A WALNUT STOKY

"I say, Dudley, do come out for a ride! Aunt Judy is with granny, and she says the house must be quiet, and I hate being in a quiet house. Come on! What are you doing?"

Roy finished his sentence by springing on Dudley's back, and as he was in a crouching attitude in a corner of the old nursery, he brought him flat to the ground by his unexpected attack. For a minute or two both boys rolled on the ground in each other's clutches, and feet and hands were having a busy time of it. Then Dudley sprang to his feet.

"I like you coming in to tell me to be quiet, and then beginning a fight at once! Do shut up! You've quite spoilt my last letter!"

"Well, what are you doing?"

"I'm carving my name in the corner here, just below my father's."

Roy looked with curiosity at Dudley's handiwork.

"Yes, your M is very crooked; but I wouldn't choose to write my name on the wainscoting. It's too low down. I like to be at the top of everything. Now if you carved it on the ceiling that would be something like!"

"You're always wanting to do impossibilities!"

"I should like to have a try at them," rejoined Roy, quickly. "I hate everything that is easy. Now come on, do! and we'll have a good gallop over the down!"

Half an hour later and the boys were tearing through the village on their ponies, and were soon out on an open expanse of heather and grass.

Roy was in the midst of an eloquent harangue on all he was going to do when he was grown up, when Dudley suddenly came to a standstill.

"Something is the matter with Hazel. I believe she's going lame. Oh, I see, one of her shoes is loose! Now what are we to do!"

He sprang off his pony as he spoke, and looked perplexed at this calamity.

"Lead her on gently," was Roy's ready advice. "We aren't far off from C----, and I know there's a blacksmith there."

Dudley grumbled a little at having his ride spoiled in this fashion; but it was not long before they reached the neighboring village, and the smith's forge was soon found.

Then, whilst Hazel was being attended to, Roy suggested that they should go and see an old lady, a great friend of their aunt's, who lived just outside the village.

"She might ask us to tea," suggested Roy, "and she has awfully nice cake always going. I'll leave my pony here, and we'll call again for them on our way back."

"I don't like paying visits," objected Dudley, a little crossly.

"But Mrs. Ford isn't half bad to talk to, she's full of stories."

And by dint of these two baits, "cake" and "stories," Dudley's shyness was overcome, and the two boys were soon walking up a sunny little garden and knocking at the rose-covered door of "Clematis Cottage."

It was a tiny house, but spotlessly clean and tidy, and the long, low, dainty drawing-room into which they were shown had a sense of rest and repose which insensibly affected even the boys' restless spirits.

"A nice room to be ill in," was Roy's comment; "there would be such a lot of jolly pictures and things to look at on the walls when you were in bed."

"I should like to sit here on Sunday," said Dudley. "I am sure I could be still for quite half an hour!"

The door opened and a little old lady in widow's cap and gown came forward. She was a fragile, delicate-looking little woman, with a very bright face and smile, and she beamed upon the boys delightedly.

"My dear boys, this is quite a treat! I don't often get a visit from young gentlemen. How is your grandmother? Have you brought me any message from your aunt?"

"Granny is not very well to-day," replied Roy, frankly, "and Aunt Judy didn't know we were coming here. We have been riding, and Dudley's pony has had to be shod, so we've left him at the blacksmith's and come on here. You see we thought it would pass the time."

"And so it will, and you shall have a nice cup of tea before you go back. Why, what big boys you are growing! Which is the elder? I always forget."

"I am," said Roy, a little shamefacedly; "but of course most people think Dudley is, because he is the biggest."

"It's only two months and five days, though, between us," put in Dudley, eagerly, knowing what a sore point his size was to Roy; "and you see, Mrs. Ford, Roy's brain is much bigger than mine—Mr. Selby says it is, so that makes us quits!"

"And I wonder which has the biggest soul?" said Mrs. Ford, quaintly.

The boys stared at her.

"Shall I tell you a little story while we are waiting for tea?" she asked, sitting down in her easy chair by the open window, and looking first at the boys with loving interest, and then away to the sweet country outside her garden.

Roy gave Dudley a delighted nudge with his elbow.

"Yes, please; we love a good rattling story; and make plenty of adventures in it, won't you?"

But Mrs. Ford shook her head with a little smile.

"I can't tell you of fights with red Indians, and shipwrecks, and lion hunts, and all such things as that; but you must take my story as it is, and think over it in your quiet moments.

"There was once an old garden. Flowers and fruit of every description grew in it, and when no human creature was about the air was full of flower laughter and fruit conversation. One day in autumn some saucy sparrows were teasing a young walnut-tree that stood between an apple and a pear-tree, opposite a wall which was covered with beautiful golden plums.

"'What are you here for?' they said, pecking at the round green balls that hung on the tree, and then wiping their beaks in disgust on the grass underneath. 'Ugh! you're sour and bitter and nasty enough to poison a person! You're a disgrace to your master. The red and yellow apples next door to you are delicious this warm day, and the pears make one's mouth fairly water, while as to the plums over there—well, every one is fighting for them, from the slugs and snails to every bird in the country, and the boys and girls and men and women—all of us have to be kept off by those horrible nets which the old gardener is continually spreading!'

"'I'm sure,' whispered the young walnuts, humbly, 'we don't mean any harm. We don't quite know why we are here ourselves. We have been hoping to see our green skins get red and yellow, and soft and ripe, like everything else round us, but they seem to get harder and uglier as time goes by. They feel very heavy, and our stems ache with holding them up; do you think it just possible there may be something inside?'

"'Inside!' laughed the sparrows; 'who ever heard of the inside being better than the outside? You're stuffed with conceit, but nothing else.'

"And away they flew, for they were not a year old themselves, and knew nothing about autumn nuts and berries.

"The walnuts sighed and appealed to an old crow flying by.

"'Do you think we have been planted in this beautiful garden by mistake?' they said. 'We have been waiting a long time to give pleasure and to do good to those around us. The bees give us a wide berth—they say they can get no honey from us; we have no sweet scent to please the passer-by, no lovely blossoms to delight their eyes. The apples have had blossoms and fruit, and all the other trees the same, yet here we hang and grow, and the days go by and we're only laughed at for our ugliness and want of sweetness.'

"'Wait a little longer,' said the old crow; 'wait, and take pains to grow!'

"And the walnuts waited, and the sun kissed their hard skins, and the rain refreshed them when dry and thirsty; and still the sparrows mocked them, and the apple and pear-tree talked to each other over their heads, for they too looked upon them as a failure. One day the biggest walnut broke from his stem and dropped in the long grass. No one heeded his fall except his brothers; the gardener came by and gathered the apples and pears, but did not look at the walnut-tree; and when he kicked the fallen walnut with his feet he took no more notice of it than if it had been a pebble.

"'Is that our fate?' sighed the walnuts. 'Now we know we are no good. What is the use of trying to grow? What is the good of living at all when we're so ugly and useless, and the end of us is to lie and rot in the grass and be kicked by every one who passes?'

"And they wept bitter tears of disappointment and mortification; and one by one they dropped from the tree and lay unheeded, uncared for on the ground below.

"Then one morning came up the old crow.

"'Why did you tell us to wait?' cried one walnut in petulant tones. 'We're rotting, dying here, and this is the end of us.'

"'Wait a little longer,' said the crow again; 'it is when we are very low that we are lifted very high. When we come to an end a new beginning is coming.'

"The walnuts sighed as he flew away; yet the biggest one turned with a spark of hope to his brothers.

"'I do believe we have been made for something. My skin is rotting and dying, but in spite of it all I feel as if I have something inside that is still alive. Let us wait and be patient a little longer.'

"And then at last one day, when the apple and pear-tree were fruitless and leafless, when the flowers and butterflies and bees had all disappeared, down the garden came the master himself and the gardener.

"He stopped when he came to the walnut-tree, and stooping down in the long grass he gently raised one of the fallen nuts.

"'You must gather these in,' he said to his gardener; 'we have a good many for the first year.'

"'Yes,' said the gardener, 'they are ready now. I've let them lie till you saw them.'

"And the walnuts whispered to themselves in surprised delight that it was not neglect and indifference had left them there, but that the gardener had watched each one fall, and knew where to find them when their time came at last.

"And when their green husks were removed, and their brown shells cracked at the master's table, they discovered that the most valuable part of them was what could not be seen by outsiders, and could only be brought to light by the master's hand."

"That's a kind of parable," said Roy when Mrs. Ford ceased speaking.

"Yes," she said, smiling; "most people are like the sparrows: they think it is only the outside you should go by. Now, when I see a person for the first time I always wonder what their soul is like. If that is beautiful it doesn't matter about their body. And a little body may contain a very big soul."

"Can we make our souls big?" asked Roy, with an anxious face.

"They should be growing, my boy, day by day. Put them into the Gardener's keeping and He will make them grow. It isn't the handsome and the strong who do all the good in the world; very often it is just the other way."

"Then there is hope I may do something," said Roy, brightening up; "I like that story about the walnuts, don't you, Dudley?"

"Yes, I'll think of it when I crack them next," said Dudley.

Tea was now brought in, and the boys did it full justice, and shortly after they were on their homeward way.

"She's a jolly old thing," remarked Dudley, presently, "and her cake was awfully good. I'm glad we went to see her."

Roy was unusually silent. Dudley continued—

"I expect you've got the biggest soul of us too, Roy; nurse is always saying your soul is too big for your body."

"I wish I had no body sometimes," said Roy, with a sigh; "it gets so tired and stupid."

"Well, we won't talk about souls and bodies any more," Dudley said, quickly, "they aren't interesting. I say, do you think we could teach Rob cricket?"

Rob was a topic which always interested Roy. He brightened up at once.

"We'll teach him everything," he said, eagerly. "I want him to be able to read and write and play, and do everything that we do, and more besides, for I shall have him for my friend as well as a servant when I grow up."

"A funny kind of chap for a friend," said Dudley, a little crossly; "he's twice as old as you are, to begin with, and he's an awfully stupid, thick-headed fellow."

"Don't you like Rob?"

Roy's tone was an astonished one.

"Oh, I like him well enough, but I'm getting rather sick of hearing you crack him up so."

Roy changed the subject. He wondered sometimes why Dudley seemed to lose his temper so over Rob; it never entered his head that Dudley might regard him as a possible rival; that Rob, the country lad, might spoil the covenant of friendship between them.