"And for heaven's sake, Meggie, next time you feel sick, tell me! Don't just sit there until it's too late and I've got a mess to clean up as well as everything else! Now you're going to have to hurry, because if you're late for the bell Sister Agatha is sure to cane you. Behave yourself, and mind your brothers."
Bob, Jack, Hughie and Stu were hopping up and down by the front gate when Fee finally pushed Meggie out the door, her luncheon jam sandwiches in an old satchel.
"Come on, Meggie, we'll be late!" Bob shouted, moving off down the road. Meggie followed the dwindling forms of her brothers at a run. It was a little after seven o'clock in the morning, and the gentle sun had been up several hours; the dew had dried off the grass except where there was deep shade. The Wahine road was a wheel-rutted earthen track, two ribbons of dark red separated by a wide band of bright green grass. White calla lilies and orange nasturtiums flowered profusely in the high grass to either side, where the neat wooden fences of bordering properties warned against trespassing.
Bob always walked to school along the top of the right-hand fences, balancing his leather satchel on his head instead of wearing it haversack style. The lefthand fence belonged to Jack, which permitted the three younger Clearys domain of the road itself. At the top of the long, steep hill they had to climb from the smithy hollow to where the Robertson road joined the Wahine road, they paused for a moment, panting, the five bright heads haloed against a puffily clouded sky. This was the best part, going down the hill; they linked hands and galloped on the grassy verge until it vanished in a tangle of flowers, wishing they had the time to sneak under Mr. Chapman's fence and roll all the way down like boulders.
It was five miles from the Cleary house to Wahine, and by the time Meggie saw telegraph poles in the distance her legs were trembling and her socks were falling down. Ears tuned for the assembly bell, Bob glanced at her impatiently as she toiled along, hitching at her drawers and giving an occasional gasp of distress. Her face under the mass of hair was pink and yet curiously pallid. Sighing, Bob passed his satchel to Jack and ran his hands down the sides of his knickers.
"Come on, Meggie, I'll piggyback you the rest of the way," he said gruffly, glaring at his brothers in case they had the mistaken idea that he was going soft.
Meggie scrambled onto his back, heaved herself up enough to lock her legs around his waist, and pillowed her head on his skinny shoulder blissfully. Now she could view Wahine in comfort.
There was not much to see. Little more than a big village, Wahine straggled down each side of a tar-centered road. The biggest building was the local hotel, of two stories, with an awning shading the footpath from the sun and posts supporting the awning all along the gutter. The general store was the next-biggest building, also boasting a sheltering awning, and two long wooden benches under its cluttered windows for passersby to rest upon. There was a flagpole in front of the Masonic hall; from its top a tattered Union Jack fluttered faded in the stiff breeze. As yet the town possessed no garage, horseless carriages being limited to a very few, but there was a blacksmith's barn near the Masonic hall, with a stable behind it and a gasoline pump standing stiffly next to the horse trough. The only edifice in the entire settlement which really caught the eye was a peculiar bright-blue shop, very un-British; every other building was painted a sober brown. The public school and the Church of England stood side by side, just opposite the Sacred Heart Church and parish school.
As the Clearys hurried past the general store the Catholic bell sounded, followed by the heavier tolling of the big bell on a post in front of the public school. Bob 28 broke into a trot, and they entered the gravel yard as some fifty children were lining up in front of a diminutive nun wielding a willowy stick taller than she was. Without having to be told, Bob steered his kin to one side away from the lines of children, and stood with his eyes fixed on the cane. The Sacred Heart convent was two-storied, but because it stood well back from the road behind a fence, the fact was not easily apparent. The three nuns of the Order of the Sisters of Mercy who staffed it lived upstairs with a fourth nun, who acted as housekeeper and was never seen; downstairs were the three big rooms in which school was taught. A wide, shady veranda ran all the way around the rectangular building, where on rainy days the children were allowed to sit decorously during their play and lunch breaks, and where on sunny days no child was permitted to set foot. Several large fig trees shaded a part of the spacious grounds, and behind the school the land sloped away a little to a grassy circle euphemistically christened "the cricket pitch," from the chief activity that went on in that area. Ignoring muffled sniggers from the lined-up children, Bob and his brothers stood perfectly still while the pupils marched inside to the sound of Sister Catherine plunking "Faith of Our Fathers" on the tinny school piano. Only when the last child had disappeared did Sister Agatha break her rigid pose; heavy serge skirts swishing the gravel aside imperiously, she strode to where the Clearys waited.