The Youngest Girl in the School Part 33

'He says Jill has got to be saved from him, or else----'

'Jill saved?' echoed Kit, scornfully. 'As if she needed any saving from _that_ idiot!'

'Well, I don't know,' objected Wilfred, shaking his head. 'Girls are so rum. Look at Merton major's aunt----'

'She isn't a girl, she's an _aunt_!' interrupted Christopher.

'Well, it's all the same, really,' declared Wilfred. 'Merton major says she only married that Indian chap because he bothered so, and because she wanted to be obliging.'

'And Jill is _awfully_ obliging, you know she is,' added Peter. 'You can't tell what may happen, if that Doctor goes on bothering her.'

'Well, what are we to do, then?' Kit condescended to ask. 'We can't lock him up, can we?'

'No,' admitted Wilfred, 'we can't lock him up. But there's lots of other things we can do. We can see that she's never left alone with him, for instance. Babs is always with them in the sickroom, that's one thing.

But what happens when he comes out of the sickroom, and Jill walks along the gallery with him and sometimes even down to the front door? That's dangerous, anyhow.'

'In future,' said Peter, solemnly, 'one of us will always be on the look-out to join them the moment they come out of the sickroom. What else, Will?'

Wilfred reflected a moment. 'Sometimes,' he said at last, 'I've known her to be taking a walk in the garden, just as he happens to drive up; and then they stay talking ever so long before they go into the house. Once, he even made her take him round the conservatory. That must never happen again.'

'Never,' agreed Peter. '_I'll_ see to that.'

'Look here,' said Christopher, doubtfully; 'perhaps Jill won't like our hanging round her like that.'

'She may not like it _at the time_,' began Wilfred, impressively.

'But she'll thank us for it all her life afterwards,' concluded Peter, with great solemnity.

Jill's voice at the door made them start like guilty conspirators. She was much too preoccupied to notice their confusion, however.

'Has Kit come back?' she asked anxiously. Christopher sprang out of the arm-chair, and her face cleared. 'I'm so glad; I was afraid you were lost,' she said, taking his hand gently. 'Babs has just woke up,' she explained, as they went upstairs together, 'and she is still rather upset about something. I think you can calm her, if you will.'

Kit muttered something indistinctly, and she went on talking in her soft voice. 'The child has got into her head that you have done something to the Doctor, so I want you to a.s.sure her that it is all right. Will you, Kit dear?'

'I'm the biggest brute,' burst out the boy, 'that ever----'

'Nonsense!' said Jill, putting her hand over his mouth. Then she opened the door of Barbara's room and they went in.

Auntie Anna was sitting by the child, trying to soothe her.

'Bless your little heart!' she was saying as they entered. 'There's nothing the matter with the Doctor, my dear. What makes you think such a thing, eh?'

'You don't understand,' said the little fretful voice from the bed. 'Kit said--Kit said----'

Christopher pushed Jill on one side, and suddenly knew what he had got to do.

'That's all right, Babe; I was only rotting,' he said bluntly, and patted the hot little hand that lay on the counterpane.

The bright, wistful eyes were fixed searchingly on his face. 'But you've sent him wandering seven times round the world,' she murmured wearily.

'You said you had, Kit.'

'It's all right, Babe,' said Kit, again. 'He's come back now. I've just seen him.'

He only partly understood what she was talking about, but he seemed to know how to satisfy her, and the others drew back and left him to do it alone.

'You've seen him?' asked Babs, wonderingly. 'But----'

'You see,' said Kit, desperately, 'it doesn't take long to get round the world seven times, when--when you've got a smart little cob like his!'

The worried look faded out of the child's face, and she smiled for the first time. 'That isn't the reason, Kit,' she told him. 'It is because he was once a fairy prince.'

'Oh, is it?' remarked Kit.

The bright little eyes were closing sleepily, and the aching bandaged head fell sideways on the pillow.

'He has only got to kill the giant and rescue the princess now,' she whispered contentedly. And Kit went on stroking her hand till she was sound asleep.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE RESCUE OF A PRINCESS

Barbara was none the worse for her relapse, and she made such a good recovery in the weeks that followed, that the Doctor decided she could be moved to Crofts on the last day of the holidays. Miss Finlayson vowed she had never enjoyed her Easter holidays so much before for she had persuaded Auntie Anna and the boys to remain her guests the whole time, to save her, as she said, from the horrible feeling of loneliness that always seized her as soon as the last fly went down the drive with the last box on the top of it, and the last girl sitting inside. 'At my age,'

she told them laughingly, 'it is not safe to be left alone. Who knows that I might not begin talking about rheumatism and nerves, if I had a whole month to think about myself?' And Auntie Anna, who never talked about rheumatism by any chance, though it had bent her back for her ten years ago, nodded her head wisely like the old witch that she was, and consented to remain at Wootton Beeches with her adopted daughter and her noisy young nephews until Barbara was well enough to be taken home. The boys, for their part, enjoyed themselves every bit as well as if they had been at Crofts; for Finny was first-rate company as long as she was with them, and she contrived at the same time to leave them to themselves just as much as they wished to be left. And staying at a girls' school was by no means such poor fun as might have been expected; for it was big enough for them to make as much noise in it as they pleased without disturbing anybody, while they had the run of a capital gymnasium, and, as soon as their bicycles had been brought from Crofts, could explore the country for miles round as well. Altogether, the Easter holidays were a great success, and there were many groans when the month came to an end, and school once more threatened to darken the joy of their existence.

'You are a lucky beast, Kit,' observed Peter, as they sat swinging on the yard gate a couple of mornings before their departure. 'Wish I was you and needn't go to school.'

'You wouldn't like it, if you were me,' answered Kit, shortly. n.o.body ever guessed how much he wished he were like other boys and could lead the healthy life they professed to despise so much.

Wilfred, who had just strolled up, had occasional glimmerings of understanding where Kit was concerned; and he had one now. 'Never mind, old chap,' he said consolingly. 'You've got all the genius, you know.'

Christopher kicked a stone across the yard without speaking; and Peter hastened to change the conversation, which he perceived was in danger of becoming serious. Peter never attempted to understand anybody, but he had a determined objection to anything that was serious.

'If we've done nothing else these holidays, we have at least saved Jill from the Doctor,' he remarked with a chuckle.

'What's the good of that?' growled Kit. He did not take the keen interest in the salvation of Jill that the others expected from him, though he certainly did not raise any grown-up objections to it, as Egbert would have done. Egbert was going to Oxford in October, and he was getting far too grown-up for ordinary intercourse with the rest of the family. Kit was not in the least grown-up; besides, he hated the Doctor--that was certain, because he so constantly said he did. But it was a pity, the others agreed, that he did not show more enthusiasm over persecuting him.

'It's a lot of good,' retorted Peter. 'You don't want her to marry the chap, do you?'

Kit smiled in a superior manner. 'I'm not interested in _marrying_,' he observed. 'You can't have marrying, or any of that rot, without girls.

And I hate girls.'

'Do you hate Jill?' cried Wilfred, staring.

Christopher kicked another stone across the yard.