CHAPTER IIITHE COMING OF MISS PRINCE
“Listen!” whispered David, “I hear the wheels of the carriage at the front door. Three groans for Miss Prince!”
The front door was opened, and Miss Prince came into the hall. She was just a little disappointed not to see the three boys waiting to welcome her, as she had expected.
“She’snotlike the Ugly Sisters!” said Nipper in a voice full of disappointment. He was peeping through the balusters, the twins peering over his shoulders.
“I expect that way of smiling and pretending to look nice is just camouflage. She’s sure to be a perfect beast inside,” said David.
The booby trap unfortunately came down on the housekeeper’s head as she showed Miss Prince to her room. The boys distinctly heard Miss Prince laugh, and then pretend she had only coughed and try and comfort Mrs. Biggs. Then they heard her discover the mice in her chest of drawers.
“Mice!” she said. “Dear little things! I love mice. But oh, how cruel! Someone has tied them by their tails!” They heard her freeing the mice. “How untidy my bed looks!”came Miss Prince’s voice presently. They heard her open it, then she laughed.
“No go,” said Bill dejectedly. “It’s going to be harder work giving Miss Prince frightfulness than I thought. But we’ll stick to it, won’t we, boys?”
“We will!” said the other two.
And they did. Not one civil or friendly word could Miss Prince get from them, try as she would. They were rude to her; they disobeyed her every order; they pretended they could not read at all when she started lessons with them, and added up every sum wrong on purpose. They told her lies, and hid when she wanted them.
Perhaps their hard little hearts would have softened a little if they could have known how their rudeness hurt and disappointed Miss Prince, and how lonely she felt without her own friendly Cubs. But she didn’t let them see; she was always cheerful and patient.
A week passed like this, and Miss Prince, who had been determined not to give in, began to despair. Being kind to them was no use; punishing them was no use. Their grandfather was furious, and told Miss Prince that he saw she could not manage them. A friend of his had told him Miss Prince could manage forty fierce Wolf Cubs, and he had said she would easily be able to tame three little boys, however wild. But she had failed; it was not much use to go on trying. Then Miss Prince got a brilliant idea.
“Mr. Ogden,” she said, “I think I know a way in which those boys could be altogetherchanged and made into really good little chaps.”
Mr. Ogden grunted like a cross bear. “Do you?” he said. “I don’t.”
“Will you give a trial to my plan?” said Miss Prince.
“I’ll try anything under the sun,” said Mr. Ogden. “What’s your plan?”
“It is to let me write and engage a boy I know, named Danny Moore, to come and act as companion to the boys, and their own groom. Jones, tells me he needs help with their ponies, and is too old to go out riding with them much longer. This boy is a Patrol-leader in the Scouts. I have known him ever since he was quite a little chap. He is a splendid leader, and can manage the most difficult boys and turn them into good Scouts. He has a good knowledge of horses too. I know he would come at once if I wrote to him, and if it’s possible to do anything with your grandsons, Danny will do it.”
“Do as you like,” said Mr. Ogden sourly. “I wash my hands of the whole business.”
That night Miss Prince posted a letter to Danny. In it she told him of the almost hopeless job she had got—of taming three perfect little terrors. She asked him to come and turn them into Wolf Cubs for her. She told him to bring his uniform, and that she would tell him the plan she had made for the way he was first to see them when he arrived.
Danny answered that he would be there in three days, and Miss Prince’s hopes began to rise.