Eleanor gathered up her umbrella and the basket containing the books, and stood up. A porter came to open the door.
"Any luggage, Miss?"
"Yes, one trunk labelled Anstruther," Eleanor said very distinctly.
"Very good, Miss; for Windy Gap, aren't you? The omnibus is waiting outside for your luggage, and Mrs. Murray has drove down to meet you."
Eleanor stepped out on to the platform feeling that the Rubicon was now crossed and that there was no drawing back for either of them. She lingered for a moment beside the door, which Margaret had very promptly shut upon her the moment she was out of the carriage.
"Don't be nervous," Margaret whispered encouragingly from the safe seclusion of her corner. "I am not."
"Of course you're not!" Eleanor retorted. "You haven't begun to play the impostor yet. I have, and I am not sure that I like it. Your turn to be nervous will come when you get to Seabourne. Well," pulling herself together as the porter came within earshot, "good-bye to you, Miss Carson, so glad to have met you. I hope your holidays will be very pleasant ones."
"I hope so too," said Margaret, with a little happy laugh of pure excitement. "Goodbye, Miss Anstruther, I hope you will get on nicely with all your lessons."
For some reason the train was late in starting on again, and Margaret was therefore able to see the meeting between Mrs. Murray and Eleanor, although she was not near enough to overhear what was said on either side. When Eleanor had given up her ticket and passed through the gate, she saw Mrs. Murray, who had not got out of the pony-carriage, lean forward and, taking hold of Eleanor's two hands, draw her under the shade of the enormous mushroom hat and kiss her affectionately. The hat got somewhat disarranged in the process, and Mrs. Murray righted it with a pleasant low laugh that came distinctly to Margaret's ears as she sat watching the little scene from the corner of the third-class carriage.
Then she seemed to be asking Eleanor some questions, which the latter answered readily through the ear-trumpet which Mrs. Murray held out to her. Once they looked in her direction, and a spasm of alarm shot through Margaret's mind. Surely, surely Eleanor was not abandoning their conspiracy at the very outset of its career. The trunk had already been hoisted on to the top of the somewhat dilapidated looking old bus that evidently plied between the distant village of Windy Gap and the station. Why, then, did the pony-carriage not drive on, or why did the train not start? Eleanor looked again towards the carriage in which Margaret sat in a perfect fever of impatience to be off, and then, after saying something to Mrs. Murray, to which the latter gave an affirmative nod, she left the carriage and came running up the platform. Margaret could have cried with disappointment. She had no doubt at all that Eleanor had already repented of her scheme, and was coming to say that it must be given up. Eleanor reached the door in a somewhat breathless condition, and Margaret resisting her first impulse to shut the window and to draw down the blind, and refuse to listen to a word she was going to say, put her head reluctantly out.
"I couldn't help coming to tell you that she is a perfectly sweet old lady," Eleanor panted. "And she gave me such a warm welcome that I feel an awful fraud, and——"
Margaret interrupted her with an exclamation that sounded almost like a wail of despair.
"And you have come to tell me that you want to change back into your own self?" she said.
"No, not much," Eleanor said hurriedly; "but the point is, do you? She seems to be perfectly charming, and I don't believe she would be very angry. And oh, Margaret! I feel as though I ought not to oust you from house and home in this way."
Margaret's brow cleared as though by magic. It was all right then. Strange though it undoubtedly appeared to her, Eleanor was not only willing but actually eager to go to Windy Gap, and it was only out of motives of unselfishness that she had offered to change into their proper selves.
Briefly, but with all the emphasis of which she was capable, Margaret assured her that such an act of unselfishness would not be appreciated in the least.
"Oh, very well," Eleanor said, much relieved, "and to tell you the truth I think Mrs. Murray would be rather surprised if I were suddenly to return to her and say that I was not Margaret Anstruther but that you were. She would probably end by thinking us both impostors. Well, I must go now; I only came back just to give you the chance of becoming yourself again if you had already repented. Look here, you must let me know how you get on. I shall be quite anxious to know. Will you write? Quick, tell me Mrs. Murray is beckoning."
"I could write, of course," Margaret said cautiously "but you must remember that Margaret Anstruther has never received a letter in her life and that Mrs. Murray might want to see it."
"I shall come in and see you then," Eleanor said.
"Oh, will you?" Margaret said with a smile. "Kindly remember, Miss Margaret Anstruther, that you never took a walk unaccompanied in your life. No, leave it to me, and I will try and come out to Windy Gap one day to see you, for I am free, free, free, and quite grown up, while you are a mere child in the nursery!"
And so, though rather against her will, Eleanor was obliged to leave the matter like that, and saying good-bye to Margaret for the second time she scurried away down the platform.
Margaret watched her step into the pony-carriage, tuck the dust wrap over her knees and over Mrs. Murray's, and then settle herself with an air of obvious enjoyment for her drive. From the window Margaret could see the long, white chalky road that they would traverse to reach Windy Gap, which place doubtless lay to the left beyond the high ridge which shut out all further view of the downs. The road wound its leisurely way between high hedges and green fields, was lost for awhile as it passed behind an outlying spur of the downs, and became visible again as, apparently repenting its former meanderings below, it sternly took the shortest and steepest way possible up the side of the hill, and finally disappeared over the brow. And it might have fallen to her lot to be sitting beside Mrs. Murray and in that little low pony-carriage, and to be driving along that monotonous road to the remote village on the downs instead of to be whirling past them as she did in a train on her way to a houseful of young people. Margaret could have hugged herself with pleasure as she thought of the exchange she had made.
There were only three or four stations between Chailfield and Seabourne, and they followed so closely on one another that in rather less than half an hour the train ran into the big station of Seabourne.
"Any luggage, Miss, cab, or outside porter, please," said a porter, opening the door of the carriage.
"One trunk and a hat-box, and I will have a cab, please," Margaret answered.
She was rather surprised and pleased at her own self-possession, as led by the porter she threaded her way up the crowded platform. And when he paused to ask her what name he should look for on the trunk she gave Eleanor's as calmly as though she had been known by it all her life. It had not occurred to Margaret that any one might come to the station to meet her, or, rather, to meet the girl whose identity she had taken on herself, consequently she gave a startled jump, when, as she stood on the edge of the press of people round the luggage van, a tap fell smartly on her shoulder, and turning, she found herself confronted by a merry, sunburnt girl of about her own age.
"Miss Carson, isn't it?" the latter sang out in a clear, rather pleasant voice, that could be distinctly heard above the noise and confusion surrounding them. "Oh, don't look so astonished! I heard you tell the porter the name on your luggage, and I tracked you up the platform. Let me introduce myself. I am Maud Danvers, and I hope you've had a nice journey and all that. I say, you're taking a cab, aren't you? That's all right. Get in to one when you've collected all your belongings, will you, and wait for me, and I'll drive up with you. I shan't be long, but I have just got to go and finish a conversation that I am in the middle of."
And with a careless little nod Miss Maud Danvers turned and went off up the platform. But casual though her greeting had been, it had served to dispel the slight feeling of loneliness that had been creeping over Margaret. How exceedingly kind of that nice girl to have come and met her! And in what a delightfully frank and friendly manner she had accosted her! Margaret felt instantly sure that she was going to like Maud Danvers very much indeed, and it was with a little glow of pleasure that she reflected that she was going to live in the same house with her for many weeks to come. For a moment she forgot to aid the porter to look for her box, but turning her back upon the busy crowd she followed Maud with her eyes. Without being exactly pretty, Maud Danvers was an exceedingly nice-looking girl, and her fresh, clear skin no less than her brisk step and the way she held herself, showed that she was an outdoor girl.
She was wearing a short tweed skirt that barely reached to her ankles, and displayed a neat pair of golfing shoes, but the skirt was so exceedingly well hung and the fit of the Norfolk coat that matched it so good that Margaret, unversed though she was in such matters, instinctively recognised that Maud's clothes not only became her very well, but had been made by a first-class tailor. Her own simply made coat and skirt of blue serge felt suddenly very dowdy.
Meanwhile Maud had made her way along the crowded platform to a point where two girls in Panama hats and long white blanket coats, and carrying tennis racquets under their arms, were standing together, and as soon as she reached their side, they all three plunged into an eager conversation in the interest of which it was soon evident that Margaret was forgotten.
Just, however, as Margaret's cabman was beginning to show signs of impatience, the bicycles for which the two girls had been waiting were extricated from the van, and with a hasty nod to Maud, they pushed their way out of the crowd.
"The Cedars, Pelham Road, please," Maud said as she got into the cab. "Sorry to have kept you waiting, Miss Carson. But I wanted to speak to the Finches. They had just got back from the Surbiton Tournament. They had done awfully well both of them. The tall one, Anna's the best. Fancy, wasn't it stupendous luck for her! She got into the third round of the open singles and met Mrs. Lambert Chambers. Of course, she was beaten hollow. Didn't even get a game. But wasn't it luck meeting her?"
Now, as Margaret had not the very vaguest notion who Mrs. Lambert Chambers was, or why it should be considered such extraordinary good fortune to meet her, she gave such a vague assent to the question that Maud turned to stare at her with undisguised amazement in her eyes.
"You don't mean to say," she exclaimed, "that you have never even heard of Mrs. Lambert Chambers!"
"I don't seem to remember her name," confessed Margaret, blushing crimson.
"Why, I mean the famous Mrs. Lambert Chambers. The tennis player. Miss Douglas that was, you know."
"Oh!" said poor Margaret again. Then she added lamely, "I—I suppose she must play very nicely."
"Play nicely!" ejaculated Maud, still surveying her companion with a direct glance that the latter found very embarrassing. "Great Scott, what a funny way of putting it! Where on earth were you brought up! And never even to have heard of her! Why, you will be saying next that you never heard of C. B. Fry or Braid, or Grace, or the Dohertys."
But Margaret, in the face of the scorn she already provoked, was not disposed to confess to such depths of ignorance, and she murmured a vague reply that might have meant anything. However, the few unintelligible sounds that passed her lips might not have been sufficient to save her from further cross examination on the subject of her knowledge of tennis had not Maud's attention been attracted by the same two girls who, speeding past on their bicycles, called out to her not to forget to-morrow.
"Right oh!" sang out Maud in reply. "I shall expect you 11.30 sharp."
"How beautifully they bicycle!" Margaret said in admiring accents, following the two girls with eyes as they threaded their way through the traffic.
"Oh, well, any one can do that, can't they?" Maud replied. "Did you bring yours? You'd find it useful. I say, what was your hockey eleven like?"
"What was our hockey eleven like?" faltered Margaret. "I—I forget."
"Forget!" Maud exclaimed, in fresh amazement. "How could you forget an important thing like that? Why, nowadays if a school can't put a decent hockey eleven in the field it does not count for much."
"I mean," said Margaret, as a timely recollection of what Eleanor had told her about the games at Waterloo House came to her mind, "Miss McDonald was very old-fashioned, and she did not at all approve of the modern fashion of girls playing boys games."
"Great Scott!" said Maud in tones of intense commiseration. "Fancy being a governess in a rotten school of that sort! I wonder you stayed. Then you didn't play cricket?"
"No."
"Tennis?"
"No. But," added Margaret rather timidly, for it distressed her to see to what depths she was sinking in Maud's estimation, "I have always thought I should like to learn lawn tennis very much. Perhaps you could teach me."
"Me?" said Maud, raising her eyebrows in a quizzical fashion and gazing at Margaret with the point blank stare, which the latter found so trying to encounter with equanimity. "Sorry, but I haven't the time. I daresay one of the kids would give you a game, though, some time."
"As if," she said afterwards, detailing this conversation with much laughter to one of her brothers, "tennis could be taught in a day, or as though I were going to bother to teach her either. And I fancied I saw myself playing with a girl who had never held a racquet in her hand before."
"By the way," Maud went on, "I don't suppose you have much idea at present what our family consists of, have you?"
"No, I have not," said Margaret, feeling that she was quite safe in making that admission, for Eleanor had not known either.
"Well, there's mother, of course, to start with, and then, of the ones who are at home, there's Geoffrey; he's a year older than me, and he's at Sandhurst. Like me, he's fearfully keen on games, and like me too, he's pretty good," added Maud, who, as Margaret had discovered by that time, was not lacking in a good opinion of herself. "Then I come, then Hilary—she's a year younger than me. Then come Jack and Noel—they're fifteen and sixteen respectively, and one's at Osborne and one's at Dartmouth; all they seem to care about at present is sailing and fishing, and so we don't see much of them. Then there's Edward, he's about fourteen, I think; he's mad keen on cricket—besides, he's got all the brains of the family. Then two cousins of ours, Nancy and Joan Green, are staying with us. They're not half bad girls, and Nancy would play quite a decent game of tennis if she wasn't so lazy. She can hit jolly hard, but she won't run, and she will talk, so I won't play with her. Then there are the kids—your little lot, you know—and I wish you joy of them; they're a jolly handful, and no mistake."
Margaret, who had been listening eagerly to this account of the family in the midst of which she was to live for the next few weeks, puckered her forehead over the last sentences.
"The—the kids," she queried in a puzzled tone.
"Yes, the infants; my eldest sister Joanna's children. You are going to take them over and teach them, aren't you? At least, that is what I believe mother gave me to understand."
"Oh yes, of course," Margaret said, so quickly that Maud had no suspicion that she had never in all her life before heard children called kids.
"Yes, mother hopes great things from you," Maud chattered on. "She says as you have been in a school you will understand discipline and all that. But I believe Joanna won't have her darlings smacked, and they are such troublesome little monkeys that a sound smacking would do them all the good in the world," wound up their young aunt with a vigour that showed the subject was one on which she felt strongly. "Not that you," with a careless glance at Margaret's pale, thoughtful face, "look strong enough to give them much of a whacking."
Margaret made no reply, simply because at the moment she felt absolutely incapable of speech. Dismay at the thought that she was to be a governess held her spellbound. She certainly had not gathered from anything that Eleanor had said that she was expected to teach, and two naughty unruly children into the bargain. No wonder that she grew paler even than her wont at the appalling thought. Luckily for her, however, Maud was far from guessing the dismay her casually given information was causing her silent companion, and under cover of her chatter, Margaret had time to recover a little from the shock she had received and to resolve to try and make the best of it. Of one thing she was sure, Eleanor herself had no idea of the services she had been expected to give in exchange for being asked to spend her holidays at The Cedars. Neither had Mrs. Danvers wished to get her there under false pretences. After all, had not her letter said that she was both to enjoy herself and to make herself useful. So she had no right to complain at the discovery that the latter half of the sentence meant so much more than either she or Eleanor had suspected. "To make yourself useful," Eleanor had said airily; "oh, that means that you will be expected to arrange flowers for the dinner table, and to write notes, and so on. Little things of that sort, you know."
So, naturally, it had been a great shock to discover that "little things of that sort" included the entire control of two unruly children. It was not the prospect of having to work that perturbed Margaret, it was the knowledge of how incapable she felt to deal with children. Why, she had scarcely ever spoken to a child in her life, and now she was to have the entire charge of two thrust upon her. She could not help wondering what Eleanor would have said or done in her place, but was unable to answer the question satisfactorily. The situation, however, could hardly have dismayed her as much as it was dismaying her substitute. To fill the post of holiday governess to two small children would seem to her an easy task after having taught for three years in a big school. Of one thing, however, Margaret felt quite convinced. If Eleanor had known of the predicament in which Margaret was placed, she would, after a moment or two of consternation, have gone off into fits of laughter. And no doubt the situation had its comic side; even Margaret, full of alarm as she was, could not restrain a smile as she thought of the very queer governess that she would make.
"You look pretty young to be a governess, don't you?" said Maud. "Did you ever have any difficulty in keeping order?"
"No, never," said Margaret, truthfully enough.
"How many girls were there?"
"Twenty boarders, forty day girls, and five governesses when I—when I——" this came out with a gulp, for Margaret found the first falsehood she had been obliged to tell most distasteful to her—"went there. But the school has been going down the last few years, and last term there were only seven boarders and ten day girls."
"Sounds rather a poor sort of show, doesn't it?" said Maud with a yawn. "I say, what a slow horse we have got, haven't we? We shall be all night getting home at this rate. What sort of place was Putney or Hampstead, or wherever the school was to live in?"
"Miss McDonald's school was at Hampstead, which is a suburb of London and is situated high up. It is celebrated for its Heath, which is a great holiday resort for the lower orders—the 'Arrys and 'Arriets, you know—on Bank Holidays, at which time it is advisable for quieter members of society to keep off it. But at other times it affords an excellent exercise ground for all the young ladies' schools in the neighbourhood. The air is fine and invigorating, and there is no reason why, with the help of a little imagination, one should not fancy oneself in the heart of the country, and many miles away from the greatest metropolis in the world. The sunsets can, by those who appreciate the beauties of Nature, be viewed from that portion of the Heath which commands a view of the western sky, and——"
"Very interesting indeed," broke in Maud, who had been listening with astonishment to this flow of instructive discourse.
At first she had thought that Margaret was, to use her own phrase, "rotting her," but a glance at the serious face beside her was sufficient to dispel that theory, and she came to the conclusion that young though she was, Margaret was a typical governess, who rejoiced in framing stilted sentences and in letting them flow from her lips in an even, monotonous voice.
"You speak like a well-informed guide-book," she added, with another yawn.
Margaret took the semi-impertinent remark as a compliment.
"I can tell you a great deal more than that about Hampstead if you would like to listen," she said, for her wonderfully accurate memory had enabled her to retain every word of the banteringly given description of Hampstead with which Eleanor had furnished her. Needless to say, Eleanor had had no idea that Margaret would think it necessary to repeat it word for word, but had thought that Margaret would only pick out facts here and there to help her in any emergency that might arise.
"Not on any account, thanks," said Maud hastily; "let's talk about something more interesting."
"Something more interesting" proved to be her own self, and from that point onwards until they reached their destination Maud talked exclusively of her own doings. And as she appeared to do little else but play games, and as Margaret's knowledge of all games was "nil," it followed that very much of what Maud said was as unintelligible as though she had talked Chinese. But though she never knew when Maud was talking of golf, or when of tennis, or again, when hockey was under discussion, so that handicaps, and sliced balls, and American services, and good forearm drives, and double faults, and poor passing, and good shooting, and half-volleys, were terms that were all jumbled up in absolutely inextricable confusion, her expression of rapt attention as she jotted them down on the tablets of her mind, resolving to acquaint herself with the meaning of each when occasion served, convinced Maud that she had a properly appreciative listener. A person even more ignorant of games than Margaret would have gathered from all she said about them that Maud excelled in each and all.
And that was no vain boast either. Her golf handicap was four; she played an exceedingly good, hard game at tennis, and had twice played hockey in International matches. But it was of billiards she was talking during the last few minutes of their drive. It appeared from what she said that she had promised to play a game with Geoffrey immediately after dinner, but that she had not only broken that promise but had been obliged to come away in the middle of dinner to meet the train.
"Oh, I am so sorry to have caused you this inconvenience," said Margaret. "But it was most kind of you to come and meet me."
"Oh, I didn't come down to meet you," said Maud, with perfect frankness. "I wanted to hear how Anna had got on at Surbiton. Then I luckily remembered that you were coming by this train, and so got a lift home in your cab, and killed two birds with one stone."
The little laugh with which Maud accompanied this candid explanation of her presence at the station robbed her words of much of their sting, yet Margaret was conscious of a feeling of mortification that Maud's errand had not been undertaken solely on her behalf. Indeed, she had been given to understand that she was by far the smaller and the least important of the two bird's that Maud's stone had brought down; and the knowledge made her feel very forlorn indeed. Up to that moment she had been under the impression that Maud had been anxious to meet her and make her acquaintance. Well, if not hers, that of the girl she represented, and the casually given information that it was only because she happened to travel by the same train as the Finches that she had been at the station to greet her quite took away the pleasant feeling she had had that there was at least one person in the big, strange household she was entering who was eager to show herself kindly disposed towards the new holiday governess.
They had long ago left the neighbourhood of the town behind them, and had been driving through the deepening dusk towards the downs, which, looking in that dim light like a high green wall, run inland from the sea. Most of the roads hereabouts were wide and bordered by trees, and on either side houses which had for the most part large gardens surrounding them lay back from the road. Even Margaret, unversed as she was in the knowledge of what made the difference between a good and bad neighbourhood in the town, could perceive that the further they went the more prosperous and consequential looking the houses became.
At last, when they were almost underneath the downs, the long, straight road they had been following for some time turned abruptly to the right, and going through a white gate they entered a long drive lined on either side with a hedge of evergreens close clipped and of great thickness. Here and there openings like doorways had been cut in the hedge, but it was now too dark to see what lay beyond them.
Almost before the cab had time to draw up before the lighted doorway, Maud had jumped out.
"Here we are at last," she said, with a big sigh of relief, "and here you are, Martin," as a portly looking butler came forward. "That's all right. Thanks ever so for the lift, Miss Carson. You'll excuse me now, won't you, though. I expect Geoffrey is tearing his hair in the billiard-room." And with that Maud vanished at top speed, and Margaret was left to Martin's guidance. Though Maud's sudden desertion came as an unwelcome surprise to her, Margaret was too tired by this time even to feel shy, and she followed Martin through the hall without any inward tremors of nervousness.
"Miss Carson, Madam," he said, throwing open a door at the far end of the big, square hall they had traversed, and ushering her into a drawing-room whose open French windows gave on to the lawn. The only light in the room, and that was not very much, came from outside, and in the semi-darkness Margaret could just make out a figure seated in a low easy chair partly in and partly out of the window.
A gentle snore was the only reply to the butler's announcement, and Margaret was conscious of a quick fear lest he might retire and leave her with her sleeping hostess.
But Martin was evidently acquainted with his mistress's habits, and he advanced slowly up the long room repeating "Miss Carson, Madam," and coughing gently behind his hand at intervals until he had reached her side.
Then she awoke.
And once awake she gave Margaret a very cordial greeting.
"My dear," she said, extending her hand but not offering to rise from her chair, "I am very pleased to see you. Turn up the lights, Martin; I was asleep when you came. But I was not snoring, was I? The boys and Maud accuse me of that, I know. The nap every evening after dinner I do not deny, but the snoring I do deny most emphatically. Just reassure me my dear, by telling me that I was not snoring."
"It was a very gentle, quiet snore," said Margaret politely.
Mrs. Danvers broke into a soft, chuckling laugh which was as pleasant and amiable as her voice, and Martin having now turned on the light Margaret saw that her hostess's face and appearance matched her voice and laugh. She was a stout, not to say exceedingly stout, middle-aged woman, with a round, rosy face, on every line of which good-temper, combined with an easy, indolent disposition, were expressed.
"Excuse my getting up, my dear," she said, "but truth to say, I do not get up as easily as I could wish. 'J'y suis, j'y reste,' ought to be, though it is not, my family motto. And so you missed your train. Very trying to miss trains, is it not? And you must be tired, my dear. I hope Maud saw that you had enough to eat, and that you like your room."
"Miss Carson has only this minute arrived, Madam," interposed Martin from the door. "And Miss Maud directed me to take her straight to you."
"And you have had nothing to eat since you arrived!" Mrs. Danvers exclaimed in a horrified tone. "Why, my dear, you must be starving! Come with me to the dining-room at once."
She got slowly up out of her capacious chair as she spoke, and as she did so a piece of knitting slid from her lap to the floor, while a big ball of worsted rolled away under the nearest sofa. Margaret first picked up the knitting and then pursued the ball and restored both to their owner, an action which, although she did not know it at the time, she was destined to perform very often for Mrs. Danvers, for that lady was very rarely unaccompanied by a piece of knitting, which she invariably dropped when she rose; to knit, she said, soothed the nerves, and gave an added pleasure to conversation. Reading she was not fond of, and scarcely ever opened a book or a newspaper, but she would knit and talk, chiefly about her children, for hours at a stretch. When her knitting had been restored to her now, and half a row of stitches dropped in the fall picked up, she led the way into the dining-room. She was kindness and hospitality itself, but though her incessant flow of talk obviated all necessity for Margaret to contribute more than the merest monosyllables, the strain of listening and being ready to say Yes or No in the right places fatigued Margaret so greatly that by the end of the meal her brain was in a whirl, and if Mrs. Danvers had put to her one-tenth of the questions to which Eleanor had supplied ready-made answers, her replies would have been so extraordinarily muddled up that the deception the two girls were practising would have been found out at once.
But Mrs. Danvers, like her daughter Maud, was far more interested in her own concerns than in those of any one with whom she might come in contact.
But her conversation did differ from Maud's in that it was not of herself she mainly spoke. It was evident, even to Margaret's tired brain, that Mrs. Danver's whole being was wrapped up in her children. She would talk about them and praise them literally by the hour together, and Margaret was given to understand that there never were such manly, clever boys as her sons, or such charming girls as her daughters. If Geoffrey did not eventually rise to be Commander-in-Chief, and if Noel and Jack did not become Admirals of the Fleet, it would not be their fault. On the other hand, Edward's brains would get him into Parliament, and there was no reason at all why he should not be Prime Minister one day. As for Maud, there was simply nothing she could not do in the way of games Daisy and David were dear children, too, if taken in the right way, and not unduly thwarted. Daisy and David Margaret concluded, were the two grandchildren to whom she was to fill the position of holiday governess and she thought to herself ruefully enough, as Mrs. Danvers went on to say what high-spirited children they were, that she was quite sure she would never have the courage to thwart them however naughty they were.
When Margaret could eat no more, and indeed she had finished her supper long before Mrs. Danvers became aware of the fact, the latter suggested that if Miss Carson had really had enough they should go into the billiard-room and watch the game that was in progress there. She had already been told that Maud was playing a level game with Geoffrey. They had started the game before dinner, and Maud had been 120 to his 80 odd when the gong brought play to a standstill. She had made four breaks of 10, two of 12, and one of 15, and though every word of this was Greek to Margaret, she gathered from the air of pride with which Mrs. Danvers spoke that it was all greatly to Maud's credit.
So when Mrs. Danvers' knitting had been picked up from the floor, and the ball, which had rolled under the dining-room table this time, retrieved, Margaret followed her hostess out of the room.
A tremendous clapping and cheering, and the noisy stamping of cues on the ground, fell on Margaret's ears as Mrs. Danvers threw open the door of the billiard-room, and it did not cease until they had both been some minutes in the room.
To Margaret's dazed, shy eyes the room seemed full of young people, although as a matter of fact there were only one or two friends of the Danvers present, the rest of the group of young people being the Danvers themselves. Maud, of course, was still in the tweed skirt in which she had gone to the station, but the other girls were in pretty white evening frocks, and the bigger boys were in dinner jackets, and the smaller ones in Etons. Maud was perched on the edge of the billiard-table with one foot on the ground and the other swinging to and fro, and it was evident both from her pleased, self-conscious air and the fact that she was the only person in the room who was not clapping, that all the applause was meant for her.
"Yes, I have beaten him handsomely, Mumsy," she said, when at length Mrs. Danvers could make her voice heard. "It was a close thing though. Fancy Geoffrey was 193, and he must needs go and miss one of the easiest shots you ever saw, and then I ran out with a break of 22."
"Fancy that!" Mrs. Danvers said, turning to Margaret with a proud, beaming face. "Maud ran out with a break of 22."
Then a momentary silence fell in the room, and everybody present seemingly became aware for the first time that there was a stranger among them. She coloured up nervously, and then feeling it incumbent upon her to say something, for, or so at least it seemed to her, every one seemed waiting for her to speak, she stammered out nervously, addressing Maud:—
"I hope you did not hurt yourself."
"Hurt myself—how?" said Maud, in wide-eyed surprise.
"By running out and breaking yourself; or," becoming miserably aware, from the expressions on everybody's faces that she had said something incredibly foolish, "was it your stick that you broke?"
An audible titter ran round the room, and as Margaret stood there, the focus of all eyes, the titter changed to literal shouts and shrieks of laughter. The boys doubled themselves up into knots, the girls staggered helplessly about, and Mrs. Danvers just sank into the nearest chair and laughed until the tears ran down her face. The room fairly rang with their laughter, and in the middle of them all Margaret stood alone with crimson cheeks, and eyes to which the tears had begun to start.
But no one had the slightest pity for her cruel mortification; only now and then one or other of them would glance from her to Maud and go off into fresh shrieks.
At last Margaret could stand her position no longer, but crying out in a high, choking voice, that was plainly heard even above the din that prevailed: "Oh I hate you all! I hate you all!" she dashed from the room, and ran, still with the sound of their laughter behind her, down the passage which led to the billiard-room into the hall. Even at that distance she could hear the shouts and yells of laughter, which seemed to be increasing rather than diminishing, for if there was an unusual lull in the noise, some one would ask Maud if her run had broken her or her stick, and that would be sufficient to start them all off again.
The noise they all made even at that distance was tremendous, but The Cedars was evidently a house to which uproarious mirth was no novelty, for Martin, by whom Margaret had brushed in her hasty flight from the billiard-room, exhibited no signs of surprise at the sound of it.
In the hall, simply because she did not know where to go next, Margaret came to a pause in her headlong flight, and, sinking on to a chair, covered her face with her hands. Even though the length of the whole house separated her now from the billiard-room, she had not escaped from the sound of the shouts and squeals to which her remarks had given rise, for fresh peals were still ringing out with unabated force.
"Oh, will they ever stop laughing at me!" Margaret said half-aloud, in a tone that was fraught with extreme misery. "Oh, how I wish I had never come here! And I had been so looking forward to being friends with girls and boys of my own age. Oh, how shall I bear it if they go on laughing at me for days and days!"
"Oh, but they won't go on for as long as that, no matter how good the joke. They'll have a dozen fresh jokes by this time to-morrow, and this one will be forgotten. Unless, of course, it was an extra good one. By the way, what was the joke? You are Miss Carson, aren't you? I am Nancy Green. Take a chocolate and tell me all about it."
Margaret, who had believed herself to be alone, turned in surprise as this unexpected voice fell on her ears, and glanced about her in a startled fashion until, in a cosy nook close to her and half hidden by a tall palm and a screen, she saw a big Chesterfield couch on which a girl was stretched full length, with a book in one hand and a box of chocolates in the other.
"I do not exactly know what is making them laugh," Margaret said, declining the chocolates with an unhappy shake of her head. "They were playing billiards, and Miss Danvers said she had run away and broken something, and I hoped she was not hurt, and then they all began to laugh, and have not stopped yet," she added resentfully, as a fresh peal of laughter reached her ears. "And you are laughing, too," she said, glancing at Nancy's twitching lips.
"Only a very little," Nancy said hastily, "and it was rather a funny mistake you made, you know. I will try and explain. You see, a break in billiards does not mean a fall; it means that you go on scoring."
"Oh!" said Margaret, in the same dejected accents, and not feeling at all enlightened, "and what does going on scoring mean?"
"Why, that it is still your turn to play, of course," said Nancy, and her tone was so surprised that Margaret thought it wiser to ask no more questions in case she displayed an ignorance so great as to rouse suspicion as to where she could have been brought up.
"I wish they would stop laughing at me," she said miserably.
"Why! Do you mind being laughed at so much as all that," Nancy said. "I should have thought that as a governess in a school you would have got used to it. For schoolgirls are awful quizzes. Perhaps, though, as you were a governess they did it behind your back."
"They certainly did not do it to my face," Margaret said.
"Oh, well, they will here," said Nancy. "Everybody chaffs everybody else in this house pretty freely. What you must do is to chaff back; but if you don't feel equal to that just at first, just grin, and let them think you don't care a rap."
At that moment heavy footsteps were heard in the passage and Mrs. Danvers came into the hall.
"Ah, here you are, Miss Carson. I could not think where you had got to. I just stopped to tell my shameless young folk what I thought of them for laughing like that at a stranger. Nancy, you lazy girl, you ought to have been watching the match instead of lying here. It was a close thing. Maud won. Really she has a wonderful eye. There is simply no game she cannot excel in if she chose. She——" But then Mrs. Danvers catching sight of Margaret's miserable expression pulled herself up short just as she had been about to launch forth into a glowing account of her daughter's skill. "But all the same, it was shameful of them to laugh at you like that, Miss Carson. Your first night too, when you are not used to them."
"Just what I said, Aunt Mary," chimed in Nancy, who had seen that Mrs. Danvers casual treatment of the incident which had brought such mortification to the new governess was making the latter feel still more lost and ill at ease. "She'll soon get used to it though, and will care just as little as anybody when her turn comes to be rotted."
"And above all things keep your temper, my dear," said Mrs. Danvers. "But that remark," she added hastily, seeing that Margaret looked more miserable even than before, "is not intended as a reproof, for the way they went on was enough to make any one lose their temper, but as a friendly warning. They'll tease you unmercifully if they find you lose your temper, and I shan't be able to stop it. And now, my dear, unless you like to come back to the billiard-room and show them that you don't care a rap for their laughter, I'll take you to your room. Which would you like to do?"
"Oh, go to my room, please," said Margaret hastily, who felt that on no account would she face any one of the Danvers' family again that night.
"Did you lose your temper?" inquired Nancy. "Then I'm jolly glad to hear it. Listen to the wretches laughing still. So many to one wasn't fair. I hope you gave it to them hot. They deserved it."
"So they did," said Mrs. Danvers heartily, and Margaret, who had yet to learn Mrs. Danvers always sided with the last speaker, took courage from that remark. It showed at all events, she thought, that her sudden passionate outburst had not caused Mrs. Danvers to take a dislike to her.
"I have put you in the big spare room," Mrs. Danvers said, as with Margaret following in her wake she led the way slowly upstairs. "Nancy and Joan have the other spare rooms, and I was really keeping this for an old aunt of mine, who may come later. If she does come while you are here, you won't mind turning out for her, will you, and going into the dressing-room opening out of this? There is a bed in it, and really it is quite a fair-sized little room; but I thought as this was empty I should like you to have it for the time being anyway. A nice room, isn't it?" Mrs. Danvers was so evidently well pleased with herself for having given a mere holiday governess the best bedroom in her house that Margaret hastened to admire it.
It was indeed a luxuriously furnished room, perfect in all its appointments, and its handsome solid old mahogany furniture looked well against the dull blue Axminster carpet and the blue silk hangings of the big double bed. The walls were blue also.
"Yes, I think you will be comfortable," Mrs. Danvers said, glancing round. "You see there is a sofa and an armchair and a writing-table, so that if at any time you want to get away from the noisy young folk downstairs you have got a nice retreat to come to. They have unstrapped your trunk I see; but as Collins, the head housemaid, is out to-night, your unpacking has not been done for you."
"Oh, but thank you very much, I can do that myself," said Margaret hastily, wondering within herself as she spoke what would have happened supposing Collins had not been out, and had insisted upon unpacking her things, and had seen that all her linen was marked with a name quite different to the one she had come in. The thought of the danger she had escaped made her turn quite pale. This sudden pallor was not lost upon Mrs. Danvers who, attributed it, not unnaturally, to extreme fatigue, and who thereupon hastened her own departure from the room, with a kindly expressed wish as she left, that Margaret would sleep well.
But tired though Margaret was, she felt that she could not go to bed until she had removed her own name from every article of her underlinen, and so having unpacked her trunk she took a pair of scissors and set to work. Fortunately for her purpose, her things had not been marked in ink but with tapes bearing her name in woven letters, and these she carefully ripped off one by one, and making a little pile of them burned them all in the grate. Then, if any maid saw them before Margaret had time to remark them with the ink and tapes that she meant to buy, the most she would feel would be a mild wonder that any young lady having such nice undergarments as Miss Carson had, should risk losing them at the wash by having no name upon them.
In spite of her settled conviction that, weary though she was, she was far too miserable to close an eye that night. Margaret's slumbers were sound. A vigorous banging on a door in the near neighbourhood of her own, a banging which was answered by a sleepy and irritable yell, roused her about six o'clock the next morning. Otherwise she could have slept on for another hour or more. But once awake further sleep was impossible. Not only were her neighbours exceedingly noisy—from snatches of conversation shouted across the passage as they dressed, Margaret gathered that most of the junior members of the house were going down to the sea to bathe—but her own thoughts were of themselves sufficient to keep her awake. She had fallen asleep the night before with the dismal thought in her mind that though her long desired wish to stay in a house full of young people had been most unexpectedly realised, the very first thing she had done was to declare enmity with all of them, and the depressing fact came vividly before her mind the instant she awoke. She found herself wishing most fervently that she had been content to remain Margaret Anstruther, and had never met Eleanor Carson, or conceived the mad idea of changing places with her. However, as it was obviously too late to entertain reflections of that sort now, she made an effort to dismiss that unprofitable wish from her mind, and in order to divert her thoughts the more effectually, resolved, early though it was, to get up.
As soon as the sound of many feet clattering noisily downstairs told her that the coast was clear, she found her way to the bathroom, and having bathed and dressed felt more courage to face the trials of the day that lay before her.
There was no one about as she went downstairs, and she passed out through the open front door and went into the garden.
The Cedars—described by the local house agents as one of the finest residential mansions in Seabourne—stood in about three acres of ground, which, though to Margaret accustomed to the big gardens of the country, seemed a small enough piece of land to belong to such an imposing looking house as The Cedars, was in reality unusually large for a town where property was so valuable and ground rents as enormous as they were in Seabourne. The grounds had been laid out to the utmost advantage. A wide lawn, planted here and there with clumps of flowering shrubs, sloped slightly away from the front of the house, and at the bottom of it lay two sunk tennis courts surrounded by high wire-netting. On the other side of the drive were kitchen and fruit gardens.
Her tour of the grounds finished, Margaret conceived the idea of going on to the downs, the foot of which were scarcely a stone's throw away from the gate, and seeing if she could discover in which direction Windy Gap lay. It was still quite early and she had plenty of time at her disposal before breakfast. It was a stiff climb to the top of the downs and took longer than she had thought, even though she left the white road that went zigzagging to the summit and took a short cut up an exceedingly steep footpath. But the view that she got when she reached the top brought a little cry of amazed wonder to her lips, and she felt amply repaid for her long, toilsome climb. Accustomed as she had been all her life to the flat, tame scenery that surrounded her native village, she had had no idea that anything as lovely as this could exist. Never had she seen anything like it. The wide downs appeared to stretch away for miles and miles in front of her forming undulating hills and valleys. Below, at the foot of the high white cliffs that now rose to a dizzy height sheer above the water, and now dipped almost to its level, lay the sea glittering and sparkling in the sunlight. For the most part the downs were bare and wind-swept, but in the hollows small villages nestled with here and there a square grey tower rising through the trees that surrounded the tiny hamlets. One of these she felt sure must be Windy Gap, because looking eastwards she could see the flat, marshy ground through which the train had taken them the day before, and though of this she could not be certain, for a light mist veiled the distant view, she even thought she could descry the long white road leading upwards to the downs from the plain beneath them.
Somewhere over there, then, Eleanor was at that moment, and whatever else she might be doing she was not roaming at her own sweet will on the hillside as she, Margaret, was at that moment doing. And her intense satisfaction at the thought of her own freedom swept away the few uncomfortable doubts and fears that had been harassing her ever since she awoke that morning. Come what might, she would enjoy herself she thought determinedly.
But as a matter of fact the invigorating, bracing air, the brilliant sunshine pouring down on land and sea, had already acted like a tonic upon Margaret's spirits, her troubles seemed to roll away of their own accord and she felt that it would be impossible not to be happy at The Cedars.
So, much the better for her walk, she presently climbed down the hill again, and turned into the road that led homewards. The windows of the dining-room looked on to the drive, and as she passed them she saw that every one was seated at breakfast, and it was with an inward and very rapid sinking of the heart that she realised that she would have to go in late and face the entire assembled party.
An access of terrible shyness rushed over her at the thought, and to delay the evil moment as much as possible she went up to her room and took off her hat and smoothed her hair. But she could not linger over that operation indefinitely, especially as a housemaid who had already arrived to do her room volunteered the information that the breakfast gong had sounded nearly a quarter of an hour ago. With slow, reluctant feet that halted at every step Margaret went down the wide, shallow stairs. If any one had told her three days ago that she would go thus laggingly to resume acquaintance with a room full of young people she would have found difficulty in believing them. A buzz of talk and laughter struck loudly on her ear as she pushed the door open and went in.
Every member of the family, except Mrs. Danvers who never came down to breakfast, were assembled in the room, and, or so at least it seemed to Margaret as she hung for a moment unperceived in a hesitating manner on the threshold, they were all talking together.
In addition, Maud, who presumably occupied her mother's place at the head of the table, but who had vacated it for the time being, was balancing herself on the fender reading out scraps of news from a letter she held in her hand.
One of the two cadets had evidently only just made his appearance at breakfast, for he was standing at the sideboard, complaining, as he lifted the covers and inspected the contents of the hot dishes, that not a single thing worth eating had been left for him.
"You shouldn't be such a lazy person then," called a girl who was seated near Geoffrey. "Of course, the early birds get all the worms."
"I am sorry, Miss Joan, that you liken our good food to worms," said the boy, as, having passed the contents of all the dishes in review, he slid a couple of poached eggs and a few rashers of bacon on to his plate, and took his seat beside the girl who had called out the remark.
"I was speaking comparatively," she said in a condescending tone, as she tilted her nose in the air. "I have heard before that one should not speak comparatively to boys of your age, and now I know."
At that there arose a delighted shout of laughter, and Maud called across from the fireplace that little girls should not use words they could not understand. "You meant figuratively, my dear Joan," she said.
Joan, who looked about sixteen, tossed the long, fair pigtail in which she wore her hair over her shoulder and began readily enough to join in the laughter to which her mistake had just given rise. But all of a sudden her countenance changed, and appearing to fly into a violent passion she started up from her chair, and stamped her foot and cried out:—
"I won't be laughed at, I won't, I won't! I hate you all!"
And burying her face in her handkerchief, she raced across the room, and dashed full tilt into Margaret who was still hesitating unperceived in the doorway.
At that a sound like a little gasp went up from the others, and though the gasp was in some cases followed by a little giggle, to their credit be it said most of the young faces wore a look of concern that Margaret should have made her appearance just in time to hear her outburst of the night before mimicked for the general amusement. Would she get angry again, or would she burst out crying? From what they had seen of her the night before, she was quite as likely to do one as the other. But to the general surprise she did neither, and for the simple reason that she had failed to grasp the fact that Joan's grief was all a sham, and that it was she herself who was being made game of. Joan, after one swift glimpse to see against whom it was she had so violently cannoned, turned away, and dropping her face in her handkerchief, again appeared to cry violently. Margaret felt quite sorry for her, and forgetting all her shyness tried to comfort her.
"I know how unpleasant it is to be laughed at," she whispered in her ear; "but if you pretend not to mind and laugh back you will not mind it so much."
But Margaret's sympathy, far from making Joan ashamed of herself, amused her immensely, and keeping her face turned away from Margaret, she looked up out of her handkerchief and winked at the others and giggled. But when she found that no one else was laughing, her own giggles died away, and she began to sidle uncomfortably towards her chair.
Though none of the others had heard what Margaret had whispered to her, they had guessed, from the sympathetic expression of her face, that she had taken Joan's pretence of rage for a real outburst, and was comforting her; and that in spite of that, Joan should still wish to make game of her seemed to them horribly unfair. Geoffrey was the first to show his disapproval of Joan's conduct. A joke was a joke, he thought, but his young cousin must be taught that she could not make game of a fellow guest—not without their sanction, at any rate. So getting up and coming round the table, he shook hands with Margaret, wished her good morning, and found a place for her next him.
"Come back to the table and do your duty, Maud," he said, as his sister showed no signs of moving from the fireplace; "or if you want to go off, let Hilary take your place. There are several of us wanting more tea. Will you have tea or coffee, Miss Carson?"
"I'll pour out for you, Maud," Hilary said, starting up.
"No, you won't, my dear," Maud said, coming back to her place. "I haven't half finished my brekker. But I thought you had had breakfast ages ago, Miss Carson, with the kids in the nursery."
"Oh, ought I to have had my breakfast there?" Margaret said uncomfortably, letting the fork she had just taken up fall with a clatter on to her plate.
Maud shrugged her shoulders. "There is no ought about it," she said carelessly. "But the kids do have their breakfast in the nursery, and I believe the idea was that you should have yours there with them."
"Well, any way, Miss Carson," put in Geoffrey pleasantly, "you show your good taste in preferring our society to theirs. Our manners may leave a good deal to be desired"—though he did not glance at Joan, that young person knew well that her recent behaviour was in his mind, and got very red—"but theirs are worse. Their sense of humour is distinctly inferior, and they think it awfully funny to put salt in your tea, and to mix mustard with your pudding when you aren't looking, and things of that sort, you know."
No one knew better than her brother that Maud's remark had not been intended to convey a hint that Miss Carson's place as governess was with her young charges. The disagreeable habit of implying things was not one of Maud's faults. Innuendos were beneath her—what she wanted to say she said outright. But sometimes, as in this case, her brother wished she was not so utterly indifferent to the effect her bluntness produced. It was because he had seen Margaret wince under it that he had exerted himself to remove any unpleasant impression that her words might have left on the holiday governess's mind.
"I—I do like your company best, of course," Margaret said. Then, with a heightening colour, and in a stammering, choked voice which showed what an effort it was to overcome her shyness and speak so that every one could hear, she said, "I beg your pardon for saying last night that I hated you all. Of course, it was not true."
"That is a great weight off our minds," said Maud in a tone of raillery. "Now we can breathe again. We were so afraid that you hadn't—well—exactly taken to us last night."
The light-hearted way in which she spoke quite robbed the words of any sting they might otherwise have conveyed, and Margaret was able to join in the laughter which this very mild way of describing the feeling she had shown the previous night evoked.
She was finding out that very little made the Danvers laugh, and when she came to think it over, she arrived at the right conclusion that she found this surprising, not because they laughed more than other young people, but because she had been used to the society of people who laughed so very much less. But anything seemed to serve with them as a cause for laughter. If the joke were a good one it evoked hearty laughter, if it were a bad one the perpetrator was laughed at; and if fresh jokes, good or bad, ran short, there was seemingly an endless store of old ones to be drawn upon, supplemented by catchwords and phrases from the latest musical comedy. These, of course, were even more unintelligible to Margaret than the rest of the queer, scrappy talk that made up the bulk of their conversation; but as she made no attempt to share in it, the fact that even their most everyday slang expressions were strange to her, passed unnoticed. For the most part, however, they were too much occupied with their own affairs to have much attention to spare for her; and it dawned upon Margaret, before even that first meal in their society was ended, that she need not have been afraid that they would bear malice against her for her outburst of the night before. They were really scarcely interested enough in her to do that. Under cover of the brisk chatter that went on round her, she took the opportunity of glancing round the table and studying the various members of the household.
With the exception of herself they numbered eight, and though there had been considerably more young people than that present in the billiard-room last night, she gathered from the conversation that was going on round her that, during the holidays at least, Mrs. Danvers kept a sort of open house for all the friends of her own children.
Opposite Margaret, on Geoffrey's other hand, sat Joan Green. Though she was only fifteen, she looked at least a year older, in spite of the fact that she wore her hair in a long, thick plait down her back. Margaret, who was still under the impression that Joan had been flying from the room in a rage as she came in, and that she had been the means of soothing her back to a better temper, was a little hurt and puzzled at the studious way in which Joan's eyes avoided hers. Once when she had caught their glance for a moment, and had smiled a friendly recognition into them, she had been rewarded by a cold glare that had quite startled her. Next to Joan sat Hilary, and the two girls had seemingly a great deal to say to each other, for though now and again they joined in the general conversation, for the most part they talked together in undertones audible to themselves alone. Hilary's face was a pale likeness of Maud's. Her eyes were not so blue, nor was her complexion so tanned as her sister's, and though her features resembled Maud's sufficiently closely to cause them to be easily recognised as sisters, Hilary's face lacked the look of sparkling vivacity which made Maud's face so attractive. On the other side of Hilary and next to Maud sat Jack, with his brother Noel, the other naval cadet, facing him. Then came Nancy, the girl who had offered Margaret chocolates and advice the previous evening, and when she caught Margaret's eyes now she smiled and nodded as much as to say she quite understood the latter's desire to find out what they were all like.
Nancy was not the only person who had noted the way in which Margaret's eyes had been travelling round the table, for when the turn of the boy next to her came to be inspected, she was startled to hear Geoffrey on the other side of her say:—
"Don't waste time on him, Miss Carson. He's not worth it, I assure you; that's only Edward—Silly Ned as we call him. You must call him that too; he never answers to any other name."
"Oh!" said Margaret, glancing with some apprehension at the small boy on her left as though she feared that he might think she was really going to call him anything of the sort.
Though he, too, was unmistakably a Danvers, he was more like Hilary than any of the others. He was a small, thin, delicate-looking boy, and he wore spectacles.
"Yes, we call him Silly Ned because he has all the brains of the family. He looks a mere child, doesn't he? But he's a sixth form boy at his college, and he got a Mathematical Exhibition last term. He's also a brilliant member of the cricket eleven. We try to take him down a peg or two in the holidays, but it isn't much good. His prizes and his cricket combined have made him too big for his boots. A nice little boy ruined, that's what he is."
"Oh, shut up, Geoffrey," Edward said; "sarcasm isn't really your line, you know."
"Meaning that it is his, or one of his," commented Geoffrey; "you see for yourself what a bumptious babe it is, Miss Carson. Well, and now that you have taken silent stock of us all, won't you tell us what you think of us? But answer me one thing to start with. Which, in your opinion, makes the most noise at breakfast, a girl's school, or the Danvers family?"
"Oh, I do not know, because I have never——" began Margaret, and then stopped in great confusion, realising that she had been about to say that she had never seen a girl's school at breakfast, and conscious that Joan, who had overheard Geoffrey's question and her answer, was staring across at her in obvious astonishment.
"Why, I thought you had come fresh from a school, Miss Carson," she said.
Before Margaret had time to answer a shout of laughter from Maud and the two boys on either side of her drowned all chance of any one making their voice heard at the other end of the table, and by the time comparative quiet was restored Margaret had collected her wits, and had remembered the part she was playing. She did not even look disconcerted when Geoffrey, whose attention had been momentarily diverted from her by the noise at the other end of the table, said thoughtfully:—
"You know, if the remark isn't rather a personal one—which it is by the way—you aren't my idea of a governess a bit."
For it was so evident that he entertained no suspicion at all of the real facts of the case that she saw there was no occasion for alarm. She even smiled as she asked him in her prim, old-fashioned way in what respect she then differed from the picture of a governess he had in his mind's eye.
"Well, it isn't exactly that you look too young, for I know governesses at girl's schools are young nowadays, and that they play games, and all that. But you don't look to me quite self-confident or self-opinionated enough. Eh! What do you think, Joan? Is Miss Carson your idea of a school governess either?"
"No," said Joan promptly; and then Margaret, who could not know that Joan had answered in the negative with the idea of giving the reply that she fancied Margaret would like least, did change countenance a little. For Joan's "No" was so very decisive. And it did not make her feel any the more comfortable to know that Joan's eyes were fixed unblinkingly, and pitilessly, on her blushes. For a moment Joan stared and Margaret blushed, the latter miserably conscious meanwhile that if she wanted to draw down suspicion upon herself she had only to continue to sit there and look the picture of guilt, and the thing was done.
"Not a bit," Joan added with much emphasis, and in the amiable hope of seeing Margaret look still more out of countenance.
But then Margaret pulled herself together. There had suddenly flashed into her mind the recollection of the words Eleanor had used when she, Margaret, had found it hard to believe that Eleanor had been a pupil teacher and a governess for the last six years. And her excellent memory coming to her aid, she quoted them now, exactly reproducing even the light, bantering tone Eleanor had used.
"You write to Miss McDonald," she said, "and ask her what sort of a governess Miss Carson was. I think she would bristle with indignation if she were to hear any one doubt that she would have a governess in her school who was incapable of keeping order. So please throw no cold doubts on my abilities. The profession of a governess is the only one I am fitted to follow, and if I was no good at that I should be hard put to it to earn a living."
"Upon my word," murmured Maud to one of the boys, "the silent Miss Carson is making quite a speech down at the other end of the table."
"I promise never to doubt your capabilities again," said Geoffrey with mock solemnity. "We are satisfied that Miss Carson really is a governess, aren't we, Joan?" he added, turning to his cousin.
"Oh, quite," said Joan slowly. Though she had not yet put the thought into words Joan thought dimly that it was rather curious of Miss Carson to insist so strongly on the fact that she had been a governess. Of course, they all knew that beforehand, so why make such a point of it.
Hilary and Joan were the first to get up from table, and with linked arms they sauntered out on to the terrace, their heads close together.
Margaret felt certain from a backward glance they threw in her direction as they went out that they were whispering about her, and the knowledge made her vaguely uncomfortable.
"Well, I suppose you two are off sailing again," said Maud to the two cadets. "I should have thought you would have had enough of the sea in term-time, and be glad enough to stay on shore when you got a chance."
"And that from a girl who thinks she knows everything," said one of the boys in disgusted accents. "Did she think, then, that Osborne is a sailing ship, or what?"
"Oh, well, you know what I mean," said Maud equably.
"I'll stay on shore, as you call it, like a shot, Maud," said Jack, "if you'll give us a game of tennis. Come on now, you and I against Noel and Nancy."
"Not taking any, thanks," was Maud's retort. "Get Hilary instead of me, and the set would be all right."
"Oh, Hilary plays a rotten game!" said Jack, with true brotherly frankness. "She can't play for nuts, and she talks all the time, and won't run, and loses her temper."
"Hilary would be pleased if she heard you," remarked Maud lazily, as she rose and strolled across to the fireplace.
"Oh, I hear, and I don't care two straws," called her sister from the terrace. But her face, which was as black as thunder, looked as if she did care nevertheless.
"Catch me wasting a whole day playing tennis," said Geoffrey. "I'm as keen on a game as any one in the afternoon, but I am not going to be glued to one little patch of grass all day."
"Of course not," put in Edward; "your favourite form of amusement we all know nowadays, is to lie flat on your back on a dusty road tinkering at your old motor-bike."
"And yours, apparently, to try and be funny at the expense of your elders and betters," retorted Geoffrey. "Say much more, young man, and I'll take you out in the trailer."
"Oh, but I wish you would, Geoffrey."
"Not much. The mater says she can't spare any of us yet, and certainly not the "Hope of His Side." So trot away to your Latin essays, my son, and don't waste time in idling like the rest of us."
"As a matter of fact, I'm going down to the cricket-ground with Tommy to practice at the nets a bit with the professional," said Edward, nettled at the imputation that he was going to spend the morning indoors. He was not vain of his brains, but he was of his cricket, and though wild horses would not have dragged from him the confession that he read Greek for pleasure long after he ought to have been asleep, he would brag of his batting averages to any one who would listen.
At that moment a maid entered the room and approached Margaret.
"If you please, Miss," she said, "the mistress says, will you wait for her in the morning-room. She will be down in a moment, and wishes to speak to you before you go out."
Margaret jumped up at once, glad of an excuse to leave the room, for though she had finished her breakfast long before any of the others, she had been too shy to rise and go away. Besides, she had not the least idea where she ought to go, or what she ought to do.
"No need for you to hurry, Miss Carson," Maud called after her. "Mother's minutes generally mean hours."
And in that Maud proved to have been right, for an hour and a quarter passed before Mrs. Danvers made her belated appearance in the morning-room. But as there was a goodly supply of magazines and illustrated papers, Margaret did not find the time hang heavily on her hands.
Truth to say, she was glad to be alone, and the knowledge that such was the case depressed her very much. She had looked forward to the society of other young people as the greatest happiness earth could give her, and it was discouraging to find that the realisation of her wish was as yet bringing her very little pleasure. She felt awkward and terribly shy in their company, and she had an uneasy consciousness that they looked upon her as a poor sort of creature, and very uninteresting—what, in short, she said sadly to herself, for she was already picking up some of their expressions—they would have called a bore.
When at last Mrs. Danvers did make her appearance she was full of apologies for having kept Margaret waiting so long.
"You must blame the cook, my dear," she said cheerily, "not me. Oh, dear, I am glad to sit down!"
She sank into a low easy chair with an air of fatigue, and Margaret seeing her look round for a footstool, brought her one and placed it under her feet.
"Thank you, my dear," she said, "and now if you will get me my knitting from that table in the corner we will have a nice, cosy chat. Thank goodness my work for the day is all done!" Ten minutes spent in the kitchen assenting to all that a very excellent cook-housekeeper suggested constituted Mrs. Danvers "work for the day." "There are many things I wanted to ask you about my old friend and cousin, Miss McDonald. By the way, what do you think of the children?"
When Margaret answered that she had not yet seen them, Mrs. Danvers, after a short pause of astonishment, gave a vexed laugh. At least, to start with, the laugh was tinged with vexation; but as she continued to laugh the feeling of annoyance was merged into one of hearty amusement.