Coppertop: The Queer Adventures of a Quaint Child — A Closer Reading

the big four-poster and listened to the wind as it blew round the house.

A ’possum on the roof uttered a plaintive gurgling cry, which sent a little shiver down her back, and she snuggled under the bedclothes, thankful for their cosy protection.

But to-night the old bed felt less “snuggly” than usual, and she had a strange “I-wonder-what-will-happen-next” feeling, which would not allow her to sleep. It was such a night as witches love, when they fly about on broomsticks, and you feel sure-as-sure there is a black cat with green, staring eyes, hiding behind the burnt log in the chimney corner.

Even the old colonial house, with its new slated roof and the strange terracotta gargoyles--that Coppertop was certain-sure had moved several times since they were first put up there--shook and shuddered in the bitter south wind which blew down from the ranges.

“Oh, I’m just too lonesome!” sighed Coppertop, “if the old wind won’t stop whooling round the house, I simply don’t know what I’ll do.”

Celia Anagusta Sinclair--for that was her real name--was rather a lonely little girl at the best of times, as her father and mother were obliged to spend many months of the year in far-away India, and left their little ten-year-old daughter in the charge of Mrs. Grudge, the housekeeper; and it must be confessed that she and “Miss Celia” were not always the best of friends.

Mrs. Grudge could not abide a nickname, and never used the term “Coppertop” by which the child was known to everyone else; she was of the old school, stern and strict, and had come out in the early days from Home. She could not understand “these colonials,” she would say, and Coppertop’s cheeks would glow and her auburn plaits would seem to grow even more coppery, for she was an Australian bred and born, and proud of it, too, and simply hated to be called one of “these colonials.”

The old four-posted bed had come out from Home, too, but it had a very different spirit from that of dour Mrs. Grudge; it was old, and massive and beautiful, with richly carved legs--which, of course, Mrs. Grudge couldn’t boast of--and it seemed to whisper of old rose gardens, and ivy-clad towers, and quaint, sleepy, thatched cottages, and knights in armour, and May-day revels, and, most of all, of security and comfort.

“I wouldn’t care one bit if only Mummie and Daddy were here,” sighed the child; “the old wind could blow as hard as it liked. I wouldn’t care if it blew away the house, and the old clock, and Mrs. Grudge. Oh, if only it would--and left just Mummie and Daddy and me, all alone in the dear old bed, cuddling tight.”

Coppertop threw her little freckled arms round the soft, bulgy pillow, and tried to “’magine” that it really was so; but still the wind howled, and the rain pattered on the windowpane.

“Oh, I’m tired of ’magining! I wish they were really-truly here. I believe I shall hate that horrid old India soon, for keeping them away. Well, perhaps I won’t quite hate it, but I wish it were here, then they’d be here too, and so would Simla and the beautiful Taj Mahal.”

“But if India were here, where would Here be? Oh, it’s awfully muddling,” she added.

Then her face brightened up, and plunging one hand under the pillow she brought out a very crumpled letter, a letter that had been hugged and kissed till it was scarcely readable.

Screwing up her grey eyes, Coppertop read it, word by word, keeping her place with a wet finger with which she had just flicked away a tear:

I am writing this letter to you from our bungalow at Simla--the one in which you stayed two years ago--do you remember?

I am sitting on the verandah, looking out over the mountains, and thinking of you, my darling, oh, so hard, that I believe I can almost see you, dancing through the long grass in the orchard, and climbing the trees, to see if the green apples are not too hard for your strong little teeth. And, dear, you really must not eat green apples, they are not good for little girls--it is so much better to let them grow into big, rosy ones.

Daddy is lying in the deck-chair under the punkah, and the breeze from it is making his hair stand up in queer little tufts--you would laugh so to see it--and he is snoring! Snoring so loudly that I thought it was the punkah. He is sound asleep, and dreaming, I expect, of his darling little girl in far-away Australia.