Part 2

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.*

"Oh the day when thou goest a-wooing, Philip, my king."

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?"

"Pretty!" said Nell, who had come up at his raised voice,--"pretty! Why, she blackens her eyebrows, I'm certain; and you should have seen her hat last Sunday--a green bird, some blue, lumpy plush, and a bunch of pink chiffon."

"Upon my word," said Pip,--he was white with anger, and his eyes blazed,--"upon my word, I've got two nice sisters. Trust a girl for running down another pretty one. You're jealous, that's what it is, because you know you can't hold a candle to her."

"Her father sells kerosene and butter--he's a _grocer_!" Nellie said, with a fine swerve of her delicate lips. "Upon _my_ word, Pip, I should think, with all the pretty girls there are about here, you might fall in love with a lady."

"She _is_ a lady," Pip contended hotly. "She works with her needle, perhaps--she's not been brought up in selfish idleness like you girls--but her manners are a long sight better than yours, and she'd blush to say small-minded things like you do."

It occurred to Meg that it _was_ small-minded, and she said no more.

But there was nothing Nellie enjoyed more than a sparring match with her eldest brother when the advantage was on her side, and had he not called her a conceited chit?

"There's one thing--you'd get your groceries at a reduction," she said meditatively. "I think their sardines are only 5-1/2*d.* a tin; they'd let _you_ have them for 5*d.* perhaps, considering all you've spent in chocolates and eight-button gloves. Meg, I _did_ think that packet of lovely gloves in his bedroom was for his dear little sisters, until----"

"Until you forfeited them by your abominable behaviour!" Philip cried jesuitically.

But Nellie gave him a pitying glance. "Until I saw the size was too utterly impossible for the hands of ladies,--o-o-h, Pip, don't, you hurt me--ah-h-h, you're bruising my arm--stop it, Pip!"

Pip was twisting her soft, muslin-covered arms back in the torturous way boys learn at school, and in a minute she was compelled to call for mercy.

"Down on your knees!" he cried, forcing her down into that humble position. "Now, apologise for all the caddish things you've said about Miss Jones; begin at once,--now, one, two, three--say, 'I apologise.'"

"Never!" screamed Nell, struggling desperately; "I'll die first,--o-o-h, ah-h-h, oh--'I--I--I apologise'--you donkey!"

"More than that,--'I should be glad to be half as beautiful and good and lady-like.'"

"'B-beautiful and good and l-l-lady-like," repeated Nell, with a gasp and a cry between each word. "Oh, Meg, make him stop!"

"'I only said those caddish things because I was jealous of her superiority'--hurry up, now!" A scientific turn accompanied his sentence.

"'C-caddish things because I was jealous--superiority,'--oh, Pip! Meg! somebody, quick--he's half killing me!" Tears of pain and mortification had started to her eyes.

"Let her go, Pip," Meg said; "you really hurt." She pulled at his arm, and he released his victim, who fell in a heap on the floor, and said he was "a h-h-horrid w-wretch, and she w-wished she had no brothers."

Pip picked up his hat and settled his pale blue tie, which had become somewhat disarranged.

"Good-night; I hope you'll learn and inwardly digest your lesson, my child," he said, going out upon the gravel.

But Nellie sprang to her feet, and called after him all down the path till he reached the gate, "Candles, sardines, needles and pins, size nine gloves! ask her what she blacks her eyebrows with!"

Meg was looking troubled. She was sitting on the lounge he had quitted, and her fair brows were knitted beneath the soft, straying hair.

"Nell dear, it _is_ vulgar," she said, "and it _is_ small. I don't know where the distinction of ladies comes in if we say things like that. Perhaps the little dressmaker really wouldn't."

"But we are ladies," Miss Elinor said, her small head in the air,--"nothing can alter that. Our father is a gentleman, our mother was a lady--we are ladies."

"Not if we act like servant girls," Meg said quietly. "If you found a bit of glass under all the conditions you'd expect to find a diamond, and yet it didn't shine like a diamond, then it wouldn't be a diamond, would it?"

"Now don't get elder-sistery and moralous," said Nell; albeit she was a trifle ashamed, for she prided herself certainly upon being a little lady to her boot toes. "Meg, I thought of doing up that white crepon Esther gave me into a kind of evening dress, just for little evenings, you know, at the Baileys or Courtneys, or anywhere, or when we have people here. Would you make the body as a blouse with big frills over the shoulders, or with a yoke and gathered into the waist? The blouse way would be easier, for there's no lining, you know."

"Oh, the blouse, I think," Meg said, half abstractedly. "Do you know if Poppet has gone to bed, Nell? I don't think I saw her come in, and her cough was bad last night."

"I don't know. Meg, I'll give you half-a-crown for that silver belt of yours; I've got a little money left in my allowance yet, and you never wear it. Half-a-crown would buy you a new book, or one of those burnt straw sailor-hats, and the belt would look lovely with the white dress." The younger girl looked persuasively at the elder.

"But I gave seven-and-sixpence for it," Meg objected, "and it's nearly new."

"But you never wear it--what's the good of a thing you don't wear?" contended Nellie, who had set her heart upon it. "If you think it's too little, say two shillings and that light blue blouse of mine that you like."

Meg put the blouse on mentally.

"Well, I like myself in pale blue," she said; "yes, I'll do that--only I hope it's not torn or anything. Oh! and Nell, I think you might go and see if Poppet is in the garden; I've done ever so much to-day, and you've only been reading."

But Nellie was comfortably in the hammock again among the cushions.

"Oh, Poppet never does anything _I_ tell her," she said; "you'd better get her yourself--all the children mind you more than me, you have so much more patience, Megsie."

So it was Meg who had disturbed the important _tete-a-tete_ between Bunty and his little sister; Meg who had separated them abruptly, almost unkindly, at a crisis of great moment; and Meg who had seen the little girl actually into bed, and administered a dose of eucalyptus against the cough.

But it was also Meg who went down in the drawing-room presently, and played Mendelssohn's tender, exquisite Love Song, and a rippling, laughing little bit of Grieg, and a Sonata of Beethoven's, to a father half asleep on the sofa and a young man very wide awake on a neighbouring chair.

And it was Poppet who made hay, and crept along the passage in her little nightgown to the room where Bunty was sitting with his head on his arms and misery in his eyes.

And it was Poppet who, after torrents of abuse and vituperation from the unhappy lad, succeeded in extracting a promise that he should own up everything bravely in the morning, and not shirk his punishment whatever it was.

*CHAPTER IV.*

*A SUMMER'S DAY.*

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

The next day was exceedingly hot, one of those moist, breathless days that make February the most unpleasant month in the year to Sydney folks.

Every one in the house felt utterly limp and cross and miserable, and daily duties were performed in as slipshod and languid a manner as possible. The cook had made a great pan of quince jam, and brought it into the breakfast-room on a tray for Esther to tie down. And Esther was sitting in the rocking-chair trying to make up her mind to do it, and wondering whether it would be easier to use string or paste. Small Esther was making a terrible noise. She owned dolls and bricks, little tea-services, and baby furniture--all the toys that well-regulated little girls are supposed to love; she generally tired of them, however, after a few minutes' play.

At present she had made a tram of six heavy leather chairs, with the armchair for "motor," and her little sweet face was scarlet and wet with the exertion of dragging them into place.

In addition to this she had taken the fire-irons out of the fender, and was rowing, or in some way propelling the train forward--to her own satisfaction, at any rate--by brandishing the tongs wildly about while she stood in the motor and shouted and cried, "Gee up!"

"Essie," big Esther said at last, "you must be quiet. Poor mamma's head aches. Where's your doll? That's not a pretty game."

"All bwoked," said Essie; "gee up, old twain." Bang, bang, clatter, clatter.

"Essie, put those things away at once." Esther noticed the poker for the first time. "You naughty girl, you are scratching the chairs dreadfully."

"But I can't make ze twain puff-puff wifout," objected the engine-driver, "an' we has to go to Bwisbane; det up wif you." She leaned over the tall back of her locomotive, and made vigorous hits at the legs of it.

So vigorous indeed that the chair went over with a crash, precipitating Essie and the poker and tongs and shovel in four different directions.

"Oh dear," said Esther, and sighed before she attempted to go to the rescue. Essie was always tumbling from somewhere or other and never got much hurt, and really it was terribly hot.

"Oo-oo-oh!" said a very small voice. It quavered for a minute. If the anxiously examined little fat knees had been scratched, it would have broken into a despairing yell, but they were whole, and the motor had misbehaved itself.

"Beast!" she said, picking herself up in a great hurry,--"howid old pig!" Then she seized the poker and beat the prostrate chair with all her small, angered strength.

"Essie," big Esther said languidly--she had found with thankfulness she need not move from the chair,--"Essie, I shall whip you, if you use naughty words like that."

"But I was zust dettin' to Bwisbane--so it _is_ a pig," Essie maintained. Then she climbed up again, and the journey proceeded.

In the nursery Meg was supposed to be giving lessons to Peter and Poppet, and superintending the more advanced studies of Nellie; for the last nursery governess had left suddenly, and the Captain had professed himself unable to afford another until the next quarter.

Meg used to provide herself with a book during these daily struggles, to be indulged in at times when her supervision was not required. It had been an "improving" book for the last month, for she had lately been finding out how wofully ignorant she was when she talked to the young man who had listened to her playing last night. To-day it was Browning, because he had looked horrified to find she never read any of his poems, on the plea that he was acknowledged to be difficult to understand.

It was a pity she chose "Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial" for her first essay, especially as it was such a hot day; but she had determined to read, dauntlessly, the first poem the book opened at.

"Do this sum, Poppet," she said, setting a multiplication with eight figures in each line--"dear, _what_ a greasy slate; and Peter, if you drop any blots on your copy, you will have to write it again this afternoon."

Peter was sucking a little lump of ice he had stolen out of the ice-chest. Poppet asked him for a bit to clean her slate with, but he considered this such waste of precious material that he swallowed it in a hurry and choked. Poppet asked if she might go and wet her sponge; but Meg said no, it always took a quarter of an hour to do that simple act, if she escaped from the room. So Peter offered to breathe on it for her.

"Both of us will," said Poppet,--"you on the top half, and me on the bottom."

Meg was taking a cursory glance at "Filippo," and groaning mentally; she did not hear the arrangement for the slate-cleaning until the heads bumped violently and the two began to quarrel.

"You licked it with your tongue," Poppet said.

"I never--I wath only breathing with my lipth on it," declared Peter.

"I saw the end of your tongue hanging out," Poppet maintained.

"You're a thtory-teller, Poppet." Peter's face began to get red. "I wath only breathing, tho there."

"Peter, go and sit at the other end of the table. Poppet, if you put out your tongue at Peter again, I shall make you stand in the corner." Meg put a pen in the Browning to keep it open, and went over to Nell at the window to see how "Le Chien du Capitaine" was progressing.

"Oh, Nell!" she said.

The French dictionary lay face downwards on the broad window-sill; "Le Chien" was face upward on Nell's knee, but on the top of it was "Not Wisely, but too Well."

"Oh!" said Nell, with a gasp, her eyes misty, her cheeks flushed,--"oh, it's no use scolding, Meg,--I absolutely must finish this; I'm just where Kate is--Oh, Meg, you _are_ horrid!"

For Meg had taken forcible possession of the dark green book, and had picked up the dictionary.

"You know you are not to read in the morning," she said; "and I don't think you ought to read a love story like this till you're eighteen at least. Really, Nellie, it's no use me pretending to overlook you; you've done one page of 'The Dog' in three mornings. I'll have to tell father I must give up the pretence of teaching."

"Here, give it to me," Nellie said, sighing wistfully; "it ought to be called 'The Pig,' I think, it's so detestable. Put 'Not Wisely' on the table, Miggie, so I can see the title and get occasional refreshment."

Then Meg returned to the "Privilege of Burial." Her first thought, when she had read the piece through, was that Browning was not a true poet, however great a man he might be; and her second that Allan Courtney must be exceedingly clever to be able to enjoy such reading; her third was sorrow at the poor brains she felt she must possess not to be able to enjoy it too.

She tried another at random--"Popularity." It was rather better she decided, though she had no very clear idea of the meaning; and oh! that terrible last verse,--was it an enigma, or could clever people see the sense instantly?--

"Hobbs hints blue--straight he turtle eats: Nobbs prints blue--claret crowns his cup Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats,-- Both gorge. Who fished the murex up? What porridge had John Keats?"

The deep sigh that accompanied the third vain reading of it, disturbed Peter in his occupation of putting flies in the ink, fishing them out, and letting them crawl over to Poppet.

Poppet at her side of the table was similarly occupied, only she had captured a March-fly, and it made beautifully clear tracks right across to Peter.

"Is your sum finished, Poppet?" Meg said abstractedly, pondering even as she spoke, what Keats, who was a god to her, had to do with porridge.

Poppet put her hand over the March-fly and confessed it was not quite.

"How many rows have you done?"

The answer came in a whisper, "Not quite one."

"I shall keep you in to do it then after four," Meg said in her sternest voice; "and, _Peter_, look at your copy."

In the excitement of getting the half-drowned flies safely across Peter had made a landing-place of his copy-book, and great was the inkiness of it.

"Oh, bleth it!" he said ruefully.

Poppet's head was within an inch of her slate. She was working now at a startling pace, and counting on her fingers in a loud whisper. What would Bunty say if he came home, and she was not there to ask how he had got on, and sympathise with the red marks that were sure to be on his hands?

Nellie had translated five lines, and was occupied in a vain search for the dictionary meaning of _pourra_.

"I believe it's 'pour,' and 'ra' is a misprint that's got tacked on," she said, "or else this beautiful dictionary has left it out, there are ever so many words I can't find, Meg."

"Oh," said Meg, her patience flying away on sudden wings, "what is the use of anything? I won't teach you any more, any of you. Peter wrote far better a month ago than he does now; Poppet's taken an hour to do a row of multiplication by six, and you are looking in the dictionary for _pourra_. It's simply wasting all my time to sit here."

The problem, "who fished the murex up?" had not improved my eldest heroine's temper. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes sparkled, she threw out her hands in a little dramatic way. "You can go, Peter, you can go and make mud pies of the universe, if you like; Poppet, you can go too, tear your dress, and climb as many trees as you please; Nellie, you can sit in front of the looking-glass the rest of the day and read every novel in the house,--why should _I_ care? I won't teach any more."

She flung herself down on the old horse-hair sofa, opened her Browning, and turned her face to the wall.

And they all went, not at first, but presently and by degrees.

"The thaid we could," whispered Peter.

"Did she _mean_ it?" Poppet said doubtfully.

"Of courth," said Peter; "I'm going, at any rate. The thaid I wath to; I'm not going to dithobey her," and he slipped out on tip-toe. Poppet worked to the end of the line by seven, then she remembered she had forgotten to "carry" all the way, and she grew afraid that Peter would get to the birds' eggs she was putting in compartments for Bunty.

So she also, after a glance or two at her sister's back hair, slipped off her chair and stole softly away.

And Nellie drew "Not Wisely" to her own end of the table with the aid of a long ruler; then she followed the example of her iniquitous juniors and departed noiselessly.

It was nearly an hour before Meg turned round again. She had lost herself in some wonderful poems now,--"The Flight of the Duchess," "By the Fireside," and some of the shorter love pieces; she began to see possibilities of beauty and enjoyment, and felt glad with a great gladness that she was able to appreciate them even in a slight degree.

Then the silence struck her. Surely if Poppet were doing her sum, her pencil would be squeaking; and surely if Peter were engaged as he should be on his copy, he would be breathing laboriously and giving occasional little impatient grunts to testify to each fresh blot.

She looked round, and saw the deserted room.

"Took me at my word!" she said aloud. "They might have known I didn't mean it, young scamps,--Nellie too."

Then she smiled indulgently. The exquisite tenderness and the strength of the love pieces had softened and braced her at the same time.

"They're very young," she said, as she went out after them, "and--really it's very hot."

This was all in the morning. At night there was another breeze.

Bunty did not eat his pudding. That of itself was phenomenal, for it was brown with sultanas and had citron peel at wide intervals; generally he managed three servings, and, even then, said they might have made it in a bigger basin. But to-night he said "No pudding" in a sullen voice, and kicked the legs of his chair monotonously with his boot heels.