Chapter Five.

Chapter Five.Miss Barnicroft’s Money.Not very far from the Roman camp Rumborough Common ended in a rough rutty road, or rather lane, and about half-way down this stood a small white cottage with a thatched roof. It was an ordinary labourer’s cottage with the usual patch of garden, just like scores of others round about; but it possessed a strange and peculiar interest of its own, for it was not an ordinary labourer who lived there, it was Miss Barnicroft, with two dogs and a goat.Now Miss Barnicroft was not in the least like other people, and the children considered her by far the most interesting object to be seen near Easney, so that they never passed her lonely dwelling without trying to get a glimpse of her, or at least of her animals. They were careful, however, only to take side glances, and to look very grave if they did happen to see her, for they had been taught to regard her with respect, and on no account to smile at anything odd in her appearance or behaviour. “Poor Miss Barnicroft” she was generally called, though Andrew spoke less politely of her as the “daft lady.”In their walks with Miss Grey it was with a thrill of pleasure that they sometimes saw the well-known flighty figure approaching, for there was always something worth looking at in Miss Barnicroft. Her garments were never twice alike, so that she seemed a fresh person every time. Sometimes she draped herself in flowing black robes, with a veil tied closely over her head and round her face. At others she wore a high-crowned hat decked with gay ribbons, a short skirt, and yellow satin boots. There was endless variety in her array, but however fantastic it might be, she preserved through it all a certain air of dignity and distinction which was most impressive.Her face, too, was delicate in feature and refined in expression. Her short upper lip had a haughty curl, and her grey eyes flickered uncertainly beneath well-marked brows. Although she was not more than middle-aged her hair was snowy white, and sometimes escaping here and there in stray locks from her head-dress, added to the strangeness of her appearance. Miss Barnicroft was indeed quite unlike other people; her very food was different, for she lived on vegetables and drank goat’s milk. It was even whispered that she did not sleep in a bed, but in a hammock slung up to the ceiling.Nothing could be more interesting than all this, but the children did not see her very often, for she went out seldom and never came to church. Occasionally, however, she paid a visit to the Vicarage, when she would ask for the vicar and carry on a very long conversation with him on all manner of subjects, darting from one to the other with most confusing speed. Mr Hawthorne did not appreciate these visits very much, but the children were always pleasantly excited by them. When, therefore, Nancy caught sight of Miss Barnicroft proceeding up the drive she abruptly left the subject of Kettles’ boots and stockings, and lost no time in pointing out the visitor to her mother.“I expect Miss Barnicroft wants to see your father,” said Mrs Hawthorne.And so indeed it proved, for by the time they reached the door Miss Barnicroft had been shown into the study, and to their great disappointment the girls saw her no more.Ambrose, however, was more fortunate, for it chanced that afternoon that he had been excused some of his lessons on account of a headache, and at that very moment was lying flat on the hearth-rug in his father’s study with a book. He was afraid, on the visitor’s entrance, that he would be sent away, but was soon relieved to find that no notice was taken of him, so that he was able to see and hear all that passed. What a lucky chance! and what a lot he would have to tell the others!At first the conversation was not interesting, for it was about some question of taxation which he did not understand; but suddenly dropping this, Miss Barnicroft began to tell a story of some white owls who lived in the keep of a castle in Scotland. Just as the point of this history was reached she dropped that too, and asked, casting a lofty and careless glance down at Ambrose:“Is that one of your children?”“That is my eldest boy,” said the vicar. “Come and speak to Miss Barnicroft, Ambrose.”“Ah!” said Miss Barnicroft with a coldly disapproving look as Ambrose shyly advanced, “I don’t like boys.”“How is that?” asked Mr Hawthorne.“They grow to be men,” she answered with a shudder, “and even while they are young there is no barbarity of which they are not capable. I could believe anything of a boy.”“Dear me!” said the vicar, smiling, “that is very severe; I hope all boys are not so bad as that!”“It is greatly, I believe, owing to the unnatural manner in which they are fed,” she continued, turning away from Ambrose. “Most wickedness comes from eating meat. Violence, and cruelty, and bloodthirstiness would vanish if men lived on fruit and vegetables.”“Do you think so?” said the vicar mildly; “but women are not as a rule cruel and bloodthirsty, and they eat meat too.”“Women are naturally better than men, and it does not do them so much harm; but they would be still better without it. It makes them selfish and gross,” said Miss Barnicroft.Mr Hawthorne never encouraged his visitor to argue long on this subject, which somehow crept into all her conversations, however far-away from it they might begin. So he merely bowed his head in silence.Miss Barnicroft rose with an air of having settled the question, but suddenly sat down again and said with a short laugh:“By the way, you have thieves in your parish.”“Really! I hope not,” said the vicar.Ambrose, who had retired to his former position on the rug, began to listen intently. This sounded interesting.“A month ago,” she continued, “I put away some gold pieces for which I had no use, and they have been stolen.”“Did you lock them up?” asked Mr Hawthorne.“I did a safer thing than that,” said Miss Barnicroft, laughing contemptuously; “I buried them.”“In your garden?”“No. I put them into a honey-jar and buried it in what, I believe, is called the Roman Camp, not far from my house.”The words, spoken in Miss Barnicroft’s clear cold tones, fell icily on Ambrose’s ear, and seemed to turn him to stone. He and David were thieves! It was no antique vessel they had discovered, but a common honey-pot; no Roman coins, but Miss Barnicroft’s money. If only he had done as David wished, and told his father long ago!He clasped his hands closely over his scarlet face and listened for the vicar’s answer.“I don’t think you chose a very safe place to hide your money,” he said. “Gypsies and pedlars and tramps are constantly passing over Rumborough Common. Someone probably saw you bury it there.”“I am more inclined to think that it was stolen by someone in the parish,” said Miss Barnicroft. “They were French napoleons,” she added.“Then you see they would be of no use to anyone living here, for they could not change them. They were more likely to be dug up by some of the gypsy people who so often camp about there, and are now far enough from Easney.”It was truly dreadful to Ambrose to hear his father talk in that calm soothing tone, and to imagine how he would feel if he knew that his own son Ambrose had taken Miss Barnicroft’s money, and that the hateful little crock of gold was at that very moment lying quite near him in David’s garden. His heart beat so fast that the sound of it seemed to fill the room. Would Miss Barnicroft never go away? He longed and yet dreaded to hear her say good-bye; for after that only one course was before him—confession.But she remained some time longer, for she was not at all satisfied to have the matter treated so quietly. She tried to impress upon Mr Hawthorne that it was his duty to make a thorough inquiry amongst his people, for she felt certain, she said with an air of conviction which made Ambrose tremble, that her money was somewhere in Easney.“I should advise you in future, Miss Barnicroft,” said the vicar when she at last took her departure, “to bring me anything you wish taken care of—it would be safer here than burying it. And there’s the bank, you know, in Nearminster. I should be glad to take any money there for you at any time.”“You are very kind,” she answered with an airy toss of the feathers and ribbons on her head, “but no banks for me. Banks fail.”She flitted out of the room, followed by Mr Hawthorne, and Ambrose was alone. Now, in a minute, he would have to tell his father. There was the hall-door shutting; there was his step coming back. How should he begin?“Well, my boy,” said the vicar, “how’s the head? Not much better, I’m afraid. You look quite flushed. You’d better go to your mother now; she’s just come in.”He sat down and lifted his pen to go on with a letter. Ambrose got up from the rug and stood irresolute by the door. He tried to say “Father,” but no voice came, and Mr Hawthorne did not look round or ask what he wanted. It made it so much worse that he did not notice or suspect anything.“I can’t do it now,” said Ambrose to himself, “I must tell David first.”Lessons were only just over in the school-room, and he found David putting away his books, while Pennie and Nancy, still with their hats and cloaks on, were talking very fast about all they had seen and done in Nearminster. How happy they looked! They had nothing dreadful on their minds. It made Ambrose all the more anxious to have someone to bear his secret with him, and he went softly up to David and said in a low voice:“I want to speak to you.”“All right!” said David rather unwillingly, for he wanted to hear more about Nearminster and Kettles.“Not here,” whispered Ambrose. “Upstairs—in the museum. It’s very important.”David turned and looked at his brother. Ambrose’s cheeks were scarlet, his eyes had a scared expression, and his hair was sticking up in spikes as if he had been running his hands through it.At these certain signs of excitement David at once concluded that something had happened. He hastily thrust away his last books, and the two boys left the school-room.“Is it a ghost?” he asked as they ran up the flight of stairs leading to the museum.“Much worse,” returned Ambrose. “It’s something real. It’s awful.”The museum looked bare and cold, and rather dusty, as if it had been neglected lately; its deal shelves with their large white labels and wide empty spaces seemed to gape hungrily—a cheerless place altogether, with nothing comfortable or encouraging about it.The boys sat down facing each other on two boxes, and Ambrose at once began his story. Alarming as the news was, he had a faint hope while he was telling it that David might not think it so bad as he did. David always took things calmly, and his matter-of-fact way of looking at them was often a support to Ambrose, whose imagination made him full of fears. So now when he had finished he looked wistfully at his brother and said, in a tone full of awe:“Should you think we really arethieves?”David’s blue eyes got very large and round, but before answering this question he put another: “What can they do to thieves?”“Put them in prison, and make them work hard for ever so long,” replied Ambrose. “They used to hang them,” he added gloomily.“I don’t believe father would let them put us in prison,” said David.“He couldn’t help it,” said Ambrose. “Nobody’s father can. Don’t you remember when Giles Brown stole a silver mug, his father walked ten miles to ask them to let him off, and they wouldn’t?”“Well, but,”—said David, feeling that there was a difference between the two cases—“he stole a thing out of a house, and we didn’t; and his father was a hedger and ditcher, and our father is vicar of Easney.”“That wouldn’t matter,” said Ambrose. “It would depend on Miss Barnicroft. She wouldn’t let us off. She said she couldn’t bear boys. She’d be glad to have us punished.”He rested his chin on his hand and stared forlornly on the ground.“It’s telling father I mind most,” he added presently, “much more than going to prison.”But here David disagreed. He thought it would be dreadful to go to prison.“I suppose,” he said, “we should be shut up in different cells, and only have bread and water. I think the sooner we tell father the better, because he’ll think of some way to help us.”“I shall never be able to begin,” said Ambrose despairingly.“Well, you ought to,” said David, “because you’re older than me, and because you thought of the whole thing, and because I wanted to tell long ago, and because I did say when we found it that it was only an old honey-pot.”Far from being a comfort, every word David spoke seemed to add to the sharpness of Ambrose’s misery, their very truth made them bitter.“It’s no good saying all that now,” he cried impatiently. “Oh, I wish I was in bed and had told father!”After a little consultation it was agreed that this must be done that very evening, directly after the school-room tea, when Mr Hawthorne was generally to be found alone in his study. If he should happen to be engaged, it must be put off till the next day.“I hope he wont be,” said David, as the boys went down-stairs together, “because it will be getting dark, and even if the lamp is lighted it will be much easier than telling it in the daylight.”But Ambrose, in his own heart, could not help a faint hope that their father might be too busy to speak to them that night. Anything to put off the confession. He dreaded it far more than David, partly because he was naturally more timid, and partly because he felt himself chiefly to blame in the whole affair, for David would certainly never have thought of the adventure unless his elder brother had suggested it. During tea-time, therefore, he found it impossible either to join in the conversation or to eat anything with this dreaded interview still before him.Resting his hot cheek on his hand, he looked on with surprise at his brother’s steady appetite, for David, perhaps feeling that this was the last comfortable meal he might enjoy for some time, munched away with his usual zeal, not forgetting to ask for the “burnt side” when his slice of cake was cut. It was hard to realise that all this might be changed on the morrow for a lonely cell, bread and water, and the deepest disgrace! Ambrose’s headache was considered sufficient reason for his silence and want of appetite, and his sisters, finding that they could not even extract any news about Miss Barnicroft’s visit from him, left him undisturbed to his moody misery.Late that afternoon the vicar came in from a long ride to a distant part of his parish, threw himself into his easy-chair, and took up the newspaper for a little rest before dinner. At this hour he was generally secure from interruption, his day’s work was over, the children were safe in the school-room, there was a comfortable half-hour before he need think of going upstairs. He was just rejoicing in the prospect of this repose when a little knock came at his door. It was a very little knock, one of many which Ambrose and David had already made so timidly that they could not be heard at all. With a patient sigh Mr Hawthorne laid his paper across his knees and said, “Come in.”The door opened very slowly and the boys entered, David somewhat in front, holding Ambrose by the hand. Their father saw at once that they had something of importance on their minds, for while Ambrose kept his eyes fixed on the ground, David’s were open to their widest extent with a sort of guilty stare. Neither spoke a word, but marched up to Mr Hawthorne and stood in perfect silence at his elbow.“Well?” said the vicar inquiringly.Ambrose gave a twitch to David’s sleeve, for he had promised to speak first.“We’ve come to say—” began David and then stopped, his eyes getting bigger and rounder, but not moving from his father’s face.“Go on,” said Mr Hawthorne.But David seemed unable to say anything more. He turned to his brother and whispered hoarsely, “You go on now.”Ambrose had gathered a little courage now that the confession had really begun, and he murmured without looking up:“We know where Miss Barnicroft’s money is.”The vicar started. He had in truth forgotten all about Miss Barnicroft and her money, for he had thought it merely one of her own crazy inventions. That Ambrose and David should have anything to do with it seemed impossible, and yet the guilty solemn looks of the two little boys showed that they were in the most serious earnest.“Miss Barnicroft’s money!” he repeated.“It’s in my garden,” continued David, taking his turn to speak, “buried.”Completely bewildered Mr Hawthorne looked from one face to the other.“I don’t know what you’re both talking about,” he said. “Ambrose, you are the elder, try to explain what you mean, and how you and David come to know anything about Miss Barnicroft’s money.”That was not so easy, but at last, by dint of some help from David and many questions from his father, Ambrose halted lamely through the history. He had a feeling that the vicar’s face was getting graver and graver as he went on, but he did not dare to look up, and it was David who asked anxiously when he had finished:“Are we thieves, father? Will she put us in prison?”“Did you remember, Ambrose,” said Mr Hawthorne, “when you asked your brother to go with you to Rumborough Camp, that you and he are strictly forbidden to go so far alone?”“Yes, father,” whispered Ambrose, “but we did so want things for the museum.”“And when you had taken all this trouble to get them, why did you not put the coins into the museum?”“Because,” put in David, “we were afraid the others would ask where we got them. But we didn’t know they belonged to Miss Barnicroft, soarewe thieves, father?”That seemed to David the one important point to be settled. If they were not thieves they would not be sent to prison.“As far as Miss Barnicroft is concerned, you are not thieves,” replied Mr Hawthorne.David gave a sigh of relief.“But—” he continued gravely, “you and Ambrose have stolen something from me of much more value than Miss Barnicroft’s money. Do you know what that is?”The boys were silent.“Listen, and I will try to explain what I mean,” said the vicar; “and I speak more particularly to you, Ambrose, because you are older than David, and he did wrong through your persuasion. When you dug the coins up you did not know that you were taking what belonged to someone else, but you did know very well that you were disobedient in going there at all. That is what was wrong, and by doing that you have destroyed my trust in you. Now, trust in anyone is a most precious thing, more precious a great deal than Miss Barnicroft’s money, and much harder to give back when it is once lost. The money you will return to-morrow; but how are you going to restore my trust? That is not to be done in a moment. Sometimes, after we once lose a person’s trust, we can never give it back at all, and that is very sad, because nothing else in the world makes up for it.”“Sha’n’t you ever trust us any more?” asked David bluntly, with his eyes full of tears.“I hope so,” said his father, “but that must depend on yourselves. You will have to show me that you are worthy of trust.”Crest-fallen and sorrowful, the boys crept out of the study when the interview was over.“I do believe,” said Ambrose, “I would rather have been sent to prison, or have had some very bad punishment.”“It’ll be rather bad, though, to-morrow to have to take it back to Miss Barnicroft, won’t it?” said David. “Do you suppose father will go in with us?”That very evening, in the twilight, the crock with its glittering pieces was unearthed for the second time, but with far less labour than at first.“I’m glad it’s out of my garden anyway,” said David as they went back to the house with it.“I’m not glad of anything,” replied Ambrose despairingly; and indeed he felt that he should never care about pleasure or be happy again until his father had said that he could trust him.Snuff, the terrier, knew quite well the next morning when the boys started with their father that there was something wrong. No smiles, no shouts, no laughter, no throwing of sticks for him to fetch—only two sad and sober little boys marching along by the vicar’s side. The dog tried at first, by dancing round them with short barks and jumps, to excite the dull party into gaiety, but soon finding no response forsook them altogether, and abandoned himself heart and soul to a frantic rabbit hunt. Rumborough Common looked coldly desolate as ever, and as they passed the Camp and saw the very hole where the crock had been buried an idea struck David.“Mightn’t we put it where we got it, and tell her it’s there?” he asked.But the vicar would not hear of this.“You must give it back into Miss Barnicroft’s own hands,” he answered, “and tell her how you came to dig it up. Perhaps Ambrose had better go in alone, and we will wait here in the lane for him.”Arrived at Miss Barnicroft’s gate, Ambrose hung back and cast an imploring glance at his father. He had wished for a “bad punishment;” but it was too dreadful to face all the unknown terrors of Miss Barnicroft’s house alone.“Come, Ambrose,” said Mr Hawthorne encouragingly, “you must take courage. It is never easy to confess our faults, but there is nothing really to fear. It will soon be over.”Ambrose pushed open the gate, and with the crock under his arm crept a few steps towards the cottage door. Then he turned, his face white with fear.“You won’t go away till I come out,” he said. David had been standing by his father’s side, feeling very much relieved that he was not to go in and see Miss Barnicroft. He had still a lingering doubt in his mind that she might wish to send him and his brother to prison. But when Ambrose gave that frightened look back, something made him feel that he must go in too; he left his father without a word, went up to Ambrose, and took hold of his hand.“I’ll go in with you,” he said.How often they had longed to see the inside of this mysterious dwelling, and yet now that the moment had come, how gladly would they have found themselves safely at home in the Vicarage! Pennie and Ambrose had vied with each other in providing strange and weird articles of furniture and ornaments for it; but the reality was almost startlingly different. When, after several knocks, the boys were told to “come in,” they entered a room which was just like that in any other cottage, except that it was barer. There was, indeed, scarcely any furniture at all, no curtain to the window, no pictures on the blank whitewashed walls, and only a very tiny square of carpet on the floor. A common deal table stood in the middle of this, and two deal boxes or packing-cases seemed to serve for seats; on the wide hearth, a fire of sticks was crackling under a kettle which hung over it by a chain, and two dogs which had been asleep, got up and growled at the strangers. There was nothing the least strange in the room, unless it was Miss Barnicroft herself, who, with her head tied up in a white cotton handkerchief, sat on one of the boxes, writing busily in a book. She gazed at her two visitors without knowing them at first, but soon a light came into her eyes.“Ah, the vicar’s little boys, I think?” she said graciously. “Pray sit down.”She waved her hand with the majesty of a queen towards the other box, and the boys, not daring to dispute her least sign, bestowed themselves upon it, as close together as possible, with the fatal little crock squeezed between them. There they sat for a minute in silence staring at Miss Barnicroft, who, with her head bent gently forward and a look of polite inquiry, waited to hear their errand.It was so dreadful to see her sitting there, and to know how her face would change presently, that Ambrose had a wild impulse to run out of the room and leave the crock to tell its own tale. He gave a glance at David, and saw by the way he had placed his hands on his knees, and fixed his eyes immovably on Miss Barnicroft, that he had no intention of either moving or speaking. Ambrose was the elder; it was for him to take the lead. There were times when Ambrose would cheerfully have given up all the rights and privileges belonging to that position, and this was one of them, but he knew that he must make an effort. Father was waiting outside. They could not sit there in silence any longer. He must speak.Seizing the crock, he suddenly rushed up to Miss Barnicroft, held it out, and said huskily:“We’ve come to bring back this!”David now slid off the box and placed himself gravely at his brother’s side. Miss Barnicroft looked from the boys to the crock with a satirical light in her eyes.“And may I ask where you found it?” she said with icy distinctness which seemed to cut the air like a knife.“In Rumborough Camp,” murmured Ambrose.“I knew the thief was in your father’s parish,” said Miss Barnicroft, “and I’m not surprised to find that it’s a boy; but I certainly didn’t suspect the vicar’s own son.”“We didn’t know the money was yours,” broke in David, “and father says we are not thieves.”“At any rate,” returned Miss Barnicroft, fixing him sharply with her cold light eyes, “you knew it wasn’t yours.Iwas always taught that to take what was not mine was stealing.”“We thought it was Roman,” said David, still undaunted, “and they’re all dead.” Then, seeing no reason for staying longer, he added quickly, “Good-bye! father’s waiting for us.”“Oh, really!” said Miss Barnicroft, rising with a short laugh. “Well, you can give him my compliments, and say that I haven’t altered my opinion of boys, and that I advise him to teach you your catechism, particularly your duty towards your neighbour.”As the boys made hurriedly for the doorway, she suddenly called to them in quite a different voice,—“Stay a minute. Won’t you have some ambrosia before you go?”Ambrose had no idea what ambrosia could be, but he at once concluded that it was something poisonous.“No, thank you,” he said, pulling David’s sleeve to make him refuse too.“It’s honey and goat’s milk,” said Miss Barnicroft persuasively; “very delicious. You’d better taste it.”“We’d much rather not, thank you,” said Ambrose with a slight shudder, and in another second he and David had unlatched the door, scudded down the garden like two frightened rabbits, and joined their father.At the Vicarage, all this while, their return had been eagerly looked for by Pennie and Nancy. They had heard the whole adventure of Rumborough Common and the crock of gold with much interest, and although the boys had been wrong to disobey orders, and were now in disgrace, it was impossible not to regard them with sympathy. They had been through so much that was unusual and daring that they were in some sort heroes of romance, and now this was increased by their having penetrated into that abode of mystery, Miss Barnicroft’s cottage.It was somewhat consoling to the boys, after their real alarm and discomfort, to be received in this way at home, and questioned with so much eagerness as to their experiences. Ambrose, indeed, warming to the subject, was inclined to give a very highly-coloured description of what had passed, and would soon have filled Miss Barnicroft’s dwelling with wonderful objects, if he had not been kept in check by David, who always saw things exactly as they were, and had a very good memory.“When we went in,” began Ambrose, “some immense dogs got up and barked furiously.”“Weren’t you frightened?” asked Pennie.“I wasn’t,” replied David, “because there were only two—quite small ones, not bigger than Snuff, and they only growled.”“Miss Barnicroft had got her head all bound up in linen,” pursued Ambrose, “like the picture of Lazarus in the big Bible.”“It was a pocket-handkerchief,” said David. “I saw the mark in one corner.”“What was in the room?” asked Nancy.“Nothing,” said David, “except Miss Barnicroft, and two boxes and a table, and the dogs.”“Oh,David!” broke in Ambrose in a tone of remonstrance; “there was a great cauldron smoking over the fire, a regular witch’s cauldron!”“I don’t know what a cauldron is,” said David; “but there was a black kettle, if you mean that.”“And only think, Pennie,” continued Ambrose; “she offered us something, she calledambrosia. I daresay it was made of toadstools and poisonous herbs picked at night.”“She said it was honey and goat’s milk,” finished David; “but we didn’t taste it.”As long as there remained anything to tell about Miss Barnicroft, Ambrose was quite excited and cheerful; but soon after the adventure had been fully described, he became very quiet, and presently gave a heavy sigh; on being asked by Pennie what was the matter, he confided to her that he never could be happy again, because father had said he was not fit to be trusted.“It doesn’t matter so much about David,” he added mournfully; “but you see I’m so much older. Do you think there’s anything I could do? anything very dangerous and difficult?”“Like Casabianca,” said Pennie, thinking of a poem she was fond of reciting:“The boy stood on the burning deck,Whence all but he had fled.”“Oh, don’t go on,” cried Nancy, “about that stupid boy. He couldn’t have supposed his father wanted him to stop there and be all burnt up. I’m sure he wasn’t fit to be trusted.”“We’re not to have any pocket-money for a month,” continued Ambrose, taking no notice of Nancy; “but I don’t mind that a bit. It’s the other I mind.”Pennie was sorry for her brother; but this last remark turned her thoughts another way. No pocket-money! She glanced ruefully at her china-house. Fate was certainly against Miss Unity’s mandarin. Nancy saw the glance and smiled triumphantly.“There, you see!” she exclaimed. “There’s nobody left to give anything to it, so you’d much better give it up, and begin to collect for Kettles.”In season and out of season she never ceased to impress this on Pennie, and although they did not see Kettles again after meeting her at the College, she soon became quite a familiar acquaintance. The little girls carried on a sort of running chronicle, in which Kettles was the chief character, and was made to do and say various surprising things. Those were mostly suggested by Pennie, for Nancy, though equally interested, would much have preferred a glimpse of the real Kettles herself. She never could secure this, though, whenever she drove into Nearminster, she hung over the waggonette to peer into Anchor and Hope Alley with such earnestness that she nearly toppled over. Once she was somewhat repaid by seeing a ragged man in a long coat and battered hat turn into the alley.“Pennie,” she said, directly she got back, “I do believe I’ve seen Kettles’ father.”All these talks and fancies made Pennie feel weaker and weaker in holding to her own plan.She was tired of standing quite alone, and though her pride was still a little hurt at her failure, she could not help seeing how much more interesting it was to have Nancy’s sympathy and help.So, one day, she took her money out of the china-house, rubbed the label off the door, and restored the box to David. Nancy knew, when she saw that, that Pennie’s support in the matter of shoes and stockings for Kettles was secure.

Not very far from the Roman camp Rumborough Common ended in a rough rutty road, or rather lane, and about half-way down this stood a small white cottage with a thatched roof. It was an ordinary labourer’s cottage with the usual patch of garden, just like scores of others round about; but it possessed a strange and peculiar interest of its own, for it was not an ordinary labourer who lived there, it was Miss Barnicroft, with two dogs and a goat.

Now Miss Barnicroft was not in the least like other people, and the children considered her by far the most interesting object to be seen near Easney, so that they never passed her lonely dwelling without trying to get a glimpse of her, or at least of her animals. They were careful, however, only to take side glances, and to look very grave if they did happen to see her, for they had been taught to regard her with respect, and on no account to smile at anything odd in her appearance or behaviour. “Poor Miss Barnicroft” she was generally called, though Andrew spoke less politely of her as the “daft lady.”

In their walks with Miss Grey it was with a thrill of pleasure that they sometimes saw the well-known flighty figure approaching, for there was always something worth looking at in Miss Barnicroft. Her garments were never twice alike, so that she seemed a fresh person every time. Sometimes she draped herself in flowing black robes, with a veil tied closely over her head and round her face. At others she wore a high-crowned hat decked with gay ribbons, a short skirt, and yellow satin boots. There was endless variety in her array, but however fantastic it might be, she preserved through it all a certain air of dignity and distinction which was most impressive.

Her face, too, was delicate in feature and refined in expression. Her short upper lip had a haughty curl, and her grey eyes flickered uncertainly beneath well-marked brows. Although she was not more than middle-aged her hair was snowy white, and sometimes escaping here and there in stray locks from her head-dress, added to the strangeness of her appearance. Miss Barnicroft was indeed quite unlike other people; her very food was different, for she lived on vegetables and drank goat’s milk. It was even whispered that she did not sleep in a bed, but in a hammock slung up to the ceiling.

Nothing could be more interesting than all this, but the children did not see her very often, for she went out seldom and never came to church. Occasionally, however, she paid a visit to the Vicarage, when she would ask for the vicar and carry on a very long conversation with him on all manner of subjects, darting from one to the other with most confusing speed. Mr Hawthorne did not appreciate these visits very much, but the children were always pleasantly excited by them. When, therefore, Nancy caught sight of Miss Barnicroft proceeding up the drive she abruptly left the subject of Kettles’ boots and stockings, and lost no time in pointing out the visitor to her mother.

“I expect Miss Barnicroft wants to see your father,” said Mrs Hawthorne.

And so indeed it proved, for by the time they reached the door Miss Barnicroft had been shown into the study, and to their great disappointment the girls saw her no more.

Ambrose, however, was more fortunate, for it chanced that afternoon that he had been excused some of his lessons on account of a headache, and at that very moment was lying flat on the hearth-rug in his father’s study with a book. He was afraid, on the visitor’s entrance, that he would be sent away, but was soon relieved to find that no notice was taken of him, so that he was able to see and hear all that passed. What a lucky chance! and what a lot he would have to tell the others!

At first the conversation was not interesting, for it was about some question of taxation which he did not understand; but suddenly dropping this, Miss Barnicroft began to tell a story of some white owls who lived in the keep of a castle in Scotland. Just as the point of this history was reached she dropped that too, and asked, casting a lofty and careless glance down at Ambrose:

“Is that one of your children?”

“That is my eldest boy,” said the vicar. “Come and speak to Miss Barnicroft, Ambrose.”

“Ah!” said Miss Barnicroft with a coldly disapproving look as Ambrose shyly advanced, “I don’t like boys.”

“How is that?” asked Mr Hawthorne.

“They grow to be men,” she answered with a shudder, “and even while they are young there is no barbarity of which they are not capable. I could believe anything of a boy.”

“Dear me!” said the vicar, smiling, “that is very severe; I hope all boys are not so bad as that!”

“It is greatly, I believe, owing to the unnatural manner in which they are fed,” she continued, turning away from Ambrose. “Most wickedness comes from eating meat. Violence, and cruelty, and bloodthirstiness would vanish if men lived on fruit and vegetables.”

“Do you think so?” said the vicar mildly; “but women are not as a rule cruel and bloodthirsty, and they eat meat too.”

“Women are naturally better than men, and it does not do them so much harm; but they would be still better without it. It makes them selfish and gross,” said Miss Barnicroft.

Mr Hawthorne never encouraged his visitor to argue long on this subject, which somehow crept into all her conversations, however far-away from it they might begin. So he merely bowed his head in silence.

Miss Barnicroft rose with an air of having settled the question, but suddenly sat down again and said with a short laugh:

“By the way, you have thieves in your parish.”

“Really! I hope not,” said the vicar.

Ambrose, who had retired to his former position on the rug, began to listen intently. This sounded interesting.

“A month ago,” she continued, “I put away some gold pieces for which I had no use, and they have been stolen.”

“Did you lock them up?” asked Mr Hawthorne.

“I did a safer thing than that,” said Miss Barnicroft, laughing contemptuously; “I buried them.”

“In your garden?”

“No. I put them into a honey-jar and buried it in what, I believe, is called the Roman Camp, not far from my house.”

The words, spoken in Miss Barnicroft’s clear cold tones, fell icily on Ambrose’s ear, and seemed to turn him to stone. He and David were thieves! It was no antique vessel they had discovered, but a common honey-pot; no Roman coins, but Miss Barnicroft’s money. If only he had done as David wished, and told his father long ago!

He clasped his hands closely over his scarlet face and listened for the vicar’s answer.

“I don’t think you chose a very safe place to hide your money,” he said. “Gypsies and pedlars and tramps are constantly passing over Rumborough Common. Someone probably saw you bury it there.”

“I am more inclined to think that it was stolen by someone in the parish,” said Miss Barnicroft. “They were French napoleons,” she added.

“Then you see they would be of no use to anyone living here, for they could not change them. They were more likely to be dug up by some of the gypsy people who so often camp about there, and are now far enough from Easney.”

It was truly dreadful to Ambrose to hear his father talk in that calm soothing tone, and to imagine how he would feel if he knew that his own son Ambrose had taken Miss Barnicroft’s money, and that the hateful little crock of gold was at that very moment lying quite near him in David’s garden. His heart beat so fast that the sound of it seemed to fill the room. Would Miss Barnicroft never go away? He longed and yet dreaded to hear her say good-bye; for after that only one course was before him—confession.

But she remained some time longer, for she was not at all satisfied to have the matter treated so quietly. She tried to impress upon Mr Hawthorne that it was his duty to make a thorough inquiry amongst his people, for she felt certain, she said with an air of conviction which made Ambrose tremble, that her money was somewhere in Easney.

“I should advise you in future, Miss Barnicroft,” said the vicar when she at last took her departure, “to bring me anything you wish taken care of—it would be safer here than burying it. And there’s the bank, you know, in Nearminster. I should be glad to take any money there for you at any time.”

“You are very kind,” she answered with an airy toss of the feathers and ribbons on her head, “but no banks for me. Banks fail.”

She flitted out of the room, followed by Mr Hawthorne, and Ambrose was alone. Now, in a minute, he would have to tell his father. There was the hall-door shutting; there was his step coming back. How should he begin?

“Well, my boy,” said the vicar, “how’s the head? Not much better, I’m afraid. You look quite flushed. You’d better go to your mother now; she’s just come in.”

He sat down and lifted his pen to go on with a letter. Ambrose got up from the rug and stood irresolute by the door. He tried to say “Father,” but no voice came, and Mr Hawthorne did not look round or ask what he wanted. It made it so much worse that he did not notice or suspect anything.

“I can’t do it now,” said Ambrose to himself, “I must tell David first.”

Lessons were only just over in the school-room, and he found David putting away his books, while Pennie and Nancy, still with their hats and cloaks on, were talking very fast about all they had seen and done in Nearminster. How happy they looked! They had nothing dreadful on their minds. It made Ambrose all the more anxious to have someone to bear his secret with him, and he went softly up to David and said in a low voice:

“I want to speak to you.”

“All right!” said David rather unwillingly, for he wanted to hear more about Nearminster and Kettles.

“Not here,” whispered Ambrose. “Upstairs—in the museum. It’s very important.”

David turned and looked at his brother. Ambrose’s cheeks were scarlet, his eyes had a scared expression, and his hair was sticking up in spikes as if he had been running his hands through it.

At these certain signs of excitement David at once concluded that something had happened. He hastily thrust away his last books, and the two boys left the school-room.

“Is it a ghost?” he asked as they ran up the flight of stairs leading to the museum.

“Much worse,” returned Ambrose. “It’s something real. It’s awful.”

The museum looked bare and cold, and rather dusty, as if it had been neglected lately; its deal shelves with their large white labels and wide empty spaces seemed to gape hungrily—a cheerless place altogether, with nothing comfortable or encouraging about it.

The boys sat down facing each other on two boxes, and Ambrose at once began his story. Alarming as the news was, he had a faint hope while he was telling it that David might not think it so bad as he did. David always took things calmly, and his matter-of-fact way of looking at them was often a support to Ambrose, whose imagination made him full of fears. So now when he had finished he looked wistfully at his brother and said, in a tone full of awe:

“Should you think we really arethieves?”

David’s blue eyes got very large and round, but before answering this question he put another: “What can they do to thieves?”

“Put them in prison, and make them work hard for ever so long,” replied Ambrose. “They used to hang them,” he added gloomily.

“I don’t believe father would let them put us in prison,” said David.

“He couldn’t help it,” said Ambrose. “Nobody’s father can. Don’t you remember when Giles Brown stole a silver mug, his father walked ten miles to ask them to let him off, and they wouldn’t?”

“Well, but,”—said David, feeling that there was a difference between the two cases—“he stole a thing out of a house, and we didn’t; and his father was a hedger and ditcher, and our father is vicar of Easney.”

“That wouldn’t matter,” said Ambrose. “It would depend on Miss Barnicroft. She wouldn’t let us off. She said she couldn’t bear boys. She’d be glad to have us punished.”

He rested his chin on his hand and stared forlornly on the ground.

“It’s telling father I mind most,” he added presently, “much more than going to prison.”

But here David disagreed. He thought it would be dreadful to go to prison.

“I suppose,” he said, “we should be shut up in different cells, and only have bread and water. I think the sooner we tell father the better, because he’ll think of some way to help us.”

“I shall never be able to begin,” said Ambrose despairingly.

“Well, you ought to,” said David, “because you’re older than me, and because you thought of the whole thing, and because I wanted to tell long ago, and because I did say when we found it that it was only an old honey-pot.”

Far from being a comfort, every word David spoke seemed to add to the sharpness of Ambrose’s misery, their very truth made them bitter.

“It’s no good saying all that now,” he cried impatiently. “Oh, I wish I was in bed and had told father!”

After a little consultation it was agreed that this must be done that very evening, directly after the school-room tea, when Mr Hawthorne was generally to be found alone in his study. If he should happen to be engaged, it must be put off till the next day.

“I hope he wont be,” said David, as the boys went down-stairs together, “because it will be getting dark, and even if the lamp is lighted it will be much easier than telling it in the daylight.”

But Ambrose, in his own heart, could not help a faint hope that their father might be too busy to speak to them that night. Anything to put off the confession. He dreaded it far more than David, partly because he was naturally more timid, and partly because he felt himself chiefly to blame in the whole affair, for David would certainly never have thought of the adventure unless his elder brother had suggested it. During tea-time, therefore, he found it impossible either to join in the conversation or to eat anything with this dreaded interview still before him.

Resting his hot cheek on his hand, he looked on with surprise at his brother’s steady appetite, for David, perhaps feeling that this was the last comfortable meal he might enjoy for some time, munched away with his usual zeal, not forgetting to ask for the “burnt side” when his slice of cake was cut. It was hard to realise that all this might be changed on the morrow for a lonely cell, bread and water, and the deepest disgrace! Ambrose’s headache was considered sufficient reason for his silence and want of appetite, and his sisters, finding that they could not even extract any news about Miss Barnicroft’s visit from him, left him undisturbed to his moody misery.

Late that afternoon the vicar came in from a long ride to a distant part of his parish, threw himself into his easy-chair, and took up the newspaper for a little rest before dinner. At this hour he was generally secure from interruption, his day’s work was over, the children were safe in the school-room, there was a comfortable half-hour before he need think of going upstairs. He was just rejoicing in the prospect of this repose when a little knock came at his door. It was a very little knock, one of many which Ambrose and David had already made so timidly that they could not be heard at all. With a patient sigh Mr Hawthorne laid his paper across his knees and said, “Come in.”

The door opened very slowly and the boys entered, David somewhat in front, holding Ambrose by the hand. Their father saw at once that they had something of importance on their minds, for while Ambrose kept his eyes fixed on the ground, David’s were open to their widest extent with a sort of guilty stare. Neither spoke a word, but marched up to Mr Hawthorne and stood in perfect silence at his elbow.

“Well?” said the vicar inquiringly.

Ambrose gave a twitch to David’s sleeve, for he had promised to speak first.

“We’ve come to say—” began David and then stopped, his eyes getting bigger and rounder, but not moving from his father’s face.

“Go on,” said Mr Hawthorne.

But David seemed unable to say anything more. He turned to his brother and whispered hoarsely, “You go on now.”

Ambrose had gathered a little courage now that the confession had really begun, and he murmured without looking up:

“We know where Miss Barnicroft’s money is.”

The vicar started. He had in truth forgotten all about Miss Barnicroft and her money, for he had thought it merely one of her own crazy inventions. That Ambrose and David should have anything to do with it seemed impossible, and yet the guilty solemn looks of the two little boys showed that they were in the most serious earnest.

“Miss Barnicroft’s money!” he repeated.

“It’s in my garden,” continued David, taking his turn to speak, “buried.”

Completely bewildered Mr Hawthorne looked from one face to the other.

“I don’t know what you’re both talking about,” he said. “Ambrose, you are the elder, try to explain what you mean, and how you and David come to know anything about Miss Barnicroft’s money.”

That was not so easy, but at last, by dint of some help from David and many questions from his father, Ambrose halted lamely through the history. He had a feeling that the vicar’s face was getting graver and graver as he went on, but he did not dare to look up, and it was David who asked anxiously when he had finished:

“Are we thieves, father? Will she put us in prison?”

“Did you remember, Ambrose,” said Mr Hawthorne, “when you asked your brother to go with you to Rumborough Camp, that you and he are strictly forbidden to go so far alone?”

“Yes, father,” whispered Ambrose, “but we did so want things for the museum.”

“And when you had taken all this trouble to get them, why did you not put the coins into the museum?”

“Because,” put in David, “we were afraid the others would ask where we got them. But we didn’t know they belonged to Miss Barnicroft, soarewe thieves, father?”

That seemed to David the one important point to be settled. If they were not thieves they would not be sent to prison.

“As far as Miss Barnicroft is concerned, you are not thieves,” replied Mr Hawthorne.

David gave a sigh of relief.

“But—” he continued gravely, “you and Ambrose have stolen something from me of much more value than Miss Barnicroft’s money. Do you know what that is?”

The boys were silent.

“Listen, and I will try to explain what I mean,” said the vicar; “and I speak more particularly to you, Ambrose, because you are older than David, and he did wrong through your persuasion. When you dug the coins up you did not know that you were taking what belonged to someone else, but you did know very well that you were disobedient in going there at all. That is what was wrong, and by doing that you have destroyed my trust in you. Now, trust in anyone is a most precious thing, more precious a great deal than Miss Barnicroft’s money, and much harder to give back when it is once lost. The money you will return to-morrow; but how are you going to restore my trust? That is not to be done in a moment. Sometimes, after we once lose a person’s trust, we can never give it back at all, and that is very sad, because nothing else in the world makes up for it.”

“Sha’n’t you ever trust us any more?” asked David bluntly, with his eyes full of tears.

“I hope so,” said his father, “but that must depend on yourselves. You will have to show me that you are worthy of trust.”

Crest-fallen and sorrowful, the boys crept out of the study when the interview was over.

“I do believe,” said Ambrose, “I would rather have been sent to prison, or have had some very bad punishment.”

“It’ll be rather bad, though, to-morrow to have to take it back to Miss Barnicroft, won’t it?” said David. “Do you suppose father will go in with us?”

That very evening, in the twilight, the crock with its glittering pieces was unearthed for the second time, but with far less labour than at first.

“I’m glad it’s out of my garden anyway,” said David as they went back to the house with it.

“I’m not glad of anything,” replied Ambrose despairingly; and indeed he felt that he should never care about pleasure or be happy again until his father had said that he could trust him.

Snuff, the terrier, knew quite well the next morning when the boys started with their father that there was something wrong. No smiles, no shouts, no laughter, no throwing of sticks for him to fetch—only two sad and sober little boys marching along by the vicar’s side. The dog tried at first, by dancing round them with short barks and jumps, to excite the dull party into gaiety, but soon finding no response forsook them altogether, and abandoned himself heart and soul to a frantic rabbit hunt. Rumborough Common looked coldly desolate as ever, and as they passed the Camp and saw the very hole where the crock had been buried an idea struck David.

“Mightn’t we put it where we got it, and tell her it’s there?” he asked.

But the vicar would not hear of this.

“You must give it back into Miss Barnicroft’s own hands,” he answered, “and tell her how you came to dig it up. Perhaps Ambrose had better go in alone, and we will wait here in the lane for him.”

Arrived at Miss Barnicroft’s gate, Ambrose hung back and cast an imploring glance at his father. He had wished for a “bad punishment;” but it was too dreadful to face all the unknown terrors of Miss Barnicroft’s house alone.

“Come, Ambrose,” said Mr Hawthorne encouragingly, “you must take courage. It is never easy to confess our faults, but there is nothing really to fear. It will soon be over.”

Ambrose pushed open the gate, and with the crock under his arm crept a few steps towards the cottage door. Then he turned, his face white with fear.

“You won’t go away till I come out,” he said. David had been standing by his father’s side, feeling very much relieved that he was not to go in and see Miss Barnicroft. He had still a lingering doubt in his mind that she might wish to send him and his brother to prison. But when Ambrose gave that frightened look back, something made him feel that he must go in too; he left his father without a word, went up to Ambrose, and took hold of his hand.

“I’ll go in with you,” he said.

How often they had longed to see the inside of this mysterious dwelling, and yet now that the moment had come, how gladly would they have found themselves safely at home in the Vicarage! Pennie and Ambrose had vied with each other in providing strange and weird articles of furniture and ornaments for it; but the reality was almost startlingly different. When, after several knocks, the boys were told to “come in,” they entered a room which was just like that in any other cottage, except that it was barer. There was, indeed, scarcely any furniture at all, no curtain to the window, no pictures on the blank whitewashed walls, and only a very tiny square of carpet on the floor. A common deal table stood in the middle of this, and two deal boxes or packing-cases seemed to serve for seats; on the wide hearth, a fire of sticks was crackling under a kettle which hung over it by a chain, and two dogs which had been asleep, got up and growled at the strangers. There was nothing the least strange in the room, unless it was Miss Barnicroft herself, who, with her head tied up in a white cotton handkerchief, sat on one of the boxes, writing busily in a book. She gazed at her two visitors without knowing them at first, but soon a light came into her eyes.

“Ah, the vicar’s little boys, I think?” she said graciously. “Pray sit down.”

She waved her hand with the majesty of a queen towards the other box, and the boys, not daring to dispute her least sign, bestowed themselves upon it, as close together as possible, with the fatal little crock squeezed between them. There they sat for a minute in silence staring at Miss Barnicroft, who, with her head bent gently forward and a look of polite inquiry, waited to hear their errand.

It was so dreadful to see her sitting there, and to know how her face would change presently, that Ambrose had a wild impulse to run out of the room and leave the crock to tell its own tale. He gave a glance at David, and saw by the way he had placed his hands on his knees, and fixed his eyes immovably on Miss Barnicroft, that he had no intention of either moving or speaking. Ambrose was the elder; it was for him to take the lead. There were times when Ambrose would cheerfully have given up all the rights and privileges belonging to that position, and this was one of them, but he knew that he must make an effort. Father was waiting outside. They could not sit there in silence any longer. He must speak.

Seizing the crock, he suddenly rushed up to Miss Barnicroft, held it out, and said huskily:

“We’ve come to bring back this!”

David now slid off the box and placed himself gravely at his brother’s side. Miss Barnicroft looked from the boys to the crock with a satirical light in her eyes.

“And may I ask where you found it?” she said with icy distinctness which seemed to cut the air like a knife.

“In Rumborough Camp,” murmured Ambrose.

“I knew the thief was in your father’s parish,” said Miss Barnicroft, “and I’m not surprised to find that it’s a boy; but I certainly didn’t suspect the vicar’s own son.”

“We didn’t know the money was yours,” broke in David, “and father says we are not thieves.”

“At any rate,” returned Miss Barnicroft, fixing him sharply with her cold light eyes, “you knew it wasn’t yours.Iwas always taught that to take what was not mine was stealing.”

“We thought it was Roman,” said David, still undaunted, “and they’re all dead.” Then, seeing no reason for staying longer, he added quickly, “Good-bye! father’s waiting for us.”

“Oh, really!” said Miss Barnicroft, rising with a short laugh. “Well, you can give him my compliments, and say that I haven’t altered my opinion of boys, and that I advise him to teach you your catechism, particularly your duty towards your neighbour.”

As the boys made hurriedly for the doorway, she suddenly called to them in quite a different voice,—“Stay a minute. Won’t you have some ambrosia before you go?”

Ambrose had no idea what ambrosia could be, but he at once concluded that it was something poisonous.

“No, thank you,” he said, pulling David’s sleeve to make him refuse too.

“It’s honey and goat’s milk,” said Miss Barnicroft persuasively; “very delicious. You’d better taste it.”

“We’d much rather not, thank you,” said Ambrose with a slight shudder, and in another second he and David had unlatched the door, scudded down the garden like two frightened rabbits, and joined their father.

At the Vicarage, all this while, their return had been eagerly looked for by Pennie and Nancy. They had heard the whole adventure of Rumborough Common and the crock of gold with much interest, and although the boys had been wrong to disobey orders, and were now in disgrace, it was impossible not to regard them with sympathy. They had been through so much that was unusual and daring that they were in some sort heroes of romance, and now this was increased by their having penetrated into that abode of mystery, Miss Barnicroft’s cottage.

It was somewhat consoling to the boys, after their real alarm and discomfort, to be received in this way at home, and questioned with so much eagerness as to their experiences. Ambrose, indeed, warming to the subject, was inclined to give a very highly-coloured description of what had passed, and would soon have filled Miss Barnicroft’s dwelling with wonderful objects, if he had not been kept in check by David, who always saw things exactly as they were, and had a very good memory.

“When we went in,” began Ambrose, “some immense dogs got up and barked furiously.”

“Weren’t you frightened?” asked Pennie.

“I wasn’t,” replied David, “because there were only two—quite small ones, not bigger than Snuff, and they only growled.”

“Miss Barnicroft had got her head all bound up in linen,” pursued Ambrose, “like the picture of Lazarus in the big Bible.”

“It was a pocket-handkerchief,” said David. “I saw the mark in one corner.”

“What was in the room?” asked Nancy.

“Nothing,” said David, “except Miss Barnicroft, and two boxes and a table, and the dogs.”

“Oh,David!” broke in Ambrose in a tone of remonstrance; “there was a great cauldron smoking over the fire, a regular witch’s cauldron!”

“I don’t know what a cauldron is,” said David; “but there was a black kettle, if you mean that.”

“And only think, Pennie,” continued Ambrose; “she offered us something, she calledambrosia. I daresay it was made of toadstools and poisonous herbs picked at night.”

“She said it was honey and goat’s milk,” finished David; “but we didn’t taste it.”

As long as there remained anything to tell about Miss Barnicroft, Ambrose was quite excited and cheerful; but soon after the adventure had been fully described, he became very quiet, and presently gave a heavy sigh; on being asked by Pennie what was the matter, he confided to her that he never could be happy again, because father had said he was not fit to be trusted.

“It doesn’t matter so much about David,” he added mournfully; “but you see I’m so much older. Do you think there’s anything I could do? anything very dangerous and difficult?”

“Like Casabianca,” said Pennie, thinking of a poem she was fond of reciting:

“The boy stood on the burning deck,Whence all but he had fled.”

“The boy stood on the burning deck,Whence all but he had fled.”

“Oh, don’t go on,” cried Nancy, “about that stupid boy. He couldn’t have supposed his father wanted him to stop there and be all burnt up. I’m sure he wasn’t fit to be trusted.”

“We’re not to have any pocket-money for a month,” continued Ambrose, taking no notice of Nancy; “but I don’t mind that a bit. It’s the other I mind.”

Pennie was sorry for her brother; but this last remark turned her thoughts another way. No pocket-money! She glanced ruefully at her china-house. Fate was certainly against Miss Unity’s mandarin. Nancy saw the glance and smiled triumphantly.

“There, you see!” she exclaimed. “There’s nobody left to give anything to it, so you’d much better give it up, and begin to collect for Kettles.”

In season and out of season she never ceased to impress this on Pennie, and although they did not see Kettles again after meeting her at the College, she soon became quite a familiar acquaintance. The little girls carried on a sort of running chronicle, in which Kettles was the chief character, and was made to do and say various surprising things. Those were mostly suggested by Pennie, for Nancy, though equally interested, would much have preferred a glimpse of the real Kettles herself. She never could secure this, though, whenever she drove into Nearminster, she hung over the waggonette to peer into Anchor and Hope Alley with such earnestness that she nearly toppled over. Once she was somewhat repaid by seeing a ragged man in a long coat and battered hat turn into the alley.

“Pennie,” she said, directly she got back, “I do believe I’ve seen Kettles’ father.”

All these talks and fancies made Pennie feel weaker and weaker in holding to her own plan.

She was tired of standing quite alone, and though her pride was still a little hurt at her failure, she could not help seeing how much more interesting it was to have Nancy’s sympathy and help.

So, one day, she took her money out of the china-house, rubbed the label off the door, and restored the box to David. Nancy knew, when she saw that, that Pennie’s support in the matter of shoes and stockings for Kettles was secure.

Chapter Six.“Dancing.”The even course of Miss Unity’s life in her dark old house at Nearminster had been somewhat ruffled lately. A troublesome question, which she could neither dismiss nor answer, presented itself so continually before her that her peace of mind was quite destroyed. It was always there. It sat with her at her wool-work, so that she used the wrong shades of green; it made her absent while she dusted the china, so that she nearly dropped her most valuable pieces; and more than once it got mixed up with her marketing, and made her buy what she did not want, to Betty’s great surprise.Every morning when she woke it was ready for her, and this was the form of it:“Am I doing my duty to my god-daughter, Penelope Hawthorne?”Miss Unity’s conscience pricked her. There were, in truth, several things she considered important which she did not approve of in Pennie; and yet, being a timid lady as well as a conscientious one, she had always shrunk from interference.“Mary ought to know best,” she argued with herself in reply to the obstinate question; “she is the child’s mother. I shall offend her if I say anything. But then, again, as godmother, I have some responsibility too; and if I see plainly that Penelope pokes over her books and writing too much, and is getting high-shouldered, and comes into the room awkwardly, and does not hold herself upright, I ought to speak. I owe it to the child. I ought not to consult my own comfort. How I should have to reproach myself if she were to grow up untidy, rough-haired, inky, the sort of woman who thinks of nothing but scribbling. And I see signs of it. She might even come to write books! What she wants is a refining influence—the companionship of some nice, lady-like girls, like the Merridews, instead of romping about so much with her brothers and Nancy, who is quite as bad as a boy. But how to make Mary see it!”Miss Unity sighed heavily when she came to this point. She felt that Pennie’s future was in some measure in her hands, and it was a very serious burden. One afternoon, feeling it impossible either to forget the subject or to find any answer to it, she put away her work and went to call upon the dean’s wife, Mrs Merridew. If anything could change the current of her thoughts it would be a visit to the deanery, which she considered both a pleasure and a privilege. Everything there pleased her sense of fitness and decorum, from the gravity of the servants to the majestic, ponderous furniture of the rooms, and she thought all the arrangements admirable. It is true that she did not understand Dr Merridew’s portly jokes, and was rather afraid of his wife, but her approval of their five daughters was unbounded. They were models of correct behaviour—her very ideal of what young people should be in every respect. If only, she secretly sighed, Mary’s girls were more like them!The Merridews, Miss Unity was accustomed to say, were quite the “nicest” people in Nearminster, and she sincerely thought that she enjoyed their society immensely. It was, however, quite a different enjoyment to that which attended a cup of tea with old Miss Spokes, the greatest gossip in the town, and was slightly mingled with awe.On this occasion Miss Unity was singularly favoured by fortune, although she had not gone to the deanery with any idea of finding help in her perplexity, for before she had been there five minutes the conversation took a most lucky turn. Mrs Merridew had been so much concerned lately, she said, about her dear Ethel’s right shoulder. It was certainly growing out; and, indeed the four younger girls would all be much better for some dancing and drilling lessons. There was nothing she so much disliked as an awkward carriage. She was sure Miss Unity would agree with her that it was important for girls to hold themselves properly. Miss Unity, with Pennie in her mind, assented earnestly, and added that she believed Miss Cannon had a class for dancing at her school in the town.“Oh yes, I know!” replied Mrs Merridew; “and I hear she has a very good master, Monsieur Deville; but I don’t quite fancy the children going there—all the townspeople, you know. I don’t think the dean would quite like it.”“Oh no! to be sure not,” murmured Miss Unity.“No, it’s not quite what one would wish,” continued Mrs Merridew; “but I’ve been wondering if I could get up a nice little class here!—just a dozen or so of children among my own friends, and have Monsieur Deville to teach them. You see he comes down to Miss Cannon every week, so there would be no difficulty about his coming on here.”Miss Unity could hardly believe her ears, for, of course, the next step on Mrs Merridew’s part was to wonder if Mrs Hawthorne would let her children join the class. Could anything be more fortunate, not only because of Pennie’s deportment, but because it would give her a chance of improving her acquaintance with the dean’s daughters. It was the very thing of all others to be wished.Quite stirred and excited out of her usual retirement, Miss Unity offered to lay the matter before Mrs Hawthorne in the course of a few days, when she was going to stay at Easney. She felt sure, she said, that it could be arranged; and she finally took her leave, feeling that she had at last accomplished some part of her duty towards her god-daughter, and much happier in her mind. This lasted until she reached her own door-step, and then she began to shrink from what she had undertaken to do. She had the deepest distrust of her own powers of persuasion, and as she thought of it, it seemed very unlikely to her that she should succeed in placing the subject in its proper light before Mrs Hawthorne. Never in her whole life had she ventured or wished to advise other people, or to see what was best for them. It was a bold step. “I shall say the wrong thing and offend Mary, or set her against it in some way,” she said to herself. “It would have been better to leave it in Mrs Merridew’s hands.”She troubled herself with this during the days that remained before her visit to Easney, and grew more anxious and desponding as time went on. If the welfare of Pennie’s whole life had depended on her joining the dancing-class, poor Miss Unity could scarcely have made it of more importance.It was, therefore, in a very wrought-up state that she arrived at the vicarage, determined to speak to Mrs Hawthorne that very same day, for until it was over she felt she should not have a moment’s comfort. She had brooded over it so constantly, and held so many imaginary conversations about it, that she had become highly nervous, and was odder in manner and more abrupt in speech than ever. As she sat at tea with Mrs Hawthorne, she answered all her inquiries about Nearminster strangely at random, for she was saying to herself over and over again, “It is my duty; I must do it.”Suddenly the door was flung wide open, and Pennie threw herself hastily into the room.“Oh mother!” she cried, “will you lend me your india-rubber?”Miss Unity set down her tea-cup with a nervous clatter as her god-daughter advanced to greet her. Yes, Pennie certainly poked out her chin and shrugged up one shoulder. She had none of the easy grace which adorned the Merridews. All her movements were abrupt. Worst of all, on the middle finger of the hand she held out was a large black stain of ink.“MydearPennie,” said her mother significantly as she noticed this.“Yes, I know, mother,” said Pennie immediately doubling down the offending finger, “I can’t get it off. I’ve tried everything. You see I’ve been writing up the magazine, and there’s such a lot of it, because the others always forget.”“Then I think I should do without their contributions,” said Mrs Hawthorne.“Oh, mother!” exclaimed Pennie reproachfully, “there’d be hardly anything in it. It’s a very good one this month,” she added, turning to Miss Unity. “David’s sent quite a long thing on ‘The Habits of the Pig,’ and Ambrose has written an ‘Ode to Spring.’”“Then why,” inquired Miss Unity, “have you so much writing to do?”“Well, you see I’m the editor,” explained Pennie, “and all the things have to be copied into the magazine in printing hand by the first of the month. So when the others forget, I do it all.”“How fast Pennie grows!” began Miss Unity hurriedly as the door closed behind her god-daughter. “You don’t think so much writing makes her stoop too much?”“Oh, no!” replied Mrs Hawthorne lightly; “it’s a great amusement to her, and she gets plenty of exercise.”“Because,” continued Miss Unity, speaking so fast that she was almost unintelligible, “if you thought so—I thought—that is, Mrs Merridew thought—you might like her to join a dancing-class at the deanery.”She paused, frightened at her own boldness. She had meant to approach the subject in the most delicate and gradual manner, and now she had rushed into the very thick of it at once.Mrs Hawthorne looked puzzled; she frowned a little.“I do not understand,” she said, “what Mrs Merridew can have to do with Pennie’s writing too much.”“Oh nothing, nothing in the world!” hastily replied Miss Unity; “of course not. I have always said it’s for you to judge—but I said I would ask you to let the children join. Mr Deville’s going to teach them. The Merridews are nice girls, don’t you think?” she added wistfully, for she saw no answering approval on Mrs Hawthorne’s face. “I knew I should offend Mary,” she said to herself.Even when the arrangement with all its advantages was fully explained, Mrs Hawthorne did not seem at all eager about it. She had once thought, she said, of sending the children to Miss Cannon’s class, but the distance was the difficulty, and that would remain in this case.Then Miss Unity made her last effort.“As to that,” she said breathlessly, “I thought of asking you to allow me to give Pennie some lessons, and I should be pleased for her to sleep at my house after the class every week, if you had no objection.”But Mrs Hawthorne still hesitated. It was most kind of Miss Unity, but she feared it would trouble her to have Pennie so often; yet she did not like to refuse such a very kind offer, and no doubt the lessons would be good for the child. Finally, after a great many pros and cons, it was settled that the vicar’s opinion should be asked, and then Miss Unity knew that Mary had decided the matter in her own mind. Her offer was to be accepted. So she had done her best for her god-daughter, and if it were not successful her conscience would at least be at rest.Perhaps no one realised what an effort it had been to her, and what real self-sacrifice such an offer involved. She was fond of Pennie, but to have the regularity of her household disturbed by the presence of a child every week—the bustle of arrival and departure, the risk of broken china, the possible upsetting of Betty’s temper; all this was torture to look forward to, and when she went to bed she felt that she was paying dearly for a quiet conscience.But if it was a trial to Miss Unity it was none the less so to Pennie, who looked upon herself as a sort of victim chosen out of the family to be sacrificed. She was to go alone to the deanery without Nancy, and learn to dance with the Merridews, who were almost strangers to her. It was a most dreadful idea. Quite enough to spoil Nearminster, or the most pleasant place on earth. However, mother said so, and it must be done; but from the moment she heard of it Pennie did not cease to groan and lament.“I don’t even know their names,” she began one night, after she and Nancy were tucked up side by side in bed.“Why, you know there’s one called Ethel,” replied Nancy, “because whenever Mrs Merridew comes here she asks how old you are, and says, ‘Just the age of my Ethel!’”“I don’t think I like the look of any of them much,” continued Pennie mournfully, “and—oh, Nancy, I do hope I sha’n’t see the dean!”“Why?” asked Nancy. “I don’t mind him a bit.”“He never makes jokes at you,” said Pennie, “so of course you don’t mind him; but whenever I meet him with father I know just what he’ll say. ‘This is Miss Penelope, isn’t it? and where’s Ulysses?’ and then he laughs. I can’t laugh, because I don’t know what he means, and I do feel so silly. Suppose he comes and says it before all the others!”“I don’t see that it matters if he does,” replied Nancy. “You needn’t take any notice. It’s the dean who’s silly, not you.”“It’s all very well for you,” said Pennie with an impatient kick at the bed-clothes; “you’re not going. Oh! how I wish you were! It wouldn’t be half so bad.”“I should hate it,” said Nancy decidedly; “but,” she added, with an attempt at comfort, “there’ll be some things you like after all. There’ll be the Cathedral and the College, and old Nurse, and oh! Pennie, have you thought what a chance it’ll be to hear more about Kettles?”But Pennie was too cast-down to take a cheerful view of anything.“I don’t suppose I shall hear anything about her,” she said. “How should I?”“Perhaps you’ll see her at the College again,” said Nancy, “or perhaps Miss Unity will know about her, or perhaps the dean goes to see her father and mother.”“That I’m sure he doesn’t,” said Pennie with conviction. “Why, I don’t suppose he even knows where Anchoranopally is.”“Father goes to see all the people in Easney,” said Nancy, “so why shouldn’t Dr Merridew go to see Kettles?”“I don’t know why he shouldn’t,” said Pennie, “but I’m quite sure he doesn’t. At any rate I’m not going to ask him anything. I hope I sha’n’t see him at all. Oh, why should people learn dancing? What good can it be?”Nancy’s muttered reply showed that she was very nearly asleep, so for that night there was no further conversation about Pennie’s dancing, but it was by no means altogether given up. On the contrary it was a very favourite topic with all the children, for it seemed to have added to their eldest sister’s dignity to be singled out as the only one to join the class at Nearminster.“Why isn’t Nancy to go too?” asked Ambrose one afternoon as he carefully put the last touches to a picture he was drawing for Dickie; it was a fancy portrait of Pennie learning to dance, with her dress held out very wide, and an immense toe pointed in the air. The children were all in the school-room engaged in various ways, for it was a wet afternoon; even Dickie, having grown tired of the nursery, had insisted on coming down until tea-time,—and now stood on tiptoe by Ambrose, watching the progress of the picture with breathless interest.Pennie looked up from her writing at her brother’s question.“Because Miss Unity only asked me,” she answered with a sort of groan.“Is she fondest of you?” asked David from the background. He had not spoken for a long time, for he was deeply engaged in what he called “putting his cupboard to rights.”The four oldest children each possessed a cupboard below the book-shelves, where they were supposed to keep their toys and private property. David was very particular about his cupboard, and could not bear to find any stray articles belonging to the others put away in it. He kept it very neat, and all the curious odds and ends in it were carefully arranged, each in its proper place. Just now he had turned them all out on the floor, and was kneeling in front of them with his hands in his pockets.“It’s nothing to do with that,” said Nancy in answer to his question. “It’s because she’s her godmother.—Why, David,” she exclaimed suddenly looking over his shoulder, “there’s my emery cushion which I lost ever so long ago!”She pointed to a small cushion in the shape of a strawberry which lay among David’s treasures. He picked it up and put it into his pocket before she could get hold of it.“It was in my cupboard,” he said slowly. “It had no business there. I shall ’fisticate it.”“’Fisticate!” repeated Nancy with a laugh of contempt; “there’s no such word; is there, Pennie?”“There is,” said David quite unmoved. “I had it in English history to-day. ‘All his lands were ’fisticated.’ I asked Miss Grey what it meant, and she said it meant ‘taken away,’ so I know it’s right.”“You mean ‘confiscate,’” put in Pennie; “but I do wish, David, you wouldn’t try to use such long words when you write for the magazine. There’s a lot in the ‘Habits of the Pig’ I can’t make out, and it’s such a trouble to copy them.”“I’m not going to lose my cushion at any rate,” said Nancy, springing suddenly on David, so that he rolled over on the floor. Dickie immediately cast herself on the top of them with shrieks of delight, while Pennie and Ambrose went quietly on with their occupation in the midst of the uproar as though nothing were happening.“I wonder if the Merridews are nice?” remarked Ambrose; “fancy five girls!”“Only four are going to learn,” said Pennie; “Miss Unity told me their names. There’s Joyce, and Ethel, and Katharine, and Sabine.”“What rum names!” said Ambrose; “all except Katharine; almost as queer as Ethelwyn.”“They’re not a bit like Ethelwyn to look at, though,” said Pennie; “they’re very neat and quiet, and I think not pretty.”“I suppose Ethelwyn was pretty, but she wasn’t nice,” said Ambrose thoughtfully; “and what a sneak she was about the mandarin!”Pennie sighed; Ethelwyn and the mandarin were both painful subjects to her, and she felt just now as though the world were full of trials. There was this dreadful dancing-class looming in the distance—something awful and unknown, to which she was daily getting nearer and nearer. Ambrose understood much better than Nancy what she felt about it, and was a much more sympathetic listener, for he knew very well what it was to be afraid, and to dread what was strange and new. Nancy was quite sure that she should hate to learn dancing; but as to being afraid of the dean or any other dignitary, or minding the presence of any number of Merridews, that was impossible to imagine. So as the days went on Pennie confided her troubles chiefly to Ambrose; but she was soon seized with another anxiety in which he could be of no help.“Those shoes are awfully shabby, mother,” she said one morning; “don’t you think I might have new ones?”Mrs Hawthorne examined the shoes which Pennie had brought to her.“Are those your best?” she asked, “it seems quite a short time since you and Nancy had new ones.”“Nancy’s are quite nice still,” said Pennie sorrowfully; “but just look how brown these toes are, and how they bulge out at the side.”“They were just the same as Nancy’s when they were bought,” said Mrs Hawthorne; “but if you will stand on one side of your foot, Pennie, of course you wear them out more quickly.”“I never mean to,” said poor Pennie, gazing mournfully at the shabby shoe, “but it seems natural somehow.”“Well, you must try harder to remember in future,” said her mother. “I should like to give you new shoes very much, but you know I have often told you I can’t spend much on your clothes, and I’m afraid we must make the old ones do a little longer.”So this was another drop of bitterness added to Pennie’s little cup of troubles. It was not only that the shoes were shabby, but they fastened with a button and a strap. She felt quite sure that the Merridews and all the other children at the class would wear shoes with sandals, and this was a most tormenting thought. She saw a vision of rows of elegantly shod feet, and one shabby misshapen pair amongst them.“I think I want new shoes quite as much as Kettles does,” she said one day to Nancy.“You might have mine if you like,” said Nancy, who was always ready to lend or give her things, “but I suppose they’d be too small.”“I can just squeeze into them,” said Pennie, “and while I stand-still I can bear it—but I couldn’t walk without screaming.”The dreaded day came, as all days must whether we want them or not, and Pennie found herself walking across the Close to the deanery with Betty, who carried a little parcel with the old shoes and a pair of black mittens in it. The grey Cathedral looked gravely down upon them as they passed, and Pennie looked up to where her own special monster perched grinning on his water-spout. The children had each chosen one of these grotesque figures to be their very own, and had given them names; Pennie called hers the Griffin. He had wings and claws, a long neck, and a half-human face, and seemed to be just poised for flight—as though at any moment he might spring away from his resting-place, and alight on the smooth green turf just outside the dean’s door. Pennie often wondered what Dr Merridew would say if he found him there, but just now she had no room for such fancies; she only felt sure of the Griffin’s sympathy, and said to herself as she nodded to him:“When I see you again I shall be glad, because it will be over, and I shall be going home to tea.” Another moment and they had arrived at the deanery.“Miss Unity wishes to know, please, what time Miss Hawthorne is to be fetched,” asked Betty.It seemed odd to Pennie that she could not run across the Close to Miss Unity’s house alone, but this by no means suited her godmother’s ideas of propriety.Having taken off her hat, changed her shoes, and put on the black mittens, Pennie was conducted to the dining-room, which was already prepared for the dancing-class, with the large table pushed into the window and the chairs placed solemnly round close to the wall. Some girls, who were chatting and laughing near the fire, all stopped short as she entered, and for one awful moment stared at the new-comer in silence.Pennie felt that no one knew who she was; she stood pulling nervously at her mittens, a forlorn little being in a strange land. At last one of the girls came forward and shook hands with her.“Won’t you sit down?” she said; and Pennie having edged herself on to one of the high leather-covered chairs against the wall, she left her and returned to the group by the fire.Pennie examined them.“That must be Ethel,” she thought, “and the tallest is Joyce, and the two with frocks alike must be Katharine and Sabine. It isn’t nice of them not to take any notice of a visitor. We shouldn’t do it at home.”Presently other children arrived, and then Miss Lacy, the governess, joined them. She went up to Pennie and asked her name.“Why, of course,” she said, “I ought to have remembered you. Ethel, come here and talk to Penelope. You two are just the same age, I think,” she added as Ethel turned reluctantly from the group near the fire.Pennie was very tired of hearing that she and Ethel were just the same age, and it did not seem to her any reason at all that they should want to know each other. Ethel, too, looked unwilling to be forced into a friendship, as she came listlessly forward and sat down by Pennie’s side.“Are you fond of dancing?” she inquired in a cold voice.“I don’t know,” said Pennie, “I never tried. I don’t think I shall be,” she added.Ethel was silent, employing the interval in a searching examination of her companion, from the tucker in her frock, to the strapped shoes on her feet. She had a way of half-closing her eyes while she did this, that Pennie felt to be extremely offensive. “I don’t like her at all,” she said to herself, “and if she doesn’t want to talk to me, I’m sure I don’t want to talk to her.”“We’ve always been taught by Miss Lacy,” said Ethel at last, “but of course it’s much better to have a master.”“I should like Miss Lacy best,” said Pennie; and while Ethel was receiving this answer with another long stare, Monsieur Deville was announced.The dancing-master was tall and slim, with a springing step and a very graceful bow; his sleek hair was brushed across a rather bald head, and he had a long reddish nose. He carried a small fiddle, on which he was able to play while he was executing the most agile and difficult steps for the benefit of his pupils. On that day, and always, it was marvellous to Pennie to see how he could go sliding and capering about the room, never making one false note, nor losing his balance, and generally talking and explaining as he went. He spoke English as though it had been his native tongue, and indeed there did not seem to be anything French about him except his name.The class opened with various exercises, which Pennie was able to do pretty well by dint of paying earnest attention to the child immediately in front of her, but soon some steps followed which she knew nothing about. She stood in perplexity, trying to gather some idea from the hopping springing figures around her. They had all learnt dancing before, and found no difficulty in what looked to her a hopeless puzzle. “Bend the knees, young ladies!” shouted Monsieur Deville above the squeaking of his fiddle. “Slide gently. Keep the head erect.Verygood, Miss Smithers. The wrong foot, Miss Hawthorne. Draw in the chin; dear, dear, that won’t do at all,”—stopping suddenly.Miss Lacy now advanced to inform Monsieur that Miss Hawthorne was quite a beginner, at which every member of the class turned her head and looked at Pennie. What a hateful thing a dancing lesson was!“Ah! we shall soon improve, no doubt,” said Monsieur cheerfully; “the great thing is to practise the exercises thoroughly—to make the form supple and elastic. Without that as a foundation we can do nothing. With it we can do wonders. Miss Hawthorne had better try that step alone. The rest stand-still.”Pennie would have given the world to run out of the room, but she grasped her dress courageously, and fixing a desperate eye on Monsieur’s movements, copied them as well as she could.“That will do for the present. All return to your seats. The Miss Smiths will now dance ‘Les Deux Armes.’”Two sisters, old pupils of Monsieur Deville, advanced with complacency into the middle of the room.“A little fancy dance composed by myself,” said the dancing-master, turning to Miss Lacy as he played a preliminary air, “supposed to represent the quarrel and reconciliation of two friends, introducing steps from the minuet and gavotte. It has been considered a graceful trifle.”Pennie gazed in awe-struck wonder at the Miss Smiths as they moved with conscious grace and certainty through the various figures of the dance, now curtsying haughtily to each other, now with sudden abruptness turning their backs and pirouetting down the room on the very tips of their toes; now advancing, now retreating, now on the very point of reconciliation, and now bounding apart as though nothing were further from their thoughts. Finally, after the spectators for some time in doubt as to their intentions, they came down the length of the room with what Monsieur called achasséstep, and curtsied gracefully hand in hand.“Well, at any rate,” thought Pennie with a sigh of relief, “Ishall never be able to dance well enough to do that; that’s one comfort.”The class lasted two long hours and finished by a march round the room, the tallest pupil at the head and the shortest bringing up the rear.“Why,” asked Monsieur, “do we begin with the left foot?”And the old pupil immediately answered:“Because it is the military rule.”This impressed Pennie a good deal; but afterwards when she found that Monsieur never failed to ask this before the march began, the effect wore off, and she even felt equal to answering him herself. But that was after many lessons had passed; at present everything seemed strange and difficult, and she was so nervous that she hardly knew her right foot from her left.After the marching was over it was time for Monsieur to put his fiddle into its case, and to say with a graceful sweeping bow, “Good evening, young ladies!” A joyful sound to Pennie. In a minute she had torn off her mittens, changed her shoes, and was on her way back to Miss Unity’s house.“It was much worse than I thought it would be,” she said as she sat at tea with her godmother; “but I sha’n’t see any of them again for another week, that’s one good thing.”

The even course of Miss Unity’s life in her dark old house at Nearminster had been somewhat ruffled lately. A troublesome question, which she could neither dismiss nor answer, presented itself so continually before her that her peace of mind was quite destroyed. It was always there. It sat with her at her wool-work, so that she used the wrong shades of green; it made her absent while she dusted the china, so that she nearly dropped her most valuable pieces; and more than once it got mixed up with her marketing, and made her buy what she did not want, to Betty’s great surprise.

Every morning when she woke it was ready for her, and this was the form of it:

“Am I doing my duty to my god-daughter, Penelope Hawthorne?”

Miss Unity’s conscience pricked her. There were, in truth, several things she considered important which she did not approve of in Pennie; and yet, being a timid lady as well as a conscientious one, she had always shrunk from interference.

“Mary ought to know best,” she argued with herself in reply to the obstinate question; “she is the child’s mother. I shall offend her if I say anything. But then, again, as godmother, I have some responsibility too; and if I see plainly that Penelope pokes over her books and writing too much, and is getting high-shouldered, and comes into the room awkwardly, and does not hold herself upright, I ought to speak. I owe it to the child. I ought not to consult my own comfort. How I should have to reproach myself if she were to grow up untidy, rough-haired, inky, the sort of woman who thinks of nothing but scribbling. And I see signs of it. She might even come to write books! What she wants is a refining influence—the companionship of some nice, lady-like girls, like the Merridews, instead of romping about so much with her brothers and Nancy, who is quite as bad as a boy. But how to make Mary see it!”

Miss Unity sighed heavily when she came to this point. She felt that Pennie’s future was in some measure in her hands, and it was a very serious burden. One afternoon, feeling it impossible either to forget the subject or to find any answer to it, she put away her work and went to call upon the dean’s wife, Mrs Merridew. If anything could change the current of her thoughts it would be a visit to the deanery, which she considered both a pleasure and a privilege. Everything there pleased her sense of fitness and decorum, from the gravity of the servants to the majestic, ponderous furniture of the rooms, and she thought all the arrangements admirable. It is true that she did not understand Dr Merridew’s portly jokes, and was rather afraid of his wife, but her approval of their five daughters was unbounded. They were models of correct behaviour—her very ideal of what young people should be in every respect. If only, she secretly sighed, Mary’s girls were more like them!

The Merridews, Miss Unity was accustomed to say, were quite the “nicest” people in Nearminster, and she sincerely thought that she enjoyed their society immensely. It was, however, quite a different enjoyment to that which attended a cup of tea with old Miss Spokes, the greatest gossip in the town, and was slightly mingled with awe.

On this occasion Miss Unity was singularly favoured by fortune, although she had not gone to the deanery with any idea of finding help in her perplexity, for before she had been there five minutes the conversation took a most lucky turn. Mrs Merridew had been so much concerned lately, she said, about her dear Ethel’s right shoulder. It was certainly growing out; and, indeed the four younger girls would all be much better for some dancing and drilling lessons. There was nothing she so much disliked as an awkward carriage. She was sure Miss Unity would agree with her that it was important for girls to hold themselves properly. Miss Unity, with Pennie in her mind, assented earnestly, and added that she believed Miss Cannon had a class for dancing at her school in the town.

“Oh yes, I know!” replied Mrs Merridew; “and I hear she has a very good master, Monsieur Deville; but I don’t quite fancy the children going there—all the townspeople, you know. I don’t think the dean would quite like it.”

“Oh no! to be sure not,” murmured Miss Unity.

“No, it’s not quite what one would wish,” continued Mrs Merridew; “but I’ve been wondering if I could get up a nice little class here!—just a dozen or so of children among my own friends, and have Monsieur Deville to teach them. You see he comes down to Miss Cannon every week, so there would be no difficulty about his coming on here.”

Miss Unity could hardly believe her ears, for, of course, the next step on Mrs Merridew’s part was to wonder if Mrs Hawthorne would let her children join the class. Could anything be more fortunate, not only because of Pennie’s deportment, but because it would give her a chance of improving her acquaintance with the dean’s daughters. It was the very thing of all others to be wished.

Quite stirred and excited out of her usual retirement, Miss Unity offered to lay the matter before Mrs Hawthorne in the course of a few days, when she was going to stay at Easney. She felt sure, she said, that it could be arranged; and she finally took her leave, feeling that she had at last accomplished some part of her duty towards her god-daughter, and much happier in her mind. This lasted until she reached her own door-step, and then she began to shrink from what she had undertaken to do. She had the deepest distrust of her own powers of persuasion, and as she thought of it, it seemed very unlikely to her that she should succeed in placing the subject in its proper light before Mrs Hawthorne. Never in her whole life had she ventured or wished to advise other people, or to see what was best for them. It was a bold step. “I shall say the wrong thing and offend Mary, or set her against it in some way,” she said to herself. “It would have been better to leave it in Mrs Merridew’s hands.”

She troubled herself with this during the days that remained before her visit to Easney, and grew more anxious and desponding as time went on. If the welfare of Pennie’s whole life had depended on her joining the dancing-class, poor Miss Unity could scarcely have made it of more importance.

It was, therefore, in a very wrought-up state that she arrived at the vicarage, determined to speak to Mrs Hawthorne that very same day, for until it was over she felt she should not have a moment’s comfort. She had brooded over it so constantly, and held so many imaginary conversations about it, that she had become highly nervous, and was odder in manner and more abrupt in speech than ever. As she sat at tea with Mrs Hawthorne, she answered all her inquiries about Nearminster strangely at random, for she was saying to herself over and over again, “It is my duty; I must do it.”

Suddenly the door was flung wide open, and Pennie threw herself hastily into the room.

“Oh mother!” she cried, “will you lend me your india-rubber?”

Miss Unity set down her tea-cup with a nervous clatter as her god-daughter advanced to greet her. Yes, Pennie certainly poked out her chin and shrugged up one shoulder. She had none of the easy grace which adorned the Merridews. All her movements were abrupt. Worst of all, on the middle finger of the hand she held out was a large black stain of ink.

“MydearPennie,” said her mother significantly as she noticed this.

“Yes, I know, mother,” said Pennie immediately doubling down the offending finger, “I can’t get it off. I’ve tried everything. You see I’ve been writing up the magazine, and there’s such a lot of it, because the others always forget.”

“Then I think I should do without their contributions,” said Mrs Hawthorne.

“Oh, mother!” exclaimed Pennie reproachfully, “there’d be hardly anything in it. It’s a very good one this month,” she added, turning to Miss Unity. “David’s sent quite a long thing on ‘The Habits of the Pig,’ and Ambrose has written an ‘Ode to Spring.’”

“Then why,” inquired Miss Unity, “have you so much writing to do?”

“Well, you see I’m the editor,” explained Pennie, “and all the things have to be copied into the magazine in printing hand by the first of the month. So when the others forget, I do it all.”

“How fast Pennie grows!” began Miss Unity hurriedly as the door closed behind her god-daughter. “You don’t think so much writing makes her stoop too much?”

“Oh, no!” replied Mrs Hawthorne lightly; “it’s a great amusement to her, and she gets plenty of exercise.”

“Because,” continued Miss Unity, speaking so fast that she was almost unintelligible, “if you thought so—I thought—that is, Mrs Merridew thought—you might like her to join a dancing-class at the deanery.”

She paused, frightened at her own boldness. She had meant to approach the subject in the most delicate and gradual manner, and now she had rushed into the very thick of it at once.

Mrs Hawthorne looked puzzled; she frowned a little.

“I do not understand,” she said, “what Mrs Merridew can have to do with Pennie’s writing too much.”

“Oh nothing, nothing in the world!” hastily replied Miss Unity; “of course not. I have always said it’s for you to judge—but I said I would ask you to let the children join. Mr Deville’s going to teach them. The Merridews are nice girls, don’t you think?” she added wistfully, for she saw no answering approval on Mrs Hawthorne’s face. “I knew I should offend Mary,” she said to herself.

Even when the arrangement with all its advantages was fully explained, Mrs Hawthorne did not seem at all eager about it. She had once thought, she said, of sending the children to Miss Cannon’s class, but the distance was the difficulty, and that would remain in this case.

Then Miss Unity made her last effort.

“As to that,” she said breathlessly, “I thought of asking you to allow me to give Pennie some lessons, and I should be pleased for her to sleep at my house after the class every week, if you had no objection.”

But Mrs Hawthorne still hesitated. It was most kind of Miss Unity, but she feared it would trouble her to have Pennie so often; yet she did not like to refuse such a very kind offer, and no doubt the lessons would be good for the child. Finally, after a great many pros and cons, it was settled that the vicar’s opinion should be asked, and then Miss Unity knew that Mary had decided the matter in her own mind. Her offer was to be accepted. So she had done her best for her god-daughter, and if it were not successful her conscience would at least be at rest.

Perhaps no one realised what an effort it had been to her, and what real self-sacrifice such an offer involved. She was fond of Pennie, but to have the regularity of her household disturbed by the presence of a child every week—the bustle of arrival and departure, the risk of broken china, the possible upsetting of Betty’s temper; all this was torture to look forward to, and when she went to bed she felt that she was paying dearly for a quiet conscience.

But if it was a trial to Miss Unity it was none the less so to Pennie, who looked upon herself as a sort of victim chosen out of the family to be sacrificed. She was to go alone to the deanery without Nancy, and learn to dance with the Merridews, who were almost strangers to her. It was a most dreadful idea. Quite enough to spoil Nearminster, or the most pleasant place on earth. However, mother said so, and it must be done; but from the moment she heard of it Pennie did not cease to groan and lament.

“I don’t even know their names,” she began one night, after she and Nancy were tucked up side by side in bed.

“Why, you know there’s one called Ethel,” replied Nancy, “because whenever Mrs Merridew comes here she asks how old you are, and says, ‘Just the age of my Ethel!’”

“I don’t think I like the look of any of them much,” continued Pennie mournfully, “and—oh, Nancy, I do hope I sha’n’t see the dean!”

“Why?” asked Nancy. “I don’t mind him a bit.”

“He never makes jokes at you,” said Pennie, “so of course you don’t mind him; but whenever I meet him with father I know just what he’ll say. ‘This is Miss Penelope, isn’t it? and where’s Ulysses?’ and then he laughs. I can’t laugh, because I don’t know what he means, and I do feel so silly. Suppose he comes and says it before all the others!”

“I don’t see that it matters if he does,” replied Nancy. “You needn’t take any notice. It’s the dean who’s silly, not you.”

“It’s all very well for you,” said Pennie with an impatient kick at the bed-clothes; “you’re not going. Oh! how I wish you were! It wouldn’t be half so bad.”

“I should hate it,” said Nancy decidedly; “but,” she added, with an attempt at comfort, “there’ll be some things you like after all. There’ll be the Cathedral and the College, and old Nurse, and oh! Pennie, have you thought what a chance it’ll be to hear more about Kettles?”

But Pennie was too cast-down to take a cheerful view of anything.

“I don’t suppose I shall hear anything about her,” she said. “How should I?”

“Perhaps you’ll see her at the College again,” said Nancy, “or perhaps Miss Unity will know about her, or perhaps the dean goes to see her father and mother.”

“That I’m sure he doesn’t,” said Pennie with conviction. “Why, I don’t suppose he even knows where Anchoranopally is.”

“Father goes to see all the people in Easney,” said Nancy, “so why shouldn’t Dr Merridew go to see Kettles?”

“I don’t know why he shouldn’t,” said Pennie, “but I’m quite sure he doesn’t. At any rate I’m not going to ask him anything. I hope I sha’n’t see him at all. Oh, why should people learn dancing? What good can it be?”

Nancy’s muttered reply showed that she was very nearly asleep, so for that night there was no further conversation about Pennie’s dancing, but it was by no means altogether given up. On the contrary it was a very favourite topic with all the children, for it seemed to have added to their eldest sister’s dignity to be singled out as the only one to join the class at Nearminster.

“Why isn’t Nancy to go too?” asked Ambrose one afternoon as he carefully put the last touches to a picture he was drawing for Dickie; it was a fancy portrait of Pennie learning to dance, with her dress held out very wide, and an immense toe pointed in the air. The children were all in the school-room engaged in various ways, for it was a wet afternoon; even Dickie, having grown tired of the nursery, had insisted on coming down until tea-time,—and now stood on tiptoe by Ambrose, watching the progress of the picture with breathless interest.

Pennie looked up from her writing at her brother’s question.

“Because Miss Unity only asked me,” she answered with a sort of groan.

“Is she fondest of you?” asked David from the background. He had not spoken for a long time, for he was deeply engaged in what he called “putting his cupboard to rights.”

The four oldest children each possessed a cupboard below the book-shelves, where they were supposed to keep their toys and private property. David was very particular about his cupboard, and could not bear to find any stray articles belonging to the others put away in it. He kept it very neat, and all the curious odds and ends in it were carefully arranged, each in its proper place. Just now he had turned them all out on the floor, and was kneeling in front of them with his hands in his pockets.

“It’s nothing to do with that,” said Nancy in answer to his question. “It’s because she’s her godmother.—Why, David,” she exclaimed suddenly looking over his shoulder, “there’s my emery cushion which I lost ever so long ago!”

She pointed to a small cushion in the shape of a strawberry which lay among David’s treasures. He picked it up and put it into his pocket before she could get hold of it.

“It was in my cupboard,” he said slowly. “It had no business there. I shall ’fisticate it.”

“’Fisticate!” repeated Nancy with a laugh of contempt; “there’s no such word; is there, Pennie?”

“There is,” said David quite unmoved. “I had it in English history to-day. ‘All his lands were ’fisticated.’ I asked Miss Grey what it meant, and she said it meant ‘taken away,’ so I know it’s right.”

“You mean ‘confiscate,’” put in Pennie; “but I do wish, David, you wouldn’t try to use such long words when you write for the magazine. There’s a lot in the ‘Habits of the Pig’ I can’t make out, and it’s such a trouble to copy them.”

“I’m not going to lose my cushion at any rate,” said Nancy, springing suddenly on David, so that he rolled over on the floor. Dickie immediately cast herself on the top of them with shrieks of delight, while Pennie and Ambrose went quietly on with their occupation in the midst of the uproar as though nothing were happening.

“I wonder if the Merridews are nice?” remarked Ambrose; “fancy five girls!”

“Only four are going to learn,” said Pennie; “Miss Unity told me their names. There’s Joyce, and Ethel, and Katharine, and Sabine.”

“What rum names!” said Ambrose; “all except Katharine; almost as queer as Ethelwyn.”

“They’re not a bit like Ethelwyn to look at, though,” said Pennie; “they’re very neat and quiet, and I think not pretty.”

“I suppose Ethelwyn was pretty, but she wasn’t nice,” said Ambrose thoughtfully; “and what a sneak she was about the mandarin!”

Pennie sighed; Ethelwyn and the mandarin were both painful subjects to her, and she felt just now as though the world were full of trials. There was this dreadful dancing-class looming in the distance—something awful and unknown, to which she was daily getting nearer and nearer. Ambrose understood much better than Nancy what she felt about it, and was a much more sympathetic listener, for he knew very well what it was to be afraid, and to dread what was strange and new. Nancy was quite sure that she should hate to learn dancing; but as to being afraid of the dean or any other dignitary, or minding the presence of any number of Merridews, that was impossible to imagine. So as the days went on Pennie confided her troubles chiefly to Ambrose; but she was soon seized with another anxiety in which he could be of no help.

“Those shoes are awfully shabby, mother,” she said one morning; “don’t you think I might have new ones?”

Mrs Hawthorne examined the shoes which Pennie had brought to her.

“Are those your best?” she asked, “it seems quite a short time since you and Nancy had new ones.”

“Nancy’s are quite nice still,” said Pennie sorrowfully; “but just look how brown these toes are, and how they bulge out at the side.”

“They were just the same as Nancy’s when they were bought,” said Mrs Hawthorne; “but if you will stand on one side of your foot, Pennie, of course you wear them out more quickly.”

“I never mean to,” said poor Pennie, gazing mournfully at the shabby shoe, “but it seems natural somehow.”

“Well, you must try harder to remember in future,” said her mother. “I should like to give you new shoes very much, but you know I have often told you I can’t spend much on your clothes, and I’m afraid we must make the old ones do a little longer.”

So this was another drop of bitterness added to Pennie’s little cup of troubles. It was not only that the shoes were shabby, but they fastened with a button and a strap. She felt quite sure that the Merridews and all the other children at the class would wear shoes with sandals, and this was a most tormenting thought. She saw a vision of rows of elegantly shod feet, and one shabby misshapen pair amongst them.

“I think I want new shoes quite as much as Kettles does,” she said one day to Nancy.

“You might have mine if you like,” said Nancy, who was always ready to lend or give her things, “but I suppose they’d be too small.”

“I can just squeeze into them,” said Pennie, “and while I stand-still I can bear it—but I couldn’t walk without screaming.”

The dreaded day came, as all days must whether we want them or not, and Pennie found herself walking across the Close to the deanery with Betty, who carried a little parcel with the old shoes and a pair of black mittens in it. The grey Cathedral looked gravely down upon them as they passed, and Pennie looked up to where her own special monster perched grinning on his water-spout. The children had each chosen one of these grotesque figures to be their very own, and had given them names; Pennie called hers the Griffin. He had wings and claws, a long neck, and a half-human face, and seemed to be just poised for flight—as though at any moment he might spring away from his resting-place, and alight on the smooth green turf just outside the dean’s door. Pennie often wondered what Dr Merridew would say if he found him there, but just now she had no room for such fancies; she only felt sure of the Griffin’s sympathy, and said to herself as she nodded to him:

“When I see you again I shall be glad, because it will be over, and I shall be going home to tea.” Another moment and they had arrived at the deanery.

“Miss Unity wishes to know, please, what time Miss Hawthorne is to be fetched,” asked Betty.

It seemed odd to Pennie that she could not run across the Close to Miss Unity’s house alone, but this by no means suited her godmother’s ideas of propriety.

Having taken off her hat, changed her shoes, and put on the black mittens, Pennie was conducted to the dining-room, which was already prepared for the dancing-class, with the large table pushed into the window and the chairs placed solemnly round close to the wall. Some girls, who were chatting and laughing near the fire, all stopped short as she entered, and for one awful moment stared at the new-comer in silence.

Pennie felt that no one knew who she was; she stood pulling nervously at her mittens, a forlorn little being in a strange land. At last one of the girls came forward and shook hands with her.

“Won’t you sit down?” she said; and Pennie having edged herself on to one of the high leather-covered chairs against the wall, she left her and returned to the group by the fire.

Pennie examined them.

“That must be Ethel,” she thought, “and the tallest is Joyce, and the two with frocks alike must be Katharine and Sabine. It isn’t nice of them not to take any notice of a visitor. We shouldn’t do it at home.”

Presently other children arrived, and then Miss Lacy, the governess, joined them. She went up to Pennie and asked her name.

“Why, of course,” she said, “I ought to have remembered you. Ethel, come here and talk to Penelope. You two are just the same age, I think,” she added as Ethel turned reluctantly from the group near the fire.

Pennie was very tired of hearing that she and Ethel were just the same age, and it did not seem to her any reason at all that they should want to know each other. Ethel, too, looked unwilling to be forced into a friendship, as she came listlessly forward and sat down by Pennie’s side.

“Are you fond of dancing?” she inquired in a cold voice.

“I don’t know,” said Pennie, “I never tried. I don’t think I shall be,” she added.

Ethel was silent, employing the interval in a searching examination of her companion, from the tucker in her frock, to the strapped shoes on her feet. She had a way of half-closing her eyes while she did this, that Pennie felt to be extremely offensive. “I don’t like her at all,” she said to herself, “and if she doesn’t want to talk to me, I’m sure I don’t want to talk to her.”

“We’ve always been taught by Miss Lacy,” said Ethel at last, “but of course it’s much better to have a master.”

“I should like Miss Lacy best,” said Pennie; and while Ethel was receiving this answer with another long stare, Monsieur Deville was announced.

The dancing-master was tall and slim, with a springing step and a very graceful bow; his sleek hair was brushed across a rather bald head, and he had a long reddish nose. He carried a small fiddle, on which he was able to play while he was executing the most agile and difficult steps for the benefit of his pupils. On that day, and always, it was marvellous to Pennie to see how he could go sliding and capering about the room, never making one false note, nor losing his balance, and generally talking and explaining as he went. He spoke English as though it had been his native tongue, and indeed there did not seem to be anything French about him except his name.

The class opened with various exercises, which Pennie was able to do pretty well by dint of paying earnest attention to the child immediately in front of her, but soon some steps followed which she knew nothing about. She stood in perplexity, trying to gather some idea from the hopping springing figures around her. They had all learnt dancing before, and found no difficulty in what looked to her a hopeless puzzle. “Bend the knees, young ladies!” shouted Monsieur Deville above the squeaking of his fiddle. “Slide gently. Keep the head erect.Verygood, Miss Smithers. The wrong foot, Miss Hawthorne. Draw in the chin; dear, dear, that won’t do at all,”—stopping suddenly.

Miss Lacy now advanced to inform Monsieur that Miss Hawthorne was quite a beginner, at which every member of the class turned her head and looked at Pennie. What a hateful thing a dancing lesson was!

“Ah! we shall soon improve, no doubt,” said Monsieur cheerfully; “the great thing is to practise the exercises thoroughly—to make the form supple and elastic. Without that as a foundation we can do nothing. With it we can do wonders. Miss Hawthorne had better try that step alone. The rest stand-still.”

Pennie would have given the world to run out of the room, but she grasped her dress courageously, and fixing a desperate eye on Monsieur’s movements, copied them as well as she could.

“That will do for the present. All return to your seats. The Miss Smiths will now dance ‘Les Deux Armes.’”

Two sisters, old pupils of Monsieur Deville, advanced with complacency into the middle of the room.

“A little fancy dance composed by myself,” said the dancing-master, turning to Miss Lacy as he played a preliminary air, “supposed to represent the quarrel and reconciliation of two friends, introducing steps from the minuet and gavotte. It has been considered a graceful trifle.”

Pennie gazed in awe-struck wonder at the Miss Smiths as they moved with conscious grace and certainty through the various figures of the dance, now curtsying haughtily to each other, now with sudden abruptness turning their backs and pirouetting down the room on the very tips of their toes; now advancing, now retreating, now on the very point of reconciliation, and now bounding apart as though nothing were further from their thoughts. Finally, after the spectators for some time in doubt as to their intentions, they came down the length of the room with what Monsieur called achasséstep, and curtsied gracefully hand in hand.

“Well, at any rate,” thought Pennie with a sigh of relief, “Ishall never be able to dance well enough to do that; that’s one comfort.”

The class lasted two long hours and finished by a march round the room, the tallest pupil at the head and the shortest bringing up the rear.

“Why,” asked Monsieur, “do we begin with the left foot?”

And the old pupil immediately answered:

“Because it is the military rule.”

This impressed Pennie a good deal; but afterwards when she found that Monsieur never failed to ask this before the march began, the effect wore off, and she even felt equal to answering him herself. But that was after many lessons had passed; at present everything seemed strange and difficult, and she was so nervous that she hardly knew her right foot from her left.

After the marching was over it was time for Monsieur to put his fiddle into its case, and to say with a graceful sweeping bow, “Good evening, young ladies!” A joyful sound to Pennie. In a minute she had torn off her mittens, changed her shoes, and was on her way back to Miss Unity’s house.

“It was much worse than I thought it would be,” she said as she sat at tea with her godmother; “but I sha’n’t see any of them again for another week, that’s one good thing.”

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