The Eagle's Nest

by S. E. Cartwright

Madge rubbed her eyes and looked again. It was no dream, and there was no possibility of a mistake. She had seen the goats safely shut into the calves' house the night before, and here they were loose and walking about the garden. She could not understand in the least how it had happened; but nevertheless it was a fact. And, moreover, they were eating her mother's favourite roses as fast as they could. She tapped gently on the window-pane, but the goats took absolutely no notice. At this rate there would not be a rose left by the time the gardener came to work.

A great idea occurred to Madge. We know that she was rather independent, as befitted the eldest of a family, and decidedly fond of managing things her own way. So it presently came about that she decided not to let the roses be eaten, and not to disturb anybody else, but to drive Jack and Jill out of the garden all by herself. Perhaps it seemed rather unkind not to wake Betty, who was sleeping quietly in her little bed in the other corner of the room. However, she looked so comfortable that it was almost a pity to disturb her, and after all she was two years younger than Madge, and could not reasonably expect to do exactly the same things as her elder sister. She would be very full of reproaches when she woke up, but Madge resolved to risk a little sisterly abuse sooner than permit anyone to share the glory of her exploit.

It really does not take very long to dress if one omits all ornamental additions, and dispenses with everything in the shape of a bath! Jack and Jill had not time to do more than taste the succulent young shoots of half a dozen rose-trees before Madge had crept downstairs and quietly opened the front-door. Then with a half-suppressed shout of battle she rushed towards them, waving a walking-stick which she had the presence of mind to snatch up in passing through the hall. The goats both gave a guilty start at the first sound, and then crossed the lawn in a series of most amazing bounds. Madge afterwards compared them to gigantic grasshoppers; and, indeed, as she panted hopelessly behind them, she would scarcely have felt surprised if one of her nimble pets had, with a higher leap than usual, suddenly perched on the bough of a tree or the roof of a house!

Madge had often laughed at her father's little terrier, Snap, for chasing the sparrows up and down the lawn in the vain hope of some day catching them, but she soon began to realize that she had started on quite as hopeless an enterprise herself. However rapidly she ran along the paths, however stealthily she stalked behind the bushes, Jack and Jill proved quicker and more artful. When, with untold trouble, she had driven them into a corner, and was advancing with outstretched hands to grasp their pert little horns, they would just toss their heads, and without any apparent effort skip right over her shoulder and be off half across the garden almost before she could turn round.

"I do believe I shall have to go back and fetch Betty after all," muttered Madge, when this sort of thing had gone on so long that she was fairly tired out. "Not that she can run half as fast as I can, her legs are so short! But she could help. I really can't be expected to do all the work by myself!"

Madge was getting tired, and consequently cross. So, rather funnily, she was beginning to feel it quite a grievance that nobody had come out to help her to drive the goats, forgetting that it was entirely her own wish to undertake the job alone. As she somewhat sullenly walked towards the house, she prepared several severe speeches to be addressed to Betty on the selfishness of lying in bed and leaving her sister to do all the work. But just as she was getting into a state of considerable indignation, out of the open front-door walked her father.

Captain West had evidently dressed in a hurry like his daughter. In point of fact he had been suddenly wakened by one of Madge's involuntary cries, for though she had every intention of being very quiet, she could not altogether suppress an occasional shout when the goats were unusually irritating. He had started up and looked into the passage. All seemed quiet, but a gleam of light in the hall below showed him that the front-door was open. Between three and four o'clock in the morning this was a fairly peculiar circumstance. So, returning to his room he hastily slipped on the first clothes he came across and proceeded downstairs, to find out who was about at that early hour.

"Hullo, Madge! What on earth are you doing?" he exclaimed, as he suddenly found himself face to face with his eldest daughter.

Madge explained the whole story in rather a confused, disjointed sort of way. It was not at all the triumphal return to the house that she had planned. If things had gone as she intended she would easily have caught Jack and Jill; they would have come to eat a little grass out of her hand, and then she would gently but firmly have led them back to the calves' house. Here she would have secured the door more skilfully than her elders had done the previous evening, so that there would have been no further possibility of escape for the prisoners. And then she would have strolled quietly back to the house, and explained to an admiring audience at breakfast-time what precautions she had taken for the safety of the garden while the more negligent members of the family slept. It was certainly very disappointing to be treated by her father as a naughty child instead of a heroine, and scolded for her stupidity in running out on the wet grass in thin shoes.

"But I couldn't expect it to be wet in the summer," replied Madge, who would seldom admit that she was in the wrong without an argument.