The very next Sunday afternoon Albert Joseph and Lily started together, hand-in-hand, to go to the Sunday-school. Old Grumpy felt very lonely when they were gone. She could not read, and Sunday had always been a long day to her before Lily came to her. But since Lily came, they had walked together on Sunday afternoons in the fields outside the town, and it had been a happy time for Old Grumpy. Now she felt restless and discontented and almost wished she had not let the child go; but because she had seemed so pleased about it, Old Grumpy felt she could not have disappointed her. So she sat watching the clock and counting the minutes till Lily’s return.
The old woman felt quite rewarded for sparing the child when she saw her bright, happy little face as she ran into the room eager to tell of her adventures.
“Oh, Grum, Grum,” she said, “dear old Grum. I wish you were a little girl, and could come with me.”
“Was it so nice, my bairn?” said the old woman.
“Yes, Grum; I’m going to tell you all about it,” said the child seating herself on a stool at the old woman’s feet. And taking both her thin wrinkled old hands, she kissed them, and then she put them on her little pale cheeks and made them stroke her face, again and again.
“It was about a garden, Grum, such a pretty garden, prettier than the garden of that big house near the cemetery where you and me peeped through the gate. ’Cause I asked teacher, and she said it was.”
“Did she?” said the old woman smiling at the child’s bright face.
“Yes, and prettier, too,” said Lily. “Lovely, Grum! Lots of flowers, and trees, and grass. Oh, Grum, wouldn’t you like to have walked in it? Well, there were only two people in it, and it all belonged to them. They could walk about and eat the fruit, and pick the flowers, not just the daisies off the grass, Grum, but the roses and all the flowers—teacher said so!”
“It was Adam and Eve, I should think,” said the old woman.
“Why, Grum,” said the child, “were you listening at the door? I never saw you.”
“No, but I heard it once before,” said Old Grumpy, “maybe when I was a young ’un at school.”
“Well, they were so happy,” said Lily, “and God used to come and walk with them every evening in the garden and talk to them. Wasn’t that nice, Grum? If He came here, and walked in Ivy Court, I’d ask Him about my mother. He never comes now, does He, Grum?”
“No, my lamb, He never comes now.”
“But He came and talked to Adam and Eve. Wasn’t it nice? But something dreadful came next, Grum,” said Lily, lowering her voice. “Oh, dear, it was such a pity. There was a tree in the middle of the garden, and God told them not to touch its fruit; it was the only tree they weren’t to touch, and they went and ate some. Wasn’t it dreadful, Grum? And then God turned them out.”
“Did He, my pet? Yes, I believe He did,” said the old woman trying to recall the lessons she had learned in the workhouse school.
“Yes, He turned them out,” said Lily sadly, “because they were bad, and all their boys and girls were bad after that, and all the people in the world were bad; and we’re bad too, Grum.”
“Not so very bad my bairn, not so very bad; not you and me!”
“Yes, we are, Grum,” said Lily jumping up, “teacher said so. And God won’t have us in heaven if we’re bad like we are now. Teacher said that too. What did teacher mean, Grum?”
“I don’t know, my darling. Come and get your tea,” said the old woman glad to change the subject.
“Grum,” said Lily suddenly as she was eating her bread and butter. “What’s a skellington?”
“I don’t know; I’m sure,” said the old woman laughing. “I never heard of such a thing.”
“‘Cause Joel was talking about a skellington today,” said the child.
“Joel talks a lot of nonsense,” said Old Grumpy scornfully. “He’s always talking some sort of rubbish to that ugly old cat of his.”
“It wasn’t the cat he was talking to,” said the child. “It was Mrs. McKay. When me and Albert Joseph was coming home they was talking together, and Joel, he pointed at me, Grum, and he said I was as thin as a skellington.”
“Joel had better mind his own business,” said the old woman sharply. “Don’t you go and listen to what Joel says. He doesn’t know, a silly old fellow like him! A skeleton indeed! What nonsense!”
Nevertheless, she looked at the child very anxiously, more anxiously and carefully than she had ever done before. Yes, she was thin, very, very thin; the old woman was forced to acknowledge this in spite of herself.
“But you always were thin, you know,” she said as she took the child on her knee, “always a little thing, you were! And it’s a deal prettier, too, to be thin, than to be a great fat thing like them little Perkinses, with arms and legs like roly-poly puddings; and I’ve heard folks say that it’s a deal healthier, too. So Joel may say what he likes. You and me don’t care about him: Do we, my beauty?”
Thus the old woman tried to lull her fears to rest. But when Lily was in bed, and the candle was put out, she sat beside her, watching her very anxiously by the flickering light of the fire.
There was a clock in the room—an old-fashioned wooden timepiece, which stood on the mantelshelf, and which Old Grumpy had bought for a very small sum at an auction in Ivy Court. She and Lily had gone to the sale together, and Lily had much admired this clock for it had a grand wreath of flowers round the face, so the old woman had bought it to please the child. It kept very bad time and was always a few hours too slow; but that did not matter to Old Grumpy, for the church clock was so near that it could be heard by night, and both heard and seen by day. The clock on the mantelshelf was a pretty ornament, and her child liked it, and the ticking that it made was a very soothing sound when they were in bed at night.
But this Sunday evening the clock on the mantelshelf seemed to speak. As the pendulum swung backwards and forwards, it seemed to be repeating over and over again the child’s words: “A—skel—ling—ton,—a—skel—ling—ton.—He—said—I—was—a—skel—ling—ton!”
And so it went on, the same words repeated so often that Old Grumpy’s head ached with the sound.
She felt angry and impatient. Why was not her little girl as strong and healthy looking as the McKays or Perkinses? Why did not God Almighty make her so? They had plenty of children; she had only this one.
Old Grumpy felt angry with God. She knew very little about Him, but she knew that health and strength are His gifts. Why then did He not give them to her darling? She felt angry, too, with herself that she had not noticed before how thin and delicate her child was, that she had not watched her more carefully, and that she had not kept her indoors when the wind was cold and fed her with more strengthening things. But, most of all, she felt angry with old Joel. He had never liked her, never been friendly to her; she and Joel had always “had words” together, and no doubt he was glad her child was like a skeleton. He was an ill-natured, cross, disagreeable old man, was old Joel.
Such were Old Grumpy’s thoughts when they were disturbed by the sound of a man’s step on the staircase. Who could it be? She opened her door cautiously, and she saw, standing before it, the very last person she expected to see. It was old Joel himself.
It was the very first time he had come to Old Grumpy’s room, and she was not at all prepared to give him a welcome. She felt very much inclined to shut the door in his face without waiting to hear what he had to say. But perhaps it would be a good opportunity to tell him to mind his own business and not to chatter and gossip about her child again.