Beechcroft at Rockstone Part 8

'Don't, don't, Aunt Jane,' shouted Fergus; 'I've almost done it!

Perpetual motion.' He seemed quite unconscious that the motion was kept up by his own hands, and even dismay could not turn him from being triumphant.

'Oh! Miss Jane,' cried Mrs. Mount, 'if I had thought what they boys was after.'

'Mop it up, Alice,' said Aunt Jane to the younger girl. 'No don't come up, Ada; it is too wet for you. It is only a misdirected experiment in hydraulics.'

'I told him not,' said Clement Varley, thinking affairs serious.

'Fergus, I am shocked at you,' said Gillian sternly. 'You are frightfully wet. You must be sent to bed.'

'You must go and change,' said Aunt Jane, preventing the howl about to break forth. 'My dear boy, that tap must be let alone. We can't have cataracts on the stairs.'

'I didn't mean it, Aunt Jane; I thought it was an invention,' said Fergus.

'I know; but another time come and ask me where to try your experiments.

Go and take off those clothes; and you, Clement, you are soaking too.

Run home at once.'

Gillian, much scandalised, broke out--

'It is very naughty. At home, he would be sent to bed at once.'

'I am not Mrs. Halfpenny, Gillian,' said Aunt Jane coldly.

'Jane has a soft spot for inventions, for Maurice's sake,' said her sister.

'I can't confound ingenuity and enterprise with wanton mischief, or crush it out for want of sympathy,' said Miss Mohun. 'Come, we must return to our needles.'

If Aunt Jane had gone into the state of wrath to be naturally expected, Gillian would have risen in arms on her brother's behalf, and that would have been much pleasanter than the leniency which made her views of justice appear like unkindness.

This did not dispose her to be the better pleased at an entreaty from the two children to be allowed to join Mrs. Hablot's cla.s.s on Sunday. It appeared that they had asked Aunt Jane, and she had told them that their sister knew what their mother would like.

'But I am sure she would not mind,' said Valetta. 'Only think, she has got a portfolio with pictures of everything all through the Bible!'

'Yes,' added Fergus, 'Clem told me. There are the dogs eating Jezebel, and such a jolly picture of the lion killing the prophet. I do want to see them! Varley told me!'

'And Kitty told me,' added Valetta. 'She is reading such a book to them.

It is called The Beautiful Face, and is all about two children in a wood, and a horrid old grandmother and a dear old hermit, and a wicked baron in a castle! Do let us go, Gillyflower.

'Yes,' said Fergus; 'it would be ever so much better fun than poking here.'

'You don't want fun on Sunday.'

'Not fun exactly, but it is nicer.'

'To leave me, the last bit of home, and mamma's own lessons.'

'They ain't mamma's,' protested Fergus; but Valetta was touched by the tears in Gillian's eyes, kissed her, and declared, 'Not that.'

Whether it were on purpose or not, the next Sunday was eminently unsuccessful; the Collects were imperfect, the answers in the Catechism recurred to disused babyish blunders; Fergus twisted himself into preternatural att.i.tudes, and Valetta teased the Sofy to scratching point, they yawned ferociously at The Birthday, and would not be interested even in the pony's death. Then when they went out walking, they would not hear of the sober Rockstone lane, but insisted on the esplanade, where they fell in with the redoubtable Stebbing, who chose to patronise instead of bullying 'little Merry'--and took him off to the tide mark--to the agony of his sisters, when they heard the St. Andrew's bell.

At last, when the tempter had gone off to higher game, Fergus's Sunday boots and stockings were such a ma.s.s of black mud that Gillian had to drag him home in disgrace, sending Valetta into church alone. She would have put him to bed on her own responsibility, but she could not master him; he tumbled about the room, declaring Aunt Jane would do no such thing, rolled up his stockings in a ball, and threw them in his sister's face.

Gillian retired in tears, which she let no one see, not even Aunt Ada, and proceeded to record in her letter to India that those dreadful boys were quite ruining Fergus, and Aunt Jane was spoiling him.

However, Aunt Jane, having heard what had become of the youth, met him in no spoiling mood; and though she never knew of his tussle with Gillian, she spoke to him very seriously, shut him into his own room, to learn thoroughly what he had neglected in the morning, and allowed him no jam at tea. She said nothing to Gillian, but there were inferences.

The lessons went no better on the following Sunday; Gillian could neither enforce her authority nor interest the children. She avoided the esplanade, thinking she had found a nice country walk to the common beyond the marble works; but, behold, there was an outbreak of drums and trumpets and wild singing. The Salvation Army was marching that way, and, what was worse, yells and cat-calls behind showed that the Skeleton Army was on its way to meet them. Gillian, frightened almost out of her wits, managed to fly over an impracticable-looking gate into a field with her children, but Fergus wanted to follow the drum. After that she gave in. The children went to Mrs. Hablot, and Gillian thought she saw 'I told you so' in the corners of Aunt Jane's eyes.

It was a further offence that her aunt strongly recommended her going regularly to the High School instead of only attending certain cla.s.ses.

It would give her far more chance of success at the examination to work with others and her presence would be good for Valetta. But to reduce her to a schoolgirl was to be resented on Miss Vincent's account as well as her own.

CHAPTER IV. -- THE QUEEN OF THE WHITE ANTS

The High School was very large. It stood at present at the end of a budding branch of Rockquay, where the managers, a.s.sisted by the funds advanced by Lord Rotherwood and that great invisible potentate, the head of the marble works, had secured and adapted a suitable house, and a s.p.a.ce round it well walled in.

The various cla.s.ses of students did not see much of each other, except those who were day boarders and spent the midday recreation time together. Even those in the same form were only together in school, as the dressing-room of those who dined there was separate from that of the others, and they did not come in and out at the same time. Valetta had thus only really made friends with two or three more Rockstone girls of about her own age besides Kitty Yarley, with whom she went backwards and forwards every day, under the escort provided in turn by the families of the young ladies.

Gillian's studies were for three hours in the week at the High School, and on two afternoons she learnt from the old organist at Rockstone Church. She went and came alone, except when Miss Mohun happened to join her, and that was not often, 'For,' said that lady to her sister, 'Gillian always looks as if she thought I was acting spy upon her. I wish I could get on with that girl; I begin to feel almost as poor Lily did with Dolores.'

'She is a very good girl,' said Miss Adeline.

'So she is; and that makes it all the more trying to be treated like the Grand Inquisitor.'

'Shall I speak to her? She is always as pleasant as possible with me.'

'Oh no, don't. It would only make it worse, and prevent you from having her confidence.'

'Ah, Jane, I have often thought your one want was gentleness,' said Miss Ada, with the gesture of her childhood--her head a little on one side.

'And, besides, don't you know what Reggie used to call your ferret look?

Well, I suppose you can't help it, but when you want to know a thing and are refraining from asking questions, you always have it more or less.'

'Thank you, Ada. There's nothing like brothers and sisters for telling one home-truths. I suppose it is the penalty of having been a regular Paul Pry in my childhood, in spite of poor Eleanor making me learn "Meddlesome Matty" as soon as I could speak. I always _do_ and always _shall_ have ringing in my ears--

'"Oh! what a pretty box is this, I'll open it," said little Miss.'

'Well, you know you always do know or find out everything about everybody, and it is very useful.'

'Useful as a bloodhound is, eh?'

'Oh no, not that, Jenny.'