A Terrible Tomboy Part 20

It felt a very insecure bridge to poor Peggy, as she crept over on her hands and knees, trying not to look down into the dark gulf below, so frail and insecure that she shuddered for Bobby, who seemed so unnerved that she scarcely dared allow him to make the trial.

'Wait a moment!' she cried. 'Don't start just yet!'

And hurriedly taking off her pinafore, she tore it into strips, and knotting them together in a kind of rope, threw one end of it across to him.

'Now tie that firmly to your arm before you set off, and then, if you fall, I think I might be able to drag you up again.'

But luckily Peggy's childish strength was not put to the test, for Bobby accomplished the crossing in safety, and scrambled over the rocks which rose at the other side. Holding up the lantern, the children found they were in what seemed to be the entrance of a rough kind of pa.s.sage. That it was not altogether of natural origin was evident from the traces of built-up stones, while here and there the walls showed the marks of the pick. The air was stale and damp and difficult to breathe, and the candle burnt so badly that several times Peggy feared it was going out altogether. They went stumbling along over the irregular floor, wondering whether their way was taking them to safety, or only into the bowels of the earth.

On and on the pa.s.sage led them, sometimes through places so narrow they could scarcely scramble through, or so low that, small as they were, they were obliged to stoop; now up hill, now down, round many a sharp curve, till it ended suddenly in a small cavern about ten feet square.

Peggy lifted up the lantern high over her head, and looked anxiously round. Apparently they were in nothing but a blind alley, for there seemed no possible way out, except the path by which they had come. The poor children stared at each other with hopeless horror.

'We shall have to go back, and chance the river going down when it's light,' faltered Peggy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "BOBBY ACCOMPLISHED THE CROSSING IN SAFETY."]

'Oh, no, no! We can't go back over that hateful plank again and sit watching the water come up! I would rather be drowned here than there!

Oh, Father, Father! do come and find us!' And Bobby sat down upon the ground with such a wail of despair that Peggy at last lost her self-control and found herself joining in his sobs.

But she stopped suddenly, and laying a restraining hand on his shoulder, put up her finger for silence, for it seemed to her that from the region somewhere over their heads she had heard a distant shout.

'Call again, Bobby, like you did before!' And both together the children joined their voices in a wild shriek of 'Father!'

This time there was an unmistakable shout of reply, and after what seemed to them a long interval of calling they could hear Father's voice from above quite plainly saying, 'Where are you?'

'In a cave down below!' cried Peggy, trying to make her voice carry in the hollow atmosphere.

Now that help was near she was her brisk, capable self again, and, seizing the lantern, searched round every foot of the cavern till she discovered what seemed to be the beginning of a little staircase, long since blocked by earth and stones.

'Here, Father! Dig for us here!' she called, and taking up a stone, began to tap like she had heard of imprisoned miners doing in the coal-pits.

There was silence for a few minutes, and then the children began to hear the welcome sound of a pickaxe, and Father's voice every now and then, shouting a word of encouragement to them. At length there was a rumbling noise in the roof above, some loose stones and earth fell, and Father called loudly:

'Stand back! Keep out of the way!'

Peggy clutched Bobby, and retreated into the pa.s.sage, while a shower of stones and soil came pouring down into the cave, till a great rent was made in the roof, and Father dropped through the hole like Santa Claus down the chimney, only no saint was ever so welcome, even at Christmas-time.

It did not take very long for the children to be hauled up by Joe at the top, and they found themselves standing among the Abbey ruins in the early gray of the dawn, with Aunt Helen rushing to catch them in her arms, and Lilian hugging them and sobbing over them by turns, while Nancy, her face all blotched and swollen with crying, kept hovering round to put in a kiss whenever the others gave her a chance, and even old David cleared his throat hard, and 'blessed the Lord they were safe.'

Very little was said until the children had been warmed and fed and comforted by the dining-room fire, and then Mr. Vaughan would only allow the briefest account of their adventures before they were put to bed to sleep off the effects of their night of exposure. Nancy prophesied quinsy and pleurisy and rheumatic fever, but the Vaughans were a hardy race, and not even a cold resulted, in spite of her gloomy prognostications.

Peggy's quiet talk with Father next day was so entirely between themselves that I shall not repeat it; but it is often incidents, and not years, which help us to grow up, and somehow afterwards she always found herself dating events from that night in the cave, and all the part 'when I was little' came before, and the older and more sensible part seemed to follow afterwards.

CHAPTER XIV

LILIAN'S HOUSEKEEPING

'Thou wert working late, thou busy, busy bee!

After the fall of the cistus flower, When the primrose-tree blossom was ready to burst, I heard thee last, as I saw thee first; In the silence of the evening hour I heard thee, thou busy, busy bee.'

Aunt Helen was married in September, with the Rector to read the service, and Father to give her away, and Lilian and Peggy for bridesmaids, while the Sunday-school children strewed the path from the church-door with flowers, and Bobby flung rice and old shoes after the carriage, and all the village people came to watch, and say how sweet and pretty she looked, and to wish health and happiness to 'Mrs. John Neville.'

Things felt very flat when the excitement was all over and the last of the guests had left the Abbey, and the children found themselves wishing that life could be a perpetual round of bouquets and favours and wedding-cake, not forgetting presents to the bridesmaids, for Lilian and Peggy were the proud possessors of charming gold lockets set with turquoises, with portraits of Aunt Helen inside them, 'the gifts of the bridegroom,' as the local paper described them, while a silver watch and chain consoled Bobby for not taking a more prominent part in the ceremony, and made him declare that his new uncle was 'a brick, and no mistake.'

After so much dissipation, it was quite hard to settle down to plain prose again; but school had already re-opened, and the children had stolen an extra week of holidays to join in the festivities, so it was high time they were setting to work once more. It seemed strange to start off every morning without Lilian, who only went into Warford once a week now for music-lessons, and Mr. Vaughan had occasional qualms as to the safety of allowing such youthful Jehus to drive about the country unattended; but the little yellow pony-trap was so well known on the road that it would have been rather difficult for anything to happen to the children. People knew the time of their pa.s.sing, and looked out for them daily; kindly women would come to cottage doorways to nod and smile; the inn-keeper at the Halfway Arms set his clock by their arrival; they had struck up quite a friendship with the postman, two milkmen, and the driver of a fish-cart, while the old man who broke stones by the roadside always nodded and gave them 'Good-morning,' and fired a facetious remark or two after them, which the children imagined he must relieve the monotony of his work by composing during the intervals of their coming and going.

Left alone, Lilian tried to settle down in dead earnest to battle with her task of housekeeping. It was a heavy burden for such young shoulders, for in a farmhouse there is always a great deal of extra work to be done. Pigs, poultry, and young animals had to be fed, and the eggs gathered in daily; the dairy claimed constant attention, for the pans must be scalded and the pails polished bright, and though Joe did the milking and churning, it was Lilian's business to superintend the making up of the b.u.t.ter, and to weigh each pound with her own hands and print it with the Abbey stamp.

Nancy, too, proved somewhat of a trial, for though a hard-working and most kind-hearted girl, she had not been gifted by Providence with either brains or a memory, and was capable of making the most astonishing mistakes, which she invariably justified by declaring she was sure she had done it so 'in Miss Vaughan's time.'

'But, Nancy,' said poor, bewildered Lilian, 'I'm sure Aunt Helen never told you to rub up the silver with paraffin and brickdust. You're scratching it horribly. There's a packet of proper pink powder stuff to do it with somewhere.'

'There's naught like oil and brickdust for putting a polish on metals,'

observed Nancy, complacently scouring away at Bobby's christening mug.

'It beats all they rubbish that the pedlars brings round in boxes, and tries hard to persuade you to buy, so it do for sure!'

'I have no doubt about it's being very good for fenders and fire-irons, and things of that sort, but not for the best teapot. Don't you think it would be better, Nancy, if I were to clean the silver on Friday mornings, and you could get on with your kitchen?'

'As you wish, Miss Lilian,' said Nancy, relinquishing the polishing-leather with no great sorrow. 'Miss Vaughan, she always did it her own self, too. Was you going to do anything with that stock that has been in the larder since Monday?'

'Oh, Nancy, I had forgotten all about it!' cried Lilian, much conscience-stricken at the reminder. 'And I had intended to make it into soup. Do go and fetch it, and see if it is still good.'

But the stock, alas! had acc.u.mulated a skim of green mould on the surface, and generally betrayed such symptoms of distress that it was fit for nothing but the pig-trough; and when Lilian, warned by its awful example, visited her neglected shelves, she found so many forgotten sc.r.a.ps put away into odd corners that she straightway formed the excellent resolution of reviewing the larder daily after breakfast, having an uneasy sensation that it was one of the golden rules which Aunt Helen had particularly impressed upon her, but which, like many others, had slidden into the background of her remembrance.

It was certainly one thing to housekeep with Aunt Helen at her elbow to advise, and quite another to puzzle it out with only her memory and the cookery-book for a.s.sistance. The quant.i.ties required for a family of five persons was a subject which took her some time to master.

'There's the butcher's boy at the back-door, miss,' observed Nancy one morning, a few days after the wedding, putting her head into the Rose Parlour, and interrupting the 'Bridal March' from 'Lohengrin' which Lilian was trying over on the piano. 'He's left his cart at the bottom of the drive, but he'll fetch up anything you want.'

The butcher only came round weekly at Gorswen, so Lilian abandoned her music and sallied forth to give her first order.

'We're quite tired of great sirloins of beef and legs of mutton,' she announced. 'Haven't you anything else this morning?'

'Nice bit of pork, mum,' suggested the man--'fillet of veal.'

'I'm sure the veal would be a change; we haven't had any for a long time.'

'Very good, mum. How much may we send you?'

'About a pound and a half, I should think,' said Lilian, knitting her brows and trying in vain to remember the extent of Aunt Helen's weekly order. 'Or suppose we say two pounds. I expect that would be right.'

The meat arrived in due course, looking such a very small amount when Nancy placed it on the kitchen-table that Lilian exclaimed in horror:

'Why, Nancy, that will never last us for a week! It looks hardly enough for one dinner!'