Produced by Al Haines
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: "LIE STILL," WHISPERED LEWIS, "SHE IS COMING THIS WAY!"]
The Eagle's Nest
BY
S. E. CARTWRIGHT
Author of "Tommy the Adventurous"
_Illustrated by William Rainey, R.I._
BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
LONDON AND GLASGOW
1899
BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
50 Old Bailey, London
17 Stanhope Street, Glasgow
BLACKIE & SON (INDIA) LIMITED
Warwick House, Fort Street, Bombay
BLACKIE & SON (CANADA) LIMITED
1118 Bay Street, Toronto
Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow
CONTENTS
Chap.
I. A WASP IN THE SCHOOLROOM
II. UNDER THE LABURNUM-TREE
III. THE EAGLE'S NEST
IV. A ROPE-LADDER
V. THE BOY WHO MOUNTED IT
VI. A VICTIM
VII. JACK AND JILL
VIII. AN EARLY CHASE
IX. AN ALARMING JUMP
X. THE TRESPASSER
XI. CERTAIN LITTLE GARDENS
XII. A NEW LADDER
XIII. THE BROWN BAG
XIV. KEEPING SHOP
XV. A CUSTOMER
XVI. IMPRISONED IN A PARLOUR
XVII. IN AN EMPTY HOUSE
XVIII. THE RETURN AFTER SHOPPING
XIX. AN INTERESTING DITCH
XX. DISPUTES
XXI. OLD GAMES
XXII. THE VISITORS
XXIII. AN END OF HIDING
XXIV. EXPLANATIONS
ILLUSTRATIONS
"LIE STILL," WHISPERED LEWIS, "SHE IS COMING THIS WAY!" . . . _Frontis._
A TALL, THIN MAN WAS CAREFULLY EXAMINING JACK
LEWIS WAS STILL LYING IN A SORT OF CRUMPLED-UP HEAP
THE EAGLE'S NEST
CHAPTER I
A WASP IN THE SCHOOLROOM
One bright May morning, Madge, Betty, and John were a little more
inattentive than usual over their lessons. Miss Thompson was very
patient. She knew that warm spring days were full of distracting
interests. The first wasp of the season managed to get into the
schoolroom and buzz ostentatiously on the window-pane in the middle of
a history lesson. There was a long pause of expectation on the part of
the three children. Surely even a grown-up person could not be so
utterly uninterested as to allow a queen-wasp to escape alive?
"What was the chief event of the reign of Henry the Eighth?" continued
Miss Thompson, quite unmoved by the display of suppressed excitement
around her. There was no answer, so she repeated the question a little
louder.
"May I kill it, or would you rather do it yourself?" said Madge
eagerly. The three children had now shut their books and given up all
pretence of interest in anything except the wasp, which was trying
harder than ever to buzz right through the pane of glass.
"Really nobody would suppose that you were twelve years old!" said Miss
Thompson, in a vain effort to make her eldest pupil ashamed of herself.
"Now then, open your history and see what was the most important event,
if you can't remember."
"But it'll get away if you don't squash it!" shrieked John and Betty.
They were twins, and perhaps for that reason always spoke together.
"Do leave the poor creature alone!" said Miss Thompson imploringly.
"It cannot hurt you if you sit still and attend to your lessons."
"That's not what we are afraid of!" cried Madge; "it's the fruit!
Don't you know a queen-wasp has millions of children before the summer
is over, and we shan't have any fruit at all if you don't kill it!"
"No strawberries! No peaches! No nothing!" echoed the twins with
growing excitement. "And it will be all your fault! But of course you
don't care, as you never eat fruit. Papa won't like it though. He
always kills--"
"My dears, please don't make such a silly fuss about nothing,"
interrupted Miss Thompson, rising with considerable dignity from her
seat. The children watched her with the most intense interest; but
when, instead of crushing the intruding wasp, she merely tried to brush
it out of the open window with her handkerchief, they broke out into
shouts of disapproval. If the poor lady had let loose some peculiarly
savage wild beast on society she could not have been more severely
condemned by public opinion. And the worst of it was, that the wasp
would not go! She clung to the handkerchief, and when it was shaken at
the open window suddenly transferred herself to the sleeve of her
deliverer's dress.
Even Miss Thompson's calmness gave way under this trial. She started
back with a slight scream. The children were at her side in a moment,
beating and slapping at her arm, until they had inflicted almost as
much injury as a sting.
"It's fallen on the floor!" shrieked Madge. "No! it's up again! It's
back on the window! Where's the squasher?"
There was one well-established way of killing wasps in the schoolroom
at Beechgrove. This was with the heavy brass top of an old-fashioned
ink-bottle. Its size and shape were all that could be desired, and it
was familiarly alluded to as "the squasher". Even Miss Thompson when
in a hurry sometimes forgot to describe it as the top of an ink-bottle,
though she usually corrected herself afterwards.
At the present moment both Betty and John rushed to the table, and
began to fight vigorously for the possession of the much-coveted
instrument of destruction.
"Bring it quickly!" screamed Madge, who did not dare leave the window
for fear of losing sight of her prey. "Bring it here, I say! You
aren't going to squash it, you little sillies! I'm the eldest, so it's
my place!"
"You unfair thing! You squashed the last, so it's my turn!" shouted
John. And while he turned to hurl defiance at his elder sister, Betty
seized the opportunity to twitch the object of strife out of his hand
and run off with it.
Something perilously like a free-fight was in progress, when Miss
Thompson recovered her self-possession and sternly ordered the children
to return to their seats.
"And the wasp?" they cried. "It will get away, and make nests, and we
shall be stung, and have no fruit, and--"
"I will kill it myself," interrupted Miss Thompson, who now saw that
this was the only way to restore quiet.
"But why should you?" pleaded Madge. "You don't like squashing wasps,
and we do."
"That's just the reason I am going to do it myself," said Miss Thompson
resolutely. "Now go back to the table and find out the place in your
books."
"You are very unkind. Yes, very unkind," grumbled the twins; but they
did not dare to flatly disobey, any more than Madge, who left the
window scowling horribly, and expressing an audible hope that everybody
who liked wasps should be stung by wasps.
It was particularly annoying that Miss Thompson took no notice of this
amiable speech, but after crushing the wasp with as little interest as
she would have buttoned a glove, returned quietly to her seat, and
inquired:
"What was the most important event in the reign of Henry the Eighth?"
precisely as if nothing had happened.
"Oh, I know the answer to that!" exclaimed John scornfully. "I've
known that since I was a baby!"
"Well then, why do you require me to repeat the question so many
times?" very naturally observed Miss Thompson. "Do give me a sensible
answer, and then I can pass on to something that you do not know so
well."
"Oh, of course, it was about all his wives having their heads cut off--"
"Not all!" interrupted Betty. "Just let me say them! Catherine of
Arragon was divorced, Anne Boleyn had--"
"Stop!" cried Miss Thompson. "You are both wrong."
"No! Really I am sure it's right!" exclaimed Betty. "Isn't it, Madge?
You know you saw the place where her head was chopped off that time you
went to London with Aunt Mabel. Nobody was allowed to walk on it, and
there were railings all round; and the policeman said one night in the
year her ghost--"
"Really this has nothing at all to do with your lesson," said Miss
Thompson, resolutely cutting short what threatened to be a very long
story. "I never doubted that Anne Boleyn was beheaded," she continued.
"Only, as it happens, my question has nothing to do with Henry the
Eighth's wives. Other events of much greater importance happened
during his reign, though you seem to have forgotten them. The
Reformation, for instance."
"Oh, you meant that sort of thing, did you?" said John, every spark of
interest dying out of his voice. It might be possible to remember a
few facts about axes and blocks, but church councils and acts of
parliament he felt to be altogether beneath his notice. So he simply
gave up even the pretence of attending, and began to stare out of the
window at the gardener mowing the lawn. "Once, twice, three times," he
counted, in a loud whisper, as the man passed the window with the
mowing-machine.
"Draw down the blind, John," said Miss Thompson.
There was a chorus of reproaches from all the children. They
particularly disliked this punishment, which was only inflicted on rare
occasions when they had been unusually inattentive.
"Draw down the blind at once," repeated Miss Thompson.
"I always feel so gloomy when the blind is down," lamented Madge in a
very mournful tone. "I know I can't do my lessons if the sun is all
shut out."
"My dear, they couldn't have been done worse this morning if you had
been shut up in the dark," replied Miss Thompson, trying to close the
discussion by again taking up the history-book.
But by this time John had wandered to the window, and was carefully
inspecting the dead wasp. Not content with looking, he must needs take
it up to count how many legs it had. "One, two, three, four." John
was very fond of counting, especially at lesson-times. But there was
one important item that he left out of his calculations--the sting!
"Oh! oh! It hurts! it hurts!" shouted the little boy, as he hopped
about the room nursing his thumb.
"You silly child! If you had only been obedient and done what I told
you, instead of playing with the wasp," began Miss Thompson. Then she
remembered that it really was a waste of breath pointing out a moral to
a boy who was shouting and sobbing, so that he could not hear a word
she said. "You had better go to the nursery," she added, "and have
something put on your hand. No, you need not do any more lessons
before dinner. You can go out into the garden, and your sisters will
join you when they have finished."
John was out of the schoolroom door almost before she had done
speaking. When once in the passage his cries stopped suddenly. He
knew better than to wake the baby out of its mid-day sleep. So on
tiptoe, with carefully suppressed sobs, he entered the nursery, and
replied in whispers to Nurse's anxious inquiries after his injuries.
John had been her favourite charge until the recent arrival of a baby
brother. Now she was fickle enough to prefer the baby, or at least to
behave as if she did. Still, she lavished much compassion in dumb-show
on John's swollen thumb, and wrapped it in a blue bag, until he became
so interested in the process that he quite forgot it was hurting. But
presently Baby stirred in his sleep, and Nurse being anxious to attend
to him, advised John to run out and play in the garden.
It was not strictly speaking kind, but at the same time it was very
natural conduct, that John should stand close outside the schoolroom
window making derisive faces at his two sisters, who were being
reluctantly introduced to the leading facts of English history. Betty
first noticed him, and broke into a loud giggle. Miss Thompson looked
up.
"If you are well enough to stand there grimacing in the sun, you are
well enough to come in and finish your lessons," was all she said.
John promptly fled out of sight round the corner.