Book One – Chapter One.
Two Mitherless Bairns
Ransey Tansey was up much earlier than usual on this particular morning, because father was coming home, and there was a good deal to do.
As he crawled out of his bed – a kind of big box arrangement at the farther end of the one-roomed cottage – he gave a glance towards the corner where Babs slept in an elongated kind of basket, which by courtesy might have been called a bassinette.
Yes, Babs was sound and fast, and that was something Ransey Tansey had to be thankful for. He bent over her for a few seconds, listening as if to make sure she was alive; for this wee three-year-old was usually awake long before this, her eyes as big as saucers, and carrying on an animated conversation with herself in lieu of any other listener.
The boy gave a kind of satisfied sigh, and drew the coverlet over her bare arm. Then he proceeded to dress; while Bob, a beautiful, tailless English sheep-dog, lay near the low hearth watching his every movement, with his shaggy head cocked a trifle to one side, as if he had his considering cap on.
In summer time – and it was early summer now – dressing did not take Ransey long.
When he opened the door at last to fetch some sticks to light the fire, and stood for a moment shading his brow with his hand against the red light of the newly-risen sun, and gazing eastwards over a landscape of fields and woods, he looked a strange little figure. Moreover, one could understand now why he had taken such a short few minutes to dress.
The fact is, Ransey Tansey hadn’t very much to wear just then. Barely eight years of age was Tansey, though, as far as experience of the world went, he might have been called three times as old as that; for, alas, the world had not been over-gentle with the boy.
Ransey wore no cap, just a head of towy hair, which was thick enough, however, to protect him against summer’s sun or winter’s cold. The upper part of his body was arrayed in a blue serge shirt, very much open at the neck; while below his waist, and extending to within nine inches of his bare feet, where they ended in ragged capes and promontories like a map of Norway, he wore a pair of pants. It would have been difficult, indeed, to have guessed at the original colour of these pants, but they were now a kind of tawny brindle, and that is the nearest I can get to it. They were suspended by one brace, a bright red one, so broad that it must have belonged to his father. I think the boy was rather proud than otherwise of this suspender, although it had a disagreeable trick of sliding down over his shoulder and causing some momentary disarrangement of his attire. But Ransey just hooked it back into its place again with his thumb, and all was right, till the next time.
A rough little tyke you might have called Ransey Tansey, with his sun-burnt face, neck, and bosom. Yet there was something that was rather pleasing than otherwise in his clear eyes and open countenance; and when his red and rather thin lips parted in a smile, which they very often did, he showed a set of teeth as clean and white as those of a six-months-old Saint Bernard puppy, and you cannot better that.
Had this little lad been a town boy, hands and face and feet would have been far from clean; but Ransey lived away down in the cool, green country, in a midland district of Merrie England, and being as often in the water as a duck, he was just as clean as one.
Away went Ransey Tansey now, and opened a rough old door in a rock which formed part of the hill by the side of which the humble cottage stood. The door opened into a kind of cave, which was a storehouse for all kinds of things.
He was soon back again, and in five minutes’ time had lit the fire, swept the hearth as tidily as a girl could have done it, and hung the kettle on a hook and chain. By this time another member of this small family came in, a very large and handsome tabby cat, with a white chest and vandyked face.
Murrams, as he was called, was holding his head very high indeed. In fact he had to, else the nice young leveret he carried would have trailed on the ground. Bob jumped up to meet him, with joy in his brown eyes.
Had Bob possessed a tail of any consequence, he would have wagged it. Bob’s tail, however, was a mere stump, and it was quite buried in the rough, shaggy coat that hung over his rump. But though honest Bob had only the fag-end of a tail, so to speak, he agitated this considerably when pleased.
He did so when he saw that leveret.
“Oh, you clever old Murrams!” Bob seemed to say. “What a nice drop of soup that’ll make, and all the bones for me!”
Murrams walked gingerly past him, and throwing the leveret on the hearth, proceeded to wash his face and warm his nose at the blaze.
Ransey put away the young hare, patted pussy on his broad, sleek forehead, then took down a long tin can to go for the morning’s milk. He left the door open, because he knew that if Babs should awake and scramble out of her cot, she would toddle right out to clutch at wild flowers, beetles, and other things, instead of going towards the fire.
