The Eagles Nest

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18. The Return After Shopping



After all, there was very little time left for the important work of choosing toys. Madge did her best to make up her mind in a hurry, assisted by a good deal of judicious advice from Miss Thompson. But that was not the way in which she enjoyed shopping. She liked to dwell on every purchase, carefully calculating whether its merits justified its price, and trying to imagine how it would look when the stuffing came out of it, or the paint was rubbed off. When the money was not all her own, and the toys not all for herself, as in the present instance, it naturally much increased the difficulty of selection. There were the tastes and needs of different people to be considered, their various wants and wishes to be recalled. Madge was a most conscientious shopper, and in the main a thoughtful elder sister. She would have scorned to spend Betty's and John's money and not give them full satisfaction.

"My dear child," said Miss Thompson at last, "I have really waited as long as I dare. We must go to the place where we left the carriage, and start home. Your parents will think we have met with an accident."

"Oh, please wait a minute! Just one minute!" begged Madge. "I haven't half chosen yet. That's to say, I have put together a lot of things that might do, but I want to look through them before I quite settle."

"Perhaps I can help you to decide?" said Miss Thompson briskly. "What's this? A whip and a boat for John? Surely that is exactly what he had last time we went shopping?"

"Yes; but he has broken the old whip, and he wants another boat," explained Madge. "They have just put such a nice great tub of water in the garden, because the pump has gone dry with the hot weather, and we sail--"

"Oh, that's all right!" interrupted Miss Thompson. "So long as you know what you like and are satisfied. And Betty is to have this doll, I suppose, and that trumpet? Isn't she getting rather old for a trumpet?"

"But she likes a trumpet better than anything, except a whistle," explained Madge hurriedly. "We all like trumpets or anything that makes a noise."

"You are welcome to your noises so long as I hear nothing of them in the schoolroom!" laughed Miss Thompson. "And you have chosen a knife and a china tea-pot for yourself, I see. Well, now be quick and let Mrs. Winter make up the bill."

"But there was a lot of other little things I want to get!" cried Madge. "I have not had time to think properly yet."

Miss Thompson looked at her watch, and said that she would wait exactly five minutes and no more. At the end of that period Madge with many groans of regret was obliged to turn away from the counter, feeling that if she only had all the time she wanted she would immediately put back most of the things she had chosen and select fresh ones. Perhaps it was just as well that she was rather hurried, for at this rate there would have been no end to the shopping.

Mrs. Winter parted from her customers with many invitations to them to return and see how the poor half-starved kitten prospered under her care. She had already put him to bed in a basket in the back-kitchen, after giving him two whole saucers of milk, that he drank without stopping. Altogether it seemed probable that he would find the shop a much more agreeable residence than the cellar, where, judging by the prominence of his ribs, he must have kept himself alive on a very limited supply of mice and black-beetles.

It was long past the usual time for schoolroom tea when Miss Thompson and Madge returned home. The twins, it may be remembered, had been climbing in the Eagle's Nest a good part of the afternoon, and were consequently as hungry as people who have been playing for hours in the open air have a right to be. They were waiting on the door-step when the carriage drove up, and began at once to reproach Madge for being so late, and to inquire what she had brought.

"Come along," said Miss Thompson briskly. "Not a word is to be spoken until Madge has taken off her hat and we are seated at the tea-table. If we begin to embark on our adventures now, we shall never get any tea to-night."

The children grumbled, but they were forced to obey, as Miss Thompson waited to see Madge walk upstairs before she took off her own jacket. Long experience had taught her that if an exciting story was once begun, even tea would be forgotten.

At last, however, the delightful moment had arrived, when the children were all seated round the table and at liberty to recount their afternoon's occupations. Of course, Madge's adventures were altogether so out of the common as to throw everything else into the shade. The twins said nothing about their meeting with Lewis, and Madge never thought of inquiring what they had been doing. They did not intentionally conceal anything, but in the excitement of hearing about the loss and recovery of the brown bag they completely forgot what, up to that time, had been a great source of pride--namely, that they had been associating on equal terms of friendship with a big school-boy. Even when tea was over and Miss Thompson left them alone, they forgot to tell Madge how they had spent the afternoon, in the interest of looking at the new purchases.

"Well, I suppose all's well that ends well," remarked Betty solemnly, as she helped to unpack the brown paper parcels on the schoolroom table. "Only it must have been very terrible in that cellar, especially when you saw those flaming eyes in the dark! What colour were they, green or yellow?"

"Oh, I hardly remember! The colour of cats' eyes, I suppose!" replied Madge rather impatiently.

She did not much care to dwell upon that time in the cellar, when she had mistaken the poor starved kitten for some sort of hobgoblin, and screamed at it in a way that was most unworthy of her age and good sense. To change the subject, she asked John how he liked the things she had chosen for him.

"The ship is all right," he said slowly, "and so is the whip. At least it's not quite so big as the one I got last time, and it cost a penny more, but still it will do. Only--"

"Well, what's the matter?" interrupted Madge. "What have you got to grumble at now, I should like to know?"

She spoke sharply, for, with all her kindness, she could not bear to have the younger ones finding fault with anything she did. So long as they were duly grateful she would work hard to amuse them; but the moment they began to criticise her conduct in any way there was trouble.

"Do you think you could have chosen anything better yourself?" she said scornfully. "You had better try next time if you think it's so easy!"

"I didn't say the things were not nice things," observed John in his quiet obstinate way. "I never meant that. Only I can't understand how you spent our money. That's all."

"Why it's as simple as A B C!" broke out Madge. "Just listen, you little silly, and I'll tell you. I took five shillings and sevenpence, didn't I?"

"Of course you did! In the brown bag," answered Betty, although nobody had spoken to her.

John merely nodded his head to show that he was following the argument up to this point.

"And as the money belonged to us all we were all to share alike," proceeded Madge rapidly. "So I got a ship and a doll and a knife, each costing a shilling. And we had one apiece. That's three shillings. Then the whip and the trumpet and the tea-pot cost sixpence each. That comes to four shillings and sixpence. And the packets of sugar-plums, and pipes for blowing soap-bubbles, come to tenpence. That makes five shillings and four-pence. And--and--"

"And that's all!" interrupted John. "But you took five shillings and sevenpence in the brown bag, you know. I remember counting it; didn't we, Betty?"

"Oh, I'm well aware of that!" cried Madge impatiently. "If you will only just keep quiet I can make it right in a moment. I must have added up wrongly while you were chattering." And spreading all the purchases out on the table she tried to count them more carefully over again, repeating their prices as she did so. But it was no use. Try as she might her accounts would not come perfectly right. There was threepence missing, and Madge could not account for it at all.

"It must have slipped out of the bag and be lying in a corner of that cellar," said Betty with considerable reason. "Threepence is such a very tiny bit of money you would never see it in the dark, or even by the light of one candle."

"Perhaps not. I suppose that is what has happened," admitted poor Madge. She was ready to cry with mortification at having had the worst of the argument with John, in spite of his being two years younger than herself and very much her inferior in arithmetic. Besides, she knew that if she had, as seemed most probable, left a threepenny piece on the cellar floor, it was all owing to that annoying fit of nervousness that had suddenly come over her in the dark. At the time that she picked up the money she was still suffering from the fright caused by the sudden appearance of the kitten, and no doubt had been too much upset to notice very carefully what she was doing. But she did not like to explain all this to the twins, who were in the habit of looking upon her as the living embodiment of courage. So she merely laid the blame on the dim light of the cellar.

The consequence of this was, that when John next found himself alone with Betty he began to grumble.

"It's all very well for Madge to say she didn't see the threepenny bit," he said, "but I think she ought to have stayed there looking until she did see it. She can see things very well when she tries. I don't believe she took any trouble about it, because it belonged to us."

"But part of it belonged to her," objected Betty.

"Only one part," said John persistently, "and two parts belonged to us. So of course it was more ours than hers, and that's why she didn't trouble to look for it."

"Do you think so really?" said Betty in an irresolute tone. She had great faith in Madge always acting for the best, but these new arguments were rather disturbing.

"I'll tell you what it is," continued John. "Madge thinks herself a much grander person than we are, because she is a little older. And it isn't fair. Lewis said he wouldn't be ordered about by her if he were in my place, and I won't either. After all, she is only a girl!"

After this remark the conversation became rather quarrelsome. Betty objected to the expression, "only a girl", and retorted by some very rude remarks about boys in general and her brother in particular. She reminded him with unpleasant emphasis of how slow he was at climbing trees compared with Madge, and she dwelt with more truth than politeness on the fact that he had once grown giddy on the roof of the cow-house, and had to be ignominiously helped down by his sisters. But in the long run John's solid persistency got the best of it, and in spite of Betty's wish to believe that Madge always acted for the best, she was gradually talked over into thinking that there was some real grievance in her elder sister always taking the lead.

Whenever Lewis Brand had an opportunity of talking to the twins by themselves he mischievously encouraged this idea, so that disagreements among the children became a matter of everyday occurrence.