"You silly child! If you had only been obedient and done what I told you, instead of playing with the wasp," began Miss Thompson. Then she remembered that it really was a waste of breath pointing out a moral to a boy who was shouting and sobbing, so that he could not hear a word she said. "You had better go to the nursery," she added, "and have something put on your hand. No, you need not do any more lessons before dinner. You can go out into the garden, and your sisters will join you when they have finished."
John was out of the schoolroom door almost before she had done speaking. When once in the passage his cries stopped suddenly. He knew better than to wake the baby out of its mid-day sleep. So on tiptoe, with carefully suppressed sobs, he entered the nursery, and replied in whispers to Nurse's anxious inquiries after his injuries. John had been her favourite charge until the recent arrival of a baby brother. Now she was fickle enough to prefer the baby, or at least to behave as if she did. Still, she lavished much compassion in dumb-show on John's swollen thumb, and wrapped it in a blue bag, until he became so interested in the process that he quite forgot it was hurting. But presently Baby stirred in his sleep, and Nurse being anxious to attend to him, advised John to run out and play in the garden.
It was not strictly speaking kind, but at the same time it was very natural conduct, that John should stand close outside the schoolroom window making derisive faces at his two sisters, who were being reluctantly introduced to the leading facts of English history. Betty first noticed him, and broke into a loud giggle. Miss Thompson looked up.
"If you are well enough to stand there grimacing in the sun, you are well enough to come in and finish your lessons," was all she said. John promptly fled out of sight round the corner.
CHAPTER II.
UNDER THE LABURNUM-TREE.
Within a few yards of the schoolroom window, but just out of sight, stood a large laburnum-tree. Behind it was a very substantial bay-bush. The two were planted at a corner of the house, with the intention probably of cutting off a view of the kitchen windows from the front. But the children had elevated them into a far higher position than that of a mere screen. The laburnum-tree represented their parliament-house. In it, or under it, as the case might be, they played most of their games, told most of their stories, originated most of their schemes.
It was to this refuge that John fled when threatened with lessons. It was so conveniently near the schoolroom, that he could easily hear through the open window when lessons were over; for since he had gone out Miss Thompson had not punished the girls by making them sit behind a closed window and drawn blind. Besides, Madge and Betty were sure to join him under the laburnum-tree directly they were released. In the meantime John enjoyed the unwonted luxury of a choice of seats.
There was only one drawback to the laburnum. It was really such a nice tree that one hardly likes to mention this one fault, but if the children could have suggested any sort of improvement, it would have been a little more sitting accommodation in the boughs. Try as they would they could never, all three, get up in it at once. And John was usually the one left out. This was the way it happened. Madge, being two years older than the twins, and much larger, naturally always seized the highest and most commodious place. Then Betty, lightly observing, "Ladies before gentlemen," would creep into a narrow little fork between two branches at her sister's feet. And all that remained for John was a yard of slippery polished stem, on which nothing but a fly could have sat.