An Australian Lassie Part 6

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 twinkling of 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 st.u.r.dy figure, countrified clothes, copper-toed boots, all pa.s.sed 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."

CHAPTER VI

MONDAY MORNING

Mrs. Bruce was 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 cl.u.s.ter of its blooms, drooping on the pebbly path for a careless foot to crush,--all for the want of a few tacks and little shreds 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 roses _must_ be clipped, the violets _must_ be thinned, the carnations _must_ be staked. And there are the new seedlings to be planted. Oh, I _think_ I 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 pa.s.sion-fruit creeper 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.

"I _am_ so tired of washing up," it said, "it wasn't fair of Dot. She had four plates for her breakfast--_I_ only 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 a.s.sist Betty and leave poor Cyril unaided. "And I _couldn't_ clean knives," she said.

But she ran indoors to her bedroom, whence came an angry crying voice.