A MASTER MIND
Hugh had come back. When he had gone away he had taken with him one small portmanteau that went easily into the luggage rack above his head. But on the return journey he had quite a little sum to pay for excess luggage.
For instance no railway carries a motor bicycle for the consideration tendered to it for a passenger ticket. And a motor bicycle was amongst the things turned out on the Burunda platform when Hugh came back, and, to the astonishment of Kate who had gone to meet him, claimed by him.
“My dear fellow,” she exclaimed when assured it was unmistakably his, “how glad I am! I knew you would come to it sooner or later. Oh, what rides we will have together!” Her face beamed.
“Preserve us!” said Hugh; “Melbourne is not responsible for developing maniacal symptoms in me, I assure you. It’s for you, of course.”
[p230]
“You mad boy,” said Kate, “haven’t I already the best you could buy?”
“But it turns your little face red,” said Hugh, “and makes your little heart beat too fast on these hills. This one won’t.”
And then it was that Kate discovered the motor attachment of the new machine and was divided between ecstasy and economic qualms.
Hugh swiftly laid the latter. The speculation had gone well—better than his best expectations; he had to break out somewhere, he said.
The breaking out included a tricycle for Muffie, who was ever in hot water with Max for stealing rides on “Trike” just when that gentleman needed the steed himself. A splendid set of croquet was for Pauline, who delighted in the game and had been overwhelmed with sorrow because one night, when mallets and balls “happened” to be left out on the lawn all night, a vagrant cow with a depraved appetite came in and, as Paul said mournfully, “went and chewed corners all over the balls.”
For Lynn, who had been heard bewailing the fact that all the books she loved had been left in the other house, was a large parcel containing six of the most delightful fairy-books in the world.
And, most exciting of all, there were four [p231] volumes, thin certainly, but most gaily bound and gilt-edged and padded up as well as possible with thick paper and pictures—the books they had all written that day in the summer-house.
There they lay, three bound in scarlet and one in green, The Horty Stepmother, by Pauline Lomax; The Fairy who Had, by Lynn Lomax; There was a Dog, by Muffie Lomax; and The Mother who said No, by Max Lomax. Kate was delighted with them and said she would give much to be at the elbow of the Judge and Mrs. Lomax in New Zealand when these choice volumes from their gifted offspring reached them.
For Miss Bibby too there was an offering.
“There aren’t many modern women left who can fitly wear these things,” Hugh said when he showed it to Kate, “but it struck me that it would become a certain old-world air that lingers about Agnes Bibby.”
“Ho, ho,” said Kate to herself, and stole a glance at him; but she allowed warmly that the thing was very pretty.
It was a chatelaine made of finely-fretted silver. The customary thimble, scissors and other useful and feminine trifles dangled there, but there was also added a delicately-chased case that might have been expected to hold a bodkin, but contained indeed a very up-to-date fountain-pen, gold-mounted.
[p232]
“A woman without a waistcoat pocket for her fountain-pen has always seemed such a pathetic object to me,” Hugh said. “When you were a business woman, K, it often moved me to internal tears to notice the disadvantage you were at in this respect.”
Kate acknowledged the disadvantage.
“Though I did stick to a skirt pocket long after the dressmakers had declared them anathema,” she said, “but there was always the danger of sitting on your pen or having it leak a wide black mark in the back width of your best frock. Even the sacred repository behind the ear that will lodge a penny pen refuses to accommodate a stout and slippery fountain one. But with that arrangement she will be able to make notes all day.”
Hugh hastened to display a miniature note-book, also made to hang suspended from the waist.
“She will be armed at all points, you see,” he said, “and the minute she sees men like columns walking, as some one says, she can jot them down.”
“But what are all the other things?” asked Kate, pointing to several still unaccounted-for parcels and hampers standing about the verandah just where the driver had set them down.
“Oh, by George, yes,” said Hugh. “You [p233] must look after those things, K, or they won’t keep. It’s to-morrow’s dinner.”
“To-morrow’s fiddlestick!” said Kate unbelievingly.
“’Tis, I assure you,” said Hugh; “I’m giving a grand picnic to-morrow at the Falls to celebrate my safe return. Thought of it in bed last night, telephoned the X.Y.Z. Company to pack a bit of lunch that would keep a day and to meet the train with it, and there you are,” he waved his hand at the hampers.
“A bit of lunch!” said Kate sarcastically. “Are you sure there is enough there to take the edge off our appetites?”
“Don’t get anxious,” said Hugh, “there’s a little more to follow in the morning—little things that don’t keep well, you know. We can easily pick them up at the station as we pass.”
“Little things like——?” said Kate.
“Oh, mustard,” said Hugh—“I remembered how you dislike stale mustard. And butter—you can’t leave butter shut up, you know—and other little things.”
“Half a dozen of everything, I suppose,” Kate said, attacking the hampers. “H’m, champagne.”
“Well, you’ve got to drink the health of those shares.”
“Poultry.”
[p234]
“It will keep, won’t it? They assured me it was only cooked at 2 o’clock to-day.”
“Oh, it will keep.”
“Peaches—pineapples—French confectionery.”
“Well, my dear girl, you will all want a square feed when you get to the bottom of those Falls.”
“And who are we all, pray?” inquired Kate.
“Well,” said Hugh, “there are the ducky little girls, that’s two. I sent them a wire each this morning and had their acceptances before the X.Y.Z. got to work.”
“That was smart,” said Kate.
“Yes, I rather pride myself on my executive abilities when I’ve once got going,” said Hugh. “Next I wired Edith and told her to stay away and Gowan, too. Told her you’d chaperone. I don’t want the gloomy brewer’s soul going by me like a stork at my own picnic. Told her to send along the kids though—all five of them.”
“That’s seven,” said Kate, “and ourselves, nine,—anyone else? I hope so, for there’s enough here for nineteen, and I hate waste.”
“Oh, I sent wires over the road, of course.”
“Half a dozen wires?” said Kate.
“Oh, no,” said Hugh innocently, “there are only five of them.”
[p235]
“Five separate wires,—Hugh Kinross, you want a keeper!”
“Well,” said Hugh, “I was only going to send one to Miss Bibby, but then it struck me how pleased a kid would be to get a telegram. I know I never did or I’d have burst with pride in my promising youth.”
“Twelve wires at—at? How many words, sir?”
“Well,” said Hugh, “they wouldn’t have cost so much only I took a fancy to drop into poetry with them. And in spite of precedents the operator declined to do it as a friend.”
“Just a minute,” said Kate, “half of those wires are doomed to be wasted. Your executive ability is a thing to marvel at, I grant you, but you overlooked the little fact that Lomax-cum-Whooping-Cough may not foregather round a tablecloth with Gowan-plus-Perfect-Health.”
Hugh certainly looked nonplussed at this.
“It would be a moral impossibility for one of the parties unaided by the other to eat all this,” pursued Kate.
“My good woman,” said Hugh, “go and put the perishables in the ice-chest. My master mind will soon deal with the difficulty.”
So Kate moved backwards and forwards between the kitchen and the verandah and [p236] Hugh tilted his chair and took out a cigar to help meet the situation.
“Well?” said Kate when only a heap of fine ash remained.
“Quite well,” said Hugh. “Both parties shall attend and not the ghost of a whoop shall be exchanged. I ordered two large sociables,—the drivers will have instructions not to approach nearer than thirty feet within each other. A whoop microbe would hardly travel thirty feet.”
“Well,” said Kate, “as far as that is concerned I don’t see that Edith need have any anxiety. She might pass a wagonette with scarlet fever convalescents herself any day. But what about the actual picnic? Muffie defines this word as eating nice things down a gully. Could we comfortably pass sandwiches to each other there at a distance of thirty feet?”
“Knowing what a fidget Edith is I propose to make the distance several hundred feet,” said Hugh. “See here, it is plain I’ve got to have two picnics now to-morrow. At the head of the Falls I disembark my first contingent,—say the ‘Greenways’ one. I give them instructions to go straight down to the bottom of the second Fall,—they are all good climbers. When they’ve got a good start,—say twenty minutes, I call up the second contingent, the little pets and [p237] Edith’s youngsters and start them down. You will go with these as chaperone and camp at the foot of the first Fall. We must explain to Miss Bibby that your wing extends over both Falls and that she as well as the little pets are brooded beneath it. I’ve already bespoken two caddies from the links to carry the hampers, and they will have plenty of exercise going up and down the steps. As host I shall endeavour to divide myself equally between my two divisions of guests. And probably the exercise between the two tables will rid me of any superfluous flesh I may have about me.”
“Well,” laughed Kate, “it is one way out of the difficulty. I certainly should not have thought of anything myself but of postponing one party until another day.”
“No,” said Hugh complacently, “it takes the strategy of a general or a genius to fix up little things like this.”
Four breathless figures came dashing over the road and through the “Tenby” gate round to the side verandah.
“Oh, oh,” said Lynn imploringly, “you have finished your tea, haven’t you? Miss Bibby wouldn’t let us ’sturb you before.”
“We counted up to a thousand to give you time,” said Pauline, “and we could eat enough tea in a hundred and fifty—unless there were drop cakes.”
[p238]
“We’ve got to go to bed in ten minutes,” said Muffie tragically.
“We’re coming,” shouted Max, and he flourished the rhymed blue telegram that he had carried about all day.
“Did you get our answers?” cried Lynn.
“We paid for them ourselves,” said Pauline. “Miss Bibby just wanted to send one answer and say ‘All accept with pleasure’! But we just wouldn’t, and we all went to the post and we told the woman just what to put, and it would have been a lot better only we didn’t have much time to think, only while we walked up the hill, and Lynn did the most, ’cause she can always think of the rhymingest words, and we’d have made them much longer only we could only afford ninepence each, and we had to lend Max threepence, ’cause he’d only got sixpence left.”
She stopped for sheer lack of breath.
“Ninepence each!” cried Kate, “and you once thought of writing some articles on teaching Thrift to young Australia, Hugh!”
“But that was before I was really acquainted with young Australia,” said Hugh.
“Did you like them?” asked Lynn anxiously, “I was ’fraid you wouldn’t like grin, but nothing else would rhyme.”
“Like them!” said Hugh, “I shall keep them in my desk among my Correspondence from Celebrated Persons. As a special and [p239] particular favour I will allow Kate to see them,” and he drew out the budget of telegraph forms.
“Your friend Pauline
Will be glad to be seen,”
was the uniquely apropos answer to his invitation to the eldest daughter of the Judge.
“Max will come quick
To your nice picnic”
was effort number two. There had been a variant reading of this—
“Max a plate will lick
At your nice picnic,”
and the matter had been fought out before entering the post office, Lynn liking the first and Pauline and Max himself inclining to the second. But Miss Bibby being made umpire declared against the second as not very “nice.” So Hugh knew only the fact that Max would come quick.
“Please take enough
To the picnic. From Muff”
would assuredly not have been allowed by Miss Bibby one little month since, to be sent as an acceptance to the invitation of a person nearly eight times her own age. The fact [p240] that it was handed across the counter—and with a smile, too—was a sign that the foundations of a liberal education may be successfully laid even at thirty-six.
“Your loving friend Lynn
With much joy doth grin,”
in no way satisfied Lynn’s ideas either of composition or beauty, but she had been so occupied helping with the couplets of the others that she was forced to compose hers standing on the door step of the post office. The word “grin” vexed her; yet “thin” would not allow itself to be worked in and no other “ryum” that would make sense would suggest itself, so she quite mournfully sent on the information that with joy she did grin.
Pauline pounced on the formal telegram from Miss Bibby—“Will bring my charges. Many thanks for thinking of them.”
“We did a much better one for her,” she said, “only she wouldn’t send it. I liked it best of all.”
“What was it?” asked Hugh, and learnt that the “rejected address” was—
“Won’t it be nibby?
Yours truly, Miss Bibby.”
But at this point Miss Bibby’s slender figure in its pale grey muslin was seen crossing [p241] the road, so the presents were hastily distributed, and four pairs of young eyes tried to outrival in brightness the just peeping stars of the early evening.
Miss Bibby shook hands with Kate, then with Hugh, on whom she bent a curious glance: she had half expected to see him turn aside and dive through the doorway at the sight of herself, yet there he stood as calm and unashamed as possible.
He took her hand and held it in a pleasant grasp. He looked down at her in the half-fatherly, bantering fashion he adopted to the “ducky little girls.”
“Well,” he said, “and how is the poor little pen?”
Miss Bibby shot one keen glance at him.
He decided that she did not like the slighting reference to that pen and strove to rectify his mistake. “You know, however good an instrument it is, I don’t like to see it in a woman’s hand,” he went on, “it’s an edged weapon and cuts into even the hard hand that holds it; your little hand would bleed if you grasped it perpetually. I better like to think of it smoothing these little heads.”
He looked—he knew not why himself—half sadly at the eager children.
“Isn’t he an anachronism?” laughed Kate, “I often tell him the reason he has not married is he has never been able to find [p242] any one sufficiently Early Victorian for him. Imagine preaching a doctrine of ‘Thou shalt not write’ to women to-day! Every woman her own authoress is the accepted thing.”
“Ah well,” said Hugh, “I know a better thing.” But though Kate pressed him he might not tell to these two spinsters that “Every woman a mother” was in his thoughts.
“I will say good-night,” said Miss Bibby, “come children—at once, if you please.” She shook hands with Kate and this time only bowed to Hugh.
“Did you give her her present?” asked Kate when the gate closed and the grey figure and the little running ones were merged in the grey of the tender dusk.
“No,” said Hugh, “I’ll have to find a better chance; I evidently put my foot in it, didn’t I?” He pondered over the keen eye-glance that had met his once or twice.
“I tell you what it is, Kate,” he said, when, his cigar finished, they went into the house, “that girl will never really forgive me for the interview, however much she may think she does.”
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