. Venning.
She wore the corner of a Paisley shawl over her white cap, and carried
a nosegay of flowers in place of her lace-pillow; but otherwise looked
much as usual.
"Quite the traveller, you see!" she cried gaily to Taffy.
Then the woman who had lent the breakfast-ware came running to say
that Joby was getting impatient. Humility handed the door-key to her,
and so the little procession passed out and down across Mount Folly.
Joby had drawn his van up close to the granite steps. They were the
only passengers, it seemed. The invalid was hoisted in and laid with her
couch across the seats, so that her shoulders rested against one side of
the van and her feet against the other. Humility climbed in after her; but
Taffy, to his joy, was given a seat outside the box.
"C'k!"--they were off.
As they crawled up the street a few