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diff --git a/24443-8.txt b/24443-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c8f5799 --- /dev/null +++ b/24443-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5688 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Australian Lassie, by Lilian Turner + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: An Australian Lassie + +Author: Lilian Turner + +Illustrator: A.J. Johnson + +Release Date: January 28, 2008 [EBook #24443] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUSTRALIAN LASSIE *** + + + + +Produced by David Wilson, Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "Seated on a partly submerged post ... was John Brown."] + + + + + AN AUSTRALIAN + LASSIE + + BY + + LILIAN TURNER + + AUTHOR OF "THE PERRY GIRLS," ETC. + + ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. J. JOHNSON + + WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED + LONDON AND MELBOURNE + + + + + TO + MY STEPFATHER + CHARLES COPE + + + + +CONTENTS + +CHAP. PAGE + + I WYGATE SCHOOL 9 + + II THE PEARL SEEKERS 20 + + III "THE DAILY ROUND--THE COMMON TASK" 30 + + IV GHOSTS 41 + + V JOHN BROWN 59 + + VI MONDAY MORNING 68 + + VII "CAREW-BROWN" 79 + + VIII THE FIGHT 86 + + IX DOROTHEA'S FRIENDS 101 + + X RICHES OR RAGS 112 + + XI THE ARTIST BY THE WAYSIDE 123 + + XII BETTY IN THE LION'S DEN 134 + + XIII "IF I WERE ONLY YOU!" 147 + + XIV JOHN'S PLANS 162 + + XV ON THE ROAD 177 + + XVI THE NOTE ON THE PINCUSHION 189 + + XVII IN THE CITY 201 + + XVIII ALMA'S SHILLING 214 + + XIX THE BENT-SHOULDERED OLD GENTLEMAN 224 + + XX THE DAY AFTER SCHOOL 234 + + XXI "GOOD-BYE, GOOD-BYE" 245 + + + + +CHAPTER I + +WYGATE SCHOOL + + +"Emily Underwood, 19; Stanley Smith, 20; Cyril Bruce, 21; Nellie +Underwood, 22; Elizabeth Bruce, 23--bottom of the class!" + +Mr. Sharman took off his eyeglasses, rubbed them, and put them on again. +Then he looked very hard at the little girl at the end of the furthest +form, who was hanging her head and industriously biting a slate pencil. + +"Stand up, Elizabeth Bruce. Put down your pencil and fold your hands +behind you." + +Elizabeth did as she was told instantly. Her rosy face looked anxiously +into the master's stern one. + +"Yesterday morning," the master said, "you were head of the class. This +morning I find your name at the end of the list. How was that?" + +Elizabeth hung her head again, and her dimpled chin hid itself behind +the needlework of her pinafore. + +A small girl, a few seats higher, held up her hand and waved it +impatiently. + +"Well?" asked the master. + +"Please sir, she was promptin' Cyril Bruce." + +"Silence!" thundered the master sternly. Then his gaze went back to the +bent head of the little culprit. + +"Stand upon the form," he said, "and tell me in a clear voice how it is +you went down twenty-two places in one afternoon." + +The rosiness left the little girl's face. She raised her head, and her +brown eyes looked pleadingly into the master's, her white face besought +him, for one second. Then she scrambled up to the form by the aid of the +desk in front of her. + +Down the room near the master's desk stood a new boy, an awkward looking +figure of twelve years old or so, waiting to be given a place in the +class. Elizabeth knew that her disgrace was meant as a solemn warning to +him. So she tossed back the short dark curls that hardly reached her +neck, and looking angrily at him, said-- + +"I was top and I pulled Nelly Martin's hair, and was sent down three. +Then I was fourth, and my pencil squeaked my slate and I was sent down +six. Then Cyril had to spell 'giraffe,' and I said 'one r and two f's,' +and she sent me to the bottom." + +All of this speech was directed to the new boy who stood on one leg and +grew red. It was an immense relief to him when the master rapped the +front desk with his cane and said-- + +"Look at me, miss. Whom do you mean by 'she'?" + +At the end of the room a sharp visaged lady of forty-five was watching +the proceedings of the first class from over the heads of a row of small +students who comprised the "Babies' Class." + +"D-o, do; g-o, go," she said mechanically, and looked anxiously from +little Elizabeth to her stern son, the master of Wygate School. + +Elizabeth jerked her head, "Mrs. Sharman," she said. + +"Sit down and fold your hands behind you," ordered the master. He +turned to the new boy. "John Brown," he said, "go and take your seat +next to Elizabeth Bruce--but one above her." + +The new boy moved across the room, red-faced and clumsy in every +movement. When he found himself in front of the class he grew still +redder, and hung hesitatingly upon the step that led to the platform +upon which the form was placed. + +Elizabeth looked at him disdainfully and drew her dress close around +her. + +"Sit down, you silly," she said in a sharp whisper, and indicated with a +little head toss the seat above her. + +John Brown slunk past her and dropped heavily into his seat. The master +retired to his desk and made an entry or two in his long blue book while +silence hung over the schoolroom. + +In Elizabeth's heart a flame of anger was spreading. That this boy, this +new boy, should be placed above her, was in her eyes the greatest +injustice. A small voice within told her that she had been punished +sufficiently yesterday afternoon. + +Her head moved slightly in the direction of the new boy and her rosy +lips opened. + +"You cheat!" she whispered. + +The boy sat motionless and the anger burned hotter in Elizabeth's heart. + +"Cheaty, cheaty; go home and tell your mother!" she said in a sing-song +way. + +Still Brown did not move. + +Elizabeth slid her hand along the seat and gave him a sharp pinch, and +he started uneasily. + +"Stand up the boy or girl who was speaking," ordered the master, without +looking up. + +A small fair-haired fair-complexioned boy, two seats above Elizabeth, +flushed. His name was Cyril Bruce and he was Elizabeth's twin +brother--twelve years old. + +"I was only talking to myself--that's not speaking," he murmured. + +Elizabeth rose slowly to her feet and stood working a corner of her +pinafore into a knot. The master looked around, and his brow grew dark +when he saw the small offender. + +"Repeat aloud what you said, Elizabeth Bruce," he ordered. + +The little girl grew white, then red, then white again, and went on +twisting her pinafore. + +"Do you hear me?" shouted the master. "Stand upon the form and repeat +your words." + +Once again Elizabeth clambered into a higher position. + +"I said--I said, 'Cheaty, cheaty; go home and tell your mother,'" she +said in a clear voice that sounded all over the room. + +A shocked expression passed over the face of the class. + +"To whom were you addressing yourself?" asked the master. + +"The new boy," said the little girl. + +"Sit down, and stay in the dinner-hour and write out the sentence fifty +times." + +Elizabeth sat down, and again her anger against the new boy blazed high. + +She put out her foot and kicked the heel of his boot, but this time she +eschewed words, for the face of the master was towards her, and an +expectant silence hung over the schoolroom. + +The clock struck ten, and the boy at the head of the class immediately +began passing slates down--one to each pupil, with a piece of pencil +upon it. + +The sight of the well-cleaned slate and nicely pointed pencil brought a +feeling of great uneasiness to Elizabeth. + +It had been in her mind how nicely she could climb above the new boy, +and the tell-tale girl, and all the other boys and girls, and now the +order of the day was--sums. + +The master was writing them down on the blackboard, making them up as he +went along, with due care working nines and eights and sevens into his +multiplicand and dealing but sparsely with fives and twos and threes. + +Elizabeth copied it down and rubbed it out. Copied it down and rubbed +out half, by judicious breathings directed judiciously; looked up the +class to see how Cyril was progressing, and back to the board to see if +a pleasant little short division sum was lurking near this obnoxious +multiplication; then back to her slate to count the number of nines +once more. And by that time the master was giving out his order: +"Pencils down. Hands behind you. _At--tention._" + +Brown's face expressed such placidity that the master asked him to stand +and give out the answer, and he gave it gladly enough--999.009--which +sounded particularly learned to a class not yet introduced to decimals. + +The master nodded. "You are right," he said, "but no one is up to +decimals yet." + +So it happened that Brown made his reputation straightway, and with such +ease did he solve every arithmetical puzzle, that dinner-time saw him +sitting smiling and covered with laurels at the head of the class, and +Elizabeth still at the bottom cleaning her slate to write "Cheaty, +cheaty; go home and tell your mother," fifty times. + +Wygate School was a preparatory school for boys and girls, although the +girls out-numbered the boys. At the present stage of its existence it +had eighteen girls and twelve boys. Not half a mile distant was a public +school, to the precincts of which flocked fifty pupils daily, each of +whom paid a modest threepence a week for educationary advantages. + +Wygate School was the only private school in the district, and was +regarded respectfully by the neighbourhood. So many "undesirables" were +precluded from its benefits, by its charge of one guinea a quarter. + +John Brown, the new boy, whose age it appeared was thirteen years, was +the eldest pupil in the school, and Floss Jones, who was four, was the +baby. + +The neighbourhood frequently moaned that there was no private school for +those of riper years--fifteen and sixteen or so; but in some cases it +called in a governess, in others it forewent its dignity and adopted the +public school, and in others again it sent its young folk over the water +to Sydney--a matter of three miles or more. + +But the North Shore Highlands was at this time uncatered for by the +tramway authorities. An old coach ran twice daily from Willoughby to the +steamer--a morning trip and an evening-tide one--there and back. It was +largely patronized by the Chinese, and parents of the artisan class +hesitated and frequently refused to allow their young folk to make the +journey. + +The three young Bruces went every day across a beaten bush track, from +their weather-board cottage home, past the big iron gates of Dene Hall, +a house built of grey stone in the early days of the colony, where their +irascible grandsire dwelt, up a red dusty road to the little +school-house on the hill. + +And special terms were arranged for them because they were three--Cyril, +and Elizabeth the twins, and six-year-old Nancy. + +They had always been three. For even in the days when Cyril and +Elizabeth had belonged to the baby class there had been Dorothea, +Dorothea who was sixteen and quite old now, who was a weekly boarder in +a fashionable Sydney school (for a ridiculously small quarterly fee). + +And when Dorothea had left Wygate School little Nancy's hand had been +put into Elizabeth's and she too had taken the long red road to school. +And after Nancy there was still a wee toddler who, it was said, would +make the number up to three again when Cyril went to a "real" boy's +school. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE PEARL SEEKERS + + +They were round the corner and away from school--Cyril, Elizabeth and +Nancy. Behind them were all the trials and vexations of the day, among +which may be counted Mrs. Sharman, Mr. Sharman--and John Brown. + +Cyril spoke with awe of John Brown's big hands and feet, and looked over +his shoulder as he spoke. For that small hope of the Bruces had in the +cloak-room inadvertently trodden upon Brown's hat, and had been startled +by the way in which Brown had swung him round by his collar. + +"I pinched him," said Betty proudly. "He shouldn't have gone above me. +I'll pinch him every time." + +Her sun-bonnet was tucked away under her arm, her boots and stockings +were in the family lunch-basket that she carried, boy-like, swung over +her shoulder, and she covered the ground most of the time with a hop, +skip, and a jump, aided by a long stout stick. + +"I suppose," she said, "we'll have to try the dangerous little coral +islands this time. I know that's where the black pearl is hidden." + +"Oh dear," sighed Nancy, "I don't like curral islands a bit. Let's go +home to-day." + +"Silly!" said Cyril loftily. "We've got to find the black pearl +somehow." + +"It'll be worth hundreds and thousands of pounds," said Elizabeth. "Just +_think_ of taking that to mother, just _think_ of all we could do. It +wouldn't matter _then_ grandfather not speaking. _We_ could drive past +him in our carriage then! Come on my lass." This last was to Nancy. + +"I want to go in the water, too, Betty," said the small lassie, +following at a trot. "Don't want to be your old wife. I've been your +wife for a lot of days now." + +"I don't know who you mean when you say Betty," declared Elizabeth, and +leapt forward so far that the other two had to sharpen their pace +suddenly. + +"Peter Lucky," said Nancy imploringly. "Oh, Peter Lucky, let Cywil be +your wife a bit--do." + +"Cywil's"--it may be stated that Betty was still very backward sometimes +in the matter of r's--"Cywil's got to be my chum--don't be such a stupid +Nancy--er--Polly. He's got to try to murder me in the middle of the +night to get the pearl. Look here, we've only just put you in to amuse +you a bit, we can _just_ as well do without you." + +Nancy's face fell. Such statements were lavishly used by these two +elders of hers towards herself. But the indignity she feared most was to +be told to go home and play with the baby, and she looked at her sister +with an eager smile now to stop the words if possible. + +"Oh, don't do wivout me, Betty dear," she said. "I'll love to be your +wife. I was only thinking it would be nice to have your feet in the +water." + +"You're six," said Betty. "You ought to be able to be my wife well +now--cook the dinner, and wash up, and all that. If you do well at +this, we'll see how you'll do as a man some day." + +For a second they stopped before their grandfather's gates and peered up +the long drive. It was an old habit of theirs, varied for instance by +challenges of who dared to walk the furthest distance up the drive. +Betty had once advanced just beyond that mysterious bend, but she had +scudded back again soon, declaring her grandfather had a gun and was +coming after them, with it aimed at her head. Oh, how they had run home +that day! + +Another time she had climbed upon the topmost rail of the gate and, +scrambling down quickly, had set off madly for home, followed +breathlessly by the others who were afraid even to look over their +shoulders. "He's set the emus loose," Betty told them as they ran, "and +emus are like bloodhounds for scenting you out. And besides, they can +fly." + +But that was fully a year ago now, and much of the terror had departed +from their grandfather's gates for the two elder ones. It was only Nancy +who had cold thrills down her back and shudderings at passing the dread +gates. + +To-day Betty did no more than peep through the railing, declare there +was nobody about, and swing off again with her long pole. "Nobody there +to-day," she said, and Nancy breathed easier and ran after her. + +They were on the well-trodden bush-track now, the track that led home +between great gums and slim saplings. The iron roof of the cottage came +into view and the row of tall pines that stood like grim sentinels +between the two-rail fence and the sweet-scented garden. A small wicket +gate stood invitingly ajar, and a black dog, lying meditatively outside +it, pricked up his ears and raised his head as the trio came into sight. + +They took a cross-track, however, and disappeared into the bush again, +and the dog shook off his thoughtful mood and ran gleefully after them. + +For he had not grown up from puppyhood to doghood with these children +without knowing what tracks led to school and home, and what to the +wonderful realm of play and fancy. Moreover, his anticipations were +always aroused when Elizabeth changed her habit, and he had seen in the +twinkling of his eye that she was bare-legged and bare-headed and +provided with a pole. So he barked joyously and scampered away upon that +cross-track too. + +Down in the gully where the growth was thicker, and where the wattles +and willows made many a fairy grove, a small creek ran. The widest end +of it ran into their grandfather's grounds, and had at one time in its +career broken down the two-rail dividing fence, which now lay submerged +in its waters and formed the "dangerous coral islands" alluded to by +Betty. + +It pleased Elizabeth's fancy to state that her grandfather was unaware +of this creek, but that some one would tell him soon, and then he would +send men and have it well examined by divers. + +To-day, however, a dire disappointment awaited them. Seated on a partly +submerged post, and holding a fishing-line in his hands, was John Brown. +The three stared at him for a minute in speechless disgust, but he +returned their stare with a nod and a small smile and looked at his +line. + +"Better come home," whispered Cyril, with a lively recollection in his +mind of the big hand that had played with his collar so short a time +past. + +But Betty was trying to swallow her indignation and to keep her voice +quiet. + +"This is our place," she said. "This was our place before yours." + +"Well," said Brown, "it's mine now." + +"It isn't yours," said Betty shrilly; "it belongs to our grandfather--so +there!" + +Again Brown smiled. + +"Well, that's a stuffer," he said, "it belongs to _my_ grandfather." + +Betty's eyes widened in horror at the new boy's depravity. "Oh, you +story!" she said in a shocked voice, then turning to the uneasy Cyril, +"Hit him, Cyril!" she said. "Hit him one in the eye for taking our place +and telling such a wicked story." + +But Cyril was already widening the distance between himself and John +Brown, and a feeling of anger was beginning to stir in his small breast +against Betty for trying to mix him up in this quarrel. + +"Come on home," he said, "what's the good of having a row with a fellow +like that?" + +"But it's our water," said Betty, her face red with anger towards the +fisher. She stooped down and picked up a stone. + +Brown turned and looked at the little group; Cyril a good distance in +the rear; and angry-faced Betty, with Nancy cowering in terror behind +her. + +"Look here," he said, "I'm not going to have any of you people poaching +on my grandfather's property. You can come as far as the fence _if_ you +like, but I advise you to come no further." + +Betty's stone flew through the air--many yards distant from the boy on +the post. + +"Good, again," he said. "There are plenty more stones and I'm here yet." + +Again Betty repeated the process, and with even worse results. She never +_could_ aim straight in all her life! + +"Good shot!" said Brown, laughing again. + +"Oh, Cywil, do _smash_ him," begged Betty in desperation. + +"He daren't, he hasn't the pluck," mocked Brown. + +"No Bruce is afraid," said Betty, using her favourite taunt. "Come on +Cyril!" + +But when she looked over her shoulder Cyril was nowhere in sight, and +Nancy was scudding away, like a terrified rabbit, through the scrub +around her. + +Through the air rang a clear shrill voice--it belonged to golden haired +Dorothea--"Betty, come home." + +"You're called," said Brown, winding up a yard or so of his line. + +Betty stooped, grasped another stone, took aim at a distant wattle in +sheer desperation, and caught Brown on the hand. + +The pain of it drew a sharp exclamation from him, and brought him from +his post in a towering rage. + +And Betty took to her bare heels and ran--ran as though her grandfather +and all his emus were after her. + +Near the wicket-gate she ran against Cyril, who was throwing stones in +the air for the dog to snap at as they fell. + +"Bwoun!" she gasped. "He's coming!" + +Cyril looked down the track and beheld no one. + +"It's all right," he said; "go inside and shut the gate. I'll give him +what for. I'd just like to see him touch you. I'd knock him into next +year as soon as look at him." + +But no Brown appeared. + +Cyril put his hands in his pockets and strutted towards the track +through the bush--to the intense admiration of Elizabeth. + +"No Bruce is afraid of any one," he said. "You and Nancy go in." + +A girl in a short long print dress ran down the verandah steps. A mane +of golden hair hung down her back and some of it lay over her shoulders, +and when she stood still she tossed it away. + +"You're to come home at once, Betty," she said, "and mind baby. And oh, +you naughty girl, you've got your boots and stockings off again. What +_will_ mother say?" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +"THE DAILY ROUND--THE COMMON TASK" + + +Betty's boots and stockings were on once more, and her school frock +exchanged for one whose school days lay far behind it. In spite of +"lettings down" and repeated patchings and mendings it was in what its +small wearer called the "ragetty tagetty" stage of its existence, and +was donned only when she was about the dirty part of "cleaning up." + +It was Saturday morning now, and she was very busy. Her mother could +never capably wield a broom, or scrub, or dust, or cook--she had done +all four, but the results were pathetic. Even Nancy knew the story of +her life, which began with "once upon a time, almost twenty years ago," +and was told in varying fragments whenever a story was begged for. + +There was the story of the jolly sea-captain and his one wee +daughter--their own mother--and of how they had sailed the seas and seen +many people and many lands. There was the story of the old house within +the iron gates--built by convicts more than fifty years ago--and of how +the sea-captain had bought it and built a tower and spiral staircase and +a roof promenade, which he called his "deck." And of how he and his +small daughter settled down in the great house together; and how her +wardrobe was always full of beautiful clothes and her purse full of real +sovereigns; and two ponies she had to her name, and a great dog that was +the terror of the neighbourhood, and a little dog that lived as much as +it could in her lap. There was the story of her garden full of rare +flowers, and her ferneries of rare ferns, and her aviary of rare birds. + +Then there was the story of the little girl "grown up," with hair done +on the top of her head, and long sweeping dresses, and a lover chosen by +her father himself--by name John Brown; and of the pale young author +who lived beyond the iron gates, in a small weather-board cottage with +an iron roof who wrote dainty little sonnets and ballads, which he read +to her under the old gum trees. + +And lastly, there was the story of the captain's pretty daughter +slipping away from the great house--to become mistress of the wee +cottage behind the pine trees. And of how the captain returned all +letters unopened and sailed away to other lands for five years; of how +afterwards the poor author lay ill unto death, and the little +wife--"mother" now--carried pretty Dorothy to the great house and sent +her trotting into the library, saying "grandpa" as she ran; and of how +the little girl had been lifted outside the house by a servant, who had +civilly stated the orders he had received, never to allow any one from +the author's house to "cross the threshold" of that other great one. + +And now it was to-day--and besides Dorothea there were the twins (Cyril +and Elizabeth), Nancy and the baby; a goodly number for the small +weather-board cottage to shelter and for the author, who had only had +one book published, to bring up. + +So it fell out that there was only a rough state girl to do the work of +the cottage, and much sweeping and dusting was Elizabeth's "share"; much +"washing-up" and tidying. To Nancy belonged the task of setting the +tables and amusing the baby; and Cyril was engaged at a penny a week to +stock the barrel in the kitchen with firewood and chips, and bits of +bark to coax contrary fires. He was the only one who received payment +for his work, and no one demurred, for was he not the only boy of the +family and in the eyes of them all a sort of king! + +So Betty was dressed in working garb and was bestowing her usual +Saturday morning attention upon the "living-room"--drawing-room they had +none. The little room that had evidently been destined by its builder to +fulfil such a mission, had been seized and occupied by the author in the +beginning of his residence at The Gunyah. + +The living-room was a low-ceiled room with French windows leading to the +verandah. It had a centre table, several cane chairs, a small piano, a +rocking-chair and a dilapidated sofa. Its floor was oilclothed and its +windows uncurtained--only Dorothea had arrived at the stage that sighed +for prettinesses. + +Betty was quite happy when she had swept the floor, shaken the cloth, +put all the chairs with their backs to the wall, and polished the piano. + +She was surveying the room with pride when Dorothea walked in. Dorothea +in the frock she had worn for five mornings during the week, and which +was still clean and fresh; with her wonderful hair in a shining mass +down her back, and a serviette in her hand (an extempore duster). It +always took her the better part of Saturday to even find her own niche +in the home. + +"I was going to dust this room, Betty," she said--"someway, everything I +am going to do, I find you've done." + +Elizabeth smiled drily. She could not even sweep a room and be just +Elizabeth Bruce. Saturdays usually found her in imagination Cinderella; +and consequently harsh words from Dorothea, who in her eyes was a cruel +step-sister, would have found more favour with her than kind ones. + +"There is the kitchen to be swept," said Betty; "the ashes are thick on +the hearth and the breakfast things are not washed up." + +Dorothea looked startled. Betty's voice sounded tired and resigned. + +"Oh dear!" said Dorothea, "I do so _hate_ doing kitchen work. It makes +my hands so red and rough, and just spoils my dress." + +"The work is there and must be done," remarked Betty. + +Mrs. Bruce looked in at the door. Her face was just Dorothea's grown +older, and without its roses; her hair was Dorothea's with its gold +grown dull; her very voice and dimples were Dorothea's. A large +poppy-trimmed hat adorned her head, and a basket with an old pair of +scissors in it was swung over her arm. + +"Of course you'll not do kitchen work, my chicken," she said gaily; +"slip on your hat and come and gather roses with me. It's little enough +of you home your get--that little shall not be spoilt by ashes and dust. + +"It's Mary's work, and Betty can see that she does it well." + +Betty stalked into the kitchen and regarded the fireplace in gleeful +gloom, sitting down in front of it and staring into the heart of the +small wood fire. + +Mary, the maid-of-all-work, took her duties in a very haphazard way. She +had no particular time for doing anything, and no particular place for +keeping anything. And alas! it is to be regretted her mistress was the +last woman in the world to train her in the way she should go. + +To-day she had taken it into her head to try the effect of a few bows of +blue ribbon upon her cherry-coloured straw hat, before the breakfast +things were washed or the sweeping and scrubbing done. But the +washing-up belonged to Betty. + +Outside in the garden Mrs. Bruce was drawing Dorothea's attention to the +scent of the violets and mignonette, and her gay voice caused Betty to +sigh heavily. + +"If my own mother had lived," she said gloomily, "I too might gather +flowers. But what am I?--the family drudge!" + +Cyril entered the back door, his arms piled up with firewood. + +"I'm getting sick of chopping wood," he said grumblingly, "it's all very +well to be you and stay in a nice cool kitchen. How'd you like it if you +had to be me and stay chopping in the hot sun? I know what _I_ wish." + +"What?" asked Betty, glancing round her "nice cool kitchen" without any +appreciation of it lighting her eyes. + +"Why, I wish mother had never run away and made grandfather mad. And I +wish he'd suddenly think he was going to die, and say he wanted to adopt +me." + +"How about me? Why shouldn't he adopt me?" demanded Betty. + +"'Cause I'm the only son," said Cyril. "He's got his pick of four girls, +but if he wants a boy there's only me." + +He went outside and loaded himself with wood once more. + +"Cecil Duncan's father gives him threepence a week, and he doesn't have +to do anything to earn it," he said when he came in again. "He says +every Monday morning his father gives him a threepenny bit and his +mother's _always_ giving him pennies." + +"H'em," said Cinderella, and fell to work sweeping up the hearth +vigorously. Her own grievances faded away, as she looked at +Cyril's--which was a way they had. + +"And he's not the only boy neither," said Cyril. He threw the wood +angrily into the barrel. "There's Harry and Jim besides. I suppose they +get threepence each as well. What's a penny a week? You can't do +anything with it." + +Elizabeth lifted down a tin bowl and filled it with water; placed in it +a piece of yellow soap, a piece of sand soap and a scrubbing brush, and +then began to roll up her sleeves. She was no longer Cinderella. A new +and wonderful thought had flashed into her mind even as she listened to +Cyril's plaint. It certainly _was_ hard for him, her heart admitted, +very hard. + +"How would you like to be rich, Cywil?" she asked, turning a shining +face to him. + +Cyril thought a reply was one of those many things that could be +dispensed with--he merely showered a little extra vindictiveness upon +the firewood and kicked the cask with a shabby copper-toed boot. + +Betty danced across to him and put her sun-tanned face close to his fair +freckled one. + +"How would you like to be _very_ rich?" she said, "and to have a pony of +your own, and jelly and things to eat, and a lovely house to live in, +and----" + +"Don't be so silly, Betty," said the boy irritably. + +Betty wagged her head. "I've got a thought," she said. + +"Your silly-old pearl-seeking is no good. There are no pearls, so +there," said Cyril crossly. "You needn't go thinking you really take me +in. It's only a game--bah!" + +Betty was still dancing around him in a convincing, yet aggravating way. + +"How'd you like to be adopted, Cywil?" she asked--"really adopted, not +pretending? Oh, I've got a very big thought, and it wants a lot of +thinking. You go on getting your wood while I think." + +And Cyril gave her one of his old respectful looks as he went out of the +kitchen door. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +GHOSTS + + +Betty's plan was beautifully simple. As Cyril said, he could easily have +thought of it himself. It was nothing more than to effect a +reconcilement between their grandfather and their mother, and the means +to bring it about was to be "ghosts." + +"Mother said he was superstitious," said Betty; "she says all sailors +are. He doesn't like omens and things, mother says. What we want to do +is to give him a severe fright." + +She had thought out alone all the details of her plan, helped only by a +few incidental words of her mother's. The story of baby Dorothea being +taken to melt a father's heart, for instance, had fired Betty with the +resolve to try what baby Nancy could do in that direction. + +Cyril was more matter-of-fact. + +"If he wouldn't forgive mother when she took Dot, he's not very likely +to soften to you with Baby," he said. + +But Betty had counted that risk too. + +"You forget he's ever so many years older," she said. "He's an old man +now, and it's quite time he woke up. I've been thinking of everything +we've to do and everything we've to say." + +"Ghosts don't talk," said Cyril. + +"They moan," replied Betty; "and they _do_ talk. In _Lady Anne's +Causeway_ there's a ghost, and it speaks in sepulchral tones and says: +'Come hither, come hither to my home; thy time is come.'" + +The little girl's eyes were shining; the very thought of that other +ghost's "sepulchral" tones gave her a thrill down her back and lifted +her out of herself. Of all her plots and plans, and they were many and +various, there was not one to compare in magnitude with this. In her +thoughts she became a ghost, straightway. She glided about the house, +her lips moved but gave no sound, her eyes shone. Underneath the +exhilaration, that her ghostly feelings gave, was the smooth sense of +being about to do a great deed that would benefit every one--Cyril, her +mother, her father, Dot, every one. Tears glistened in her eyes as she +thought of the meeting between her grandfather and her mother, and +beheld in fancy her pretty mother clasped at last in the sea-captain's +arms. + +Throughout that Saturday afternoon she made her preparations, only now +and then giving Cyril a trifling explanation. He was much relieved to +hear he would not be expected to take any active part in the +proceedings, only to be at hand, in hiding, to help his ghostly sister +carry the baby. + +Tea was always an early meal at The Gunyah, that Mr. Bruce might have a +long evening at his writing, and the children at their home lessons. + +To-night, after the last cup and saucer had been washed and dried by +Betty and put away by Dot, and after the baby, had been tucked into her +little crib, by Betty again, a long pleasant evening seemed to stretch +before every one. + +Mr. Bruce brought out _My Study Windows_, and declared he had "broken +up" till Monday. Mrs. Bruce opened a certain exercise book her eldest +daughter had given her, imploring secrecy, and Dot sat down to the piano +and wandered stumblingly into Mendelssohn's Duetto. The twins, to every +one's entire satisfaction, "slipped away"--Betty to her bedroom to make +her preparations, and Cyril (who was strictly forbidden even to peep +through the key-hole) to the dark passage that ran from the bedrooms to +the dining-room and front door. He went on with his plans while he +waited. All day he had been thinking of the rainbow coloured future +Betty assured him was his. He had quite decided to leave school directly +he was adopted, and to have "some one" come to teach him at home. Of +course his grandfather would not be able to bear him out of his sight. +He had heard of such cases, and supposed he was about to become one. +Then he decided to have a pony, a nice quiet little thing with a back +not _too_ far from the ground; and he would have a boat and sail her +where the coral islands were, and he would have a few new marbles--and +get his grandfather to have the emus killed. + +He had just arrived at the part of the story where his grandfather was +giving orders for the destruction of his emus, when Betty opened the +bedroom door a crack, and whispered his name. + +She shut the door at once, before he was fairly inside the room, and +then he saw her. + +Such a strange new Betty she was, that he almost cried out. Her +face was white--white as death; two black cork lines stood for +eyebrows, and black lines lay under her eyes, making them larger +and unnatural-looking. She wore a black gown of her mother's, and +a black capacious bonnet, and had a rusty dog chain tied to one +arm. She moved her arm and fixed her eyes on her startled brother. + +"Do you hear my clanking chain?" she asked in what she fondly believed +to be "sepulchral tones." "Ghosts always have them. Come on." + +But Cyril hung back somewhat--perhaps the glories of "being adopted" +paled beside the unpleasantness of walking a lonely road in such unusual +company. + +"It's--it's a silly game," he said. "I don't see any good in it at all." + +But the little ghost turned upon him spiritedly. + +"This isn't a game at all," she said. "This is _real_. It'll make mother +friends with grandfather, and get you adopted. Get baby and come on--it +might frighten her if she saw me." + +"They'll find out that she's gone," said Cyril, still leaning upon the +bed-foot and eyeing his sister distrustfully. "Let's chuck it, Betty, +we'll only get in a row." + +"We won't get in a row," said Betty staunchly. "She'll be only too glad +when we come back and tell them all. I didn't undress Baby to-night, and +I put on her blue sash and everything. All you've to do is to wrap that +shawl round her and catch me up. I'll be at the gate." + +Baby was used, as were all of the others except Dot, to an open-air +existence. Most of her daylight hours were spent, either rolling on the +rough lawn, or sleeping in a hammock swung beneath an apple tree, and as +a result, night-tide found her a very drowsy baby indeed. The children +might romp and sing and chatter around her very cot as she slept, but +she could not steal out of her slumbers even to blink a golden eyelash +at them. + +So that when Cyril overtook Elizabeth at the gate, my Lady Baby was +asleep in his arms, and so she stayed in spite of the thumping of his +heart, and the chatter of the ghost, and the rough road. + +The night was dark with the luminous darkness of an Australian summer +night. The tender sky was scattered with star-dust, a baby-moon peeped +over the hill-top and the leaves and branches of the great bush trees +lay like dark fretwork over the heavens. + +Betty, holding her dress well up, and Cyril carrying the sleeping baby, +hurried through the belt of bush that lay between their home and their +grandfather's. Betty strove to instil energy into her listless brother, +telling him stories of a golden future in store for him. But at the +two-rail fence below "Coral Island Brook," Cyril came to a standstill, +and urged Betty, who was under it in a trice and on her feet again, to +"come along home." + +Betty turned her ghastly face towards him indignantly. "I won't," she +said fiercely. "Give me the baby and go home yourself if you like." + +Between the outer world of bush and the house was a slip of ground +called the banana grove, and known in story to both boy and girl, as the +play-place of their mother. + +Cyril followed Betty through this grove, trying to make up his mind as +he went, whether to go or stay. To stay and take his part in the +proceedings; to do and be bold--as an inner voice kept urging him--to +blend his moans with Betty's, and carry the heavy baby; or to turn upon +his heels, and fly through the darkness from these horrid haunted +grounds where his grandsire, and the great emus and dogs lived; where +John Brown stated he had his dwelling--away from all these terrors to +his small cottage home on the other edge of the bush, where were parents +and sisters, music and lights--and another voice urged this. + +So he neither followed Betty nor went home; but, in dreadful doubt and +great fear, he hung between the two courses in the banana grove, and +shivered at the tree-trunks and the rustling leaves and the stray +patches of moonlight. + +And Betty went forward alone with the baby. Her heart was beating in a +sickening way, but her courage was, as usual, equal to the occasion. It +was far easier to her to go forward than backward now, and she braced +herself up with a few of her stock phrases--"He won't eat me anyway"; +"It'll be all the same in a hundred years"; "No Bruce is afraid _ever_." + +A great bay window jutted into the darkness and gave out a blaze of +light. This was the lowest room in the tower portion of the house and +was, as Betty knew, her grandfather's study. + +Betty's mind was swiftly made up. All fear had left her, and she +stepped into the soft moonlight--a ghost indeed. + +She called Cyril, and her voice was so imperative that he quitted his +sheltering tree and ran to where she stood on the edge of the grove. + +"Take Baby," she said whisperingly; "I can't do what I want with her in +my arms." + +"Come home, B--B--Betty," implored the small youth--and his teeth +chattered as he spoke--"I--I don't want to be adopted. I----" + +"Hush!" urged Betty, and filled his arms with the baby. "I--I don't want +to be r--rich," cried Cyril. "It's b--b--better to be poor." + +"H--sh!" said Betty again. + +"I--I don't want to be like a c--camel!" whimpered the boy. "R--remember +about rich men getting to Heaven." + +"Stay close here with Baby," ordered the little ghost, and the next +second she had glided away over the path to the verandah. She went close +to the window--three blinds had been left undrawn and the window panes +ran down to the verandah floor. Surely the room had been designed +expressly for this night. + +Cyril, in horror, beheld his sister creep to the first window and peep +in; creep to the second--to the third. + +All the other windows were darkened; only this one room in all the great +house seemed to be awake. + +Then, in the silence which lay everywhere, a blood-curdling thing +happened. Betty's "clanking chain" came in contact with something of +iron reared up near the window and gave forth a fearsome sound. Cold +chills played about Cyril's back, a distant dog barked--and Baby awoke. + +Betty at once perceived this to be the one moment. Many people can +recognize their moment when it has gone. Betty's talent lay in seeing it +just as it arrived. + +If truth must be confessed, fear had once or twice during this campaign +tugged at her heart; when Cyril had urged home, her greatest desire had +been to flee. But Betty never quite knew herself--was never in any +crisis of her life absolutely certain what this second terribly +insistent self would do. + +Instead of scampering away with Cyril through the night, her feet had +taken her to the windows, and the proportions of her plan had grown +gloriously, albeit her heart-beats could be heard aloud. + +Now, when her chain clanked, it seemed to her the war drum had been +sounded. She darted from the verandah across the path and snatched the +baby from her brother's arms; then, running back to the verandah, her +chain clanked again and again, and she rent the air with a dismal wail-- + + "Father! Father!" + +From the depths of an easy chair whose back was to her there rose the +tall bent figure of an old man. + +Betty had arranged to "rend the air with wail upon wail"--to "press her +pinched white face, and her little one's, time after time upon the +window pane," but opportunity interfered, the window flew up, and Betty +crouched on the floor in terror. + +In the banana grove Cyril fled from tree to tree, crying dismally. The +darkness, the screams, the chain, the opening of the window, had each +and all terrified him almost past endurance. Now he felt convinced his +grandfather was chasing him with the emus. + +Meanwhile Betty on the verandah was also quaking. A stern voice from the +open window demanded "Who is there?" but her fortitude was not equal to +a wail. + +"I heard some one say 'Father, Father,' I'll swear," said a somewhat +familiar boyish voice. + +"I saw a face," said the old man. + +And then Baby began to whimper piteously, and Betty's heart sank into +her shabby small shoes. + +Footsteps were coming her way; the inevitable was at hand and she +recognized it, and with an effort stood upright cuddling the baby close. + +The old man put his hand on her shoulder, and with a "I'll just trouble +you--this way please," and not so much as a quaver in his voice, led her +into the brightly-lighted study. + +And there followed him "big John Brown," of mathematical and pugilistic +renown. + +He stared at Betty very hard, and Betty stared at him--only for a +moment, though, for Baby began to cry and had to be hushed--and the +chain clanked and frightened her while it produced no visible effect +upon her grandfather. + +The old man turned sharply to the wondering boy. + +"Is this a trick of yours, John?" he demanded sharply. + +"No," said Betty, "it's--it's only me," and she looked straight into her +grandfather's face, although her voice was trembling. + +"And who are _only you_?" + +The child hesitated. In a vague way she felt she would be doing her +mother's and Cyril's great future an injury to tell her name. And yet, +quick-witted as she was, it did not occur to her to find a new one. + +The young face in the old black bonnet looked beseechingly into the +man's. + +"_Please_ don't ask my name," she begged. + +"Take off your bonnet." + +She put Baby on the floor at her feet and pulled off her bonnet. And +her dark curly hair fell loosely around her odd white face. + +"Now--your name!" shouted the old captain, as if he were calling to a +sailor high up a mast. + +"Elizabeth Bruce," faltered the girl, for her reason showed her in a +second how John Brown would give it if she did not. + +A certain gleam that had been in the old man's eyes went away and his +brow grew black as thunder. Betty instinctively picked up the baby again +and gathered up the train of her dress. + +"Ah!" said the old man, breathing hard. + +Then suddenly a light dawned on Betty and she saw things as this old man +would see them, which was the very way of all others that he must not +do. + +She repeated swiftly to herself her old charm against fear--"No Bruce is +afraid. I can only die once. He won't eat me." + +"It's all my fault," she said, and her brown eyes looked into his brown +ones. "Cyril and I got tried of being poor, and I--I thought it would be +a good plan if you adopted Cyril--and--and I came to frighten you." + +"Ah----" + +"I thought you were old, and--and--might be sorry now, and I thought a +bit of a fright--I thought if a ghost----" + +Her chain clanked and her hands trembled, and Baby bumped up and down in +her arms. The very remembrance of her words left her, for a great frown +was spreading over the old man's face. He turned angrily to the boy. + +"Put her out of the door," he said. "Put her out of the place!" and some +hot words, fearful and unintelligible some of them to the small girl, +burst from his lips. + +And Betty, Baby and chain and all went out into the darkness. Only the +bonnet remained. + +Cyril was on the outermost edge of the grove, and with danger behind +him, and Betty and Baby before his eyes, safe and unhurt, a wave of very +ill-temper swept over him. He refused to have part in any more of +Betty's "silly games," left her to carry the baby unaided, and told her +she had spoilt his chance of ever being adopted. But he was all the time +wishing passionately that he too had "done and dared"--that he had not +crouched there among the trees, afraid and trembling. A small inner +voice, that spoke to him very sharply after such occasions, told him +contemptuously, that he had been more afraid than a girl; that he had +been a coward; and as soon as he reached their small lamp-lit home, he +ran away from silent Betty and the babbling baby, to his own bedroom, to +cry in loneliness over this second self who had done the wrong. + +And Betty stole silently into her bedroom. The dining room door was +still closed, and those quiet elder ones were having their "pleasant" +evening. She undressed the baby, and kissed her over and over, then put +her into her little cot and gave her a dimpled thumb to suck. And she +herself cuddled up very close to her, and began to cry too. So much for +all her show of bravery now. + +And a small voice spoke to her also, and showed her the seamy side of +this great deed of hers. Told her that no one else in all the world +would have dreamed of doing so wrong a thing; pointed out her mother and +father and pretty Dot, Mrs. and Mr. Sharman as examples of great +goodness. When the baby was placidly sleeping, she sat upright on the +end of her mother's bed in her earnestness to "see" if any of those +righteous five would be guilty of the wickedness of becoming ghosts to +frighten an old man. She would have felt easier at once if she could +have convinced herself that they would; but she could only see each of +them rounding eyes of horror at her, and her sobs, broke out afresh. + +The door opened and Cyril came into the darkness, whispering and +whimpering,-- + +"I didn't play fair, Betty," he said--"I wish I'd played fair--I----" + +"Oh," said Betty sobbingly--"Oh, Cyril, you're ever so much nobler than +I am. You wouldn't frighten an old man, neither. Oh, I wish I was as +good as you!" + +Whereat a sweet sense of well-doing stole over Cyril. "Never mind," he +said cheerfully, "do as I do another time." + +"There won't be another time," said Betty. "I'm going to turn over a new +leaf, and be as good as if I was grown up." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +JOHN BROWN + + +John Brown's life had hitherto been a curiously rough and tumble sort of +existence. There had been a season, brief and entirely unremembered by +him, when his home had been in one of Sydney's most fashionable suburbs; +when a tender-eyed mother had watched delightedly over his first gleams +of intelligence, and a proud father had perched him on his shoulder for +a bed-time romp. When he had been taken tenderly for an "airing" by the +trimmest of nursemaids, and in the daintiest of perambulators. When he +had worn tiny silk frocks and socks and bonnets. When hopes and fears +had arisen over "teething-time." When he had been carried round a +drawing-room, to display to admiring friends, his chubby wrists, his +dimpled fat legs, his quite remarkable length of limb and growth of +bone. + +Then Death slipped in unawares, and called the sweet young mother from +that happy home, and little John Brown became a perplexity and a care to +a grief-maddened father. + +For a space it was conjectured that the baby, pending the arrival of a +step-mother, would be handed over to the cook, a rotund motherly person +who was fond of asserting that she had buried thirteen children and +reared one. + +But conjectures have a way of falling beside the mark. + +One morning an old schoolmate of poor little Mrs. Brown's arrived from +"out back," packed up the baby's things with her own quick brown hands +and returned "out back" the same evening. + +The perambulator, the cradle, the cot, the dainty baby basket and a +multitude of other things were sold the next week along with the tables +and chairs and other "household effects," and Mr. John Brown, senior, a +cabin box and a portmanteau, left by a mail steamer for Japan. + +And the small suburban house became "to let." Thenceforward the pattern +of little John Brown's existence became altered. He was one of three +other children, and not even the baby, although scarcely one year old. + +His elegant lace-trimmed silken and muslin garments were "laid by." He +wore dark laundry-saving dresses and neither boots nor socks. He was +never carried around for admiration, for the very good reason that +visitors were few and far between--and there was (except to doting +parents, perhaps) very little to admire about him. He lost his +chubbiness and his pink prettiness and became thin and wiry, brown faced +and brown limbed. + +He was always abnormally tall and abnormally strong, so that he became +almost a jest on the station. He learned to fight at three, to swim at +four, shoot at seven, ride, yard cattle, milk, chop wood, make bush +fires and put them out again, ring bark trees all before he was eleven. +In short, to do, and to do remarkably well, the hundred and one things +that make up a man's and boy's existence on an Australian station. + +At thirteen he learned that his name was Brown, and that he had a father +other than the bluff squatter he had grown up with. And at thirteen he +was taken from the station-life he loved, and, after much travelling, +delivered by a station-hand into his father's care in Sydney. + +Before he could form any idea as to what was about to happen to him, and +to this grey-bearded father of his, he was taken across the blue harbour +water, and thence by coach to the little township over the northern +hills. + +They walked past the small weather-board school together, and few, if +any, words passed between them. For the man's thoughts were away down +the slope of many years, and the boy's were away in that flat country +"out back" where he had been brought up. + +They were close to the great iron gates when the man broke the silence; +pointing beyond them he remarked-- + +"This is where your home will be in the future, John." + +John considered the prospect thoughtfully and shook his head-- + +"I'd rather go home," he said. "Let me go home." + +"No," said his father, "it can't be done. I ought to have fetched you +away sooner, only I shirked a duty. Open the little gate, I see the big +ones are padlocked. Push, it's stiff." + +They walked up the long red drive, John's mind busy over the questions +he wished to ask his father and he began to lag behind considering them. + +"This will be your home," repeated Mr. Brown quietly, "and it's a +marvellous thing how life has arranged itself. The turn of Fortune's +wheel, we may say. Walk quicker, John." + +When they stood before the great front door, Mr. Brown became +retrospective again. + +"We played here together," he said--, "down these very steps, along these +very paths. It is strange how life has fallen out--how my boy will +be----" He put out his hand and pulled the bell vigorously, then turned +his back to the house and surveyed the garden. + +"Is it a school?" whispered John. But before his father could reply the +door had rolled back and a man-servant stood looking at them. + +Mr. Brown walked in, put his hat on a table, motioned to John, and +opened a door at one side of the wide hall. + +"It's me--Brown," he said as he entered the room. "I've brought the +boy." + +John followed very quickly, being curious now. His father stood half-way +across the room, looking hesitating and apologetic. + +A man of sixty or so, with a red, merry-looking face, and an +unmistakable sea-captain air, glanced up from a paper he was reading. + +"Eh?" he asked. + +Then he sent his look--it was a quick darting look that saw everything +in the twinkling of an ordinary person's eye--to the thin badly-dressed +figure in the rear. "Eh? The boy? Oh--ah! My newly-found grandson." + +"He is scarcely what I had hoped to find," said Mr. Brown, apologetic +still. "Yet his mother was a good-looking woman and----" + +"Be hanged to looks," said Mr. Carew. "He'll get on all the better +without 'em. And you were never anything to boast of yourself you know. +What's his name?" + +"John." + +"Um! John Brown. John Carew-Brown, we'll say. It's a pity it's not John +Brown Carew." + +"That's a matter that can easily be altered. It can be merely John +Carew, if you like, and let the melodious Brown go hang." + +"Eh? What does the boy say? What do you say John to changing your name +and letting the Brown go hang?" + +To Mr. Brown's surprise and consternation, the boy gave an emphatic +"No." + +"Ah!" said old Mr. Carew, "and how's that? Speak up, John." + +"The boys 'ud forget me," said John anxiously, "and I'd have to begin +all over agen." + +"What with?--Leave him alone, Brown." + +"Thrashing 'em. They know me everywhere about Warrena. I can make 'em +all sit up. I don't want to change my name." + +A sparkle came into the old man's eyes. + +"Well said, my lad," he snapped. "I'd not have given a rap for you if +you'd have cast your name away as easily as a pinching pair o' boots. +Stick to your own name, John, and you'll look all the better after +mine." + +He waited a bit, eyeing the boy up and down keenly. The thin brown face, +with its square determined mouth, quiet grey eyes and high forehead; the +sturdy figure, countrified clothes, copper-toed boots, all passed under +his scrutiny. + +"So you're of the fighting kind?" he asked at last. + +"Yes," said John proudly. + +"Ah! You never were, you remember, Brown. Things might have been +different if you had been." + +He waited again. Then he smiled queerly. + +"John," he said, "your father's going away again to-night. You're my +grandson. It may not seem a great matter to you now--but it is, all the +same. You stay here. You and I have to take life together, boy--though +you're at one end of the ladder and I'm at t'other. Your name's your +name right enough, but I want you to be good enough to tack mine on to +it, and to do a bit of fighting for mine too if necessary. I've fought +for it hard in my day too. And now, John Carew-Brown, we'll have a bit +of lunch if it's all the same to you." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +MONDAY MORNING + + +Mrs. Bruce was down on her knees caressing tiny Czar violets. Quite +early in the morning (before the breakfast things were washed or the +beds made) she had slipped on one of Dot's picturesque poppy-trimmed +hats and declared her intention of planting the bed outside the study +windows thick with these the sweetest-scented of all flowers. + +"And all the time you are working and thinking and plotting, daddie +darling, the sweetest scents will be stealing round you," she said. + +For some little time she was quite happy among her violets. But +presently a richly hued wall-flower called her attention to a cluster of +its blooms, drooping on the pebbly path for a careless foot to +crush,--all for the want of a few tacks and little shreds of cloth. A +heavily-blossomed rose-tree begged that some of its buds might be +clipped, and a favourite carnation put in its claim for a stake. + +"So much to do!" said Mrs. Bruce, as she flitted here and there in the +old-fashioned garden, which was a veritable paradise to her. "The roses +_must_ be clipped, the violets _must_ be thinned, the carnations _must_ +be staked. And there are the new seedlings to be planted. Oh, I _think_ +I will take the week for my garden--and let the house go!" + +A flush of almost girlish excitement was in her cheeks, her garden meant +so very much to her. Certainly the house had strong claims--and it was +Monday morning--the very morning for forming and carrying out good plans +and resolutions! Meals wanted cooking, cupboards and drawers tidying; +garments darning and patching! But then--the garden! Did it not also +need her. Ah! and did she not also need it! + +Even as she hesitated, balancing duty with beauty, Betty's voice floated +out through the kitchen window, past the passion-fruit creeper and the +white magnolia tree, past the tiny sweet violets and the study windows, +right to where she stood among the roses and wall-flowers. + +"I _am_ so tired of washing up," it said, "it wasn't fair of Dot. She +had four plates for her breakfast--_I_ only had one. She might remember +I've to go to school as well as her." + +Then Mrs. Bruce advanced one foot towards the house, and in thought +wielded the tea-towel and attacked the trayful of cups and saucers that +she knew would be awaiting the tea-towel. + +It was Cyril's voice that arrested her. It came from the kitchen too. + +"What's washing up!" said Cyril contemptuously. "Washing up a few cups +and spoons--pooh! How'd you like to be me and have to clean all the +knives, I wonder." + +Whereat Mrs. Bruce relinquished thoughts of the tea-towel. It would +never do, she told herself, to assist Betty and leave poor Cyril +unaided. "And I _couldn't_ clean knives," she said. + +But she ran indoors to her bedroom, whence came an angry crying voice. +Six-year-old Nancy was, in the frequent intervals that occurred in the +doing of her hair, frolicking about the small hot bedroom and trying +frantically to catch the interest of the thumb-and-cot-disgusted baby. + +"Do your hair nicely," said Mrs. Bruce to her second youngest daughter. +"I will take baby into the garden. Button your shoes and ask Betty to +see that your ears are clean. And your nails. A little lady always has +nice nails." + +She carried her baby away, kissing her neck and cheeks and hands, and +telling her, as she had told them all, from Dorothy downwards, that +there never had been such a baby in the world before. + +And she slipped her into the much used hammock under the old apple tree, +and left her to play with her toes and fingers, whilst she went back to +her violets and roses singing-- + + "Rock-a-bye, Baby on a tree top, + There you are put, there you must stop." + +and trying to be rid of that uncomfortable feeling, of having done what +she wanted and not what she ought. + +In the study Mr. Bruce sat before a paper-strewn table. Most of the +papers related to his beloved book--which was almost half-completed. It +had reached that stage several times before, and what had been written +thereafter had been consigned to the kitchen fire. + +Now it was necessary that he should put it away, even out of thought, +and turn his attention towards something that would bring in a quick +return. For Dot's school fees would be due very shortly, and he +remembered, with a smile-lit sigh, that this quarter she had taken up +two extras, singing and dancing. + +His income would not admit of extras--and yet, as Mrs. Bruce frequently +put it, Dot was the eldest and was very pretty. She certainly must be +able to dance and sing! + +He gathered up a few stray leaves of his manuscript, rolled them up with +the bulk, and heroically put them away. + +But, as he returned to his seat, he caught a glimpse of his wife, +kneeling on the path, and making a little trench with a trowel in the +bed outside his window. + +"Well, little mother!" he called, and felt blithe as he said it, and +young and fresh hearted, just because of the bright face in the +poppy-trimmed hat. + +"I ought to be in the kitchen making a pudding," she said, screwing up +her face into a grimace. + +"You are far better where you are," he said fondly. + +"Yes. But, oh, dear! I wish I had a cook, and laundress, and a +housemaid. Oh, and a nursemaid, too! It is dreadful to be poor, isn't +it, daddie?" + +She went on with her gardening, just as happy as before, but the face +that the little author took to his work-table had grown grave in a +minute. + +"She was born to have servants," he said, "servants and ease. I must +work harder." + +Cyril's voice broke into his reverie. He had come beneath the study +windows to interview his mother. + +"Can't I be raised to twopence a week now I'm going on for thirteen," +he said. "Bert Davis gets threepence, and he's only nine." + +Mr. Brace did not catch the reply. But he told himself that most men +would have been more liberal in the matter of _Ł. s. d._ to their only +son. + +He began to pace round and round his study. + +"I must work harder--harder--harder!" he said. "I must put my book away, +and grind out those articles for Montgomery!" + +Nancy, in a big white sun-bonnet, clean for the new week, passed under +his window and turned her face to the wicket gate. He could hear that +she was crying in a miserable forsaken way, crying and talking to +herself away within that capacious bonnet of hers. + +He called "Baby!" and leaned over his window sill to her. But she did +not hear him. She just went murmuring on to the gate. + +Then two other hurrying little figures came along. Cyril, with a +battered hat crushed down on his head, and his school-bag over his +shoulders, and Betty with her boots unlaced, a white bonnet under her +arm, and a newspaper parcel, which she was trying to coax into neatness, +in one hand. + +"It's all through you and your ghosts," Cyril was saying grumblingly. "I +know I'd have done my lessons only for you, Betty Bruce." + +"What is the matter with Nancy?" asked their father, leaning over the +window sill once more. "Why was she crying?" + +"'Cause she thinks she'll be late," said Betty easily. "She always cries +if she thinks she's late." + +Down the road they went, Nancy hurrying and crying, Cyril grumbling, +Betty silent. + +To none of them had Monday morning come exactly right--fresh and +uncrumpled. + +Betty sat down, just outside her grandfather's gate, to lace her boots, +and Cyril went grumbling on about a hundred yards behind Nancy. + +Then did a fresh crease get into the new week's first day for Betty. +Looking under her arm as she bent over her boot, she beheld three +figures walking down the road, and at the first glimpse of them her face +grew hot. + +"Geraldine and Fay!" she exclaimed. + +The centre figure was dressed in a lilac print, and wore a spotless +apron and a straw hat. Upon either side of her walked a little +golden-haired girl, one apparently about Betty's age, and one Nancy's. +Their dresses were white and spotless, and reached almost to their +knees; their hats were flat shady things trimmed with muslin and lace. +Their hair was beautifully dressed and curled, their boots shining--and +buttoned, and their faces smiling and happy-looking. + +They were Betty's ideals! Little rich girls, who rode ponies, and +drove--sometimes in a village cart with a nurse, and sometimes in a +carriage with a lady who invariably wore beautiful hats and dresses. +Sometimes, again, they were to be seen in a dog-cart with a dark man who +seemed a splendid creature indeed to Betty. + +The little girl by the roadside grasped her unbuttoned boot in one hand, +her bonnet and newspaper parcel in the other, and in a trice had +squeezed herself under her grandfather's fence, just at a point where +two or three panels were broken down. + +Then she peeped out to see if they were looking. But no--they had not +seen her. Betty gave a great sigh of relief as she watched them. How +beautiful they were. How dainty! Betty looked down at her own old boots, +old stockings, old dress. She turned her bonnet over disdainfully and +thought of their lace-trimmed hats--their golden hair! + +"Oh, I am glad they didn't see me!" she said aloud fervently. + +Just then a voice shouted, a rough word to her from the path, and Betty +awoke to two alarming facts. The one, that she was in the emu's +enclosure and that one great bird was bearing curiously towards her +already; the other, that her grandfather was the one who had called to +her, and that John Brown, who was careering down the path on his +bicycle, had stopped and was evidently giving information about her. + +Her grandfather waved an angry hand. + +"Out you go!" he shouted. "If you come here again, I'll set the dogs +loose!" + +Betty squeezed herself under the fence just before the emu reached her, +and once more faced a very crumpled Monday morning. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +"CAREW-BROWN" + + +It must be confessed that John Brown--or to be polite and +up-to-date--John Carew-Brown surveyed the pupils of Wygate School with a +fighting eye, which is to say, he considered them carefully with +regarded to their pugilistic abilities, and he decided very soon that he +"could make them all sing small." + +Even upon that first day when he, a new boy, had been standing in view +of the whole school, his mind had chiefly been occupied in running over +the boys' obvious fighting qualities--tall, short, fat, thin, all sorts +and conditions of them were there. + +The girls he had passed by with but slight notice; to him they were +absolutely valueless and uninteresting. Betty Bruce had certainly caught +his attention by her public punishment, and he had been taken aback by +that sharp little pinch of hers. Hitherto he had had nothing to do with +girls but he supposed immediately that that was their manner of +fighting, and he did not admire it. + +Not many days later an opportunity occurred for him to defend his newly +adopted name. Truth to tell, he had been longing for such an occasion +from the day on which old Captain Carew had asked him to fight for his +name too. + +He was in the playground, round by the school house, just where the +babies' end of the school room joined the cloak room, and school was +over for the day. Having a piece of chalk in one hand, and nothing +particular to do, he occupied a few minutes by writing upon the weather +boards of the cloak-room--"J. C. Brown, J. C. Brown, John C. Brown, John +C. Brown," and the hinting C. raised a small dispute in a circle of +onlooking boys and girls. + +It was Peter Bailey who said, "John Clara Brown," and it was silly +little Jack Smith who said "John Codfish Brown." + +A burst of laughter followed, and Peter Bailey and Jack Smith chased +each other down the playground, and in and out among the sapling clump +away at the end of it, where some shabby scrub and three gum trees grew. + +When they came back, John Brown was still silently writing apparently +deaf to all the surmising going on around him. + +Nellie Underwood said it was--"Crabby John Brown," and Arthur Smedley, +the school bully, said--"John Brown the clown." + +Whereupon Brown sought out a clean weather-board a shade or so above his +head and wrote in bold letters. + +"John Carew-Brown, Dene Hall, Willoughby," which made Bailey say-- + +"Hullo, he's got hold of Bruce's grandfather." + +Cyril, who was one of the little circle of jesters, grew pink to the +tips of his pretty pink ears, but feeling the majority and the bully +were against Brown, ventured to say-- + +"He's only running you!" + +Nellie Underwood pushed herself into a prominent position in the group +and cried-- + +"I seen him coming out of Dene Hall gates, and old Mr. Carew was with +him. So there!" + +John Brown chose another weather-board and the group closed round him to +read-- + +"John Carew-Brown, only grandson of Captain Carew, of Dene Hall, +Willoughby, Sydney, N.S. Wales, Australia, Southern Hemisphere," which +certainly looked imposing and had the effect of silencing every one for +almost half a minute. + +Then the bully's eyes glared into Cyril's pretty blue ones, and he said +angrily-- + +"You said you were the only grandson." + +Cyril did not speak. + +"You said," repeated the bully, "you said the Captain was going to +adopt you, and give you his collection of guinea pigs." + +Cyril hung his crimson face and kicked the ground with the toe of his +boot. + +John Brown chose another weather-board and wrote-- + +"Captain Carew has no guinea pigs," which sent most of the blood away +from Cyril's face. The bully was eyeing him angrily, and even went as +far as doubling up one fist. + +"You said he was going to give you five shillings a week pocket-money, +and let you buy my white mice," he muttered, and Cyril found himself +face to face with the occasion, and with no clever intervening Betty to +throw the right word into the right place, and so save his skin and his +honour. + +"So he is," he said, moving away from Brown as far as he dared--"and so +I am the only grandson." He looked over his shoulder and beheld Brown's +back, whereupon he felt if Brown could not see he could not hear. +"_He's_ only the gardener's boy," he said; "ask"--his mind made a swift +excursion for an authority--"ask my grandfather," he said, "any of you +who like, ask my grandfather." + +Brown and his chalk advanced to Cyril. + +"Who told you I was the gardener's boy?" he asked. Cyril looked from foe +to foe, and the wild thought of denying he had said such words entered +his mind, only to be followed by a swift remembrance of various daring +deeds of the bully's. + +So he went over recklessly to Arthur Smedley's side. + +"My grandfather!" he said. + +"Are you going to be adopted?" asked the bully. + +"Yes," said Cyril in desperation. + +"Are you going to have five shillings a week?" demanded the bully. + +"No--I'm going to have ten," roared Cyril. + +A window belonging to Mr. Sharman's private house, which adjoined the +school, flew open, and John Brown's name was sharply called. It entered +into Arthur Smedley's mind to see what writing remained upon the wall, +and he went across to the cloak-room for that purpose. + +Whereupon Cyril looked to the right of him, to the left of him, to the +back of him, and beheld neither friend nor foe in his vicinity; and he +heaved a sigh of great satisfaction, ran to the fence, squeezed himself +through a hole in it, and was upon the road towards home in a trice. + +But before he had gone more than a hundred yards he heard quick +footsteps behind him, and looking over his shoulder he saw John C. +Brown. Then did a sickening sense of terror sweep over him, and his +heart leapt into his mouth, for had he not said John Carew-Brown was +"only the gardener's boy"? + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE FIGHT + + +Betty was in the belt of bush that lay between the wicket-gate of her +home and the road. Her idea was to be sufficiently near to home to +gather from the sound of the voices that might call her if she were +_really_ needed and yet to be so far from sight that the continual +"Betty, come here," and "Betty, go there," could not be. + +She had come home as soon as school was out, come home leaving Cyril and +Nancy behind her, flung herself beneath the shade of one of her +favourite old gum trees, and begun to write. + +When Mr. Bruce was busy over a story, or an article, or a book, every +one in the house knew. Then the study door would be closed and the +window only opened at the top; then the children would be banished from +the side garden into which the study looked, and from the passage +outside the study door; then Mrs. Bruce would carry his meals to him +upon a tray, and he would have strong black coffee in the early evening. +And then at last a neatly folded missive, gummed and tied with thin +string, with a mysterious "_MS. only_" inscribed in one corner, would be +carried to the post by either Cyril or Betty. + +When Dot wrote a story, as she very frequently did now-a-days, portions +of it would be carried into the study for her father to see, and her +mother would proudly read page after page of the neat round hand, and +wonder where on earth the child got her ideas from. + +But when Betty wrote her stories, no one in the house--excepting Cyril, +of course--knew anything about it! no one kept the house quiet for +Betty, and no one wondered wherever she got her ideas from. And yet she +had quite a collection of fairy stories and poems of her own +composition. She and an exercise book, or a few scraps of paper and a +stumpy bit of pencil were to be seen sometimes in very close +companionship. + +But for all that no one did see; or seeing, they did not understand. + +Still Betty wrote her stories--not necessarily for publication like her +father--nor as a guarantee that the scribbling genius was within her, +like Dot--but for the love of story writing alone. + +Her fairy story to-day had to do with the bold and handsome Waratah +which ran mad in the bush behind her home, towards Middle Harbour. Her +fertile fancy had suggested many roles for these flowers to take. + +It occurred to her as she wrote that she had intended to write a poem +which should stir Cyril--not one of _her_ sort of poems, about streams +and flowers and dells and birds, but a dashing sort of poem, one that +would make Cyril say "By _Jup-i-ter_, Betty," and learn it off by heart +without any asking. + +For a space she laid down her story, which began, "Once upon a time," +and asked herself what there was that she could make a poem of for +Cyril. + +"It must be something brave," she said. "A horse, a dog, a fire, a +man--a St. Bernard dog saving a boy--a soldier--I think a soldier would +suit Cyril!" + +She stared through the bush to the red road consideringly, holding her +pencil ready to write. As she looked she became aware of a small figure +running along the road, and entering the bush track. It was Cyril, and +Cyril in woe. She could see that at a glance, and of course the first +thing she did was to throw down her paper and pencil and run to meet +him. + +As she got nearer to him she saw tears were running down his face and +she heard, ever and anon as he ran, a great sob, half of anger and half +of fear, come bursting from his lips. + +"Oh, my poor boy, whatever _is_ the matter?" she cried in her most +motherly way. + +"The g-g-great big bully!" sobbed Cyril. + +"Oh dear!" exclaimed Betty in distress. + +"Oh the b-b-big bully. Let's get home." + +"Big John Brown?" asked Betty, for only yesterday this same John Brown +had sent her small brother home weeping over a sore head. + +"Yes, of course. He--he said he'd knock me into next year. Come on, +can't you?" + +Betty was running by his side at quite a brisk trot to keep up with him. + +"I--I hope you knocked him down," she said. + +"He said grandfather isn't our grandfather at all." + +"Oh!--and you _did_ give him a black eye Cywil dear?" asked Betty +eagerly. Her "r's" had a way of rolling themselves into "w's" whenever +she was excited. + +They were at the wicket-gate now, and Cyril slackened his speed, and +looked over his shoulder. No one was in sight. + +"Oh, I will do!" he said boldly. "I told him no Bruce was afraid!" + +"That's right," said Betty eagerly. "That's right Cywil. No Bruce is +afraid. But you did knock him down, didn't you." + +Cyril hesitated--then his trouble broke from him in a burst. "We fight +to-night down at our coral islands at seven," he said. + +"Oh my bwave Cywil!" exclaimed Betty admiringly. "Oh, I am so glad--oh, +I am so very glad!" + +But Cyril looked doleful, and was lagging behind his small eager +sister. + +"I'm not so sure that he meant us to fight," he said. "He--he never +asked me to." + +"What did he say?" + +"He only said something about a challenge and things." + +"Oh," said Betty, eager again in a minute; "_if_ he said 'challenge' you +_must_ fight. There's no get out." + +"But I've hurt my leg." + +"Oh never mind your leg--think of the honour of the Bruces!" said the +fervent Betty, who regarded the family cognomen as something sacred and +against which no breath of evil must be allowed to come. + +"Honour of the Bruces be hanged, if I'm lame," said Cyril savagely. + +A sense of foreboding swept over Betty as she followed Cyril into the +house. Her imagination showed her willows and the "coral islands," and +only John Brown--big square John Brown--there. She knew the story that +would soon be all over the school--all over the neighbourhood--that +Cyril had been _afraid_ to fight. Of course she, Betty, his own twin +sister, knew there would not be a grain of truth in it. She knew he was +shy and delicate, and had hurt his leg. But for all that, she wished +eagerly that he were not shy and delicate, and did not always have some +bodily ill when fighting time came. And more than one sob shook her, for +she beheld the honour of the Bruces being trampled under John Brown's +big boots. + +She set the table and went about her usual household tasks in a very +half-hearted way. Cyril would not look at her, and crept off to bed at +six o'clock, complaining of the pain in his leg. Tea was over by then, +and Betty, with her woeful look still on her face was helping "wash up" +in the kitchen. + +Cyril in his bedroom turned down his stocking and examined the little +blue bruise near his knee. That there was some outward and visible sign +of his hurt he was very thankful. It raised his self-respect and brought +tears of self-pity to his eyes, that Betty should have expected him to +fight under such circumstances! So much did the sight of his wound +upset him that he only went on one leg while undressing, though it must +be confessed it was not always the same leg that did the hopping. + +Presently, after he had been lying in bed for some little time and +commiserating with himself over his sad fate, the door opened and Betty, +with the wistfulness quite gone from her face, came in. And _such_ a +Betty! Her brown hair was bundled away under one of Cyril's battered +straw hats, and thankful indeed had she been that she had so little hair +to bundle. She wore one of Cyril's sailor jackets, and a pair of his +serge knickers, and few looking at her casually, would have insulted her +with the supposition that she was a mere girl. + +Her face was alight with eagerness as she besought her brother to "just +_see_ if he'd know her!" + +"It'll be almost dark when I get there," she said, "and he'll never +_dweam_ I'm not you." + +"But what'll you do when you get there?" asked Cyril, sitting up in bed; +"perhaps a challenge _does_ mean a fight!" + +"Fight him!" said Betty stoutly; "I've been wanting to ever since he +went above me." + +"You can't fight," said Cyril disgustedly. "You're only a girl." + +Betty's face positively flamed with eagerness. + +"Can't fight!" she said. "Why Fred Jones taught me. He says I've got the +knack, but not _very_ much strength. Anyway, I fought that Barry kid the +other day, _I_ can promise you!" + +"But John Brown is three times as big as Ces Barry." + +"I know!" she sighed dismally. "Anyway, it's better to be beaten than +not to fight at all. And if you don't fight, they--they _might_ say you +were afraid." Her face grew scarlet as she put the horrid thought into +words. + +When the door was shut, Cyril jumped out of bed to watch her go, and so +occupied was he over _her_ danger, that he forget his own hurt and did +not limp at all. + +Up and down the garden paths his mother and father were walking, his +mother's arm through his father's, and a happy peaceful look on her +face. The thought ran through the boy's mind, how little grown up ones +know of the troubles of childhood. Nancy was rolling with baby on the +little lawn, singing-- + + "John, John, John, the grey goose is gone, + The fox is away o'er the hill, Oh!" + +and he thought how good it was to be a girl--a goose--a fox--anything +but a boy! + +Then he crept back to bed, covered up his head and began to cry. For he +was afraid that Betty would be hurt--and once again had he hung back +when he should have gone forward. And his heart told him that again he +had been a coward. + +Down by the willows John Brown was waiting. He had very much enjoyed +issuing his "challenge" but he felt morally certain that it would not be +accepted. He was therefore surprised when he saw his small adversary +approaching him in the dusk. + +Who shall say what fancies were running riot in his head! He was a +squire going to punish a rash youth for trying to thrust himself into +their family. He, his grandfather's grandson, was going to thrash a +foolish boy for taking his grandfather's name in vain! + +Meanwhile his little foe came on, over the rough sun-burnt grass, over a +fallen tree through a small stretch of denser scrub, to the very shores +of the "coral island sea." And the baby-moon chose the moment of their +meeting to slip behind a cloud and leave the world in semi-darkness. + +"Well done, Bruce!" said Brown coming forward and speaking in a hearty +tone; "I didn't believe you'd come--I didn't think you had a fight in +you." + +"We Bruces fight till we die!" piped Betty, and bit her lip to still its +quivering. + +Brown laughed. He detected the nervousness in his opponent's voice, and +had fully expected it. If he had found "Bruce" over-bold, he would have +been surprised indeed. As it was, the reply in some way pleased him. + +"Well," he said, "you're not going to fight me. _I'm_ not in a fighting +mood; I'm going to _thrash_ you." + +Betty caught her breath. It certainly entered into her mind to cry out +and run away, but she did nothing of the sort, she only clenched her +hands, and stood her ground--having as usual a sufficiency of courage +for the occasion. + +The next minute Brown's great hand had grasped her coat collar, and she +felt herself swung round, stood down and swung round again. Then a sharp +swish lashed her once, twice, thrice. + +Whereupon Betty began to fight on her own account, forgetting all the +advice Fred Jones had given her about "hitting out from the shoulder," +etc. etc. She kicked Brown's legs with all the strength she could put +into her own. She pinched his wrists and his cheek, and lastly and to +his disgust she set her sharp little teeth into his hand. + +He dropped her quickly, her hat rolled off, and down tumbled her short +curly hair. And the moon chose that moment to sail from under the cloud +and put Betty's face in a soft silver light. + +Brown whistled. "By Jove!" he said, the "sister." + +Betty crammed her hat down upon her head again. + +"I'm not," she said. "It's not! It's me, Cyril. Come on, _coward_, +_bully_!" + +She made a little rush at him, but Brown threw down his switch. + +"Thanks," he said. "I'm not taking any this trip." + +"Come on," urged Betty. + +"I don't fight girls, thanks." + +Betty began to cry in a heart-broken desperate way. + +"It's not me," she said. "It's Cyril. It's Cyril. Oh, it's Cyril!" + +But Brown, smiling darkly, turned from her, jumped over the fence, and +took his way through the banana grove to his home. + +And what pen could tell of his heaviness of heart, and great shame in +that he had _thrashed_ a girl. He could feel her light weight yet as he +swung her round, hear her girlish voice crying, "We Bruces fight till +we die!" see her thin white face in the moonlight as her hat fell off, +and she looked at him and said-- + +"Come on, coward, bully!" + +How he tingled with shame. Coward, bully! Yes, he had hit a girl. + +Betty started for home at a brisk run, for during her adventure the +night had advanced, and her imagination peopled the surrounding bush +with bogeys, and imps and elves. + +And as she ran, sobs broke from her, solely on account of her physical +woes. + +Within the wicket gate she walked slowly. How could fear of outer +darkness remain, when the dinning-room window sent such a bar of light +beyond. + +She crept softly along the verandah to the window and peeped in. Her +father was lying on the old cane lounge, his eyes upon her mother who +sat at the piano, in a pretty fresh dress, flower-like as ever. For a +space, while little boy-Betty looked, she just touched the keys tenderly +as if she loved them like her flowers, then she struck a few chords, and +began to sing "Home, Sweet Home," in her sweet girlish voice. + +And Betty turned away, the tears running down her cheeks, and her small +heart aching. + +"I've been bad again," she said, "and I meant to be good always. I don't +believe you _can_ be good till you are grown up." She ran along the +passage into the little bedroom which she and Dot and Nancy shared, and +she fell down by Dot's quiet white bed and buried her face in the quilt. + +"Bad again," she sobbed. "I've been bad again. Oh, I'm _glad_ I got +thrashed, it ought to do me good." But it is to be feared her gladness +was not very deep, because a sense of great satisfaction swept over her +as she remembered, she had kicked, really kicked, big John Brown. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +DOROTHEA'S FRIENDS + + +Alma Montague, a wealthy doctor's daughter; Elsie and Minnie Stevenson, +daughters of a Queensland squatter; and Nellie Harden, only child of a +Supreme Court Judge, were Dorothea Bruce's "intimate" friends. Mona +Parbury was her only "bosom" friend. Thus she defined them herself when +speaking of them to members of her family and to the girls themselves, +who were one and all eager to stand a "bosom" friend to pretty Thea +Bruce as they called her. + +The difference between an "intimate" friend and a "bosom" friend is too +subtle to be described, but school-girls all the world over, and those +who have left school days just behind them, will know and understand. + +Mona Parbury was one week older than Dorothea and one inch (they +measured upon the verandah wall) taller. Her waist was two sizes larger; +her boots and gloves were three. In every way she was cast in a +different mould from Dorothea. She was a heavily built girl, who looked +at sixteen as though her teens were a year or two behind her. Her +features were pronounced--high cheek-bones, square chin, high forehead; +her hair was black and straight and plentiful, and she wore it in a +heavy plait down her back. Her eyes were brown, clear, faithful, good +eyes, and her mouth was distinctly large and ill-shaped. + +Such was Mona in the days when Dorothea loved her--in the days when +Dorothea told her all her hopes, and dreams, and often very foolish +thoughts; when she made her the heroine of her stories; and wrote little +poems to her as--"her love"--and little loving letters if the cruel fate +which sometimes hovers over such friendships separated them for half a +day. + +We have seen Dorothea before. She was small and fairy-like; +slender-waisted and light in movement. Her hair was golden and curly, +and was usually worn quite loose about her shoulders; her eyes were blue +and sunshiny and lashed by dark curling lashes; her mouth was small and +red, and her complexion delicate pink and white. All of her "intimate" +friends gave her the frankest admiration--they all loved her, and they +were all eager to stand first with her. + +But it was Mona who loved her the most. Mona who kept and treasured +every one of the little "private" notes sent to her by Dot. She worked +out all her most troublesome sums, brushed and curled her hair; bore +many of her punishments; brought her numberless fal-lals (keepsakes she +called them); wore a lock of her golden hair in a locket around her +neck, and told her all of her secrets--she had as many as ten a week +sometimes. + +Miss Weir, the "principal" of the school, had, many years ago, given to +Dorothea's mother much the same sort of love as Mona Parbury now gave to +Dorothea. And it was owing to this old love that Dorothea was now +admitted on very low terms to the most fashionable school in Sydney. + +No one among all the pupils (there were fifteen) knew anything about +poverty--no one but Dorothea. As she once said in a burst of anguish to +her mother-- + +"They are all rich, every _one_ of them. They live in beautiful houses +and have parlourmaids and housemaids and nursemaids, and kitchenmaids +and cooks and carriages, and as much money to spend as we have to live +on, I believe." + +It was very rarely, though, that any of her troubles ruffled her calm +serenity. Dorothea was usually as placid as the placidest baby. She +longed to be rich, and to have pretty things to wear and a handsome +house to live in, but she never talked of her poverty. Instead she +draped its cloven foot gracefully, and turned her back on it--and +_imagined_ she was rich--from Monday till Friday. + +She discussed "fashion" and "society" with Alma Montague and Nellie +Harden, and grew quite familiar with the names and doings of the great +society dames. She even learned--at considerable pains--a "society" +tone of voice with a drawl in it and a little lisp. + +School life was a great happiness to her--the regular hours, the +beautifully ordered house, the neat table, the daily constitutional, the +morning and evening prayer-time, and the hour in the drawing-room at +night, everything that made life from Monday till Friday. + +It was Friday till Monday that was the cross, Friday till Monday, the +days when the cloven foot would not be draped, when the elegancies of +life were left behind in the city, when the twins and the babies were +everywhere, when the meals were often but suddenly thought of snatches +of food. + +Sometimes the thought of the looming future--the time when all the days +would be as Friday till Monday, when there would no longer be any school +days to be lived by her--would quite break down her placidity, and make +her feel she could put down her head anywhere and cry. + +Yet away they were marching, one by one, all the beautiful school-days, +all the days of discipline and pleasant duty, and the ugly slack days, +when there would be nothing but home with house-work to do, were drawing +near. + +And at last she could bear the thought of it by herself no longer. + +It was early evening, and she was on the schoolroom verandah, watching +the young moon rise over a distant chimney. Every moment she expected +the prayer-bell to ring, and meanwhile, as it was not ringing, she +filled up the time by counting how many more evening prayer-bells would +ring before the end of term. + +She counted on her fingers, out aloud, and found there were just +twenty-nine--twenty-nine without Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays. +Twenty-nine days, and then came the end of term, and the end of her +school-days. + +It would then be Betty's turn--larrikin Betty's! The moon sailed over +the chimney, and Dot put her head down on the verandah railing and began +to cry. She did not cry in the vigorous whole-hearted way in which Betty +cried, but she sighed heavily, and sobbed gently, and allowed two or +three tears to run down her cheek before she brought out her dainty +handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. + +And at that precise moment Mona was crossing the schoolroom floor, and +she saw her darling Thea in tears! She was not given to light impulsive +movements at all, but this time she really did _spring_ forward and +kneel at Dot's side. + +"Dear, darling Thea!" she whispered, "what is the matter? Miss Cowdell +has been bullying you for the silly old French? That's it, isn't it +dear?" + +"Oh, no!" said Dot hopelessly, "nothing _half_ as small as that." + +"You've lost the new sleeve-links Alma gave you? Never mind--there are +plenty more. Not that? What then? Tell your own Mona--tell your own old +Mona." + +Two more tears ran down Dot's cheeks. + +"It's--it's nearly the end of term," she said. + +Mona nodded. + +"And I'm going to leave school," she said. + +Again Mona nodded and waited. + +"I've to go home," said Dot, and she put her head down on Mona's +shoulder heavily. + +"I've to go home too," said Mona, and she sighed, "right away to the +Richmond river, where you girls never come." + +"My home," said Dot, "is like a little plain, hedged round with prickly +pear, and put on the top of a mountain. No one ever comes in, and we +never go out." + +"Poor little Thea," said Mona. + +"And we're very poor," went on Dorothea with strange recklessness; "we +ought to be rich, but we're not, and the house is full of children, and +there's never any peace from morning till night." + +Mona grew crimson. She wanted to say something very much, and she lacked +the courage. Instead she asked how old were the children, as if she did +not know! + +"There's Betty," said Dot, "she's to come here when I leave, and she +won't enjoy it a bit--she's such a romp--and there's Cyril, they're both +about twelve. And there's Nancy, she's six, and the baby." + +"I wish," said Mona, "I _wish_ they belonged to me." + +"How can I practise with them everywhere about. How can I read, how can +I paint even, write my book, do anything, with them everywhere?" asked +Dot dismally. "They just fill the house." + +Again Mona stumbled to what she wanted to say, and stopped. Dot would +say she was "lecturing." It would never do. + +"You're rich," said pretty Dot pouting; "you can have everything you +want, do anything, go anywhere." + +A few puckers got into Mona's high forehead. + +"Once," she said, "I had four sisters, all younger than myself, and they +all died. I told you, didn't I?" + +"But it's long ago," said Dot. "Three years ago since the baby died. You +must have forgotten." + +"I'd promised my mother, when she was dying, to be a mother to them. +Father and aunt _made_ me go to school, and all the time I was counting +on when I should leave, and be an elder sister." + +Dot opened her eyes very wide. + +"Why did you want to be an elder sister?" she asked. + +Mona still looked red and ashamed. + +"You should read _The Flower of the Family_," she said, and "_The Eldest +of Seven, Holding in Trust_. You'd know then." + +Dorothea had read the last, and she began to see and understand. + +"You've got your mother and sisters," said Mona shyly. + +And then for the first time it occurred to Dorothea that she herself was +an elder sister, that she was the eldest of five, and that infinite +possibilities lay before her. + +"There's only my father and my aunt and brother when _I_ go home," said +Mona. "And I've only twenty-nine days, too, and then, oh! Thea darling, +I have to lose you." + +"We'll write twice a week always," whispered Dot, twining her arms round +her friend's waist. + +"And always be each other's bosom friend," said Mona. + +Then the prayer-bell rang, and the four intimate friends scanned Thea +closely, seeing that she had been crying, and feeling angry with "that" +Mona Parbury for letting her. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +RICHES OR RAGS + + +Captain Carew and John Brown--big John Brown in Betty's parlance--sat at +dinner together. + +Although not an elegant dinner table it was very far removed from being +a poor one. The linen, silver and glass were all of the best, the very +best; the man-servant was decorous and swift of eye, foot and hand, and +the menu was beyond any that had entered into John Brown's knowledge, +before he came to Dene Hall. Yet he was out of love with it all. + +Captain Carew had his glass of clear saffron-coloured wine at his right +hand. His silver fork was making easy journeyings from a slice of cold +turkey on his plate, to his mouth, and his eyes were now and again +running over a long type-written letter that lay before him. + +He was well pleased, well fed, and interested, and he had no reason to +suppose John Brown was in any other humour than himself. + +He had heard that the thoughts of youth were of vast length, and perhaps +he believed it. But he did not think John's had reached quite as far as +wishing to be a cobbler in a country village. + +And it must be confessed that few, seeing the appetite the boy brought +to his plate of cold turkey and "snowed" potato, would have suspected +him of longing for a "crust of bread and a drink of cold water." + +The truth was, he had been of late ransacking his grandfather's library +and had found besides sea-stories and stories of wrecks, and foreign +lands and pirates and deep sea treasure--what interested him more than +all, a volume of biographies of self-made men. + +He had lingered longingly over their boyhoods; their brief school times +(when such times were lacking altogether he liked both man and story +better); their privations, struggles, self-reliance and success. The +success interested him the least. That came, of course, he decided, to +all who tried hard enough. But the privations! The struggle! The +self-reliance! How his eyes shone and his heart beat at it! + +There was the story of Richard Arkwright, the great mechanician. _He_ +was never at school in his life--never forced to do ridiculous sums, to +spell correctly, to parse, to drill, to sing! His biographer said that +the only education he ever received he gave himself--that he was fifty +years of age when he set to work to learn grammar and to improve his +hand-writing. He did not waste the precious hours of his youth over such +things. When he was a boy he was apprenticed to a barber, and when he +set up in business for himself he occupied an underground cellar and put +up his sign--"Come to the subterraneous barber; he shaves for a penny." +This caused brisk competition, and a general reduction in barber's +prices. Yet not to be beaten, Arkwright altered his sign to "A clean +shave for a halfpenny." Then he turned his attention to wig-making, and +from that to machine-making. And years and years passed. Years filled +with patient labour, privations, obstacles, and at last _Success_! +"Eighteen years after he had constructed his first machine he rose to +such estimation in Derbyshire that he was appointed High Sheriff of the +county, and shortly afterwards George III conferred upon him the honour +of knighthood." So said the book. + +Shakespeare, he read, was the son of a butcher and grazier; Sir +Cloudesley Shovel, the great admiral, a cobbler's son; Stephenson was an +engine-fireman; Turner, the great painter, came from a barber's shop. + +Life after life he had turned over of men who had risen from the ranks +and gotten for themselves fame and riches. So that at last he came to +regard humble birth and poverty as the necessary foundations of ultimate +success. He noticed that his heroes all worked hard and patiently; were +all brave and sternly self-disciplined, plodding onwards past every +obstacle and hardship. But he forgot to notice that they all made the +_best of that sphere of life into which they were born_. + +He had quite decided to be a self-made man. That was simple enough. The +question that troubled him was what sort of a self-made man to be! A +Newton? A Shakespeare? A Stephenson? A Turner? An Arkwright? + +The wide choice worried and perplexed him. It was pitiful to his +thinking that he could, try and strive as he might, only be _one_. + +He had put himself through several examinations. He had lain under a +pear tree and watched the leaves fall; he felt another man had the +monopoly of apple trees. And he had decided that the leaves fell because +they had become unfastened from the branches, and that they did not fall +straight because the wind blew them sideways. And there was an end of +the leaves. + +He had studied kitchen furnishings and their ways, avoiding only the +kettle, since some one else had risen on its steam. + +He had tried himself with a pencil and paper, but he had composed +nothing even reminiscent of Shakespeare. In fact, he had composed +nothing at all. + +And at last he became convinced it was the circumstances of his life +that were at fault, not he himself. _If_ he had only been a cobbler's +son, a tailor's, a barber's! + +But alas! he was well-dressed, well-fed, well-housed; sent to a good +school. He had a pony of his own and a man to groom him; a bicycle; a +watch; every equipment for cricket and football; a dog; pigeons and most +of the possessions dear to the heart of a boy. + +He had almost finished his dinner to-day when he put a question to the +Captain sitting there smiling over his letter. + +"Grandfather," he asked, "are you rich?" + +His grandfather sat straight immediately, which is to speak of his +features as well as his figure. + +"Well, what do you think, lad?" he asked. + +John shook his head dolefully. + +"_I_ think you are," he said, "but _are_ you?" + +"That depends on how riches are counted," said the old man cautiously, +"and who does the counting. King Solomon, now, might consider me but an +old pauper." + +John went on with his dinner thoughtfully. + +"Are you wondering what I am going to do with my money?" asked the old +man, watching him closely. + +John looked him straight in the face. + +"I expect you're going to leave it to me," he said. + +"Ah!" said his grandfather. "And who has been talking to you now? Who +told you that?" + +"Oh, Johnson and Roberts and Mrs. Wilkins. Mrs. Wilkins says you'll give +it me in a will," said John carelessly. + +"Who the dickens is Mrs. Wilkins?" + +John opened his eyes widely. Not to know Mrs. Wilkins was indeed to +argue oneself unknown. + +"Why the lady at the store next our school," he said. "She sells +pea-nuts and chewing gum and everything." + +"And she says I'll leave all my money to you, eh? Hum. Well, how'd you +like it if I do?" + +"I don't want it," said John with blunt force. He went on sturdily with +his blanc-mange, arranging his strawberry jam carefully, that he should +have an excess of that for the last spoonful. + +Captain Carew stared surprisedly at him. + +"Eh? What's that?" he asked. + +"When you were as old as me," said John, lifting his carefully trimmed +spoon to his mouth, "were you as rich as now?" + +The question stirred the old man immediately. His eyes brightened, he +put down his letter, pushed his glasses up high on his forehead and +struck the table with one hand. + +"I should think not," he said excitedly, "I should rather think not. As +rich as now--God bless my life!" + +"I thought you weren't," said John calmly. + +"I can't remember my father and mother," said Captain Carew, speaking a +little more quietly as his thoughts began to run backwards. "I lived +with my uncle in London; he kept a ham and beef shop, and had thirteen +or fourteen youngsters of his own to bring up. He was going to put me to +the butchering, but I settled all that myself. I ran away." + +"You ran away?" asked John breathlessly, and regarding the old man with +more interest than he had ever given him yet. + +"Ay! When I was no older than you. Half a crown I had in my pocket, I +remember. It was all the start in life _I_ ever got." + +John put down his spoon and stared at his grandfather earnestly, +eagerly, admiringly. + +"You're a self-made man!" he said. And old as the Captain was, and young +as was his admirer, he warmed pleasantly at the words. + +"Ay!" he said exultingly, "I'm a self-made man right enough. Every bit +of me! I started life as an errand boy in the London slums, and it +seemed for a time as if I was going to die an errand boy in the London +slums. At least, it might have seemed so to most people. _I'd_ made up +my mind how it was to be, how it had got to be." + +"What did you do?" asked John eagerly. + +"Do--well, I had about a year at errand running and then I got a chance +to go to sea, and I took it. I went first to China. By gad, how well I +remember that trip!" + +And forthwith he launched into a sea-story more enthralling by far to +the boy than any in that library so stocked with sea-stories. + +At dinner again, at night, the talk was the same. The usually silent +ruminative old man was positively loquacious, and John gave him a rapt +attention. + +When nine o'clock struck a dim remembrance come to the boy that he was +still a pupil of Wygate School and had home tasks to prepare for the +morrow. + +But he had slipped too far out of his groove to go back again that +night. + +He began to wander in and out of the lower floor rooms; out of the front +door, round the verandah, and in by the French windows to the +dining-room. + +"I'll chuck school," he said. "Catch any of those self-made men going to +school when they were thirteen. I'll have to struggle and screw and put +myself to a night-school. That's what they did. A self-made man is good +enough for me." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE ARTIST BY THE WAYSIDE + + +Elizabeth Bruce was "detained for inattention." + +No one else out of all the four and thirty scholars of Wygate School was +kept in to-day. One after the other, hands folded behind them, they had +marched to the door. Then delightful sounds--the scuffling of feet, +stifled screams, gigglings and low buzzings of talk--had stolen over the +partition that separated the cloak-room from the class-room, and +Elizabeth, sitting on the high-backed form, with all the other empty +forms in front of her, nibbled her pencil in melancholy loneliness. + +She wondered if Nellie Underwood and Cyril would wait for her. Only +yesterday she had waited a dreary hour for them and had carried Cyril's +bag home for him to ease his wounded spirit. + +Then she began her task. She seized a slate, arranged two slate-pencils +to work together and expedite her task and wrote: "Elizabeth Bruce +detained for inattention." + +When she had written the statement ten times the silence in the +cloak-room struck chill upon her. All the rest had found their hats and +bonnets then and gone outside. + +She sat on the floor under her desk and tried to see the playground +through the open door. Two small pinkly-clad figures dashed past the +door, chased by a maiden in blue--all screaming and laughing. + +"Nell Underwood!" ejaculated Betty gladly, and went back to her slate +warmed and cheered. + +She made her pencils work harder than before, kneeling upon the form in +an excess of industry. + +Even as she wrote the statement for the fortieth time, voices and +laughter came from the playground--but a cold silence had come by the +fiftieth. + +At the sixtieth her little moist hand was cramped, and she had to stay +to work her fingers rapidly. At the seventieth the tears were trickling +down her cheeks, for she was only Elizabeth Bruce "detained for +inattention," the schoolroom was only a schoolroom, and the forms were +only forms--and empty. And that was the master down at the desk there, +exercise books and slates around him and a pen behind his ear. For a +space the tears splashed down hard and fast upon her slate and the sight +of the big drops aroused her self-pity. The larger the splashes the +larger her self-sorrow. + +A sharp "Go on with your work, Elizabeth Bruce" waked her to the +necessity of drying her eyes and slate and adjusting her pencils for +again writing, "Elizabeth Bruce detained for inattention." + +But at the eightieth time of writing it, she was no longer Elizabeth +Bruce, the daughter of a moneyless author. Her name was now Geraldine +Montgomery, and she was the adopted daughter of a millionaire. Her +mother, she had decided, was a gipsy, and was even now hovering near at +hand to steal back her beautifully dressed child. + +By the time she had written the melancholy statement of Elizabeth +Bruce's detention, her face had all its old smiling serenity again. + +She rose, sighing thankfully, and collecting her slates, walked down +soberly to the busy master at his desk. + +"Let this be a lesson to you, Elizabeth," he said, running his eye down +slate after slate. "Ten times each side, twenty times each slate, five +slates--one hundred. More punishments are meted out to you than to any +other child in the school. I shall find it necessary, if this state of +things continues, to write to your father. Clean the slates and return +them to their places--then go." + +Elizabeth found the cloak-room empty. She assured herself that every one +had gone home--of course; but her eyes flashed round the press room, and +to that corner between the press and the door, for a blue-frocked little +girl with red hair. And, of course, as she was now Geraldine Montgomery, +the disappointment of finding the corner empty was not so keen as it +would have been merely to Elizabeth Bruce. + +"I think," said this foolish little girl aloud, "I'll wear my leghorn +hat with the ostrich feathers in it to-day. Papa always likes that." And +she took her old pink bonnet down from her peg and slipped it upon her +head. Then she stuffed her books into her black school-bag and turned to +the door. + +Elizabeth Bruce fancied Cyril would be away there under the saplings +playing knucklebones impatiently, and her eyes eagerly scanned the +deserted playground. No kneeling figures, no Nellie Underwood, no Cyril, +no knucklebones. For a second the tears trembled in her eyes at the +thought that no one had waited for her, but in a minute Elizabeth Bruce +slipped away, and Geraldine Montgomery in her leghorn hat was treading +the homeward way. + +Behind her, she told herself, an old gipsy woman was skulking--she had +seen the ostrich feathers, the "rare lace upon the simple rich dress." + +It was just behind the store that the gipsy and Geraldine both +disappeared. + +The store turned one blank wall upon Carlyle Road--which was the home +road--and Elizabeth came round the corner sharply and then stood still. +There, kneeling upon the red clayey earth, his face to the wall, was big +John Brown. + +Elizabeth made out that he was writing or figuring with blue chalk upon +the wall's blankness, and although her heart feared the big rough boy +she had "fought," she drew nearer. + +"Hulloa!" said John Brown, flushing when he saw the small pinafored +maiden he had an unpleasant recollection of beating so short a time ago, +and whom he had carefully avoided ever since. + +"Hulloa!" said Betty, surprised into speaking to him. + +Brown made a seat of his boot-heels and surveyed her, being much too +bashful to open up a conversation. + +But Betty was not bashful. + +"What are you doing?" she asked, and a very inquisitive face stared at +him from the depths of the pink sun-bonnet. + +[Illustration: "'Is it a horse?' queried Betty."] + +"H'm!" said John, and made a few more strokes with his pencil. + +"Is it a horse?" queried Betty. "Yes it is--there are no horns, and it's +too big for a dog or cat. Yes, it's a horse." + +"H'm!" said John again. Then he looked at his handiwork, drawing further +off to see it from Betty's point of view. + +"Yes," he said, with badly concealed pride; "it's a horse right enough. +It's a race-horse. I drew him from memory." + +"Why didn't you draw him on paper?" asked the small girl. + +"Won't be let. And no sooner do I see a bit of blank wall than I begin +drawing something on it," said the reader of _Self-made Men_. + +Betty only heeded the first part of his sentence. + +"Who won't let you?" she asked, standing on one leg as she put the +question. + +"My people," said John. "They don't want me to be an artist." + +Betty's eyes rounded themselves. + +"_Are_ you going to be an artist?" she asked. She was intensely +interested. The boys who played in her kingdom had not arrived at the +stage of thinking what they were going to be. What they were was +all-sufficient unto them. Cyril had once declared his intention of +keeping a sweets' shop, but that was quite a year ago now. + +Betty had read many stories about artists, and they were always set in +romantic or tragic circumstances. The look she gave to the one before +her warmed him into becoming confidential on the spot. He did not tell +her all at once, not all even that first afternoon, although they took +the homeward way together. + +But he gave her a rough outline of the lives of several artists who had +sprung from the ranks, and of one in particular who lived in a cellar, +and tasted of starvation as a boy; one who, denied paper, could not yet +deny the genius within him, but drew in coloured chalks upon any vacant +wall that came in his way. And he always drew animals--and usually +horses and dogs. + +The little brown face under the sun-bonnet glowed with delight. Never +in all her life had the imaginative small maiden come across a boy like +this. Big John Brown, indeed! Bully, indeed! Gardener's boy, indeed! How +could she and Cyril ever have said, ever have thought, such things? + +Presently, for the boy had never had such a listener in his life before, +he told her of other men--Stephenson, Newton, Shakespeare--and Betty +took off her bonnet as her earnestness increased, and tucked it under +her arm after a way she had when agitated. + +"Oh, I wish I was a boy," she said. "What's the good of a girl? What can +a girl do? Don't you know anything about self-made women?" + +John knew very little. In fact he too very much doubted the "good of a +girl." He told her so quite bluntly, but added that she'd better make +the best of it. + +"There _must_ be some self-made women," insisted Betty. "I'll ask father +to-night." + +John thought deeply for a few minutes, seeing her distress. He really +ransacked his mind, for besides sorrow for her sorrowing he could +plainly see the admiration with which she regarded him, and he wanted to +show her that he knew something about women too. + +"There's Joan of Arc," he said, "and--there's Grace Darling!" + +But Betty was indignant. "They're in the history book!" she said. + +John thought again, but could only shake his head. + +"All women can do," he said, "is wash up, and cook dinners, and mend +clothes!" + +Betty's lips quivered. + +"I won't be a woman," she said, "I _won't_!" + +John owned to sharing her craving to be rich, but he wanted to _make_ +his wealth himself--which set Betty's imagination galloping down a new +road. _She_ had only thought hitherto of her grandfather's riches, which +had seemed to her and Cyril to be all the money there was in the world. + +But now John had slid back a door and let her peep into all the glories +of a new world, and she had seen there wealth and fame to be had for the +earning--by men and boys! + +"Try and find out about self-made women," she said, when he left her at +the turn through the bush. "See if there were any women artists, or +women inventors, or women pirates, or _anything_. Good-bye." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +BETTY IN THE LION'S DEN + + +So that it was John who showed Betty the thing in all its beauty. It was +he, who, so to speak, called her to the mountain top, and pointed out to +her the cities of the world to be climbed above. And it seemed to little +independent-hearted Betty to be the most glorious thing in the world to +climb upon one's own feet, pulling oneself upwards with one's own hands. + +She wondered how she could have ever wanted such a very ordinary +happening as for her grandfather to _adopt_ them and give them _his_ +money. Here was this wonderful John Brown actually longing to give up +her grandfather--his grandfather. For he had soon convinced her that +Captain Carew was his grandfather too, and while allowing that he might +be hers, he showed her how very little in the eyes of the world _her_ +relationship counted for. He, he said, was the son of his grandfather's +eldest son--that their names were different was solely owing to the fact +that his father had changed his name for private reasons. She and Cyril +and all the rest of them were merely the children of his grandfather's +_daughter_. And, as he impressed upon Betty, women didn't count for much +in the world's eyes. + +Yet Betty was very earnest in her intention to be something +great--something self-made, and John was willing enough not to stand in +her way. He himself was going to start at once; _he_ was not going to +waste any more time over going to school and doing lessons. He pointed +to his grandfather as a fine example of a man who had risen _because_ he +had not wasted time in learning. He told Betty they could not begin +their "career" too early. + +It was Betty who suggested waiting till the Christmas holidays, and it +was John who said-- + +"Perhaps you'd better wait till the next Christmas. I will have got a +bit of a start by then and will be able to help you." + +But Betty was indignant at that. + +"I won't be helped!" she said. "I won't be helped by you, John Brown. +Stay at home till Christmas yourself--I'm going _now_!" + +Her career had to be decided upon, and very little time remained in +which to decide. John intended beginning life as an errand boy. In his +spare time, he said, he would go on with his drawing, and if an +opportunity occurred, he would work his passage out somewhere in some +ship. He was rather vague about all but the errand running; that he saw +to be the first step towards greatness. + +Betty was not long before she decided he was keeping some part of his +design from her. And every afternoon when they had left school and each +other, she was nervous lest he should have gone by morning--gone and +left her to find her way into the world alone! + +And here was she unable to decide upon her career! She even asked +questions about Joan of Arc and Grace Darling, and set herself to find +out if there were any other women in the history book. + +"It isn't fair!" she said at last to the thoughtful John Brown. "You'd +never have known about being an errand boy and an artist only for your +books. You've got a lot of books to help you." + +But John told her how he had been decided upon his "career" all his +life, ever since his father had left him alone on the station in the +country which time was, as the reader will be aware, situated somewhere +about his first birthday. But he magnanimously proposed to place his +grandfather's library at her feet, or rather to place her feet within +his grandfather's library. + +"You can come and take your pick," he said. + +At this period of her life Betty was not troubled with pride--the pride +of the slighted and poor relation. + +She accepted his offer rapturously, only adding, "You'd better keep my +grandfather out of the way when I come." + +"Come when he's having his afternoon sleep," said John. + +So Betty was smuggled into her grandfather's library. + +It was Saturday afternoon when she went to the great house. She had to +slip away from Dot, who was making elaborate alterations to a pretty +blue muslin frock (she was invited to spend the next Saturday and Sunday +with Alma Montague, the doctor's daughter); her mother was calling +"Betty, come here," in the front garden as she reached the track through +the bush, and Cyril and Nancy had implored her to "come and play +something." + +But Betty had a "career" to think of. She ran through the bush and +arrived breathless at that part of her grandfather's fence which ran +past their coral islands. At a certain hour every afternoon, John said, +his grandfather went to sleep. It was during this sleep time that Betty +was to search the shelves of his library for a book that should +enlighten her as to the best way to become a "self-made woman." + +She slipped under the fence, and into the little belt of bush that +bounded the emu run, and where she, as a ghost, had waited. + +John's signal came very soon, and Betty immediately took off her bonnet +and rolled it up under her arm--the better to hear--and marched boldly +across the gravel paths to the library window where John stood. + +"Where is he?" asked Betty. + +"Asleep on the little verandah," said John; "he always sleeps a long +time after dinner." + +Betty stepped into the room and looked around her curiously. + +It was such a room as she had never seen yet, and it pleased her +greatly. Two enormous bookcases full of books stood side by side against +one wall. Another wall was book-lined for about eight feet of its height +and ten of its length. The centre-table had a dark blue cloth upon it +and bore magazines, books and newspapers and writing materials. + +Betty's feet rested pleasurably on the thick rich carpet and her eyes +went from easy chair to easy chair. + +"My father ought to have this room," she said, "he writes the most +beautiful books, and I know he'd write ever so many more if he lived +here." + +"Here's the book I got myself from," said John, advancing to a +bookcase. + +But Betty was oblivious of her errand. She lingered by the table, +turning over the covers of the magazines, and picture after picture +caught her eye. + +One in particular she lingered over. It represented a bric-a-brac strewn +room. + +"The boudoir of Madam S----," it said. + +"Oh!" exclaimed Betty, and dropped her sun-bonnet into her grandfather's +chair. "Oh, John, when I've made myself, I'll have a room like _this_!" + +She began to read and her eyes smiled. Then she sank down on the floor, +carrying the book with her, and leaning her back against a table-leg she +lost herself in an interview with Madam S----. + +Madam replied to several searching questions blithely. She told a little +story about her large family of brothers and sisters, their extreme +poverty and her own inordinate love of music. Then there was a pathetic +touch when sickness, poverty and hunger darkened the poor little home, +and she, a mite of eight, had stood at a street corner in a foreign +city and sung a simple song. A crowd had soon collected, and a +keen-eyed, bent-shouldered man had been passing by hurriedly, and had +stopped, caught by a "something" in the little singer's voice, and face, +and attitude. He had finally pushed his way through the crowd and stood +beside the little girl in the tattered frock. + +_That_ song and _that_ interview had been the beginning of a great +career. Hard work and small pay had intervened, but success had followed +success, and now not one of her concerts to-day meant less to her than +hundreds of pounds. Dukes threw flowers at her feet, Princes loaded her +with diamond brooches, tiaras, necklaces, bangles; kings and queens and +emperors "commanded her to sing before them," and gave her beautiful +mementos. + +Betty was breathing quickly as she came to this stage of Madam S----'s +career. She turned a leaf, and a face smiling under a coronet looked at +her. + +"Madame S----, present day," the words below said. + +A neighbouring photograph showed a mite with a pinched face and a +tattered frock. + +"Madame S----, at eight years old!" was the inscription. + +"And I'm twelve," said Betty. "Twelve and a bit." + +She turned her head, then raised it sharply. There standing beside her +was her grandfather. + +The two looked at each other. + +What Betty saw at first--it must be confessed--was the keen-eyed, +bent-shouldered individual who had appeared to the little street singer, +and the silly little imaginative maiden waited for him to speak. + +What the grandfather saw was a small girl of "twelve and a bit," in a +pink print frock; a small girl with a brown shining face, golden-brown +hair and brown eyes, and parted red lips, a little person in every way +different from the pale-faced ghost who had visited him awhile back--so +different that he did not know her. + +He simply took her for a little school-girl and no more. + +Then Betty remembered who he was--who she was--where she was--and a few +other matters of similar importance, and a red, red flush spread over +her face and to the tips of her small pink ears. + +The sea-captain opened his mouth in a jocular roar. + +"Who's been sitting in my room?" he demanded. "Why, here she is!" + +Betty's lip quivered. She _was_ beginning to be afraid--or rather she +was afraid. + +"I--I just wanted to see a book," she said. + +"And what book did you _just_ want to see?" + +He took the magazine from her and noticed two things--how her hand shook +and how bravely her eyes met his. + +His glance wandered over the open page, and a wonderment came to him +what there was here to interest such a child. + +The next second the fatal question was on his lips. + +"And what is your name?" he asked. + +Betty's lips moved, but no sound left them. She just sat dumbly there +gazing into her grandsire's face. + +The old man sat down on the pink bonnet. He was not in the least +anxious over her name. She was a schoolmate of John's, of course; he had +often stumbled over these active eager little creatures in the back +yard, in the near paddock, by the emus' run, near the pigeon-boxes, on +the staircase. _Only_ hitherto they had been of John's own sex. This +pretty little nervous girl interested him. + +He drew her magazine towards him. + +"We're waiting for the name--aren't we, Jack?" he said. + +Then Betty realized that her hour was indeed come. She rose to her feet +and stood in front of him gulping down a few hard breaths. + +"I--I didn't come to get us adopted this time," she quavered. + +"Eh?" said Captain Carew. He spoke dully, yet the faintest glimmerings +of light were beginning to break on him. Her attitude, something +familiar in her voice, her height and shining curly head brought that +evening to his mind, when she had owned to an intention of wishing to +frighten him. A slow anger stirred him, anger against this child, her +parents, and himself. + +"Your name!" he said harshly. + +And at the sound of his own voice his anger grew. His lip thrust itself +out when he had spoken, and his whole face wore its hardest, most +unlovely look. + +"Your name, girl?" + +And Betty hesitated no longer. Her only point of pride at this age lay +in assuming bravery whether she had it or not. "We Bruces are afraid of +no one," being her favourite speech, and as inspiriting to her as the +sound of the war-drum to a warrior bold. + +She stood straight and her brown eyes looked straight into his brown +eyes. + +"Elizabeth Bruce," she said. + +The old man's anger blazed fiercely. + +"Look here my girl," he said, "you can tell your father it's a bit late +in the day for these games. Tell him I've got the only grandchild here +that ever I want. Now--go." + +But Betty stood her ground. + +"My father didn't send me," she said, and her face went from red to +white. "He didn't know I was coming at all--and--sure's death! he never +knew anything about the ghosts. I came to get Cyril adopted because he's +getting tired of cutting wood an' only getting a penny a week." + +The old man broke into a hoarse laugh. + +"And this time to get yourself adopted," he said. + +But Betty shook her head vigorously. + +"No, I only wanted to see what sort of woman to be," she said. She +walked to the open window. + +"I'm not going to adopt you," said the old man, "so go--GO! Never let me +see you inside my gates again--by day or by night. Go!" + +And once more Betty took a swift departure by way of the balcony door. +And again she left a bonnet behind her. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +"IF I WERE ONLY YOU!" + + +The third Saturday and Sunday before the ending of term, Dorothea spent +with her "intimate" friend, Alma Montague. + +Alma's home was a very beautiful one at Elizabeth Bay, and, as Dot told +her mother, there were parlour-maid, housemaid, kitchen-maid and every +other sort of maid there. + +Dot slept in one of the visitor's rooms, and had a bathroom and a +sitting-room opening off her bedroom for her exclusive use. The +sitting-room and bedroom were "treated" with the same colouring--a +tender wonderful shade of blue. The wall paper was just suggestive of +blue; the ceiling was delicately veined with blue; the curtains were, +Dot felt certain, blue. The easy chairs and the lounge, the footstools +and the cushions were dull blue. + +Such a beautiful room. + +Again, in the bedroom, there were delicate suggestions of blue among the +whiteness. + +And the bathroom! How different in every way from the little wooden +unlined room at home. There the ceiling-joists were gracefully festooned +with cobwebs, the floor had many a great hole in it, caused by white ant +and damp. No water was laid on--only a tap came from a tank outside, +which in its turn was fed from an underground well. And whenever Dot +wanted a bath she had to coax or bribe Cyril or Betty to work the pump. +Dot herself hated working the pump--it blistered her little hands. + +Here the floor was leaded the walls tiled, the bath itself painted a +delicate sea blue. There was a square of carpet just beyond the edge of +the lead; a cushioned chair, two hospitable taps, one offering cold, one +hot water. All sorts of toilet luxuries were at hand, pretty coloured +soaps, loofahs, lavender-water, ammonia, violet powder, violet scent. + +No wonder poor Dot was in an ecstasy with her surroundings, and that she +roamed round her rooms and sighed with happiness because she was here, +and with sorrow because she was going away in two days. + +On Saturday morning she and Alma went shopping. They breakfasted alone +at nine o'clock, Alma's father being in his consulting-room and her +mother in bed (she had been at the theatre on Friday evening and Dot had +not even seen her). + +So the two girls lingered over a very dainty breakfast table till nearly +ten o'clock, when Alma suggested "shopping." + +Dot had only two frocks, besides her morning pink print with her. One +was a blue muslin that had to last her for next week at school; the +other was a white muslin and her best. She had taken them out of her +dress-basket and hung them carefully in her pretty wardrobe, and now +that Alma spoke of shopping she was in miserable doubt which to wear. + +"I'm going to wear a blue," said Alma, "you wear yours, too, Thea dear, +and then people will think we are sisters. Sisters! Oh, don't I wish I +had a sister!" + +Dot, who possessed three, shook her head as she handled her muslin +dress. + +"I think it's very nice to be the only one," she said. "The only child! +It's lovely!" + +"But I'm so lonely except when I'm at school," said Alma sadly. + +Dot opened her eyes. She was just slipping her blue frock carefully over +her shining curly head, but she stopped with her head half through to +wonder at Alma. + +"Lonely!" she said. "Here! In this house! And you've got your father and +mother!" + +Alma shook her head dolefully. + +"Father is always busy," she said, "and mother is always out--or +entertaining. Oh, Thea, I would love to have you for my very own sister. +I would give everything I have if I could have you." + +Dorothea smiled kindly. Mona Parbury had told her the same--and Minnie +Stevenson, and Nellie Harden. They all wanted her for their _very_ own +sister. It was only such little madcaps as her own sisters, Betty and +Nancy, who were indifferent. + +Alma was small and undeveloped. She was seventeen and looked hardly +fifteen. Her large dark eyes looked pathetic in her thin sallow face. +Her lips were thin and colourless, her hair straight and dull brown. No +prettiness at all belonged to her. Only wistfulness and gentleness. + +So they went shopping together, the two little girls in blue. And they +had no chaperon at all with them, no schoolmistress, or governess, or +mother, or aunt--no one to direct their eyes where they should look, and +their smiles when they should be given out and when withheld. No one to +carry the purse. + +Dot had two shillings and sixpence halfpenny in her small worn purse. +Her mother had slipped the money in. "I can't bear for you to be without +money, Dot dear," she had said, "but try your best not to spend it." + +Alma's purse seemed full of half-crowns and shillings and sixpences! + +Dot bought herself a new hat-band and a pretty lace-trimmed +handkerchief; and she tried to hide from Alma how very little both had +cost. + +Alma made several peculiar mistakes in her purchases. For instance, she +bought just twice as much gold liberty silk as she would need for a +sash, and she had to beg Dot to accept the part that was too much, as +she would be so tired of the thing if she had two _just_ alike. And she +bought a pair of size two evening shoes, and remembered when they were +going home that size two was a size too big for her. She wished she knew +of any one who wore two's. Dot wore three's, didn't she? No?--two's! How +lovely! Then Dot would take the shoes, wouldn't she, and save them from +becoming mouldy! And she bought two pretty lace-trimmed collars, just +alike--and she hated two of her things to be alike. So Dot would take +one off her hands, wouldn't she? + +Only each time she said "Thea," or "Thea darling!" And she bought her a +silver "wish" bangle as a keepsake, and a little scent bottle and fan +for "remembrance." + +Before they went home they went into an arcade shop and had strawberries +and cream, and a big ice cream and sponge cake each. And they met +several straw-hatted youths to whom Alma bowed. + +She told Dot to count how many hats were taken off to her, and Dot +counted, and behold, the number was ten. + +Dot herself felt rather envious. She only knew one grammar-school boy, +who smiled from ear to ear and blushed with delight on seeing her. + +Then they went home. + +When they opened the dining-room door the table was set for luncheon, +and a bald-headed gentleman was waiting at the head of it, a book +propped up before him. + +When the girls came in he went on reading just as before, deaf to their +chatter, blind to the pretty blue of their dresses. + +Alma ran down the room to him, and kissed the top of his head. + +"Home again, father!" she said. + +And then he looked up smiling, and stroked her little sallow face with +one finger. + +"This is my _very_ dearest friend--Dorothea Bruce!" said Alma +delightedly, and drawing Dot forward. + +The great doctor, who was small in stature, stood up then and took +little Dot's hand in his, and a very kindly smile came to his eyes as he +looked into her lovely childish face. + +"I'm very glad to see my daughter's dearest friend," he said, and he +patted her soft pink cheeks also. + +The door opened again just as this introduction was over, and a new +nervousness attacked Alma. Another tinge of yellowness crept into her +skin, her eyes grew wistful, and she began to stammer. + +"My f-friend, mother--Thea--Dorothea Bruce," and Dot turned curiously +and shyly round to the door. Entering there was a very beautiful woman +in a tea gown. Her eyes were like Alma's, only far lovelier, her +complexion was only a few years less fresh and perfect than Dorothea's +own--and her hair was red-gold and beautiful. + +When her glance rested on Dorothea's face, a look of pleasure crept +into them--just pleasure at seeing any one so flower-like and sweet as +this little maid from school. + +"I am very pleased to see you, dear," she said graciously, and she +stooped forward and kissed the girl's cheek. + +Then she looked at Alma--poor undersized Alma, with her yellow skin and +bloodless lips--and she sighed. But she kissed her also, and asked how +she had spent her morning and whether she had come from school this +morning or yesterday afternoon. + +When luncheon became the order of the day conversation died out. Dr. +Montague, indeed made two or three attempts at light talk--but Dot was +shy and Alma was nervous and Mrs. Montague was apparently elsewhere in +thought, so that presently silence fell. + +Dinner was at seven that night. It was a meal of many courses, several +wines two servants, and finger glasses. And again Dot was perfectly if +silently happy--although the finger glasses (of which she had seen none +before) threw, her off her balance until she had stolen a glance at +Alma to "see how she did," whereupon Dot performed the operation with +infinitely more grace than Alma. + +Alma wore a white silk dress and gold sash, and Dorothea white muslin +and gold sash, and the doctor's eyes went from one little whitely clad +maid to the other, smilingly. + +The happy look on his small daughter's face pleased him greatly. + +His wife often said he neither saw nor heard what was going on around +him, but he had very soon discovered his little girl's supreme +contentment. + +He asked Dorothea if she were going away for Christmas and the holidays, +and Dorothea shook her golden head and said, "No; she was going to stay +at home." + +Whereupon he asked Alma if she wouldn't like to carry her "dearest +friend" up the mountains with her, and Alma went quite pink with delight +and said-- + +"Oh, Father! Oh, Thea _dear_!" + +And Dot raised her pretty shy eyes and said-- + +"Oh, Alma!" and then looked at Mrs. Montague as if to ask if such +happiness was possible. + +Mrs. Montague laughed. + +"I will write and ask your mother," she said, "but we really can't take +'no.'" And she said it so graciously that the tears came into Alma's +eyes. + +"It would be _too_ lovely!" said Dot breathlessly. + +On Sunday afternoon, just as the evening shadows were stealing out and +the daylight was growing grey, Alma ran into the little blue +sitting-room, her great eyes luminous. + +"Oh, Thea _darling!_" she said, and then she stopped in surprise. Only a +little while ago Dot had tripped upstairs, her hair in a golden plait +down her back, her dress not so low as her boot-tops by quite three +inches. + +And now! She was sitting in an easy chair, her dress skirt lowered till +it reached the floor, her hair loosely done up on the top of her head, +her blue, blue eyes staring through the windows to the darkening +harbour waters, afar off. + +She blushed rosily red when Alma ran in. + +"I--I was just thinking," she said. + +"What were you thinking of, Thea?" asked Alma, "and what have you done +your hair like this for? You _do_ look so pretty--I wish the girls could +see you." + +Dot pulled her friend towards her and patted the arm of her chair for +her to sit there. Then she leaned her head upon Alma's shoulder and held +one of her hands between her own two. + +"I was _wishing_ I were grown-up, really grown-up," she said; "I did my +hair up to see how I looked. I tried to do it like your mother does +hers." + +Alma stroked her head gently. + +"My mother is in love with you," she said. "She has just been saying all +sorts of _beautiful_ things about you. She says she wishes you were her +daughter." + +"Oh!" said Dot. "Her daughter! How I _wish_ I were!"--and no disloyalty +to her own mother was meant. "To live here always! To be rich! To----" + +She paused. "Oh, Alma," she added, "you _are_ a lucky girl." + +But Alma only sighed. + +Dot began to think again, comparing in her own mind this home of Alma's +with her own little bush home. + +"Oh!" she said at last; "How happy you ought to be. How would you like +to change places with me!" + +And to her surprise Alma burst into tears, covering her face with her +little trembling hands. + +Gentle ways belonged to Dorothea. + +She stood up and put her friend into her chair and then she knelt beside +her, and slipped her arm round her waist. + +"_Dearest_ Alma!" she whispered. + +"Oh," sobbed Alma, "if only you were my _very_ own sister Thea--I +_couldn't_ love you more. I'm _so_ lonely. Father is always busy, and +mother--mother is disappointed in me." + +Dot opened her eyes in surprise. She had never dreamed of a mother being +_disappointed_ in her child. + +"I'm not pretty--or clever--or _any_thing," sobbed Alma. "She's always +been disappointed in me--ever since I was a tiny baby--and I've always +known it--and--and--she doesn't know I know. Oh dear!" + +Dot was shocked. "Darling Alma!" she said again. + +"It's dreadful to be the only child--and to be a disappointment," said +Alma. "I think father is sorry for us both." + +Dot stroked the girl's straight hair. + +"You've got lovely eyes," she said, "and you're very clever at crotchet +work." + +"What's that!" said Alma drearily. "Mother wouldn't mind if I never +touched a needle. She says if a girl hasn't beauty she has only one +other chance in the world--and that is to be brilliant. I _do_ try to be +clever--but it's no good." + +Dot kissed her. + +"When you are grown up you'll look different," she said. "You'll wear +long trailing dresses--and--do your hair like this--and----" + +But Alma sprang to her feet. + +"What a croaker I am," she said. "I _never_ told this to any one +before. Thea--it is my very _biggest_ secret. You'll never tell any one, +will you? Never! never! Father says if I'm good I'll be beautiful enough +for _him_. But oh, I wish I were you!" + +"And _I've_ been wishing I were you," said Dot. + +"I suppose," said Alma, with one of her most wistful looks, "I suppose +we're _meant_ to be ourselves for some reason. And we must make the best +of ourselves just as we are!" + +And the two girls kissed each other tenderly. + +"I've to be an elder sister," said Dot, with a sudden thought towards +Mona Parbury. + +"And I've to be an only child," said Alma, "and we've both to make the +best of our state of life--eh?" + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +JOHN'S PLANS + + +On Monday morning Betty took the road to school with running feet. A +fear was at her heart that John Brown had set out upon his expedition +into the world this day. Had gone--and left her behind! Had begun "life" +and left her at school! + +And it must be confessed that she liked the thought of two waifs facing +the world together, very much better than one. + +She was not at all disturbed (when it was over) about the interview with +her grandfather. It had not, like its predecessor, sent her to bed +weeping and ashamed and resolved upon the expediency of "turning over a +new leaf." + +She had been vexed that her grandfather had had so short a sleep--and +that John had not given her warning of his approach--as he had promised +to do. + +And she was very much distressed to find she had left her pink bonnet +behind her. Her mother had discovered its loss when giving out the +week's clean one, and had insisted upon her searching every corner in +the house for it. + +"It's was Dot's," said Mrs. Bruce. "Dot never lost a bonnet in her life. +You will have done with bonnets soon, but yours will do for Nancy. I +expect you left it at school, you tiresome child." + +It certainly would have electrified Mrs. Bruce if her small daughter had +confessed to her bonnet's whereabouts. But Betty's scrapes were many and +various at this period of her life, and it never entered into her head +to tell them to her mother, who was absorbed in her garden and her +books, nor to her father, who was supposed to be always "thinking +stories." + +So Betty ran to school with her clean bonnet tucked under her arm, after +promising that she would "try to bring the other one home with her." + +Her mind was now at rest upon her future "career." She had quite +determined to be a second Madam S---- with this sole difference in their +lives--Madam S---- faced the world at _her_ street corner at the age of +eight, and Betty was not beginning till she was "twelve and a bit." + +Still, she had a few worries. + +She was worried over John--lest he should have gone and left her; and +she was worried over the great question, "What song to sing?" as many +singers have been before. + +She had thought of "God save the Queen," but the words did not fulfil +all requirements, while "Please give me a penny, sir"--that song she had +found among a heap of yellow old ones with her mother's name--maiden +name, Dorothea Carew--upon them, seemed to have been written just for +the occasion. The only pity was, that whereas Betty knew "God Save the +Queen" perfectly, "Please give me a penny, sir" was almost a stranger to +her. + +She had learnt a verse of it on Saturday night when she ought to have +been doing her arithmetic; and on Sunday evening she had coaxed her +mother to the piano, and begged her to sing "_just_ this one song, +_please_." Her mother sang very prettily--like Dot--and she had thrown a +good deal of pathos into the old song, so that Betty's ambition was +fired, and she had _almost_ decided upon the song straightaway. + +This morning she arrived at school flushed and hot, before either Cyril +or Nancy, and she began at once to explore the playground for John Brown +the artist. Two little lines of boys and girls were playing a sober game +of French and English away under the gum trees, and Betty ran her eyes +along the lines--but no John Brown was there. + +Two boys were skirmishing just behind the cloak-room, but neither of +them was John Brown. Five were playing "leap frog," but John Brown was +not there. One sat on the doorstep learning a lesson, but that was only +Artie Jones. + +Then a motley crowd of boys and girls came trailing in at the gate, and +the bell began to ring. + +Betty drew into the shadow of the new wing, the "Babies' Wing," and +scanned the new arrivals eagerly. + +Fat Nellie Underwood gave her a bunch of jonquils and fell into line to +march into the schoolroom. Minute Hetty Ferguson begged to be allowed to +do her hair in the dinner-hour. "_Please_, Betty dear," she urged. But +Betty was looking for John and did not heed. + +Cyril was there and grumbling. He was pushing a boy who had pushed him, +and pressing his lips together as he pushed, when, all at once, he saw +Betty, and left the field to the other boy. + +"You're going to catch it, Betty Bruce!" he whispered. "You'll just see! +I'm going to tell of you when I go home. Teach you to sneak off to +school by yourself." + +But Betty's eyes were looking past Cyril, looking for a squarely built +figure in grey. + +Cyril drew nearer. "You never washed up the porridge plates," he said. +"I found them in the dresser cupboard. An' the knives an' forks. An' +baby's basin. I'll tell of you." + +Then he fell into line and carried his fair pretty face into the +schoolroom, where Miss Sharman patted his cheeks when he went to present +a little bunch of Czar violets to her. + +Miss Sharman presided over Class A for grammar upon Mondays and +Thursdays, and Cyril, who was but very weak on adverbs and prepositions, +always gave her a sweet-smelling nosegay to begin the day with. + +And Miss Sharman had a very tender spot in her heart for pretty Cyril, +where she had none for scapegrace Betty. She had doctored Cyril for +bruises, had washed his face in her own room and brushed his wavy hair; +had kissed him, and given him cakes, and acid drops, and bananas. And +although these small sweet matters were just between Miss Sharman and +Cyril--their influence might be felt upon grammar days. + +Nancy came into school crying--crying noisily. She was rubbing her eyes +with one hand, a moist dirty hand, and leaving her face the worse for +the contact. + +The master inquired sternly what was the matter, and called her to his +side. And Nancy told him sobbingly that she "fort she was late, an' now +she wasn't." And he patted her head so kindly that the little maid +lowered her sobs at once and finally let them die away in an occasional +hiccough of sorrow. + +Betty came in at last. She had run as far as the store and back again in +search of John Brown--and had found him not. She felt quite certain now +that he was away practising his genius upon some wall in the great +world. + +When she came into the schoolroom her face was red with running and +excitement, her hair was rough, and her bonnet under her arm still, so +oblivious was she to the things of this very every-day and commonplace +world. + +"Elizabeth Bruce, what is that you have under your arm," Miss Sharman +inquired, as Betty walked to her place, which was somewhere in the +second form. + +Betty looked in surprise--and there was her bonnet. She had to walk out +and hang it up, while the class, and even the babies tittered at her +blunder. + +But there in the cloak-room she found John Brown. He was in the act of +hanging his hat upon his own particular peg--the highest one in the +room. + +"Oh!" said Betty, "_here_ you are!" + +"You're a nice one," said John Brown. + +"What have I done?" asked the little girl eagerly. + +But John Brown simply looked his scorn, and it made his face very ugly +indeed. + +"Oh, what _have_ I done?" begged Betty. "Do tell me." + +"Trust a girl to mull things up," said John. + +"Elizabeth Bruce, return to your class," said a stern voice from the +schoolroom, and Betty shot herself back through the door in the +twinkling of an eye. + +A lengthy space of valuable time was given over to moods and tenses, +perfects, pluperfects, pasts, futures; and Betty, whose fortitude was +much shaken by John Brown's remarks, sat listlessly five places above +him, caring not the least about such mighty words as "cans" and +"coulds" and "shalls" and "shoulds," although the air was full of them. + +She went down a place, through not being able to find a passive +participle for the verb "to bid," Miss Sharman shaking an angry head at +her eager "bidded." And she went down two for knowing nothing of the +present tense of "slain." + +That brought her one place removed from John Brown, and all her +eagerness now was to go one lower and learn at once wherein lay her +offence. + +So, although she knew perfectly that the verb "to fall" had "fell" for +its past participle, she uttered an eager "failed" and sat next to John +Brown. + +"Disgraceful!" said Miss Sharman. "You could not have opened your book, +Elizabeth (which was only too true). Your little sister Nancy, in the +babies' class, could have told you that." + +But Elizabeth saved herself with the verb, "to sing," and sat uneasily +in case John should blunder over "to fight." But he was quite correct +and did not need his small neighbour's eager whisper. + +And then Miss Sharman passed on to other verbs and other pupils, and +John and Betty were left in peace, side by side, outwardly two +indifferently intelligent pupils, inwardly perplexed, distressed and +elated by their new ambition. + +"What have I done?" whispered Betty. + +"Silly!" whispered John. + +"But--what _have_ I done?" + +"Girl!" whispered John in scorn. + +The trouble at Betty's heart stirred and hurt her. Was it not enough _to +be_ a girl, without being _called_ one--and in such a whisper. She sat +still, and, to save herself from tears, bit her lips and pressed them +together, and pinched her left arm with her right hand, as she sat there +with her arms folded behind her. + +And John thought she didn't care! + +He looked at her out of an eye-corner and added, "I'm done with you," as +a final stab. + +Betty said, "Oh no, John," imploringly, and Miss Sharman caught her +whisper and saw her lips move, and said-- + +"Elizabeth Bruce--don't let me have to look at you again this morning. +You are very troublesome. Why can you not take a leaf out of your +brother's book, I wonder?" + +The morning wore on, and tenses and moods gave place to drill. Then they +all went into the playground, and armed themselves with poles, and +formed into lines. + +John, as the tallest and straightest-backed and sturdiest-limbed pupil +in the school, was always at the head of one line. While Nellie +Underwood and Betty Bruce, being of a height and age, headed a line +alternately. + +It fell to Betty's lot to be head of a line to-day, and though she had +to "right wheel and march," with John for a partner, down the middle and +up again, and "left wheel and march" from John to meet again, and "right +wheel and march," and all of it over and over and over again, John's +eyes only ignored the little distressed face in the cotton bonnet, or +told her contemptuously that she was a "girl." + +At eleven o'clock recess he was skirmishing with four smaller boys +(using only one hand to their eight) and Betty walked up and down under +the gum trees arm in arm with two other girls in sun-bonnets. + +At dinner-time John scampered home to roast fowl and bread sauce, and +Betty and Cyril and Nancy carried their lunch bag to a shady corner and +ate bread and jam sandwiches with relish, finishing up with a banana +each. + +It was not until afternoon school was well over that Betty found John in +any way approachable. He was skimming stones along the dusty road with +practised skill, and Betty, alone and hurrying, caught him up. + +She artfully admired a stone that sped for a couple of hundred yards an +inch or so above the earth, without, to all seeming, ever touching it. +And John condescended to be pleased at her praise. + +When she had at his command tried her hand at throwing and been +condemned by him, she put her question again. + +"Why aren't you speaking to me, John? What have I done?" + +"I'm speaking!" quoth John. "But I'm done with you." + +"But what have I done?" + +"Done! Only got me into a row with my grandfather. Only got me to bed at +six o'clock without any tea for speaking to you. That's all." + +"And shan't you speak to me any more?" asked Betty. + +"Only just speak," said John. + +"And--and----" Betty's voice quavered with anxiety--"shan't you run away +with me?" + +"Mightn't" said John. He sent another stone speeding down the road, and +Betty watched it with misty eyes, as she trudged along behind him. She +did not speak. + +"You should have cleared when I coughed," said John. "I told you I'd +cough, but you sat there reading and wouldn't look up." + +Still Betty was silent. + +"You'd give the whole blessed show away," said John. "What's the good +of running away and being brought back to school. That comes of being a +girl." + +And then he looked at her and saw the tears were running down her cheeks +and her lips quivering. + +"You're crying!" he said, turning round to her sharply. + +"Oh, I'm not," said Betty, and dragged her bonnet further over her face. +"That horrid stone of yours made a d-dust, and its--it's got in my +eyes." + +John laughed. "If you do run away," he said, "what shall you do?" + +Betty's ambition leapt to life, and her tears dried themselves on her +cheeks and in her eyes. + +"I'm going to sing," she said. "I'm going to stand at a street corner +and sing, and I'm going to wear a tattered old dress and no boots and +stockings. And then an old gentleman will pass by and he'll hear me and +stand still, and he'll take me away to make a singer of me; and even +lords will come to hear me sing, and kings and queens." + +John was stirred. + +"I'm going without boots, too," he said, "and I shall be in tattered +things. I shall get a place as errand boy first, and----" + +"When are you going?" asked Betty artfully. + +"To-morrow," said John. + +"Why, so am I," said Betty. "How funny." + +"If you like," said John, "I'll see you to some street corner. I'm going +at five o'clock in the morning." + +"Why, so am I," said Betty. "Oh, yes; let's go together." + +"You can be down at the store by half-past five," said John. "That'll +give us time to get a bit of breakfast. And we'll be in Sydney early, +before they find out we've gone." + +[Illustration: "She went back to her bedroom, to place by Nancy's side +her only remaining doll."] + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +ON THE ROAD + + +Needless to say Betty did not "waste" any time that night over +home-lessons. How can the beginner of a great singer be expected to care +whether the pronoun "that" in "I dare do all 'that' may become a man," +is relative or possessive? or whether Smyrna is the capital of Turkey or +Japan? or even whether the Red Sea has to do with Africa or China. + +Betty did not even open her school satchel, or peep at the cover of her +books. Instead, she copied out the words of her song and learnt them +sitting there at the table with Cyril. + +Neither was Cyril doing home-lessons. He certainly had his books spread +out before him, but the contents of his pockets were strewn upon his +open books, and he was examining them and grumbling now and again at +the rapacity of certain school-mates who had caused him to lose certain +treasures, or accept less valuable ones, on the school system of "I'll +give you this for that." + +He turned over three coloured marbles in disgust. For them he had +bartered away a catapult, and now his heart was heavy over the exchange. + +"Artie Jones is a sneak," he grumbled. "He ought to have given me six +marbles for that catapult. Eh? What do you say?" + +The question was directed to Betty, whose lips were moving. + +She shook her head, and sighed drearily, for she had entered into the +very being of the little beggar girl who sang for a penny. + +"Nothing," she said. "Nothing you'd understand. Don't chatter." + +"Don't be so silly," said Cyril. "I'm as old as you, any way." + +"Mother says I'm an hour older than you," said Betty. + +"That's nothing," said Cyril. + +"You can learn a lot in an hour," quoth Betty, and bent her attention +to her strip of paper. + +"I told mother about the dirty plates, so there," said the boy. +"And----" + +"Bah!" said Betty, and pushed her fingers into her ears. + +Betty had several plans for waking early, amongst which may be +named--putting marbles in her bed that in rolling unconsciously about +for comfort she might be awakened by the discomfort. That had answered +very well once or twice. Another was to place her pillow half-way down +the bed, that she might be within reach of the foot of it--and then to +rest her own foot on a lower rail and tie it there. Another was to prop +herself into a sitting position and fold her hands across her chest, +that by sleeping badly she might not sleep long. + +Many a night had her father and mother laughed at the attitude chosen by +their second daughter, and arranged her that her sleep might be easier. + +"Betty wants to get up early," they would say and smile. But upon this +night--the night before the battle--they did not go to her room at all. + +Mrs. Bruce was reading a new magazine, and saying now and again, as she +turned a leaf or smiled at her husband, that she _had_ intended doing a +bit of mending; and Mr. Bruce was polishing up a chapter in his book, +and saying now and again as he paused for a choicer word, or smiled at +his wife, that he _had_ intended doing that blessed article on Cats, for +Flavelle. So they both went on being uncomfortably comfortable. + +Betty tried all her expedients for early rising, and yet peaceful was +her sleep throughout the night. Her lashes lay still on her rounded +cheeks, her rosy lips smiled and her brown curls strewed the pillow, +just as effectively as though she were on a velvet couch, and a living +illustration of a small princess, sleeping to be awakened by a kiss. + +She awoke just as the day was pinkly breaking and the night stealing +greyly away, awoke under the impression that John Brown was cutting off +her foot. It was a great comfort to find it there and merely cold and +cramped from lack of covering and an unnatural position. + +She remembered everything immediately without even waiting to rub her +eyes, and she sprang out of bed at once, even though her right foot +refused to do its duty, and she had to stand for a valuable minute on +her left. + +The clock hands (she had carried the kitchen clock into her bedroom to +Mary's chagrin), pointed to a quarter to five, and Betty realized she +had only an hour in which to dress eat her breakfast, bid good-bye to +any home objects she held dear, and travel down the road to the store. + +She was vexed, for she had meant to get up at four. + +She got into her tattered Saturday's frock (her Cinderella costume) and +she brushed and plaited her short curly hair, as well as it would allow +itself to be plaited. Then she made a bundle of her boots and stockings +and school-day frock and hid them away under the skirt of her draped +dressing-table, and opened her money-box and extracted the contents +(thirteen half-pennies). This was the fortune with which she purposed to +face the world. + +And so real had this thing become to her now, that she crept to the far +side of the double bed to kiss the sleeping Nancy, and down the passage +to Cyril's room, to look at his face upon the pillows; and the tears +were heavy in her eyes because she was quitting her "early" home. + +When she had reached the pantry she remembered something, and went back +to her bed room, to place by Nancy's side her only remaining doll, a +faded hairless beauty, Belinda, by name. + +And she pinned a note upon the pincushion (all her heroines who fled +from their early homes, left notes upon the pincushion) addressed to +"Father and Mother," and as she passed their door she stroked it +lovingly. In the pantry she was guilty of several sobs, while she cut +the bread, it seemed so pitiful to her to be going away from her home in +the grey dawn to seek a livelihood for her family. In truth her small +heart ached creditably as she ate her solitary breakfast, and it might +have gone on aching only that she suddenly bethought herself of time. +Half-past five, John had said, and she remembered all that she had done +since half-past four. + +"It _must_ be half-past five now," she said. "I'll eat this as I go," +and she folded two pieces of bread and butter together. + +Then she found her bonnet and the strip of paper with the song upon it, +and grasping her half-pennies set forth. + +She ran most of the way to the store, which, it may be remembered, +occupied the corner, just before you come to Wygate School. + +As Betty came in sight of it she saw John standing still there, and she +thought gratefully how good it was of him to wait for her. + +He wore a very old and very baggy suit, a dirty torn straw hat (of which +it must be owned he had plenty), and neither boots nor stockings. + +The children eyed each other carefully, noting every detail, and both in +their own heart admiring the other exceedingly. + +Betty's face had lost its traces of tears, but had not got back its +happy look. Her mouth drooped sadly. + +"What's up?" asked John as they turned their faces towards the silent +south. + +"It hurts me, leaving the little ones," said Betty, who was now in +imagination Madam S----. "You have no brothers and sisters to provide +for." + +John sighed. "No," he said, "I've no one but an old grandfather, and he +grudges me every crust I eat. He's cut me off with a shilling." + +For a space Betty was envious. For a space she liked John's imagination +better than her own. That "cutting off with a shilling" seemed to her +very fine. + +He showed her his shilling. "I've _that_," he said, "to begin life on. +Many a fellow would starve on it. _I'm_ going to make my fortune with +it." + +They were the words one of his heroes had spoken, and sounded splendid +to both. + +"I've sixpence-halfpenny," said Betty, and unclosed her little brown +hand for a second. "That's all!" + +They walked on. In front of them and behind ran the dusty road, like a +red line dividing a still bush world. Overhead was a tender sky, grey +stealing shyly away to give place to a soft still blue. Already the +daylight was wakening others than these foolish barefooted waifs. Here +and there a frog uttered its protest against, mayhap, the water it had +discovered, or been born to; the locusts lustily prophesied a hot day. +Occasionally an industrious rabbit travelled at express speed from the +world on one side of the red road to the world on the other. And above +all this bustle and business and frivolity rang the brazen laugh of a +company of kookaburras, who were answering each other from every corner +of the bush. + +After some little travelling the fortune seekers came upon a cottage +standing alone in a small bush-clearing on their right. Three cows stood +chewing their cud, and waiting to be milked, a scattering of fowls was +shaking off dull sleep, and making no little ado about it, and near the +door a shock-headed youth was rubbing both eyes with both hands. + +Betty and John walked on. These signs of awakening life roused them to a +livelier sense of being alive. + +Yet a little further and they came to what Betty always called a +"calico" cottage, which is to say, a cottage made of scrim, and +white-washed. Windows belonged to it, and a door, and a garden enclosed +by a brushwood fence. + +"Let's peep in the gate," said Betty, "it's such a _sweet_ little +house." + +"Wait till you see the house _I_ mean to have," quoth John. + +But Betty preferred to peep in then. She went close to the half-open +gate and popped in her head. + +Inside the gate was a garden, and all its beds were defined by upended +stout bottles--weedless, sweet-scented beds wherein grew such blooms as +daisies, and violets, stocks, sweetpeas, sweet williams, lad's love and +mignonette. + +"Oh!" said Betty. "Oh--just smell! just put your head in for a minute, +John." + +But John was for "pushing on," and getting to Sydney to make his +shilling two. + +While they were parleying, a man came round the corner of the "sweet +little house," and his eyes fell on the bonneted maiden. + +"Hullo!" he exclaimed, "and who's this? Polly?" + +"No," said Betty. + +"Na-o. Then p'raps it's Lucy. Eh?" + +John tugged at Betty's dress and said "Come on," urgingly; but the man +was already letting down two slip-rails a little way from the crazy +gate, and his eyes rested on the second barefooted imp. + +"Hullo!" he exclaimed, "An' how's this any'ow?" + +John, who had a greater dread of capture than Betty, inquired innocently +if there were any wild flowers up this way. + +The man drew his hand across his eyes to banish sleep inclinations. "Not +many now, I reckon," he said. "There might be a few sprigs of 'eath an' +the flannel flowers ain't all done yet. Goin' to town?" + +Betty nodded, and John said,-- + +"Yes--we'll be gettin' back 'ome" in a fair imitation of his +questioner's voice. + +"I'll be goin' as far as the markets," said the man "an' I don't mind +givin' you a lift ef you like." + +John's eyes brightened, for he was longing for the centre of the city, +and he had felt they were covering ground very slowly. And Betty's +brightened because she thought she would soon coax the man into letting +her drive. + +So the fortune seekers made their entry into town in a fruit cart. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE NOTE ON THE PINCUSHION + + +Every morning there was a skirmish between Betty and Cyril as to who +should have the first bath, and Betty generally won, because as she +pointed out, she had Nancy to bath, too, and to make her bed, and set +the table, and cut the lunches, whereas Cyril only had to bring up two +loads of wood. + +But this morning, to Cyril's delight, he was first and he got right into +the room and fastened the door with the prop (a short thick stick which +was wedged between the centre of the door and the bath, and was Mr. +Bruce's patent to replace the handle that "lost itself"), and still +Betty came not. And he loitered in the bathroom and played, and +half-dressed, and then undressed, and got back into the bath, and out +again, and dressed, and still no Betty banged at the door. + +"Can't make out where Miss Betty's got to," said Mary sulkily, "I'll +tell your mother on her. She's not set the table, and she's not cut the +lunches, and she's not done nothing." + +Cyril, who had brought up his wood and otherwise and in every way +performed his morning's duties, waxed indignant at Betty and her +negligence, and went down the passage to her room, muttering-- + +"I'll tell mother of you, Betty Bruce, so there!" + +But no Betty Bruce was there. Only Nancy in her nightgown still, and +playing with poor faded Belinda. + +Mary had to set the table, and Mary had to cut the lunches, and Nancy +had to miss her bath, and go to Mary for the buttoning of her clothes. +And all because Betty had gone out to make her fortune! + +Mrs. Bruce came out of her room late--which was a very usual thing for +her to do--and she called:-- + +"Nancy, come and take baby. Betty, find me a safety pin _quickly_. I +think I saw one on the floor near the piano." + +And Mr. Bruce followed her in his slippers, and called-- + +"Nancy--Betty--one of you go down to the gate and bring up the paper." + +Cyril ran to them breathless with his news-- + +"Betty's never got up yet. Mary's had to do all her work an' she's not +got breakfast ready yet. And Nancy's had to dress herself an' all." + +Mrs. Bruce opened her eyes--just like Dot did when she was very +surprised, and said,-- + +"Then go and _make_ Betty get up at once." But Cyril interrupted with-- + +"She's not in bed at all. She's out playing somewhere; I daresay she's +gone to school so's to be before me and Nancy. She's always doing that +now." + +Mrs. Bruce had to hurry to make up for lost time--as she had perpetually +to do--and she could not stay to lend an ear to Cyril's tale. So he was +left grumbling on about Betty, and school, and a hundred and one things +that were "not fair." + +Nancy had a bowl of porridge and milk in the kitchen, superintended in +the eating of it by Mary, who was giving baby her morning portion of +bread and milk. + +Cyril carried his porridge plate to the verandah that he might watch if +Betty was lurking around in the hopes of breakfast. + +And Mr. Bruce read the paper and sipped a cup of abominably made coffee +serenely. + +They were such a scattered family at breakfast time usually, that one +away made little difference. No one but Cyril missed Betty at the table. +Her services in the house were missed--so many duties had almost +unnoticeably slipped upon her small shoulders, and now it was found +there was no one to do them but slip-shod overworked Mary. + +Just as Cyril was setting off to school Mary ran after him with a +newspaper parcel of clumsy bread and jam sandwiches. + +"I'm not sending Miss Betty's," she said--"it'll teach her not to clear +out of the way again." + +Mrs. Bruce put her head out of the kitchen window--she had not had +"time" for any breakfast yet beyond a cup of tea. + +"Send Betty home again," she said; "she _shan't_ go to school till her +work's done." + +But even at eleven o'clock no Betty had arrived. Mary, who had done all +the washing-up--and done some of it very badly--was sent by her mistress +to strip Betty's bed and leave it to air. And she found the note on the +pincushion, and after reading it through twice, carried it in open-eyed +amazement to her mistress, who was eating a peach as she sat on the +verandah edge, and merely said, "Very well, give it to your master." + +So Mr. Bruce took it, and opened it very leisurely, and then started and +said: "Ye gods!" and read it through to himself first and then out +aloud. + + + "DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER" (it said)-- + + "I am going away from my childhood's home to make a fortune for + all of you. My voice is my fortune. When I've made it I shall + come back to you. So good-bye to you all, and may you be very + happy always. + + "Your loving daughter, + "BETTY." + +Mrs. Bruce put down her peach and said: "Read it again, will you, +dear," in a quiet steady way as though she were trying to understand. + +And Mr. Bruce read it again, and then passed it over to her to read for +herself. + +"She's somewhere close at hand, of course!" he said. "Silly child!" + +"She _couldn't_ go very far, could she?" asked Mrs. Bruce, seeking +comfort. + +Mr. Bruce shook his head. + +"One never quite knows _what_ Betty could do," he said. "She's gone to +find her fortune, she says. I wonder now if that is her old crazy idea +of hunting for a gold mine. No! 'My voice is my fortune,' she says. Good +lord! Whom has she been talking to? What books has she been reading?" + +Mrs. Bruce sighed and smiled. As no immediate danger seemed to threaten +Betty, there appeared no reason for instant action. They could still +take life leisurely, as they had done all their married days. It was +only madcap Betty who ever tried to hurry their pace or upset the calm +of their domestic sky--Betty with her ways and plans and pranks. + +So Mrs. Bruce leaned back on the verandah post. + +"Where one has only _one_ child," she said, "life must be a simple +matter. It is when there are several of several ages that the difficulty +comes in. Now we, for instance, need to be--just a year old--and six +years old--and twelve and seventeen--all in addition to our own weight +of years." + +Her husband smiled. "You do very well," he said. "I saw you playing with +Baby this morning, and I've heard you and Dot talk, and could have +imagined she had a school-friend here." + +"Dot--yes! But Betty--no!" + +"Betty is at an awkward age," said Mr. Bruce. "I confess _I_ know very +little of her. What is her _singing_ voice like? I think, dear, you'd +better give me a list of the clothing she has on, and I'll go down the +road and make a few inquiries." + +The only dress they could discover "missing," to Mrs. Bruce's horror, +was the tattered Saturday frock. And Mary found the boots and stockings +under the dressing-table, so the conviction that she had gone barefoot +was forced upon them. + +At twelve o'clock Cyril was startled to see his father enter the +schoolroom, and he observed that Mr. Sharman shook hands with him in a +very affable manner, which was, of course, very condescending of Mr. +Sharman. In fact, it led Cyril to hope for leniency from him in the +looming arithmetic lesson. + +A low voiced conversation took place, and then Cyril was called down to +the desk and questioned closely about his truant sister. + +But of course Cyril knew nothing. + +Then another very strange thing happened. + +While Mr. Bruce and Mr. Sharman and Cyril were standing in the middle of +the floor--Cyril feeling covered with glory from his father's and Mr. +Sharman's intimacy in the eyes of the whole school--another shadow +darkened the doorway. And the other shadow belonged to no smaller a +person than Captain Carew, of Dene Hall, Willoughby, N.S. Wales. + +Miss Sharman went out to meet him before the little trio knew he was +there, and his hearty "Good morning, ma'am! I've come for news of that +young scapegrace, my grandson, John Brown," filled the room. + +Whereat Mr. Bruce turned round, and he and the captain faced each other, +and Cyril, in great fear, looked up to see if Arthur Smedley, the dread +bully, had heard how the great captain of Dene Hall had absolutely, and +in the hearing of the whole school acknowledged John Brown to be his +grandson, and had not so much as glanced at Cyril, who stood there quite +close to him. + +It was the first time for more than seventeen years that Captain Carew +and Mr. Bruce had been so close together, despite the fact that the +fences of their respective properties were within sight of each other. + +To-day Captain Carew grew a deep dark-red from his neck to the top of +his forehead, and Mr. Bruce went quite white and held his head very +high. + +And Mr. Sharman drew back nervously, for he, like most other people, +knew all about the relationship of these two men to each other, and +about their deadly feud. + +But the captain strode down the room, just as though he owned Mr. and +Miss Sharman and every boy in the school, and he raised his voice +somewhat as he repeated his statement about his grandson, "John Brown." + +"And if you'll kindly excuse Cyril, I'll take him with me," said Mr. +Bruce quietly, continuing his sentence, just as if no interruption had +occurred at all. + +In the playground Cyril received his commands, glad indeed to have them +to execute instead of the arithmetic lesson and play-hour which the +ordinary happenings of life would have brought about. + +"Go into the bush," said his father, "and search there for her. Look +everywhere where you are accustomed to play. She may have fallen down +somewhere and hurt herself." + +"Yes, father," said the boy obediently. "How'd it be to see if she's +fallen in the creek?" + +His father gave him an angry look. + +"Afterwards go home," he said. "Let the creek alone, and don't talk such +folly--Betty is more than five. Tell your mother I'm going to give it +into the hands of the police." + +Cyril went into the bush--not very far--because the growth was thick, +and he had a great dread of snakes. + +"S'pose I were bitten," he said, "and I just had to stay here by myself +and die! Wonder where Betty is; it's very silly of her to go and lose +herself like this. _I_ never lose myself at all." + +He came to a two-rail fence, and climbed up and sat on one of its posts, +and then he looked around as far as the bush would let him see. + +"It's better to keep near a fence," he said. "Then if a bull comes, +you're safe. If he jumped over I could roll under, and we could keep +doing it, an' he couldn't catch me.... 'Tis silly of Betty to get lost. +_I_ wouldn't get lost. You never know how many bulls and things there +are about." + +He looked round again, and then he climbed down and ran back to the +road. + +"I'll go home now," he said, "I can't find Betty anywhere. I've looked +and looked. And school will be out soon, and how do I know Arthur +Smedley took his lunch to-day; he might be coming home." + +Whereat this valiant youth looked over his shoulder, and saw the boys +running out of the school gate. So he took to his heels and ran home as +fast as ever he could. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +IN THE CITY + + +The fortune seekers were set down at a street corner near the Quay at +half-past six. + +When it had come to the matter of crossing the harbour, from the +Northern Shore to the Quay, in the punt (they two sitting in the cart +the while), they had found themselves called upon to pay a penny each +for the passage over, which they had enjoyed amazingly. Betty paid both +pennies, having the coppers, but she urged John to be quick and get his +shilling changed to pay her back. + +At the street corner John suggested leaving her for awhile. "This would +be as good a corner as any other for you, Betty," he said, and slapped +the shutters of a chemist's shop as he spoke, "You stand here, and +you'll catch everybody who goes by." + +"There's no one going by yet," said Betty. "What are you going to do? +You're not going to leave me all alone?" + +"Well," said John, "we might stick together a bit longer, anyway. I'll +come back for you. You sing your song, and I'll just go and see if any +shops want a boy. I don't suppose the offices are opened yet. What I'd +like is a good warehouse, and then I'd rise to be manager, and partner. +That's the sort of thing. I don't think there's much in a shop after +all, but I'll have to find out where the warehouses are. A tea warehouse +is good, _I_ can tell you. You get sent out to India for the firm, and +then come back and are made a partner." + +He started off, only to be stopped after he had gone a few steps, by +Betty's voice calling, "Get your shilling changed, I want my penny"; to +which he nodded. + +Betty had the corner all to herself then. Down the street, and up the +street, and down the side street, whichever way she craned her neck she +could see no one. + +It seemed to her a very good opportunity to try her powers. So she +commenced. At first it must be confessed she made no more sound than +she had done in talking to John. And the street was so used to voices +that it did not open an eye. + +Therefore Betty grew bolder, and forgot in singing that she was +not at the bend in the old home-road, where she had practised +once or twice since she had decided upon her career. Her voice +rose clearly--shrilly--and sometimes she remembered the tune +quite fairly. When she forgot it, she filled in what would have +otherwise been a pause with a little bit out of any other tune +that came into her head. + +For those who would like to know the words of the song she was singing, +and who may not have it among their mother's girlhood songs, as Betty +had, it may be as well to copy them from the paper she held in her hand +to refresh her memory from-- + + "Please give me a penny, sir; my mother dear is dead, + And, oh! I am so hungry, sir--a penny please for bread; + All day I have been asking, but no one heeds my cry, + Will you not give me something, or surely I must die? + + "Please give me a penny, sir; you won't say 'no' to me, + Because I'm poor and ragged, sir, and oh! so cold you see; + We were not always begging--we once were rich like you, + But father died a drunkard, and mother she died too." + + _Chorus_-- + + "Please give me a penny, sir; my mother dear is dead, + And, oh! I am so hungry, sir--a penny please for bread." + +At the end of the first verse she found it necessary to run her eye over +the paper before beginning the second. + +Perhaps it was just as well for her serenity that she did not look up as +she sang. For just as soon as her voice rose into anything approaching a +tune--it was near the end of the first verse--a face looked down upon +her from the corner window of the second story of the chemist's house. + +It was a young face, early old--white and drawn and marked by the +unmistakable lines of suffering. + +Betty knew nothing about the trouble of the world in those days; nothing +of suffering, nothing of sorrow. And the woman above her knew of all. +She leaned over the window-sill and her eyes smiled pityingly as they +rested on the small bared head. + +She had been praying her morning prayer near the open window, begging +for strength to bear her sorrows, and for as many as might be to be +taken from her, when Betty's voice quavered right up to her window. + +She looked down, and there was the small singer's curly brown head. She +looked longer, and saw Betty clasp a bare foot in one hand and stand on +one foot, drop the foot from her hand and reverse the action. + +It was merely a habit of Betty's, but the woman found in it a sign that +the child was worn and weary--worn and weary before seven o'clock in the +morning. + +She drew her dressing-gown around her, searched her dress pocket for her +purse, and leaning out dropped sixpence upon the pavement close to the +little singer. + +Betty stopped at once and looked around her, down the street and around +the corner; at the shop shutters and door, but never once so high as the +windows. + +The woman smiled to herself. + +"Poor little mite," she said. "I must remember even the little children +have their griefs! It should make me grumble less." + +Betty ran along the street in the direction John had taken. She felt she +_must_ tell some one. Then, as a thought struck her, she ran back to the +house, looked up to the second story and saw a smiling face, and then +set off again, running down the street for John. + +Not seeing him, she stopped at the next corner and examined her coin +lovingly. Then she looked up at _that_ corner window and began to sing +again. + +But this time her reward came from the street. Three bluejackets were +walking down the street to the Quay, lurching over the pavement as they +walked. The child's song touched and stirred that latent sentimentality +of theirs. + +Her "or _surely_ I shall die," brought a silver threepence from one of +them, and a copper from each of the others. + +Betty felt wealthy now, beyond the dreams of avarice. She had made a +shilling in an hour! + +She looked at the post office clock high up in the air there above her +head, and it informed her that it was only a quarter past seven. Not +eight o'clock yet! And she had made a shilling! Twelve pennies! As much +as she received in six months by staying at home! + +She sat down on the kerbstone to count her money, putting her feet in +the dry gutter _a la maničre_ born. She made first of all a stack of her +half-pennies, and then of her pennies. There were nine half-pennies, +three pennies, a threepenny bit and a sixpence. The grand total she +found was one and fourpence halfpenny. More than even John had started +out with. + +While she was thus like a small miser counting her money, a hand swooped +suddenly down upon the heap of coppers and swept them away. Betty looked +up to scream, but it was only John. And he warned her solemnly how +easily such a dreadful theft could be committed. + +"I wish to goodness the shops would open," he said discontentedly. "I'm +beginning to want some breakfast, I can tell you." + +Betty unfolded her hands and displayed her wealth of coin. "A shilling +in an hour," she said, and John's look of surprised unbelief delighted +her. + +"You picked it up!" he said. + +"Oh, I didn't!" cried Betty. "People gave it to me just for singing! A +shilling an hour! I forget how much Madam S---- makes in an hour. I +think its more than a pound!" + +"Don't you want your breakfast?" asked John. + +"Let's count how many hours in a day," said Betty, twisting about to see +a clock, the high post office clock they were walking under now, and +found it. "I want to make my fortune quickly and go home and surprise +them. How much money is in a fortune, John?" + +John considered deeply for a minute and then gave it as his idea that +five hundred pounds was usually called a fortune. + +[Illustration: "The child's song touched and stirred that latent +sentimentality of theirs."] + +"That'll take a good bit of making," said Betty. + +"Well, you didn't expect to make it in a day did you?" asked John +roughly. + +"Oh, no," said Betty cheerfully, "I was only wondering how many hours +there are in a day--at a shilling an hour." + +She began to count slowly on the fingers of one hand all the hours until +seven o'clock at night, the first hour to be from eight till nine +o'clock in the morning. + +"Eleven hours!" she said. "That's eleven shillings! Eleven shillings, +John. Oh, and one hour gone, that's twelve! Twelve _shillings_ a day, +just fancy, John! Oh, I'll soon be rich." + +"But you couldn't sing every hour in the day," said sensible John, +although his eyes plainly expressed admiration for her brilliant career. +"Why, you'd get hoarse!" + +"I only sang twice in this hour," said Betty; "the rest of the time I've +just been counting my money and looking round me." + +"But you mightn't make a shilling every hour," said John. + +"_But_--some hours I may make more, so it's about equal." + +"I wish we could have some breakfast," said John, reverting to his +trouble. "I'm jolly hungry, I can tell you." + +"So am I," said Betty. "Twelve shillings a day--six days in a week. Oh, +can I sing on Sundays, John?" + +"Hymns," quoth the boy. + +"Um! I could sing 'Scatter seeds of kindness' and 'Yield not to +temptation.' Um! I never thought of hymns. I think I'll sing hymns +to-day as well, 'cause I'm not very sure of my song yet, and every now +and then I have to stop to look at the words. Can I sing hymns on other +days than Sundays, John?" + +"Better not," said the cautious John; "better keep the proper things for +the proper days. Well, Betty Bruce, if you're going to stay here all +day, I'm not. I'm getting awfully hungry." + +At last Betty's motherliness awoke. + +"My poor John!" she said, "of course you're hungry. We'll go to a shop +and get a really good breakfast. I wasn't thinking. When a person begins +to make a lot of money, they generally forget other things, don't they?" + +"Um!" said John, who had made nothing at all. "We'll go and get a good +breakfast and then we'll be fit for anything, won't we. Come on." + +They turned round the corner into King Street, and there to their +delight found the shops one by one opening their eyes--drapers, chemist, +fruiterers, and then at last a shop with cakes in the window. + +The children stood at the door and peeped in. They saw myriads of white +tables and a couple of sleepy looking girls. One girl held a broom and +was leaning on its handle and surveying the stretch of floor to be +swept. Her eyes at last went to the door, and Betty, seeing they had +been observed walked slowly in, leaving John outside. + +"No," said the girl, shaking her head. + +"We want some breakfast," said Betty, and added "please," as her eyes +fell on a trayful of pastry on the counter. + +Again the girl shook her head. + +"Can't give you any here," she said; "now run away." + +Then Betty's face flushed; for though one may sing to earn an honest +livelihood and competency, it is quite another thing to be taken for a +beggar. + +"We'll pay for it," she said, and then forgot her pride and urged, "Go +on, we're so hungry! We've been walking about since five o'clock." + +Something in the child's face touched the girl's heart. She herself had +been up at half-past five and knew a great deal about poverty and +privation. + +"Well, come on then," she said. "Go and sit down at one of them tables +and I'll fetch you something." + +Betty ran to the door and called "John," in an ecstatic tone, "come on." + +Then the two of them chose a table and sat down. + +"Not porridge, please," called Betty to the girl. "Just cakes and +things, and lemonade instead of tea. _I'll_ pay the bill." + +But John brought out his shilling. + +"I'll pay for myself," he said grimly, "and I'll pay you back the penny +I owe you, too." + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +ALMA'S SHILLING + + +By ten o'clock Betty had made another shilling, having caught the +workers of the city as they were going to their day's toil. + +And it must be owned it was a mysterious "something" about the child +herself that arrested what attention she drew. Perhaps it lay in the +fresh rosiness of her face, in the clearness of her sweet eyes, in the +brightness of her young hair; for her courage ebbed away so soon as two +or three were gathered around her; her voice sank to a whisper, she +drooped her head, trifled with one wristband or the other, stood first +on one foot and then on the other, and displayed the various signs of +nervousness Mr. Sharman's stern eye provoked her to. + +At eleven o'clock, John, who had made threepence by carrying a bag for +a lady, looked Betty up at the appointed corner and proposed lemonade +and currant buns, for which she was quite ready. + +Afterwards they stood for a valuable half-hour outside the waxworks and +explored the markets, where Betty sang "Scatter seeds of kindness," in +spite of John's solemnly given advice to keep it for Sunday. Here she +only made a penny halfpenny by her song, but as she said to John-- + +"Every one must expect some bad hours." + +Then, too, there was in her heart a feeling of certainty that a keen +eyed, bent shouldered old gentleman would be passing soon, and carry her +away straight to the very threshold of fame, as Madam S----'s old +gentleman carried _her_. + +When they had become thoroughly acquainted with the markets, John +suggested she should again "count up," with a view of deciding what sort +of lodgings she could afford for the night. + +Betty had not thought of such a trivial thing, leaving it possibly for +her old gentleman to settle. But she was more than willing to "count +up" again. + +So they went into a corner behind a deserted fruit stall, sat down upon +an empty case, and made little stacks of pennies and half-pennies and +small silver coins. + +She had two shillings and a penny, she found in all, and John told her +she could afford to go to one of the places he had seen this morning, +where a bed and breakfast were to be had for sixpence. + +"I have seen some places where they charge a shilling," said John. "It +seems an awful lot to pay for a bed and a bit of breakfast. But a +sixpenny place will do for you, and as you're only twelve they might +take you for threepence." + +"And where will you go?" asked Betty anxiously. + +"Oh, I'd be sixpence, you see, because I'm thirteen and a half," said +John. "I can't afford to pay sixpence. It's always harder for a fellow +to get on than for a girl. That's why you hear more about self-made men +than self-made women--they're thought more of. No bed for me, I expect, +for some time to come. I'll have to sleep in the Domain. I heard a +fellow talking this morning, and he said he's been sleeping there for a +week now. And, you know, Peterborough, the artist I told you +about--well, he slept for a week in a _barrel_!" + +"How much money have you got?" asked Betty. + +"Eightpence!" said John. "No one seems to want an errand boy to-day." + +Betty began to feel very doleful at being one step above John in this +the beginning of their career. But she dared not offer to lend to him, +he had been so very insistent upon paying her back her penny, and paying +for his own breakfast and lemonade and buns. + +He took her and showed her two houses which bore the words, "Bed and +breakfast, 6_d._!" and then he led the way to the Domain, having been +through it many times with his grandfather, while to stay-at-home Betty +it was no more than a name. Macquarie Street lay asleep as they +travelled through it and past Parliament House and the Hospital and the +Public Library. + +It never for a moment occurred to Betty that Dot was domiciled in that +street of big high houses and hushed sounds. She knew Dot's school +address was "Westmead House, Macquarie Street," but she had not the +remotest idea that she and John were travelling down Macquarie Street +past Westmead House. + +Just inside the Domain gates they paused to admire Governor Burke's +statue, and to count their money again in its shade. + +Then John pointed out to her the tree-shaded path that runs to +Woollomooloo Bay and the great sweeping grass stretch that lay on one +side of it. + +Many men were there already, full length upon the grass, their hats over +their eyes, asleep or callous to waking. + +Betty at once signified her intention of spending her first night out +here, also, and pointed to a seat under a Norfolk Island pine tree. + +"We could be quite cosy there," she said, "and you could lend me your +coat." + +"But I'd want it myself," said John. + +"John in _Girls and Boys Abroad_ used always to give Virginia his coat," +said Betty. + +It was slightly to the right of Governor Burke's statue that Betty was +inspired to sing "Yield not to temptation," standing with her back to +the iron railing. + +And it was just as she was being carried out of herself and singing her +shrillest in the second verse that Miss Arnott, the English governess in +Westmead House, brought her line of pupils for their daily +constitutional down the Domain. + +Pretty Dot, and the judge's daughter, Nellie Harden, were at the head of +the line, and were conversing in an affable manner and low voices upon +the newest trimmings for summer hats, when the little couple near the +statue came into view. + +Betty's eyes were downcast that she might not be distracted by her +audience, but John, who was clinging to the railing near her, saw the +marching school, saw Dot, and knew that she had seen. + + "Each victory will help you + Some other to win," + +sang Betty shrilly. + +Dot's face went white, sheet white. She heard the judge's daughter speak +of eau de nil chiffon, and a hat turned up at the side. She was at the +head of thirty fashionable "young ladies," and a fashionable young +governess was close by. She wore her best shoes (the ones with the +toe-caps of Russian leather) and her best dress (white with the gold +silk sash given by Alma Montague). + +And there was Betty--dreadful scapegrace Betty, barefooted, dirty faced, +bare-headed (her bonnet was of course under her arm), singing songs for +coppers! + +Dot coughed, went white, choked, and walked on. She simply had not the +courage to step out from that line of fashionable demoiselles and claim +her little sister. + +But Alma Montague, who carried her purse for the purchase of chocolate +nougats should a favourable opportunity occur, had her tender little +heart touched by Betty's face and song. + + "Each victory will help you + Some other to win." + +spoke directly to her, and her longing for chocolate nougats. She only +had a shilling in her purse, wonderful to relate, and she and her +conscience had a sharp short battle. Chocolate nougats or--pitiful +hunger! Her face flushed as conscience won the battle. + +The next second she had slipped out of line and run across to Betty. + +"Here; little girl!" she said, and thrust a shilling into Betty's hand. + +The little singer looked up, shy and startled, and her song died on her +lips while her eyes plainly rejoiced over the shilling. + +Then the English governess awoke from a happy day-dream and sharply +ordered Alma back to her place. + +"You should have asked permission," she said stiffly. "I cannot have +such disorders. I will punish you when we return to school!" + +Just as if the lost chocolates were not punishment enough. + +The deed and the reprimand travelled along the line, whispered from +mouth to mouth, till it came to Dot. + +"That silly Alma Montague," the whisper ran, "has just broken line to +give her money to that little beggar girl. She gave a shilling. She was +going to buy chocolate nougats. Miss Arnott's going to punish her." + +Dot's sensitive soul shuddered over the terrible Betty. If she had been +looking up instead of down! If she had rushed forward and claimed her +before the eyes of the wondering school! If Miss Arnott had known! If +Alma Montague had known! If any one of all those thirty girls had even +guessed! + +The very possibility was so dreadful that Dot found herself unable to +discuss fashion for all the rest of that constitutional. + +But later on in the day, in the evening, when the lamps were alight, she +had crept away by herself to wonder where madcap Betty was. She felt +quite sure she would go home again quite safely, she was always doing +terrible things without any harm coming to her. + +The tears that fell from Dot's eyes were not for Betty, but altogether +for herself. She had disowned, by not owning, her sister! She had been +afraid to step forward before those thirty pairs of eyes and say, "This +is my sister!" And she felt as one guilty of a mean and dishonourable +deed. + +"I will tell every girl in the school in the morning," she said; and +then, as her repentance increased: "I will tell them to-night." + +And to her credit be it spoken, she descended to the schoolroom and +weepingly told her story. + +Some of the girls laughed, most of them "longed to know Betty," and all +of the "intimate" friends tried to comfort Dot. + +"You're _such_ a darling," said Mona. "You've made us all love you more +than ever." + +She was very enthusiastic for she _felt_ that Dot had been afraid and +had conquered fear. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE BENT-SHOULDERED OLD GENTLEMAN + + +"Let's go somewhere and count my money," said Betty, when she had +watched the last pupil of Westmead House disappear down the long avenue. +"You see I _easily_ make a shilling an hour, don't I?" + +John admitted she had chosen a good paying profession; and that if +"things" didn't improve with him very soon he should try singing in the +frequent spare moments of his errands running. + +The day wore on, and although it must be recorded that Betty did not +always make a shilling an hour, her "takings" were very fair, +considering many things, notably her lack of voice and great shyness so +soon as anything approaching an audience gathered around her. + +[Illustration: "Only a little barefooted girl asleep--fast asleep upon +his lounge."] + +By six o'clock a great weariness had crept over her. Unused to city +pavements, her limbs ached wofully, her feet were blistered and swollen, +her head ached from the noises of the busy city, and her heart ached for +her little white bed at home. For the day was growing old and it was +almost bed-time. + +Presently the stars stole out and began to play at hide and seek, and +Betty who had finished counting her money again, was still standing +tiredly on one foot at the corner of Market and George Streets, waiting +for John--John who had promised to be with her at six; and now it was +after seven and he had not come. + +The tears were too near for her to attempt to wile away the minutes with +another song--tears of weariness and disappointment. The disappointment +was caused by the non-arrival of the keen-eyed, bent-shouldered old +gentleman who was to raise her eventually to the pinnacle of fame--and +by John's absence. + +It was just as this great matter was straining her heart almost to +breaking point that a heavy hand fell upon her shoulders, and she looked +up into the face of a roughly clad, ill-kempt looking man--a face that +in some way seemed familiar to her. + +"I b'lieve you're the very little girl as I've been on the look-out for +all day," he said. "Le's look at you! Yes, s'elp my Jimmy Johnson, you +are! If you'll just come along with me, we'll talk about your name an' a +few other things." + +He held out his hand and took hers. + +"Your name," he said, "as it ain't John Brown, may be Elizabeth Bruce. +Ain't I right now?" + +Betty tremblingly admitted that he was, and listened as she walked the +length of a street by his side to his jocularly spoken lecture and to +all the dire happenings--gaols, reformatories, ships, etc.--that befell +she or he who left the home nest before such glorious time as they were +twenty-one. + +Finally Betty and her earnings were placed in a cab, and the man, +holding her arm firmly, stepped in after her. He seemed to be afraid, +all the time, that if he moved his hand from her she would be off and +away. They rattled down the Sydney streets in the lamplight, which +Betty had never seen before this night, to the harbour waters and across +them in a punt, and the little girl thought tiredly of her journey in +the greengrocer's cart not so very many hours ago. + +The remembrance brought with it a flash of light. This man by her side +was the greengrocer!--their morning friend. She decided that she would +soon ask him about John, ask him whether he had found John also. + +But before she could satisfactorily arrange her question a great +heaviness settled down upon her, and her head nodded and her eyes +blinked and blinked and fell too. And all thought of money-making and +street-singing, and John Brown slipped away and left her in a merry land +of dreams playing with Cyril and Nancy in the old home garden. + +"Poor little mite," said the man, and he slipped his roughly clad arm +around her and drew her towards him so that her head might rest on his +coat. "Poor little mite! She'd find the world but a rough place, I'm +thinking!" + +And they sped onwards into the hill country where Betty's home was, and +John's, and the little school-house and the white church and the +wonderful corner shop. Only they stopped before they came to Betty's +home, stopped at the great iron gates of her grandfather's dwelling, +drove through them and up the dark gum tree shaded path. + +The man, carrying the sleeping child in his arms, walked straight into +the hall, to the huge astonishment of the sober man-servant who had +opened the door. + +"I'll wait here for yer master," he said. + +The hall was wide and square, and contained besides three deck-chairs, a +cane lounge covered with cushions. + +Perhaps the man had some eye for dramatic effect, perhaps it was only +accident, but he placed Betty carefully upon the cushions, and put a +crimson-covered one under her dark curly head. Then he withdrew to the +door. + +It was not likely that, having worked hard for his reward, he was about +to forego it. But he told himself that "his room would be better than +his company" while the rejoicings over her recovery were going on. + +The captain came through the door slowly. One hour ago a policeman had +arrived in a cab with John--and had departed with a substantial reward +in his pocket. During the last hour the captain had heard John's +story--thrashed him with his own hands, and sent him to bed. + +Now he was "wanted in the hall by a man with a little girl." + +But there was no man visible in the hall, only a little barefooted girl +asleep--fast asleep upon his lounge. He could hear her breathing, see +her face, and he knew in a moment who she was. + +He looked sharply at her, back to the door which was closed, forward to +the front door which was drawn to, and around the empty hall. + +Then slowly and as if fearful of being caught he went nearer to the +sofa, and looked down at this little creature--blood of his blood--who +had appeared before him again. Her lashes lay still on her rosy +sun-tanned cheeks, her curly hair was in confusion upon the red cushion, +her bare feet were upon another. Such a pretty tired child she looked +although she was but a tattered and soiled representative of the small +pink-bonneted maiden he had seen only the other day. + +He knew the story of her "career" now, and of her desire to be a +self-made woman. John had told him about her in speaking of his own +ambition. The captain's slow mind went back to the time when his own +"career" had been forced upon him, when he had only too often "slept +out." And as remembrance after remembrance awoke, his heart warmed +strangely to this brown-haired girl who seemed to be always stumbling +into his pathway. + +Dirty, ragged imp as she was, that strange inexplicable sense of kinship +stirred within him. Stirred as it had never stirred towards alien John, +who was after all only the son of his first love's son, with no blood of +his at all in him; stirred as it had stirred towards no one living since +his daughter had left him more than seventeen years ago. + +He put out one hand and touched her hair (she could not know, no one +could know, of course)--his only daughter's little child! + +And Betty slept on. Had she but known it, a bent-shouldered old +gentleman, who might have exerted a wonderful influence over her whole +life, was at that moment looking at her with softened eyes. But great +possibilities are frequently blighted by small importunities. + +The greengrocer chose this moment to open the front door and look into +the hall, and the captain saw him, started, and lost his feeling of +kinship for the sleeper. + +"Good evenin'," said the greengrocer blandly, "I found her about an hour +ago, an' came straight 'ome with her." + +Captain Carew explained briefly that his boy had been returned to him +about an hour ago, and that the promised reward had been given on his +behalf to the policeman. + +The man looked crestfallen. + +"My wife told me," he said, "when I come back from the markets. She said +somebody had lost a boy, and you had lost a girl. And your reward was +the biggest, so I went for the girl." + +Captain Carew put his hand in his pocket, and shook his head. To pay +for Betty seemed to him to be publicly claiming her. Yet he could not +help being glad that she was found. + +"And she ain't nothin' to you?" said the man, most evidently +disappointed. + +"Nothing!" said Captain Carew firmly; "but I hear that she ran away with +my boy--to make her fortune. She lives, I believe, in a small +weather-board cottage a few yards further on." + +He felt much stronger after he had spoken that sentence. Of course she +was nothing to him. He walked to his library, and then looked over his +shoulder, and saw the man just stooping over the little girl again. And +then, for no reason at all, of course, he put his hand into his pocket +again, drew out a sovereign and gave it to the man. + +"To make up for your mistake," he said. + +Then he went away and shut the library door, while the two went away. + +"Little baggage!" he said, "she's nothing to me. John's the only +grandchild I ever want." + +But he had an uncomfortable feeling that he had owned her. + +An hour later, on his way through the hall to his bedroom; he found a +soiled crumpled piece of paper on the cane lounge, and opening it, +read--"Please give me a penny, sir!" + +"The little vagabond!" he muttered. But he put the paper into his +pocket. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +THE DAY AFTER SCHOOL + + +A great day had dawned for Dorothea Bruce, a day long dreamed of and +alas, long dreaded! + +The first day after school life! + +She would joyfully have taken another two years of school-days, with +their sober joys and sweet intimate friendships; their griefs and small +quarrellings; their lessons and their play hours; their meetings and +their breakings up. + +But yesterday she had "broken up" for ever. Yesterday she had mournfully +given eight locks of her beautiful hair away as "keepsakes," although it +must be owned to-day she had examined her hair carefully, looking over +her shoulder to see how it bore the loss of its tendrils. + +Yesterday she had wept separately with each of her "intimate" friends, +excepting only Alma Montague, at this dreadful parting that had come +about. + +Alma was not to lose Dorothea at all, instead she was to have her all to +herself at Katoomba for the holidays, and her queer little yellow face +wore a superior smile as she saw the other girls' sorrow at parting from +their "darling Thea." + +Many things were promised and vowed in this touching season. The little +band of intimates were to write to each other every week; still to tell +each other _every single_ secret; to think of each other every night; to +be each other's bridesmaids as long as there were maids to go round, and +to visit each other in their married homes. + +For of course they were all going to be married--every one of them. + +It was Nellie Harden who had first alluded to the time "When I am +married," "When you are married," etc. She said she was rather curious +to see who would be married first, and even plain little Alma felt +cheerful in looking forward to the time when she would be engaged. They +simply took it for granted that in the great beautiful world into which +they were going there were lovers--lovers in plenty; lovers who vowed +beautiful vows, and performed gallant deeds, and wore immaculate +clothing, and still more immaculate moustaches. + +Dorothea had decided to be "elder sister" to the best of her ability. +She intensely admired the beautiful elder sister in _The Mother of +Eight_, a book Mona had just lent to her. + +The mother of eight was a girl of eighteen, who had promised her mother +on her death-bed to be a mother to all the little ones. Lovers had come +to her, imploring her to "make their lives," friends had put in their +claims, pleasures had beckoned; but the mother of eight had shaken her +beautiful head and stood there at her post until the eight were married +and settled in homes of their own, when the "mother" had suddenly died +of a broken heart. + +This book formed the basis of Dorothea's day-dreams. She, too, was going +to be an "elder sister" and reform the home. In the flights of her +imagination she saw herself making Betty and Nancy new frocks, mending +Cyril's trousers, trimming her mother's hats, correcting her father's +manuscripts. + +Wherever she looked she seemed to be wanted. A great place gaped in the +household, and it was for the elder sister to step in and fill it. And +Betty, wild madcap Betty, would want talking to, and training and +putting into the way in which she should go. And, of course, lovers +would come for Dot, but until Baby was well started in life she would +have none of them. And when she married, "a few silver threads would be +discernible in her golden hair, and there would be patient tired lines +at the corners of her mouth." + +But it was only the first day after school now, and she had much to +think of. She was not going to commence the new order of things by being +an elder sister, although the home needed her sorely. + +As things had fallen out, it was necessary, she found, to set duty aside +for a while. + +She was invited to spend the end of December and the whole of January +with Alma Montague at Katoomba. They were to stay at the best hotel +there--Mrs. Montague, her sister Mrs. Stacey, Alma and Dot. Rooms had +already been engaged for the party (Alma's and Dot's adjoining each +other's), and all sorts of intoxicating details been settled. + +Dot, indeed, spoke to her mother once about coming home to help, +instead of going away, but even if she had meant it--which must +be questioned--Mrs. Bruce was quite decided that she should go. + +"It will do you good," she said, "and we don't need you at home at all. +Betty will be here--it will be holiday-time and she must help." + +For February Dot had an invitation to Tasmania. In her wildest +imaginings she did not dream of accepting it, but Minnie Stevenson, +whose school-days lay behind her too, was going down before Christmas +and declared she could not be without Dot longer than the middle of +February. + +And Mona--Mona, her nearest and dearest friend, said it was _very_ hot +on the Richmond River till the end of March, but April was a perfect +month there, and in April she would take _no_ refusal. She must have +Thea in her own home all to herself then. + +Nellie Harden had her mother's consent to ask Dot to "come out" with +her. The début was to take place in June, at a big ball, and Nellie had +"set her heart" on Thea and herself coming out at the _very_ same ball, +on the _very_ same night as each other, "All in white, you know, Thea +darling, and we _will_ look so nice." + +So it will be seen Dot's idea of being elder sister and home daughter +had every chance of remaining an idea for the present. With such +alluring pleasures, where was there room for duty? + +"I'll do my best _every_ time I am at home," said Dot to herself, +weighing pleasure and duty in the balance and finding duty sadly +wanting, "and I'll _write_ Betty good letters of advice, and take some +mending away with me to do." + +But all that belonged to yesterday. + +To-day Dot was at home, and in the important position of being about to +set out upon a journey. She was to start early in the morning and to go +direct to the Redfern railway station. + +Mr. Bruce had gone to town to draw a five guinea cheque for his eldest +daughter. He also had to do a little shopping on her account. All his +instructions were written down in Dot's fair round hand-writing upon a +piece of foreign notepaper and slipped into his waistcoat pocket. + +For those who are at all curious to know what the items were we will +steal a look at the paper-- + + 1. Pair of white canvas shoes, size 2. + + 2. One cake of blanco (for cleaning them with). + + 3. Two pairs of black silk _shoe_ laces--not boot laces--(all of + those things at the same shop). + + 4. 1-1/4 yds. of _white_ chiffon (_very_ thin--for a veil). + + 5. 1 bunch of scarlet poppies--just common ones (both of these + at same shop--draper's). + + 6. _At a chemist's_: sponge (6_d._), tooth-brush (9_d._), + Packet of violet powder (6_d._). + +Mrs. Bruce was letting down Dot's dresses, and altering a pretty blue +silk evening blouse (bought ready made). Cyril had cleaned her shoes and +the family portmanteau, an ugly black thing, and run half a dozen +errands grumblingly--all for Dot! + +Betty was locked in her room in disgrace, for running away to seek her +fortune. No one was allowed to speak to her, even Baby's "Bet, Bet," was +sternly hushed; two slices of bread and a glass of water were placed +outside her door three times a day; three times a day she was permitted +to walk for five minutes, each time alone in the garden, then back again +to her room. + +This state of things, which had commenced on Wednesday morning, was, if +Betty showed proper penitence and meekness, to terminate on Saturday +morning. + +Yet even prisoner Betty was employed on Dot's behalf. She had Dot's +stockings to mend, and to add insignificant things like buttons and +tapes and hooks and eyes to those of her garments which had an +insufficiency of such trifles. And she was sewing away industriously +as she brooded over her woes. + +Dot herself was unpacking and packing up. Unpacking all her exercise +books, and notebooks, and stacks of neat examination papers; her lesson +books and Czerney's 101 _Exercises for the Pianoforte_; her sewing +samples and wool-work; her study of a head in crayon, and waratahs and +flannel flowers in oils, and peep of Sydney Harbour in water colours. + +"When I come home again," she told herself gravely, "I will arrange +life: I'll practise _at least_ two hours every morning; I'll do some +solid good reading _every_ day--some one like Shakespeare or Milton or +Bacon! I'll paint every afternoon. I really have a talent for +landscapes. And I'll finish writing my novel. For some things I'm really +glad I've finished learning." + +A keen observer, regarding Dot's new scheme for life, would detect very +little time or thought for reforming the household, and training Betty +and teaching the younger ones. But then, Dot's schemes varied, and a +day seemed to her a very big piece of time to have to play with as she +liked, all in her own hands. Hitherto it had been given out to her in +hours by Miss Weir--this hour for French, that for English, this for a +constitutional, that for sewing, this for the Scriptures, that for +practice, and so on. + +What wonder that the felt she could crowd all the arts and sciences into +a day when all the hours belonged to her for her very own. + +When she went to bed at night, by way of beginning the home reforms she +looked at Betty very earnestly and shook her head, words being +forbidden. + +And she removed her own particular text from above her bed to above +Betty's, feeling very old and sedate the while, for it must be owned +conscious virtue has a sobering effect. + +But the action threw Betty into a towering rage. + +"If you don't take down your old text I won't get into bed at all. I've +only been trying to make you all rich." + +And Dot, who was always alarmed into placidity when she had provoked +wrath, returned "Blessed are the pure in heart" to its own position on +the wall. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +"GOOD-BYE, GOOD-BYE" + + +All was ready very early in the morning, for Dot was to start upon her +journey at ten o'clock. + +The little school trunk and the family portmanteau stood side by side in +the hall, labelled and ready to go forth--neat clean labels, bearing the +inscription in Dot's best hand-writing-- + + "MISS BRUCE, + Passenger to Katoomba, + Blue Mountains." + +A strange excitement was upon Dot. She had never before in her life been +upon a railway journey. + +The household generally, from her father down to little Nancy, treated +her with gentle politeness as a newly arrived and just departing guest. + +At breakfast the bread was handed to her without her once asking for +it; Nancy watched her plate eagerly, that she did not run out of butter; +Mary ran in with a nicely poached egg just at the right moment; Mrs. +Bruce kept her cup replenished without once asking if it was empty. + +"Don't do any view hunting or gully climbing alone," said Mr. Bruce. +"It's the easiest thing in life to be lost in the bush. Besides, no girl +should roam about alone." + +"Oh, don't be too venturesome, darling!" said Mrs. Bruce. "Just think if +you fell down one of those valleys or gaps or falls!" + +Yet Dot had never been "too venturesome" in her life. + +"A little more bread?" inquired Cyril; "don't bother to eat that crusty +bit; we can, and I'll give you some fresh." + +"More butter?" piped Nancy; then taking a leaf from Cyril's book--"Don't +bover to eat it if it's nasty; _we_ will. Have some jam astead." + +And Betty, in the silence of her bedroom, was drinking cold water and +eating dry bread, without any one asking solicitously "if she would +have a little more, or leave that if she did not like it, and have +something nicer." + +"Yet I was trying to earn money for them all," she said aloud. "I won't +try any more. Dot only spends it, but they love her more than me." + +It was while these thoughts were busy in her mind that Dot ran down the +passage and opened the door suddenly. Such a dainty pretty Dot, in her +new blue muslin dress that _almost_ reached to the ground, and fitted +closely to her slender little figure, and a new white straw hat with a +new white gossamer floating out behind waiting to be tied when the +kisses were all given and taken. + +The girl's face was like a tender blush rose; her eyes were shining with +actual excitement (rare thing in placid Dot), and her hair hung down her +back in a thick plait tied with blue ribbon. + +It was the plait which caught Betty's attention. + +"Oh!" she cried in disappointment, and then stopped, remembering the +silence that had been imposed upon her. + +Dot ran to her and kissed her. + +"It's all right," she said. "You may talk to me. I asked mother, and she +says _yes_ until I go." + +"I can't when you're gone," said Betty; but she brightened up very much. + +And she thought it very kind of Dot to have asked her mother to break +the rule of silence, if it were only for an hour. + +"I thought you were going to wear your hair on the top of your head," +she said, surveying Dot's plait somewhat contemptuously. + +"Mother won't let me," said Dot; "she says sixteen's too young." + +"Why sixteen is _old_," said Betty, "and you've left school." + +"I know. And mother was married at sixteen. But she says she wants me to +keep my girlhood a little longer than she kept hers." + +"Hem," said Betty. + +"_I_ don't want to," said Dot, and added virtuously, "but we can't do +just as we like even with our own hair." + +"_I_ shall," said Betty, and gave her morsel of a plait a convincing +pull. "Wasn't my hair as long as yours once; and didn't I cut it off +because I wanted to?" + +Then Dot bethought her of the wisdom of sixteen, and the foolishness of +twelve and a bit, and she slipped her arm as lovingly around her little +sister as she was wont to do around any of her friends at Westmead +House. + +"Dear little Betty," she said, "promise me, you poor little thing, to be +good all the time I am away." + +But Betty, unused to caresses, slipped away. + +"You always are away," she said. "I'll be as good as I want to. I wonder +how good you'd be if suddenly you had to stay at home and wash up and +dust." + +The picture was quite unenticing to Dot. _Wash up and dust and stay at +home!_ She moved slowly to the door, feeling very sorry for Betty. + +"I must go now," she said. "All this is just a finish up to my school +time. Afterwards I shall have to stay at home and be eldest daughter +while you have _your_ time. Mother says you may come to the gate and see +me off if you like." + +But she was genuinely sorry for Betty all the way down the hall to the +front door, and her heart gave her an unpleasant pang when Betty sprang +after her and thrust a shilling into her hand. + +"It's my own," whispered Betty; "take it; it will buy something; I +earned it. Don't be afraid; I'll earn plenty more some day," and she ran +away down the path to the gate. + +"Dear little Betty," said Dot, and slipped the shilling into her purse. +"I'll buy something for her with it." + +They all came down to the gate to see the little traveller off. + +Mr. Bruce wore his best suit--well brushed--because he was going to +accompany his eldest daughter as far as Redfern station. As the others +were saying good-bye to her, he occupied himself by counting his money, +to make sure he had enough for a first-class return ticket for her, and +the three half-sovereigns he had decided to slip into her purse before +they reached the station. + +Mrs. Bruce, slight and small almost as Dot herself, put Baby down on the +brown-green grass at the gate, while she put a few quite unnecessary +finishing touches to her eldest daughter. + +"I went away from my home for a visit when I was sixteen," she said--"to +Katoomba, too!" Then she took Dot into her arms and held her closely for +a minute. "Come back to us the same little girl we are sending away," +she said as she let her go. + +Cyril was waiting on the bush track, with the home-made "go-cart" piled +up with Dot's luggage. He had to push it to the corner of the road and +help it on the coach. + +He was very anxious to get home again, for he had heard a few words +whispered pleadingly by Dot, then a whispered consultation between Mr. +and Mrs. Bruce. He knew what it was about. Even before his father patted +Betty's head and told her to start afresh from that minute, and his +mother kissed her and said, "Be a good madcap Betty, and we'll commence +now instead of to-morrow morning." + +Whereat Cyril became anxious to get home again to discover his sister's +plans for the day. + +Nancy was crying and clinging to Dot's skirt. + +"Be quick and come home again," she said. "You look so nice in that +hat!" + +Betty climbed over the gate instead of going through it. + +"I'm going down to the road to wave my handkerchief to you," she said. +"Oh, mother, will you lend me yours. Mine's gone." + +When she reached the road corner, a dog-cart flashed by, almost +upsetting Cyril's equilibrium as he laboured along the road. + +In the dog-cart were Captain Carew and big John Brown. John looked +steadily at the horse's head, fearing an explosion of wrath from his +grandsire if he smiled at his fellow fortune-seeker. He, too, was going +to the mountains for his holidays, preparation to commencing life at a +Sydney Grammar School. + +But the Captain himself looked at Betty, and his grim face smiled. And +there are not many who can translate a smile, so that we may take it +that he was not altogether displeased with the little singer. + +Down the road went Dot, after her father and Cyril--a little maid fresh +from school--dainty and fresh and crying gentle tears that would not +hurt her eyes, and yet _must_ come because of all these partings. + +Perhaps we shall see her again some day when she comes back again to try +to be an elder sister. Perhaps we shall see Betty, too, in her new +position as one of the "young ladies" of Westmead House. + +But just now she has climbed an old tree-stump, and is standing there +bare-headed and waving her handkerchief to cry--"Good-bye, good-bye." + + +_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of An Australian Lassie, by Lilian Turner + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN AUSTRALIAN LASSIE *** + +***** This file should be named 24443-8.txt or 24443-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/4/4/24443/ + +Produced by David Wilson, Jacqueline Jeremy and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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