Us

''Us''

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Title: "Us" An Old Fashioned Story
Author: Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

Release Date: October 27, 2005 [eBook #16954]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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"US"
An Old Fashioned Story
by
MRS MOLESWORTH
Author of "carrots", "cuckoo Clock", etc.
With Illustrations by Walter Crane

[Illustration: IN ANOTHER MOMENT TOBY'S NOSE WAS IN THE BOWL TOO, TO TOBY'S SUPREME CONTENT!--p. 26. _Front_]
[Illustration]
London: MacMillan & Co. Ltd
1899

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE HOW THEY CAME TO BE "US" 1
CHAPTER II.
BREAD AND MILK 20
CHAPTER III.
QUEER VISITORS 40
CHAPTER IV.
BABES IN A WOOD 59
CHAPTER V.
TIM 79
CHAPTER VI.
TOBY AND BARBARA 100
CHAPTER VII.
DIANA'S PROMISE 119
CHAPTER VIII.
NEW HOPES 139
CHAPTER IX.
CROOKFORD FAIR 156
CHAPTER X.
A BOAT AND A BABY 177
CHAPTER XI.
A SAD DILEMMA 197
CHAPTER XII.
GOOD-BYE TO "US" 218

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
IN ANOTHER MOMENT TOBY'S NOSE WAS IN THE BOWL TOO, TO TOBY'S SUPREME CONTENT Front.
FROM BEHIND SOME STUBBLE A FEW YARDS OFF ROSE THE FIGURE OF THE YOUNG BOY WHOM THE CHILDREN HAD SEEN WALKING BEHIND THE GIPSIES--WHISTLING WHILE HE CUT AT A BRANCH HE HELD IN HIS HAND Page 74
"HERE'S SOME SUPPER FOR YOU. WAKE UP, AND TRY AND EAT A BIT. IT'LL DO YOU GOOD" 89
"THEY WANT OUT A BIT," SHE SAID. "THEY'RE TIRED LIKE WITH BEING MEWED UP IN THERE ALL DAY AND NEVER A BREATH OF AIR--NO WONDER" 132
"UPON MY WORD THEY ARE SOMETHING QUITE OUT OF THE COMMON," HE SAID; "I WOULDN'T HAVE MISSED THEM FOR A GOOD DEAL. WHAT A KING AND QUEEN OF THE PIGMIES, OR 'BABES IN THE WOOD,' THEY'D MAKE" 173
"I DO FINK WHEN US IS QUITE BIG AND CAN DO AS US LIKES, US MUST HAVE A BOAT LIKE THIS, AND ALWAYS GO SAILING ALONG" 195

"She is telling them stories of the wood, And the Wolf and Little Red Riding-Hood." _The Golden Legend._
CHAPTER I.
HOW THEY CAME TO BE "US."
"Blue were their eyes as the fairy-flax, Their cheeks like the dawn of day." LONGFELLOW.
A soft rather shaky sort of tap at the door. It does not all at once reach the rather deaf ears of the little old lady and tall, still older gentleman who are seated in their usual arm-chairs, one with his newspaper by the window, the other with her netting by the fire, in the exceedingly neat--neat, indeed, is no word for it--"parlour" of Arbitt Lodge. In what part of the country this queerly-named house was--is still, perhaps--to be found there is no particular reason for telling; whence came this same queer name will be told in good time. The parlour suited its name anyway better far than it would that of "drawing-room," which would be given it nowadays. There was a round table in the middle; there were high-backed mahogany chairs against the wall, polished by age and careful rubbing to that stage of dark shininess which makes even mahogany pleasant to the eye, and with seats of flowering silk damask whose texture must have been very good to be so faded without being worn; there were spindle-legged side-tables holding inlaid "papier-mach��" desks and rose-wood work-boxes, and two or three carved cedar or sandal-wood cases of various shapes. And, most tempting of all to my mind, there were glass-doored cupboards in the wall, with great treasures of handleless teacups and very fat teapots, not to speak of bowls and jugs of every form and size; and everything, from the Indian box with the ivory chessmen to the china Turk with his long pipe of green spun-glass, sitting cross-legged on the high mantelpiece between a very sentimental lady and gentleman, also of china, who occupied its two ends,--everything was exactly and precisely in its own place, in what had been its own place ever since the day, now more than thirty years ago, when Grandpapa, the tall old gentleman, had retired from the army on half-pay and come to settle down at Arbitt Lodge for the rest of his life with Grandmamma and their son Marmaduke. A very small Marmaduke, for he was the only one left of a pretty flock who, one after the other, had but hovered down into the world for a year or two to spread their tiny wings and take flight again, leaving two desolate hearts behind them. And in this same parlour at Arbitt Lodge had that little Marmaduke learned to walk, and then to run, to gaze with