A harum-scarum schoolgirl Part 28

Then a very desperate idea occurred to her, so desperate that only a harum-scarum like Diana would have thought of it. She would swim out towards them, and when they saw her in the water they would probably turn and come back. She pulled off her skirt and her shoes. Now Diana was not a very expert swimmer; it was indeed two years since she had had any practice, and that had been in the sea, which is easier than fresh water. She never thought of these particulars, however, but, putting her hands together, dived off the landing-place just as Loveday turned the corner of the boat-house. It was very cold, indeed, in the water, far colder than she had expected; it made her gasp for breath, and sent a numbness into her limbs. She struggled on, however, with brave strokes.

"Di--ana!" screamed Loveday's agitated voice behind her.

The girls in the boat were not even looking. How fearfully cold it was!

It was difficult to hold up her head properly and see where she was going. She had thought swimming was so easy. A few more strokes and something seemed to be twining round her. She had dashed into some waterweeds, and their clammy stems clutched her like dead fingers. She made a desperate effort to free herself; down went her head, and next moment she was gulping, struggling, and shrieking for help. There was a splash behind from the landing-place as Loveday plunged to the rescue; the occupants of the boat also, at last looking and realizing the seriousness of the situation, began to row in her direction as fast as they could pull. They were some distance off, however, and Loveday won the race. She caught Diana just as she was sinking, and held her up until the boat arrived.

A very draggled, agitated pair of girls made their way up the shrubbery walk to the house, leaving a wet trail to mark their path. Adeline tied up the _Peveril_ before she followed them.

"I'm sure n.o.body can blame _us_," she remarked to Hilary.

Loveday and Diana, warmed, dried, and clad in fresh garments, scolded by Miss Todd, and cosseted by Miss Carr, the heroines of a real adventure, and for the moment the centre of interest in the school, discussed the event in private.

"I've explained, but Adeline doesn't see it," said Diana. "She says the boat wasn't as bad as all that, and they were in no real danger, and that I did a very silly, idiotic, foolhardy thing. She doesn't understand I was trying to save her life. But I _was_!"

"I know," nodded Loveday. "I don't think somehow, though, that Adeline's the kind of girl whom you could ever make understand. Why do you lavish all this love on her, Di? She's not worth it."

Diana was plaiting her skirt into little gathers. She looked at her fingers and not at Loveday.

"I _did_ like her so! But it's all ended now--drowned in the water, I think. She doesn't care twopence about me. Well! If _she_ doesn't, no more do _I_! She may go to Hong-Kong as far as I'm concerned."

Loveday glanced anxiously at her friend. There was a suspicious tremble in the usually cheerful voice. Were those drops shining on the long eyelashes?

"It takes a good deal of riddling before we sort out the wheat and the chaff in our friendships," ventured Loveday.

"_You're_ 'honest grain', at any rate!" said Diana, winking rapidly, as she rose and ended the conversation.

CHAPTER XVIII

Diana's Foundling

There was very little doubt in the minds of Miss Todd and of other mistresses at Pendlemere Abbey that Diana was a spoilt child. Her parents, far away in Paris, made up for their enforced absence by sending her a larger a.s.sortment of presents than usually falls to the lot of a schoolgirl. She had practically everything that she could want, and a great many things beside. There was one subject, however, upon which she had coaxed her father for a long time. In every letter she had written lately she had a.s.sured him that life was not liveable in the summer term without a pony. Diana had a pa.s.sion for horses. She had ridden much in America, and her ideal of happiness was to be on ponyback. She was occasionally allowed to mount Baron, but, as Miss Todd would not permit her to take him into the lanes alone, she had to confine her gallops to the paddock, which she considered very poor sport. She thought the matter over till she evolved an idea; then she confided it to Miss Carr. Miss Carr was also an enthusiast about horses, and was secretly longing to ride Baron. Diana's scheme was that she should ask her father to allow her to hire a pony for the rest of the term, have it stabled at the farm near, and go with Miss Carr for rides.

When she made up her mind to a thing she was apt to press the subject hotly. A series of such very urgent letters went to Paris that Mr.

Hewlitt yielded, and wrote to Miss Todd asking her to be so kind as to arrange the matter. Very fortunately for Diana the idea appealed to Miss Todd; she wished to encourage riding amongst her girls, and was quite willing to allow the experiment to be tried. She commissioned Mr.

Greenhalgh, a neighbouring farmer, to procure a suitable mount for a young lady of fourteen, and to take charge of it in his stable. Diana had to wait a week, in great impatience, while he made enquiries and interviewed horse-dealers; then one red-letter afternoon she was taken by Miss Todd to the farm, and introduced to the prettiest possible little white pony. "Lady" was getting on in years, but still had some spirit left in her, and she was accustomed to the saddle. Her owner, considering that she needed a rest, was glad to hire her out for such light work. Diana flung her arms round the pony's neck, and at once began the process of making love to her, cementing the new friendship with several lumps of sugar which she had brought in her pocket.

Then began a series of perfectly delightful rides. Miss Carr and Diana would start out after tea, and explore all the bridle-roads in the neighbourhood. Sometimes they would go up on the moors, and enjoy a canter over the soft gra.s.s, or ride alongside the beautiful little lakes that lay like gems among the hills. Diana did not much mind where they went, so long as she could be upon Lady's back. Her new possession naturally aroused wild longing in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of a considerable number of her schoolfellows. If it had been possible Miss Todd would have arranged for a riding-master to bring horses to Pendlemere and give lessons to some of the girls, but matters had not yet adjusted themselves sufficiently after the war for such an ambitious scheme as that, so she did the next best thing, hired a second pony, and sent certain girls, whose parents wished them to learn riding, out in relays.

These elect few were regarded as favourites of fortune, but they were obliged to take their luck in turns. They could only have one ride a week each, and that was not nearly enough to content them. They wanted at least two.

"If Miss Todd could hire another pony," sighed Wendy, "that would mean we each got in a second lesson a week."

"Mr. Greenhalgh has tried, and says he can't hear of one anywhere,"

lamented Tattie. "Horses are scarce since the war, and ponies seem particularly wanted in the summer. It's very difficult to get riding-ponies."

"Glad I secured Lady," chuckled Diana.

"I think it's very mean of you to keep Lady all to yourself," retorted Sadie, airing a grievance. "Why can't you let her be the second school pony, and take your turn with the rest of us? It would be far fairer."

"Give up Lady? Well, I like that! Coolest idea I've ever heard! Why, I thought of the whole thing, and wrote to Dad, and she was hired specially for me. _Your_ riding lessons were only a copy of my idea. Get a third pony if you can, but I guess I'm not going to give up Lady to anybody. Why should I? Dad said she was to be mine."

"It's not sporty of you, though," grumbled Sadie. "You know perfectly well we _can't_ get a third pony, and everybody in the school is saying how hard it is for you to monopolize one entirely to yourself. There are six other girls who'd be glad to learn riding if they could get a mount."

"Then let them write home to their fathers to send them ponies."

"As if they could! But their fathers would let them take lessons if there were a school pony for them. I know that for a fact."

"Well, they shan't have mine, at any rate," rapped out Diana defiantly.

"You just needn't think it, so there!"

One afternoon it was Wendy's turn for the school pony. She and Diana and Miss Carr rode away together down the road to Chapelrigg. It was a gloriously fine day. Wild roses starred the hedgerows, and the beautiful blue speedwell bordered the lanes. Larks were singing, and, though the cuckoo had changed his tune, blackbirds still fluted in the coppices.

They had come out on an errand--not a particularly romantic one, as it happened, only to pay a bill for Miss Todd at a farm-house a few miles away. If the errand was prosaic the farm and its surroundings looked attractive; it stood on a hill with a beautiful group of birch-trees behind it, and a small stream came rippling down at the bottom of the garden. The path from the high road was blocked by a cart left standing with a load of straw, so it would be impossible to ride the horses up to the door. The three riders dismounted, and Miss Carr, tying Baron to the fence, said she would walk up the lane and pay the bill while the girls waited for her in the road. Allowing Lady and Topsy to crop the gra.s.s in the hedge bottom, Diana and Wendy sat on the bank lazily enjoying themselves. It was very pleasant that afternoon to be alive. In that northern district although summer came late she made up for it by the extreme beauty with which she clothed the landscape; the view from the hill-side was like one of Turner's pictures.

As the girls sat chatting, watching the ponies, and idly plucking flowers, they heard footsteps coming along the road, and presently a woman carrying a baby appeared round the corner. She was young and dark and gipsy-looking, and wore large ear-rings and a red cotton handkerchief knotted loosely round her brown throat. She stopped at the sight of Diana and Wendy and the ponies, and seemed to consider a moment. Then she walked boldly up to them, looked keenly in their faces, and evidently chose Diana.

"Could you do me a kindness, miss?" she asked. "I've to go up to the farm for a basket. I don't want to carry the baby with me; she's so heavy. If I leave her here on the gra.s.s would you keep an eye on her till I come back? I shan't be gone five minutes."

Now Diana was fond of babies, and the little dark-eyed specimen, wrapped up in the plaid shawl, was pretty and attractive and fairly clean. For answer she held out her arms, received baby, shawl, and feeding-bottle on to her knee, and const.i.tuted herself temporary nurse.

"She'll be good till I come back," said the woman, turning up the lane that led to the farm.

The small person with the brown eyes was probably accustomed to be handed about. She did not jib at strangers, as might have been expected, but accepted the situation quite amiably. She gurgled in response to Diana's advances, and allowed herself to be amused. Perhaps the vicinity of horses was familiar to her, and she felt at home. Diana, hugging her on her knee, freed her from the folds of the shawl and allowed her to kick happily. She was certainly a fascinating little mortal.

In the course of about ten minutes Miss Carr, who had been having a chat at the farm about gardening prospects, returned leisurely down the lane, and was electrified to find Diana sitting by the roadside nursing a baby.

"I didn't see any gipsy woman come up to the farm," she said, in answer to the girls' explanations. "You'd better go, Wendy, and see if you can find her, and tell her to come at once and fetch her baby."

So Wendy went up the lane to the farm, and asked at the front door and the back door, and looked round the stack-yard and the buildings, but there was never a trace of the gipsy girl. A little boy playing by the pond, however, declared that he had seen a woman crossing the field and climbing over the fence on to the road. Wendy returned with this report.

Miss Carr looked annoyed.

"We must go along the road, then, and follow her. We can't wait here till she chooses to come back."

So Diana carried the baby, and Wendy led Lady and Topsy, and Miss Carr, with an anxious wrinkle between her eyebrows, followed with Baron in the direction that the small boy had pointed out. They walked a mile, and enquired at cottages and from pa.s.sers-by, and from men working in the fields, but n.o.body had seen the gipsy woman. Then they went back to the trysting-place to see if she had returned, but she was not there. They asked again at the farm, and went back to the cottages, and Miss Carr begged to leave the baby there, because its mother would be sure to enquire for it and find it. The occupants of the cottages, however, shook their heads, and were not at all prepared to accept the responsibility. Neither were the people at the farm. They utterly refused to take it in. Then Diana realized that it is one thing to offer to nurse a baby, and quite another to get rid of it again. What were they to do?

"We can't dump the poor mite down by the roadside and leave it," said Miss Carr distractedly. "Whatever _can_ have become of its mother?"

No answer was forthcoming to her question, and matters were urgent. She decided that the only thing to be done was to take the baby with them to Pendlemere, leaving messages at the farm and the cottages for the mother to follow on and claim it. Naturally it made a great sensation in the school when Diana arrived holding her foundling in her arms. Miss Carr explained at full length to Miss Todd, who was utterly aghast, but consented to take in the small stranger till it was claimed. Miss Chadwick, who had studied hygiene at the Agricultural College, and had once a.s.sisted at a creche, const.i.tuted herself head nurse, mixed a bottle, and left Miss Ormrod to feed the fowls while she sat in a rocking-chair and soothed the foundling to sleep.

"Surely the mother'll turn up before dark," she said.

But n.o.body turned up, and Miss Chadwick, who had had to guess at the baby's age and requirements, and had mixed too strong a bottle, spent a wakeful night patting her small guest on the back and endeavouring to still her wails. Next morning Miss Todd reported the matter at the police station, enquiries were made, and it was ascertained that a girl answering to the description given had been in the company of a band of hawkers, but had disappeared and left no trace of her whereabouts. The baby was not hers, but belonged to a woman who had just been arrested on a serious charge and taken to Glenbury jail; the hawkers with whom she had a.s.sociated disclaimed all responsibility for the child.

"The only thing to be done is to send it to the Union," said the police sergeant.

But by that time the school in general, and Diana in particular, had fallen in love with the poor little baby. They raged at the idea of sending it to the workhouse. They had borrowed clothes for it; and, nicely bathed and dressed and recovered from its fit of indigestion, it looked a sweet thing, and was ready to make friends with anybody and everybody.