ROUND THE RABBIT HOLES

THE corn was growing up ever so high, and the poppies were red between. At the end of the cornfield there was a stile, and the boy sat on it watching the sun sink lower and lower into the west. “It is looking down on some wonderful city,” he thought; “it sees the faces of the men and women glad to welcome it, and ready to work in the new light day, while for us there is only the night. It is a fine thing to be the sun; how grand it would if one could journey on and on in front of it, with the day for ever before one and the night for ever behind!” He heard the children’s voices in the distance calling to him, and he answered, “I am here, I am here; come and sit by me.” And they came, saying—

“Tell us a story, tell us of the things you will some day do.”

“Some day,” he said with a sigh, “some day perhaps I shall journey to the strange city to which the sun goes at night. It must be a wonderful city, for, when the great gates in the west open for the sun to pass in, all the sky reddens at the sight of its beauty. Some day when I journey there I shall make all manner of things. I want to make them,” he added, and sighed again, “for my father’s sake and for my little sister, who is far away in the town waiting for news of them.”

“When do you mean to begin?” the children asked.

“I do not know yet. I have to work all day now for my uncle, and when it is over my hands are tired, and I have so much to think about; besides, I can make nothing yet so well as I mean to make it. I like to sit and dream of the days that will come; they will all come, but it’s long to wait.”

“How long have you been waiting?”

“Ever since Daddy died,” he answered.

“Tell us about him,” they said, though they had heard many times before. They were never tired of listening to the strange boy that had come to the carpenter’s. “Tell us about him and about the little sister;” and the children gathered closer round him, and the tall girl with the pink apron, whose eyes seemed to know some strange language her lips had not yet learnt to speak, drew up closer than the rest, so that she might lose no word of what he said.

“Nurse me,” the little one said. Then the girl gathered the little one of three years old upon her lap, and sat on the lower step of the stile, and looked up at the boy’s face while he spoke.

“Daddy used to make shoes and mend them,” the boy said; “and he and the little sister and I lived in the garret at the top of a house in the town. In the evening, when Daddy had done his work, he used to sit and tell us stories: he told us about all manner of things, of all we must do, and of how the great men were those who did things as best they could be done. It makes one long to do things well so much; I will never do them badly, that is why I am waiting he added softly.

“But one has to try one’s ’prentice hand,” the mother said. She had come to seek her children, but the boy had not noticed her. “One can but do one’s best,” she added sadly, “or maybe one gets no time for anything, and goes away as useless as one came.” But the boy did not heed her, and went on—

“The little sister used to sit and work, for a woman in the house taught her how to sew, and she kept all the place neat, and tried to do the things that would please Daddy, though she was only seven years old; and sometimes while Daddy worked at the bench she would sing songs to him.”

“Ah, the little doer are better than the great dreamers,” the mother said.

“And what did you do?” the girl with the pink apron asked.

“I always had so much to think about,” he answered; “and then once my uncle came to see us, the same uncle with whom I am living now, and he saw the box of tools which the lady, for whose crippled child Daddy made shoes, had given me, and he sent me some bits of wood, and I set to work to make things. Daddy told me to be satisfied only when I had done my best, and to count all else as nothing, ‘for when one did well,’ he said, ‘one did it for all the world.’”

“But one can get one’s hand in by working for those about,” persisted the mother.

“Go on,” said the children, impatiently; “tell us about the little sister.”

“She is with the lady who sent me the tools, learning how to do many things.”

“And where is the little table you made?” they asked, though they all knew.

“It is in the great lady’s drawing –room,” he answered with a smile. “Some day I shall make a much better one, but I am waiting till I know more, and have thought of some grander way to work than I know now....The night that Daddy died,” he went on suddenly, “my sister and I went into the garden; we saw the stars come out, and we looked at a little creeper planted in a wooden box; it was growing up against the wall,” and suddenly he stopped.

“Go on,” they said.

“But that is all,” he answered. “The little sister went to the great lady, and I came here, and am working for my uncle the carpenter, and am waiting—the rest is in my heart.”

“Tell us what is in your heart,” they said.

“I do not know yet,” he answered. “One does not find out all at once.”

“Now take us to see the rabbit holes,” the children said, “and tell us all about the rabbits.” So the boy rose to do as they wished, and the mother cried—

“Do not keep them out long; and see the little one doe s not fall,” she added, speaking to the girl with the pink apron.

“I will carry the little one,” the boy said, taking her in his arms. The girl with the pink apron walked beside him, and the rest followed, talking among themselves as they went along. All down the cornfield they went, and over the gate with the padlock on it into the wood. Then soon they turned aside from the pathway and went in among the shadiest trees. The ground was thick with brake and briar and underwood, the nuts hung green on the branches above them, the blackberries were almost ripe on the bushes as they passed by.

“They are here,” he said, and he stopped by a tree that grew at the farthest side of the wood, close to the hedge that parted off the hayfield. They could see the schoolhouse across the field, and the church, and they remembered the gate that stood close by the church and led to the village. The schoolmaster had stacked his hay, and the ricks were there right across the field, compact and well-shaped and comfortable-looking, ready for the winter; the children thought of the haymaking, but it was always nicer to be in the woods than in the fields. In the fields the green was only under their feet, but in the woods it was all about and above them, as if the sweet world wrapped them round and filled them with its beauty, till their hearts brimmed over with content. The tree by which the boy had stopped was so tall and shady, it seemed as if the top that looked at the sky must be a long way off. “Here they are,” he said. “I have never seen the rabbits, but I often think about them.” The children went forward one by one and peeped in the holes, and the little one looked down at them, holding the boy tighter while she did so. Then they all stood in a group waiting for the boy to speak.

“Tell us what they do when they come out of their holes,” they said.

“I don’t know,” the boy answered. “I have never seen them.”

“What do you think they do?”

“I think that when the wood is still, and not a sound or voice or footstep can be heard, they peep out, and if they hear and see no one, they come out gaily and play about among the ferns and grass until they are tired, and they give little, short, quick runs, stopping to nibble a leaf or to listen to some strange sound, or else they stay still a while just to drink in, without knowing anything about them, the sweetness of the air, and the brightness of the sun, and the silence of the shade, and the little cool breeze that steals among the leaves and passes on.”

“And what do they do at night?”

“Ah, at night they have fine fun. They scamper across the hayfield, running ever so swiftly, with their ears put back and their little tails shaking, till they find their way into the schoolmaster’s garden, and they eat the cool, crisp lettuce leaves, and play at hide-and-seek among the cabbages, and then they scamper to the hayfield again, and wander by the hedge back to the wood, and there they play about till the long gray dawn grows lighter and lighter.”

“Surely you would like to see them?” the girl with the apron said.

“No,” said the boy. I can think about them. I should not like them better if I saw them, and they might go and I should miss them. The things on thinks about stay unless one sends them away, and they never change unless one’s self changes first.”

“How did you learn to think?” the girl asked curiously.

“Daddy used to talk to me,” answered in surprise; “and it’s just as if he talked to me still, or had written things down in a book. All the people we love teach us to see and hear.”

“Do you love the people you don’t see?” she asked, “for you love the things you don’t see.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “I love all people, they are so good,” he added. “I have heard there are bad people, but I never knew any. All people have hearts, and if one makes for them one always finds them. But come,” he said, “we must go home.” And the children, not understanding what the boy and girl were talking about, turned silently round towards the gate that led to the cornfield. The little one’s head drooped on the boy’s shoulder, for she was tired. “You dear little one,” he whispered; “my sister was small like you once, and I used to carry her in my arms down to the garden, and sit on the stone steps with her, waiting for the stars.”

“The stars are in the sky already,” he girl said.

“Yes,” answered the boy, and he whispered to the little one—“The stars are coming out. They will all be out soon; they are shining down upon the little garden in the town, and the creeper is growing up to meet them; it will touch the garret window on its way.”