The Happy Adventurers by Lydia Miller Middleton (hardest books to read .txt) 📕

Just then Aunt Mary began to play the piano in the next room. She played soft, old-fashioned tunes, so that her niece might be soothed to sleep. Mollie did not recognize the tunes but she liked them; they seemed to sympathize with her as she continued to look at the prim little girl in the photograph.

“Perhaps she played those very tunes; she looks as if she practised for one hour a day regularly.”

As Mollie lay there, the sweet old music sounding in her ears and her eyes steadily fixed on the face of that other child of long ago, it seemed to her that the child smiled at her.

“I am getting sleepy,” she said to herself, and shut her eyes. But she did not feel sleepy and soon opened them again. This time there was no mistake about it—the child in the photograph was smiling, first with her solemn eyes, and then with her prim little mouth. Mollie was so startled that she let the album slip from her lap, and it fell down between the sofa and the wall. She turned round, and, after groping in the narrow space for a minute, she succeeded in getting hold of the album again and pulled it up. As she raised her head and sat up, she saw, standing beside her sofa, as large as life, the prim little girl—wide skirts, white stockings, tasselled boots, and all.

As Mollie stared “with all her eyes” as people say, the little girl smiled at her again, and she noticed that, although the child’s dress was so very old-fashioned, her smile was quite a To-day smile, so to speak.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mollie, “who are you?”

“I am a Time-traveller,” the child answered, speaking in a peculiarly soft voice. “You called me, so I came.”

“What on earth is a Time-traveller?” asked Mollie, rather surprised to find that she did not feel in the least alarmed at this sudden apparition.

“A person who travels in Time,” the child replied. “I am one, and you are one, but everybody isn’t one. I can’t explain, so you’d better not waste time asking questions if you want to travel. I can’t wait here long.”

“But—” said Mollie, looking bewildered, as well she might. “Travel where? Of course I’d love to come, but how can I with a crocked-up ankle; and what would Grannie say?”

“Those things don’t matter to Time-travellers,” said the other child. “We travel about in Time. You haven’t got to think about what is happening here and now—that will be all right. But you have to make a vow before you begin Time-travelling. Do you know what a vow is?”

“Of course I do,” Mollie replied; “I’m a Girl Guide.”

“I don’t know what a Girl Guide is,” said the other girl, wrinkling up her pretty forehead, “but a Time-traveller has to vow on her faith and honour never to say one single word about her adventures to any grown-up, either here or there. You must not ask them questions that will make them wonder things, however much you want to, because they don’t understand, and would be almost sure to interfere. Will you vow?”

“Yes, I will, but you must give me one moment to think. Where shall I travel to and how long shall I stay?”

“You come along with me to my Time; I don’t know how long you will stay. A year of our Time might be a minute of yours, or a minute of ours might be a year of yours, but you will be all right. Have you ever seen a dissolving view?”

“That’s a magic lantern, isn’t it? Yes, Dick once had one. I think they are rather dull.”

“Oh no, not if they are properly done. Hugh—” she stopped and then began again. “You will step into a dissolving view of our Time. It just begins and ends anyhow, and you go out of it again.”

“But it’s so queer,” Mollie said doubtfully. “I never heard of such a thing. I must be dreaming.”

The other child shook her head. “No, you’re not,” she said patiently. She looked around the room as though in search of inspiration, and her eyes fell upon a volume of Shakespeare which Aunt Mary had been reading: “Do you learn Shakespeare at your school?” she asked.

“Rather,” Mollie answered, in a slightly superior voice; “I have acted in six plays.”

“Ah—then you remember what Hamlet says: ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy’.”

“We haven’t done Hamlet yet,” Mollie answered, in a less superior tone, “I don’t think I quite understand what that means.”

“Neither do I,” said the child. “That’s it, you see. Papa says—” she stopped short again, and then went on. “It’s nearly time for me to go—and I can never come back if you don’t come this time,” moving away a few steps as she spoke.

“Oh, don’t go—don’t go,” Mollie cried. “I do want to come; it won’t do anyone any harm, will it?”

The child smiled very sweetly: “Not the least in the world. But remember the vow. On your faith and honour.”

“I vow, I vow—on my word of honour as a Guide. I can’t say more than that.”

“Give me your hand, then. Listen to the music, and shut your eyes till I tell you to open them.”

Mollie closed her eyes. She had a queer swimmy feeling, as if she were in a high swing and were just swooping down to the lowest point. All the time Aunt Mary’s tunes went on, but they seemed to go farther and farther away.

“Open,” said a soft voice.

*

The darkened room had vanished, and the ticking clock; Aunt Mary’s tunes and the rain splashing on the window-panes; the sofa too, and the prim child. And Mollie herself!

*

She was standing in a sunny road, with one foot on a white painted wooden gate, upon which she had evidently been swinging. The gate opened into a large garden, and before her lay a broad path planted on either side with tall, pointed cypress trees, their thin shadows lying across the walk like black bars. Between the trees ran narrow flowerbeds, and beyond these stretched a wide, open space, so solidly spread with yellow dandelions that it looked as though the golden floor of heaven had come to rest upon earth. The path, with its sentinel trees, led straight as a rod to a distant house, long and low, surrounded by a vine-covered veranda. There were strange, sweet smells in the air, which felt soft and warm. The sky was brilliantly blue, and on the fence across the road a gorgeous parrot sat preening its feathers in the sunshine.

Mollie looked about her with curious eyes, wondering where she was. Not in England, of that she was sure—there was a different feel in the air, colours were brighter, scents were stronger, and that radiant parrot would never perch itself so tranquilly upon an English fence.

Then she saw, coming down the path, a girl of about her own age, dressed in a brown-holland overall trimmed with red braid, high to the throat, and belted round the waist. She wore no hat, and her hair fell over her shoulders in plump brown curls. By her side paced a large dog, a rough-haired black-and-white collie with sagacious brown eyes. He leapt forward with a short bark, but the girl laid a restraining hand on his back:

“Down, Laddie, down,” she said, “don’t you know a friend when you see one? Come in, Mollie.”

And suddenly Mollie knew where she was. This was Adelaide, in Australia; that was the child in the photograph, whose name, she knew, was Prudence Campbell; and they were living in the year 1878.