The Christmas Mouse by Miss Read

but the comfort of all that a shared life meant.
    Mary’s Bertie brought back to the cottage the feeling of comfort and reliability. The birth of her grandson had meant more to Mrs Berry than she cared to admit. It was the continuance of male protection that subconsciously she needed. The baby’s early death was something she mourned as deeply as Mary and Bertie had.
    A piece of wood fell from the fire, and Mrs Berry stirred herself to reach for the tongs and replace it. Not yet midnight! She seemed to have been lying there for hours, dreaming of times passed.
    Poor Stanley, poor Bertie, poor baby! But what ablessing the two little girls were! Mary knew how to bring up children. Plenty of fun, but no nonsense when it came to doing as they were told. Say what you will, thought old Mrs Berry, it didn’t do people any harm to have a little discipline. You could cosset them too much, and give in to their every whim, and what happiness did that bring?
    She remembered neighbours in the early days of her marriage at Beech Green. They were an elderly pair when their first child arrived, a pale sickly little fellow called, much to the ribaldry of some of the Beech Green folk, Clarence.
    The baby was only put out into the garden on the warmest days, and then he was so swaddled in clothes that his normally waxen complexion was beaded with perspiration. The doctor harangued the doting mother; friends and neighbours, genuinely concerned for the child’s health, proffered advice. Nothing was of any avail. Clarence continued to be smothered with love.
    Not surprisingly, he was late in walking and talking. When he was at the toddling stage, his mother knitted him a long pair of reins in scarlet wool, and these were used in all his walks abroad. Mrs Berry herself had seen the child tethered by these same red reins to the fence near the back door, so that his mother could keep an eye on him as she worked.
    He was a docile child, too languid to protest against his restrictions and, never having known freedom, he accepted his lot with a sweet meekness that the other mothers found pathetic.
    Clarence reached the age of six, still cosseted, still adored, still forbidden the company of rough playmates who might harm him. But one bleak December day he fellill with some childish infection that a normal boy would have thrown off in a day or two. Clarence drooped and died within the week, and the grief of the parents was terrible to see.
    Poor Clarence and his red reins! thought Mrs Berry, looking back over the years. She thought of him as ‘the sweet dove’ that died, in Keats’ poem. Long, long ago she had learned it, chanting with the other children at the village school, and still, seventy years on, she could remember it.
    I had a dove, and the sweet dove died;
And I have thought it died of grieving:
Oh, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied
With a silken thread of my own hand’s weaving;
Sweet little red feet! Why should you die—
Why should you leave me, sweet bird, why?
You lived alone in the forest tree,
Why, pretty thing, would you not live with me?
I kissed you oft and gave you white peas;
Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees?
    Yes, that was Clarence! ‘Tied with a silken thread’ of his poor mother’s weaving. The stricken parents had moved away soon after the tragedy, and very little was heard of them, although someone once said that the mother had been taken to the madhouse, years later, and was never fit to be released.
    Thank God, thought Mrs Berry, turning her pillow, that children were brought up more sensibly these days. She thought of Mary’s two vivacious daughters, their glossy hair and round pink cheeks, their exuberance,their inexhaustible energy. Well, they were quiet enough at the moment, though no doubt they would wake early and fill the house with their excitement.
    Mrs Berry rearranged the eiderdown, turned her cheek into the pillow, and, thanking God for the blessing of a family, fell asleep at