Read Ebook: The Eagle's Nest by Cartwright S E Rainey W William Illustrator

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Ebook has 994 lines and 51429 words, and 20 pages

There was only one drawback to the laburnum. It was really such a nice tree that one hardly likes to mention this one fault, but if the children could have suggested any sort of improvement, it would have been a little more sitting accommodation in the boughs. Try as they would they could never, all three, get up in it at once. And John was usually the one left out. This was the way it happened. Madge, being two years older than the twins, and much larger, naturally always seized the highest and most commodious place. Then Betty, lightly observing, "Ladies before gentlemen," would creep into a narrow little fork between two branches at her sister's feet. And all that remained for John was a yard of slippery polished stem, on which nothing but a fly could have sat.

John grumbled--it was one of the things he did best, according to his sisters. "Practice makes perfect," Betty used to say, alluding to this habit of his. She was fond of proverbs, and introduced them into her conversation with more aptness than consideration for the feelings of others. But really about this matter of seats it did seem a little hard on John to have always to crouch in the bay-bush, while his sisters looked down on him from their lofty thrones,--even Betty's boots on a level with his head. Of course, they daily pointed out to him that the crushed bay leaves gave out a delicious smell. This was quite true, but it in no way removed the original grievance. One may have too much even of bay leaves.

However, this morning for about half an hour John had undisturbed possession of the laburnum-tree. He began by trying Madge's seat, but his legs being several inches shorter than hers dangled most uncomfortably, instead of reaching the bough below. In order to steady himself he had to hold on with one hand, which was terribly humiliating. Madge, who could sit there in the most unconcerned manner, plaiting rushes or carving a stick, would be sure to laugh at him if she came out and noticed his difficulty. He hastily slipped down into Betty's seat.

Now it so happened that the twins were not at all alike in appearance. John was a fine handsome boy, Betty rather a thin, under-sized girl; consequently the fork between the laburnum branches into which she fitted exactly would not admit her brother at all. Except for the glory of the thing, it was far safer and more comfortable down among the bay leaves. John was so seldom out in the garden without his sisters that he had never before had a quiet opportunity for making this discovery. He was still thinking it over with puzzled astonishment, when there was a loud sound of slamming doors, and Betty ran out of the house, dangling her straw hat from her hand by a worn-out bit of elastic.

"Madge kept in?" inquired John anxiously.

"Oh no! It's her turn to put away the books and desks, that's all."

This was a relief, for though the twins were supposed to be romantically devoted to each other, they were both in reality rather dependent upon Madge, whose superior size, age, and experience made her the undisputed leader in all their games. John and Betty waited impatiently, listening to the series of bangs which accompanied their sister's rather abrupt restoration of order in the schoolroom. At last there were three crashes louder than all the former sounds.

"Hurrah! There go the desks!" shouted John. "That's the last thing always. She'll be here in a minute!"

In point of fact Madge joined them almost immediately. "I've thought of something," she said, directly she came within shouting distance.

There was some excitement at this announcement, for when Madge solemnly observed that she had thought of something, it always meant that an unusually interesting plan was about to be unfolded. They all climbed into their customary seats to await further developments. As Betty was nearest the laburnum-tree she scrambled up first, so that Madge had presently to crawl right over her, even planting a pair of very substantial and dusty boots in her younger sister's lap; but this was by no means a sufficiently uncommon event to call for any remonstrance. As for John, he squatted down among the bay leaves much more contentedly than usual. He had just found out that those lofty seats up among the golden-chains, as the children called the laburnum blossom, were not half as comfortable as they looked.

"This is what I have been thinking," began Madge, when she had settled herself, not kicking Betty's head more than twice in the process. "We want some hiding-place where no one can find us."

"Yes! yes!" shouted the twins.

"Some place in a tree," continued Madge.

The applause became louder than ever. Climbing trees was the favourite amusement of all the children, and no game found favour for long which did not include something of the kind.

"A tree like this, will it be?" inquired Betty.

"Of course not," replied Madge. She had her own idea, and could not help feeling rather irritated with the younger ones for not entering into it without any explanations. "This is hardly like a real tree," she continued; "more like a garden-seat, you know. If we fell out of it, I don't believe we should be hurt a bit."

This statement was felt by the assembled company to be quite true, though perhaps a little ungrateful, seeing how very much use they made of the laburnum.

"Now, I should like a tree which would be a real fortress," continued Madge. "A regular place of refuge--"

"What is a refuge?" interrupted John.

"Why, a place of safety, of course! Where one can hide from the enemy and--"

"What enemy?" again interrupted John.

"Oh, don't be so tiresome!" broke in Betty, who always understood things a little quicker than her brother--or if not, pretended she did. "Can't you fancy an enemy? Men in armour, or lions, or Nurse when she wants us to be put to bed."

John did not answer, being a little sulky. Of course he could imagine enemies just as well as his sisters; worse ones perhaps, with longer spears and sharper teeth! And he did not like being considered silly.

"What I think," continued Madge, who was accustomed to talk through interruptions, so that she hardly noticed them; "what I think is that we ought to make a kind of house up in a big tree, so high that no grown-up people can possibly climb to it, and if we tumbled out we should break our legs."

"I am afraid none of the garden trees will do," said Betty thoughtfully, as she pondered over the required qualifications.

"Did I say it was to be in the garden?" snapped out Madge. "It will be in the fields--the farthest part of the fields. And," she added, leaning forward and whispering mysteriously, "I know the tree."

"Oh, which is it? Where is it?" shouted the twins. John's sulks at once gave place to his curiosity.

"It's the beech-tree by the wall at the end of the Pig's Field," announced Madge. "I have examined it, and it will do exactly."

"You do have such good plans!" murmured Betty admiringly. Indeed, an elder sister who can work out a project of this sort in her head without saying a word to anyone, is a member of the family of whom one may feel justly proud.

"But I hope there's a place for me in this grand tree of yours," observed John, in the accent of complaint that was rather habitual to him. "Because, if I've got to sit on the ground as I do here, and the enemy comes, it won't be very nice for me; though of course you two will be all right, so you won't care!" and he crushed the bay leaves viciously under his feet until the air became quite aromatic.

"If you would only listen to me instead of grumbling you would hear my whole plan," observed Madge, very reasonably. "We shall not sit on branches as we have always done before, we will build a house by putting sticks for a floor. A sort of huge nest, with lots of room for us all. Of course, if we build it ourselves, we can make it just as large or as small as we like."

The audience was positively struck dumb by the magnificent ingenuity of this new idea. The clanging sound of a large bell at last broke the silence.

"Oh, dear! There is dinner in five minutes!" sighed Betty, wriggling out of her narrow seat. "And I upset the ink-bottle over my hands, so that they will take longer to wash than usual, and there will be no time to hear the rest of your plan now, because I promised to bring Miss Thompson in a bunch of golden-chains." And she began pulling down the lowest boughs of the laburnum by swinging upon them with all her weight.

"All right!" said Madge good-naturedly; "I'll help." Climbing down to the ground, she began to tear large sprays of golden blossom off the boughs lowered by Betty's weight. "There, I should think that's enough!" she said, when her two hands were full to overflowing. "Now we had better run in, or we shall be late and lose our punctuality marks! But first I will tell you both one more thing. I have even thought of a name for this house in the tree. The Eagle's Nest. What do you say to that?" But the twins' admiration and enthusiasm for their elder sister could not find a vent in mere words.

THE EAGLE'S NEST.

A good name is half the battle. That the Eagle's Nest was going to be a magnificent success all the children felt at once. Fortunately it was Saturday, and there were no lessons to be done after dinner, so they had a whole long afternoon in which to lay the foundations of their new house.

When Captain West married and left the navy, many years before our story begins, he had bought Beechgrove and the little farm attached to the house. So his children had no lack of fields and outhouses in which to play, directly they were old enough for Nurse to trust them out of her sight. The only rule that they were bound to observe was: Never to go off their father's property. This was not often felt to be an oppressive regulation, for the dozen fields of which the farm consisted contained untold treasures, in the way of hedges rich in birds' nests, and green slimy ponds alive with newts and tadpoles. The fact was, that the children had never yet found any day long enough to explore the fields to their entire satisfaction.

But there was one corner of the Beechgrove farm which seemed more mysteriously interesting than all the rest. In the first place, it was at an immense distance from the house; a grown-up person on a hot day would very likely have taken nearly a quarter of an hour to walk there. The children, of course, took much longer; they never went straight anywhere, and even if they started to run they forgot half-way where they were going, and wandered off in several directions, after passing objects of interest, before they remembered. So, excepting on long summer afternoons, they very seldom got as far as this particular corner, where the beech-trees grew in such abundance as to give their name to the whole place.

There was another reason as well as its remoteness from civilization which made the children regard this corner with a peculiarly awe-struck interest. On the other side of the high wall which bounded the farm at this end lived an old lady, about whom most extraordinary stories were told. She was undoubtedly eccentric and fond of seclusion, as she had spent a large sum of money on fencing her little property entirely round with a stone wall about ten feet high. Also, she never went for walks; and it was said that tradesmen's carts were not admitted into the garden, but had to wait outside on the road while the old housekeeper carried all they brought through a door in the wall, which she carefully closed behind her. Nobody but the clergyman and the doctor had been admitted to see Mrs. Howard for years; and they were neither of them gossips, so the neighbourhood did not learn much after their visits. Some people said that the old lady was mad; others that she had committed some terrible crime for which she had been sentenced to imprisonment for life, but that being very rich, she had been allowed to escape this disgrace on condition of paying a huge fine and promising never to go outside those gloomy high walls.

The children firmly believed all the different stories they had been told by successive nursery-maids, and even a legend started by the old weeding-woman, to the effect that Mrs. Howard belonged to a very high family living in London, and that having gone mad she took advantage of her position to shoot at the Queen as she was driving through Hyde Park. The story broke off at this point, which was so unsatisfactory that the children teased Mrs. Bunn to try and remember more, until, being in a hurry to get on with her weeding, she hazarded a suggestion that perhaps the poor lady was so mad that she forgot to load the pistol. As the Queen continued to live and reign, this really seemed very probable.

Of course the little Wests could have asked their parents about Mrs. Howard, and found out from them something more nearly approaching the truth. But on the whole they very much preferred being at liberty to believe all sorts of wonderful and terrible reports. It is such hard work to satisfy one's natural craving for romantic adventure when one is carefully brought up in a well-guarded nursery and schoolroom, that it would be mere stupid ingratitude not to get all the excitement one could out of a mysterious neighbour.

After this explanation, it can be better understood how very bold and thrilling a proposal Madge made when she suggested that the Eagle's Nest should be built in a beech-tree that actually overhung the boundary wall.

"How are we to begin? What shall we do first?" inquired the twins, as with business-like rapidity the three children started off across the fields immediately after their dinner. For once none of them lingered to pick buttercups, or even hunt the pigs.

"First we make the floor," said Madge, who was in a very good humour at being so undoubtedly leader of the expedition. "Until that is made we have nothing to stand on while we are putting up the roof."

This was unquestionably true; besides, everybody felt that though a very fairly satisfactory nest could be imagined open to the sky, some sort of floor was an absolute necessity in a tree-house.

"But where shall we get the boards and nails from?" asked John, thinking of the neat planks he had so often counted in the nursery.

"Boards and nails!" laughed Madge. "Do you think it's going to be exactly like the stupid sort of houses we are used to? Perhaps you expect to see a brown carpet with red spots, like the one in the schoolroom?"

"Of course not! Don't be so silly!" cried John angrily. But all the same, it must be confessed he could not imagine a house very unlike Beechgrove.

"You see, this will be more of a nest," interposed Betty; "so it ought to be made of sticks."

"That's it! Follow me and I will show you where to get some." And Madge set off running across the field, closely pursued by the two others.

It was not very difficult to guess where the sticks were to be found. Every winter the wind had a delightful way of blowing down some large boughs on the farm, and these used to be cut up and stacked together until wanted for various purposes. The children regarded these windfalls as expressly designed for their convenience and amusement. They climbed on the heavier logs, which were piled into temptingly irregular mountains several feet high; and of the smaller sticks they made every kind of defensive weapon.

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