Australian Lassie Read online

  CHAPTER VI

  MONDAY MORNING

  Mrs. Bruce was down on her knees caressing tiny Czar violets. Quiteearly in the morning (before the breakfast things were washed or thebeds made) she had slipped on one of Dot's picturesque poppy-trimmedhats and declared her intention of planting the bed outside the studywindows thick with these the sweetest-scented of all flowers.

  "And all the time you are working and thinking and plotting, daddiedarling, the sweetest scents will be stealing round you," she said.

  For some little time she was quite happy among her violets. Butpresently a richly hued wall-flower called her attention to a cluster ofits blooms, drooping on the pebbly path for a careless foot tocrush,--all for the want of a few tacks and little shreds of cloth. Aheavily-blossomed rose-tree begged that some of its buds might beclipped, 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 theold-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 meantso very much to her. Certainly the house had strong claims--and it wasMonday morning--the very morning for forming and carrying out good plansand resolutions! Meals wanted cooking, cupboards and drawers tidying;garments darning and patching! But then--the garden! Did it not alsoneed her. Ah! and did she not also need it!

  Even as she hesitated, balancing duty with beauty, Betty's voice floatedout through the kitchen window, past the passion-fruit creeper and thewhite 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. Shehad four plates for her breakfast--_I_ only had one. She might rememberI've to go to school as well as her."

  Then Mrs. Bruce advanced one foot towards the house, and in thoughtwielded the tea-towel and attacked the trayful of cups and saucers thatshe 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 cupsand spoons--pooh! How'd you like to be me and have to clean all theknives, I wonder."

  Whereat Mrs. Bruce relinquished thoughts of the tea-towel. It wouldnever do, she told herself, to assist Betty and leave poor Cyrilunaided. "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 thedoing of her hair, frolicking about the small hot bedroom and tryingfrantically 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 tosee that your ears are clean. And your nails. A little lady always hasnice nails."

  She carried her baby away, kissing her neck and cheeks and hands, andtelling her, as she had told them all, from Dorothy downwards, thatthere 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 toher 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 whatshe wanted and not what she ought.

  In the study Mr. Bruce sat before a paper-strewn table. Most of thepapers related to his beloved book--which was almost half-completed. Ithad reached that stage several times before, and what had been writtenthereafter 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 quickreturn. For Dot's school fees would be due very shortly, and heremembered, with a smile-lit sigh, that this quarter she had taken uptwo extras, singing and dancing.

  His income would not admit of extras--and yet, as Mrs. Bruce frequentlyput it, Dot was the eldest and was very pretty. She certainly must beable to dance and sing!

  He gathered up a few stray leaves of his manuscript, rolled them up withthe 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 thebed outside his window.

  "Well, little mother!" he called, and felt blithe as he said it, andyoung and fresh hearted, just because of the bright face in thepoppy-trimmed hat.

  "I ought to be in the kitchen making a pudding," she said, screwing upher 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 ahousemaid. Oh, and a nursemaid, too! It is dreadful to be poor, isn'tit, daddie?"

  She went on with her gardening, just as happy as before, but the facethat the little author took to his work-table had grown grave in aminute.

  "She was born to have servants," he said, "servants and ease. I mustwork harder."

  Cyril's voice broke into his reverie. He had come beneath the studywindows 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 menwould have been more liberal in the matter of _L. s. d._ to their onlyson.

  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 underhis window and turned her face to the wicket gate. He could hear thatshe was crying in a miserable forsaken way, crying and talking toherself away within that capacious bonnet of hers.

  He called "Baby!" and leaned over his window sill to her. But she didnot hear him. She just went murmuring on to the gate.

  Then two other hurrying little figures came along. Cyril, with abattered hat crushed down on his head, and his school-bag over hisshoulders, and Betty with her boots unlaced, a white bonnet under herarm, 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. "Iknow I'd have done my lessons only for you, Betty Bruce."

  "What is the matter with Nancy?" asked their father, leaning over thewindow sill once more. "Why was she crying?"

  "'Cause she thinks she'll be late," said Betty easily. "She always criesif 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 anduncrumpled.

  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 threefigures walking down the road, and at the first glimpse of them her facegrew hot.

  "Geraldine and Fay!" she exclaimed.

  The centre figure was dressed in a lilac print, and wore a spotlessapron and a straw hat. Upon either side of her walked a littlegolden-haired girl, one apparently about Betty's age, and one Nancy's.Their dresses were white and spotless, and reached almost to theirknees; their hats were flat shady things trimmed with muslin and lace.Their hair was beautifully dressed and curled, their boots shining--andbuttoned, and their faces smiling and happy-looking.

  They were Betty's ideals! Little rich girls, who rode ponies, anddrove--sometimes in a village cart with a nurse, and sometimes in acarriage with a lady who invari
ably wore beautiful hats and dresses.Sometimes, again, they were to be seen in a dog-cart with a dark man whoseemed 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 hadsqueezed herself under her grandfather's fence, just at a point wheretwo or three panels were broken down.

  Then she peeped out to see if they were looking. But no--they had notseen her. Betty gave a great sigh of relief as she watched them. Howbeautiful they were. How dainty! Betty looked down at her own old boots,old stockings, old dress. She turned her bonnet over disdainfully andthought 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 Bettyawoke to two alarming facts. The one, that she was in the emu'senclosure and that one great bird was bearing curiously towards heralready; the other, that her grandfather was the one who had called toher, and that John Brown, who was careering down the path on hisbicycle, 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 dogsloose!"

  Betty squeezed herself under the fence just before the emu reached her,and once more faced a very crumpled Monday morning.