Once Aboard the Lugger Part 16

"Goodness!" cried she, and fell to scattering her outdoor finery at a speed dangerous under any but the deftest fingers. Into a skirt of black and a simple blouse she slipped, and down, skimming the stairs, to where her charges bided their bedtime.

Opening the nursery door she paused upon the threshold with a little "Oh!" of surprise. There was a reek of cigar smoke; its origin between the lips of a burly young man who stood drumming a tune upon the window-pane.

Mr. Bob Chater turned at her entry. "I've been waiting for you a long time," he said.

She asked, "Whatever for?" and in her tone there was a chill.

"Didn't I tell you yesterday that I was coming to see the kids tubbed?"

"I didn't think you meant it."

Mr. Bob Chater laughed. "Well, now you see that I did. I've been looking forward to this all day."

Plainly she was perturbed. She said: "Mr. Chater, I really would rather you did not, if you don't mind."

"Well, but I do mind, d'you see? I mind very much indeed. It would be the bitterest disappointment."

His playfulness sat ill upon him. This was a stout young man, black- eyed, dark-moustached, with a thick and heavy look about him.

She would not catch his mood. "I am sure when I ask you--"

"Well, you're jolly well wrong, you know," he laughed; "'cause I ain't going."

Mary flushed slightly; moved to the hearthrug where sat David and Angela, her small charges, watching, from their toys, the scene.

It occurred to Mr. Bob Chater that she was annoyed.

"I say, be decent to a fellow, Miss Humfray," he said. "Look here, I hadn't seen the kids for two years when I came back yesterday. They hardly remember their kind big brother." He addressed the small girl whose round eyes, moving from speaker to speaker since Mary had entered, were now upon him. "Do you, Angela?" he asked.

"I--hate--you," Angela told him, in the slow utterance of one giving completest effect to a carefully weighed sentiment.

With equal impressiveness, David, seated beside her, lent his authority to the statement. "I--hate--you--too," he joined.

Mr. Bob Chater laughed a little stupidly.

Mary cried: "Oh, Angela! Oh, David! How can you speak like that!"

"He is perfectly abom'able," Angela said, unmoved. "He made Davie cry.

He trod on Davie's beetle."

The cracked corpse of a mechanical beetle, joy of David's heart, was produced in evidence; its distressed owner reddening ominously at this renewed recollection of the calamity.

Mary took the sad pieces tenderly. "Silly children! He never meant to break it. Oh, such silly children!"

Angela protested, "He did! He did! He put his foot over it while it was running, and stopped it. He told David to get it away if he could, and David bit his leg, and he said 'd.a.m.n you!' and crushed it crack."

Mary whipped a glance at the murderer. She ignored the evidence. "To- morrow!" said she. "Why, what fun! To-morrow we'll play hospital like we did when Christabel broke her arm. We'll make Mr. Beetle just as well as ever he was before!"

"I'll be doctor!" cried David, transported into delight.

"Yes, and Angela nurse. Look, we'll put poor Mr. Beetle on the mantelpiece to-night, right out of the draughts. If he got a draught into that crack in his back, goodness knows what wouldn't happen. He must eat slops like Christabel did. _What_ fun! Now, bed--_bustle!_"

Their adored Mary had restored confidence. They clung about her.

"It was a pure accident," explained Mr. Bob Chater, gloomily watching this scene. "I'll buy you another to-morrow."

"There!" Mary cried. "Think of that!"

David reflected upon it without emotion. He regarded his big brother sullenly; sullenly said, "I don't want another."

Mary cried brightly: "Rubbish! Come, kiss your brother good-night, and say 'thank you!' Both of you. Quick as lightning!"

They hung back.

Mary had obtained so complete a command of their affections that her word was the wise law which, ordinarily, they had come unquestioningly to accept. In their short lives David and Angela had experienced a procession of nurses, of nursery-governesses, of lady-helps, each one of whom received or gave her month's notice within a few weeks of arrival, and against whom they had conducted a sullen or a violent war. From the first it had been different with Miss Humfray. As was their custom (for this constant change tried tempers) upon the very day of her arrival they had met her with frank hostility, had declared mutiny at her first command. But her reception of this att.i.tude they found a new and astonishing experience. She had not been shocked, had not been angry, had ventured no threat to tell their mother. Instead, at the outbreak of defiance, she went into the gayest and most infectious laughter, kissed them--and they had capitulated before they realised the event.

A second attempt at mutiny, made upon the following day, met with a reception equally novel. Again this pretty Miss Humfray had laughed, but this time had fully sympathised with their view of the point at issue and had made of the affair a most entrancing game. She, behold, was a pirate captain; they were the rebellious crew. In five minutes they had marooned her upon the desert island represented by the hearthrug; had rowed away with faces which, under her instructions, were properly stern; and only when she waved the white flag of truce had they taken her aboard again. Meanwhile the subject of the quarrel had been forgotten.

Never a dispute arose thereafter. They idolised this pretty Miss Humfray: whatsoever she said was clearly right.

Here, however, was a dangerous conflict of opinion. They hung back.

"Quickly," Mary repeated. "Kiss him, and say thank-you quickly, or there will be no story when you are in bed."

It was a terrific price to pay; their troubled faces mirrored the conflict of decision.

David found solution. In his slow, solemn voice, "You kiss him first,"

he said. Miss Humfray always took their medicine first, and David argued from the one evil necessity to this other.

Mr. Bob Chater laughed delightedly. "That's a brilliant idea!" he cried; came two strides towards Mary; put a hand upon her arm.

So sudden, so unexpected was his movement, that by the narrowest chance only did she escape his purpose. A jerk of her head, and he had mouthed at the air two inches from her face.

She shook her arm free. "Oh!" she cried; and in the exclamation there was that which would have given a nicer man pause.

Mr. Bob Chater was nothing abashed. A handsome face and a bold air had made conquests easy to him. It was an axiom of his that a girl who worked for her living by that fact proclaimed flirtation to be agreeable to her--at all events with such as he. Chance had so shaped affairs that this was the first time his theory had found disproof. He saw she was offended; so much the more tickling; conquest was thereby the more enticing.

He laughed; said he was only "rotting."

Mary did not reply. The command to kiss their brother went by default; she hurried her charges through the door to the adjoining night nursery.

When they were started upon undressing she came back.

"You're going to let me see you tub them?" Bob asked her.

Busy replacing toys in cupboards, she did not reply.

"You're not angry, are you?"