The Eagle's Nest.

by S. E. Cartwright.

CHAPTER I

A WASP IN THE SCHOOLROOM

One bright May morning, Madge, Betty, and John were a little more inattentive than usual over their lessons. Miss Thompson was very patient. She knew that warm spring days were full of distracting interests. The first wasp of the season managed to get into the schoolroom and buzz ostentatiously on the window-pane in the middle of a history lesson. There was a long pause of expectation on the part of the three children. Surely even a grown-up person could not be so utterly uninterested as to allow a queen-wasp to escape alive?

"What was the chief event of the reign of Henry the Eighth?" continued Miss Thompson, quite unmoved by the display of suppressed excitement around her. There was no answer, so she repeated the question a little louder.

"May I kill it, or would you rather do it yourself?" said Madge eagerly. The three children had now shut their books and given up all pretence of interest in anything except the wasp, which was trying harder than ever to buzz right through the pane of gla.s.s.

"Really n.o.body would suppose that you were twelve years old!" said Miss Thompson, in a vain effort to make her eldest pupil ashamed of herself.

"Now then, open your history and see what was the most important event, if you can't remember."

"But it'll get away if you don't squash it!" shrieked John and Betty.

They were twins, and perhaps for that reason always spoke together.

"Do leave the poor creature alone!" said Miss Thompson imploringly.

"It cannot hurt you if you sit still and attend to your lessons."

"That's not what we are afraid of!" cried Madge; "it's the fruit!

Don't you know a queen-wasp has millions of children before the summer is over, and we shan't have any fruit at all if you don't kill it!"

"No strawberries! No peaches! No nothing!" echoed the twins with growing excitement. "And it will be all your fault! But of course you don't care, as you never eat fruit. Papa won't like it though. He always kills--"

"My dears, please don't make such a silly fuss about nothing,"

interrupted Miss Thompson, rising with considerable dignity from her seat. The children watched her with the most intense interest; but when, instead of crushing the intruding wasp, she merely tried to brush it out of the open window with her handkerchief, they broke out into shouts of disapproval. If the poor lady had let loose some peculiarly savage wild beast on society she could not have been more severely condemned by public opinion. And the worst of it was, that the wasp would not go! She clung to the handkerchief, and when it was shaken at the open window suddenly transferred herself to the sleeve of her deliverer's dress.

Even Miss Thompson's calmness gave way under this trial. She started back with a slight scream. The children were at her side in a moment, beating and slapping at her arm, until they had inflicted almost as much injury as a sting.

"It's fallen on the floor!" shrieked Madge. "No! it's up again! It's back on the window! Where's the squasher?"

There was one well-established way of killing wasps in the schoolroom at Beechgrove. This was with the heavy bra.s.s top of an old-fashioned ink-bottle. Its size and shape were all that could be desired, and it was familiarly alluded to as "the squasher". Even Miss Thompson when in a hurry sometimes forgot to describe it as the top of an ink-bottle, though she usually corrected herself afterwards.

At the present moment both Betty and John rushed to the table, and began to fight vigorously for the possession of the much-coveted instrument of destruction.

"Bring it quickly!" screamed Madge, who did not dare leave the window for fear of losing sight of her prey. "Bring it here, I say! You aren't going to squash it, you little sillies! I'm the eldest, so it's my place!"

"You unfair thing! You squashed the last, so it's my turn!" shouted John. And while he turned to hurl defiance at his elder sister, Betty seized the opportunity to twitch the object of strife out of his hand and run off with it.

Something perilously like a free-fight was in progress, when Miss Thompson recovered her self-possession and sternly ordered the children to return to their seats.

"And the wasp?" they cried. "It will get away, and make nests, and we shall be stung, and have no fruit, and--"

"I will kill it myself," interrupted Miss Thompson, who now saw that this was the only way to restore quiet.

"But why should you?" pleaded Madge. "You don't like squashing wasps, and we do."

"That's just the reason I am going to do it myself," said Miss Thompson resolutely. "Now go back to the table and find out the place in your books."

"You are very unkind. Yes, very unkind," grumbled the twins; but they did not dare to flatly disobey, any more than Madge, who left the window scowling horribly, and expressing an audible hope that everybody who liked wasps should be stung by wasps.

It was particularly annoying that Miss Thompson took no notice of this amiable speech, but after crushing the wasp with as little interest as she would have b.u.t.toned a glove, returned quietly to her seat, and inquired:

"What was the most important event in the reign of Henry the Eighth?"

precisely as if nothing had happened.

"Oh, I know the answer to that!" exclaimed John scornfully. "I've known that since I was a baby!"

"Well then, why do you require me to repeat the question so many times?" very naturally observed Miss Thompson. "Do give me a sensible answer, and then I can pa.s.s on to something that you do not know so well."

"Oh, of course, it was about all his wives having their heads cut off--"

"Not all!" interrupted Betty. "Just let me say them! Catherine of Arragon was divorced, Anne Boleyn had--"

"Stop!" cried Miss Thompson. "You are both wrong."

"No! Really I am sure it's right!" exclaimed Betty. "Isn't it, Madge?

You know you saw the place where her head was chopped off that time you went to London with Aunt Mabel. n.o.body was allowed to walk on it, and there were railings all round; and the policeman said one night in the year her ghost--"

"Really this has nothing at all to do with your lesson," said Miss Thompson, resolutely cutting short what threatened to be a very long story. "I never doubted that Anne Boleyn was beheaded," she continued.

"Only, as it happens, my question has nothing to do with Henry the Eighth's wives. Other events of much greater importance happened during his reign, though you seem to have forgotten them. The Reformation, for instance."

"Oh, you meant that sort of thing, did you?" said John, every spark of interest dying out of his voice. It might be possible to remember a few facts about axes and blocks, but church councils and acts of parliament he felt to be altogether beneath his notice. So he simply gave up even the pretence of attending, and began to stare out of the window at the gardener mowing the lawn. "Once, twice, three times," he counted, in a loud whisper, as the man pa.s.sed the window with the mowing-machine.

"Draw down the blind, John," said Miss Thompson.

There was a chorus of reproaches from all the children. They particularly disliked this punishment, which was only inflicted on rare occasions when they had been unusually inattentive.

"Draw down the blind at once," repeated Miss Thompson.

"I always feel so gloomy when the blind is down," lamented Madge in a very mournful tone. "I know I can't do my lessons if the sun is all shut out."

"My dear, they couldn't have been done worse this morning if you had been shut up in the dark," replied Miss Thompson, trying to close the discussion by again taking up the history-book.

But by this time John had wandered to the window, and was carefully inspecting the dead wasp. Not content with looking, he must needs take it up to count how many legs it had. "One, two, three, four." John was very fond of counting, especially at lesson-times. But there was one important item that he left out of his calculations--the sting!

"Oh! oh! It hurts! it hurts!" shouted the little boy, as he hopped about the room nursing his thumb.

"You silly child! If you had only been obedient and done what I told you, instead of playing with the wasp," began Miss Thompson. Then she remembered that it really was a waste of breath pointing out a moral to a boy who was shouting and sobbing, so that he could not hear a word she said. "You had better go to the nursery," she added, "and have something put on your hand. No, you need not do any more lessons before dinner. You can go out into the garden, and your sisters will join you when they have finished."

John was out of the schoolroom door almost before she had done speaking. When once in the pa.s.sage his cries stopped suddenly. He knew better than to wake the baby out of its mid-day sleep. So on tiptoe, with carefully suppressed sobs, he entered the nursery, and replied in whispers to Nurse's anxious inquiries after his injuries.

John had been her favourite charge until the recent arrival of a baby brother. Now she was fickle enough to prefer the baby, or at least to behave as if she did. Still, she lavished much compa.s.sion in dumb-show on John's swollen thumb, and wrapped it in a blue bag, until he became so interested in the process that he quite forgot it was hurting. But presently Baby stirred in his sleep, and Nurse being anxious to attend to him, advised John to run out and play in the garden.

It was not strictly speaking kind, but at the same time it was very natural conduct, that John should stand close outside the schoolroom window making derisive faces at his two sisters, who were being reluctantly introduced to the leading facts of English history. Betty first noticed him, and broke into a loud giggle. Miss Thompson looked up.