CHAPTER XXVIII.

“A PRETTY PICTURE.”

Well knowing all that she had gone through for their sakes, the children felt terribly shy of meeting their hostess.

But, save that her face was a little pale, and that her eyelids showed narrow red rims, there was nothing in her quiet, pleasant greeting, no lack of warmth in her bright smile, to betray that anything had gone wrong with her.

For the first time, perhaps, in their lives, Fay and Phoena realised how much elder folk may suffer for the misdoings of the young, and how unselfishly they may conceal that suffering from its authors.

“Well, now, my dears,” she began, and there was a certain jerkiness in her tone now, which, to older ears would have told its own story, “I want you all to make an extra good breakfast, and I’ll tell you the reason why.”

Oh, then they _were_ going to be sent away. Faith felt sure of that.

“We’re going to have such beautiful weather to-day,” Mrs. Busson went on--as if a fine day during that remarkably dry season were quite a novelty--“that I’ve thought of a little treat for you all.”

The elder girls breathed freely.

“And it’s this. You’ve often heard talk of the old oak at Barnby.”

“Under which Queen Elizabeth is said to have drunk a cup of cider?” asked Phoena, eagerly.

“Yes, quite right, that’s the tree. Well, suppose now you all make an expedition to see it. It’s seven miles there, every step, but you can take the little donkey-trap, and that’ll carry four of you at a time, as well as the dinner and tea baskets, for you’d best not set out to come home till it’s got cool. Now, do you think you’d like to go?”

“Of course we should,” cried the children in chorus.

Phoena, noting the look of relief on Mrs. Busson’s face at the unanimous consent to her plan, guessed the old lady’s good reasons for arranging that they should be out of the house for that whole day.

“And now you’ll finish your breakfast nice and quietly,” besought Mrs. Busson, “and then you’ll just stop indoors out of the sun, till you are ready to start. The house is still topsy-turvy after yesterday’s upset, so we don’t want more little feet running about than can be helped. Besides, poor Miss Di must be kept quiet.”

“Is she better to-day?” asked Fay, timidly, feeling almost guilty in asking after one of the culprits.

“Not much, I’m afraid; she hasn’t had a wink of sleep.”

“And Andrew,” asked Jack, “will he come with us?”

“No, sir, that he certainly won’t,” said Nanny, appearing at the door, to fetch a cup of milk for Di, “Master Andrew’s got to stop at home to be punished, and a rare punishment we’ve thought out for him, too, Mr. Busson and I.”

Without another word, Nanny took the milk, and departed.

Mrs. Busson hurried after her.

“What a horrid old crab-stick,” cried Jack, “no wonder that you all hated her, when she was your nurse.”

“Small blame to Andrew that he didn’t want to see her again,” said Jack.

“Her bark is worse than her bite,” said Faith; “she always used to threaten us with a great deal more than she ever carried out.”

“I expect,” said Phoena, with her natural shrewdness, “that she has really been doing Andrew a kind turn, and that whatever the punishment may be, she only invented it to get Andrew off the merciless beating he seemed likely to get last evening.”

“It won’t be much fun,” said tender-hearted Marygold, “to go to our picnic, and not know all the time what dreadful things may be happening to Andrew.”

“Yes,” chimed in Hubert, “it does seem werry sad to leave him behind in disgrace, when we are going to enjoy ourselves.”

“He has no one to thank for it but himself,” said Phil. “No one asked him to go and kick up all this shine, and do us out of our supper last night. He ought to be licked for it.”

A little later, Jack was quite ready to endorse Phil’s opinion.

Forgetting Mrs. Busson’s directions as to staying indoors, Jack strayed round to the straw-yard, where he ran up against Mr. Busson.

Not heeding the signs of the times, Jack accosted the farmer--who had rather pointedly turned his back upon him--and asked if they might have the ponies.

The old man turned on him in a fury.

“Now, clear out of this,” he cried, seizing Jack by the ear, “I’ve told the missus, and I’ll tell you, that I’m not going to be walked over in my place by a parcel of ill-behaved youngsters.”

Therewith, he dragged Jack across the yard, pushing him through the gate, and slamming it after him with quite unnecessary violence.

“Bother Andrew,” cried Jack, indignantly, rejoining the others, “I do call it a beastly shame that he has gone and spoilt everything for us. Look here, Phil, he’s done us out of the ponies now, for old Busson has cut up rusty, and won’t let us have them.”

“I’d like to kick Andrew,” said Phil, with more heartiness than heart.

“I think,” said Fay, “that you may leave Andrew to the tender mercies of Nanny and Busson. I expect that he’ll get all that he deserves.”

“I hope to goodness that he will,” said Philip, whose disappointment about the ponies made him very vengeance-thirsty.

“Well,” said Jack, gloomily, “he has made the farmer as cross as a bear with _two_ sore heads.”

“I hope we’ll soon start now,” said Marygold, “I don’t want to see Mr. Busson, I don’t, at all.”

“Not much fear of your seeing him,” said Fay, “if you keep indoors, like a good little girl.”

But Faith proved a false prophet.

For, just as the children were thinking of setting off, the door opened, and Mr. Busson put his dreaded head in.

“Now, you little gentlemen and ladies,” he began, “just you come along with me, and see what comes of meddling with what does not belong to you. Never too late to learn, or too early, says I.”

These last words were aimed at Marygold, who was shaking with fear.

So a very subdued procession followed the farmer, as he strode down the garden, and across the fowl-yard to the orchard, beloved of Gaston.

On plodded Mr. Busson through the long, rank grass, till he reached nearly the middle of the orchard. Then he paused.

“Now, here’s a pretty sight for you,” he said, “look at it. _Look_ at it!”

This recommendation was entirely superfluous, however.

Faith and Phoena were standing with eyes and mouth wide open, and fixed in a rigid stare, whilst Hubert and Marygold were backing like the traditional crabs.

“What is it? What is it?” they all asked.

“Why, it’s your brother, Andrew, doing penance, my dears,” said the farmer. “Take a nearer look at him.”

In the middle of the orchard was a big, artificial mound, surmounted by a flagstaff.

This table-mountain, as Phoena had christened it, had been described by Marygold, in a letter to her mother, as being “a mile high,” and affording a view “all over the country.”

As a matter of fact, it was about twenty feet high, and from its top you could command a good view of the lane, which ran alongside of the orchard. But though the surface of the mound was now so thickly overgrown with coarse weeds and grass, that to the unknowing it might almost appear a natural hillock, it was really entirely made up of broken brick-bats, and crockery, and all the other miscellaneous objects which go to form a rubbish heap. But it was a rubbish heap of ancient date, and of very literal long-standing.

It was this table mountain that Mr. Busson had selected as the theatre of Andrew’s punishment. A wide-bottomed tub, turned topsy-turvy, was set at the foot of the flag-staff, and in the middle of the tub was placed a chair, and on the chair was what appeared to be a monster straw bee-hive.

It was of the old-fashioned extinguisher shape, wide at the edge of the skirt--as the cottagers term it--whence three wooden legs projected, and tapering upwards into quite a narrow circumference round the neck.

Above this neck, and struggling out of a thick garnish of stiff, struggling straws, Andrew’s head was just apparent. In front of the brim of his straw hat was a huge card, bearing the words, in Nanny’s largest writing, “Who would be a curious boy?”

A further decoration was added to the hat, in the shape of Libbie’s scorched and rent apron, which was spread over it after the fashion of those cloths which sometimes serve to protect hives from the undue heat.

“There now, don’t you call that a pretty picture, and all made with a truss of straw, and a good-for-nothing youngster?” asked the farmer, turning upon Jack and Phil, who were holding their sides with laughter, so absolutely ludicrous did Andrew appear.

“Go away, all of you, you nasty cowards,” howled Andrew, “if you were not such a sneaking lot, all of you, you would never let me be treated like this.”

“Oh, I say, none of your cheek, old bee-hive,” said Jack, “you chain up, after all the row you’ve kicked up for everyone.”

“I wish I’d kicked up ten times more,” snarled Andrew, “you’re all traitors and snea--”

“Look here, old straw-sides,” said Phil, “you’d better take your punishment meekly, or you may get something worse than that shied at you,” he added, flinging a pellet of grass, which he took care should only shave Andrew’s face.

“Ay, that’s it, my lads, pelt him a bit,” said Busson, “it won’t do him no harm. As I tell him, if I’d had my way, I’d have given him a good lathering last night, but there the women folk interfered, so he has got to do bee-hive penance instead, and get no honey either. Eh, sonny?” and the farmer brought his heavy stick down on Andrew’s straw envelope with a playful energy, which set a cloud of dust whirling about that unfortunate boy’s eyes and nose.

“Get away with you, get away with you,” whimpered Andrew, “if you don’t go soon, I’ll--”

“Make your mind easy, my lad,” said Busson, “we’re all going away now, for it’s not everyone that is so mighty fond of bee-hive company as you. So just you bide nice and quiet there, until such time as I see fit to relieve you, and _ponderate_ over your misdoings, that’s my advice to you. But, just remember, that, perched up aloft as you are, I can keep my weather eye on you from all over the place, so you’d better behave yourself, else it will be the worse for you, and for this here stick too, for it shall be broken in your service then, and no mistake,” and Busson’s laugh was not pleasant to hear. “Now, young ’uns, march off, and leave him to himself.”

“Oh, Andrew,” said Fay, screwing as close to him as she could, “are you very miserable?”

“Get away, I hate you all,” was the spiteful reply.

“Oh, please, Mr. Busson,” implored Faith, as they trooped out of the orchard, “you won’t leave Andrew very long up there; suppose he got very tired of standing up on that chair, and tumbled off.”

“No fear of that happening, missy,” said the farmer, who had worked off the worst part of his temper by now, “for before we put that comfortable straw jacket over him, we stood him up on the chair, and tied him pretty tightly to the back of it. Then, to make sure that the chair itself wouldn’t budge, we slipped a chain round the legs of it, and so made the chain taut to the flag-staff, so you see that it’s all been carefully arranged. I’ve told him that most likely he’ll be there till the sundown, but I’ll let him off, may be, in a couple of hours.”

“Well, really,” said Faith, as they started on their expedition, “I think after all he has done, that Andrew has got off uncommonly well. Of course, Nanny invented that punishment, she always used to concoct the most fearful chastisements for us.”

“It must be disgustingly stuffy inside all that straw,” said Jack, “I’d sooner have had twenty lickings.”

“And I’d sooner have had forty than been made such a tom-fool of,” said Phil.

“Yes, but then you are not Andrew,” remarked Fay.

“Well, at any rate,” said Phoena, “I’m very glad that we know the worst of what is to happen to him, because now we needn’t feel so very selfish, going off to our picnic and not knowing what dreadful punishment Andrew might be undergoing all the time.”

“That’s true,” said Faith, “but where’s Gaston, I thought he started with us.”

“So he did,” said Phoena, “I expect he has gone round by the road, with Ruth, and the infants, and the donkey cart.”

“And we had better hurry up,” said Jack, “for they are going to wait for us at the stile by the barley-held.”