Seven Little Australians | Page 2

to be
much of a disciplinarian, and the slatternly but good-natured girl, who

was supposed to combine the duties of nursery-maid and housemaid,
had so much to do in her second capacity that the first suffered
considerably. She used to lay the nursery meals when none of the little
girls could be found to help her, and bundle on the clothes of the two
youngest in the morning, but beyond that the seven had to manage for
themselves.
The mother? you ask.
Oh, she was only twenty---just a lovely, laughing-faced girl, whom
they all adored, and who was very little steadier and very little more of
a housekeeper than Meg. Only the youngest of the brood was hers, but
she seemed just as fond of the other six as of it, and treated it more as if
it were a very entertaining kitten than a real live baby, and her very
own.
Indeed at Misrule--that is the name their house always went by, though
I believe there was a different one painted above the balcony--that baby
seemed a gigantic joke to everyone. The Captain generally laughed
when he saw it, tossed it in the air, and then asked someone to take it
quickly.
The children dragged it all: over the country with them, dropped it
countless times, forgot its pelisse on wet days, muffled it up when it
was hot, gave it the most astounding things to eat, and yet it was the if
healthiest; prettiest, and most sunshiny baby that ever sucked a wee fat
thumb.
It was never called "Baby," either; that was the special name of the next
youngest. Captain Woolcot had said, "Hello, is this the General?" when
the little, red, staring-eyed morsel had been put into his arms, and the
name had come into daily use, though I believe at the christening
service the curate did say something about Francis Rupert Burnand
Woolcot.
Baby was four, and was a little soft fat thing with pretty cuddlesome
ways, great smiling eyes, and lips very kissable when they were free
from jam.
She had a weakness, however, for making the General cry, or she
would have been really almost a model child. Innumerable times she
had been found pressing its poor little chest to make it "squeak;" and
even pinching its tiny arms, or pulling its innocent nose, just for the
strange pleasure of hearing the yells of despair it instantly set up.

Captain Woolcot ascribed the peculiar tendency to the fact that the
child had once had a dropsical-looking woolly lamb, from which the
utmost pressure would only elicit the faintest possible squeak: he said it
was only natural that now she had something so amenable to squeezing
she should want to utilize it.
Bunty was six, and was fat and very lazy. He hated scouting at cricket,
he loathed the very name of a paper-chase, and as for running an errand,
why, before anyone could finish saying something was wanted he
would have utterly disappeared. He was rather small for his age;-and I
don't think had ever been seen with a clean face. Even at church,
though the immediate front turned to the minister might be passable,
the people in the next pew had always an uninterrupted view of the
black rim where washing operations had left off.
The next on the list--I am going from youngest to oldest, you see--was
the "show" Woolcot, as Pip, the eldest boy, used to say. You have seen
those exquisite child-angel faces on Raphael Tuck's Christmas cards? I
think the artist must just have dreamed of Nell, and then reproduced the
vision imperfectly. She was ten, and had a little fairy-like figure, gold
hair clustering in wonderful waves and curls around her face, soft hazel
eyes, and a little rosebud of a mouth. She was not conceited either, her
family took care of that--Pip would have nipped such a weakness very
sternly in its earliest bud; but in some way if there was a pretty ribbon
to spare, or a breadth of bright material; just enough for one little frock,
it fell as a matter of course to her.
Judy was only three years older, but was the greatest contrast
imaginable. Nellie used to move rather slowly about, and would have
made a picture in any attitude. Judy I think, was never seen to walk,
and seldom looked picturesque. If she did not dash madly to the place
she wished to get to, she would progress by a series of jumps, bounds,
and odd little skips. She was very thin, as people generally are who
have quicksilver instead of blood in their veins; she had a small, eager,
freckled face, with very, bright dark eyes, a small, determined mouth,
and a mane of untidy, curly dark hair that was: the