The Youngest Girl in the School Part 37

'I shan't,' said Jean, regarding her with scorn. 'I don't want to be presented. Any stupid idiot can put on a white satin dress, miles long, and grin at Queen Victoria. _I_ want to be clever like father, and get a degree at college, and lecture to thousands and thousands of people, and----'

'Oh, don't be like that, Jean,' interrupted Barbara, earnestly. 'If you're going to give lectures you'll have to go away from all your children, for months and months and months, and leave them to break all their legs, all by themselves, and--oh, it _is_ so horrible to break your leg all by yourself!'

'Poor dear,' said Angela, ready as usual with a tearful and demonstrative sympathy.

Jean was much too wrapped up in her future to sympathise with anybody.

'I dare say I shan't have any children,' she said, seized with a happy inspiration. 'You can't have everything, and I'd much sooner have a degree.'

Barbara looked at her in some doubt. 'That's all very well,' she remarked, 'but you'll be jolly dull if you don't look out. _I_ don't mean to go without children; I'm going to have millions of 'em--all boys--see if I don't! Then we can always be sure of having enough for sides, without inviting strangers to come and play. You can never be sure how strangers are going to play, and sometimes they spoil the game, and that's a bore.'

'If you have boys of your own, you'll be a mother; and if you're a mother, you won't join in the games at all. Mothers only sit and look on, and send the ones to bed that can't agree,' said Angela, with an air of experience.

'I don't advise you to be a mother, Babe,' added Jean, earnestly. 'You'll have to mend such a lot of socks, and p'r'aps make babies' clothes too; and you've been a whole term getting round the hem of one flannel petticoat, as it is.'

'You _can_ get things ready-made,' answered Barbara, but her tone did not sound hopeful. She had to own sadly to herself that she was not cut out for a mother, and she fell back on the more practical futures of other people. 'Wilfred's going to be a doctor, after all,' she told them, with great pride. 'Auntie Anna says she'll stand all the money that father can't, and he's going to St. Thomas's--Will is, I mean. Isn't it awfully splendid?'

Her friends murmured something appropriate, but they were not deeply interested in the career of Wilfred. At school, the girls' conversation was largely made up of details of this kind; but Crofts was not school, and neither Jean nor Angela felt inspired to carry on the discussion.

Babs, however, failed to notice their want of enthusiasm. Everything was happening exactly like the fairy story she had planned, the fairy story that had begun in the old London house, on the day that a certain dragon had entered it as a fairy G.o.dmother; and for the moment she was back again in her own kingdom, where the old witch still wandered about in her steeple-hat, in the company of Kit the prince, and where the twice-disenchanted beast was placing a crown on the charming head of the princess who had waited so long for him, and where a crowd of other princesses, after breaking their heads and their legs and suffering numerous unpleasant penalties of the kind, had at last returned from their banishment and were hailing the child herself as their queen. But one familiar figure was still missing from her fairy kingdom; and the little queen came sadly back to the world under the cedar tree, with a sigh and a murmured remark about 'America' and 'lectures' that her listeners only half understood. They recognised the Babe's very natural wish for her father's return, but they did not know how the wish had grown into a longing since her accident, during the weary days in which there had been no school to distract her, and nothing to do but to think.

'He'll be back in two months, won't he?' asked Jean, meaning to be sympathetic, though her manner was awkward.

'Two months!' echoed Babs, dolefully, 'What's two months?'

'It's years, isn't it?' responded Angela, with her accustomed inaccuracy.

Having secured their sympathy, such as it was, Barbara allowed herself to become more doleful still. 'He must have missed all our letters, too,'

she sighed. 'The last one he sent us was from some awful American place, that Kit says is in the map if you've got a month to look for it, only you haven't!--and he never told us where to write next, and he didn't say a word about me. So he's not even heard yet that I fell off the rings!'

'Never mind, Babs dear,' said Angela, consolingly; 'think how _proud_ you will be when you can tell him all about it yourself.'

Not appreciating the distinction of having broken her leg quite so warmly as Angela, Babs did not respond; and the arrival of tea, and with it every one from the house, made her give up the immediate attempt to pity herself. After all, people who went away to America to lecture could not leave their children to break their legs by themselves for ever; and meanwhile, there was home-made cake and strawberry jam under the cedar tree.

It was in the middle of tea, just as Robin, with a wavering hand, was conveying a second cup to Babs, that the wonderful event happened. Jill had the best view of the house from where she sat at the tea-table, and her sudden exclamation interrupted the jeers of the others over Robin's strenuous performance.

'Such a funny-looking man is coming up the drive!' she remarked. 'He's wearing the very oddest kind of clothes, too--a sort of Inverness cape, and a squashy brown hat. And do look at the way he is walking, with his arms swinging about--just like Peter, when he's in a hurry.'

'He must be a tramp,' said Angela, giggling.

Everybody looked round, except Barbara, who made a plaintive request, that n.o.body heard, for her couch to be wheeled into a different position.

Then Auntie Anna gave a little shriek, and dropped her pince-nez into her lap.

'Bless my soul!' she cried, fumbling for them in an agitated manner. 'Why, it looks exactly like--I do believe--look, Jill! Your eyes are younger than----'

The boys were sharper than Jill, though, and they settled the question at once in their own riotous fashion. Barbara's second cup of tea fell with a crash and a splash, before she could reach out her hand for it, and her two brothers rushed shouting and screaming across the lawn. In another instant they had disappeared in the folds of the Inverness cape; and Angela Wilkins realised with a shock that she had called Barbara Berkeley's father a tramp!

'Well, Everard, and what have you to say for yourself?' demanded Auntie Anna, in a severe tone, as soon as she could make herself heard. For quite ten minutes, every one had been talking at once.

'What have I to say?' repeated Mr. Berkeley, with his eyes twinkling.

'Why, plum-cake, to be sure! You haven't offered me any tea yet.'

His sons nearly wrecked the tea-table in their efforts to be first in supplying his wants; and Auntie Anna gave up the attempt to be firm.

'Well, well,' she said, shaking her head, 'you always were incorrigible, Everard! But what about the end of your lecturing tour?'

'There won't be any end, as far as I'm concerned,' smiled her brother, devouring plum-cake with avidity.

'But--but what did they _say_ to your extraordinary departure?' cried Auntie Anna.

'I didn't give them time to say much,' answered Mr. Berkeley. 'The boat was starting in a couple of hours, you see.'

Auntie Anna threw up her hands. 'Of all the improvident, hot-headed----'

she was beginning, when the change of expression in her brother's face silenced her. He held out his cup to her with a pathetic look.

'You always forget,' he said. 'Two lumps, please.'

The boys flung themselves upon the sugar-basin, and more than two lumps found their way into his cup. Jill took the opportunity to present Barbara's friends to him, and Mr. Berkeley smiled and said something genial to both of them, which made Jean forget at once how shy she was and drove away the last bit of Angela's confusion over her stupid mistake. But his attention soon wandered back to his children, and he stirred his tea and beamed upon all three of them alternately, until the others began to feel that they were in the way. His eyes rested longest of all upon Babs, who lay on her couch with an expression of complete contentment on her face; and Auntie Anna saw, and understood.

'I said all the while it was madness to write and tell you about it,' she grumbled.

Mr. Berkeley chuckled. 'I never got your letter till last Wednesday week,'

he said. 'It had been following me about from place to place. Poor little Babe!' he added, pinching her cheek softly; 'what a shame to let you knock yourself about, when your poor old father wasn't there to take care of you!'

Auntie Anna smiled grimly. 'No one could very well be less capable of taking care of her,' she remarked.

Robin clambered on his father's knee and hugged him afresh.

'Why _did_ you come home, father?' he cried, raising his voice higher than ever.

Mr. Berkeley looked mildly surprised. 'Can't you guess, sonny?' he asked.

'Do you suppose I could stay another minute in somebody else's country, when I heard that my little girl was ill over here?'

Jill got up rather suddenly, and offered to take Jean and Angela round the garden; and Auntie Anna grasped her blue-k.n.o.bbed cane, and rose slowly to her feet. Before she went off, however, she shot one more question at her brother in her most abrupt manner. 'What about your luggage, Everard?' she demanded. 'Where have you left it?'

Mr. Berkeley reflected a moment. 'I _think_ it was Boston,' he began doubtfully, 'but it may have been----'

He did not finish his sentence, for the old lady shook her head in despair at him and hobbled off towards the house. Barbara watched her retreating figure, and smiled gently to herself. Auntie Anna might pretend as much as she liked that she was a dragon, but nothing could prevent her looking like a fairy G.o.dmother!

Her father stroked her rough, tumbled hair caressingly, and smiled back at her.

'What is it, Babe?' he asked.

The child gazed at him as he sat there, with the two boys clinging to him as though they would never let him go again; and the whimsical look stole into her bright little eyes, and lighted up the whole of her small impish face.

'The magician has come back,' she said, with a happy laugh; 'and there isn't room to _move_ in my fairy kingdom!'