[175]CHAPTER XVITHE END OF PLAY DAYSWiththe constant derision that so much boy companionship brought at Sunnymeade, Jennie and Suey had been forced to retire from adventurous lives, and now, wrapped in soft old handkerchiefs, they passed their later days in a quiet box that stood on a cupboard shelf.Suey had lost an arm; that was on one occasion in Sunnymeade, when a bushranging game had been popular, and Clif, admitted half-jealously to it, had seized her so roughly from the burning roof of the station he had stuck up, that all Phyl’s heartbroken care could effect no remedy.And Jennie’s thin hair was drawn back and combed carefully to conceal the sad fact that the back half of her head was false. This was also due to Clif. Enmity used sometimes to reign between the boys and girls in the two cottages, and on these occasions Dolly used to take a wicked pleasure in running[176]through the careful rings of marbles Clif and Teddie would make.Retaliation had once carried Jennie high up a gum-tree near. “The lovely hewoine twying to escape from the hangman on the Tower of London,” Clif had called teasingly from his height, and he had thereupon lowered the waxen creature by a piece of string.Underneath the tree, Dolly jumped about in anguish. “Oh, Clif, please, Clif—dearClif, do give her to me. I’ll never jump on your marbles again, twuly I won’t,” she cried beseechingly.Jennie dangled within a foot of her head,—she sprang up again and again to grasp her, but each time just as her hands almost closed on her treasure, the string was jerked, and the “escaping hewoine” swung yards away.There was one jerk too many of course, and poor Jennie lay at the foot of the tree, her head broken in two places. The “hangman” dropped to the ground, real distress on his face, so anguished was the cry of the mother as she dropped down beside her darling.Mrs. Conway patched up the poor head, and time dried Dolly’s tears, but so keen was Clif’s repentance, and so many his hearty endeavours to make up, that the incident cemented a friendship between the little couple that lasted always.But now such days and deeds had gone for ever. The dolls, worn out by their troublous life, lay at rest,[177]and the little mother’s empty hands, groping for something to fill them, fastened after a time as a matter of course on pens.There was an interval, however, before that relief came, in which the passion for “pretending” vented itself in an odd way. Mrs. Conway once, in turning over the frocks of her elder daughters, found in the pockets of both a number of small bits of wood. They were of different sizes, none more than a couple of inches high, and perhaps half an inch wide. Each one was wrapped in some scrap or other of material, one perhaps in white muslin with a scrap of blue silk tying it round the middle, one in a morsel of red cashmere, one in blue serge, and so on. She turned them over curiously in her hand.“What on earth are these things?” she said. But Phyl and Dolly turned a deep uncomfortable red, and remained speechless.Almost a year later, however, the mother came upon the pair sitting in the corner of the garden, the identical pieces of wood on their knees or strewn around them. Her footfall had been so light neither of the children heard her.Both were murmuring, murmuring at the same time, neither exactly listening to the other, and yet there was such close connection between the games of the two that it is doubtful if either could have been played apart.“Annabella is dwessing for the ball,” Dolly was[178]murmuring. “Purple satin, and a bouquet of dahlias and poppies.” “Oh, there you are, Muriel, I see you are dwessed—what a poor ugly dwess, but I suppose you can’t afford a better, as you’re only a governess.” “Muriel is attired in pure white clinging muslin, with one moss-wose in her hair.” And so on, and so on. Phyl’s fair little face was ashine with the excitement of her game. “So he plunged madly in the river,” she was murmuring, her hand at the same time making a dive with a scrap of wood attired in blue serge, “and Geraldine was floating along, her hair streaming on the water; she had sunk six times, and only had strength to put her arm round his neck before she fainted.“He swam to the shore with his lovely burden, and there stood Luke Robespierre, and he had cut a leak in her boat. Sir Guy Redcliffe strode up to him, he put Lady Geraldine in a safe place first. ‘You traitor, and villain,’ he cried, and rushed upon him” (two bits of wood were banged forcibly together). “Luke drew a dagger from his sleeve, but Sir Guy brushed it aside, pulled his pistol from his pocket, and shot him through the heart.”“But,” said the mother, stepping between them, her sense of humour overcoming everything else, “don’t you think, Phyl, the powder would be wet after that long swim?”Phyl’s face went scarlet. Dolly, at the first footstep—for might it not be one of those dreadful[179]boys?—swept her wooden family into a hasty heap and thrust them into her pocket.But the mother when her smile had died looked a little troubled. They seemed such big girls—Phyl was nearly thirteen—to be playing in so childish a manner; and the absurd stuff they were talking, where they had read or picked up such nonsense she could not tell,—who knew where such foolishness would end?“My dears,” she said, “I really think you are too old to play like this now. I do not often cross your wishes, do I?—but I must ask you both to throw those things quite away.”She talked to them a little longer, and they both felt ashamed of their silliness.“We won’t play with them again,” they said sadly.“Give them to me, and I will throw them away,” the mother said.But the two shrank from that—those bits of wood had dwelt in their pockets, shared their thoughts, their life, for over a year.“Oh, please,” they said, “please let us do it ourselves, mama.”An hour later they were disposing of them with unhappy eyes.They had buriedall but two in a matchbox with cotton-wool, the grave being at the foot of a favourite tree. But Muriel and Sir Guy Redcliffe had still to be disposed of.[180]“Let’s leave them exposed to the world,” said Phyl; “if we bury them, they’re dead; they may as well have some more adventures.”Away down the road was a railway-bridge with ironwork pillars at either end, rather elaborately wrought. Sir Guy was placed in one deep niche, and Muriel, attired in clinging white muslin, in another.[Illustration]They buried them in a matchbox with cotton-wool.For very long after this, whenever their walks took them past the bridge, Phyl and Dolly always walked that particular side of the road and peeped into the niches.Their promise, they considered, bound their hands from taking the wooden couple out, but it was great[181]happiness to find them still there. And to this very day Muriel and Sir Guy may be still adventuring in those iron recesses and exposing themselves to the world’s hardships; for many years after Dolly found Muriel there and took her out and laughed and put her back again.After the interdict was placed on wooden images, the pair fell to playing “beggar-my-neighbour” and “old maid” in the long evenings after tea, but the possibilities of cards urged themselves too strongly for resistance, and after Weenie had gone to bed dramas were once more enacted, the cards themselves for puppets.“You don’t mind us pretending with cards, mama?” they had said, and Mrs. Conway, not quite comprehending, had told them to please themselves.The queen of spades was Dolly’s heroine now; she saw in her a dark little girl with flashing eyes and a propensity for getting into terrible mischief, and then dying with pious words of exhortation on her lips and all her weeping relatives around her bed. She was a unique mixture of Topsy and Eva, and Dolly named her Judy.Phyl’s heroine was the queen of hearts; the knave of diamonds, a handsome hero named Lochinvar; and on the knave of clubs was heaped all the villainy a heart of thirteen could conceive. The king of clubs with both was always the heavy father.Aces were tiny babies, and fours and fives little children of the house. Tens were the servants,[182]spades and clubs being footmen, butlers, gardeners, and other “ancient retainers,” while diamonds and hearts were housekeepers with stiff black silk dresses and bunches of jingling keys, pert ladies’-maids and nurses.Both children always kept up a large establishment, and placed their characters in “old turreted mansions hoary with age,” or Venetian palaces, or moated castles.But when Phyl’s fourteenth birthday came round she renounced for ever all puppets, and took with greater avidity to reading.Dolly played a little longer. She had been bitten with the mania for collecting stamps and shells, and now being left lonely—for the card game lost interest without Phyl’s companionship—shells served their turn as the bits of wood and cards had done.Saturday afternoon, after they returned to Sydney, always found the little girls on some beach—Manly, Bondi, Coogee, or Bronté,—for it seemed a delightful thing to them that the seaside was to be reached at any time by a tram or boat ride, instead of waiting a whole year for three or four weeks of it as had been their English habit.And lying on the beach Dolly could pursue her shell stories in the loveliest fashion, the best of materials to hand, and no fear of laughing detection.On the crisp sand she drew her houses with all their different rooms, and placed in them her shell[183]inhabitants. One of the shells, a pretty bluish grey, was always “Mary,” a model eldest sister; a tiny smooth scallop, snow-white, was “Muriel,” who used to be chiefly occupied in dying. And a very bright, brown, thin one with black, irregular markings on it was always “Judy.”
Withthe constant derision that so much boy companionship brought at Sunnymeade, Jennie and Suey had been forced to retire from adventurous lives, and now, wrapped in soft old handkerchiefs, they passed their later days in a quiet box that stood on a cupboard shelf.
Suey had lost an arm; that was on one occasion in Sunnymeade, when a bushranging game had been popular, and Clif, admitted half-jealously to it, had seized her so roughly from the burning roof of the station he had stuck up, that all Phyl’s heartbroken care could effect no remedy.
And Jennie’s thin hair was drawn back and combed carefully to conceal the sad fact that the back half of her head was false. This was also due to Clif. Enmity used sometimes to reign between the boys and girls in the two cottages, and on these occasions Dolly used to take a wicked pleasure in running[176]through the careful rings of marbles Clif and Teddie would make.
Retaliation had once carried Jennie high up a gum-tree near. “The lovely hewoine twying to escape from the hangman on the Tower of London,” Clif had called teasingly from his height, and he had thereupon lowered the waxen creature by a piece of string.
Underneath the tree, Dolly jumped about in anguish. “Oh, Clif, please, Clif—dearClif, do give her to me. I’ll never jump on your marbles again, twuly I won’t,” she cried beseechingly.
Jennie dangled within a foot of her head,—she sprang up again and again to grasp her, but each time just as her hands almost closed on her treasure, the string was jerked, and the “escaping hewoine” swung yards away.
There was one jerk too many of course, and poor Jennie lay at the foot of the tree, her head broken in two places. The “hangman” dropped to the ground, real distress on his face, so anguished was the cry of the mother as she dropped down beside her darling.
Mrs. Conway patched up the poor head, and time dried Dolly’s tears, but so keen was Clif’s repentance, and so many his hearty endeavours to make up, that the incident cemented a friendship between the little couple that lasted always.
But now such days and deeds had gone for ever. The dolls, worn out by their troublous life, lay at rest,[177]and the little mother’s empty hands, groping for something to fill them, fastened after a time as a matter of course on pens.
There was an interval, however, before that relief came, in which the passion for “pretending” vented itself in an odd way. Mrs. Conway once, in turning over the frocks of her elder daughters, found in the pockets of both a number of small bits of wood. They were of different sizes, none more than a couple of inches high, and perhaps half an inch wide. Each one was wrapped in some scrap or other of material, one perhaps in white muslin with a scrap of blue silk tying it round the middle, one in a morsel of red cashmere, one in blue serge, and so on. She turned them over curiously in her hand.
“What on earth are these things?” she said. But Phyl and Dolly turned a deep uncomfortable red, and remained speechless.
Almost a year later, however, the mother came upon the pair sitting in the corner of the garden, the identical pieces of wood on their knees or strewn around them. Her footfall had been so light neither of the children heard her.
Both were murmuring, murmuring at the same time, neither exactly listening to the other, and yet there was such close connection between the games of the two that it is doubtful if either could have been played apart.
“Annabella is dwessing for the ball,” Dolly was[178]murmuring. “Purple satin, and a bouquet of dahlias and poppies.” “Oh, there you are, Muriel, I see you are dwessed—what a poor ugly dwess, but I suppose you can’t afford a better, as you’re only a governess.” “Muriel is attired in pure white clinging muslin, with one moss-wose in her hair.” And so on, and so on. Phyl’s fair little face was ashine with the excitement of her game. “So he plunged madly in the river,” she was murmuring, her hand at the same time making a dive with a scrap of wood attired in blue serge, “and Geraldine was floating along, her hair streaming on the water; she had sunk six times, and only had strength to put her arm round his neck before she fainted.
“He swam to the shore with his lovely burden, and there stood Luke Robespierre, and he had cut a leak in her boat. Sir Guy Redcliffe strode up to him, he put Lady Geraldine in a safe place first. ‘You traitor, and villain,’ he cried, and rushed upon him” (two bits of wood were banged forcibly together). “Luke drew a dagger from his sleeve, but Sir Guy brushed it aside, pulled his pistol from his pocket, and shot him through the heart.”
“But,” said the mother, stepping between them, her sense of humour overcoming everything else, “don’t you think, Phyl, the powder would be wet after that long swim?”
Phyl’s face went scarlet. Dolly, at the first footstep—for might it not be one of those dreadful[179]boys?—swept her wooden family into a hasty heap and thrust them into her pocket.
But the mother when her smile had died looked a little troubled. They seemed such big girls—Phyl was nearly thirteen—to be playing in so childish a manner; and the absurd stuff they were talking, where they had read or picked up such nonsense she could not tell,—who knew where such foolishness would end?
“My dears,” she said, “I really think you are too old to play like this now. I do not often cross your wishes, do I?—but I must ask you both to throw those things quite away.”
She talked to them a little longer, and they both felt ashamed of their silliness.
“We won’t play with them again,” they said sadly.
“Give them to me, and I will throw them away,” the mother said.
But the two shrank from that—those bits of wood had dwelt in their pockets, shared their thoughts, their life, for over a year.
“Oh, please,” they said, “please let us do it ourselves, mama.”
An hour later they were disposing of them with unhappy eyes.They had buriedall but two in a matchbox with cotton-wool, the grave being at the foot of a favourite tree. But Muriel and Sir Guy Redcliffe had still to be disposed of.
[180]“Let’s leave them exposed to the world,” said Phyl; “if we bury them, they’re dead; they may as well have some more adventures.”
Away down the road was a railway-bridge with ironwork pillars at either end, rather elaborately wrought. Sir Guy was placed in one deep niche, and Muriel, attired in clinging white muslin, in another.
[Illustration]They buried them in a matchbox with cotton-wool.
They buried them in a matchbox with cotton-wool.
For very long after this, whenever their walks took them past the bridge, Phyl and Dolly always walked that particular side of the road and peeped into the niches.
Their promise, they considered, bound their hands from taking the wooden couple out, but it was great[181]happiness to find them still there. And to this very day Muriel and Sir Guy may be still adventuring in those iron recesses and exposing themselves to the world’s hardships; for many years after Dolly found Muriel there and took her out and laughed and put her back again.
After the interdict was placed on wooden images, the pair fell to playing “beggar-my-neighbour” and “old maid” in the long evenings after tea, but the possibilities of cards urged themselves too strongly for resistance, and after Weenie had gone to bed dramas were once more enacted, the cards themselves for puppets.
“You don’t mind us pretending with cards, mama?” they had said, and Mrs. Conway, not quite comprehending, had told them to please themselves.
The queen of spades was Dolly’s heroine now; she saw in her a dark little girl with flashing eyes and a propensity for getting into terrible mischief, and then dying with pious words of exhortation on her lips and all her weeping relatives around her bed. She was a unique mixture of Topsy and Eva, and Dolly named her Judy.
Phyl’s heroine was the queen of hearts; the knave of diamonds, a handsome hero named Lochinvar; and on the knave of clubs was heaped all the villainy a heart of thirteen could conceive. The king of clubs with both was always the heavy father.
Aces were tiny babies, and fours and fives little children of the house. Tens were the servants,[182]spades and clubs being footmen, butlers, gardeners, and other “ancient retainers,” while diamonds and hearts were housekeepers with stiff black silk dresses and bunches of jingling keys, pert ladies’-maids and nurses.
Both children always kept up a large establishment, and placed their characters in “old turreted mansions hoary with age,” or Venetian palaces, or moated castles.
But when Phyl’s fourteenth birthday came round she renounced for ever all puppets, and took with greater avidity to reading.
Dolly played a little longer. She had been bitten with the mania for collecting stamps and shells, and now being left lonely—for the card game lost interest without Phyl’s companionship—shells served their turn as the bits of wood and cards had done.
Saturday afternoon, after they returned to Sydney, always found the little girls on some beach—Manly, Bondi, Coogee, or Bronté,—for it seemed a delightful thing to them that the seaside was to be reached at any time by a tram or boat ride, instead of waiting a whole year for three or four weeks of it as had been their English habit.
And lying on the beach Dolly could pursue her shell stories in the loveliest fashion, the best of materials to hand, and no fear of laughing detection.
On the crisp sand she drew her houses with all their different rooms, and placed in them her shell[183]inhabitants. One of the shells, a pretty bluish grey, was always “Mary,” a model eldest sister; a tiny smooth scallop, snow-white, was “Muriel,” who used to be chiefly occupied in dying. And a very bright, brown, thin one with black, irregular markings on it was always “Judy.”