In the Mist of the Mountains Part 27

"That will do, Max," said Miss Bibby, coldly. "I shall consider you in disgrace, until you have told Anna and m.u.f.fie you are sorry."

"I've done wiv bibs," shouted Max.

"Go and stand in that corner, Max," Miss Bibby said with unexpected sternness in her tone.

Max scrambled off his chair as if he could hardly reach the place indicated fast enough.

He ran right into the corner--gave a hard kick at the skirting board and made a rush for the door.

"I've done wiv bibs," he shrieked, and tore away as fast as his legs could carry him into the garden.

"Go on with your breakfast, Lynn," said Miss Bibby with as much calmness as she could muster,--"sit down immediately, m.u.f.fie--" for m.u.f.fie, excited by the unusual happening, had flown to the window to see where the rebel was heading for, "Max has forgotten himself, I am afraid."

This was ever Miss Bibby's phrase--ever her gentle optimism. If you lost your temper, your manners, your courage, any of your higher qualities, you had "forgotten yourself," forgotten the fine, upright man you were by nature and become for a moment the shadowy ghost of that black unknown self that ever dogs one.

"As I have finished, I will ask you to excuse me, little girls," Miss Bibby continued, rising from her seat. In point of fact, she had not yet consumed the whole of her slender meal, but who was to say what a boy with such a red, fierce little face might be doing?

She crossed the gra.s.s with troubled eyes. Max was too busy a little man to have fits like this often.

Now and again in wet weather, certainly, when he could not work off any superfluous steam in the garden, he had lately taken to flinging himself flat on the floor and kicking, if thwarted in any way. And Miss Bibby had vaguely recognized that this was due to his being deprived so long of the healthy moral tone of the presence of his mother and father--the latter in especial.

Anna opined that the easiest way to get him out of these "tantrums" was to bribe him with the offer of a large piece of chocolate.

"He's only a baby," she would say excusingly, "and besides, he's a boy--it's in him and it's got to come out,--same as a measle rash. You'd think there'd be some med'cin for it, wouldn't you?"

Kinross would have enjoyed the notion--the need of a Tonic for Eliminating the Black Corpuscles from the Blood of Boys.

Max saw Miss Bibby coming. In truth he had almost forgotten his recent revolt against law and order, for during his tumultuous pa.s.sage through the garden, he had come across one of the guinea-pigs that had escaped from its bondage. An exciting chase had followed, but he had won, and in the satisfaction consequent upon victory he might have even been induced to overlook Miss Bibby's behaviour.

But then he saw the gentle reproach in her eyes, and noted (the Judge himself had not the faculty of lightning observation possessed by his son) the nervous, half-conciliatory trepidation of her manner. He thrust his hands as deeply as they would go into his inadequate pockets and met her gaze unblinking.

"Why, Maxie," she said, "I can't believe this is the good little boy who was here yesterday. No, it is some other bad little fellow who has taken his suit and looks like him. Do you think if I look carefully about I could find my good little boy again?"

Max would have none of such folly.

"I'm me," he said determinedly.

Miss Bibby sought to gather him up in her arms--the natural instinct.

For indeed when your rebel's "trousers" measure but three inches in the inner seam you cannot regard him as other than a baby.

But he held fast to the wire fence of the guinea-pigs' run.

"I _won't_ be nursed," he said. She stood ten minutes cajoling him, wheedling, coaxing, threatening. No, he would not return to his corner and work out his punishment, even though the punisher was eagerly offering to reduce the duration of it to "exactly three minutes, Max darling,--see, by this pretty little watch, and then we can all be friends again."

No, Max would have no traffic at all in the offer of such an ignominious position.

"Well, see here, Max," said the helpless lady recognizing and bowing at last to the stronger will, "if I let you off the corner will you run in and kiss m.u.f.fie and Anna to show you are sorry?" (The word "apologize"

was eliminated now from this last treaty.)

No, Max would _not_ kiss either Anna or m.u.f.fie. They were both "bad girls."

"Very well, Max," said Miss Bibby, "you only leave me one resort. I shall shut you up until you are good."

"I can run licker than you," was Max's reply, and he ducked beneath her arm and dashed across the garden.

Miss Bibby's blood rose high and she started to follow him. But how may a lady who for at least twenty years has done nothing but walk sedately ever expect or wildly hope to catch up a pair of brown muscular little legs? She was brought up panting, with her hand at her side before they had circled the bamboos three times and the quarry was plainly as fresh as ever. But:

"Escape me never, beloved, While I am I and you are you."

was Miss Bibby's att.i.tude now. She called to Anna to help with the chase. And Anna came cheerfully as well as of necessity, for Max had crushed mulberries on her snowy kitchen table, in an endeavour to "invent cochineal," and it would take her hours to eradicate the stain.

The little girls came too--they felt it was more than half a game, for Max's face was perfectly smiling and good-natured.

So Pauline stood guard at the waratahs, and Lynn and Anna prevented any more dodging at the bamboos, and Miss Bibby cut off the retreat to the house and m.u.f.fie worried him in the rear.

Surely, surely by tactics like these they drove him right into a corner.

Had there been a fence he would have shown fight a little longer by scrambling up it and continuing the chase on the other side. But they had headed him to a hedge, an African box thorn hedge, and there was nothing more to be done. So he stuck his legs apart, and put his hands in his pockets and surveyed his captors as they closed in round him. And it seemed satisfactory to his self-respect that it had taken five of them--two quite grown-up, too--to beat him.

But Anna was singularly without the capacity for admiring fine deeds and simply grasped him firmly around the middle and bore him to the house.

He kicked all the way, merely to maintain his self-respect.

"Where shall I put 'im?" gasped the girl, stumbling along the hall, the other four at her heels.

"Here, here," said Miss Bibby, opening the sitting-room door, and running across the floor to close and lock the French windows.

Anna stood him down on his feet and gave him one good, if unauthorized, shake for all the kicks she had received.

"There!" she said, as a woman will.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The boy glared round at his victors."]

And it was precisely at this point the "language," feelingly alluded to before, happened.

The boy glared round at his victors, now all grouped at the door.

"You beasly girls," he said.

CHAPTER XX

A LESSON IN DISCIPLINE

That is why "Greenways" should have hidden its shamed head in one of the mountain's tender mists instead of gaily smiling out at the world that morning.

When Miss Kinross rode briskly up the drive, perhaps an hour later, she had no suspicion that so truly shocking an occurrence had befallen the sunny place.