GUESS WHOSE BAG

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 857, 28 December 1929, Page 10

GUESS WHOSE BAG

By

Furnicy Maurice

Give us a quick and lively onceover, Dave,” said tlie carpenter one morning, as lie went into the local barber. “She won't let me start it I need a shave.”

The barber dragged his poring sight from the pink newspaper spread out on the counter, and followed his customer into the saloon. “Still on Miss Braden's job?” he “Job?” said the carpenter. “It's not a job, it's a living. She's kept me at it off and on for 17 year, and there’s always something fresh cropping up.” "Where’s she get all that stuff she piles up about the place?” asked the barber. "Auctions, anywhere,” was the answer.

It’s the worst hotch-potch I ever

“It’s all according to her plans,” the carpenter went on, disclaiming responsibility. “I’m always making things out of bits of other things. She seems to have come to the end of bush huts, bark houses and outdoor chairs and tables. She’s on ornamental water now; all in a twoacre block, and it’ll make a considerable big difference. I’ve drained a frog-pool in from the little creek at the back, and it’s got a tiny pavilion in the middle, and real tadpoles. When the tadpoles grow into frogs and hop away she gets new ones. And now it’s a midget bridge over the creek. She tells me it’s got to be only tiny, and puts her hands the size, and brings down a great willow pattern meat dish for me to copy off. That’s what I’m on now,” the carpenter mumbled, dodging the lather as well as he could, “the bridge.” Even without the carpenter’s perplexing revelations, Miss Braden’s “estate” from the outside appeared curious enough. The house was set in the front corner of the block. There was a well-known path from the front gate leading to the “office,” which was also a kitchen, where all business was transacted. Excepting the carpenter, local inhabitants rarely set a foot beyond this part. Visitors shot curious glances at the surroundings, but dared make no inquiries. Miss Braden was well' primed in most of the local gossip, but knew how to suppress idle questions when the topic came under review or attempted to arise. Miss Braden was careful to keep her neighbours in their places. Sometimes she threw out suggestions of fairly intimate associations with royalty before she left England. The Princess of Wales, the Queen that now is, often popped in on washing days to borrow the dipper. So she naturally felt a little superior to these “colonial” surroundings. She knew everybody’s business, and nobody knew hers. When occasional unguarded children came into her office on errands she would make herself the perfect host with a chaneach and thick slices of bread and home-made jam. “And now, Johnny Dane, how long has your father been on the job he’s in now? How’s your auntie’s new baby. Has Effie got any new pieces? Does Miss Cornie think she practises enought, because I don’t think she does?” And during pumping operations the children would sit in a row innocently supplementing one another’s knowledge and helping one another out when childish vocabularies weakened. She ran her business competently and gave satisfaction to all who had dealings with her. Estate agent and local registrar she was, or could find you a gardener by the day or job, a single room, furnished or unfurnished, anywhere in the locality, or even a flat in the hotel, a huge white-elephant of a place languishing under the effects of a devastating referendum. She had settled on her two-acre block when the district was bush, and, although the value of the land had increased enormously, Miss Brayden continued to hold on for her own mysterious purposes. Every time an offer to purchase was made she went to the market a few stations up the line and bought a little gum tree in a pot for sixpence and planted it somewhere in the “estate.” As time went on picture shows and confectionery shops invaded the adjoining properties, but Miss Braden’s acres became, like her strange old self, more and more virgin. The whole neighbourhood knew about the leafy and flowery rockeries, nooks and crannies, the tiny chairs, the swings and the maypole, rustic seats, chairs, tables, lattice houses and bush huts, some of them covered with years of mould and tangled creepers, some of them with the carpenter’s fresh, scented adze-chips still lying beside them. But she loved best the little paling house, with its gabled bark roof and tiny white windows and hessian cur- - tains, hemmed with odd lengths of different coloured thread. It was inhabited by sunbeams and moonbeams that came in through the cracks, and a happy host of undisturbed spiders. Even the dog kennels had lattice screens and pebbled entrances. The glad and affectionate animals romped with the two big cats among the crazily trimmed clumps of tea-tree. Boxes for pigeons and the soiled-look-ing wood doves were fixed to the gums and the other birds came regularly to haunts she had cleverly provided. From years of quiet and patient observation she knew the habits and tastes of every living thing that visited her territory. The land was on a slight rise, with many undulations. When the road was made a bank had been raised at the side of the house, and into this bank the carpenter cut three sets of steps that let down on the garden. He modelled them of soil, with retaining boards and wooden pegs. When storms washed the soil out he was asked to put it back again. “Why three sets?” asked the carpenter. “Because I like three more than one,” Miss Braden answered. But the little bridge had captured her imagination, and the patient old carpenter was hard put to it to keep his temper, as he strove to bring her vision to .realisation. The creek trickled through the lower garden and wandered into a copse that hid the boundary fence and the unmade side street. Pretty dense it was, that copse; and the birds loved it. At night, anyone passing down that unmade street might hear sounds of a certain birdlike and there the hedge was thin. One ds* when the lady was making a progress inspection of the carpenter's work she looked along the watercourse into the scrub, and her sharp eyes caught sight of a little, weather-beaten handbag, almost buried in the undergrowth. It was only a cheap thing. She picked it up, and, on opening it, found inside a

lady's handkerchief without initials, soiled, and tightly crumpled into a ball. There were some ancient tram tickets also, and a hint of faded scent. “What’s this mean? Visitors? Lovers?” she sniffed, but quickly banished the outrageous notion, and went and hung the bag in the trellis-house. When she came back to the carpenter she puckered her nose vigorously to force her pince-nez off, and they fell down their cord length. “Carpenter,” she said imperially, “when you have finished the bridge and latticed the sides and painted it, you can get Hack- Dawes to bring a load of sand to put in the; creek. It will look cleaner then. . One of these Sundays I’ll go down to Portarlington and get a basket of shells to sprinkle among it. And mind you keep the hanks cut away, so that the water doesn't get too deep. And I think, after this is finished, you had better put a pier in the frog pond, about ‘that’ wide and ‘that’ long.” She indicated measurements of 9in and 3ft. The carpenter mumbled acknowledgment of the instruction. He always had plenty of really important work to do outside, but enjoyed putting his odd leisure into Miss Braden’s quaint and useless jobs. While he was in the middle of one there was always another ahead. He rather liked the pier idea; it was a change from seats and tables and rock paths. As he himself put it, the damned place was just lousy with useless little seats and tables that no one ever used, and which were not big enough for anyone to use, even if they were allowed to. He rather liked the sand and shells idea, too; but why the devil ? Oh, never mind!

So it had gone on for years; all pretty crude and rough; painting (green and white mostly), path-laying (with as many bends as possible. Miss Braden disliked straight lines), garden planning (Miss Brade* herself tended the plants), renovating weather-beaten woodwork that wasted for lack of use. But neither the carpenter nor Miss Braden suspected that the little copse at the lower end had visitors other than the birds by day and the moonbeams by night. They thought the bag just “came” there.

One dark evening there must have been serious doings in that copse, but no one knew about it —not even the carpenter, who thought he knew everything. There were sounds of a girl’s whimpering and a youth’s quavering voice trying to reassure the girl about something he seemed not very sure about himself. But there were so many sounds, strange or sweet, from birds and bees and humming things there, that all this could easily have been mere imagination. We cannot be too sure about it.

So the carpenter went on oddly carpentering. He put lattices at the mouths of grottos and steps in the sides of those little mounds that Miss Braden kept so green and soft. He turned the house drain away from the little creek and into the council’s street drain (there are some advantages in civilisation), because the creek water had to be kept pure. Two swings and a maypole, one swung with loose sides for little babies, and one with a plain seat for elder children. What the devil ? The carpenter’s years of wonderment would have been easily satisfied if Miss Braden had been mad or even merely silly. But the entire neighbourhood was quite content upon that point. Anyone who had business dealings with her would know that Miss Braden was neither mad nor silly. So the thing was all the harder to account for. When the trees reached great heights he had the job of curtailing their exuberance, although he did not make use of those words when he described the job to the barber. When the weight of the creepers dragged down walls of rustic retreats he had to clear away and repair. While new plans, were continually coming into her queer brain all her weather-worn contrivances had to be kept in order. For some months now there had been no nocturnal voices in the corner copse, but (perhaps it was mere imagination again), one night there may have been a furtive step that crackled on the *wigs and undergrowth, and one fine June morning, When the bright sun was threading a sort of trembling lustre among the leaves of the gums and the retreating frost gleamed and dripped from all the eaves of all 'the little huts, the carpenter came hurriedly into the untidy “office” (that served Miss Braden as a kitchen also). There was a look in his face that the lady could not possibly disregard when he said in suppressed amazement: “You’d better come and have a look at this.”

Miss Braden had never heard him say “this” quite like that before, so she hurriedly followed him down the first set of dirt steps in the embankment, through the long bright grass by the round lattice house, past the tiny swing, and the m&ypole, right down to the big rough paling and bark affair near the copse, that no one had given a name to as yet. They went inside, where the white sun showed in sharp vivid lines through the cracks.

On an old gin case in the shadow was a broken dress-basket. One visible corner was worn quite awav into straggly ends, and the other had its reinforcing leather hanging by a few threads. Inside this basket was a ruble of worn old woollies, which stirred as Miss Braden looked, and well it might, because under the woollies was a little baby boy. Miss Braden showed no surprise at all. She just wrinkled and wrinkled her nose until her glasses fell off, because she felt she could read him better without glasses. Then Miss Braden went forward and picked the baby up. He was new and naked and pink.

“So there you are,” said Miss Braden, and sure enough there he was. "When she laid him on her bosom he did not cry out at ail if the hard, shiny buttons hurt; he just kicked a bit like a little pink frog, and muzzled his mouth into her wrinkled old neck. The carpenter puckered his forehead and rubbed his thin, hair into disorder.

“Do you think you'd better advertise him?” he asked in perplexity.

But Miss Braden never heard the babble of fools. She just told him how to make a cradle out of half a barrel that was standing in the shed, and she took the baby proudly into her office (which served also as a kitchen) and registered him in the quality, but not made by birds. The fence was only a wire one, and here was a more severe business woman than formerly, and if people com-

plained when she pressed for her dues, she just said: —“Prince must go -

Oxford, you see. I don’t know how I’ll bear being separated from him all that time, but he must go.” She must have forgotten all about the lady’s cheap bag, with its ball of a handkerchief, hanging on a rusty nail in the paling and bark house by the shell-bottomed creek with the tiny bridge.—“ The Australasian.”