  Produced by Al Haines. THE FAMILY AT MISRULE. BY ETHEL TURNER, AUTHOR OF "Ah that spring should vanish with the Rose! "To youth the greatest reverence is due." WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. J. JOHNSON. LONDON: TO E. S. T., CONTENTS. CHAP.
[image] Contents tailpiece THE FAMILY AT MISRULE. CHAPTER I. PICKING UP THREADS. "Should auld acquaintance be forgot?" There was discord at Misrule. Nell, in some mysterious way, had let down a muslin frock of last season till it reached her ankles. And Meg was doing her best to put her foot down upon it. In a metaphorical sense, of course. Meg Woolcot at twenty-one was far too lady-like to resort to a personal struggle with her young sister. But her eyes were distressed. "You can't say I don't look nice," Nell said. "Why, even Martha said, 'La, Miss Nell!' and held her head on one side with a pleased look for two minutes." "But you're such a child, Nellie," objected Meg. "you look like playing at being grown up." "Fifteen's very old, I think," said Miss Nell, walking up and down just for the simple pleasure of hearing the frou-frou of muslin frills near her shoes. "Ah well, I do think I look nice with my hair done up, and you can't have it up with short frocks." "Then the moral is easy of deduction," said Meg drily. "Oh, bother morals!" was Nell's easy answer. She tripped down the verandah steps with a glance or two over her shoulder at the set of the back of her dress, and she crossed the lawn to the crazy-looking summer-house. "Oh dear!" sighed Meg. She leaned her face on her hands, and stared sadly after the crisp, retreating frills and the shimmer of golden hair "done up." This was one of the days when Meg's desires to be a model eldest sister were in the ascendency, hence the very feminine exclamation. She had not altered very much in all these live long years—a little taller perhaps, a little more womanly, but the eyes still had their child-like, straightforward look, and the powdering of freckles was there yet, albeit fainter in colouring. She still made resolutions—and broke them. She still wrote verses—and burnt them. To-day she was darning socks, Pip's and Bunty's. That was because she had just made a fresh resolve to do her duty in her state of life. At other times she left them all to the fag end of the week, and great was the cobbling thereof to satisfy the demands of "Clean socks, Meg, and look sharp." Besides darning, Meg had promised to take care of the children for the afternoon, as Esther had gone out. Who were the children? you will ask, thinking five years has taken that title away from several of our young Australians. The General is six now, and answers to the name of Peter on the occasions that Pip does not call him Jumbo, and Bunty, Billy. Nell, who is inclining to elegant manners, ventures occasionally in company to address him as Rupert; but he generally winks or says "Beg pardon?" in a vacant kind of way. Baby also has become "Poppet," and handed down her name of long standing to a rightful claimant who disjointed the General's nose nearly three years ago and made our number up to seven again. Just a wee, chubby morsel of a girl it is, with sunshiny eyes and sunshiny hair and a ceaseless supply of sunshiny smiles. Even her tears are sunshiny; they are so short-lived that the smiles shine through and make them things of beauty. The boys generally call her "The Scrap," though she is as big as most three-year-olds. She was christened Esther. And Poppet is still a child,—to be nine is scarcely to have reached years of discretion. She has lost her chubbiness, and developed abnormally long, thin legs and arms, a surprising capacity for mischief, and the tenderest little heart in the world. So Meg's hands were fairly well filled for the afternoon, to keep these three young ones in check, darn the socks, and superintend kitchen arrangements, which meant Martha Tomlinson and the cook. She had not bargained for the tussle with Nell too. That young person was at a difficult age just now: too old—in her own eyes, at any rate—to romp with Bunty and Poppet; too young to take a place beside Meg and pay visits with Esther,—she hung between, and had just compromised matters by letting down her frocks, as years ago Meg had done in the privacy of her bedroom. Her early promise of good looks was more than fulfilled, and in this long, pale blue muslin, and "picture" hat, cornflower-trimmed, she looked a fresh enough young beauty to be queen of a season. The golden hair had deepened, and was twisted up in the careful, careless way fashion dictated. The complexion was wonderfully pure and bright for Australia, and the eyes were just as dewy and soft and sweetly lashed as ever. But not yet sixteen! Was ever such an impossible age for grown-up rights? Just because she was tall and gracefully built was no reason why she should consider herself fit to be "out," Meg contended—especially, she added, with a touch of sisterly sarcasm, as she had a weakness for spelling "believe" and "receive" in unorthodox ways, and was still floundering wretchedly through her first French author—Le Chien du Capitaine. Poppet's legs dashed across the gravel path under the window; Peter's copper-toed boots in hot pursuit shone for a second and vanished. "Where's Baby, I wonder?" Meg said to herself. The child had been playing with a chair a little time back, dragging it up and down the verandah and bumping it about noisily; now all was silent. She went to the foot of the stairs, one of Bunty's socks more "holey" than righteous drawn over her hand. "What you doing, Essie?" she called. "Nosing, Mig," said a little sweet voice from a bedroom,—"nosing at all." "Now, Essie!"—Meg's voice took a stern note,— "tell me what you are doing!" "Nosing," said the little voice; "I'se velly dood." [image] "'I'SE VELLY DOOD.'" "Quite sure, Essie?" "Twite; I isn't dettin' wet a bit, Miggie." Up the stairs Meg ran at a swift pace; that last speech was eminently Baby's, and betokened many things. "Oh, you wicked child!" she cried, and drove an unsummoned smile away from her mouth corners. The big water-jug was on the floor near the washstand, and small Essie with slow and deep enjoyment was standing with one wee leg in the jug and the other on the oilcloth. The state of the lace sock and little red shoe visible betrayed the fact that the operation had been reversed more than once. This was an odd little characteristic of Essie's, and no amount of scolding and even shaking could break her of it. Innumerable times she had been found at this work of iniquity, dipping one leg after the other in any water-jugs she found on the floor. And did Martha, in washing floors, leave her bucket of dirty water one moment unguarded, Essie would creep up and pop in one little leg while she stood her ground with the other. Meg dried her, scolding hard all the time. "All your shoes are spoiled, Baby, you naughty girl; what am I to do to you?" "Velly solly," said Baby cheerfully. She squeezed a tear out of her smiling eyes when Meg bade her look at the ruin of her pretty red shoes. "And you told me a story, Essie; you said you were good, and were not getting wet." Meg held the little offender away from her, and looked upon her with stern reproach. "But on'y my legs was dettin' wet—not me," explained Essie, with a sob in her voice and a dimple at the corner of her mouth. There was nothing of course to be done but put the water-jug into its basin, and carry the small sinner downstairs in dry socks and ankle-strap slippers that showed signs of having been wet through at some time or other. Bunty was lying on his back on the dining-room couch, which Meg had left strewn with footwear waiting to be paired and rolled up. "Oh, John!" she said vexedly, seeing her work scattered about the floor. "John" took no notice. I should tell you, perhaps, that, since starting to school, Bunty's baptismal name had been called into requisition by authorities who objected to nicknames, and his family fell into the way of using it occasionally too. He was a big, awkward lad, tall for his thirteen years, and very loosely built. Nell used to say complainingly that he always looked as if he needed tightening up. His clothes never fitted him, or seemed part of him, like other boys' clothes. His coats generally looked big and baggy, while his trousers had a way of creeping up his ankles and showing a piece of loose sock. In the matter of collars he was hopeless. He had a daily allowance of one clean one, but, even if you met him quite early in the morning, there would be nothing but a limp, crooked piece of linen of doubtful hue visible. He had the face of a boy at war with the world. His eyes were sullen, brooding—his mouth obstinate. Every one knew he was the black sheep. He knew it himself, and resented it in silence. Poppet understood him a little—no one else. He was at perpetual enmity with his father, who had no patience with him at all. Esther excused him by saying he was at the hobbledehoy stage, and would grow up all right; but she was always too busy to help him to grow. Meg's hands were full with Pip; and Nell, after a try or two to win his confidence, had pronounced him a larrikin, undeserving of sisters at all. So Poppet undertook him. She was a faithful little soul, and in some strange way just fitted into him, despite his awkward angles. Sometimes he would tell her things, and go to a great deal of trouble to do something she particularly wanted; but then again he would bully her unmercifully, and make her life not worth living. "Why don't you play cricket, or do something, John?" Meg said, snipping off an end of cotton very energetically. "I hate to see a great boy like you sprawling on a sofa doing nothing." "Do you?" said John. "What made you so late home from school? It's nearly teatime. I hope it wasn't detention again." "It was," said John. "Oh, Bunty, that means Saturday taken again, doesn't it?" "It does." John rolled over, and lay on his other side, his eyes shut. "Bunty, why don't you try?" Meg said; "you are always in scrapes for something. Pip never got in half so many, and yet he wasn't a model boy. Will you promise me to try next week?" There was a grunt from the sofa cushion that might be interpreted at will as negative or affirmative. Nell came into the room, her hat swung over her arm. "Get up, John," she said; "what a horrid boy you are! Look at your great muddy boots on the sofa! Meg, I don't know how you could sit there and see him. Why, if we sat down, we'd get our dresses all spoiled." "Good job too," said John, not moving a hand. Nellie regarded him with frankest disgust. "What a collar!" she said, a world of emphasis on the "what." "I declare the street newsboys and match-sellers look more gentlemanly than you do." The tea-bell rang upstairs; John sat up instantly. "I hope you saved me more pudding to-day, Meg," he said. "I never saw such a stingy bit as you kept yesterday." Nell's scarlet lips formed themselves into something very like "pig" as she turned on her heel to leave the room. Then she said "Clumsy wretch!" with startling suddenness. John had set his "great muddy boot" down on one of her pretty flounces, and a sound of sundering stitches smote the air. "Beg pardon," said John, with a fiendish light of triumph in his eyes. Then he went upstairs two steps at a time to discuss his warmed-up dinner while the others had tea. CHAPTER II. SCHOOL TROUBLES.
Poppet and Peter were discussing many things in general, and the mystery of life in particular. They were sitting crouched up together in an old tank that had been cast out in the first paddock because it leaked. It was after tea, and Poppet had a little dead chicken in her hand that she had picked up in the garden. "Ith got wheelth inthide it, and when they thop ith deaded," Peter was saying,—"thust like my thteam engine, thath what tith." "I think being alive is very funny," Poppet said, looking earnestly at the little lifeless body. "All those chickies was eggs, and then sud'nly they begin running about and enjoying themselves, and then sud'nly they tumble down dead, and even the doctor can't make them run again." "Yeth," said Peter, his eyes very thoughtful as he tried to grasp great things. "Prapth you might tumble down like that, Poppet; all your wheelth might thtop." "Or yours," urged Poppet. Death was in her hand. She did not like to feel that ever her active little body could lie like this fluffy, silent one, and so made the likelihood more general. "Yeth," said Peter; "and oneth, Poppet, I nearly wath deaded, and Judy thaved me." "You don't remember," Poppet said, in a voice of great scorn. "You was only a little, tiny baby, just beginning to walk, Peter. But I was there, and remember everything." "You wath athleep, Poppet," Peter objected,—Poppet's air of superiority irritated him. "Meg told me about it when I had the meathleth, and the thaid that you wath athleep, tho there!" "At any rate, Peter, I think you are old enough to stop lisping," Poppet said severely, finding herself worsted. "You are six now, and only babies of ten months lisp. I never lisped at all." Peter went red in the face. "I don't lithp; you're a thtory-teller, Poppet Woolcot!" he said, drawing in his tongue with a great effort at straight pronunciation. Poppet jeered unkindly, then she caught sight of Bunty strolling aimlessly about the garden, and she squeezed herself out of the tank and stood upright. "Don't go," said Peter. "Leth play Zoo, Poppet, and you can be the lion thith time, and I'll feed you!" But not even this inducement had any effect. "I want to talk to Bunty," the little girl said, looking across with a half-troubled light in her eyes to where Bunty's old cap was visible. "I can play with you when he's at school. You can go and have a game with Baby." She went away, leaving him disconsolate, and crushed herself through a broken paling into the garden. She would like to have gone up to Bunty and slipped her arm through his and asked him what had made him so exceptionally glum and silent these last few days. But she knew him better than that. She was very wise for her nine years. She fell to weeding her garden with great industry while he was walking on the path near it. Then when he rambled farther away, she hovered about here and there, now plucking a flower, now giving chase to a great praying mantis. She was within a few feet of him all the time. "What are you buzznaccing about like this for?" he said at last irritably, when her short holland frock appeared at every path he turned down. He threw himself down on the grass, and pulled his cap over his eyes. "Flibberty-Gibbet had a tic in his head this morning," said the little girl, sitting down beside him Turk fashion. "Well, I don't care," Bunty said, with almost a groan. A look of anger crept up into the little sister's, earnest eyes. "I 'spect it's that old Burnham again," she said wrathfully. "What's he been doing this time?" Bunty groaned again. "Was it your Greek?" she said, edging nearer. "Howid stuff! As if you could be espected to get it right always!" There was another smothered sound from beneath the cap. "Was it that nasty algebra?" said the little, encouraging voice. It was so tender and anxious and loving that the boy uncovered his eyes a little. "I'm in the beastliest row, Poppet," he said. Poppet's little, fair face was ashine with sympathy. "I'd like to hammer that Mr. Burnham," she said. "How did it happen, Bunty?" Bunty sat up and sighed. After all, it would be a relief to tell some one; and who better than the faithful Poppet? "Well, you know Bully Hawkins?" he said. "Oh yes," said the little girl; and she did, excellently—by hearsay. "Well, on Monday he was on the cricket pitch practising, and Tom Jackson was bowling him—he'd made him. And when I went down—I was crossing it to go up to Bruce—he jumped on me, and said I was to backstop. I said I wasn't going to—why should I go after his blooming balls?—and he said he'd punch my head if I didn't. And I said, 'Yes, you do,' and walked on to Bruce. We were going to play marbles. And he came after me, and hit me over the head and boxed my ears and twisted my arms." "Bully!" said Poppet, with gleaming eyes. "What did you do, Bunty? did you knock him down? I hope you made his nose bleed,—I'd—I'd have flattened him!" Bunty gave her a look of scorn. "He's sixteen, and the size of a prize-fighter!" he said. "I'd have been half killed. No; Mr. Burnham was just a little way off, and I let out a yell to him, and he came up and I told of him." "Bunty!" said Poppet. The word came out like the report of a pistol, and her red lips shut again very tightly to prevent any more following. [image] "MR. BURNHAM CAME UP AND I TOLD OF HIM." This touch of cowardice, this failure to grasp simple honour in Bunty's character, was a perpetual grief and amazement to her little fearless soul. But he would brook no advice nor reproach from her, as she knew full well, and that is why her lips had closed with a snap after that one word. But he had seen the look of horror in her eyes. "D'ye think I'm going to be pummelled just as that brute likes?" he demanded angrily. "He's always bullying the fellows in our form, and it'll do him good to get a taste of what he gives us. Mr. Burnham said he hated a bully, and he just walked him up to the schoolroom and gave him six." Still Poppet was silent; her face was flushed a little, and she was pulling up long pieces of grass with feverish diligence. In her quick little way she saw it all, and felt acutely just how the boys would look upon Bunty's behaviour. "What an idiot you are, Poppet!" he said irritably, as she did not speak; "as though a bit of a girl like you knows what it is at a boys' school. I'm sorry I told you—I—I won't tell you the rest." Poppet choked something down in her throat. "Do tell me, Bunty," she said; "I didn't mean to be howid. Go on—I only couldn't help wishing you could have foughted him instead of telling, because—well, I espect he'll be worse to you than ever now, and the other fellows too." "That's it," Bunty said, with a groan. "Oh, but that's not half of it yet, Poppet. I almost wish I was dead." Something like a tear forced itself beneath his eyelids and trickled down his cheeks. Poppet's. heart expanded and grew pitiful again instantly His face was close to her knee, and wore so miserable an expression that in a sudden little burst of love she put down her lips and kissed him half-a-dozen times. He sat up instantly and looked ashamed. "How often am I to tell you I hate mugging?" he said gruffly. "If you go on like this, I won't tell you." "I beg your pardon," Poppet said very humbly; "really, I won't again, Bunty. Do go on." "Well, after that, I went round the side of the school—you know that path, near the master's windows. Well, I'd nothing much to do, and the bell hadn't gone, and I was just chucking my cricket ball up and down; there was a tree, and I tried to make it go up in a straight line just as high, and the next minute I heard a crash, and it had gone through Mr. Hollington's window." "Good gracious!" Poppet said, with widening eyes; then she gave a little joyful jump. "I've got thirteen shillings, Bunty, from the pound Mr. Hassal gave me; I'll give it to you to get it mended with. Oh, it won't be such a very bad row; you can 'splain it all to Mr. Hollington." "That's not all," Bunty said. "Thirteen shillings! You might as well say ha'pennies. I stood there for a bit and no one came, and at last I went in and looked about, and what do you think?—no one had heard!" "Oh!" breathed Poppet. She scented the old trouble again. "But you see it was such an awful crash. I knew it was more than the window. And every one was out in the playground,—even Mr. Burnham had just gone out again for something, and Mr. Hollington had gone home early. So I first went quietly upstairs, and no one was about, so I went into his room to get the ball, because my name was on it. And there were two glass cases on top of one another under the window with eggs and specimens and things in, and they were all smashed." Poppet drew a long breath that ended in a whistle. She was wishing she had not bought that set of gardening tools that cost six shillings, and that shillingsworth of burnt almonds—perhaps a sovereign—— "It wasn't school-time," Bunty was whispering now, "and no one had seen—not a soul, Poppet. Poppet, it was an accident; why should I go and tell of myself? Why, I might have been expelled; and think what the governor would say. So——" "Yes," said Poppet steadily, "go on, Bunty." He had paused, and was digging up the earth with his broken pocket-knife. "So—go on." "So, when we were all in afternoon school, Mr. Burnham came in and asked who did it." "Yes, Bunty—dear." A red colour had crept up into the little girl's cheeks, her eyes were full of painful anxiety. "You said you had, Bunty—didn't you, Bunty dear? Oh, Bunty, of course you said you had." "No, I didn't," burst out her brother. "How could I after that, you idiot you? What is the good telling you things? Why I didn't know what would have happened. When he asked us separately I just said 'No' in a hurry, and then I couldn't say 'Yes' after, could I?" Again Poppet was silent, again there was the look of amaze and grief in her wide, clear eyes. Bunty pulled his old cap over his face again—he hated himself, and most of all he hated to meet the honest, sorrowful eyes of his little sister. "Couldn't you tell now, Bunty?" she said softly. "Go to-night—I'll come with you to the gate—oh, do, Bunty dear. Mr. Burnham is not vewy howid perhaps, and canings don't hurt vewy much—let's go to-night, and by to-morrow it'll all be over." "It's no good." A sob came from under the cap. "Oh, Poppet, it'll be awful to-morrow! Oh, Poppet! Some one had seen, after all. Just as I left school Hawkins came up to me. He hadn't been there when Burnham asked us, and didn't hear anything till after school, and he said he saw me coming out of Hollington's room, and creeping down the passage with a cricket ball in my hand, and he went in to report it to Burnham just as I came home, to pay me out for getting him a swishing." Poppet was crying, though she hardly knew it. Such a terrible scrape, and such a lie at the back of it—what could be the end of it? "Oh, Bunty!" she said, and put her face right down in the long grass. The earth and the tears got mixed, and smirched the clearness of her skin—there was a wet, black smudge all down her poor little nose. "Poppet!" cried Meg's voice, preceding her down the path in the dusk. "Are you really sitting on the grass again when I've told you so often how wet the dew makes it? John, how can you let her, when you know how she coughs! Go to bed at once, Poppet, it's after eight; and you haven't touched your home-lessons, John—really it's one person's work to look after you—and where is that coat with the buttons off?" "On my bed," "John" said sulkily. "I wish you'd hang it up—what's the use of pegs? Poppet, go in when I tell you—don't be naughty. Now, John, go and start your lessons. You'd better do them in your bedroom, you make such a litter downstairs." Meg turned to go back, Poppet's reluctant hand held fast. "Can't I stay five minutes, please, Meg?" the little girl said, looking up beseechingly. Even in the fading light Meg saw the sweet brimming eyes and quivering little lips. "John!" she said angrily, "you've been bullying the poor little thing again; I simply won't have it—I shall speak to father." "Oh, shut up!" said John; and he moved away wearily up to the house. CHAPTER III. A PASSAGE AT ARMS.
Meg was a little "put out," as it is popularly called, this evening,—she was not generally so short with the young ones. The good fit had worn away during the endless process of darning, and she had jumped up at last, stuffed all the work into the gaping stocking-bag, and said to herself that eldest sisters were mistaken and wrongful institutions. But that did not give Baby Essie her tea, nor yet put her lively little ladyship to bed; and since Esther was out, there was no one else to undertake it. And when that was done Pip came in and asked her in his off-hand manner to "just put a stitch in that football blazer." The stitch meant a hundred or two, for it was slit from top to bottom. And then Esther came home—a quieter Esther, an Esther of less brilliant colouring than you used to know, for there are not many "fast colours" beneath Australian skies—and with her the Captain, grown more short-tempered with the lapse of years, and an income that did not grow with his family. And again it was "Meg." The seltzogene was empty. The Captain asked some one to tell him what was the use of having a grown-up daughter—he could not answer the question himself. The lamb was a shade too much cooked, and the Golden Pudding a shade too little. He wanted to know whether Meg considered it below her to superintend domestic matters. In his young days girls, etc., etc. She went from the dinner-table at the end of the meal with hot cheeks. "I never chose to be eldest—I was made so; and I don't see I should be scapegoat for everything!" she said, sitting down on the arm of the lounge on which lay six feet of the superior sex in the shape of Pip. There was a wrathful look in her blue eyes, and she had ruffled her fair hair back in a way she always did in moments of annoyance. "Why don't you make that conceited little chit help?" Pip said between puffs at his cigar. "Nellie!" ejaculated Meg in surprise. "Yes, Nellie," said Pip. He looked across to where she was making a picture beautiful to the most critical eye in a hammock a yard or two distant. "Is her only mission in life going to be looking pretty?" "Oh," Meg said, "she's too young, of course, Pip. Why, she's only fifteen, though she is so tall! Oh, of course it can't be helped—only it's annoying. But what have you got your best trousers on for, Pip, again, and that blue tie? You had them last night and the night before!" Pip's handsome face coloured slowly. "You've got a fair amount of cheek of your own, Meg," he said, collecting the cigar ash in a little heap very carefully, and then blowing it away with equal industry. "I wonder when you'll learn to mind your own business. I should imagine I'm old enough to choose my own clothes." "Only she's a horrid, vulgar girl, that's all," Meg said slowly, and colouring on her own account. "Pip, I don't know how you can, really I don't—a common little dressmaker. Oh yes, we know all about it; Peter saw you last night, and Poppet the night before." "Peter be—Poppet be—— What the deuce do you mean spying after me?" stormed Pip, sitting upright and looking wrathfully at his sister. "If I choose to take a walk with a pretty girl, is it any concern of yours?" |
|