The Family at Misrule/Chapter 2

OPPET and Peter were discussing many things in general, and the mystery of life in particular. They were sitting crouched up together in an old tank that had been cast out in the first paddock because it leaked. It was after tea, and Poppet had a little dead chicken in her hand that she had picked up in the garden.

"Ith got wheelth inthide it, and when they thop ith deaded," Peter was saying,—"thust like my thteam engine, thath what tith."

"I think being alive is very funny," Poppet said, looking earnestly at the little lifeless body. "All those chickies was eggs, and then sud'nly they begin running about and enjoying themselves, and then sud'nly they tumble down dead, and even the doctor can't make them run again."

"Yeth," said Peter, his eyes very thoughtful as he tried to grasp great things. "Prapth you might tumble down like that, Poppet; all your wheelth might thtop."

"Or yours," urged Poppet. Death was in her hand. She did not like to feel that ever her active little body could lie like this fluffy, silent one, and so made the likelihood more general.

"Yeth," said Peter; "and oneth, Poppet, I nearly wath deaded, and Judy thaved me."

"You don't remember," Poppet said, in a voice of great scorn. "You was only a little, tiny baby, just beginning to walk, Peter. But I was there, and remember everything."

"You wath athleep, Poppet," Peter objected,—Poppet's air of superiority irritated him. "Meg told me about it when I had the meathleth, and the thaid that you wath athleep, tho there!"

"At any rate, Peter, I think you are old enough to stop lisping," Poppet said severely, finding herself worsted. "You are six now, and only babies of ten months lisp. I never lisped at all."

Peter went red in the face.

"I don't lithp; you're a thtory-teller, Poppet Woolcot!" he said, drawing in his tongue with a great effort at straight pronunciation.

Poppet jeered unkindly, then she caught sight of Bunty strolling aimlessly about the garden, and she squeezed herself out of the tank and stood upright.

"Don't go," said Peter. "Leth play Zoo, Poppet, and you can be the lion thith time, and I'll feed you!"

But not even this inducement had any effect.

"I want to talk to Bunty," the little girl said, looking across with a half-troubled light in her eyes to where Bunty's old cap was visible. "I can play with you when he's at school. You can go and have a game with Baby."

She went away, leaving him disconsolate, and crushed herself through a broken paling into the garden.

She would like to have gone up to Bunty and slipped her arm through his and asked him what had made him so exceptionally glum and silent these last few days.

But she knew him better than that. She was very wise for her nine years.

She fell to weeding her garden with great industry while he was walking on the path near it. Then when he rambled farther away, she hovered about here and there, now plucking a flower, now giving chase to a great praying mantis. She was within a few feet of him all the time.

"What are you buzznaccing about like this for?" he said at last irritably, when her short holland frock appeared at every path he turned down. He threw himself down on the grass, and pulled his cap over his eyes.

"Flibberty-Gibbet had a tic in his head this morning," said the little girl, sitting down beside him Turk fashion.

"Well, I don't care," Bunty said, with almost a groan.

A look of anger crept up into the little sister's, earnest eyes.

"I 'spect it's that old Burnham again," she said wrathfully. "What's he been doing this time?"

Bunty groaned again.

"Was it your Greek?" she said, edging nearer. "Howid stuff! As if you could be espected to get it right always!"

There was another smothered sound from beneath the cap.

"Was it that nasty algebra?" said the little, encouraging voice. It was so tender and anxious and loving that the boy uncovered his eyes a little.

"I'm in the beastliest row, Poppet," he said.

Poppet's little, fair face was ashine with sympathy.

"I'd like to hammer that Mr. Burnham," she said. "How did it happen, Bunty?"

Bunty sat up and sighed. After all, it would be a relief to tell some one; and who better than the faithful Poppet?

"Well, you know Bully Hawkins?" he said.

"Oh yes," said the little girl; and she did, excellently—by hearsay.

"Well, on Monday he was on the cricket pitch practising, and Tom Jackson was bowling him—he'd made him. And when I went down—I was crossing it to go up to Bruce—he jumped on me, and said I was to backstop. I said I wasn't going to—why should I go after his blooming balls?—and he said he'd punch my head if I didn't. And I said, 'Yes, you do,' and walked on to Bruce. We were going to play marbles. And he came after me, and hit me over the head and boxed my ears and twisted my arms."

"Bully!" said Poppet, with gleaming eyes. "What did you do, Bunty? did you knock him down? I hope you made his nose bleed,—I'd—I'd have flattened him!"

Bunty gave her a look of scorn.

"He's sixteen, and the size of a prize-fighter!" he said. "I'd have been half killed. No; Mr. Burnham was just a little way off, and I let out a yell to him, and he came up and I told of him."

"Bunty!" said Poppet. The word came out like the report of a pistol, and her red lips shut again very tightly to prevent any more following.

This touch of cowardice, this failure to grasp simple honour in Bunty's character, was a perpetual grief and amazement to her little fearless soul. But he would brook no advice nor reproach from her, as she knew full well, and that is why her lips had closed with a snap after that one word.

But he had seen the look of horror in her eyes.

"D'ye think I'm going to be pummelled just as that brute likes?" he demanded angrily. "He's always bullying the fellows in our form, and it'll do him good to get a taste of what he gives us. Mr. Burnham said he hated a bully, and he just walked him up to the schoolroom and gave him six."

Still Poppet was silent; her face was flushed a little, and she was pulling up long pieces of grass with feverish diligence. In her quick little way she saw it all, and felt acutely just how the boys would look upon Bunty's behaviour.

"What an idiot you are, Poppet!" he said irritably, as she did not speak; "as though a bit of a girl like you knows what it is at a boys' school. I'm sorry I told you—I—I won't tell you the rest."

Poppet choked something down in her throat.

"Do tell me, Bunty," she said; "I didn't mean to be howid. Go on—I only couldn't help wishing you could have foughted him instead of telling, because—well, I espect he'll be worse to you than ever now, and the other fellows too."

"That's it," Bunty said, with a groan. "Oh, but that's not half of it yet, Poppet. I almost wish I was dead."

Something like a tear forced itself beneath his eyelids and trickled down his cheeks. Poppet's. heart expanded and grew pitiful again instantly His face was close to her knee, and wore so miserable an expression that in a sudden little burst of love she put down her lips and kissed him half-a-dozen times.

He sat up instantly and looked ashamed.

"How often am I to tell you I hate mugging?" he said gruffly. "If you go on like this, I won't tell you."

"I beg your pardon," Poppet said very humbly; "really, I won't again, Bunty. Do go on."

"Well, after that, I went round the side of the school—you know that path, near the master's windows. Well, I'd nothing much to do, and the bell hadn't gone, and I was just chucking my cricket ball up and down; there was a tree, and I tried to make it go up in a straight line just as high, and the next minute I heard a crash, and it had gone through Mr. Hollington's window."

"Good gracious!" Poppet said, with widening eyes; then she gave a little joyful jump. "I've got thirteen shillings, Bunty, from the pound Mr. Hassal gave me; I'll give it to you to get it mended with. Oh, it won't be such a very bad row; you can 'splain it all to Mr. Hollington."

"That's not all," Bunty said. "Thirteen shillings! You might as well say ha'pennies. I stood there for a bit and no one came, and at last I went in and looked about, and what do you think?—no one had heard!"

"Oh!" breathed Poppet. She scented the old trouble again.

"But you see it was such an awful crash. I knew it was more than the window. And every one was out in the playground,—even Mr. Burnham had just gone out again for something, and Mr. Hollington had gone home early. So I first went quietly upstairs, and no one was about, so I went into his room to get the ball, because my name was on it. And there were two glass cases on top of one another under the window with eggs and specimens and things in, and they were all smashed."

Poppet drew a long breath that ended in a whistle. She was wishing she had not bought that set of gardening tools that cost six shillings, and that shillingsworth of burnt almonds—perhaps a sovereign——

"It wasn't school-time," Bunty was whispering now, "and no one had seen—not a soul, Poppet. Poppet, it was an accident; why should I go and tell of myself? Why, I might have been expelled; and think what the governor would say. So——"

"Yes," said Poppet steadily, "go on, Bunty."

He had paused, and was digging up the earth with his broken pocket-knife. "So—go on."

"So, when we were all in afternoon school, Mr. Burnham came in and asked who did it."

"Yes, Bunty—dear." A red colour had crept up into the little girl's cheeks, her eyes were full of painful anxiety. "You said you had, Bunty—didn't you, Bunty dear? Oh, Bunty, of course you said you had."

"No, I didn't," burst out her brother. "How could I after that, you idiot you? What is the good telling you things? Why I didn't know what would have happened. When he asked us separately I just said 'No' in a hurry, and then I couldn't say 'Yes' after, could I?"

Again Poppet was silent, again there was the look of amaze and grief in her wide, clear eyes. Bunty pulled his old cap over his face again—he hated himself, and most of all he hated to meet the honest, sorrowful eyes of his little sister.

"Couldn't you tell now, Bunty?" she said softly. "Go to-night—I'll come with you to the gate—oh, do, Bunty dear. Mr. Burnham is not vewy howid perhaps, and canings don't hurt vewy much—let's go to-night, and by to-morrow it'll all be over."

"It's no good." A sob came from under the cap. "Oh, Poppet, it'll be awful to-morrow! Oh, Poppet! Some one had seen, after all. Just as I left school Hawkins came up to me. He hadn't been there when Burnham asked us, and didn't hear anything till after school, and he said he saw me coming out of Hollington's room, and creeping down the passage with a cricket ball in my hand, and he went in to report it to Burnham just as I came home, to pay me out for getting him a swishing."

Poppet was crying, though she hardly knew it. Such a terrible scrape, and such a lie at the back of it—what could be the end of it?

"Oh, Bunty!" she said, and put her face right down in the long grass. The earth and the tears got mixed, and smirched the clearness of her skin—there was a wet, black smudge all down her poor little nose.

"Poppet!" cried Meg's voice, preceding her down the path in the dusk. "Are you really sitting on the grass again when I've told you so often how wet the dew makes it? John, how can you let her, when you know how she coughs! Go to bed at once, Poppet, it's after eight; and you haven't touched your home-lessons, John—really it's one person's work to look after you—and where is that coat with the buttons off?"

"On my bed," "John" said sulkily.

"I wish you'd hang it up—what's the use of pegs? Poppet, go in when I tell you—don't be naughty. Now, John, go and start your lessons. You'd better do them in your bedroom, you make such a litter downstairs."

Meg turned to go back, Poppet's reluctant hand held fast.

"Can't I stay five minutes, please, Meg?" the little girl said, looking up beseechingly.

Even in the fading light Meg saw the sweet brimming eyes and quivering little lips.

"John!" she said angrily, "you've been bullying the poor little thing again; I simply won't have it—I shall speak to father."

"Oh, shut up!" said John; and he moved away wearily up to the house.