CHAPTER VIII A Catapult and a Catastrophe


"Oh, sweet pale Margaret,
Oh, rare pale Margaret,
What lit your eyes with tearful power?"


The dusk had fallen very softly and tenderly over the garden,
and the paddocks, and the river. There was just the faintest
wind at the waters edge, but it seemed almost too tired after the
hot, long day to breathe and make ripples. Very slowly the grey,
still light deepened, and a white star or two came out and blinked
up away in the high, far heavens. Down behind the gum trees,
across the river, there was a still whiter moon; a stretch of
water near was beginning to smile up to it. Meg hoped it
would not climb past the tree-tops before eight o'clock, or the
long paddocks would be flooded, with light and she would be seen.
At tea-time, and during the early part of the evening, she was
preoccupied and inclined to be irritable in her anxiety, and she
snubbed Bunty two or three times quite unkindly.

He had been hovering about her ever since six o'clock in almost
a pitiable way.

It was characteristic of this small boy that when he had been tempted
into departing from the paths of truth he was absolutely wretched
until he had confessed, and rubbed his little unclean hands into
his wet eyes until he was "a sight to dream of, not to tell."