Baa. Baa. |
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" Come back, Punch-baba," said the ayah. " Come back," said Meeta, " and be a Burra" Sahib." " Yes," said Punch, lifted up in his father's arms to wave good-by. " Yes, I will come back, and I will be a Burra Sahib Bahadur" At the end of the first day Punch demanded to be set down in England, which he was certain must be close at hand. Next day there was a merry breeze, and Punch was very sick. "When I come back to Bombay," said Punch on his recovery, "I will come by the road — in a broom-gharri. This is a very naughty ship." The Swedish boatswain consoled him, and he modified his opinions as the voyage went on. There was so much to see and to handle and ask questions about that Punch nearly forgot the ayah and Meeta and the hamal, and with difficulty remembered a few words of the Hindustani, once his second-speech. But Judy was much worse. The day before the steamer reached Southampton, Mama asked her if she would not like to see the ayah again. Judy's blue eyes turned to the stretch of sea that had swallowed all her tiny past, and she said, "Ayah! What ayah?" Mama cried over her, and Punch marveled. It was then that he heard for the first time Mama's passionate appeal to him never to let Judy forget Mama. Seeing that Judy was young, ridiculously young, and that Mama, every evening for four weeks past, had come into the cabin to sing her and Punch to sleep with a mysterious tune that he called " Sonny, my soul," Punch could not understand what Mama meant. But he strove to do his duty, for the moment Mama left the cabin he said to Judy, " Ju, you bemember Mama?" "Torse I do," said Judy. "Then always bemember Mama, or else I won't give you the paper ducks that the red-haired Captain Sahib cut out for me." So Judy promised always to "bemem-ber Mama." |
TRADITIONAL nursery rhymes are being rewritten at
nursery schools around the world so as to avoid causing offence to children. Instead of singing “Baa baa, black sheep” as generations of children have learned to do, toddlers in Oxfordshire are being taught to sing “Baa baa, rainbow sheep”. *** Horse Faqs * Water, Water, the book * Get The Camera Out, activities for Kids * Chickens are Cute Little Carnivores * ***
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Many and many a time was Mama's command laid upon Punch, and Papa would say the same thing with an insistence that awed the child. " You must make haste and learn how to write, Punch," said Papa, " and then you'll be able to write letters to us in Bombay." "I'll come into your room," said Punch, and Papa choked. Papa and Mama were always choking in those days. If Punch took Judy to task for not "bemembering," they choked. If Punch sprawled on the sofa in the Southampton lodging house and sketched his future in purple and gold, they choked; and so they did if Judy put up her mouth for a kiss. Through many days all four were vagabonds on the face of the earth: Punch with no one to give orders to, Judy too young for anything, and Papa and Mama grave, distracted, and choking. "Where," demanded Punch, wearied of a loathsome contrivance on four wheels with a mound of luggage atop, "where is our broom-gharri? This thing talks so much that I can't talk. Where is our own broom-gharri? When I was at Bandstand before we comed away, I asked Inverarity Sahib why he was sitting in it, and he said it was his own. And I said,' I will give it you — I like Inverarity Sahib — and I said, (Can you put your legs through the pully-wag loops by the windows?) And Inverarity Sahib said No, through these pully-wag loops. Look! Oh, Mama's crying again! I didn't know. I wasn't not to do so." Punch drew his legs out of the loops of the four-wheeler; the door opened and he slid to the earth, in a cascade of parcels, at the door of an austere little villa whose gates bore the legend "Downe Lodge." Punch gathered himself together and eyed the house with disfavor. It stood on a sandy road, and a cold wind tickled his knickerbockered legs.
"Let us go away," said Punch. "This is not a pretty place." But Mama and Papa and Judy had quitted the cab, and all the luggage was being taken into the house. At the door-step stood a woman in black; and she smiled largely, with dry, chapped lips. Behind her was a man, big, bony, gray, and lame as to one leg — behind him a boy of twelve, black-haired and oily in appearance. Punch surveyed the trio and advanced without fear, as he had been ac-customed to do in Bombay when callers came and he happened to be playing in the veranda. "How do you do?" said he. "I am Punch." But they were all looking at the luggage — all except the gray man, who shook hands with Punch and said he was " a smart little fellow." There was much running about and banging of boxes, and Punch curled himself up on the sofa in the dining room and considered things. "I don't like these people," said Punch. "But never mind. We'll go away soon. We have always went away soon from everywhere. I wish we was gone back to Bombay soon." The wish bore no fruit. For six days Mama wept at intervals, and showed the woman in black all Punch's clothes — a liberty which Punch resented. "But p'r' aps she's a new white ayah," he thought. |
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"I'm to call her Antirosa, but she doesn't call me Sahib. She just says Punch," he confided to Judy. "What is Antirosa?" Judy didn't know. Neither she nor Punch had heard anything of an animal called an aunt. Their world had been Papa and Mama, who knew everything, permitted everything, and loved every-body—even Punch when he used to go into the garden at Bombay and fill his nails with mold after the weekly nail cutting, because, as he explained between two strokes of the slipper to his sorely tried father, his fingers " felt so new at the ends." In an undefined way Punch judged it advisable to keep both parents between himself and the woman in black and the boy in black hair. He did not approve of them. He liked the gray man, who had expressed a wish to be called Uncleharri. They nodded at each other when they met, and the gray man showed him a little ship with rigging that took up and down. " She is a model of the Brisk — the little Brisk that was sore exposed that day at Navarino." The gray man hummed the last words and fell into a reverie. " I'll tell you about Navarino, Punch, when we go for walks together; and you mustn't touch the ship, because she's the Brisk." Long before that walk, the first of many, was taken, they roused Punch and Judy in the chill dawn of a February morning to say good-by; and, of all people in the wide earth, to Papa and Mama — both crying this time. Punch was very sleepy and Judy was cross. " Don't forget us," pleaded Mama. " Oh, my little son, don't forget us, and see that Judy remembers too." " I've told Judy to bemember," said Punch, wriggling, for his father's beard tickled his neck. " I've told Judy — ten — forty — 'leven thousand times. But Ju's so young—quite a baby—isn't she? " “ Yes,” said Papa. “ Quite a baby. And you must be good to Judy, and make haste to learn to write and—-and— and" . . .
Punch was back in his bed again. Judy was fast asleep, and there was the rattle of a cab below. Papa and Mama had gone away. Not to Nassick; that was across the sea. To some place much nearer, of course, and equally of course they would return. They came back after dinner parties, and Papa had come back after he had been to a place called "The Snows," and Mama with him, to Punch and Judy at Mrs. Inverarity's house in Marine Lines. Assuredly they would come back again. So Punch fell asleep till the true morning, when the black-haired boy met him with the information that Papa and Mama had gone to Bombay, and that he and Judy were to stay at Downe Lodge " forever." Antirosa, tearfully appealed to for a contradiction, said that Harry had spoken the truth and that it behooved Punch to fold up his clothes neatly on going to bed. Punch went out and wept bitterly with Judy, into whose fair head he had driven some ideas of the meaning of separation. When a matured man discovers that he has been deserted by Providence, deprived of his God, and cast without help, comfort, or sympathy, upon a world which is new and strange to him, his despair, which may find expression in evil living, the writing of his experiences, or the more satisfactory diversion of suicide, is generally supposed to be impressive. A child, under exactly similar circumstances as far as its knowledge goes, cannot very well curse God and die. It howls till its nose is red, its eyes are sore, and its head aches. Punch and Judy, through no fault of their own, had lost all their world. They sat in the hall and cried, the black-haired boy looking on from afar. The model of the ship availed nothing, though the gray man assured Punch that he might pull the rigging up and down as much as he pleased, and Judy was promised free entry into the kitchen. They wanted Papa and Mama, gone to Bombay beyond the seas, and their grief while it lasted was without remedy. When the tears ceased, the house was very still. Antirosa had decided it was better to let the children " have their cry out," and the boy had gone to school. Punch raised his head from the floor and sniffed mournfully. Judy was nearly asleep. Three short years had not taught her how to bear sorrow with full knowledge. There was a distant, dull boom in the air — a repeated heavy thud. Punch knew that sound in Bombay in the monsoon. It was the sea — the sea that must be traversed before anyone could get to Bombay. " Quick, Ju! " he cried. " We're close to the sea. I can hear it! Listen! That's where they've went. P'r'aps we can catch them if we was in time. They didn't mean to go without us. They've only forgot." " Iss," said Judy. " They've only forgotted. Less go to the sea." The hall door was open and so was the garden gate. " It's very, very big, this place," he said, looking cautiously down the road, " and we will get lost, but I will find a man and order him to take me back to my house — like I did in Bombay." He took Judy by the hand, and the two fled hatless in the direction of the sound of the sea. Downe Villa was almost the last of a range of newly built houses running out, through a chaos of brick mounds, to a heath where gypsies occasionally camped and where the Garrison Artillery of Rockington practiced. There were few people to be seen; and the children might have been taken for those of the soldiery, who ranged far. Half an hour the wearied little legs tramped across heath, potato field, and sand dune. " I'se so tired," said Judy, " and Mama will be angry."
" Mama's never angry. I suppose she is waiting at the sea now while Papa gets tickets. We'll find them and go along with. Ju, you mustn't sit down. Only a little more and we'll come to the sea. Ju, if you sit down I'll thmack you! " said Punch. They climbed another dune, and came upon the great gray sea at low tide. Hun-dreds of crabs were scuttling about the beach; but there was no trace of Papa and Mama, not even of a ship upon the waters—nothing but sand and mud for miles and miles.
And Uncleharri found them by chance — very muddy and very forlorn — Punch dissolved in tears but trying to divert Judy with an " ickle trab," and Judy wailing to the pitiless horizon for " Mama, Mama! " — and again "Mama!" |
A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson is yours for free too. I believe you will find it a perfect introduction to the world of poetry. The Hound of the Baskervilles by A. Conan Doyle, newly arranged and edited by Lin Stone. Thrown To The Wolves * The Flying Tortoise * The Plans of Mice and Men * The Wolf and the Kid If you can keep your head when
all about you Yours is the Earth and everything
that's in it, |