"It will cost us twopence each," said Pauline calculatingly, "but we can afford it; it"s nearly the day for our sixpences again."
"I wanted my last tuppence for some pink wool--can"t you find some paper in the house?" said m.u.f.fie on discovering that the disburs.e.m.e.nt Pauline declared necessary was for mere paper.
"No," said Pauline firmly; "authors always have plenty of clean paper. I won"t use the half sheets Miss Bibby gives us to scribble on."
"No, no; _do_ let us use proper paper," cried Lynn, who had had far too many poetic fancies nipped in the bud for want of this precious transmitting material.
So the purchases were made and the eightpennyworth of paper made a very respectable show upon the table of the summer-house, to which they had retreated to ensure privacy to themselves for the arduous undertaking.
Pauline sat at the head of the table, the others ranged almost meekly around her. Hers was a responsible position and she intended them all to realize it.
For while it was one thing for all to say lightly, "We will write a book each," the matter resolved itself into all the actual writing falling to Pauline, for the sad and simple reason that none of the others _could_ write.
So Pauline leaned back and gave herself airs.
"I shall write my own story first," she said, "and you are none of you to speak a word to interrupt me, or I won"t write yours at all. Max, stop scratching on the table; m.u.f.fie, don"t shuffle your feet like that, you put my vein out." The last was a slightly tangled remark picked up from Miss Kinross who had been heard to speak of various interruptions putting her brother out of vein.
m.u.f.fie, thwarted in her desire to scratch a horse upon the surface of the table, fell to filling up a crack in it with sand scooped up from the floor and mixed, when the writing lady was not looking, to a pleasing consistency with ink.
Lynn lay face downwards on a bench and bent all her energies to composing the story that Pauline would shortly write at her dictation.
Max simply strolled to the door; the little girls might be under Pauline"s thumb, but no one expected him really to obey any one except his father.
"Call me when you"re leady," he said to Pauline, "I"ll be sitting on the loof."
And m.u.f.fie, suffering from her enforced inactivity, soon had the tantalizing sight of sections of his brown legs displayed through the lattice work above her head.
Scratch, scratch went Pauline"s pen--scratch, scratch along line after line. Evidently she was not troubled with any lack of ideas.
Twenty minutes, half an hour slipped away. Lynn had long since composed her tale and had fallen to playing a fairy drama at the end of her bench with bits of moss and white pebbles from the floor.
Max had tumbled twice through a hole in the lattice roof, and had on each occasion blotted Pauline"s precious MS by the precipitation of his whole body upon it.
Sore, therefore, about his knees and elbows, he had given up his lofty perch and betaken himself to his oft-essayed task of digging a hole in the ground, to reach the fire that the kindergarten governess had informed him burnt in the middle of the earth.
And m.u.f.fie now occupied the seat on the summer-house roof, and did not lose the opportunity of demonstrating to Max that girls kept their balance much better than boys.
"I"ve finished--come and listen," cried Pauline at last.
Lynn sat upright at once and tried to disentangle her drama from her story. m.u.f.fie slid comfortably down from her perch. But Max was not ready.
"Wait a minte," he cried, "I"m nearly down to the fire--oh, oh, I can feel it on my hand--I b"leeve my spade"s aginning to melt."
But Pauline insisted on his instant attendance within doors.
""Once upon a time"," she began, ""there was a beautiful mother"."
"As beautiful as ours?" asked Lynn.
"Beautifuller," said Pauline.
Lynn argued the point hotly, with m.u.f.fie to back her.
"She _couldn"t_ be," they said.
"Yes, she could--in a book," said Pauline. "I"m not talking about really truly, of course. But in a book they can be as lovely as lovely."
"So is mother," said the little girls stoutly.
"Oh, of course," said Pauline, and her heart softening to the distant dear one, she said, "Well, "once "pon a time there was a mother as beautiful as our mother, and she died"."
"Oh, oh," said Lynn. "Oh, I wish mamma was here. Oh, I don"t like your story a bit, Paul."
"Silly," said Paul, "this is only a book mother--it doesn"t hurt book mothers to die. Now just stop interrupting me. Well, she died--she"s just got to die or the rest of the story can"t happen. The beautiful mother died, "and one day when Emmeline was sitting in the s.p.a.chius drawing-room of the castle--""
"Who"s Emmeline?" asked m.u.f.fie.
"Oh, how stupid you are," cried Pauline; "she"s the daughter, of course,--"sitting in the s.p.a.chius drawing-room of the castle her father strode in, and he led by the hand a very horty lady. "This is your new mother and I command you to obey her, my lady Emmeline," he said.
Emmeline fainted to the ground.
""Her father the n.o.ble lord was always out at his office and didn"t know how the horty step-mother treated Emmeline, but she grew thinner and paler every day, and all her face went transparant and the blue veins were trased in their pallor and her little hand was like a skellington"s; and the cruel step-mother made her do all the scrubbing and hard work, and treated her like a menient. And one day the Lady Emmeline disappeared and was never found again. But twenty years afterwards the wainscotching in the castle was being mended, and they found her lying behind it, her long eyelashes resting on the marble pallor of her cheeks, her little hands clasped in their last long sleep, quite dead. And the n.o.ble lord wept bitterly and resolved never to have another step-mother, and he built a monyment with a white angel to her memory"."
Lynn was quite moved by the story, and gulped down a sob which made Paul most gracious and grateful to her.
But m.u.f.fie sniffed. "Well, she was a silly," she said. "Why didn"t she bang and kick on the wall like the time I hid in the cupboard and the door got shut? Every one heard me in a minute."
"Wainscotching"s much thicker than common cupboards," said Paul disdainfully.
"I"d have got my axe and chopped and chopped and walked light out and chopped off the woman"s head and put her down my hole," said Max.
Then it was Lynn"s turn.
She dictated rapidly, occasionally waving her arms dramatically to heighten the effect.
""A key lay on the ground. The moon was up. Purple was on the mountains, and all in the valley lay the snow-white mist. Black pine trees stood in a long, long row, like the ghosts of tall soldiers. The sun was setting, and orange and purple flamed in the sky. The moon was very young and thin and was just climbing up the other side of the sky. The sun----""
"Oh, I say," said Pauline, "isn"t anything ever going to happen? I"m tired of the sun and the moon. I always skip that kind of thing in books."
"Oh, Paul!" said Lynn, "that"s the best part. You can make such lovely pictures."
"Go on," said Paul.
""The sun was----""
Pauline folded her arms. "I won"t write another word about the sun," she said.
"Well, the moon--" said Lynn beseechingly. "Just say "the moon looked like a far-off silver boat.""
"No," said Paul; "you"ve said once it looked like a starved baby."