Max went back disgustedly to his digging for fire.

Muffie nearly fell asleep, Pauline's hand grew cramped, and still the fairy continued to "have" things.

"'Her dress was of silver spider's silk studded all over with dewdrops'," went on Lynn, beginning now energetically upon every detail of the wardrobe of the "beautious" being.

And Pauline bore even with this, though she heaved a huge sigh of relief when from crown to shoes the entire toilette of the fairy had been dealt with.

But Lynn held her, like the ancient mariner, with a glittering eye.

"'She was followed by six handmaidens'," she said, "'and the first one had——'"

But here Pauline struck. The prospect of describing six more beauteous beings and their toilettes was more than she could contemplate.

"You've had your amount," she cried; "mine only took five pages, and I've done five for you." And despite Lynn's wild entreaties, she wrote "The End" at this point of the story, and shook Muffie and informed her it was her turn.

Muffie yawned.

"'Oncepon a time'," she said.

"Go on," said Pauline.

"'Oncepon a time there was'——"

"I've got that, be quick," said Paul.

"'Oncepon a time there was a—a——'" Muffie looked appealingly at Lynn.

"A fairy?" suggested Lynn.

"A little dog?" said Max who had strolled back.

"Yes, a little dog," said Muffie gratefully.

"Go on, I've got that," said Paul.

"'Oncepon a time there was a little dog and it—it——'"

"Was really a fairy under a enchanting spell?" whispered Lynn.

But Muffie was too sleepy to rise to the occasion. She repeated her formula once more in the hope of helping herself.

"'Oncepon a time there was a—a dog—and it—it——'"

"Barked?" said Max.

"Yes," said Muffie thankfully. "That's all, Paul—write it big, and it will make a lot. Le's go and see if tea's ready."

"I haven't lote my book," said Max, and looked ready to cry.

"Don't be so mean, Muffie; sit down and wait," said Pauline. "Come on Max, darling, Paul will write yours the neatest of all. Now then."

Max thrust his hands into his ridiculous pockets and stood with his legs well apart. He always told the same class of story though the variations were several.

"Well," he said slowly, "''was a ittle boy, an' him said to hims mover, can I go down in the deep foresh all by myself, an' she told him no. And'"—here Max paused very impressively till he had collected the eyes of all his audience—"'he went. An' he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he met'"—another pause, calculated to thrill his listeners—"'a snake. An' it clawled light up him an' it ate him all up. Evly bit of him. Escept hims legs. An' he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he met a tiger. An' e tiger eat 'em up. Evly bit of 'em. Escept hims feet. An' he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he walked along, an' he met a horsh. An' e horsh ate 'em all up. Evly bit of 'em. An' nofing was left. Ony hims button. An' hims mover had no dear ittle boy left', so there."

The unique part of the stories Max told was, he invariably managed to leave the impression that the moral of the tale was the mother should not have refused her consent to his going down the dark forest all alone and that she was the sole sufferer.

Pauline opened and shut her cramped hand half a dozen times.

"Thank goodness they're done," she said. "Give me that piece of paper to wrap them in, Muffie, and you go and get some string, Lynn, while I write to him."

For the final destination of the tales had long since been settled.

So it happened that Hugh Kinross, coming home from the golf links at tea-time, was greeted by a bulky newspaper parcel on his desk, and the laconic note, "Please corect our mistakes and have them made into books like yours, only nicer covers. We like red except Lynn, and she likes green. And we like gold edges and plenty of pictures, and our names at the front in big letters."



CHAPTER XV

"OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES"

"That excuse about inspiration was all very well," said Dora, rubbing away hard at an obstinate spot on a pink silk blouse, "but I would give a good deal to know why he really went off in such a violent hurry, Bee."

"Well, I fancy he does not get on too well with Mr. Gowan," said Bee. "It always seemed to me when I saw them together that the one despised the other for brewing beer and the other despised the one for brewing books."

"Why, Bee," said the other girl admiringly, "that was almost clever. I wish I could think of that sort of thing to say."

"Must be evil communications," laughed Bee. "I never used to be accused of such a thing as cleverness. I must tell Mr. Kinross he's contagious."

"But why do you suppose he went?" persisted Dora. "I don't think he bothered much over Mr. Gowan; he just used to avoid him. And you can see he likes Mrs. Gowan well enough, though I suppose not so well as that fat sister he lives with. What could have driven him away?"

Bee, with a little iron that she heated at a gas ring on her washstand, was carefully smoothing out some crumpled chiffons and ribbons.

For it was wet weather on the mountains, and in the big hotel where the Gowans were staying the two girls whom Hugh was pleased privately to call "little pets" had foregathered in Bee's bedroom, to gossip happily and repair little ravages in their many and bewilderingly pretty toilettes.

Bee held her tiny iron against her cheek a moment to test its heat.

"You've accounted for every one but ourselves, Doady," she said; "it must have been one of us, or both. That is it; he likes us both so much, and was so afraid of proposing to the wrong one, that he dashed off in a motor-car to consider the matter in solitude."

Dora held her blouse up to the light. "I believe I'm making it worse," she said, pensively regarding the spot. Then she poured out a little more benzine and fell to rubbing the place again.

"What shall you say if he proposes to you, Bee?"

Bee ironed out with much deliberation the blue chiffon hat strings that made her a joy to all beholders.

"I haven't quite decided," she said thoughtfully; "I might say briskly, 'With much pleasure, my dear Mr. Kinross.' Or I might put my finger in my mouth and hang back a little time."

"But you would accept him, Bee?"

"Oh, of course," said Bee; "wouldn't you?"

"I—I suppose so," said Dora.

Then both girls sighed.

"I wish he hadn't started to go bald," Bee said pathetically.

"I wish he hadn't started to grow stout," Dora added.

Bee pulled herself together.

"Charlie and Graham may be stout themselves by the time they are his age," she said.

Dora felt obliged to follow suit.

"And of course you can't expect an author to have as much hair as—as Charlie, for instance, can you?" she said.

"Oh, Charlie, Charlie!" sighed Bee. "But what shall you say if it is you he wants, Dora?"

Dora looked absolutely nervous.

"Oh, Bee—tell me, for goodness' sake, so I can be ready. Oh, I wish you could be there to help me, if he does. I know I shall just giggle."

"You mean 'should,'" said Bee calmly. "You know it is quite probable that it is I he likes."

"Oh, yes, of course, Bee, you know that is what I mean," said the younger girl; "but do tell me what to say. I should want him to understand distinctly that I couldn't think of being married for ages. Oh, Bee, I must have a bit more fun. Don't you feel like that?"

"Oh, yes, that's all very well, Do," said Bee gloomily, "but it is quite time we were engaged. It is a very serious matter and we must face it."

They faced it, sitting side by side on the edge of the narrow hotel bed, with their pretty little feet in their high-heeled shoes dangling several inches from the ground.

"I am nineteen now," Bee continued, "and I can see plainly if you don't get engaged by the time you are as old as that there is very little chance for you nowadays. Look at my sisters, four of them older than I and not one of them engaged. And poor old Floss is thirty-four—though of course that's a secret, Dora."

"Oh, of course," said Dora.

"Well, I'm not going to take any risks," continued Bee; "I decided that before I left school last year. Five disengaged Miss Kings are too frightful to contemplate. I shall not be as particular as the girls have been; Floss threw away one excellent chance just because the man was only five feet."

"Oh, Bee," said Dora pathetically, "of course she did! Five feet! Why, I am five feet!"

Bee shook her wise head.

"If there aren't enough six-foot men to go round you've got to put up with the five-foot ones," she said inexorably. "I have quite decided that the first real man who asks me I shall accept. I don't mean silly boys like Charlie and Graham, of course, who are only just starting their medical course and then have to buy a practice and make it pay before they can marry. Why, we should have crow's-feet round our eyes, and thin, scraggy necks"—she passed a hand over her plump young neck—"and be left to sit out at dances, if we waited for them!"

"I—I suppose so, Bee," said Dora faintly.

"Now, Dora!" said Bee sternly, "this won't do. I saw you trying to hide the address on the envelope you posted this morning. You've written another letter to that Graham."

"It was a very short one, Bee," said Dora meekly.

"Well, it won't do. Do, dear, you be guided by me and you will live to thank me," said Beatrice.

"But, Bee," began Dora imploringly, "it is not quite the same with me as with you, is it? I'm only seventeen, and I'm the eldest. Don't you think I could have just a little more fun?"

But the marvellous product of a worldly mother and a fashionable boarding-school shook her pretty head vigorously.

"It's every bit as serious for you, Dora," she said. "Look at you, your father's only a barrister, and you know you don't get a big dress allowance, and there are lots of things you can't go to for want of money. Then you have three sisters coming on. You owe it to them to marry early and get out of the way. If Floss had taken that man——"

"The five-foot one?"

"Yes, certainly—don't be so frivolous, Dora—I repeat if Floss had married—he was well off and clever, and really very nice, she owns—the chances are the other three girls would have gone off early and been the heads of beautiful homes to-day instead of dragging the rounds of season after season and making me stay up at school till I simply refused point blank to keep my hair down another day."

Dora heaved a submissive sigh. Those three chubby, pretty little sisters of hers at home were very dear to her. And it was true they were "coming on;" Amy, the eldest of them was thirteen. She would not stand in their light.

"There's one thing," she said a little more hopefully, "I'm sure it won't be me—he talks to you a lot more, Bee."

"That's only because I talk a lot more to him," said Bee, nipping the hope. "I notice he looks at you most."

Dora gazed at herself in the glass, and the reflection of the young rounded face and the candid eyes and the pretty hair was so pleasing that the instinct of conquest braced her.

"After all, Bee," she said more brightly, "he is really very nice. And except when you're behind him you don't notice he's going bald. Perhaps he's a man you'd get to like a good deal after you were married to him."

"That's what I feel," said Bee, and added in an extremely virtuous tone, "if I didn't I should not think of him for one minute. How girls can marry really old men or horrid men, I simply don't know. I think it's just disgraceful. But with Hugh Kinross it is very different and people think a lot of you if your husband's an author and you get asked everywhere."

She returned energetically to her chiffon and twisted it in a most artistic fashion upon a charming hat.



Dora jumped down also from the bed and began to collect her own belongings. Then she stopped short one second; pretty as she was she had a latent sense of humour.

"It would be rather funny, Bee, after all this talk if he'd never given either of us a serious thought," she said. "What makes you so sure?"

"Oh, lots of things," said Miss Bee. "Look at the chocolates and things he brings us—and didn't he make Mrs. Gowan ask us to join his party for the Caves? And look at the things he says actually to us—that quotation, for instance, when we were on the seat in the summer-house,—"

"'How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear charmer away!'"

murmured Dora softly.

"Yes, and lots of things like that. A man of his age doesn't say them as Charlie or Graham might. Love is a much more serious thing with a real man than with a boy."

"Yes, I suppose so," sighed Dora.

"And don't you remember what Effie Gowan told us she had heard her mother laughing and telling her father? That when he asks after us he always says, 'Well, how are the ducky little girls?' Or else, 'When are you going to bring the little pets down?'"

"Y-yes," said Dora, "yes, I suppose he must be serious then—as he's not a boy."

"And Mrs. Gowan told me privately that she really did hope Hugh would marry and that she thought a bright young wife would do him a world of good and get him out of all his old-fashioned ways. Said it meaningly, too."

"Oh, well," said Dora, "I had better go. It must be nearly time to dress for dinner. What are you going to wear, Bee?"

And Hugh was promptly shelved to permit of this more important point being properly discussed.



CHAPTER XVI

WOOING THE MUSE

"Five thousand words," muttered Hugh, and then tilted back in the steady chair he had abstracted from the kitchen for the very purpose. Yes, this was going to be one of his good days—he willed it so. The mood was not there certainly, but then, now the finishing of the book had become a pressing necessity, the mood never was there; it was like a tantalizing butterfly that flitted a second in his face and then led him a desperate chase through a tangle of undergrowth that never ended.

Five thousand words! Yes, he could if he would. Let him brace up his sinews, summon up his blood! The mere act of battling for it hard and earnestly would probably bring the mood back—it had done so many a time ere this.

Let him read over the last chapter or so to get in touch again with his characters.

Great heavens, what balderdash it all was! He crashed his chair on to its four legs again and reached out blindly for his pen. And now he scored pages and pages across with heavy black lines; he seemed to take a vicious pleasure after a little time in destroying what he had written and went along with his lips tight and a hard look in his eye, weighing every sentence in the balance and adjusting that balance to such nicety that he found nearly every sentence wanting. Out they came: occasionally a fierce black zig-zag on the page he considered sufficient for future deliberations, but more frequently it needed greater physical activity to relieve his state of mind and he ripped the page fiercely off the block, crumpled it in his hand and sent it flying across the room.

If Miss Bibby had happened in that morning she would have come to the conclusion that the eccentricity of genius led it to divert itself at times with the game of paper snowballs.

The heavy slaughtering brought a degree of relief; he looked over his shoulder at the paper-strewn floor and felt a twinge of self-satisfaction: there were authors who would have passed the work quite complacently or at most have considered a little polishing was all it needed. For him it was satisfaction or snowballs—no medium course. But then he groaned, for his eye of a sudden fell on a calendar. Fell on the calendar, to be exact. Many of his lady friends and admirers invariably presented him with calendars at Christmas time ("Such a suitable present for an author, my dear!"); exquisite works of art some of them were, whose dainty strips of ribbon, adroitly pulled, brought into more or less perfect view the day of the month nestling in the heart of a flower. Or you would turn a gilded handle perhaps and a day of the week would appear on the silver sail of a ship, while another turn would bring the date to the figure head and the pressing of a spring send the name of the month fluttering as a flag on the top of the mast. Hugh had a sincere admiration for this ingenious trifle, and frequently when a hero was behaving untowardly idly amused himself with spinning up the signs.

But of course, if one really wanted to know the date one looked at the plainest one had: this year it happened to be a gratis one, presented with the advertisement pamphlets of some patent medicine, and it had stood Hugh in good stead from January to now, when November's cloud of heat clung closely to the mountains.

But the sight of it caused him to groan and to realize that the just passed Berserk mood had cost him perhaps seven thousand words; and the seven thousand words represented all the work he had done up here at "Tenby"—"Tenby" that he had taken expressly for the performance of doughty deeds of literature.

He looked ruefully at his snowballs;—perhaps after all he had been hypercritical, perhaps one or two of those pages might be rescued and smoothed out and made to answer. After all, who else would be the better or the worse for it? All the public wanted of him was a piquant flavour for its jaded appetite and the details on which he bestowed such a fever of care would probably escape its attention altogether. Yes, after all, what was he? Just the paid provider of certain species of mental refreshment,—a sort of fashionable drink that the hurrying public, coming along and seeing others drinking, took a gulp at and went on with its much more important work nor better nor worse for the quaff. Why, an orange boy, selling his honest juicy fruit to a thirsty crowd was a better public benefactor than himself! Pah! he had been over-estimating himself of late; he was not of the authors who might legitimately claim to refresh and stimulate the race to higher things. He was just a maker of "bitters," and the public, in its charmingly inscrutable fashion, declaring for it as its favourite beverage for the moment, he had become "popular." Why worry himself ill over the concoction of the bitters; sharp and strong that was all it asked? Yes, yes, those snowballs on the floor were quite good enough, let him pick them up and uncrumple them and pin them back in their places ready for the typewriter.

But Kate came in,—Kate in one of her fresh-looking pin-spot print frocks. She seemed to exhale something clean, wholesome, stimulating, though she spoke no word and only laid the morning letters down beside him and, when he looked round at her, gave him her cheery smile.

He clutched at her plump, print-covered arm.

"For the love of heaven, K," he said, "pick all that paper up off the floor and take it away."

Kate gave him the soothing hand-stroke that nurses keep for feverish patients.

"Of course," she said, "certainly, straight away, old boy." She groped about beneath his knees for the wastepaper basket that would be needed as vehicle.

Then he heard her breathing a little hard as she stooped here, there and everywhere for the snowballs.

He did not turn round, but talked during her labours.

"It's not etiquette I know, girl," he said, "I wouldn't dare to present a hero to the public who let a woman pick up her own handkerchief. But I always was a cowardly chap, wasn't I? You remember the time I took Jack's licking at school because I knew if I turned round and let him see it was the wrong fellow, the master would notice my cheek was puffed out with toothache and send me straight off to the dentist's."

"Yes, I remember," said Kate, puffing and panting cheerfully about the room.

"Hurry up, old girl," he said. "In a second I shan't be able to restrain myself from clutching some of that stuff back."

"And it's genuinely bad?" said Kate, working hard: you might have imagined her engaged in gathering mushrooms at so much a minute.

"The scum of literary abomination," groaned Hugh.

"And you're certain you're not deceiving yourself."

"Oh, perhaps I am," he said swinging round, "y-y-yes, I'm pretty sure it's good enough. Seven thousand words, K, seven thousand p-p-precious words—human nature won't stand it, will it? Let me have another look at it."

But now Kate was adamant.

"Good enough is not good enough for Hugh Kinross," she said sternly and made straight off to the kitchen fire with the overflowing basket clasped firmly in her arms.

And now Hugh heaved a sigh of relief and settled down in better heart to his work. He took out a fresh writing-block and firmly and with inspiring assurance inscribed upon it the number of his chapter.

But after regarding this effort with an uplifted look for a second or two his eye fell upon the letters beside him that Kate had laid down.

Now there is something insidiously insistent about the morning post when one is away from all the other corrupting effects of the civilization of cities.

Hugh knew perfectly well that he was trembling on the verge of his precipice when he let his eye linger upon the envelopes; he knew perfectly well that the act of opening one would send his already nearly maddened Muse clean out of the window for the rest of the morning. But yet he dallied.

It was more than possible that there was a highly important letter there, and two or three hours' delay in opening would mean a serious loss. His last story, for instance, that his London agent was serializing in several countries—yes, it was quite possible some instant information was wanted about it. Or that tale he had offered to an American magazine—probably there was news about it here; it was a decent story too, he would like to find out if it had been appreciated. And then there were those shares he had taken in that Transvaal concern, suppose news had come of a fall or rise in them? He would not listen to the cold-headed remembrance that whispered that no English, nor American, nor African mail was due to-day. It was perfectly possible that in an undermanned country post office like this these important letters had been left over since last mail and only just delivered. It was really highly important that he should make sure.

He drew the little stack of envelopes towards him and tilted comfortably back while he opened them.

He owed his tailor thirteen pounds eleven and six, he discovered. He discovered that by employing the Reliance Carpet Company his Axminster carpets would be entirely freed from dust and in such a way that he need fear no microbes for his nursery.

The Mission to the Chinese of Wexford Street, and Lower George Street, would be glad of a subscription from him, he learnt.

A Consumptive Hospital, a Creche for Neglected Infants, a Convalescent Home, an Inebriates' Retreat all had a similar use for him. While slightly more cheerful, if less urgently necessary methods of spending his money were suggested by requests, (1) to take a few five-shilling tickets for a concert for the purpose of sending a deserving young singer to Italy; (2) to purchase at a reduction a calf-bound set of the Encyclopaedia Cosmopolitana with which the owner, being short of money, was reluctantly compelled to part, and which he, as an author, would doubtless find it to his benefit to acquire; (3) to be present at the banquet of a fellow author, departing for the old country, tickets one guinea. Then there was one typewriting lady who offered to do his work at so much a thousand words, and submitted a sample of her work. And another typewriting lady, who submitted no sample, stated that reverses of fortune had driven her from a high position in the best society to the bitter one of a typist, and she was therefore compelled to solicit his work to enable her to keep herself.

It was quite a pleasant change to discover two people merely wanted his autograph. "Dear sir, I am collecting autographs and have 637; will you please send yours by return post as I enclose a stamp."

"She encloses a stamp," murmured Hugh admiringly.

The other seeker accompanied her request with a perfervid letter of praise about his work, but on the heavy autograph album that accompanied the letter he noticed Kate had had to pay tenpence deficient postage and there were no stamps enclosed for the return of the precious volume.

A jeweller's catalogue provided a few minutes' lighter reading, and its diamond rings and its pearl and diamond necklets and pendants and brooches were so temptingly illustrated, that they awoke the present-giving instinct in the man's heart and he revolved the question whether etiquette would permit him to give Dora and Beatrice a necklet apiece for their pretty necks and Miss Bibby a chaste brooch. Kate, he reluctantly remembered, cared nothing for jewellery.

But it was upon the last opened missive he wasted most of his time,—possibly because it was the last and Chapter eleven looked large on the horizon again.

It was an advertisement of enamel paint and was accompanied by a most pleasing picture of a gentleman in a frock coat and a lady in a most complicated costume, delicately engaged in making "better than new," by the aid of this enamel paint, a whole bedroom suite.

Something in the elegant neglige of the attitude of the gentleman in the frockcoat depicted pensively painting the bedstead stimulated Hugh marvellously.

He felt an insane desire to get a pot of the famous paint and set to work himself upon a similar labour.

Kate came gently across the floor and placed a jug of iced lemon water and a tumbler at his elbow.

She was about to withdraw in perfect silence, but he detained her.

"Kate," he said.

Her most motherly look was on her face.

"What is it, dear lad?" she said, for her heart was full of futile sympathy for his straits.

"Kate," he said yearningly. "Do you think Larkin could get me a pot of Perfect Perfection Enamel warranted to dry in ten minutes, all colours kept in stock? If I can't enamel a bedstead this very minute I won't answer for my reason."

Kate walked deliberately across the room and boxed his ears.



CHAPTER XVII

LITERATURE IS LOW

But after half an hour's further struggle he got up and drifted aimlessly out of the room, finally bringing up in the kitchen.

Kate was here concocting a savoury and an entree and two or three other things for his dinner, for she had packed the depressed and depressing Ellen off to the bakers' picnic with Anna from "Greenways" and was sole mistress of her hearth and home for the day.

Here she was when her brother found her, covered up in a spotless apron and, with sleeves rolled engagingly back over her plump white arms, energetically pounding up some anchovies. Hugh sat down heavily on the edge of the dresser.

"A writer's a miserable beast, K," he said dejectedly.

"Give it up to-day, boy," she said. "I can see you can't help yourself. Go for a walk,—go and look up the little pets. Or have a romp with the children across the road. Don't break your back to-day over a load that another day you will snap your fingers at."

He took no notice of her suggestions.

"Can you deny that it is a miserable trade? A womanish sort of business? You sit twiddling your pen, your nerves so a-stretch that if a door bangs the mood shuts down on you for the day. And there's that fellow across the road swinging away with his axe among the trees just as he has been ever since breakfast. He'll leave off presently and boil his billy and eat his bread and cheese and have his smoke, and then back he'll go to his work. There it is spread out straight before him, and the muscles on his arms—have you ever noticed the fellow's muscles?—tell him that he is equal to it. Do you ever see him pacing distractedly about, wondering if the mood will come to him? Do you ever see him sitting dejectedly twiddling his axe, and rendered quite incapable because he has been interrupted at a critical time and put out of vein? I tell you, my girl, that fellow's a man, and I'd like to go out and shake hands with him."

"And doubtless," said Kate, hastily sprinkling coral pepper over her savouries, "doubtless every time that fine fellow stops to wipe his beaded brow, he glances over here to envy a man who has nothing to do but sit in a comfortable chair in the shade and scribble any nonsense that comes into his head."

"Now, why," said Hugh addressing the rows of plates ranged beside him, "why does a woman feel it her bounden duty to clap down with a conventional remark like that every time a man lets off a little steam? Besides I deny it,—the chair is not comfortable."

Kate gave a sidelong glance at the clock and began to chop parsley as if against time.

"No," said Hugh, "I will not take the hint, my good woman. I hold you with my glittering eye and listen to me you shall. 'Litteratoor is low',—Artemus Ward says so. Worse than that it's no longer exclusive,—Mr. Dooley maintains that it is not. Do you remember the verse and chapter, madam?"

"Something about turning Miranda into authoreen does her skirt sag," murmured Kate.

Hugh held up a hand commanding silence and rolled out his Irish with gusto: "'Th' longer th' wurruld lasts th' more books does be comin' out. They's a publisher in ivry block an' in thousands iv happy homes some wan is plugging away at th' romantic novel or whalin' out a pome on th' typewriter upstairs. A fam'ly without an author is as contemptible as wan without a priest. Is Malachi near-sighted, peevish, averse to th' suds, an' can't tell whether th' three in th' front yard is blue or green? Make an author iv him! Does Miranda prisint no attraction to the young men iv th' neighbourhood, does her over-skirt dhrag an' is she poor with th' gas range? Make an authoreen iv her!' That's it, Kit, it's a poor sort of life at best, no manliness about it. Picture the contrast, girl—those fine fellows who stood at attention by their gun at Colenso when it was all up with them, and your blessed brother tinkering away at a pink and white muslin heroine that never was on land or sea."

"But, but, but," said Kate, "you can't have a world made up of axemen and fine soldiers. It seems to me Nature has made a use for your contemptible authors in letting them inspire others to fine deeds. Those men at Colenso, for instance,—I grant you it was a fine thing to do, to stand at attention while awaiting death. But I believe if such a thing ever could have been inquired into with the minuteness that the Psychic Research Society brings to bear upon the problems that confront it, it would have been found that something far back in the minds of one or more of the three, some fine deed in a book, some shining act witnessed on a stage, gave the cue for the act at which the civilized world thundered applause."

"It's a pretty notion," said Hugh, "and a kind one to a writer sunk in a slough of despond. But I hae ma doots."

"I haven't," said Kate stoutly. "In point of fact I truly believe that one half of our actions—especially our better ones—spring from an unconscious desire to be like or unlike some character of some book or play. Where a sincere Christian struggles desperately to live like Christ of the Great Book, the less courageous aim lower and substitute a panorama of book characters that shift with their stages of growth. Many a meanness of life is left uncommitted, not solely because it is a meanness but because it would look execrable in the pages of a novel. Why, only for being terrorized by the Old Maid of Fiction, I'd be keeping a cat and a parrot myself by this time, Hugh Kinross, and you know it."

"And what should I be doing?" asked Hugh, amused.

Kate cogitated for a moment.

"You would have been an Egoist, only Meredith made you ashamed to be one," she answered.

Hugh nodded approval at her hit.

"But I'm still a posturing, narrow-living ass, ain't I?" he said, "like the rest of the writing tribe."

"Oh," said Kate comfortably, "of course one hates an author that's all author—how does it go? fellows in foolscap uniforms turned up with ink? But you're not that sort, Hughie. I will say for you that when you haven't the pen in your hand you are just plain man."

"Thanks, old girl," said Hugh, grateful for a moment. But then he soon drooped again.

"No, no, the trail of the serpent is over the artistic temperament, Kit. Look at me,—if I get into a company where I'm pointed out, monstrari digito, as Hugh Kinross, I'm bored—and no doubt show that I am."

"Yes, I've often noticed that," said Kate, who had long secretly considered this rather a noble trait in her brother's character.

"Yes," said Hugh pensively, "and then when I get into a company where no one knows me from Smith the chemist's clerk, a childish resentment comes over me."

"Good heavens!" cried Kate.

It was not Hugh's pettiness that called forth the exclamation, but the saddening circumstance that she had put her chopped and seasoned parsley into the sweet mixture that represented the pudding.

"How," she asked pathetically, "can I get ready to feed a lion when it gets under my feet all the time like this? Is there nothing you can do? Couldn't you go and play wild beasts under the piano for a little time? Max and Muffie would help you growl."

Hugh abandoned the dresser which rattled ominously as he took his solid weight off.

"Max and Muffie remind me of Miss Bibby, and Miss Bibby reminds me of a duty to be performed," he said; "I've promised to read her story. Well, if England expects every man this day to do his duty, Australia may expect duty this day to do a man."

Kate heard him going heavily back to his study.



CHAPTER XVIII

AN EDITING PENCIL

And now he swept all his own work out of the way and, sitting firmly down once more upon his chair from the kitchen, spread out upon his time-be desk, Miss Bibby's MS.

He had read it through no less than three times.

At the first reading he had laughed, indeed he had leaned back in his chair and fairly yelled with laughing.

For he could so plainly recognize his own influence, and the incongruity of it against the gentle, colourless background of the tale was in truth amusing. A more ludicrous effect could hardly have been obtained, if Miss Bibby herself, clad in the limp lavender muslin, had been encountered lashing about with a stockwhip or hurling blue metal wildly in all directions.

But then he sobered himself with an effort and read the tale again. And this time a hopeless look settled upon his face. It would have been so pleasant, so easy to praise warmly, point out a trifling error or two and so have done with his self-imposed task.

But it was so plain, so very plain that the woman could not write,—would never write. Her characters were paper dolls and lay on the typed sheets as flat as paper dolls. No breath of air, of motion, was in all the tale. No glint of humour, no suspicion of literary grace, not one even faintly original observation made it possible for him to hope there might be any promise of success before the woman. Stereotyped characters talking stereotyped talk and working out a thin stereotyped little plot, such was the hopeless material before him, while here and there on the dull grey of it, like patches of amazing scarlet clumsily stitched on, were cutting phrases and sardonic observations closely imitated from Liars All.

He tossed the stuff aside impatiently after the second reading and shot an indignant glance through the window at "Greenways." But "Greenways" only showed dimly through a mist that was rolling through the garden, so imagination had to call up the offending figure of the would-be authoress. And call her up it did,—kindly tender imagination! It flashed two glimpses of her before Hugh's eyes, one as she knelt on the path and dragged at a child's obstinate shoe biting her lips while the marauding ants ran up her own sleeves. And the other as she faced him, white-cheeked against the ruddy waratahs, and told him she "preferred to talk of the New Zealand Terraces."

He drew the poor MS towards him again and glanced through it once more desperately.

Then he took off his coat as a signal of earnest determination and filled his pen afresh and pulled a sheaf of paper towards him and settled down to see what might be done.

Two hours later he was still battling with it. He told himself it was his expiation. He had galvanized a few of the paper dolls into something a little resembling life, had put a dash of humour here and there and in some slight degree strengthened the plot. All this by putting in slips between the pages or by writing in the margin. But it was still a sorry story.

He stood up, yawned relievedly and went to the window. "Greenways" was smiling in the sunshine now as if it had never had such a garden guest as mist.

"My dear lady," he said—he had a habit of thinking aloud when he was alone like this—"that is not a kind action I have done you, though you will probably thank me profusely. You can't always be edited like this, and even with all this assistance you won't have the least idea how the thing is done. As the Snark said,

'The method employed I would gladly explain, While I have it so clear in my head, If I had but the time and you had but the brain— But yet much remains to be said.'

Anyway I've done my best to atone."

Kate came in with a telegram in her hand.

"And have you sixpence about you?" she said. "Of course it's not in Larkin's day's work to deliver telegrams."

It was not—officially. But your telegram would lie on the little counter of the post office for a whole day waiting for you to chance in—unless Larkin looked to the matter. So he used to pop his red head in at the post-office door, whenever he was near, just to ascertain if there were a blue envelope lying there for one of his clients. And if there were, that client was in possession of it in a few minutes.

"By George, K,—I've got to catch the one-thirty," said Hugh, and he strode this way across his little room and then that way, and knocked a chair over, and seized hold of his coat and began to struggle into it, and still seemed no farther on his way.

"All right,—don't get excited, old fellow," said Kate, "I'll manage it,—no, never mind that coat, you can't travel in it. Shall I pack your bag for only one day or longer?" Hugh read the message again, but it did not seem to help him with the amount of clothing he would need; indeed it merely sent his thoughts off at a tangent.

"Never mind," Kate said briskly, "a few extra things won't be in the way. Now see here, Hugh, go in and shave, I'll bring your hot water, then dress, your brown suit and your new Panama—I wonder where your travelling cap is? No need to get flurried, you can have twenty minutes to dress and then take a comfortable half-hour for lunch. Larkin's here, luckily; I can send him for a wagonette, so you won't have to waste time walking to the station."

Hugh felt his chin.

"I suppose I must shave? I shouldn't meet any one by this train." He looked at her anxiously for indulgence.

"Certainly you must," she said severely, and then he knew there was no hope.

"Do you want any of this with you?" she added, nodding across to his paper-strewn table, "or shall I put it all in a safe place till you come back?"

"Oh, by Jove," he said,—"yes, there's that short story of mine, 'Fools of Fortune'—I've promised that for the Melbourne Review, it ought to have been posted last night. And then there's that woman's stuff—I suppose there's no time for me to run across to Miss Bibby, eh, K?"

"Certainly there is not," said Kate decisively, "you don't stir from here without a comfortable lunch."

"Well," said Hugh, "see here, K, I'll leave her stuff here on the desk in this envelope, and you take it over to her and tell her I think if she goes more on these lines the tale will be stronger."

"All right," said Kate, "and what about the other tale,—the one for the Melbourne Review?"

Hugh hastily stuffed some more MS into an envelope, wrote a few lines to accompany it, and scribbled an address.

"See it is posted at once," he said; "I've addressed it to Miss Brown, and told her to type it and to post it on to the Review."

"I'm sure I could start again," said Kate, "let me do it as usual."

But a slight eye trouble she had suffered from lately had made Hugh lock his sister's machine for the time.

"Don't waste time talking," he said, "just send it to the post as it is."

"Oh, very well," said Kate, "Larkin can take it with him. Now go and shave instantly and, remember—your brown suit."

All was managed so well that Hugh had nearly ten minutes to spare after lunch in which to smoke and luxuriate in the knowledge that all was well with him, his bag properly packed, his cap in his pocket, his flask filled, and money for the journey in the pocket of the suit on his back instead of in the one dangling in his wardrobe as had occurred before this, when Kate had not been there.

He looked at her gratefully. She was as good-tempered as ever; not in the least flustered or put out.

"Jove, K," he said, "I should be a fool to marry. For real solid satisfaction give me a sister."

"Why?" said Kate amusedly. "Do you think your wife wouldn't pack your bag for you?"

He considered Bee for a moment in a wifely, packing attitude, then Dora.

"Not all wives," he said a little vaguely. "At all events they'd pout and worry to know why I was going and what the horrid telegram was about, and when was I coming back, and where was I going to stay—and so on till the train was lost. And look at you—not a word!"

"Oh, I should have asked you fast enough—when you came back," said Kate, "and that is the same thing."

"No, faith, it's not, Kate; I'd have had leisure to invent my own account by that time," said Hugh.

"Very well," said Kate, "next time I shall pout."

Hugh struck a match.

"I can tell you now, as there's time. I felt I wasn't making money fast enough by books for our old age, K, and I've been speculating a bit. It's helped to worry me and keep me from work lately. But the shares are rising and I'm going down to be on the spot."

Then the wagonette drove up and he seized his bag and his hat, and Kate ran after him to the gate with his pipe.

When Miss Bibby heard from the children that he had gone away, she sighed deeply. And at night when the little ones were all asleep, and Anna, her face smeared with Pauline's sunburn cream, her hair damp with the preparation bought to improve Muffie's thin hair, and her teeth ashine with the family tooth powder, was on her way to bed, and the mist had crept up to the windows and wrapped everything in its eerie shroud, Miss Bibby sighed again.



CHAPTER XIX

MAX RUNS AMUCK

Greenways was overwhelmed with horror. It felt it ought to draw a veil of mist round its face and shrink from the public gaze instead of standing there brazenly smiling as usual amid its trees and flowers and pretending it was the abode of innocence and content.

Miss Bibby was extremely upset, sufficiently so to be nearly helpless in the crisis. The little girls whispered together with horrified and excited eyes and more than inclined to a theory that nothing short of a cable to New Zealand recalling their parents could adequately deal with the present situation.

Anna, who had quarrelled with her baker, said she was not in the least surprised, for men and boys were all the same, downright black at heart.

But Max stood fast in his iniquity.

Max, four-year old Max—whose "trousers" did not measure three inches in the inner seam of the leg—Max, who was not yet entirely initiated into the difficulties of speech, had broken forth into "language!"

No one knew where he could have possibly heard the hair-raising phrase. Certainly there was the gardener, Blake, about the premises who, being of the downright black-hearted sex, might have let fall the words Max had evidently garnered and laid by with such care and accuracy until occasion offered.

But he was so surly and monosyllabic a man that the children gave him the widest of berths, and therefore that theory was unlikely.

Anna aspersed the character of Larkin. A boy with hair that colour, she maintained, must be subject to periodical explosions, and it was probably during one of them that Max had secreted his bit of dynamite. But the little girls gave Larkin the warmest testimonials. In all the time they had known him he had never been guilty of anything stronger than "My jiggery!"

It all began with a bib at breakfast time.

When Anna would have tied it around Max's neck, as she or some other person in her position had done for years, he jerked his head suddenly aside. "Take it away," he said.

"But, darling," said Miss Bibby, who was serving out the porridge, "you must have your bib on; don't be naughty. Look, it's the pretty one with Jack Sprat on it. Tie it on, Anna."

Max ducked skilfully just as Anna brought the tapes together.

"Just look at 'im," said the girl.

"Come, come, Max," said Miss Bibby, "you don't want to spoil that pretty coat with your porridge. Why, it's your new coat with a pocket in! Let Anna tie it now, quickly."

Again Anna essayed her task. Max held still till the square of huckaback portraying the economic existence of Jack Sprat and his wife was well beneath his chin, and the tapes gathered once more up into Anna's hands.

Then he gave a movement like a plunging horse, seized the offending article and flung it with all his force across the table where it fell and floated upon the milk Muffie had poured over her porridge.

"Very well, Anna," said Miss Bibby, "take the bib away and you need not wait. Master Max does not want any breakfast."

This was quite true, for Master Max had quite satisfied his morning appetite by a surreptitious ten minutes at the mulberry tree while the three little girls were having their hair brushed.

"Can I go?" he said eagerly.

"You mean, may I?" Miss Bibby said mechanically.

"Well, may I?"

"Certainly not. You will sit quite still as a gentleman should when ladies are still eating."

Max cast a lowering glance at the ladies.

"Well, make her hurry," he said; "look at her taking anover lot of leam." He glared at Muffie.

"I shall take six lots of cream, if I choose," said Muffie. "I've got to put something on to take away the taste of your horrid dirty bib."

"It was a clean one, Muffie, or I should have passed you a fresh plateful," said Miss Bibby; "at the same time that does not excuse Max for his ill-behaviour. Max, before I can overlook your conduct you must apologize to Muffie and to Anna."

Muffie looked important; she rather enjoyed being apologized to.

Max sat very square on the big books of his chair; possibly their presence beneath him encouraged his rebellion by reminding him that until he took a firm stand against it a month or two ago a high chair had been considered fitted to his dignity.

"I've done wiv bibs," he announced, and he looked the whole table fairly in the face.

Pauline and Muffie and Lynn giggled a little. They had begun to recognize vaguely that Max was not exactly as they were.

When he stood with his little legs planted far apart and his little hands thrust deep in his knickerbocker pockets, and his little head cocked on one side, some subtle breath of a spirit, masculine and essentially opposed to their own, was wafted towards them.

"I've done wiv bibs," he repeated.

"That will do, Max," said Miss Bibby, coldly. "I shall consider you in disgrace, until you have told Anna and Muffie you are sorry."

"I've done wiv bibs," shouted Max.

"Go and stand in that corner, Max," Miss Bibby said with unexpected sternness in her tone.

Max scrambled off his chair as if he could hardly reach the place indicated fast enough.

He ran right into the corner—gave a hard kick at the skirting board and made a rush for the door.

"I've done wiv bibs," he shrieked, and tore away as fast as his legs could carry him into the garden.

"Go on with your breakfast, Lynn," said Miss Bibby with as much calmness as she could muster,—"sit down immediately, Muffie—" for Muffie, excited by the unusual happening, had flown to the window to see where the rebel was heading for, "Max has forgotten himself, I am afraid."

This was ever Miss Bibby's phrase—ever her gentle optimism. If you lost your temper, your manners, your courage, any of your higher qualities, you had "forgotten yourself," forgotten the fine, upright man you were by nature and become for a moment the shadowy ghost of that black unknown self that ever dogs one.

"As I have finished, I will ask you to excuse me, little girls," Miss Bibby continued, rising from her seat. In point of fact, she had not yet consumed the whole of her slender meal, but who was to say what a boy with such a red, fierce little face might be doing?

She crossed the grass with troubled eyes. Max was too busy a little man to have fits like this often.

Now and again in wet weather, certainly, when he could not work off any superfluous steam in the garden, he had lately taken to flinging himself flat on the floor and kicking, if thwarted in any way. And Miss Bibby had vaguely recognized that this was due to his being deprived so long of the healthy moral tone of the presence of his mother and father—the latter in especial.

Anna opined that the easiest way to get him out of these "tantrums" was to bribe him with the offer of a large piece of chocolate.

"He's only a baby," she would say excusingly, "and besides, he's a boy—it's in him and it's got to come out,—same as a measle rash. You'd think there'd be some med'cin for it, wouldn't you?"

Kinross would have enjoyed the notion—the need of a Tonic for Eliminating the Black Corpuscles from the Blood of Boys.

Max saw Miss Bibby coming. In truth he had almost forgotten his recent revolt against law and order, for during his tumultuous passage through the garden, he had come across one of the guinea-pigs that had escaped from its bondage. An exciting chase had followed, but he had won, and in the satisfaction consequent upon victory he might have even been induced to overlook Miss Bibby's behaviour.

But then he saw the gentle reproach in her eyes, and noted (the Judge himself had not the faculty of lightning observation possessed by his son) the nervous, half-conciliatory trepidation of her manner. He thrust his hands as deeply as they would go into his inadequate pockets and met her gaze unblinking.

"Why, Maxie," she said, "I can't believe this is the good little boy who was here yesterday. No, it is some other bad little fellow who has taken his suit and looks like him. Do you think if I look carefully about I could find my good little boy again?"

Max would have none of such folly.

"I'm me," he said determinedly.

Miss Bibby sought to gather him up in her arms—the natural instinct. For indeed when your rebel's "trousers" measure but three inches in the inner seam you cannot regard him as other than a baby.

But he held fast to the wire fence of the guinea-pigs' run.

"I won't be nursed," he said. She stood ten minutes cajoling him, wheedling, coaxing, threatening. No, he would not return to his corner and work out his punishment, even though the punisher was eagerly offering to reduce the duration of it to "exactly three minutes, Max darling,—see, by this pretty little watch, and then we can all be friends again."

No, Max would have no traffic at all in the offer of such an ignominious position.

"Well, see here, Max," said the helpless lady recognizing and bowing at last to the stronger will, "if I let you off the corner will you run in and kiss Muffie and Anna to show you are sorry?" (The word "apologize" was eliminated now from this last treaty.)

No, Max would not kiss either Anna or Muffie. They were both "bad girls."

"Very well, Max," said Miss Bibby, "you only leave me one resort. I shall shut you up until you are good."

"I can run licker than you," was Max's reply, and he ducked beneath her arm and dashed across the garden.

Miss Bibby's blood rose high and she started to follow him. But how may a lady who for at least twenty years has done nothing but walk sedately ever expect or wildly hope to catch up a pair of brown muscular little legs? She was brought up panting, with her hand at her side before they had circled the bamboos three times and the quarry was plainly as fresh as ever. But:

"Escape me never, beloved, While I am I and you are you."

was Miss Bibby's attitude now. She called to Anna to help with the chase. And Anna came cheerfully as well as of necessity, for Max had crushed mulberries on her snowy kitchen table, in an endeavour to "invent cochineal," and it would take her hours to eradicate the stain.

The little girls came too—they felt it was more than half a game, for Max's face was perfectly smiling and good-natured.

So Pauline stood guard at the waratahs, and Lynn and Anna prevented any more dodging at the bamboos, and Miss Bibby cut off the retreat to the house and Muffie worried him in the rear.

Surely, surely by tactics like these they drove him right into a corner. Had there been a fence he would have shown fight a little longer by scrambling up it and continuing the chase on the other side. But they had headed him to a hedge, an African box thorn hedge, and there was nothing more to be done. So he stuck his legs apart, and put his hands in his pockets and surveyed his captors as they closed in round him. And it seemed satisfactory to his self-respect that it had taken five of them—two quite grown-up, too—to beat him.

But Anna was singularly without the capacity for admiring fine deeds and simply grasped him firmly around the middle and bore him to the house.

He kicked all the way, merely to maintain his self-respect.

"Where shall I put 'im?" gasped the girl, stumbling along the hall, the other four at her heels.

"Here, here," said Miss Bibby, opening the sitting-room door, and running across the floor to close and lock the French windows.

Anna stood him down on his feet and gave him one good, if unauthorized, shake for all the kicks she had received.

"There!" she said, as a woman will.



And it was precisely at this point the "language," feelingly alluded to before, happened.

The boy glared round at his victors, now all grouped at the door.

"You beasly girls," he said.



CHAPTER XX

A LESSON IN DISCIPLINE

That is why "Greenways" should have hidden its shamed head in one of the mountain's tender mists instead of gaily smiling out at the world that morning.

When Miss Kinross rode briskly up the drive, perhaps an hour later, she had no suspicion that so truly shocking an occurrence had befallen the sunny place.

She leaned her bicycle against a ficus-covered post and crossed the verandah, a little surprised at the silence, for she was accustomed on her morning visits to being run into by Max on the red tricycle and to find little girls everywhere swinging, skipping, hoop-bowling, or doll-carrying.

She crossed the verandah and rang the bell; the door was closed—a most unusual thing.

Anna appeared and seemed to hesitate about asking her in.

"Would you mind coming into the dining-room, ma'am?" she said at last; for how might a sitting-room be used for its legitimate purpose with a ramping rebel at large in it?

"Certainly," said Miss Kinross. "Is Miss Bibby in?"

"Ye-e-es," said Anna, and opened the dining-room door.

The little girls were all here. Miss Bibby had said they might do exactly as they liked this morning. Pauline sat crocheting at a grey woollen shoulder cape which was destined for some old woman in some old asylum, and was among the least interesting of her work. Lynn was reading. Not face downward, on a rug and with swiftly-moving eyes and hurrying breath, as was her custom with a living book, but she had merely picked up the History of England and sat with it quite listlessly on a chair. And Muffie was standing at the window, breathing on a pane from time to time and then drearily drawing figures upon her breath.

How could one be gay and do as one liked with the sitting-room door shut and locked on Little Knickerbockers?

Miss Bibby herself was standing before the bookcase, turning over a volume here and another one there. When Miss Kinross came in she was at Herbert Spencer's Education, thinking that surely so wise and practical an observer of youth as he must have offered some recipe for such a situation as had just passed.

But Spencer held out no helping hand. The lines on her forehead deepened.

"Are you all well?" said Miss Kinross, coming forward to shake hands with her. "How do you do, little girls? How are the coughs? And where is my little cavalier?"

"He—he—" said Miss Bibby, hesitating a second, then deciding not quite to conceal the outrage since here might be wisdom. Surely here must be wisdom; for could any one dwell side by side with an author like Hugh Kinross and not absorb it in every pore?

"Max has been," said Miss Bibby, "not—not quite good, I am sorry to say. He—I have been obliged to leave him by himself in the sitting-room."

"Oh dear," said Kate, "poor little chap; what has he done?"

Miss Bibby looked helplessly from one little girl to the other. She could not actually repeat the terrible language, and yet she did so badly need help in the emergency.

"He—I regret to say he quite forgot himself and used some naughty words," she said. "What would you do in my position, Miss Kinross?"

"Oh," said Kate with a comfortable smile, "I'd let him out. He's such a little fellow."

"But he hasn't said he is sorry," said Miss Bibby anxiously. "I told him that when he rang the sitting-room bell I would go at once, for I should know it meant he was sorry."

"And hasn't he rung it, the young scamp?" said Kate, smiling.

"Well, yes, he did, several times," admitted Miss Bibby unhappily; "but when I opened the door he said he had rung to say he wasn't sorry."

Kate laughed outright.

"What a man he will make!" she said admiringly.

Miss Bibby looked as if she did not quite follow the train of reasoning.

"So I took the bell away," she continued, "and told him I would come every half hour and ask through the door if he was sorry. The second half hour is nearly up."

"Oh," said Kate impulsively, "let's go and peep through the verandah window. Half an hour is a frightful time, Miss Bibby; he will have cried himself sick. Think what a baby he is!"

They tiptoed round to the verandah, the little girls at their heels, and they peeped cautiously through the window.

Max was riding his tricycle. He had arranged the furniture to suit himself—a little table here, a chair there, and the rest of the things pushed out of the way; and he was earnestly practising some sharp turns and curves, in and out, out and in of the articles he had stood about. He had his tongue a little way out, a sure sign of the undivided attention he was giving the work. The way he manipulated the handles, the command he had over the little machine was really admirable.

Kate was convulsed.

"Why—why," said Miss Bibby, "how did he get his tricycle? It certainly was not there when I went in last. Who gave him his tricycle?"

"I did, Miss Bibby," said Lynn meekly. "I didn't think you'd mind."

"Oh, Lynn!" said Miss Bibby.

"But he looked so lonely," said the little girl piteously.

Miss Bibby went round at once to the other door and demanded "Trike," though Kate strongly advised against it.

"I've quite fin'shed with it," said the rebel sweetly, and dismounted without a struggle.

Miss Bibby wheeled it out, somewhat ignominiously.

"I want you to sit down quietly and think how very naughty you have been, Max," she said. "Remember, I am coming in a few minutes to ask you if you are sorry."

"A'right," said Max cheerfully.

The ladies went back to the dining-room and conversation took a wider trend, for Miss Bibby seemed not too certain now of the judgment of the author's sister.

"I brought you round that book I promised," said Miss Kinross, "but I haven't found your story yet. I have hunted everywhere again for it, and I cannot think where Hugh could have put it. Are you sure you are not in a hurry for it? I could write to Hugh, of course, though I really don't know his address; he only told me Melbourne."

"Oh, no," said Miss Bibby, "I would not have him worried on any account. A few days will not make any difference. I can wait until he returns. And it is possible"—her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkled with the hope—"that he has taken the MS with him and means to look through it while he is away."

"But he did look through it," said Kate; "he told me he had spent all the morning over it. That is what makes me doubtful that he can have taken it. He said so distinctly that it was on his desk and that I was to take it across to you."

Her eyes held a troubled look. Hugh was so hopelessly untidy with his papers that it was just possible the precious MS had fallen into the waste-paper basket and been reduced to smoke by Lizzie. Still it seemed unwise to meet trouble half-way. Hugh would be back now any day, so there was no use to worry the poor authoress unnecessarily.

"Well," she said, "I must be off if I am to get my ride. But I tell you I shall not enjoy it a bit without the little man on the little red tricycle pounding along behind me to the corner as usual. You couldn't find it possible to let him out now? He must feel good by this. You never feel naughty as long as this, do you, Muffie?"

"Never," said Muffie stoutly.

"Boys are so different," sighed Miss Bibby.

"Well, let us have one more peep before I go," pleaded Kate.

They tiptoed round to the verandah window again. But this time there was no sign whatever of the rebel though both doors were still locked on the outside. Miss Bibby flew back in terror to the door that opened into the hall; she had taken the key of the verandah doorway. But as her eyes went wildly searching among the furniture they fell upon a dusty little sandal with a brown little foot attached. The boy had crawled so completely underneath the low sofa that nothing more of him was visible.

"Max," said Miss Bibby.

Not a toe quivered.

Miss Bibby stooped down and laid a hand on the foot; the muscles of it lay soft and resistless beneath her fingers.

"Max," she said again.

"Oh, oh," said Lynn, whose nature was easily strung high, "is he dead! Oh, is he dead!" She leapt across the room.

But Miss Bibby was gently drawing more of the unresisting body into view—the scratched and chubby knees that succeeded the brown feet, and that were perfect little "calendars of distress," the three-inch "trousers," the crumpled tunic, the little smudgy face.

"Fast asleep!" she said tenderly, and gathered him very softly up into her arms.

"Fast asleep!" said Kate, and something stirred at her heart and made her long to gather up the chubby rogue herself.

"I will lay him down on the sofa," whispered Miss Bibby, but made no haste to do so, so sweet was the sense of the warm, helpless child body in her arms.

But when the little girls had flown to make a nest with cushions and proclaimed it ready, what further excuse had she? She moved gently across the floor with her burden. But the motion broke the boy's light sleep and he stirred in her arms and opened half an eye. It fell on Kate.

"I'm coming," he said sleepily, "wait for me," and sank away again—"wait for me," and struggled back almost to wakefulness.

Miss Bibby sat down on the sofa with him.

"There," she said soothingly; "hush, go to sleep, love."

Love of course instantly opened his eyes wide.

"I'm going wiv her," he said, looking at Kate. "I always go wiv her to the corner."

"But my little boy was naughty," murmured Miss Bibby in his ear. "Is he my own little good boy again?"

Max nodded.

"Get the licycle," he commanded the three little sisters who were looking at him yearningly.

They flew to obey.

"I'm hungly," he announced.

"Yes, yes—you had no breakfast, darling—Pauline, quickly, some arrowroot biscuits and a glass of milk."

Anna herself brought in the little tray; she had a soft spot in her heart for this member of the black-hearted sex after all.

"I put cream on them for you, darling," she said, and proffered the biscuits.

Max munched away. "I like cleam," he said, licking it lovingly off one biscuit.

"Well, I am thankful the insurrection is over and that discipline has been so firmly maintained," said Kate with a twinkle in her eye.

Miss Bibby blushed.

"You are sorry, aren't you, darling?" she said, feeling after her formula as a matter of duty.

Max nodded again.

"Say you are sorry, darling boy," she whispered.

Max patted her cheek and then stole his little arm round her neck in a perfectly cherubic way.

"I'm solly," he said; then he seemed to realize more clearly that the lady's honour had to be vindicated before all these "girls," and he repeated more loudly and without being asked, "I'm velly solly."

"You darling!" cried the delighted Miss Bibby, and clasped and kissed him again.

Pauline wheeled "Trike" out to the foot of the steps, Lynn rushed for the ever lost boy-hat, Muffie flew to pick a stone up from the path before the little wheel.

Then a flash of irresistible humour shone in Kate Kinross's eyes.

"Max," she said with exceeding suddenness, "what are you sorry for?"

Max mounted his machine from behind and settled himself in his saddle.

"Solly cos I was shut up," he said in the most perfect faith, and then pushed at his little red pedals and started slowly away.



CHAPTER XXI

IN PRINT AT LAST

Pauline and Muffie had gone flying down to the gate to run behind the bicycle and tricycle as far as the corner where the little red tricycle had always to turn and come back.

Lynn hung back a moment.

"Take care of this till I come back, will you, Miss Bibby?" she said, "I'm keeping it for Max."

This was a paper boat that Kate had cleverly folded for Lynn while she waited, using a sheet she tore haphazard from a periodical that she had under her arm, part of the morning's post.

Miss Bibby took the boat, and when Lynn had darted off after the other young ones, she examined it with a view to finding out how Kate made these clever little things that the children so greatly delighted in.

And there leaped up at her eyes from the printed sheet one of the cutting sentences she had put into the mouth of the hero of her story, the Hypocrites! Another and another sentence followed—there stood out her own heroine's name in the heavenly black of type! At last, at last. Oh, how good of him, how very good—he had plainly taken the tale with him, and got it into this Melbourne Review, which was an infinitely better medium than the Evening Mail! How very, very good of him—this explained Kate's inability to find the MS!

Her eyes tore up and down the folded sail;—this sentence was different—sharper, pithier, better rounded than she had written it. A soliloquy was missing there—and better so, its inclusion would have been a mistake. Oh, how good, how good he was! Her quivering fingers fumbled with the folding—Lynn and Max would forgive her for spoiling their boat when they knew—when she showed them her name in print.

Ah, how hungry were her eyes for the sight of it, the sight of the simple name "Agnes Bibby" at the head of her first signed story—the story that was to take away the reproach from the name that the ill-starred interview had brought!

Then the heavens clapped down on her head and the deadliest sickness assailed her.

The heading of the columns said the Hypocrites, and the line beneath "By Hugh Kinross."



CHAPTER XXII

A MASTER MIND

Hugh had come back. When he had gone away he had taken with him one small portmanteau that went easily into the luggage rack above his head. But on the return journey he had quite a little sum to pay for excess luggage.

For instance no railway carries a motor bicycle for the consideration tendered to it for a passenger ticket. And a motor bicycle was amongst the things turned out on the Burunda platform when Hugh came back, and, to the astonishment of Kate who had gone to meet him, claimed by him.

"My dear fellow," she exclaimed when assured it was unmistakably his, "how glad I am! I knew you would come to it sooner or later. Oh, what rides we will have together!" Her face beamed.

"Preserve us!" said Hugh; "Melbourne is not responsible for developing maniacal symptoms in me, I assure you. It's for you, of course."

"You mad boy," said Kate, "haven't I already the best you could buy?"

"But it turns your little face red," said Hugh, "and makes your little heart beat too fast on these hills. This one won't."

And then it was that Kate discovered the motor attachment of the new machine and was divided between ecstasy and economic qualms.

Hugh swiftly laid the latter. The speculation had gone well—better than his best expectations; he had to break out somewhere, he said.

The breaking out included a tricycle for Muffie, who was ever in hot water with Max for stealing rides on "Trike" just when that gentleman needed the steed himself. A splendid set of croquet was for Pauline, who delighted in the game and had been overwhelmed with sorrow because one night, when mallets and balls "happened" to be left out on the lawn all night, a vagrant cow with a depraved appetite came in and, as Paul said mournfully, "went and chewed corners all over the balls."

For Lynn, who had been heard bewailing the fact that all the books she loved had been left in the other house, was a large parcel containing six of the most delightful fairy-books in the world.

And, most exciting of all, there were four volumes, thin certainly, but most gaily bound and gilt-edged and padded up as well as possible with thick paper and pictures—the books they had all written that day in the summer-house.

There they lay, three bound in scarlet and one in green, The Horty Stepmother, by Pauline Lomax; The Fairy who Had, by Lynn Lomax; There was a Dog, by Muffie Lomax; and The Mother who said No, by Max Lomax. Kate was delighted with them and said she would give much to be at the elbow of the Judge and Mrs. Lomax in New Zealand when these choice volumes from their gifted offspring reached them.

For Miss Bibby too there was an offering.

"There aren't many modern women left who can fitly wear these things," Hugh said when he showed it to Kate, "but it struck me that it would become a certain old-world air that lingers about Agnes Bibby."

"Ho, ho," said Kate to herself, and stole a glance at him; but she allowed warmly that the thing was very pretty.

It was a chatelaine made of finely-fretted silver. The customary thimble, scissors and other useful and feminine trifles dangled there, but there was also added a delicately-chased case that might have been expected to hold a bodkin, but contained indeed a very up-to-date fountain-pen, gold-mounted.

"A woman without a waistcoat pocket for her fountain-pen has always seemed such a pathetic object to me," Hugh said. "When you were a business woman, K, it often moved me to internal tears to notice the disadvantage you were at in this respect."

Kate acknowledged the disadvantage.

"Though I did stick to a skirt pocket long after the dressmakers had declared them anathema," she said, "but there was always the danger of sitting on your pen or having it leak a wide black mark in the back width of your best frock. Even the sacred repository behind the ear that will lodge a penny pen refuses to accommodate a stout and slippery fountain one. But with that arrangement she will be able to make notes all day."

Hugh hastened to display a miniature note-book, also made to hang suspended from the waist.

"She will be armed at all points, you see," he said, "and the minute she sees men like columns walking, as some one says, she can jot them down."

"But what are all the other things?" asked Kate, pointing to several still unaccounted-for parcels and hampers standing about the verandah just where the driver had set them down.

"Oh, by George, yes," said Hugh. "You must look after those things, K, or they won't keep. It's to-morrow's dinner."

"To-morrow's fiddlestick!" said Kate unbelievingly.

"'Tis, I assure you," said Hugh; "I'm giving a grand picnic to-morrow at the Falls to celebrate my safe return. Thought of it in bed last night, telephoned the X.Y.Z. Company to pack a bit of lunch that would keep a day and to meet the train with it, and there you are," he waved his hand at the hampers.

"A bit of lunch!" said Kate sarcastically. "Are you sure there is enough there to take the edge off our appetites?"

"Don't get anxious," said Hugh, "there's a little more to follow in the morning—little things that don't keep well, you know. We can easily pick them up at the station as we pass."

"Little things like——?" said Kate.

"Oh, mustard," said Hugh—"I remembered how you dislike stale mustard. And butter—you can't leave butter shut up, you know—and other little things."

"Half a dozen of everything, I suppose," Kate said, attacking the hampers. "H'm, champagne."

"Well, you've got to drink the health of those shares."

"Poultry."

"It will keep, won't it? They assured me it was only cooked at 2 o'clock to-day."

"Oh, it will keep."

"Peaches—pineapples—French confectionery."

"Well, my dear girl, you will all want a square feed when you get to the bottom of those Falls."

"And who are we all, pray?" inquired Kate.

"Well," said Hugh, "there are the ducky little girls, that's two. I sent them a wire each this morning and had their acceptances before the X.Y.Z. got to work."

"That was smart," said Kate.

"Yes, I rather pride myself on my executive abilities when I've once got going," said Hugh. "Next I wired Edith and told her to stay away and Gowan, too. Told her you'd chaperone. I don't want the gloomy brewer's soul going by me like a stork at my own picnic. Told her to send along the kids though—all five of them."

"That's seven," said Kate, "and ourselves, nine,—anyone else? I hope so, for there's enough here for nineteen, and I hate waste."

"Oh, I sent wires over the road, of course."

"Half a dozen wires?" said Kate.

"Oh, no," said Hugh innocently, "there are only five of them."

"Five separate wires,—Hugh Kinross, you want a keeper!"

"Well," said Hugh, "I was only going to send one to Miss Bibby, but then it struck me how pleased a kid would be to get a telegram. I know I never did or I'd have burst with pride in my promising youth."

"Twelve wires at—at? How many words, sir?"

"Well," said Hugh, "they wouldn't have cost so much only I took a fancy to drop into poetry with them. And in spite of precedents the operator declined to do it as a friend."

"Just a minute," said Kate, "half of those wires are doomed to be wasted. Your executive ability is a thing to marvel at, I grant you, but you overlooked the little fact that Lomax-cum-Whooping-Cough may not foregather round a tablecloth with Gowan-plus-Perfect-Health."

Hugh certainly looked nonplussed at this.

"It would be a moral impossibility for one of the parties unaided by the other to eat all this," pursued Kate.

"My good woman," said Hugh, "go and put the perishables in the ice-chest. My master mind will soon deal with the difficulty."

So Kate moved backwards and forwards between the kitchen and the verandah and Hugh tilted his chair and took out a cigar to help meet the situation.

"Well?" said Kate when only a heap of fine ash remained.

"Quite well," said Hugh. "Both parties shall attend and not the ghost of a whoop shall be exchanged. I ordered two large sociables,—the drivers will have instructions not to approach nearer than thirty feet within each other. A whoop microbe would hardly travel thirty feet."

"Well," said Kate, "as far as that is concerned I don't see that Edith need have any anxiety. She might pass a wagonette with scarlet fever convalescents herself any day. But what about the actual picnic? Muffie defines this word as eating nice things down a gully. Could we comfortably pass sandwiches to each other there at a distance of thirty feet?"

"Knowing what a fidget Edith is I propose to make the distance several hundred feet," said Hugh. "See here, it is plain I've got to have two picnics now to-morrow. At the head of the Falls I disembark my first contingent,—say the 'Greenways' one. I give them instructions to go straight down to the bottom of the second Fall,—they are all good climbers. When they've got a good start,—say twenty minutes, I call up the second contingent, the little pets and Edith's youngsters and start them down. You will go with these as chaperone and camp at the foot of the first Fall. We must explain to Miss Bibby that your wing extends over both Falls and that she as well as the little pets are brooded beneath it. I've already bespoken two caddies from the links to carry the hampers, and they will have plenty of exercise going up and down the steps. As host I shall endeavour to divide myself equally between my two divisions of guests. And probably the exercise between the two tables will rid me of any superfluous flesh I may have about me."

"Well," laughed Kate, "it is one way out of the difficulty. I certainly should not have thought of anything myself but of postponing one party until another day."

"No," said Hugh complacently, "it takes the strategy of a general or a genius to fix up little things like this."

Four breathless figures came dashing over the road and through the "Tenby" gate round to the side verandah.

"Oh, oh," said Lynn imploringly, "you have finished your tea, haven't you? Miss Bibby wouldn't let us 'sturb you before."

"We counted up to a thousand to give you time," said Pauline, "and we could eat enough tea in a hundred and fifty—unless there were drop cakes."

"We've got to go to bed in ten minutes," said Muffie tragically.

"We're coming," shouted Max, and he flourished the rhymed blue telegram that he had carried about all day.

"Did you get our answers?" cried Lynn.

"We paid for them ourselves," said Pauline. "Miss Bibby just wanted to send one answer and say 'All accept with pleasure'! But we just wouldn't, and we all went to the post and we told the woman just what to put, and it would have been a lot better only we didn't have much time to think, only while we walked up the hill, and Lynn did the most, 'cause she can always think of the rhymingest words, and we'd have made them much longer only we could only afford ninepence each, and we had to lend Max threepence, 'cause he'd only got sixpence left."

She stopped for sheer lack of breath.

"Ninepence each!" cried Kate, "and you once thought of writing some articles on teaching Thrift to young Australia, Hugh!"

"But that was before I was really acquainted with young Australia," said Hugh.

"Did you like them?" asked Lynn anxiously, "I was 'fraid you wouldn't like grin, but nothing else would rhyme."

"Like them!" said Hugh, "I shall keep them in my desk among my Correspondence from Celebrated Persons. As a special and particular favour I will allow Kate to see them," and he drew out the budget of telegraph forms.

"Your friend Pauline Will be glad to be seen,"

was the uniquely apropos answer to his invitation to the eldest daughter of the Judge.

"Max will come quick To your nice picnic"

was effort number two. There had been a variant reading of this—

"Max a plate will lick At your nice picnic,"

and the matter had been fought out before entering the post office, Lynn liking the first and Pauline and Max himself inclining to the second. But Miss Bibby being made umpire declared against the second as not very "nice." So Hugh knew only the fact that Max would come quick.

"Please take enough To the picnic. From Muff"

would assuredly not have been allowed by Miss Bibby one little month since, to be sent as an acceptance to the invitation of a person nearly eight times her own age. The fact that it was handed across the counter—and with a smile, too—was a sign that the foundations of a liberal education may be successfully laid even at thirty-six.

"Your loving friend Lynn With much joy doth grin,"

in no way satisfied Lynn's ideas either of composition or beauty, but she had been so occupied helping with the couplets of the others that she was forced to compose hers standing on the door step of the post office. The word "grin" vexed her; yet "thin" would not allow itself to be worked in and no other "ryum" that would make sense would suggest itself, so she quite mournfully sent on the information that with joy she did grin.

Pauline pounced on the formal telegram from Miss Bibby—"Will bring my charges. Many thanks for thinking of them."

"We did a much better one for her," she said, "only she wouldn't send it. I liked it best of all."

"What was it?" asked Hugh, and learnt that the "rejected address" was—

"Won't it be nibby? Yours truly, Miss Bibby."

But at this point Miss Bibby's slender figure in its pale grey muslin was seen crossing the road, so the presents were hastily distributed, and four pairs of young eyes tried to outrival in brightness the just peeping stars of the early evening.

Miss Bibby shook hands with Kate, then with Hugh, on whom she bent a curious glance: she had half expected to see him turn aside and dive through the doorway at the sight of herself, yet there he stood as calm and unashamed as possible.

He took her hand and held it in a pleasant grasp. He looked down at her in the half-fatherly, bantering fashion he adopted to the "ducky little girls."

"Well," he said, "and how is the poor little pen?"

Miss Bibby shot one keen glance at him.

He decided that she did not like the slighting reference to that pen and strove to rectify his mistake. "You know, however good an instrument it is, I don't like to see it in a woman's hand," he went on, "it's an edged weapon and cuts into even the hard hand that holds it; your little hand would bleed if you grasped it perpetually. I better like to think of it smoothing these little heads."

He looked—he knew not why himself—half sadly at the eager children.

"Isn't he an anachronism?" laughed Kate, "I often tell him the reason he has not married is he has never been able to find any one sufficiently Early Victorian for him. Imagine preaching a doctrine of 'Thou shalt not write' to women to-day! Every woman her own authoress is the accepted thing."

"Ah well," said Hugh, "I know a better thing." But though Kate pressed him he might not tell to these two spinsters that "Every woman a mother" was in his thoughts.

"I will say good-night," said Miss Bibby, "come children—at once, if you please." She shook hands with Kate and this time only bowed to Hugh.

"Did you give her her present?" asked Kate when the gate closed and the grey figure and the little running ones were merged in the grey of the tender dusk.

"No," said Hugh, "I'll have to find a better chance; I evidently put my foot in it, didn't I?" He pondered over the keen eye-glance that had met his once or twice.

"I tell you what it is, Kate," he said, when, his cigar finished, they went into the house, "that girl will never really forgive me for the interview, however much she may think she does."



CHAPTER XXIII

THE PICNIC AT THE FALLS

The morning rose in mist; the sun moved upwards and still the mist lingered, as if anxious to drape and hide the rough edges of this oddly-arranged picnic.

Sometimes the wagonette in front was lost to sight by a rolling curtain of gauze; sometimes a wind swept the road clear and then the children waved hats and kissed hands to each other.

Dora and Beatrice were visions of beauty and fashion in smartly-cut linen gowns and the latest thing in stocks and belts and shoes and hats and gloves and parasols; not over-dressed in the least, but so correct, so up-to-date, so "well-planned," Miss Bibby involuntarily drew a heavy sigh as she looked at them.

In their turn the two young girls pleasantly patronized Miss Bibby. It was the first time they had seen her, though they had heard of her often, and indeed were a little anxious to meet her, for Mrs. Gowan had teased Hugh before them, ever since the interview, about the "fair and mysterious Miss Bibby." But this figure in its plain blue serge and its out-of-date, if spotless, cuffs and collar! This gentle, tired face with faint lines at the eye corners and its brown hair simply waved back from the forehead instead of bulging out on a frame as Fashion insisted!

"We need not have been afraid," they whispered to each other.

Effie and Florence, second and third in age of the five little Gowans and mustering some fifteen years between them, sat up on the box next the driver and whispered together. All the way they hardly moved their eyes from the wagonette in front, where the faces of their loved little friends appeared and disappeared like flowers of the vapour.

The driver was an unemotional man, long used to being squeezed up on his seat by more people than that seat was ever built to accommodate; used, too, to having his ears filled with every sort and condition of conversation. City men talked to each other beside him of stocks and shares; tourists compared the views along the roads with New Zealand views, and American ones and German and Swiss: mothers babbled of their babies and their servants; girls whispered to girls of "Jack" and "Jim"—lovers—and these allowed him more seat space—of love.

Why should he lend a more than quarter ear as usual to the chatter of two little bits of girls? How should he know the demure holland frocks beside him covered revolutionists?

Hugh started off his first party, Paul and Lynn, Muffie and Max and Miss Bibby.

The children besought him to come, too.

"It will be just a common picnic, if you don't," Pauline said, looking disparagingly round her family party.

Hugh promised to divide his time equally between his two sets of guests.

"Let the boys bring your basket down with the other things, Miss Bibby," he said, seeking to relieve her of a tiny basket she carried, "then you will have your hands free when you come to the ladder."

"Thank you, it is very light, I can manage it quite well," said Miss Bibby, holding fast to the handle.

"It's her lunch," volunteered the ever ready Muffie, "she doesn't eat things like you've got. But we do,—and we're getting hungry now, aren't we, Paul?"

"Rather!" said Paul. "Can we begin to set the tables as soon as we get down?"

Hugh looked disappointedly at the miserable little basket.

"Won't you even make a feast and be merry to-day?" he said.

Miss Bibby glanced away from the kindly eyes. How could they look so clear and merry when he had stolen the work of her brain?

"Thank you," she said coldly, "I prefer my own things." And when he turned away instantly, quite hurt at the unfriendly tone, she caught hold of Max's hand and began the steep descent with a mist, not entirely of the mountains, blinding her eyes. For she was heartsick this morning, and it was not only the loss of the story that had occasioned the wretchedness, but her faith and admiration for this man had been torn away so roughly that certain sensations she hardly realized seemed numbed.

"Come along, dear, hold my hand," she said to Max,—"Lynn, Muffie,—walk carefully! Hold to the rail at the steep places, Paul."

But she always said this as a matter of duty, and equally as a matter of duty they never heeded her, for even Max knew every step of the way and had manfully climbed the ladders alone, and crept sure-footed over the great fallen trees that formed bridges, since he was three.

Down, down they went through the exquisite gorge; greener and still more green grew the way as the path wound farther and farther away from the sunburnt lands overhead. Giant tree ferns grouped themselves together in one place and in another guarded the path in sentinel-like rows. You looked up and sheer walls of rock towered thousands of feet above your head—brown, naked, rugged walls here—and there, where the waterfalls dripped, clothed in a marvellous mantle of young ferns. Here a huge, jagged promontory stretched across your way, and the diplomatic path, unable to force a way through, simply ceased in its downward bent, and with handrails and steps led you up again.

As a reward for expended breath, a rail at the top encircled a stone peninsula and gave you a resting-place and an outlook—an outlook startlingly beautiful by reason of its unexpectedness. For the promontory had hidden the valley's loveliness, and here you found a sudden glorious peep at it. And then your eyes looking down, down below the rail, saw that cascades had met and the water was plunging in a wide glistening sheet down the dizzy height.

The path led downwards again; the heart of the traveller has seen the falling of the water and cannot have its desire until it stands somewhere where the same down-dropping stream forms a deep pool and ceases.

Down, down they went, Miss Bibby, Muffie and Max leading and, far behind, Pauline and Lynn, lingering as was their wont (they had a passion for pretending they were wandering quite alone in the gully)—but occasionally sending downwards a cooee to assure Miss Bibby of their safety.

They were dangling their legs on a seat in "The Lovers' Cave," two little figures in blue zephyr, when Paul gave a sudden exclamation of dismay.

"Quick, quick," she said, "we're going too slowly. Here come the others."

She seized Lynn's hand and the two began to hurry along the path again, for at a bend just above them were the holland frocks and mushroom hats of Florence and Effie.

Down, down, a hundred steps here, round a bend there, down a damp ladder, hard as they could go, and yet the holland frocks gained on the blue every moment. Lynn was panting, Pauline's face streamed with perspiration, and still they sought to increase the distance; they could not have run more conscientiously from their little friends if they had been lepers.

But on, on, resistlessly came the holland frocks. Driven to bay Paul wheeled round—"We can't go any faster," she shouted desperately, "you'll just have to sit down and wait."



On, on came Florence and Effie while Lynn who had pulled up, too, regarded them in horror. When they were within a distance of ten feet she caught at Pauline's hand and began to run again. But the newcomers who had dropped into a comfortable walk began to run even faster.

Paul and Lynn dodged into "Lurline's Bower" that came along opportunely.

"We'll wait here while you go past as you're in such a hurry," Paul shouted.

But the holland frocks came on steadily, steadily till they stood in the opening of the bower, till they crushed themselves on the very seat with the amazed blue ones.

"You'll catch our whooping," began Paul.

"We want to," said Effie and Florence succinctly.

"But—but—" said Paul and Lynn agitatedly.

"It's all right," said Florence, "we 'cided all about it coming along, didn't we, Eff? It's we's who haves to cough, not mother, an' we don't mind, do we, Eff?"

"Not a bit," said Effie stoutly.

"But," said Paul, looking at the opening of the bower as if she would dash out, "we promised your mother."

Effie and Florence cut off any possible escape by jumping up and standing with their backs to the opening. "It's too late, we've caught it by now,—haven't we, Eff?" said Florence.

"Of course we have," said Effie, "we've got it as much as you have now. Oh we are glad. Aren't we, Florence?"

"Rather," said Florence.

"Won't your Aunt Kate be coming after you?" asked Paul, looking fearfully along the side of the gorge for the sight of a stout figure of vengeance crushing downwards to separate them.

"She thinks we're only a little way in front," chuckled the naughty children.

"But who's taking care of you?" persisted Paul.

"Oh, Miss Dora and Miss Bee said they would, but they always let us do anything," said Effie easily, "it was such a lovely chance."

"Well, I think you are big sillies," said Pauline virtuously, but she began untwisting Effie's tight brown curls and twisting them together again in the way she had ever loved to do.

While as to Lynn and Florence, they were almost rubbing noses in the joy of the reunion.

"It's just too dreadful at the hotel," said Effie, "we'd rather be at school. There's nothing to do all day."

"'Cept walk along the road with nurse, and mind you don't get your good school frock spoiled"—Effie's was the complaint. "Can't have fun in the hotel garden or you spoil their silly old beds."

"Can't shout in the house or a lot of old ladies put their fingers up at you."

"Can't make a mud pie like at your house, 'cause you've got to be clean all the time."

The angry duet went on and on till the spirits of the little holland frocks were somewhat relieved, after the restrictions imposed upon them by the residence of their parents for a "holiday" in a fashionable hotel.