The Youngest Girl in the Fifth: A School Story, Angela Brazil [most popular novels of all time .TXT] 📗

"I am going back to Skelwick myself, and I could show you the way if you like," returned Gwen, moved with a sudden compassion for the frail little figure, a whole head shorter than her stalwart self.

"If it will not be incommoding you, I shall be glad to avail myself of your offer. I am a trifle shortsighted, and these moorland paths are confusing."

"Yes, you can easily go miles out of your way," agreed Gwen, wondering again who the stranger could be.

He did not look like an ordinary tourist, and as they walked together over the wold he began to make a number of enquiries about Skelwick and the people who lived there. He was an artful questioner, and Gwen, almost before she realized what she was doing, gave him a full and detailed history of the neighbourhood, including what it had been before Father came, and what it was now.

"Of course some of them still drink, but they're better than they were," she said. "Six years ago most of the fishermen wouldn't go near a service, and spent all Sunday with bottles of whisky in that little cabin on the shore, the very one Dad's made into a newsroom now. I don't know what the place would do without him if he really—" but here she stopped in great distress, remembering she was letting out the secret which Beatrice had strictly enjoined her to keep.

The blinking, shortsighted eyes did not seem to take any notice of her confusion. The old gentleman twitched his mouth hard, and then merely remarked:

"It's well to be a favourite in one's parish."[176]

"I wish it were Dad's parish!" said Gwen, following up her private train of thought. "If Skelwick were a separate living of its own, quite apart from North Ditton, he could do so much more. It's fearfully hampering to be under another church that's such a long way off. It doesn't give Dad a free hand at all."

"Yes—yes—yes; exactly so," commented the stranger, wrinkling up his forehead into thick lines.

He was very silent after this, as if he were turning something over in his mind, and Gwen, who began to think she had chattered too much, walked along trying to remember what she had said. They had almost reached the village by now; the sun was glaring on the red roofs below them and on the white highroad which led to North Ditton.

"This is my short cut back to the Parsonage," said Gwen, stopping at a stile; "but if you want the 'King's Arms' you must go along that footpath to the right."

"Thank you! I shall get some lunch there, and then go on to North Ditton. By the by, what time is your evening service on Sunday?"

"Half-past six," replied Gwen, wondering as she turned away why a stranger who was evidently only passing through Skelwick should ask such a question.

"Mere curiosity, I suppose," she thought. "He seems an inquisitive old fellow."

She told her experiences to Beatrice and Winnie, but they had no more idea than herself of the identity of the little old gentleman.

"Some tourist on a walking tour, I expect," said Beatrice. "You were quite right to show him the[177] way; but you really must be careful, Gwen, and not talk so freely to chance people whom you meet. I'd rather you didn't go on the moors quite alone. Take one of the boys next time."

"Stumps is a far worse blabber than I am!" laughed Gwen. "He'd have given the most intimate details of our household arrangements, and what we were going to have for dinner to-day. Perhaps have added an invitation!"

"Which would surely not have been accepted."

"I don't know! Such an eccentric old fellow might be capable of anything. I shall look out for him in church to-morrow evening."

And much to Gwen's surprise he was actually there. He turned up rather late—during the singing of the first Psalm, in fact—and left in the middle of the hymn after the sermon. He sat on one of the benches close to the door, and Gwen would hardly have known of his presence had she not recognized the peculiar way in which he cleared his throat, which attracted her attention to him.

"Who was that stranger, Robert?" she asked the clerk afterwards.

"Don't know at all, Miss Gwen. I never see him in my life before. Funny old chap, weren't he? But he put a half-crown in the plate before he left! We don't get many half-crowns at Skelwick; it's mostly pennies and threepennybits, with a few sixpences, as I collect."

"Perhaps he just came over from North Ditton for the walk; he seems to be fond of walking, and perhaps he wanted to see the village by sunset," said[178] Gwen. "I wish he'd stayed five minutes longer and spoken to Father. He always likes to welcome strangers who come to the church."

"And those bean't a-many," returned the clerk as he locked the big door.

It was a little incident, and seemed quite unimportant at the time. Gwen dismissed it quickly from her mind, for she had very many other things to think about just then, things that seemed paramount and far more interesting and exciting than chance tourists who asked questions.

But she was to hear of the eccentric old gentleman again.

[179]

Gwen's quarrel with Netta was so complete that the two were no longer on speaking terms. Gwen was very apprehensive lest her former chum should carry out her old threat and betray the secret of the broken china, and in the first heat of her anger Netta had been inclined to do so; on further reflection, however, she decided that the consequences might be too compromising to herself, and that it would be safer to preserve silence. She had already scored by fetching Miss Trent into the schoolroom during Gwen's conversation with Dick, and the trouble which had ensued was almost enough to satisfy her. Really Netta had been rather tired of Gwen before this, and she was not sorry to seize upon an excuse for breaking their friendship. She now took up hotly with Annie Edwards, and the pair were for the moment inseparable.

"I believe it's as I thought," said Elspeth Frazer to Charlotte Perry; "Gwen Gascoyne's quite off with Netta. Now, if she can only get into a better set she may be a different girl. I want to find out what she's really like, so I'm going to be nice to her to-morrow when we go the geological excursion."

"Perhaps we have been rather horrid to her," returned Charlotte thoughtfully.[180]

"It was mostly her own fault for putting on airs when she first came up, and then making such friends with Netta. She couldn't expect any of us to have anything to say to her after that."

"Probably she didn't know Netta."

"I dare say not; but it shows she's a bad judge of character. All the same I've got Gwen a little on my conscience, and I'm going to try what I can do. She may improve now."

Elspeth spoke the truth when she said that she had Gwen on her conscience. It had occurred to her several times lately that perhaps she had misunderstood her schoolfellow, and that she might have done more to help her. "Am I my brother's keeper?" rose uneasily to her mind. She had an uncomfortable feeling that in happier circumstances Gwen might have made a better impression on the Form, and that she and Hilda and Edith and Louise were partly responsible for her ill reception.

"I'm very sorry if we've been Pharisees!" she thought. "Of course one wanted to keep to one's own set, and not have anything to do with the tag-end of the Form—but—Well, I mean to give Gwen Gascoyne a chance now, anyhow."

The geological excursion was rather an event of the term. The Form had been learning geology with Miss Roberts, who promised to take the girls for an afternoon