rowful
history.

There is a lurking sparkle of joyousness and rebellion and mischief
in nature here, and therefore in children.

Often the light grows dull and the bright colouring fades to
neutral tints in the dust and heat of the day. But when it
survives play-days and school-days, circumstances alone determine
whether the electric sparkle shall go to play will-o'-the-wisp
with the larrikin type, or warm the breasts of the spirited,
single-hearted, loyal ones who alone can "advance Australia."

Enough of such talk. Let me tell you about my seven select
spirits. They are having nursery tea at the present moment with
a minimum of comfort and a maximum of noise, so if you can bear a
deafening babel of voices and an unmusical clitter-clatter of
crockery I will take you inside the room and introduce them to
you.

Nursery tea is more an English institution than an Australian one;
there is a kind of _bon camaraderie_ feeling between parents and
young folks here, and an utter absence of veneration on the part of
the latter. So even in the most wealthy families it seldom
happens that the parents dine in solemn state alone, while the
children are having a simple tea in another room: they all
assemble around the same board, and the young ones partake of the
same dishes, and sustain their parts in the conversation right
nobly.

But, given a very particular and rather irritable father, and
seven children with excellent lungs and tireless tongues, what
could you do but give them separate rooms to take their meals in?

Captain Woolcot, the father, in addition to this division, had had
thick felt put over the swing door upstairs, but the noise used to
float down to the dining-room in cheerful, unconcerned manner
despite it.

It was a nursery without a nurse, too, so that partly accounted
for it. Meg, the eldest, was only sixteen, and could not be
expected to be much of a disciplinarian, and the slatternly but
good-natured girl, who was supposed to combine the duties of
nursery-maid and housemaid, had so much to do in her second
capacity that the first suffered considerably. She used to lay
the nursery meals when none of the little girls could be found to
help her, and bundle on the clothes of the two youngest in the
morning, but beyond that the seven had to manage for themselves.

The mother? you ask.

Oh, she was only twenty--just a lovely, laughing-faced girl, whom
they all adored, and who was very little stead