Seven Little Australians

eque

could y

o doubt, yo

r, even yet. When she got into the house N

slow wonder in her round eyes. "I'v

?" said M

wo Miss Gormestons are in the drawing-room,

?" sa

s she won't leave him for a second, not if Go

said M

d himself. He's sung 'My sweetheart when a boy' and 'Mona,' and he's tol

said wearily, and as if the s

one my best: he sent out and said we were to go in, an

?" Meg asked, curiou

it was in two sharps," she added sadly. "And then Baby told Mrs. Gormeston all about Judy leaving the General at the Barracks, and being sent to b

ross to-morrow about it. Oh! and, Nell, go and tell Martha

taken away the traces of her recent tears. Then she went into the drawing-roam, where her father was looking quite h

hed, and a silence seemed settling down over them all again; "or si

listened to with a certain amount of pleasure, but this evening she was tired and excited a

lay Kowalski's March Hongroise. But the keys seemed to be rising up and hitting her hands, and the piano was growing unsteady, and rocking to and fro in an alarming manner; she made a horrible

ns, her face white and unconscious, she looked strangely like her mother, whom he had buried out in the churchyard four years ago. He went to the filter for a glass of water, and, as it trickled, wondered in a dull, mechanical kind of way if his little dead wife thought he had been too quick in appoin

oice. He was talking to Esther, who had been hastily summoned

That pressure, if it has been constant, has been enough to half kill her. Chut, chu

band was regarding her almost gloomily from the sofa, where the little figure lay in its crumpled m

ed and the excitement all over, she

me!" she said with a little sob in her voice.

d again that night there came to him Meg's white, still face as it lay on the scarlet cushions, and he knew the wind