In the Mist of the Mountains Part 3

He was a thin lad, small for fourteen, with sharp features and blue eyes, and a head of hair nearer in shade to an orange than to the lowly carrot to which red hair is popularly likened. He wore a khaki coat a size too small for him, and an old Panama hat some big-headed "stranger"

had left behind. Round this latter dangled a string veil that he had manufactured for himself against the ubiquitous and famous mountain fly.

But the flamboyant head drooped wretchedly just at present.

He pulled up at the gate, seeing Miss Bibby was not on guard, and poured out a graphic account of the ride between himself and Howie. Browning's "Ghent to Aix" was nothing to it, and "How we beat the Favourite" was colourless narrative to the early part of Larkin's recital. But then the tragedy happened. Larkin's horse got a pebble in its foot, and went dead lame. Howie shot ahead and caught the lady of the house just as she was reluctantly sallying forth to find one of his trade and leave her order.

"An' she's got a baby--patent foods and biscuits," said Larkin in a choked voice, "and I saw quite four boys,--oatmeal, tins of jam, bacon, b.u.t.ter,--I wouldn't have lost her for anything. An' only for giving you kids a ride this morning I'd have heard sooner, an' got the start of Howie."

The children felt quite crushed to think they were the cause of Larkin's great loss. For a loss it was indeed; both boys received commissions on the accounts of the new customers they obtained, and a lady with a baby and four hungry boys, not to mention a maid or two, and possible visitors, was not to be picked up every day.

Then Pauline had a brilliant thought.

"We know of another new one," she cried. "'Tenby' is taken; a man's coming up by to-night's train. Howie doesn't know, no one knows but ourselves,--that will make up to you, Larkin. Men eat more than babies."

Larkin was greatly excited. He made rapid plans: he would slip his cards under the door to-night; he would present himself at the house the moment it was unlocked in the morning. He would take b.u.t.ter, eggs, sugar, with him, so that breakfast at least would be comfortable, and the wife or housekeeper, or maiden sister, whichever the "man" brought with him, would bless his thoughtfulness, and promptly promise her custom.

Then his jaw dropped with a sudden recollection.

To-morrow was his holiday--the only whole week-day holiday he received in six months. He had arranged to go home, as he always did, catching the 11 o'clock train that night, and travelling through the midnight to the highest point of the mountains, and into the early dawn down, down the Great Zigzag on the other side, till he came out on the plain to a little siding, where he scrambled out with his bundle, and shouldered it briskly, and trudged along eight miles, perhaps, to a wretched selection where his father, for his mother and six or seven children younger than Larkin, fought the losing fight of the Man on the Land. A few hours here, slipping his wages into his mother's reluctant hand, escorted by his father round the place to see the latest devices for trapping rabbits and other pests, telling his brothers stirring tales of the struggles between himself and Howie, then the long tramp to the station, and the travelling through the night again, s.n.a.t.c.hing his only chance of sleep sitting upright in his crowded carriage, he fitted his holidays naturally into the Railway Commissioners' Cheap Excursion seasons. And then the fight again in the new-born day with Howie.

The lad looked miserable. How could he give up such a holiday? Yet how allow Howie an uncontested victory with the latest stranger?

Max and m.u.f.fie had run back along the path in pursuit of a lively lizard. Only Lynn and Pauline, their sweet little faces ashine with sympathy, hung on the gate.

The lad blurted out his highest hope to them. He gave his mother his wages, of course, he told them, but he had been saving up his commissions for a special purpose. He wanted to put "a bit of stuff" on the Melbourne Cup.

"I know I'll win," he said, with glistening eyes. "It'll be five hundred at least,--p'raps a cool thou,--then I'll buy Octavius and Septimus out, and mother and the old man shall chuck up that dirty selection, and come an' get all the custom here. And the kids can go to school, an' I'll get Polly an' Blarnche a pianner." The rapt look of the visionary was on his face.

But he was torn with the conflict; it was plain he must give up either his holiday or his commission on the new "stranger."

Pauline's position as eldest had developed her naturally resourceful and intrepid disposition.

"Larkin," she said, "I've thought what to do. You go and see your mother. _We'll_ get you the new man's custom. And before Howie gets a chance of it."

Then Anna appeared on the verandah, ringing the lunch bell violently, and Larkin rode home his dead lame horse, and Pauline marched into the house with her head up, the other children following and clamouring to be told of her great plan.

CHAPTER III

MISS BIBBY

The Judge's mountain home had an inviting aspect. It was not large,--it was not handsome,--simply a comfortable brick cottage with a gable or two cut to please the eye as well as meet architectural requirements, and a fine window here and there where a glimpse of far-off mountain piled against mountain could be obtained.

It stood back from the road and hid itself from the picnickers' gaze in lovely garments of trees and green vines that would take the envious newly-sprung cottage ten years at least to imitate.

Yet "Greenways" had never looked crude and painful as the naked places about did, even when it emerged years ago fresh from the hands of the local builder. For the Lomaxes, unlike many Australians, respected the hand of Nature even when it had traced Australian rather than English designs on their land. And the young gum trees still tossed their light heads here and there, and clumps of n.o.ble old ones stood everywhere smiling benevolent encouragement to the beginners.

It had been the Judge's original intention to have nothing but native trees and shrubs and flowers on this summer estate, and a well-clipped hedge of saltbush at present flanked the drive, and a breakwind plantation of Tasmanian blue gum, alternated with silver wattle, ran for several hundred feet where the westerly winds had at first caught one side of the house.

The tennis-court was guarded along both ends by soldierly rows of magnificently grown waratahs, that from October to Christmas time were all in bloom and worth coming far to see. And you approached that same tennis-court through a shady plantation, where every tree and shrub was native-born, and the ground carpeted with gay patches of boronia and other purely aboriginal loveliness. Rarely did the Judge take his walks abroad on the hills or in the gullies but he returned carefully cherishing in one hand some little seedling tree or plant he had dug up with his penknife. And he would set and water and shade it in his plantation, and tell you its name and its species, and its manner of growth, for the bushland was an open book to him and every letter of it had been lovingly conned.

But Mrs. Lomax, English-born, while he was Australian, through two or three generations, hankered, after a year or two of this native garden, for the softer and richer greens and more varied loveliness of the trees and flowers of English cultivation. So they laughingly drew a line of division through the estate; and it must be confessed that, whatever the Judge's opinion, the average eye gathered more permanent pleasure and refreshment from Mrs. Lomax's division than from the stiff, though brilliant, portion under the Judge's jurisdiction.

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, m.u.f.fie--go into the bathroom instantly, please, and wash your hands," said Miss Bibby, as the children trooped in after their interview with Larkin.

Dinner was spread in the dining-room as usual. The children sighed for the times when their mother had been with them, and had had such a delightful habit of having that meal served in all sorts of unexpected places, even on days when they could not go for an orthodox picnic.

Behind the waratahs one day--and of course they imagined themselves waited on by a row of stiff and magnificent footmen in red plush. Among the wattles another time, and the wattles just in bloom. Once in the vegetable garden with big leaves for plates, and the tomatoes that made the first course bending heavily on the trellis behind their seats, and the purple guavas that made the last hiding among their leaves just the other side of the path.

It would have required an earthquake to dislodge Miss Bibby from the stronghold of the dining-room table.

She sat at the head of that table now, a thin delicately-coloured woman not far from forty, with a nervous mouth and anxious blue eyes. Possibly she had been quite pretty in youth, if ever peace and the quiet mind had been hers. But the unrest and worry of her look left rather a disturbed impression on the beholder.

She sat at the head of the table and carved a leg of mutton, and saw Anna putting vegetables upon the children's plates under silent protest.

She did not believe in meat. She did not believe in vegetables. She did not believe in puddings. Pauline had drawn her into confessing this at the first meal she had had with them, and the shock was so great that m.u.f.fie had actually burst into tears, and Max had clambered down from his chair with the half-formed intention of setting out at once for New Zealand, and dragging his mother back to her proper place.

Miss Bibby, however, set their minds at rest. She had no intention of interfering with the food they were accustomed to; only she begged to be excused from partaking of such herself.

No meat, no vegetables, no pudding, and still alive! The children took an abnormal interest in watching her preparations for eating at each meal.

She began each day, they found out, with a pint of hot water. Indeed they found it out to their sorrow, for she had Mrs. Lomax's entire permission to work upon themselves one or two of her hygienic reforms--if she could only manage it.

So at seven o'clock, when in various stages of their morning toilet, they were confronted by Miss Bibby, armed with a tall jug of hot water and five tumblers. And they found they had to sit down on the edges of their beds and, receiving a full tumbler, hand back an empty one. If it had been their mother now, they might have protested and wheedled and got out of it in some way. But Miss Bibby was so strange to them, so new--and then mother had bidden them, even as she gave them their last kiss at the station, do all she bade them--that they found themselves making an absolute habit of this watery beginning to the day. Worse still, instead of being rewarded for such heroic behaviour, they were, in consequence of it, deprived of the pleasant cup of cocoa or hot milk that had always. .h.i.therto formed part of their breakfast.

"I consider it perfectly uncivilized to eat and drink at the same meal," Miss Bibby said.

Pauline blinked at her very fast, in a way she had when angry.

"Daddy and mamma always do," she said.

"For children, I mean," said Miss Bibby, correcting herself. "I trust, Pauline, you do not think me capable of reflecting upon the conduct of your father and mother."

But Pauline was engrossed with her breakfast again.

"All food should be taken dry," Miss Bibby continued; "and your mother is anxious that I should get you _into_ good ways. At the same time the human system needs a certain degree of liquid, so I shall call you in for your drink meals at eleven, and at three, and you may also have a gla.s.s of water each upon retiring."

Sometimes it made the children quite depressed to watch her. Pauline used to say she would feel perfectly happy if she could once see Miss Bibby eat a big, lovely woolly currant bun or a plate of rich brown sausages dished on b.u.t.tered toast.

And Lynn--it actually moved Lynn to poetry, the tragedy of this meagre fare. Pauline was bidden write "the song" down.

"And the name of the song," added the poetess after a melancholy verse or two, "is 'Sorrow,' or 'Miss Bibby.'"