Odd | Page 2

Betty was led up to it.
'You will stay here till tea-time, and will not come out until you have learnt a text, and said you are sorry for knocking down your little brother in a fit of wicked temper. This is the fourth time I have had to bring you here this week, and it is now only Tuesday. I have more trouble with you than all the others put together, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.'
Betty was sobbing bitterly, and when nurse left the room and turned the key behind her, the child flung herself down on the floor.
'It's a shame! It's all Douglas and Molly: they make promises and don't keep them; and it was ever so much nicer a story than Molly's. I know they'd have liked it if they'd heard it; they never think I can do anything!'
To explain the cause of Betty's grievance, I must tell you that it was a custom of the little Stuarts to await the muffin man's approach on his rounds, and as his bell would sound, they would take it in turns each day to relate to the others an account of the different houses he had gone to, and who had been the fortunate individuals to receive the muffins that had already disappeared from his tray. It was an idle hour in the nursery from four to five, and if the gathering dusk kept the active eyes still, the fertile brains were brought into requisition. Telling stories was a constant delight, and the wonderful adventures that befell the muffins on their daily rounds kept the little gathering quiet and happy till tea appeared.
Betty's stories were not inferior to her elders, and it was her childish sense of justice and consideration that was outraged. But tears will come to an end, and soon the little maiden was perched up at the table to learn the task before her. She turned over the pages till she reached Revelation, that mysterious and mystical book that so fascinates and contents a child's soul, though the wisest on earth read it with perplexity and awe. And after a moment or two Betty had found a text to learn, and when nurse appeared later on she repeated unfalteringly with shining eyes and with a note of triumph in her tone 'And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb' (Rev. vii. 14).
'That's a good child; are you sorry?'
'Yes,' was the reply, rather absently given, for Betty's mind was on the white-robed throng; and how could she let nurse know all the workings of her busy brain over the verse she had been taking into her heart and soul?
'And remember,' said nurse gravely, 'that no naughty children who quarrel and fight will ever be in heaven.'
'Not even if they've been through great tribulation?' quickly demanded Betty.
But nurse did not hear, and Betty was received into the well-lighted nursery with acclamation from the others, already seated at the round table for tea.
'We've made a new game, Molly and I,' announced Douglas.
He was a fair, curly-headed boy with an innocent baby face, and a talent for inventing the most mischievous plans that could ever be concocted, with a will that made all the others bow before him. Molly was also fair, with long golden hair that reached to her waist; extreme self-possession and absence of all shyness were perhaps her chief characteristics. 'I am the eldest of the family,' she was fond of asserting, and she certainly claimed the eldest's privileges. Yet her temper was sweet and obliging, and she could easily be swayed and led by those around her.
'Is it one for outdoors or indoors?' asked Betty with interest.
'Indoors, of course; we'll tell you after tea.'
'Your mother wants you in the drawing-room after ten,' put in nurse; 'you and Miss Molly are to go down.'
Molly looked pleased, not so Douglas. At last, putting down his piece of bread and butter, he looked up into nurse's face with one of his sweetest looks.
'Why are grown-up people so very dull, nurse? They all are just the same, except Uncle Harry. They are dreadfully heavy and dull.'
'They have so little to amuse them,' Molly said reflectively: 'no games or toys; they never make believe, or pretend the lovely things we do.'
'And their legs get stiff, and their dresses trip them up if they try to run.'
'But they never get punished, and they're never scolded, and they're never wicked.'
This from Betty.
'It's their talk that is so stupid,' went on Douglas; 'they look nice until they begin to talk; they make me dreadfully sleepy to listen to them.'
'Shall I go down instead