Monitress Merle Part 8

"Guess I'll take the wind out of Muriel's sails!" she murmured.

The list was beautifully wrapped up in a sheet of new tissue-paper, and Merle carried it proudly to school. Miss Mitch.e.l.l was generally in the study from about 8.45 till 9 o'clock, so there would be nice time to present it before call-over. On this particular morning, however, as fate would have it, the study was unoccupied. Merle peeped in many times, went to the hostel, asked the boarders if they had seen Miss Mitch.e.l.l, but was utterly unable to find her. She seemed to have mysteriously disappeared, and only walked in, from no one knew where, just in time to take the register. The Fifth form marched away to its cla.s.sroom, and Merle's offering, for the present, was obliged to be consigned to the recesses of her desk.

Latin was the first lesson, and as far as she was concerned it was a dismal failure. Miss Mitch.e.l.l looked surprised at her ghastly mistakes, and one or two of the girls glanced at each other. Merle was hot and fl.u.s.tered at the close of the hour, and closed her books with relief. She hoped to manage a little better in 'The Merchant of Venice,' which was at least an English subject. The girls were supposed to learn the notes, and were questioned upon them and upon the meaning of the pa.s.sages, and she trusted to native wit and successful guessing to supply her answers. The teacher, however, very soon grasped the fact that Merle knew nothing about the lesson, asked her to recite, and found that she broke down at the end of three lines.

"You're absolutely unprepared!" said Miss Mitch.e.l.l scathingly. "A nice example for a monitress to set to the rest of the form! Come to the study at eleven, and report yourself! I'm astonished at you, Merle!"

A very depressed and humiliated monitress entered the study at 'interval'

to receive her scolding.

"I can't understand you! You have been doing so well. Why have you suddenly slacked off?" asked her inquisitor, who believed in getting to the bottom of things if a girl shirked her work.

Merle, who was too much upset even to mention her reason, and who had left the offering inside her desk, said nothing, and only looked unutterably miserable. Matters, therefore, were at rather a deadlock, when there was a tap at the door and Mavis entered bearing the precious parcel.

"Miss Mitch.e.l.l, _please_! In case Merle won't tell, I've brought this. She sat up fearfully late last night doing it for you, and that's why she didn't do her prep. Please excuse me for coming in!" and Mavis bolted in much confusion.

Miss Mitch.e.l.l unwrapped the parcel and looked critically at its contents.

"It's very kind of you to have made this for me, Merle," she said, in a gentler voice. "I only wish it hadn't been at the expense of your preparation. I like the monitresses to do all they can for the school, but they must remember their own work comes first, and that they have to set an example to the rest. Don't let a thing like this happen again! I thought you would have had more discretion. The list could have waited a day or two. I was not in such a hurry for it as all that. It was kindly meant, but a little excess of zeal, wasn't it? Thank you for it all the same! There! I'll put it on my desk so that it will be always ready if I want to refer to it. Now run along, or you won't have time to eat your lunch before the bell rings."

Merle, hurrying to the dressing-room, inwardly congratulated herself.

"I got jolly well out of a bad business!" she thought. "Miss Mitch.e.l.l wasn't very cross after all, and she liked the list! I've got mine in before Muriel's anyway, and it's going to stay on her desk, so she'll always have something of mine right under her eyes. She fingered that saxe-blue ribbon rather lovingly! It exactly matches her sports coat!

I'll make her a calendar for Christmas and put the same kind of ribbon to hang it up by. But I don't mean to tell a single soul, in case Muriel goes and does the same! Miss Mitch.e.l.l is my property, not hers!"

CHAPTER VI

Fishermaidens

Several Sat.u.r.days turned out wet, and it was not until the middle of October that Mavis and Merle were again able to motor with Dr. Tremayne to Chagmouth.

They had made arrangements for a nature ramble, so, after an early lunch at Grimbal's Farm, they went to the trysting-place by the harbour to meet the other members of the club. Beata and Romola turned up alone to-day, unenc.u.mbered by younger brothers and sisters or the donkey. They had brought businesslike baskets with them, and were armed with note-books to record specimens, some apples and nuts, and a couple of log-lines.

"We might be able to get some fishing!" they explained eagerly. "Father went out yesterday in old Mr. Davis's boat, and he brought home the most _lovely_ mackerel. Wouldn't it be a surprise if we could get some for ourselves? I don't see why we shouldn't!"

The idea appealed to the others. Fish were undoubtedly a division of zoology and ought to be included in their nature study. Specimens would be no less scientifically interesting from the fact that they could be eaten afterwards. Fay instantly rushed into Helyar's General Store to buy a log-line of her own; Mavis and Merle, after cautiously ascertaining the cost, invested in one between them, while Tattle, Nan, and Lizzie contented themselves with purchasing a few fishhooks and a ball of fine string.

"I suppose we ought really to take some bait with us," remarked Romola casually. "There isn't time, though, to go and dig for lob-worms. What's to be done about it?"

"Oh, we'll use limpets or anything else we can get," decreed Beata.

"We'll find something along the rocks, you'll see. Mavis, where are we going? You know all the best walks. We elect you leader this afternoon."

"It's beautiful along the cliffs towards St Morval's Head. There's a path most of the way, and we can scramble where there isn't. I wouldn't have dared to take the children, but I vote we venture it."

"Anywhere you like so long as we don't waste any more time; I'm just crazy to start!" agreed Fay.

So they went by a narrow alley and up steep flights of steps to the hill above the town, and took the track that led along the edge of the cliffs towards St. Morval's Head. It was a glorious autumn afternoon, and, though the bracken was brown and withered, there were specimens of wild flowers to be picked and written down in the note-books. Summer seemed to have lingered, and had left poppies, honeysuckle, foxgloves, and other blossoms that were certainly out of season. Tattie, who was keen on entomology, recorded a red admiral, a clouded yellow b.u.t.terfly, and a gamma moth, though she did not consider them worth chasing and catching for her collection.

Flocks of goldfinches and long-tailed t.i.ts were flitting about, and they spied some black-caps and pipits, and even a buzzard falcon poised in the air high above the cliffs. Here quite a little excitement occurred, for several sea-gulls attacked the buzzard and with loud cries tried to drive it away, following it as it soared higher and higher into the heavens, and finally routing it altogether and sending it off in the direction of Port Sennen.

The path along which the girls had been walking was the merest track through the bracken. So far there had been either a low wall or a hedge as a protection at the edge of the cliff, but now these outposts of civilisation vanished and they were at the very brink of the crags.

Tattie, whose head was not of the strongest, turned giddy and refused to go farther; indeed, she was so overcome that she sank on the ground and buried her face in her hands.

"I daren't look down!" she shuddered. "I know I shall fall if I do. Oh! I wish I'd never come! How am I going to get back?"

"There's only about a hundred yards like this," urged Mavis. "After that the path is all right again. Take my arm."

"No, no! I daren't! I can't go either backwards or forwards. I feel as if I should faint!" sobbed Tattie, waxing quite hysterical.

Here was a dilemma! She must certainly be made to move one way or the other. With great difficulty Fay and Beata between them got her back to the path along which they had come, where she collapsed under the shelter of the wall, and sat down to recover.

"I'll be all right now," she said, wiping her eyes. "I can go home alone.

Don't let me keep any of you."

"We'll come with you," said Lizzie Colville. "Nan and I don't like walking so near the edge either. I wouldn't cross that place for worlds."

So it was arranged that the Ramsays and the Castletons and Fay should go on to St. Morval's Head, while the rest of the company turned back.

"It's a pity, but it's no good taking people who turn giddy," commented Mavis. "If they can't manage that piece of cliff, how would they scramble down into the cove?"

"They haven't got tennis shoes on for one thing," remarked Merle, "and boots are horribly slippery. You ought to have rubber soles for these rocks. It just makes all the difference. Mavis and I always wear them at Chagmouth."

"So do we. We learnt that at Porthkeverne. We're used to scrambling. As for Fay she's a real fairy. I believe she could fly if you gave her a push over the edge to start her off."

"Don't try, thanks, or I might turn into a mermaid instead of a fairy or a bird! I often think, though, I'd like a private aeroplane of my own.

They're things that are bound to come sooner or later. I only hope I shan't be too old to use one when they do. What a view it is here!"

The difficult piece of cliff had led them round a corner, and they were now facing a magnificent sweep of coast-line. Below them, fixed to a buoy that floated on the water, a bell was ringing incessantly, its clanging sound floating over the sea like the knell of a mermaid's funeral.

"It's to warn the vessels off the rocks," explained Mavis. "They can hear it in a fog when they can't see quite where they are." Merle and I always call it 'The Inchcape Bell.' Oh, you know the story?

'The worthy abbot of Aberbrothock Had fixed that bell on the Inchcape rock.

On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung, And over the waves its warning rung.'

Then the pirate, Sir Ralph the Rover, goes and cuts it off, just out of spite, and sails away. Years afterwards his ship comes back to Scotland, and there's a thick fog, and he's wrecked on the very Inchcape rock from which he stole the warning bell.

'Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair; He cursed himself in his wild despair.

The waves poured in on every side, And the vessel sank beneath the tide.'"

"Serve him right too! It was a sneaking rag to play!" commented Merle.

"The bell makes me think of an old hermitage," said Romola. "I expect to see a monk walking along, telling his beads. Who was St. Morval? Didn't he have a little chapel on the cliffs here?"

"Romola always thinks of the Middle Ages," laughed Beata. "That's because she poses so much for Dad's pictures. It sounds like a church bell under the sea to me. When we lived at Porthkeverne we were close to the lost land of Lyonesse, and there was a lovely story about a mermaid. They said she used to come and sit on a broad flat stone outside the church and listen to the singing; and the priest heard of it, so one day he came out and talked to her, and asked her if she wouldn't like to be baptized, and she said she'd think about it. So she swam away; but she came back again and again, and it was decided that she was to be baptized on Easter Sunday. But on Good Friday there was a terrible storm, and the waves came up and swallowed the whole of the village, so that when the poor mermaid arrived she found the church sunk under the sea, and the priest and all the people drowned. There was n.o.body to baptize her, and there never has been since, and she swims about the water weeping and singing any little bits of the service that she can remember. The fishermen said if anybody was at sea and heard her it was bad luck, and a sign he would certainly be drowned before long."