The Great Idea
The village schoolroom was packed
as full as it would hold, and the air was so thick
that, as Sylvia said, it could almost be scooped up
with a spoon. The lecturer was stout and perspiring
freely, but he meant to do his duty at all costs,
and he rose to the occasion with tremendous vigour,
declaiming in really fine style:
“It is a poor man’s paradise,
and there is no place on the face of this earth to
rival it. You reach it by a pleasure cruise across
summer seas, to find it has the finest scenery your
eyes have ever beheld and a climate that is not to
be beaten.”
“Hear, hear!” shouted
Rumple, clapping vigorously. He had led the applause
from the very beginning of the lecture, only it was
a little awkward for the lecturer that he mostly broke
into the middle of a sentence instead of waiting for
a pause, as a more judicious person might have done.
“Encore!” yelled Billykins,
forgetting for the moment that it was not a concert,
and, as the lecture had already lasted for upwards
of an hour and a half, it might have proved a little
tedious to some of the audience if it had been repeated
from the very beginning.
The rows of people sitting in the
seats behind broke into a wild uproar of stamping,
thumping, and clapping which lasted for nearly five
minutes, and, of course, raised more dust to thicken
the atmosphere.
The pause gave the lecturer time to
recover his breath and wipe some of the perspiration
from his face; it also made him rather cross, for he
had somehow got the idea that he was being laughed
at, which was quite wrong, because all seven of the
Plumsteads, from Nealie down to Ducky, thought that
he was doing very well indeed.
“If you don’t believe
what I say,” concluded the lecturer, “just
come out to New South Wales and see for yourselves
if I have not told you the plain, unvarnished truth;
and I repeat what I have said before, that although
it is no place for the idle rich, for the man or the
woman who wants to work it is not to be beaten.”
It was at this moment that Nealie
leaned forward to whisper to Rupert, who sat on the
other side of Don and Billykins:
“Would it not be lovely for
us all to go? Just think how we could help dear
Father, and he would not be lonely any more.”
“Rather!” ejaculated Rupert,
making a noise which was first cousin to a whistle;
then he passed the whisper on to Sylvia and Rumple,
and that was how the great idea started.
When the lecture was over they all
crowded forward to speak to the lecturer, explaining
in a rather incoherent fashion the reason of their
keen interest in what he had been saying, and their
hard and fast intention to emigrate as soon as possible.
“Our father lives in New South
Wales; but most likely you have met him,” said
Nealie, whose knowledge of Australian geography was
rather vague, and who supposed that, as the lecturer
came from Sydney, he would most probably know everyone
who lived in the country known as New South Wales.
“I can’t remember him
offhand, young lady, but perhaps if you tell me his
name I may recollect whether I have met him,”
said the lecturer, smiling at her in a genial fashion.
“He is Dr. Plumstead, and he
is very clever,” said Nealie, giving her head
the proud little tilt which it always took on when
she spoke of her father. She was very much of
a child, despite her nineteen years, and she never
seemed able to understand that her father was not at
the top of his profession.
“Father is very much like Rumple,
only, of course, bigger,” broke in Billykins,
who could never be reduced to silence for many minutes
together nor yet be thrust into the background.
But Rumple blushed furiously at being
dragged into notice in such a way, and, turning his
head abruptly, gave the lecturer no chance of comparing
his face with those of possible acquaintances on the
other side of the world.
“Most likely I have met him.
I see so many people, far too many to be able to recall
their names at will,” said the lecturer; but
then the vicar came up to claim his attention and
the seven could get no further chance to talk to him.
They set off home then; and as it
was so dark, and a drizzling rain was falling, Nealie
took Ducky on her back, while Sylvia and Rumple helped
Rupert, who was lame, leaving Don and Billykins to
bring up the rear.
The nearest way was down through Boughlee
Wood, but this route was not to be thought of in the
dark. It was not even wise to take the short cut
across Kennel Hill, so they tramped along the hard
road, splashing through the puddles and talking like
a set of magpies about the lecture, the lecturer,
and their own determination to emigrate at once.
“No one wants us here, and there
is nothing to do except get into mischief,”
said Sylvia, with a sigh.
“Father will be glad to have
us, of course, and we will make him so very happy!”
cried Nealie, and then Ducky leaned forward to kiss
her on the nose, hugging her so tightly that it was
quite wonderful she was not choked.
“But how are we to get to Australia?”
panted Rupert, who was finding the pace rather trying.
“We must ask Mr. Runciman to
let us have the money,” said Nealie. “I
should think that he would be glad to do it, for then
he will get rid of us, don’t you see? And
he is always grumbling about our being such a dreadful
expense.”
“Mr. Runciman is horrid!”
burst out Ducky, giving Nealie another hug. “I
just hate him when he says nasty things to you, Nealie.”
“Of course we are an expense
to him, especially when dear Father is not able to
send enough money to keep us, and we have all got such
big appetites,” said Nealie, with a sigh.
“I am hungry now, dreadfully
hungry,” put in Billykins from the rear.
“Shall we go to see Mr. Runciman
to-morrow?” asked Rumple.
“We can’t manage to get
back before dark, I am afraid, and Mrs. Puffin makes
such a fuss if we are out after dark; just as if anyone
would want to run away with the seven of us,”
returned Nealie in a scornful tone.
“We can go in the morning, for
the vicar is going to a Diocesan Conference, and he
has given us a holiday. He told me about it to-night,”
said Rupert.
“That will be lovely. Then
we will have Aunt Judith’s chair for you and
Ducky, it will be just a jolly jaunt for us; only we
must be at The Paddock early, to catch Mr. Runciman
before he goes out,” said Nealie.
“I would rather walk ”
began Ducky, with a touch of petulance in her voice,
but Nealie stopped her quickly with a whisper:
“You must ride, darling, or
Rupert won’t have the chair, and a long walk
does take it out of him so badly you know.”
“If we have the chair, Don and
I will be the horses, and we will go down Coombe Lane
at a gallop,” said Billykins, with a festive
prance.
“That will be perfectly lovely,
only Rupert will have to hold me tightly or I shall
be tossed out at the turn, and I might damage my nose
again,” replied Ducky, with a gleeful chuckle.
By this time they had reached Beechleigh,
and turning short across the green by the pond they
tramped in at the gate of the funny little house where
their great-aunt, Miss Judith Webber, had lived and
died, and which was the only home they had known since
Ducky was a tiny babe.
Mrs. Puffin, a lean little widow of
mouldy aspect, opened the door to let them in and
exclaimed loudly to see how damp they were.
“Now you will all be catching
colds, and I shall have to nurse you,” she said
in a woebegone tone, as she felt them all round.
“If you must go out in the wet in this fashion,
why can’t you take umbrellas?”
“Because we haven’t got
them,” answered Nealie, with a laugh. She
mostly laughed about their limitations, because it
made them just a little easier to bear. “The
little boys had the last umbrella that we possess
to play at Bedouin tents with on Tuesday, and they
had a sad accident and broke three of its ribs, poor
thing. But we shall not catch cold, Mrs. Puffin,
because we are all going straight to bed.”
“But I am hungry,” protested Billykins.
“I know, and so am I; but we
will all have a big piece of seed cake when we get
into bed, and go to sleep to dream of big bowls of
steaming porridge with brown sugar on the top,”
said Nealie; and the vision proved so alluring that
all seven trooped up the dark stairs and crowded into
the small bedrooms, feeling quite cheerful in spite
of tired limbs, hunger, and the discomfort of damp
clothes.
But their voices hushed, and a wistful
look crept into their faces, as they passed the door
leading into Aunt Judith’s empty bedroom.
The old lady had loved them so dearly, and they had
given her love for love in unstinted measure, so that
now she was dead there was an awful blank in their
hearts and their lives.
Being very tired and very healthy,
however, they went to sleep directly they tumbled
into bed; indeed Ducky could not keep awake long enough
to eat her cake, so Nealie laid it on the chair by
the little girl’s bed for her to find when she
opened her eyes in the morning.
Sleep was longer in coming to Nealie
than to the others. She was older than they were,
and had been mother to them so long that she was apt
to be thinking out ways and means when she ought to
have been asleep.
It would be too utterly delightful
to go out to Australia and live with her father.
It was nearly seven years since she had seen him, and
her heart was always aching at the thought of his
lonely exile.
If only Mr. Runciman would consent
to their going! But would he?
“Well, it is of no use to worry
and to wonder; we must just wait and see. But
I think when all seven of us go marching into that
splendid library of his at The Paddock, he will be
so dismayed to see what a lot of us there are, that
he will be quite ready to take the very shortest way
of getting rid of the bother of looking after us,”
she said to herself, with a soft little laugh which
rippled through the dark room and even made itself
heard in the other room across the passage where the
four boys were sleeping; and Rupert, who had been having
bad dreams because his lame foot was hurting rather
badly, smiled in his uneasy slumber and straightway
drifted off into a more profound repose, from which
he did not wake until the misty September dawning crept
over the wide plantations of beech and larch for which
Beechleigh was famous.