MONDAY MORNING
Mrs. Bruce was down on her knees caressing tiny Czar violets. Quite
early in the morning (before the breakfast things were washed or the
beds made) she had slipped on one of Dot's picturesque poppy-trimmed
hats and declared her intention of planting the bed outside the study
windows thick with these the sweetest-scented of all flowers.
"And all the time you are working and thinking and plotting, daddie
darling, the sweetest scents will be stealing round you," she said.
For some little time she was quite happy among her violets. But
presently a richly hued wall-flower called her attention to a cluster of
its blooms, drooping on the pebbly path for a careless foot to
crush,--all for the want of a few tacks and little shreds of cloth. A
heavily-blossomed rose-tree begged that some of its buds might be
clipped, and a favourite carnation put in its claim for a stake.
"So much to do!" said Mrs. Bruce, as she flitted here and there in the
old-fashioned garden, which was a veritable paradise to her. "The roses
_must_ be clipped, the violets _must_ be thinned, the carnations _must_
be staked. And there are the new seedlings to be planted. Oh, I _think_
I will take the week for my garden--and let the house go!"
A flush of almost girlish excitement was in her cheeks, her garden meant
so very much to her. Certainly the house had strong claims--and it was
Monday morning--the very morning for forming and carrying out good plans
and resolutions! Meals wanted cooking, cupboards and drawers tidying;
garments darning and patching! But then--the garden! Did it not also
need her. Ah! and did she not also need it!
Even as she hesitated, balancing duty with beauty, Betty's voice floated
out through the kitchen window, past the passion-fruit creeper and the
white magnolia tree, past the tiny sweet violets and the study windows,
right to where she stood among the roses and wall-flowers.
"I _am_ so tired of washing up," it said, "it wasn't fair of Dot. She
had four plates for her breakfast--_I_ only had one. She might remember
I've to go to school as well as her."
Then Mrs. Bruce advanced one foot towards the house, and in thought
wielded the tea-towel and attacked the trayful of cups and saucers that
she knew would be awaiting the tea-towel.
It was Cyril's voice that arrested her. It came from the kitchen too.
"What's washing up!" said Cyril contemptuously. "Washing up a few cups
and spoons--pooh! How'd you like to be me and have to clean all the
knives, I wonder."
Whereat Mrs. Bruce relinquished thoughts of the tea-towel. It would
never do, she told herself, to assist Betty and leave poor Cyril
unaided. "And I _couldn't_ clean knives," she said.
But she ran indoors to her bedroom, whence came an angry crying voice.
Six-year-old Nancy was, in the frequent intervals that occurred in the
doing of her hair, frolicking about the small hot bedroom and trying
frantically to catch the interest of the thumb-and-cot-disgusted baby.
"Do your hair nicely," said Mrs. Bruce to her second youngest daughter.
"I will take baby into the garden. Button your shoes and ask Betty to
see that your ears are clean. And your nails. A little lady always has
nice nails."
She carried her baby away, kissing her neck and cheeks and hands, and
telling her, as she had told them all, from Dorothy downwards, that
there never had been such a baby in the world before.
And she slipped her into the much used hammock under the old apple tree,
and left her to play with her toes and fingers, whilst she went back to
her violets and roses singing--
"Rock-a-bye, Baby on a tree top,
There you are put, there you must stop."
and trying to be rid of that uncomfortable feeling, of having done what
she wanted and not what she ought.
In the study Mr. Bruce sat before a paper-strewn table. Most of the
papers related to his beloved book--which was almost half-completed. It
had reached that stage several times before, and what had been written
thereafter had been consigned to the kitchen fire.
Now it was necessary that he should put it away, even out of thought,
and turn his attention towards something that would bring in a quick
return. For Dot's school fees would be due very shortly, and he
remembered, with a smile-lit sigh, that this quarter she had taken up
two extras, singing and dancing.
His income would not admit of extras--and yet, as Mrs. Bruce frequently
put it, Dot was the eldest and was very pretty. She certainly must be
able to dance and sing!
He gathered up a few stray leaves of his manuscript, rolled them up with
the bulk, and heroically put them away.
But, as he returned to his seat, he caught a glimpse of his wife,
kneeling on the path, and making a little trench with a trowel in the
bed outside his window.
"Well, little mother!" he called, and felt blithe as he said it, and
young and fresh hearted, just because of the bright face in the
poppy-trimmed hat.
"I ought to be in the kitchen making a pudding," she said, screwing up
her face into a grimace.
"You are far better where you are," he said fondly.
"Yes. But, oh, dear! I wish I had a cook, and laundress, and a
housemaid. Oh, and a nursemaid, too! It is dreadful to be poor, isn't
it, daddie?"
She went on with her gardening, just as happy as before, but the face
that the little author took to his work-table had grown grave in a
minute.
"She was born to have servants," he said, "servants and ease. I must
work harder."
Cyril's voice broke into his reverie. He had come beneath the study
windows to interview his mother.
"Can't I be raised to twopence a week now I'm going on for thirteen,"
he said. "Bert Davis gets threepence, and he's only nine."
Mr. Brace did not catch the reply. But he told himself that most men
would have been more liberal in the matter of _L. s. d._ to their only
son.
He began to pace round and round his study.
"I must work harder--harder--harder!" he said. "I must put my book away,
and grind out those articles for Montgomery!"
Nancy, in a big white sun-bonnet, clean for the new week, passed under
his window and turned her face to the wicket gate. He could hear that
she was crying in a miserable forsaken way, crying and talking to
herself away within that capacious bonnet of hers.
He called "Baby!" and leaned over his window sill to her. But she did
not hear him. She just went murmuring on to the gate.
Then two other hurrying little figures came along. Cyril, with a
battered hat crushed down on his head, and his school-bag over his
shoulders, and Betty with her boots unlaced, a white bonnet under her
arm, and a newspaper parcel, which she was trying to coax into neatness,
in one hand.
"It's all through you and your ghosts," Cyril was saying grumblingly. "I
know I'd have done my lessons only for you, Betty Bruce."
"What is the matter with Nancy?" asked their father, leaning over the
window sill once more. "Why was she crying?"
"'Cause she thinks she'll be late," said Betty easily. "She always cries
if she thinks she's late."
Down the road they went, Nancy hurrying and crying, Cyril grumbling,
Betty silent.
To none of them had Monday morning come exactly right--fresh and
uncrumpled.
Betty sat down, just outside her grandfather's gate, to lace her boots,
and Cyril went grumbling on about a hundred yards behind Nancy.
Then did a fresh crease get into the new week's first day for Betty.
Looking under her arm as she bent over her boot, she beheld three
figures walking down the road, and at the first glimpse of them her face
grew hot.
"Geraldine and Fay!" she exclaimed.
The centre figure was dressed in a lilac print, and wore a spotless
apron and a straw hat. Upon either side of her walked a little
golden-haired girl, one apparently about Betty's age, and one Nancy's.
Their dresses were white and spotless, and reached almost to their
knees; their hats were flat shady things trimmed with muslin and lace.
Their hair was beautifully dressed and curled, their boots shining--and
buttoned, and their faces smiling and happy-looking.
They were Betty's ideals! Little rich girls, who rode ponies, and
drove--sometimes in a village cart with a nurse, and sometimes in a
carriage with a lady who invariably wore beautiful hats and dresses.
Sometimes, again, they were to be seen in a dog-cart with a dark man who
seemed a splendid creature indeed to Betty.
The little girl by the roadside grasped her unbuttoned boot in one hand,
her bonnet and newspaper parcel in the other, and in a trice had
squeezed herself under her grandfather's fence, just at a point where
two or three panels were broken down.
Then she peeped out to see if they were looking. But no--they had not
seen her. Betty gave a great sigh of relief as she watched them. How
beautiful they were. How dainty! Betty looked down at her own old boots,
old stockings, old dress. She turned her bonnet over disdainfully and
thought of their lace-trimmed hats--their golden hair!
"Oh, I am glad they didn't see me!" she said aloud fervently.
Just then a voice shouted, a rough word to her from the path, and Betty
awoke to two alarming facts. The one, that she was in the emu's
enclosure and that one great bird was bearing curiously towards her
already; the other, that her grandfather was the one who had called to
her, and that John Brown, who was careering down the path on his
bicycle, had stopped and was evidently giving information about her.
Her grandfather waved an angry hand.
"Out you go!" he shouted. "If you come here again, I'll set the dogs
loose!"
Betty squeezed herself under the fence just before the emu reached her,
and once more faced a very crumpled Monday morning.