I haven't introduced you to Pip yet, have I? He was a little like
Judy, only handsomer and taller, and he was fourteen, and had as
good an opinion, of himself and as poor a one of girls as 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 hem 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