John Brown'slife had hitherto been a curiously rough and tumble sort of existence. There had been a season, brief and entirely unremembered by him, when his home had been in one of Sydney's most fashionable suburbs; when a tender-eyed mother had watched delightedly over his first gleams of intelligence, and a proud father had perched him on his shoulder for a bed-time romp. When he had been taken tenderly for an "airing" by the trimmest of nursemaids, and in the daintiest of perambulators. When he had worn tiny silk frocks and socks and bonnets. When hopes and fears had arisen over "teething-time." When he had been carried round a drawing-room, to display to admiring friends, his chubby wrists, hisdimpled fat legs, his quite remarkable length of limb and growth of bone.
Then Death slipped in unawares, and called the sweet young mother from that happy home, and little John Brown became a perplexity and a care to a grief-maddened father.
For a space it was conjectured that the baby, pending the arrival of a step-mother, would be handed over to the cook, a rotund motherly person who was fond of asserting that she had buried thirteen children and reared one.
But conjectures have a way of falling beside the mark.
One morning an old schoolmate of poor little Mrs. Brown's arrived from "out back," packed up the baby's things with her own quick brown hands and returned "out back" the same evening.
The perambulator, the cradle, the cot, the dainty baby basket and a multitude of other things were sold the next week along with the tables and chairs and other "household effects," and Mr. John Brown, senior,a cabin box and a portmanteau, left by a mail steamer for Japan.
And the small suburban house became "to let." Thenceforward the pattern of little John Brown's existence became altered. He was one of three other children, and not even the baby, although scarcely one year old.
His elegant lace-trimmed silken and muslin garments were "laid by." He wore dark laundry-saving dresses and neither boots nor socks. He was never carried around for admiration, for the very good reason that visitors were few and far between—and there was (except to doting parents, perhaps) very little to admire about him. He lost his chubbiness and his pink prettiness and became thin and wiry, brown faced and brown limbed.
He was always abnormally tall and abnormally strong, so that he became almost a jest on the station. He learned to fight at three, to swim at four, shoot at seven, ride, yard cattle, milk, chop wood, make bush fires and put them out again, ring bark trees allbefore he was eleven. In short, to do, and to do remarkably well, the hundred and one things that make up a man's and boy's existence on an Australian station.
At thirteen he learned that his name was Brown, and that he had a father other than the bluff squatter he had grown up with. And at thirteen he was taken from the station-life he loved, and, after much travelling, delivered by a station-hand into his father's care in Sydney.
Before he could form any idea as to what was about to happen to him, and to this grey-bearded father of his, he was taken across the blue harbour water, and thence by coach to the little township over the northern hills.
They walked past the small weather-board school together, and few, if any, words passed between them. For the man's thoughts were away down the slope of many years, and the boy's were away in that flat country "out back" where he had been brought up.
They were close to the great iron gateswhen the man broke the silence; pointing beyond them he remarked—
"This is where your home will be in the future, John."
John considered the prospect thoughtfully and shook his head—
"I'd rather go home," he said. "Let me go home."
"No," said his father, "it can't be done. I ought to have fetched you away sooner, only I shirked a duty. Open the little gate, I see the big ones are padlocked. Push, it's stiff."
They walked up the long red drive, John's mind busy over the questions he wished to ask his father and he began to lag behind considering them.
"This will be your home," repeated Mr. Brown quietly, "and it's a marvellous thing how life has arranged itself. The turn of Fortune's wheel, we may say. Walk quicker, John."
When they stood before the great front door, Mr. Brown became retrospective again.
"We played here together," he said—,"down these very steps, along these very paths. It is strange how life has fallen out—how my boy will be——" He put out his hand and pulled the bell vigorously, then turned his back to the house and surveyed the garden.
"Is it a school?" whispered John. But before his father could reply the door had rolled back and a man-servant stood looking at them.
Mr. Brown walked in, put his hat on a table, motioned to John, and opened a door at one side of the wide hall.
"It's me—Brown," he said as he entered the room. "I've brought the boy."
John followed very quickly, being curious now. His father stood half-way across the room, looking hesitating and apologetic.
A man of sixty or so, with a red, merry-looking face, and an unmistakable sea-captain air, glanced up from a paper he was reading.
"Eh?" he asked.
Then he sent his look—it was a quick darting look that saw everything in the twinklingof an ordinary person's eye—to the thin badly-dressed figure in the rear. "Eh? The boy? Oh—ah! My newly-found grandson."
"He is scarcely what I had hoped to find," said Mr. Brown, apologetic still. "Yet his mother was a good-looking woman and——"
"Be hanged to looks," said Mr. Carew. "He'll get on all the better without 'em. And you were never anything to boast of yourself you know. What's his name?"
"John."
"Um! John Brown. John Carew-Brown, we'll say. It's a pity it's not John Brown Carew."
"That's a matter that can easily be altered. It can be merely John Carew, if you like, and let the melodious Brown go hang."
"Eh? What does the boy say? What do you say John to changing your name and letting the Brown go hang?"
To Mr. Brown's surprise and consternation, the boy gave an emphatic "No."
"Ah!" said old Mr. Carew, "and how's that? Speak up, John."
"The boys 'ud forget me," said John anxiously, "and I'd have to begin all over agen."
"What with?—Leave him alone, Brown."
"Thrashing 'em. They know me everywhere about Warrena. I can make 'em all sit up. I don't want to change my name."
A sparkle came into the old man's eyes.
"Well said, my lad," he snapped. "I'd not have given a rap for you if you'd have cast your name away as easily as a pinching pair o' boots. Stick to your own name, John, and you'll look all the better after mine."
He waited a bit, eyeing the boy up and down keenly. The thin brown face, with its square determined mouth, quiet grey eyes and high forehead; the sturdy figure, countrified clothes, copper-toed boots, all passed under his scrutiny.
"So you're of the fighting kind?" he asked at last.
"Yes," said John proudly.
"Ah! You never were, you remember, Brown. Things might have been different if you had been."
He waited again. Then he smiled queerly.
"John," he said, "your father's going away again to-night. You're my grandson. It may not seem a great matter to you now—but it is, all the same. You stay here. You and I have to take life together, boy—though you're at one end of the ladder and I'm at t'other. Your name's your name right enough, but I want you to be good enough to tack mine on to it, and to do a bit of fighting for mine too if necessary. I've fought for it hard in my day too. And now, John Carew-Brown, we'll have a bit of lunch if it's all the same to you."
Mrs. Brucewas down on her knees caressing tiny Czar violets. Quite early in the morning (before the breakfast things were washed or the beds made) she had slipped on one of Dot's picturesque poppy-trimmed hats and declared her intention of planting the bed outside the study windows thick with these the sweetest-scented of all flowers.
"And all the time you are working and thinking and plotting, daddie darling, the sweetest scents will be stealing round you," she said.
For some little time she was quite happy among her violets. But presently a richly hued wall-flower called her attention to a cluster of its blooms, drooping on the pebbly path for a careless foot to crush,—all for the want of a few tacks and littleshreds of cloth. A heavily-blossomed rose-tree begged that some of its buds might be clipped, and a favourite carnation put in its claim for a stake.
"So much to do!" said Mrs. Bruce, as she flitted here and there in the old-fashioned garden, which was a veritable paradise to her. "The rosesmustbe clipped, the violetsmustbe thinned, the carnationsmustbe staked. And there are the new seedlings to be planted. Oh, IthinkI will take the week for my garden—and let the house go!"
A flush of almost girlish excitement was in her cheeks, her garden meant so very much to her. Certainly the house had strong claims—and it was Monday morning—the very morning for forming and carrying out good plans and resolutions! Meals wanted cooking, cupboards and drawers tidying; garments darning and patching! But then—the garden! Did it not also need her. Ah! and did she not also need it!
Even as she hesitated, balancing duty with beauty, Betty's voice floated out through the kitchen window, past the passion-fruitcreeper and the white magnolia tree, past the tiny sweet violets and the study windows, right to where she stood among the roses and wall-flowers.
"Iamso tired of washing up," it said, "it wasn't fair of Dot. She had four plates for her breakfast—Ionly had one. She might remember I've to go to school as well as her."
Then Mrs. Bruce advanced one foot towards the house, and in thought wielded the tea-towel and attacked the trayful of cups and saucers that she knew would be awaiting the tea-towel.
It was Cyril's voice that arrested her. It came from the kitchen too.
"What's washing up!" said Cyril contemptuously. "Washing up a few cups and spoons—pooh! How'd you like to be me and have to clean all the knives, I wonder."
Whereat Mrs. Bruce relinquished thoughts of the tea-towel. It would never do, she told herself, to assist Betty and leave poor Cyril unaided. "And Icouldn'tclean knives," she said.
But she ran indoors to her bedroom, whence came an angry crying voice. Six-year-old Nancy was, in the frequent intervals that occurred in the doing of her hair, frolicking about the small hot bedroom and trying frantically to catch the interest of the thumb-and-cot-disgusted baby.
"Do your hair nicely," said Mrs. Bruce to her second youngest daughter. "I will take baby into the garden. Button your shoes and ask Betty to see that your ears are clean. And your nails. A little lady always has nice nails."
She carried her baby away, kissing her neck and cheeks and hands, and telling her, as she had told them all, from Dorothy downwards, that there never had been such a baby in the world before.
And she slipped her into the much used hammock under the old apple tree, and left her to play with her toes and fingers, whilst she went back to her violets and roses singing—
"Rock-a-bye, Baby on a tree top,There you are put, there you must stop."
"Rock-a-bye, Baby on a tree top,There you are put, there you must stop."
and trying to be rid of that uncomfortable feeling, of having done what she wanted and not what she ought.
In the study Mr. Bruce sat before a paper-strewn table. Most of the papers related to his beloved book—which was almost half-completed. It had reached that stage several times before, and what had been written thereafter had been consigned to the kitchen fire.
Now it was necessary that he should put it away, even out of thought, and turn his attention towards something that would bring in a quick return. For Dot's school fees would be due very shortly, and he remembered, with a smile-lit sigh, that this quarter she had taken up two extras, singing and dancing.
His income would not admit of extras—and yet, as Mrs. Bruce frequently put it, Dot was the eldest and was very pretty. She certainly must be able to dance and sing!
He gathered up a few stray leaves of his manuscript, rolled them up with the bulk, and heroically put them away.
But, as he returned to his seat, he caughta glimpse of his wife, kneeling on the path, and making a little trench with a trowel in the bed outside his window.
"Well, little mother!" he called, and felt blithe as he said it, and young and fresh hearted, just because of the bright face in the poppy-trimmed hat.
"I ought to be in the kitchen making a pudding," she said, screwing up her face into a grimace.
"You are far better where you are," he said fondly.
"Yes. But, oh, dear! I wish I had a cook, and laundress, and a housemaid. Oh, and a nursemaid, too! It is dreadful to be poor, isn't it, daddie?"
She went on with her gardening, just as happy as before, but the face that the little author took to his work-table had grown grave in a minute.
"She was born to have servants," he said, "servants and ease. I must work harder."
Cyril's voice broke into his reverie. He had come beneath the study windows to interview his mother.
"Can't I be raised to twopence a week now I'm going on for thirteen," he said. "Bert Davis gets threepence, and he's only nine."
Mr. Brace did not catch the reply. But he told himself that most men would have been more liberal in the matter of£. s. d.to their only son.
He began to pace round and round his study.
"I must work harder—harder—harder!" he said. "I must put my book away, and grind out those articles for Montgomery!"
Nancy, in a big white sun-bonnet, clean for the new week, passed under his window and turned her face to the wicket gate. He could hear that she was crying in a miserable forsaken way, crying and talking to herself away within that capacious bonnet of hers.
He called "Baby!" and leaned over his window sill to her. But she did not hear him. She just went murmuring on to the gate.
Then two other hurrying little figures came along. Cyril, with a battered hat crusheddown on his head, and his school-bag over his shoulders, and Betty with her boots unlaced, a white bonnet under her arm, and a newspaper parcel, which she was trying to coax into neatness, in one hand.
"It's all through you and your ghosts," Cyril was saying grumblingly. "I know I'd have done my lessons only for you, Betty Bruce."
"What is the matter with Nancy?" asked their father, leaning over the window sill once more. "Why was she crying?"
"'Cause she thinks she'll be late," said Betty easily. "She always cries if she thinks she's late."
Down the road they went, Nancy hurrying and crying, Cyril grumbling, Betty silent.
To none of them had Monday morning come exactly right—fresh and uncrumpled.
Betty sat down, just outside her grandfather's gate, to lace her boots, and Cyril went grumbling on about a hundred yards behind Nancy.
Then did a fresh crease get into the new week's first day for Betty. Looking underher arm as she bent over her boot, she beheld three figures walking down the road, and at the first glimpse of them her face grew hot.
"Geraldine and Fay!" she exclaimed.
The centre figure was dressed in a lilac print, and wore a spotless apron and a straw hat. Upon either side of her walked a little golden-haired girl, one apparently about Betty's age, and one Nancy's. Their dresses were white and spotless, and reached almost to their knees; their hats were flat shady things trimmed with muslin and lace. Their hair was beautifully dressed and curled, their boots shining—and buttoned, and their faces smiling and happy-looking.
They were Betty's ideals! Little rich girls, who rode ponies, and drove—sometimes in a village cart with a nurse, and sometimes in a carriage with a lady who invariably wore beautiful hats and dresses. Sometimes, again, they were to be seen in a dog-cart with a dark man who seemed a splendid creature indeed to Betty.
The little girl by the roadside grasped her unbuttoned boot in one hand, her bonnetand newspaper parcel in the other, and in a trice had squeezed herself under her grandfather's fence, just at a point where two or three panels were broken down.
Then she peeped out to see if they were looking. But no—they had not seen her. Betty gave a great sigh of relief as she watched them. How beautiful they were. How dainty! Betty looked down at her own old boots, old stockings, old dress. She turned her bonnet over disdainfully and thought of their lace-trimmed hats—their golden hair!
"Oh, I am glad they didn't see me!" she said aloud fervently.
Just then a voice shouted, a rough word to her from the path, and Betty awoke to two alarming facts. The one, that she was in the emu's enclosure and that one great bird was bearing curiously towards her already; the other, that her grandfather was the one who had called to her, and that John Brown, who was careering down the path on his bicycle, had stopped and was evidently giving information about her.
Her grandfather waved an angry hand.
"Out you go!" he shouted. "If you come here again, I'll set the dogs loose!"
Betty squeezed herself under the fence just before the emu reached her, and once more faced a very crumpled Monday morning.
Itmust be confessed that John Brown—or to be polite and up-to-date—John Carew-Brown surveyed the pupils of Wygate School with a fighting eye, which is to say, he considered them carefully with regarded to their pugilistic abilities, and he decided very soon that he "could make them all sing small."
Even upon that first day when he, a new boy, had been standing in view of the whole school, his mind had chiefly been occupied in running over the boys' obvious fighting qualities—tall, short, fat, thin, all sorts and conditions of them were there.
The girls he had passed by with but slight notice; to him they were absolutely valueless and uninteresting. Betty Bruce had certainly caught his attention by her public punishment, and he had been taken aback by thatsharp little pinch of hers. Hitherto he had had nothing to do with girls but he supposed immediately that that was their manner of fighting, and he did not admire it.
Not many days later an opportunity occurred for him to defend his newly adopted name. Truth to tell, he had been longing for such an occasion from the day on which old Captain Carew had asked him to fight for his name too.
He was in the playground, round by the school house, just where the babies' end of the school room joined the cloak room, and school was over for the day. Having a piece of chalk in one hand, and nothing particular to do, he occupied a few minutes by writing upon the weather boards of the cloak-room—"J. C. Brown, J. C. Brown, John C. Brown, John C. Brown," and the hinting C. raised a small dispute in a circle of onlooking boys and girls.
It was Peter Bailey who said, "John Clara Brown," and it was silly little Jack Smith who said "John Codfish Brown."
A burst of laughter followed, and PeterBailey and Jack Smith chased each other down the playground, and in and out among the sapling clump away at the end of it, where some shabby scrub and three gum trees grew.
When they came back, John Brown was still silently writing apparently deaf to all the surmising going on around him.
Nellie Underwood said it was—"Crabby John Brown," and Arthur Smedley, the school bully, said—"John Brown the clown."
Whereupon Brown sought out a clean weather-board a shade or so above his head and wrote in bold letters.
"John Carew-Brown, Dene Hall, Willoughby," which made Bailey say—
"Hullo, he's got hold of Bruce's grandfather."
Cyril, who was one of the little circle of jesters, grew pink to the tips of his pretty pink ears, but feeling the majority and the bully were against Brown, ventured to say—
"He's only running you!"
Nellie Underwood pushed herself into a prominent position in the group and cried—
"I seen him coming out of Dene Hall gates,and old Mr. Carew was with him. So there!"
John Brown chose another weather-board and the group closed round him to read—
"John Carew-Brown, only grandson of Captain Carew, of Dene Hall, Willoughby, Sydney, N.S. Wales, Australia, Southern Hemisphere," which certainly looked imposing and had the effect of silencing every one for almost half a minute.
Then the bully's eyes glared into Cyril's pretty blue ones, and he said angrily—
"You said you were the only grandson."
Cyril did not speak.
"You said," repeated the bully, "you said the Captain was going to adopt you, and give you his collection of guinea pigs."
Cyril hung his crimson face and kicked the ground with the toe of his boot.
John Brown chose another weather-board and wrote—
"Captain Carew has no guinea pigs," which sent most of the blood away from Cyril's face. The bully was eyeing him angrily, and even went as far as doubling up one fist.
"You said he was going to give you fiveshillings a week pocket-money, and let you buy my white mice," he muttered, and Cyril found himself face to face with the occasion, and with no clever intervening Betty to throw the right word into the right place, and so save his skin and his honour.
"So he is," he said, moving away from Brown as far as he dared—"and so I am the only grandson." He looked over his shoulder and beheld Brown's back, whereupon he felt if Brown could not see he could not hear. "He'sonly the gardener's boy," he said; "ask"—his mind made a swift excursion for an authority—"ask my grandfather," he said, "any of you who like, ask my grandfather."
Brown and his chalk advanced to Cyril.
"Who told you I was the gardener's boy?" he asked. Cyril looked from foe to foe, and the wild thought of denying he had said such words entered his mind, only to be followed by a swift remembrance of various daring deeds of the bully's.
So he went over recklessly to Arthur Smedley's side.
"My grandfather!" he said.
"Are you going to be adopted?" asked the bully.
"Yes," said Cyril in desperation.
"Are you going to have five shillings a week?" demanded the bully.
"No—I'm going to have ten," roared Cyril.
A window belonging to Mr. Sharman's private house, which adjoined the school, flew open, and John Brown's name was sharply called. It entered into Arthur Smedley's mind to see what writing remained upon the wall, and he went across to the cloak-room for that purpose.
Whereupon Cyril looked to the right of him, to the left of him, to the back of him, and beheld neither friend nor foe in his vicinity; and he heaved a sigh of great satisfaction, ran to the fence, squeezed himself through a hole in it, and was upon the road towards home in a trice.
But before he had gone more than a hundred yards he heard quick footsteps behind him, and looking over his shoulder he saw John C.Brown. Then did a sickening sense of terror sweep over him, and his heart leapt into his mouth, for had he not said John Carew-Brown was "only the gardener's boy"?
Bettywas in the belt of bush that lay between the wicket-gate of her home and the road. Her idea was to be sufficiently near to home to gather from the sound of the voices that might call her if she werereallyneeded and yet to be so far from sight that the continual "Betty, come here," and "Betty, go there," could not be.
She had come home as soon as school was out, come home leaving Cyril and Nancy behind her, flung herself beneath the shade of one of her favourite old gum trees, and begun to write.
When Mr. Bruce was busy over a story, or an article, or a book, every one in the house knew. Then the study door would be closed and the window only opened at the top; then the children would be banished fromthe side garden into which the study looked, and from the passage outside the study door; then Mrs. Bruce would carry his meals to him upon a tray, and he would have strong black coffee in the early evening. And then at last a neatly folded missive, gummed and tied with thin string, with a mysterious "MS. only" inscribed in one corner, would be carried to the post by either Cyril or Betty.
When Dot wrote a story, as she very frequently did now-a-days, portions of it would be carried into the study for her father to see, and her mother would proudly read page after page of the neat round hand, and wonder where on earth the child got her ideas from.
But when Betty wrote her stories, no one in the house—excepting Cyril, of course—knew anything about it! no one kept the house quiet for Betty, and no one wondered wherever she got her ideas from. And yet she had quite a collection of fairy stories and poems of her own composition. She and an exercise book, or a few scraps of paper and a stumpy bit of pencil were to be seen sometimes in very close companionship.
But for all that no one did see; or seeing, they did not understand.
Still Betty wrote her stories—not necessarily for publication like her father—nor as a guarantee that the scribbling genius was within her, like Dot—but for the love of story writing alone.
Her fairy story to-day had to do with the bold and handsome Waratah which ran mad in the bush behind her home, towards Middle Harbour. Her fertile fancy had suggested many roles for these flowers to take.
It occurred to her as she wrote that she had intended to write a poem which should stir Cyril—not one ofhersort of poems, about streams and flowers and dells and birds, but a dashing sort of poem, one that would make Cyril say "ByJup-i-ter, Betty," and learn it off by heart without any asking.
For a space she laid down her story, which began, "Once upon a time," and asked herself what there was that she could make a poem of for Cyril.
"It must be something brave," she said. "A horse, a dog, a fire, a man—a St.Bernard dog saving a boy—a soldier—I think a soldier would suit Cyril!"
She stared through the bush to the red road consideringly, holding her pencil ready to write. As she looked she became aware of a small figure running along the road, and entering the bush track. It was Cyril, and Cyril in woe. She could see that at a glance, and of course the first thing she did was to throw down her paper and pencil and run to meet him.
As she got nearer to him she saw tears were running down his face and she heard, ever and anon as he ran, a great sob, half of anger and half of fear, come bursting from his lips.
"Oh, my poor boy, whateveristhe matter?" she cried in her most motherly way.
"The g-g-great big bully!" sobbed Cyril.
"Oh dear!" exclaimed Betty in distress.
"Oh the b-b-big bully. Let's get home."
"Big John Brown?" asked Betty, for only yesterday this same John Brown had sent her small brother home weeping over a sore head.
"Yes, of course. He—he said he'd knockme into next year. Come on, can't you?"
Betty was running by his side at quite a brisk trot to keep up with him.
"I—I hope you knocked him down," she said.
"He said grandfather isn't our grandfather at all."
"Oh!—and youdidgive him a black eye Cywil dear?" asked Betty eagerly. Her "r's" had a way of rolling themselves into "w's" whenever she was excited.
They were at the wicket-gate now, and Cyril slackened his speed, and looked over his shoulder. No one was in sight.
"Oh, I will do!" he said boldly. "I told him no Bruce was afraid!"
"That's right," said Betty eagerly. "That's right Cywil. No Bruce is afraid. But you did knock him down, didn't you."
Cyril hesitated—then his trouble broke from him in a burst. "We fight to-night down at our coral islands at seven," he said.
"Oh my bwave Cywil!" exclaimed Betty admiringly. "Oh, I am so glad—oh, I am so very glad!"
But Cyril looked doleful, and was lagging behind his small eager sister.
"I'm not so sure that he meant us to fight," he said. "He—he never asked me to."
"What did he say?"
"He only said something about a challenge and things."
"Oh," said Betty, eager again in a minute; "ifhe said 'challenge' youmustfight. There's no get out."
"But I've hurt my leg."
"Oh never mind your leg—think of the honour of the Bruces!" said the fervent Betty, who regarded the family cognomen as something sacred and against which no breath of evil must be allowed to come.
"Honour of the Bruces be hanged, if I'm lame," said Cyril savagely.
A sense of foreboding swept over Betty as she followed Cyril into the house. Her imagination showed her willows and the "coral islands," and only John Brown—big square John Brown—there. She knew the story that would soon be all over the school—all over the neighbourhood—that Cyril had beenafraidto fight. Of course she, Betty, his own twin sister, knew there would not be a grain of truth in it. She knew he was shy and delicate, and had hurt his leg. But for all that, she wished eagerly that he were not shy and delicate, and did not always have some bodily ill when fighting time came. And more than one sob shook her, for she beheld the honour of the Bruces being trampled under John Brown's big boots.
She set the table and went about her usual household tasks in a very half-hearted way. Cyril would not look at her, and crept off to bed at six o'clock, complaining of the pain in his leg. Tea was over by then, and Betty, with her woeful look still on her face was helping "wash up" in the kitchen.
Cyril in his bedroom turned down his stocking and examined the little blue bruise near his knee. That there was some outward and visible sign of his hurt he was very thankful. It raised his self-respect and brought tears of self-pity to his eyes, that Betty should have expected him to fight under such circumstances! So much did the sight of hiswound upset him that he only went on one leg while undressing, though it must be confessed it was not always the same leg that did the hopping.
Presently, after he had been lying in bed for some little time and commiserating with himself over his sad fate, the door opened and Betty, with the wistfulness quite gone from her face, came in. Andsucha Betty! Her brown hair was bundled away under one of Cyril's battered straw hats, and thankful indeed had she been that she had so little hair to bundle. She wore one of Cyril's sailor jackets, and a pair of his serge knickers, and few looking at her casually, would have insulted her with the supposition that she was a mere girl.
Her face was alight with eagerness as she besought her brother to "justseeif he'd know her!"
"It'll be almost dark when I get there," she said, "and he'll neverdweamI'm not you."
"But what'll you do when you get there?" asked Cyril, sitting up in bed; "perhaps a challengedoesmean a fight!"
"Fight him!" said Betty stoutly; "I've been wanting to ever since he went above me."
"You can't fight," said Cyril disgustedly. "You're only a girl."
Betty's face positively flamed with eagerness.
"Can't fight!" she said. "Why Fred Jones taught me. He says I've got the knack, but notverymuch strength. Anyway, I fought that Barry kid the other day,Ican promise you!"
"But John Brown is three times as big as Ces Barry."
"I know!" she sighed dismally. "Anyway, it's better to be beaten than not to fight at all. And if you don't fight, they—theymightsay you were afraid." Her face grew scarlet as she put the horrid thought into words.
When the door was shut, Cyril jumped out of bed to watch her go, and so occupied was he overherdanger, that he forget his own hurt and did not limp at all.
Up and down the garden paths his motherand father were walking, his mother's arm through his father's, and a happy peaceful look on her face. The thought ran through the boy's mind, how little grown up ones know of the troubles of childhood. Nancy was rolling with baby on the little lawn, singing—
"John, John, John, the grey goose is gone,The fox is away o'er the hill, Oh!"
"John, John, John, the grey goose is gone,The fox is away o'er the hill, Oh!"
and he thought how good it was to be a girl—a goose—a fox—anything but a boy!
Then he crept back to bed, covered up his head and began to cry. For he was afraid that Betty would be hurt—and once again had he hung back when he should have gone forward. And his heart told him that again he had been a coward.
Down by the willows John Brown was waiting. He had very much enjoyed issuing his "challenge" but he felt morally certain that it would not be accepted. He was therefore surprised when he saw his small adversary approaching him in the dusk.
Who shall say what fancies were running riot in his head! He was a squire goingto punish a rash youth for trying to thrust himself into their family. He, his grandfather's grandson, was going to thrash a foolish boy for taking his grandfather's name in vain!
Meanwhile his little foe came on, over the rough sun-burnt grass, over a fallen tree through a small stretch of denser scrub, to the very shores of the "coral island sea." And the baby-moon chose the moment of their meeting to slip behind a cloud and leave the world in semi-darkness.
"Well done, Bruce!" said Brown coming forward and speaking in a hearty tone; "I didn't believe you'd come—I didn't think you had a fight in you."
"We Bruces fight till we die!" piped Betty, and bit her lip to still its quivering.
Brown laughed. He detected the nervousness in his opponent's voice, and had fully expected it. If he had found "Bruce" over-bold, he would have been surprised indeed. As it was, the reply in some way pleased him.
"Well," he said, "you're not going to fight me.I'mnot in a fighting mood; I'm going tothrashyou."
Betty caught her breath. It certainly entered into her mind to cry out and run away, but she did nothing of the sort, she only clenched her hands, and stood her ground—having as usual a sufficiency of courage for the occasion.
The next minute Brown's great hand had grasped her coat collar, and she felt herself swung round, stood down and swung round again. Then a sharp swish lashed her once, twice, thrice.
Whereupon Betty began to fight on her own account, forgetting all the advice Fred Jones had given her about "hitting out from the shoulder," etc. etc. She kicked Brown's legs with all the strength she could put into her own. She pinched his wrists and his cheek, and lastly and to his disgust she set her sharp little teeth into his hand.
He dropped her quickly, her hat rolled off, and down tumbled her short curly hair. And the moon chose that moment to sail fromunder the cloud and put Betty's face in a soft silver light.
Brown whistled. "By Jove!" he said, the "sister."
Betty crammed her hat down upon her head again.
"I'm not," she said. "It's not! It's me, Cyril. Come on,coward,bully!"
She made a little rush at him, but Brown threw down his switch.
"Thanks," he said. "I'm not taking any this trip."
"Come on," urged Betty.
"I don't fight girls, thanks."
Betty began to cry in a heart-broken desperate way.
"It's not me," she said. "It's Cyril. It's Cyril. Oh, it's Cyril!"
But Brown, smiling darkly, turned from her, jumped over the fence, and took his way through the banana grove to his home.
And what pen could tell of his heaviness of heart, and great shame in that he hadthrasheda girl. He could feel her light weight yet as he swung her round, hear hergirlish voice crying, "We Bruces fight till we die!" see her thin white face in the moonlight as her hat fell off, and she looked at him and said—
"Come on, coward, bully!"
How he tingled with shame. Coward, bully! Yes, he had hit a girl.
Betty started for home at a brisk run, for during her adventure the night had advanced, and her imagination peopled the surrounding bush with bogeys, and imps and elves.
And as she ran, sobs broke from her, solely on account of her physical woes.
Within the wicket gate she walked slowly. How could fear of outer darkness remain, when the dinning-room window sent such a bar of light beyond.
She crept softly along the verandah to the window and peeped in. Her father was lying on the old cane lounge, his eyes upon her mother who sat at the piano, in a pretty fresh dress, flower-like as ever. For a space, while little boy-Betty looked, she just touched the keys tenderly as if she loved them like her flowers, then she struck a few chords, andbegan to sing "Home, Sweet Home," in her sweet girlish voice.
And Betty turned away, the tears running down her cheeks, and her small heart aching.
"I've been bad again," she said, "and I meant to be good always. I don't believe youcanbe good till you are grown up." She ran along the passage into the little bedroom which she and Dot and Nancy shared, and she fell down by Dot's quiet white bed and buried her face in the quilt.
"Bad again," she sobbed. "I've been bad again. Oh, I'mgladI got thrashed, it ought to do me good." But it is to be feared her gladness was not very deep, because a sense of great satisfaction swept over her as she remembered, she had kicked, really kicked, big John Brown.
Alma Montague, a wealthy doctor's daughter; Elsie and Minnie Stevenson, daughters of a Queensland squatter; and Nellie Harden, only child of a Supreme Court Judge, were Dorothea Bruce's "intimate" friends. Mona Parbury was her only "bosom" friend. Thus she defined them herself when speaking of them to members of her family and to the girls themselves, who were one and all eager to stand a "bosom" friend to pretty Thea Bruce as they called her.
The difference between an "intimate" friend and a "bosom" friend is too subtle to be described, but school-girls all the world over, and those who have left school days just behind them, will know and understand.
Mona Parbury was one week older thanDorothea and one inch (they measured upon the verandah wall) taller. Her waist was two sizes larger; her boots and gloves were three. In every way she was cast in a different mould from Dorothea. She was a heavily built girl, who looked at sixteen as though her teens were a year or two behind her. Her features were pronounced—high cheek-bones, square chin, high forehead; her hair was black and straight and plentiful, and she wore it in a heavy plait down her back. Her eyes were brown, clear, faithful, good eyes, and her mouth was distinctly large and ill-shaped.
Such was Mona in the days when Dorothea loved her—in the days when Dorothea told her all her hopes, and dreams, and often very foolish thoughts; when she made her the heroine of her stories; and wrote little poems to her as—"her love"—and little loving letters if the cruel fate which sometimes hovers over such friendships separated them for half a day.
We have seen Dorothea before. She was small and fairy-like; slender-waisted andlight in movement. Her hair was golden and curly, and was usually worn quite loose about her shoulders; her eyes were blue and sunshiny and lashed by dark curling lashes; her mouth was small and red, and her complexion delicate pink and white. All of her "intimate" friends gave her the frankest admiration—they all loved her, and they were all eager to stand first with her.
But it was Mona who loved her the most. Mona who kept and treasured every one of the little "private" notes sent to her by Dot. She worked out all her most troublesome sums, brushed and curled her hair; bore many of her punishments; brought her numberless fal-lals (keepsakes she called them); wore a lock of her golden hair in a locket around her neck, and told her all of her secrets—she had as many as ten a week sometimes.
Miss Weir, the "principal" of the school, had, many years ago, given to Dorothea's mother much the same sort of love as Mona Parbury now gave to Dorothea. And it was owing to this old love that Dorothea was nowadmitted on very low terms to the most fashionable school in Sydney.
No one among all the pupils (there were fifteen) knew anything about poverty—no one but Dorothea. As she once said in a burst of anguish to her mother—
"They are all rich, everyoneof them. They live in beautiful houses and have parlourmaids and housemaids and nursemaids, and kitchenmaids and cooks and carriages, and as much money to spend as we have to live on, I believe."
It was very rarely, though, that any of her troubles ruffled her calm serenity. Dorothea was usually as placid as the placidest baby. She longed to be rich, and to have pretty things to wear and a handsome house to live in, but she never talked of her poverty. Instead she draped its cloven foot gracefully, and turned her back on it—andimaginedshe was rich—from Monday till Friday.
She discussed "fashion" and "society" with Alma Montague and Nellie Harden, and grew quite familiar with the names and doings of the great society dames. She even learned—at considerable pains—a "society" tone of voice with a drawl in it and a little lisp.
School life was a great happiness to her—the regular hours, the beautifully ordered house, the neat table, the daily constitutional, the morning and evening prayer-time, and the hour in the drawing-room at night, everything that made life from Monday till Friday.
It was Friday till Monday that was the cross, Friday till Monday, the days when the cloven foot would not be draped, when the elegancies of life were left behind in the city, when the twins and the babies were everywhere, when the meals were often but suddenly thought of snatches of food.
Sometimes the thought of the looming future—the time when all the days would be as Friday till Monday, when there would no longer be any school days to be lived by her—would quite break down her placidity, and make her feel she could put down her head anywhere and cry.
Yet away they were marching, one by one, all the beautiful school-days, all the days of discipline and pleasant duty, and the uglyslack days, when there would be nothing but home with house-work to do, were drawing near.
And at last she could bear the thought of it by herself no longer.
It was early evening, and she was on the schoolroom verandah, watching the young moon rise over a distant chimney. Every moment she expected the prayer-bell to ring, and meanwhile, as it was not ringing, she filled up the time by counting how many more evening prayer-bells would ring before the end of term.
She counted on her fingers, out aloud, and found there were just twenty-nine—twenty-nine without Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays. Twenty-nine days, and then came the end of term, and the end of her school-days.
It would then be Betty's turn—larrikin Betty's! The moon sailed over the chimney, and Dot put her head down on the verandah railing and began to cry. She did not cry in the vigorous whole-hearted way in which Betty cried, but she sighed heavily, and sobbed gently, and allowed two or three tears to rundown her cheek before she brought out her dainty handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.
And at that precise moment Mona was crossing the schoolroom floor, and she saw her darling Thea in tears! She was not given to light impulsive movements at all, but this time she really didspringforward and kneel at Dot's side.
"Dear, darling Thea!" she whispered, "what is the matter? Miss Cowdell has been bullying you for the silly old French? That's it, isn't it dear?"
"Oh, no!" said Dot hopelessly, "nothinghalfas small as that."
"You've lost the new sleeve-links Alma gave you? Never mind—there are plenty more. Not that? What then? Tell your own Mona—tell your own old Mona."
Two more tears ran down Dot's cheeks.
"It's—it's nearly the end of term," she said.
Mona nodded.
"And I'm going to leave school," she said.
Again Mona nodded and waited.
"I've to go home," said Dot, and she put her head down on Mona's shoulder heavily.
"I've to go home too," said Mona, and she sighed, "right away to the Richmond river, where you girls never come."
"My home," said Dot, "is like a little plain, hedged round with prickly pear, and put on the top of a mountain. No one ever comes in, and we never go out."
"Poor little Thea," said Mona.
"And we're very poor," went on Dorothea with strange recklessness; "we ought to be rich, but we're not, and the house is full of children, and there's never any peace from morning till night."
Mona grew crimson. She wanted to say something very much, and she lacked the courage. Instead she asked how old were the children, as if she did not know!
"There's Betty," said Dot, "she's to come here when I leave, and she won't enjoy it a bit—she's such a romp—and there's Cyril, they're both about twelve. And there's Nancy, she's six, and the baby."
"I wish," said Mona, "Iwishthey belonged to me."
"How can I practise with them everywhere about. How can I read, how can I paint even, write my book, do anything, with them everywhere?" asked Dot dismally. "They just fill the house."
Again Mona stumbled to what she wanted to say, and stopped. Dot would say she was "lecturing." It would never do.
"You're rich," said pretty Dot pouting; "you can have everything you want, do anything, go anywhere."
A few puckers got into Mona's high forehead.
"Once," she said, "I had four sisters, all younger than myself, and they all died. I told you, didn't I?"
"But it's long ago," said Dot. "Three years ago since the baby died. You must have forgotten."
"I'd promised my mother, when she was dying, to be a mother to them. Father and auntmademe go to school, and all the time I was counting on when I should leave, and be an elder sister."
Dot opened her eyes very wide.
"Why did you want to be an elder sister?" she asked.
Mona still looked red and ashamed.
"You should readThe Flower of the Family," she said, and "The Eldest of Seven, Holding in Trust. You'd know then."
Dorothea had read the last, and she began to see and understand.
"You've got your mother and sisters," said Mona shyly.
And then for the first time it occurred to Dorothea that she herself was an elder sister, that she was the eldest of five, and that infinite possibilities lay before her.
"There's only my father and my aunt and brother whenIgo home," said Mona. "And I've only twenty-nine days, too, and then, oh! Thea darling, I have to lose you."
"We'll write twice a week always," whispered Dot, twining her arms round her friend's waist.
"And always be each other's bosom friend," said Mona.
Then the prayer-bell rang, and the four intimate friends scanned Thea closely, seeing that she had been crying, and feeling angry with "that" Mona Parbury for letting her.
Captain Carewand John Brown—big John Brown in Betty's parlance—sat at dinner together.
Although not an elegant dinner table it was very far removed from being a poor one. The linen, silver and glass were all of the best, the very best; the man-servant was decorous and swift of eye, foot and hand, and the menu was beyond any that had entered into John Brown's knowledge, before he came to Dene Hall. Yet he was out of love with it all.
Captain Carew had his glass of clear saffron-coloured wine at his right hand. His silver fork was making easy journeyings from a slice of cold turkey on his plate, to his mouth, and his eyes were now and again running over a long type-written letter that lay before him.
He was well pleased, well fed, and interested, and he had no reason to suppose John Brown was in any other humour than himself.
He had heard that the thoughts of youth were of vast length, and perhaps he believed it. But he did not think John's had reached quite as far as wishing to be a cobbler in a country village.
And it must be confessed that few, seeing the appetite the boy brought to his plate of cold turkey and "snowed" potato, would have suspected him of longing for a "crust of bread and a drink of cold water."
The truth was, he had been of late ransacking his grandfather's library and had found besides sea-stories and stories of wrecks, and foreign lands and pirates and deep sea treasure—what interested him more than all, a volume of biographies of self-made men.
He had lingered longingly over their boyhoods; their brief school times (when such times were lacking altogether he liked both man and story better); their privations, struggles, self-reliance and success. Thesuccess interested him the least. That came, of course, he decided, to all who tried hard enough. But the privations! The struggle! The self-reliance! How his eyes shone and his heart beat at it!
There was the story of Richard Arkwright, the great mechanician.Hewas never at school in his life—never forced to do ridiculous sums, to spell correctly, to parse, to drill, to sing! His biographer said that the only education he ever received he gave himself—that he was fifty years of age when he set to work to learn grammar and to improve his hand-writing. He did not waste the precious hours of his youth over such things. When he was a boy he was apprenticed to a barber, and when he set up in business for himself he occupied an underground cellar and put up his sign—"Come to the subterraneous barber; he shaves for a penny." This caused brisk competition, and a general reduction in barber's prices. Yet not to be beaten, Arkwright altered his sign to "A clean shave for a halfpenny." Then he turned his attention to wig-making, and fromthat to machine-making. And years and years passed. Years filled with patient labour, privations, obstacles, and at lastSuccess! "Eighteen years after he had constructed his first machine he rose to such estimation in Derbyshire that he was appointed High Sheriff of the county, and shortly afterwards George III conferred upon him the honour of knighthood." So said the book.
Shakespeare, he read, was the son of a butcher and grazier; Sir Cloudesley Shovel, the great admiral, a cobbler's son; Stephenson was an engine-fireman; Turner, the great painter, came from a barber's shop.
Life after life he had turned over of men who had risen from the ranks and gotten for themselves fame and riches. So that at last he came to regard humble birth and poverty as the necessary foundations of ultimate success. He noticed that his heroes all worked hard and patiently; were all brave and sternly self-disciplined, plodding onwards past every obstacle and hardship. But he forgot to notice that they all madethebest of that sphere of life into which they were born.
He had quite decided to be a self-made man. That was simple enough. The question that troubled him was what sort of a self-made man to be! A Newton? A Shakespeare? A Stephenson? A Turner? An Arkwright?
The wide choice worried and perplexed him. It was pitiful to his thinking that he could, try and strive as he might, only beone.
He had put himself through several examinations. He had lain under a pear tree and watched the leaves fall; he felt another man had the monopoly of apple trees. And he had decided that the leaves fell because they had become unfastened from the branches, and that they did not fall straight because the wind blew them sideways. And there was an end of the leaves.
He had studied kitchen furnishings and their ways, avoiding only the kettle, since some one else had risen on its steam.
He had tried himself with a pencil and paper, but he had composed nothing evenreminiscent of Shakespeare. In fact, he had composed nothing at all.
And at last he became convinced it was the circumstances of his life that were at fault, not he himself.Ifhe had only been a cobbler's son, a tailor's, a barber's!
But alas! he was well-dressed, well-fed, well-housed; sent to a good school. He had a pony of his own and a man to groom him; a bicycle; a watch; every equipment for cricket and football; a dog; pigeons and most of the possessions dear to the heart of a boy.
He had almost finished his dinner to-day when he put a question to the Captain sitting there smiling over his letter.
"Grandfather," he asked, "are you rich?"
His grandfather sat straight immediately, which is to speak of his features as well as his figure.
"Well, what do you think, lad?" he asked.
John shook his head dolefully.
"Ithink you are," he said, "butareyou?"
"That depends on how riches are counted," said the old man cautiously, "and who does the counting. King Solomon, now, might consider me but an old pauper."
John went on with his dinner thoughtfully.
"Are you wondering what I am going to do with my money?" asked the old man, watching him closely.
John looked him straight in the face.
"I expect you're going to leave it to me," he said.
"Ah!" said his grandfather. "And who has been talking to you now? Who told you that?"
"Oh, Johnson and Roberts and Mrs. Wilkins. Mrs. Wilkins says you'll give it me in a will," said John carelessly.
"Who the dickens is Mrs. Wilkins?"
John opened his eyes widely. Not to know Mrs. Wilkins was indeed to argue oneself unknown.
"Why the lady at the store next our school," he said. "She sells pea-nuts and chewing gum and everything."
"And she says I'll leave all my moneyto you, eh? Hum. Well, how'd you like it if I do?"
"I don't want it," said John with blunt force. He went on sturdily with his blanc-mange, arranging his strawberry jam carefully, that he should have an excess of that for the last spoonful.
Captain Carew stared surprisedly at him.
"Eh? What's that?" he asked.
"When you were as old as me," said John, lifting his carefully trimmed spoon to his mouth, "were you as rich as now?"
The question stirred the old man immediately. His eyes brightened, he put down his letter, pushed his glasses up high on his forehead and struck the table with one hand.
"I should think not," he said excitedly, "I should rather think not. As rich as now—God bless my life!"
"I thought you weren't," said John calmly.
"I can't remember my father and mother," said Captain Carew, speaking a little more quietly as his thoughts began to run backwards. "I lived with my uncle in London;he kept a ham and beef shop, and had thirteen or fourteen youngsters of his own to bring up. He was going to put me to the butchering, but I settled all that myself. I ran away."
"You ran away?" asked John breathlessly, and regarding the old man with more interest than he had ever given him yet.
"Ay! When I was no older than you. Half a crown I had in my pocket, I remember. It was all the start in lifeIever got."
John put down his spoon and stared at his grandfather earnestly, eagerly, admiringly.
"You're a self-made man!" he said. And old as the Captain was, and young as was his admirer, he warmed pleasantly at the words.
"Ay!" he said exultingly, "I'm a self-made man right enough. Every bit of me! I started life as an errand boy in the London slums, and it seemed for a time as if I was going to die an errand boy in the London slums. At least, it might have seemed so to most people.I'dmade up my mind how it was to be, how it had got to be."
"What did you do?" asked John eagerly.
"Do—well, I had about a year at errand running and then I got a chance to go to sea, and I took it. I went first to China. By gad, how well I remember that trip!"
And forthwith he launched into a sea-story more enthralling by far to the boy than any in that library so stocked with sea-stories.
At dinner again, at night, the talk was the same. The usually silent ruminative old man was positively loquacious, and John gave him a rapt attention.
When nine o'clock struck a dim remembrance come to the boy that he was still a pupil of Wygate School and had home tasks to prepare for the morrow.
But he had slipped too far out of his groove to go back again that night.
He began to wander in and out of the lower floor rooms; out of the front door, round the verandah, and in by the French windows to the dining-room.
"I'll chuck school," he said. "Catch any of those self-made men going to school whenthey were thirteen. I'll have to struggle and screw and put myself to a night-school. That's what they did. A self-made man is good enough for me."