Merrylips

by Beulah Marie Dix

When Merrylips next woke, she wondered for a minute where she was. Then she remembered last night. She remembered how Lieutenant Crashaw had led her across the courtyard, and through dim halls and passages, and up a narrow stair. She remembered how he had opened the door of a little chamber and had said:—

"This is thy b-brother's quarters. Thou canst l-lie here for now."

So it was Munn's own room in which she woke. Munn's coats hung on the wall, and on the table, beneath the window, were paper and ink and two bitten apples. Munn must have sat there, writing and eating, before he started on the march from which he had not come back.

At the thought of her lost brother, Merrylips hid her face in the pillow. She was sorry for Munn, who was left a prisoner in the hands of the cruel Roundheads. And she was sorry for herself, too, and sorely afraid of what might happen to her. For if it had seemed hard to be a boy at Monksfield, when Munn was to be there to help her, what did it not seem, now that he was taken from her and she was left to play her part alone?

Still, she never dreamed of telling any one, not even friendly Lieutenant Crashaw, that she was a little girl. She had promised Munn to bear herself as a boy, as long as she stayed at Monksfield. And a gentleman must keep his promise, whatever might happen.

So presently, as a little boy, she should have to meet those brother officers that Munn had told her about. She thought of Captain George Brooke, who would tease, and Lieutenant Miles Digby, who was apt to bully, and Captain Tibbott Norris, from whose path she had been warned to keep herself. She felt that she should never, never have the courage to show her face among them.

But as the morning passed, poor Merrylips grew hungry. And she doubted if there was any one in Monksfield who would bring dinner to a lazy little boy that stayed in bed.

So she got up, and brushed her hair, and smoothed her doublet and breeches, which she had sadly rumpled in her sleep. Then she took from the wall an old red sash and tied it round her waist in a huge bow. It was an officer's sash, and Munn's sash, too. Somehow she felt braver when she had it on.

Like a little soldier and Munn's brother, she marched out of the room and down the stairs into a flagged corridor. Right before her she saw a door that was ajar, and in the room beyond she heard a murmur of men's voices. She shrank back, but just then she smelled the savor of bakemeat. And indeed she was very hungry!

So she sidled through the crack of the door, like a very timid little boy. She found herself in a rude old hall, which was paved with stone and very damp, in spite of the great fire that blazed upon the hearth. Against the wall were benches, and in the middle of the room was an oaken table on which dinner was set out—a chine of beef, and a bakemeat, and leathern jacks full of beer.