tell you what!" said Alex. "We'll have tight-rope dancing. I'm tired of learned pigs and things like that – " This last impersonation having been perseveringly rendered by Cedric with much shuffling and snorting over a pack of cards.
"Give me the skipping-rope, Barbara."
"Why?" said Barbara, whining.
"Because I say so," replied her sister, stamping her foot. "I've got an idea."
"It's my skipping-rope."
"But if you don't give it to me we can't have the tight-rope dancing," said Alex in despair.
"I don't care. Why should you do tight-rope dancing with my skipping-rope?"
"You shall do it first – you shall do it all yourself, if you'll only let me show you," Alex cried in an agony of impatience.
On this inducement Barbara slowly parted with her skipping-rope, and let Alex knot it hastily and insecurely to the newel post on the first landing above the hall.
"Now just get up on to the post, Barbara, and I'll hold the other end of the rope like this, and you'll see – "
"But I can't, I should fall off."
"Don't be such a little muff; I'll hold you on."
"No, no – I'm frightened. Let Cedric do it."
"No," said Cedric. "I'm being a learned pig." He went down the short flight of stairs and sat firmly down upon the tiled floor with the pack of cards out-spread before him.
"Now come on, Barbara," Alex commanded her; "I'll hold you."
Between hoisting and pulling and Barbara's own dread of disobeying her, Alex got her sister into a kneeling position on the broad flat top of the newel post.
"Now stand up, and then I'll hold out the rope. You'll be the famous tight-rope dancer crossing the Falls of Niagara."
"Alex, I'm frightened."
"What of, silly? If you did fall it's only a little way on to the stairs, and I'll catch you. Besides, you'll feel much safer when you're standing up."
Barbara, facing the stairs, and with her back to the alarming void between her perch and the hall-floor, rose trembling to her feet.
"You look splendid," said Alex. "Now then!" She jerked at the rope, and at the same instant Barbara screamed and tried to clutch at her.
Alex caught hold of her sister's ankles, felt Barbara's weight slip suddenly, and screamed aloud as a shriek and crash that seemed simultaneous proclaimed Barbara's fall backwards into the hall.
Cedric and Barbara in a confused struggling heap on the floor – doors opening upstairs and in the basement – the flying feet of the servants – all was an agonized nightmare to Alex until Barbara, limp and inert on Nurse's lap, suddenly began to scream and cry, calling out, "My back! my back!"
They hushed her at last, and Nurse carried her into the boudoir, which was the nearest room, and laid her down on the broad sofa. Then Alex became aware of a monotonous sound that had struck on her ear without penetrating to her senses ever since the accident happened.
"My spectacles are broken. You've broken my spectacles," reiterated a lamentable voice.
"You horrid, heartless little boy, Cedric! When poor Barbara – " Sobs choked her.
"I like that!" said Cedric. "When it was all you that made her fall at all – and break my spectacles."
"What's that?" said Nurse, miraculously reappearing. "All you, was it? I might have known it, you mischievous wicked child. Tell me what happened, this minute."
But Alex was screaming and writhing on the floor, feeling as though she must die of such misery, and it was Cedric who gave the assembled household a judicial version of the accident.
The doctor came and telegrams were sent to Scotland, which brought back Lady Isabel, white-faced and tearful, and Sir Francis, very stern and monosyllabic.
"Father, my spectacles are broken," cried Cedric earnestly, running to meet them, but they did not seem to hear him.
"Where is she, Nurse?" said Lady Isabel.
"In the boudoir, my lady, and better, thank Heaven. The doctor says her back'll get right again in time."
Alex, hanging shaking over the balustrade, saw that Nurse was making faces as though she were crying. But when she came upstairs, after a long time spent with Lady Isabel in the boudoir, and saw Alex, her face was quite hard again, and she gave her a push and said, "It's no use crying those crocodile tears now. You should have thought of that before trying to kill Barbara the way you did."
"I didn't, I didn't," sobbed Alex.
But nobody paid any attention to her.
Good-natured Emily was sent away, because Nurse said she wasn't fit to be trusted, and Cook, who was Emily's aunt, and very angry about it all, told Alex that it was all her fault if poor Emily never got another place at all. Everything was Alex' fault.
There was no going to the seaside, even after Barbara was pronounced better. But Lady Isabel, who, Nurse said, had been given a dreadful shock by Alex' wickedness, was going into the country, and would take Archie and the baby with her, if they could get a new nursery-maid at once.
"And me and Cedric?" asked Alex, trembling.
"Cedric doesn't give me no trouble, as you very well know, and he'll stay here and help me amuse poor little Barbara, as has always got on with him so nicely."
"Shall I stay and play with Barbara too?"
"She's a long way from playing yet," Nurse returned grimly. "And I should think the sight of you would throw her into a fit, after what's passed."
"But what will happen to me, Nurse?" sobbed Alex.
"Your Papa will talk to you," said Nurse.
Such a thing had never happened to any of the children before, but Alex, trembling and sick from crying, found herself confronting Sir Francis in the dining-room.
"I am going to send you to school, Alex," he told her. "How old are you?"
"Twelve."
"Then I hope," said Sir Francis gravely, "that you are old enough to understand what a terrible thing it is to be sent from home in disgrace for such a reason. I am told that you have the deplorable reputation of originating quarrels with your brothers and sister, who, but for you, would lead the normal existence of happily-circumstanced children."
Alex was terrified. She could not answer these terrible imputations, and began to cry convulsively.
"I see," said Sir Francis, "that you are sensible of the appalling lengths to which this tendency has led you. Even now, I can scarcely believe it – a harmless, gentle child like your little sister, who, I am assured, has never done you wilful injury in her life – that you should deliberately endanger her life and her reason in such a fashion."
He paused, as though he were waiting for Alex to speak, but she could not say anything.
"If your
