



Produced by Al Haines.





                        *THE FAMILY AT MISRULE.*


                                   BY

                             ETHEL TURNER,

                               AUTHOR OF
         "SEVEN LITTLE AUSTRALIANS," "THE STORY OF A BABY," ETC



"Ah that spring should vanish with the Rose!
That youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!"
           THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM.

"To youth the greatest reverence is due."
                                       JUVENAL.



                 _WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. J. JOHNSON._



                                LONDON:
                       WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
                 WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
                        NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.




                                   TO
                             CHARLES COPE,
                        MY STEPFATHER AND FRIEND

E. S. T.,
LINDFIELD, SYDNEY.




                              *CONTENTS.*

CHAP.

      I. PICKING UP THREADS
     II. SCHOOL TROUBLES
    III. A PASSAGE-AT-ARMS
     IV. A SUMMER'S DAY
      V. BETWEEN A DREAM AND A DREAM
     VI. TO-MORROW
    VII. A LITTLE MAID-ERRANT
   VIII. ONE PARTICULAR EVENING
     IX. THAT MISCHIEVOUS CUPID
      X. NEEDLES AND PINS
     XI. A DAY IN SYDNEY
    XII. THREE COURSES ONE SHILLING
   XIII. PARNASSUS AND PUDDINGS
    XIV. MUSHROOMS
     XV. THE GOVERNMENT OF MEG
    XVI. MORE MUTINY
   XVII. A DINNER PARTY
  XVIII. "HOW GOOD YOU OUGHT TO BE!"
    XIX. HEADACHE AND HEARTACHE
     XX. MY LITTLE ONE DAUGHTER
    XXI. THE SEVENTH DAY
   XXII. AMARANTH OR ASPHODEL
  XXIII. LITTLE FAITHFUL MEG
   XXIV. "IN THE MIDNIGHT, IN THE SILENCE OF THE SLEEP-TIME"
    XXV. HERE ENDETH



[Illustration: Contents tailpiece]




                        *THE FAMILY AT MISRULE.*



                              *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."

[Illustration: "'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.

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.




                             *CHAPTER II.*

                           *SCHOOL TROUBLES.*

    "A heart at leisure from itself
    To soothe and sympathise."


Poppet and Peter were discussing many things in general, and the mystery
of life in particular. They were sitting crouched up together in an old
tank that had been cast out in the first paddock because it leaked.  It
was after tea, and Poppet had a little dead chicken in her hand that she
had picked up in the garden.

"Ith got wheelth inthide it, and when they thop ith deaded," Peter was
saying,--"thust like my thteam engine, thath what tith."

"I think being alive is very funny," Poppet said, looking earnestly at
the little lifeless body.  "All those chickies was eggs, and then
sud'nly they begin running about and enjoying themselves, and _then_
sud'nly they tumble down dead, and even the doctor can't make them run
again."

"Yeth," said Peter, his eyes very thoughtful as he tried to grasp great
things.  "Prapth you might tumble down like that, Poppet; all _your_
wheelth might thtop."

"Or yours," urged Poppet.  Death was in her hand.  She did not like to
feel that ever her active little body could lie like this fluffy, silent
one, and so made the likelihood more general.

"Yeth," said Peter; "and _oneth_, Poppet, I nearly _wath_ deaded, and
Judy thaved me."

"_You_ don't remember," Poppet said, in a voice of great scorn.  "You
was only a little, tiny baby, just beginning to walk, Peter.  But I was
there, and remember _everything_."

"You wath athleep, Poppet," Peter objected,--Poppet's air of superiority
irritated him.  "Meg told me about it when I had the meathleth, and the
thaid that you wath athleep, tho there!"

"At any rate, Peter, I think you are old enough to stop lisping," Poppet
said severely, finding herself worsted.  "You are six now, and only
babies of ten months lisp.  _I_ never lisped at all."

Peter went red in the face.

"I don't lithp; you're a thtory-teller, Poppet Woolcot!" he said,
drawing in his tongue with a great effort at straight pronunciation.

Poppet jeered unkindly, then she caught sight of Bunty strolling
aimlessly about the garden, and she squeezed herself out of the tank and
stood upright.

"Don't go," said Peter.  "Leth play Zoo, Poppet, and you can be the lion
thith time, and I'll feed you!"

But not even this inducement had any effect.

"I want to talk to Bunty," the little girl said, looking across with a
half-troubled light in her eyes to where Bunty's old cap was visible.
"I can play with you when he's at school.  You can go and have a game
with Baby."

She went away, leaving him disconsolate, and crushed herself through a
broken paling into the garden.

She would like to have gone up to Bunty and slipped her arm through his
and asked him what had made him so exceptionally glum and silent these
last few days.

But she knew him better than that.  She was very wise for her nine
years.

She fell to weeding her garden with great industry while he was walking
on the path near it.  Then when he rambled farther away, she hovered
about here and there, now plucking a flower, now giving chase to a great
praying mantis.  She was within a few feet of him all the time.

"What _are_ you buzznaccing about like this for?" he said at last
irritably, when her short holland frock appeared at every path he turned
down.  He threw himself down on the grass, and pulled his cap over his
eyes.

"Flibberty-Gibbet had a tic in his head this morning," said the little
girl, sitting down beside him Turk fashion.

"Well, _I_ don't care," Bunty said, with almost a groan.

A look of anger crept up into the little sister's, earnest eyes.

"I'spect it's that old Burnham again," she said wrathfully.  "What's he
been doing _this_ time?"

Bunty groaned again.

"Was it your Greek?" she said, edging nearer. "Howid stuff!  As if you
could be espected to get it right _always_!"

There was another smothered sound from beneath the cap.

"Was it that nasty algebra?" said the little, encouraging voice.  It was
so tender and anxious and loving that the boy uncovered his eyes a
little.

"I'm in the _beastliest_ row, Poppet," he said.

Poppet's little, fair face was ashine with sympathy.

"I'd like to _hammer_ that Mr. Burnham," she said. "How did it happen,
Bunty?"

Bunty sat up and sighed.  After all, it would be a relief to tell some
one; and who better than the faithful Poppet?

"Well, you know Bully Hawkins?" he said.

"Oh yes," said the little girl; and she did, excellently--by hearsay.

"Well, on Monday he was on the cricket pitch practising, and Tom Jackson
was bowling him--he'd made him.  And when I went down--I was crossing it
to go up to Bruce--he jumped on me, and said I was to backstop.  I said
I wasn't going to--why should I go after his blooming balls?--and he
said he'd punch my head if I didn't.  And I said, 'Yes, you do,' and
walked on to Bruce.  We were going to play marbles.  And he came after
me, and hit me over the head and boxed my ears and twisted my arms."

"Bully!" said Poppet, with gleaming eyes. "What did you do, Bunty? did
you knock him down?  I hope you made his nose bleed,--I'd--I'd have
_flattened_ him!"

Bunty gave her a look of scorn.

"He's sixteen, and the size of a prize-fighter!" he said.  "I'd have
been half killed.  No; Mr. Burnham was just a little way off, and I let
out a yell to him, and he came up and I told of him."

"Bunty!" said Poppet.  The word came out like the report of a pistol,
and her red lips shut again very tightly to prevent any more following.

[Illustration: "MR. BURNHAM CAME UP AND I TOLD OF HIM."]

This touch of cowardice, this failure to grasp simple honour in Bunty's
character, was a perpetual grief and amazement to her little fearless
soul.  But he would brook no advice nor reproach from her, as she knew
full well, and that is why her lips had closed with a snap after that
one word.

But he had seen the look of horror in her eyes.

"D'ye think I'm going to be pummelled just as that brute likes?" he
demanded angrily.  "He's always bullying the fellows in our form, and
it'll do him good to get a taste of what he gives us. Mr. Burnham said
he hated a bully, and he just walked him up to the schoolroom and gave
him six."

Still Poppet was silent; her face was flushed a little, and she was
pulling up long pieces of grass with feverish diligence.  In her quick
little way she saw it all, and felt acutely just how the boys would look
upon Bunty's behaviour.

"What an idiot you are, Poppet!" he said irritably, as she did not
speak; "as though a bit of a girl like you knows what it is at a boys'
school. I'm sorry I told you--I--I won't tell you the rest."

Poppet choked something down in her throat.

"Do tell me, Bunty," she said; "I didn't mean to be howid.  Go on--I
only couldn't help wishing you could have foughted him instead of
telling, because--well, I espect he'll be worse to you than ever now,
and the other fellows too."

"That's it," Bunty said, with a groan.  "Oh, but that's not half of it
yet, Poppet.  I almost wish I was dead."

Something like a tear forced itself beneath his eyelids and trickled
down his cheeks.  Poppet's. heart expanded and grew pitiful again
instantly His face was close to her knee, and wore so miserable an
expression that in a sudden little burst of love she put down her lips
and kissed him half-a-dozen times.

He sat up instantly and looked ashamed.

"How often am I to tell you I hate mugging?" he said gruffly.  "If you
go on like this, I won't tell you."

"I beg your pardon," Poppet said very humbly; "really, I won't again,
Bunty.  Do go on."

"Well, after that, I went round the side of the school--you know that
path, near the master's windows.  Well, I'd nothing much to do, and the
bell hadn't gone, and I was just chucking my cricket ball up and down;
there was a tree, and I tried to make it go up in a straight line just
as high, and the next minute I heard a crash, and it had gone through
Mr. Hollington's window."

"Good gracious!" Poppet said, with widening eyes; then she gave a little
joyful jump.  "I've got thirteen shillings, Bunty, from the pound Mr.
Hassal gave me; I'll give it to you to get it mended with.  Oh, it won't
be such a very bad row; you can'splain it all to Mr. Hollington."

"That's not all," Bunty said.  "Thirteen shillings! You might as well
say ha'pennies.  I stood there for a bit and no one came, and at last I
went in and looked about, and what do you think?--no one had heard!"

"Oh!" breathed Poppet.  She scented the old trouble again.

"But you see it was such an awful crash.  I knew it was more than the
window.  And every one was out in the playground,--even Mr. Burnham had
just gone out again for something, and Mr. Hollington had gone home
early.  So I first went quietly upstairs, and no one was about, so I
went into his room to get the ball, because my name was on it.  And
there were two glass cases on top of one another under the window with
eggs and specimens and things in, and they were all smashed."

Poppet drew a long breath that ended in a whistle. She was wishing she
had not bought that set of gardening tools that cost six shillings, and
that shillingsworth of burnt almonds--perhaps a sovereign----

"It wasn't school-time," Bunty was whispering now, "and no one had
seen--not a soul, Poppet. Poppet, it was an accident; why should I go
and tell of myself?  Why, I might have been expelled; and think what the
governor would say.  So----"

"Yes," said Poppet steadily, "go on, Bunty."

He had paused, and was digging up the earth with his broken
pocket-knife.  "So--go on."

"So, when we were all in afternoon school, Mr. Burnham came in and asked
who did it."

"Yes, Bunty--_dear_."  A red colour had crept up into the little girl's
cheeks, her eyes were full of painful anxiety.  "You said you had,
Bunty--didn't you, Bunty dear?  Oh, Bunty, of _course_ you said you
had."

"No, I didn't," burst out her brother.  "How could I after that, you
idiot you?  What is the good telling you things?  Why I didn't know what
would have happened.  When he asked us separately I just said 'No' in a
hurry, and then I couldn't say 'Yes' after, could I?"

Again Poppet was silent, again there was the look of amaze and grief in
her wide, clear eyes.  Bunty pulled his old cap over his face again--he
hated himself, and most of all he hated to meet the honest, sorrowful
eyes of his little sister.

"Couldn't you tell now, Bunty?" she said softly. "Go to-night--I'll come
with you to the gate--oh, do, Bunty dear.  Mr. Burnham is not vewy howid
perhaps, and canings don't hurt vewy much--let's go to-night, and by
to-morrow it'll all be over."

"It's no good."  A sob came from under the cap. "Oh, Poppet, it'll be
awful to-morrow!  Oh, _Poppet_! Some one had seen, after all.  Just as I
left school Hawkins came up to me.  He hadn't been there when Burnham
asked us, and didn't hear anything till after school, and he said he saw
me coming out of Hollington's room, and creeping down the passage with a
cricket