The Fairy Caravan: Chapter XXII - Cuckoo Brow Lane

CHAPTER XXII

CUCKOO BROW LANE

IT is never quite dark during spring nights in the north. All through the twilight night Charles kept crowing. He was calling the circus company to breakfast, strike camp, and away, before the sun came up.

Jenny Ferret’s fire still smouldered; she heaped on sticks to boil the kettle. There was hustling, and packing up, and clucking of hens, and barking of dogs.

“Is all taken back that we borrowed?” asked Sandy. “I am answerable to honest old Bobs. What about that meal-bagful of mice, Xarifa?”

“Please, Sandy, the Codlin Croft mice are tied up ready.”

“Why only the mice of Codlin Croft? where are the other nine?”

“Please, please, Sandy, might they ride to the top of Cuckoo Brow? Then they could run home all the way inside the fence. They were afraid of owls. And besides, I did so want them to meet Belinda Woodmouse, we are sure to see her.”

“In short, they have remained; and they must be pulled,” said Pony Billy, good-humouredly.

“Here’s a worse difficulty! Who is going to pull the tilt-cart? Paddy Pig is not fit for it,” said Jenny Ferret, hurrying up with an armful of circus trappings.

“That’s all arranged,” said Pony Billy. “Come along, Cuddy Simpson!”

The gypsies’ donkey walked into the orchard, on Mettle’s four new shoes. “Here come I, fit and ready to pull a dozen pigs! Good friends, I’ll go with you to the hills for a summer’s run on the grass. Fetch me a straw rope, Sandy; I’m too big for Paddy Pig’s breast-straps.”

“Sandy! Sandy!” cried Jenny Ferret. “The tent-pole has been forgotten, and our little bucket at the well. Bother that crowing cock. Where is Iky Shepster?”

The starling laughed and whistled; but he refused to leave the chimney stack.

Paddy Pig was installed in the cart, to ride in state; he was wrapped in a shawl and treated like an invalid; but he was in the highest possible spirits. He played the fiddle, and squealed and joked. Sandy marched in front of the procession with his tail tightly curled. The cavalcade set off up the lane amidst the acclamations of the poultry and dogs.

Cuckoo Brow Lane is a bonny spot in spring, garlanded with hawthorn and wild cherry blossom. It skirts the lower slopes of the hill that rises behind Codlin Croft.

The meadows on their left were bathed in pearly dew; the lane still lay in the shadow of dawn; the sun had not yet topped the Brow. As it rose, its beams touched the golden tops of the oak trees in Pringle Wood; and a faint smell of bluebells floated over the wall.

Paddy Pig fiddled furiously. “I’ll play them ‘Scotch Cap’! I’ll pop the weasel at them! Never again will I cross plank bridges into that abominable wood. Gee up, gee up! get along, Cuddy Simpson!”

The gypsies’ donkey trundled the cart through the dead leaves in the lane; steadily pulling in the wake of the caravan.

Tuppenny, Xarifa, and the visitor mice were all peeping through the muslin curtains.

“Is the wood full of fairies, Xarifa?”

“Hush, till we get across the water; then I will tell you!”

“Here, you mice, let me brush up the crumbs. I want to open all the windows.” (Jenny Ferret was so accustomed to travel that no amount of jolts upset her housekeeping.) “I might as well take down the curtains, as we are going up to Goosey Foot.”

“Where is that, Jenny Ferret?”

“Spring cleaning,” replied Jenny Ferret briefly.

Xarifa commenced to explain about the washerwomen up at the tarn; but Jenny Ferret bundled everybody out on to the caravan steps.

Tuppenny rolled off, under the surprised nose of Cuddy Simpson, who was brought to a sudden standstill, whilst Tuppenny was picked up amidst squeaks of laughter. He was put to ride in a basket, one of several that were slung at the back of the caravan.

Xarifa sat in the doorway; and the visitor mice hung on anywhere, like Cinderella’s footmen behind the pumpkin coach. They set up an opposition fiddling, and joked with Paddy Pig and the donkey.

Indeed, Pippin fiddled so sweetly that presently they all joined in concert together, and the little birds in the trees sang to them also as they passed along. First a robin sang:

“Little lad, little lad, where was’t thou born? Far off in Lancashire under a thorn, Where they sup sour milk, in a ram’s horn!”

Pippin did not know that tune, so he began another:

“I ploughed it with a ram’s horn, Sing ivy, sing ivy! I sowed it all over with one peppercorn, Sing holly go whistle and ivy! I got the mice to carry it to the mill Sing ivy, sing ivy!”

Then he changed his tune, and the chaffinches sang with him:

“I saw a little bird, coming hop, hop, hop!”

Then he played another; and Xarifa pelted him with hempseeds:

“Madam will you walk, madam will you talk— Madam will you walk and talk with me?”

And then he heard a cuckoo and he played:

“Summer is icumen in!”

The music did sound pretty all the way up Cuckoo Brow Lane.

Where they crossed the beck there was a row of stepping stones, with the water tinkling merrily between them. On a stone, bobbing and curtseying, stood a fat, browny-black little bird with a broad white breast.

“Bessie Dooker! Bessie Dooker! Tell all the other little birds and beasties that there will be a circus show this evening. Bid them come to the big hawthorn tree, near the whin bushes by High Green Gate.”

Bessie Dooker bobbed her head; she sped swiftly up the beck, whistling as she flew.

The lane was steep after crossing the stream; as they climbed they met the early sunbeams. The bank on their right was full of wild flowers; wood sorrel, spotted orchis, dog violets, germander speedwell, and little blue milkwort.

“See!” cried Xarifa, “the milkwort! the milk is coming with the grass in spring; the grass is coming with the soft south wind. Listen to the lambs! they are before us in the other lane.”

Sandy had been in advance of the procession; he turned back. “Wait a little while, Pony Billy; wait with a stone behind the wheel. The sheep are going up to the intake pastures in charge of Bobs and Matt. Let them gain a start before us at the meeting of the lanes; it is slow work driving lambs. How they bleat and run back and forward! Their own mothers call, but they run to each other’s mothers, and bawl and push!”

“Here under this sunny hedge I could pleasantly eat a bite and rest,” said Cuddy Simpson. “Put stones behind the wheels, and unharness the cart.”

“May we get down and play? we have been shut up so long, me and Tuppenny?”

“Yes, yes! go and play; but do not get left behind.”

Xarifa clapped her little hands. “Oh, look at the flowers.”

“What is that peeping at us, Xarifa? with bright black eyes?” said Tuppenny, pointing to something that rustled amongst the hedge.

“It is my dearest Belinda Woodmouse! Oh, what a happy meeting!”

Belinda was a sleek brown mouse; she was larger than the house mice; and more active than Xarifa. Tuppenny turned shy, and stared at her very solemnly; but her sprightliness soon reassured him.

Xarifa introduced her to Tuppenny, Pippin, Cobweb, Dusty, and Smut. “Rufty Tufty I am unable to introduce, because she has stayed at home to rock the cradle. But here are enough of us to dance a set tonight on the short-cropped turf by the hawthorn bush.”

“More mice to pull!” laughed Pony Billy.

“Oh, oh! Mr. Pony William, you have swallowed three violets!”

“Well?” said Pony Billy. “What then? I must eat!”

“I do not think they liked it,” said Xarifa, doubtfully. “Could you not eat young nettles, like Cuddy Simpson?”

Pony Billy rubbed his nose against his foreleg, and gave it up! He moved a little further up the lane, and went on nibbling.

“Can the flowers feel, Xarifa?” whispered Tuppenny.

“I do not know how much or how little; but surely they enjoy the sunshine. See how they are smiling, and holding up their little heads. They cannot dart about, like yonder buzzing fly, nor move along the bank, like that big yellow striped queen wasp. But I think they take pleasure in the gentle rain and sun and wind; children of spring, returning from year to year; and longer-lived than us—especially the trees.

“Tuppenny, you asked me about fairies. Here on this pleasant sunny bank, I can tell you better than in the shadowed woods.”

“Are they good fairies, Xarifa?”

“Yes; but all fairies are peppery. The fairy of the oak tree was spiteful for a while. Sit you round on the moss, Belinda, and Tuppenny, and visitor mice; and I will try to tell you prettily a tale that should be pretty—the tale of the Fairy in the Oak.”