The Family at Misrule

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot?”

There was discord at Misrule.

Nell, in some mysterious way, had let down a muslin frock of last season till it reached her ankles.

And Meg was doing her best to put her foot down upon it.

In a metaphorical sense, of course. Meg Woolcot at twenty-one was far too lady-like to resort to a personal struggle with her young sister.

But her eyes were distressed.

“You can’t say I don’t look nice,” Nell said. “Why, even Martha said, ‘La, Miss Nell!’ and held her head on one side with a pleased look for two minutes.”

“But you’re such a child, Nellie,” objected Meg; “you look like playing at being grown up.”

“Fifteen’s very old, I think,” said Miss Nell, walking up and down just for the simple pleasure of hearing the frou-frou of muslin frills near her shoes.

“Ah well, I do think I look nice with my hair done up, and you can’t have it up with short frocks.”

“Then the moral is easy of deduction,” said Meg drily.

“Oh, bother morals!” was Nell’s easy answer.

She tripped down the verandah steps with a glance or two over her shoulder at the set of the back of her dress, and she crossed the lawn to the crazy-looking summer-house.

“Oh dear!” sighed Meg.

She leaned her face on her hands, and stared sadly after the crisp, retreating frills and the shimmer of golden hair “done up.” This was one of the days when Meg’s desires to be a model eldest sister were in the ascendency, hence the very feminine exclamation.

She had not altered very much in all these five long years—a little taller perhaps, a little more womanly, but the eyes still had their child-like, straightforward look, and the powdering of freckles was there yet, albeit fainter in colouring.

She still made resolutions—and broke them. She still wrote verses—and burnt them. To-day she was darning socks, Pip’s and Bunty’s. That was because she had just made a fresh resolve to do her duty in her state of life.

At other times she left them all to the fag end of the week, and great was the cobbling thereof to satisfy the demands of “Clean socks, Meg, and look sharp.”

Besides darning, Meg had promised to take care of the children for the afternoon, as Esther had gone out.

Who were the children? you will ask, thinking five years has taken that title away from several of our young Australians.

The General is six now, and answers to the name of Peter on the occasions that Pip does not call him Jumbo, and Bunty, Billy. Nell, who is inclining to elegant manners, ventures occasionally in company to address him as Rupert; but he generally winks or says “Beg pardon?” in a vacant kind of way.

Baby also has become “Poppet,” and handed down her name of long standing to a rightful claimant who disjointed the General’s nose nearly three years ago and made our number up to seven again.

Just a wee, chubby morsel of a girl it is, with sunshiny eyes and sunshiny hair and a ceaseless supply of sunshiny smiles.

Even her tears are sunshiny; they are so short-lived that the smiles shine through and make them things of beauty.

The boys generally call her “The Scrap,” though she is as big as most three-year-olds. She was christened Esther.

And Poppet is still a child,—to be nine is scarcely to have reached years of discretion.

She has lost her chubbiness, and developed abnormally long, thin legs and arms, a surprising capacity for mischief, and the tenderest little heart in the world.

So Meg’s hands were fairly well filled for the afternoon, to keep these three young ones in check, darn the socks, and superintend kitchen arrangements, which meant Martha Tomlinson and the cook.

She had not bargained for the tussle with Nell too.

That young person was at a difficult age just now: too old—in her own eyes, at any rate—to romp with Bunty and Poppet; too young to take a place beside Meg and pay visits with Esther,—she hung between, and had just compromised matters by letting down her frocks, as years ago Meg had done in the privacy of her bedroom.

Her early promise of good looks was more than fulfilled, and in this long, pale blue muslin, and “picture” hat, cornflower-trimmed, she looked a fresh enough young beauty to be queen of a season. The golden hair had deepened, and was twisted up in the careful, careless way fashion dictated. The complexion was wonderfully pure and bright for Australia, and the eyes were just as dewy and soft and sweetly lashed as ever.

But not yet sixteen! Was ever such an impossible age for grown-up rights? Just because she was tall and gracefully built was no reason why she should consider herself fit to be “out,” Meg contended—especially, she added, with a touch of sisterly sarcasm, as she had a weakness for spelling “believe” and “receive” in unorthodox ways, and was still floundering wretchedly through her first French author—Le Chien du Capitaine.