"There goes the `Pampered Pet' again! Got its little keeper with it, as
usual. Why don't they lead her by a chain, and be done with it?"
Miles stood by the schoolroom window, hands jingling in pockets, as he
surveyed a prospect, sufficiently grey and drear to make any diversity
doubly welcome, and at his words there came the sound of a general
pushing-back of chairs, as the four other occupants of the room dashed
forward to share in the view.
They jostled each other with the scant courtesy which brothers and
sisters are apt to show each other in early days; five big boys and
girls, ranging between the ages of eight and nineteen. Miles kept his
central position by reason of superior strength, a vigorous dig of his
pointed elbow being enough to keep trespassers at a distance. Betty
darted before him and nimbly dropped on her knees, the twins stood on
either side of the window-sill, while poor Pam grumbled and fretted in
the background, dodging here and there to try all positions in turn, and
finding each as unsatisfactory as the last.
The Square gardens looked grey and sodden with the desolation of autumn
in a city, and the road facing the window was empty, except for two
female figures--a lady, and a girl of sixteen, who were slowly
approaching the corner. The lady was dressed in black, the girl was
noticeably smart, in a pretty blue costume, with dainty boots on her
tiny feet, and a fur cap worn at the fashionable angle on her golden
head.
"That's a new dress,--the fifth I've seen her in this month!" sighed
Betty enviously. "Wearing it on an afternoon like this, too. The idea!
Serve her right if it were soaked through!"
"Look at her mincing over the puddles! She'd rather go a mile out of
her way than get a splash on those precious boots. I'm sure by the look
of them that they pinch her toes! I am glad you girls don't make
ninnies of yourselves by wearing such stupid things."
"Can't! Feet too big!" mumbled Jill, each cheek bulging in turn with
the lump of toffee which she was mechanically moving from side to side,
so as to lengthen the enjoyment as much as possible.
"Can't! Too poor! Only four shillings to last out till the end of the
quarter!" sighed Betty, dolorous again.
"Boots! Boots! What boots? Let me see her boots. It's mean! You
won't let me see a thing!" cried Pam, pushing her shaggy head round
Miles' elbow, and craning forward on the tip of her toes. "I say!
She's grander than ever to-day, isn't she?"
"Look at the umbrella! About as thick as a lead pencil!" scoffed Jill,
flattening her nose against the pane. "Aunt Amy had one like that when
she came to stay, and I opened it, because mother says it spoils them to
be left squeezed up, and she was as mad as a hatter. She twisted at it
a good ten minutes before she would take it out again. She'd never get
_mine_ straight! I've carried things in it till the wires bulge out
like hoops. An umbrella is made for use; it's bosh pretending it's an
ornament. ... They are going a toddle round the Square between the
showers for the benefit of the Pet's complexion. I'm glad I haven't got
one to bother about!"
"True for you!" agreed Miles, with brotherly candour. "You are as brown
as a nigger, and the Pet is like a big wax-doll--yellow hair, blue eyes,
pink cheeks, all complete. Not a bad-looking doll, either. I passed
quite close to her one day, and she looked rattling. She'll be a jolly
pretty girl one of these days."
"Oh, if you admire that type. Personally, I don't care for niminy-
piminies. You never see her speaking, but I daresay if you poked her in
the right places she would bleat out `Mam-ma! Pa-pa!' ... Now watch!"
cried Betty dramatically. "When she gets to the corner, she will peer
up at this window beneath her eyelashes, and mince worse than ever when
she sees us watching. Don't shove so, Pam! You can see quite well
where you are. Now _look_! She's going to raise her head."
The five heads pressed still more curiously against the pane, and five
pairs of eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon the young girl who was
daintily picking her way round the corner of the Square. The fur cap
left her face fully exposed to view, and, true to Betty's prophecy, as
she reached a certain point in the road she turned her head over her
shoulder and shot a quick glance at the window overhead. Quicker than
lightning the pretty head went round again, and the pink cheeks grew
crimson at the sight of those five eager faces watching her every
movement.
Jack and Jill burst into loud laughter, Betty's upper lip curled
derisively, but Miles' thin face showed an answering flush of colour,
and he backed into the room, exclaiming angrily--
"I say, this is too much of a good thing! I don't know what you all
mean by swarming round me wherever I go! Why can't you leave a fellow
alone? Can't I even look out of the window without having you all on my
back? A nice effect it must have to see the whole place blocked up, as
if we were staring at a Lord Mayor's show!"
Betty sat down by the table and took up the blouse on which she had been
working for the last three months. The sleeves had been taken out and
replaced twice over, and the collar-band obstinately refused to come
right. By the time it was finished it would be hopelessly out of date,
which Betty considered as one of the many contrary circumstances of life
which continually thwarted her good endeavours.
"Don't worry yourself. She will enjoy being stared at!" she said
coldly. "She knows we watch her coming in and out, and shows off all
her little tricks for our benefit. She's the most conceited, stuck-up,
affected little wretch I ever saw, without a thought in her head but her
clothes, and her own importance. I wouldn't have anything to do with
her for the world!"
"Jolly good thing then that you are never likely to get a chance! Her
people will never trouble to call upon us; they are much too high and
mighty. That's no reason, though, why you should be so down on the poor
little soul. I should have thought that you would have felt sorry for
her, cooped up with that old governess all her time, with not a soul to
keep her company! But girls are such cads--they never play fair."
Miles strode out of the room in a fume, and Betty's lips compressed
themselves into a thin straight line, the meaning of which the others
knew full well. To incur Miles' displeasure was Betty's bitterest
punishment, and the "Pampered Pet" was not likely to fare any better at
her hands in consequence of his denouncement. Jill beckoned furtively
to Jack. There was no chance of any more fun in the schoolroom now that
Miles had departed, and Betty was in the sulks; it would be wise to go
and disport themselves elsewhere. They left the room arm-in-arm, heads
almost touching, as they whispered and giggled together, the most
devoted pair of twins that ever existed, and eight-year-old Pam leant
her elbows on the table and stared fixedly at her big sister.
Betty was seventeen, nearly grown-up, inasmuch as she had left school,
and now took classes to complete her education. Her blue serge dress
came down to her ankles, and she made a gallant attempt to "do up" her
hair in the style of the period. Mrs Trevor considered the style too
elaborate for such a young girl, but after all it did not much matter
what was aimed at, since every morning someone exclaimed innocently,
"You've done your hair a new way, Betty!" and was fully justified in the
remark. One day Betty's ambition ran to curls and waves, and she
appeared at the breakfast-table with a fuzz worthy of a negress. The
next day better judgment prevailed, when she brushed hard for ten
minutes, and then pinned on a hair-net, with the result that she looked
a veritable little Puritan; and between these extremes ranged a variety
of effects, only possible of achievement to an amateur with no
experience, but boundless ambition.
If you could have honestly pronounced Betty pretty, you would have
satisfied the deepest longing of her heart. She gazed in the glass
every morning, twisting her head from side to side, and deciding
irrevocably that she was hideous, a fright, a perfect freak, while all
the time an obstinate little hope lingered that perhaps after all, in
becoming clothes, and when she was in a good temper, she might look
rather ... nice! Chestnut hair, such a pretty colour, but so little of
it that it would not "go" like other girls'; dark grey eyes with curly
black lashes; an impertinent little nose, and a mouth just about twice
as big as those possessed by the ladies in mother's _Book of Beauty_
downstairs. At the best she could only be "pretty" or a "sweet-looking
girl," and she pined to be beautiful and stately, and to reign as a
queen over the hearts of men.
Poor Betty! Many a girl of seventeen lives through the same tragedy in
secret, but they are not all fortunate enough to possess an adoring
younger sister who thinks her all that she fain would be.
Pam put out a little ink-stained hand, and stroked the half-finished
blouse admiringly.
"It's going to be lubly, Bet! It hardly shows a bit where you joined
it. You'll soon have finished it now."
"No, I shan't," snapped Betty. "There's heaps to do still, and it's
getting too cold for cottons. Just my luck! I always seem to be making
mistakes. It wasn't my fault that that stupid girl looked up and caught
us watching."
The underlying thought showed itself in the sudden change of subject,
but Pam was not surprised, for in her quiet, shrewd little way she had
divined it long ago.
"But you said she'd look up, so you could have moved if you liked. I
don't think it was very perlite," she said solemnly. "There were all
four of you at the window, and my eyes peeping round Miles' back. I
expect it looked pretty fearful. She went purple, didn't she? It's
horrid to blush! I did once when I got a prize before people, and I
hated it."
"Oh, you! You are a modest little mouse. The Pet is quite different.
Nasty thing, she might have been satisfied without making mischief
between Miles and me! She has everything that she wants, and that _I_
want, and haven't got. She's pretty, and rich, and has a lovely big
house and heaps of people to wait upon her, and nice things, and--
everything! You can't think how I hate her!"
Pam leant her thin arms on the table, and meditated for a long,
thoughtful moment. When she spoke, it was, as usual, to deliver herself
of the unexpected.
"That's what you call `envy, hatred, and malice,' I s'pose," she said
thoughtfully, and Betty's head came up with a jerk to turn upon her a
glance of suspicious inquiry.
No! The round, grey eyes were as clear, as innocent, as guilelessly
adoring as she had ever seen them. They gazed into her own without a
shadow of self-consciousness, and as she met that gaze Betty flushed,
and the irritable lines disappeared from her face as if wiped out by a
sponge.
"One for you, Pam," she cried, laughing. "I _am_ a pig! A nice big
elder sister I am, to set you such an example! I'm cross, dear.
Everything has gone wrong the whole day long. You had better run off
and leave me alone, or I'll snap again. I feel all churned up inside!
This is only a temporary lapse."
"There's scones for tea; I saw the bag in the pantry. S'pose I went
downstairs and coaxed cook to toast them? You said yourself toasted
scones were soothing. If Miles smells them he's sure to come," said Pam
shrewdly, and Betty leant forward and kissed her impetuously on the
cheek.
"There's one comfort," she cried; "I've got you, and the Pet hasn't!
You are the comfort of my old age, Pamela, my child. Yes, toasted! And
lots of butter, and leave the door wide open, so that the smell may get
out, and lure Miles back."