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Seven Little Australians

<h3> CHAPTER V </h3> <h3> "Next Monday Morning" </h3> 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 General, 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 lips 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 her 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. <h3> CHAPTER VI </h3> <h3> The Sweetness of Sweet Sixteen </h3> "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 be 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 end of 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 have to 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 anger. 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 communicate 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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