Lilian had always taken rather a delight in what Nancy called 'the melancholics.' When quite a tiny child she had much preferred the tragedy of Red Riding Hood to the brighter fate of the princesses who lived happily ever afterwards, and, with the tears streaming down her fat little cheeks, would quaver out 'Tell it again!'
Her first efforts in poetry had been in a distinctly pensive strain. When only about nine years old she had composed—
'The Dying Child's Last Words.
'Remember me when I am gone,
And me thou canst not see;
When I lie sleeping in my grave,
Dear friends, remember me.
'You'll keep my little garden neat,
My clothes you'll fold away;
My playthings in a drawer you'll put
With which I last did play.'
There ought to have been more verses, but at this point Father had unfortunately got hold of the paper, and persisted in treating the poem in such a comic light that the indignant authoress had never found the heart to finish it, though the fragment was considered very talented by Aunt Helen, and carefully put away in an old work-box, with the first specimens of Peggy's handwriting and one of Bobby's little baby-curls.
Peggy came to the end of her book at last, and life seemed so stale and flat anywhere out of the South Seas that she wandered down the garden for a little diversion. Lilian's fresh young voice proclaiming that her heart 'was breaking, breaking,' came wafted along the terrace, mingled with the sound of the reaping-machine, and the indignant gobble of the old turkey, which Bobby was chasing round the pasture.
'Let him alone, you naughty boy! Whatever mischief will you be in next?' cried Aunt Helen, flying to the rescue of the patriarch of her poultry-yard, and enforcing her remarks by sounding raps on the culprit's curly brown pate. Bobby was the apple of her eye, but she considered wholesome chastisement to be necessary to his moral welfare.
'Oh, Auntie, I've finished my book, and we've nothing much to do this afternoon; don't you think we might take our tea out into the woods?' said Peggy, swinging herself over the garden wall into the pasture.
'You can if you like; only you must get the baskets ready yourselves, and not worry Nancy. You may as well buy a loaf while you are out, too,' said Aunt Helen, rummaging a shilling out of her pocket. 'We're baking again to-day, but the harvesters take so much bread for the "drinkings." Get some tea-cakes, too, if they have any.'