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"I can, thanks, Eric."
"Well, aren't you getting up?"
"I will, if you will both favor me by retiring into the corridor for five minutes. And listen, even though it is my birthday, it isn't necessary to have any more vic I mean, we need not wake the rest of the house."
"Oh, we'll be as quiet as mice," retorted Marjorie. "Dear father, you'll promise to be very quick?"
"Dear Maggie, I promise; I am your devoted and humble servant for the rest of the day."
"Isn't father delicious?" said Marjorie, as they waited in the passage.
"Delicious!" retorted Eric; "what a girl's expression! One would think you were going to eat him. I tell you what it is, pater ought to be very much obliged to us for waking him. He was lazy, but he'll have a time of
it for the rest of the day."
CHAPTER X. THE REIGN OF CHAOS
"I feel like a sort of knight putting on my armor," he said to himself. "I am going on a crusade for the rest of the day. A crusade against all my established customs, against all my dearly loved order, against my newspaper, my books, my quiet pleasant meals. Well, it is for the sake of the children; and their mother, bless her" here he glanced at the picture of the girl over the mantelpiece "would smile at me if she could. Oh, yes, I buckle on my armor cheerfully enough. Hey, for Chaos! Hey, for wild Mirth and childish Frivolity! Here I come, Eric and Maggie poor patient little mice that you are! Here's father at last. Give me your hand, Mag: you may jump on my shoulder, if you like. Now for a race downstairs to the garden, and then you can tell me what you got me out of my bed in the middle of the night for."
Miss Wilton was quite right when she left the Chase the day before. She certainly would not have enjoyed being awakened from her early morning slumbers by the wild raid which now took place through the old house. There was a scamper, a rush, some shouts, not only from childish throats, but from a manly and decidedly bass voice. The poor respectable old house would have looked shocked if it could, but who cared what anything looked or felt when Chaos was abroad?
About three hours later a somewhat draggled-looking party might have been seen approaching the Chase. They were all dead tired, and all very untidy, not to say disreputable in appearance. The little girl's brown Holland frock was not only torn, but smeared with mud and some sort of green mossy stuff which produces a deep stain very difficult for laundresses to remove. The little boy was also in a sorry plight, for he had a scratch across his cheek, and his knickers were cut through at the knees; while the big boy, in other words, the man, looked the most untidy, the most fatigued, the most travel-stained of all.
Ermengarde, in her neat white cool frock, with a green sash tied round her slim waist, and her long fair hair streaming down her back, came out to meet this party. She was accompanied by Lucy, who was also neat and fresh and trim. The two had stepped out of the house to gather a few flowers to put on the breakfast-table, and now they assumed all the virtuous airs of those good moral people who do not get up to catch the early worm.
"What a figure you are, Maggie! and what a disgraceful noise you and Eric made this morning," she began, in her most grown-up and icy tones.
"Oh, please don't scold us, Ermengarde," said Mr. Wilton. "Look at our water-lilies, gaze well at them, and be merciful."
Yes, the water-lilies were superb each jaded conqueror was laden with them buds and blossom and leaf, all were there such buds, such blossoms, heavy and fragrant with richness.
Ermie adored flowers. She uttered a little shriek of delight when her father held up a great mass of enormous waxen bells for her to bury her face in.
"Oh, delicious!" she exclaimed, "but how tired you all are!"
"Yes, yes, yes," exclaimed Victor No. 1, "tired and starving, absolutely starving. Get us some breakfast, good Ermie, and put the lilies in water as quickly as you can."
Miss Nelson presided at the breakfast-table, and as this meal was eaten in the comfortable old schoolroom, and as Miss Nelson looked just as usual, just as orderly, just as neat and prim as she did yesterday, and as she would again to-morrow, her presence had a certain calming effect upon the rioters. They ate their meal with some decorum, and not more than three children spoke at the same moment.
There was a grand consultation immediately after breakfast as to the proceedings of the day, and here it must be confessed Chaos once more mounted his throne, and held a most determined sway.
After ten minutes of babel, Marjorie suddenly squatted herself on the floor, and began to write furiously.
This was her programme: "Rush upstairs and dress as fast as possible don't be long on account of keeping the carriages waiting. Put on our oldest, but we must be neat on account of father not liking dirty hands, and smuts on the top of the nose, and smears anywhere we had better wear our best, perhaps tumble into the carts and carriages and wagons, and drive to Bee's Head, that's ten miles away. Eric wants to go, the others don't; Lucy and I are for Salter's Point, on account of the shells, and that's in the other direction. I think it's quite eleven miles. Ermengarde votes for the Deep Woods, although I hate midges. Well,