Then he felt glad that he had been so happy, and had not wasted his life. "It has been very short," said he to himself; "but it has been very pleasant, and I think I have made the best use of it. I have drunk in the sunshine, I have lain on the soft, warm air, I have played merry games in the waving grass, I have tasted the juice of the sweet green leaves. I have done what I could. I have spread my wings, I have sung my song. Now I will thank God for the sunny days that are passed, and die."
Saying which, he crawled under a brown leaf, and met his fate in the way that all brave grasshoppers should; and a little bird that was passing by picked him up tenderly and buried him.
Now when the foolish ant saw this, she was greatly puffed up with Pharisaical conceit. "How thankful I ought to be," said she, "that I am industrious and prudent, and not like this poor grasshopper. While he was flitting about from flower to flower, enjoying himself, I was hard at work, putting by against the winter. Now he is dead, while I am about to make myself cosy in my warm home, and eat all the good things that I have been saving up."
But, as she spoke, the gardener came along with his spade, and levelled the hill where she dwelt to the ground, and left her lying dead amidst the ruins.
Then the same kind little bird that had buried the grasshopper came and picked her out and buried her also; and afterwards he composed and sang a song, the burthen of which was, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." It was a very pretty song, and a very wise song, and a man who lived in those days, and to whom the birds, loving him and feeling that he was almost one of themselves, had taught their language, fortunately overheard it and wrote it down, so that all may read it to this day.
Unhappily for us, however, Fate is a harsh governess, who has no sympathy with our desire for rosebuds. "Don't stop to pick flowers now, my dear," she cries, in her sharp, cross tones, as she seizes our arm and jerks us back into the roadway; "we haven't time to-day. We will come back again to-morrow, and you shall pick them then."
And we have to follow her, knowing, if we are experienced children, that the chances are that we shall never come that way to-morrow; or that, if we do, the roses will be dead.
Fate would not hear of our having a houseboat that summer,―which was an exceptionally fine summer,―but promised us that if we were good and saved up our money, we should have one next year; and Ethelbertha and I, being simple-minded, inexperienced children, were content with the promise, and had faith in its satisfactory fulfilment.
As soon as we reached home we informed Amenda of our plan. The moment the girl opened the door, Ethelbertha burst out with:- "Oh! can you swim, Amenda?"
"No, mum," answered Amenda, with entire absence of curiosity as to why such a question had been addressed to her, "I never knew but one girl as could, and she got drowned."
"Well, you'll have to make haste and learn, then," continued Ethelbertha, "because you won't be able to walk out with your young man, you'll have to swim out. We're not going to live in a house any more. We're going to live on a boat in the middle of the river."
Ethelbertha's chief object in life at this period was to surprise and shock Amenda, and her chief sorrow that she had never succeeded in doing so. She had hoped great things from this announcement, but the girl remained unmoved. "Oh, are you, mum," she replied; and went on to speak of other matters.
I believe the result would have been the same if we had told her we were going to live in a balloon.
I do not know how it was, I am sure. Amenda was always most respectful in her manner. But she had a knack of making Ethelbertha and myself feel that we were a couple of children, playing at being grown up and married, and that she was humouring us.
Amenda stayed with us for nearly five years―until the milkman, having saved up sufficient to buy a "walk" of his own, had become practicable―but her attitude towards us never changed. Even when we came to be really important married people, the proprietors of a "family," it was evident that she merely considered we had gone a step further in the game, and were playing now at being fathers and mothers.
By some subtle process she contrived to imbue the baby also with this idea. The child never seemed to me to take either of us quite seriously. She would play with us, or join with us in light conversation; but when it came to the serious affairs of life, such as bathing or feeding, she preferred her nurse.
Ethelbertha attempted to take her out in the perambulator one morning, but the child would not hear of it for a moment.
"It's all right, baby dear," explained Ethelbertha soothingly. "Baby's going out with mamma this morning."
"Oh no, baby ain't," was baby's rejoinder, in effect if not in words. "Baby don't take a hand in experiments―not this baby. I don't want to be upset or run over."
Poor Ethel! I shall never forget how heart-broken she was. It was the want of confidence that wounded her.
But these are reminiscences of other days, having no connection with the days of which I am―or should be―writing; and to wander from one matter to another is, in a teller of tales, a grievous sin, and a growing custom much to be condemned. Therefore I will close my eyes to all other memories, and endeavour to see only that little white and green houseboat by the ferry, which was the scene of our future collaborations.
Houseboats then were not built to the scale of Mississippi steamers, but this boat was a small one, even for that primitive age. The man from whom we hired it described it as "compact." The man to whom, at the end of the first month, we tried to sub-let it, characterised it as "poky." In our letters we traversed this definition. In our hearts we agreed with it.
At first, however, its size―or, rather, its lack of size―was one of its chief charms in Ethelbertha's eyes. The fact that if you got out of bed carelessly you were certain to knock your head against the ceiling, and that it was utterly impossible for any man to put on his trousers except in the saloon, she regarded as a capital joke.
That she herself had to take a looking-glass and go upon the roof to do her back hair, she thought less amusing.
Amenda accepted her new surroundings with her usual philosophic indifference. On being informed that what she had mistaken for a linen-press was her bedroom, she remarked that there was one advantage about it, and that was, that she could not tumble out of bed, seeing there was nowhere to tumble; and, on being shown the kitchen, she observed that she should like it for two things―one was that she could sit in the middle and reach everything without getting up; the other, that nobody else could come into the apartment while she was there.
"You see, Amenda," explained Ethelbertha apologetically, "we shall really live outside."
"Yes, mum," answered Amenda, "I should say that would be the best place to do it."
If only we could have lived more outside, the life might have been pleasant enough, but the weather rendered it impossible, six days out of the seven, for us to do more than look out of the window and feel thankful that we had a roof over our heads.
I have known wet summers before and since. I have learnt by many bitter experiences the danger and foolishness of leaving the shelter of London any time between the first of May and the thirty-first of October. Indeed, the country is always associate in my mind with recollections of long, weary days passed in the pitiless rain, and sad evenings spent in other people's clothes. But never have I known, and never, I pray night and morning, may I know again, such a summer as the one we lived through (though none of us expected to) on that confounded houseboat.
In the morning we would be awakened by the rain's forcing its way through the window and wetting the bed, and would get up and mop out the saloon. After breakfast I would try to work, but the beating of the hail upon the roof just over my head would drive every idea out of my brain, and, after a wasted hour or two, I would fling down my pen and hunt up Ethelbertha, and we would put on our mackintoshes and take our umbrellas and go out for a row. At mid-day we would return and put on some dry clothes, and sit down to dinner.