Chapter IX: A Prince in Disguise

More good-tempered than usual next morning, nurse was easily persuaded by Bryda that the village would be quite the nicest direction for a walk. She wanted to see that nice old Roger again, and perhaps they might even meet Beppo. She begged a roll left from breakfast, and put it, wrapped in a sheet of old copy-book, with some pennies, in her pocket.

The blacksmith was in his forge, and had some very important news for nurse, and Roger was outside his door busily weaving the cane seat of a chair he had made, for he was a jack-of-two-trades, if not of all trades, and made chairs from beginning to end.

"Good morning, Roger," said Bryda, as she came up.

"Good morning, missy. A good morning it is, though not like yesterday. That was a sort o' wedding day, with the world in a green dress, covered with jewels made of dewdrops, while the birds sang a hymn, and the great gold sun came in his best blue dress to marry her," answered the poetical Roger.

"And to-day, Roger? What's that like?"

"All! to-day's a good honest workin' day, missy, made for the busy bees and all the Lord's workin' folk."

"Cats aren't working folk," said Bryda, stroking Roger's sleek tabby.

"Maybe cats' work is to keep lone folk company, missy," said the disguised prince, for as such his little friend always thought of him.

"Shall you have cats in your palace?" she asked.

"That'll be as the king pleases, missy. I do hope so, for I be main fond o' cats."

"Is tabby very old? she's very lazy."

"I don't rightly know how old she is. You see, missy, nigh on two years ago my housecat died. Well, I suppose the village cats told each other when they met on the house-tops at night. Anyhow I never could open my door of a morning that there wasn't one cat, or maybe two and three cats, applying for the situation, each one with a first-rate character from his last place."

Bryda laughed heartily. "How did they tell you?"

"How? Why, bless you, little miss, it's often easier to know what God Almighty's brutes mean than what men mean, for all we call the brutes dumb. Tell me all about it they did, rubbin' against me and purrin', how the master of one had gone away, and the mistress of another was dead; and how one was a real good mouser, and another was that honest he'd rather starve than steal.

"Well, the long and short of it is, missy, I took Mrs. Tabby for a month on trial, to see if she'd make a good housekeeper. An' we suited, she and I, and she's never given me warning yet, nor I her, so I don't think we'll part company till I go home."

"When are you going, Roger?" asked Bryda. She could not help puzzling a good deal over this story of the old man's, about his palace home; but he spoke so simply and naturally that she could not doubt that he spoke the truth.

"I don't rightly know," he answered slowly; "I'm thinking when it's ready they'll let me know. But I'd be main glad to stay a little longer now, Miss Bryda, for all I've often wearied to be there. Shall I show you why?"

"Please do."

The old carpenter got up and opened a door opposite to that which led to his own little room, and there Bryda saw a touching sight.

The poor Italian woman was sitting propped up with pillows in a straight-backed old armchair, with Beppo in her arms. The child seemed to have grown sleepy after play, or perhaps, like his countrymen, he was accustomed to take a nap at midday. At all events he was sleeping, and the poor sick mother was gently rocking the heavy boy, and singing a soft little Italian cradle song:

"Ninni, ninni, ninni, nanna,
Ninni, nanna, ninni, nolu,
Allegrezza di la mamma,
Addormentati, oh figliolu."

That is:

"Joy of thy mother,
Fall asleep, oh, my little son!"

How white she looked and how weary! She laid her finger on her lip, and looked at the curly black head on her knee. Roger closed the door softly, and went back to his seat on tiptoe.

"I think, missy," he said, "it won't be long before the Everlasting Arms are put round her, to soothe her gently to sleep, as she do the little 'un."

"Is she _dying_, Roger?" asked Bryda, in an awe-struck voice.

"Ay," answered the carpenter, wiping his spectacles, which had suddenly grown dim. "That little black head'll not long have a mother to lean against; though she'll want for nothing as I can get her; and doctor, he sent her full two pints o' stuff, all for nothing. But he shook his head, he did, and I know what he means by that only too well; he did it to my Liz twenty-five years ago, come March next."

Bryda felt very sorrowful. Her own mother had gone to India, but then she wrote letters, nice long ones, every week. And she would come back. But poor Beppo would have no letter from his mother if once she went away, as she knew Roger's loved wife Liz had done, for there was an old gravestone by the old church door with that one little word roughly cut upon it--"Liz." And on it last Sunday she had seen the old man lay a bunch of fresh flowers, as he passed in to pray.

"Will you share your riches with her, Roger--that money you told me you had stored away?" she asked.

"My hid treasure, missy? Ah, that I will! There's so much o' that--ah, so much!--that I might share it wi' every soul as passed the door and be none the worse off mysel'."

"You won't want it in your palace, will you? Or is there more of it there? Chests and chests of precious things all the palaces in fairy tales have in them. But they are only made up," added Bryda, with a little sigh. "That's the worst of fairy tales. But your treasures are really true, aren't they, Roger?"

"True when all else is false, missy; safe when all else is lost; real when all else is a sham."

Bryda longed to ask more about this wonderful wealth of the old man who looked so poor. He must be a miser, she thought.

"Roger, are all the king's sons as rich as you are? and his daughters? or are you the eldest?"

"There's enough for all alike, missy. No one's too rich or too poor in our Father's house. But our Elder Brother, missy, there's none like him--none. The only wonder is as he isn't ashamed of his sisters and brothers, so far as he is above them, and so much greater than ever since his work was finished."

"Oh, do tell me about him! Oh, nurse! don't go on yet, please!" implored Bryda, as nurse came up the little garden-path with hasty step.

But nurse would not stay. She always said she "couldn't abide that old Methody carpenter;" and the real reason of her dislike was that once before, when she had brought Bryda to stay with the grannies, old Roger had said something she did not care to hear, because she had helped to spread a cruel mischief-making story about the village.

So Bryda left her roll and her pence with Roger, and went on with nurse.

Bryda had not seen the last of Beppo for that day. There was a private walk through the grounds, which led to the church. The grannies could not walk so far, and the old carriage always came to take them to church. But this afternoon, as Bryda was wandering in the garden, it struck her that she would like to take some flowers and put them on the grave of Roger's dear Liz. It would please the old man to see them there.

Bryda, of course, had never seen Liz.

"But I know exactly what she was like," she told herself. "She was not very tall, but just nice; and she had violet eyes and long black lashes, and pretty rosy cheeks--not too red, but pink like a peach. Oh, I know she was nice! And she always wore a brown gown, and a red handkerchief crossed on her chest. And I don't wonder Roger loved her. I should, too, for she always spoke gently, not like nurse."

So Bryda grew quite fond of the Liz she had thus invented while she gathered her flowers.

"I wonder what flower Liz was like? Cousin Salome says we ought all to be like flowers in God's garden. If we are, I'd rather be like some flowers than others. Here is a tall orange lily. Oh, you great, showy thing! How stiff and proud you are! And I tell you you're not so very pretty, after all," said Bryda severely.

The orange lily did not seem to mind in the least, but stood up just as proudly as ever.

"You poppies, red and white," went on Bryda, "you have much nicer manners: you're like ladies who are polite as well, and say nicely, 'How do you do, Mr. Jones? Will you sell me some chickens, please?' You yellow flowers--I don't know your name--you're very nice till one comes close, and then you smell horrid. I think you are like people who are very polite to strangers, but are nasty and cross at home, and slap when they play games.

"You, dear roses," she went on, talking to all the flowers in turn, "you are really too lovely! But I mustn't put you on Liz's grave, because the grannies don't like you gathered; you are like beautiful ladies in pictures, who get prettier and prettier if you go on looking at them.

"Here are pansies--hearts'ease, nurse calls them. That is the right flower for Liz! She was so gentle, and good, and kind that she made every one happy. If you fell down and were hurt, or if you had that horrid ache all over, that comes of being naughty or unhappy, and you told Liz, she would make you all right in no time. She shall have hearts'ease on her grave and nothing else, except a little mignonette, for that is quiet and sweet like she was."

So Bryda twisted up a pretty wreath of hearts'ease and mignonette, to take to the grave of this Liz, whose looks and character you see she had invented for herself, for you know if the carpenter was really a prince in disguise, of course his wife and daughter were princesses. Bryda would take the first possible chance of asking old Roger more about his brother and about the palace, and if he would not be sorry that Liz could never go there with him. Meanwhile she set off down the pretty shrubbery walk with her simple little wreath to lay on the princess' grave.

"No one would call her Princess Liz. I suppose she was Princess Elizabeth," she said to herself.