The Foursome League met in Dormitory 2 after the holidays with much clattering of tongues. Each wanted to tell her own experience, and they all talked at once. Fil had a new way of doing her hair, and gave the others no peace till they had duly realized and appreciated it. Verity had been bridesmaid to a cousin, and wished to give full details of the wedding; Nora had played hockey in a Scotch team against a Ladies' Club, and had been promised ten minutes in an aeroplane, but the weather had been too stormy for the flight; the disappointment—when she happened to remember it—quite weighed down her spirits.
"If there's one thing on earth—or rather on air—I'd like to be, it's a flying woman!" she told her friends emphatically. "I'm hoping aeroplanes will get a little cheaper some day, and rich people will keep them instead of motor cars. Then I'll go out as an aviatress. It's a new career for women."
"I wouldn't trust myself toyourtender mercies, thank you!" shuddered Ingred. "You'd soon bring the machine down with a crash, and smash us to smithereens."
"Indeed I shouldn't! I'd go sailing about like a bird!"
And Nora, suiting action to words, stood on her bed fluttering her arms, till Verity wickedly gave her a push behind, and sent her springing with more force than grace to the floor.
"You Jumbo! You make the room shake!" exclaimed Ingred. "If that's how you're going to land you'll dig a hole in the ground like a bomb! Do move out, and let me get to my drawer! You're growing too big for this bedroom!"
"Nobody's looked at my new hair ribbons yet!" interposed Fil's plaintive voice. "See, I've got six! Aren't they beauties! Pale pink, pale blue, Saxe blue, navy for my gym. costume, black for a useful one, and olive green to go with my velveteen Sunday dress. Don't you think they're nice?"
"Ripping!" agreed Nora. "We'll know where to go when we want to borrow. There, don't look so scared, Baby! I've chopped my hair so short I couldn't wear a ribbon if I tried! It would be off in three cracks! Stick them back in their box, and don't tempt me! They're not in my line! I'm going in for uniform.You're the sort who wears chiffons and laces and all the rest of it, but you'll seemein gilt buttons before I have done, with wings on them, I hope! I may be the first to fly to Mars! Who knows? You shall all have my photo beforehand just in case!"
Everybody at the College, and particularly at the Hostel, agreed that the first few weeks of the new term were trying. After the interval of the holidays, the yoke of homework seemed doubly heavy, and undoubtedly the prep. was stiffer than ever. Only certain hours were set apart for study during the evenings at the hostel, and any girl who could not accomplish her lessons in that time had to finish them as best she could in odd minutes during the day, or even in bed in the mornings if she happened to wake sufficiently early. Fil, who generally succeeded in mastering about half her preparation and no more, railed at fate.
"I'm so unlucky!" she sighed to a sympathetic audience in No. 2. "I knew the first ten lines of my French poetry beautifully, and I could have said them if Mademoiselle had asked me, but of course she didn't. She set me on those wretched irregular verbs, and they always floor me utterly. As for the 'dictée'—I can't spell in English—let alone French! It's not the least use for Mademoiselle to get excited and stamp her foot at me. I shall be glad when I'm old enough to leave school. I never mean to look at a French book again!"
"How about English spelling?" suggested Ingred. "You'll want to write a letter occasionally!"
"I think by that time," said Fil hopefully, "somebody will have invented a typewriter that can spell for itself. You'll just press a knob for each word, you know!"
"There are about 3000 words in common daily use!" laughed Verity. "If you need a knob for each, your typewriter will have to be the size of a church organ. It'll want a room to itself!"
"Oh, but think of the convenience of it! No more hunting in the dictionary!" declared Fil.
To add to the aggravations of the new term the weather was doubtful, and seemed to take a spiteful pleasure in being particularly wet on hockey afternoons. Day after day, disappointed girls would watch the streaming rain and lament the lack of practice. To give them some form of exercise they were assembled in the gymnasium, and held rival displays of Indian clubs, Morris dancing, or even skipping. "The True Blues" excelled at high jumping, "The Pioneers" at certain rigid balancing feats, "The Old Brigade" were great at vaulting, and "The Amazons" and "The Mermaids" performed marvels in the way of Swedish Boom exercises.
Still, everybody agreed that though the contests were fun in their way they were not hockey, and the girls would much have preferred the playing-fields, however wet, to the gymnasium.
The girls in the hostel had the hour between four and five o'clock at their own disposal. They were not allowed to leave the College bounds, but they might amuse themselves as they pleased in the garden, playground, or gymnasium. In turns, according to the practising list, they had to devote the time to the piano, and a few even began their prep., though this was not greatly encouraged by Miss Burd, who thought a short brain rest advisable. One afternoon Ingred walked along the corridor with a big pile of music in her arms. Just outside the study she met Verity, and saluted her:
"Cheerio, old sport! Here's Dr. Linton left his whole cargo behind him to-day. He rushed off in a hurry and forgot it, and I know he'll be just raging. I'm going to ask Miss Burd if I may run over into the Abbey and leave it on the organ for him. He has a choir practice to-night, so he's sure to find it. Will you come with me? Right-o! We'll both go in and ask 'exeats.'"
The College was erected upon a plot of land which had originally been part of the Abbey grounds. All the old buildings, formerly inhabited by the monks of St. Bidulph's, and by the nuns in the adjoining convent of St. Mary's, had long ago been swept away, and only a few ruined walls marked their sites. The nave of the Abbey, however, had escaped, and was still in use as a parish church, though the beautiful original chancel and transepts had been battered down by Henry the Eighth's Commissioners. It was only a few hundred yards from the school to the Abbey, and Miss Burd readily gave the girls permission to take Dr. Linton's music and leave it for him on the organ. It was the first time either of them had been inside the church when no service was going on, and they looked round curiously. The organ was locked, or Ingred would certainly never have resisted the temptation to put on the fascinating stops and pedals. She tried to lift the lid that hid the keyboards, but with no success.
"He might have left it open!" she sighed.
"But the verger would come fussing up directly you began to play," said Verity.
"I don't see the verger anywhere about."
"Why, no more do I, now you mention it."
"Perhaps he's slipped across to his cottage to have his tea!"
"Perhaps. I say, Ingred, what a gorgeous opportunity to explore. Let's look round a little on our own."
There was nobody to forbid, so they started on a tour of inspection. The places they wanted to look at were those that ordinary church-goers never have a chance of seeing. They peeped into the choir vestry, and Verity gave rather a gasp at the sight of an array of white surplices hanging on the wall like a row of ghosts. They went down a narrow flight of damp steps into a dark place where the coke was kept, they peered into a dusty recess behind the organ, and into a room under the tower, where spare chairs were stored. All this was immensely interesting, but did not quite content them. Verity's ambition soared farther. Very high up on the wall, above the glorious pillars, and just under the clerestory windows, was a narrow passage called the Nuns' Ambulatory. It had been built in the long-ago ages to provide exercise for the sisters in the adjoining convent, to which a covered way had originally led.
"Just think of the poor dears parading round there on wet days when they couldn't walk in their own garden!" said Verity, turning her head almost upside down in her efforts to scan the passage. "I wonder if they ever felt giddy."
"There's a balustrade, of course, but I prefer our modern gym. I believe there's a walk all over the roof too. Athelstane went up once. He said it was like being on the top of a mountain, and you could look all over the town."
"What's that queer stone box thing on the wall?" asked Verity, still gazing upwards.
Ingred followed the line of her friend's eye to a point above the pillars but below the Nuns' Ambulatory. Here, built out like an oriel window, was a curious closed-in-gallery of stone, pierced in places by tiny frets. It seemed to have nothing to do with the architecture of the Abbey, and indeed to be a sort of excrescence which had been added to it at some later date. It spoilt the beauty of line, and would have been better removed.
"Oh, that's the peep-hole!" said Ingred, lowering her head, for it was painful to stretch her neck in so uncomfortable a position. "It was put up in the seventeenth century, when the whole place was full of those old-fashioned high pews. People were very dishonest in those days, and thieves used to come to church on purpose to pick pockets. So they always used to keep somebody stationed up there, looking down through the holes over the congregation to see that no purses were taken during the service. Nice state of things, wasn't it?"
"Rather! But I'd love to go up there. I say, the verger's still at his tea. Shall we try?"
"Right-o! I'm game if you are!"
By the north porch there was a small oak door studded with nails. Generally this was kept locked, but to-day, by a miracle of good fortune, it happened to be open. It was, of course, a very unorthodox thing for the verger to go away and leave the Abbey unattended, even for half an hour, but vergers, after all, are only human, and enjoy a cup of tea as much as other people who do not wear black cassocks. He was safely seated by the fireside in his ivy-colored cottage at the other side of the churchyard, so the girls seized their golden opportunity. They went up and up and up, along a winding staircase for an interminable way. It was dark, and the steps were worn with the tread of seven centuries, and here and there was a broken bit over which they had to clamber with care. At last, after what seemed like mounting the Tower of Babel, they stumbled up through a narrow doorway into the most extraordinary place in the world. They were in the garret of the roof over the south aisle. Above them were enormous beams or rafters, and below, a rough flooring. It was very dim and dusky, but about midway shone a bright shaft of light evidently from some communication with the interior of the nave. Towards this they directed their steps. It was a difficult progress owing to the huge rafters that supported the roof. A plank pathway about four feet above the floor had been laid across the beams, and along this Ingred decided to venture.
She started, balancing herself with her arms, and kept her equilibrium, though the plank was narrow and sprang as she walked. Verity, who had no head for such achievements, preferred to scramble along the floor, creeping under the rafters, in spite of the thick dust of years that lay there. Eventually they both reached the radius of light, and found another doorway leading down by a few steps into what was apparently a cupboard. In the wall of the cupboard, however, were frets through which the sunlight was streaming. Ingred applied an eye and gave a gasp of satisfaction.
They were in the peep-hole on the wall of the nave, and could gaze straight down into the church below. It was marvellous what an excellent view they obtained. Nothing was hidden, not even the interiors of the old-fashioned square pews that had lingered as a relic of the eighteenth century. Anybody stationed in this spy-box would certainly be able to keep guard over the congregation, and note any nefarious designs on the pockets of the worshipers.
For the moment the church was empty, then footsteps were audible in the porch. Was it the verger returning from his tea? The girls began to flutter at the prospect of his wrath if he discovered them. It was no cassock-clad verger that entered, however, but two young people, far too much interested in each other to gaze upwards towards the frets of the peep-hole. They thought they had the church to themselves, and walked along conversing in a low tone. The particular shade of flaxen hair in the masculine figure seemed familiar, and Ingred chuckled as she recognized her eldest brother.
"Caught you, old boy! Caught you neatly!" she thought. "Who's the girl? Oh, I know. It's one of the Bertrands—Queenie said they were at the Desmonds' dance, so I suppose he met her there. What a priceless joke! How I shall crow over him for this! They're actually going to sit down in a pew and talk! Well, this is the limit!"
Quite unconscious that sisterly eyes were watching, Egbert ushered his fair partner into one of the old-fashioned square pews. It was a quiet place to rest, and perhaps the young lady was tired. He sat by her side, very much occupied in explaining something which the girls in the peep-hole could not overhear. At last the quiet well-trained footsteps of the verger echoed again in the nave. He glanced at the young couple in the pew, and began to dust and rearrange the hymn-books. Egbert and Miss Bertrand took the hint and departed.
The pair spying through the fretwork above also judged it expedient to beat a hasty retreat. They were terrified lest the verger should remember that he had left the tower door open, and should lock them in. They stumbled back among the rafters, regardless of dust, and groped their rather perilous way down the winding staircase. To their infinite relief the door was not shut, and they were able to creep quietly out and bolt from the Abbey unperceived. They fled along the stone path that edged the churchyard, then stopped under the shelter of a ruined wall to brush the dust off their dresses before re-entering the College.
"It's been quite an adventure!" gasped Verity.
"Rather! Particularly catching old Egbert. Won't he look silly when I bring it out before the family? I don't know whether Iwilltell them, though! I think I'll keep it back, so as to have something to hold over his head when he teases me. Yes, that would be far more fun, really. I can hint darkly that I know one of his secrets, and he'll be so puzzled. I don't admire his taste much. Queenie detests those Bertrand girls. I don't know them myself to speak to, but I'm not impressed. Look here, the dust simplywon'tcome off your skirt, Verity!"
"It'll do as it is, then, and I'll use the clothes brush afterwards. Don't worry any more. There's the Abbey clock striking five! It's a few minutes fast, fortunately, but we shall simply have to sprint, or we shall be late for tea!"
There was no doubt that Egbert was the odd one in the Saxon family. He had inherited a testy strain of temper, and was frequently most obstinate and perverse. It was unfortunate that he was an articled pupil in his father's office, for he fretted and tried Mr. Saxon far more than Athelstane would have done in the circumstances. Egbert's saving quality was his intense love for his mother. Her influence held him steadily to his work, and smoothed over many difficult situations. He was apt to quarrel with Quenrede, but he had a soft corner for Ingred, and sometimes made rather a pet of her.
A few days after the incident at the Abbey he turned up at school, to her immense astonishment, and asked leave from Miss Burd to take her out to tea at a café. It had been an old promise on his part, ever since Ingred went to the hostel, but it had hung fire so long that she had come to regard it as one of those piecrust promises that elder members of a family frequently make, and never find it convenient to carry out. She had reminded Egbert of it at intervals all through the autumn term, then had given it up as "a bad job." To find him waiting for her in Miss Burd's study, ready to escort her to the Alhambra tea-rooms, seemed like a fairy tale come true. She whisked off at once to make the best possible toilet in the circumstances, and reappeared smilingly ready. When you have tea every day at a long table full of girls, the meal is apt to grow monotonous, and it was a welcome change to take it instead in a gay Oriental room with Moorish decorations and luxurious arm-chairs, and a platform in a corner, where musicians were giving a capital concert. Ingred leaned back on an embroidered cushion and ate cakes covered with pink sugar, and listened to a violin solo followed by some charming songs, and watched the gay crowd sitting at the other small tables. It was really delightful to be out just with Egbert alone. It made her feel almost grown-up. Moreover, he was in such a remarkably generous mood. He set no limit to the supply of cakes, and he stopped at the counter as they went downstairs and bought her a box of chocolates and a large packet of Edinburgh rock. He even went further, for as they walked round the square together, and looked into the window of a fancy shop, he told her to choose her birthday present, and agreed amicably when she selected a morocco-leather bag which was for the moment the summit of her dreams. She parted from him at the College gates in deepest gratitude. This was indeed something like a brother!
"You're an absolute trump!" she assured him.
"Well, a fellow's always got a decent sister to take about, anyway," he replied enigmatically, a remark over which Ingred pondered, but could not fathom.
She mentioned the jaunt at the family supper-table on Friday evening. To her immense surprise her innocent remark had somewhat the effect of a bomb. Mr. Saxon turned to his son with a sudden keen expression, as if he had convicted him of a crime. Mrs. Saxon's face also was full of suppressed meaning, while Egbert colored furiously, looked thunderous at his sister, and relapsed into sulky silence. Poor Ingred felt that she had, quite unconsciously, put her foot in it, though how or why she could not tell. She said no more at the time, and when, afterwards, she ventured to refer again to the subject, she was so tremendously shut up that she saw clearly it was discreet to make no further inquiry. Plainly there was some tremendous quarrel between Egbert and his father, for they were barely on speaking terms.
Mr. Saxon threw out occasional inuendoes that caused his son finally to stump from the room. Mrs. Saxon went about with a cloud of distress on her face, and Quenrede, to whom Ingred applied for enlightenment, promptly and pointedly changed the subject. It was miserably uncomfortable, for father and son were like two Leyden jars charged with electricity, and ready to let fly at any moment. It was only the mother's influence that averted a family thunderstorm. Athelstane, too, seemed in the depths of gloom. He was willing, however, to communicate his woes.
"I want a whole heap more medical books," he confided to his sister, "and Dad says he can't get them, and I must manage without. How on earthcanI manage without. What's the use of my going to College if I haven't the proper textbooks? I can't always be borrowing. If I fail in my exams, it will be his fault, not mine. He's the most absolutely unreasonable man anybody could have to deal with. Of course I know they're expensive, and funds are low, but I've simplygotto have them, or chuck up medicine!"
"It's so terrible to be poor!" sighed Quenrede, thinking of the old, happy pre-war days at Rotherwood, when everything came so easily, and there were no struggles to make ends meet.
She talked the matter over afterwards with Ingred.
"If I could only help somehow!" she mourned. "I've often thought I might go out and earn something, but Mother's not strong, and I really do a great deal in the house. If I went away and left her with only 'The Orphan,' she'd be laid up in a fortnight. As it is, she tries to do far too much. How could we possibly get some money for Athelstane's books? We'd rather die than ask our friends!"
Ingred shook her head sadly. Wild ideas surged through her mind of disguising herself and sweeping a crossing—there were stories of wealthy crossing-sweepers—or rivaling Charlie Chaplin on the cinema stage, but somehow they did not seem quite practicable for a girl of sixteen. She left Quenrede's question unanswered. It was only late on Saturday afternoon that a great idea came to her. Great—but so overwhelming that she winced at the bare notion. It was as if some inner voice said to her: "Sell Derry!" Now Derry, the fox terrier, was her very own property. He had been given to her two years before by a cousin as a birthday present. He was of prize breed, and had brought his pedigree with him. He was a smart, bright little fellow, and on the whole a favorite in the household, though he sometimes got into trouble for jumping on to the best chairs and leaving his hairs on the cushions. It had never particularly struck Ingred that Derry was of value, until last week, when Mr. Hardcastle noticed him. Relations with that precise old neighbor next door had been rather strained for a long time, since the unfortunate episode when Hereward had unwittingly discharged the contents of the garden syringe in his face. For months he studiously avoided them, calling his collie away with quite unnecessary caution if they happened to pass him on the road, and bolting into his own premises if they met near the gate. But one day, about Christmas-time, Sam, the collie, who was a giddy and irresponsible sort of dog, given to aimless yapping at passing conveyances, overdid his supposed guardianship of his owner's property, and blundered into a motor that was whisking by. The car did not trouble to stop, and when it was a hundred yards away, Sam picked himself up and limped on three legs to show his bleeding paw to his agitated master. Fortunately Athelstane, from the bungalow garden, had witnessed the accident, and came forward like a Good Samaritan with offers of help. His elementary acquaintance with surgery stood him in good stead, and he neatly set the injured limb, and bound it up with splints and plaster. There had been many inquiries over the hedge as to the invalid's progress, and congratulations when the bandages were able at last to be removed. Old Mr. Hardcastle had waxed quite friendly as he expressed his thanks, and one day, catching Ingred by the gate with Derry, he had volunteered the information that "that fox terrier of yours is a fine dog, and no mistake, and would be worth something to a fancier!"
"Sell Derry!" the idea, though she hated it, had taken possession of Ingred's brain. He was the only thing she had that was of marketable value. To part with the poor little fellow would be like selling her birthright, but, after all, brothers came first, and how could Athelstane study without books? Something Mother had said the other day clamored in her memory. "If we've lost our fortune we've got our family intact, and we must stick tight together, and be ready to make sacrifices for one another." Ingred had quite made up her mind. She put on her hat, took Derry from his cozy place by the kitchen fire, kissed his nose, and, carrying him in her arms, walked to the next-door house, rang the bell, and asked to see Mr. Hardcastle.
She found the old gentleman in a cozy dining-room, seated by a cheery fire, and reading the evening paper. He looked a little astonished when she was ushered in, but received her politely, as if it was quite a matter of course for a young lady, hugging a dog, to pay him an afternoon visit.
Ingred put Derry down on the hearth rug, took the arm-chair that was offered her, and with a beating heart and a very high color plunged into business, and inquired if it were possible to find a fancier who wished to buy a prize fox terrier.
"I've his pedigree here," she finished, "and he really is a nice little dog. If you know of anybody, I'd be so glad if you would tell me please!"
Mr. Hardcastle, evidently much electrified, knitted his bushy eyebrows in thought, and pursed his mouth into a button.
"There was a vet. in Grovesbury who told me a while ago that he wanted one, but I saw him yesterday, and he said he had just bought one, so that's no good! You might try the advertisements inThe Bazaar. He looks a bright little chap. Why are you in such a panic to get rid of him? Been killing chickens?"
"No," said Ingred, turning pinker still; "it isn't that—I don't want to sell him, of course—only—only——"
And then to her extreme annoyance, her brimming eyes overflowed, and she burst into stifled sobs.
The old gentleman shot his lips in and out in mingled consternation and sympathy.
"There! There! There!" he exclaimed. "Don't cry! For goodness' sake, don't cry! Tell me, whatever's the matter?"
It was, of course, a most unorthodox thing for Ingred to blurt out family affairs, and Father and Mother would have been justly indignant had they known, but she was impulsive, and without much worldly wisdom, and Mr. Hardcastle seemed sympathetic, so on the spur of the moment she told him the urgency of Athelstane's need, and how she was trying to meet it. He sat quite quiet for a short time, staring into the fire, then he said, very gently and kindly:
"My dear little girl, you needn't part with your dog. I believe I can lend your brother all the medical books he wants."
"You! But you're not a doctor?" exclaimed Ingred.
"No, but my boy was studying medicine at Birkshaw. He had just passed his intermediate M. B. when he was called up. I've got all his books. He won't want them again now. He was flying over the German lines, and his machine crashed down. One comfort, he was killed instantly! He had always hoped he'd never be taken prisoner. I think he'd have liked his books to be put to some use. I'll hunt them out, and send them across to your brother, and the microscope, and any other things I can find. He may just as well have them."
There was a huskiness in the old gentleman's voice, but he coughed it away.
"I don't know how to thank you!" stammered Ingred.
"I don't want any thanks. It's only a neighborly act. Take your dog home, and say nothing about all this. I'll write to your brother. I wonder I never thought about it before!"
Mr. Hardcastle was as good as his word, for next Monday evening quite a large consignment arrived for Athelstane, with a note offering the loan of books and microscope if they would be of any service in his medical studies.
"Why, they're absolutely the very things I wanted!" exclaimed that youth rapturously. "What a trump he is! A real good sort! I say, you know, it's really most awfully kind of him! I wonder what the Dickens put it into his head?"
But on that point none of the family could enlighten him, for only Ingred and Derry knew the secret, and Ingred was at school, while Derry, belonging to the dumb creation, expressed his opinions solely in barks.
When the household was reunited for next week-end, the clouds had cleared from Athelstane's horizon, but seemed to have settled more darkly than ever round Egbert. There was a horrible feeling of impending storm in the home atmosphere. It lent a constraint to conversation at meals, and put an effectual stopper on the fun which generally circulated round the fireside. It was all the more uncomfortable because nobody voiced the cause.
"Father looks unutterables, Mother's plainly worried to death, Egbert is sulks personified, Queenie won't tell, Athelstane and Hereward either don't know or don't care what's the matter, but it makes them cross. What is one to do with such a family?" thought Ingred on Sunday afternoon.
It had been wet, and, though a detachment of them had ventured to church in waterproofs, they had not been able to take their usual safety valve of a walk across the moors. Seven people in a small house seem to get in one another's way on Sunday afternoons. Father was dozing in the dining-room, Mother, Athelstane and Hereward were in the drawing-room, interrupting each other's reading by constant extracts from their own books; Ingred, who hated to pause in the midst ofThe Scarlet Pimpernelto hear choice bits fromThe Young VisitersorParisian Sketches, sought sanctuary in her bedroom, only to find the blind drawn and Quenrede with a bad headache, trying to rest. There seemed no comfortable corner available, so she slipped on her thick coat, put her book in the pocket, and walked down the garden to sit in the cycle-shed. Even in the rain it was nice out of doors; clumps of purple and yellow crocuses showed under the gooseberry bushes; lilies were pushing up green heads through the soil; the flowering currant was bursting into bud; roots of polyanthus flaunted mauve and orange blossoms; under a sheltered wall were even a few early violets, whose sweet fresh scent seemed as the first breath of spring. A missel-thrush on the bare pear tree sang triumphantly through the rain, and a song-thrush, with more melodious notes, trilled forth an occasional call; the robin, which had haunted the garden all the winter, was scraping energetically for grubs among the ivy on the wall, and scarcely troubled to fly away at her approach.
Ingred drew great breaths of sweet-scented wet air, and, with almost the same instinct as the thrush, broke into "Thank God for a Garden!" the song that Mother loved to hear Quenrede sing in the evenings when the day's work was over.
Delightful and refreshing and soothing as Nature may be, however, it is rather a wet business to stand admiring crocuses in the streaming rain, so Ingred made a dash through the dripping bushes to the cycle-shed. If she had calculated upon finding solitude here she was disappointed. It was occupied already. Egbert, looking as gloomy as Hamlet, was tinkering with the motor-bicycle. He greeted his sister with something between a sigh and a grunt, whistled monotonously for a moment or two, then burst into confidence.
"Look here, Ingred; I can't stand this any longer. I wish I were back in the army! I've a jolly good mind to chuck everything up, and re-enlist!"
"Is it as bad as all that?" asked Ingred.
"Yes, I'm about fed up with life. If it weren't for the little Mater I'd have cleared out before this. Perhaps she'll miss me, but I don't know that anybody else will, and I don't care!"
"How about Miss Bertrand?" asked Ingred, obeying a sudden impulse of mischief.
Egbert flung down a spanner, and turned to her the most astonished face in the world.
"What doyouknow about Miss Bertrand?" he queried.
Ingred chuckled delightedly. To use her own schoolgirl expression, she felt she "had him on toast."
"More than you imagine! Who went into the Abbey Church, I should like to know, and sat in a pew for ever so long, and looked tender nothings? Oh yes!Isaw you, and a pretty sight it was, too!" she teased.
Egbert was gazing at her as if he could scarcely believe his senses.
"But—but—where were you?" he stuttered.
"In the peep-hole!" exploded Ingred. "I could see right down into the church, and I watched you come in! I've been saving this up!"
Egbert drew a long breath.
"If I'd only known before!" he said slowly. "Ingred, stop laughing! You don't understand. Look here, will you go and tell Dad that you saw me there, and the exact day and time when it happened. You can remember that?"
"Why, surely Father's the very last person you want to know?" said Ingred, sobering down.
"No, he isn't, he's the one it's most important should hear about it from a reliable witness whom he can believe. I don't mind telling you about it now" (as Ingred expressed her astonishment in her face), "I'd got myself into a jolly old mess, and you'll be able to clear me! It was this way; I slipped out from the office one afternoon for an hour, and went into the Abbey as you saw. Well, when I got back, somebody had been into Dad's room during his absence, and a small sum of money was missing. He taxed me with taking it!"
"You!But why you?" exclaimed Ingred indignantly.
"Because I was the only person who had access to his private room. I told Dad I had been out—which made him angrier still—but none of the clerks had happened to see me go or come back, and I had no other witness to prove my words. As a matter of fact, I went out before Father, and came back after he had returned, but he wouldn't take my word for it. You know what he is when he's angry. You simply can't argue with him! Then you made things ever so much worse by blurting out how I'd taken you to tea at the café, and bought you a bag. Father glared as if it proved I'd been spending stolen money!"
"You were rather flush of cash that day," commented Ingred.
"Yes, the fact is I'd been writing a short story, and it had been accepted by a newspaper. It's a poor enough thing, and I didn't sign my own name to it. I didn't want to tell them at home I was trying to write until I could do something better. Anyhow, I'd just cashed the check, and thought I'd give you a treat for once. I knew it was no use to explain to Father. Mother has stuck up for me, but I can tell you I've been having a time of it this last fortnight."
"But, Egbert," said Ingred, frankly puzzled, "couldn't you have got Miss Bertrand to tell Dad where you were? It would have been better after all than letting him think you took the money."
Egbert's face darkened again tragically.
"I wouldn't appeal to Miss Bertrand to clear my character if it were a charge of murder. I'd be hanged first! I met her the very day after we were in the Abbey together—she was walking with some idiot of an airman—and she stared straight in my face and cut me. I've done with girls! They're all of them alike!" and the gloomy young misanthrope picked up the spanner and began energetically tightening nuts on the motorcycle.
Ingred shook a sympathetic head. She had not much experience in love affairs, but she fancied that this one did not go very deep.
"You'll get over it," she consoled. "And she wasn't a very nice girl, anyway. Queenie always loathed her. If Dad's had his nap, I'll go and tell him how I saw you in the Abbey. I know it was a Tuesday, because I'd had my music lesson, and was taking the books that Dr. Linton left behind him."
"Good! That's what's called proving an alibi. I don't know who walked off with those notes, but as long as Dad's satisfied I had nothing to do with it, that's all I care. He can thrash it out with the clerks now, or leave it alone."
Mr. Saxon questioned Ingred closely, but accepted her account of the matter, which set his doubts at rest concerning his son. The relief in the family circle was enormous. Mother's face was beaming, and it seemed as if the storm-clouds had blown away, and the sun had shone out. Tea was the most comfortable meal that the household had taken together for a fortnight.
"I haven't spent quite all that check I got from theHarlow Weekly News," whispered Egbert to Ingred that evening, "and I'm going to buy you a box of chocolates on Monday. I'll leave them for you at the Hostel. You deserve them!"
"You mascot! I can't quite see that Idodeserve them, for I really meant to rag you about that Abbey business. But I won't say 'No, thank you!' to chocks! Rather not! We'll have a gorgeous little private feast in No. 2 to-morrow night."
The thirteen weeks between Christmas and Easter dragged much more slowly than those of the autumn term. The weather was cold and variable. As fast as Spring stirred in the earth, Winter seemed to stretch forth chilly fingers to check her advent. Nature, like a careful mother, kept the buds tightly folded on the trees and the yellow daffodil blossoms securely hidden under their green casement curtains. Only the most foolhardy birds ventured to begin building operations. The rooks in the elm trees near the Abbey had begun to repair their nests during a mild spurt in January, then put off further alterations till late in March. Morning after morning the girls would wake to find the roofs covered with hoar frost. Ingred, who hated the cold, shivered as she crossed the windy quadrangle from the college to the hostel, and congratulated herself that she lived in the days of modern comforts.
"How the old monks and nuns managed to exist in those wretched chilly damp cloisters I can't imagine," she said, as she squatted by the stove warming her hands. "Were they allowed to take hot bricks to bed with them in their cells? Think of turning out for midnight services into an unwarmed church! It sounds absolutely miserable!"
"Perhaps they made themselves more comfortable than we think," commented Verity. "One of them probably kept up the fire and doled out hot drinks after the services. It might even have been possible to take a hot-water bottle to church under the folds of those ample habits."
"I don't believe that would have been allowed. Surely the cold was part of the discipline."
"I shouldn't have been a nun if I'd lived in the Middle Ages," said Fil. "I'd have wanted to go to the tournaments and to have seen my knight fighting with my ribbons in his helmet and bringing me the crown. Oh, wouldn't it have been fun? Life's not a scrap romantic nowadays. I do think men are slackers. Why don't they wear their ladies' colors at football, and let whoever gets a goal carry a wreath of flowers to the pavilion and crown his girl 'Queen of Beauty'? There'd be some excitement in looking on then. As it is it's nothing but a scrimmage; and I never care a button which side wins. You needn't laugh. Why shouldn't a footballer look gallant and present trophies? The world would jog on a great deal better if there were more chivalry in it."
"The girls want to play games themselves nowadays instead of looking on and receiving trophies," giggled Verity.
"I don't!" declared Fil emphatically. "I hate tearing about at hockey, or running at cricket. I'd far rather let my knight do the work for me."
"Chilly work looking on in this weather. The games keep one warm," said Ingred, who was still only half thawed.
In spite of boisterous March winds and late spring frosts the sun climbed steadily higher in the sky and the days lengthened. Ingred, who used to arrive home in the twilight at Wynchcote on Friday afternoons, could now dig in the garden after tea. She liked the scent of newly-turned earth, and was happy working away with a trowel transplanting roots of wall-flowers and forget-me-nots to make a display in the bed near the dining-room window. At school the various forms vied with one another in shows of hyacinths grown in bowls, the best of which were lent to the studio on drawing days and figured as models for water-color sketches, together with daffodils and hazel catkins. Lispeth, who did not relax the activities of The Rainbow League, revived her idea of a Posy Union, persuaded some of the girls to bring little pots of gay crocuses or blue squills to school, and after these had been duly exhibited on a table in the lecture-hall, sent them through the agency of a "Children's Welfare Worker" to brighten the bedsides of various small invalids in the poorer quarters of the town and let them know that spring had arrived.
Easter-tide was very near now, and the school would break up for three weeks. Miss Burd was going away to allow her tired brains to lie fallow for a while, and most of the other teachers were looking forward to a well-earned rest apart from their forms. It came as a surprise to everybody when Miss Strong—alone—among the staff—suggested the project of taking some of her pupils for a short walking tour. They were to start off, like pilgrims of old, carrying with them the barest necessaries, and have a four days' tramp to visit a few of the beauty spots of the neighborhood, spending a couple of nightsen route.
"It will be a real open-air holiday," she assured them. "We shall be out of doors all day long and eat most of our meals by the roadside. I've planned it out carefully. A short railway journey to Carford, then walk by easy stages through Ryton-on-the-Heath to Dropwick and Pursborough, where we can get the train again back to Grovebury. I know of two extremely nice Temperance Hotels where we can be put up for the night. By going in this way we shall see the cream of the country. Any girl who is a good walker may join the party."
It certainly sounded a fascinating program, and after due consideration at home eight girls put their names down for the excursion—Ingred, Verity, Nora, Bess, Linda, Francie, Kitty, and Belle. They felt it would be quite a new experience to know Miss Strong out of school hours; the light in her eyes when she announced the scheme gave promise of hitherto hidden capacities for fun. It circulated round the form that she might prove quite a jolly companion. Those girls who could not join the tour were a trifle wistful and inclined towards envy. They took it out of the pilgrims in gloomy prognostications concerning the weather.
"It will probably rain all the time and you'll tramp along like a row of drowned rats," suggested Beatrice.
"It won't do anything of the sort. I believe we're going to have a fine mild spell and it will be just glorious. I'm taking my 'Brownie,' so there'll be some snapshots to show we've been enjoying ourselves," retorted Nora briskly. "You stay-at-homes will be sorry for yourselves when you hear our adventures!"
To allow the weather ample chance of improvement, and perhaps also to give Miss Strong time to rest, the excursion was fixed for the last week of the holidays. One morning in mid-April, therefore, found teacher and pupils meeting together on the platform of Grovebury station to catch the 9.25 train to Carford. They wore jerseys and their school hats, and they carried their luggage according to their individual ideas of convenience. Linda wore her little brother's satchel slung over her back. Nora had borrowed a knapsack, Kitty preferred a parcel, Verity packed her possessions in a string bag, and Bess carried a neat dispatch-case.
"I'd a ripping idea for mine, but it wouldn't work," declared Ingred. "I meant to tie my parcel to a balloon and then just lead it along by a string. But I couldn't get a proper gas balloon for the business, and that's what you ought to have."
"And suppose the wind were to blow it away from you, what then?" inquired Miss Strong.
"I suppose I should have to cable it round my waist."
"Then you might be whisked up with it, and we should see you sailing off into the clouds in a kind of aeroplane holiday instead of a walking tour! I don't think we can patent your balloon dodge yet."
"What I want," said Kitty, "is a sort of child's light mail-cart arrangement that I could wheel along. It's what Mother always says she needs for shopping—a parcel-holder on wheels. Why doesn't somebody invent one? He—or she (I'm sure it would be ashe)—would make a fortune."
"We might have borrowed a perambulator," said Belle, quite seriously, "and have packed all our luggage into it."
"Oh, I dare say! And who would have wheeled it?"
"We could have taken it in turns."
"With long turns for the willing horses, and short turns for shirkers! No, thanks! Better each to stick to our own."
"Besides which, forget stiles. We hope to try some field paths as well as high roads," added Miss Strong. "Also I should decidedly have jibbed at escorting a perambulator. Here comes the train! Let us make a dash for an empty carriage and keep it to ourselves."
It was only a short journey to Carford, but it took them over twelve rather uninteresting miles and put them down just at the commencement of a very beautiful stretch of country where open uplands alternated with wooded coombes, and where the stone-roofed villages were the prettiest in the county.
Miss Strong, who had had some experience of mountaineering in Switzerland, restrained the pace and kept them all at what she called a "guide's walk."
"It pays in the long run," she assured them. "If you tear ahead at first, you get tired later on, and we must keep fairly well together. I can't have some of you half a mile behind."
The April days were still cold, but very bracing for exercise. Lambs were out in the fields, primroses grew in clumps under the hedgerows, hazel catkins flung showers of pollen to the winds, and in the coppice that bordered the road pale-mauve March violets and white anemone stars showed through last year's carpet of dead leaves. There was that joyful thrill of spring in the air, that resurrection of Nature when the thraldom of winter is over, and beauty comes back to the gray dim world. The old Greeks felt it, thousands of years ago, and fabled it in their myth of Persephone and her return from Hades. The Druids knew it in Ancient Britain, and fixed their religious ceremonies for May Day. The birds were caroling it still in the hedgerows, and the girls caught the joyous infection and danced along in defiance of Miss Strong's jog-trot guide walk. Even the mistress herself, so wise at the outset, finally flung prudence to the winds, and skirmished through the coppices with enthusiasm equal to that of her pupils, lured from the pathway by the glimpses of kingcups, or the pursuit of a peacock butterfly.
"All the same, if we tear round like small dogs, we shall never reach Dropwick to-night, and I've booked our rooms there," she assured them. "You don't want to sleep on the heather, I suppose!"
"Bow-wow! Shouldn't mind!" laughed Kitty. "We could cling together and keep each other warm."
"You won't cling to me, thanks! I prefer a bed of my own."
Nora, having brought a good supply of films for her Brownie camera, was most keen on taking snapshots. She photographed the company eating their lunch on a bank by the roadside, with Miss Strong in the very act of biting a piece of bread and butter, and Ingred with her face buried in a mug. She even went further. She had been reading a book on faked photography, and she yearned to try experiments.
"I'm going to give those stay-at-homes a few thrills," she declared. "I told them we'd have adventures."
Nora expounded her plan to Miss Strong, who was sufficiently interested in the subject to promise her collusion and good advice. A mock Alpine scene came first. Nora had brought with her, for this express purpose, a length of rope, which she wore around her jersey like a Carmelite's girdle. She took it off now and fastened it round the waists of three of her schoolfellows, linking them together in the manner of Swiss mountaineers. Then she found a piece of rock on which were narrow ledges, and, with the help of Miss Strong, posed them in attitudes of apparent peril. Really, they were only a couple of feet from the ground, and a fall would have been a laughing matter, but in a camera they appeared to be clinging almost by their eyelashes to the face of an inaccessible crag and in imminent danger of their lives. Nora took two views, and chuckled with satisfaction.
"That'll make their hair stand on end! I'll fix a few more sensations if I can. Who's game to run six inches in front of a mild old cow's horns, while somebody urges her on from behind?"
"How will you guarantee she's mild?" inquired Bess dubiously. "She might take it into her head to toss us!"
"Not she! It was only the 'cow with the crumpled horn' that went in for tossing."
"Well, I'd rather be in a safer photo, thanks! I'm terrified of cows, anyway."
Nora's instincts were really quite dramatic. She photographed Bess crouching in the hollow of a tree, an imaginary fugitive, to whom Francie, in an attitude of caution, handed surreptitious victuals. She posed Linda, apparently lifeless, on the borders of a pond, with Kitty and Verity applying artificial respiration. She bound up Ingred's head with a handkerchief, and placed her arm in a sling as the result of a fictitious accident, and would have arranged a circle of weeping girls round the prostrate body of Miss Strong, had not that stalwart lady stoutly objected.
"I'm not going to do anything of the sort, so put up that camera, and come along at once. We've wasted far too much time already, and we shall have to step out unless we want to finish our walk in the dark. I promise you tea at Ryton-on-the-Heath, if you hurry, but we can't stop half an hour there unless you put your best foot foremost, so, quick march!"
This book does not propose to extol an ideal heroine, only to chronicle the deeds and thoughts of a girl, who, like most other girls, had her pleasant and her disagreeable moods, her high aspirations and good intentions, and her occasional bursts of bad temper. Ingred had been very passionate as a child, and, though she had learnt to put on the curb, sometimes that uncomfortable lower self would take the bit between its teeth and gallop away with her. It is sad to have to confess that the enjoyment of her walking tour was entirely spoilt by an ugly little imp who kept her company. In plain words she was horribly jealous of Bess. Ingred liked to be popular. She was gratified to be warden of "The Pioneers" and a member of the School Parliament. She felt she had an acknowledged standing not only in her own form but throughout the college. Her official position, her cleverness in class, her aptitude for music, her skill at games, made her an all-round force and a referee on most subjects. There is no doubt that Ingred would have had the undivided post of favorite in her form had it not been for Bess Haselford. Not that Bess was in any way a self-constituted rival—on the contrary she was rather shy and retiring, and made no particular bid for popularity. Perhaps that was one reason why the girls liked her. She was generous in lending her property, invited her form-mates to charming parties at Rotherwood, and often persuaded an indulgent father to include some of her special chums in motoring expeditions on Saturday afternoons. She had, indeed, taken up the exact role that Quenrede had played years ago, before the war, and which Ingred would have followed had Rotherwood and a car still been in the Saxons' possession. In spite of several overtures from Bess, Ingred had thrust away all idea of friendship, and had steadily refused any invitations to her old home. The reports which the girls brought back of the renewed glories of Rotherwood made her feel like a disinherited princess. She considered it rough luck that her supplanter should be at the same school and in the same form as herself, and decided that Bess had ousted her from both house and favor. It made it only the more aggravating that Bess's musical talent was quite equal, if not superior, to her own. Bess had improved immensely on the violin, and her performance at the end-of-term recital had received quite a little ovation.
When the question of the walking tour was broached, Bess, owing to home engagements, had at first reluctantly refused, then had managed to rearrange her holidays and had joined the party after all. To Ingred her presence utterly marred the enjoyment. It was extremely unreasonable of Ingred, for Bess was most unassuming and really very long-suffering. She put up with snubs that would have made most girls retaliate indignantly. Nobody likes to be sat upon too hard, however, and even the proverbial worm will turn at last.
As the walking party, much urged by Miss Strong straggled along towards Ryton-on-the-Heath, Bess made a lightning dive up a bank and came back with a blue flower plainly of thelabiatespecies.
"Bugle!" she remarked with satisfaction.
"Bugle?" echoed Ingred scornfully. "Shows how much you know about botany! That's self-heal!"
"Oh no; it's certainly bugle."
"I tell you it's self-heal. I found some at Lynstones last August and looked it up in the flower-book."
"Very likely you did, but that doesn't prove that this is self-heal."
"It does, for anybody with a pair of eyes. I've been studying botany."
"And so have I!"
"You may think you know everything, Bess Haselford, but you don't know this."