Chapter One.
A Birthday Morning
One morning Mary awoke very early. It was in the month of May, and the mornings were light, and sometimes the sun shone in through the windows very brightly. Mary liked these mornings. The sunshine made everything in the room look so pretty; even the nursery furniture, which was no longer very new or fresh, seemed quite shiny and sparkling, as if fairy fingers had been rubbing it up in the night.
“I wonder what day it is,” thought Mary. It was difficult for her to remember the days, for she was not yet four years old. She was only going to be four soon. Mamma had told her her birthday would come in May, and that this year it would be on a Thursday. And every day, ever since Mary knew that May had come, she wondered if it was Thursday. But it was rather puzzling. Two Thursdays had come without it being her birthday.
“P’raps mamma has made a mistook,” thought Mary. “P’raps my birfday isn’t going to be in May this time.”
For if it changed about from one day to another – last year it was Wednesday, and next year it would be – oh, it was too difficult to remember that – mightn’t it change out of May too? Mary didn’t think months were quite so difficult to remember as days, for different things came in months. In April there were showers, and in May flowers. Nurse had told her that, and when the months with the long names came it would be winter.
“I hope it isn’t a mistook,” thought Mary. “I’d like it best to be in May. ‘MAY’ is such a nice short little word, and only one letter more makes it ‘Mary.’ No, I think it can’t be a mistook.” Mary could read very well, and she could spell little words. She had learnt to read when she was so little that she could not remember it. She thought knitting and cross-stitch work were much harder than reading. But she had to learn them, because mamma said too much reading was not good for such a little girl, and would make her head ache, and mamma bought her pretty coloured wools and nice short knitting needles, and Mary had made a carpet for the drawing-room of her doll-house. But though it looked very pretty Mary still liked reading best. She had also worked a kettle-holder for grandmamma: that is to say she had worked the stitches all round the picture of a kettle, which was already on the canvas when mamma bought it. Mamma called it “grounding it,” and while she was working it, Mary often wondered what “grounding” it meant, for a kettle-holder was not meant to lie on the ground. She might have asked mamma to explain, but somehow she did not. She was not a very asking child. Big people did not always understand, not even mamma quite always, and it made Mary feel very strange when they did not understand; it almost made her cry. Though even that she did not mind as much as when they told her she would know when she got big. She did not want to wait to know things till when she got big. It made her feel all hot to think what a lot of knowing there would be to do then, it seemed like a very big hill standing straight up in front of her which she would never get to the top of. She thought she would rather go up it in what she called “a roundy-round way.” Papa had shown her that way once when it took her breath away to climb up one of the “mountings” – Mary always called hills “mountings” – in grandmamma’s garden, and Mary had never forgotten it. She thought the hill of knowing would be much nicer to go up that way, and that she might begin it now – just a little bit at a time. She thought this all quite plain inside her own mind, but she could not have told it to anybody. Very often it is not till children are quite big that they can tell their own thoughts, looking back upon them. And Mary did not know that she was going up the hill of knowing already, a little bit at a time, just as she fancied she would like to go.
Mary felt glad when she had settled it in her mind that it could not be a mistake about her birthday coming on a Thursday, and she lay quite still, watching the sunshine. It had got on to her bed by now, and it made all sorts of nice things on the counterpane. Mary’s bed was rather a big one for such a little girl, for the cot she used to have was now her brother Artie’s; Artie slept now in Leigh’s room, and there was only a corner there for quite a small bed. Leigh was the big brother of Artie and Mary. He was eight years old.
Yes, the sunshine made the counterpane very pretty. It was quite white, and as Mary’s home was in the country, white things did not get a grey dull look as they do in London. There were patterns all over the counterpane, and if Mary bumped up her knees she could make fancies to suit the patterns – like garden paths leading to beautiful castles, or robber caves – the boys told her stories of robber caves which were very interesting, though rather frightening. And this morning the light shone on a pattern she had never noticed so much before. It was a round ring, just in the middle, and flowers and leaves seemed growing inside it.
