boys of
that age generally have.

Meg was the eldest of the family, and had a long, fair plait that
Bunty used to delight in pulling; a sweet, rather dreamy face,
and a powdering of pretty freckles that occasioned her much
tribulation of spirit.

It was generally believed in the family that she wrote poetry
and stories, and even kept a diary, but no one had ever seen a
vestige of her papers, she kept them so carefully locked up in
her, old tin hat-box. Their father, had you asked them they would
all have replied with considerable pride, was "a military man,"
and much from home. He did not understand children at all, and was
always grumbling at the noise they made, and the money they cost.
Still, I think he was rather proud of Pip, and sometimes, if Nellie
were prettily dressed, he would take her out with him in his dogcart.

He had offered to send the six of them to boarding school when he
brought home his young girl-wife, but she would not hear of it.

At first they had tried living in the barracks, but after a time
every one in the officers' quarters rose in revolt at the pranks
of those graceless children, so Captain Woolcot took a house some
distance up the Parramatta River, and in considerable bitterness
of spirit removed his family there.

They liked the change immensely; for there was a big wilderness
of a garden, two or three paddocks, numberless sheds for
hide-and-seek, and, best of all, the water. Their father kept
three beautiful horses, one at he barracks and a hunter and a
good hack at Misrule; so, to make up, the children--not that they
cared in the slightest--went about in shabby, out-at-elbow clothes,
and much-worn boots. They were taught--all but Pip, who went to
the grammar school--by a very third-class daily governess, who
lived in mortal fear of her ignorance being found out by her
pupils. As a matter of fact, they had found her out long ago, as
children will, but it suited them very well not to be pushed on
and made to work, so they kept the fact religiously to
themselves.

CHAPTER II

Fowl for Dinner

"Oh, don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and nothing wrong;
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at?"

I hope you are not quite deafened yet, for though I have got
through the introductions, tea is not nearly finished, so we must
stay in the nursery a little longer: All the time I have been
talking Pip has been grumb