Merrylips

The little girl's name was Sybil Venner, but she was known as Merrylips. For Sir Thomas Venner, her jolly, bluff father, never by any chance called a child of his by its baptism...

Gentle Pug took the doll, and, in the moments when she was not setting neat stitches or baking custards, played with it prettily. Meantime Merrylips went romping her own way, an...

At first Merrylips found it easy to be brave. She was given a pretty new cloak and gown. She was pitied by the serving-maids, and envied by her sisters, and petted by her brothe...

Next day, when the storm was over and the sky was a windy blue, Merrylips rode in her godmother's coach to her godmother's house of Larkland. And there at Larkland, with the god...

Yet for all her hoping and wishing Merrylips did not recognize her soldiers of the king, when first she set eyes on them. She had been out with Mawkin, one shimmery hot afternoo...

Merrylips had thought that the bed in the great chamber would be made ready at once for Rupert. She had thought that she herself should be allowed to sit by him and tend him, as...

At the very moment when he promised to wait for her, he had been stealing away from Larkland, like the spy that Goody Trot and Roger and Mawkin called him. No doubt he had Claus...

That night Merrylips hardly slept a wink. No doubt it was the thought of home that kept her wakeful, but she wondered why that thought should also make her head heavy and her th...

For a thousand years, it seemed to Merrylips, she had been climbing a hill. It was a long, long hill, and very steep, but at the top, she knew, was Walsover, and only by gaining...

The dream of the steep hill was only a dream. In time it ended, and Merrylips found herself, such a weak little shadow of a Merrylips, lying in her chamber at Larkland. Round he...

There was no singing of carols nor eating of plum-pudding and mince pies at Larkland that Christmas, you may be sure. Mistress Lowry said that to keep Christmas was to bow the k...

It was Herbert Lowry that spoke from the threshold of the hall, where Merrylips sat alone at her knitting. She raised her eyes from the tiresome stitches, and saw him standing t...

At first Merrylips could only laugh and cry and repeat her brother's name, while all the time she clung tight to him. It seemed too good to be true that Munn had really come at...

"Be just as thou art, and let them think thee a timid little lad, and one that hath been reared among women. I'll say thou art not overstrong, and under that pretext will keep t...

So Merrylips was perched on the saddle in front of Claus Hinkel. And for the first half mile that she rode, she wondered what would happen to her, now that she was left in the c...

When Merrylips next woke, she wondered for a minute where she was. Then she remembered last night. She remembered how Lieutenant Crashaw had led her across the courtyard, and th...

As soon as Merrylips found that her secret was safe and that she seemed to every one a little boy, she enjoyed her days at Monksfield very much. Indeed, she would have been more...

For two weeks and more Merrylips had lived at Monksfield. In a hole in her mattress she had hidden the silver ring that had been Lady Sybil's. As long as she had been a girl, sh...

That night Merrylips slept on a form in the mess-room, with Lieutenant Crashaw's cloak wrapped about her. She had meant to sit up all night, to be ready when the attack came. In...

When Merrylips stopped running, she found herself in the darkest corner of the bare, stone-paved room that took up the ground-floor of the wash-house. At her feet was a heap of...

It was broad daylight, and once more the fire of muskets was sputtering along the walls of Monksfield, when at last Dick Fowell opened his eyes. He looked at Merrylips, and smil...

In the mess-room, where the candles were lighted, Captain Tibbott Norris sat alone at the table. Before him were a dish of stewed meat and a cup of wine, and he ate and drank st...

All that night Merrylips and Rupert groped their way by the paths that Captain Norris had bidden them take. At dawn they found a hiding-place at the edge of a beech wood on a lo...

In the dull light of the dripping morning Rupert and Merrylips sat up and looked at each other. The packet that had held their food gaped emptily at their feet, and the flask la...

At first Merrylips could not guess what had happened to her. Perhaps, she thought, she had been drowned. Her face was all wet and dripping, and she could hear a rushing sound of...

"First of all," Rupert began, "my name is not Rupert Hinkel, no more than thine is Tibbott. I am no kinsman to Claus Hinkel, nor to any peasant folk. I am a gentleman's son, and...

After all the wonders of the last hour, Merrylips and Rupert were keyed high with excitement. They felt as if they could walk right along and never tire until they came to Walso...

While the wain jolted through the stiffening mire, Rupert and Merrylips whispered together. They agreed that at the first chance they would scramble down noiselessly from the wa...

For a long time after, indeed until she was a grown woman, Merrylips used to dream of that run across the market-place. She would wake all breathless and trembling with fear les...

At last Merrylips gathered courage to look. Then she saw that just inside the door stood a young man, who blinked as if he had newly come from a dark place.

As soon as Merrylips had passed beyond the carved screen, she was sorry for her rash promise. She did not wish to tell Rupert's story, then and there. For she found herself in a...

You may be sure that the rest of the dinner went that day untasted from Lord Caversham's table. For all who sat at the board forgot to eat, while they listened to the story, a s...

At the mere name of Will Lowry, Merrylips forgot the dress that she wore and forgot that she must be brave like a boy. She ran to her brother Munn, and creeping into the space b...

But by the time that they had ridden down the long slope in the twilight, and reached the outermost of the barriers that now were built round Walsover, Merrylips' heart was ligh...

When Merrylips woke next morning, she thought at first that she was back at Monksfield. She could hear the sounds that she loved--the clatter of horses ridden over flagged pavem...