Part 9 (1/2)
”Once upon a time,” said the Sun, ”there was a meadow surrounded by a flint walk, where I caused the b.u.t.tercups to s.h.i.+ne like burnished gold, and where the gra.s.s was high and green and as long as the pony and the donkey who inhabited the meadow would allow it to be. Here and there was a cowslip; while near the house were hen-coops with old hens in them whose anxious heads protruded through the bars querulously shouting instructions to their fluffy children.
”Such,” said the Sun, ”was the meadow, which was interesting to me chiefly because it was the playground of a small but very vigorous and restless boy named n.o.bby, whose merry inquiring face it gave me peculiar pleasure to tan and to freckle.
”A small boy can do,” said the Sun, ”a thousand things in a meadow like this, even without the company of a donkey and a pony, and n.o.bby did them all; while his collection of performing wood-lice was unique.
”But a morning came when he was absent. I was s.h.i.+ning at my best, the b.u.t.tercups were glowing, there was even an aeroplane manoeuvring in the blue--which is still, I notice, a certain lure to both young and old--but no n.o.bby. The wood-lice crept about or rolled themselves into b.a.l.l.s, all unnoticed and immune.
”'This is very odd,' I heard the pony say; 'he's never neglected us before.'
”'Pa.s.sing strange,' said the donkey, who affected archaic speech. 'And on so blithe and jocund a morn too.'
”So saying they resumed their everlasting meal, but continually turned their eyes to the garden-gate through which n.o.bby would have to pa.s.s. I also kept my eyes wide for him; but all in vain; and what made it more perplexing was that n.o.bby's mother came in and fed the chickens, and n.o.bby's aunt came in with a rug and a book and settled down to be comfortable; and that meant that the boy was not absent on a visit to the town, because one of them would have gone too.
”'That settles it,' said the donkey, who had, for an a.s.s, quite a lot of sense: 'n.o.bby is ill.'
”The donkey was right--or approximately so, as I afterwards found out.
n.o.bby was ill. That is to say, he was in bed, because that morning he had sneezed--not through looking up at me, but for no reason at all--and his mother, who was a very careful mother, had at once fetched the clinical thermometer and taken his temperature, and behold it was a hundred. So n.o.bby was not allowed to get up, but now lay there watching my rays pouring into the room, and listening to the buzz of the aeroplane, and longing to be out in the meadow with the donkey and the pony and the wood-lice.
”That, however, would never do; for 'It all comes,' his mother had said, 'of sitting about in that long gra.s.s so much, and so early in the year too'--a line of argument hardly likely to appeal to a small and vigorous boy who does not reckon summer by dates and to whom prudence is as remote as one-pound Treasury notes.
”Anyway,” said the Sun, ”he was paying for it now, for was he not in bed and utterly sick of it, while the rest of the world was out and about and, warmed and cheered by me, completely jolly? Moreover, he didn't feel ill. No self-respecting boy would, of course, admit to feeling ill ever; but n.o.bby was genuinely unconscious of anything wrong at all. Not, however, until his temperature went down would he be allowed to get up; that was the verdict. But that was not all. Until it came down he would be allowed nothing but slops to eat.
”His mother took his temperature again before lunch, and it was still a hundred; and then at about half-past four, when human beings, I understand, get a little extra feverish, and it was still a hundred; and then at last came the night, and n.o.bby went to sleep confident that to-morrow would re-establish his erratic blood.
”On the morrow he woke long before any one else,” said the Sun, ”and sat up and saw that I was s.h.i.+ning again, without the vestige of a cloud to bother me, and he felt his little body to see how hot it was, and was quite sure that at last he was normal again, but he couldn't tell until his mother was up and about. The weary hours went by, and at last she came in just before breakfast with the thermometer in her hand.
”'I'm certain I'm all right to-day,' I heard n.o.bby say. 'I feel quite cool everywhere.'
”But, alas and alack,” said the Sun, ”he was a hundred still.
”'My poor mite!' his mother exclaimed, and n.o.bby burst into tears.
”'Mayn't I get up? Mayn't I get up?' he moaned; 'I feel so frightfully fit,' But his mother said no, not till the temperature had gone down.
You see,” added the Orb of Day, ”when n.o.bbies are only-sons and those only-sons' fathers are fighting the enemy, mothers have to be more than commonly cautious and particular. You will wonder perhaps why she didn't send for the doctor, but it was for two reasons, both womanly ones, and these were that (_a_) she didn't like the _loc.u.m_, her own doctor being also at the War, and (_b_) she believed in bed and nursing as the best cure for everything.
”And so all through another long day--and when you are vigorous and robust, like n.o.bby, and accustomed to every kind of impulsive and adventurous activity, day can be, in bed, appallingly long--n.o.bby was kept a prisoner, always with his temperature at a hundred, and always with nothing to bite, and growing steadily more and more peevish and difficult, so much so that his mother became quite happy again, because it is very well known that when human invalids are testy and impatient with their nurses they are getting better.
”But when on the third morning, although n.o.bby's temper had become too terrible for words, his temperature was still a hundred, his mother began to be alarmed again. 'It's very strange,' she said to her sister, 'but he seems perfectly well and cool, and yet the thermometer makes him still a hundred. What do you think we ought to do?'
”n.o.bby's aunt, who was a wise woman, although unmarried, went up and examined her nephew for herself. 'He certainly looks all right to me,'
she said, 'and he feels all right too. Do you think that the thermometer might he faulty? Let me try it'; and with these words n.o.bby's aunt shook the thermometer down and then put it under her tongue and gave it a good two minutes, and behold it said a hundred; and then n.o.bby's mother shook it down and tried it and gave it a good two minutes, and behold it said a hundred; and the cook was a hundred too, and the gardener was a hundred, and the girl who came in to help was a hundred, and probably the donkey would have been a hundred, and the pony a hundred, if they had been tested, because a hundred was the thermometer's humorous idea of normal; and so,” added the Sun, ”n.o.bby's mother and aunt rushed upstairs two or three at a time, having a great sense of justice, and pulled him out of bed and dressed him and hugged him and told him to be happy once more.
”And a couple of seconds after this,” said the Sun, bringing the story to a close, ”I saw him again.”
TWO OF MARTHA'S SONS
Mr. Kipling, dividing, in that fine poem, men into the Sons of Martha and the Sons of Mary--the Sons of Martha being the servants and the Sons of Mary the served--characteristically lays his emphasis on those who make machinery to move. Thus:
The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part, But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart; And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest, Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve or rest.