A Popular Schoolgirl, Angela Brazil [most romantic novels .txt] 📗

or the burglar? How am I to know which is which?"

"You'd better let me be there to decide for you, child, or you'll be snapped up by the first adventurer that comes along," declared Nora. "Don't trust him if he has a mustache. 'Daring Dick of the Black Gang' had a little twisted mustache like Mephistopheles in 'Faust'."

"Oh dear! And the last piece I saw on the Pictures, the villain was clean shaven! That's no guide at all!"

"Girls, you're breaking the silence rule!" said Mrs. Best, opening the door of Dormitory 2, where the conversation, which had begun in whispers, had risen to a pitch audible on the landing outside. "This doesn't look like scoring again next week, and giving another performance. Why, Nora, the rain's driving through that open window straight on to your bed! You'll be getting rheumatism! I shall shut it, and leave the door wide open for air instead. Now be good girls and go to sleep at once. Don't let me hear any more talking."

The Foursomes, in common with most of the hostel, were fond of Mrs. Best, so they turned over obediently, and composed themselves to slumber. They were really tired by this time, and dropped off into the land of Nod before the clock on the stairs had chimed another quarter. How long she slept, Ingred did not know. She dreamt quite a long and circumstantial dream of wandering on the cliffs near the sea with a gentleman-burglar, who was telling her his intention of raiding Buckingham Palace and taking away the Crown Jewels, and she heard his daring designs (as we always do in dreams) without the slightest surprise or any suggestion that the Crown Jewels are kept at the Tower instead of at Buckingham Palace. She woke suddenly, and laughed at the absurdity of the idea. She felt hot, and threw back her eiderdown. The other girls were sleeping quietly, and the rain was still beating against the window in heavy showers, for it was a stormy night. The door of the bedroom stood wide open. What was that sound coming up the stairs from the hall below? It was certainly not the ticking of the clock. It seemed more like muffled and stealthy footsteps. In an instant Ingred was very wide awake indeed, and listening intently. There it came again! She could not lie still and ignore it. She got out of bed, and with rather shaking knees walked on to the landing and peeped over the banisters. There was a tiny oil-lamp hanging on the wall; it faintly illuminated the stairs. Was that somebody moving about in the darkness of the hall? If it was a burglar, he certainly must not come upstairs, or she would die of fright. An idea occurred to her, and acting on a sudden impulse she dashed into Dormitory 2, roused the others, and told them to snatch what missiles they could, and hurry to her aid.

"We'll fling things at him if he tries to come up!" she gasped, groping for her boots.

It was a horrible experience: four nervous, quaking girls stood in the dim light on the landing gazing down into the haunted blackness of the shadowy hall. The sounds had ceased temporarily, but now they began again—a distinct shuffling as of footsteps, and even a subdued sniff, then the outline of a dark figure made its appearance, bearing straight for the stairs.

With quite commendable bravery Ingred flung her boots at it, which missiles were instantly followed by Nora's hairbrush, Fil's dispatch case, and Verity's pillow. It screamed in a most unburglar-like voice, and apparently with genuine fright.

"If you t-t-t-try to c-c-come nearer, I'll sh-sh-shoot you dead!" quavered Ingred, wishing she had at least some semblance of a pistol to bluff with.

"What are you doing, girls?" replied the dark shadow, persisting in its movement towards the staircase, and, as it came into the faint circle of radiance spread by the lamp, resolving itself into the familiar form of Nurse Warner. "Have you suddenly gone mad?"

Here was a situation! The four girls flew back to their dormitory in great haste, especially as Mrs. Best, disturbed by the noise, had opened her door and come on to the scene in a pink-and-gray dressing-gown. They were followed, however, by both Matron and Nurse, and forced to give an explanation of their extraordinary conduct.

"I couldn't sleep for the wind, so I put on my felt slippers and my cloak, and went downstairs for a biscuit," declared Nurse Warner, whose voice sounded rather aggrieved. "I didn't think I should disturb anybody."

"You girls are the limit with your silly notions!" said Mrs. Best, really angry for once. "If you fill your heads with absurd ideas about burglars before you go to sleep, of course you can imagine anything. If I hear any more talking in No. 2 another night after the lights are out, I shall separate you, and send each of you to sleep in another dormitory. I'll not have the house upset like this! So you know what to expect. Are you all in your beds? Then not another word!"

"It's very uncomfy without my pillow!" whispered naughty Verity, in distinct disobedience to this mandate, as the door of Mrs. Best's room closed. "Dare I go and fetch it?"

"Sh! Sh! No!"

"I know what we'll give Nursie for a Christmas present," murmured Fil softly. "A nice ornamental tin box of biscuits to keep in her bedroom. She shan't get hungry in the night again, poor dear!"

"Sh! Sh! Will you go to sleep!" warned Ingred emphatically.

CHAPTER X The Whispering Stones

The Saxon family had squeezed themselves and certain of their possessions into the little home at Wynch-on-the-Wold, and while flowers still bloomed in the garden and apples hung ripe on the trees it seemed a kind of continuation of their summer holiday; but as the novelty wore off, and stormy weather came on, their altered circumstances began to be more evident. Most of us can make a plucky fight against fate at first—there had been something rather romantic about retiring to the bungalow—but the plain prose of the proceeding was yet to come, and there were certainly many disadvantages to be faced. Mr. Saxon was worried about business affairs; he was a proud, sensitive man, and felt it a great "come down" to be obliged to resign Rotherwood, and the social position it had stood for, and confess himself to the world as one of the "newly poor." It was humiliating to have to walk or take a tram where he had formerly used his car in fulfilling his professional engagements, hard not to be able to entertain his friends, and perhaps hardest of all to be obliged to refuse subscriptions to the numerous charities in the town where his name had always stood conspicuously upon the liberal list. His temper, never his strongest point, suffered under the test, and he would come home from Grovebury in the evenings tired out, moody and fretful, and inclined to find fault with everything and everybody.

It took all his wife's sunny sweetness of disposition to keep the home atmosphere cheerful and peaceful, for Egbert also had a temper, and was bitterly disappointed at not being sent to Cambridge, and at having to settle down in the family office instead. Father and son did not get on remarkably well together. Mr. Saxon, like many parents, pooh-poohed his boy's business efforts, and would sometimes—to Egbert's huge indignation—point out his mistakes before the clerks. He would declare, in a high and mighty way, that his own son should not receive special preference at the office, and so overdid his attitude of impartiality that he contrived to give him a worse time than any of his other articled pupils.

Athelstane, who had begun his medical course at the University of Birkshaw, also had his troubles. He had hoped to study at Guy's Hospital in preparation for the London M.D., and to an ambitious young fellow it was hard to be satisfied with a provincial degree. The thirty-mile motor ride to and from Birkshaw soon lost its charm, and the difficulties of home study in the evenings were great in a bungalow with thin partition walls and a family not always disposed to quiet. As a rule, he kept his feelings to himself, but he went about with a depressed look, and got into a habit of lifting his eyebrows which was leaving permanent lines on a hitherto smooth and unwrinkled forehead.

Pretty Quenrede, who had just left school, was going through the awkward phase of discovering her individuality. At the College, with a full program of lessons and games, she had followed the general lead of the form. Now, cast upon her own resources, she was quite vague as to any special bent or taste. The war-time occupations which had tempted her imagination were no longer available, and Careers for Women did not attract her, even if family funds had run to the necessary training. So, for the present, she stayed at home, going once a week to the School of Art at Grovebury, and practicing singing in a rather desultory fashion. Though she pretended to be glad she was an emancipated young lady, as a matter of fact she missed school immensely, and was finding life decidedly slow and tame.

With their elders palpably dissatisfied, Ingred and Hereward would have been hardly human if they had not raised some personal grievances of their own to grumble at, and matters would often have been dismal enough at the bungalow but for Mrs. Saxon's happy capacity for looking on the bright side of things. The whole household centered round "Mother." She was a woman in a thousand. Naturally it had hurt her to relinquish Rotherwood, and it grieved her—for the girls' sake—that most of her old acquaintances in Grovebury had not troubled to pay calls at Wynchcote. The small rooms, the one maid from the Orphanage, the necessity of doing much of the housework herself, the difficulties of shopping on a limited purse, and her husband's fretfulness and fault-finding, might have soured a less unselfish disposition: she had married, however, "for better or for worse," and took the altered circumstances with cheery optimism. She was a great lover of nature and of scenery, and the nearness of the moors, with their ever-changing effects of storm and sunshine, and the opportunities they gave for the study of birds and insects, proved compensation for some of the things which life otherwise lacked.

Every morning, after the fuss of getting off the family to their several avocations, she would run down the garden, and stand for a few minutes by the wall that overlooked the moor, watching great shafts of sunlight fall from a gray sky on to brown wastes of heather and bracken, listening to the call of the curlews or to the trilling autumn warble of the robin, perched on the red-berried hawthorn bush. Kind Mother Nature could always soothe her spirits, and send her back with fresh courage for the day's work. And, in the evening, when husband and children came home to fire and lamp-light, she had generally some nature notes to tell them, or some amusing little incident to make them laugh and forget their various woes and worries.

"I'm so glad, Muvvie dear, you're not a melancholy lugubrious person!" said Ingred once. "It would be so trying if you sat at the tea-table and sighed."

"Humor is the salt of life," smiled Mrs. Saxon. "We may just as well get all the fun out of the little daily happenings. Even 'the orphan' has her bright side!"

As "the orphan" was a temporary member of the Wynchcote establishment she merits a word of description. She came from an institution in the neighborhood, and, being the only servant procurable at the time, was tolerated in spite of a terrible propensity for smashing plates, and for carolling at the very pitch of a nasal voice. She was a rough, good-tempered girl, devoted to Minx, the cat, and really kind if anybody had a headache or toothache, but quite without any sense of discrimination: she would show a traveling hawker into the drawing-room, and leave the clergyman standing on the doorstep, took the best serviettes to wipe the china, scoured the silver with Monkey Brand Soap, and systematically bespattered the kitchen tablecloth with ink. Her love of music was a terrible trial to the medical student of the family on Saturday morning, when he was endeavoring to read at home.

"Carlyle says somewhere: 'Give, oh, give me a man who sings at his work!'" growled Athelstane one day, bursting forth from his den to complain of the nuisance, "but I bet the old buffer didn't write that sentiment with a maid-servant howling popular songs in the next room. According to all accounts he loathed noise and couldn't even stand the crowing of a cock. I should call that bit of eloquence just bunkum. If the orphan doesn't stop this voice-production business