‘Such a splendid day as we have had!’ they all cried in a breath. ‘And we know now how to get our own living; we can take care of ourselves in future, so you need have no further trouble with us.’
‘Madam,’ said the doctor, making a bow with an air which displayed his tail-feathers to advantage ‘let me congratulate you on the charming family you have raised. A finer brood of young healthy ducks I never saw. Give claw, my dear friend,’ he said, addressing the elder son. ‘In our barn-yard no family is more respected than that of the ducks.’
And so Madam Feathertop came off glorious at last; and when after this the ducks used to go swimming up and down the river like so many nabobs among the admiring hens, Dr. Peppercorn used to look after them and say, ‘Ah! I had the care of their infancy!’ and Mr. Gray Cock and his wife used to say, ‘It was our system of education did that!’
MOTHER MAGPIE’S MISCHIEF.
OLD Mother Magpie was the busiest character in the forest. But you must know that there is a great difference between being busy and being industrious. One may be very busy all the time, and yet not in the least industrious; and this was the case with Mother Magpie.
She was always full of everybody’s business but her own, — up and down, here and there, everywhere but in her own nest, knowing every one’s affairs, telling what everybody had been doing or ought to do, and ready to cast her advice gratis at every bird and beast of the woods.
Now she bustled up to the parsonage at the top of the oak tree, to tell old Parson Too-whit what she thought he ought to preach for his next sermon, and how dreadful the morals of the parish were becoming. Then, having perfectly bewildered the poor old gentleman, who was always sleepy on a Monday morning, Mother Magpie would take a peep into Mrs. Oriole’s nest, sit chattering on a bough above, and pour forth floods of advice, which, poor little Mrs. Oriole used to say to her husband, bewildered her more than a hard north-east storm.
‘Depend upon it, my dear,’ Mother Magpie would say, ‘that this way of building your nest, swinging like an old empty stocking from a bough, isn’t at all the thing. I never built one so in my life, and I never have headaches. Now you complain always that your head aches whenever I call upon you. It’s all on account of this way of swinging and swaying about in such an absurd manner.’
‘But, my dear,’ piped Mrs. Oriole, timidly, ‘the Orioles always have built in this manner, and it suits our constitution.’
‘A fiddle on your constitution! How can you tell what agrees with your constitution unless you try? You own you are not well; you are subject to headaches; and every physician will tell you that a tilting motion disorders the stomach, and acts upon the brain. Ask old Dr. Kite. I was talking with him about your case only yesterday, and says he, “Mrs. Magpie, I perfectly agree with you.”’
‘But my husband prefers this style of building.’
‘That’s only because he isn’t properly instructed.
Pray, did you ever attend Dr. Kite’s lectures on the nervous system?’
‘No, I have no time to attend lectures. Who would set on the eggs?’
‘Why, your husband, to be sure; don’t he take his turn in setting? If he don’t, he ought to. I shall speak to him about it. My husband always set regularly half the time, that I might have time to go about and exercise.’
‘Oh, Mrs. Magpie, pray don’t speak to my husband; he will think I’ve been complaining.’
‘No, no, he won’t! Let me alone. I understand just how to say the thing. I’ve advised hundreds of young husbands in my day, and I never give offence.’
‘But I tell you, Mrs. Magpie, I don’t want any interference between my husband and me, and I will not have it,’ says Mrs. Oriole, with her little round eyes flashing with indignation.
‘Don’t put yourself in a passion, my dear; the more you talk, the more sure I am that your nervous system is running down, or you wouldn’t forget good manners in this way. You’d better take my advice, for I understand just what to do.’ And away sails Mother Magpie; and presently young Oriole comes home, all in a flutter.
‘I say, my dear, if you will persist in gossiping over our private family matters with that old mother Magpie—’
‘My dear. I don’t gossip; she comes and bores me to death with talking, and then goes off and mistakes what she has been saying for what I said.’
‘But you must cut her.’
‘I try to, all I can; but she won’t be cut.’
‘It’s enough to make a bird swear,’ said Tommy Oriole. — „
Tommy Oriole, to say the truth, had as good a heart as ever beat under bird’s feathers; but then he had a weakness for concerts and general society, because he was held to be, by all odds, the handsomest bird in the woods, and sung like an angel; and so the truth was, he didn’t confine himself so much to the domestic nest as Tom Titmouse or Billy Wren. But he determined he wouldn’t have old Mother Magpie interfering with his affairs.
‘The fact is,’ quoth Tommy, ‘I am a society bird, and nature has marked out for me a course beyond the range of the commonplace, and my wife must learn to accommodate. If she has a brilliant husband, whose success gratifies her ambition and places her in a distinguished public position, she must pay something for it. I’m sure Billy Wren’s wife would give her very bill to see her husband in the circles where I am quite at home. To say the truth, my wife was all well enough content till old Mother Magpie interfered. It is quite my duty to take strong ground, and show that I cannot be dictated to.’
So, after this, Tommy Oriole went to rather more concerts, and spent less time at home than ever he did before, which was all that Mother Magpie effected in that quarter. I confess this was very bad in Tommy; but then birds are no better than men in domestic matters, and sometimes will take the most unreasonable courses, if a meddlesome magpie gets her claw into their nest.
‘ But old Mother Magpie had now got a new business in hand in another quarter. She bustled off down to Water-Dock Lane, where lived the old music-teacher, Dr. Bullfrog. The poor old doctor was a simple-minded, good, amiable creature, who had played the double-bass and led the forest choir on all public occasions since nobody knows when. Latterly some youngsters had arisen, who sneered at his performances as behind the age. In fact, since a great city had grown up in the vicinity of the forest, tribes of wandering boys broke up the simple tastes and quiet habits which old Mother Nature had always kept up in those parts.
This was not the worst of it. The little varlets had a way of jeering at the simple old doctor and his concerts, and mimicking the tones of his bass viol.
‘There you go, Paddy-go-donk, Paddy-go-donk — umph — chunk,’ some rascal of a boy would shout, while poor old Bullfrog’s yellow spectacles would be bedewed with tears of honest indignation. In time, the jeers of these little savages began to tell on the society in the forest, and to corrupt their simple manners; and it was whispered among the younger and more heady birds and squirrels, that old Bullfrog was a bore, and that it was time to get up a new style of music in the parish, and to give the charge of it to some more modem performer.
Poor old Dr. Bullfrog knew nothing of this, however, and was doing his simple best in peace, when Mother Magpie called in upon him one morning.
‘Well, neighbour, how unreasonable people are! Who would have thought that the youth of our generation should have no more consideration for established merit? Now, for my part, I think your music-teaching never was better; and as for our choir, I maintain constantly that it never was in better order; but — well one may wear her tongue out, but one can never make these young folks listen to reason.’
‘I really don’t understand you, ma’am,’ said poor Dr. Bullfrog.
‘What! you haven’t heard of a committee that is going to call on you to ask you to resign the care of the parish music?’
‘Madam,’ said Dr. Bullfrog, with all that energy of tone for which he was remarkable, ‘I don’t believe it — I can’t believe it. You must have made a mistak
e.’
‘I mistake! No, no, my good friend; I never make mistakes. What I know, I know certainly! Wasn’t it I that said I knew there was an engagement between Tim Chipmunk and Nancy Nibble, who are married this blessed day? I knew that thing six weeks before any bird or beast in our parts; and I can tell you, you are going to be scandalously and ungratefully treated, Dr. Bullfrog.’
‘Bless me, we shall all be ruined!’ said Mrs. Bullfrog; ‘my poor husband—’
‘Oh, as to that, if you take things in time, and listen to my advice,’ said Mother Magpie, ‘we may yet pull you through. You must alter your style a little — adapt it to modern times. Everybody now is a little touched with the operatic fever, and there’s Tommy Oriole has been to Paris and brought back a touch of the artistic. If you would try his style a little — something Tyrolean, you see.’
‘Dear madam, consider my voice. I never could hit the high notes.’
‘How do you know? It’s all practice; Tommy Oriole says so. Just try the scales. As to your voice, your manner of living has a great deal to do with it. I always did tell you that your passion for water injured your singing. Suppose Tommy Oriole should sit half his days up to his waist in water, as you do, his voice would be as hoarse and rough as yours. Come up on the bank, and learn to perch, as we birds do. We are the true musical race.’
And so poor Dr. Bullfrog was persuaded to forego his pleasant little cottage under the rushes, where his green spectacles and honest round back had excited, even in the minds of the boys, sentiments of respect and compassion. He came up into the garden, and established himself under a tree, and began to practise Italian scales.
The result was, that poor old Dr. Bullfrog, instead of being considered as a respectable old bore, got himself universally laughed at for aping fashionable manners. Every bird and beast in the forest had a gibe at him; and even old Parson Too-whit thought it worth his while to make him a pastoral call, and admonish him about courses unbefitting his age and standing. As to Mother Magpie, you may be sure that she assured every one how sorry she was that dear old Dr. Bullfrog had made such a fool of him self: if he had taken her advice, he would have kept on respectably, as a nice old Bullfrog should.
But the tragedy for the poor old music-teacher grew even more melancholy in its termination; for one day as he was sitting disconsolately under a currant-bush in the garden, practising his poor old notes in a quiet way, thump came a great blow of a hoe, which nearly broke his back.
‘Hullo! what ugly beast have we got here?’ said Tom Noakes, the gardener’s boy. ‘Here, here, Wasp, my boy.’
What a fright for a poor, quiet, old Bullfrog, as little wiry, wicked Wasp came at him, barking and yelping. He jumped with all his force sheer over a patch of bushes into the river, and swam back to his old home among the rushes. And always after that it was observable that he was very low-spirited, and took very dark views of life; but nothing made him so angry as any allusion to Mother Magpie, of whom, from that time, he never spoke except as Old Mother Mischief.
THE NUTCRACKERS OF NUTCRACKER LODGE.
MR and Mrs. Nutcracker were as respectable a pair of squirrels as ever wore grey bushes over their backs. They were animals of a settled and serious turn of mind, not disposed to run after vanities and novelties, but filling their station in life with prudence and sobriety. Nutcracker Lodge was a hole in a sturdy old chestnut overhanging a shady dell, and was held to be as respectably kept an establishment as there was in the whole forest. Even Miss Jenny Wren, the greatest gossip of the neighbourhood, never found anything to criticise in its arrangements, and old Parson Too-whit, a venerable owl, who inhabited a branch somewhat more exalted, as became his profession, was in the habit of saving himself much trouble in his parochial exhortations, by telling his parishioners in short to ‘look at the Nutcrackers,’ if they wanted to see what it was to live a virtuous life. Everything had gone on prosperously with them, and they had reared many successive families of young Nutcrackers, who went forth to assume their places in the forest of life, and to reflect credit on their bringing-up, — so that, naturally enough, they began to have a very easy way of considering themselves models of wisdom.
But at last it came along, in the course of events, that they had a son named Featherhead, who was destined to bring them a great deal of anxiety. Nobody knows what the reason is; but the fact was, that Master Featherhead was as different from all the former children of this worthy couple as if he had been dropped out of the moon into their nest, instead of coming into it in the general way. Young Feather-head was a squirrel of good parts and a lively disposition, but he was sulky, and contrary, and unreasonable, and always finding matter of complaint in everything his respectable papa and mamma did. Instead of assisting in the cares of a family — picking up nuts and learning other lessons proper to a young squirrel — he seemed to settle himself from his earliest years into a sort of lofty contempt for the Nutcrackers, for Nutcracker Lodge, and for all the good old ways and institutions of the domestic hole, which he declared to be stupid and unreasonable, and entirely behind the times. To be sure, he was always on hand at meal-times, and played a very lively tooth on the nuts which his mother had collected, always selecting the very best for himself; but he seasoned his nibbling with so much grumbling and discontent, and so many severe remarks, as to give the impression that he considered himself a peculiarly ill-used squirrel in having to ‘eat their old grub,’ as he very unceremoniously called it.
Papa Nutcracker, on these occasions, was often fiercely indignant, and poor little Mamma Nutcracker would shed tears, and beg her darling to be a little more reasonable; but the young gentleman seemed always to consider himself as the injured party.
Now nobody could tell why or wherefore Master Featherhead looked upon himself as injured and aggrieved, since he was living in a good hole, with plenty to eat, and without the least care or labour of his own; but he seemed rather to value himself upon being gloomy and dissatisfied. While his parents and brothers and sisters were cheerfully racing up and down the branches, busy in their domestic toils, and laying up stores for the winter, Featherhead sat gloomily apart, declaring himself weary of existence, and feeling himself at liberty to quarrel with everybody and everything about him. Nobody understood him, he said: he was a squirrel of a peculiar nature, and needed peculiar treatment, and nobody treated him in a way that did not grate on the finer nerves of his feelings; he had higher notions of existence than could be bounded by that old rotten hole in a hollow tree; he had thoughts that soared far above the miserable, petty details of every-day life, and he could not, and would not, bring down these soaring aspirations to the contemptible toil of laying up a few chestnuts for winter.
‘Depend upon it, my dear,’ said Mrs. Nutcracker solemnly, ‘that fellow must be a genius.’
‘Fiddlestick on his genius!’ said old Mr. Nutcracker; ‘ what does he do?’
‘Oh, nothing, of course; that’s one of the first marks of genius. Geniuses, you know, never can come down to common life.’
‘He eats enough for any two,’ remarked old Nutcracker, ‘and he never helps to gather nuts.’
‘My dear, ask Parson Too-whit; he has conversed with him, and quite agrees with me that he says very uncommon things for a squirrel of his age; he has such fine feelings — so much above those of the common crowd.’
‘Fine feelings be hanged!’ said old Nutcracker. ‘When a fellow eats all the nuts that his mother gives him, and then grumbles at her, I don’t believe much in his fine feelings. Why don’t he set himself about something? I’m going to tell my fine young gentleman, that if he doesn’t behave himself, I’ll tumble him out of the nest, neck and crop, and see if hunger won’t do something towards bringing down his fine airs.’
But then Mrs. Nutcracker fell on her husband’s neck with both paws, and wept, and besought him so piteously to have patience with her darling, that old Nutcracker, who was himself a soft-hearted old squirrel, was prevailed upon to put up with the airs and gr
aces of his young scapegrace a little longer; and secretly in his silly old heart he revolved the question, whether possibly it might not be that a great genius was actually to come of his household.
The Nutcrackers belonged to the old established race of the Grays; but they were sociable, friendly people, and kept on the best of terms with all branches of the Nutcracker family. The Chipmunks of Chipmunk Hollow were a very lively, cheerful, sociable race, and on the very best of terms with the Nutcracker Grays. Young Tip Chipmunk, the oldest son, was in all respects a perfect contrast to Master Featherhead. He was always lively and cheerful, and so very alert in providing for the family, that old Mr and Mrs. Chipmunk had very little care, but could sit sociably at the door of their hole and chat with neighbours, quite sure that Tip would bring everything out right for them, and have plenty laid up for winter.
Now Featherhead took it upon him, for some reason or other, to look down upon Tip Chipmunk, and on every occasion to disparage him in the social circle, as a very common kind of squirrel, with whom it would be best not to associate too freely.
‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Nutcracker one day, when he was expressing these ideas, ‘it seems to me that you are too hard on poor Tip; he is a most excellent son and brother, and I wish you would be civil to him; ‘Oh, I don’t doubt that Tip is good enough,’ said Featherhead, carelessly; ‘but then he is so very common! he hasn’t an idea in his skull above his nuts and his hole. He is good-natured enough, to be sure — these very ordinary people often are good-natured, — but he wants manner; he has really no manner at all; and as to the deeper feelings, Tip hasn’t the remotest idea of them. I mean always to be civil to Tip when he comes in my way, but I think the less we see of that sort of people the better; and I hope, mother, you won’t invite the Chipmunks at Christmas, these family dinners are such a bore!’
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 564