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Title: Seven Little Australians

Author: Ethel Turner

Release Date: December, 2003  [EBook #4731]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on March 8, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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Ethel Turner:  Seven Little Australians



CONTENTS
CHAPTER	
I     Chiefly Descriptive
II    Fowl for Dinner	
III   Virtue Not Always Rewarded	
IV    The General Sees Active Service	
V     "Next Monday Morning"
VI    The Sweetness of Sweet Sixteen
VII   "What Say You to Falling in Love?"
VIII  A Catapult and a Catastrophe
IX    Consequences
X     Bunty in the Light of a Hero	
XI    The Truant
XII   Swish, Swish!
XIII  Uninvited Guests
XIV   The Squatter's Invitation
XV    Three Hundred Miles in the Train
XVI   Yarrahappini
XVII  Cattle-Drafting at Yarrahappini
XVIII The Picnic at Krangi-Bahtoo 	
XIX   A Pale-Blue Hair Ribbon
XX    Little Judy	177
XXI   When  the Sun Went Down
XXII  And Last



  To
MY MOTHER














Chapter I  Chiefly Descriptive



Before you fairly start this story I should like to give you just a
word of warning.

If you imagine you are going to read of model children, with
perhaps; a naughtily inclined one to point a moral, you had better lay
down the book immediately  and betake yourself to 'Sandford and Merton'
or similar standard juvenile works.  Not one of the seven is really
good, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are.

In England, and America, and Africa, and Asia, the little folks may
be paragons of virtue, I know little about them.

But in Australia a model child is--I say  it not without
thankfulness--an unknown quantity.

It may be that the miasmas of naughtiness develop best in the
sunny brilliancy, of our atmosphere.  It may be that the land and
the people are young-hearted together, and the children's spirits not
crushed and saddened by the shadow of long years' sorrowful
history.

There is a lurking sparkle of joyousness and rebellion and mischief
in nature here, and therefore in children.

Often the light grows dull and the bright colouring fades to
neutral tints in the dust and heat of the day.  But when it
survives play-days and school-days, circumstances alone determine
whether the electric sparkle shall go to play will-o'-the-wisp
with the larrikin type, or warm the breasts of the spirited,
single-hearted, loyal ones who alone can "advance Australia."

Enough of such talk.  Let me tell you about my seven select
spirits.  They are having nursery tea at the present moment with
a minimum of comfort and a maximum of noise, so if you can bear a
deafening babel of voices and an unmusical clitter-clatter of
crockery I will take you inside the room and introduce them to
you.

Nursery tea is more an English institution than an Australian one;
there is a kind of _bon camaraderie_feeling between parents and
young folks here, and an utter absence of veneration on the part of
the latter.  So even in the most wealthy  families it seldom
hoppens that the parents dine in solemn state alone, while the
children are having a simple tea in another room: they  all
assemble around the same board, and the young ones partake of the
same dishes, and sustain their parts in the conversation right
nobly.

But, given a very  particular and rather irritable father, and
seven children with excellent lungs and tireless tongues, what
could you do but give them separate rooms to take their meals in?

Captain Woolcot, the father, in addition to this division, had had
thick felt put over the swing door upstairs, but .the noise used to
float down to the dining-room in cheerful, unconcerned manner
despite it.

It was a nursery  without a nurse, too, so that partly accounted
for it.  Meg, the eldest, was only sixteen, and could not be
expected to be much of a disciplinarian, and the slatternly  but
good-natured girl, who was supposed to combine the duties of
nursery-maid and housemaid, had so much to do in her second
capacity that the first suffered considerably.  She used to lay
the nursery meals when none of the little girls could be found to
help her, and bundle on the clothes of the two youngest in the
morning, but beyond that the seven had to manage for themselves.,

The mother? you ask.

Oh, she was only twenty---just a lovely, laughing-faced girl, whom
they all adored, and who was very little steadier and very
little more of a housekeeper than Meg.  Only the youngest of the
brood was hers, but she seemed just as fond of the other six as
of it, and treated it more as if it were a very entertaining
kitten than a real live baby, and her very  own.

Indeed at Misrule--that is the name their house always went by,
though I believe there was a different one painted above the
balcony--that baby seemed a gigantic joke to everyone.  The
Captain generally  laughed when he saw it, tossed it in the air,
and then asked someone to take it quickly.

The children dragged it all:  over the country  with them, dropped
it countless times, forgot its pelisse on wet days, muffled it up
when it was hot, gave it the most astounding things to eat, and yet
it was the if healthiest; prettiest, and most sunshiny baby that
ever sucked a wee fat thumb.

It was never called "Baby," either; that was the special name of
the next youngest.  Captain Woolcot had said, "Hello, is this the
General?" when the little, red, staring-eyed morsel had been put
into his arms, and the name had come into daily use, though I
believe at the christening service the curate did say something
about Francis Rupert Burnand Woolcot.

Baby was four, and was a little soft fat thing with pretty
cuddlesome ways, great smiling eyes, and lips very kissable when
they were free from jam.

She had a weakness, however, for making the General cry, or she
would have been really almost a model child.  Innumerable times
she had been found pressing its poor little chest to make it
"squeak;" and even pinching its tiny arms, or pulling its
innocent nose, just for the strange pleasure of hearing the yells
of despair it instantly set up.  Captain Woolcot ascribed the
peculiar tendency to the fact that the child had once had a
dropsical-looking woolly lamb, from which the utmost pressure would
only elicit the faintest possible squeak: he said it was only
natural that now she had something so amenable to squeezing she
should want to utilize it.

Bunty was six, and was fat and very lazy.  He hated scouting at
cricket, he loathed the very name of a paper-chase, and as for
running an errand, why, before anyone could finish saying something
was wanted he would have utterly disappeared.  He was rather small
for his age;-and I don't think had ever been seen with a clean face.
Even at church, though the immediate front turned to the minister
might be passable, the people in the next pew had always an
uninterrupted view of the black rim where washing operations had
left off.

The next on the list--I am going from youngest to oldest, you
see--was the "show" Woolcot, as Pip, the eldest boy, used to say.
You have seen those exquisite child-angel faces on Raphael Tuck's
Christmas cards?  I think the artist must just have dreamed of
Nell, and then reproduced the vision imperfectly.  She was ten,
and had a little fairy-like figure, gold hair clustering in wonderful
waves and curls around her face, soft hazel eyes, and a little
rosebud of a mouth.  She was not conceited either, her family took
care of that--Pip would have nipped such a weakness very sternly
in its earliest bud; but in some way if there was a pretty ribbon
to spare, or a breadth of bright material; just enough for one little
frock, it fell as a matter of course to her.

Judy was only three years older, but was the greatest contrast
imaginable.  Nellie used to move rather slowly about, and would
have made a picture 1n any attitude.  Judy I think, was never
seen to walk, and seldom looked picturesque.  If she did not dash
madly to the place she wished to get to, she would progress by a
series of jumps, bounds, and odd little skips.  She was very thin,
as people generally are who have quicksilver instead of blood in
their veins; she had a small, eager, freckled face, with very,
bright dark eyes, a small, determined mouth, and a mane of untidy,
curly dark hair that was: the trial of her life.

Without doubt she was the worst of the seven, probably because she
was the cleverest.  Her brilliant inventive powers plunged them all
into ceaseless scrapes, and though she often bore the brunt of the
blame with equanimity, they used to turn round, not infrequently,
and upbraid her for suggesting the mischief.  She had been
christened "Helen," which in no way account's for "Judy," but
then nicknames are rather unaccountable things sometimes, are they
not?  Bunty said it was because she was always popping and
jerking herself about like the celebrated wife of Punch, and
there really is something in that.  Her other name, "Fizz," is
easier to understand; Pip used to say he never yet had seen the
ginger ale that effervesced and bubbled and made the noise that
Judy did,

I haven't introduced you to Pip yet, have I?  He was a little like
Judy, only handsomer and taller, and he was fourteen, and had as
good an opinion, of himself and as poor a one of girls as boys of
that age generally have.

Meg was the eldest of the family, and had a long, fair plait that
Bunty used to delight in pulling; a sweet, rather dreamy face,
and a powdering of pretty freckles that occasioned her much
tribulation of spirit.

It was generally believed in the family that she wrote poetry
and stories, and even kept a diary, but no one had ever seen a
vestige of her papers, she kept them so carefully locked up in
her, old tin hat-box.  Their father, had you asked them they would
all have replied with considerable pride, was "a military man,"
and much from home.  He did not understand children at all, and was
always grumbling at the noise they made, and the money they cost.
Still, I think he was rather proud of Pip, and sometimes, if Nellie
were prettily dressed, he would take her out with him in his dogcart.

He had offered to send the six of hem to boarding school when he
brought home his young girl-wife, but she would not hear of it.

At first they had tried living in the barracks, but after a time
every one in the officers' quarters rose in revolt at the pranks
of those graceless children, so Captain Woolcot took a house some
distance up the Parramatta River, and in considerable bitterness
of spirit removed his family there.

They liked the change immensely; for there was a big wilderness
of a garden, two or three paddocks, numberless sheds for
hide-and-seek, and, best of all, the water.  Their father kept
three beautiful horses, one at he barracks and a hunter and a
good hack at Misrule; so, to make up, the children--not that they
cared in the slightest--went about in shabby, out-at-elbow clothes,
and much-worn boots.  They were taught--all but Pip, who went to
the grammar school--by a very third-class daily governess, who
lived in mortal fear of her ignorance being found out by her
pupils.  As a matter of fact, they had found her out long ago, as
children will, but it suited them very well not to be pushed on
and made to work, so they kept the fact religiously to
themselves.



CHAPTER II Fowl for Dinner


"Oh, don't the days seem lank and long
 When all goes right and nothing wrong;
 And isn't your life extremely flat
 With nothing whatever to grumble at?"

I hope you are not quite deafened yet, for though I have got
through the introductions, tea is not nearly finished, so we must
stay in the nursery a little longer: All the time I have been
talking Pip has been grumbling at the lack of good things.  The
table was not very tempting, certainly; the cloth looked as if it
had been flung on, the china was much chipped and battered, the tea
was very weak, and there was nothing to eat but great thick slices
of bread and butter.  Still, it was the usual tea, and everyone
seemed surprised at Pip's outburst.

"My father and Esther" (they all called their young stepmother
by her Christian name) "are having roast fowl, three vegetables,
and four kinds of pudding," he said angrily; "it isn't fair!"

"But we had dinner at one o'clock, Pip, and yours is saved as
usual," said Meg, pouring out tea with a lavish allowance of hot
water and sugar.

"Boiled mutton and carrots and rice puddingt " returned her brother
witheringly.  "Why shouldn't we have roast fowl and custard and
things?"

"Yes, why shouldn't we?" echoed little greedy Bunty; his eyes
lighting up.

"What a lot it would take for all of us!" said Meg, cheerfully
attacking the bread loaf.

"We're only children--let us be thankful for this nice thick bread
and this abundance of melting butter," said Judy, in a good little
tone.

Pip pushed his chair back from the table.

"I'm going down to ask for some roast fowl," he said, with a look
of determination in his eyes.  "I can't forget the smell of it,
and they'd got a lot on the table--I peeped in the door." '

He took up his plate and proceeded downstairs, returning presently,
to the surprise of everyone, with quite a large portion on his plate.

"He couldn't very well refuse," he chuckled.  "Colonel Bryant
is there; but he looked a bit mad here, Fizz, I'll, go you halves."

Judy pushed up her plate eagerly at this unusually magnanimous
offer, and received a very small division, a fifth part, perhaps,
with great gratitude

"I just LOVE fowl," said Nell longingly; "I've a great mind to go
down and ask for a wing--I believe he'd give it to me."

These disrespectful children, as I am afraid you will have noticed,
always alluded to their father as "he."

Nell took up another plate, and departed slowly to the lower
regions.  She followed into the diningroom at the heels of the
housemaid, and stood by the side of her father, her plate well
behind her.

"Well, my little maid, won't you shake hands with me?  What is
your name?" said Colonel Bryant, tapping her cheek playfully.

Nell looked up with shy, lovely eyes.

"Elinor Woolcot, but they call me Nell," she said, holding out
her left hand, since her right was occupied with the plate.

"What a little barbarian you are, Nell!" laughed her father; but
he gave her a quick, annoyed glance.  "Where is your right hand?"

She drew it slowly from behind and held out the cracked old plate.
"I thought perhaps you would give me some fowl too," she said--
"just a leg or a wing, or bit of breast would do."

The Captain's brow darkened.  "What is the meaning of this?  Pip
has just been to me, too.  Have you nothing to eat in the
nursery?

Only bread and butter, very thick," sighed Nellie.

Esther suppressed a smile with difficulty.

"But you had dinner, all of you, at one o'clock."

"Boiled mutton and carrots and rice pudding, said Nell mournfully.

Captain Woolcot severed a leg almost savagely and put it on her
plate.

"Now run away; I don't know what has possessed you two to-night."

Nellie reached the door, then turned back.

"Oh, if you would just give me a wing for poor Meg--Judy had some
of Pip's, but Meg hasn't any," she said, with a beautiful look of
distress that quite touched Colonel Bryant.

Her father bit his lip, hacked off a wing in ominous silence, and
put it upon her plate.

"Now run away,-and don't let me.have any more of this nonsense--
dear."  The last word was a terrible effort.

Nell's appearance with the two portions of fowl was hailed with
uproarious applause in the nursery; Meg was delighted with her
share; cut apiece off for Baby, and the meal went on merrily.

"Where's Bunty? ", said Nell, pausing suddenly with a very clean
drumstick in her fingers, "because I HOPE he hasn't gone
too; someway I don't think Father was very pleased, especially
as that man was there."

But that small youth had done so, and returned presently
crestfallen.

He wouldn't give me any--he told me to go away, and the man
laughed, and Esther said we were very naughty--1 got some
feathered potatoes, though, from the table outside the door."

He opened his dirty little hands and dropped the uninviting
feathered delicacy out upon the cloth.

"Bunty, you're a pig," sighed Meg, looking up from her book.
She always read at the table, and this particular story was
about some very refined, elegant girls.

"Pig yourself all of you've had fowl but me, you greedy things!"
retorted Bunty fiercely, and eating, his potato very fast.

"No, the General hasn't," said Judy and the old mischief light
sprang up suddenly into her dark eyes.

"Now, Judy!" said Meg warningly; she knew too well what that
particular sparkle meant.

Oh, I'm not going to hurt you, you dear old thing," said Miss Judy,
dancing down the room and bestowing a pat on her sister's fair head
as she passed.  "It's only the General, who's after havin' a bit
o' fun."

She lifted him up out of the high chair, where he had been sitting
drumming on the table with a spoon and eating sugar in the
intervals.

"It's real action you're going for to see, General," she said,
dancing to the door with him.

"Oh, Judy, what are you going to do?" said Meg entreatingly.

"Ju-Ju!" crowed the General, leaping almost out of Judy's arms,
and scenting,fun with the instinct of a veteran.

Down the passage they went, the other five behind to watch
proceedings.  Judy sat down with him on the last step.

"Boy want chuck-chuck, pretty chuck-chuck? she said insidiously.

"Chuck-chuck, chuck-a-chuck," he gurgled, looking all around
for his favourite friends.

"Dad got lots--all THIS many," said Judy, opening her arms very
wide to denote the number in her father's possession.  "Boydie,
go get them!"

"Chuck-chuck," crowed the General delightedly, and struggling
to his feet--"find chuck-chuck."

"In there," whispered Judy, giving him a gentle push into the
half-open dining-room door; "ask Dad."

Right across the room the baby tottered on fat, unsteady little
legs.

"Are the children ALL possessed to-night, Esther?" said the
Captain, as his youngest-son clutched wildly at his leg and
tried to climb up it.

He looked down into the little dirty, dimpling face.  "Well,
General, and to what do we owe the honour of your presence?"

"Chuck-chuck, chuck-a-chuck, chuck, chuck, chuck," said the.
General, going down promptly upon all fours to seek for the
feathered darlings Judy had said were here.

But Esther gathered up the dear, dirty-faced young rascal and
bore him struggling out of the room.  At the foot of the stairs
she nearly stumbled over the rest of the family.

Oh, you scamps, you bad, wicked imps!" she said, reaching out
to box all their ears, and of course failing.

She sat down on the bottom stair to laugh for a second, then she
handed the General to Pip.  "To-morrow," she said, standing up
and hastily smoothing the rich hair that the General's hands had
clutched gleefully--"to-morrow I shall beat every one of you
with the broomstick."

They watched the train of her yellow' silk dress disappear into
the dining-room again, and returned slowly to the nursery and
their interrupted tea.



CHAPTER III  Virtue Not Always Rewarded


It was not to be expected that such an occurrence could be passed
entirely over, but then again it is difficult to punish seven
children at the same time.  At first Captain Woolcot had requested
Esther to ask Miss Marsh, the governess, to give them all ten
French verbs to learn; but, as Judy pointed out, the General
and Baby and Bunty and Neil had not arrived at the dignity of
French verbs yet, so such a punishment would beiniquitous.
The sentence therefore had not been quite decided upon as yet,
and everyone felt in an uncomfortable state of suspense.

"Your father says you're a disgraceful tribe," said the young
stepmother slowly, sitting down on the nursery rocking-chair
a day later.  She had on a trailing morning wrapper of white
muslin with cherry ribbons, but there was a pin doing duty
for a button in one or two places and the lace was hanging
off a bit at the sleeve.

"Meg, dear, you're very untidy, you know, and Judy's absolutely
hopeless."

Meg was attired in an unbecoming green cashmere, with the elbows
out and the plush torn off in several places, while Judy's
exceedingly scant and faded pink zephyr had rents in several
places, and the colour was hardly to be seen for fruit-stains.

Meg coloured a little.  I know, Esther, and I'd like to be
nicely -dressed as well as anyone, but it really isn't worth
mending these old things."

She picked up her book about the elegant girls who were
disturbing her serenity and went over to the armchair with it.

"Well, Judy, you go and sew up those rents, and put some buttons
on your frock."  Esther spoke with unusual determination.

Judy's eyes snapped and sparkled.

"'Is that a dagger that I see before me, the handle to my hand?
Come, let me grasp it,'" she said saucily, snatching one of the
pins from Esther's dress, fastening her own with it, and dropping
a curtsey.

Esther reddened a little now.

"That's the General, Judy: he always pulls the buttons off my
wrappers when I play with him.  But I'm forgetting.  Children,
I have bad news for you."

There was a breathless silence.  Everyone crowded round her knees.

"Sentence has been proclaimed," said Judy dramatically: "let us
shave our heads and don sackcloth."

"Your father says he cannot allow such conduct to go unpunished,
especially as you have all been unusually tiresome lately;
therefore: you are all--

"To be taken away and hanged by the neck until we are dead! "

"Be quiet, Judy.  I have tried my best to beg you off, but it
only makes him more vexed.  He says you are the untidiest, most
unruly lot of children in Sydney, and he will punish you each time
you do anything, and--"

"There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

"Oh, shut up, Judy!  Can't you let us hear?"  Pip put his hand
over her mouth and held her by the hair while Esther told the
news.

"None of you are to go to the pantomime.  The seats were taken for
Thursday night, and now, you very foolish children, you will all
have to stay at home."

There was a perfect howl of dismay for a minute or two.  They had
all been looking forward to this treat for nearly a month, and the
disappointment was a really bitter one to them all.

"Oh, I say, Esther, that's too bad, really!  All the fellows at
school have been."  Pip's handsome face flushed angrily.  "And for
such a little thing, too!"

"Just because you had roast fowl for dinner," said Judy, in a
half-choked voice.  "Oh, Esther, why couldn't you have had cow,
or horse, or hippopotamus--anything but roast fowl?  "

"Couldn't you get round him, Esther?"  Meg looked anxiously at
her.

"Dear Esther, do!"

"Oh, you sweet, beautiful Essie, do try!"

They clung round her eagerly.  Baby flung her arms round her neck
and nearly choked her; Nell stroked her cheek; Pip patted her
back, and besought her to "be a good fellow"; Bunty buried his
nose in her back hair and wept a silent tear; Meg clasped her hand
in an access of unhappiness; the General gave a series of delighted
squeaks; and Judy in her wretchedness smacked him for his pains.

Esther would do her best, beg as she had never done before, coax,
beseech, wheedle, threaten; and they let her go at last with that
assurance. '

"Only I'd advise you all to be preternaturally good and quiet
all day," she said, looking back from the doorway.  "That would
have most effect with him, and he is going to be at home all day."

GOOD!  It was absolutely painful to witness the virtue of those
children for the rest of the day.

It was holiday-time, and Miss Marsh was away, but not once did
the sound of quarrelling, or laughing, or crying fly down
to the lower regions.

"'Citizens of Rome, the eyes of the world are upon you!'"
Judy had said solemnly, and all had promised so to conduct
themselves that their father's heart could not fail to be melted.

Pip put on his school jacket, brushed his hair, took a pile of
school books, and proceeded to the study where his father was
writing letters, and where he was allowed to do his home-lessons.

"Well, what do you want?" said the Captain, with a frown.  "No,
it's no good coming to the about that pup, sir--I won't have you
keep it."

"I came to study, sir," said Pip mildly.  "I feel I'm a bit
backward with my mathematics, so I won't waste all the holidays,
when I'm costing you so much in school fees."

The Captain gave a little gasp and looked hard at Pip; but the
boy's face was so unsmiling and earnest that he was disarmed,
and actually congratulated himself that his eldest son was at
last seeing the error of his ways.

"There arc those sets of problems in that drawer that I did when
I was at school," he said graciously.  "If they are of any use
to you, you can get them out.

"Thanks awfully--they will be a great help," said Pip gratefully.

He examined them with admiration plainly depicted upon his face.

"How very clearly and correctly you worked, Father," he said
with a sigh.  "I wonder if ever I'll get as good as this!  How
old were you, Father, when you did them?"

"About your age," said the Captain, picking up the papers.

He examined them with his head on one side.  He was rather proud
of them, seeing he had utterly forgotten now how to work decimal
fractions, and could not have done a quadratic equation to save his
life.

"Still, I don't think you need be quite discouraged, Pip.  I was
rather beyond the other boys in my class in these subjects, I
remember.  We can't all excel in the same thing, and I'm glad to
see you are beginning to realize the importance of work."

"Yes, Father."

Meg had betaken herself to the drawing-room, and was sitting on the
floor before the music canterbury with scissors, thimble, and a
roll of narrow blue ribbon on her knee, and all her father's songs,
that he so often complained were falling to pieces, spread out
before her.

He saw her once as he passed the door, and looked surprised and
pleased.

"Thank you, Margaret: they wanted it badly.  I am glad you can
make yourself useful, after all," he said.

"Yes, Father."

Meg stitched on industriously.

He went batik to his study, where Pip's head was at a studious,
absorbed angle, and pyramids of books and sheaves of paper were
on the table.  He wrote two more letters, and there came a little
knock at the door.

"Come in," he called; and there entered Nell.

She was carrying very carefully a little tray covered with a
snow-white doyley, and on it were a glass of milk and a plate
of mulberries."  She placed it before him.

"I thought perhaps you would like a little lunch, Father," she
said gently; and Pip was seized with a sudden coughing fit.

"My DEAR child!" he said.

He looked at it very thoughtfully.

"The last glass of milk I had, Nellie, was when I was Pip's age,
and was Barlow's fag at Rugby.  It made me ill, and I have never
touched it since."

"But this won't hurt you.  You will drink this?"  She gave him one
of her most beautiful looks.

"I would as soon drink the water the maids wash up in, my child."
He took a mulberry, ate it, and made a wry face.  "They're not,
fit to eat."

"After you've eaten about six you don't notice they're sour,"
she said eagerly.  But he pushed them away.

"I'll take your word for it."  Then he looked at her curiously.
"What made you think of bringing me anything, Nellie?  I don't
ever remember you doing so before."

"I thought you might be hungry writing here so long," she said
gently; and Pip choked again badly, and she withdrew.

Outside in the blazing sunshine Judy was mowing the lawn.

They only kept one man, and, as his time was so taken up with the
horses and stable work generally, the garden was allowed to fall
into neglect.  More than once the Captain had spoken vexedly of
the untidy lawns, and said he was ashamed for visitors to come to
the house.

So Judy, brimming over with zeal, armed herself with an abnormally
large scythe, and set to work on the long, long grass.

"Good heavens, Helen! you'll cut your legs off!" called her
father, in an agitated tone.

He had stepped out on to the front veranda for a mild cigar after
the mulberry just as she brought her scythe round with an
admirable sweep and decapitated a whole army of yellow-helmeted
dandelions.

She turned and gave him a beautiful smile.  "Oh, no, Father!--why,
I'm quite a dab at mowing."

She gave it another alarming but truly scientific sweep.

"See that--and th-a-at--and tha-a-a-at!"

"Th-a-at" carried off a fragment of her dress, and "tha-a-a-at"
switched off the top of a rose-bush; but there are details to
everything, of course.

"Accidents WILL happen, even to the best regulated grass-cutters,"
she said composedly, and raising the scythe for a fresh circle.

"Stop immediately, Helen!  Why ever can't you go and play quietly
with your doll, and not do things like this?" said her father

irascibly.

"An' I was afther doin' it just to pleasure him," she said,
apparently addressing the dandelions.

"Well, it won't 'pleasure him' to have to provide you with cork
legs and re-stock the garden," he said dryly: "Put it down."

"Sure, an' it's illigence itsilf this side: you wouldn't be
afther leaving half undone, like a man with only one cheek shaved."

Judy affected an Irish brogue at some occult reason of her own.

"Sure an' if ye'd jist stip down and examine it yirself, it's
quite aisy ye'd be in yer moind."

The Captain hid a slight smile in his moustache.  The little girl
looked so comical, standing there in her short old pink frock, a
broken-brimmed hat on her tangle of dark curls, her eyes
sparkling, her face flushed, the great scythe in her hands, and the
saucy words on her lips.

He came down and examined it: it was done excellently well, like
most of the things miss Judy attempted--mischief always included:
and her little black-stockinged legs were still in a good state of
preservation.

"Hum!  Well, you can finish it then, as Pat's busy.  How did you
learn to mow, young lady of wonderful accomplishments?" (he looked
at her questioningly); "and what made you set yourself such a task?."

Judy gave her curls a quick push off her hot forehead.

"(A) Faix, it was inborn in me," she answered instantly; "and
 (B)--sure, and don't I lo-o-ove you and delaight to plaize you?"

He went in again slowly, thoughtfully.  Judy always mystified
him.  He understood her the least of any of his children, and
sometimes the thought of her worried him.  At present she was only
a sharp, clever, and frequently impertinent child; but he felt
she was utterly different from the other six, and it gave him
an aggrieved kind of feeling  when he thought about it, which was
not very often.

He remembered her own mother had often said she trembled for
Judy's future.  That restless fire of hers that shone out of her
dancing eyes, and glowed scarlet on her cheeks in excitement, and
lent amazing energy and activity to her young, lithe body, would
either make a noble, daring, brilliant woman of her, or else she
would be shipwrecked on rocks the others would never come to, and
it would flame up higher and higher and consume her.

"Be careful of Judy" had been almost the last words of the anxious
mother when, in the light that comes when the world's is going out,
she had seen with terrible clearness the stones and briars in the
way of that particular pair of small, eager feet."

And she had died, and Judy was stumbling right amongst them now,
and her father could not "be careful " of her because he
absolutely did not know how.

As he went up the veranda steps again and through the hall, he was
wishing almost prayerfully she had not been cast in so different a
mould from the others, wishing he could stamp out that strange
flame in her that made him so uneasy at times.  He gave a great
puff at his cigar, and sighed profoundly; then he turned on his
heel and went off toward the stables to forget it all.

The man was away, exercising one of the horses in the long paddock;
but there was something stirring in the harness-room, so he went
in.

There was a little, dripping wet figure standing over a great
bucket, and.dipping something in and out with charming vigour.

At the sound of his footsteps, Baby turned round and lifted a
perspiring little face to his.

"I'se washing the kitsies for you, and Flibberty-Gibbet," she said
beamingly.

He took a horrified step forward.

There were two favourite kittens of his, shivering, miserable,
up to their necks in a lather of soapy water; and Flibberty-Gibbet,
the beautiful little fox terrier he had just bought for his wife,
chained to a post, also wet, miserable, and woebegone, also
undergoing the cleansing process, and being scrubbed and
swilled till his very reason was tottering.

"They'se SO clean and nicey--no horrid ole fleas 'n them now.
AREN't you glad?  You can let Flibberty go on your bed now, and
Kitsy Blackeye is---"

Poor Baby never finished her speech.  She had a confused idea of
hearing a little "swear-word" from her father, of being shaken in
a most ungentle fashion and put outside the stable, while the
unfortunate animals were dried and treated with great consideration.

But the worst was yet to come, and the results were so exceedingly
bad that the young Woolcots determined never again to assume virtues
that they had not.

Bunty, of course, desired to help the cause as strongly as the
others, and to that end his first action was to go into his
bedroom and perform startling ablutions with his face, neck, and
hands.  Then he took his soap-shiny countenance and red, much
bescrubbed hands downstairs, and sunned himself under his
father's very nose, hoping to attract favourable comment.

But he was bidden irritably "go and play," and saw he would
have to find fresh means of appeasement.

He wandered into the study, with vague thoughts of tidying
the tidy bookshelves; but Pip vas there, surrounded with books
and whittling a stick for a catapult, so he went out again.
Then he climbed the stairs and explored his father's bedroom
and dressing-room.  In the latter there was a wide field for his
operations.  A full-dress uniform was lying across a chair, and it
struck Bunty the gold buttons were looking less bright than they
should, so he spent a harmless quarter of an hour in polishing
them up.  Next, he burnished some spurs, which also was harmless.
Then he east about for fresh employment.

There was quite a colony of dusty boots in one corner of the
room, and there was a great bottle of black, treacly looking
varnish on the mantelpiece.  Bunty conceived the brilliant idea of
cleaning the whole lot and standing them in a neat row to meet his
father's delighted eyes.  He found a handkerchief on the floor, of
superfine cambric, though dirty, poured upon it a liberal allowance
of varnish, and attacked the first pair.

A bright polish rewarded him, for they were patent leather ones;
but the next and the next and the next would not shine, however
hard he rubbed.  There was a step on the stair, the firm, well-known
step of his father, and he paused a moment with a look of
conscious virtue on his small shiny face.

But it fled all at once, and a look of horror replaced it.  He had
stuck the bottle on a great armchair for convenience, as he was
sitting on the floor, and now he noticed it had fallen on its side
and a black, horrid stream was issuing from its neck.

And it was the chair with the uniform on, and one of the sleeves
was soaked with the stuff, and the beautiful white shirt that
lay there, too, waiting for a button, was sticky, horrible!
Bunty gave a wild, terrified look round the room for some place
to efface himself, but there were no sheltering corners or curtains,
and there was not time to get into the bedroom and under the bed.
Near the window was a large-sized medicine chest, and in despair
Bunty crushed himself into it, his legs huddled up, his head
between his knees, and an ominous rattle of displaced bottles
in his ears.  The next minute his father was in the room.

"Great Heavens!  God bless my soul!" he said, and Bunty shivered
from head to foot.

Then he said a lot of things very quickly--"foreign language" as
Judy clled it; kicked something over, and hsouted "Esther!" in a
terrifying tone.  But Esther was down in one of the paddocks with
the General, so htere was no reply.

More foreign language, more stomping about.

bunty's teeth chattered noisily; he put up his hand to hold
his mouth together, and the cupboard, overbalanced, fell right
over, precipitating its occupant right at his father's feet,
and the bottles everywhere.

"I didn't--I haven't--'twasn't me--'twasn't my fault!" he
howled, backing towards the door.  "Hoo--yah--boo-hoo-ooo!
Esther--boo--yah--Judy--oh--oh--h! oh--oh--h--h--h--h!"
As might be expected, his father had picked up a strap that
lay conveniently near, and was giving his son a very fair
taste of it.


"Oh--h--h--h! o--o--h! o--o--h! ah--h--h! 'twasn't me--
'twasn't my fault--its Pip and Judy--oh--h--h--h! hoo--the
pant'mime! boo-hoo! ah--h--h--h--you're killing me! hoo-boo!
I was only d--doin' it--oh--hoo--ah--h--h! d--oin' it to
p--please--boo--oo--oo! to p--please you!"

His father paused with uplifted strap.  "And that's why all
the others are behaving in so strange a fashion?  Just for me
to take them to the pantomime?"

Bunty wriggled himself free.  "Boo--hoo--yes! but not me--I
didn't--I never--true's faith--oh-h-h-hoo-yah! it wasn't my
fault, it's all the others--boo--hoo--hoo! hit them the rest."

He got three more smart cuts, and then fled howling and yelling
to the nursery, where he fell on the floor and kicked and rolled
about as if he were half killed.

"You sn--n--n--n--neaks!" he sobbed, addressing the others,
who had flown from all parts at his noisy outcry, "you m-m---
mean p--p--p--pigs! I h--hadn't n--n--no fo--o--ow-l, and I've
h--h--had all the b--b--b--beating! y--you s--s--sn--n-neaks!
oh--h--h--h! ah--h--h--h! oh--h--h--h! oh--h--h-h! I'm b--b--
bleeding all over, I kno--o--o--ow!"

They couldn't help laughing a bit; Bunty was always so
irresistibly comic when he was hurt ever so little; but still
they comforted him as well as they could, and tried to find out
what had happened.

Esther came in presently, looking very worried.  "Well?" they
said in a breath.

"You really are the most exasperating children," she said
vexedly.

"But he pantomime--quick, Esther--have you asked him?" they
cried impatiently.

"The pantomime!  He says he would rather make it worth Mr.
Rignold's while to take it off the boards than that one of you
should catch a glimpse of it--and it serves you very well right!
Meg, for goodness' sake give Baby some dry clothes--just look
at her; and, Judy, if you have any feeling for me, take off
that frock.  Bunty, you wicked boy, I'll call your father if
you don't stop that noise.  Nell, take the scissors from the
General, he'll poke his eyes out, bless him."

The young stepmother leaned back in her chair and looked round
her tragically.  She had never seen her husband so thoroughly
angered, and her beautiful lips quivered when she remembered how
he had seemed to blame her for it all.

Meg hadn't moved; the water was trickling slowly off Baby's
clothes and making a pool on the floor, Bunty was still giving
vent to spasmodic boos and hoos, Judy was whistling stormily,
and the General, mulcted of the scissors, was licking his own
muddy shoe all over with his dear little red tongue.

A sob rose in her throat, two tears welled up in her eyes and
fell down her smooth, lovely cheeks.  "Seven of you, and I'm only
twenty!" she said pitifully.  "Oh! it's too bad--oh dear! it
is too bad."



CHAPTER IV  The General Sees Active Service

"My brain it teems
With endless schemes,
Both good and new."


It was a day after "the events narrated in the last chapter,"
as story-book parlance has it.  And Judy, with a wrathful look in
her eyes, was sitting on the nursery table, her knees touching her
chin and her thin brown hands clasped round them.

"It's a shame," she said, "it's a burning, wicked shame!
What's the use of fathers in the world, I'd like to know!"

"Oh, Judy!" said Meg, who was curled up in an armchair, deep in
a book.  But she said it mechanically, and only as a matter of
duty, being three years older than Judy.

"Think of the times we could have if he didn't live with us,"
Judy continued, calmly disregardful.  "Why, we'd have fowl
three times a day, and the pantomime seven nights a week."

Nell suggested that it was not quite usual to have pantomimic
performances on the seventh day, but Judy was not daunted:

"I'd have a kind of church pantomime," she said thoughtfully--
"beautiful pictures and things about the Holy Land, and the
loveliest music, and beautiful children in white, singing hymns,
and bright colours all about, and no collection plates to take
your only threepenny bit-oh! and no sermons or litanies, of course."

"Oh, Judy!" murmured Meg, turning a leaf.  Judy unclasped her
hands, and then clasped them again more tightly than before.
"Six whole tickets wasted--thirty beautiful shillings--just
because we have a fatherl"

"He sent them to the Digby-Smiths," Bunty volunteered, "and wrote
on the envelope, 'With eompts. J. C. Woolcot.'

Judy moaned.  "Six horrid little Digby-Smiths sitting in the
theatre watching our fun with their six horrid little eyes," she
said bitterly.

Bunty, who was mathematically inclined, wanted to know why they
wouldn't look at it through their twelve horrid little eyes, and
Judy laughed and came down from the table, after expressing a
wicked wish that the little Digby-Smiths might all tumble over the
dress-circle rail before the curtain rose.  Meg shut her book with
a hurried bang.

"Has Pip gone yet?  Father'll be awfully cross.  Oh dear, what a
head I've got!" she said.  "Where's Esther?  Has anyone seen Esther?"

"My DEAR Meg!" Judy said; "why, it's at least two hours since
Esther went up the drive before your very nose.  She's gone to
Waverly--why, she came in and told you, and said she trusted you
to see about the coat, and you said, 'M--'m! all right.'"

Meg gave a startled look of recollection.  "Did I have to clean
it?" she asked in a frightened tone, and pushing her fair hair
back from her forehead.  "Oh, girls! what WAS it I had to do?"

"Clean with benzine, iron while wet, put in a cool place to keep
warm, and bake till brown," said Judy promptly.  "SURELY you
heard, Margaret?  Esther was at such pains to explain."

Meg ruffled her hair again despairingly.  "What shall I do?" she
said, actual tears springing to her eyes.  "What will Father
say?  Oh, Judy, you might have reminded me."

Nell slipped an arm round her neck.  "She's only teasing,
Megsie; Esther did it and left it ready in the hall--you've only
to give it to Pip.  Pat has to take the dogcart into town this
afternoon to have the back seat mended, and Pip's going in it,
too, that's all, and they're putting the horse in now; you're
not late."

It was the coat Bunty had done his best to spoil that all
the trouble was about.  It belonged, as I said, to the Captain's
full-dress uniform, and was wanted for a dinner at the Barracks
this same evening.  And Esther had been sponging and cleaning
at it all the morning, and had left directions that it was to be
taken to the Barracks in the afternoon.

Presently the dogcart came spinning round to the door in great
style, Pip driving and Pat looking sulkily on.  They took the
coat parcel and put it carefully under the seat, and were
preparing to start again, when Judy came out upon the veranda,
holding the General in an uncomfortable position in her arms.

"You come, too, Fizz, there's heaps of room--there's no reason you
shouldn't," Pip said suddenly.  "Oh--h--h!" said Judy, her eyes
sparkling.  She took a rapid step forward and lifted her foot to
get in.

"Oh, I say!" remonstrated Pip, "you'll have to put on something
over that dress, old girl--it's all over jam and things."

Judy shot herself into the hall and returned with her ulster; she
set the General on the floor for a minute while she donned it,
then picked him up and handed him up to Pip.

"He'll have to come, too," she said; "I promised Esther I
wouldn't let him out of my sight for a minute; she's getting
quite nervous about him lately--thinks he'll get broken."

Pip grumbled a minute or two, but the General gave a gurgling,
captivating laugh and held up his arms, so he took him up and
held him while Judy clambered in.

"We can come back in the tram to the Quay, and then get a boat
back," she said, squeezing the baby on the seat between them.
"The General loves going on the water."

Away they sped; down the neglected carriage drive, out of the
gates, and away down the road.  Pip, Judy of the shining eyes,
the General devouring his thumb, and Pat smiling-faced once more
because in possession of the reins.

A wind from the river swept through the belt of gum trees on the
Crown lands, and sent the young red blood leaping through their
veins; it played havoc with Judy's curls, and dyed her brown
cheeks a warm red; it made the General kick and laugh and grow
restive, and caused Pip to stick his hat on the back of his head
and whistle joyously.

Until town was reached, when they were forced to yield
somewhat to the claims of conventionality.  On the way to
Paddington a gentleman on horseback slackened pace a little.
Pip took off his hat with a flourish, and Judy gave a frank,
pleased smile, for it was a certain old Colonel they had known
for years, and had cause to remember his good-humour and
liberality.

"Well, my little maid--well, Philip, lad," he said, smiling
genially, while his horse danced round the dogcart--"and the
General too--where are you all off to?

"The Barracks--I'm taking something up for the governor," Pip
answered, Judy was watching the plunging horse with admiring eyes.
"And then we're going back home."

The old gentleman managed, in spite of the horse's tricks, to
slip his hand in his pocket.  "Here's something to make yourselves
ill with on the way," he said, handing them two half-crowns; "but
don't send me the doctor's bill."

He flicked the General's cheek with his whip, gave Judy a nod, and
cantered off.

The children looked at each other with sparkling eyes.

"Coconuts," Pip said, "and tarts and toffee, and save the rest for
a football?"  Judy shook her head.  "Where do I come in?" she said.
"You'd keep the football at school.  I vote pink jujubes, and icecreams,
and a wax doll."

"A wax grandmother!" Pip retorted; "you wouldn't be such a girl, I
hope."  Then he added, with almost pious fervour, "Thank goodness
you've always hated dolls, Fizz."

Judy gave a sudden leap in her seat, almost upsetting the General,
and bringing down upon her head a storm of reproaches from the
coachman.  "I know!" she said; "and we're almost halfway there
now.  Oh--h--h! it will be lovely."

Pip urged her to explain herself.

"Bondi Aquarium--skating, boats, merry-go-round, switchback
threepence a go!" she returned succinctly.

"Good iron," Pip whisded softly, while he revolved the thing
in his mind.  "There'd be something over, too, to get some tucker
with, and perhaps something for the football, too."  Then his
brow clouded.

"There's the kid--whateverdid you go bringing him for?  Just
like a gir to spoil everyihing!" Judy looked nonplussed.
I quite forgot him," she said, vexedly.  "Couldn't we leave
him somewhere?  Couldn't we ask someone to take care of him
while we go?  Oh, it would be TOO bad to have to give it up
just because of him.  It's beginning to rain, too; we couldn't
take him with us.

They were at the foot of Barrack Hill now, and Pat told them
they muust get out and walk the rest of the way up, or he would
never get the dogcart finished to take back that evening.

Pip tumbled out and took the General, all in a  bunched-up heap,
and Judy alighted carefully after him, the precious coat parcel
in her arms.  And they walked up the asphalt hill to the
gate leading to the officers' quarters in utter silence.

"Well?" Pip said querulously, as they reached the top.  "Be
quick; haven't you thought of anything?"

That levelling of brows, and pursing of lips, always meant deep
and intricate calculation on his sister's part, as he knew full
well.

"Yes," Judy said quietly.  "I've got a plan that will do, I think."
Then a sudden fire entered her manner.

"Who is the General's father?  Tell me that," she said, in a
rapid, eager way; "and isn't it right and proper fathers should
look after their sons?  And doesn't he deserve we should get
even with him for doing us out of the pantomime?  And isn't the
Aquarium too lovely to miss?"

"Well?"  Pip said; his slower brain did not follow such rapid
reasoning.

"Only I'm going to leave the General here at the Barracks for a
couple of hours till we come back, his father being the proper
person to watch over him."  Judy grasped the General's small.
fat hand in a determined way, and opened the gate.

"Oh, I say," remarked Pip, "we'll get in an awful row, you know,
Fizz.  I don't think we'd better--I don"t really, old girl."

"Not a bit," said Judy, stoutly--" at least, only a bit, and
the Aquarium's worth that.  Look how it's raining; the child will
get croup, or rheumatism, or something if we take him; there's
Father standing over on the green near the tennis-court talking to
a man.  I'll slip quietly along the veranda and into his own room,
and put the coat and the General on the bed; then I'll tell a
soldier to go and tell Father his parcels have come; and while
he's gone I'll fly back to you, and we'll catch the tram
and go to the Aquarium."

Pip whistled again softly.  He was used to bold proposals from
this sister of his, but this was beyond everything.  "B--b--but,"
he said uneasily, "but, Judy, whatever would he do with that kid for
two mortal hours?"

"Mind him," Judy returned promptly.  "It's a pretty thing if a
father can't mind his own child for two hours.  Afterwards, you
see, when we've been to the Aquarium, we will come back and fetch
him, and we can explain to Father how it was raining, and that we
thought we'd better not take him with us for fear of rheumatism,
and that we were in a hurry to catch the tram, and as he wasn't
in his room we just put him on the bed till he came.  Why, Pip,
it's beautifully simple!"

Pip still looked uncomfortable.  "I don't like it, Fizz," he said
again; "he'll be in a fearful wax."

Judy gave him one exasperated look.  "Go and see if that's the
Bondi tram coming," she said; and glad of a moment's respite,
he went down the path again to the pavement and looked down
the hill.  When he turned round again she had gone.

He stuck his hands in his pockets ancd walked up and down the path
a few times.  "Fizz'll get us hanged yet," he muttered, looking
darkly at the door in the wall through which she had disappeared.
He pushed his hat to the back of hiss head and stared gloomily
at his boots, wondering what would be the consequences of this
new mischief.  There was a light footfall beside him.

"Come on," said Judy, pulling his sleeve; "it's done now, come on,
let's go and have our fun; have you got the money safe?  "

It was two o'clock as they passed out of the gate and turned
their faces up, the hill to the tram stopping-place.  And it was
half-past four when they jumped out of a town-bound tram and
entered the gates again to pick up their charge.

Such an afternoon as they had had!  Once inside the Aquarium,
even Pip had put his conscience qualms on one side, and bent all
his energies to enjoying himself thoroughly.  And Judy was like
a little mad thing.  She spent a shilling of her money on the
switchback railway, pronouncing the swift, bewildering motion
"heavenly."  The first journey made Pip feel sick, so he
eschewed a repetition of it, and watched Judy go off from time to
time, waving gaily from the perilous little car, almost with his
heart in his mouth.  Then they.hired a pair of roller skates each,
and bruised themselves black and blue with heavy falls on the
asphalt.  After that they had a ride on the merry-go-round, but
Judy found it tame after the switchbaek, and refused to squander
a second threepence upon it, contenting herself with watching Pip
fly round, and madly running by his side, to keep up as long as
she could.  They finished the afternoon with a prolonged
inspection of the fish-tanks, a light repast of jam tarts of
questionable freshness, and twopennyworth of peanuts.  And, as
I said, it was half-past four as they hastened up the path again
to the top gate of the Barracks.

"I hope he's been good," Judy said, as she turned the handle.
"Yes, you come, too, Pip"--for that young gentleman hung back one
agonized second.  "Twenty kicks or blows divided by two only make
ten, you see."

They went up the long stone veranda and stopped at one door.

There was a little knot of young officers laughing and talking
close by.

"Take my word, 'twas as good as a play to see Wooly grabbing his
youngster, and stuffing it into a cab, and getting in himself, all
with a look of ponderous injured dignity," one said, and laughed
at the recollection.

Another blew away a cloud of cigar smoke.  "It was a jolly little
beggar," he said.  "It doubled its fists and landed His High
Mightiness one in the eye; and then its shoe dropped off, and
we all rushed to pick it up, and it was muddy and generally
dilapidated, and old Wooly went red slowly up to his ear-tips as
he tried to put it on."

A little figure stepped into the middle of the group--a little
figure with an impossibly short and shabby ulster, thin
black-stockinged legs, and a big hat crushed over a tangle of
curls.

"It is my father you are speaking of," she said, her head very
high, her tone haughty, "and I cannot tell where your amusement is.
Is my father here, or did I hear you say he had gone away?

Two of the men looked foolish, the third took off his cap.

" I am sorry you should have overheard us, Miss Woolcot," he
said pleasantly.  "Still, there is no irreparable harm done, is
there?  Yes, your father has gone away in a cab.  He couldn't
imagine how the little boy carne on his bed, and, as he couldn't
keep him here very well, I suppose he has taken him home."

Something like a look of shame came into Judy's bright eyes,

"I am afraid I must have put my father to some inconvenienoe,"
she said quietly.  "It was I who left the Gen--my brother here,
because I didn't know what to do with him for an hour or two.
But I quite meant to take him home myself.  Has he been gone
long?"

"About half an hour," the officer said, and tried not to look
amused at the little girl's old-fashioned manner.

"Ah, thank you.  Perhaps we can catch him up.  Come on, Pip,"
and, nodding in a grave, distant manner, she turned away, and
went down the veranda and through the gate with her brother.

"A nice hole we're in," he said.

Judy nodded.

"It's about the very awfullest thing we've ever done in our lives.
Fancy the governor carting that child all the way from here!  Oh,
lor'!"

Judy nodded again.

"Can't you speak?" he said irritably.  "You've got us into this--
I didn't want to do it; but I'll stand by you, of course.  Only
you'll have to think of something quick."

Judy bit three finger-tips off her right-hand glove, and looked
melancholy.

"There's absolutely nothing to do, Pip," she said slowly.  "I
didn't think it would turn out like this.  I suppose we'd better
just go straight back and hand ourselves over for punishment.
He'll be too angry to hear any sort of an excuse, so we'd better
just grin and hear whatever he does to us.  I'm really sorry, too,
that I made a laughing-stock of him up there."

Pip was explosive.  He called her a little ass and a gowk and a
stupid idiot for doing such a thing, and she did not reproach him
or answer back once.

They caught a tram and went into Sydney, and afterwards to the
boat.  They ensconced themselves in a corner at the far end, and
discussed the state of affairs with much seriousness.  Then Pip got
up and, strolled about a little to relieve his feelings, coming
back in a second with a white, scared face.

"He's on the boat," he said, in a horrified whisper.

"Where-where--where? what--what--what?" Judy cried, unintentionally
mimicking a longburied monarch.

"In the cabin, looking as glum as a boiled wallaby, and hanging
on to the poor little General as if he thinks he'll fly away."

Judy looked a little frightened for the first time.  "Can't we
hide?  Don't let him see us.  It wouldn't be any good offering to
take the General now.  We're in for it now,, Pip--there'll be no
quarter."

Pip groaned; then Judy stood up.

"Let's creep down as far as the engine," she said, and see if he
does look very bad."

They made their way cautiously along the deck, and took up a
position where they could see without being seen.  The dear
little General was sitting on the seat next to his stern father,
who had a firm hold of the back of his woolly-pelisse.  He was
sucking his little dirty hand, and casting occasional longing
glances at his tan shoe, which he knew was delicious to bite.
Once or twice he had pulled it off and conveyed it to his mouth,
but his father intercepted it, and angrily buttoned it on again
in its rightful place.  He wanted, too, to slither off the horrid
seat, and crawl all over the deck, and explore the ground under
the seats, and see where the puffing noise came from; but there
was that iron grasp on his coat that no amount of wriggling would
move.  No wonder the poor child looked unhappy!

At last the boat stopped at a wharf not far from Misrule, and the
Captain alighted, carrying his small dirty son gingerly in his
arms.  He walked slowly up the red road along which the dogcart
had sped so blithesomely some six or seven hours ago, and Judy
and Pip followed at a respectful--a very respectful--distance.
At the gate he saw them, and gave a large, angry beckon for them
to come up.  Judy went very white, but obeyed instantly, and Pip,
pulling himself together, brought up the rear.

Afterwards Judy only had a very indistinct remembrance of what
happened during the next half-hour.  She knew there was a stormy
scene, in which Esther and the whole family came in for an
immense amount of vituperation.

Then Pip received a thrashing, in spite of Judy's persistent avowal
that it was all her fault, and Pip hadn't done anything.  She
remembered wondering whether she would be treated as summarily as
Pip, so angry was her father's face as he pushed the boy aside
and stood looking at her, riding whip in hand.  But he flung
it, down and laid a heavy hand on her shrinking shoulder.

"Next Monday," he said slowly--"next Monday morning you will
go to boarding school.  Esther, kindly see Helen's clothes are
ready for boarding school--next Monday morning."



CHAPTER V  "Next Monday Morning"


There was a trunk standing in the hall, and a large, much-travelled
portmanteau, and there were labels on them that said: "Miss Helen
Woolcot, The Misses Burton, Mount Victoria."

In the nursery breakfast was proceeding spasmodically.  Meg's
blue eyes were all red and swollen with crying, and she was still
sniffing audibly as she poured out the coffee.  Pip had his hands
in his pockets and stood on the hearthrug, looking gloomily at a
certain plate, and refusing breakfast altogether; the General was
crashing his own mug and plate joyously together; and Bunty
was eating bread and butter in stolid silence.

Judy, white-faced and dry-eyed, was sitting at the table, and Nell
and Baby were clinging to either arm.  All the three days between
that black Thursday and this doleful morning she had been obstinately
uncaring.  Her spirits had never seemed higher, her eyes brighter,
her tongue sharper, than during that interval of days; and she had
pretended to everyone, and her father, that she especially thought
boarding school must be great fun, and that she should enjoy it
immensely.

But this morning she had collapsed altogether.  All the time before,
her hot childish heart had been telling her that her father could
not really be so cruel, that he did not really mean to send her
away among strangers, away from dear, muddled old Misrule and all
her sisters and brothers; he was only saying it to frighten her,
she kept saying to herself, and she would show him she was not
a chickenhearted baby.

But on Sunday night, when she saw a trunk carried downstairs
and filled with her things and labelled with her name, a cold
hand seemed to close about her heart.  Still, she said to herself,
he was doing all this to make it seem more real,

But now it was morning, and she could disbelieve it no longer.
Esther had come to her bedside and kissed her sorrowfully, her
beautiful face troubled and tender.  She had begged as she had
never done before for a remission of poor Judy's sentence, but
the Captain was adamant.  It was she and she only who was always
ringleader in everything; the others would behave when she was not
there to incite them to mischief and go she should.  Besides, he
said, it would be the making of her.  It was an excellent school
he had chosen for her; the ladies who kept it were kind, but very
firm, and Judy was being ruined for want of a firm hand.  Which,
indeed, was in a measure true.

Judy sat bolt upright in bed at the sight of Esther's sorrowful
face.

"It's no good, dear; there's no way out of it," she said gently.
"But you'll go like a brave girl, won't you, Ju-Ju?  You always
were the sort to die game, as Pip says."

Judy gulped down a great lump in her throat, and her poor little
face grew white and drawn.

"It's all right, Essie.  There, you go on down to breakfast,"
she said, in a voice that, only shook a little; "and please
leave the the Gneral, Esther; I'll bring him down with me."

Esther deposited her little fat son on the pillow, and with one
loving backward glance went out of the door.

And Judy pulled the little lad down into her arms, and covered the
bedclothes right over both their heads, and held him in a fierce,
almost desperate clasp for a minute or two, and buried her face
in his soft, dimpled neck, and kissed it till her dips ached.

He fought manfully against these troublesome proceedings, and at
last objected, with an angry scream, to being suffocated.  So she
flung back the clothes and got out of bed, leaving him to burrow
about among the pillows, and pull feathers out of a hole in one
of them.

She dressed in a quick nervous fashion, did her hair with more
care than usual, and then picked up the General and took him along
the passage into the nursery.  All the others were here, and, with
Esther, were evidently discussing her.  The three girls looked
tearful and protesting; Pip had just been brought to book for
speaking disrespectfully of his father, and was looking sullen;
and Bunty, not knowing what else to do at such a crisis, had fallen
to catching flies, and was viciously taking off their wings.

It was a wretched meal: The bell sounded for the downstairs
breakfast, and Esther had to go.  Everyone offered Judy everything
on the table, and spoke gently and politely to her.  She seemed
to be apart from them, a person not to be lightly treated in the
dignity of this great trouble.  Her dress, too, was quite new--
a neat blue serge fresh from the dressmaker's hands; her boots
were blacked and bright, her stockings guiltless of ventilatory
chasms.  All this helped to make her a Judy quite different from
the harum-scarum one of a few days back, who used to come to
breakfast looking as if her clothes had been pitchforked upon her.

Baby addressed herself to her porridge for one minute, but the
next her feelings overcame her, and, with a little wail, she rushed
round the table to Judy, and hung on her arm sobbing.  This
destroyed the balance of the whole company.  Nell got the other arm
and swayed to and fro in an excess of misery. Meg's tears rained
down into her teacup; Pip dug his heel in the hearthrug, and
wondered what was the matter with his eyes; and even Bunty's
appetite for bread and butter diminished.

Judy sat there silent; she had pushed back her unused plate, and
sat regarding it with an expression of utter despair on her
young face.  She looked like a miniature tragedy queen going to
immediate execution.

Presently Bunty got off his chair, covered up his coffee with his
saucer to keep the flies out, and solemnly left the room.  In a
minute he returned with a pickle bottle, containing an enormous
green frog.

"You can have it to keep for your very own, Judy," he said, in a
tone of almost reckless sadness.  "It'll, keep you amused, perhaps,
at school."  Self-sacrifice could go no further, for this frog was
the darling of Bunty's heart.

This stimulated the others; everyone fetched some offering to lay
at Judy's shrine for a keepsake.  Meg brought a bracelet, plaited
out of the hair of a defunct pet pony.  Pip gave his three-bladed
pocketknife.  Nell a pot of musk that she had watered and cherished
for a,year, Baby had a broken-nosed doll, that was the Benjamin of
her large family.

"Put them in the trunk, Meg--there's room on top, I think," Judy
said in a choking voice, and deeply touched by these gifts.  "Oh!
and, Bunty, dear! put a cork over the f--f--frog, will you? it
might get lost, poor thing! in that b--b--big box."

"All right," said Bunty, "You'll take c--c--care of it, w--won't
you, Judy?  Oh dear, oh--h--h!--boo-hoo!"

Then Esther came in, still troubled-looking.  "The dogcart is
round," she said.  "Are you ready, Ju, dearest?  Dear little Judy!
be brave, little old woman."

But Judy was white as death, and utterly limp.  She suffered
Esther to put her hat on, to help her into her new jacket, to put
her gloves into her hand.  She submitted to being kissed by the
whole family, to be half carried downstairs by Esther, to be
kissed again by the girls, then by the two good-natured domestics,
who, in spite of her peccadilloes, had a warm place in their hearts
for her.

Esther and Pip lifted her into the dogcart; and she sat in a
little, huddled-up way, looking down at the group on the veranda
with eyes that were absolutely tragic in their utter despair.  Her
father came out, buttoning his overcoat, and saw the look.

"What foolishness is this?" he said irascibly--"Esther-great
heavens! are you making a goose of yourself, too?"--there were
great tears glistening in his wife's beautiful eyes.  "Upon my
soul, one would think I was going to take the child to be hanged,
or at least was going to leave her in a penitentiary."

A great dry sob broke from Judy's white lips.

"If you'll let me stay, Father, I'll never do another thing to vex
you; and you can thrash me instead, ever so hard."

It was her last effort, her final hope, and she bit her poor
quivering lip till it bled while she waited for his answer.

"Let ber stay--oh! do letter stay, we'll be good always," came
in a chorus from the veranda.  And, "Let her stay, John, PLEASE!"
Esther called in a tone as entreating as any of the children.

But the Captain sprang into the dogcart and seized the reins from
Pat in a burst of anger.

"I think you're all demented!" he cried.  "She's going to a
thoroughly good home, I've paid a quarter in advance already,
and I can assure you good people I'm not going to waste it."

He gave the horse a smart touch with the whip, and in a minute
the dogcart had flashed out of the gate, and the small, unhappy
face was lost to sight.



CHAPTER VI  The Sweetness of Sweet Sixteen

"She is not yet so old
But she may learn: happier than this,
She is not bred so dull but she can learn."


Meg's hair had always been pretty, but during the last two months
she had cut herself a fringe, and begun to torture it up in curl
papers every night.  And in her private, drawer she kept a jam tin
filled with oatmeal, that she used in the water every time she
washed, having read it was a great complexion beautifier.  And
nightly she rubbed vaseline on her hands and slept in old kid
gloves.  And her spare money went in the purchase of "Freckle
Lotion," to remove that slight powdering of warm brown sun-kisses
that somehow lent a certain character to her face.

All these things were the outcome of being sixteen, and having
found a friend of seventeen.

Aldith MacCarthy learnt French from the same teacher that Meg
was going to twice a week, and after an exchange of chocolates,
hair-ribbons, and family confidences a friendship sprang up.

Aldith had three grown-up sisters, whom she aped in everything,
and was considerably wiser in the world than simple-minded,
romantic Meg.

She lent Meg novels, "Family Herald Supplements", "Young Ladies'
Journals", and such publications, and the young girl took to them
with avidity, surprised at the new world into which they took her;
for Charlotte Yonge and Louisa Alcott and Miss Wetherall had hitherto
formed her simple and wholesome fare.

Meg began to dream rose-coloured dreams of the time when her fair,
shining hair should be gathered up into "a simple knot at the back
of her head" or "brushed into a regal coronet," these being the
styles in which the heroines in the novels invariably dressed
their hair.  A pigtail done in three was very unromantic.  That
was why, as a sort of compromise, she cut herself a fringe and
began to frizz out the end of her plait.  Her father stared at her,
and said she looked like a shop-girl, when first he noticed it,
and Esther told her she was a stupid child; but the looking-glass
and Aldith reassured her.

The next thing was surreptitiously to lengthen her dresses, which
were at the short-long stage.  In the privacy of her own bedroom
she took the skirts of two or three of her frocks off the band,
inserted a piece of lining for lengthening purposes, and then
added a frill to the waists of her bodices to hide the join.  This
dropped the skirts a good two inches, and made her look quite a
tall, slim figure, as she was well aware.

And none of these things were very harmful.

But Aldith gradually grew dissatisfied with her waist.

"You're at least twenty-three, Marguerite," she said once, quite in
a horrified way. She never called her friend Meg, pronouncing that
name to be "too domestic and altogether unlovely."

Meg glanced from her own waist to her friend's slender, beautiful
one, and sighed profoundly.  "What ought I to be?" she said in a
low tone; and Aldith had answered, "Eighteen--or nineteen,
Marguerite, at the most; true symmetrical grace can never he
obtained with a waist twenty-three inches round."

Aldith had not only made statements and comparisons, she had given
her friend practical advice, and shown her how the thing was to be
done.  And every night and morning Meg pulled away ruthlessly
at her corset laces, and crushed her beautiful little body into
narrower space.  She had already brought it within a girdle of
twenty-one inches, which was a clear saving of two, and she had
taken in all her dresses at the seams.

But she gave up the evening game of cricket, and she never made one
at rounders now, much to the others' disgust.  No one, to look at
the sweet blossom-like face, and soft, calm eyes, could have
guessed what torture was being felt beneath the now pretty,
welt-fitting dress body.  To walk quickly was positive pain; to
stoop, almost agony; but she endured it all with a heroism
worthy of a truly noble cause.

"How long shall I have to go on like this, Aldith? "she asked
once faintly, after a French lesson that she had scarcely been
able to sit through.

And the older girl answered carelessly, "Oh, you mustn't leave
it off, of course, but you don't feel it at all after a bit."

With which assurance Meg pursued her painful course.

Esther, the only person in a position to exercise any authority
in the matter, had not noticed at all, and, indeed, had she done,
so would not have thought very gravely of it, for it was only
four years since she, too, had been sixteen, and a "waist" had
been the most desirable thing on earth.

Once she had said unwittingly,

"What a nice little figure you are getting, Meg; this new
dressmaker certainly fits better than Miss Quinn"; and foolish
Meg, with a throb of delight, had redoubled her efforts.

Lynx-eyed Judy would have found her out long ago, and laughed her
to utter shame, but unfortunately for Meg's constitution she
was still at school, it being now the third month of her
absence.

Aldith only lived about twenty minutes' walk from Misrule, so
the two girls were always together.  Twice a week they went down
to town in the river-boat to learn how to inquire, in polite
French, "Has the baker's young daughter the yellow hat, brown
gloves, and umbrella of the undertaker's niece?" And twice a
week, after they had answered irrelevantly, "No, but the surgeon
had some beer, some mustard, and the dinner-gong," Aldith conducted
her friend slowly up and down that happy hunting-ground of
Sydney youth and fashion--the Block.  "Just see how many hats
I'll get taken off," Miss Aldith would say as they started; and
by the endof the time Meg would say longingly, "How lovely it must
be to know crowds of gentlemen like you do."

Sometimes one or two of them would stop and exchange a word or two,
and then Aldith would formally introduce Meg; often, however, the
latter, who was sharp enough for all her foolishness, would fancy
she detected a patronizing, amused air in these gentlemen's
manners.  As, indeed, there often was; they were chiefly men
whom Aldith had met at dances and tennis in her own home; and
who thought that young lady a precocious child who wanted keeping
in the schoolroom a few more years.

One day Aldith came to Misrule brimming over with mysterious
importance.  "Come down the garden, Marguerite," she said,
taking no notice whatever of Baby, who had, with much difficulty,
beguiled her eldest sister into telling her the ever delightful
legend of the three little pigs.

"Oh, no, by the hair of my chiny-chin-chin, then I'll huff and
I'll puff and I'll blow your house in," had only been said twice,
and the exciting part was still to come.

Baby looked up with stormy eyes.

"Go away, Aldiff," she said.

"Miss MacCarthy,-Baby, dear, Meg suggested, gently, catching Aldith's
half-scornful smile.

"ALDIFF," repeated Baby obstinately.  Then she relented, and put
one caressing little arm round her sister's neck.

"I will say Miff MacCarfy iss you will say ze uzzer little pig,
too."

Oh, send her away, Marguerite, do," Aldith said impatiently,
"I have an enthralling secret to tell you, and I'll haveto go soon."

Meg looked interested immediately.

"Run away, Baby, dear," she said, kissing the disappointed little
face; "go and play Noah's Ark with Bunty, and I'll finish the
piggies to-night or to-morrow."

"But I want them NOW" Baby said insistently.

Meg pushed her gently aside.  "No, run away, pet--run away at once
like a good girl, and I'll tell you Red Riding Hood, too, to-morrow." ,

Baby looked up at her sister's guest."

"You are a horrid old pig, Aldiff MacCatfy," she said, with slow
emphasis, "an' I hates you hard, an' we all hates you here, 'ceps Meg;
and Pip says you're ze jammiest girl out, an' I wis' a drate big ziant
would come and huff and puff and blow you into ze middlest part of
ze sea."

Aldith laughed, a little aggravating grown-up laugh, that put the
finishing touch to Baby's auger.  She put out her little hand and
gave the guest's arm in its muslin sleeve a sharp, scientific pinch
that Pip had taught her.  Then she fled madly away down the long
paddocks, to the bit of bush beyond.

"Insufferable," Aldith muttered angrily, and it needed all Meg's
apologies and coaxings to get her into an amiable frame of mind
again, and to induce her to conmmunicate the enthralling secret.
At last, however, it was imparted, with great impressiveness.
Aldith's eldest sister was engaged, engaged to be married!  Oh!
wasn't it heavenly?  Wasn't it romantic?--and to the gentleman with
the long fair moustache who had been so much at their house lately.

"I knew it would come--I have seen it coming for a long time.
Oh!, I'm not easily blinded;" Aldith said.  "I know true love when
I see it.  Though certainly for myself I should prefer a dark
moustache, should not you, Marguerite?"

"Ye--es," said Meg.  Her views were hardly formed yet on the
subject.

"Jet black, with waxed ends, very stiff," Aldith continued
thoughtfully, "and a soldierly carriage, and very long black
lashes."

"So should I," Meg said, fired in a moment.  "Like Guy Deloraine
in 'Angelina's Ambition'."  Aldith put her arm more tightly round
her friend.

"Wouldn't it be HEAVENLY, Marguerite, to be engaged--you and I?"
she said, in a tone of dreamy rapture.  "To have a dark,
handsome man with proud black eyes just dying with love for you,
going down on his knees, and giving you presents, and taking you
out and all--oh, Marguerite, just think of it!"

Melt's eyes looked wistful.  "We're not old enough, though, yet,"
she said with a sigh.

Aldith tossed her head.  "That's nonsense; why, Clara Allison is
only seventeen, and look at your own stepmother.  Plenty of girls
are actually married at sixteen, Marguerite, and a man proposed
my sister Beatrice when she was only fifteen."  Meg looked
impressed and thoughtful.

Then Aldith rose to go.  "Mind you're in time for the boat
to-morrow," she said, as they reached the gate; "and, Marguerite,
be sure you make yourself look very nice--wear your cornflower
dress, and see if Mrs. Woolcot will lend you a pair of her gloves,
your grey ones are just a little shabby, aren't they, dear?"

"H'm," said Meg, colouring.

"And Mr. James Graham always comes back on that boat, and the two
Courtney boys--Andrew Courtney told Beatrice he thought you seemed
a nice little thing; he often notices you, he says, because you
blush so."

"I can't help it," Meg said, unhappily.  "Aldith, how ought the
ribbon to go on my hat?  I'm going to retrim it again."

Oh, square bows, somewhat stiff, and well at the side," the oracle,
said.  "I'm glad you're going to, dear, it looked just a wee bit
dowdy, didn't it?"  Meg coloured again.

"Have you done your French?" she said, as she pulled open the
gate.

"In a way," Aldith said carelessly.  Then she put up her chin,
"Those frowzy-looking Smiths always make a point of having no
mistakes; and, Janet Green, whose hats are always four seasons
behind the fashions; I prefer to have a few errors, just to show
I haven't to work hard and be a teacher after I---"

But just here she stumbled and fell down her full length in a most
undignified manner, right across the muddy sidewalk.

It was a piece of string and Baby's vengeance.



CHAPTER VII  "What Say You to Falling in Love?"


Meg was looking ill, there was no doubt about it.  Her pretty
pink-and-white complexion was losing its fresh look, a slightly
irritable expression had settled round a mouth that a few months
back had seemed made for smiles only.  And terribly unromantic
fact, her nose was quite florid-looking at times. Now a heroine
may have the largest, deepest, and most heavily lashed eyes
imaginable; she may have hair in very truth like the gold "mown
from a harvest's middle floor"; she may have lips like cherries
and teeth like pearls, and a red nose will be so utterly fatal
that all these other charms will pass unnoticed.  It cost Meg real
anguish of spirit. She carefully read all the Answers to Correspondents
in the various papers Aldith lent her in search of a remedy, but
nearly everyone seemed to be asking for recipes to promote the
growth of the eyelashes or to prevent _embonpoint_.  Not one she
chanced on said, "A red nose in a girl is generally caused by
indigestion or tight-lacing."  She asked Aldith to suggest something,
and that young person thought that vaseline and sulphur mixed
together, and spread over the afflicted member, would have the
desired effect.  So every night Meg fastened her bedroom door
with a wedge of wood, keys being unknown luxuries at Misrule,
and anointed her, poor little nose most carefully with the
greasy mixture, lying "all night on her back to prevent it
rubbing off on the pillow.

Once Pip had forced his way into demand a few stitches for his
braces which had split, and she had been compelled to wrap her
whole face hastily up in a towel and declare she had violent
neuralgia, and he must go to Esther or one of the servants.  Had
he seen and known the cause there would have been no end to the
teasing.

Nowadays Meg spent a great deal of time in her bedroom, that she
had all to herself while Judy was away.  In its privacy she
trimmed and retrimmed her hats, altered her dresses, read her
novels, and sat in front of the looking-glass with her hair down,
dreaming of being quite grown up and in love.  For just now both
to Aldith, and herself that state of life seemed the only one
altogether lovely and desirable.  Meg used to curl herself up in a
big easy-chair that had drifted to her room because its springs
were broken, and dream long, beautiful, hopeless dreams of a lover
with "long black lashes and a soldierly carriage."  Of course it
was highly reprehensible to have such thoughts at the tender age
of sixteen, but then the child had no mother to check that erring
imagination, and she was a daughter of the South.

Australian girls nearly always begin to think of "lovers and
nonsense," as middlefolks call it, long before their English aged
sisters do.  While still in the short-frock period of existence,
and while their hair is still free-flowing, they take the keenest
interest in boys--boys of neighbouring schools, other girls' brothers,
young bank clerks, and the like.  Not because they would be good
playmates, but because they look at them in the light of possible
"sweethearts."  I do not say English girl children are free from this.
By no means; in every school there may be found one or two this way
inclined, giggling, forward young things who want whipping and
sending to play cricket or dolls again.  But in this land of
youthfulness it is the rule more frequently than the exception, and
herein lies the chief defect of the very young Australian girl.
She is like a peach, a beautiful, smooth, rich peach, that has come
to ripeness almost in a day, and that hastens to rub off the soft,
delicate bloom that is its chief charm, just to show its bright,
warm colouring more clearly.  Aldith had, to her own infinite
satisfaction, brushed away her own "bloom," and was at present
busily engaged in trying to remove Meg's, which was very soft
and lovely before she touched it.  The novels had taken away a
little, and the "Block" a little more, but, Meg was naturally
freshminded, and it took time to make much difference.  Just now,
under her friend's tutelage, she was being inducted into the
delightful mysteries of sweethearting, and for the time, it quite
filled her some what purposeless young life.  But it all ended
with an adventure that years afterwards used to make her cheeks
tingle painfully at the thought.

After the bi-weekly French lesson, as I have said, the two friends
used to come back together in the river-boat at five o'clock.
And by this boat there always came two boys by the name of Courtney,
and a third boy, Aldith's particular property, James Graham.  Now
the young people had become known to each other at picnics and the
like in the neighbourhood, but the acquaintance, instead of
ripening on frequent meeting into a frank, pleasant friendship,
had taken the turn of secrecy and silly playing at love.  James
Graham was in a lawyer's office, a young articled cleric of
seventeen in undue haste to be that delightful thing, a man.
He carried a cane, and was very particular about his hat and
necktie and his boots, which generally were tan.  And he had
the faintest possible moustache, that he caressed with great
frequency; and that privately Aldith thought adorable.  Aldith's
pert, sprightly manner pleased him, and in a very short time
they had got to the period of passing notes into each other's
hands and sighing sentimentally.  Not that the notes contained
much harm, they were genesally of rather a formal character.

"My dear' Miss MacCarthy," one would run--

"Why were you not on the boat yesterday?  I looked for you till
it was no use looking longer, and then the journey was blank.
How charmingly that big hat suits you, and those jonquils at
your neck.  Might l beg one of the flowers? just one, please,
Aldith.

Your devoted friend,
James Graham."

And Aldith's, written on a sheet of her note-book with a pink
programme pencil that she always kept in her purse, might be
no worse than:

"Dear Mr. Graham,
"What EVER can you want these flowers at my neck for?  They have
been there all day, and are dead and spoiled.  I can't IMAGINE what
good they'll be to you.  Still, of course, if you REALLY care for
them you shall have them.  I am so glad you like this hat.  I shall
always like it NOW.  Did you REALLY miss me yesterday?  I had gone
to have my photo taken.  Marguerite thinks it very good indeed,
but I am SURE it flatters me TOO much.

 Yours truly,
L. Aldith Evelyn MacCarthy."

Now Mr. James Graham had a great friend in one of the before-
mentioned Courtney boys, Andrew by name.  .,He was_ a
handsome lad of eighteen, still a schoolboy, but possessed of
fascinating manners and a pair of really beautiful eyes.

And, since his friend and companion Jim had taken to "having fun "
with "the girl MacCarthy," he objected to being left out in the
cold.  So he began to pay marked attentions to Meg, who blushed
right up to her soft, pretty fringe every time he spoke to her,
and looked painfully conscious and guilty if he said anything at
all complimentary to her.

The other boy, Alan Courtney, was very tall and broad-shouldered,
and not at all good-looking.  He had a strong, plain face, grey
eyes deeply set, and brown hair that looked as if he was in a
constant state of rumpling it up the wrong way.  He was a University
student, and a great footballer, and he never diverted himself on
the long homeward journey in the way Andrew and his friend did.

He used generally to give a half-contemptuous nod as he passed
the little group, uncovering his head for the shortest possible
period consistent with civility, and making his way to the far
end of the boat.  One time as he passed them Aldith was drooping
her lashes and using her eyes with great effect, and Meg was almost
positive she heard him mutter under his breath, "Silly young fools!"
He used to smoke at his end of the boat--cigars at the beginning
of term and a short, black, villainous-looking pipe at the end--
and Meg used secretly to think how manly he looked, and to sigh
profoundly.

For I may as well tell you now as later what this foolish little
thing had done after a few months' course of Aldith and novels.
She had fallen in love as nearly as it is possible for sweet sixteen
to do; and it was with Alan, who had no good looks nor pleasant
manners--not Andrew, who had speaking eyes, and curls that "made
his forehead like the rising sun"; not Andrew, who gave her tender
glances and conversation peppermints that said "My heart is thine,"
but Alan, who took no notice whatever of her beyond an occasional
half-scornful bow.

Poor little Meg!  She was very miserable in these days, and yet it
was a kind of exquisite misery that she hugged to her to keep it
warm.  No one guessed her secret.  She would have died rather than
allow even Aldith to get a suspicion of it, and accepted Andrew's
notes andsmiles as if there was nothing more she wanted.  But she
grew a trifle thin and large-eyed, and used to make copious notes
in her diary every night, and to write a truly appalling quantity
of verses, in which "heart" and "part," "grieve" and "leave,"
"weep" and "keep," and sigh" and "die," were most often the
concluding words of the lines.  She endured Andrew for several
reasons.  He was Alan's brother for one thing, and was always
saying things about "old Al," and recording his prowess on the
football field; and Aldith might discover her secret if she gave
him the cold shoulder altogether.  Besides this Andrew had the
longest eyelashes she had ever seen and she must have somebody
to say pretty things to her, even if it was not the person she
would have wished it to be.

One day things came to a crisis.

"No more trips on the dear old boat for a month," Aldith remarked,
from her corner of the cabin.

"This is appalling! Whatever do you mean, Miss MacCarthy?:" James
Graham said, with exaggerated despair in his voice.

"Monsieur H--- has given the class a month's holiday.  He is going
to Melbourne," Aldith returned, with a sigh:

Meg echoed it as in duty bound, and Andrew said fiercely that
hanging was too good for Monsieur H---.  What did he mean by
such inhuman conduct, he should like to know; and however were Jim
and himself to maintain life in the meantime?

It was James who speedily thought of a way out."

"Couldn't we go for a walk somewhere one evening--just we four?"
he said insinuatingly.

Aldith and Andrew thought the proposal a brilliant one; and though
Meg had at first shaken her head decidedly, in the end she was
prevailed upon, and promised faithfully to go.

They were to meet in a bush paddock adjoining the far one belonging
to Misrule, to walk for about an hour, returning by half-past seven,
before it grew dusk.

"I am going to ask you for something that day, Meg," Andrew whispered
just as they were parting.  "I wonder if I shall get it."

Meg flushed in her nervous, conscious way, and wondered to herself
for a moment whether he intended to ask for a lock of her hair, a
thing Graham had already obtained from Aldith.

"What?" she said unwillingly.

"A kiss," he whispered.

The next minute the others had joined them, and there was no chance
for the indignant answer that trembled on her lips.  She had even
to shake hands, to appear as if nothing had happened, and to part
apparently good friends.

"Half-past six sharp, Marguerite.  I will never forgive you if you
don't come," Aldith said, as they parted at her gate.

"I--you---Oh, Aldith, I don't see how I can come," Meg faltered,
the crimson in her cheeks again.  "I've never done anything like it
before.  I'm sure it's not right."

But the curl, in Aldith's lip made her ashamed of herself.

"You're just twelve, Marguerite;" the young lady said calmly:
"you're not a bit more than twelve.  You'd better get a roll again,
and a picture-book with morals.  I'll ask Andrew to buy you one
and a bit of cord, too, to tie you in your high chair in the
nursery."

Such sarcasm was too much for Meg.  She promised hastily and
unconditionally to be on the spot at the time mentioned, and fled
away up the path to obey the summons of the wildly clanging
tea-bell.

But for the two intervening days her secret hung upon her like a
burden of guilt, and she longed inexpressibly for a confidante
who would advise her what to do at this distressing issue.  Not
Judy: that young person was too downright, too sensible, too much
of a child and a boy--she would never dare to tell her anything of
the sort.   She could fancy the scorn in her sister's large clear
eyes, the ringing laughter such a tale would evoke, the scathing,
clever ridicule that would fall on her shrinking shoulders.  Not
Esther: her very position as stepmother'precluded such an idea,
and, besides that, the General's gums were gradually disclosing
wee white double pearls, and his health thereby was affected,
and causing her too much anxiety to allow her, to notice Meg's
oppression of mind.

By the night decided upon, the child had worked herself up into a
strong state of excitement.  Half-past six was the time settled
upon, and, as she knew, it was broad daylight even then.  She
felt she really dare not, could not go.  Suppose her father or
Esther, some of her scornful young sisters or brothers, should
be about and see the meeting, or any of the neighbours--why, she
could never survive the shame of it!  Yet go she must, or Aldith
would despise her.  Besides, she had made up her mind fully to tell
Andrew plainly she could not allow him to talk to her as he had
been doing.  After that last terrible whisper, she felt it
necessary that she should let him understand clearly that she did
not approve of his conduct, and would be "his friend," but
nothing more.

But why had they not thought of deciding on an hour when it would
be darker? she kept saying to herself: there would be no danger
of being seen then; she could slip out of the house without any
difficulty, and run through the paddocks under cover of the
kindly dusk; whereas if it was light, and she tried to creep away,
at least two or three of the children would fly after her and
offer generously to "come too."

At last, too afraid to go in the light, and unwilling for Aldith
to reproach her for not going at all, she did in her excitement
and desperation a thing so questionable that for long after she
could not think of it without horror.

Dear Mr. Courtney,", she wrote, sitting down at her dressing-table,
and scribbling away hurriedly in pencil:

"It would be horrid going for the walk so early.  Let us go later,
when it is quite dark.  It will be EVER so much nicer, for no one
will be able to see us.  And let us meet at the end of the paddocks
where the bush grows thickly, it will be more private.  I am writing
to Aldith to tell her to go at that time, she will tell Mr. Graham.

Yours sincerely,
M. Woolcot.

"P.S.--I must ask you, please, not to kiss me.  I should be very
angry indeed if you did.  I don't like kissing at all."

She wrote the last paragraph in a nervous hurry for she had a dread
that he might fulfil his promise, if she did not forbid him as soon
as they met.  Then she slipped it into an envelope and addressed it
to A. Courtney, Esq., it never having even occurred to her for a
moment that there was anything at all strange or unconventional in
a young girl making such a point that the meeting should be in the
dark.

Next she wrote a few lines of explanation to Aldith, and told her
to be sure to be in the paddock by half-past eight, and she (Meg)
would slip out when the children were going to bed and unlikely
to notice.

And then she went out into the garden to find messengers for
her two notes.  Little Flossie Courtney had been spending the
afternoon with Nellie, and Meg called her back from the gate
just as she was going home, and, unseen by the children, entrusted
the note to her.

"'Give it to your brother Andrew the minute he comes from school,"
she whispered, popping a big chocolate at the same time into
the little girl's mouth.  Bunty was next bribed, with a promise of
the same melting delicacies, to run up to Aldith's with the other
letter, and Meg breathed freely ago feeling she had skilfully
averted the threatening danger attendant on the evening
meeting.

But surely the notes were fated!  Bunty delivered his safely
enough to the housemaid at the MacCarthys', and in answer to
the girl's question "s'posed there was an answer, girls always
'spected one to nothing."

Aldith was confined to her room with a sudden severe cold, and
wrote a note to her friend, telling her how she was too ill to be
allowed out, and had written to Mr. Graham, and Mr. Courtney,
too, postponing the walk for a week.

Now this note, in its pale pink triangular envelope, was
transferred to Bunty's pocket among his marbles and peanuts and
string.  And, as might be expected, he fell in with some other
choice spirits on the return journey, and was soon on his knees
by the roadside playing marbles.

He lost ten, exclusive of his best agate, fought a boy who had
unlawfully possessed himself of his most cherished "conny," and
returned home with saddened spirits an hour later, only to find
as he went through the gate that he had lost Aldith's dainty
little note.

Now Meg had promised him eight chocolate walnuts on his return,
and if this same boy had one weakness more pronounced than others,
it was his extreme partiality for this kind of confectionery, and
he had not tasted one for weeks, so no wonder it almost broke his
heart to think they would be forfeited.

"I know she'll be stingy enough to say I haven't earned them, just
'cause I dropped that girl's stupid letter," he said to himself,
miserably, "and I don't suppose there was anything in it but
'Dearest Marguerite, let us always tell each other our secrets';
I heard her say that twice, and of course she writes it, too."
Then temptation came upon him swiftly, suddenly.

By nature Bunty was the most arrant little storyteller ever born,
and it was only Judy's fearless honesty and strongly expressed
scorn for equivocation that had kept him moderately truthful.
But Judy was miles away, and could not possibly wither him up
with her look of utter contempt.  He was at the nursery door now,
turning the handle with hesitating hands.

"What a time you've been," said Meg from the table, where she was
mending a boxful of her gloves.  " Well, what did she say?"

Just at her elbow was the gay _bonbonniere_ containing the brown,
cream-encrusted walnuts.

"She said, 'All right,'" said Bunty gruffly.

Meg counted the eight chocolates out into his little grimy hand,
and resumed her mending with a relieved sigh.  And Bunty, with a
defiant, shamed look in his eyes, stuffed the whole of the
sweets into his mouth at once, as if to preclude the possibility
of a sudden repentance.

The other note was equally unfortunate.  Little Flossie went
home, her thoughts intent upon a certain Grannie bonnet Nell
had promised to make for her new doll.

"Gween with pink stwings," she was saying softly to herself as
she climbed the steps to her own door.  75 ;

Alan was lying on the veranda lounge, smoking his black pipe.

"Gween what?"  he laughed--" guinea-pigs or kangaroos?"

"Clawice Maud's bonnet," the little girl said, and entered forthwith
into a grave discussion with  him as to the colour he thought more
suitable for that waxen lady's winter cloak.

Then she turned to go in.

"What's that sticking out of your wee pocket, Flossie girl?"  he
said, as she brushed past him.  She stopped a second and felt.

"Oh, nearly I didn't wemember, an' I pwomised I would--it's a
letter for you, Alan," she said, and gave Meg's poor little epistle
up into the very hands of the Philistine.



CHAPTER VIII  A Catapult and a Catastrophe


"Oh, sweet pale Margaret,
Oh, rare pale Margaret,
What lit your eyes with tearful power?"


The dusk had fallen very softly and tenderly over the garden,
and the paddocks, and the river.  There was just the faintest
wind at the waters edge, but it seemed almost too tired after the
hot, long day to breathe and make ripples.  Very slowly the grey,
still light deepened, and a white star or two came out and blinked
up away in the high, far heavens.  Down behind the gum trees,
across the river, there was a still whiter moon; a stretch of
water near was beginning to smile up to it.  Meg hoped it
would not climb past the tree-tops before eight o'clock, or the
long paddocks would be flooded, with light and she would be seen.
At tea-time, and during the early part of the evening, she was
preoccupied and inclined to be irritable in her anxiety, and she
snubbed Bunty two or three times quite unkindly.

He had been hovering about her ever since six o'clock in almost
a pitiable way.

It was characteristic of this small boy that when he had been tempted
into departing from the paths of truth he was absolutely wretched
until he had confessed, and rubbed his little unclean hands into
his wet eyes until he was "a sight to dream of, not to tell."

Pip said it was because he was a coward, and had not the moral
courage to go to sleep with a lie on his soul, for fear he might
wake up and see an angel with a fiery sword standing by his
bedside.  And I must sorrowfully acknowledge this seemed a truer
view of the case than believing the boy was really impressed
with the heinousness of his offence and anxious to make amends.
For the very next day, if occasion sufficiently strong offered,
he would fall again, and the very next night would creep up to
somebody and whimper, with his knuckles in his eyes, that he had
"t--t--told a s--s--story, boo--hoo!"

By seven o'clock this particular, evening he was miserably
repentant; several tears had trickled down, his cheeks and mingled
with the ink of the map he was engaged upon for Miss Marsh.  He
established himself at Meg's elbow, and kept looking up into her
face in a yearning love-and-forgive-me kind of way that she found
infinitely embarrassing; for she had begun to suspect, from his
strange conduct, that he had in some way learned the contents
of her note, and was trying to discourage her from her enterprise.
The more he gazed at her the redder and more uncomfortable she
became.

"You can have my new c--c--catapult," he whispered once, giving
her a tearful, imploring look, that she interpreted as an entreaty
to stay safely at home.

At last the clock had travelled up to eight, and the children being
engaged in a wordy warfare over the possession of a certain stray
dog that had come to Misrule in the afternoon, she slipped out of
the room unobserved.  No one was in the hall, and she picked up
the becoming, fleecy cloud she had hidden there, twisted it round
her head, and crept out of the side door and along the first path.

Down in the garden the ground was white with fallen rose leaves,
and the air full of their dying breath; a clump of pampas grass
stood tall and soft against the sky; some native trees, left
growing among the cultivated shrubs, stretched silver-white
arms up to the moon and gave the little hurrying figure a ghostly
kind of feeling.  Out of the gate and into the first paddock,
where the rose scent did not come at all, and only a pungent smell
of wattle was in the thin, hushed air.  More gum trees, and more
white, ghostly arms; then a sharp movement near the fence, a thick,
sepulchral whisper, and a stifled scream from Meg.

"Here's the c--c--c--catapult, M--Meg; t---take it," Bunty said,
his face white and miserable.

"You little stupid! What do you mean coming creeping here like
this?  "Meg said, angry as soon as her heart began to beat
again.

"I only w--wanted to p--p--please you, M--M-Meggie," the little
boy said, with a bitter sob in his voice.

He had put both his arms round her waist, and was burying his nose
in her white muslin dress.  She shook him off hastily.  ,

"All right; there--thanks," she said.  " Now go home, Bunty;
I want to have a quiet walk in the moonlight by myself."

He screwed his knuckles as far into his eyes as they would go,
his mouth opened, and his lower lip dropped down, down.

"I t--t--told y--y--you a b--b--big st--st--story;" he wept,
rocking to and fro where he stood.

"Did you?  Oh, all right!  Now go home," she said impatiently.
"You always ARE telling stories, Bunty, you know, so I'm not
surprised. There-go along."

"But--but I'm--must tell you all ab--ab--about it," he said,
still engaged in driving his eyes into his head.

"No, you needn't; I'll forgive you this time," she said
magnanimously, "only don't do it again.  Now run away at once,
or you won't have your map done, and miss Marsh will punish you."

His eyes returned to their proper position, likewise his hands.
His heart was perfectly light again as he turned to go back to the
house.  When he had gone a few steps he came back.

"D'ye want that catapult very much, Meg?  "he said gently.
"You're only a girl, so I don't 'spect it would be very much
good to you, would it?"

No, I don't want it.  Here, take it, and hurry back: think of
your map," Meg returned, in a very fever of impatience at his
slowness.

And then Bunty, utterly happy once more, turned and ran away gaily
up to the house.  And Meg let down the slip-rail, put it back in
its place with trembling fingers, and fled in wild haste through
the two remaining paddocks.

The wattle-scrub at the end was very quiet; there was not a rustle,
not a sound of a voice, not a sound of the affected little laugh
that generally told when  Aldith was near.

Meg stopped breathless, and peered among the bushes; there was a
tall figure leaning against the fence.

"Andrew!" she said in a sharp whisper, and forgetting in her
anxiety that she never called him by his Christian name--"where
are the others?  Hasn't Aldith come?"

There was the smell of a cigar, and, looking closely, she saw to
her horror it was Alan.

"Oh!" she said, in an indescribable tone.

Her heart gave one frightened, shamed bound, and then seemed
to stop beating altogether.

She looked up, at him as if entreating him not to have too bad an
opinion of her; but his face wore the contemptuous look she had
grown to dread and his lips were finely curled.

"I--I only came out for a little walk; it is such a beautiful
evening," she said, with miserable lameness; and then in a tone
of justification she added, "it's my father's paddock, too."

He leaned back against he fence and looked down at her.

"Flossie gave me your note, and as it seemed addressed to me, and
I was told it was far me; I opened it," he said.

"You KNEW it was for Andrew," she said not looking at him, however.

"So I presumed when I had read it," he returned slowly; "but
Andrew has not come back to-night yet, so I came instead; it's all
the same as long as it's a boy, isn't it?

The girl made no reply, only put her hand up and drew the cloud
more closley round her head.

His lips curled a little more.

"And I know how to kiss, too, I assure you.  I am quite a good hand
at it, though you may not think so.  Oh yes, I know you said you
did not want to be kissed; but then, girls always say that, don't
they?--even when they expect it most."

Still Meg did not speak, and the calm, merciless voice went on.

"I am afraid it is hardly dark enough for you, is it?  The moon
is very much in the way, do you not think so?  Still, perhaps we
can find a darker place farther on, and then I can kiss you without
danger.  What is the matter?--are you always as quiet as this with
Andrew?"

"Oh, DON'T!" said Meg, in a choking voice.

The mocking tone died instantly out of his voice, "Miss Meg, you
used to seem such a nice little girl," he said quietly; "what
have you let that horrid MacCarthy girl spoil you for?  For she is
horrid, though you may not think so."

Meg did not speak or move, and he went on with a gentle earnestness
that she had not thought him capable of..

"I have watched her on the boat, systematically going to work to
spoil you, and can't help thinking of the pity of it.  I imagined
how I should feel if my little sister Flossie ever fell in with
such a girl, and began to flirt and make herself conspicuous,
and I wondered would you mind if I spoke to you about it.
Are you very angry with me, Miss Meg?"

But Meg leaned her head against the rough fence and began to
sob-little, dry, heartbroken sobs that went to the boy's warm
heart.

"I oughtn't to have spoken as I did at first--I was a perfect
brute," he said remorsefully; "forgive me, won't you?  Please,
little Miss Meg--I would rather cut my hand off than really hurt
you."

This last was a little consoling, at any rate, and Meg lifted her
face half a second, white and pathetic in the moonlight, and all
wet with grievous tears.

"I--I--oh! indeed I have not been quite so horrid as you think,"
she said brokenly; "I didn't want to come this walk--and oh!
indeed, indeed, indeed I wouldn't allow ANYONE to kiss me.  Oh,
PLEASE do believe me!"

I do, I do indeed," he said eagerly; "I only said it because--well,
because I am a great rough brute, and don't know how to talk to a
little, tender girl.  Dear Miss Meg, do shake hands and tell me you
forgive my boorishness."

Meg extended a small white hand, and he shook it warmly.  Then
they walked up the paddocks together, and parted at a broken gate
leading into the garden.

"I'll never flirt again while I live," she said with great
earnestness, as he bade her good-bye; and he answered encouragingly,
"No, I am quite sure you won't--leave it to girls like Aldith, won't
you? you only wanted to be set straight.  Good-bye, little Miss Meg.



CHAPTER IX  Consequences


"However could you do it?
 Some day, no doubt, you'll rue it!"


Meg's troubles were not quite over, however, even yet.  When she
got into the :house Nellie met her in the hall and stared at her.

"Where have you been?" she said, a slow wonder in her round eyes.
"I've been hunting and hunting for you."  .

"What for?" said Meg shortly.

"Oh, Dr. Gormeston and Mrs. Gormeston and two Miss Gormestons are in
the drawing-room, and I think they'll stay for ever and ever."

"Well?" said Meg.

"And the General is ill again, and Esther says she won't leave him
for a second, not if Gog and Magog were down there dying to see
her."

"Well?" said Meg again.

"And Father is as mad as he can be, and is having to keep them
all amused himself.  He's sung 'My sweetheart when a boy' and
`Mona,' and he's told them all about his horses, and now I s'pose
he doesn't know what to do.`

"Well, I can't help it," Meg said wearily, and as if the subject
had no interest for her.

"But you'll just have to!" Nell cried sharply, "I've done my
best: he sent out and said we were to go in, and you weren't
anywhere, so there was only Baby and me."

"And what did you do?" Meg asked, curious in spite of herself.

"Oh, Baby talked to Miss Gormeston, and they asked me to play,"
she returned, "so I played the 'Keel Row.'  Only I forgot
till I had finished that it was in two sharps," she added sadly.
"And then Baby told Mrs. Gormeston all about Judy leaving the
General at the Barracks, and being sent to boarding school for it,
and about the green frog Bunty gave her, and, then Father said
we'd better go to bed, and asked why.ever you didn't come in."

"I'll go, I'll go," Meg said hastily, "he'll be fearfully cross
to-morrow about it.  Oh! and, Nell, go and tell Martha to
send in the wine and biscuits and things in half an hour."

She flung off her cloud, smoothed her ruffled hair, and peeped
in the hall-stand glass to see if the night wind had taken away
the traces of her recent tears.  Then she went into the drawing-roam,
where her father was looking quite heated and unhappy over
his efforts to entertain four guests who were of the class
popularly known as "heavy in hand:"

"Play something, Meg," he said presently, when greetings were
finished, and a silence seemed settling down over them all again;
"or sing something that will be better--haven't you anything you
can sing?"

Now Meg on ordinary occasions had a pleasant, fresh little voice
of her own, that could be listened to with a certain amount of
pleasure, but this evening she was tired and excited and unhappy.
She sang "Within a mile of Edinboro' town," and was exceedingly
flat all through.

She knew her father was sitting on edge all the time, and that her
mistakes were grating on him, and at the end of the song, rather
than turn round immediately and face them all, she began to play
Kowalski's March Hongroise.  But the keys seemed to be rising up
and hitting her hands, and the piano was growing unsteady, and
rocking to and fro in an alarming manner; she made a horrible
jangle as she clutched at the music-holder for safety, and the
next minute swayed from the stool and fell in a dead, faint right
into Dr. Gormeston's arms, providentially extended just in time.

The heavy, heated atmosphere had proved too much for her, in her
unhinged state of mind.  Captain Woolcot was extraordinarily
upset by the occurrence; not one of his children had ever done
such a thing before, and as Meg lay on the sofa, with her
little fair head drooping against the red frilled cushions, her
face white and unconscious, she looked strangely like her mother,
whom he had buried out in the churchyard four years ago.  He went
to the filter for a glass of water, and, as it trickled, wondered
in a dull, mechanical kind of way if his little dead wife thought
he had been too quick in appointing Esther to her kingdom.  And
then, as he stood near the sofa and looked at the death-like face,
he wondered with a cold chill at his heart whether Meg was going
to die, too, and if so would she be able to tell the same little
wife that Esther received more tenderness at his hands than she
had done.

His reverie was interrupted by the doctor's sharp, surprised
voice.  He was talking to Esther, who had been hastily summoned to
the scene, and who had helped to unfasten the pretty bodice.

"Why, the child is tight-laced!" he said; "surely you must
have noticed it, madam.  That pressure, if it has been constant,
has been enough to half kill her.  Chut, chut! faint indeed--
I wonder she has not taken fits or gone into a decline before this."

Then a cloud of trouble came over Esther's beautiful face--she had
failed again in her duty.  Her husband was regarding her almost
gloomily from the sofa, where the little figure lay in its
crumpled muslin dress, and her heart told her these children
were not receiving a mother's care at her hands.

Afterwards, when Meg was safely in bed and the excitement
all over, she went up to her husband almost timidly.

"I'm only twenty; Jack; don't be too hard on me!"-she said
with a little sob in her voice.  "I can't be all to them that
she was, can I?"

He kissed the bright, beautiful head against his shoulder,
and comforted her with a tender word or two.  But again and again
that night there came to him Meg's white, still face as it lay on
the scarlet cushions, and he knew the wind that stirred the
curtains at the window had been playing with the long grass in
the churchyard a few minutes since.



CHAPTER X  Bunty in the Light of a `Hero


"'I know him to be valiant.'
'I was told that by one that knows him better than you.'
'What's he?'
'Marry, he told the so himself, and he said he cared not who knew
it'"


Bunty had been betrayed into telling another story.  It was a
very, big one, and he was proportionately miserable.  Everyone
else had gone out but Meg, who was still in bed after her fainting
fit, and he had been having a lonely game of cricket down in the
paddock by himself.  But even with a brand-new cricket ball this
game palls after a time when one has to bowl and bat and backstop
in solitary state.  So presently he put his bat over into the garden,
and began to throw the ball about in an aimless fashion, while he
cogitated on what he should do next.  His father's hack was standing
away at the farther end of the paddock, and in an idle, thoughtless
way Bunty sauntered down towards it, and then sent his ball spinning
over the ground in its direction "to give it a jump."  Nothing was
further from his thoughts than an idea of hurting the animal, and
when the ball struck it full on the leg, and it moved away limping,
he hastened down to it, white and anxious.

He could see he had done serious mischief by the way the poor
thing held its leg up from the ground and quivered when he touched
it.  Terror seized him forthwith, and he turned hastily round with
his usual idea of hiding in his head.  But to his utter dismay,
when he got half-way back across the paddock he saw his father and
a brother officer come out of the wicket gate leading from the
garden and saunter slowly down in the direction of the horse,
which was a valuable and beautiful one.

In terror at what he had done, he slipped the cricket ball into the
front of his sailor jacket, and, falling hurriedly upon his
knees, began playing an absorbing game of marbles.  His trembling
thumb had hit about a dozen at random when he heard his name called
in stentorian tones.

He rose, brushed the dust from his shaking knees, and walked slowly
down to his father.

"Go and tell Pat I want him instantly," the Captain said.  He
had the horse's leg in his hand and was examining it anxiously.
"If he's not about, send Pip.  I can't think how it's happened--
do you know anything of this, Bunty?"

"No, of course not! I n--never did n--n--nothing," Bunty said with
chattering teeth, but his father was too occupied to notice his
evident guilt, and bade him go at once.

So he went up to the stables and sent Pat posthaste back to his
father.

And then he stole into the house, purloined two apples and a bit
of cake from the dining-room, and went away to be utterly miserable
until he had confessed.

He crept into a disused shed some distance from the house; in days
gone by it had been a stable, and had a double loft over it that
was only to be reached by a ladder in the last stage of dilapidation.
Bunty scrambled up, sat down in an unhappy little heap among some
straw, and began thoughtfully to gnaw an apple.

If ever a little lad was in need of a wise loving, motherly
mother it was this same dirty-faced, heavyhearted one who sat
with his small rough head against a cobwebby beam and muttered
dejectedly,, "'Twasn't my fault: 'Twas the horse:"

He fancied something moved in the second loft, which was divided
from the one he was in by a low partition.  "Shoo--shoo, get away!"
he called, thinking it was rats.  He struck the floor several times
with his heavy little boots.

"Shoo!" he said.

"Bunty,"

The boy turned pale to his lips.  That odd, low whisper of his
name, that strange rustle so near him--oh, what COULD it mean?

"Bunty."

Again the name sounded.  Louder this time, but in a tired voice,
that struck him some way with a strange thrill.  The rustling grew
louder, something was getting over the partition, crossing the
floor, coming towards him.  He gave a sob of terror and flung
himself face downwards on the ground, hiding his little blanched
face among the straw.

"Bunty," said the voice again, and a light hand touched his arm.

"Help me--HELP me!" he shrieked.  "Meg--oh! Father--Estherl "

But one hand was hastily put over his mouth and another pulled him
into a sitting position.

He had shut his eyes very tightly, so as not to see the ghostly
visitant that he knew had come to punish him for his sin.  But
something made him open them, and then he felt he could never
close them again for amazement.

For, it was Judy's hand that was over his mouth, and Judy's self
that was standing beside him.

"My golly!" he said, in a tone of stupefaction.  He stared hard
at her to make sure she was real flesh and blood.  "However did
you get here?"

But Judy made no answer.  She merely took the remaining apple
and cake from his hand, and, sitting down, devoured them in
silence.

"Haven't you got any more?" she said anxiously.  Then he
noticed what a tall, gaunt, strange-looking Judy it was.  Her
clothes were hanging round her almost in tatters, her boots were
burst and white with dust, her brown face was thin and sharp,
and her hair matted and rough:

"My golly!" the little boy said again, his eyes threatening
to start out of his head--"my golly, Judy, what have you been
doin'?"

"I--I've run away, Bunty," Judy said, in a quavering voice.
"I've walked all the way from school.  I wanted to see you all
so badly."

"My jiggery!" Bunty said.

"I've thought it all out," Judy continued, pushing back her hair
in a weary moray.  "I can't quite remember everything just now,
I am so tired, but everything will be all right."

"But what'll he say?" Bunty said with frightened eyes, as a
vision of his father ciossed his mind.

"He won't know, of course," Judy returned, in a matter-of-fact
manner.  "I shall just live here in this loft for a time, and
you can all come to see me and bring me food and things, and then
presently I'll go back to school."  She sank down among the straw
and shut her eyes in an exhausted way for a minute or two, and
Bunty watched her half fascinated.

How far is it from your school?" he said at last.

"Seventy-seven miles."  Judy shuddered a little.  "I got a lift
in a luggage train from Lawson to Springwood, and a ride in a cart
for a little way, but I walked the rest.  I've been nearly a week
coming," she added after a pause, and shut her eyes again for quite
a long time.  Then a tear or two of weakness and self-pity trickled
from beneath her black lashes, and made a little clean mark down her
cheeks.  Bunty's throat swelled at the sight of them, he had never
seen Judy cry as long as he could remember.  He patted her thin
hand, he rubbed his head against her shoulder, and said, "Never
mind, old girl," in a thick voice.

But that brought, half a dozen great heavy drop hurrying down from
beneath the closed lashes, and the girl turned over and lay face
downwards to hide them.  Then she struggled up to a sitting position
and actually began to laugh.

"IF the Miss Burtons could see me!" she said.  "Oh, I've managed
everything so beautifully; they think I'm spending a fortnight at
Katoomba--oh, BUNTY, you ought to see the curls Miss Marian Burton
wears plastered at each side of her cheeks!"  She broke off,
laughing almost hysterically, and then coughing till the tears came
back in her eyes.

"Do go and get me something to eat," she said crossly, when she got
her breath--"you might remember I've had nothing to eat since
yesterday morning; only you always were selfish, Bunty."

He got up and moved away in a great hurry.  "What could you eat?
what shall I get?"  he said, and put one leg down the trap-door.

"Anything so long as it's a lot," she said--"ANYTHING!- I feel I
could eat this straw, and crunch up the beams as if they were
biscuits.  I declare I've had to keep my eyes off you, Bunty;
you're so fat I keep longing to pick your bones."

Her eyes shone with a spark of their old fun, but then she began to
cough again, and, after the paroxysm had passed, lay back exhausted.

"Do fetch same of the others," she called faintly, as his head was
disappearing.  "You're not much good alone, you
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