Page 66 - An Australian Lassie

"Betty wants to get up early," they would say and smile. But upon this night--the night before the battle--they
did not go to her room at all.

Mrs. Bruce was reading a new magazine, and saying now and again, as she turned a leaf or smiled at her
husband, that she had intended doing a bit of mending; and Mr. Bruce was polishing up a chapter in his book,
and saying now and again as he paused for a choicer word, or smiled at his wife, that he had intended doing
that blessed article on Cats, for Flavelle. So they both went on being uncomfortably comfortable.

Betty tried all her expedients for early rising, and yet peaceful was her sleep throughout the night. Her lashes
lay still on her rounded cheeks, her rosy lips smiled and her brown curls strewed the pillow, just as effectively
as though she were on a velvet couch, and a living illustration of a small princess, sleeping to be awakened by
a kiss.

She awoke just as the day was pinkly breaking and the night stealing greyly away, awoke under the
impression that John Brown was cutting off her foot. Tt was a great comfort to find it there and merely cold
and cramped from lack of covering and an unnatural position.

She remembered everything immediately without even waiting to rub her eyes, and she sprang out of bed at
once, even though her right foot refused to do its duty, and she had to stand for a valuable minute on her left.

The clock hands (she had carried the kitchen clock into her bedroom to Mary's chagrin), pointed to a quarter
to five, and Betty realized she had only an hour in which to dress eat her breakfast, bid good-bye to any home
objects she held dear, and travel down the road to the store.

She was vexed, for she had meant to get up at four.

She got into her tattered Saturday's frock (her Cinderella costume) and she brushed and plaited her short curly
hair, as well as it would allow itself to be plaited. Then she made a bundle of her boots and stockings and
school-day frock and hid them away under the skirt of her draped dressing-table, and opened her money-box
and extracted the contents (thirteen half-pennies). This was the fortune with which she purposed to face the
world.

And so real had this thing become to her now, that she crept to the far side of the double bed to kiss the
sleeping Nancy, and down the passage to Cyril's room, to look at his face upon the pillows; and the tears were
heavy in her eyes because she was quitting her "early" home.

When she had reached the pantry she remembered something, and went back to her bed room, to place by
Nancy's side her only remaining doll, a faded hairless beauty, Belinda, by name.

And she pinned a note upon the pincushion (all her heroines who fled from their early homes, left notes upon
the pincushion) addressed to "Father and Mother," and as she passed their door she stroked it lovingly. Tn the
pantry she was guilty of several sobs, while she cut the bread, it seemed so pitiful to her to be going away
from her home in the grey dawn to seek a livelihood for her family. Tn truth her small heart ached creditably
as she ate her solitary breakfast, and it might have gone on aching only that she suddenly bethought herself of
time. Half-past five, John had said, and she remembered all that she had done since half-past four.

"Tt must be half-past five now," she said. "T'll eat this as T go," and she folded two pieces of bread and butter
together.

Then she found her bonnet and the strip of paper with the song upon it, and grasping her half-pennies set
forth.