The Family at Misrule/Chapter 1
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."
"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.
[Illustration: "'I'SE VELLY DOOD.'"]
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.