THE FAMILY AT MISRULE.
[Frontispiece: “‘Gee up, old twain.’”]
The Family at Misrule.
BY
ETHEL TURNER.
[Illustration: “Poppet had a little dead chicken in her hand.”]
LONDON:
WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, LIMITED,
WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.
THE FAMILY AT MISRULE.
BY
ETHEL TURNER,
AUTHOR OF
“SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS,” “THE STORY OF A BABY,” ETC.
“Ah that spring should vanish with the Rose!
That youth’s sweet-scented manuscript should close!”
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
“To youth the greatest reverence is due.”
Juvenal.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. J. JOHNSON._
LONDON:
WARD, LOCK, & BOWDEN, LIMITED.
WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.
1895.
_All rights reserved._
TO
CHARLES COPE,
MY STEPFATHER AND FRIEND.
E. S. T.,
Lindfield, Sydney.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. PICKING UP THREADS 9
II. SCHOOL TROUBLES 20
III. A PASSAGE AT ARMS 32
IV. A SUMMER’S DAY 42
V. BETWEEN A DREAM AND A DREAM 56
VI. TO-MORROW 69
VII. A LITTLE MAID-ERRANT 78
VIII. ONE PARTICULAR EVENING 88
IX. THAT MISCHIEVOUS CUPID 98
X. NEEDLES AND PINS 113
XI. A DAY IN SYDNEY 125
XII. THREE COURSES ONE SHILLING 137
XIII. PARNASSUS AND PUDDINGS 151
XIV. MUSHROOMS 161
XV. THE GOVERNMENT OF MEG 172
XVI. MORE MUTINY 184
XVII. A DINNER PARTY 194
XVIII. “HOW GOOD YOU OUGHT TO BE!” 208
XIX. HEADACHE AND HEARTACHE 217
XX. MY LITTLE ONE DAUGHTER 228
XXI. THE SEVENTH DAY 238
XXII. AMARANTH OR ASPHODEL 245
XXIII. LITTLE FAITHFUL MEG 254
XXIV. “IN THE MIDNIGHT, IN THE SILENCE OF THE SLEEP TIME” 266
XXV. HERE ENDETH 274
THE FAMILY AT MISRULE.
CHAPTER I.
PICKING UP THREADS.
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot?”
There was discord at Misrule.
Nell, in some mysterious way, had let down a muslin frock of last
season till it reached her ankles.
And Meg was doing her best to put her foot down upon it.
In a metaphorical sense, of course. Meg Woolcot at twenty-one was far
too lady-like to resort to a personal struggle with her young sister.
But her eyes were distressed.
“You can’t say I don’t look nice,” Nell said. “Why, even Martha said,
‘La, Miss Nell!’ and held her head on one side with a pleased look for
two minutes.”
“But you’re such a child, Nellie,” objected Meg; “you look like playing
at being grown up.”
“Fifteen’s very old, _I_ think,” said Miss Nell, walking up and down
just for the simple pleasure of hearing the frou-frou of muslin frills
near her shoes.
“Ah well, I do think I look nice with my hair done up, and you can’t
have it up with short frocks.”
“Then the moral is easy of deduction,” said Meg drily.
“Oh, bother morals!” was Nell’s easy answer.
She tripped down the verandah steps with a glance or two over her
shoulder at the set of the back of her dress, and she crossed the lawn
to the crazy-looking summer-house.
“Oh dear!” sighed Meg.
She leaned her face on her hands, and stared sadly after the crisp,
retreating frills and the shimmer of golden hair “done up.” This was
one of the days when Meg’s desires to be a model eldest sister were in
the ascendency, hence the very feminine exclamation.
She had not altered very much in all these five long years—a little
taller perhaps, a little more womanly, but the eyes still had their
child-like, straightforward look, and the powdering of freckles was
there yet, albeit fainter in colouring.
She still made resolutions—and broke them. She still wrote verses—and
burnt them. To-day she was darning socks, Pip’s and Bunty’s. That was
because she had just made a fresh resolve to do her duty in her state
of life.
At other times she left them all to the fag end of the week, and great
was the cobbling thereof to satisfy the demands of “Clean socks, Meg,
and look sharp.”
Besides darning, Meg had promised to take care of the children for the
afternoon, as Esther had gone out.
Who were the children? you will ask, thinking five years has taken that
title away from several of our young Australians.
The General is six now, and answers to the name of Peter on the
occasions that Pip does not call him Jumbo, and Bunty, Billy. Nell, who
is inclining to elegant manners, ventures occasionally in company to
address him as Rupert; but he generally winks or says “Beg pardon?” in
a vacant kind of way.
Baby also has become “Poppet,” and handed down her name of long
standing to a rightful claimant who disjointed the General’s nose
nearly three years ago and made our number up to seven again.
Just a wee, chubby morsel of a girl it is, with sunshiny eyes and
sunshiny hair and a ceaseless supply of sunshiny smiles.
Even her tears are sunshiny; they are so short-lived that the smiles
shine through and make them things of beauty.
The boys generally call her “The Scrap,” though she is as big as most
three-year-olds. She was christened Esther.
And Poppet is still a child,—to be nine is scarcely to have reached
years of discretion.
She has lost her chubbiness, and developed abnormally long, thin legs
and arms, a surprising capacity for mischief, and the tenderest little
heart in the world.
So Meg’s hands were fairly well filled for the afternoon, to keep these
three young ones in check, darn the socks, and superintend kitchen
arrangements, which meant Martha Tomlinson and the cook.
She had not bargained for the tussle with Nell too.
That young person was at a difficult age just now: too old—in her own
eyes, at any rate—to romp with Bunty and Poppet; too young to take a
place beside Meg and pay visits with Esther,—she hung between, and had
just compromised matters by letting down her frocks, as years ago Meg
had done in the privacy of her bedroom.
Her early promise of good looks was more than fulfilled, and in this
long, pale blue muslin, and “picture” hat, cornflower-trimmed, she
looked a fresh enough young beauty to be queen of a season. The golden
hair had deepened, and was twisted up in the careful, careless way
fashion dictated. The complexion was wonderfully pure and bright for
Australia, and the eyes were just as dewy and soft and sweetly lashed
as ever.
But not yet sixteen! Was ever such an impossible age for grown-up
rights? Just because she was tall and gracefully built was no
reason why she should consider herself fit to be “out,” Meg
contended—especially, she added, with a touch of sisterly sarcasm, as
she had a weakness for spelling “believe” and “receive” in unorthodox
ways, and was still floundering wretchedly through her first French
author—_Le Chien du Capitaine_.
Poppet’s legs dashed across the gravel path under the window; Peter’s
copper-toed boots in hot pursuit shone for a second and vanished.
“Where’s Baby, I wonder?” Meg said to herself.
The child had been playing with a chair a little time back, dragging
it up and down the verandah and bumping it about noisily; now all was
silent. She went to the foot of the stairs, one of Bunty’s socks more
“holey” than righteous drawn over her hand.
“What you doing, Essie?” she called.
“Nosing, Mig,” said a little sweet voice from a bedroom,—“nosing at
all.”
“Now, Essie!”—Meg’s voice took a stern note,—“tell me what you are
doing!”
“Nosing,” said the little voice; “I’se velly dood.”
“Quite sure, Essie?”
“Twite; I isn’t dettin’ wet a bit, Miggie.”
Up the stairs Meg ran at a swift pace; that last speech was eminently
Baby’s, and betokened many things.
“Oh, you wicked child!” she cried, and drove an unsummoned smile away
from her mouth corners.
The big water-jug was on the floor near the washstand, and small Essie
with slow and deep enjoyment was standing with one wee leg in the jug
and the other on the oilcloth. The state of the lace sock and little
red shoe visible betrayed the fact that the operation had been reversed
more than once.
This was an odd little characteristic of Essie’s, and no amount of
scolding and even shaking could break her of it. Innumerable times she
had been found at this work of iniquity, dipping one leg after the
other in any water-jugs she found on the floor. And did Martha, in
washing floors, leave her bucket of dirty water one moment unguarded,
Essie would creep up and pop in one little leg while she stood her
ground with the other.
[Illustration: “‘I’SE VELLY DOOD.’”]
Meg dried her, scolding hard all the time.
“All your shoes are spoiled, Baby, you naughty girl; what _am_ I to do
to you?”
“Velly solly,” said Baby cheerfully.
She squeezed a tear out of her smiling eyes when Meg bade her look at
the ruin of her pretty red shoes.
“And you told me a story, Essie; you said you were good, and were not
getting wet.”
Meg held the little offender away from her, and looked upon her with
stern reproach.
“But on’y my legs _was_ dettin’ wet—not me,” explained Essie, with a
sob in her voice and a dimple at the corner of her mouth.
There was nothing of course to be done but put the water-jug into
its basin, and carry the small sinner downstairs in dry socks and
ankle-strap slippers that showed signs of having been wet through at
some time or other.
Bunty was lying on his back on the dining-room couch, which Meg had
left strewn with footwear waiting to be paired and rolled up.
“Oh, John!” she said vexedly, seeing her work scattered about the floor.
“John” took no notice. I should tell you, perhaps, that, since starting
to school, Bunty’s baptismal name had been called into requisition by
authorities who objected to nicknames, and his family fell into the way
of using it occasionally too.
He was a big, awkward lad, tall for his thirteen years, and very
loosely built. Nell used to say complainingly that he always looked
as if he needed tightening up. His clothes never fitted him, or seemed
part of him, like other boys’ clothes. His coats generally looked big
and baggy, while his trousers had a way of creeping up his ankles and
showing a piece of loose sock.
In the matter of collars he was hopeless. He had a daily allowance of
one clean one, but, even if you met him quite early in the morning,
there would be nothing but a limp, crooked piece of linen of doubtful
hue visible. He had the face of a boy at war with the world. His eyes
were sullen, brooding—his mouth obstinate. Every one knew he was the
black sheep. He knew it himself, and resented it in silence.
Poppet understood him a little—no one else. He was at perpetual enmity
with his father, who had no patience with him at all. Esther excused
him by saying he was at the hobbledehoy stage, and would grow up all
right; but she was always too busy to help him to grow. Meg’s hands
were full with Pip; and Nell, after a try or two to win his confidence,
had pronounced him a larrikin, undeserving of sisters at all.
So Poppet undertook him. She was a faithful little soul, and in some
strange way just fitted into him, despite his awkward angles.
Sometimes he would tell her things, and go to a great deal of trouble
to do something she particularly wanted; but then again he would bully
her unmercifully, and make her life not worth living.
“Why don’t you play cricket, or do something, John?” Meg said, snipping
off an end of cotton very energetically. “I hate to see a great boy
like you sprawling on a sofa doing nothing.”
“Do you?” said John.
“What made you so late home from school? it’s nearly teatime. I hope it
wasn’t detention again.”
“It was,” said John.
“Oh, Bunty, that means Saturday taken again, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” John rolled over, and lay on his other side, his eyes shut.
“Bunty, why _don’t_ you try?” Meg said; “you are always in scrapes for
something. Pip never got in half so many, and yet _he_ wasn’t a model
boy. Will you promise me to try next week?”
There was a grunt from the sofa cushion that might be interpreted at
will as negative or affirmative.
Nell came into the room, her hat swung over her arm.
“Get up, John,” she said; “what a horrid boy you are! Look at your
great muddy boots on the sofa! Meg, I don’t know how you could sit
there and see him. Why, if we sat down, we’d get our dresses all
spoiled.”
“Good job too,” said John, not moving a hand.
Nellie regarded him with frankest disgust. “What a collar!” she said,
a world of emphasis on the “what.” “I declare the street newsboys and
match-sellers look more gentlemanly than you do.”
The tea-bell rang upstairs; John sat up instantly.
“I hope you saved me more pudding to-day, Meg,” he said. “I never saw
such a stingy bit as you kept yesterday.”
Nell’s scarlet lips formed themselves into something very like “pig”
as she turned on her heel to leave the room. Then she said “Clumsy
wretch!” with startling suddenness. John had set his “great muddy boot”
down on one of her pretty flounces, and a sound of sundering stitches
smote the air.
“Beg pardon,” said John, with a fiendish light of triumph in his eyes.
Then he went upstairs two steps at a time to discuss his warmed-up
dinner while the others had tea.