Prissy's face was rather red, and Bertie had his handkerchief tucked into his mouth in a very odd way, whilst Milly was looking divided between the desire to laugh and the fear of Prissy; however, Mrs.

Polperran did not observe these small signs, but told her children to take care of their little guests, and sailed back to the house herself, where there was always work to be done.

"Pretty poll! pretty poll! Scratch a poll, polly!" cried Puck softly, capering on the gra.s.s-plot as the lady disappeared.

"You are a very rude little boy," said Prissy with an air of displeasure and a glance at Esther, as much as to ask her why she did not reprove such impertinence; but Bertie made a dash at Puck, seized him by the hand, and cried out,--

"Come along! come along! Oh, won't we have some fun now!"

Immediately the three boys dashed off together full tilt, and Milly, after a wavering glance in the direction of her sister and Esther, rushed headlong after them. The elder pair were left for the moment alone, and Prissy looked inquiringly into Esther's flushed face.

"I don't think your cousins are very nice boys," she remarked with some severity; "I should think they have been very badly brought up."

Esther felt a little tingle of vexation at hearing her cousins thus criticised, though after all she was not quite sure that she could deny Prissy's charge.

"They have no mother, you see," she said.

"Ah, well, perhaps that does make a difference. Fathers often spoil their children, when there is no mother; I've heard mama say so herself," she said. "You will have to be a little mother to them, Esther, and teach them better. I'm not going to hear my mother called names, and I shall tell them so."

Prissy proceeded to do this with great firmness when the children met a little later. Pickle listened to her speech with most decorous gravity, while Puck's pretty face dimpled all over with laughter.

"Pretty polly! pretty polly!--doesn't she talk well!" he exclaimed; and to Prissy's infinite astonishment and dismay, Milly and Bertie rolled to and fro in helpless mirth, whilst Pickle looked up in her flushed face and said,--

"You know little poll-parrots are called lovebirds. It isn't pretty-behaved at all to get so angry about it.--Scratch her poll, Tousle; perhaps that'll put her in a better temper. Why, she's sticking her feathers up all over; she'll peck somebody next!" and Pickle made a show of drawing back in fear, whilst his admirers became perfectly limp with laughter.

It was the first time the younger pair had ever tasted of the sweets of liberty. Without exactly knowing it, they had been under Prissy's rule from their babyhood upwards. It had been as natural to them to obey her as to obey their mother, and they had come to regard her almost in the light of a grown-up person whose word must, as a matter of course, be law. And yet the germs of rebellion must surely have been in their hearts, or they would hardly have sprung up so quickly.

"We never have any fun at home," said Bertie, in a subdued whisper, when the boys and Milly had had their tea and had taken themselves off to the farthest corner of the orchard; "whenever we think of anything nice to do, Prissy always says we mustn't."

"Why do you tell her?" asked Puck, and at that Bertie and Milly exchanged glances. It had never occurred to them as possible to keep anything from Prissy.

"We mean to have some fun here, Puck and I," said Pickle, "and we shan't go and tell everything beforehand. We tell when it's done. It's a much better way."

Milly and Bertie sat open-mouthed in admiration at such audacity and invention.

"I never thought of that!" said Milly softly.

"We thought of it a long time ago," said Puck, with a touch of pride and patronage in his voice.

"Well," said Pickle suddenly, "you don't seem such a bad pair of youngsters; so suppose we let you know when we've got our next plan on hand, and you come too."

"Oh!" cried Milly, and "Oh!" cried Bertie. A look of slow rapture dawned upon their faces. They realized that a time of glorious emanc.i.p.ation was at hand, when they might be able to get into mischief like other happy little boys and girls.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SWEETS OF FREEDOM.

"You can do as you like, Milly; but I shall go!"

Small Herbert set his foot to the ground with a gesture of immovable firmness. Milly watched him with admiring eyes, still halting between two opinions.

"Oh, but, Bertie, isn't it naughty?"

"I don't care if it is. I'm going."

It was like hoisting the signal of revolt--revolt from the rule of the elder sister. They both knew that Prissy would never go, or let them go either, if she knew of the plan. And to slip away unknown to her, though not a difficult matter upon a Sat.u.r.day afternoon, would mark an epoch in the life of this pair of properly-brought-up children, as both instinctively felt, though they could not have expressed themselves upon the subject.

"It's our holiday afternoon," said Bertie stoutly, his square face looking squarer than ever. "n.o.body's told us never to go out of the orchard; we're allowed to know Pickle and Puck. They say they're going out for a lark on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and I'm going with them."

Milly's eyes were growing brighter and brighter; she looked with open admiration upon Herbert. He was younger than herself, but at this moment he seemed the older of the pair.

"Bertie," she asked, in a voice that was little above a whisper, "what _is_ a lark?"

Bertie hesitated a moment.

"It's something we don't ever get here," he answered, with a note of resentment in his voice; "but Pickle and Puck know all about it, and I mean to learn too."

"O Bertie!--and so will I!"

"That's right. I'd like you to come too. I don't see why you should be a little c.o.c.kney any more than I!"

"O Bertie! what's that?"

"Well, I don't just exactly know; but it's something I heard father say."

"What did he say?"

"Well, I'll tell you. I was in his study learning my Latin declension; and I was behind the curtain, and I think he'd forgotten I was there.

Mother came in, and they talked, and I stopped my ears and was learning away, when I heard them say something about Puck and Pickle. Then I listened."

"What did they say?"

"Mother was saying she was afraid they were naughty, rude boys, and would teach us mischief; and then father laughed and said he didn't much mind if they did."

"O Bertie!"

"He did, I tell you," answered Bertie, swelling himself out, as though he felt his honor called in question. "They talked a good while, and I couldn't understand it all; but I heard father say he'd rather I were a bold Cornish boy, even if I did get into mischief sometimes, than grow up a little timid c.o.c.kney."

"I wonder what he meant," said Milly in an awestruck tone; "I never heard of a c.o.c.kney before."

"I think it must mean something like a girl," said Bertie, with a note of perhaps unconscious contempt in his voice, "for mother said something, and then father said, 'You see, you were brought up a c.o.c.kney yourself, my dear, and you can do as you like about the girls; but I want Herbert to be a true Cornish boy, and he doesn't seem to be one yet.' That's what he said; and now I'm going to find out what it is to be a Cornish boy, and I'm going to be one. You can go on being a c.o.c.kney if you like."

"But I won't!" cried Milly rebelliously; "I'll be a Cornish boy too!"

"You can't be a boy, but you can come along with us if you like," said Bertie patronizingly; "Pickle and Puck said you could, though Puck did say he thought girls cried and spoiled things after a bit."