Meg had betaken herself to the drawing-room, and was sitting on the floor before the music canterbury with scissors, thimble, and a roll of narrow blue ribbon on her knee, and all her father"s songs, that he so often complained were falling to pieces, spread out before her.
He saw her once as he pa.s.sed the door, and looked surprised and pleased.
"Thank you, Margaret: they wanted it badly. I am glad you can make yourself useful, after all," he said.
"Yes, Father."
Meg st.i.tched on industriously.
He went back to his study, where Pip"s head was at a studious, absorbed angle, and pyramids of books and sheaves of paper were on the table. He wrote two more letters, and there came a little knock at the door.
"Come in," he called; and there entered Nell.
She was carrying very carefully a little tray covered with a snow-white doyley, and on it were a gla.s.s of milk and a plate of mulberries. She placed it before him.
"I thought perhaps you would like a little lunch, Father," she said gently; and Pip was seized with a sudden coughing fit.
"My DEAR child!" he said.
He looked at it very thoughtfully.
"The last gla.s.s of milk I had, Nellie, was when I was Pip"s age, and was Barlow"s f.a.g at Rugby. It made me ill, and I have never touched it since."
"But this won"t hurt you. You will drink this?" She gave him one of her most beautiful looks.
"I would as soon drink the water the maids wash up in, my child."
He took a mulberry, ate it, and made a wry face. "They"re not fit to eat."
"After you"ve eaten about six you don"t notice they"re sour,"
she said eagerly. But he pushed them away.
"I"ll take your word for it." Then he looked at her curiously.
"What made you think of bringing me anything, Nellie? I don"t ever remember you doing so before."
"I thought you might be hungry writing here so long," she said gently; and Pip choked again badly, and she withdrew.
Outside in the blazing sunshine Judy was mowing the lawn.
They only kept one man, and, as his time was so taken up with the horses and stable work generally, the garden was allowed to fall into neglect. More than once the Captain had spoken vexedly of the untidy lawns, and said he was ashamed for visitors to come to the house.
So Judy, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with zeal, armed herself with an abnormally large scythe, and set to work on the long, long gra.s.s.
"Good heavens, Helen! you"ll cut your legs off!" called her father, in an agitated tone.
He had stepped out on to the front veranda for a mild cigar after the mulberry just as she brought her scythe round with an admirable sweep and decapitated a whole army of yellow-helmeted dandelions.
She turned and gave him a beautiful smile. "Oh, no, Father!--why, I"m quite a dab at mowing."
She gave it another alarming but truly scientific sweep.
"See that--and th-a-at--and tha-a-a-at!"
"Th-a-at" carried off a fragment of her dress, and "tha-a-a-at"
switched off the top of a rose-bush; but there are details to everything, of course.
"Accidents WILL happen, even to the best regulated gra.s.s-cutters,"
she said composedly, and raising the scythe for a fresh circle.
"Stop immediately, Helen! Why ever can"t you go and play quietly with your doll, and not do things like this?" said her father irascibly.
"An" I was afther doin" it just to pleasure him," she said, apparently addressing the dandelions.
"Well, it won"t "pleasure him" to have to provide you with cork legs and re-stock the garden," he said dryly: "Put it down."
"Sure, an" it"s illigence itsilf this side: you wouldn"t be afther leaving half undone, like a man with only one cheek shaved."
Judy affected an Irish brogue at some occult reason of her own.
"Sure an" if ye"d jist stip down and examine it yirself, it"s quite aisy ye"d be in yer moind."
The Captain hid a slight smile in his moustache. The little girl looked so comical, standing there in her short old pink frock, a broken-brimmed hat on her tangle of dark curls, her eyes sparkling, her face flushed, the great scythe in her hands, and the saucy words on her lips.
He came down and examined it: it was done excellently well, like most of the things miss Judy attempted--mischief always included: and her little black-stockinged legs were still in a good state of preservation.
"Hum! Well, you can finish it then, as Pat"s busy. How did you learn to mow, young lady of wonderful accomplishments?" (he looked at her questioningly); "and what made you set yourself such a task?"
Judy gave her curls a quick push off her hot forehead.
"(A) Faix, it was inborn in me," she answered instantly; "and (B)--sure, and don"t I lo-o-ove you and delaight to plaize you?"
He went in again slowly, thoughtfully. Judy always mystified him. He understood her the least of any of his children, and sometimes the thought of her worried him. At present she was only a sharp, clever, and frequently impertinent child; but he felt she was utterly different from the other six, and it gave him an aggrieved kind of feeling when he thought about it, which was not very often.
He remembered her own mother had often said she trembled for Judy"s future. That restless fire of hers that shone out of her dancing eyes, and glowed scarlet on her cheeks in excitement, and lent amazing energy and activity to her young, lithe body, would either make a n.o.ble, daring, brilliant woman of her, or else she would be shipwrecked on rocks the others would never come to, and it would flame up higher and higher and consume her.
"Be careful of Judy" had been almost the last words of the anxious mother when, in the light that comes when the world"s is going out, she had seen with terrible clearness the stones and briars in the way of that particular pair of small, eager feet.
And she had died, and Judy was stumbling right amongst them now, and her father could not "be careful" of her because he absolutely did not know how.
As he went up the veranda steps again and through the hall, he was wishing almost prayerfully she had not been cast in so different a mould from the others, wishing he could stamp out that strange flame in her that made him so uneasy at times. He gave a great puff at his cigar, and sighed profoundly; then he turned on his heel and went off toward the stables to forget it all.
The man was away, exercising one of the horses in the long paddock; but there was something stirring in the harness-room, so he went in.
There was a little, dripping wet figure standing over a great bucket, and dipping something in and out with charming vigour.
At the sound of his footsteps, Baby turned round and lifted a perspiring little face to his.
"I"se washing the kitsies for you, and Flibberty-Gibbet," she said beamingly.
He took a horrified step forward.