FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING.
“Maggie, Maggie, wake up, I say!”
“Yes, who’s there.
I’m so sleepy. Oh, it’s you, Eric.
What do you want?”
“It’s father’s birthday,
and the clock has just struck four. You promised
you’d get up at four.”
“Yes; but, oh dear me, I am so sleepy.”
Marjorie yawned, and twisted about on her pillow.
“Are you sure it wasn’t three that struck,
Eric?”
“No, four; I counted the strokes.
I thought you liked getting up early.”
“So I do, but don’t talk so loud, or you’ll
wake Ermie.”
“Catch me wanting her to get up, cross old thing!”
“Eric, you are unkind, and Basil wouldn’t
like it.”
“Bother Basil! what do I care?
I say, Mag, are you going to pop out of bed?”
“I suppose so. Go outside
the door and wait for me, Eric, and do be quiet.”
Eric departed, whistling under his
breath, and kicking his heels so restlessly that only
the soundest sleeper could still remain in the land
of dreams.
Marjorie rubbed her eyes, stretched
herself, yawned, and finally, stimulated by threatening
knocks of Eric’s on the other side of the door,
managed to tear herself away from her warm snug bed.
She saw the sunlight streaming in through the closed
window-curtains, but August though it was, this early
hour of the morning was chilly, and Marjorie shivered
as she tumbled not too tidily into her clothes.
Eric would not give her time to take her usual cold
plunge-bath, and she was decidedly of opinion that
plans which looked delightful the night before are
less alluring when viewed by the candid light of morning.
Marjorie was a hearty child in every
way, hearty at work and at play, hearty, too, at sleep,
and it was hard to be debarred of quite a third of
her usual allowance. She dipped her face and neck,
however, in cold water, which effectually woke her
up, and when she had brushed out her thick hair, and
knelt for a moment or two at her little bed to say
her usual morning prayers, she felt quite cheerful,
and joined Eric with her usual sunny good humored
face.
“That’s right,”
said Eric, clasping her hand. “Isn’t
the morning scrumptious? Not a bit of a cloud
anywhere. Now let’s be off to wake father.”
“To wake father! at four o’clock
in the morning! What do you mean, Eric?”
“It’s twelve minutes past
four, if it comes to that,” said Eric. “You
were an awful time getting into your clothes, Mag.
And why shouldn’t we wake father? It’s
his birthday. He will like us to wake him!”
Marjorie, however, judging from her
own too recent experience, thought differently.
“It really is too early,”
she said. “He wouldn’t like it a bit,
and why should we vex father because it’s his
birthday?”
“You forget that he never is
vexed with anything we do on his birthday,”
said Eric. “It’s our day, and we couldn’t
be scolded, whatever we did. Do come along,
Maggie; I have it all planned so jolly. Father
is to come with us, and unmoor the boat, and help us
to gather the water-lilies. Do come on, and don’t
waste the precious time. I tell you, father will
like it.”
Marjorie was very unselfish, but she
was also easily persuaded, particularly by her chosen
and special chum, Eric. Accordingly, after a
little further demur, she consented to go with her
brother to their father’s room.
It was very still in the house, for
not a servant as yet had thought of stirring.
Eric pushed back the oak doors, which so effectually
divided the nursery people from the grown ups.
“There you stay, you nasty things!”
he said, hooking them back with an air of great triumph.
“This is our day, and you can’t keep us
prisoners. Come along, Mag, I’ve broken
the prison-bars.”
Marjorie’s own spirits were
rising fast. After all, it was delicious to be
up in the early morning. She was glad she had
taken the trouble to get out of bed now.
The children ran down the wide corridor
into which the best bedrooms opened. They paused
at length outside their father’s door. Here
Marjorie once again grew a little pale, but Eric, with
a look of resolution, turned the handle of the door
and went in.
Marjorie followed him on tiptoe.
Father’s room was very large, and to the culprits
who stood just inside the door, looked solemn and
awe-inspiring. Even Eric felt a little subdued;
the chamber seemed so vast, and the great four-poster,
away by itself in an alcove, had a remote and unapproachable
aspect. It was one thing to have a rollicking,
merry, good-humored father to romp about with all day,
and another to approach the solemn personage who reposed
in the center of that bed.
“Let’s come away,” whispered Marjorie.
“Fudge!” retorted Eric.
“It’s father’s birthday! It’s
our day! Come along-he can’t
be angry with us even if he wished.”
Thus exhorted, but with many misgivings
at her heart, Marjorie followed her brother across
the big room and up the two steps which led to the
alcove.
A picture of the children’s
mother hung over the mantelpiece. It was a very
girlish picture, and represented a slim figure in a
white dress, with a blue sash round her waist.
The face was a little like Ermengarde’s, but
the eyes which looked down now at the two children
had Marjorie’s expression in them. There
were other portraits of Mrs. Wilton in the house,
later and more matronly portraits; but Marjorie liked
this the best-the girlish mother seemed
in touch with her youthful self.
“Do come away, Eric,”
she said again, and tears almost sprang to her eyes.
It seemed cruel to wake father just to add to their
own pleasure.
Eric, however, was not a boy to be
lightly turned from his purpose. He had very
little sentiment about him, and had stern ideas as
to what he termed his rights. Father’s
birthday was the children’s lawful day:
on that day they were one and all of them kings, and
the “king could do no wrong.”
Accordingly this little king, with
a somewhat withering glance at his sister, stepped
confidently up to the big bed, raised himself on tiptoe,
so as to secure a better view, and looked down with
his chubby expectant face on his slumbering father.
It is all very well for the little
folk, who are in bed and asleep as a rule between
eight and nine in the evening, to feel lively and
larky, and quite up to any holiday pranks at four o’clock
on a summer’s morning; but the older and less
wise people who sometimes do not close their eyes
until the small hours, are often just enjoying their
deepest and sweetest slumbers about the time the sun
likes to get up.
This was the case with Mr. Wilton.
He had not arrived home until midnight-he
had found some letters before him which must be replied
to-he had even dipped into a book in which
he was specially interested. Then his favorite
spaniel Gyp had begun to howl in his kennel, and Mr.
Wilton had gone out to see what was the matter.
So, from one cause or another, he
had not laid his tired head on his pillow until one
and two o’clock in the morning.
Therefore Mr. Wilton was now very
sound asleep indeed, and not Eric’s buzzing
whispers nor Marjorie’s cautious repentant “Hush-hush,
Eric!” disturbed him in the very least.
“How lazy of father!”
pronounced Eric in a tone of withering scorn.
“He has not even stirred. Oh, you needn’t
go on with your ‘hush-hush!’
Mag-he’s as sound as a button.
Look here, I must speak a little louder. Fa-ther!
oh, I say, father, open your eyes!”
Eric’s voice became piteous,
but the eyes remained closed, the face peaceful and
immovable.
“We might both of us jump on
the bed at the same moment,” said Eric.
“That ought to shake him a good bit, and perhaps
he’d begin to yawn. Oh, jolly, it’s
a spring mattress; we can give him a great bounce if
we jump on together. Now then, Mag, be sure you
jump when I do.”
Marjorie, still looking rather terrified,
but led on by Eric’s indomitable spirit, did
spring on the bed, and so heavily that she rolled
on to Mr. Wilton’s leg. He started, groaned,
said “Down, Gyp!” in a very angry voice,
and once more pursued his way in dreamland, without
any idea that two little imps were perched each on
one side of his pillow.
“It’s too bad,”
said Eric. “The whole morning will go at
this rate; it will soon be five o’clock.
Oh, I say-pater-father-gov!
do wake!”
“You shouldn’t say pater
or gov,” said Marjorie. “Father doesn’t
like it.”
“Much he cares! He doesn’t
hear anything. He’s stone deaf-he’s
no good at all!”
“Well, we shouldn’t say
words he doesn’t like, even if he is asleep,”
said Marjorie in her properest tones.
“I like that,” said Eric.
“And why mayn’t I say pater, I wonder?
Pater is the Latin of father. It’s a much
nicer word than father, and all our fellows say it.
You think it isn’t respectful because you’re
an ignorant girl, Maggie, but Julius Cæsar used to
say pater when he was young, so I suppose I may.”
“Father looks very handsome
in his sleep,” said Marjorie, turning her head
on one side, and looking sentimentally at her parent.
“He doesn’t,” said
Eric. “He looks much better with his eyes
open. Oh, I say, I can’t stand this!
The morning will go, and we’ll never get our
water-lilies. Father, wake up! Father, it’s
your birthday! Don’t you hear us?
Here, Mag, let’s begin to jump up and down again
on the bed. Couldn’t you manage to hop
on his leg by accident? You’re heavier
than me.”
Marjorie and Eric joined hands, the
fun entered into their souls, and they certainly jumped
with energy.
Mr. Wilton began to have a very bad
dream. Gyp, his favorite spaniel, seemed suddenly
to have changed into a fiend, and to have seized him
by the leg. Finally the dream dissolved itself
into a medley of laughter and childish cries.
He opened his eyes: two little figures with very
red faces and very disordered hair were tumbling about
on his bed.
“Eh-what? Is the house on fire?”
he gasped.
“Oh, father! At last!”
exclaimed Marjorie. She flung herself upon him,
and began to kiss him all over his face.
“My dear child-very
affectionate of you, no doubt, but why this sudden
rush of devotion in the middle of the night?”
“It isn’t!” exclaimed
Eric in a voice of awful emphasis. “It’s
nearly five o’clock!”
“And it’s your birthday,”
said Marjorie, beginning to kiss him again.
“Yes,” continued Eric,
“it’s your birthday, father. Our
day, you know.”
The victim in the bed lay quite still
for a moment. That much grace he felt he must
allow himself to recover from the shock of the announcement.
Then he said, as cheerfully as he could speak, “What
did you say the hour was?”
“Close on five o’clock-awfully
late,” answered both children, shouting their
words into his ears.
“All right; what do you want me to do?”
“To get up at once, and come with us to gather
water-lilies.”
“Oh!”
“Isn’t it a delightful plan?”
“Very. Are you sure the morning isn’t
wet?”
“The morning wet, father!
The sun is shining like anything. Run to the
window, Mag, and pull the blind up. Now you can
see, can’t you, father?”
“I can, thanks, Eric.”
“Well, aren’t you getting up?”
“I will, if you will both favor
me by retiring into the corridor for five minutes.
And listen, even though it is my birthday, it isn’t
necessary to have any more vic-I
mean, we need not wake the rest of the house.”
“Oh, we’ll be as quiet
as mice,” retorted Marjorie. “Dear
father, you’ll promise to be very quick?”
“Dear Maggie, I promise;
I am your devoted and humble servant for the rest
of the day.”
“Isn’t father delicious?”
said Marjorie, as they waited in the passage.
“Delicious!” retorted
Eric; “what a girl’s expression! One
would think you were going to eat him. I tell
you what it is, pater ought to be very much obliged
to us for waking him. He was lazy, but he’ll
have a time of it for the rest of the day.”