the ground ivy, and the golden saxifrage. It was a fresh March day, with a wind blowing scudding white clouds across a pale blue sky. Rooks were beginning to build, green foliage showed on the elder trees, and the elms were flowering.
“We shall all be pixie-led if we gather the white stitchwort!” said Mavis. “They’re the pixies’ flowers, so Mrs. Penruddock told me! It’s a very old Devonshire superstition.”
“Is that so? I never heard it before,” said Miss Mitchell. “I know ever so many of the flowers are supposed to belong to the fairies in various parts of the country. Foxgloves are really ‘the good folks’ gloves,’ and they’re called fairies’ petticoats in Cheshire, and fairies’ hats in Ireland. Wild flax is always fairy flax, and harebells are fairy bells.”
“Our old nurse used to call funguses pixie stools,” said Edith Carey, “and the hollow ones were pixies’ baths. She wouldn’t let us pick elder, I can’t remember why.”
“That’s a very old superstition. The ‘elder mother’ is supposed to live inside the tree, and to be very angry indeed if any harm is done to it. In the good old days, people used to ask her permission before they dared to cut down an elder. They knelt on bended knees and prayed:
“Lady Elder! Lady Elder!
Give me some of thy wood.
“There’s a story about a man who hadn’t the politeness to perform this little ceremony. He made a cradle for his baby out of the elder tree. But the sprite was offended, and she used to come and pull the baby out of the cradle by its legs, and pinch it and make it cry, so that it was quite impossible to leave the poor little thing in the elder cradle, and they had to weave one of basket-work for it instead.”
“Tell us some more fairy lore about the plants!” begged the girls.
“Well, the St. John’s wort is called ‘the fairies’ horse.’ If you pick it after sunset a fairy horse will rise from the ground and carry you about all night, leaving you in the morning wherever you may chance to be at sunrise. You know if you keep fern-seed in your pockets you’ll have the chance of seeing the pixies. The moonwort is supposed to be a very supernatural plant, and to have the power of opening locks if you place a leaf of it in the keyhole. No, I’ve never tried to burgle with it! I’ve never found any moonwort. It’s an exceedingly rare plant now, and it’s not been my luck to come across any. If you’re troubled with warts, you ought to go at sunrise to an ash tree, stick a pin into the bark, and say:
“Ashen tree! Ashen tree!
I pray thee buy these warts of me!
“Then the ash tree would cure you, that’s to say, if you’d repeated the charm properly!”
“I suppose it was always wise to leave a loophole in case the cure didn’t come off!” laughed Mavis.
They had been walking by a footpath across the meadows, and found themselves in the little village of Bamberton, a small place with picturesque cottages close to a river. Miss Mitchell, who was an enthusiast upon architecture, marched her party off to view the church, much to the disgust of several of them.
“Don’t want to see mouldy old churches! I’d rather be out of doors!” grumbled Merle.
“And there are actually sweet violets growing in a field on the opposite side of the river,” said Edith, who knew the neighbourhood.
“Oh, are there? Do let’s get some.”
“It’ll be too late by the time we’ve been all round the monuments and read the inscriptions and the rest of it!”
“How long will Miss Mitchell stay in the church?”
“A good twenty minutes, I daresay. You can’t get her away when she starts talking about architecture. Dad took her round our church one day, and I thought she’d never go. Tea was getting cold, but she went on asking questions about windows and pillars and things!”
“Then why shouldn’t we slip out and run and get the violets while she’s inside the church with the others?”
It was a naughty thing for a monitress to propose, but even Sybil, who happened to overhear, did not wax moral for the occasion.
“I’ll come with you!” she said eagerly. “I’m not at all fond of going round churches, and looking at monuments. It always makes me wonder if I’m going to die young! When Miss Mitchell took us to Templeton Church and read us the epitaphs, I cried afterwards! There was one about a girl exactly my age. ‘Sweet flower, nipped off in early bloom,’ it said, or something of the sort.”
“Don’t be so sentimental!” snapped Merle.
“But come with us if you like. Yes, you too, Beata! But for goodness’ sake don’t tell any one else or they’ll all want to come, and if the whole lot try to scoot, it will put a stopper on the thing. We’ll wait till the others are inside and then just slide off. Mum’s the word, though!”
It was quite easy to loiter among the tombstones pretending to read the inscriptions, but the moment Miss Mitchell and her audience had safely passed through the porch and opened the big nail-studded door, the four confederates turned and fled.
Edith knew a short cut, and took them between rows of graves, regardless of Sybil’s protesting shudders, to a tiny stile that led down an alley to the riverside. Here there was a tumbledown wharf, and an old ferryboat which worked on a chain. Years ago a ferryman had had charge of it, but there was so little traffic that it was no longer worth his while, so the boat had been left for passengers to use as they liked. It was lying now at the edge of the wharf. The girls, following Edith, stepped in, and began to wind the boat across the river by pulling the chain. It was rather an amusing means of progression, and they enjoyed their ‘Dover- Calais crossing,’ as they called it. Arrived at the opposite bank, Edith scrambled out.
“Tie the boat up, somebody!” she called, and set off running over the meadow to the hedge where the violets grew.
Somebody is an exceedingly vague term, and generally means nobody. Merle and Beata went scampering after Edith, and Sybil, who was last, flung the boat chain hastily round a post and followed her friends. The violets were lovely, sweet-scented and blue and modest and everything that orthodox violets ought to be.
The girls gathered delicious, fragrant little bunches, and felt that they were scoring tremendously over those unfortunates who were receiving information about architecture inside the church.
“We mustn’t stay too long!” sighed Edith. “It’s a pity, but I’m afraid we really ought to go now. They’ll be looking for us if we don’t.”
So they walked back across the meadow to the bank. Here a most unpleasant surprise greeted them. The boat, into which they had meant to step and ferry themselves back, had drifted into the middle of the river.
“Good gracious! Didn’t you tie it up?” exclaimed Edith, aghast.
“Of course I did, but-well, I suppose I didn’t tie it tight enough. I never thought it would float away,” confessed Sybil.
The boat, though still working on the chain which spanned the river, was quite inaccessible from either side. The girls were in an extremely awkward position. Nobody knew where they had gone, and unless it occurred to some of their party to come and seek them by the wharf, or unless some chance passer-by happened to notice their plight, they might wait for a long time without rescue.
“What are we to do?” fumed Beata. “If we’re not back at four the ‘sardine-tin’ will be waiting for me, and Mr. Vicary will be so cross! The last time we were late he went and complained to Father and said he’d have to charge us extra for wasting his time. There was an awful row, and Violet scolded Romola and me, although it was really Tattie’s fault.”
“Can we get to Durracombe on this side of the river?” suggested Sybil.
Edith shook her head.
“We could; but there isn’t a bridge till you get to Parlingford, and that’s five miles round. I think we’d better stay here.”
“I could slay that wretched boat for playing us such a trick!” said Merle.
Meantime Miss Mitchell and the rest of the girls had finished their survey of the various monuments, and, catching sight of the church clock, realised how late it was, and that they must start back at once. Of course the four truants were missed, and a hasty search was made for them, in the chancel, and behind the organ, and outside among the tombstones.
“They’re not anywhere here!” reported the scouts.
“Then they must have walked on,” said Miss Mitchell. “Beata knew she had to be back by four o’clock. I expect we shall catch them up on the road. Come along!”
[Illustration: “WHY DIDN’T ‘EE FASTEN UP THE CHAIN”]
So the party set off at full speed, all unwitting that four disconsolate maidens were marooned on the farther side of the river, waiting for some faerie boat to ferry them across. For a long time no knight-errant arrived for their relief, but at last, as chance would have it, an urchin came down on to the wharf, with a string and a bent pin, intent on fishing. He was at least a link with the outer world, and they yelled hopefully to him across the water. He stopped and stared, then took to his heels and ran, but whether in terror or to fetch help they were uncertain. After what seemed a weary while, however, he returned, escorted by his father, who evidently understood the situation, for he shouted something which the girls could not catch, then went away.
“Has he left us to our fate?” asked Merle indignantly.
“Gone to get somebody else, perhaps!” ventured Edith more hopefully.
She proved correct, for after another eternity of time an old man hobbled on to the wharf, unlocked a boat-house, and slowly took out a punt, by means of which he reached the ferry-boat, climbed in, and worked it across the river to the farther bank.
“Why didn’t ‘ee fasten up the chain?” he asked; but as he was almost stone-deaf he did not understand either their excuses or professions of gratitude, and simply motioned to them to enter.
Arriving back on the wharf the girls, after subscribing a shilling amongst them to reward their rescuer, hurried up to the churchyard, where, of course, there was no sign of their party, then started as fast as they could to walk along the high road. They had gone perhaps half a mile when they heard a warning hoot behind them, and, looking round, what should Merle see but the little Deemster car with Dr. Tremayne at the driving-wheel. She shouted wildly and stopped him.
“Oh, Uncle David! Are you going back to Durracombe? Could you possibly take Beata at any rate! Her car will be waiting for her at school. We’d be everlastingly grateful!”
“I’ll try and cram you all in if you like,” smiled Dr. Tremayne. “Open the dickey, Merle!”
It was a decided squash. Edith and Sybil sat in front, and Merle and Beata managed to get together into the little dickey seat behind, where they each held one another in and clutched the hood for support.
“I have to pay a visit, but I’ll run you back first,” said Uncle David, setting off at a pace that made Merle and Beata cling for their lives as they whisked round corners. They arrived at ‘The Moorings’ exactly as the town-hall clock was chiming the quarter after four. Mr. Vicary, his face a study of patience, was standing by the side of the ‘sardine-tin,’ which was already packed for transit, and whose occupants set up a joyful screech of welcome.
“Of course, if Dr. Tremayne motored you back with Merle it’s all right, though you ought to have asked me first,” said Miss Mitchell, to whom Sybil gave a much edited explanation, omitting the ferry-boat incident altogether, and suppressing the violets.
So the four culprits, who had expected trouble, got off a great deal better than they deserved.
CHAPTER XII
Fifth Form Justice
Easter was coming–Easter with its birds and flowers and hope of summer. Already there were hints of plans for the holidays, though these had not yet absolutely crystallised into shape. The mere mention of one of them had been enough to send Merle dancing round the house, but, as she had overheard by accident, and was strictly pledged not to reveal the secret to Clive, for the present she restrained her ecstasies and kept her lips sealed.
Meantime there was plenty to be done at school. The term-end examinations were due, and Miss Mitchell, who had been rather disappointed with Christmas results, was urging everybody to make heroic efforts. Mavis and Merle had missed much on account of the mumps, and when they attempted some revision they were absolutely appalled at the amount that had to be made up. They did their most creditable best, and toiled over text-books till heads ached. On the evening before the first examination they were sitting in Dr. Ramsay’s study giving a farewell grind to several rather rusty subjects, when Clive walked in.
“Hello, kid! You’re not allowed in here! We’re working!” warned Merle.
Her young cousin grinned.
“I know! And you’ve got to stop it. I’ve been sent to tell you to shut those books up at once!”
“Did Mother say so?”
“She did. She says you’ve done enough, and you’ll only muddle yourselves if you go on any longer.”
“We shan’t pass!” sighed Mavis.
“Yes, you will! Listen to the Oracle and he’ll give you a tip or two. A little bird told him, look up Keltic words in the English language, and the life and works of William Cowper, and the products of Java and Borneo!”
Merle giggled.
“How clever you are all of a sudden! What do you know about our exam subjects?”
Clive winked solemnly, first with one eye and then with another.
“Perhaps I’m in communication with the occult!” he remarked. “Don’t people go to clairvoyants and crystal-gazers and astrologers when they want to get tips about the future? I’m your wizard to-night.”
“All right. Tell us our fortunes.”
Clive reached over for the pack of Patience cards that Merle had left on the table, and shuffled them elaborately.
“The wizard is now ready to wizz. I may mention that my fee is only a guinea. You mustn’t laugh or it might break the spell. Will you please to choose a card, look at it, and put it back in the pack.”
“O Fate! wangle me a decent fortune!” chuckled Merle, selecting at random. It was the six of spades, and her cousin shook his head gravely.
“That’s a bad omen, but wait a bit! Stick it back in the pack and we’ll see where it comes. Oh, this is better now-a dark woman is going to bring you trouble, but a fair man will come to the rescue and help you out. You’re going amongst a number of people, but the general result will be fortunate. I see a number of diamonds, which means that prizes are in store for you.”
“We don’t have prizes at Easter! Is that all?”
“All that the cards tell me, but I’ll do a little crystal-gazing if you like!” and Clive seized a glass paperweight, and, staring intently at it, pretended to throw himself into a state of abstraction.
“I see an examination-room!” he declared. “I see rows of desks, and girls writing at them. There are lists of questions. I am peeping over their shoulders, and they are puzzling about the products of Java and Borneo, and the life and works of William Cowper, and the Keltic words in the English language. You and Mavis are scribbling ahead for all you’re worth.”
“A very pretty picture, I’m sure! Can’t you tell us some more?”
“Alas! The crystal has grown milky.”
“And it’s your bedtime!” said Mavis. “I expect you were on your way upstairs when you came in here. Confess!”
“There’s no hurry. I’ll stay and tell yours too if you like.”
“No, thanks. This will do for both of us. Is Mother in the drawing-room? Come along, Merle, we won’t work any more to-night.”
“Oh, I must just look up what was it?–the products of Java and Borneo, and William Cowper, and Keltic words. There’s luck in them! Just for five minutes! Get off to bed, you kid, and leave me to work.”
Rather reluctantly Mavis fell in with her sister’s humour and reopened her text-books.
“Clive’s only fooling!” she remonstrated.
“I know; and so am I! Here we are–Keltic words in use in the English language. You can squint over my shoulder if you like.”
The five minutes lengthened out till Mrs. Ramsay came herself and put a finish to the preparation.
“It’s silly to overdo it. You’ll only have headaches to-morrow and be able to remember nothing. Come along to the drawing-room and sing to Father.”
“Yes, Mummie darling, I’m just strapping up my books. There, I’ll leave them here on the hall-table. I promise you I won’t take them upstairs. Hello! Here’s my jersey! I was hunting for it everywhere after tea and couldn’t find it. It feels wet! How funny! Has anybody been out in it?”
“Give it to Alice and ask her to put it by the kitchen fire to dry. Father wants to hear that Devon folksong you’re learning. It will do you good to have a little music after such hard brain-work.”
Merle marched into school next morning joking about her fortune. She told the girls what the oracle had said, and how she had ground up those particular bits of information.
“I’m sporting enough to give you the tip!” she laughed.
“Clive was only making fun and ragging us!” qualified Mavis. “He’s a silly boy.”
There was no time for any more last looks, however. The bell was ringing for call-over, and all books must be put away. In the Fifth form room a clean sheet of blotting-paper was laid upon every desk, and the inkwells had been newly filled. Miss Mitchell dealt round typewritten sheets of questions, and the agony began. The English Language and Literature paper was not nearly so bad as Mavis and Merle had expected, and curiously enough there were questions both on William Cowper and on Keltic words. It was such a coincidence that Merle could not help looking at Mavis and smiling. They were both well prepared, and wrote away at full speed, almost enjoying themselves, and worked steadily till Miss Mitchell said, “Pens down.” After eleven o’clock came the examination on the text-book geography, which had this term–owing to Miss Pollard’s influence –supplemented the lantern lectures on that subject. When she saw the first question, “Describe the products of Java and Borneo,” Merle gave such an audible chuckle that many eyes were cast in her direction, and Miss Mitchell glared a warning. Again Mavis and Merle found themselves well prepared, and scribbled continuously till the bell rang.
“How did you get on?” said Merle to Muriel, as they walked downstairs from their classroom. “I say! Wasn’t it funny about my fortune? Why, we had the exact questions! I never heard of anything so queer in my life!”
“Very queer!” answered Muriel, with restraint in her voice. She was looking at Iva, who shrugged her shoulders significantly.
“Some people have all the luck!” remarked Sybil.
“Well, it was lucky, for it was pure guessing of Clive’s.”
“How did he know what exams you were going to have?”
“Oh, he’s heard us talking about them, of course.”
“I wish I had a cousin who could guess the questions beforehand.”
“We’d all get Honours on those lines.”
When Mavis and Merle returned to school after lunch, they each found a little note laid upon their desks marked ‘Urgent.’
You are requested to attend a most important meeting to be held in the boarders’ sitting-room at the hostel immediately after four.
There was no signature, but the writing was Iva’s. The Ramsays were much mystified. As day-girls they had nothing to do with the hostel, and could only go there by special invitation. When afternoon school was over they asked some of the boarders the meaning of the missive. Nobody would explain.
“You’ll find out when you get there,” was Nesta’s cryptic reply.
Puzzled, and considerably distressed at a certain offensive attitude exhibited by Sybil and others, Mavis and Merle walked across the garden to the hostel. Iva had cleared all the younger girls out of the boarders’ sitting-room, and was waiting in company with Nesta, Muriel, Aubrey, Edith, and Kitty. As soon as the Ramsays and Sybil came in, she closed the door.
“I’ve called a general meeting of the Fifth,” she said, “because there’s something we all feel we ought to go into. Would you like to elect some one into the chair?”
“I beg to propose yourself,” piped Aubrey.
“And I beg to second,” said Nesta.
Iva settled herself and looked somewhat embarrassed, as if not knowing quite how to begin. She fidgeted for a moment with her pencil, and cleared her throat.
“We’re all here,” she said at last, “except Fay and Beata, who couldn’t stay. What we’ve met for is to ask Mavis and Merle to explain how it was they got to know some of the examination questions beforehand. It seems to us queer, to say the least of it!”
The Ramsays, overwhelmed with amazement at such a palpable insinuation, turned wrathfully red.
“Why, we’ve told you! Clive guessed!” gasped Merle.
“Bunkum!”
“How could he?”
“Very convenient guessing, I’m sure!”
“It’s no use telling us such utter fibs!”
“They’re not fibs! How dare you say so!” flamed Merle.
“It’s the absolute truth!” endorsed Mavis.
“Do you stick to that?”
“Of course we do.”
“Then I shall have to call on Sybil to tell us something she saw yesterday.”
Sybil, who was red, nervous, and even more uncomfortable than Iva, rose from her seat to make her accusation.
“I was in the garden yesterday after school, and I saw Merle come back, hurry among the bushes, and climb in at the study window. I waited, and presently she came out again and scooted off as if she didn’t want to meet anybody.”
“O–o–oh! You _didn’t_ see me! I wasn’t there! Was I, Mavis?”
“Most certainly not. You were at home all the time. I can prove that!”
“I think the thing proves itself!” said Iva. “First of all, you’re seen by a witness entering the study, where, no doubt, the exam papers were spread out on the table, and then you come to school primed with the questions. There isn’t a shadow of doubt.”
“Wait a minute!” said Mavis, rising with a very white face. “To begin with, you’ve got to prove that it was Merle. One witness isn’t enough.”
“Catie and Peggie saw her down the drive. They told me so.”
“What time was it?”
“About five o’clock.”
“She was practising at home then. I can bring witnesses to prove that. Besides, if she had really seen the questions, do you think she’d have been silly enough to tell them to you before the exam?”
The girls looked puzzled at that, but Nesta murmured that Merle was silly enough for anything.
“As she’s one of the monitresses, we thought we ought to give her a chance to clear herself before we told Miss Mitchell,” said Iva.
“She _can_ clear herself and she will. It’s not fair to condemn her like this. You must give her time to bring her own witnesses. I ask you all, is it like Merle to do such a thing?”
“Well, no, it certainly isn’t like either of you. That’s what’s surprised us so much.”
“You feel you can’t be sure of anybody,” added Aubrey.
The boarders’ tea-gong, sounding at that moment, brought the meeting to an unsatisfactory conclusion. The Ramsays hurried home, bubbling over with indignation, to pour their woes into Mother’s sympathetic ear, and were highly put out to find the drawing-room full of callers, and to be expected to hand tea-cups and make pleasant conversation instead of retailing their grievances. They beat a retreat as soon as they possibly could, and, for fear of being asked to play or sing for the benefit of visitors, deemed it wise to escape into the garden.
“We’ll sit in the summer-house, only I must have my jersey,” declared Merle, catching up the garment in question from its peg in the hall, and pulling it on. “I want some place where I can explode. This is just the beastliest thing that’s ever happened to me in all my life.”
“I can’t understand it!” puzzled Mavis, with her forehead in wrinkles.
Merle was stumping along the path with her hands in the pockets of her jersey.
“Why should they accuse _me_, of all people in the world, of climbing in through the study window? Sybil must have been dreaming. She’s an idiot of a girl. She’d imagine anything from a ghost to a burglar. What are we going to do about it? I wish to goodness they _would_ tell Miss Mitchell! I’d rather she knew. I’ve a jolly good mind to go and tell her myself. Then I should have first innings and she’d hear our side of it. Hello! There’s Clive.”
It was that lively young gentleman who came walking along the garden wall and took a flying leap on to the path, just avoiding one of Tom’s best flower-beds.
“There’s a whole tribe of ladies in the drawing-room!” he volunteered. “I carried my tea into the summer-house! You won’t catch me ‘doing the polite’ if I can help it. Rather not! Have you bunked too? I don’t blame you. You’re looking down in the mouth, both of you! Exams gone wrong this afternoon? Shall I tell your fortunes again?”
“Your precious fortune has got us into a great deal of trouble,” answered Merle. “How did you manage to guess those questions? They were actually in our papers!”
Clive pulled his face into a variety of grimaces.
“Ah! Wouldn’t you just like to know!” he retorted. “Perhaps I keep a familiar spirit, or perhaps I read things in the stars. I prophesy you’ll fail in all the rest of your exams! There!”
“You young wretch!” cried Merle, chasing him down the path as he fled. She took her hands from her pockets to catch hold of him, and as she did so out flew a penknife on to the grass. Clive pounced upon it immediately and picked it up.
“I’ve been looking for this everywhere!” he declared.
“How did it get inside my pocket?” asked Merle.
“_I_ never put it there!”
“Clive!” exclaimed Mavis, with a sudden flash of intuition. “Did you wear Merle’s jersey yesterday? I remember she found it wet. I verily believe you dressed up in her clothes and went to school.”
For answer Clive burst into fits of laughter.
“Oh, it was topping!” he hinnied. “I stuck on her skirt and jersey and tam o’ shanter and took in everybody. I walked down the street, and up the drive to the school door, and prowled round the garden. There was a window open, so in I went and found exam questions all over the table. I thought I’d rag you about them!”
“You atrocious imp! Look here! You don’t know what a scrape you’ve got us into. You’ll just have to own up and get us out of it again, that’s all!”
Irresponsible Clive was full of thoughtless mischief, and it was a long time before the girls could get him to see the serious side of his escapade, and realise what an exceedingly grave charge had been brought against their honour. In the end, by dint of scolding, entreaty, coercion, and even bribery, they succeeded in persuading him to come along with them to ‘The Moorings,’ where they asked for Miss Mitchell, and told her the whole story.
“I’m extremely glad to know,” she said, looking hard at Clive. “The fact is I was deceived myself. He’s very like you, Merle! I happened to see him climbing out of the window, and I certainly thought I recognised you. I’ve felt upset all day about it. I couldn’t understand your doing such a thing.”
“Will you explain to the boarders, please! I hate them to think me a sneak.”
“I’ll make that all right.”
“And about those exam questions–Mavis and I wouldn’t have dreamt of looking them up beforehand, and I don’t suppose we should have known them. Wouldn’t it be fairer just to cross them off in our papers and not count them? We’d much rather you did.”
“Yes, it’s the only thing to be done.”
Clive, much subdued, blurted out a kind of apology before he left, which Miss Mitchell accepted with dignity. Perhaps she did not think it good for him to forgive him too easily. His evil prophecies about the exams were fortunately not fulfilled, for his cousins, though they did not score brilliant successes, just managed to scrape through without any failures.
The Fifth form, when they heard the true facts of the story, repented their hasty court of justice and made handsome amends.
“It doesn’t matter!” said Merle. “You were quite right if you thought we’d been cheating. I should pull anybody else up myself, fast enough. It must have been the acting we did at Christmas that put the idea into Clive’s idiotic young head. He was dressed up as a girl then, and rather fancied himself. He really is the limit.”
“We shall always be a little uncertain now which is you and which is your cousin!” laughed Iva.
“Oh, he won’t do it again! We’ve put him on his honour, and I don’t think he’d break his word.”
CHAPTER XIII
The Kittiwake
The great Easter secret, which Merle had surprised and preserved with so much difficulty, was out at last. Clive’s father and mother were coming to Devonshire for a holiday; they had taken rooms at a farm in Chagmouth, and they had not only arranged for their own son to join them, but they had also asked Mavis and Merle to be their visitors. The girls thought that no invitation could have been more delightfully acceptable. They adored Chagmouth, and the Saturdays they managed to spend there were always red-letter days, so the prospect of three whole weeks in this El Dorado sent their spirits up to fizzing-over point.
“Bevis will be at Grimbal’s Farm!”
“And Tudor will be at home!”
“The Castletons are expecting Morland and Claudia!”
“And, of course, Fay will be there, and Tattie, and the Colvilles!”
“Goody! What a lovely tribe of us to go out picnics!”
“We’ll have the time of our lives!”
Burswood Farm, where Mr. and Mrs. Percy Tremayne had taken rooms, was on the hillside above Chagmouth. It was a delightful spot, with that airy feeling about it that comes from looking down upon your neighbours’ chimneys.
“I wouldn’t live in Chagmouth, not if you paid me hundreds a year!” declared Mrs. Treasure, their landlady. “Once I’m up here, here I stay! I’ve not been in the town for over six months. I go on Sundays to the little chapel close by, and if I want shops we get out the gig and drive into Kilvan or Durracombe. It isn’t worth the climb back from Chagmouth. I carried William up when he was a baby, and it nearly killed me. I set him down in his cradle and I said: ‘There, my boy! I don’t go down to Chagmouth again till you can walk back yourself!’ And I didn’t! He was three years old before I went–even to the post office. How do I manage about stamps? Why, the postman brings them for me and takes my letters. The grocers’ carts come round from Kilvan, and the butcher calls once a week, and what can you want more? I say when I’ve got a nice place like this to live in I’ll stay here, and not worry myself with climbing up and down hill.”
Though Mavis and Merle might not hold with Mrs. Treasure’s depreciation of Chagmouth, they thoroughly agreed with her eulogy of Burswood. There was a view of the sea from the farm, and it had an old-fashioned garden with beehives and hedges of fuchsia and blue veronica, and at the back there was a small fir wood, with clumps of primroses and opening bluebells. The girls christened it ‘Elfland.’
“You can almost see the fairies here,” said Mavis. “Why is it that some places feel so much more romantic than others?”
“Because you’re in the right mood, I suppose. This is almost as nice as Blackthorn Bower.”
“Not quite. Nothing can ever come up to that! When Bevis gets The Warren he’s going to build up the Bower again.”
“Why doesn’t he do it now? The Glyn Williams would let him if he wanted. It’s his property.”
“He wouldn’t care to ask them; especially after what happened there between him and Tudor.”
“They’ve forgotten that, surely!”
“Well, I sympathise with Bevis. He doesn’t care to interfere with anything until The Warren is really his own. I think he feels they’d laugh at the Bower, and so they would!”
“It’s not in their line, of course.”
However much we may love old and familiar scenes, there is always a novelty in something new, and the bird’s-eye aspect of Chagmouth was attractive, especially to those whose young limbs did not mind the climb. Mr. and Mrs. Percy Tremayne were most enthusiastic about their quarters. They were charming people, and ready to fall in with the young folk’s plans and give them a thoroughly happy holiday. They had brought a motor- bicycle and side-car, and took some excursions round the neighbourhood, going over often to Durracombe to see Dr. and Mrs. Tremayne, glad to have the opportunity of a private chat with them while their lively son was safely picnicking with Mavis and Merle. Picnics were the established order of the day. The girls declared that Society at Chagmouth this Easter began with a big S. The Castletons were a host in themselves. They were all at home, and all equally fascinating. Musical Mavis attached herself to Claudia with a great admiration, and Merle found a devoted knight in ten-year-old Madox, who clung to her with the persistency of a chestnut burr, chiefly because she had the charity to answer his perpetual questions. “The interrogation mark,” as he was called by his own family, was a typical Castleton, and most cherubic of countenance, though his curls had been sheared in deference to school, spoiling him, so his father declared, for artistic purposes. He was a mixture of mischief and romance, and Merle, who accepted his temporary allegiance, never quite knew whether his embraces were marks of genuine affection or were designed for the chance of dropping pebbles down her back.
Some delightful friends of the Castletons were also spending a holiday in rooms at Chagmouth–Miss Lindsay, an artist, and Lorraine Forrester, a chum of Claudia’s, both of whom were sketching the quaint streets and the quay and the harbour with the wildest enthusiasm. Morland had also taken a sudden fancy for painting, and insisted upon going out with them daily, producing some quite pretty little impressionistic pictures, with a touch of his father’s style about them. In Morland the family talent ran high but never rose to genius. His touch on the piano was perfect. He scribbled poems in private. His achievements, however, in either music, art, or poetry were insufficient to justify taking one of them for a vocation.
“I’d rather make him a chimney-sweep!” declared Mr. Castleton eloquently. “The public nowadays don’t appreciate pictures! They’ll look at them in galleries, especially when the admission is free, but you can’t get them to buy. They hang their drawing-rooms with cheap prints instead of water- colours, and go to the photographers instead of the portrait-painter. If you can design something to advertise mustard or cocoa you may make a little money, but not by pure art! It’s as dead as the ancient Greeks. This is a commercial age. Music’s as bad. Your pianists are glad to take posts to play at the cinemas! I wish Claudia success; but her training is the business of the college, not mine, and _they’ll_ have to bring her out. I’ve nothing to do with it. No; Morland must realise he’s living in the twentieth century, and has to earn his bread and butter. Art doesn’t pay, and that’s the fact! Have it as a hobby if you wish, but don’t depend upon it!”
So Morland, who, like many young fellows of artistic calibre, had a general affection for the muses but no very marked vocation for anything, had been pitchforked into engineering, and was making quite tolerable progress, and would possibly support himself later on, but always with the feeling that life was commonplace and unromantic, and that a splendid vision had been somewhere just round the corner, only unfortunately missed. He allowed his artistic temperament to run loose during the holidays. He would go up to Bella Vista and play for hours on the Macleods’ new grand piano, improvising beautiful airs, and sending Fay into raptures.
“Why don’t you write them down right away?” she demanded.
“What’s the use? No one would publish them if I did. The publishers are fed up with young composers wanting a hearing. I’ve made up my mind to be just an amateur–nothing more.”
“I’m not sure,” ventured Mrs. Macleod, “whether you won’t have the best of it. After all, ‘amateur’ means ‘lover,’ and the art and the music that you pursue for pure pleasure will be more to you than what you might have had to produce for the sake of bread and butter. Why must our standard in these things always be the commercial one, ‘does it pay?’ The fact of making it pay often degrades it. My theory is that a man can have his business, and love his hobby just as he loves his wife, without turning it into L s. d. Look at my husband! In his own office there isn’t any one in America knows more about motor fittings, but once outside the office his heart and soul is in painting. I believe he’s a happier man for doing both!”
“Do you really think so? It cheers me up! When I’m a full-blown engineer, perhaps I’ll make enough to buy a grand piano at any rate. That’s one way of looking at it. It’s awfully kind of you to let me come here and thump away on yours.”
“We enjoy having you, so use it whenever you like. It’s always absolutely at your disposal.”
Morland was not the only one of the party who was amusing his leisure hours. Bevis also had hobbies. He had taken up photography, had turned an attic at Grimbal’s Farm into a dark room, and was trying many experiments. Moreover, his lawyers had at last yielded to his urgent entreaties and had allowed him to buy a small sailing yacht. She was not a racing craft, or remarkably smart in any way, but she was his own, and the joy of possession was supreme. He rechristened her The Kittiwake, painting in her new name with much satisfaction, and he made trial trips in her along the coast as far as Port Sennen. He was extremely anxious to take Mavis and Merle and Clive with him, but that was strictly prohibited by Mrs. Tremayne, who would not allow either her son or her visitors to venture.
“It’s too big a risk, and I know what Clive is! Young Talland can swim like a fish if he upsets his yacht, but _you_ can’t!”
“We can swim!” protested Merle.
“A little, close by the shore, I daresay, but that’s nothing if you’re plunged into deep water. I can’t take the responsibility of letting you go. Never mind! We’ll make up a party one day and take a motor-boat with a proper experienced boatman. Young Talland can join us then if he likes.”
Mavis and Merle were disappointed almost to the point of tears. They had duly admired _The Kittiwake_ in the harbour, and they simply longed to go on board. It seemed so particularly tempting when they had such a cordial invitation, and so aggravating to be obliged to decline.
“Cousin Nora’s very nervous,” urged Mavis in extenuation. “She’d be afraid of our being drowned if we went on a duck-pond.”
Bevis passed over the slur on his seamanship.
“It’s all right!” he answered quietly, but there was a certain set obstinate look about his mouth which the girls knew well, and which meant that he intended if possible to get his own way, though he said nothing more at the time.
[Illustration: HE KEPT THEM DAWDLING]
It was perhaps as well for everybody’s peace of mind that he should not take Clive boating, for the boy was venturesome and mischievous, and rather out of hand except when his father was by. He often made the girls’ hair almost stand on end by his pranks at the verge of the cliffs, and was sometimes the cause of considerable bad language among the sailors when he interfered with their nets or tar-pots down on the quay. It was a relief to Mavis and Merle when Mr. Tremayne took him out in the side-car, and they knew that for some hours at least they need not be responsible for his behaviour. They were both fond of botany, and were enthusiastically making collections of wild flowers to press for their holiday task. Bevis was a good ally in this respect, and would often call in at Burswood Farm with some uncommon specimen which he thought they had not yet found for themselves. He had come on this errand one morning, and was helping Mavis to screw up her pressing boards, when Mrs. Tremayne happened to mention the scarcity of shells in the neighbourhood of Chagmouth.
“I’ve hardly found any!” she remarked. “And I’m so annoyed, because it happens to be my particular hobby. I’m collecting them. I suppose the coast is too rocky and they get broken. They’re always very local things.”
“There’s just one place I know where you might find some,” said Bevis. “It’s a particular patch of sand near Gurgan Point. I saw some beauties there a while ago. I’ll show you where it is with pleasure if you like.”
“Oh, thanks! That would be delightful,” beamed Mrs. Tremayne. “The girls and I could go to-day if you can take us. My husband and Clive are out with the motor-bike, so it’s a splendid opportunity.”
“Let me see! The tide should be just right this afternoon,” agreed Bevis cheerfully. “Mavis and Merle know the way to Gurgan Point. If they’ll take you there and down the path to the cove, I’ll come round in the yacht and meet you. Shall we say at three o’clock?”
“That would be exactly nice time after lunch.”
“Very well, I’ll be there.”
Bevis went back to Grimbal’s Farm chuckling to himself, though he did not betray the cause of his amusement to anybody. He hunted out a hamper and packed it with cups and saucers, a methylated spirit-lamp, and other picnic requisites. On his way to the quay he stopped at the confectioner’s and bought cakes and fancy biscuits. He placed these comestibles inside the hamper, and stowed it away in the locker of _The Kittiwake_. At two o’clock he was out of the harbour, and was off in the direction of Gurgan Point.
Mavis and Merle and Cousin Nora, bearing baskets in which to place shells, had a pleasant walk along the cliffs, and descended the path to the trysting-place. They found Bevis waiting for them in the cove. He had moored _The Kittiwake_ to a buoy, and now led the way over the sands to a sort of little peninsula that jutted out into the sea. Here he had beached his dinghy.
“This is the shell-bank. You’ll find heaps of them here!” he said.
Undoubtedly he had brought them to the right place. There were shells in abundance, and of many different kinds, delicate pink ones, tiny cowries, twisted wentletraps, scallops, screw-shells, and some like mother-of- pearl. Mrs. Tremayne was in raptures, and went down on her knees to gather them. There was such a tempting variety that it was difficult to stop, and in the excitement of the quest the time simply fled.
“I haven’t brought my watch!” declared Mrs. Tremayne once.
“Oh, it’s quite early yet!” Bevis assured her. “I’ve lighted the spirit- lamp, and I’m going to make you some tea.”
He had carried the hamper on to the sands, and was busy setting out his cups and saucers in a sheltered place behind some rocks, ‘to be out of the wind,’ as he carefully explained. When his kettle boiled he filled the tea-pot, and summoned his guests.
“You’ve chosen a snug spot!” said Mrs. Tremayne, walking along with her eyes on the sands still looking for shells.
And Merle, who was watching a white line of advancing waves, added:
“Lovely and snug, only I hope we shan’t get–“
She meant to say ‘surrounded,’ but Bevis pulled such a fearful face at her behind Cousin Nora’s back that she stopped short and let him finish the sentence.
“We shan’t get shells while we’re having tea, of course! You can look for some more afterwards if you haven’t enough.”
“Oh, surely, we have heaps and heaps! And simply exquisite ones! These tiny yellow babies are just perfect. I like them better than the big grandfathers,” exulted Mavis.
Bevis made a polite but leisurely host. He insisted on boiling some more water, which was not really wanted, but which took a long time, and he spun out his own tea interminably.
“It’s so jolly here under the rocks!” he declared. “I like the _dolce far niente_–makes one think of lotus-eaters and all the rest of it. Shall I help you sort your shells? You could wash them in the tea-cups. It’s no use carrying home surplus sand. There’s some water left in the kettle.”
On one pretext or another he kept them dawdling under the rocks, till Mrs. Tremayne at last rose up and declared they really must be starting back for the cove.
“We shall be having the tide coming in if we don’t mind,” she said. “Why! Look!”
She might well exclaim, for while they had been sitting with their backs to the sea the water had all the while been lapping slowly in and had changed their peninsula into an island. They were entirely surrounded, and quite a wide channel lay between themselves and the shore. Mrs. Tremayne looked much alarmed, but Bevis took the matter with the utmost calm.
“It’s all right! I’ve the dinghy here, and I can row you to the yacht. I’d land you in the cove if I could, but it really wouldn’t be safe because of the rocks. I’ll sail you all back to Chagmouth and run you into the harbour.”
There was evidently nothing else to be done, and though Cousin Nora might not enjoy the prospect of yachting, she was obliged to accept Bevis’s offer.
It was quite a pleasant little excursion from Gurgan Point to the harbour; the sea was luckily calm, but there was sufficient breeze to enable The Kittiwake to skim over the water like her sea-gull namesake. The girls, who by this time had grasped the depths of their friend’s plot, enjoyed the situation immensely. They were actually having their coveted sail in the very company of the dear lady who had so expressly forbidden the jaunt, and all without the slightest friction or trouble. Bevis, indeed, was posing as rescuer and accepting grateful thanks.
“It’s a lesson to us all to watch the tide and not sit talking with our backs to the sea!” said Cousin Nora virtuously.
“It is indeed!” answered Bevis, so gravely that Merle had to stuff her handkerchief into her mouth to stifle her chortles of mirth.
He brought them into the harbour, and helped them to land on the steps of the jetty.
“Wasn’t I clever?” he whispered, as he handed Mavis her basket of shells. “When I really make up my mind to get a thing, I get it!”
CHAPTER XIV
The Haunted Tree
There were so many jolly friends staying at Chagmouth at present that they made a most delightful circle. Generally they all managed to meet every day, and the usual trysting-place was The Haven, partly because it was in so central a situation for everybody, but chiefly because the kind-hearted, unconventional Castletons were ready at any and every time to welcome visitors, and would allow friends to ‘drop in’ in true Bohemian fashion, quite regardless of whatever happened to be taking place in the household. From the studio, indeed, they were excluded while Mr. Castleton was at his easel, but they were allowed to use it when he was not working, and it proved admirable for either games, theatricals, or dancing. With so many costumes in the cupboard it was easy to get up charades, and they had much fun over acting. Perhaps the most successful was a small performance of ‘The Babes in the Wood,’ given by the Castleton children, with Perugia and Gabriel, lovely in Elizabethan costume, as ‘the babes’ John and Jane; Madox and Constable as the two villains ‘Daggersdrawn’ and ‘Triggertight,’ who abandoned them in the wood; and Lilith as the beneficent fairy ‘Dewdrop,’ who found them and whisked them away to bonny Elfland. The little Castletons had natural dramatic instincts and were adepts at posing, so their play was really very pretty. Madox, in especial, absolutely excelled himself as a robber and came out tremendously. He bowed gallantly in response to the storm of applause, and blew an airy kiss to Merle, who nearly collapsed with mirth. She thought her ten-year-old admirer deserved something in return for so graceful an attention, so she sent him a box of chocolates with a few verses written on a sheet of paper and placed inside.
TO DAGGERSDRAWN
You’re a very handsome fellow,
So gallant and so gay;
And I really blush to tell you,
But you’ve stole my heart away.
When you took the part of Daggersdrawn, My bosom swelled with pride
To hear your voice of thunder
And see your manly stride.
You seized the nasty pistols up
Without a sign of fear,
And thrust and parried with your sword Just like a Cavalier.
As you’ve escaped the lonesome wood– For so the story ends–
I send these chocs, with best regards, And beg we may be friends.
Merle had no doubt the chocolates would be appreciated, but she had not expected to receive back a poetical effusion from her small knight. He evidently, however, had some slight gift for minstrelsy, for one day there was a tremendous rap on the front-door knocker at Burswood Farm, then a sound of running footsteps, and inside the letter-box was a note addressed to ‘Miss Merle Ramsay,’ in a rather wobbly and unformed hand. At the top of the sheet of paper was painted a boat with brown sails on a blue sea, and underneath was written:
You ask me, dear, will I be thine?
How can you such a question ask
When, ‘neath the robber’s fearful mask, I languish for thee, lady mine!
Thou art the lady that I love;
Thou art the lady that I chose.
Oh, fly with me from friends and foes! Oh, for the wings of a dove!
O sail with me to a southern sea,
To where an isle is fair and warm, And the sea around it bright and calm:
O Merle, will you come with me?
But for the nasty pistols, miss,
I have one ready to shoot me dead! For already my heart is heavy as lead
Unless you favour my wish!
[Footnote: These verses were really composed by a little boy.]
It’s rather silly but it’s the best I can rite. M C.
In the privacy of the parlour Merle had a good laugh with Mavis over what they termed her first love-letter.
“‘Oh, for the wings of a dove!'” quoted Merle. “It’s so Biblical, isn’t it? He’s a dear, all the same! I love him better even than Constable. He’s such a bright little chap. Don’t tell Clive, or he’d tease Madox to death about this. It must be an absolute secret. I can just picture the child sitting writing it with his sticky little fingers!”
“You mustn’t let him know about ‘Sweet William,’ or there’ll be a free fight!” laughed Mavis.
William was Mrs. Treasure’s little boy, and also an ardent admirer of Merle, who gave him chocolates when she met him in the garden or the stackyard. In spite of his mother’s injunctions to ‘Behave and not trouble the visitors,’ he would hang about the passages to present Merle with handfuls of ferns and flowers grabbed at random from the hedgerows and of no botanical value whatever; or sometimes the parlour window would be cautiously opened from the outside, a pair of bright eyes would appear, and a small grubby hand would push in a bird’s egg or some other country trophy as an offering. It was William who told Merle about the ‘headless horseman,’ a phantom rider who was reported to gallop down the road after dusk, and whom Chagmouth mothers found useful as a bogey to frighten their children with.
“He’ll get you if you’re out when it’s dark!” said William, with round awed eyes.
“What would he do with you if he did?” asked Merle.
But such a pitch of horror was beyond the limit of William’s imagination, and he could only reaffirm his original statement.
Of course the girls and Clive were very excited to learn that a real live ghost was supposed to haunt the neighbourhood. They discussed it at the dinner-table over the jam-tart and cream.
“We’ve certainly heard a sort of trotting sound when we’ve been in bed at night,” said Mavis, anxious to establish evidence. “We didn’t think of getting up to look out of the window, but I don’t suppose we could have seen on to the road if we had.”
“Yes; I remember people used to believe in the ‘headless horseman,'” said Mr. Tremayne, who had known Chagmouth very well as a boy. “There was a demon dog, too, that ran down Tinkers’ Lane, and an old lady who ‘walked’ by the well.”
A delighted howl arose from the family at the mention of two more spooks.
“O–o–h! Tell us about the demon dog!” implored Clive.
“It had eyes as big as saucers, and they shone like fire. It used to scuttle along the lane, and no one ever waited to see where it went, though there used to be a hole in a bank where I was told it had once disappeared.”
“Was it _really_ ever seen?” asked Merle.
“I believe all these phantoms were clever devices of the smugglers in the old days, when it was very desirable to have the roads quiet at night in order to carry about contraband goods. It would be quite easy to fake a demon dog. You take a black retriever, fasten two cardboard circles smeared with phosphorus round his eyes, give him a kick, and send him running down a dark road, and every one who met him would have hysterics. As for the headless horseman, that’s also a well-known smugglers’ dodge –false shoulders can be made and fixed on a level with the top of your head, and covered with a cloak, so that the apparently headless man has eyes in the middle of his chest, and can see to ride uncommonly well. It was generally to somebody’s interest to make up these ghosts and frighten people.”
“You take all the romance out of it!” pouted Mavis.
In spite of Mr. Tremayne’s most reasonable explanations they clung to the supernatural side of the stories. It was much more interesting to picture the demon dog as the property of his Satanic Majesty, than to believe it an ordinary black retriever with circles of phosphorus round its eyes.
“I vote we go and try and see it for ourselves!” suggested Clive, waxing bold one evening. The girls agreed, so just before bedtime they sallied forth in the direction of Tinkers’ Lane, a lonely stretch of road that led from the hillside towards the sea. They were all three feeling half valiant and half scared, and each had brought some species of protection. Mavis carried a prayer-book and a little ivory cross, Merle grasped a poker, and Clive was armed with the hatchet from the wood-pile. So long as they were on the uplands and could see the stars they marched along tolerably bravely, but presently Tinkers’ Lane turned downhill, and, like most of its kind in Devon, ran between high fern-grown banks, on the tops of which grew trees whose boughs almost met overhead and made an archway. To plunge down here was like taking a dip into Dante’s ‘Inferno,’ it looked so particularly dark and gloomy, and such a suitable place for anything ghostly.
“I wish we’d brought a lantern with us!” murmured Mavis.
“Then we shouldn’t see any spooks!” declared Merle. “Come along! Let’s go as far as the old gate at any rate. I dare you both to come! Who’s afraid?”
Clive certainly was not going to show the white feather, and Mavis, though rather nervy, preferred to venture forward with the others than to remain by herself, so it ended in their all going on, arm-in-arm. They had worked themselves to such a pitch of excitement that the whole atmosphere seemed charged with the supernatural. There were mysterious groanings and rustlings in the hedge, and the long branches of the trees moaned as they swayed. It was so dark they were almost groping their way, and could barely see the banks on either side. Suddenly, through a rift in the trees came a faint gleam of starlight, and oh! horror of horrors! What was that black dog-like object running rapidly towards them up the lane? Mavis, whose over-sensitive nerves were strung up to the last point, yelled with terror, and clung screaming to Merle, who gave a shriek of agony herself as the phantom approached and leaped at them.
“Whatever’s the matter?” cried a voice, and a figure came hurrying forward and flashed an electric torch upon the scene.
In the circle of light thus formed the girls saw nothing more alarming than Bevis and his spaniel Fan, who was jumping up affectionately at Merle and licking her hands. They drew long breaths and then laughed.
“They thought you were Old Nick himself and his demon dog!” vouchsafed Clive, very brave now the alarm was over.
“What are you all doing down Tinkers’ Lane so late as this?” asked Bevis.
“We came out to see spooks!”
“You won’t find anything worse than Fan and myself! Better let us take you home.”
“Oh, I wish you would,” said Mavis, accepting the escort with alacrity. “I don’t think I like this dark place. I’m rather scared still. I don’t wonder people see bogeys here. If you’d been riding, Bevis, I should certainly have taken you for the headless horseman. He rides here, doesn’t he?”
“I’ll tackle him for you if we meet him, never fear!” laughed Bevis. “I’ll tell him it isn’t respectable to go about without a head, and he must put it on again at once! All the same, though” (more gravely), “I think, if I were you, I wouldn’t come down this lane in the dark all by yourselves.”
“We certainly shan’t!”
“It’s a good thing I didn’t use the hatchet on poor Fan,” said Clive, forbearing to mention that he had been huddling in the hedge, much too paralysed to take such violent measures.
“Bless her! She’s an angel dog–not a demon!” murmured Merle, fondling the silky ears that pressed close to her dress. “But you gave your auntie rather a scare, darling! Another time you mustn’t bounce upon her in the dark! You must be a good girlie, and remember!”
The adventurous trio were not at all sorry to be taken safely to their own gateway by Bevis, but all the same they felt a little disappointed that they had no real peep at phantom forms in the lane. The girls did not intend to tell their experience to William, but Clive let it out, so they had to give him the full account. He looked at them with awe-struck admiration.
“Suppose it had really been the ghost and it had got you!” he ventured.
William took the supernatural side of life seriously. It was no laughing matter to him. On the very next day he came to Merle with important news.
“There’s something queer in the wood above the house. I was up there with Connie, and we both heard it!”
Of course Merle had to go and investigate. William escorted her at once to the spot. There was a large elm just at the edge of the wood, and certainly it was emitting very strange sounds. At intervals a curious clicking whirr came from among the branches. Mr. and Mrs. Treasure, who had also been informed of the mysterious noises, had hurried up from the farm with little Connie. They stood staring upwards in much perplexity.
“Could it be a bird?” suggested Merle.
“That’s no bird! It’s something beyond that!” said Mr. Treasure solemnly.
“Oh! Is it an omen? My mother’s been ill the last fortnight!” exclaimed Mrs. Treasure in much distress.
“Maybe it’s a warning of some kind or another!” opined the postman, who had been passing and had joined the party.
Whatever might occasion the noises, they continued with great regularity. The postman, continuing his round, spread news of the strange happening, and soon quite a number of people came into the wood to listen for themselves. No one was in the least able to account for the sounds, and the general opinion was that the tree was haunted. Superstition ran rife, and most of the neighbours considered it must be a portent. Poor Mrs. Treasure began to be quite sure it had some intimate connection with her mother’s illness. Several girls were weeping hysterically, and one of them asked if the end of the world was coming. Meantime, more and more people kept crowding into the wood, and the idea spread that some disaster was imminent.
“My John’s out with the trawler!” wailed one woman. “I wish I’d not let him go! As like as not he’ll be wrecked!”
“You never know!” agreed a friend.
Old Grandfather Treasure, who had hobbled up from the stackyard, quoted texts from Scripture and began to improve the occasion. His daughter-in- law, with Connie clasped in her arms, sobbed convulsively.
Into the midst of all this excitement suddenly strode Bevis.
“I heard about it down on the quay,” he said. “I came up at once. I’ll soon show you what it is!”
He was buckling climbing-irons on to his legs while he spoke, and with the aid of these he rapidly mounted the elm tree to where the boughs forked, put his hand into a hollow, and drew out a wooden box, which he brought down with him.
“It’s nothing at all ghostly,” he explained. “The fact is I’m fearfully keen on photographing birds, and I’ve just got a cinema camera. There’s a sparrow-hawk’s nest in the next tree, and I want to take pictures of it; only I knew the clicking of the cinema business would scare them away probably for hours, so I made a little mechanical contrivance that would go on clicking and let them get used to the noise, so that they’d take no notice when I really went to work. You can look at it if you want to.”
It was such a simple explanation that those among the neighbours who had most loudly expressed superstitious fears looked rather foolish, and the crowd began to melt away.
“Why didn’t you tell us about it, Bevis?” asked Merle in private.
“Well, Soeurette, the fact is the birds are so shy that the fewer people who go and watch them the better for the success of a photograph. I’m afraid this will have sent them off altogether. Annoying, isn’t it? Can’t be helped, though, now. It’s a good dodge all the same, and I shall try it again in some other tree when I can find a nest I want to take. Better luck next time, I hope!”
CHAPTER XV
Leave-takings
The precious delightful holidays at Chagmouth seemed to be flying only too fast. All the various young people were busy with their several hobbies, but they liked to meet and compare notes about them, and took a keen interest in one another’s achievements. Bevis’s bird-photography, and especially his cinema camera, was highly appreciated, particularly by the younger members of the party, who persistently tried to track him and follow him, greatly to his embarrassment, for their presence frightened the birds away and defeated the very object for which he had gone out. Mavis had struck up a friendship with Miss Lindsay and Lorraine Forrester, and often went to see them at the studio which they had temporarily hired. Lorraine’s principal branch of art was sculpture, and she was modelling a bust of Morland, who came readily for sittings, though he had refused point-blank to act model for his father.
The two were on terms of what Lorraine called “sensible friendship,” which Mavis suspected might mean a good deal more some day, if Morland stopped merely drifting and put his shoulder in dead earnest to the wheel of life. Lorraine was much the stronger character of the two, and could generally wind up Morland’s ambition while he was with her, though it often came down again with a run as soon as her influence was removed. Whether or no her feelings went deeper than she would at present allow, she was a loyal chum to him, and almost the only person who could really persuade him to work. To Claudia also Lorraine was a splendid friend. The girls lived together at a Students’ Hostel in London, and shared all their jaunts and pleasures. Claudia held a scholarship at a college of music, and was training for grand opera. With her talent and lovely face she had good prospects before her, but the Castleton strain was strong in her, as also in Morland, and it needed Lorraine’s insistent urging to make her realise that it does not do only to dream your ideals, that you must toil at them with strong hands and earth-stained fingers, and that on this physical plane no success can ever be achieved without hard work.
“They’ll both of them absolutely have to be towed through life!” thought Mavis. “I could shake the whole family sometimes. Beata’s the most practical, but the others might have strayed out of a poetry book! Of course they’re all perfectly charming and romantic, but you want to frame them and glaze them and hang them in exhibitions, not set them to do ordinary every-day things. They don’t fit somehow into the twentieth century. Lorraine stirs them up like yeast. She’ll be the making of Morland if she elects to take on so big a job.”
The Ramsay girls were very much attracted by the Macleods. They liked Fay and her father and mother, whose experience of the world and sensible views appealed to them. They often went to Bella Vista and enjoyed a chat, or sat looking at American art magazines, while Morland, who could not keep away from the grand piano, sat improvising memories of Debussy or compositions of his own. Mrs. Macleod was one of those delightful women who can appreciate other people’s daughters as well as their own. Her adoration for Fay did not hinder her from genuinely admiring Mavis and Merle and Romola, and the other young friends who flocked to her hospitable house. She had a nice word for them all, and was so sympathetic that they always wanted to tell her of their little achievements. It was a most congenial atmosphere.
“She’s such a _dear_!” commented Mavis. “Now when Fay and I went out painting together, she praised my sketch, although it was a daub compared with Fay’s! Once I was silly enough to show one of my efforts to Mrs. Earnshaw; she put on her pince-nez, and looked at it most critically, and said,’ Oh, you must see _Opal’s_ work! She’s done some really _beautiful_ paintings at Brackenfield! They know how to teach there!’ I felt so squashed!”
“Mrs. Earnshaw is the limit!” agreed Merle. “The last time I went to tea there-when you had a cold and couldn’t go-she asked me to play the piano. I’d brought my music, but I didn’t like to seem too anxious, so I said I’d rather not. ‘Oh, never mind then!’ she said, ‘you play something, darling!’ (to Opal). And then she whispered proudly to me, ‘Opal plays magnificently since she’s been to Brackenfield!’ I wanted to sing out ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ only I remembered my manners. Then a friend came in, and she introduced us. ‘This is Miss Ramsay,’ she said casually, ‘and this (with immense pride) is our daughter Opal!’ I felt inclined to quote, ‘Look on this picture and on that!’ It was so evident which of us he was expected to take notice of! I simply wasn’t to be in it at all!”
“Opal’s more decent, though, since she’s been at Brackenfield.”
“There was room for improvement. I shall never like her, not if I know her to all eternity.”
The glorious three weeks at Chagmouth were over at last, and there would be no more picnics on the beach, or walks down primrose-decked lanes, or rambles on the cliffs, or merry parties at The Haven or Bella Vista, or expeditions in search of flowers or shells. The girls were almost weeping when it came to saying good-bye to Burswood Farm, and to Mr. and Mrs. Treasure, and William and little Connie, and Ethel the small servant (brought up from the village to wait on the visitors), and Charlie, the boy who helped to milk the cows and weed the fields. Mavis and Merle had been very busy concocting one of their wonderful rhyming effusions, and wrote it in the Visitors’ Book, much to the delight of their landlady, who appreciated such souvenirs.
Who welcomed us to Burswood Farm
Amid the heart of Devon’s charm,
With skies so blue and seas so calm? ‘Twas Mrs. Treasure.
Who was it chopped our logs of wood
To make our fires so bright and good, And brought from Durracombe our food?
‘Twas Mr. Treasure.
Who brought our luggage to the door
And then went back to fetch some more, And showed us cows and pigs galore?
‘Twas Charlie.
Who made our boots and shoes to shine, And brought us plates wherewith to dine, And boiled our breakfast eggs by nine?
‘Twas Ethel.
Who was it gave us ferns so green
From hedges that we’d often seen,
And called the holiday a dream?
‘Twas William.
Who was it down the passage ran
And shouted, ‘Kiss me if you can!’ And hid her face when we began?
‘Twas Connie.
Who was it left with many a sigh,
As to the farm we said good-bye,
And wanted sheets wherein to cry?
We all!
The very best of things, however, must come some time to an end; schools were reopening, college terms recommencing, Mr. Tremayne’s duties claimed him in London, and, most prosaic of all, another batch of visitors was expected at Burswood, so that they could no longer have the rooms. After tremendous leave-takings the jolly party separated, Dr. Ramsay fetching Mavis and Merle in the car, while Mr. and Mrs. Tremayne took Clive home with them, for he was to try another term at his preparatory school. It seemed quite quiet at Bridge House without their lively young cousin, though in some ways his absence was rather a relief. After his many escapades at Chagmouth the girls felt that discipline under a headmaster would be very wholesome for him. They themselves were busy with the work of the coming term, and not sorry to be free from his continual interruption of their preparation time. There were other things besides lessons. They meant to take up tennis very seriously, and practise both on the school courts and at home. Miss Mitchell was a tennis enthusiast and also Miss Barnes.
“If we can only persuade Miss Hopkins and Mademoiselle to do their duty we could have a match ‘Mistresses versus Girls,'” sighed Merle. “It would be something new at ‘The Moorings,’ and such an excitement for every one.”
“I wish they would!”
“If I were a boarder I’d simply _make_ them! What they want is somebody to keep them up to it. Day-girls are really very much hampered. They haven’t half a chance when they go home from school at four o’clock. I really sometimes think I’d like to be a boarder, just for the fun of it.”
It is not very often we get what we want, but on this occasion Fortune waved a fairy wand and gave Merle the luck she coveted. It happened that the cook at Bridge House developed a sore throat, and Dr. Ramsay, having his suspicions, had the drains examined and found them to be in an exceedingly wrong condition. It was necessary to take them up at once, and as the process would probably be unpleasant, Mrs. Ramsay arranged for the girls to stay at ‘The Moorings’ until everything was once more in good sanitary condition.
“You can’t be too careful where young people are concerned,” was her motto. “Mavis is so marvellously well now that we don’t want to run any risks, and Merle, too, strong though she is, will be better out of the way of drains. We elders can take our chance.”
To be temporarily transformed into boarders was a novel experience for the girls. To Merle it meant an opportunity for making a much more intimate acquaintance with her idol Miss Mitchell, with whom she would now be at close quarters. To sit at the same table with her for meals seemed an unspeakable privilege. Merle was at the age for enthusiastic hero-worship, and in her eyes the popular mistress almost wore a halo. That she bestowed no particular tokens of favour made the devotion none the less, because it gave an added incentive for trying to win at least a glance or a smile.
Though Merle’s schoolgirl affections centred in Miss Mitchell, whose modern, up-to-date, twentieth-century methods and opinions entirely appealed to her, Mavis was glad to see something more of Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny. She had loved ‘The Moorings’ best as it was a year ago, a little ‘homey’ school, where the classes had been like working with a private governess. She immensely admired the two sweet, grey-haired sisters, with their refined, cultured atmosphere and beautiful, courteous, dignified manner. They seemed the epitome of the nineteenth century, and marked a different era, a something very precious that was rapidly passing away. If flowers are the symbols of our personalities she would have set them down as rosemary and lavender. They had withdrawn almost entirely from teaching, so that the day-girls now saw little of them, but in the hostel they still reigned supreme, and kept to their old custom of amusing the youngest boarders for half an hour before bedtime. The elder ones, owing to the large amount of preparation required under the new regime, could very rarely find time now to come and join this pleasant circle, which met in quite an informal manner in Miss Pollard’s room. To Mavis it was a bigger attraction even than tennis, and she would give up her turn at the courts, or would hurry over her home-work, in order to creep in among the juniors for that cosy half-hour.
“Have you written down any more Devonshire folk-tales?” she asked once. “I do so love your stories of the neighbourhood. It makes the pixies seem almost real when you tell about them!”
“They seemed real to the old people from whom I heard them years ago, and who had learnt them from their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. I loved them when I was a child. Yes; they’re written in my little manuscript book. I put them carefully down for fear I might forget them. Read you one? If the others would like it! We haven’t had a fairy tale for quite a long time, have we, Doreen?”
As the younger children plumped for a story, Miss Pollard fetched her manuscript volume, and hunted for something they had not yet heard. She was a most excellent reader, having that charm of voice and vividness of expression which makes a narrative live before its hearers. It was as if some electric cord linked her with those who listened, and restless little fidgets would sit quite quietly for as long as she chose to go on. The tale which she selected to-night was:
GINNIFER’S DOWRY
In the days when good King Arthur ruled all the west country from Exeter to Land’s End, a maiden named Ginnifer lived with her father in a little, round, stone hut on the top of Dartmoor. They were poor, but she was a good girl, and she could spin, and weave baskets, and do many things about the house. One day a young hunter knocked at the door and asked for hospitality, and as there was much game to be had in the neighbourhood he remained for many weeks as a guest of the cottage, going out every day fishing or fowling, and sharing his captures with his hosts. No doubt Ginnifer’s blue eyes and gentle glances were the main attraction, and in a short time indeed the young folk became attached to one another. It was only when Ginnifer’s father at length questioned the youth, that he confessed to being the son of the great lord of the neighbourhood, who lived in the big Castle beside the river beyond the moor. This was sad news for Ginnifer, for in those days a young noble might not wed with a poor girl, and must marry a bride who could bring a rich dowry with her of jewels and ornaments and silver money. So she quietly told her sweetheart to go back to his father, and learn to forget her; and he went away very sadly, vowing he would get permission to return and marry her, or else he would never wed anyone. When he was gone, Ginnifer went out over the moor among the heather, where she might fight her grief alone, with only the birds and the flowers to see her weep. She lay on the short moorland grass among the sweet bog-myrtle and asphodel, until the sun was setting in a red ball over the hillside. Then, all of a sudden, she heard a rustling and a whispering like countless leaves blown by an autumn wind.
“Who is this?” said a voice. “Who dares to lie in our pixie ring?”
“It’s a mortal! A mortal!” cried another.
Ginnifer raised her head. All the moor was alive with tiny pixies, whose green garments were like moving fronds of fern. They crowded eagerly round her.
“It’s Ginnifer!” they said. “Ginnifer who lives in the stone hut on the moor! Ginnifer who tended the plover with the broken wing, and watered the harebells that were withering in the burning sun, and who treads so lightly that the birds don’t trouble to fly away from her. We know her kindness and her gentle heart, for the ‘good folk’ watch over the children of the earth, and, unseen, we have followed her through all her simple life. Pretty Ginnifer, tell us your trouble. The pixies cannot bear to see you weep.”
They stroked her hair with their tiny fingers, they bathed her eyes with dewdrops and wiped them with the petals of a wild rose. At first Ginnifer was frightened, but the little folk were so kind that she took courage and told them her trouble. They began to dance and jump about with delight, and clapped their little hands.
“Is that all?” they shouted. “Would he wed you if you were a great lady? Tell us what dowry his father would expect his bride to bring?”
“Silks and jewels!” sobbed poor Ginnifer, “and rich embroidered dresses, and trinkets of gold, and caskets of silver money! And I have nothing at all!”
The pixies laughed lustily, throwing up their wee green caps into the air and catching them again for sheer joy.
“Ginnifer dear! We’ll find you your dowry! Quick! Let us set to work! We must finish our task before daybreak.”
By this time the moon had risen and had flooded the moor with light. Like a flight of busy buzzing bees the little people went flitting up and down. They pulled the gossamer from the gorse bushes and wove it into the finest silk; they caught the great brown moths and sheared their soft fur and spun it on the daintiest little spinning-wheels in the world; and with skilful touches they wove together the harebells and the wild rose petals into the most wonderful of embroidered gowns. The tears which Ginnifer had shed in her sorrow lay shining among the grass, and gathered up by magic fingers they turned into pearls and diamonds fit for a queen. The gorse flowers became golden ornaments, and the little smooth pebbles in the brook changed into pieces of silver money.
The pixies dressed Ginnifer in the softest of the gossamer silk robes, they clasped the golden bracelets round her arms and twisted diamonds into her hair.
“Now she is a fairy princess,” they said. “There is none lovelier in all Elfland. We must build her a palace worthy of her!”
Hither and thither they ran, gathering up the dewdrops, and piling them one above the other till the most wonderful Castle rose up on the hillside: as clear as glass, it shone with all the colours of the rainbow, and here they stored the silks and the beautiful ornaments and the caskets of silver money.
Next morning Ginnifer’s lover came riding back to tell her that his father forbade the match, but that he meant to marry her whether or no. And lo and behold! he found her at the door of a pixie palace, and directly he set foot inside it, it sank through the ground and carried them both with it into Elfland. And there they have lived ever since, as happy as the pixies themselves, though no one on earth saw them any more. But sometimes when the late sickle moon shines over the moor, travellers who have lost their way have been set in the right path by a lovely lady in gauzy green garments, who sprang up, as it seemed, from nowhere, and vanished away again into the mist, and to this day the children, hunting for bilberries on the hillside, call the shining dewdrops ‘Ginnifer’s tears.'”
“Have you ever seen any pixies yourself, Miss Pollard?” asked Doreen eagerly.
“No; but I’ve seen the dewdrops shining just like diamonds, and I’ve seen the mist make wonderful pixie castles in the moonlight. We can live in a fairy world of our own if we look at the right things. It depends on your eyes. Those people who keep their childhood have the pixies all round them.”
“You have!” said Mavis, as Miss Pollard rose to say good-night to her circle of listeners. “You’re like Peter Pan, and never grow old!”
“I had such a happy childhood! And it seemed so much the best part of life that I’ve always been reluctant to let the glamour go. Children ought to be brought up on fairy tales! They’re incipient poetry, and should be woven into the web of our lives as a beautiful border, before all the dark prose part follows. If the shuttle only weaves matter-of- fact threads it spoils the pattern!”
CHAPTER XVI
The Tadpole Club
It was quite interesting to be a boarder at ‘The Moorings,’ though it had its more sober side, particularly for Merle. Her trouble lay in the fact that though she was a school officer from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M., out of those hours her authority was non-existent. Iva and Nesta were hostel monitresses, and they had quite plainly and firmly given her to understand that they did not expect any interference. They were perfectly within their rights, and Merle knew it, but she chafed nevertheless. The fact was that Iva and Nesta, accustomed to the old traditions of ‘The Moorings,’ when there were only about a dozen boarders, were quite unable to cope with the new order of things, and girls who had been to other schools took decided advantage of their slackness. Merle, whose motto was ‘once a monitress always a monitress,’ could not see why she might reprove Norma Bradley in the playground, but must allow that damsel ostentatiously to do exactly the same act in the recreation room under her very nose.
“It’s so bad for the kids!” she raged. “They know Iva and Nesta are weak and just pretend not to notice, so as to have no fuss. I’m sure Miss Mitchell can’t know all that goes on or she’d make some different arrangement. You feel in another element when you get into the hostel. It’s ‘do as you like and don’t bother me so long as you don’t go too far and aren’t found out.’ It might be all very well in the old days last year, but it’s wrecking the show now. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes.”
The chief offenders were three Third form girls, Norma Bradley, Biddy Adams, and Daisy Donovan, who, with those former firebrands Winnie Osborne and Joyce Colman, had formed a kind of Cabal, whose object seemed to be to find out how far rules might be evaded.
“They’ve more time than we have, and they simply ‘rag’ about and ‘play the giddy goat’!” complained Merle to her sister.
“They don’t seem to have enough to do with their spare time,” commented Mavis. “It’s all very well to say they must have absolute recreation, but both they and the babies turn it into a sort of bear-garden. You were rather a terror yourself when you were that age! I remember Mother used to quote, ‘Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands’.”
“Was I? And now I’m a monitress!”
“It makes all the difference when you’re in authority, and have some stake in the school.”
This chance remark set Merle thinking, and she thought to some purpose. Her natural disposition was always to obtain results by blunt, matter-of- fact methods. In school her policy was, ‘Come along with you now, I’m not going to have any nonsense!’ Backed by her position, her strong personality, and her prowess at games it succeeded. But here in the hostel, if she wished to effect any improvements, she must go about it another way. The old fable of the wind and the sun would apply, school breezes would be useless, and she must switch on the love-radiator and try smiling.
“I believe I _was_ rather a terror at twelve,” she acknowledged to herself. “It’s such a tiresome age; you’re no longer a pet lamb, and yet you’re not a senior. You get all the snubs and none of the kisses. I used to long to do a little bossing on my own, instead of trailing like a comet’s tail after the big girls. What those kids want is a properly organised club. They’d work the steam off in that. I’ve a very good mind to draw up a scheme, show it to Miss Mitchell, and ask her if I may start it among the juniors. If I have her leave, then Iva and Nesta can’t call it interfering.”
It took Merle a little trouble to evolve her idea, but with a remembrance of Girl Guiding she decided on forming a company corresponding to the Brownies, the objects of which should be to train its members to win various school honours. It was to have its own officers, and its own committees, and to concentrate upon cricket practice, badminton, and net- ball, as well as First Aid, knot-tying, and signalling.
Feeling rather nervous and a little uncertain whether she would meet with approval or a rebuff, she carried her scheme to Miss Mitchell’s study. The mistress listened quite composedly and thought for a moment or two.
“You may try it, Merle, if you can persuade the children to join,” she said at length. “You have my full sanction, and you may tell them so. We’ll see how it succeeds.”
It was something to have leave from headquarters. Merle hurried away and lost no time in collecting the junior boarders, who came to her meeting out of sheer curiosity to see what she could possibly want with them. For once blunt plain-spoken Merle was silver-tongued, and advocated her club with all the ingenuity of which she was capable.
“A school is no good if it depends entirely on its elder girls,” she said artfully. “In a year or two they’ll have left, and it’s the middle forms who’ll be at the top. If those middle forms will only begin and train themselves _now_, they’ll be champions by the time they reach the Sixth, and there’d be some sense in making fixtures for tennis and cricket. It generally takes a school years before it begins to win matches. Why? Because it must train its champions, of course. You” (nodding at the Cabal) “are the sort who ought to win cups and shields for ‘The Moorings’ in another four years or so. And it’s your business to teach the younger ones. I saw Doreen and Elsbeth playing cricket with Joyce to-day in a way that absolutely made me shudder. She should show them how to hold their bats, and never allow leg-before-wicket even with the veriest kid. It’s no use letting them start bad habits, is it? My suggestion is that you form yourselves into a club; let the elder ones be officers, and give efficiency badges for certain things. You’ve so much more time than we seniors have, that you ought to get on like a house on fire. You’d be laying the foundations of some very good work later on. I should call you the ‘Pioneers,’ because you’d be starting on a new venture to spread the fame of ‘The Moorings.’ What d’you think about it?”
The idea decidedly appealed to the juniors. It was far more flattering to be told they were the coming strength of the school than that they were nuisances and in the way of the older girls. Moreover, the notion of being officers was attractive to such temperaments as Winnie’s, Biddy’s, and Daisy’s. They thought they should rather enjoy training the younger ones, and giving their opinions at committee meetings. It was so dull simply to form audiences while the seniors did the talking.
“I vote we do!” said Winnie, looking at the rest of the Cabal, who nodded approvingly in reply.
“Very well. You must organise your own committees, but I think every now and then there should be an inspection to show how you’re getting on. You can choose any one you like for your commissioner. A teacher if you want.”
“Might as well have you as anybody!” murmured Winnie.
“You can decide that later. What I advise you to do is to hold a committee among yourselves, write down your officers and your rules and everything, and then set to work.”
The plan answered admirably, from the mere fact that it gave the restless juniors something definite to do in their recreation time. Instead of tearing aimlessly about and getting into mischief, they suddenly became the most busy little mortals, and absolutely bristled with importance. Their committees were conducted with as much solemnity as the meetings of Cabinet ministers to decide the fate of a nation. They had taken the burden of the future success of the school upon their youthful shoulders, and it gave them huge satisfaction to think that so much depended upon them. They practised cricket quite diligently, and made even the youngest observe the rules, and they bandaged one another’s arms and legs in well-meant efforts at ambulance work. Their ambition soared as high as a debating society, where they evidently allowed full freedom of speech on popular topics, for Mavis, by mistake getting hold of one of their secret notices, found the subject for discussion was: “_Monnitresses. Are they a Neccessary Evil?_”
She showed it to Merle with much amusement.
“I should suggest, ‘Need Spelling copy the Dictionary?’ for their next debate!” she laughed. “I wish I could creep in, Merle, and hear them slanging you four. I expect they’ll give you some hard hits. How priceless they are!”
With the exception of Mavis the elder girls were not entirely in sympathy with the new movement. They considered the Pioneers exhibited signs of swollen head, and nicknamed their society the ‘Tadpole Club,’ declaring its members to be still in that elementary stage of their development. They made very merry at their expense, and poked fun at Merle for having evolved the idea.
“Have you arranged for the Queen to come down and inspect them?” asked Nesta sarcastically. “No one but royalty is good enough! By the time they’ve worked their way up into the Sixth the school will be so reformed it’ll be a pattern for all England. I think we seniors had better retire gracefully now and have done with it. We don’t seem of much account according to their notions. One of them actually had the impudence to criticise my bowling yesterday!”
“Yes; and the little beggar was right too!” put in Iva. “You’ll have to buck up over cricket, old sport! It never was your strong point, you know!”
“Well, I’m not going to be corrected by a kid of eleven at any rate!” fumed Nesta.
Though the seniors might be scornful, indignant, or otherwise hostile towards the Tadpole Club, it certainly had the effect of increasing their own efforts and making them keep up their standards. A craze came over the school for physical fitness and efficiency, and the most persistent shirkers were forced by public opinion into exerting themselves. Miss Mitchell said little, but her hazel eyes saw everything that was going on. Her manner towards Merle, which had been rather off-hand, gradually softened, and though she showed her no special favour, she gave her, on one occasion, a word of praise.
“You’ve shown me that you possess certain powers of organisation, and that you know how to use your influence,” she remarked.
And Merle, to whom Miss Mitchell’s good opinion seemed almost the most important thing in the world, went about as if she were treading on air, and repeated the precious sentence to herself as proudly as if it were a patent of nobility.
“She wouldn’t notice me when I used to bring her flowers!” thought Merle. “It’s only when I’ve done something for the school that she really cares. Some day, perhaps, I’ll make her like me for myself!”
CHAPTER XVII
The Fourth of July
Mavis and Merle went home to Bridge House feeling as if they had had a peep at the inner life of ‘The Moorings.’ They had seen fresh aspects of Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny, and though Merle could not honestly assure herself that she knew Miss Mitchell any better than before, she had at least the remembrance of a few words of approval.
“I’m afraid she’s one of those people whom you never do get to know very well!” ruminated Merle. “You go a little way, but never any further. We see the school side of her, and a quite jolly-all-round-to-everybody holiday afternoon side. I wonder what she’s like to her private friends, and at home?”
Miss Mitchell, however, was not at all disposed to make a confidante of any of her pupils, particularly of a girl who was not yet sixteen, and much preferred to preserve business-like relations and confine her conversation to school topics, than to give any details of her private life. She made it quite manifest that whoever wished to please her must do so on general and not individual grounds, so Merle accepted the inevitable, and worked very hard in class and at preparation, making a sudden burst of progress in her lessons that astonished herself even more than everybody else. It meant a certain amount of heroism to stick steadily to her books on glorious summer evenings, when even her own family tempted her to play tennis or go out in the car. Most of the other members of the Fifth form showed a marked slacking off in their homework, particularly the day-girls, whose preparation was not regulated. The Castletons, who had another wee baby brother at home, declared they found so much to do on their return that it was impossible to spend long over their lessons.
“Violet’s not very strong, and she’s often just about done in when we get back,” explained Beata to Mavis. “Romola and I take the baby and put the kids to bed, so as to give her a rest. I can’t tell that to Miss Mitchell as an excuse for not having touched my Latin, but it’s the truth. What else can I do? We’ve only one maid, and she’s busy in the kitchen. Somebody has to look after the children!”
And Mavis, who adored the new Castleton baby, and would have flung lessons to the winds to nurse it, cordially agreed with her.
Another girl whose work suffered in summer, though for a different reason, was Fay. Her father was better in health, but he still needed somebody to interest him and keep him amused, and found no more lively companion than his own daughter. He had taught her to row, and wanted her to go out boating with him now the evenings were so long and light.
“Never mind your prep! It’s more important to help to get Father well!” Mrs. Macleod would say. “He looks forward so much to this rowing, and the exercise is good for him. We want a companionable daughter, not a Minerva, and you may tell Miss Mitchell so with my compliments if she grumbles. If we can’t have any of your society when you get home, you might as well be away at boarding-school. I bargained with Miss Pollard that you weren’t to be overworked.”
Fay was clever, and a hasty run through her books usually served to make her pass muster in class. She was a jolly and amusing girl, and was generally the life and soul of the ‘sardine’ party. She was great chums with the Castletons, though she sparred occasionally with Tattie Carew or with Nan Colville. The latter gave general offence because she always insisted upon taking up more than her fair share of room in the crowded car. She would wear her satchel, and let its knobby corners press against her expostulating neighbour, or she would spread out her elbows instead of keeping them by her side. One day Nan, after a scrimmage on the way to school, begged a lift back from Babbie.
“But we don’t go down the hill to Chagmouth,” objected Babbie, who had received instructions from her mother to allow the ‘sardines’ to use their own car, and not to offer to motor any of them. “We turn off at the cross-roads to go to The Warren.”
“I know. But you always start first, and you could leave me at the cross-roads, and the others would pick me up as they passed. Be a sport, Babbie!”
“All right. You can come if you like.”
Now it happened that Fay overheard Nan telling Lizzie that she would wait at the cross-roads, and further witnessed the magnificent start in the Glyn Williams’ car.
“Too good for us to-day, are you?” she murmured. “Then I think you may just do without us altogether! I’ve got a brain throb! It’ll serve you right, Miss Nan Colville!”
Fay went privately to Mr. Vicary and asked him if he would mind driving them home that afternoon by Brendon, which was a slightly different route from their ordinary one.
“I want to call for a parcel there,” she explained.
“As it happens, I have an errand I can do there too,” agreed Mr. Vicary. “It won’t take above five minutes or so longer, I daresay.”
“That’s all right then. By the by, Miss Colville won’t be with us to-day. Miss Williams is motoring her home.”
“Yes; I saw them set off.”
Fay took care that Lizzie Colville sat at the back of the car that afternoon and not in front with Mr. Vicary. She stifled her objections when they turned off in the direction of Brendon.
“I tell you Mr. Vicary has to go on an errand and so have I, so just shut up! Nan? If she chooses to wait at the cross-roads it’s her own fault. She should have come with us.”
The ‘sardine-tin’ entered Chagmouth that afternoon from the direction of Brendon, and Nan, after sitting a long time by the roadside expecting its appearance, gave it up and walked the rest of the way home, very annoyed at the trick that had been played her.
“You shouldn’t have let them, Lizzie!” she scolded.
“How could I help it? Fay wouldn’t let me speak, and Mr. Vicary just flew on to Brendon. Why didn’t Babbie take you into Chagmouth?”