Produced by Al Haines.
*THE FAMILY AT MISRULE.*
BY
ETHEL TURNER,
AUTHOR OF
"SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS," "THE STORY OF A BABY," ETC
"Ah that spring should vanish with the Rose!
That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!"
THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM.
"To youth the greatest reverence is due."
JUVENAL.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. J. JOHNSON._
LONDON:
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.
TO
CHARLES COPE,
MY STEPFATHER AND FRIEND
E. S. T.,
LINDFIELD, SYDNEY.
*CONTENTS.*
CHAP.
I. PICKING UP THREADS
II. SCHOOL TROUBLES
III. A PASSAGE-AT-ARMS
IV. A SUMMER'S DAY
V. BETWEEN A DREAM AND A DREAM
VI. TO-MORROW
VII. A LITTLE MAID-ERRANT
VIII. ONE PARTICULAR EVENING
IX. THAT MISCHIEVOUS CUPID
X. NEEDLES AND PINS
XI. A DAY IN SYDNEY
XII. THREE COURSES ONE SHILLING
XIII. PARNASSUS AND PUDDINGS
XIV. MUSHROOMS
XV. THE GOVERNMENT OF MEG
XVI. MORE MUTINY
XVII. A DINNER PARTY
XVIII. "HOW GOOD YOU OUGHT TO BE!"
XIX. HEADACHE AND HEARTACHE
XX. MY LITTLE ONE DAUGHTER
XXI. THE SEVENTH DAY
XXII. AMARANTH OR ASPHODEL
XXIII. LITTLE FAITHFUL MEG
XXIV. "IN THE MIDNIGHT, IN THE SILENCE OF THE SLEEP-TIME"
XXV. HERE ENDETH
[Illustration: Contents tailpiece]
*THE FAMILY AT MISRULE.*
*CHAPTER I.*
*PICKING UP THREADS.*
"Should auld acquaintance be forgot?"
There was discord at Misrule.
Nell, in some mysterious way, had let down a muslin frock of last season
till it reached her ankles.
And Meg was doing her best to put her foot down upon it.
In a metaphorical sense, of course. Meg Woolcot at twenty-one was far
too lady-like to resort to a personal struggle with her young sister.
But her eyes were distressed.
"You can't say I don't look nice," Nell said. "Why, even Martha said,
'La, Miss Nell!' and held her head on one side with a pleased look for
two minutes."
"But you're such a child, Nellie," objected Meg. "you look like playing
at being grown up."
"Fifteen's very old, _I_ think," said Miss Nell, walking up and down
just for the simple pleasure of hearing the frou-frou of muslin frills
near her shoes.
"Ah well, I do think I look nice with my hair done up, and you can't
have it up with short frocks."
"Then the moral is easy of deduction," said Meg drily.
"Oh, bother morals!" was Nell's easy answer.
She tripped down the verandah steps with a glance or two over her
shoulder at the set of the back of her dress, and she crossed the lawn
to the crazy-looking summer-house.
"Oh dear!" sighed Meg.
She leaned her face on her hands, and stared sadly after the crisp,
retreating frills and the shimmer of golden hair "done up." This was
one of the days when Meg's desires to be a model eldest sister were in
the ascendency, hence the very feminine exclamation.
She had not altered very much in all these live long years--a little
taller perhaps, a little more womanly, but the eyes still had their
child-like, straightforward look, and the powdering of freckles was
there yet, albeit fainter in colouring.
She still made resolutions--and broke them. She still wrote verses--and
burnt them. To-day she was darning socks, Pip's and Bunty's. That was
because she had just made a fresh resolve to do her duty in her state of
life.
At other times she left them all to the fag end of the week, and great
was the cobbling thereof to satisfy the demands of "Clean socks, Meg,
and look sharp."
Besides darning, Meg had promised to take care of the children for the
afternoon, as Esther had gone out.
Who were the children? you will ask, thinking five years has taken that
title away from several of our young Australians.
The General is six now, and answers to the name of Peter on the
occasions that Pip does not call him Jumbo, and Bunty, Billy. Nell, who
is inclining to elegant manners, ventures occasionally in company to
address him as Rupert; but he generally winks or says "Beg pardon?" in a
vacant kind of way.
Baby also has become "Poppet," and handed down her name of long standing
to a rightful claimant who disjointed the General's nose nearly three
years ago and made our number up to seven again.
Just a wee, chubby morsel of a girl it is, with sunshiny eyes and
sunshiny hair and a ceaseless supply of sunshiny smiles.
Even her tears are sunshiny; they are so short-lived that the smiles
shine through and make them things of beauty.
The boys generally call her "The Scrap," though she is as big as most
three-year-olds. She was christened Esther.
And Poppet is still a child,--to be nine is scarcely to have reached
years of discretion.
She has lost her chubbiness, and developed abnormally long, thin legs
and arms, a surprising capacity for mischief, and the tenderest little
heart in the world.
So Meg's hands were fairly well filled for the afternoon, to keep these
three young ones in check, darn the socks, and superintend kitchen
arrangements, which meant Martha Tomlinson and the cook.
She had not bargained for the tussle with Nell too.
That young person was at a difficult age just now: too old--in her own
eyes, at any rate--to romp with Bunty and Poppet; too young to take a
place beside Meg and pay visits with Esther,--she hung between, and had
just compromised matters by letting down her frocks, as years ago Meg
had done in the privacy of her bedroom.
Her early promise of good looks was more than fulfilled, and in this
long, pale blue muslin, and "picture" hat, cornflower-trimmed, she
looked a fresh enough young beauty to be queen of a season. The golden
hair had deepened, and was twisted up in the careful, careless way
fashion dictated. The complexion was wonderfully pure and bright for
Australia, and the eyes were just as dewy and soft and sweetly lashed as
ever.
But not yet sixteen! Was ever such an impossible age for grown-up
rights? Just because she was tall and gracefully built was no reason
why she should consider herself fit to be "out," Meg
contended--especially, she added, with a touch of sisterly sarcasm, as
she had a weakness for spelling "believe" and "receive" in unorthodox
ways, and was still floundering wretchedly through her first French
author--_Le Chien du Capitaine_.
Poppet's legs dashed across the gravel path under the window; Peter's
copper-toed boots in hot pursuit shone for a second and vanished.
"Where's Baby, I wonder?" Meg said to herself.
The child had been playing with a chair a little time back, dragging it
up and down the verandah and bumping it about noisily; now all was
silent. She went to the foot of the stairs, one of Bunty's socks more
"holey" than righteous drawn over her hand.
"What you doing, Essie?" she called.
"Nosing, Mig," said a little sweet voice from a bedroom,--"nosing at
all."
"Now, Essie!"--Meg's voice took a stern note,-- "tell me what you are
doing!"
"Nosing," said the little voice; "I'se velly dood."
[Illustration: "'I'SE VELLY DOOD.'"]
"Quite sure, Essie?"
"Twite; I isn't dettin' wet a bit, Miggie."
Up the stairs Meg ran at a swift pace; that last speech was eminently
Baby's, and betokened many things.
"Oh, you wicked child!" she cried, and drove an unsummoned smile away
from her mouth corners.
The big water-jug was on the floor near the washstand, and small Essie
with slow and deep enjoyment was standing with one wee leg in the jug
and the other on the oilcloth. The state of the lace sock and little
red shoe visible betrayed the fact that the operation had been reversed
more than once.
This was an odd little characteristic of Essie's, and no amount of
scolding and even shaking could break her of it. Innumerable times she
had been found at this work of iniquity, dipping one leg after the other
in any water-jugs she found on the floor. And did Martha, in washing
floors, leave her bucket of dirty water one moment unguarded, Essie
would creep up and pop in one little leg while she stood her ground with
the other.
Meg dried her, scolding hard all the time. "All your shoes are spoiled,
Baby, you naughty girl; what _am_ I to do to you?"
"Velly solly," said Baby cheerfully.
She squeezed a tear out of her smiling eyes when Meg bade her look at
the ruin of her pretty red shoes.
"And you told me a story, Essie; you said you were good, and were not
getting wet."
Meg held the little offender away from her, and looked upon her with
stern reproach.
"But on'y my legs was dettin' wet--not me," explained Essie, with a sob
in her voice and a dimple at the corner of her mouth.
There was nothing of course to be done but put the water-jug into its
basin, and carry the small sinner downstairs in dry socks and
ankle-strap slippers that showed signs of having been wet through at
some time or other.
Bunty was lying on his back on the dining-room couch, which Meg had left
strewn with footwear waiting to be paired and rolled up.
"Oh, John!" she said vexedly, seeing her work scattered about the floor.
"John" took no notice. I should tell you, perhaps, that, since starting
to school, Bunty's baptismal name had been called into requisition by
authorities who objected to nicknames, and his family fell into the way
of using it occasionally too.
He was a big, awkward lad, tall for his thirteen years, and very loosely
built. Nell used to say complainingly that he always looked as if he
needed tightening up. His clothes never fitted him, or seemed part of
him, like other boys' clothes. His coats generally looked big and
baggy, while his trousers had a way of creeping up his ankles and
showing a piece of loose sock.
In the matter of collars he was hopeless. He had a daily allowance of
one clean one, but, even if you met him quite early in the morning,
there would be nothing but a limp, crooked piece of linen of doubtful
hue visible. He had the face of a boy at war with the world. His eyes
were sullen, brooding--his mouth obstinate. Every one knew he was the
black sheep. He knew it himself, and resented it in silence.
Poppet understood him a little--no one else. He was at perpetual enmity
with his father, who had no patience with him at all. Esther excused
him by saying he was at the hobbledehoy stage, and would grow up all
right; but she was always too busy to help him to grow. Meg's hands
were full with Pip; and Nell, after a try or two to win his confidence,
had pronounced him a larrikin, undeserving of sisters at all.
So Poppet undertook him. She was a faithful little soul, and in some
strange way just fitted into him, despite his awkward angles.
Sometimes he would tell her things, and go to a great deal of trouble to
do something she particularly wanted; but then again he would bully her
unmercifully, and make her life not worth living.
"Why don't you play cricket, or do something, John?" Meg said, snipping
off an end of cotton very energetically. "I hate to see a great boy
like you sprawling on a sofa doing nothing."
"Do you?" said John.
"What made you so late home from school? It's nearly teatime. I hope
it wasn't detention again."
"It was," said John.
"Oh, Bunty, that means Saturday taken again, doesn't it?"
"It does." John rolled over, and lay on his other side, his eyes shut.
"Bunty, why _don't_ you try?" Meg said; "you are always in scrapes for
something. Pip never got in half so many, and yet _he_ wasn't a model
boy. Will you promise me to try next week?"
There was a grunt from the sofa cushion that might be interpreted at
will as negative or affirmative.
Nell came into the room, her hat swung over her arm.
"Get up, John," she said; "what a horrid boy you are! Look at your
great muddy boots on the sofa! Meg, I don't know how you could sit
there and see him. Why, if we sat down, we'd get our dresses all
spoiled."
"Good job too," said John, not moving a hand.
Nellie regarded him with frankest disgust. "What a collar!" she said, a
world of emphasis on the "what." "I declare the street newsboys and
match-sellers look more gentlemanly than you do."
The tea-bell rang upstairs; John sat up instantly.
"I hope you saved me more pudding to-day, Meg," he said. "I never saw
such a stingy bit as you kept yesterday."
Nell's scarlet lips formed themselves into something very like "pig" as
she turned on her heel to leave the room. Then she said "Clumsy
wretch!" with startling suddenness. John had set his "great muddy boot"
down on one of her pretty flounces, and a sound of sundering stitches
smote the air.
"Beg pardon," said John, with a fiendish light of triumph in his eyes.
Then he went upstairs two steps at a time to discuss his warmed-up
dinner while the others had tea.
*CHAPTER II.*
*SCHOOL TROUBLES.*
"A heart at leisure from itself
To soothe and sympathise."
Poppet and Peter were discussing many things in general, and the mystery
of life in particular. They were sitting crouched up together in an old
tank that had been cast out in the first paddock because it leaked. It
was after tea, and Poppet had a little dead chicken in her hand that she
had picked up in the garden.
"Ith got wheelth inthide it, and when they thop ith deaded," Peter was
saying,--"thust like my thteam engine, thath what tith."
"I think being alive is very funny," Poppet said, looking earnestly at
the little lifeless body. "All those chickies was eggs, and then
sud'nly they begin running about and enjoying themselves, and _then_
sud'nly they tumble down dead, and even the doctor can't make them run
again."
"Yeth," said Peter, his eyes very thoughtful as he tried to grasp great
things. "Prapth you might tumble down like that, Poppet; all _your_
wheelth might thtop."
"Or yours," urged Poppet. Death was in her hand. She did not like to
feel that ever her active little body could lie like this fluffy, silent
one, and so made the likelihood more general.
"Yeth," said Peter; "and _oneth_, Poppet, I nearly _wath_ deaded, and
Judy thaved me."
"_You_ don't remember," Poppet said, in a voice of great scorn. "You
was only a little, tiny baby, just beginning to walk, Peter. But I was
there, and remember _everything_."
"You wath athleep, Poppet," Peter objected,--Poppet's air of superiority
irritated him. "Meg told me about it when I had the meathleth, and the
thaid that you wath athleep, tho there!"
"At any rate, Peter, I think you are old enough to stop lisping," Poppet
said severely, finding herself worsted. "You are six now, and only
babies of ten months lisp. _I_ never lisped at all."
Peter went red in the face.
"I don't lithp; you're a thtory-teller, Poppet Woolcot!" he said,
drawing in his tongue with a great effort at straight pronunciation.
Poppet jeered unkindly, then she caught sight of Bunty strolling
aimlessly about the garden, and she squeezed herself out of the tank and
stood upright.
"Don't go," said Peter. "Leth play Zoo, Poppet, and you can be the lion
thith time, and I'll feed you!"
But not even this inducement had any effect.
"I want to talk to Bunty," the little girl said, looking across with a
half-troubled light in her eyes to where Bunty's old cap was visible.
"I can play with you when he's at school. You can go and have a game
with Baby."
She went away, leaving him disconsolate, and crushed herself through a
broken paling into the garden.
She would like to have gone up to Bunty and slipped her arm through his
and asked him what had made him so exceptionally glum and silent these
last few days.
But she knew him better than that. She was very wise for her nine
years.
She fell to weeding her garden with great industry while he was walking
on the path near it. Then when he rambled farther away, she hovered
about here and there, now plucking a flower, now giving chase to a great
praying mantis. She was within a few feet of him all the time.
"What _are_ you buzznaccing about like this for?" he said at last
irritably, when her short holland frock appeared at every path he turned
down. He threw himself down on the grass, and pulled his cap over his
eyes.
"Flibberty-Gibbet had a tic in his head this morning," said the little
girl, sitting down beside him Turk fashion.
"Well, _I_ don't care," Bunty said, with almost a groan.
A look of anger crept up into the little sister's, earnest eyes.
"I 'spect it's that old Burnham again," she said wrathfully. "What's he
been doing _this_ time?"
Bunty groaned again.
"Was it your Greek?" she said, edging nearer. "Howid stuff! As if you
could be espected to get it right _always_!"
There was another smothered sound from beneath the cap.
"Was it that nasty algebra?" said the little, encouraging voice. It was
so tender and anxious and loving that the boy uncovered his eyes a
little.
"I'm in the _beastliest_ row, Poppet," he said.
Poppet's little, fair face was ashine with sympathy.
"I'd like to _hammer_ that Mr. Burnham," she said. "How did it happen,
Bunty?"
Bunty sat up and sighed. After all, it would be a relief to tell some
one; and who better than the faithful Poppet?
"Well, you know Bully Hawkins?" he said.
"Oh yes," said the little girl; and she did, excellently--by hearsay.
"Well, on Monday he was on the cricket pitch practising, and Tom Jackson
was bowling him--he'd made him. And when I went down--I was crossing it
to go up to Bruce--he jumped on me, and said I was to backstop. I said
I wasn't going to--why should I go after his blooming balls?--and he
said he'd punch my head if I didn't. And I said, 'Yes, you do,' and
walked on to Bruce. We were going to play marbles. And he came after
me, and hit me over the head and boxed my ears and twisted my arms."
"Bully!" said Poppet, with gleaming eyes. "What did you do, Bunty? did
you knock him down? I hope you made his nose bleed,--I'd--I'd have
_flattened_ him!"
Bunty gave her a look of scorn.
"He's sixteen, and the size of a prize-fighter!" he said. "I'd have
been half killed. No; Mr. Burnham was just a little way off, and I let
out a yell to him, and he came up and I told of him."
"Bunty!" said Poppet. The word came out like the report of a pistol,
and her red lips shut again very tightly to prevent any more following.
[Illustration: "MR. BURNHAM CAME UP AND I TOLD OF HIM."]
This touch of cowardice, this failure to grasp simple honour in Bunty's
character, was a perpetual grief and amazement to her little fearless
soul. But he would brook no advice nor reproach from her, as she knew
full well, and that is why her lips had closed with a snap after that
one word.
But he had seen the look of horror in her eyes.
"D'ye think I'm going to be pummelled just as that brute likes?" he
demanded angrily. "He's always bullying the fellows in our form, and
it'll do him good to get a taste of what he gives us. Mr. Burnham said
he hated a bully, and he just walked him up to the schoolroom and gave
him six."
Still Poppet was silent; her face was flushed a little, and she was
pulling up long pieces of grass with feverish diligence. In her quick
little way she saw it all, and felt acutely just how the boys would look
upon Bunty's behaviour.
"What an idiot you are, Poppet!" he said irritably, as she did not
speak; "as though a bit of a girl like you knows what it is at a boys'
school. I'm sorry I told you--I--I won't tell you the rest."
Poppet choked something down in her throat.
"Do tell me, Bunty," she said; "I didn't mean to be howid. Go on--I
only couldn't help wishing you could have foughted him instead of
telling, because--well, I espect he'll be worse to you than ever now,
and the other fellows too."
"That's it," Bunty said, with a groan. "Oh, but that's not half of it
yet, Poppet. I almost wish I was dead."
Something like a tear forced itself beneath his eyelids and trickled
down his cheeks. Poppet's. heart expanded and grew pitiful again
instantly His face was close to her knee, and wore so miserable an
expression that in a sudden little burst of love she put down her lips
and kissed him half-a-dozen times.
He sat up instantly and looked ashamed.
"How often am I to tell you I hate mugging?" he said gruffly. "If you
go on like this, I won't tell you."
"I beg your pardon," Poppet said very humbly; "really, I won't again,
Bunty. Do go on."
"Well, after that, I went round the side of the school--you know that
path, near the master's windows. Well, I'd nothing much to do, and the
bell hadn't gone, and I was just chucking my cricket ball up and down;
there was a tree, and I tried to make it go up in a straight line just
as high, and the next minute I heard a crash, and it had gone through
Mr. Hollington's window."
"Good gracious!" Poppet said, with widening eyes; then she gave a little
joyful jump. "I've got thirteen shillings, Bunty, from the pound Mr.
Hassal gave me; I'll give it to you to get it mended with. Oh, it won't
be such a very bad row; you can 'splain it all to Mr. Hollington."
"That's not all," Bunty said. "Thirteen shillings! You might as well
say ha'pennies. I stood there for a bit and no one came, and at last I
went in and looked about, and what do you think?--no one had heard!"
"Oh!" breathed Poppet. She scented the old trouble again.
"But you see it was such an awful crash. I knew it was more than the
window. And every one was out in the playground,--even Mr. Burnham had
just gone out again for something, and Mr. Hollington had gone home
early. So I first went quietly upstairs, and no one was about, so I
went into his room to get the ball, because my name was on it. And
there were two glass cases on top of one another under the window with
eggs and specimens and things in, and they were all smashed."
Poppet drew a long breath that ended in a whistle. She was wishing she
had not bought that set of gardening tools that cost six shillings, and
that shillingsworth of burnt almonds--perhaps a sovereign----
"It wasn't school-time," Bunty was whispering now, "and no one had
seen--not a soul, Poppet. Poppet, it was an accident; why should I go
and tell of myself? Why, I might have been expelled; and think what the
governor would say. So----"
"Yes," said Poppet steadily, "go on, Bunty."
He had paused, and was digging up the earth with his broken
pocket-knife. "So--go on."
"So, when we were all in afternoon school, Mr. Burnham came in and asked
who did it."
"Yes, Bunty--_dear_." A red colour had crept up into the little girl's
cheeks, her eyes were full of painful anxiety. "You said you had,
Bunty--didn't you, Bunty dear? Oh, Bunty, of _course_ you said you
had."
"No, I didn't," burst out her brother. "How could I after that, you
idiot you? What is the good telling you things? Why I didn't know what
would have happened. When he asked us separately I just said 'No' in a
hurry, and then I couldn't say 'Yes' after, could I?"
Again Poppet was silent, again there was the look of amaze and grief in
her wide, clear eyes. Bunty pulled his old cap over his face again--he
hated himself, and most of all he hated to meet the honest, sorrowful
eyes of his little sister.
"Couldn't you tell now, Bunty?" she said softly. "Go to-night--I'll come
with you to the gate--oh, do, Bunty dear. Mr. Burnham is not vewy howid
perhaps, and canings don't hurt vewy much--let's go to-night, and by
to-morrow it'll all be over."
"It's no good." A sob came from under the cap. "Oh, Poppet, it'll be
awful to-morrow! Oh, _Poppet_! Some one had seen, after all. Just as I
left school Hawkins came up to me. He hadn't been there when Burnham
asked us, and didn't hear anything till after school, and he said he saw
me coming out of Hollington's room, and creeping down the passage with a
cricket ball in my hand, and he went in to report it to Burnham just as
I came home, to pay me out for getting him a swishing."
Poppet was crying, though she hardly knew it. Such a terrible scrape,
and such a lie at the back of it--what could be the end of it?
"Oh, Bunty!" she said, and put her face right down in the long grass.
The earth and the tears got mixed, and smirched the clearness of her
skin--there was a wet, black smudge all down her poor little nose.
"Poppet!" cried Meg's voice, preceding her down the path in the dusk.
"Are you really sitting on the grass again when I've told you so often
how wet the dew makes it? John, how can you let her, when you know how
she coughs! Go to bed at once, Poppet, it's after eight; and you
haven't touched your home-lessons, John--really it's one person's work
to look after you--and where is that coat with the buttons off?"
"On my bed," "John" said sulkily.
"I wish you'd hang it up--what's the use of pegs? Poppet, go in when I
tell you--don't be naughty. Now, John, go and start your lessons. You'd
better do them in your bedroom, you make such a litter downstairs."
Meg turned to go back, Poppet's reluctant hand held fast.
"Can't I stay five minutes, _please_, Meg?" the little girl said,
looking up beseechingly.
Even in the fading light Meg saw the sweet brimming eyes and quivering
little lips.
"John!" she said angrily, "you've been bullying the poor little thing
again; I simply _won't_ have it--I shall speak to father."
"Oh, shut up!" said John; and he moved away wearily up to the house.
*CHAPTER III.*
*A PASSAGE AT ARMS.*
"Oh the day when thou goest a-wooing,
Philip, my king."
Meg was a little "put out," as it is popularly called, this
evening,--she was not generally so short with the young ones. The good
fit had worn away during the endless process of darning, and she had
jumped up at last, stuffed all the work into the gaping stocking-bag,
and said to herself that eldest sisters were mistaken and wrongful
institutions.
But that did not give Baby Essie her tea, nor yet put her lively little
ladyship to bed; and since Esther was out, there was no one else to
undertake it.
And when that was done Pip came in and asked her in his off-hand manner
to "just put a stitch in that football blazer."
The stitch meant a hundred or two, for it was slit from top to bottom.
And then Esther came home--a quieter Esther, an Esther of less brilliant
colouring than you used to know, for there are not many "fast colours"
beneath Australian skies--and with her the Captain, grown more
short-tempered with the lapse of years, and an income that did not grow
with his family. And again it was "Meg."
The seltzogene was empty. The Captain asked some one to tell him what
was the use of having a grown-up daughter--he could not answer the
question himself.
The lamb was a shade too much cooked, and the Golden Pudding a shade too
little. He wanted to know whether Meg considered it below her to
superintend domestic matters. In his young days girls, etc., etc. She
went from the dinner-table at the end of the meal with hot cheeks.
"I never chose to be eldest--I was made so; and I don't see I should be
scapegoat for everything!" she said, sitting down on the arm of the
lounge on which lay six feet of the superior sex in the shape of Pip.
There was a wrathful look in her blue eyes, and she had ruffled her fair
hair back in a way she always did in moments of annoyance.
"Why don't you make that conceited little chit help?" Pip said between
puffs at his cigar.
"Nellie!" ejaculated Meg in surprise.
"Yes, Nellie," said Pip. He looked across to where she was making a
picture beautiful to the most critical eye in a hammock a yard or two
distant. "Is her only mission in life going to be looking pretty?"
"Oh," Meg said, "she's too young, of course, Pip. Why, she's only
fifteen, though she is so tall! Oh, of course it can't be helped--only
it's annoying. But what have you got your best trousers on for, Pip,
again, and that blue tie? You had them last night and the night
before!"
Pip's handsome face coloured slowly.
"You've got a fair amount of cheek of your own, Meg," he said,
collecting the cigar ash in a little heap very carefully, and then
blowing it away with equal industry. "I wonder when you'll learn to
mind your own business. I should imagine I'm old enough to choose my
own clothes."
"Only she's a horrid, vulgar girl, that's all," Meg said slowly, and
colouring on her own account. "Pip, I don't know how you can, really I
don't--a common little dressmaker. Oh yes, we know all about it; Peter
saw you last night, and Poppet the night before."
"Peter be--Poppet be---- What the deuce do you mean spying after me?"
stormed Pip, sitting upright and looking wrathfully at his sister. "If
I choose to take a walk with a pretty girl, is it any concern of yours?"
[Illustration: "'PRETTY!' SAID NELL--'PRETTY! WHY, SHE BLACKENS HER
EYEBROWS, I'M CERTAIN.'"]
"Pretty!" said Nell, who had come up at his raised voice,--"pretty!
Why, she blackens her eyebrows, I'm certain; and you should have seen
her hat last Sunday--a green bird, some blue, lumpy plush, and a bunch
of pink chiffon."
"Upon my word," said Pip,--he was white with anger, and his eyes
blazed,--"upon my word, I've got two nice sisters. Trust a girl for
running down another pretty one. You're jealous, that's what it is,
because you know you can't hold a candle to her."
"Her father sells kerosene and butter--he's a _grocer_!" Nellie said,
with a fine swerve of her delicate lips. "Upon _my_ word, Pip, I should
think, with all the pretty girls there are about here, you might fall in
love with a lady."
"She _is_ a lady," Pip contended hotly. "She works with her needle,
perhaps--she's not been brought up in selfish idleness like you
girls--but her manners are a long sight better than yours, and she'd
blush to say small-minded things like you do."
It occurred to Meg that it _was_ small-minded, and she said no more.
But there was nothing Nellie enjoyed more than a sparring match with her
eldest brother when the advantage was on her side, and had he not called
her a conceited chit?
"There's one thing--you'd get your groceries at a reduction," she said
meditatively. "I think their sardines are only 5-1/2*d.* a tin; they'd
let _you_ have them for 5*d.* perhaps, considering all you've spent in
chocolates and eight-button gloves. Meg, I _did_ think that packet of
lovely gloves in his bedroom was for his dear little sisters, until----"
"Until you forfeited them by your abominable behaviour!" Philip cried
jesuitically.
But Nellie gave him a pitying glance. "Until I saw the size was too
utterly impossible for the hands of ladies,--o-o-h, Pip, don't, you hurt
me--ah-h-h, you're bruising my arm--stop it, Pip!"
Pip was twisting her soft, muslin-covered arms back in the torturous way
boys learn at school, and in a minute she was compelled to call for
mercy.
"Down on your knees!" he cried, forcing her down into that humble
position. "Now, apologise for all the caddish things you've said about
Miss Jones; begin at once,--now, one, two, three--say, 'I apologise.'"
"Never!" screamed Nell, struggling desperately; "I'll die first,--o-o-h,
ah-h-h, oh--'I--I--I apologise'--you donkey!"
"More than that,--'I should be glad to be half as beautiful and good and
lady-like.'"
"'B-beautiful and good and l-l-lady-like," repeated Nell, with a gasp
and a cry between each word. "Oh, Meg, make him stop!"
"'I only said those caddish things because I was jealous of her
superiority'--hurry up, now!" A scientific turn accompanied his
sentence.
"'C-caddish things because I was jealous--superiority,'--oh, Pip! Meg!
somebody, quick--he's half killing me!" Tears of pain and mortification
had started to her eyes.
"Let her go, Pip," Meg said; "you really hurt." She pulled at his arm,
and he released his victim, who fell in a heap on the floor, and said he
was "a h-h-horrid w-wretch, and she w-wished she had no brothers."
Pip picked up his hat and settled his pale blue tie, which had become
somewhat disarranged.
"Good-night; I hope you'll learn and inwardly digest your lesson, my
child," he said, going out upon the gravel.
But Nellie sprang to her feet, and called after him all down the path
till he reached the gate, "Candles, sardines, needles and pins, size
nine gloves! ask her what she blacks her eyebrows with!"
Meg was looking troubled. She was sitting on the lounge he had quitted,
and her fair brows were knitted beneath the soft, straying hair.
"Nell dear, it _is_ vulgar," she said, "and it _is_ small. I don't know
where the distinction of ladies comes in if we say things like that.
Perhaps the little dressmaker really wouldn't."
"But we are ladies," Miss Elinor said, her small head in the
air,--"nothing can alter that. Our father is a gentleman, our mother
was a lady--we are ladies."
"Not if we act like servant girls," Meg said quietly. "If you found a
bit of glass under all the conditions you'd expect to find a diamond,
and yet it didn't shine like a diamond, then it wouldn't be a diamond,
would it?"
"Now don't get elder-sistery and moralous," said Nell; albeit she was a
trifle ashamed, for she prided herself certainly upon being a little
lady to her boot toes. "Meg, I thought of doing up that white crepon
Esther gave me into a kind of evening dress, just for little evenings,
you know, at the Baileys or Courtneys, or anywhere, or when we have
people here. Would you make the body as a blouse with big frills over
the shoulders, or with a yoke and gathered into the waist? The blouse
way would be easier, for there's no lining, you know."
"Oh, the blouse, I think," Meg said, half abstractedly. "Do you know if
Poppet has gone to bed, Nell? I don't think I saw her come in, and her
cough was bad last night."
"I don't know. Meg, I'll give you half-a-crown for that silver belt of
yours; I've got a little money left in my allowance yet, and you never
wear it. Half-a-crown would buy you a new book, or one of those burnt
straw sailor-hats, and the belt would look lovely with the white dress."
The younger girl looked persuasively at the elder.
"But I gave seven-and-sixpence for it," Meg objected, "and it's nearly
new."
"But you never wear it--what's the good of a thing you don't wear?"
contended Nellie, who had set her heart upon it. "If you think it's too
little, say two shillings and that light blue blouse of mine that you
like."
Meg put the blouse on mentally.
"Well, I like myself in pale blue," she said; "yes, I'll do that--only I
hope it's not torn or anything. Oh! and Nell, I think you might go and
see if Poppet is in the garden; I've done ever so much to-day, and
you've only been reading."
But Nellie was comfortably in the hammock again among the cushions.
"Oh, Poppet never does anything _I_ tell her," she said; "you'd better
get her yourself--all the children mind you more than me, you have so
much more patience, Megsie."
So it was Meg who had disturbed the important _tete-a-tete_ between
Bunty and his little sister; Meg who had separated them abruptly, almost
unkindly, at a crisis of great moment; and Meg who had seen the little
girl actually into bed, and administered a dose of eucalyptus against
the cough.
But it was also Meg who went down in the drawing-room presently, and
played Mendelssohn's tender, exquisite Love Song, and a rippling,
laughing little bit of Grieg, and a Sonata of Beethoven's, to a father
half asleep on the sofa and a young man very wide awake on a
neighbouring chair.
And it was Poppet who made hay, and crept along the passage in her
little nightgown to the room where Bunty was sitting with his head on
his arms and misery in his eyes.
And it was Poppet who, after torrents of abuse and vituperation from the
unhappy lad, succeeded in extracting a promise that he should own up
everything bravely in the morning, and not shirk his punishment whatever
it was.
*CHAPTER IV.*
*A SUMMER'S DAY.*
"Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn."
The next day was exceedingly hot, one of those moist, breathless days
that make February the most unpleasant month in the year to Sydney
folks.
Every one in the house felt utterly limp and cross and miserable, and
daily duties were performed in as slipshod and languid a manner as
possible. The cook had made a great pan of quince jam, and brought it
into the breakfast-room on a tray for Esther to tie down. And Esther
was sitting in the rocking-chair trying to make up her mind to do it,
and wondering whether it would be easier to use string or paste. Small
Esther was making a terrible noise. She owned dolls and bricks, little
tea-services, and baby furniture--all the toys that well-regulated
little girls are supposed to love; she generally tired of them, however,
after a few minutes' play.
At present she had made a tram of six heavy leather chairs, with the
armchair for "motor," and her little sweet face was scarlet and wet with
the exertion of dragging them into place.
In addition to this she had taken the fire-irons out of the fender, and
was rowing, or in some way propelling the train forward--to her own
satisfaction, at any rate--by brandishing the tongs wildly about while
she stood in the motor and shouted and cried, "Gee up!"
"Essie," big Esther said at last, "you must be quiet. Poor mamma's head
aches. Where's your doll? That's not a pretty game."
"All bwoked," said Essie; "gee up, old twain." Bang, bang, clatter,
clatter.
"Essie, put those things away at once." Esther noticed the poker for
the first time. "You naughty girl, you are scratching the chairs
dreadfully."
"But I can't make ze twain puff-puff wifout," objected the
engine-driver, "an' we has to go to Bwisbane; det up wif you." She
leaned over the tall back of her locomotive, and made vigorous hits at
the legs of it.
So vigorous indeed that the chair went over with a crash, precipitating
Essie and the poker and tongs and shovel in four different directions.
"Oh dear," said Esther, and sighed before she attempted to go to the
rescue. Essie was always tumbling from somewhere or other and never got
much hurt, and really it was terribly hot.
"Oo-oo-oh!" said a very small voice. It quavered for a minute. If the
anxiously examined little fat knees had been scratched, it would have
broken into a despairing yell, but they were whole, and the motor had
misbehaved itself.
"Beast!" she said, picking herself up in a great hurry,--"howid old
pig!" Then she seized the poker and beat the prostrate chair with all
her small, angered strength.
"Essie," big Esther said languidly--she had found with thankfulness she
need not move from the chair,--"Essie, I shall whip you, if you use
naughty words like that."
"But I was zust dettin' to Bwisbane--so it _is_ a pig," Essie
maintained. Then she climbed up again, and the journey proceeded.
In the nursery Meg was supposed to be giving lessons to Peter and
Poppet, and superintending the more advanced studies of Nellie; for the
last nursery governess had left suddenly, and the Captain had professed
himself unable to afford another until the next quarter.
Meg used to provide herself with a book during these daily struggles, to
be indulged in at times when her supervision was not required. It had
been an "improving" book for the last month, for she had lately been
finding out how wofully ignorant she was when she talked to the young
man who had listened to her playing last night. To-day it was Browning,
because he had looked horrified to find she never read any of his poems,
on the plea that he was acknowledged to be difficult to understand.
It was a pity she chose "Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial"
for her first essay, especially as it was such a hot day; but she had
determined to read, dauntlessly, the first poem the book opened at.
"Do this sum, Poppet," she said, setting a multiplication with eight
figures in each line--"dear, _what_ a greasy slate; and Peter, if you
drop any blots on your copy, you will have to write it again this
afternoon."
Peter was sucking a little lump of ice he had stolen out of the
ice-chest. Poppet asked him for a bit to clean her slate with, but he
considered this such waste of precious material that he swallowed it in
a hurry and choked. Poppet asked if she might go and wet her sponge;
but Meg said no, it always took a quarter of an hour to do that simple
act, if she escaped from the room. So Peter offered to breathe on it
for her.
"Both of us will," said Poppet,--"you on the top half, and me on the
bottom."
Meg was taking a cursory glance at "Filippo," and groaning mentally; she
did not hear the arrangement for the slate-cleaning until the heads
bumped violently and the two began to quarrel.
"You licked it with your tongue," Poppet said.
"I never--I wath only breathing with my lipth on it," declared Peter.
"I saw the end of your tongue hanging out," Poppet maintained.
"You're a thtory-teller, Poppet." Peter's face began to get red. "I
wath only breathing, tho there."
"Peter, go and sit at the other end of the table. Poppet, if you put out
your tongue at Peter again, I shall make you stand in the corner." Meg
put a pen in the Browning to keep it open, and went over to Nell at the
window to see how "Le Chien du Capitaine" was progressing.
"Oh, Nell!" she said.
The French dictionary lay face downwards on the broad window-sill; "Le
Chien" was face upward on Nell's knee, but on the top of it was "Not
Wisely, but too Well."
"Oh!" said Nell, with a gasp, her eyes misty, her cheeks flushed,--"oh,
it's no use scolding, Meg,--I absolutely must finish this; I'm just
where Kate is--Oh, Meg, you _are_ horrid!"
For Meg had taken forcible possession of the dark green book, and had
picked up the dictionary.
"You know you are not to read in the morning," she said; "and I don't
think you ought to read a love story like this till you're eighteen at
least. Really, Nellie, it's no use me pretending to overlook you;
you've done one page of 'The Dog' in three mornings. I'll have to tell
father I must give up the pretence of teaching."
"Here, give it to me," Nellie said, sighing wistfully; "it ought to be
called 'The Pig,' I think, it's so detestable. Put 'Not Wisely' on the
table, Miggie, so I can see the title and get occasional refreshment."
Then Meg returned to the "Privilege of Burial." Her first thought, when
she had read the piece through, was that Browning was not a true poet,
however great a man he might be; and her second that Allan Courtney must
be exceedingly clever to be able to enjoy such reading; her third was
sorrow at the poor brains she felt she must possess not to be able to
enjoy it too.
She tried another at random--"Popularity." It was rather better she
decided, though she had no very clear idea of the meaning; and oh! that
terrible last verse,--was it an enigma, or could clever people see the
sense instantly?--
"Hobbs hints blue--straight he turtle eats:
Nobbs prints blue--claret crowns his cup
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,--
Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?
What porridge had John Keats?"
The deep sigh that accompanied the third vain reading of it, disturbed
Peter in his occupation of putting flies in the ink, fishing them out,
and letting them crawl over to Poppet.
Poppet at her side of the table was similarly occupied, only she had
captured a March-fly, and it made beautifully clear tracks right across
to Peter.
"Is your sum finished, Poppet?" Meg said abstractedly, pondering even as
she spoke, what Keats, who was a god to her, had to do with porridge.
Poppet put her hand over the March-fly and confessed it was not quite.
"How many rows have you done?"
The answer came in a whisper, "Not quite one."
"I shall keep you in to do it then after four," Meg said in her sternest
voice; "and, _Peter_, look at your copy."
In the excitement of getting the half-drowned flies safely across Peter
had made a landing-place of his copy-book, and great was the inkiness of
it.
"Oh, bleth it!" he said ruefully.
[Illustration: "'PETER, LOOK AT YOUR COPY.'"]
Poppet's head was within an inch of her slate. She was working now at a
startling pace, and counting on her fingers in a loud whisper. What
would Bunty say if he came home, and she was not there to ask how he had
got on, and sympathise with the red marks that were sure to be on his
hands?
Nellie had translated five lines, and was occupied in a vain search for
the dictionary meaning of _pourra_.
"I believe it's 'pour,' and 'ra' is a misprint that's got tacked on,"
she said, "or else this beautiful dictionary has left it out, there are
ever so many words I can't find, Meg."
"Oh," said Meg, her patience flying away on sudden wings, "what is the
use of anything? I won't teach you any more, any of you. Peter wrote
far better a month ago than he does now; Poppet's taken an hour to do a
row of multiplication by six, and you are looking in the dictionary for
_pourra_. It's simply wasting all my time to sit here."
The problem, "who fished the murex up?" had not improved my eldest
heroine's temper. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes sparkled, she
threw out her hands in a little dramatic way. "You can go, Peter, you
can go and make mud pies of the universe, if you like; Poppet, you can
go too, tear your dress, and climb as many trees as you please; Nellie,
you can sit in front of the looking-glass the rest of the day and read
every novel in the house,--why should _I_ care? I won't teach any
more."
She flung herself down on the old horse-hair sofa, opened her Browning,
and turned her face to the wall.
And they all went, not at first, but presently and by degrees.
"The thaid we could," whispered Peter.
"Did she _mean_ it?" Poppet said doubtfully.
"Of courth," said Peter; "I'm going, at any rate. The thaid I wath to;
I'm not going to dithobey her," and he slipped out on tip-toe. Poppet
worked to the end of the line by seven, then she remembered she had
forgotten to "carry" all the way, and she grew afraid that Peter would
get to the birds' eggs she was putting in compartments for Bunty.
So she also, after a glance or two at her sister's back hair, slipped
off her chair and stole softly away.
And Nellie drew "Not Wisely" to her own end of the table with the aid of
a long ruler; then she followed the example of her iniquitous juniors
and departed noiselessly.
It was nearly an hour before Meg turned round again. She had lost
herself in some wonderful poems now,--"The Flight of the Duchess," "By
the Fireside," and some of the shorter love pieces; she began to see
possibilities of beauty and enjoyment, and felt glad with a great
gladness that she was able to appreciate them even in a slight degree.
Then the silence struck her. Surely if Poppet were doing her sum, her
pencil would be squeaking; and surely if Peter were engaged as he should
be on his copy, he would be breathing laboriously and giving occasional
little impatient grunts to testify to each fresh blot.
She looked round, and saw the deserted room.
"Took me at my word!" she said aloud. "They might have known I didn't
mean it, young scamps,--Nellie too."
Then she smiled indulgently. The exquisite tenderness and the strength
of the love pieces had softened and braced her at the same time.
"They're very young," she said, as she went out after them, "and--really
it's very hot."
This was all in the morning. At night there was another breeze.
Bunty did not eat his pudding. That of itself was phenomenal, for it
was brown with sultanas and had citron peel at wide intervals; generally
he managed three servings, and, even then, said they might have made it
in a bigger basin. But to-night he said "No pudding" in a sullen voice,
and kicked the legs of his chair monotonously with his boot heels.
"You might have the common politeness to say thank you, I think," said
Nellie, who was officiating at nursery tea in Meg's absence. "What a
boor you are getting, John."
"Oh, go and hang yourself," he returned. He pushed his chair back from
the table, and went out of the room with lowering brows.
Poppet slipped down from her chair.
"Sit down instantly, Poppet; do you think I'm going to allow you to
behave like this?" Nellie cried. "If John has no more manners than a
larrikin, you are not to follow his example. Sit down, I tell you,
Poppet; _do_ you hear me?"
"Can't you see how white he is?" said the little girl, her lips
trembling. "Nellie, I can't stay--no, I don't want pudding." She
darted across the room and down the passage after him.
The boys' bedrooms opened on to a long landing with a high staircase
window at the end that looked straight out to the river and the great
stretch of gum trees on the Crown lands.
Bunty was standing staring out, his hands thrust in his pockets; the
setting sun was on the stained window-panes, and his face looked ghastly
in the red light.
"Was it very bad?" said the little, tender voice at his elbow.
He turned round, and looked at his young sister for a minute in silence.
"Look here, Poppet," he said, and his voice sounded strange and
strangled; "I know I tell lies and do mean things--I can't help it
sometimes, I think I was made so; but I haven't done this new thing they
say I have--Poppet, I swear I haven't."
"I know you haven't," the loving voice said; "what is it, Bunty?"