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Title: Mother's Birthday Review
Author: Juliana Horatia Ewing [
More Titles by Ewing]
BROTHER BILL.
To have a good birthday for a grown-up person is very difficult indeed;
We don't give it up, for Mother says the harder things are, the harder
you must try till you succeed.
Still, _our_ birthdays are different; we want so many things, and
choosing your own pudding, and even half-holidays are treats;
But what can you do for people who always order the dinner, and never
have lessons, and don't even like sweets?
I know Mother does not. Baby put a big red comfit in her mouth, and I
saw her take it out again on the sly;
I don't believe she even enjoys going a-gypseying, for she gets
neuralgia if she stands about where it isn't dry.
And how can you boil the kettle if you're not near the brook? But it's
the last time she shall go there,
I told her so; I said, "What's the good of having five sons, except to
mount guard over you, you Queen of all Mothers that
ever were?"
But she's not easy to manage, and she shams sometimes, and shamming is
a thing I can't bear.
She shammed about the red comfit, when she didn't think Baby could
see her;
And (because they're the only things we can think of for birthday
presents for her) she shams wearing out a needle-book and a
pin-cushion every year.
The only things we can think of for Father are paper-cutters; but
there's no sham about _his_ wearing _them_ out;
He would always lose them, long before his next birthday, if Mother
did not keep finding them lying about.
Last year's paper-cutter was as big as a sword (not as big as Father's
sword, but as big as a wooden one, like ours),
And he left it behind in a railway-carriage, when he'd had it just
thirty-six hours;
So we knew he was ready for another. It was Mother's birthday that
bothered us so;
And if it hadn't been for Dolly's Major (he's her Godfather, and she
calls him "my Major"), what we should have done I really
don't know!
He said, "What's the matter?" And Dolly said,
"Mother's birthday's the matter." And I said, "We can't think what
to devise
To give her a birthday treat that won't give her neuralgia, and will
take her by surprise.
Look here, Major! How can you give people treats who can order what
they wish for far better than you?
I wonder what they do for the Queen!--her birthday must be the hardest
of all." But he said, "Not a bit of it! They have a review:
Cocked hats and all the rest of it; and a salute, and a _feu de joie_,
and a March-Past.
That's the way we keep the Queen's Birthday; and every year the same
as the last."
So I settled at once to have a Mother's Birthday Review; and that she
should be Queen, and I should be the General in command.
I thought she couldn't come to any harm by sitting in a fur cloak and
a birthday wreath at the window, and bowing and waving
her hand.
We did not tell her what was coming, we only asked for leave to have
all the seven donkeys for an hour and a half;
(We always hire them from the same old man)--two for the girls, and
five for me and my brothers--I told him, "for me and
my Staff."
We could have managed with five, if the girls would only have been
Maids of Honour, and stayed indoors with the Queen.
Maggie would if I'd asked her; but Dolly will go her own way, and
that's into the thick of everything, to see whatever there
is to be seen.
She's only four years old, but she's ridiculously like the picture
of an ancient ancestress of ours
Who defended an old castle in Cornwall, against the French, for
hours and hours.
Her husband was away, so she was in command, and all her household
obeyed her;
She made them strip the lead off the roofs, and they did, and she
boiled it down and gave it very hot indeed to the
French invader.[1]
Maggie would have let the French in; she doesn't like me to say so,
but I know she would,--you can get anything out of Maggie
by talking.
She likes to hire a donkey, and then sham she'd rather not ride, for
fear of being too heavy; and to take Spike out for a run,
and then carry him to save him the trouble of walking.
But she's very good; she made all our cocked hats, and at the review
she and Dolly and Spike were the loyal crowd.
Dick and Tom and Harry were the troops, and I was the General, and
Mother looked quite like a Queen at the window, and bowed.
The donkeys made very good chargers on the whole, and especially mine;
Jem's was the only one that gave trouble, and neither fair means nor
foul would keep him in line.
Just when I'd dressed all their noses to a nice level (you can do
nothing with their ears), then back went Jem's brute,
And Jem caught him a whack with the flat of his sword (a thing you
never see done on the Staff), and it rather spoilt the salute;
But the spirit of the troops was excellent, and we'd a _feu de joie_
with penny pistols (Jem's donkey was the only one that shied),
and Dolly's Major says that, all things considered, he never
saw a better March-Past;
And Mother was delighted with her first Birthday Review, and she is
none the worse for it, and says she only hopes that it won't
be the last.
[Footnote 1: Dame Elizabeth Treffry (_temp._ Henry VI.) defended Place House, Fowey, Cornwall, in the circumstances and with the vigorous measures described. On his return her husband wisely "Embattled all the walls of the house, and in a manner made it a Castelle, and unto this day it is the glorie of the town building in Faweye."--_Carew_. The beauties of Place Castle remain to this day also.]
[The end]
Juliana Horatia Ewing's poem: Mother's Birthday Review
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