CHAPTER V.
SKATTA.
Among the contents of the trunks sent down to Dolly from Boston was a copy of "Ivanhoe," bound in drab boards. Now "Robin's Journal among the Arabs" was bound in dingy leather. So Ned knew from experience that very good things may have a homely or even rough exterior, like a watermelon or a chestnut. He opened the book and began to read aloud.
"'In that pleasant district of Merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster.'"
And Dolly sank down among the litter of things which she had tumbled out of her two trunks to listen, and there Aunt Anna found them at the end of three hours, in animated talk, having just finished the tenth chapter, which closes with Gurth's meeting with Rebecca in the house of Isaac of York.
"Rebecca is a trump," remarked Ned, summing up in that expressive word the universal feeling in regard to the beautiful Jewess.
"And isn't the Disinherited Knight splendid? I wonder how he came out the next day. I should so like to see a tournament, Ned. Oh, do read on!" said Dolly, her cheeks aglow with excitement.
"After dinner," said Aunt Anna—"dinner is ready now." And after dinner it was, for they went up into the hay-mow and read till it was time to fetch the cows home; and if they did not, like Thackeray when he was a school-boy, sit up far into the night to follow the fortunes of Rebecca, it was only because they were not allowed to do so. Mr. and Mrs. Park had gone to Plymouth for the night, and Thankful found the two after ten o'clock still reading, and swooped them off to bed, right in one of the most thrilling parts of the story, where Rebecca throws down her embroidered glove, exclaiming,
"God will raise me up a champion. It cannot be that in Merry England, the hospitable, the generous, the free, where so many are ready to peril their lives for honor, there will not be found one to fight for justice. But it is enough that I challenge the trial by combat—there lies my gage."
"Oh, Thankful, it's too bad to make us go to bed now. Do let us just find out how Rebecca came out. Just read ahead a little bit and see, Ned. Only ten minutes, Thankful, please," pleaded Dolly, as eager for the fray as the most accomplished knight could possibly have been.
But Thankful was inexorable, and Ned, running his eye over a page or two, and announcing that it looked as though it would take a hundred pages "to get Rebecca out of the scrape," Dolly went off reluctantly to bed, and dreamed that she was the Disinherited Knight, and had a joust with Thankful, wearing a brass kettle for a helmet and carrying a mince-pie for a shield, and Thankful, having received her death-blow, was suddenly transformed into the lovely Rowena, and crowned the Disinherited Knight with a wreath of cabbages.
As to Ned, he awoke 'Zekle, who slept in an adjoining room, in the dead of the night, by shouting, "Saint George for Merry England! To the rescue! to the rescue!" and pommelling the head-board violently. And it was "a marcy," as Thankful remarked the next morning, "that he didn't get his death a-readin' novils," for 'Zekle, only half awake, and possessed with the idea that burglars were entering the house in the absence of its master, got out his gun, heavily loaded with small shot for crows, and was just upon the point of firing it off in the direction of the pommelling when his brain cleared and he became aware that the voice was Ned's.
Thankful indulged in many more disrespectful remarks concerning "novils" the next morning while frying their favorite pancakes for breakfast, but Ned audaciously brought out "Ivanhoe" into the very kitchen itself, and he and Dolly finished it comfortably on the settle, and were pleased to remark that Thankful did not close the door between the kitchen and the buttery, where she was mixing a batch of dough-nuts. Indeed, her ordinarily heavy step seemed to grow lighter as she stepped from the buttery to the frying-kettle, back and forth, and she held her skimmer suspended a moment in mid-air at that consummate moment where, his helmet being removed, Brian de Bois Gilbert is found to be dead, and the Grand Master exclaims,
"This is indeed the judgment of God. Fiat voluntas tua."
"That's so!" said Thankful, lowering her skimmer and scooping the dough-nuts from the kettle en masse.
Thankful did not understand Latin, so her fervent response must have been to the sentiment expressed in English; and Thankful was apt to look upon the misfortunes of mankind in general as judgments.
Ned read the closing chapter and kept his voice bravely firm, while Dolly wept openly and copiously, and Thankful dropped a furtive tear into the frying-kettle. At least Ned said so, and the fat spluttered and sizzled suspiciously.
"Rebecca's wuth a dozen o' that set-up Rowena," remarked Thankful, as Ned closed the book, and Dolly drew a long sigh. "An' I reckon Ivaner thought so, only he couldn't help himself. Things is unaccountably mixed 'n this world. I reckon she hen-pecked him well. She's jest the kind t' dew it." With which sentiments we most of us, including the immortal Thackeray, doubtless agree.
"Wouldn't it be fun to have a tournament, Ned?" Dolly said more than once during the days that followed the reading of "Ivanhoe." For nothing in that entertaining book seemed to have taken such hold upon her imagination as the famous tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. "And if we only had another horse we'd have one, wouldn't we, Ned?" she said, confidentially, as the two were riding old Bill down to water one day.
"Gaston wouldn't make a bad horse," she continued, looking down at the noble fellow, who, as usual, was following closely in the wake of his beloved mistress; "but he isn't half big enough. Oh dear! can't you think of some way, Ned?"
"We might take the saw-horse or clothes-horse, Dolly. I'm sure I can't think of anything else," replied Ned, in despair. "I'm afraid Dapple or Sukey wouldn't do. There's too much go to 'em, an' we should catch it if anything happened to 'em."
"Oh no, of course not," replied Dolly, virtuously, but secretly wondering whether one of them could not be made to "do," after all.
But Dolly was saved from the probable consequences of riding Sukey in a tournament by a most happy happening. For things do sometimes happen just right in real life, as well as in story-books.
Her birthday was approaching—her thirteenth birthday. In fact, it was near at hand, and at last it dawned; and the sun, as he thrust his red face through a cloud of golden mist, sent a quivering dart betwixt the curtain and the window-frame of Dolly's bedroom, and touched her eyelids with a "Good-morning, my dear; it's your birthday, and it's time to get up."
Was it the sun, or Aunt Anna, or only a dream? As Dolly, not yet quite out of dream-land, was trying to solve this question, she was thoroughly aroused by Ned, who knocked at her door and called out, in a voice of suppressed excitement, "Hurry-up, Dolly! oh, hurry up, do! If you only kn—" Here a hand was evidently clapped over his mouth—the hand of his mother, in fact—who laughingly said,
"Now, Ned, I told you so! It'll pop out before you know it. Come with me; it's the only safe thing to do;" and she dragged him off protesting.
"Now, mother, you know I can keep a secret a thousand times better than you or any other woman," he said, saucily. "I only wanted to sharpen Dolly's curiosity. But I say, isn't it—" Here his mother's hand went over his mouth again.
"There! you see, Ned, it's no use. Dolly will hear you, and the cat'll be out of the bag unless you're gagged;" and she slipped half a melocotoon peach into his mouth, which effectually stopped the tide of speech.
Dolly had heard, and her curiosity was sharpened to a degree that would have sufficiently gratified Ned could he have witnessed it. She hurried with her dressing; but everything was perverse. Her hair twisted into knots; she pulled on a stocking wrong side out, and an impatient jerk broke the lacing of her shoe; then an important button flew off. She stopped to sew it on, and, as a fitting finale to this chapter of accidents, ran the needle deep into her finger.
"Oh dear! oh dear!" she exclaimed, sucking the wounded member. "'Haste makes waste,' Thankful says, and I should think so. It's just like a dream; the more I hurry the less I get on."
But at last she was in order, from the snood of blue ribbon in her hair to the carefully tied lacing of each slender shoe; and as she walked into the breakfast-room with a sunny "Good-morning!" Uncle Harry was sure no bonnier lassie could have been found that day throughout the length and breadth of New England, and indeed, for that matter, he might have safely challenged the whole United States.
"Many happy returns of the day, my dear!" he said, as she took her seat at the table, while Ned remained suspiciously intent upon the buckwheats he was devouring at a rate that ordinarily would have called out a remonstrance from his mother.
The breakfast-room that morning seemed charged with an atmosphere at once delightful and provoking. Conversation flagged. Nobody seemed possessed of ideas on any subject except some forbidden one. Aunt Anna cast looks of warning at Ned and interchanged meaning glances with Uncle Harry; and the latter, in a fit of extreme absent-mindedness, poured the sirup over his bacon, and said, "No, my love," when 'Zekle came in to ask if he should take the oxen to Plympton to be shod after breakfast.
The breakfast-table stood in what was called the inner kitchen, and Thankful, as she put on fresh cakes and dispensed cream and maple-sirup, wore the inscrutable air of a Yankee Sphinx. Absorbed in her riddle, she even neglected to snub 'Zekle, as he came in bringing a pound of dirt on each foot, which he distributed liberally about the kitchen. He, too, was evidently laboring under the weight of some mighty secret, or he never would have so forgotten the habits of neatness into which Thankful, after many years of persistent effort, had trained him. Indeed, Dolly shrewdly suspected that, after all, the oxen didn't need shoeing, and his inquiry was only a pretext to come in.
At last Ned finished his tenth buckwheat, and pushed back his chair, just as Dolly was thinking that she could not stand it another minute.
"May I be excused, mother?" he asked.
"Certainly," replied his mother, significantly, and he was out of the kitchen in a twinkling, while Gaston, upon whose tail he had trodden in his haste, set up a howl of remonstrance.
A profound, expectant silence, broken only by Gaston's plaintive moans, succeeded. For a brief moment you might have almost heard a fly wink. Then the door of the outer kitchen opened, a curious clatter as of brisk feet was heard, the door of the inner kitchen swung back, and Ned entered, leading a black Shetland pony, "all saddled and bridled," who, as she stepped daintily over the braided rugs which strewed the floor, looked as much at home as though she had had a house of her own, and a breakfast-table to sit down to regularly every day of her life. From the pony's bridle hung a card, which Ned, leading her up to Dolly, detached and presented with a low bow.
"Feed me, curry me, ride me, and love me. My name is Skatta," was on one side, and on the other was written, "A birthday gift for our dear daughter Dorothea, from papa and mamma."
"Old Bill won't have to carry two any more," said Ned, not waiting for Dolly to speak, who at first struggled between a desire to cry and to laugh at the same time—between pleasure over her birthday gift and regret for the absent father and mother. But Skatta made a diversion, and saved Dolly from the hysterical combination by thrusting her nose into the wide-mouthed sugar-bowl and taking out a lump.
"Jump on, Dolly, do, right here," said Ned. "Mayn't she, mother?" and Dolly with one spring was on Skatta's back and the reins in her hands. "Look out for your head!" said Ned, as they went out, Thankful and 'Zekle ranging themselves on either side of the kitchen-door like a guard of honor.
"Oh, isn't she lovely, Ned?" said Dolly, getting her voice at last. "And wasn't it good of papa and mamma?"
"I always knew Uncle Malcolm was a brick!" was Ned's emphatic reply.
Skatta was next put through her paces and pronounced "perfect."
"And now, Ned," said Dolly, as she reined her up by the horse-block, "we can have our tournament," and Ned, nothing loath, assented.