Seven Little Australians Part 4

There were two favourite kittens of his, shivering, miserable, up to their necks in a lather of soapy water; and Flibberty-Gibbet, the beautiful little fox terrier he had just bought for his wife, chained to a post, also wet, miserable, and woebegone, also undergoing the cleansing process, and being scrubbed and swilled till his very reason was tottering.

"They'se SO clean and nicey--no horrid ole fleas 'n them now.

AREN't you glad? You can let Flibberty go on your bed now, and Kitsy Blackeye is--"

Poor Baby never finished her speech. She had a confused idea of hearing a little "swear-word" from her father, of being shaken in a most ungentle fashion and put outside the stable, while the unfortunate animals were dried and treated with great consideration.

But the worst was yet to come, and the results were so exceedingly bad that the young Woolcots determined never again to a.s.sume virtues that they had not.

Bunty, of course, desired to help the cause as strongly as the others, and to that end his first action was to go into his bedroom and perform startling ablutions with his face, neck, and hands. Then he took his soap-shiny countenance and red, much bescrubbed hands downstairs, and sunned himself under his father's very nose, hoping to attract favourable comment.

But he was bidden irritably "go and play," and saw he would have to find fresh means of appeas.e.m.e.nt.

He wandered into the study, with vague thoughts of tidying the tidy bookshelves; but Pip was there, surrounded with books and whittling a stick for a catapult, so he went out again.

Then he climbed the stairs and explored his father's bedroom and dressing-room. In the latter there was a wide field for his operations. A full-dress uniform was lying across a chair, and it struck Bunty the gold b.u.t.tons were looking less bright than they should, so he spent a harmless quarter of an hour in polishing them up. Next, he burnished some spurs, which also was harmless.

Then he cast about for fresh employment.

There was quite a colony of dusty boots in one corner of the room, and there was a great bottle of black, treacly looking varnish on the mantelpiece. Bunty conceived the brilliant idea of cleaning the whole lot and standing them in a neat row to meet his father's delighted eyes. He found a handkerchief on the floor, of superfine cambric, though dirty, poured upon it a liberal allowance of varnish, and attacked the first pair.

A bright polish rewarded him, for they were patent leather ones; but the next and the next and the next would not shine, however hard he rubbed. There was a step on the stair, the firm, well-known step of his father, and he paused a moment with a look of conscious virtue on his small shiny face.

But it fled all at once, and a look of horror replaced it. He had stuck the bottle on a great armchair for convenience, as he was sitting on the floor, and now he noticed it had fallen on its side and a black, horrid stream was issuing from its neck.

And it was the chair with the uniform on, and one of the sleeves was soaked with the stuff, and the beautiful white shirt that lay there, too, waiting for a b.u.t.ton, was sticky, horrible!

Bunty gave a wild, terrified look round the room for some place to efface himself, but there were no sheltering corners or curtains, and there was not time to get into the bedroom and under the bed.

Near the window was a large-sized medicine chest, and in despair Bunty crushed himself into it, his legs huddled up, his head between his knees, and an ominous rattle of displaced bottles in his ears. The next minute his father was in the room.

"Great Heavens! G.o.d bless my soul!" he said, and Bunty shivered from head to foot.

Then he said a lot of things very quickly--"foreign language" as Judy called it; kicked something over, and shouted "Esther!" in a terrifying tone. But Esther was down in one of the paddocks with the General, so there was no reply.

More foreign language, more stomping about.

Bunty's teeth chattered noisily; he put up his hand to hold his mouth together, and the cupboard, overbalanced, fell right over, precipitating its occupant right at his father's feet, and the bottles everywhere.

"I didn't--I haven't--'twasn't me--'twasn't my fault!" he howled, backing towards the door. "Hoo--yah--boo-hoo-ooo!

Esther--boo--yah--Judy--oh--oh--h! oh--oh--h--h--h--h!"

As might be expected, his father had picked up a strap that lay conveniently near, and was giving his son a very fair taste of it.

"Oh--h--h--h! o--o--h! o--o--h! ah--h--h! 'twasn't me--'twasn't my fault--its Pip and Judy--oh--h--h--h! hoo--the pant'mime! boo-hoo!

ah--h--h--h--you're killing me! hoo-boo! I was only d--doin'

it--oh--hoo--ah--h--h! d--oin' it to p--please--boo--oo--oo! to p--please you!"

His father paused with uplifted strap. "And that's why all the others are behaving in so strange a fashion? Just for me to take them to the pantomime?"

Bunty wriggled himself free. "Boo--hoo--yes! but not me--I didn't--I never--true's faith--oh-h-h-hoo-yah! it wasn't my fault, it's all the others--boo--hoo--hoo! hit them the rest."

He got three more smart cuts, and then fled howling and yelling to the nursery, where he fell on the floor and kicked and rolled about as if he were half killed.

"You sn--n--n--n--neaks!" he sobbed, addressing the others, who had flown from all parts at his noisy outcry, "you m-m--mean p--p--p--pigs! I h--hadn't n--n--no fo--o--ow-l, and I've h--h--had all the b--b--b--beating! y--you s--s--sn--n-neaks!

oh--h--h--h! ah--h--h--h! oh--h--h--h! oh--h--h-h! I'm b--b--bleeding all over, I kno--o--o--ow!"

They couldn't help laughing a bit; Bunty was always so irresistibly comic when he was hurt ever so little; but still they comforted him as well as they could, and tried to find out what had happened.

Esther came in presently, looking very worried. "Well?" they said in a breath.

"You really are the most exasperating children," she said vexedly.

"But the pantomime--quick, Esther--have you asked him?" they cried impatiently.

"The pantomime! He says he would rather make it worth Mr.

Rignold's while to take it off the boards than that one of you should catch a glimpse of it--and it serves you very well right!

Meg, for goodness' sake give Baby some dry clothes--just look at her; and, Judy, if you have any feeling for me, take off that frock. Bunty, you wicked boy, I'll call your father if you don't stop that noise. Nell, take the scissors from the General, he'll poke his eyes out, bless him."

The young stepmother leaned back in her chair and looked round her tragically. She had never seen her husband so thoroughly angered, and her beautiful lips quivered when she remembered how he had seemed to blame her for it all.

Meg hadn't moved; the water was trickling slowly off Baby's clothes and making a pool on the floor, Bunty was still giving vent to spasmodic boos and hoos, Judy was whistling stormily, and the General, mulcted of the scissors, was licking his own muddy shoe all over with his dear little red tongue.

A sob rose in her throat, two tears welled up in her eyes and fell down her smooth, lovely cheeks. "Seven of you, and I'm only twenty!" she said pitifully. "Oh! it's too bad--oh dear! it is too bad."

CHAPTER IV

The General Sees Active Service

"My brain it teems With endless schemes, Both good and new."

It was a day after "the events narrated in the last chapter,"

as story-book parlance has it. And Judy, with a wrathful look in her eyes, was sitting on the nursery table, her knees touching her chin and her thin brown hands clasped round them.

"It's a shame," she said, "it's a burning, wicked shame!

What's the use of fathers in the world, I'd like to know!"

"Oh, Judy!" said Meg, who was curled up in an armchair, deep in a book. But she said it mechanically, and only as a matter of duty, being three years older than Judy.

"Think of the times we could have if he didn't live with us,"

Judy continued, calmly disregardful. "Why, we'd have fowl three times a day, and the pantomime seven nights a week."

Nell suggested that it was not quite usual to have pantomimic performances on the seventh day, but Judy was not daunted.

"I'd have a kind of church pantomime," she said thoughtfully--"beautiful pictures and things about the Holy Land, and the loveliest music, and beautiful children in white, singing hymns, and bright colours all about, and no collection plates to take your only threepenny bit--oh! and no sermons or litanies, of course."

"Oh, Judy!" murmured Meg, turning a leaf. Judy unclasped her hands, and then clasped them again more tightly than before.

"Six whole tickets wasted--thirty beautiful shillings--just because we have a father!"

"He sent them to the Digby-Smiths," Bunty volunteered, "and wrote on the envelope, 'With compts. J. C. Woolcot.'"