A SUMMER’S DAY.
“Happy in this, she is not yet so old
But she may learn; happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn.”
The next day was exceedingly hot, one of those moist, breathless days
that make February the most unpleasant month in the year to Sydney
folks.
Every one in the house felt utterly limp and cross and miserable, and
daily duties were performed in as slipshod and languid a manner as
possible. The cook had made a great pan of quince jam, and brought it
into the breakfast-room on a tray for Esther to tie down. And Esther
was sitting in the rocking-chair trying to make up her mind to do it,
and wondering whether it would be easier to use string or paste. Small
Esther was making a terrible noise. She owned dolls and bricks, little
tea-services, and baby furniture—all the toys that well-regulated
little girls are supposed to love; she generally tired of them,
however, after a few minutes’ play.
At present she had made a tram of six heavy leather chairs, with the
armchair for “motor,” and her little sweet face was scarlet and wet
with the exertion of dragging them into place.
In addition to this she had taken the fire-irons out of the fender,
and was rowing, or in some way propelling the train forward—to her own
satisfaction, at any rate—by brandishing the tongs wildly about while
she stood in the motor and shouted and cried, “Gee up!”
“Essie,” big Esther said at last, “you must be quiet. Poor mamma’s head
aches. Where’s your doll? That’s not a pretty game.”
“All bwoked,” said Essie; “gee up, old twain.” Bang, bang, clatter,
clatter.
“Essie, put those things away at once.” Esther noticed the poker for
the first time. “You naughty girl, you are scratching the chairs
dreadfully.”
“But I can’t make ze twain puff-puff wifout,” objected the
engine-driver, “an’ we has to go to Bwisbane; det up wif you.” She
leaned over the tall back of her locomotive, and made vigorous hits at
the legs of it.
So vigorous indeed that the chair went over with a crash, precipitating
Essie and the poker and tongs and shovel in four different directions.
“Oh dear,” said Esther, and sighed before she attempted to go to the
rescue. Essie was always tumbling from somewhere or other and never got
much hurt, and really it was terribly hot.
“Oo-oo-oh!” said a very small voice. It quavered for a minute. If the
anxiously examined little fat knees had been scratched, it would have
broken into a despairing yell, but they were whole, and the motor had
misbehaved itself.
“Beast!” she said, picking herself up in a great hurry,—“howid old
pig!” Then she seized the poker and beat the prostrate chair with all
her small, angered strength.
“Essie,” big Esther said languidly—she had found with thankfulness she
need not move from the chair,—“Essie, I shall whip you, if you use
naughty words like that.”
“But I was zust dettin’ to Bwisbane—so it _is_ a pig,” Essie
maintained. Then she climbed up again, and the journey proceeded.
In the nursery Meg was supposed to be giving lessons to Peter and
Poppet, and superintending the more advanced studies of Nellie; for
the last nursery governess had left suddenly, and the Captain had
professed himself unable to afford another until the next quarter.
Meg used to provide herself with a book during these daily struggles,
to be indulged in at times when her supervision was not required. It
had been an “improving” book for the last month, for she had lately
been finding out how wofully ignorant she was when she talked to the
young man who had listened to her playing last night. To-day it was
Browning, because he had looked horrified to find she never read any
of his poems, on the plea that he was acknowledged to be difficult to
understand.
It was a pity she chose “Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial”
for her first essay, especially as it was such a hot day; but she had
determined to read, dauntlessly, the first poem the book opened at.
“Do this sum, Poppet,” she said, setting a multiplication with eight
figures in each line—“dear, _what_ a greasy slate; and Peter, if you
drop any blots on your copy, you will have to write it again this
afternoon.”
Peter was sucking a little lump of ice he had stolen out of the
ice-chest. Poppet asked him for a bit to clean her slate with, but he
considered this such waste of precious material that he swallowed it in
a hurry and choked. Poppet asked if she might go and wet her sponge;
but Meg said no, it always took a quarter of an hour to do that simple
act, if she escaped from the room. So Peter offered to breathe on it
for her.
“Both of us will,” said Poppet,—“you on the top half, and me on the
bottom.”
Meg was taking a cursory glance at “Filippo,” and groaning mentally;
she did not hear the arrangement for the slate-cleaning until the heads
bumped violently and the two began to quarrel.
“You licked it with your tongue,” Poppet said.
“I never—I wath only breathing with my lipth on it,” declared Peter.
“I saw the end of your tongue hanging out,” Poppet maintained.
“You’re a thtory-teller, Poppet.” Peter’s face began to get red. “I
wath only breathing, tho there.”
“Peter, go and sit at the other end of the table. Poppet, if you put
out your tongue at Peter again, I shall make you stand in the corner.”
Meg put a pen in the Browning to keep it open, and went over to Nell at
the window to see how “Le Chien du Capitaine” was progressing.
“Oh, Nell!” she said.
The French dictionary lay face downwards on the broad window-sill; “Le
Chien” was face upward on Nell’s knee, but on the top of it was “Not
Wisely, but too Well.”
“Oh!” said Nell, with a gasp, her eyes misty, her cheeks flushed,—“oh,
it’s no use scolding, Meg,—I absolutely must finish this; I’m just
where Kate is—Oh, Meg, you _are_ horrid!”
For Meg had taken forcible possession of the dark green book, and had
picked up the dictionary.
“You know you are not to read in the morning,” she said; “and I don’t
think you ought to read a love story like this till you’re eighteen
at least. Really, Nellie, it’s no use me pretending to overlook you;
you’ve done one page of ‘The Dog’ in three mornings. I’ll have to tell
father I must give up the pretence of teaching.”
“Here, give it to me,” Nellie said, sighing wistfully; “it ought to be
called ‘The Pig,’ I think, it’s so detestable. Put ‘Not Wisely’ on the
table, Miggie, so I can see the title and get occasional refreshment.”
Then Meg returned to the “Privilege of Burial.” Her first thought, when
she had read the piece through, was that Browning was not a true poet,
however great a man he might be; and her second that Allan Courtney
must be exceedingly clever to be able to enjoy such reading; her third
was sorrow at the poor brains she felt she must possess not to be able
to enjoy it too.
She tried another at random—“Popularity.” It was rather better she
decided, though she had no very clear idea of the meaning; and oh! that
terrible last verse,—was it an enigma, or could clever people see the
sense instantly?—
“Hobbs hints blue—straight he turtle eats:
Nobbs prints blue—claret crowns his cup
Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,—
Both gorge. Who fished the murex up?
What porridge had John Keats?”
The deep sigh that accompanied the third vain reading of it, disturbed
Peter in his occupation of putting flies in the ink, fishing them out,
and letting them crawl over to Poppet.
Poppet at her side of the table was similarly occupied, only she had
captured a March-fly, and it made beautifully clear tracks right across
to Peter.
“Is your sum finished, Poppet?” Meg said abstractedly, pondering even
as she spoke, what Keats, who was a god to her, had to do with porridge.
Poppet put her hand over the March-fly and confessed it was not quite.
“How many rows have you done?”
The answer came in a whisper, “Not quite one.”
“I shall keep you in to do it then after four,” Meg said in her
sternest voice; “and, _Peter_, look at your copy.”
In the excitement of getting the half-drowned flies safely across Peter
had made a landing-place of his copy-book, and great was the inkiness
of it.
“Oh, bleth it!” he said ruefully.
[Illustration: “‘PETER, LOOK AT YOUR COPY.’”]
Poppet’s head was within an inch of her slate. She was working now at
a startling pace, and counting on her fingers in a loud whisper. What
would Bunty say if he came home, and she was not there to ask how he
had got on, and sympathise with the red marks that were sure to be on
his hands?
Nellie had translated five lines, and was occupied in a vain search for
the dictionary meaning of _pourra_.
“I believe it’s ‘pour,’ and ‘ra’ is a misprint that’s got tacked on,”
she said, “or else this beautiful dictionary has left it out, there are
ever so many words I can’t find, Meg.”
“Oh,” said Meg, her patience flying away on sudden wings, “what is the
use of anything? I won’t teach you any more, any of you. Peter wrote
far better a month ago than he does now; Poppet’s taken an hour to do a
row of multiplication by six, and you are looking in the dictionary for
_pourra_. It’s simply wasting all my time to sit here.”
The problem, “who fished the murex up?” had not improved my eldest
heroine’s temper. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes sparkled, she
threw out her hands in a little dramatic way. “You can go, Peter, you
can go and make mud pies of the universe, if you like; Poppet, you can
go too, tear your dress, and climb as many trees as you please; Nellie,
you can sit in front of the looking-glass the rest of the day and read
every novel in the house,—why should _I_ care? I won’t teach any more.”
She flung herself down on the old horse-hair sofa, opened her Browning,
and turned her face to the wall.
And they all went, not at first, but presently and by degrees.
“The thaid we could,” whispered Peter.
“Did she _mean_ it?” Poppet said doubtfully.
“Of courth,” said Peter; “I’m going, at any rate. The thaid I wath to;
I’m not going to dithobey her,” and he slipped out on tip-toe. Poppet
worked to the end of the line by seven, then she remembered she had
forgotten to “carry” all the way, and she grew afraid that Peter would
get to the birds’ eggs she was putting in compartments for Bunty.
So she also, after a glance or two at her sister’s back hair, slipped
off her chair and stole softly away.
And Nellie drew “Not Wisely” to her own end of the table with the
aid of a long ruler; then she followed the example of her iniquitous
juniors and departed noiselessly.
It was nearly an hour before Meg turned round again. She had lost
herself in some wonderful poems now,—“The Flight of the Duchess,” “By
the Fireside,” and some of the shorter love pieces; she began to see
possibilities of beauty and enjoyment, and felt glad with a great
gladness that she was able to appreciate them even in a slight degree.
Then the silence struck her. Surely if Poppet were doing her sum, her
pencil would be squeaking; and surely if Peter were engaged as he
should be on his copy, he would be breathing laboriously and giving
occasional little impatient grunts to testify to each fresh blot.
She looked round, and saw the deserted room.
“Took me at my word!” she said aloud. “They might have known I didn’t
mean it, young scamps,—Nellie too.”
Then she smiled indulgently. The exquisite tenderness and the strength
of the love pieces had softened and braced her at the same time.
“They’re very young,” she said, as she went out after them, “and—really
it’s very hot.”
This was all in the morning. At night there was another breeze.
Bunty did not eat his pudding. That of itself was phenomenal, for
it was brown with sultanas and had citron peel at wide intervals;
generally he managed three servings, and, even then, said they might
have made it in a bigger basin. But to-night he said “No pudding” in a
sullen voice, and kicked the legs of his chair monotonously with his
boot heels.
“You might have the common politeness to say thank you, I think,” said
Nellie, who was officiating at nursery tea in Meg’s absence. “What a
boor you are getting, John.”
“Oh, go and hang yourself,” he returned. He pushed his chair back from
the table, and went out of the room with lowering brows.
Poppet slipped down from her chair.
“Sit down instantly, Poppet; do you think I’m going to allow you to
behave like this?” Nellie cried. “If John has no more manners than a
larrikin, you are not to follow his example. Sit down, I tell you,
Poppet; _do_ you hear me?”
“Can’t you see how white he is?” said the little girl, her lips
trembling. “Nellie, I can’t stay—no, I don’t want pudding.” She darted
across the room and down the passage after him.
The boys’ bedrooms opened on to a long landing with a high staircase
window at the end that looked straight out to the river and the great
stretch of gum trees on the Crown lands.
Bunty was standing staring out, his hands thrust in his pockets; the
setting sun was on the stained window-panes, and his face looked
ghastly in the red light.
“Was it very bad?” said the little, tender voice at his elbow.
He turned round, and looked at his young sister for a minute in silence.
“Look here, Poppet,” he said, and his voice sounded strange and
strangled; “I know I tell lies and do mean things—I can’t help it
sometimes, I think I was made so; but I haven’t done this new thing
they say I have—Poppet, I swear I haven’t.”
“I know you haven’t,” the loving voice said; “what is it, Bunty?”
He gave her a fleeting, grateful glance. “I can’t tell you, old
girl—you’ll know soon enough,—every one thinks I have; it’s no good
me saying anything—nothing’s any good in the world.” He leaned his
forehead on the cold window-pane and choked something down in his
throat. “To-morrow, Poppet, they’ll say all sorts of things about me;
but don’t you believe them, old girl—will you?—whatever they say,
Poppet—promise me.”
“I pwomise you, Bunty, faithf’lly,” the little girl said, an almost
solemn light in her eyes. She could never remember Bunty quite like
this before. There was a despairing note in his voice, and really the
red sunset light made his face look dreadful.
“Give us a kiss, Poppet,” he whispered, and put his face down on her
little, rough, curly head.
The child burst into tears of excitement and fright—everything seemed
so strange and unreal. Bunty had never asked her for a kiss before in
his life. She clung to him sobbing, with her small, thin arms around
his neck and her cheek against his. Both his arms were round her, he
had lifted her up to him right off the ground, and his cheeks were
almost as wet as hers.
There was a step, and he set her down again and turned away.
“Where are you going?” she asked half fearfully.
“To bed,” he said gruffly. “My head aches. Good-night.”