The Ship of Stars. Arthur Quiller-Couch

he found his mother in the passage. She had been for a walk alone. The candle was lit, and he saw she had been crying. This told him where she had been; for, although he remembered nothing about it, he knew he had once possessed a small sister, who lived with him less than two months. He had, as a rule, very definite notions of death and the grave; but he never thought of her as dead and buried, partly because his mother would never allow him to go with her to the cemetery, and partly because of a picture in a certain book of his, called Child's Play. It represented a little girl wading across a pool among water-lilies. She wore a white nightdress, kilted above her knees, and a dark cloak, which dragged behind in the water. She let it trail, while she held up a hand to cover one of her eyes. Above her were trees and an owl, and a star shining under the topmost branch; and on the opposite page this verse:

      "I have a little sister,

       They call her Peep-peep,

       She wades through the waters,

       Deep, deep, deep;

       She climbs up the mountains,

       High, high, high;

       This poor little creature

       She has but one eye."

      For years Taffy believed that this was his little sister, one-eyed, and always wandering; and that his mother went out in the dusk to persuade her to return; but she never would.

      When he woke next morning his mother was in the room; and while he washed and dressed she folded his bed-clothes and carried them down to a waggon which stood by the door, with horses already harnessed. It drove away soon after. He found breakfast laid on the window-seat. A neighbour had lent the crockery, and Taffy was greatly taken with the pattern on the cups and saucers. He wanted to run round again and repeat his good-byes to the house, but there was no time. By-and-by the door opened, and two men, neighbours of theirs, entered with an invalid's litter; and, Humility directing, brought down old Mrs. Venning. She wore the corner of a Paisley shawl over her white cap, and carried a nosegay of flowers in place of her lace-pillow; but otherwise looked much as usual.

      "Quite the traveller, you see!" she cried gaily to Taffy.

      Then the woman who had lent the breakfast-ware came running to say that Joby was getting impatient. Humility handed the door-key to her, and so the little procession passed out and down across Mount Folly.

      Joby had drawn his van up close to the granite steps. They were the only passengers, it seemed. The invalid was hoisted in and laid with her couch across the seats, so that her shoulders rested against one side of the van and her feet against the other. Humility climbed in after her; but Taffy, to his joy, was given a seat outside the box.

      "C'k!"—they were off.

      As they crawled up the street a few townspeople paused on the pavement and waved farewells. At the top of the town they overtook three sailor-boys, with bundles, who climbed up and perched themselves a-top of the van, on the luggage.

      On they went again. There were two horses—a roan and a grey. Taffy had never before looked down on the back of a horse, and Joby's horses astonished him; they were so broad behind, and so narrow at the shoulders. He wanted to ask if the shape were at all common, but felt shy. He stole a glance at the silver ring in Joby's left ear, and blushed when Joby turned and caught him.

      "Here, catch hold!" said Joby handing him the whip. "Only you mustn't use it too fierce."

      "Thank you."

      "I suppose you'll be a scholar, like your father? Can ee spell?"

      "Yes."

      "Cipher?"

      "Yes."

      "That's more than I can. I counts upon my fingers. When they be used up, I begins upon my buttons. I ha'n't got no buttons—visible that is—'pon my week-a-day clothes; so I keeps the long sums for Sundays, and adds 'em up and down my weskit during sermon. Don't tell any person."

      "I won't."

      "That's right. I don't want it known. Ever see a gipsy?"

      "Oh, yes—often."

      "Next time you see one you'll know why he wears so many buttons.

       You've a lot to learn."

      The van zigzagged down one hill and up another, and halted at a turnpike. An old woman in a pink sun-bonnet bustled out and handed Joby a pink ticket. A little way beyond they passed the angle of a mining district, with four or five engine-houses high up like castles on the hillside, and rows of stamps clattering and working up and down like ogres' teeth. Next they came to a church town, with a green and a heap of linen spread to dry (for it was Tuesday), and a flock of geese that ran and hissed after the van, until Joby took the whip and, leaning out, looped the gander by the neck and pulled him along in the dust. The sailor-boys shouted with laughter and struck up a song about a fox and a goose, which lasted all the way up a long hill and brought them to a second turnpike, on the edge of the moors. Here lived an old woman in a blue sun-bonnet; and she handed Joby a yellow-ticket.

      "But why does she wear a blue bonnet and give yellow tickets?" Taffy asked, as they drove on.

      Joby considered for a minute. "Ah, you're one to take notice, I see.

       That's right, keep your eyes skinned when you travel."

      Taffy had to think this out. The country was changing now. They had left stubble fields and hedges behind, and before them the granite road stretched like a white ribbon, with moors on either hand, dotted with peat-ricks and reedy pools and cropping ponies, and rimmed in the distance with clay-works glistening in the sunny weather.

      "What sort of place is Nannizabuloe?"

      "I don't go on there. I drop you at Indian Queens."

      "But what sort of place is it?"

      "Well, I'll tell you what folks say of it:"

      'All sea and san's,

       Out of the world and into St. Ann's.'

      "That's what they say, and if I'm wrong you may call me a liar."

      "And Squire Moyle?" Taffy persevered. "What kind of man is he?"

      Joby turned and eyed him severely. "Look here, sonny. I got my living to get."

      This silenced Taffy for a long while, but he picked up his courage again by degrees. There was a small window at his back, and he twisted himself round, and nodded to his mother and grandmother inside the van. He could not hear what they answered, for the sailor-boys were singing at the top of their voices:

      "I will sing you One, O!

       What is your One, O?

       Number One sits all alone, and ever more shall be-e so."

      "They're home 'pon leave," said Joby. The song went on and reached

       Number Seven:

      "I will sing you Seven, O!

       What is your Seven, O?

       Seven be seven stars in the ship a-sailing round in Heaven, O!"

      One of the boys leaned from the roof and twitched Taffy by the hair. "Hullo, nipper! Did you ever see a ship of stars?" He grinned and pulled open his sailor's jumper and singlet; and there, on his naked breast, Taffy saw a ship tattooed, with three masts, and a half-circle of stars above it, and below it the initials W. P.

      "D'ee think my mother'll know me again?" asked the boy, and the other two began to laugh.

      "Yes, I think so," said Taffy gravely; which made them laugh more than ever.

      "But why is he painted like that?" he asked Joby, as they took up their song again.

      "Ah, you'll larn over to St. Ann's, being one to notice things." The nearer he came to it, the more mysterious this new home of Taffy's seemed to grow. By-and-by Humility let down the window and handed out a pasty. Joby searched under his seat and found a pasty, twice the size of Taffy's, in a nose-bag.