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

The first rosy streaks of dawn saw the three girls making their morning toilet at the pump, where the water was cold even to the touch of English Mollie, but it was freshening, and they emerged from their splashes with pink cheeks and ravenous appetites. The “inventor” loved his bed and did not join in the morning revels. (So boys were lazy lie-a-beds in Father’s young days, thought Mollie.)

Prudence and Mollie went straight to the cherry trees with their baskets, while Grizzel lighted the fire and prepared the secret breakfast. She called them before the first baskets were quite full. The fire was burning cheerfully, sending long streamers of wood smoke into the morning air. On the bricks sat a billy-can full of water just on the boil, and, as it bubbled up, Grizzel threw in a small handful of tea, giving it a stir round with a cherry twig. She let it bubble again while she counted ten, then lifted the can to one side and put the lid on. She had begged a cup of warm, frothy milk from the milk-boy’s pail as he came up the hill. The damper was sitting on the hot bricks, and Grizzel had gathered a plateful of strawberries from the berry-bed at the foot of the hill.

They sat down on the sandy path, holding their mugs of steaming tea in one hand and their damper in the other, large juicy strawberries taking the place of jam. Mollie thought it was the most exquisitely delightful breakfast she had ever tasted in her life. The sun had risen and was sending his beautiful rays along the valley; they fell upon the roses and heliotrope in the garden and on the misty blue-green of the gum trees on the hill opposite. As the children munched in silent enjoyment, their eyes wandering here and there, one long shaft of light fell straight upon the patch of golden sand, so that it glittered as though it were the door to Aladdin’s cave. Prue reached out her hand and pulled down a branch of sweet-scented geranium, crushing a leaf and holding it to Mollie’s nose.

“Isn’t it nice here, Mollie?” she said.

“It’s perfectly heavenly,” Mollie answered, with a sigh. “Why can’t all the world be as nice as this, and why do people ever live in streets?”

They tidied up the remains of their breakfast, and were soon back at work in the cherry trees. By nine o’clock they had filled four baskets and had stoned more than half, and laid them in a shallow pan with sugar over them “to draw”, as Grizzel explained. They cracked the kernels and took out the tiny white nuts, and last of all Grizzel added a good handful of gooseberries.

“That’s my idea,” she said, “it will help the cherries to jell. I think I will pop in some red currants too.”

“You are clever,” Mollie said admiringly. “I never in all my life saw a girl as young as you make jam.”

“When I am grown up,” Grizzel said, sucking her sugary fingers as she spoke, “I am going to have a fruit-farm and make immense quantities of jam to send home. Grandmamma says our jam is the nicest she has tasted, especially our peach and apricot. I am going to try grape jam too, and I shall preserve mandarin oranges whole, and pineapples, and figs.”

Mollie suddenly remembered big tins of jam which used to arrive from Australia now and then, at a time when jam was very scarce and precious in London. She smiled to herself as she wondered if they had been Grizzel’s jams—they might have been. At any rate they must have come from beautiful gardens like this.

“If you do,” she said to Grizzel, “put a picture of yourself and a cherry tree on the tin. It will look much prettier than ‘Campbell’s Jams’!”

This made the children laugh, and they went in to their second breakfast feeling very cheerful and what Mollie called “pleased with life”. The lazy inventor made his appearance halfway through the meal, looking still rather sleepy. “Come and see my distillery,” he said, when breakfast was over, “I fixed it up last night.”

Hugh had set the bronchitis-kettle—always carried about with Baby, who was subject to croup—on the fire-place, and had fixed a long narrow jam-tin on to the end of the spout.

“I put the roses and water into the kettle,” he explained, “and they boil, and the steam comes out and drops into this cold tin and condenses. Then, when we have enough, we boil that up and condense again. Then we skim the oil that rises to the top, and that is attar of roses. It is perfectly simple.”

“It sounds simple,” said Mollie, “but—”

“But what?” asked Hugh, with a frown.

“Oh, I don’t know—just but,” said Mollie, in a hurry. “I don’t know a thing about distilling; how many boilings will it take to collect a bottle of attar?”

“A good many, but you must not forget that a bottle holds a great many drops, and each drop is worth a guinea, so that a lavender-water bottle will hold about three hundred guineas’ worth.”

Mollie was greatly impressed. How easy it was to make fortunes in Australia! And how much pleasanter a way than Father’s way, which meant living in a street and sighing over bills, and not making much of a fortune after all.

The girls returned to the garden, and soon gathered enough petals for the first boiling. Hugh, in the meantime, lit the fire and fetched water from the rain-water tank. “It says water from a spring, in the book,” he said, “but there’s nothing like rain-water really for this kind of work.”

Soon Grizzel said she must go to her jam-making. Prudence stayed to help Hugh, and Mollie decided to hover between both fortune-building schemes, as she was too deeply interested in the results to wish to miss either. For an hour they worked hard, Mollie and Prudence bringing in fresh supplies of roses, rain-water, and logs of wood, for the fire had to be kept well stocked. The room got very hot, for Hugh would not allow any windows to be opened, and a good part of the steam managed to escape in spite of all his care. Indeed it seemed to Mollie that more steam got into the room than into the tin. After the third instalment of roses and water she asked if she could be spared to go and see how the jam was getting on.

“You might bring back some bread and skimmings,” said Prudence. “Working like this makes you so hungry.”

The day was warm, but it was refreshing to get out of doors after the steamy atmosphere of the playroom. Mollie sauntered along, keeping in the shade of the trees, a little tired after her early rising. She could see Bridget and Baby at the bottom of the garden gathering gooseberries for a pudding. Baby’s pink sunbonnet bobbed about like a rose going for a walk in the berry-bed. Before she reached the kitchen door she began to smell something uncommonly like burning sugar.

“I expect it has spilt on the stove,” she thought; “that pot is pretty heavy for Grizzel to lift.”

The smell got stronger and stronger, and when Mollie reached the kitchen there was not only a smell but smoke. There was no sign of Grizzel, nor of anyone else; the house was silent and empty but for the sizzling and smoking of the boiled-over jam. Mollie ran to the stove—a funny flat arrangement, different from the stoves of her acquaintance. The jam had evidently been boiling over for some time, for not only the saucepan, the stove, and the fender, but even the floor was covered with a dark-brown sticky syrup. She trod carefully to the fire-place and lifted the pan to one side, the smoke and steam making her eyes water.

“Making fortunes is pretty hot work in Australia,” she muttered to herself. “If I made many there wouldn’t be much of me left to enjoy them with. Where on earth is Grizzel?”

She found her in their bedroom, arranging some vine leaves and green grapes in her golden bowl, quite oblivious of a world which contained jam.

“I think your jam is burning, Grizzel—I am afraid it is rather badly burnt.”

“My jam!” said Grizzel, coming back to the world of every day. “Goodness me! I forgot all about the jam.” She hastily dumped her bowl down on the window-sill, and flew to the kitchen, followed by Mollie.

“Oh dear, dear, dear!” she cried, when her eyes fell upon the scene of devastation. “Oh, my jam! my jam! Oh, why am I both a cook and an artist? One half of me is always getting into the way of the other half! Oh, Mollie—my lovely, beautiful jam!”

“Let’s taste it and see; perhaps it isn’t burnt,” Mollie suggested. But one sip was enough. “Ab-so-lute wash-out!” was her verdict. Grizzel seized the pot by the handle and made for the door.

“What are you going to do?” asked Mollie, following her.

“Bury it,” said Grizzel, laying down the pot and seizing a spade. She rapidly dug a shallow hole, poured the sticky black mixture into it and tossed back the earth.

“And they were so pretty a few hours ago,” she wailed. “Why on earth did I go and spoil them like that! Oh, Mollie, I am a cruel girl!”

“It isn’t really any more cruel than eating them,” said Mollie consolingly. “I’d just as soon be burnt as eaten myself—only perhaps one might be cooked first and eaten afterwards. I must say it is rather hard lines on mutton when you come to think of it.”

Grizzel took the blackened pot to the pump, filled it with water, and carried it back to the kitchen. The fire was nearly out, and logs had to be piled on and blown up with the bellows before the pot could be set on again. Grizzel looked round for a towel to clear up the horrible mess with, but Bridget had washed her towels that morning and they were all hanging out to dry on the line.

“Get a newspaper and crumple it up,” suggested Mollie; “wet it in the pot-water.”

When Bridget and Baby appeared at the door, two very hot and sticky children were surrounded by a litter of crumpled, wet, black newspapers, and the stove was as far as you can possibly imagine from being clean.

“Holy saints!” said Bridget.

Nothing could have looked less like holy saints than Mollie and Grizzel did at that moment. They stood up in the midst of the ruins, and Mollie waited for the skies to fall. But Biddy was a good-natured soul.

“An’ me stove new cleaned this very mornin’—you an’ yir jam! Be off wid ye!” flapping the children out of the way with her apron as she spoke.

“Come and wash,” said Grizzel, catching up a tin basin from the porch as they went out.

When they were moderately clean again they went back to the playroom to see how the scent-makers were faring. They found Hugh and Prudence as red as lobsters; the big kettle had been moved and a tiny one put in its place.

“I thought I’d better try how the experiment was getting on,” Hugh explained to Mollie and Grizzel. “There’s no use doing all the roses till we see if it’s all right; so I’m boiling up the distilled water now.”

He peered into a doll’s milk-jug, which was fastened on to the end of the little spout. “There is a little. We’ll just try for