In the Mist of the Mountains Part 14

Her conscience was always a p.r.i.c.kly little affair, and forced her to confess to her sins almost before she had committed them. But she told herself this morning that it was certainly no business of hers to point out to Miss Bibby Miss Bibby's forgetfulness. And she was just comfortably settled up in the big quince tree as Fritz, in "Falconhurst," when that soul-vexing cry about "medsun" shrilled through a window.

"'Tend you don't hear; it's only Anna," said Pauline in swift sympathy.

Lynn flattened her body along a bough and drew up a possibly betraying leg.

"Do I show?" she whispered.

Paul shook her head, and moved with m.u.f.fie hastily away from the tree and began to run towards Anna, who, failing to obtain her quarry with a shout, was now seen rapidly coming to the Island of the Robinson family, late of Switzerland.

"Anna," shouted Pauline, one of the most resourceful young people in the world, "have you seen Lynn anywhere?"

Anna pulled up.

"No, I haven't," she said.

"Are you _sure_ she's not in the house?" persisted Paul.

"If she is and heard me calling, I'll give it to her, or my name's not Anna," said that maiden irately.

"Do you think she can have gone again over to 'Tenby'?" pursued Pauline.

"That's it--that's what's got her," said Anna; "and fine and mad Miss Bibby will be with her, going worrying that book-man again. Well, I'm not going trapesing over there in this sun, but I'll make her take two doses at lunch if I have to put it down her back."

And with this frightful threat Anna returned to the house.

Poor Fritz nearly fell out of "Falconhurst" in his agitation.

"Oh, I think I'll go up and take it, Paul," she said; "two doses together would be too awful."

Her eyes grew round with horror at the mere thought.

"You could shut your teeth hard, after the first spoonful," said Paul, "and refuse, firmly refuse more."

"You could spit it out," said m.u.f.fie eagerly, "like when they gave me the castor-oil; and it was the last in the bottle, so they couldn't give me any more."

"But there are _gallons_ more in my bottle," Lynn said dolefully, "and you heard what she said about putting it down my back."

"Look here," said Pauline, the judicial look of her father in her eyes, "that's just talk about putting it down our backs. I thought it all out that day m.u.f.fie ate the green peach. You know Miss Bibby said then she'd put it down her back--the castor-oil, you know. Well, if I'd been m.u.f.fie I'd just have said, 'All right, do.' Do you think they would have done so, and got her clothes all nasty and greasy? Not they, they think far too much of clothes. But even if they _had_--well, it might have been a bit sticky, but it would be better than taking stuff like that down your mouth."

This was marvellous perspicacity of thought; Lynn looked admiringly down at her sister, and m.u.f.fie stood, with her mouth open, digesting this freshly-minted fact, and making clear resolutions for all future consequences of green peaches.

They fell to playing again, Lynn remaining in the tree, however. Mrs.

Robinson now engaged in sewing skin coats with a porcupine needle and flax, since the more active part of Fritz, shooting and shouting down below, was fraught with too much danger.

"I can't make Tentholm, 'less I have the diny-room tablecloth," said m.u.f.fie.

"Well, go and get it," said Pauline.

"All right," said m.u.f.fie, making a line for it, then calling back, just as a little sop to duty, "she said we weren't to, though."

"Run up and ask her," said Lynn, a law-abiding little person so long as the iron did not enter her soul or body.

m.u.f.fie dashed into Miss Bibby's bedroom after the briefest knock, and made her request.

"Yes, yes," murmured Miss Bibby, looking up with bright eyes from some writing she was engaged upon, "just this once, dear, but be careful not to----"

But m.u.f.fie had sprung away again, and what she had to avoid with the cloth, whether tearing it into holes, or getting mud on it, or losing it, or wetting it, she did not wait to hear. It is possible Miss Bibby did not even finish the sentence--her eyes looked absent-minded enough for such a lapse.

m.u.f.fie went gleefully back to Robinson Island, the art-green serge trailing behind her.

"We can have it, we can have it!" she announced gleefully, "only we're to be careful not to--come on, fasten it on to the sticks, Paul."

Miss Bibby had reached the chronicle of Hugh Kinross's "endearing little eccentricities."

A small pile of neatly written sheets lay to the right of her. In front of her lay more sheets, scored through, corrected, polished, until Flaubert himself would have been satisfied with the labour bestowed.

She had worked steadily through the night, the silent night in the hills, her lamp the only household eye still open in miles of black slumbering country.

At three o'clock she had flung herself down and s.n.a.t.c.hed a few hours'

sleep, but by seven she was up again, the same quivering excitement in her veins. A little more polishing, then a fair copy in her very neatest hand, and she might bear it up to the four o'clock post, and send it flying forward to the _Evening Mail._

The envelope that would hold it would hold also her destiny, she told herself. This was the most important crisis of her life; she had travelled nearly forty years--thirty-six to be exact--along a road of life, not rough and stony as many a road is, but just dull and level and monotonous and dusty, as are so many excellent highways. But now she stood at two crossroads, and saw stretching before her one in no wise different from that she had traversed so long, and the other a glittering tempting path springing joyously up a high hill, on the top of which, in the shade of laurel trees, sat at ease the whole goodly company of great authors. She fancied they were beckoning to her; she heard sweet voices from them throughout that feverish night--"Come up higher, Agnes Bibby," they were saying.

The interview was the first step along this second path. The story, already promised s.p.a.ce for, would be the second. And then, from out the bitter gloom of the trunk, the novels would emerge, one after the other, the world graciously holding out its hand for them.

"Miss Bibby," said a mournful voice at the door, "Miss Bibby."

"Oh, dear," sighed Miss Bibby, "what is it now, Max?"

Max entered with a wool door-mat depending from his collar and just reaching his shoes.

"I have no tail," he said, his lip drooping, "an' Paul an' m.u.f.f's got late big long ones."

"Oh, dear!" said Miss Bibby, after a frantic glance round her own apartment in search of an appendix, "I have nothing that would do, Max.

Do run away, darling. Pretend you've got a tail, that is just as good."

Max gulped threateningly.

"Laindeers have leal tails," he said.

Again a frantic glance around. "Would a towel do if I pinned it on, dear?"

Max shook his head.

"In the lawning-loom lere's a tail on the curtains," he said, "but it's showd on tight."

"Well, ask Paul, ask Anna, ask some one else to look for something for you; but you mustn't come to me, darling, this is Miss Bibby's holiday, you don't want to spoil it for her, do you?" Miss Bibby looked at him beseechingly.

But Max's lip drooped lower and lower. Outside in the garden pranced m.u.f.fie and Pauline, a long ta.s.selled drawback from the dining-room curtains, sweeping magnificently after each of them.