Meantime, Bishop's Court was musical with children's voices, and with
the patter of tiny feet that ferreted out every nook and cranny of the
old place. There was Ewan, the Deemster's son, a slight, sensitive boy,
who listened to you with his head aslant, and with absent looks. There
was wee Mona, Ewan's meek sister, with the big eyes and the quiet ways,
who liked to be fondled, and would cry sometimes when no one knew why.
And then there was Daniel--Danny--Dan, the Bishop's boy, a braw little
rogue, with a slice of the man in him, as broad as he was long, with
tousled fair head and face usually smudged, laughing a good deal and not
crying overmuch, loving a good tug or a delightful bit of a fight, and
always feeling high disdain at being kissed. And the Bishop, God bless
him! was father and mother both to the motherless brood, though Kerry
Quayle was kept as nurse. He would tell a story, or perhaps sing one,
while Mona sat on his knee with her pretty head resting on his breast,
and Ewan held on to his chair with his shy head hanging on his own
shoulder, and his eyes looking out at the window, listening intently in
his queer little absent way. And when Dan, in lordly contempt of such
doings, would break in on song or story, and tear his way up the back of
the chair to the back of the Bishop, Mona would be set on her feet, and
the biggest baby of the four there present would slide down on to his
hands and knees and creep along the floor with the great little man
astride him, and whinny like a horse, or perhaps bark like a dog, and
pretend to leap the four-bar gate of the baby's chair tumbled down on
its side. And when Dan would slide from his saddle, and the restless
horseman would turn coachman and tug the mane of his steed, and all the
Bishop's long hair would tumble over his face, what shrieks of laughter,
what rolling on the ground and tossing up of bare legs! And then when
supper-time came, and the porridge would be brought in, and little Mona
would begin to whimper because she had to eat it, and Ewan to fret
because it was barley porridge and not oaten cake, and Dan to devour his
share with silent industry, and then bellow for more than was good for
him, what schemes the good Bishop resorted to, what promises he made,
what crafty tricks he learned, what an artful old pate his simple head
suddenly became! And then, when Kerry came with the tub and the towels,
and three little naked bodies had to be bathed, and the Bishop stole
away to his unfinished sermon, and little Mona's wet hands clung to
Kerry's dress, and Ewan, standing bolt-upright in the three inches of
water, blubbered while he rubbed the sponge over an inch and a half of
one cheek, and Dan sat on his haunches in the bottom of the tub
splashing the water on every side, and shrieking at every splash; then
the fearful commotion would bring the Bishop back from the dusky room
upstairs, where the shaded lamp burned on a table that was littered with
papers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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