Produced by Geoffrey Cowling. HTML version by Al Haines.
Seven Little Australians
by
Ethel Turner
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I Chiefly Descriptive II Fowl for Dinner III Virtue Not Always Rewarded IV The General Sees Active Service V "Next Monday Morning" VI The Sweetness of Sweet Sixteen VII "What Say You to Falling in Love?" VIII A Catapult and a Catastrophe IX Consequences X Bunty in the Light of a Hero XI The Truant XII Swish, Swish! XIII Uninvited Guests XIV The Squatter's Invitation XV Three Hundred Miles in the Train XVI Yarrahappini XVII Cattle-Drafting at Yarrahappini XVIII The Picnic at Krangi-Bahtoo XIX A Pale-Blue Hair Ribbon XX Little Judy XXI When the Sun Went Down XXII And Last
ToMY MOTHER
CHAPTER I
Chiefly Descriptive
Before you fairly start this story I should like to give you just aword of warning.
If you imagine you are going to read of model children, withperhaps; a naughtily inclined one to point a moral, you had better laydown the book immediately and betake yourself to 'Sandford and Merton'or similar standard juvenile works. Not one of the seven is reallygood, for the very excellent reason that Australian children never are.
In England, and America, and Africa, and Asia, the little folks maybe paragons of virtue, I know little about them.
But in Australia a model child is--I say it not withoutthankfulness--an unknown quantity.
It may be that the miasmas of naughtiness develop best in thesunny brilliancy, of our atmosphere. It may be that the land andthe people are young-hearted together, and the children's spirits notcrushed and saddened by the shadow of long years' sorrowfulhistory.
There is a lurking sparkle of joyousness and rebellion and mischiefin nature here, and therefore in children.
Often the light grows dull and the bright colouring fades toneutral tints in the dust and heat of the day. But when itsurvives play-days and school-days, circumstances alone determinewhether the electric sparkle shall go to play will-o'-the-wispwith the larrikin type, or warm the breasts of the spirited,single-hearted, loyal ones who alone can "advance Australia."
Enough of such talk. Let me tell you about my seven selectspirits. They are having nursery tea at the present moment witha minimum of comfort and a maximum of noise, so if you can bear adeafening babel of voices and an unmusical clitter-clatter ofcrockery I will take you inside the room and introduce them toyou.
Nursery tea is more an English institution than an Australian one;there is a kind of _bon camaraderie_ feeling between parents andyoung folks here, and an utter absence of veneration on the part ofthe latter. So even in the most wealthy families it seldomhappens that the parents dine in solemn state alone, while thechildren are having a simple tea in another room: they allassemble around the same board, and the young ones partake of thesame dishes, and sustain their parts in the conversation rightnobly.
But, given a very particular and rather irritable father, andseven children with excellent lungs and tireless tongues, whatcould you do but give them separate rooms to take their meals in?
Captain Woolcot, the father, in addition to this division, had hadthick felt put over the swing door upstairs, but the noise used tofloat down to the dining-room in cheerful, unconcerned mannerdespite it.
It was a nursery without a nurse, too, so that partly accountedfor it. Meg, the eldest, was only sixteen, and could not beexpected to be much of a disciplinarian, and the slatternly butgood-natured girl, who was supposed to combine the duties ofnursery-maid and housemaid, had so much to do in her secondcapacity that the first suffered considerably. She used to laythe nursery meals when none of the little girls could be found tohelp her, and bundle on the clothes of the two youngest in themorning, but beyond that the seven had to manage for themselves.
The mother? you ask.
Oh, she was only twenty--just a lovely, laughing-faced girl, whomthey all adored, and who was very little steadier and verylittle more of a housekeeper than Meg. Only the youngest of thebrood was hers, but she seemed just as fond of the other six asof it, and treated it more as if it were a very entertainingkitten than a real live baby, and her very own.
Indeed at Misrule--that is the name their house always went by,though I believe there was a different one painted above thebalcony--that baby seemed a gigantic joke to everyone. TheCaptain generally laughed when he saw it, tossed it in the air,and then asked someone to take it quickly.
The children dragged it all: over the country with them, droppedit countless times, forgot its pelisse on wet days, muffled it upwhen it was hot, gave it the most astounding things to eat, and yetit was the if healthiest; prettiest, and most sunshiny baby thatever sucked a wee fat thumb.
It was never called "Baby," either; that was the special name ofthe next youngest. Captain Woolcot had said, "Hello, is this theGeneral?" when the little, red, staring-eyed morsel had been putinto his arms, and the name had come into daily use, though Ibelieve at the christening service the curate did say somethingabout Francis Rupert Burnand Woolcot.
Baby was four, and was a little soft fat thing with prettycuddlesome ways, great smiling eyes, and lips very kissable whenthey were free from jam.
She had a weakness, however, for making the General cry, or shewould have been really almost a model child. Innumerable timesshe had been found pressing its poor little chest to make it"squeak;" and even pinching its tiny arms, or pulling itsinnocent nose, just for the strange pleasure of hearing the yellsof despair it instantly set up. Captain Woolcot ascribed thepeculiar tendency to the fact that the child had once had adropsical-looking woolly lamb, from which the utmost pressure wouldonly elicit the faintest possible squeak: he said it was onlynatural that now she had something so amenable to squeezing sheshould want to utilize it.
Bunty was six, and was fat and very lazy. He hated scouting atcricket, he loathed the very name of a paper-chase, and as forrunning an errand, why, before anyone could finish saying somethingwas wanted he would have utterly disappeared. He was rather smallfor his age;-and I don't think had ever been seen with a clean face.Even at church, though the immediate front turned to the ministermight be passable, the people in the next pew had always anuninterrupted view of the black rim where washing operations hadleft off.
The next on the list--I am going from youngest to oldest, yousee--was the "show" Woolcot, as Pip, the eldest boy, used to say.You have seen those exquisite child-angel faces on Raphael Tuck'sChristmas cards? I think the artist must just have dreamed ofNell, and then reproduced the vision imperfectly. She was ten,and had a little fairy-like figure, gold hair clustering in wonderfulwaves and curls around her face, soft hazel eyes, and a littlerosebud of a mouth. She was not conceited either, her family tookcare of that--Pip would have nipped such a weakness very sternlyin its earliest bud; but in some way if there was a pretty ribbonto spare, or a breadth of bright material; just enough for one littlefrock, it fell as a matter of course to her.
Judy was only three years older, but was the greatest contrastimaginable. Nellie used to move rather slowly about, and wouldhave made a picture in any attitude. Judy I think, was neverseen to walk, and seldom looked picturesque. If she did not dashmadly to the place she wished to get to, she would progress by aseries of jumps, bounds, and odd little skips. She was very thin,as people generally are who have quicksilver instead of blood intheir veins; she had a small, eager, freckled face, with very,bright dark eyes, a small, determined mouth, and a mane of untidy,curly dark hair that was: the trial of her life.
Without doubt she was the worst of the seven, probably because shewas the cleverest. Her brilliant inventive
powers plunged them allinto ceaseless scrapes, and though she often bore the brunt of theblame with equanimity, they used to turn round, not infrequently,and upbraid her for suggesting the mischief. She had beenchristened "Helen," which in no way account's for "Judy," butthen nicknames are rather unaccountable things sometimes, are theynot? Bunty said it was because she was always popping andjerking herself about like the celebrated wife of Punch, andthere really is something in that. Her other name, "Fizz," iseasier to understand; Pip used to say he never yet had seen theginger ale that effervesced and bubbled and made the noise thatJudy did.
I haven't introduced you to Pip yet, have I? He was a little likeJudy, only handsomer and taller, and he was fourteen, and had asgood an opinion, of himself and as poor a one of girls as boys ofthat age generally have.
Meg was the eldest of the family, and had a long, fair plait thatBunty used to delight in pulling; a sweet, rather dreamy face,and a powdering of pretty freckles that occasioned her muchtribulation of spirit.
It was generally believed in the family that she wrote poetryand stories, and even kept a diary, but no one had ever seen avestige of her papers, she kept them so carefully locked up inher, old tin hat-box. Their father, had you asked them they wouldall have replied with considerable pride, was "a military man,"and much from home. He did not understand children at all, and wasalways grumbling at the noise they made, and the money they cost.Still, I think he was rather proud of Pip, and sometimes, if Nelliewere prettily dressed, he would take her out with him in his dogcart.
He had offered to send the six of them to boarding school when hebrought home his young girl-wife, but she would not hear of it.
At first they had tried living in the barracks, but after a timeevery one in the officers' quarters rose in revolt at the pranksof those graceless children, so Captain Woolcot took a house somedistance up the Parramatta River, and in considerable bitternessof spirit removed his family there.
They liked the change immensely; for there was a big wildernessof a garden, two or three paddocks, numberless sheds forhide-and-seek, and, best of all, the water. Their father keptthree beautiful horses, one at he barracks and a hunter and agood hack at Misrule; so, to make up, the children--not that theycared in the slightest--went about in shabby, out-at-elbow clothes,and much-worn boots. They were taught--all but Pip, who went tothe grammar school--by a very third-class daily governess, wholived in mortal fear of her ignorance being found out by herpupils. As a matter of fact, they had found her out long ago, aschildren will, but it suited them very well not to be pushed onand made to work, so they kept the fact religiously tothemselves.