In the Mist of the Mountains Part 29

Not a toe quivered.

Miss Bibby stooped down and laid a hand on the foot; the muscles of it lay soft and resistless beneath her fingers.

"Max," she said again.

"Oh, oh," said Lynn, whose nature was easily strung high, "is he dead!

Oh, is he dead!" She leapt across the room.

But Miss Bibby was gently drawing more of the unresisting body into view--the scratched and chubby knees that succeeded the brown feet, and that were perfect little "calendars of distress," the three-inch "trousers," the crumpled tunic, the little smudgy face.

"Fast asleep!" she said tenderly, and gathered him very softly up into her arms.

"Fast asleep!" said Kate, and something stirred at her heart and made her long to gather up the chubby rogue herself.

"I will lay him down on the sofa," whispered Miss Bibby, but made no haste to do so, so sweet was the sense of the warm, helpless child body in her arms.

But when the little girls had flown to make a nest with cus.h.i.+ons and proclaimed it ready, what further excuse had she? She moved gently across the floor with her burden. But the motion broke the boy's light sleep and he stirred in her arms and opened half an eye. It fell on Kate.

"I'm coming," he said sleepily, "wait for me," and sank away again--"wait for me," and struggled back almost to wakefulness.

Miss Bibby sat down on the sofa with him.

"There," she said soothingly; "hush, go to sleep, love."

Love of course instantly opened his eyes wide.

"I'm going wiv her," he said, looking at Kate. "I always go wiv her to the corner."

"But my little boy was naughty," murmured Miss Bibby in his ear. "Is he my own little good boy again?"

Max nodded.

"Get the licycle," he commanded the three little sisters who were looking at him yearningly.

They flew to obey.

"I'm hungly," he announced.

"Yes, yes--you had no breakfast, darling--Pauline, quickly, some arrowroot biscuits and a gla.s.s of milk."

Anna herself brought in the little tray; she had a soft spot in her heart for this member of the black-hearted s.e.x after all.

"I put cream on them for you, darling," she said, and proffered the biscuits.

Max munched away. "I like cleam," he said, licking it lovingly off one biscuit.

"Well, I am thankful the insurrection is over and that discipline has been so firmly maintained," said Kate with a twinkle in her eye.

Miss Bibby blushed.

"You are sorry, aren't you, darling?" she said, feeling after her formula as a matter of duty.

Max nodded again.

"Say you are sorry, darling boy," she whispered.

Max patted her cheek and then stole his little arm round her neck in a perfectly cherubic way.

"I'm solly," he said; then he seemed to realize more clearly that the lady's honour had to be vindicated before all these "girls," and he repeated more loudly and without being asked, "I'm velly solly."

"You darling!" cried the delighted Miss Bibby, and clasped and kissed him again.

Pauline wheeled "Trike" out to the foot of the steps, Lynn rushed for the ever lost boy-hat, m.u.f.fie flew to pick a stone up from the path before the little wheel.

Then a flash of irresistible humour shone in Kate Kinross's eyes.

"Max," she said with exceeding suddenness, "what are you sorry for?"

Max mounted his machine from behind and settled himself in his saddle.

"Solly cos I was shut up," he said in the most perfect faith, and then pushed at his little red pedals and started slowly away.

CHAPTER XXI

IN PRINT AT LAST

Pauline and m.u.f.fie had gone flying down to the gate to run behind the bicycle and tricycle as far as the corner where the little red tricycle had always to turn and come back.

Lynn hung back a moment.

"Take care of this till I come back, will you, Miss Bibby?" she said, "I'm keeping it for Max."

_This_ was a paper boat that Kate had cleverly folded for Lynn while she waited, using a sheet she tore haphazard from a periodical that she had under her arm, part of the morning's post.

Miss Bibby took the boat, and when Lynn had darted off after the other young ones, she examined it with a view to finding out how Kate made these clever little things that the children so greatly delighted in.

And there leaped up at her eyes from the printed sheet one of the cutting sentences she had put into the mouth of the hero of her story, the _Hypocrites_! Another and another sentence followed--there stood out her own heroine's name in the heavenly black of type! At last, at last.

Oh, how good of him, how very good--he had plainly taken the tale with him, and got it into this _Melbourne Review_, which was an infinitely better medium than the _Evening Mail_! How very, very good of him--this explained Kate's inability to find the MS!

Her eyes tore up and down the folded sail;--this sentence was different--sharper, pithier, better rounded than she had written it. A soliloquy was missing there--and better so, its inclusion would have been a mistake. Oh, how good, how good he was! Her quivering fingers fumbled with the folding--Lynn and Max would forgive her for spoiling their boat when they knew--when she showed them her name in print.

Ah, how hungry were her eyes for the sight of it, the sight of the simple name "Agnes Bibby" at the head of her first signed story--the story that was to take away the reproach from the name that the ill-starred interview had brought!

Then the heavens clapped down on her head and the deadliest sickness a.s.sailed her.