“Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy, and the dividing of our grief.”— CICERO

Jim received the same warning about not getting into mischief from his guardians that Evie had from her parent.

“Ye’ll mind she’s a bit lassie, and the laird’s daughter,” said Alison; “and ye’ll no’ get her intae dirt, or tear her bonnie claes.”

“You will not be rough, and you will treat little Miss Hamilton with proper respect,” added Miss Mercer.

“Ay, if ever I hear ye’ve been up tae ony cantrips,” concluded Alison, as Jim went out of the door on his way to his first authorized meeting with Evie, “I’m no’ sayin’ but I’ll get the tawse oot again.”

And, of course, Jim promised, with a light heart, there would be no dirt or tears to deal with; that, in fact, mischief would be a thing unknown. And from the first two or three meetings it was commendably absent.

However, the expected does happen sometimes; and, being human children, it was almost inevitable that sooner or later Jim and Evie should get into mischief. Jim did not begin it; it was Evie who bit at the apple, and then passed it on to him. At the same time, common honesty compels me to state he received it without the slightest demur.

It took the form of a bonfire. And, after all, is anything in the world so irresistible as the making of a bonfire, when you see within your reach any quantity of sticks and fallen branches, which you fondly imagine to be dry; when you think of the glorious blaze they ought to produce; and when you can lay the flattering unction to your soul that parents and guardians, with happy oversight, have never told you not to do it?

It was Evie who said, clapping her hands with a sudden burst of inspiration, “Jim, let us make a bonfire!”

And Jim smiled, as at a happy thought, and said, “We could play the Armada was going to land.”

Evie did not care particularly about the Armada; the bonfire pure and simple was her point; but to Jim the idea instantly opened up a vista. He had read all about the Armada in his school history; it meant a good solid fight that he would have given all he possessed—not much, poor Jim!—to have been in; and so, quite apart from the natural child-love of playing with fire, he caught at the idea of the new game with enthusiasm.

He appeared on the scene next morning with one jacket-pocket bulged out by a newspaper which he had annexed from Alison’s cupboard, while in the other reposed a match-box which had previously adorned the kitchen mantelpiece.

“We’ll have a splendid play,” said Evie, enthusiastically, when they met. “Oh, I’m glad your matches are in a box, because mine aren’t. You see, I took them from the library, and the box belonged to the writing-table. I thought, perhaps, it was better to leave it.” And she began producing small handfuls of loose wax vestas from the pocket of her frock.

There were some elements of common sense about Jim.

“You’d better quite empty your pocket, Miss Evie,” he said, “and put them on this stone here. If you had sat down sudden on these, there might have been trouble,” indicating vaguely the probable tragedy.

“Would they have gone off?” said Evie, with casual interest. “Oh, come on, Jim, let’s gather the sticks.”

And for the next twenty minutes they were both busily engaged running hither and thither with armfuls of sticks and bits of fallen boughs. It was when they had at last got what they considered sufficient, and had piled them up bonfire fashion, that the real serious anxiety of the undertaking commenced.

“It won’t burn, Jim,” Evie said after a time, in a small disappointed voice.

“Oh, it’ll do it yet, Miss Evie, if we keep at it,” Jim said, in tones of hope and resolution, slightly broken by puffs and gasps, the result of his being down on his knees on the grass, blowing like a very animated pair of bellows at the still embryo bonfire.

Evie sighed a little. It had seemed such a capital idea; and running to and fro, with bundles of sticks clasped in her arms, and her clean white pinafore full of damp leaves and twigs, had been a most satisfactory employment; but now it was quite time something came of it all. Jim had been patiently striking matches and applying them for a quarter of an hour or so, the newspaper was entirely consumed, but still the sticks refused to do more than fizzle for a moment, and then go out. And Evie, gazing anxiously into the match-box, perceived there were now only five matches left: her own contribution had been already consumed as fuel, but had failed to ignite the rest.

“Are fires always as difficult to light?” she asked despairingly.

“Dear, no, Miss Evie,” said Jim, pausing for a moment, and looking up with a smile; “you should see Alison kindle the kitchen fire in the morning. But, you see, she dries her sticks first, that’s where it is.”

“They couldn’t have dried all the sticks they used for the fires when the Armada came,” said Evie, decidedly; “they could never have dried them all—but they burned up.”

“They had pitch and tar and stuff to put over them that time,” said Jim, as one who had studied the subject, and knew; “that would burn up like anything.”

“Would it?” said Evie. “Can’t you get some?”

“I don’t know where,” said Jim, doubtfully.

“Because, you see,” went on Evie, “it’s no use playing at the Armada like this; they’d land before we’d roused the country or anything.”

“Then,” cried Jim, suddenly jumping up, with flashing eyes, “we’d march down to the beach, and meet them hand to hand! We’d drive them back into the sea, and perish sword in hand rather than let the foot of the invader pollute our sacred soil!” And he flourished a stick, and prepared to face any quantity of Armadas, which presumably were expected to come up the Gail Water.

“Yes,” said Evie, in a matter-of-fact tone, “of course; but—the bonfire would be more fun.”

Jim had been taken with like enthusiastic outbursts on previous occasions, and Evie had joined in them; but she had felt that in this particular game of the Armada there was a satisfactory realism about the part she had proposed—the bonfire—which had been lacking in some of Jim’s romantic battles and sieges.

“It’s no use blowing any more, and I’m so tired waiting,” she announced in a voice that sounded very near tears, her mouth drooped, and her eyes looked piteously at Jim.

He rubbed his brown curls, and looked troubled.

“Don’t you fret, Miss Evie,” he said suddenly; “I know where there’s some old dry wood we can have at the Cottage. I’ll go for it, and you’ll see if I don’t make you a fire, after all.” And he was off like the wind, darting under the old beech trees, and racing across the park till he was lost to view.

When he came back, he carried the wood in his arms, and he had brought besides another newspaper, and a fresh match-box—where procured history does not relate. There was to be no mistake this time; Jim relaid the fire, carefully introducing the dry wood and the paper; then he struck a match and applied it. Evie went down on her knees too, and Jim blew the tiny flame very gently.

“It’s going to burn, Jim,” Evie said under her breath.

Jim nodded; he was far too much engrossed to speak.

“May I blow too?” asked Evie, persuasively, tingling to assist in the great work.

“Not yet; you’d put it out,” said Jim, puffing away softly and steadily, caressing the tiny new-born flame, till it grew and grew, and spread, and became a respectable little grown-up fire.

Evie clapped her hands. “I may blow now!” she said. And Jim, whose puffing had become porpoise-like, agreed.

Evie caught up the skirt of her pinafore, and flapped it rapidly up and down close to the fire, the flames blowing backwards and forwards, and shooting out in all directions. It was a lovely play. Evie completely lost sight of the Armada. Armadas could be pretended at any time, but a real fire all to themselves was not to be had every day. She flapped and flapped, and the flames rose higher and spread wider till even the damp sticks and moist leaves joined in the blaze, and a beacon-fire almost worthy of a real Armada was burning triumphantly under the old beech tree, where it had no business on earth to be.

“Isn’t it hot?” cried Evie, triumphing in the production of a fire possessing this quality.

“It would boil a kettle,” said Jim.

Evie paused, and looked at him. “Oh-h-h!” she began, “I wish—”

But the wish remained unuttered. Jim suddenly caught her and pulled her back, as he saw the growing flames bending towards her. The movement was so quick, they did not reach her; but, alas! a great brown singe marked the front of her pretty pinafore. Evie looked at it in dismay—she knew what it would mean when she got back to her nursery—and then her gaze wandered piteously to Jim. He took it in his hand and rubbed it, possibly with a vague idea the brown might come off.

“P’r’aps,” said Evie, “we oughtn’t to have made the fire.” A virtuous reflection coming rather late in the day, like those of some older people.

Jim made no remark. The bonfire had been Evie’s idea; and, for his own part, he could not see why, if Miss Evie wanted a bonfire in her own domains—or, to be accurate, her father’s—she should not have it. Wherefore, after a moment’s doubtful consideration, he merely said—

“Would washing do?”

Evie brightened. “Oh, p’r’aps! But how could we get it done?”

“I could do it in the water,” said Jim, obviously entertaining no doubts as to his own laundry capacities.

His faith in himself inspired Evie with trust; she untied her blue sash, disengaged herself from the unlucky pinafore, and delivered it to Jim. The Gail Water ran close by, and in a couple of minutes he was down on his knees on the bank, had soused the pinafore in the water, and was scrubbing at the offending mark. But water and hard rubbing is not an infallible receipt for removing a singe. Jim paused at last, holding the damp garment up before him, and shook his head.

“Maybe it’s soap it wants,” he said slowly.

Evie wrung her hands. “There’s no time for soap now,” she said; “it must be near teatime, and nurse will scold. Oh, Jim, it’s so wet now! You’ve made it worse than it was.”

Base ingratitude! But Jim only said, patiently, “We’ll lay it on the grass in the sun, and it’ll soon dry.”

Both had imbibed a wholesome fear of putting it near the fire again. So it was laid in the driest and brightest spot Jim could select; and then they went back to the bonfire. But its charm for Evie had departed; that damp singed pinafore was unpleasantly on her mind.

“Isn’t it nearly dry yet, Jim?” she had asked several times, and he had as often critically examined it, and replied, “Well, not quite,” when a figure was seen in the distance, coming across the park.

“Nurse!” Evie said. “Oh, I must put it on now!”

And Jim, no longer questioning, lent his assistance. He had just tied the blue sash over the damp, draggled pinafore when the new-comer arrived on the scene.

“Whatever have you been doing, Miss Evie? And what’s this fire? And, my goodness, what a sight you are! One of your new pinafores, too! Ruined, that it is! James Wallace, is this your work? Who lit this fire?”

“I did,” said Jim, quietly, acting with more chivalry than his forefather, Adam, and shielding this little modern Eve, who if she had not actually applied the matches, had certainly been the prime instigator of the affair.

“And who are you to come trespassing on the laird’s grounds, I want to know!” cried the irate nurse. “Destroying good clothes, and—and setting the whole country in a blaze for anything you care!”

Jim looked up at this picturesque description of the bonfire.

“It was for the Armada,” he said.

“None of your impudence to me!” cried nurse, who may have had hazy views on the subject of the attempted Spanish invasion. “Just you put that fire out now, as you lit it, and go home.”

That he should put it out, she never expected; but Jim, after a comprehensive look, began kicking their cherished bonfire to pieces, spreading wood and sticks wide apart on the grass.

“It’ll soon go out now,” he said; “and won’t do any harm.”

“What do you know about that?” said nurse, who never conceded a point. “You go away home; and I’ll just see if you’re to come here again and make mischief.”

And Jim touched his hat to Miss Evie, and went.

Site map / contact details    Search this site