Ethel Turner

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Her white shoes and socks, fresh with the morning, were a little reddened with walking through the “Tenby” garden, which, as Pauline had borne witness, contained no grass whatever.
Just behind her was a small boy, sitting very firmly on a little red tricycle.
“Hello!” said Hugh; “very glad to see you, I’m sure. Friends who look you up in the low ebb of the hours before breakfast are friends indeed. Come along up, both of you, and tell me your names.”
But Lynn stood loyal and steadfast at the foot of the steps, while she put the first necessary and searching question that was his due. ”

“ At this point Anna stalked into the room.
“Which I’m quite aware it isn’t my place, Miss Bibby; but I’m here to look after the children as well as you,” she said, “and them down with whooping cough that dreadful they can’t eat potatoes, and getting punished like this till the very kettle in the kitchen is ready to scream, and the Missus don’t believe in punishing, no, she don’t, and it’s a good deal longer I’ve lived in the fambly than some people, and knows the ways better, and the tears streaming down the poor child’s face like you never saw.” ”

“ 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!” ”

“ Pauline had quivered once or twice during this heated speech, but as it finished she crashed on to D flat yet again, fell off her stool on to the floor, and rolled about screaming with laughter.
Even Miss Bibby was forced to smile a little, for Anna was plainly suffering keenly, and had bottled it up for some time.
“You mean well, Anna,” she said quietly, “even if you don’t express yourself well. You can put on your hat and take the children to the waterfall; it will do you all good, for it will be cool down there. ”

“ One or two people carrying golf clubs had passed along the monotonous road during the morning and Max had longed to be a caddie. Once a woodcutter had gone along with his axe over his shoulder and Lynn had been moved to recite—to the disgust of the others—“Woodman, spare that tree.” And once Larkin had flashed past on horseback, Howie tearing along not far behind, it having come to their ears five minutes before that a cottage far away through the bush was opened, its occupants having come up by the night train.
“When I grow up,” said Muffie enviously, “I’ll be a grocer’s boy.” ”

“ Scratch, scratch went Pauline’s pen over a couple of pages; the fairy’s eyes were described and likened to stars and other shining things; her ears, her teeth, her neck, her arms and hands were all lingeringly and lovingly enumerated and described.
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. ”

“ 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.
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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. ”

“ Great Scott! to think of it; but for the chance of one chap laying another fifty to a hundred that his car could do the journey down in ten minutes under the other chap’s, those girls would be jabbering in my ears yet.”
“But I thought they were such wonderful girls,” said Kate amusedly; “‘ducky little girls’, you called them, and ‘little pets’.”
“That’s all very well,” said Hugh; “little pets are very nice in their place, and no one appreciates them better than faithfully yours, for an hour or so. But when you get ’em for breakfast and lunch and dinner. ”

“ But you wouldn’t have had the cheek to send me a rotter of a story like that six years ago, and you know it. You want a change, that’s what it is, old man, you’re attempting too much. Take a run over to New Zealand, or go home. And if you’ve been turning out any more stories like this choice Hypocrites, take my advice and burn ’em before you blast your brand-new reputation.”
“Where’s the last Melbourne Review, I ask you?” roared Hugh. As if it were part of Kate’s duty to bring files of the latest magazines with her to picnics! ”

“ The merry lunch progressed; the talk fell upon the author’s own books—and other books. Again Hugh was surprised—and delighted—at the lady’s discrimination and genuine culture. It was difficult to realize that any one who wrote so atrociously could think and speak so well.
“It’s like Kate’s bicycle,” he said to himself, “a single woman must break out somewhere. The probabilities are, if she had a home of her own, that she would never want to touch a pen again.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Oh, I could eat a drop cake,—couldn’t you?”
“A Benson’s one,” said Pauline dreamily; “they’re the sweetest.”
“But there are more currants in Dunks’s,” said Muffie. “I shall spend my penny there.”
“You won’t,” said Lynn, who was subject to fits of pessimism, “you’ll never spend it. Anna will never have finished washing up. Miss Bibby will never have finished writing to mamma. We’ll never get up to the shops. We’ll have to stop shut up here for ever.”
“But why,” said Muffie, who was only six, and easily bewildered by words, “why can’t we do like always and ever when we come up here?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Lynn looked distressed.
“But there ought to be,” she said.
“But there isn’t,” repeated Pauline; “and I tell you I won’t write untruths.”
“Very well,” said Lynn meekly, “it can be earth, only it doesn’t sound so green. Say,
‘Out on the earth where the fairies play;
Come and play with us, oh, come and play.’”
“‘Out on the earth where the fairies play,’” wrote Pauline, and the next line said, “Prime middle cuts at Octavius Smith’s, Elevenpence a pound.”
“Here’s Larkin,” called Muffie excitedly, “an’ he’s coming very slowly, so he can’t be in a hurry. Let’s ask him for another ride.” ”

“ Miss Bibby hastily expressed the sentiment that nothing he could do could surprise her; then saw the difficulties of the sentence, and grappled hard with it to reduce it to a polite form that should express the fact that a great author is above all the petty bonds that bind the rest of the world, and must be expected to act accordingly.
But Hugh was evidently not listening to her.
“Most authors, I believe,” he said, “when working, wear their collars in the place intended by nature—or should I say the manufacturers?—namely, around their neck. ”

“ Lynn, who, though but eight, is given to quaint and delicate turns of thought, calls it all “God’s kaleidoscope.”
Nearer to the station cluster the weatherboard business places of the little township of Burunda. The butcher does a trade of perhaps two sheep a week during the winter, but leaps to many a score of them when “the strangers” begin to come up from the moist city at the first touch of November’s heat. The bakers—there are two of them—fight bitterly for “the strangers’” custom.
All the winter a few decrepit-looking tarts and buns form the shop window display of each. ”

“ After ten years the demarcation was not so clearly defined: pines and young oaks, ashes and elms, stood about in perfectly friendly relations with the gum trees and wattles, and the boronia looked up at the rose and saw that it, too, was good.
“Have you washed your hands? Max, Muffie—go into the bathroom instantly, please, and wash your hands,” said Miss Bibby, as the children trooped in after their interview with Larkin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ And never did an advertisement offer free a sample bottle of any drug, no matter for what purpose, but Anna sent instantly and claimed it.
It needed nothing but the announcement on Max’s malt bottle of its tissue-building qualities, and its power of restoring the waste of nature in the human frame, for the girl at once privately to take a course of the same treatment and, as the chemist’s bill might have testified, from the same bottle. ”

“ 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?” ”