The Youngest Girl in the Fifth Part 30

Miss Roscoe readily took charge of the precious satchel, leaving Gwen free to enter for any of the remainder of the sports in which she might care to try her skill. The dart-throwing contest was just about to take place, so she promptly joined the ranks of the compet.i.tors.

Each in turn had to throw six darts at a target, the one obtaining the highest score securing the prize. It was a task that needed a true eye and a firm hand, and proved far more difficult than most of the girls antic.i.p.ated. Some of them failed altogether to hit the target, and others only achieved a chance dart in the outside rings. One or two of the Sixth Form did fairly well, but did not secure a bull's-eye.

"They've fixed the distance too far. It's impossible to shy properly when one's such a long way off," declared Charlotte Perry, retiring disconsolately after a series of bad shots. "It's your turn now, Gwen.

I wish you better luck than I've had."

Gwen took her six darts and advanced to the white circle which was marked on the gra.s.s as the throwing place. It was a game which she had played frequently at the Parsonage, where she had often matched her skill against that of her father and Beatrice. She had a strong arm and a very true aim, two great essentials for success, and though the number of paces was certainly greater than that to which she was accustomed at home the increased distance did not seem an insuperable difficulty.

"I must throw a little higher and harder, that's all," she said to herself. "Fortunately there's no wind blowing to speak of."

Gwen's first shot went wide, but her second lodged in the outer ring of the target. Profiting by the experience she regulated her aim, and sent her third dart into the second ring. Her fourth and fifth were nearer the centre still and the spectators began to cheer. Only one dart remained; it was the best feathered of the six, and she had purposely kept it until the last. She poised it carefully, calculated for the slight breeze, then with a neat turn of her wrist hurled it as swiftly as possible at the target. It whistled rapidly through the air and lodged full in the bull's-eye. A storm of clapping greeted her achievement. She was the last on the list of compet.i.tors, so she had gained a full and complete victory over her rivals in the contest. She beamed with satisfaction as she went up to receive her prize--a pretty little silver brooch.

She had no further good fortune, though she tried her luck in the potato race and the ball-catching compet.i.tion, which concluded the sports. It was now after five o'clock, and a procession of girls in Elizabethan costume came on to the field to sing the final madrigal which was to wind up the fete. As the last strains died away and the band began "G.o.d Save the King", everybody joined in the National Anthem and gave three hearty cheers for the Rodenhurst Cot.

"It has been a splendid afternoon," said Miss Roscoe, as the crowd began to disperse and the sweet vendors and flower sellers came to hand over their gains. "I'm sure we shall have realized quite a large sum. It's too late to count our proceeds this afternoon. You must all go home now, but if you have each labelled your own bag I will lock them up in my safe until to-morrow. I think we may congratulate ourselves on the success of our anniversary. It has more than answered our expectations."

Gwen went home in high glee. She had enjoyed her part of the celebrations thoroughly, and the consciousness that she had originated the cot scheme gave an added degree of pleasure to the general sense of prosperous termination of the affair. As she walked with Lesbia round the orchard that evening she indulged in a little self-congratulation.

"It is nice to have engineered all this!" she admitted. "Miss Roscoe's pleased about it, I'm sure. She was so gracious to me when I took her my satchel. She actually called me 'dear'!--a thing she's never done in her life before. It's been a ripping day. School will seem quite flat again after it. I wish there were another fete to look forward to!"

"There's the tennis tournament," suggested Lesbia.

"Yes; but I shan't have much chance for that with my wretched old racket!" sighed Gwen.

"Suppose I'd a new one, and could lend it to you?" said Lesbia quickly. "A lovely half-guinea one!"

"You don't possess half a guinea to buy one, my child!"

"But I do! I've got the money, and I'm going to get the racket I shall go to Graham's to-morrow for it."

"I thought your savings box was empty again? How in the name of wonder did you come by ten and sixpence?"

"Never you mind--I've got it, and that's the main point," replied Lesbia, turning very pink.

"But how?"

"I shan't tell you! Leave me alone, Gwen! You've no right to pry into my affairs. I never bother about yours. Let go my arm!" and Lesbia, blushing even more furiously, wrenched herself free and fled towards the house.

Lesbia seldom had secrets, so her conduct was the more astonishing.

Gwen gazed after her in great surprise, half inclined to follow her and press the point; but remembering that her Latin for the next day was still unprepared, she fetched her books instead, and buried the remembrance of her sister's strange behaviour in Virgil and a dictionary.

CHAPTER XX

A Day of Reckoning

Gwen went to school next morning in the jauntiest of spirits. She was satisfied with the part she had played both in organizing the fete and in helping to make it a success, and she fully expected approval from headquarters.

"This will set me all right with Miss Roscoe now," she thought.

"She'll quite forgive me that business about d.i.c.k and the sweets on the strength of a 'Rodenhurst Cot'. I think I've scored considerably."

When at eleven o'clock, therefore, Gwen received a summons from the Princ.i.p.al, she was not at all dismayed, and presented herself in the study with a smiling face. To her surprise, however, she was hardly welcomed with the enthusiasm she expected. Miss Roscoe looked grave and annoyed, and greeted her more as if she were a culprit than a praiseworthy collector of money.

"Sit down, Gwen," she said coldly, motioning her pupil to a chair near her desk. "You can unlock your satchel and go over your accounts with me; then there is another matter that I wish to talk to you about afterwards."

Feeling decidedly chilled, Gwen produced her key. Miss Roscoe emptied the contents of the bag on to a tray, and proceeded to count the various coins. She reckoned them twice over, frowned, consulted a paper, then turned to Gwen.

"See how much you make it!" she said abruptly.

Gwen carefully went over the piles of half-crowns, florins, shillings, and sixpences, and added them together.

"I get thirteen pounds seven and six," was her conclusion.

"So do I, so we must both be correct," returned Miss Roscoe. "Now the checks that Moira Thompson received at the second gate register thirteen pounds seventeen shillings. How is it you are nine and sixpence short?"

"Am I that much short?" cried Gwen. "It can't possibly be!"

"Look for yourself," said Miss Roscoe. "The checks are all numbered.

There are two hundred and fifty-one shilling admissions and fifty-two sixpenny ones. Examine the numbers on the rolls of checks left in your satchel; you will see they begin at Nos. 252 and 53. That means that you certainly issued 251 checks at a shilling and 52 at sixpence. The right amount ought to have been in your bag."

"Is there nothing left stuck in the corners?" asked Gwen, utterly dumbfounded at the defalcation.

"Nothing whatever. Look and satisfy yourself."

Gwen seized the satchel, and almost turned it inside out in her eagerness, but there was no remaining coin to be found.

"Did you give any people checks without receiving the money in return?" enquired Miss Roscoe.

"No, certainly not. I was most particular. I didn't let anybody in without paying. If they had no tickets I sold them checks. I don't see how I can be all that amount wrong."

"Unfortunately both our reckonings show the same deficit. What I want to know, Gwen, is what has become of this missing nine and sixpence?"

"I can't imagine."

"But it is your duty to account for it. You alone are responsible; and it is my duty to enquire where it has gone."

"Miss Roscoe! You surely don't think I've pocketed it?" broke out Gwen, the drift of the Princ.i.p.al's remarks suddenly dawning upon her.

"I say nothing except that it is a very strange circ.u.mstance that you cannot produce it. Was the satchel in your own possession the whole of the afternoon?"

"Yes--at least--yes, it was!" stammered Gwen, looking very red and confused. The remembrance had just struck her that she had allowed Lesbia to take some change from her bag, and at the same instant Lesbia's extraordinary behaviour of the evening before flashed across her mind. Could there possibly be any connection between the two incidents? The idea was so horrible that she blushed at entertaining it even for a moment.

Miss Roscoe glanced at her keenly.

"Do you a.s.sume the full responsibility for this?" she asked in a strained voice.