CHAPTER I

THERE was Daddy, of course, and Mammy and home. Outside home was the world, and the world was a stretch of golden sand. It was a very perplexing world to a small boy, for it had a trick, when one least expected it, of hiding under the sea. At such times the confines of the world narrowed, and the world itself became a succession of rocky ledges entirely made up of don’t-go-there-Tommy places, and most of the fun was spoiled.

There was always the danger, too, in the world of rocks that clothes would not stand the extra strain they were called upon to bear. In sliding down their sea-washed sides “Take care of your trousers, ma handsome!” was forgotten until the bottom of the rock was reached and the mischief done. Tommy’s trousers were never very durable even in the beginning of things, for they were made out of Mammy’s worn-out skirts and cast-off coats (all but the Sunday pair, that is) and so little friction seemed to wear them into holes.

Just as often as the warning concerning his clothes was given him, just so often did Tommy disregard it, but never were the consequences so disastrous as on that July evening when he walked slowly up the cobble-paved alley to his home; a boy who had lost his illusions; a boy who regarded sliding down sloping rocks as a highly over-rated form of[Pg 2] enjoyment. With one fat hand he held together a yawning rent, while with the other now and again he rubbed his eyes. Slowly he trailed unwilling feet over the cobbles, and only half-heartedly did he kick the little pile of dust left under the wall near the Church door, neglected by the dustman on his morning round.

Mammy was standing in the doorway and saw him coming. “Surely this cannot be Tommy Tregennis?” she said, in a puzzled, uncertain voice.

Tommy’s heart stood still. Suppose she didn’t know him; suppose she wouldn’t have him in the house; suppose he had to sit out on the cobble-stones all night! There was no end to the awful supposings.

However “’Tis me, Mammy!” he explained, and tried to put matters on a pleasant basis by butting her in the stomach as he ran head foremost.

But Mammy drew back, a hurt, surprised look in her eyes. “It sounds like Tommy Tregennis’s voice,” she said uncertainly, “but surely neither Tommy Tregennis nor his fäather ever comes home with they trousers tore! I’m just waitin’ for ma handsome, now,” she volunteered, “he’s been out playin’ in the——”

“I’m your handsome, Mammy,” declared a choking, muffled voice. “I’m your Tommy, I am, but I’ve tore me trousers on the Skiddery Rock.”

It was dreadful to make such a confession, but necessity calls for decided action; and the effect of the confession was good, for Mammy admitted[Pg 3] her graceless son and followed him into the kitchen.

“No, don’t sit down,” she exclaimed, “let me see just what you’ve been up to, young man. I’ll tell your fäather when he comes home, Tommy Tregennis, you tearin’ up the good trousers he goes to sea to get for ee!”

Unprotesting, Tommy was led up to bed. “To-morrow,” suggested Mammy, “you’d best run fast all the way to school so as no one shan’t see ee, and start early before they other children goes out.”

There was a moment’s silence, then a wailing cry: “Oh, Mammy, Mammy, can’t ee mend they trousers to-night?” Conclusively Mammy proved the impossibility of such rapid repair and it was a broken-hearted Tommy who knelt in his little cot. “Bless Mammy, ’n Daddy, ’n make Tommy a good boy. Please get me trousers mended, Amen.” Then “Give I just another chanst, Mammy, just one more chanst.”

“But you’ve said that again and again, Tommy Tregennis, an’ it’s just been untruth, untruth every time.”

“Well, it’ll be truth this time, Mammy, for sure it will; just one more chanst.” Then very pleadingly, “Put ’em in the rag-bag, Mammy.”

Mrs. Tregennis looked horrified. “An’ that I won’t, my son. Do you think I be made of trousers that I can afford to use them for house-cleanin’ just because you’ve got ’em tore slidin’ on Skiddery[Pg 4] Rock?” And Mammy kissed her son somewhat coldly and went down the creaking wooden stairs.

There was no sleep for the culprit; the evening light coming in at the window mocked his misery. The sea was going down now, and in the distance he could hear the laughter of the children who still played on the widening sands; the very children who, to-morrow, would laugh at him, Tommy Tregennis, because his trousers was tore.

He decided that he would leave for school before breakfast as Mammy had advised, and run very fast all the way. But even so, Tommy was five now, and when you are five years old you no longer sit on the window-seat in Miss Lavinia’s school-room. When you are five your legs are supposed to be so long that you can be given an ordinary chair at the long, narrow table.

Of course it was very grand to be promoted from the window-seat; it meant one was definitely growing up. In spite of the promotion Tommy often had regrets, for the outside world, as viewed from the window, was most attractive. The window opened on to Miss Lavinia’s back-garden, and there were always sparrows, and often cats; bees in the summer, too, and the gay colours of the flowers. The window-seat was very low (that was why it was your place when you were only four) and it would have been so easy to sit down there backwards. But a chair was quite another matter. That meant standing on a spindle first, then stretching upwards before[Pg 5] you turned round and sat; and detection would seem inevitable.

There was the new game, too; the game in which you all lay flat on the ground in a ring and blew at the bonfire in the middle, having first of all piled it up with leaves and sticks (pretending leaves and sticks, of course). And you sang all the time. Then you crawled nearer and nearer to the centre until Miss Lavinia said: “Take care, Tommy; suppose you should burn!” and you wriggled hurriedly back to your place in the ring.

But for such games trousers must be entire. Tommy broke down utterly and sobbed beneath the bed clothes.

Mammy must still be standing in the doorway for now and again he heard a heavy tread up the alley. “Evenin’,” a hearty voice would say, and “G’d evenin’,” Mammy would reply.

Then there came a much lighter step, and through the open window Tommy heard another voice which caused him to still his sobs and sit up in bed, his hands tightly clasped and his little chest heaving under the flannelette nightshirt.

“Good-evenin’, Miss Lavinia.” This was exactly what Tommy had feared.

“I’ve just had to put my Tommy to bed. He’s tore his trousers on the rocks, and I cannot mend they to-night. He must come early to school to-morrow and bide still all day, so that the children won’t laugh at him. Yes, thank you, Miss; if he may go back to the window-seat that’ll be fine,[Pg 6] and Billy Triggs can have his chair, then they children won’t see.”

When these arrangements had been made Miss Lavinia said “Good-night” and her footsteps died away round the corner.

The evening light grew dimmer and dimmer. Grotesque shadows lengthened in the room and Tommy was still wide awake. At last he could bear it no longer.

“Mammy, Mammy!” he cried; but there was no response.

A second call, however, brought her to the foot of the stairs, for he distinctly heard her toe hit the stair-rod at the bottom that held the linoleum in place. So he knew that she was really listening and called once more. “Mammy, Mammy, don’t let anyone have me!”

“But who should want you, Tommy Tregennis?”

“I don’t know, Mammy,” he shouted back in his lusty, young voice. “I don’t know, but I thought if you was in the kitchen some one might come up the stairs and get I.”

“But who should want to take you away, Tommy Tregennis? Who should want a little boy as tears his trousers when his Daddy’s away at sea?”

There it was again! Even a fly, unpardonably late in going to bed, was buzzing on the window-pane, “Tommy’s tore his trousers; Tommy’s tore his trousers!” Finally the moon looked in at the window laughing at his grief, and Tommy fell into a troubled sleep.

[Pg 7]

Many hours later he was wakened by the striking of a match and a flare of light. Mammy was putting the kettle on the spirit-lamp at her bedside, and by this Tommy knew that Daddy was home again. Rubbing his eyes he sat up and looked anxiously at the foot of his cot. He saw that the torn trousers were no longer there. He gave a deep sigh of relief; it was true then; he had feared that it was perhaps only a dream. But they were not there, so now he knew that the odd little red-haired man who danced in the moonlight had really taken away those dreadful trousers to make them into tiny coats for the ten little boys and girls whom he invariably left at home on his nights out.

Sleepily Tommy watched his mother’s movements. When she had poured water into the tea-pot he crept into the big bed, and as soon as Daddy came the feast began. Some potato and gravy from the cold pasty oozed out of Tommy’s share and fell upon his nightshirt. It was too good to be left, so Tommy licked vigorously making very sure that none was wasted. Quickly the midnight meal ended.

“Now, ma handsome,” said Mammy (she must have forgotten about the trousers), “skip back to bed like a fly in a jaboon.”

So Tommy skipped. Daddy blew out the candle, and soon their regular breathing testified that all three slept.

[Pg 8]

CHAPTER II

AFTER all Tommy Tregennis had breakfast at the proper time the following morning; and although he left home a little earlier than usual it was with no intention of hurrying. Rather did he choose to swagger slowly through the crooked streets, while every now and again he bent ostentatiously to pick up a stone to throw at a sparrow, or a lamp-post, or an old tin in the gutter. It did not matter in the least what he aimed at, sparrow, post or tin, for never by any chance did he hit it; but it mattered greatly that those children who had laughed last night, laughed while he was sobbing in bed, should know that there was no need for him to stand upright unless he cared to do so. Without shame he could now assume any attitude he chose. For Tommy Tregennis wore a new pair of trousers!

Tommy himself had not known of their existence, but weeks before, at night while he slept, Mammy had planned and cut and sewn by the light of the kitchen lamp. With puckered brow, and tightly compressed lips holding two or three pins, she had spread her old green coat carefully on the kitchen table, smoothed out every wrinkle, and upon it placed a piece of newspaper which bore some resemblance to the shape of Tommy’s legs.

[Pg 9]

The first plan was faulty; the curve of the arm-hole interfered. The newspaper pattern was taken up, Mammy’s mouth held more pins and her frown grew deeper. It was only after much anxious thought that she decided finally that it was possible to cut a strip from a sleeve of the coat and join it to the top of the trousers in such a way that when Tommy’s jersey was well pulled down the seam would not show. So the pattern was pinned on more firmly, the first cut was made half-an-inch from the edge of the paper, and after that there was no drawing back.

As Mammy planned and pinned and cut and sewed in the yellow light of the lamp the silence of the little kitchen was only broken by the fall of a cinder now and again, and by the steady ticking of the clocks.

One clock stood on the chimney-piece, a canister on either side, and beyond each canister a china dog with staring yellow eyes. It was the chimney-piece clock that told the time. Nailed to the wall, to the left of the fireplace, with long slender chains dangling and throwing shadows in the lamplight, hung a cuckoo clock that was Tommy’s most cherished possession. All day and all night it ticked steadily through the hours, but as the hands never moved it was not considered trustworthy more than once a day; this was at five minutes past twelve, when (at any rate on Saturdays and Sundays) Mammy would look up to the wall, and say: “Deary me, five minutes past twelve; my dear soul, why ’tis time to put on the potaties!”

[Pg 10]

As the clocks ticked, and the cinders fell, and the oil in the lamp burned low, Mammy’s deft fingers moved very busily, and her thoughts were very busy too. They carried her a long way back—ten years back, in fact—to the time before she was Mammy, to the days when Tommy, and even Tommy’s father, had not yet come into her life.

She was just Ellen in those days; Ellen Pertwee really, but no one seemed to remember that she had a second name more than once a year when it was all written in full in her Sunday School prize. For four years Ellen had been a willing little servant-maid at Tomses the draper’s, but when she was eighteen there was a great change in her life, for she went to the doctor’s as house-parlour-maid, and her wages were twelve pounds a year. She was very hazy at the time as to the meaning of her grand new title; but the money was very real, and she remembered even now how dazzled she was at the thought of so much gold.

With her first month’s wages, ten years ago, she had bought the cloth for her new green coat. It had cost her much deliberation and several sleepless nights, but at last she had gone back to Tomses on her fortnightly night-out, and made the important purchase. Night after night she had cut and shaped and pinned and stitched, much as she was cutting and shaping now. At last the coat was finished (all sewn by hand, too, for Ellen had no machine in those days) and she wore it in Church on her next Sunday out.

[Pg 11]

It was after Church that very night that Tom Tregennis, much to her surprise, asked her to walk out with him, and——. Well, now the new green coat was the old green coat, and was being made into trousers for little Tommy Tregennis to wear!

[Pg 12]

CHAPTER III

SO far Draeth is comparatively unknown, for it lies a little off the beaten track and hurrying tourists do not find it easily. The Limited Express does not pull up at Scard, the junction, but hurries on, through beautiful country, from Plymouth to Falmouth without a stop. Visitors to Draeth, therefore, travel by a slower train from Mill Bay and leave the main line at Scard. Here, seizing their own hand-luggage (for the porters, like the express, are limited, and unlike the express are slow), they cross the line by the bridge, and pass along a bit of dusty road, following the direction indicated by a painted hand under which is written “To the Draeth and Scard Branch Railway.”

The independence of the branch line is emphasized by the fact that the Draeth train remains just outside the station until all the passengers are in line upon the platform. It then steams up alongside with much unnecessary fuss. When at last it starts it runs very slowly and the line is single, but as a precaution against possible accidents an iron bar passes across the window of each compartment. Thus, if a traveller wishes to look out at the narrow East Draeth river, at the willows and alders on its banks, and at the clumps of Rose Bay and Willowherb that give rich colour to the line,[Pg 13] he rubs his nose on the dusty bar while he knocks his forehead on the window-frame above.

So steep is the gradient from Scard to Draeth that half-way there the train stops, and the engine steams away alone. Returning it is coupled at the rear and now pulls the train backward at first doubling on its track. Those who cannot travel facing the engine change places with those who cannot sit with their backs in the direction in which they are going. By the time these changes are effected the narrow East Draeth river expands into a wide sheet of water if the tide is up, or into a series of mud flats when the tide is low. Five minutes later the train enters what is surely the prettiest of all Cornish stations, and the journey is at an end.

There was a man once who lived in Draeth who made many plans for beautifying and improving the town. He built the Frying Pan Pier, and it was he, too, who opened up the Pentafore Estate. The branch railway also owes its existence to him. He dreamed of a modern sea-front all asphalt and glittering lights, of a grand Hydro, too, which was to front the sea on a commanding bit of cliff-coast less than a mile eastward of the town. But he died and his plans came to naught, and Draeth is still just Draeth!

Beyond the station the East and West rivers join and together run out to sea, dividing East Draeth from West Draeth and forming a safe harbour for the fishing smacks that have safely weathered so many storms. Lately the fishing has been poor in[Pg 14] Draeth because the steam-trawlers have driven away the fish, and in winter there is much poverty in the town.

It was dread of the winter that led the Tregennises to give up their three-roomed cottage and move into a house that had eight windows in the front and rose three stories high. The change was made in April so that all might be in readiness for the summer and the visitors the summer brought.

The new home was only a stone’s throw from the old one, and there was much running backwards and forwards between the two houses, much fetching and carrying, until the last moments in the old home came, and nothing remained but to lock the door and give up the key to the landlord. Then Mrs. Tregennis leaned up against the kitchen sink and cried, while Tommy, not in the least understanding why, cried, too.

“Mammy,” he wailed, “Oh, Mammy, what’ve I done to ee?” “Done, ma lamb, done?” Mrs. Tregennis spoke breathlessly between her sobs. “Why, nothin’, ma handsome; you’re just the best little boy as ever I had.”

Then, having wiped Tommy’s eyes and her own with a large red-bordered handkerchief, Mrs. Tregennis ran upstairs for the last time, took one more look at the empty rooms and, with set mouth and without a backward glance, came slowly down the stairs. She took Tommy’s hand in hers, and silently and tearfully mother and son passed through the open door, locked it behind them and crossed the[Pg 15] cobble-stone alley to the imposing double-fronted house which was henceforth to be home.

Much more furniture was wanted in the three-storied house than in the forsaken cottage, and for some months past the Tregennis family, Daddy, Mammy and Tommy had attended all the neighbouring sales. They were almost too nervous to bid when the articles they wished to buy were put up for auction; when shame-facedly they had made their nod they were held upon the tenterhooks of despair while some one else, who could not possibly want the goods as much as they did, bid against them and so raised the price.

Now the furnishing was complete. The kitchen and one bedroom held the old things, but in the other four rooms Mrs. Tregennis arranged with pride the bargains collected at the sales, and the new things sent out from a Plymouth shop.

It was all so grand and wonderful that she could scarcely realize that the rooms were her very own. Morning after morning, for many weeks, as soon as she was dressed, she opened the door of the tiny sitting-room on the first floor and looked round almost with awe on its beauty and newness. On tiptoe she then advanced into the room, picked a piece of cotton off the gay Brussels carpet, dusted an imaginary fleck from the green art-serge tablecloth, and stroked out the fringe of the plush mantel-border. Then, having slightly altered the position of one of the velvet upholstered chairs, she passed out with a sigh of contentment, and gently closed the door behind her.

[Pg 16]