Mrs. Molesworth - The Oriel Window

I do not think you could anywhere have found a happier little boy than Ferdy Ross when he woke on the morning of his ninth birthday.

He was always – at least almost always – happy, and he had good reason for being so. He had everything that children need to make life bright and joyous: kind parents, a dear sister, a pretty home, and, best of all, a loving, trusting, sunshiny nature, which made it easy for him to be very happy and loving, and made it easy too for others to love him in return and to feel pleasure in being with him. But to-day, his birthday, the fourteenth of May, he was very particularly, delightfully happy.

What a very long time it seemed that he and Chrissie had been looking forward to it! Ever since Christmas, or New Year at least. That was how he and Chrissie had settled to do about their lookings-forwards. Chrissie's birthday was in September. She was a year and four months older than Ferdy, so it fitted in very well. As soon as her birthday was over they began the Christmas counting, and this in one way was the biggest of all the year, for their father's and mother's birthdays both came in Christmas week, and it had been found very convenient to "keep" them and Christmas Day together. So Christmas Day at Evercombe Watch House, which was Ferdy's home, was a very important day for more reasons than the great Christmas reasons which we all join in.

And then when Christmas time was over and Ferdy and Christine began to feel a little dull and unsettled, as children are pretty sure to do after a great deal of pleasure and fun, there was Ferdy's birthday to think of and prepare for; for it was not only just looking forward and counting the days, or rather the months first, and then the weeks and then the days to their "treat" times, that they divided the seasons into; there were separate and different things to do, according to which of the three parts of the year it was. For Christmas, of course, there was the most to do – all the little things to get ready for the Christmas tree as well as the presents for papa and mamma and lots of other people. And for Ferdy's birthday Chrissie had always to make something which had to be done in secret, so that he should not know what it was; and for Chrissie's birthday it was Ferdy's turn to prepare some delightful surprise for her. He was very clever at making things, even though he was a boy! He was what is called "neat-handed," and as this little story goes on, you will see what a good thing it was that he had got into the way of amusing himself and using part of his playtime in carrying out some of his inventions and ideas.

"I don't know how I should bear it, Ferdy," Christine used to say sometimes, "if you were one of those tiresome boys that do nothing but fidget and tease their sisters when they want to sit still and work quietly for their dolls. Just think of Marcia Payne now. These two horrible boys, Ted and Eustace, think there is nothing so nice as to snatch away her work and throw it into the fire or out of the window, or to nearly kill her poor dolls with their cruel tricks. I really don't know how poor Marcia ever gets their clothes made, for it takes all my time to keep my children tidy, even though you never worry me," and Chrissie sighed, for she was a very anxious-minded doll-mother.

Ferdy's presents to his sister were very often for her dolls, rather than for herself, though, like most mothers, it pleased her much more, she used to say, for her dear pets to be kindly treated than any attention to their little mamma could do.

She was very amusing about her dolls. She used to talk about them in such an "old-fashioned" way that if any grown-up person had overheard her, I think they would have laughed heartily. But Chrissie took care to keep all private conversation about her four girls and two sons for herself and Ferdy only.

Besides these big dolls, she had a large party of tiny ones who lived in the doll house, and I think Ferdy's prettiest presents were for this miniature family. These small people really were almost as much his as Chrissie's, for he took the greatest interest in them, especially in their house and their carriages and horses and in all kinds of wonderful things he had made for them. Several of the doll-house rooms were entirely furnished by him, and he was builder and paper-hanger and cabinet-maker and upholsterer for Doll Hall, all in one. But now I think I must return to the history of his ninth birthday.

The fourteenth of May – just about the middle of the month which is the best loved, I almost think, of all the twelve. And oh it was such a lovely day! Ferdy woke early – though not quite as early as he had meant to do, for when he bade his sister good-night he told her he would be sure to knock at her door not later than five. But the sun was a good way up in the sky when he did wake – so far up indeed that Ferdy got quite a fright that he had overslept himself altogether, and it was a relief to see by the old clock which stood on the landing just outside his door that it was only half-past six.

"And after all," he said to himself, "now I come to think of it, I don't believe mamma would have liked me to wake Chris so very early. I remember last year, on her birthday, she had a headache and was quite tired by the afternoon with having got up so soon."

He rubbed his eyes, – to tell the truth he was still rather sleepy himself, though it was his birthday, – and downstairs he heard the servants moving about and brushing the carpets. The schoolroom would certainly not be in order just yet; it never took him very long to have his bath and dress, and he knew by experience that housemaids are not the most amiable of human beings when little boys get in their way in the middle of their cleanings and dustings.

So on the whole Ferdy decided that the best thing to do was to go back to bed again and not get up till Flowers – Flowers was Chrissie's maid, and she looked after Ferdy too, since nurse had left to be married – came to wake him at his usual time, for he could hear no sound of any kind in his sister's room, though he listened well, outside the door.

It was very comfortable in bed, for May mornings, however lovely, are often chilly. And as Ferdy lay there he could see out of the window, and enjoy the sight of the clear bright sunshine and the trees moving softly in the wind, their leaves glittering green and gold, and even silver, as the gentle breeze fluttered them about. The birds too, they were up and about of course; now and then there came quite a flight of them, and then one solitary soarer would cross the blue sky up at the very top of the window – he would see it for half a moment, and then it disappeared again. On the whole, he had more view of sky than of anything else from his bed, though when standing by the window he could see a good long way down the road, and, by craning his neck a little, some way across the fields past the church.

For the Watch House stood at the very end of the village, near the church, so that strangers often thought it must be the Vicarage, and envied the vicar for having such a charming home, whereas the real Vicarage was a pretty but small cottage-like house, quite at the other side of the church, and not nearly as old as it was, or as the Watch House was.

It , Ferdy's home, was very, very old. And the story went that long ago some part of it had really been a kind of watch tower, though there was nothing remaining to show this except the name and the fact that you could, from the upper windows especially, see a very long way. The nicest window of all was one in Mrs. Ross's own sitting-room, or "boudoir," as it was sometimes called. This was a corner room on the floor just below the children's, and the beauty of it was this window, – an oriel window, – projecting beyond the wall, as such windows do, and so exactly at the corner that you could see, so to say, three ways at once when you were standing in it: right down the village street to begin with, and down the short cross-road which led to the church, and then over the fields between the two, to where Farmer Meare's duckpond jutted out into the lane – "the primrose lane" – as not only Ferdy and Christine but all the children of the neighbourhood had long ago named it. For here the first primroses were always to be found, year after year; they never forgot to smile up punctually with their little bright pale faces before you could see them anywhere else. Chrissie sometimes suspected that the fairies had a hand in it. Everybody knows that the good people "favour" certain spots more than others, and perhaps Chrissie's idea was right.