MAX RUNS AMUCK
Greenways was overwhelmed with horror. It felt it ought to draw a veil
of mist round its face and shrink from the public gaze instead of
standing there brazenly smiling as usual amid its trees and flowers and
pretending it was the abode of innocence and content.
Miss Bibby was extremely upset, sufficiently so to be nearly helpless in
the crisis. The little girls whispered together with horrified and
excited eyes and more than inclined to a theory that nothing short of a
cable to New Zealand recalling their parents could adequately deal with
the present situation.
Anna, who had quarrelled with her baker, said she was not in the least
surprised, for men and boys were all the same, downright black at heart.
But Max stood fast in his iniquity.
Max, four-year old Max--whose "trousers" did not measure three inches in
the inner seam of the leg--Max, who was not yet entirely initiated into
the difficulties of speech, had broken forth into "language!"
No one knew where he could have possibly heard the hair-raising phrase.
Certainly there was the gardener, Blake, about the premises who, being
of the downright black-hearted sex, might have let fall the words Max
had evidently garnered and laid by with such care and accuracy until
occasion offered.
But he was so surly and monosyllabic a man that the children gave him
the widest of berths, and therefore that theory was unlikely.
Anna aspersed the character of Larkin. A boy with hair that colour, she
maintained, must be subject to periodical explosions, and it was
probably during one of them that Max had secreted his bit of dynamite.
But the little girls gave Larkin the warmest testimonials. In all the
time they had known him he had never been guilty of anything stronger
than "My jiggery!"
It all began with a bib at breakfast time.
When Anna would have tied it around Max's neck, as she or some other
person in her position had done for years, he jerked his head suddenly
aside. "Take it away," he said.
"But, darling," said Miss Bibby, who was serving out the porridge, "you
must have your bib on; don't be naughty. Look, it's the pretty one with
Jack Sprat on it. Tie it on, Anna."
Max ducked skilfully just as Anna brought the tapes together.
"Just look at 'im," said the girl.
"Come, come, Max," said Miss Bibby, "you don't want to spoil that pretty
coat with your porridge. Why, it's your new coat with a pocket in! Let
Anna tie it now, quickly."
Again Anna essayed her task. Max held still till the square of huckaback
portraying the economic existence of Jack Sprat and his wife was well
beneath his chin, and the tapes gathered once more up into Anna's
hands.
Then he gave a movement like a plunging horse, seized the offending
article and flung it with all his force across the table where it fell
and floated upon the milk Muffie had poured over her porridge.
"Very well, Anna," said Miss Bibby, "take the bib away and you need not
wait. Master Max does not want any breakfast."
This was quite true, for Master Max had quite satisfied his morning
appetite by a surreptitious ten minutes at the mulberry tree while the
three little girls were having their hair brushed.
"Can I go?" he said eagerly.
"You mean, may I?" Miss Bibby said mechanically.
"Well, may I?"
"Certainly not. You will sit quite still as a gentleman should when
ladies are still eating."
Max cast a lowering glance at the ladies.
"Well, make her hurry," he said; "look at her taking anover lot of
leam." He glared at Muffie.
"I shall take six lots of cream, if I choose," said Muffie. "I've got
to put something on to take away the taste of your horrid dirty bib."
"It was a clean one, Muffie, or I should have passed you a fresh
plateful," said Miss Bibby; "at the same time that does not excuse Max
for his ill-behaviour. Max, before I can overlook your conduct you must
apologize to Muffie and to Anna."
Muffie looked important; she rather enjoyed being apologized to.
Max sat very square on the big books of his chair; possibly their
presence beneath him encouraged his rebellion by reminding him that
until he took a firm stand against it a month or two ago a high chair
had been considered fitted to his dignity.
"I've done wiv bibs," he announced, and he looked the whole table fairly
in the face.
Pauline and Muffie and Lynn giggled a little. They had begun to
recognize vaguely that Max was not exactly as they were.
When he stood with his little legs planted far apart and his little
hands thrust deep in his knickerbocker pockets, and his little head
cocked on one side, some subtle breath of a spirit, masculine and
essentially opposed to their own, was wafted towards them.
"I've done wiv bibs," he repeated.
"That will do, Max," said Miss Bibby, coldly. "I shall consider you in
disgrace, until you have told Anna and Muffie you are sorry."
"I've done wiv bibs," shouted Max.
"Go and stand in that corner, Max," Miss Bibby said with unexpected
sternness in her tone.
Max scrambled off his chair as if he could hardly reach the place
indicated fast enough.
He ran right into the corner--gave a hard kick at the skirting board and
made a rush for the door.
"I've done wiv bibs," he shrieked, and tore away as fast as his legs
could carry him into the garden.
"Go on with your breakfast, Lynn," said Miss Bibby with as much calmness
as she could muster,--"sit down immediately, Muffie--" for Muffie,
excited by the unusual happening, had flown to the window to see where
the rebel was heading for, "Max has forgotten himself, I am afraid."
This was ever Miss Bibby's phrase--ever her gentle optimism. If you lost
your temper, your manners, your courage, any of your higher qualities,
you had "forgotten yourself," forgotten the fine, upright man you were
by nature and become for a moment the shadowy ghost of that black
unknown self that ever dogs one.
"As I have finished, I will ask you to excuse me, little girls," Miss
Bibby continued, rising from her seat. In point of fact, she had not yet
consumed the whole of her slender meal, but who was to say what a boy
with such a red, fierce little face might be doing?
She crossed the grass with troubled eyes. Max was too busy a little man
to have fits like this often.
Now and again in wet weather, certainly, when he could not work off any
superfluous steam in the garden, he had lately taken to flinging himself
flat on the floor and kicking, if thwarted in any way. And Miss Bibby
had vaguely recognized that this was due to his being deprived so long
of the healthy moral tone of the presence of his mother and father--the
latter in especial.
Anna opined that the easiest way to get him out of these "tantrums" was
to bribe him with the offer of a large piece of chocolate.
"He's only a baby," she would say excusingly, "and besides, he's a
boy--it's in him and it's got to come out,--same as a measle rash. You'd
think there'd be some med'cin for it, wouldn't you?"
Kinross would have enjoyed the notion--the need of a Tonic for
Eliminating the Black Corpuscles from the Blood of Boys.
Max saw Miss Bibby coming. In truth he had almost forgotten his recent
revolt against law and order, for during his tumultuous passage through
the garden, he had come across one of the guinea-pigs that had escaped
from its bondage. An exciting chase had followed, but he had won, and in
the satisfaction consequent upon victory he might have even been induced
to overlook Miss Bibby's behaviour.
But then he saw the gentle reproach in her eyes, and noted (the Judge
himself had not the faculty of lightning observation possessed by his
son) the nervous, half-conciliatory trepidation of her manner. He thrust
his hands as deeply as they would go into his inadequate pockets and met
her gaze unblinking.
"Why, Maxie," she said, "I can't believe this is the good little boy who
was here yesterday. No, it is some other bad little fellow who has taken
his suit and looks like him. Do you think if I look carefully about I
could find my good little boy again?"
Max would have none of such folly.
"I'm me," he said determinedly.
Miss Bibby sought to gather him up in her arms--the natural instinct.
For indeed when your rebel's "trousers" measure but three inches in the
inner seam you cannot regard him as other than a baby.
But he held fast to the wire fence of the guinea-pigs' run.
"I _won't_ be nursed," he said. She stood ten minutes cajoling him,
wheedling, coaxing, threatening. No, he would not return to his corner
and work out his punishment, even though the punisher was eagerly
offering to reduce the duration of it to "exactly three minutes, Max
darling,--see, by this pretty little watch, and then we can all be
friends again."
No, Max would have no traffic at all in the offer of such an ignominious
position.
"Well, see here, Max," said the helpless lady recognizing and bowing at
last to the stronger will, "if I let you off the corner will you run in
and kiss Muffie and Anna to show you are sorry?" (The word "apologize"
was eliminated now from this last treaty.)
No, Max would _not_ kiss either Anna or Muffie. They were both "bad
girls."
"Very well, Max," said Miss Bibby, "you only leave me one resort. I
shall shut you up until you are good."
"I can run licker than you," was Max's reply, and he ducked beneath her
arm and dashed across the garden.
Miss Bibby's blood rose high and she started to follow him. But how may
a lady who for at least twenty years has done nothing but walk sedately
ever expect or wildly hope to catch up a pair of brown muscular little
legs? She was brought up panting, with her hand at her side before they
had circled the bamboos three times and the quarry was plainly as fresh
as ever. But:
"Escape me never, beloved,
While I am I and you are you."
was Miss Bibby's attitude now. She called to Anna to help with the
chase. And Anna came cheerfully as well as of necessity, for Max had
crushed mulberries on her snowy kitchen table, in an endeavour to
"invent cochineal," and it would take her hours to eradicate the stain.
The little girls came too--they felt it was more than half a game, for
Max's face was perfectly smiling and good-natured.
So Pauline stood guard at the waratahs, and Lynn and Anna prevented any
more dodging at the bamboos, and Miss Bibby cut off the retreat to the
house and Muffie worried him in the rear.
Surely, surely by tactics like these they drove him right into a corner.
Had there been a fence he would have shown fight a little longer by
scrambling up it and continuing the chase on the other side. But they
had headed him to a hedge, an African box thorn hedge, and there was
nothing more to be done. So he stuck his legs apart, and put his hands
in his pockets and surveyed his captors as they closed in round him. And
it seemed satisfactory to his self-respect that it had taken five of
them--two quite grown-up, too--to beat him.
But Anna was singularly without the capacity for admiring fine deeds and
simply grasped him firmly around the middle and bore him to the house.
He kicked all the way, merely to maintain his self-respect.
"Where shall I put 'im?" gasped the girl, stumbling along the hall, the
other four at her heels.
"Here, here," said Miss Bibby, opening the sitting-room door, and
running across the floor to close and lock the French windows.
Anna stood him down on his feet and gave him one good, if unauthorized,
shake for all the kicks she had received.
"There!" she said, as a woman will.
[Illustration: "The boy glared round at his victors."]
And it was precisely at this point the "language," feelingly alluded to
before, happened.
The boy glared round at his victors, now all grouped at the door.
"You beasly girls," he said.