MERRYLIPS

By BEULAH MARIE DIX

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
FRANK T. MERRILL

AND
NEW FRONTISPIECE AND DECORATIONS BY
ANNE COOPER

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1927

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Copyright, 1906,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1906. Reprinted 1907,
1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919, 1920,
1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925.

New edition September, 1925; June, 1926.

Reissued October, 1927.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

TO
EVERY LITTLE GIRL
WHO HAS WISHED FOR AN HOUR
TO BE A LITTLE BOY
THIS STORY IS DEDICATED
BY HER FRIEND
THE AUTHOR

MERRYLIPS

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

MERRYLIPS

CHAPTER I

A MAID OF OLD

The little girl's name was Sybil Venner, but she was known as Merrylips. For Sir Thomas Venner, her jolly, bluff father, never by any chance called a child of his by its baptismal name. His tall eldest son, Thomas, answered, whether he liked it or not, to the nickname of Longkin, and Edmund and Philip, the two younger lads, became Munn and Flip, and Katharine, the oldest girl, was Puss, and prim Lucy was Pug.

So when Sir Thomas came riding home from London town and first saw his little daughter Sybil, a baby of three months old, crowing and laughing in her cradle, he cried:—

"'Truth, here's a merry lass! Come to thy dad, little Merrylips."

Thus it was that little Sybil was christened anew, and Merrylips she remained, to all who loved her, to the end of her story.

The home of little Merrylips was a great old house called Walsover, which stood below a hill hard by a sleepy village of a half-score thatched cottages. The village, too, was called Walsover, and it lay in that pleasant part of merry England known as the county of Wilts.

A remote countryside it was in the days, now more than two long centuries ago, when our Merrylips was romping and laughing in Walsover hall. From Walsover to Salisbury, the market-town, was a journey of many hours on horseback, by roads that were narrow and hard to follow, and full of ruts and stones, and oftentimes heavy with mire.

From Salisbury to London was a journey of days, in a carrier's clumsy wain or on horseback, over downs where shepherds kept their flocks, through country lanes where the may bloomed white in the hedgerows, past little villages that nestled in the shadow of stumpy church towers, through muddy towns where half-timbered gables and latticed casements overhung the crooked streets, across wide commons—this far oftener than was pleasant!—where, in the fear of highwaymen or "padders," the traveller kept a hand upon his pistols, and so at last into the narrow streets amid the jostling crowd, under the jangling of the bells that swung in the many steeples of great London town.

Of this long, perilous journey Merrylips, from a little child, never tired of hearing her father tell. Four times a year he rode to London, at the head of a little cavalcade of serving-men in blue coats, that made a brave show as they gathered for the start in the courtyard at Walsover. And four times a year, when he came back from London, he brought in his pockets treasures of sugar candy, and green ginger, and raisins of the sun. No wonder that Merrylips longed to take that great journey to London town, to have adventures by the way, and, at the end, come to the place where such sweets were to be found!

But meantime, while she was too young for journeys and adventures, Merrylips lived at Walsover as happily, it would seem, as a little maid might live. Walsover was a rare place in which to play. The house was old and rambling, with odd little chambers hidden beneath the eaves, and odd little windows tucked away among the vines, and odd little steps, when you went from room to room, that you fell up or down—and Merrylips found it hard to remember which!

In the upper story was a long gallery in which to run and romp on the days—and there were many such in the green county of Wilts!—when the rain fell softly. Downstairs were a great hall, with a balcony for musicians, and dim parlors, all wainscotted in dark wood, where Merrylips grew almost afraid of the pattering sound of her own footsteps.

Better to her liking was the kitchen, with its paved floor and vast fireplace, and the group of buildings that lay beyond the kitchen. There was a brew-house, and a bakehouse, and a dairy, each with its own flagged court, where delightful tasks were always being done. Hard by the dairy was the cow-house, and barns full of sweet-scented hay, and great stables, where Merrylips knew by name and loved all the horses, from her father's bright bay courser to the honest draught beasts. Over against the stables were kennels full of dogs, both for hunting and for fowling. There were rough-coated staghounds, and fleet greyhounds, and setters, and spaniels.

Round this block of buildings and little courts lay gardens and orchards, where wallflowers flamed and roses blew, and apricots and cherries ripened in the sun. And beyond the gardens were on one side rich fields, and on the other a park where rabbits burrowed and deer fed in the dappled shade.

So Merrylips had charming places in which to play, and she had, too, playfellows in plenty. She was the youngest child at Walsover, so she was the pet of every one, from the least scullery wench in the kitchen and the least horseboy in the stable, to her big, bluff father, Sir Thomas.

Above all, she was dearly loved by her three big brothers. As soon as she was able to toddle, she had begun to follow them about, at their work or play, and when they found her merry always and afraid of nothing, the lads began, half in sport, to give her a share in whatever they took in hand.

From those kind big brothers Merrylips learned to climb and to vault, to pitch a quoit and toss a ball, to sit a horse, and whip a trout-brook, to play fair always, and to keep back the tears when she was hurt. These were good lessons for a little girl, but Merrylips learned others that were not so good. She learned to speak hard words when she was angry, to strike with her little fists, to be rough and noisy. And because it seemed to them droll to see such a mite of a girl copy these faults of theirs, her brothers and sometimes even her father laughed and did not chide her.

In all the house of Walsover there was no one to say Merrylips nay except her mother, Lady Venner. Of her mother Merrylips stood in great fear. Lady Venner was a silent woman, who was very busy with the cares of her large household and of the whole estate, which was left to her management when her husband was away. She had little time to spend on her youngest daughter, and that little she used, as seemed to her wise, in trying to correct the faults that her husband and sons had fostered in the child. So Merrylips soon came to think of her mother as always chiding her, or forbidding her some pleasure, or setting her some task.

These tasks Merrylips hated. She did not mind so much when she was taught to read and write by the chaplain, for Munn and Flip, before they went away to Winchester School, had also had lessons to say to him. But when she was set down with a needle, to be taught all manner of stitches by her mother's waiting-woman, or bidden to strum a lute, under sister Puss's instruction, she fairly cried with rage and rebellion.

For down in her little heart, so secret that none had suspected, Merrylips kept the hope that she might grow up a boy. To be a boy meant to run and play, with no hindering petticoats to catch the heels and trip the toes. It meant to go away to school or to camp. It meant to be a soldier and have adventures, such as her father had had when he was a captain in the Low Countries.

To be a girl, on the other hand, meant to sew long seams and sit prettily in a quiet room, until the time, years and years away, when one was very old. Then one married, and went to another house, and there sat in another quiet room and sewed more seams till the end of one's life. No wonder Merrylips prayed with all her heart to grow up a boy!

To her mind the granting of this prayer did not seem impossible. To be sure, she wore petticoats, but so had Longkin and Munn and Flip when they were little. If she did all the things that boys did, she had no doubt that in time she should, like them, pass beyond the stage of petticoats.

But in this plan she was balked by her mother's orders to sew and play the lute and help in the still-room and do all the foolish things that girls were set to do. That was why Merrylips cried and raged over her needlework, and she raged still harder on the day about which you now shall hear.

Sir Thomas, who had been to Salisbury market, came riding home, one sweet summer evening, and cried lustily in the hall:—

"Merrylips! Halloo! Where beest thou, little jade?"

When Merrylips came running down the staircase, with her flyaway hair all blown about her face, he caught her and tossed her in his arms and said, laughing:—

"Hast got thee a sweetheart without thine old dad's knowing? Here's a packet for thine own small self, come by carrier to Salisbury town."

Now when Merrylips looked at the packet of which her father spoke, a little box that lay upon the table beside his whip and gloves, her eyes sparkled, for she guessed what it held. Only the month before her brother Munn, in a letter that he wrote from Winchester, had promised to send her a fish-line of hair that she much wanted and a four-penny whittle that should be her very own.

"'Tis from Munn!" she cried, and struggled from her father's arms, though he made believe to hold her hard, and ran to the table.

"There you are out, little truepenny!" said Sir Thomas.

He cast himself into a chair that his man might draw off his great riding boots. Lady Venner and tall Puss and rosy Pug, who loved her needle, had come into the hall at the sound of his voice, and to Lady Venner he now spoke:—

"'Tis a packet come out of Sussex, from thine old gossip, Lady Sybil Fernefould."

"Ay, our Sybil's godmother," said Lady Venner. "What hath she sent thee, little one?"

All flushed with joy and pride, for never in her life had she received a packet all her own—nor, for that matter, had Puss or Pug—Merrylips tore open the box. Instantly she gave a sharp cry of anger. Within the box, wrapped in a piece of fair linen, lay a doll, made of cloth, and daintily dressed in a bodice and petticoat of thin figured silk, with little sleeves of lawn and a neat cloak and hood.

"'Tis a mammet—a vild mammet!" screamed Merrylips, and dashed it to the floor and struck it with her foot.

"Oh, Merrylips!" cried Pug, in her soft voice, and caught up the doll and cuddled it to her breast. "'Tis so sweet a baby! Look, Puss! It hath a whisket of lawn, and the under-petticoat, 'tis of fair brocade."

"A mammet—a girl's toy!" repeated Merrylips, and stamped her foot. "My godmother shall not send me such. I will not be a girl. I'll be a lad."

"Well said! And so thou shalt, if wishing will do't, my bawcock!" laughed Sir Thomas.

But Lady Venner looked on in silence, and her face was grave.

CHAPTER II

HER BIRTHDAY

Gentle Pug took the doll, and, in the moments when she was not setting neat stitches or baking custards, played with it prettily. Meantime Merrylips went romping her own way, and soon had forgotten both the doll and the godmother that had sent it.

This godmother Merrylips knew only by name, as the Lady Sybil Fernefould, her mother's old friend, a dread and distant being to whom, in her mother's letters, she was trained to send her duty. She had never seen Lady Sybil, nor, after the gift of the doll, did she wish to see her.

Through the summer days that followed Merrylips was busy with matters of deeper interest than dolls and godmothers. She rode on the great wains, loaded with corn, that lumbered behind the straining horses to the barns of Walsover. She helped to gather fruit—plums and pears and rosy apples. She watched her father's men, while they thrashed the rye and wheat or made cider and perry. She shaped a little mill-wheel with the four-penny whittle that Munn, true to his promise, at last had sent her, and set it turning in the brook below the paddock.

Almost in a day, it seemed to her, the time slipped by, till it was two months and more since she had been so angry at her godmother's gift. Michaelmas tide was near, and by a happy chance all three of her tall brothers were home from Winchester School and from college at Oxford.

It was a clear, windy day of autumn in the first week of their home-coming,—the very day, so it chanced, on which Merrylips was eight years old. She was sitting on the flagstones of the west terrace of Walsover, eating a crisp apple and warding off the caresses of three favorite hounds, Fox and Shag and Silver, while she watched her brothers playing at bowls.

They had thrown off their doublets in the heat of the game, and their voices rang high and boyish.

"Fairly cast!"

"A hit! A hit!"

Indeed, they were no more than boys, those three big brothers. Tall Longkin himself, for all his swagger and the rapier that he sometimes wore, was scarcely eighteen. Munn, a good lad in the saddle but a dullard at his book, was three years younger, and Flip, with the curly pate, was not yet turned thirteen.

But to Merrylips they were almost men and heroes who had gone out into the world, though it was but the world of Winchester School and of Oxford. With all her heart she loved and believed in them, those tall brothers. How happy she felt to be seated near them, pillowed among the dogs and munching her apple, where at any moment she could catch Munn's eyes or answer Flip's smile! She thought that she should be happy to sit thus forever.

While she watched, the game came to an end with a notable strong cast from Longkin that made her clap her hands and cry, "Oh, brave!"

Then the three, laughing and wiping their hot foreheads on their shirt-sleeves, came sauntering to the spot where Merrylips sat and flung themselves down beside her among the dogs.

"Give me a bite of thine apple, little greedy-chaps!" said Munn, and cast his arm about Merrylips' neck and drew her to him.

"To-morrow, lads," said Longkin, who was stretched at his ease with his head upon the hound Silver, "say, shall we go angling in Walsover mead?"

"Take me!" cried Merrylips, with her mouth full. "Oh, take me too, good Longkin!"

"Thou art too small, pigwidgeon," said Flip.

"I ben't," clamored Merrylips. "I can trudge stoutly and never cry, I promise ye. I be as apt to go as thou, Flip Venner. Thou hast but four years the better of me."

"Ay, but I am a lad, and thou art but a wench," said Flip.

He had had the worst of the game with his elder brothers, poor Flip! So he was not in the sweetest of humors.

"I care not!" Merrylips said stoutly. "Where thou canst go, Flip, I can go!"

At this they all laughed, even that tall youth Longkin, who was growing to stand upon his dignity.

"Come, Merrylips!" Longkin teased. "What wilt thou do an Flip get him a long sword and go to war? 'Tis likely he may do so."

"And that's no jest," cried Flip, most earnestly. "Father saith an the base Puritan fellows lower not their tone, all we that be loyal subjects to the king must e'en march forth and trounce 'em."

"Then Heaven send they lower not their tone!" added Munn. "I be wearied of Ovid and Tully. Send us a war, and speedily, that I may toss my dreary book to the rafters and go trail a pike like a lad of spirit!"

"So you'll go unto the wars, you two?" Longkin kept on teasing. "Then hang me if Merrylips shall not make a third! 'Hath as good right as either of ye babies to esteem herself a soldier."

Then Flip and Munn cast themselves upon the scoffing eldest brother and mauled him gloriously in a welter of yelping dogs. Like a loyal heart Merrylips tossed by her apple and ran in to aid the weaker side, where she cuffed Flip and tugged at Munn's arm with no mean skill.

But in the thick of the fray she got a knock on the nose from Flip's elbow, and promptly she lost her hot little temper. She did not cry, for she had been too well trained by those big brothers, but she screamed, "Hang thee, varlet!" and hurled herself upon Flip.

She heard Longkin cry, "Our right old Merrylips!"

Through the haze that swam before her eyes, which were all dazzled with the knock that she had got, she saw Flip's laughing face, as he warded her off, and she raged at him for laughing. Then, all at once, she heard her shrill little voice raging in a dead stillness, and in the stillness she heard a grave voice speak.

"Sybil! Little daughter!"

Merrylips let fall her clenched hands. Shamefacedly she turned, and in the doorway that opened on the terrace she saw Lady Venner stand.

"Honored mother!" faltered Merrylips, and stumbled through a courtesy.

All in a moment she longed to cry with pain and shame and fright, but she would not, while her brothers looked on. Instead she blinked back the tears, and at a sign from her mother started to follow her into the house.

"If it like you, good mother, the fault was mine to vex the child," said Longkin.

But the mother answered sternly, "Peace!" and so led Merrylips away.

In the cool parlor, where the long shadows of late afternoon made the corners as dim as if it were twilight, Lady Venner sat down on the broad window-seat. Merrylips stood meekly before her, and while she waited thus in the quiet, where the terrace and the dogs and the lads seemed to have drawn far away, she grew aware that her hair was tousled, and her hands were soiled and scratched. She was so ashamed that she cast down her eyes, and then she blushed to see how the toes of her shoes were stubbed. Stealthily she bent her knees and tried to cover her unmaidenly shoes with the hem of her petticoat.

"Little daughter," said Lady Venner, "or haply should I say—little son?"

Then, in spite of herself, Merrylips smiled, as she was always ready to do, for she liked that title.

Straightway Lady Venner changed her tone.

"Son I must call you," she said gravely, "for I cannot recognize a daughter of mine in this unmannered hoiden. For more than two months, Sybil, I have made my plans to send you where under other tutors than unthinking lads you may be schooled to gentler ways. What I have seen this hour confirmeth my resolve. This day week you will quit Walsover."

"Quit Walsover—and Munn and Flip and Longkin?" Merrylips repeated; but thanks to the schooling of the unthinking lads, her brothers, breathed hard and did not cry.

"You will go," said Lady Venner, "to your dear godmother, Lady Sybil, at her house of Larkland in the Weald of Sussex. She hath long been fain of your company, and in her household I know that you will receive such nurture as becometh a maid. Now go unto my woman and be made tidy."

In silence Merrylips courtesied and stumbled from the room. Just outside, in the hall, she ran against Munn, who caught her by the sleeve.

"What's amiss wi' thee?" he asked. "Did our mother chide thee roundly, little sweetheart?"

"I be going hence," said Merrylips, and blinked fast. "I be going to mine old godmother—she that sent me a vild mammet—and I know I'll hate her fairly! Oh, tell me, dear Munn, where might her house of Larkland be? Is't far from Walsover?"

"A long distance," said Munn; and his face was troubled for the little girl he loved.

"Is't farther than Winchester?" Merrylips urged in a voice that to his ears seemed near to breaking.

He was an honest lad, this Munn; and though he did not like to say it, spoke the truth.

"Ay, dear heart," he said, "'tis farther even than Winchester thou wilt go, but yet—"

Merrylips tossed back her flyaway hair.

"Tell that unto Flip!" she cried. "He hath been but unto Winchester, and now I'll go farther than Winchester! I'll journey farther than Master Flip, though he be a lad and I but a wench!"

She lifted a stanch little face to her brother, and smiled upon him, undismayed.

CHAPTER III

OUT IN THE WORLD

At first Merrylips found it easy to be brave. She was given a pretty new cloak and gown. She was pitied by the serving-maids, and envied by her sisters, and petted by her brothers, because she was going on a long journey.

Better still, she found it easy to be, not only brave, but merry, like herself, on the autumn morning when she was mounted on a pillion behind one of the serving-men in her father's little cavalcade. For, girl though Flip had called her, she was leaving Walsover at last on that wondrous journey to great London town.

For five long days they rode among the scenes that Merrylips knew from her father's tales. They passed through fields that were brown with autumn, and villages where homely smoke curled from the chimneys. They clattered through towns where beggar children ran at the horses' stirrups and whined for ha'pennies. They crossed great wastes of common, where Merrylips half hoped that they might meet with padders, so sure was she that her father and his stout serving-men could guard her from all harm.

For four wonderful nights they halted at snug inns, where civil landladies courtesied to Merrylips. They supped together, Merrylips and her father, and he plied her with cakes and cream and oyster pies that she felt her mother would have forbidden. After supper she sat on his knee, while he sipped his claret by the blazing fire, till for very weariness she drooped her head against his shoulder and slept. Then, if she woke in the night, she would find herself laid in a big, strange bed, and she would wonder how she had ever come there.

A happy journey it was, through the clear autumn weather! But the happiest day of all was the one when, toward sunset, Merrylips was shown a pile of roofs, where spires and towers rose sharp against the pale glow of the eastern sky. Yonder was London, so her father said.

A little later, in the twilight, they were clattering through paved streets. Above them frowned dim houses, and on all sides were hurrying folk that jostled one another. This was London, Merrylips said over and over to herself, and in the London of her dreams she planned to have many gay hours, like those of the days that were just passed.

But in this Merrylips was sadly disappointed. Next morning Sir Thomas, who had been her playmate since they left Walsover, was closeted with some of his friends,—men who wore long swords and talked loudly of church and king. He had no time to spend with his little daughter, so Merrylips had to go walk with Mawkin, the stout Walsover lass who was to wait upon her, and a serving-man who should guard them through the streets.

On this walk Merrylips found that though there were raisins of the sun, and oranges, and sugar candy in the London shops, just as she had dreamed, these sweets—unlike her dreams!—were to be had only by paying for them. She found too that the streets of London were rough and dirty and full of rude folk. They paid no heed to her pretty new cloak and gown, but jostled her uncivilly.

Once Merrylips and her companions were forced to halt by a crowd of staring folk that blocked the way. In the midst of the crowd they saw that a prentice lad and a brisk young page were hard at fisticuffs.

"Rogue of a Cavalier!" taunted the prentice.

In answer the other lad jeered: "Knave of a Roundhead!"

Then the spectators took sides and urged them on to fight.

"What be they, Cavaliers and Roundheads that they prate of, good Mawkin?" asked Merrylips.

Mawkin, who was gaping at the fight, said tartly that she knew not.

But the serving-man, Stephen Plasket, said: "'Tis thus, little mistress: all gentlefolk who are for our gracious king are called by the name of Cavaliers, while the vile knaves who would resist him are Roundheads."

"Then I am a Cavalier," said Merrylips.

At that moment Mawkin cried: "Lawk! he hath it fairly!"

There was the young page tumbled into the mud, with his nose a-bleeding!

"O me!" lamented Merrylips. "If Munn were but here, he would 'a' learned that prentice boy a lesson, not to mock at us Cavaliers. I would that my brother Munn stood here!"

Not till she had spoken the words did Merrylips realize how from her heart she wished that Munn were there. She wanted him, not only to beat the rude prentice boy, but to cheer her with the sight of his face. For the first time she realized that she longed to see Munn, or even prim Pug, or any of the dear folk that she had left at Walsover.

When once she had realized this, she found that London was a dreary place, and she was tired of her journey in the world. From that moment she found it quite useless to try to be merry, and hard even to seem brave, and every hour she found it harder.

There was the bad hour of twilight, when she sat alone by the fire in her father's chamber. She listened to the rumble of coaches in the street below and the cry of a street-seller: "Hot fine oat-cakes, hot!" She found something in the sound so doleful that she wanted to cry.

There was the lonely hour when she woke in the night and did not know where she was. When she remembered at last that she was in London, bound for Larkland in Sussex, she lay wide-eyed and wondered what would happen to her at her godmother's house, till through the chamber window the dawn came, bleak and gray.

Last, and worst, there was the bitter hour when she sat, perched on high at Mawkin's side, in a carrier's wagon. She looked down at her father, and he stood looking up at her. She knew that in a moment the wagon would start on its long journey into Sussex, and he would be left behind in London town.

Merrylips managed to smile, as she waved her hand to her father in farewell, but it was an unsteady little smile. And when once the clumsy wagon had lumbered out of the inn-yard, and she could no longer catch a glimpse of her father's sturdy figure, she hid her face against Mawkin's shoulder.

"Cheerly, mistress my pretty!" comforted Mawkin. "Do but look upon the jolly fairings your good father hath given you. If here be not quince cakes—yes, and gingerbread, and comfits! Mercy cover us! Comfits enough to content ye the whole journey, even an ye had ten mouths 'stead o' one. And as I be christom woman, here are fair ribbons, and such sweet gloves,—yes, and a silver shilling in a little purse of silk. Do but look thereon!"

"Oh, I care not for none of 'em," said Merrylips. "Leave me be, good Mawkin!"

But all that day Mawkin chattered. She pointed out sheep and kine and crooked-gabled houses, and men that were scouring ditches or mending hedges. Indeed, she tried her best to amuse her young mistress.

Merrylips found her talk wearisome, but next day, when Mawkin, who was vexed at her dumpishness, kept sulkily silent, she found the silence harder still to bear. She did not wish to think too much about her godmother, for the nearer she came to her, the more afraid of her she grew. So, to take up her mind, she ate the comfits and the cakes with which her father had heaped her lap. It was no wonder, then, that on the third day of her journey she had an ache in the head that was almost as hard to bear as the ache in her heart.

About mid-afternoon a chill, fine rain began to fall. Mawkin, all huddled in her cloak, slept by snatches, and woke at the lurching of the wagon, and grumbled because she was wakened. But Merrylips dared not sleep lest she tumble from her place. So she sat clinging fast to Mawkin's cloak with her cold little hands, while through the drizzling rain she stared at the plashy fields and the sheep that cowered in the shelter of the dripping hedges.

At last, in the deepening twilight, she saw the dim fronts of houses where candles, set in lanterns, were flaring gustily. She knew that the wagon had halted in the ill-smelling court of an inn. She saw the steam curl upward from the horses' flanks, and heard the snap of buckles and clatter of shafts, as the stable-lads unhitched the wagon.

"Come, little mistress!" spoke the big carrier, who had clambered on the wheel near Merrylips. "Here we be, come to the inn at Horsham and the end of our journey. Ye must light down."

"I will not!" cried Merrylips, and clung to the seat with stiffened hands. "I'll sit here forever till ye go back unto London. I'll not bide here in your loathly Sussex. I do hate your Sussex. I'll not light down. I'll not, I tell ye!"

Mawkin, half awake, spoke sharply: "Hold your peace, I pray you, mistress!"

One of the stable boys laughed, and with that laughter in her ears, Merrylips felt herself lifted bodily into the big carrier's arms and set down on her feet in the courtyard. The world was all against her, she thought, and it was a world of rain and darkness in which she felt small and weak and lonely. In sudden terror she caught at the carrier's sleeve.

"Oh, master, take me back to London!" she cried. "I'll give ye my new silver shilling. I cannot bide here—indeed, you know not! I like not your Sussex—and I be feared of mine old godmother. Oh, master, take me back wi' you to my daddy in London town!"

Then, while she pleaded, Merrylips felt two hands, eager hands but gentle, laid on her shoulders.

"Little lass!" said a woman's voice. "Thou art cold and shivering. Do thou come in out of the storm."

"I'm fain to go back!" cried Merrylips.

She turned toward this stranger who was friendly, but saw her all blurred through a mist of rain and of tears.

"All in good time!" the kind voice went on. "If thou art fain to be gone, thou shalt go, but for now—come in from the storm."

Merrylips went obediently, with her hand in the hand that was held out to her. Too tired to question or to wonder, she found herself in a snug, warm chamber where candles burned on the table and a fire snapped on the hearth. She found herself seated in a great cushioned chair, with the shoes slipped from her numbed feet and the wet cloak drawn from her shoulders. She found herself drinking new milk and eating wheaten bread, that tasted good after the sweets on which she had feasted, and always she found her new friend with the kind voice moving to and fro and ministering to her.

Shyly Merrylips looked upon the stranger. She saw that she was a very old woman, no doubt, for her soft brown hair was touched with gray, but she had fresh cheeks and bright eyes and the kindest smile in the world. Then she saw the kind face mistily, and knew that she had nodded with sleepiness.

A little later she found herself laid in a soft bed, between fair sheets of linen, and she was glad to see that the stranger, her friend, was seated by the bedside.

"Oh, mistress!" said Merrylips, and stretched forth her hand. "Did you mean it in sober truth—that you will aid me to go back to London—away from mine old godmother?"

Then the gentlewoman laughed, with eyes and lips.

"Oh, my little lass!" she said, and knelt and put her arms about Merrylips where she lay. "Hast thou not guessed that I am that poor old godmother thou wouldst run from? I pray thee, dear child, stay with me but a little, for I am sadly lonely."

All in a moment, as she looked into the face that bent above her, Merrylips grew sorry that she had thrown the poor doll on the floor and kicked it too. She felt almost as if she had struck a blow at this kind soul who had come to befriend her when she had felt so tired and lost.

She spoke no word, because of the lump that rose in her throat, but she put both arms about her godmother's neck.

And when her godmother said: "We shall be friends, then, little Merrylips?" Merrylips nodded, with her head nestled against her godmother's breast.

CHAPTER IV

AT LARKLAND

Next day, when the storm was over and the sky was a windy blue, Merrylips rode in her godmother's coach to her godmother's house of Larkland. And there at Larkland, with the godmother that she had so feared to meet, Merrylips lived for almost a year and was very happy.

Larkland, to be sure, was a tiny house beside great Walsover. There were no lads to play with, and there were no dogs, except one fat old spaniel. There was no great company of serving-men and maids to watch at their tasks and be friends with. Neither was there a going and coming of guests and kinsfolk to keep the house in a stir.

Yet Merrylips found much to please her. Though the house was little, it was very old. It was said to have a hidden chamber in the wall, such as great Walsover could not boast. And with her own eyes Merrylips could see that there was a moat, half choked with water-weeds, and a pond full of carp that came sluggishly to the surface when crumbs were flung to them.

Though there were not many servants, there was among them an old butler, who all his life had served Lady Sybil's father, the Duke of Barrisden. He taught Merrylips to shoot at the butts with a crossbow, and while he taught her, told her tales of how, as a young man, he had gone with his Grace, the duke, to fight the Spaniards at Cadiz and to serve against the Irish kerns in Connaught.

There was too an old, old woman who had been nurse to Lady Sybil's mother. She sat knitting all day in a warm corner by the kitchen hearth or on a sunny bench against the garden wall. This old woman, in her old, cracked voice, would sing to Merrylips long ballads—The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward, and Chevy Chace, and The Fair Flower of Northumberland. At such times Merrylips listened with round eyes and forgot to miss her brothers.

But dearer to Merrylips even than Roger, the butler, or Goody Trot, the old nurse, or even Mawkin, her own kind maid from Walsover, was her godmother, Lady Sybil. For Lady Sybil, dwelling in that forgotten corner of Sussex, with only her few servants, was, as she had said, a lonely woman. She had a heartful of love to give to Merrylips, and it was a love that had wisdom to find the way to lead the little maid to what was for her good. So Merrylips, to her own surprise, found herself presently sewing seams and making tarts and toiling over lessons. In short, she did all the tasks that she had hated to do at Walsover, yet now she did them happily.

This was partly because she felt that she should do the bidding of her godmother, who so plainly loved her, and partly because the tasks were put before her in so pleasant a way. When she sewed seams, she was learning to make shirts and handkerchiefs for Longkin and Munn and Flip. When she baked a burnt and heavy little pasty, she was learning to cook—a knowledge that in camp might prove most useful to a gentleman. When she struggled with inky pothooks, she was learning to write long letters to her dear, big brothers.

There were other lessons, too, that Merrylips had not had at Walsover. Lady Sybil taught her Latin, in which she was herself an apt scholar, and Merrylips set herself eagerly to learn this tongue, because it was what her brothers studied.

Lady Sybil gave her easy lessons in surgery and the use of simples. Sometimes she even let her be present when she herself dressed the hurts or prescribed for the ills of the poor folk of Cuckstead, the little hamlet that lay hard by the walls of Larkland. This art Merrylips was glad to be taught, and she spoke often of the use it would be to her when she was a grown lad and went to the wars.

Somehow, when once she had put this secret hope into words and her godmother had not laughed, Merrylips began herself to feel that such a thought was babyish. In those quiet days at Larkland she began to grow up and to realize, with bitter disappointment, that she was likely to grow up a girl. She talked of this sometimes at twilight with her godmother, and was much comforted.

"For thou mayst have all the true virtues of a lad, dear little heart," Lady Sybil would say. "Thou canst be brave and truthful as any of thy brothers, not fearing to bear hard knocks, but fearing to bestow them on any that be weaker than thyself. I do not chide thee that thou wouldst be a man, my Merrylips, but I would have thee more than that—a gentleman."

So Merrylips tried to be a gentleman. She tried not to show a naughty temper, nor speak rudely to the serving-folk, but to be courteous and considerate always of those about her. And at times she found this a far harder task than sewing seams or reading Latin.

But life at Larkland was far from being all tasks. There were hours when Lady Sybil played to Merrylips upon the lute or the virginals and sang sweet old songs. There were other hours, while they sat together at their sewing, when Lady Sybil told wondrous tales of what she had done when she lived with her father in Paris and at the Hague and in great London town.

"I had no brothers as thou hast, Merrylips," said Lady Sybil, "but I had one dear sister, Venetia, and a sad madcap she was! By times thou dost mind me of her, honey."

One wintry afternoon, when she had talked for a long time of the Lady Venetia's pranks and plays in their girlhood together, Lady Sybil fetched a miniature from a cabinet in her chamber and showed it to Merrylips. It was the portrait of a girl of much the same age as sister Puss, Merrylips thought—a beautiful girl, with soft brown hair parted from a white forehead, and eyes that laughed, and a finger laid upon her rosy lips. On the upraised finger, Merrylips noticed, was an odd ring of two hearts entwined, wrought in what seemed dull silver.

"This is my sister Venetia," said Lady Sybil. "So she looked at eighteen, save that she was fairer than any picture."

"She is not so fair as you, godmother mine!" Merrylips declared.

Lady Sybil smiled in answer, but faintly. Indeed, as she looked upon the picture, she sighed.

"And is she dead, this sister you did love?" Merrylips hushed her voice to ask.

"Ay, long years dead," Lady Sybil answered. "'Tis a piteous tale that some day thou shalt hear, but not till thou art older."

She put away the miniature and spoke no more of the Lady Venetia. But all the rest of the day she seemed burdened with heavy thoughts.

But at most times Lady Sybil, although she seemed to Merrylips so very old, was a gay companion. At evening, when the fire danced on the hearth and the reflected glow danced on the oak panels of the parlor wainscot, she would dance too, and she taught Merrylips to dance. Sometimes even she would play at games of hunt and hide, all up and down the dim corridors and shadowy chambers of the old house. When they were tired, Lady Sybil and Merrylips would sit by the hearth and roast crabs or crack nuts, and Merrylips, like a little gentleman, would pick out the nut-meats for Lady Sybil.

By day, in the pale sunlight, they would walk in the garden and scatter crumbs for the birds that found it hard to live in the rimy days of winter. Or they would stroll through tiny Cuckstead village, where Lady Sybil would talk with the cottage women, and Merrylips would talk with the rosy village lads of lark-traps and badger hunts and the best way in which to cover a hand-ball.

So the days trod on one another's heels. Merrylips heard the waits sing beneath her chamber window on a Christmas eve of frosty stars. Almost the next week, it seemed, Candlemas had come, and she had found a pale snowdrop in a sheltered corner of the garden and run to lay it in Lady Sybil's hand. Then each week, almost each day, she found a new flower by the moist brookside, or heard a new bird-note in the budding hedgerows, till spring had come in earnest, and it was Whitsunday, and in good Sussex fashion Lady Sybil and Merrylips dined on roast veal and gooseberry pudding.

From time to time, through these happy months, Merrylips had had letters, all her own, from her kindred. Her mother had written to bid her remember her duty to her godmother, and Pug to say that she was reading A Garland of Virtuous Dames. Munn had written twice, and each time had said he hoped that there would soon be war in England, for 'twas time that the king's men schooled the rebel Roundheads to their duty. Then Merrylips remembered the two lads that she had seen at fisticuffs in the London street, and wondered if it were true that outside of peaceful Larkland grown men were making ready to fly at one another's throats, and found it hard to believe.

But soon after Whitsuntide Merrylips had a letter from Flip, which Lady Sybil read aloud to her. Flip wrote boastfully that he too was soon to see London, as well as Merrylips, only he, being a lad, was to ride thither as a soldier. Father was raising a troop to fight for the king, and he and Longkin and Munn were going to the wars. Maybe, he added loftily, he would send Merrylips a pretty fairing from London, when he had entered the town as a conqueror.

"Oh," cried Merrylips, most dismally. "I would I were a lad! Here'll be brave fighting, and Flip will have a hand therein while I must sit at home. I do so envy him!"

There Lady Sybil hushed her, laying an arm about her neck.

"Little one," she said, "thou knowest not what thou dost say. War in the land meaneth burned houses and wasted fields and slain men—men dear unto their daughters and their sisters, even as thy father and thy brothers are dear unto thee. Oh, little heart, instead of wishing to look on the sorry work of war, pray rather that peace, even at this late hour, be granted to our poor England."

Now Merrylips understood little of this, except that she grieved her godmother when she wished for war. So she did not speak again in that strain, but in her heart she hoped, if war must come, that she might somehow have a share in the fighting, as well as Flip. She even at night, when she had prayed for peace as Lady Sybil bade, added a prayer of her own:—

"But if there be any tall soldiers must needs come into these parts, grant that I may be brought to have a sight of 'em!"

Once, in a roundabout way, she asked Mawkin if this prayer were likely to be granted.

"Lawk, no!" cried Mawkin. "There's be no soldiery come into this nook-shotten corner. Put aside that whimsey, mistress."

But Merrylips still said her little prayer, and, in spite of Mawkin, it was answered, for before the month was out two of the king's soldiers had indeed come to Larkland.

CHAPTER V

AMONG THE GOLDEN GORSE

Yet for all her hoping and wishing Merrylips did not recognize her soldiers of the king, when first she set eyes on them. She had been out with Mawkin, one shimmery hot afternoon, to gather broom-flowers on Cuckstead common. She had also found a lively little green snake, which she was carrying home in her handkerchief to show to her godmother.

"And indeed my lady will not thank you for the sight of such vermin!" protested Mawkin. "It giveth me creeps but to look thereon. Put it down, do 'ee now, there's my lovey mistress."

Merrylips shook her head, and held fast to her handkerchief. So intent was she upon the snake that she did not look up till she heard a sudden little cry from Mawkin. At that moment they had come to the top of a little swell of land, too gentle to be called a hill, whence they could look down on the roofs of Larkland and the thatched cottages of the village that nestled against its wall. They had reached indeed the highest point of Cuckstead common, and there, couched among the golden gorse, a boy was lying and a man was sitting by his side.

So well were the strangers screened that Mawkin had not spied them till she was almost upon them. She gave a start of natural terror and laid her hand on Merrylips' shoulder.

"Trudge briskly, mistress!" she bade, in a low voice. "I like not the look of yonder fellow."

As she spoke, Mawkin glanced anxiously at the roofs of the village, which were a good half mile away across the lonely common.

But Merrylips, who knew nothing of fear, halted short. To be sure, the man seemed a rough fellow. He was low-browed, with a shock of fair hair and a sunburnt face. His leathern breeches and frieze doublet were soiled and travel-stained, and he had laid on the ground beside him a bundle wrapped in a handkerchief and a great knotted cudgel. He looked as Merrylips fancied a padder might look, but there was a helpless distress in his pale eyes that made her, in spite of Mawkin's whisper, turn to him.

"Were you fain to speak unto me?" asked Merrylips.

The man peered upon her stupidly beneath his thatch of light hair, and seemed to grope for words.

"Ja, ja, gracious fräulein," he said, in a thick, foreign speech. "Rupert, mein kindlein—he beeth outworn—sick."

At that the boy, who had lain face down among the flowering gorse, turned languidly and lifted his head. He was a young boy, not so old as Flip. He did not look like the man, for his hair was dark and soft, and his eyes were gray. Indeed he would have been a handsome boy, for all his mean garments, if his eyes had not been dulled and his face flushed with weariness or with fever.

"Let be, Claus!" he said, in a weak voice. "I'll be better straightway, and then we'll trudge."

But as he spoke, he let his dark head sink on his arms once more.

"He cannot lie in the fields," the man said thickly. "Gracious fräulein—bring us to shelter!"

"Haply you may find charitable folk in the next village," struck in Mawkin, who still was tugging at Merrylips' arm. "Come, mistress!"

But Merrylips cried, "Fie upon you, Mawkin! There's shelter at Larkland for all who ask it. An you can bear your son thither, good fellow, my godmother will make you welcome."

The man stared, as if he were slow to understand, but the boy dragged himself to his knees.

"She saith—there's shelter," he panted. "Take me thither, good Claus."

Slowly they set out for Larkland, all four together, for Merrylips would not leave her chance guests, and Mawkin, though she grumbled beneath her breath, would not leave Merrylips. Claus, as the man was called, half carried the boy Rupert, holding him up with one arm about him, and Merrylips walked at the boy's side, and cheered him as well as she could by repeating that it was not far to Larkland.

So they passed down the gentle slope of the common, with their shadows long upon the right hand, through the heavy scent of the gorse, amid the droning of bees. Always thereafter the warm, fruity fragrance of gorse brought to Merrylips the picture of the common, all golden with bloom, the feel of the sun upon her neck, and the sight of Rupert's strained and suffering face, that was so sadly at variance with the gay weather.

More than once they had to pause and sit by the path, while the lad rested, leaning his heavy head upon Claus's shoulder. The first time Merrylips tried to comfort him by showing him the little green snake, but he would scarcely look upon it, so in disappointment she let it go free.

More than once they had to pause and sit by the path, while the lad rested.

After that she talked with Claus. Had they come from far, she asked him?

"From beyond seas," he answered with a clumsy gesture to the south. "Yonder—they call it Brighthelmstone—we came a-land. We are bound to the king's army."

"Ay, the king," said Rupert, suddenly, and opened his eyes. "I am going to fight for the king of England, even as my father fought. For," said he, and his eyes sought Merrylips' face, yet seemed not to see her, "I am English born."

Claus hushed him there, speaking in a tongue that Merrylips did not know, but she had scarcely heeded Rupert's last words in her joy at finding out that these strangers were recruits for the king's army.

"Oh!" said she. "You are going to the wars, even as my brothers will go."

Jealously she looked at Rupert, who indeed seemed very childish as he rested in the circle of Claus's arm.

"He is but little older than I," said Merrylips. "Can he fight?"

"One winter in the camps he hath been with me, in Bohemia," Claus answered, when he had taken time to understand her question. "When he is taller, ja, he will be a trooper, and a gallant one."

"I'll be no trooper," said the boy, scarcely raising his eyelids. "I'll be captain of a troop, as was my father."

"Fine prattle for a beggar brat!" Mawkin grumbled.

But Merrylips gazed with adoring eyes on the big, rough man, who no longer seemed to her like a padder, and the slender boy, who talked so lightly of fighting for the king and winning captaincies.

"'Tis happy chance," said she, "that you came unto Larkland, for we are here all Cavaliers, even as yourselves, and were I a lad, I'd go unto the wars with you."

Then she met Rupert's eyes, fixed full upon her, and for the first time, in all his pain, Rupert smiled, seeing her earnestness, and his smile was winning.

"I would you were a lad and my brother, mistress!" he said.

Mawkin gave a little snort.

"A landleaper such as thou a brother to Sir Thomas Venner's daughter!" she cried.

But Merrylips leaned nearer and laid her hand on the boy's limp fingers.

"You are coming unto Larkland to be made well," she said, "and oh, Rupert! in very truth we'll be as good friends as if we were indeed born brothers."

CHAPTER VI

THE TART THAT WAS NEVER BAKED

Welladay, as Merrylips would herself have said, 'twas passing strange, the way of wise, grown folk, even of such kind folk as her own dear godmother!

Merrylips had thought that the bed in the great chamber would be made ready at once for Rupert. She had thought that she herself should be allowed to sit by him and tend him, as if he had been indeed her brother. But instead Lady Sybil, with her usual kindness for the sick and needy, neither more nor less, bade make a bed for the boy in the chamber above the ox-house, where some of the farm-servants used to lodge. And though she went herself to see that he was made comfortable, she would not let Merrylips go near him.

"But I thought 'twould pleasure you," Merrylips faltered, "to aid one that was a soldier to the king."

"And so it doth, sweetheart," said Lady Sybil, and bent to kiss her. "Thou didst well, no doubt, to bring the poor lad hither. But ere I let thee speak with him further, I must know whether his illness be such that thou mightst take it, and moreover I must know what manner of lad is he."

Lady Sybil spoke with her own kind smile, but as she turned away Merrylips saw that a shadow of trouble was on her face.

A little dashed in spirits, though she could scarcely say why, she ran to Goody Trot for comfort. Up and down the many stairs of Larkland she sought in vain for the old woman, till at last, as a most unlikely place, she looked into her chamber. And there she found Goody Trot, all in a flutter, busied in sewing a tawdry necklace and three broad pieces into the covering of her bolster.

"Never do I look to see the light of morn!" cried the poor old soul, as soon as she saw Merrylips. "We's all be robbed of goods and gear and slain as well, with two murderous Spanish spies lying beneath our roof."

It was useless for Merrylips to say that Claus and Rupert were neither spies nor Spaniards.

They were foreign folk, were they not, Goody Trot asked. Go to, then! All foreigners were Spaniards, and had not the Spaniards, in her girlhood, sent a great fleet to conquer England? Now that there were rumors of war in the air, Goody Trot was sure that the Spaniards were coming again, and that Claus and Rupert were spies, sent before the general army.

It was almost as sad when Merrylips left the old woman and sought out Roger, the butler. She found him loading an old snaphance, over which he cocked his head wisely. These were troublous times, he hinted, and there were those not a thousand miles away who might be fain to see the inside of Larkland. Let them but try, and they should see more than they bargained on, he ended, with a grim chuckle, as he fondled his snaphance.

"But they are friends unto us, Rupert and Claus," cried Merrylips. "They are soldiers to the king whom we serve."

"And how know you that, mistress," asked the old man, "save by their own telling? And how know you that they tell the truth?"

In all her life Merrylips had never thought that any one could really lie. Wicked people did so, she had been told, but she had never dreamed that she herself should ever know such people. It hurt her now to believe that Rupert could have lied to her who had trusted him. Yet if he had not lied, Roger, her tried old friend, who called him false, was harsh and cruel.

It was a torn and tossed little heart that Merrylips carried to her godmother to be quieted, at the hour of twilight when they usually talked together.

"It is not true," she said stormily. "Oh, dear godmother, now that you have seen Rupert, you know it is not true—the evil things they all are saying of him."

"I know that he is ill and weary, poor lad!" said Lady Sybil, but when Merrylips would have protested further, she hushed her.

"Think not too harshly of thine old friends that they suspect this new friend thou hast made," she counselled. "Remember these are days when every man in this poor country doth suspect his fellow—when brother is arrayed against brother. We know not whence these two strangers come."

"Claus told me—" Merrylips began.

"Ay," said Lady Sybil, "he told thee somewhat, even as thou didst tell it unto me, but, child, when I questioned him, he unsaid much that he had said aforetime."

Then, touched by the little girl's sorrowful silence, Lady Sybil made haste to add:—

"It may be the poor soul was but confused and frightened. He seemeth none too ready of wit, and hath small skill in our language. In any case, my dear, time will show whether he be true man or false, and to time we'll leave the proof."

But at eight years old it is not easy to leave a small matter to time, let alone so great a matter as the proving of a dear new friend. Lady Sybil might go comfortably to her bed, but for Merrylips that night there was no rest. Between dozing and dreaming and waking to doze again, she thought about Rupert, her little soldier of the king.

So much to heart she took the charge of falseness that all the household made against him that she felt as if he must somehow know of that charge and suffer under it. She longed to do something to show him that she, at least, believed in him. Sleepily she wondered which one of her treasures she might give him by way of comfort. Should it be her dear whittle, or her best ball, or her own crossbow?

The light of the summer dawn was just breaking in the chamber when Merrylips sat up in her bed. She had been struck with a fine idea. She would give Rupert a cherry tart of her own baking. He would like a cherry tart, she knew. Any boy would! Besides, she must put herself to some pains to bake it, and she was glad to sacrifice herself for the sake of poor Rupert whom every one distrusted.

As soon as Merrylips had made up her mind, she began to wonder why she should not rise at once and go pluck the cherries for the tart. Then she decided that that would be a very wise thing to do,—indeed, that she ought to do it, and by such industry she should greatly please her godmother.

So up she got, at four o'clock in the morning, and dressed herself swiftly. She tied a little hood over her flyaway hair, and an apron round her waist to hold the cherries. Then she slipped out at the garden door, just as the cocks were crowing, and ran through the dewy grass to the great tree in the corner of the garden, where the duke cherries grew.

When once she was seated on high among the branches, Merrylips could look over the wall of the garden. On her right hand she saw the ox-house and the wain-house and the stable, all faintly gray in the morning light. Almost beneath her ran a footpath from these outbuildings. It skirted the garden wall until it reached the corner where stood the duke cherry tree, and there it led into the fields.

With her eyes Merrylips followed this path. It made a narrow thread of darkness among the grasses that were white with dew, until it was lost in a hazel copse. Beyond the copse the sun was rising, and the sky was flushed with a strong red that dazzled her eyes, so that she had to turn them away.

Just at that moment Merrylips heard a sound of cautious footsteps on the path below, and a hoarse exclamation. She looked down, but she was so dazzled that for a second she could not see clearly. Then on the path below she saw Rupert standing. She was surprised, not only to see him there, but to see him alone, for she had thought that the voice that she had heard was not his, but Claus's.

Still, she could not stop to wonder about this, for here was Rupert, looking up at her with a piteous, startled face. She could not bear that for a single minute he should think her unfriendly, like the rest of the household.

"Good-morrow, Rupert!" she called gayly. "You're early afoot. Fie! So ill as you are, you should lie snug abed. My godmother will be vexed with you."

For a moment Rupert thrummed his battered cap and cast down his eyes.

"I stole forth. I was starved for a sup o' fresh air," he muttered. "But now—I will go back."

"Best so!" nodded Merrylips. "And oh, Rupert!" she leaned from her perch to add: "Ere noontime I'll have something rare to show you."

He looked up at her then, and blinked fast with his gray eyes. If he had been a younger boy, she would have said that he was almost crying.

So sorry did she feel for him that she was very near telling him about the cherry tart, but she checked herself, and tried another means of comfort.

"Rupert," said she, "would you like to see my crossbow? Old Roger gave 't me,—ay, and I can hit the white at twenty paces. Would it pleasure you to see it?"

"Will you go now to fetch it?" Rupert asked in a low voice.

Merrylips nodded, and tossed him a cluster of cherries.

"Do you wait me here," she bade, as she made ready to climb down from the tree. "You will await me, Rupert?"

He kept his eyes on the ground beneath the garden wall,—the little strip of ground that Merrylips could not see. After a moment he bowed his head, and then, as Merrylips swung herself downward from branch to branch, she lost sight of him.

In breathless haste Merrylips ran to her chamber. There she flung down the cherries, and bundled into her apron her crossbow and her ball and her top and all her other treasures.

Then out she posted, in the light that now was broadening, and ran through the garden gate into the path to the spot where she had left Rupert. She found footprints in the gravel, and under the wall the elder bushes were crushed as if a man had crouched there, but she found no other sign of human creature.

Sadly enough Merrylips trudged back to her chamber and put away the playthings that Rupert had not cared to see. She felt that she should have been angry with him, if it were not that she was his only friend in Larkland and must be faithful to him. And perhaps, she tried to excuse him, he had been too ill to stay longer out-of-doors. She did not blame him for going back to his bed, and she would make him the cherry tart, just the same.

When the rest of the household rose for the day, Merrylips said no word of Rupert, for at heart she was still a little hurt. But she took the cherries in a pipkin and sat down to stone them on the shady bench by the garden door. She was thinking, as she did so, how all would be made right between her and Rupert, when she carried him the little tart. Perhaps he would even say that he was sorry that he had broken his promise to her.

Just then Mawkin came bustling to her side.

"Lackaday, mistress," cried Mawkin, "but you are lessoned fairly, and mayhap next time you'll hark to the words of them that be older and wiser than you, a-vexing her sweet Ladyship and a-setting the house by the ears, as you have done, with fetching in of graceless vagrom wretches, no whit better than they should be!"