CHAPTER XVI

THE END OF PLAY DAYS

With the constant derision that so much boy companionship brought at

Sunnymeade, Jennie and Suey had been forced to retire from adventurous

lives, and now, wrapped in soft old handkerchiefs, they passed their

later days in a quiet box that stood on a cupboard shelf.

Suey had lost an arm; that was on one occasion in Sunnymeade, when a

bushranging game had been popular, and Clif, admitted half-jealously to

it, had seized her so roughly from the burning roof of the station he

had stuck up, that all Phyl’s heartbroken care could effect no remedy.

And Jennie’s thin hair was drawn back and combed carefully to conceal

the sad fact that the back half of her head was false. This was also

due to Clif. Enmity used sometimes to reign between the boys and girls

in the two cottages, and on these occasions Dolly used to take a wicked

pleasure in running through the careful rings of marbles Clif and

Teddie would make.

Retaliation had once carried Jennie high up a gum-tree near. “The

lovely hewoine twying to escape from the hangman on the Tower of

London,” Clif had called teasingly from his height, and he had

thereupon lowered the waxen creature by a piece of string.

Underneath the tree, Dolly jumped about in anguish. “Oh, Clif, please,

Clif—_dear_ Clif, do give her to me. I’ll never jump on your marbles

again, twuly I won’t,” she cried beseechingly.

Jennie dangled within a foot of her head,—she sprang up again and again

to grasp her, but each time just as her hands almost closed on her

treasure, the string was jerked, and the “escaping hewoine” swung yards

away.

There was one jerk too many of course, and poor Jennie lay at the foot

of the tree, her head broken in two places. The “hangman” dropped to

the ground, real distress on his face, so anguished was the cry of the

mother as she dropped down beside her darling.

Mrs. Conway patched up the poor head, and time dried Dolly’s tears,

but so keen was Clif’s repentance, and so many his hearty endeavours

to make up, that the incident cemented a friendship between the little

couple that lasted always.

But now such days and deeds had gone for ever. The dolls, worn out

by their troublous life, lay at rest, and the little mother’s empty

hands, groping for something to fill them, fastened after a time as a

matter of course on pens.

There was an interval, however, before that relief came, in which the

passion for “pretending” vented itself in an odd way. Mrs. Conway once,

in turning over the frocks of her elder daughters, found in the pockets

of both a number of small bits of wood. They were of different sizes,

none more than a couple of inches high, and perhaps half an inch wide.

Each one was wrapped in some scrap or other of material, one perhaps in

white muslin with a scrap of blue silk tying it round the middle, one

in a morsel of red cashmere, one in blue serge, and so on. She turned

them over curiously in her hand.

“What on earth are these things?” she said. But Phyl and Dolly turned a

deep uncomfortable red, and remained speechless.

Almost a year later, however, the mother came upon the pair sitting in

the corner of the garden, the identical pieces of wood on their knees

or strewn around them. Her footfall had been so light neither of the

children heard her.

Both were murmuring, murmuring at the same time, neither exactly

listening to the other, and yet there was such close connection between

the games of the two that it is doubtful if either could have been

played apart.

“Annabella is dwessing for the ball,” Dolly was murmuring. “Purple

satin, and a bouquet of dahlias and poppies.” “Oh, there you are,

Muriel, I see you are dwessed—what a poor ugly dwess, but I suppose you

can’t afford a better, as you’re only a governess.” “Muriel is attired

in pure white clinging muslin, with one moss-wose in her hair.” And so

on, and so on. Phyl’s fair little face was ashine with the excitement

of her game. “So he plunged madly in the river,” she was murmuring, her

hand at the same time making a dive with a scrap of wood attired in

blue serge, “and Geraldine was floating along, her hair streaming on

the water; she had sunk six times, and only had strength to put her arm

round his neck before she fainted.

“He swam to the shore with his lovely burden, and there stood Luke

Robespierre, and he had cut a leak in her boat. Sir Guy Redcliffe

strode up to him, he put Lady Geraldine in a safe place first. ‘You

traitor, and villain,’ he cried, and rushed upon him” (two bits of wood

were banged forcibly together). “Luke drew a dagger from his sleeve,

but Sir Guy brushed it aside, pulled his pistol from his pocket, and

shot him through the heart.”

“But,” said the mother, stepping between them, her sense of humour

overcoming everything else, “don’t you think, Phyl, the powder would be

wet after that long swim?”

Phyl’s face went scarlet. Dolly, at the first footstep—for might it not

be one of those dreadful boys?—swept her wooden family into a hasty

heap and thrust them into her pocket.

But the mother when her smile had died looked a little troubled. They

seemed such big girls—Phyl was nearly thirteen—to be playing in so

childish a manner; and the absurd stuff they were talking, where they

had read or picked up such nonsense she could not tell,—who knew where

such foolishness would end?

“My dears,” she said, “I really think you are too old to play like this

now. I do not often cross your wishes, do I?—but I must ask you both to

throw those things quite away.”

She talked to them a little longer, and they both felt ashamed of their

silliness.

“We won’t play with them again,” they said sadly.

“Give them to me, and I will throw them away,” the mother said.

But the two shrank from that—those bits of wood had dwelt in their

pockets, shared their thoughts, their life, for over a year.

“Oh, please,” they said, “please let us do it ourselves, mama.”

An hour later they were disposing of them with unhappy eyes. They had

buried all but two in a matchbox with cotton-wool, the grave being at

the foot of a favourite tree. But Muriel and Sir Guy Redcliffe had

still to be disposed of.

“Let’s leave them exposed to the world,” said Phyl; “if we bury them,

they’re dead; they may as well have some more adventures.”

Away down the road was a railway-bridge with ironwork pillars at either

end, rather elaborately wrought. Sir Guy was placed in one deep niche,

and Muriel, attired in clinging white muslin, in another.

[Illustration: They buried them in a matchbox with cotton-wool.]

For very long after this, whenever their walks took them past the

bridge, Phyl and Dolly always walked that particular side of the road

and peeped into the niches.

Their promise, they considered, bound their hands from taking the

wooden couple out, but it was great happiness to find them still

there. And to this very day Muriel and Sir Guy may be still adventuring

in those iron recesses and exposing themselves to the world’s

hardships; for many years after Dolly found Muriel there and took her

out and laughed and put her back again.

After the interdict was placed on wooden images, the pair fell to

playing “beggar-my-neighbour” and “old maid” in the long evenings after

tea, but the possibilities of cards urged themselves too strongly for

resistance, and after Weenie had gone to bed dramas were once more

enacted, the cards themselves for puppets.

“You don’t mind us pretending with cards, mama?” they had said,

and Mrs. Conway, not quite comprehending, had told them to please

themselves.

The queen of spades was Dolly’s heroine now; she saw in her a dark

little girl with flashing eyes and a propensity for getting into

terrible mischief, and then dying with pious words of exhortation on

her lips and all her weeping relatives around her bed. She was a unique

mixture of Topsy and Eva, and Dolly named her Judy.

Phyl’s heroine was the queen of hearts; the knave of diamonds, a

handsome hero named Lochinvar; and on the knave of clubs was heaped all

the villainy a heart of thirteen could conceive. The king of clubs with

both was always the heavy father.

Aces were tiny babies, and fours and fives little children of the

house. Tens were the servants, spades and clubs being footmen,

butlers, gardeners, and other “ancient retainers,” while diamonds and

hearts were housekeepers with stiff black silk dresses and bunches of

jingling keys, pert ladies’-maids and nurses.

Both children always kept up a large establishment, and placed their

characters in “old turreted mansions hoary with age,” or Venetian

palaces, or moated castles.

But when Phyl’s fourteenth birthday came round she renounced for ever

all puppets, and took with greater avidity to reading.

Dolly played a little longer. She had been bitten with the mania for

collecting stamps and shells, and now being left lonely—for the card

game lost interest without Phyl’s companionship—shells served their

turn as the bits of wood and cards had done.

Saturday afternoon, after they returned to Sydney, always found the

little girls on some beach—Manly, Bondi, Coogee, or Bronté,—for it

seemed a delightful thing to them that the seaside was to be reached at

any time by a tram or boat ride, instead of waiting a whole year for

three or four weeks of it as had been their English habit.

And lying on the beach Dolly could pursue her shell stories in the

loveliest fashion, the best of materials to hand, and no fear of

laughing detection.

On the crisp sand she drew her houses with all their different rooms,

and placed in them her shell inhabitants. One of the shells, a pretty

bluish grey, was always “Mary,” a model eldest sister; a tiny smooth

scallop, snow-white, was “Muriel,” who used to be chiefly occupied

in dying. And a very bright, brown, thin one with black, irregular

markings on it was always “Judy.”

PART II

SCRIBBLING DAYS

CHAPTER XVII

RHYME AND RHYTHM

“I know of no sweeter emotion, and hardly of a greater one, than when

a young man takes a sheaf of paper in his hand and, striding about

his room, boldly resolves to turn it into MS.”—Jean Paul Richter.

In after years, when two of her little maids were actually among the

army of the makers of books, Mrs. Conway used often to try to recollect

what had been their earliest essay with a pen.

So far as her memory served, it was Dolly who first made the great

plunge at the age of ten or eleven.

The child was shy with her for three or four days, hung about her in

odd, half-ashamed nervousness burdened with her secret. Finally she

crept up close and hid her face on an arm that was busily engaged

cutting out pinafores for Weenie.

“I’ve—I’ve written something, mama,” she whispered, pink as a peony.

The scissors went snip, snip, snip along the edge of the pattern.

“Have you, dear one?” the mother said, rather abstractedly; “is it

another letter to me?”

Dolly shook her head. Letters were very common things. She and Phyl

were always writing them and posting them, for reading at all hours of

the day, in their mother’s pocket. There were two there at the present

time awaiting reading.

“My dearest Mama” (Dolly wrote),

“Isn’t it a lovely day? I love bright days when the little birds

go twitter-tweet and the sun laughs and the flowers look like pink

and red fires all over the garden. Jennie is not very well to-day;

I wish we were going to the seaside, then she would soon be well!

Oh I do love the sand, when it feels warm and crunchy, and you can

let it go sliping, sliping through your fingers and the weeney bits

of silver and gold and diamonds shine in the sun. Oh I wish we were

there padling in the frothy waves and making houses with the sand and

little shells.

“I remain,

“Your lovingest of loving daughters,

“Dolly.”

“Darling old Mother” (said Phyl),

“I’ve been reading such a lovely story, it was on the paper that came

wrapped round the ironing. Geraldine Montmorency was going to be

married to the Duke of something—I can’t remember his name—and she

was very proud and only had black hair and there was a dear little

governess and she had golden hair and she was ever so sweet and the

children were horrid to her and Lady Geraldine used to be proud and

haughty to her but the Duke kept noticing her and one day when he

was walking in the wood he saw her sitting crying on the bank of a

streme and all her beautiful golden hair had come undone and was

streming down her back. And he asked her what was the matter and she

wouldn’t tell him. And he said ‘Darling’ in a hoarse whisper and

begged her to speak and took her little hand in his great broad one.

And she kept on crying and he kept on begging her. And then she put

her little head on his strong shoulders and told him she was weping

because he was going to marry the haughty Lady Geraldine. And he said

he wouldn’t because he didn’t love her a bit and was only going to

marry her because he was impoverished and there were mortgages on the

estate—what are mortgages, mother? And so instead he eloped with the

governess, and it turned out she was the real Lady Geraldine and she

had been changed in her cradle for the other Lady Geraldine who was

only a common farmer’s daughter now.

“Oh, it was such a lovely story!

“I remain,

“Ever your loving daughter,

“Phyl.”

“Then what have you been writing if it isn’t a letter?” the mother

said. “I hope a copy, Dolly; you and Phyl are the most shocking little

writers I have ever seen.”

“No; it isn’t a copy,” said Dolly. Her face grew redder than ever,

and at last she produced from her pocket a scrap of paper whereon was

writing in red ink.

Mrs. Conway took it a little hurriedly, for the pinafores were badly

needed, and read the following first poem of her daughter:—

“BY THE SEA.

“Down in a mossy dell

Near to a little well

A busy little wren

Thus built its nest.

First of all it brought

Hay within its bill

Then to its young ones taught

To gather quills.

It wove them all together

And then the nest was made

And then they all lay down

Together in the shade.”

Dolly was regarding her with anxious eyes.

“It—it _is_ a poem, isn’t it, mother?” she said shyly.

But the mother laughed,—for once in her life she was unsympathetic,

and had no intuition as to the feelings of her little girl on this

occasion. It seemed only a funny thing to her that the child should

write anything in verse.

“Oh, you little goose, Dolly,” she said. “When did you ever see a

bird’s nest built of quills?”

Dolly looked a trifle saddened.

[Illustration: “It—it _is_ a poem, isn’t it, mother?”]

“It had to be something to go with bill,” she said, and sighed. She was

recollecting the struggle she had had with the word, and even now one

word had an “s” and the other was without; yet it was impossible to

make bill plural or quills singular.

The mother laughed again.

“And why did you call it ‘By the Sea’?” she said. “There’s not a wave

in it anywhere.”

“It sounded so nice,” Dolly said forlornly.

“And all the birds I know of,” Mrs. Conway said, “build the nest before

the young ones come. Did you ever see wrens wait till the young ones

could help with the building?”

Dr. Wise came in at this point, and Dolly slipped away, all the

pleasurable elation at having “made something up” entirely gone. How

could any one make up poetry if they had to be as careful of facts as

this? It had seemed to her that as long as everything had “sounded

right” nothing else mattered. Her cheeks burned as she ran away. She

felt she had been silly again, and so ashamed was she that it was years

before she ever attempted again to “drop into poetry.”

Five years after Mrs. Wise’s death the little boys had a mother again,

and into the quiet life of Dolly, Phyl, and Weenie there stepped five

riotous and ready-made brothers.

The lives of the two families had run too close together not to merge

in the end.

When at the end of three years of the wretchedly-paying school

Mrs. Conway was forced to pack up and go back to try another bout with

the Fates in Sydney, Dr. Wise, lonely himself, and in despair at the

thought of his lads growing up in miserable Sunnymeade without her

gentle influence, came also to the city and started a suburban practice

close by the little home she had made.

The death of an aunt about this time brought Mrs. Conway a little

legacy, seventy pounds a year perhaps. The house she rented had a spare

room; she took two boarders, a student and a clerk, and once again was

just able to make a living. But life was fuller and pleasanter in every

way here than in Sunnymeade, so small privations pressed less heavily.

It was after two years of this life that Dr. Wise finally persuaded the

mother of the little maids to let who would take the house she had, and

come into his that so sorely needed her.

And so there was another revolution in those small girls’ lives, and

once again fresh days and dreams presented themselves.

CHAPTER XVIII

TEN AT TABLE

The half-past five train whistled shrilly at the station, and Phyl

dropped hastily down from the low branch of the quince-tree where the

afternoon sun had found and left her buried in _Comin’ thro’ the Rye_.

She ran hastily up the orchard; already small black specks were on the

brow of the hill, and those same specks would enlarge and enlarge until

in ten minutes they trooped up the garden-path and demanded dinner.

She set the table with hasty yet careful hand. There was only one

servant in the house for all the work, unless one counted an imp of a

boy of twelve, who answered the door to the patients, and cleaned the

doctor’s hard-worked bicycle, and occasionally took a weed out of the

garden, and occasionally cleaned a window.

Knife and fork and spoon and fork, knife and fork and spoon and fork,

up and down the long table Phyl went with her silver basket until ten

places were set. Yellow chrysanthemums, grasses and autumn leaves made

a feast for the eyes in the centre; the cloth was snowy; the room,

though plainly furnished, had a sunshiny, fresh, and dainty look that

did the doctor’s wife credit, considering the size of the double family.

[Illustration: Buried in _Comin’ thro’ the Rye_.]

Phyl’s dress came down to her shoes, and she was still conscious of it.

Her fair, wavy hair had not been twisted into that knot long enough for

her to feel sure it would not come tumbling over her shoulders if she

ran. Her complexion was still somewhat pale, but at eighteen her early

delicacy was almost outgrown. Blue eyes looked thoughtfully out upon

the world, but fun found plenty of room to dance there too. There was

a look of happiness about her mouth.

A little boy came into the room—Freddie, who had been a mere baby when

Mrs. Wise died, but was now eight.

“Go and wash your face, Freddie,” Phyl said, at the sound of his

footstep, “and be sure to scrub your hands well—dinner will be ready in

ten minutes.”

But Freddie obtruded a face ashine with cleanliness, and a pair of

passable hands, upon her notice, which had not been given to him before.

“I have washed myself, Phyl,” he said mildly.

Phyl glanced at him and laughed.

“You must be dreadfully hungry,” she said; “one can generally take it

for granted that your hands are crying out for the scrubbing-brush. I

believe, Freddie, before they let you into heaven the archangel who

keeps the keys will say in a hollow voice, ‘F e r e d e r i c k James

Allison Wise, go back and wash your hands.’”

Freddie smiled rather nervously at the pleasantry and watched his

sister uncertainly. Surely it was too much good fortune for him to

expect that she had forgotten his afternoon’s behaviour! He was her

pupil, being considered as yet too young to go daily the long distance

the others went to school, and this morning had she not fairly cried

with rage and vexation over the daily struggle of his music lesson? And

this afternoon when geography, and arithmetic, and copy-books were all

in neat readiness on the dining-room table, had he not slipped away

entirely and gone to play marbles behind the stables with Davey, the

impish house-boy?

Perhaps, he told himself relievedly at the sight of her calm face, she

was appeased by the excellent washing he had given himself. What a very

good thing he had thought of it!

Her eyes were straying about half abstractedly.

“Are you looking for anything,—shall I find it?” he said solicitously.

“Yes, the knife-sharpener, Freddie, have you seen it anywhere? Your

father will call out if it isn’t on the table.”

Freddie looked about busily.

“Don’t you bother, Phyl,” he said kindly, “you just go on with your

work, I’ll find it for you.”

“There’s a good old laddie,” Phyl said, and fell to smoothing the salt

in the corner cruets.

Freddie had to steal out on to the verandah, where in the morning

he had been engaged in a railway game, for which, for some occult

reason of his own, he had used all the tools in the machine-drawer,

the corkscrew, tin-opener, and egg-whisk from the kitchen, and from

the dining-room the knife-sharpener. He was always in hot water for

mislaying these things, but if people had only known how admirably

they had answered for his purpose, and how impossible it was to make

anything else do, they would hardly have grumbled so much; and they

would certainly never have presented him with mere shilling tin trains,

with red and green and blue cars, and a stupid little motor that could

do nothing, in the hope that with a “proper toy” he would let household

articles alone.

He slipped into the dining-room with a beaming face.

“Here it is, Phyl,” he said.

Phyl was stealing one more hasty page from Helen Mathers, seeing the

gate had not yet banged.

“Um,” she said, her eyes tearing along.

“I soon found it for you, didn’t I?” he said.

“Good old laddie,” Phyl murmured, feeling approval was required of her.

Freddie sat down in the rocking-chair, his heart full of affection for

his eldest sister.

Up the path trooped all the home-comers. Weenie was in advance—such a

long-legged girl with a bright little face, burnt brown as a berry,

alert brown eyes, and her brown hair drawn back anyway to be out of

the road, and plaited in a short, pert little plait. Her frock was

too short for her—it always was, for there was no keeping up with her

growth. On the knees of her black stockings there were networks of

little holes. When Phyl saw them she would be sure to sigh and say, “I

can’t think how you get such holes. Those stockings were perfect this

morning. You might consider me a little, Weenie.”

And Weenie would be sure to reply, “I’m quite willing to go without

stockings. I only wear them because you all seem to think it wouldn’t

be respectable not to. But if they get torn when I’m wearing them for

your good, _I_ can’t help it.”

Clif, twenty-one now and a man, came along slowly, his arm over Alf’s

shoulder, his hand gripping the younger boy’s arm affectionately.

Chatterbox Richie was close at Alf’s other side; now and again he

looked up at him with a curiously affectionate look, then promptly held

his lips together as if fearful some secret should burst forth.

Alf was fourteen, short, rather thick-set, cheerfully ugly. But his

hair, light-coloured, crisp, went back from his forehead in a lovable

sort of wave, and his eyes were blue, soft, merry, mischievous, loving.

Even when he was a baby he would give half his biscuit to a dog, and

proffer his mug of milk-and-sugar to every one who came near him, with

a hearty little “tate some.” And now every one knew they could have

whatever was Alf’s, every one knew if Alf had sixpence they could get

at least fourpence of it. Phyl went near to worshipping him; her love

of him was more motherly than sisterly. The holes in his socks were

never mentioned; the biggest tarts always went into his lunch-bag; he

had a penwiper, a brush-and-comb-bag, and a very elaborate cricket

cap, articles that no one had thought of making for the other boys.

And he was a thoughtful little lad, and really tried to remember to

use the penwiper instead of his coat-sleeve, seeing the labour Phyl

had put in it; and a courageous little lad, for he wore the elaborate

cap dauntlessly at the school match, and only laughed good-temperedly

when his fellows chaffed. Dolly and Ted brought up the rear. Ted, lanky

and book-learned; Dolly, very like Phyl, but smaller and rosier. And

her blue serge frock was still several inches away from the top of her

shoes, seeing she was not yet sixteen, and her light, wavy hair was

caught back into a loose curly plait and tied with dark-blue ribbon.

She was carrying a strap full of school-books in one hand, and a

tennis-racquet and a roll of papers in the other.

Phyl came on to the verandah.

“Wasn’t mother in the train?” she said.

Ted nodded.

“She saw the governor’s bike outside the Rileys’, and waited to walk

home with him,” he said.

“Was—was the German mail in?” Phyl’s eyes widened apprehensively as she

put the question.

“Yes,” said Ted briefly.

Alf was almost up the steps and on a level with her by this, and she

put a sudden arm around his neck and clung to him one moment.

“Don’t be a little donkey,” Ted said gruffly, a warning look in his

eyes.

Phyl obediently let go her hold of the boy, who had been so engrossed

with something Richie was telling about the football that he had

hardly heeded the caress.

Twenty minutes later Dr. Wise was running his carving-knife up and

down the sharpener Freddie had so kindly found, and looking round on

his assembled family with the keen, kind eyes that saw everything so

quickly. Perhaps his glance rested more tenderly on Alf to-night than

on any one else.

Mrs. Wise, at the other end of the table, had some sprays of jonquils

in her dress. They were not out yet in the garden, but Clif had seen

the early ones in town and brought a few for “the little mother.”

There was a book on the table beside her—_Transcendentalism_. Ted had

been at the greatest pains to borrow it for her and bring it home,

because he had been so engrossed in it himself. And busy as she was,

and not a bit interested in the subject, she would find time to read it

just because of that.

“Any one call, Phyl?” she said.

“Yes, I’m dreadfully sorry, mother,” Phyl said, “but Mrs. Marriott and

Mrs. and Miss Anderson came.”

“Why sorry?” said the doctor,—“too much waste of your valuable time? I

thought you had a great admiration for Mrs. Marriott?”

“I was down the orchard,” Phyl said; “Mary couldn’t find me, and said

every one was out. I—was reading.”

“You weren’t reading too much, I hope, to darn that table-cloth, Phyl?”

Mrs. Wise said.

“Sixpence she was,” said Ted. “Bet you she was in the apple-tree all

day.”

“Wrong for once, my beautiful youth,” Phyl answered; “the table-cloth

is a miracle of fine workmanship, mother. Further, I did the elbows of

Weenie’s blue frock, likewise Alf’s hat, ditto two pairs of Richie’s

socks, not to mention doing the vases and thirty-nine other articles

of domestic necessity. Don’t you think the quince-tree was entitled to

receive me, doctor?”

“I do,” said the doctor; “indeed I think there are about twenty-nine

articles too many in that day’s work. Weenie, can’t you keep your

elbows in? Richie, we must put you in copper-toed socks. We mustn’t

take all the little girl’s time, mother.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Wise, “when I am at home there is more leisure.

Besides, it is good for cobwebs, isn’t it, Phyl?”

“I should think driving multiplication into that little beggar Fred

would be a safe preservative against all cobweb forming,” said Clif.

Then Phyl looked at Freddie, and Freddie looked at Phyl.

Phyl’s last recollection of Freddie was at about two o’clock, when

he was, with many protests, getting out his lesson-books for the

afternoon. He had the capes and rivers of New South Wales to learn, so

in the meantime she thought she would occupy the quince-tree. And this

was her next thought of him!

The pink ran into her cheeks; she opened her mouth to confess her

forgetfulness.

But at that alarming crisis Freddie spilt his tea; all over the clean

cloth it went, and all over his own hands. It was some time before

order was restored, for Mary had to bring a tea-cloth and mop up the

wet place, and Mrs. Wise had to scold a little, for a soiled cloth

was a real trial to her, and then put flour on the hands that Freddie

persisted were scalded.

In the confusion Phyl forgot to confess, but Freddie was apprehensive,

and kept a watchful eye upon her.

“Well, my editress,” said the doctor, “and how does your learned and

valuable magazine progress?”

“Oh,” said Dolly with a sigh, “there are five more columns empty, and

we have to send it to the printer to-morrow. We’ll both have to do

something more to-night, Phyl.”

“But your lessons, dear!” said Mrs. Wise, “the examination is only a

month away. Couldn’t you make the paper later this quarter?”

“If it isn’t out on the first of the month,” Dolly said sadly, “all the

girls spend their pocket-money, and can’t buy it.”

“Tell you,” said Richie, “we had an A1 football match against the

Grammar—write all about that, Phyl.”

“Oh, Richie,” said Dolly, impatiently.

“It ’ud be a great deal interestinger than things about your silly

tennis, and tea-parties, and cookery-notes,” said Richie hotly.

“And about green hats being the dominant note this spring in Paris,”

quoth Clif.

“I didn’t write that,” said Dolly, “some one else does Fashion.”

“If you like,” said Ted, “I’ll give you enough for a column on Psychic

Research.”

“I’m afraid no one would read it,” Dolly said dubiously. “Couldn’t you

write a story, Ted? I’m sure you could if you tried; it’s very easy.”

But the learned one would not commit himself to such frivolity; if they

wouldn’t have his article on Psychic Research they must go without.

Dolly sighed.

“Well, if we can’t fill up all the columns to-night, I’ll catch it,”

she said.

Suddenly Alf pushed back his chair with a loud noise, and jumped as

if he had been bitten by Davey, who was helping Mary to remove the

meat-plates.

“Good old Jingo, good old Jingo,” he cried, making for the door.

“Alf, Alf,” remonstrated Mrs. Wise.

But Davey’s whisper of “Jingo’s caught five rats, Master Alf,” had been

too exciting for the boy to remember manners.

He gave his step-mother a sudden, breathless hug as he passed her.

“Be quick down and have a look, darling,” he said, and shot himself out

of the room.

“Did the letter come?” Phyl asked, with very anxious eyes on her mother.

“They want him to go next month,” said Mrs. Wise.

Silence fell on the table; every one’s heart and nearly every one’s

eyes were filled. Alf, bright-eyed, jolly little thick-set Alf to be

going away from them, thousands of miles away—why, it was as if Death

had stalked suddenly into the room and selected the merriest of them

all for its victim!

“Next month!” gasped Phyl.

“They have a representative here at present,” said the doctor. “His

passage is taken by the _Ormuz_. We must tell the lad soon.”

But what a thing to tell a home-loving laddie! The dead mother’s people

had made overtures at last. There were only a father and a spinster

sister left, for death had broken up their proudly serried ranks of

late, and the spirits of those remaining were broken too—in a certain

degree.

When Mrs. Wise died they went to Sunnymeade for the funeral, and there

saw Alf. The other four boys they took no notice of, for they were

all their father’s boys entirely; Alf alone had the eyes and hair and

manner the grandfather remembered in his daughter when she was a

child, and dear to his heart. More than this, Alf was “Alfred Wyndham

Mergell Wise,” every name his grandfather’s. They were asking now to

have him given to them entirely. The old man had been a merchant, and

had made a big fortune; the daughter had a large income of her own,—all

would be Alf’s, for they had no other relatives they cared to think of

leaving it to. The boy would have the best of educations—English public

school life followed by Oxford—and could choose for himself among

all the professions. He would have the advantage of travel, for the

grandfather had left Australia for ever, and wintered on the Continent,

and spent the summer in England. The doctor felt he must accept the

offer. He himself could give the boy no advantages; his very schooling

at a second-rate grammar-school was a serious item, and the future

he could not even think of, crippled as he was with such a family

and so narrow a purse. Clif and Ted were fighting their way into the

world without help from him; Alf would certainly be forced to do the

same, had he only his father to depend upon. And the boy had not much

strength of will or perseverance; left to himself he would probably

twenty years hence be occupying almost the same place in whatever

office he was placed in now. It was plain it would be madness to refuse

the offer; in after years the boy would be sure to upbraid them did

they follow their own inclination.

They had not told him yet, not wishing to unsettle him before all was

decided, but the rest of the family knew, and their eyes used to follow

his comings-in and goings-out, and their hearts would swell at his

merry chatter.

“A month!” Phyl echoed again.

Mrs. Wise forced the tremble from her voice.

“Here he is coming from the garden,” she said. “Your father is obliged

to go out till nine, but when he comes back we are going to tell him.

Please every one be quiet and just as usual until we call him into

the drawing-room to us; I don’t want it broken to him in any careless

fashion.”

CHAPTER XIX

GWENDOLEN TREVALLION AND A SOLDIER BRAVE AND TRUE

“Some blank verse and blanker prose,

And more of both than any one knows.”

So every one took up their usual evening employment. Clif and Mrs. Wise

played chess in the drawing-room, and Ted in a quiet corner not far

away buried himself in a book. In the dining-room Alf and Richie and

Weenie, when it could no longer be postponed, got out their books

to prepare their home-lessons, and the two latter, as a customary

preliminary, played “French and English” on their slates, until Phyl

heard the tell-tale sounds of “I’ve got a gun,” “Two tents now,”

“Hurrah, all my men have legs!” “Shot—t—t,” and unkindly separated them.

Alf with his fingers in his ears wrestled with the onus of proving

that “the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal,” and

occasionally refreshed himself by telling Phyl interesting anecdotes

about rat-catching fox-terriers. Dolly, with a great bundle of books

and papers, retreated up to her bedroom, for real work down-stairs was

an impossibility. She put on a jacket against the spring cold, and she

lifted the jug and basin and soap-dish off the wash-stand.

It was a very roomy old wash-stand with a marble top, necessarily

concealed by a toilet-cover, for its whiteness was for ever seamed with

irregular veins of ink. It bore also dabs of Prussian blue and sepia

and vermilion, testifying to the fact that Dolly sometimes forsook the

pen for the brush. Indeed Dolly’s energy from the age of sixteen to

eighteen was a thing to wonder at. Phyl went on more quietly, reading,

writing, helping in the house, teaching Freddie. But Dolly pursued

everything. _The Girls’ Own Paper_ was her stimulating friend at the

time, and she was always anxious to try every experiment or suggestion

it gave.

There was a time when ginger-jars and old bottles painted various

colours and with strange excrescences upon them were foisted by her on

the rest of the family as ornaments for the different rooms. That was

when the articles on “Imitation Barbotine Pottery” were running. Even

Freddie was interested in this craze of Dolly’s. It was pleasant to

see her bring an old bottle into the house, after persuading Clif to

knock half the neck off very neatly, and to watch it being painted in

delightfully merging shades of blue. And the next day’s work was always

absolutely fascinating. Putty was obtained from the glazier’s—Freddie

always went to buy it himself—threepence worth. Dolly used to knead

this, roll it and make it smooth with water, and then with sharp

bits of wood cut out strange leaves and flowers. Sometimes she made

berries by squeezing little putty balls in mosquito-net; Freddie loved

this. This vegetation was with much pains made to adhere to the blue

bottles and ginger-jars, and then painted over. The effect was quite

handsome—until a week or two’s time or Freddie’s itching fingers

made the excrescent spiky leaves and sprays crumble off and leave

white patches. When articles appeared on “The Difficulties of a Young

Housekeeper, and How She Overcame Them,” Dolly was ever to be found in

the kitchen labelling all the store bottles with immaculate labels,

making “Fairy Butter,” “Dutch Scrambled Eggs,” and trying to persuade

Mary to cook potatoes after a new method.

She started a museum, a collection of skeleton leaves, a bush house;

she wheedled Clif into making her an easel, and she bought big sheets

of Bristol board—canvases were too expensive—and painted away, with

green and yellow pigment in dabs on her pink cheeks, at Red Riding

Hoods and Cinderellas whose anatomy would have made an artist shriek,

lurid sunsets, seascapes, with strangely-shaped boats sailing full in

the wind’s eye.

She had a music craze, and in a month gave the piano more work than

she usually did in a year. She decided to learn to sing, and when the

boys were all away, practised vocal exercises from a book of her

mother’s until Phyl and Mrs. Wise took to sitting in the orchard to be

out of the sound. Sometimes Mrs. Wise grew rather anxious. “Everything

attempted and nothing done,” she said to her husband. “What sort of a

training for her?”

But the doctor thought nothing of it. “It is only youthful

effervescence,” he said; “more of it perhaps than most girls have.

Before long she will settle down and put her whole heart into some one

thing.”

At the present time she ought to have been putting her whole heart into

her examination, which loomed close, but she merely placed her Cicero

and her Euclid and _The Essay on Man_ in a stack on the wash-stand to

be in readiness when she could spare time, and fell to covering sheets

of exercise-book paper with the woes of one Gwendolen Trevallion.

And her spirits, saddened at the news about Alf, caused her to drown

Gwendolen with detail and gloom, and many harrowing last words.

Next week when the paper came out, the impressionable ones among the

school-girls would weep at the sad end of the heroine, whose chequered

career they had followed in very short chapters for months. And but

for Alf she might have been left alive to pursue her adventures

indefinitely. But Dolly also wept as she wrote; the tears invariably

ran down her cheeks when she was engaged in killing any one, but she

never flinched from a detail of the death on that account.

“And now,” she wrote, when the evening waxed late, and she knew a

certain number of those lesson-books must at all events be looked

at, “now at length Gwendolen was left alone—alone with death. Yes,

she could deceive herself no longer; before the man could lay down

Ermentrude, for whom she had given her life, and swim back to her

through the voracious, clamouring sea” (it need hardly be said that

Gwendolen had gone to save Ermentrude, who had ventured on to a

dangerous part of the coast and was cut off by the tide), “the waves

would be dashing high above the narrow ledge where she stood, and she

would be ‘where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at

rest.’ So young, so fair for death she seemed. She was clad in a simple

white muslin dress, her deep violet eyes with their long sweeping black

lashes looked like frightened stars, her heavy golden waves of hair

blew out with the wind” (anyone’s hair but Gwendolen’s would have been

wet, seeing she had been in the water), “and seemed to make a halo for

her face. No cry of anguish rose to her sweet white lips as the last

wave rolled up for its victim . . . a holy solemn light shone in her

eyes; already the scales of this dim earthly vision seemed falling from

them, already she seemed to see beyond the veil—the veil white Death

alone can lift.

“The advancing wave rolled up and broke . . . sweeping over the rock,

shooting its spray high into the air and retreating, leaving the

ledge vacant. Gwendolen was gone . . . gone to a fairer heritage than

earth . . . gone Home.

“‘Break, break, break,

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

And I would that my tongue could utter

The thoughts that arise in me.

And the stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;

But O for the touch of a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!’”

Neither Phyl nor Dolly would have dreamed of ending a story of any kind

without some favourite verse; there were even times when the end of the

story shaped itself so that a particular verse might be worked in.

Down-stairs, just after the dinner-things had been cleared away, Phyl

had looked at Freddie, and Freddie looked at Phyl.

“I wonder,” was Phyl’s thought, shame in her heart at having neglected

his studies so badly during the day, “I wonder if I could coax him to

do some parsing now to make up.”

And Freddie had quaked beneath her blue considering eye.

“I’m in for it now,” he thought to himself.

“What are you going to do to-night, Freddie?” she said, and actually

stroked his round little head.

Freddie kept his head very still under her hand, but stole an amazed

glance at her through his eyelashes—the affectionate diminutive of his

name, and a caress!

“Oh,” he said in his kindest and most hearty little way, “I thought I’d

just do a bit of gography for you, Phyl dear, I don’t know my capes

_very_ well, do I?”

And he actually sat down without much ado and committed them to memory,

to Phyl’s deepest astonishment. Just before nine she went up-stairs to

Dolly, her old tin hat-box in her hand.

“There’s that essay of mine on Moral Rectitude,” she said, “that will

fill a column.”

“Oh, yes,” Dolly said, “I’d forgotten that, and I liked it _very_ much.”

She took the closely-written sheets from her sister and glanced through

them, deep admiration on her face. Phyl had of late, after a somewhat

severe course of reading Ruskin, Emerson, and Marcus Aurelius, abjured

story-writing for a time, and fallen instead to composing essays on

high and abstruse subjects. They were written in a very lofty strain,

contained as many quotations as she could possibly put in, and were

full of moral reflections.

“But you said you’d write a poem too,” said the ever rapacious little

editor. Phyl had been on the staff of the paper until a year ago, when

she left school, and she was still always pressed into the service to

help to fill up yawning columns, for the body of school-girls very,

very seldom furnished any work, and the editor and staff were often

hard pushed for material.

Phyl produced her poem, not without anxiety on her face for her

sister’s opinion; they criticized each other very frankly, these two,

and hard truths often flew, though on frequent occasions they yielded

each other the warmest admiration.

[Illustration: “Oh, Phyl, it’s beautiful!”]

Dolly read the many verses, her eyes kindling at the end.

“Oh, Phyl, it’s beautiful!” she said; “It’s the very best thing you’ve

done—oh, Phyl!”

And Phyl herself had had a secret idea that it was a masterpiece.

The poem was about a soldier who clasped a fair maiden in his arms in

anguished farewell, then “light to his saddle prest—

“Away o’er the grassy plain, far away thro’ the stilly air,

Away from all that was lovely,—away from all that was fair.”

The maiden of course languished through several verses. Indeed all the

school-girls would have been quite hurt had she stayed healthily alive

to welcome her lover back from his wars.

“‘Good-bye to sadness and sorrow! Good-bye to parting and pain.

Oh, welcome to death,’ she cries, ‘which binds us together again.’”

And the soldier at last comes spurring back from the battle only to

find—

“’Tis over, the hope and the love, the dream of his earthly life,

Sorrow has taken his goblet up and filled it with sadness and strife.

And now a broken and saddened man bends over a grassy grave,

’Tis but the ghost of the lover, the soldier so strong and brave.

‘Oh, what are fame and glory?’ cries he in his anguish sore.

‘Oh, love, thou art all I care for, wilt thou never come back to me

more?’

And the river, the silent river, flowing onward into the sea,

And the willows bending and waving thro’ the air so sweet and free,

Seem whisp’ring low the story of the soldier loving and brave,

Of the maiden true and tender—of the grassy, silent grave,

Of the end of fame and glory, of riches which too soon rust,

Of the end of all things earthly—only the crumbling dust.”

How beautiful that poem seemed to them at the time! Perhaps nothing

either of them ever wrote in after years afforded them such exquisite

satisfaction. Dolly glowed all over with pride in her sister and pride

in herself that she should have so beautiful a poem for her beloved

paper. And at Dolly’s praises the modest poetess exulted more and

more; she even had a rapt vision before she slept that night, of a

sweet little volume, in willow green, entitled “Sea Fancies,” or “Rose

Petals,” bearing on its front page the words, “By Phyllida Rankin

Conway,” and on the next, “Dedicated to my sister, Dorothy Rankin

Conway.”

From the window, as she stood up to reach her school-books, Dorothy saw

the doctor’s silent flying figure come down the moonlit road, and three

minutes later there came the dull sound of the bicycle’s wheels along

the verandah.

Both girls instantly laid down paper and pens and went down-stairs.

CHAPTER XX

THE ‘GERMAN SAUSAGE’ LAND

“No pretence

To intellectual eminence,

Or scholarship sublime.”

The dining-room was in an uproar, and it was to be feared nobody’s

home-lessons were well done. Weenie had had a map of Europe to do; she

also had recently expended the sum of a shilling on a box of coloured

crayons. As a natural result she had devoted a bare five minutes to

an unrecognizable outline of the Continent, and spent the rest of the

evening in making a Joseph’s coat of it. The boys all insisted in

having a voice in the selection of colours. Weenie had considered pink

would look well for France, seeing she had coloured the Channel and Bay

of Biscay a deep indigo, and Belgium and Holland two shades of green.

But Alf, fresh from _A Tale of Two Cities_, insisted it must be dyed

incarnadine.

“But I’ve done Spain red,” objected the artist.

“Rub some blue over the red, then.” Alf said.

“Purple is the right colour for Spain; the people there always have

purple eyes and hair.”

So Weenie selected the most brilliant among her reds, and made France

lurid. Italy, by unanimous consent, was blue, a paler tint than the

sea. Germany, Richie contended, must be coloured to resemble German

sausage, that being, as he said, the chief export of the place; so

great pains were expended with dark crimson and dabs of white.

“Well, at all events, we’ll do Russia pink,” Weenie said, eager to

cover all that great expanse with the salmon-coloured stick, which

worked more easily than the others.

But Alf would not suffer this either. “No,” he said, “it’s got to be

yellow,—think of all the convicts there.” And Weenie had to be content

for Norway and Switzerland to be the only countries blushing delicately.

“Why,” said Richie, “there’s a pretty map! She’s forgotten Greece

altogether, and she’s got no Black Sea in at all, and all her Germany

and Austria are not as big as Belgium!”

Weenie looked vexedly at the place Greece should have occupied.

“I _always_ forget that horrid little place,” she said. “Stick it in

for me, Alf; you do it more neatly than I.”

So Alf performed upon the brilliant map. He was rather quick with his

fingers, and he introduced the country of story and song so skilfully

one could not have guessed it had ever been missing. But then Weenie’s

handiwork led his fingers into temptation. She always enjoyed drawing

Italy because it was like a leg, just as the resemblance to a leg

of mutton made South America pleasant and easy to outline. And even

to-night, while all the rest of Europe’s lines were scamped, she

had taken pains to give a shapely toe and a high heel to the land

of sunshine. What wonder if Alf added a high boot with many green

buttons and a green toe-cap? What wonder if his pencil ran north and

added eyes, and, where necessary, chins to the mouths and noses Weenie

intended to indicate Norway’s blue fiords and jagged promontories?

Spain with a long-lashed eye placed just at Coimbra, a nostril added to

the nose where Lisbon lies, and a black-pointed beard continued below

Cape St. Vincent, personified itself; and the “German Sausage Land,” in

the twinkling of a crayon, resolved itself into a particularly fat and

solid-looking cat. But Weenie at the sight of the ruin actually burst

into tears. There was a prize to be given, it seemed, for the best map,

and she had felt so admirable a colour-scheme as hers could not fail

to win it. All the time she was putting in the Ural Mountains and the

Alps, with Dolly’s finicking little pen, she was imagining a scene in

school in which the head-teacher stood up and said, “Prize for best

workmanship as displayed in map of Europe, Wilhelmina Conway.” And now

that booted Italy, that feline Fatherland!

Alf looked quite dismayed, for Weenie was not in the least given to

tears.

“I never thought you’d mind,” he said; “you never care how many blots

you have. I’m awfully sorry, old girl. Here, you pay me out—you

scribble all over this blessed Euclid I had to do for old Brownlow,”

and he held out the problems he had worked. But the method he proposed

appealed to Weenie’s humour, and a little laugh bubbled out amidst the

tears.

“No,” she said, “that wouldn’t do me any good. Come here and I will

scribble on you.”

Alf, relieved at her averted wrath, promptly presented his face, and

she gave him green eyebrows, a red tip on his nose, and a moustache of

ultramarine. Of course that made a clown of him, and he treated them

extempore to various antics and witticisms brought home from a circus.

Phyl came in at the door just as he finished walking round the table on

his hands.

“Alf,” she said, and there came a choking little sound in her voice

as she looked at his happy face, “doctor and mother want you in the

drawing-room, dear.”

Alf did not notice her voice, nor Richie’s drooped jaw, nor Weenie’s

startled air of sudden remembrance.

“Stand clear of the gangway, then,” he cried, and Phyl moved hastily

aside in time to allow him to make his exit turning brilliant

Catherine-wheels through the door, across the passage, and, with a

skilful twist, right into the drawing-room.

In the dining-room nobody spoke for a long time. Dolly went to the

window and stood looking out at the willow-trees and grass; and once

she broke the silence by laughing in a queer little way, for Jingo

was on the path engaged in tearing an old sock to bits, and once he

tossed it up in the air and tried to catch it on his nose in the way

Alf taught him to catch lumps of sugar. Richie went to Dolly’s side to

look also, and they put their arms round each other for comfort as they

stood waiting. Phyl presently picked up the geography-book.

“Be saying your gulfs, Freddie,” she said. But when Freddie, also

distraught, made the grave statement that the Gulf of Carpentaria was

the chief gulf in Victoria, and Broken Bay was the harbour of Perth,

she allowed it to go uncontradicted.

Clif and Ted were in the room too, now.

“Poor little beggar!” Clif said, and puffed vigorously at his pipe.

There came a quick clatter across the passage, and Alf burst into their

midst again with eyes blazing wrathfully under their green brows, and

the blue moustache twitching with the muscles of his face.

“I won’t,” he said stormily. “Don’t you imagine I’m going, any of you.

No dirty Germanies for me, thank you. If you want their dirty money go

yourselves, all of you.”

“Wish I had the chance,” Ted said. “You don’t know when you’re well

off, Alf. None of us ever had such a chance of education.”

“Education!” Little Alf fairly snorted with wrath. “As if I don’t get

enough now with old Brownlow to make me sick of everything. Here I’m

about as stuffed up with their beastly Latin and Euclid as I can be,

and you want to choke some more on me.”

“Well, think of the pleasure to be derived from rolling in money,” said

Clif. “You’ll be the important person of the family, Alf; we shall all

take our hats off to you when we meet you.”

“I’d rather roll in mud!” said the fierce, small youth. “Sixpence a

week’s all I want—you wouldn’t think the Pater ’ud grudge me that!”

The doctor came behind him and laid a quiet hand on his shoulder.

“Alf,” he said.

“W—wouldn’t think you’d g—g—grudge me sixpence a week,” blubbered Alf,

struggling away and dashing his fist so rapidly across his ashamed eyes

one green eyebrow was smeared half-way down his cheek.

“Alf,” said the doctor again, and Alf, looking up, found tears also in

the keen fatherly eyes.

The fierce young muscles relaxed, his head drooped.

“G—g—grudge me s—s—sixpence,” he repeated, the tears gushing out in

self-pity. His father put an arm round his shoulder and led him out

very quietly.

“S—s—s—sixpence,” they heard the sobbing voice repeating just as the

drawing-room door closed again.

* * * * *

It was an hour before he came back. He walked in to them then very

slowly. His eyes were swollen, half the poor blue moustache was washed

away and the red tip of the nose no longer startled, for all the face

was puffy and reddened.

Phyl longed to console, but dare not endanger that brittle fortitude.

She did not know that the tears were running down her cheeks as

fast as they were down Dolly’s, who was holding up Richie’s French

exercise-book to hide them.

“Well, old chap,” said Clif.

“Are you going?” said Weenie, breathlessly.

Alf stuck his hands deeper than ever in his pockets.

“Course I am,” he said jerkily.

“That’s sensible, old fellow,” Clif said; “of course it’s a wrench, but

you’d be the first to blame the Pater if he let you lose the chance

now.”

“Oh, would I?” said little Alf. The fit of coughing that followed

accounted of course for the fresh tears in his eyes.

“I’d give my very head to be in your place,” sighed Ted. It chafed

his spirit to think of the German Universities and Libraries, travel,

mixing with clever men, being wasted on this unwilling young Goth,

while he must go hungry for them all his days.

“I’d give—your head—too,” was little Alf’s answer, made staccato for

safety.

“But you really are a lucky young dog, you know,” Clif said; “a fortune

to your hand—two fortunes perhaps! I wish I’d had a cherubic smile,

Alf, and a love-curl, and eyes of blue when the old gentleman and the

little wisp of a lady came along.”

“Look here,” said Alf, and he got up and tumbled his heap of books as

usual into the book-cupboard, “I’ve promised the Pater I’ll go, but

I’ve got another month to have fun in, and if any one speaks to me

about that dirty German sausage place I’ll fight him.”

Then they separated for bed.

CHAPTER XXI

‘GOOD-BYE, GOOD-BYE!’

“Now is not this ridiculous?

Now is not this preposterous?

A thorough-paced absurdity.

Explain it if you can.”

Alf was gone.

In his bedroom there still hung his old school-suit, his sunburnt hat,

his shabby mackintosh—Phyl could not realize that he would never again

come stamping and clattering up the stairs to put any of them on.

Richie was to have the clothes now, but it gave them all a sharp pang

the first time he wore the green-black rain-coat that still seemed to

have beneath it Alf’s solid little figure.

Phyl emptied the pockets of the coat herself, before it was

transferred to Richie. String, stamps, bits of pencil, a padlock,

several nails, several marbles, a penny dreadful, some peach-stones,

a conversation-peppermint with “Name the day” upon it, three

pocket-knives, a bit of rope tied in ingenious knots, two or three ends

of match-boxes, the major half of a cigarette that had made the boy

no one knew how ill,—all these things she emptied tenderly from the

pockets into a collar-box and carried them off to her own room.

Mr. Mergell’s agent had been to the house two or three times; a burly,

kind-eyed German, with a delightfully broken accent; they all liked

him immediately. He had unlimited credit to set up Alf’s wardrobe for

the voyage—in the words of his grandfather—as “befitted a gentleman.”

Even Alf himself took a passing interest in the ever-arriving parcels.

Mrs. Wise did the shopping as requested on an unstinted scale, and

Richie and Freddie and the girls were filled with admiration at the

beautiful things that kept arriving,—a cabin-box, a handsome tan

Gladstone bag, a portmanteau that turned at need into a bath, a little

dressing-case with “A. W. M. W.” upon a silver plate, half-a-dozen

suits, hats, shoes and boots, shirts, even white gloves for dances

aboard.

“If it were any one but Alf,” said Mrs. Wise as she packed, “the

transition from two suits—one bad and the other worse—to all this

luxury would make a coxcomb of him. But Alf is safe, so we may as well

please the grandfather and the aunt.”

The great steamer went out on a Saturday, and all the family went on

board to view the cabin, to see the luggage well disposed, and to catch

the last glimpse of the lad.

He wore one of his new suits, a well-cut blue serge, his boots

creaked, his straw hat was immaculate—all these things added to his

misery.

The parting hour fled past. The boys had tramped all over the decks to

see the workings of the mammoth creature that soon would be quivering

with life; the girls had explored the magnificent white and gold

saloon, the music-room, the splendid state-rooms, all so different from

the plain though comfortable boat that had seen their voyaging.

But now the last bell had gone and the last straggler been hurried off.

The gangways were cast off and dragged in, the great black side that

had lain motionless against the wharf, very, very slowly began to move

along. Alf was leaning over the upper deckrail, his chin on his hands,

his hat tilted over his eyes: the burly German was beside him, trying

to cheer his spirits, but the lad looked down at the dear, upturned

faces, and his heart seemed bursting. Then a strange thing happened on

deck; there came a boy’s shout, so familiar a shout that the doctor and

his family turned their eyes alarmedly in the direction.

And lo! the pressing passengers divided in one place, and a little

wild-eyed boy sprang up on the seat.

“Hi there, stop, hold hard, I’m not going!” he yelled.

“Freddie!” gasped Mrs. Wise; she had seen him actually off the boat,

held his hand indeed down the gangway, but once off—he was a big boy

now—she had not thought of him.

And now there he was, hatless, shouting, gesticulating among the

passengers bound for the continent of Europe.

“Hi there, stop!” he screamed again, his voice grown shrill with

terror; “let me off; hi there! make the captain stop, father! Clif, get

me off, make him stop, can’t you!”

Alf and the agent rushed down the deck to the small, frantic youth, and

there quickly sprang up in the little crowd several officers.

Freddie was almost beside himself; he shrank away from his astonished

brother; he fought himself free of the burly German’s hands; they had

to hold him firmly, or he would have gone bodily over the vessel’s side.

The officers acted with the promptitude necessary seeing the vessel was

almost past the wharf now, and no one seemed anxious to have the boy’s

company as far as Melbourne. Freddie found them tying a rope round his

waist and making arm-loops for him with another one. He quietened a

little while they did this, only his heaving chest and streaming eyes

showing the agitation under which he was labouring.

“Perhaps he had better come on to Melbourne, Mr. Johansen,” said the

first officer gloomily to the third who was roping Freddie.

But at this Freddie began to kick and give vent to such heart-broken

howls that the third officer, father of sundry small boys, said he

thought they could manage to deposit him.

They hallooed to a rowing-boat to come up, and the boatman approached

as closely as he might. Then Freddie was lowered slowly down the side

by a couple of sailors; the girls and Mrs. Wise shut their eyes one

fearful minute when they saw the little dangling body and terrified

white face.

The next second he swung out a little; one man in the boat caught him,

the other swept the boat round and out of the way.

[Illustration: One man in the boat caught him.]

A loud cheer went up from ship and wharf when the child was put on the

solid ground once more.

“Good heavens, boy, what did you do that for?” said the doctor in

natural irritation at finding himself and family the cynosure of every

one’s observation.

But Freddie was beyond excusing himself. Dolly’s arms opened for him,

and he made a rush for such a haven. Phyl closed in at the other side

to help to soothe and comfort. Alf carried away with him, as the last

bit of home, the sight of the two girls in their blue serge dresses and

sailor hats looking after him with drenched blue eyes, and at the same

time trying to pat and soothe to quietness the boy who was burying his

head on Dolly’s arm.

The kindly German tried to direct his attention to the fussy little

pilot-boat, to the sailor who was hanging by his teeth, it seemed, from

the rigging. But Alf’s eyes gazed wharfward till the last flutter of

a handkerchief faded, then he gulped very hard and disappeared till

dinner-time; when, it must be confessed, roast ducklings and the choice

of half-a-score of delicious puddings went far to assuaging his grief.

Freddie travelled home with his family, hatless. From time to time

during the journey he drew a sobbing breath, as if the recollection was

too much for him; but it was not till he was in bed at night, and Dolly

tucking him comfortably in, that he would give any explanation of his

conduct.

Then it came out, bit by bit. Alf looked so miserable, and it seemed

so dreadful a thing to be going alone across the great ocean, that he

(Freddie), in a sudden fit of brotherly love and self-abnegation, had

resolved to accompany him.

The struggle was a hard one, and was fought manfully out on the wharf

after the bell had rung for the boat to be cleared. No one to look at

him could have guessed of the tumult that was going on beneath the

white chest flannel of his sailor coat.

On the one hand there was his home, and all his happiness, a

comfortable bed, and sisters or a mother to tuck him up and give the

good-night kiss.

And then there was Alf, poor Alf, up there biting his poor lips, trying

to smile down at them, crushing his hat over his eyes—walking away from

the side, then coming back again, and looking, looking, looking! Yes,

he would give up everything, and accompany him into his exile.

He slipped his hand from out his mother’s and mingled again with the

crowd. Amid the stream coming down from the boat, and the hurrying

stragglers going up, who was to notice so insignificant a person as

a small boy, in a sailor suit, pressing upwards? Once on deck he did

not join Alf. He quite understood he must be a stowaway, and hide

all the voyage in Alf’s cabin. For the present he crushed his small

body into a space between two hen-coops. And then at last the quiver

of life ran through the great inert vessel, and then the bells rang,

and the straining sound of the ropes ceased, and the engines began to

work, and sailors rushed hither and thither, and officers called out

instructions, and the men not on duty sat and looked sleepily at the

frothing waters.

Freddie’s courage oozed away as rapidly as it had risen. After all,

he would not go;—no, it was too much to ask. Who knows what horrible

things would await him in that far land, away from father and mother

and sisters? No; he would get off at once while he could, and Alf must

go alone—after all, perhaps, he would not mind so very much.

He extricated himself from his cramped position and scurried along

the deck in the hopes of meeting the captain. But the ship’s movement

continued, and a frenzied glance to the side showed the gangways

entirely gone, and the wharf slipping slowly, slowly, slowly back.

It was then that the horror of his situation mastered him and made him

break through the crowd at the side, leap on to the seat, and implore,

with sobs and tears, for the ship to stop.

“S—s—stay with us, Dolly,” he whimpered, when, at the end of the

recital, everything seemed so vivid again he could hardly believe his

little bed was secure. So Dolly, seeing his agitation was not even yet

calmed down, brought a green volume of _Alice_, and read the Tweedledum

and Tweedledee battle, and the moving tale of the Walrus and the

Carpenter, until sleep conquered the excitement.

CHAPTER XXII

THE WRITING-ROOM

It very early became necessary that Phyl and Dolly should have some

sort of a room in which to write quite to themselves.

A sudden gust of wind in the house would bring scraps of papers

floating from everywhere, and if any one had troubled to pick them up

and read them, the eye would be sure to be met with some such choice

literary morsel as, “With a smothered oath, the Earl flung away his

half-smoked Havana, and ground his heel into the gravel;” or, “She drew

her willowy figure up proudly, and gave him a look of scorn from her

starry violet eyes.”

And when, on Dolly leaving school, the two girls, lost without the

school paper, resolved to bring out a girls’ magazine, a secluded room

for editorial purposes was more than ever necessary.

Mary, coming in to lay the lunch-cloth, would be met by an agonized

entreaty from the editors for just ten more minutes, and the big table

was always so littered up with stacks of paper, that Mary, impressed

by the business-like look, generally yielded, and lunch was in

consequence frequently half-an-hour late.

Or an early afternoon visitor would be shown into the drawing-room

just in time to see a girl rise up from the floor with startled eyes,

hastily gather up the papers from the sofa-table, and beat a hurried

retreat.

Sometimes the two wrote in their bedrooms.

Phyl had a tiny room to herself, but Dolly and Weenie slept together.

Phyl had an old writing-table against one wall, and just the other side

of the partition stood Dolly’s wash-stand.

And no one knew how often Phyl had to spring up from her work, and

with wrathful eyes seek the neighbouring apartment, to request Dolly

to “stop that wretched tapping,” for Dolly had a vexatious habit, in

moments when words failed her, of sitting with dreamy eyes in front of

her wash-stand and tap, tapping at the wall with her idle pen.

And no one knew how often Dolly had to get up and move her chair to

allow Weenie to pass into the room. It was a small room, and the

furniture almost filled it; when the young editor was seated on her

chair there was not one inch of space for any one to pass to one part

of the room, for the big bed reached just to the chair.

Dolly used to groan when she heard Weenie coming.

“Look here, Weenie, this is the fifth time this morning,” she would

say, exasperated, “you can’t come past me again.”

“Oh, can’t I?” Weenie would retort; “I want something out of my drawer,

and I’m going to have it.”

“Well, climb over the bed,” Dolly would entreat, “I’m in _such_ an

important place.”

If Weenie were in a mild mood she would comply, and scramble across the

bed to her set of drawers. But as a rule the sight of Dolly’s flushed

cheeks and bent head used to act as an irritant upon her, and she would

insist upon a passage being made for her.

“This is my room as much as yours,” she would say, “it’s not right for

any one to block it up. I never do.”

“But there’s nowhere else to sit,” poor Dolly would say.

“Write your silly things on the dressing-table, then,” Miss Weenie

would suggest.

Dolly could not explain to her how it was growing impossible for her to

write well anywhere except on that ancient wash-stand.

“I’ve let you go past four times,” she would say, “and I will _not_

move again. I believe you come up just on purpose. What do you want out

of your drawer now?”

“Never you mind. Are you going to get up?”

“No, I am _not_,” and Dolly would sit hard on her chair and put her

feet against the wall to brace herself. And Weenie would push and

struggle to get past, and try to tilt the chair.

And sometimes Dolly won and wrote on victorious, while Weenie climbed

the bed.

And sometimes Weenie won, and Dolly was jammed helplessly up against

her table, and a heroine had to wait in the middle of an impassioned

speech, while Weenie leisurely extricated a pair of gloves, or a

catapult, or a box of chocolates from the drawer.

Clif and Ted at last took pity on the literary pair, and, as a joint

Christmas present, built them a little wooden room at the end of the

verandah.

The girls were delighted, and indeed all the house took interest in

seeing them establish themselves in the tiny place when the carpenters

pronounced the long-awaited word, “Finished.”

They set to work and papered the walls themselves, and even Ted, who

at first had been quite annoyed at the idea of his carpentering being

covered up, was forced to admit that the aesthetic covering of green

marguerites was an improvement. True, Richie, who had too fine an eye,

pointed out the vexatious facts that some of the widths had the flowers

upside down, that there were blisters and bubbles in places, that one

or two pieces showed a tendency to curl away from the wall, but no one

else was hypercritical. The room was about seven feet square, so there

was space for no furniture beyond a little table and a chair each. The

chairs stood back to back, touching each other, so that if one writer

in the throes of an idea that would not reduce itself to words, moved

restlessly, the other was forced to protest. On the walls, hanging

book-shelves held every volume the girls possessed; and like most of

the shelves that depend from a cord, these had an irritating knack

of occasionally tilting forward, or sloping sideways, and showering

their contents on the owners’ heads. Photographs, little pictures,

and nick-nacks filled every available corner; under each table was a

little waste-paper basket; on each table a tiny ink-bottle and fancy

pen—Richie’s gifts—a vase of flowers, sixpenny statuettes of Milton and

Shakespeare, a photograph or two, a penwiper, a stamp-sponge, a doll’s

saucer filled with paper fasteners.

“Now we _can_ write,” said the girls, and they set out neat little

stacks of paper, and dipped their new gilt pens into the new ink, and

held their elbows well to their sides as they wrote, lest they should

disturb any of the pretty decorations on their tables.

There was a window in the room, a tiny affair that remained from an

old greenhouse, and while the room was new the family used to be

always going along the verandah on tip-toe and peeping at the would-be

authoresses.

But Ted came into the dining-room one evening when the room was a

couple of months old. “Look here,” he said, “I don’t believe those

little monkeys do a thing but talk and fix up the pictures and things

in there. A lot of good it is to them.”

“Dolly was writing down in the orchard to-day,” volunteered Freddie.

“Phyl’s scribbling in her bedroom now,” Richie said.

Clif and Ted went up-stairs two steps at a time to see, and there was

Phyl writing by a candle in her room, and Dolly, her washing-stand in

a glorious muddle, her arms spread out, covering paper at a surprising

pace in hers.

“Well, you’re nice ones,” said the discomfited carpenters. “Why aren’t

you in your study?”

The girls looked very much ashamed of themselves.

“I was only just finishing something in a hurry,” Dolly said.

Phyl gathered her papers together, and picked up her candle.

“I’m just going down,” she said guiltily.

But Freddie reported them again next day.

“That Dolly was writing in the garden again on her knee,” he said, “and

Phyl hasn’t been in the room all day.”

Again the carpenters demanded the reason, and again the girls made lame

excuses, and hastened away to sit there forthwith.

But gradually the dapper little study fell into disuse, except when the

makers were about, when the girls, afraid of hurting feelings, and

being told that they did not know their own minds, used to make a point

of going and sitting there.

“It’s because you bump my chair so, Dolly,” Phyl said irritably,

one evening when they had been fairly driven into the place by the

indignant carpenters. “I’m sure I could write here if you would only

sit still.”

Dolly sighed. “If only I could spread my arms out,” she said, “I’d give

anything to have a great big table to write on.”

“I believe it’s the walls,” Phyl said in a whisper; “don’t they seem to

press down on you when they’re so near?”

Richie poked his head in the door at this point, and looked searchingly

and suspiciously at each girl’s table.

“Thought so,” he said offendedly, “using your dirty old ink-bottles,

both of you, and red pens. Just wait till I give you Christmas-boxes

again! Don’t believe you ever use the ones I gave you.”

“I forgot to fill mine,” Phyl said.

“My nib wanted changing,” said Dolly; “I’ll use yours again to-morrow,

Richie.” But she sighed; it _was_ such comfort to use a plain pen, and

have a great fat bottle of ink to dip into.

Ted came and looked at them gloomily. “Freddie says you’re always

writing in the orchard, Dolly,” he said; “what’s the good of a study to

you? I’ll make an aviary of it for the Mater.”

“I’m getting so that I can only write out of doors,” Dolly said.

“Well, why doesn’t Phyl stay in?” Ted demanded.

Phyl cast about for an excuse; then she told one of the truths.

“It—it’s really a bit draughty, Ted, these windy days,” she said

apologetically. And indeed she owed several colds to the winds that

whistled beneath and round the ill-fitting door and the window.

“You could easily hang something over them,” said Ted, “you’re so fond

of draping everything.”

“And—and it really has a musty smell sometimes,” Phyl added, driven to

bay. “See—there’s blue mould coming in patches everywhere on the walls

from the last rains, our books are getting quite spoiled.”

Ted sniffed and peered about. “I don’t notice anything,” he said; “but

of course there’s no accounting for finicky girls like you.”

“If they burnt coffee in the room they wouldn’t notice it,” Richie

said; “that’s what old Adams always does after our chemistry.”

“Oh, go away,” said Phyl, exasperated, “we’re frightfully busy;

everything has to be with the printer to-morrow, and there are Answers

to Correspondents, and Fashions, and an editorial, and some poems to do

yet.”

Richie and Ted melted away after a little more carping, and the

harassed editors fell to work again.

CHAPTER XXIII

ENTIRELY EDITORIAL

Their little paper had met with a fair amount of success, but they had

both grown thin with the worry of it.

The printer of their School Magazine had undertaken to print and

publish this new one for twenty-five pounds a month. He was interested

in the little venture, and really gave the editors thicker paper,

better type, and handsomer headlines than he could afford for the sum.

They would easily get advertisements to pay his charge, he told them,

and the circulation would pay themselves.

The girls engaged canvassers for the very necessary advertisements,

and that is the reason they began to grow so thin. The first two men

undertook the work on commission, but came back after some time with

the sad news that no one seemed to want to advertise, and that it would

not pay them to work for commission only. In fear and trembling the

editors engaged one of them at the alarming salary of ten shillings

a week, and a commission of so much per cent. The man drew his

ten shillings a week for a month, and found one pound’s worth of

advertisements; that did not answer at all.

Then a very energetic man came along who only wanted commission, and

said he could get any amount of people to advertise. In a week he

filled three pages of the paper, and the two breathed freely again.

They sent him out at the end of the month to collect the moneys due,

and then came a frightful blow,—he quietly absconded with the full

purse.

They almost gave in after that; yet how could they allow the expenses

of that first issue to fall on the doctor?

The printer suggested that they should go and get advertisements for

themselves; lots of ladies did, he said. He himself gave them a list of

City men likely (he judged by their kind hearts) to advertise.

It was the only course left; even the doctor and Mrs. Wise could think

of no other way to pay for that first issue, and allow a second one to

make its appearance. So there came a summer’s day when two trembling

girls in white muslin dresses and sailor hats went forth and assailed

the big insurances offices, and the busy agents of various patent

cocoas, and soaps and perfumes.

When they finally knocked for admittance at the inner glass doors, no

manager ever dreamed how long they had been outside the great building,

hesitating, trying to screw up their courage, walking up the steps,

assailed with fears and descending again, finally biting their lips and

forcing themselves to walk in.

The clerks did not take them for canvassers, they looked too youthful,

and they had no difficulty in gaining the private room.

“And what can I do for you?” a manager would say, at a loss to think

what two nervous-looking girls could want with them.

Then Phyl or Dolly, for they took the speaking strictly in turn—

“This is our paper, Mr. Jamieson prints it; the circulation is a

thousand; will you advertise in it?—it is a pound for one month, but

less for a year.”

They were never met with anything but the greatest kindness and

courtesy, even when they intruded, as they must sometimes have done, on

mail-days, and other busy hours. The manager used to take the little

paper and look it through in an interested fashion, asking questions

as he turned the leaves. And it was very seldom the advertisement was

refused; the biggest office in Sydney had taken one whole page for

a year; this example and a kindly feeling for the young editors led

nearly every manager to take a certain space and to ask to be put down

as a yearly subscriber.

[Plate Illustration: “‘This is our paper: the circulation is a

thousand; will you advertise in it?’”]

The finances of the paper were for two or three months in a flourishing

condition, and after all expenses were paid there were from six to ten

pounds each month to divide between the editors.

What keen pleasure then to buy pretty things for the home and pay

Weenie’s and Freddie’s school bills, and clothe themselves, and have

spare money for books and music, and little presents for the mother!

But after a very few months their repugnance for the work became too

strong for them.

“I can’t do it again,” Phyl said vehemently, when after a long

afternoon she and Dolly came home just in time for dinner.

“If we never get another penny, if the paper goes altogether, I won’t

ask for another advertisement,” Dolly said, and she flung the little

paper with its severe classical title and stilted motto right to the

other end of the room.

“Hello!” said the doctor; “a strike of editors, eh?”

“It’s hateful!” repeated Phyl.

“No one has been rough to you, have they?” said the mother quickly.

“I’d rather they had,” Dolly said. “It’s really _horrid_ mother. I’m

sure they don’t think the advertising will do them any good—they all

just give them out of kindness. We hate kindness.”

“There’s an ungrateful pair for you,” the doctor said, but he patted

Phyl’s shoulders so sympathetically that both girls burst out at last

with an excited, almost tearful account of the hatefulness of the

work. They had bottled it up between them until now, for one of their

mother’s earliest teachings had been to make the best of things and not

to whine.

That was almost the end of the little paper. The girls maintained their

resolution; rather than bring out one more issue under the existing

circumstances they would go and be governesses on some bush station, or

send Mary away and do all the work of the house themselves; earn money

in some way they must, for they could not bear the thought of being a

burden on the doctor.

Then the printer, seeing the advertisements were well started, offered

to take the paper for his property, and pay the editors a joint salary

of five pounds a month.

They accepted thankfully and fell to work again with fresh spirits to

fill the twenty-eight pages of letterpress that was required monthly.

Sometimes they received outside contributions to help them in the task;

the undergraduates whom Ted brought home for tennis on the chip court

he and Clif had made, sometimes dropped into poetry or prose for them;

once or twice when columns gaped hungrily the girls had begged from

them various prize essays, and then the classic pages had held, side

by side with an article on “How to Renovate a Drawing-room for Five

Pounds,” or “Cookery Chats for Young Housewives,” “The Effect of the

Renaissance on the Theology of the Period,” or “The Architecture of

Cheops and Cephrenes.”

But there were many months when they had no help at all, and then they

had fourteen pages each of assorted matter, signed by a number of

different names, to furnish.

That was what was the matter with the tempers of both of them this same

evening when the carpenters had driven them into the cribbed study and

then wasted time in carping at them.

On top of the book-case was the pile of finished matter. The ninth and

tenth chapters of Phyl’s serial were there—“The Master of Malbrook

Court.” There were quotations at the head of both chapters, a couple

from Browning, one from Tennyson. The prose too was broken up in

several parts with verses; when the heroine, for instance, went to the

piano and sang _For Ever and For Ever_—the words of all the verses

were given, and never did the hero grow agitated or impassioned, but

he flung a few lines of Whitman or Heine, or whatever last poet the

authoress had been reading, at the head of the person to whom he was

speaking.

There was also Dolly’s serial, likewise full of quotations and similar

in style, except that she did not attempt to work out the intricate

plots in which Phyl revelled, but occupied herself chiefly in piling as

much pathos as she could possibly manage upon every page.

Then there was Dolly’s children’s page ready, and for this she

generally let pathos alone, and scribbled off in half-an-hour a little

tale, in which occasionally Freddie’s latest prank or some of their

own home fun figured. Then there were poems, two each, signed either

with the _nom-de-plumes_ of “Fleur-de-lis” or “Wild Hyacinth,” “Robert

Bernard Wycherly” or “Rupert Grey.”

Dolly delighted in such forms as the Villanelle, the Rondeau redouble,

the dainty Triolet, and Phyl wrote in the strain of a still more

diluted Lewis Morris.

“It’s your month to do the Home Article,” Phyl said, looking up from

her own more congenial task of a paper on the blind poet, Philip Bourke

Marston.

“I know,” groaned Dolly.

“And you’ll really have to be more careful this time,” the elder editor

said. “Alice Ellerton told me her mother laughed like anything at your

‘How to Furnish a Girl’s Sitting-room for Three Pounds.’”

“Laughed!” said the writer anxiously, “why there wasn’t anything wrong.”

“Yes, there was,—you said, ‘First operate upon your inartistic walls,

which I dare say are covered with some ugly wall-paper. Now nothing

is easier than to enamel them all over with a delicate hedge-sparrow

green.’”

“Well,” contended Dolly, “and what is wrong with that? Enamelling

_is_ easy. Look at the way I enamelled that little table in the

drawing-room.”

“Yes,” said Phyl, “but you didn’t say anything about taking the old

wall-paper off first, and you didn’t allow any of your three pounds for

it. Mrs. Ellerton says a tin would only do about two yards, and it’s a

shilling a tin, so it would cost a frightful lot, pounds and pounds.”

Dolly looked discomfited,—then she revived a little.

“It’s not worse than the time you wrote ‘How to Furnish a House on

£100 for a Newly Married Couple,’ and only left two pounds for all the

kitchen and laundry,” she said.

Phyl went on writing. When she finished Marston, she seized a Cookery

Book and hastily made up an article on “Over the Kitchen Fire.”

“We’ll have to do Answers to Correspondents between us,” said Dolly,

“there’s a whole page, and we must fill it.”

No correspondents ever wrote and asked a question of any sort, but the

editors would not have considered it possible for a Magazine to be

produced without such a page, so they were obliged to make it up, with

the help of an Encyclopædia.

Some of this month’s answers ran like this—

_Ximenes_.—The quotation you ask for is from Browning, “The Last Ride

together.” Lest you should not have the book at hand, we give you the

context. Here followed twenty favourite lines.

_Forget-me-not_.—(1) We are sorry to hear your hair is coming out.

Have you tried ammonia for it? Wash it once a week, and do not use

curling-tongs. (2) The books you refer to are _Alton Locke_ and the

_Essays of Elia_. (3) No.

_Constant Reader._—

“Where but to think is to be full of sorrows,

And leaden-eyed despairs.”

From Keats’ _Ode to Nightingale_.

_Titus._—(1) The most highly salaried of her Majesty’s Ministers is

the Lord High Chancellor, the Right Hon. Lord Halsbury, who receives

£10,000 per annum. (2) A Kreutzer is worth very little—five are equal

to a penny in our coinage. Thanks for your kind wishes; it is very

pleasant to receive so appreciative a letter as yours.

_Portia._—(1) Fur, passementerie, and various braids will be used as

trimming. (2) Cover it with pale pink chiffon. (3) _Jacta est alea_,

“The die is cast.” _Pace tua_, “With your consent.” Questions requiring

answers in these columns should be in our hands quite six days before

publication.

_Ignoramus._—(1) Chopin, as if spelt Shopain, the last syllable

pronounced as the word “bread” in French; Goethe—Gerter. (2) March 14,

1872, was a Thursday.

_Literary Puzzled One._—(a) You must not take Poe’s _Philosophy of

Composition_ too seriously. (b) No; many prefer not to regard “The

Raven” as emblematic of drink. Read “Annabel Lee,”—will not this verse

tempt you?