The Rebel of the School, L. T. Meade [best historical biographies .txt] 📗

off to see Aunt Church. He found the old lady sitting at her parlor window looking out as usual for him. She was dressed in rusty black; she had a front of stiff curls on her forehead, a white widow's-cap over it, and a small black crape handkerchief crossed on her breast. Mrs. Church was a little woman; she had very tiny feet and hands, and was very proud of them. She never thought of buying any new clothes, and her black bombazine dress was more brown than black now; so was her shawl, and so was the handkerchief which she wore round her neck. Her cap was tied with ribbons which had been washed so often that they were no longer white, but yellow.

She came to the door to greet Tom when he arrived, and called him in.

"Ah, Tom!" she said, "I have got a piece of plumcake waiting for you; and if you are a really good boy, and will shoo the fowls into my backyard and shut the gate on them, you may look into my microscope."

"Thank you, Aunt Church," said Tom. "Shall I go at once and shoo the fowls?"

"You had best give me my money first. Here is the box; you drop it in: two pounds in gold—I hope to goodness your mother has sent the money in gold—two pounds in gold and the rest in silver. Now then, here is the box. Drop it in like a good child, and then you shall shoo the fowls, and have your plumcake, and look in the microscope."

"But, Aunt Church—" said Tom. He planted himself right in front of the old lady. He was a tall boy, well set up, with a sandy head, and a face covered with freckles. He had rather shallow blue eyes and a wide mouth, but his whole expression was honest and full of fun. "I am desperately sorry, and so is mother."

"Eh! What?" said the old lady. She put her hand to her ear. "I am a bit hard of hearing, my dear; come close to me."

"Mother's awfully sorry, but she can't pay you to-day."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Church; "can't pay me to-day! But it's the first of the month, and she was never behindhand—I will say that—in her payments before."

"She's fretting past bearing," said Tom. "She'd give all the world to be able to pay you up, but she ain't got the money, and that's a fact. We have had a robbery in the shop, Aunt Church, and mother has took on dreadful."

"A burglary?" said Mrs. Church. "Now tell me all about it. Stand here and pour your words into my ear. I am very much interested about burglaries. Was there attempted murder? Speak up, boy—speak up."

Tom quite longed to say that there was. Had he been able to assure Mrs. Church that burglars with masks on their faces had burst into the shop at dead of night and penetrated to his mother's bedroom, and had held pistols to her throat and Susy's throat, and a great bare, glittering knife to his; and had he been further able to tell her that he himself, unaided, had grappled with the enemy, had wrested the knife from the hand of one, and knocked the loaded pistols from the hands of the others—then, indeed, he would have felt himself a hero, and the mere fact of not being able to return the money on the appointed day would not have signified.

But Tom was truthful, and he had but a lame story to tell. Nineteen-and-sixpence had been abstracted from the till. Nobody knew how it had been done, and nobody had the least idea who was the thief. Mrs. Church, who would have given her niece unlimited time to return the money had there been a real, proper, bloodthirsty burglary, was not at all inclined to show mercy when the affair dwindled down into an unknown thief taking a small sum of money out of the till.

"Why didn't you get it back?" she said. "Why didn't you send for the police? My word, this is a nice state of things! And me to be out of my money that I counted upon. Why, Tom, boy, I spend that money on my food, rent, and the little expenses I have to go to. I made up my mind when I drew that hundred pounds from my dear husband's hard-earned savings that, whatever happened, I'd make that sum last me for all expenses for three years. And I have done it, Tom—I have done it. I am in low water, Tom. I want the money; I want it just as much as your poor mother does."

"But you have money in the bank, haven't you?"

"That is no affair of yours, Tom Hopkins. Don't talk in that silly way to me. No, I don't want you to shoo the fowls into the yard, and I don't mean to give you any plumcake. I shall have to eat it myself, for I have no money to buy anything else. And I won't show you the beautiful wings of the beetle in the microscope. You can go home to your mother and tell her I am very much annoyed indeed."

"But, Aunt Church," said Tom, "if you were to see poor mother you wouldn't blame her. She looks, oh, so thin and so tired! She's terribly unhappy, and she will be certain sure to pay you next week. It was silly of her, I will own, not to think of the police sooner; but she's gone to them to-day, ordered by me to do that same."

"That was thoughtful enough of you, Tom, and I don't object to giving you a morsel of the stalest cake. I always keep three cakes in three tin boxes, and you can have a morsel of the stalest; it is more than two months old, but you won't mind that."

"Not me," said Tom, "I like stale cakes best," he added, determined to show his aunt that he was ready to be pleased with everything. He was a very knowing boy, and spoke up so well, and was so evidently sorry himself, and so positive that as soon as ever the police were told they would simply lay their hands on the thief and the thief would disgorge his spoils, that Aunt Church was fain to believe him.

In the end she and he made a compact.

"I tell you what it is," he said. "You haven't been to see mother for a long time, and if you ain't got any money to buy a dinner for yourself, it is but fair you should have a slice off our Sunday joint."

"Sunday joint, indeed!" snapped Mrs. Church.

"You couldn't expect us not to have a bit of meat on Sunday," said Tom. "Why, we'd get so weak that mother couldn't earn the money she sends you every month."

"And you couldn't do your lessons and be the fine big boy that I am proud of," said Mrs. Church. "Now, to tell the truth, I can't bear that sister of yours—Susy, you call her—but I have a liking for you, Tom Hopkins. What is it you want me to do?"

"If you will let me come here to-morrow, I'll push you all the way to Merrifield in time for our dinner. Wouldn't you like that? And I'd bring you back again in the evening. There's your own old bath-chair that Uncle Church used to be moved about in before he died."

"To be sure, there is," said Mrs. Church, her eyes brightening. "But the lining has got moth-eaten."

"Who minds that?" said Tom. "I'll go and clean it after you have given me that bit of cake you promised me."

Everything ended quite satisfactorily as far as Tom was concerned, for Mrs. Church forgot her anger in the interest that the boy's visit gave her. She consulted him about her fowls, and gave him a new-laid egg to slip into his pocket for his own supper. Later on she allowed him to munch some very poor and very stale plumcake. Finally she gave him his heart's delight, for he was allowed to peer into the old microscope and revel in the sight of the beetle's wings with thin, sweeping plumes, as he afterwards described them.

It was rather late when Tom returned home. He burst into the parlor where his mother and Susy were sitting.

"Mother," he said, "I have done everything splendidly; and she's coming to dine with us to-morrow."

"She's what?" said Mrs. Hopkins.

"Aunt Church is coming to dine with us. She was mad about the money, and nobody could have been nastier than she might have turned out but for me. But it's all right now. We must have a nice dinner for her. She is very fond of good things, and as she never gives them to herself, she will enjoy ours all the more."

"She'll think that I am rich, when I am as poor as a church mouse," said Mrs. Hopkins. "But I suppose you have done everything for the best, Tom, and I must go around to the butcher's for a little addition to the dinner."

Mrs. Hopkins left the house, and Tom sank into a chair by his sister.

"It's golloptious for me," he said. "She's taking no end of a fancy to me. See this egg? She gave it to me for my supper. Mother shall have it. Mother is looking very white about the gills; a new-laid egg that she hasn't to pay for will nourish her up like anything."

"So it will," said Susy. "We'll boil it and say nothing about it, and just pop it on her plate when she's having her supper. All the same, Tom, I wish you hadn't asked old Aunt Church here. She is such a queer old body; and the neighbors sometimes drop in on Sundays. And I have asked Miss Kathleen O'Hara to come in to-morrow, and she has promised to."

"What?" said Tom. "That grand beauty of a young lady, the pride of the school? Why, everybody is talking about her. At the boys' school they've caught sight of her, and there isn't a boy that hasn't fallen in love with her. They all slink behind the wall, and bob up as she comes by. You don't mean that she's coming here?"

"Yes; why not? She's very fond of me."

"But she's no end of a howler. They say she's worth her weight in gold, and that her father is a sort of king in Ireland. Why should she take up with a little girl like you?"

"Well, Tom, some people like me, although you think but little of your sister. Kathleen is very fond of me. I invited her to have tea with us to-morrow, and she is coming."

"My word!" said Tom. "To think that I shall be sitting at the same table with her! I'll be able to make my own terms now with John Short and Harry Reid and the rest of the chaps. Why, Susy, you must be a genius, and I thought you weren't much of a sort."

"I am better than you think; and she is fond of me."

"And you really and truly call her by her Christian name?"

"Of course I do."

Susy longed to tell Tom about the wonderful society; but its strictest rule was that it was never to be spoken about to outsiders. Susy, as a member of the Cabinet, must certainly be one of the last to break the rules.

Mrs. Hopkins came back at that moment. She had added a pound of sausage and a little piece of pork to their usual Sunday fare. She had also brought sixpennyworth of apples with her.

"These are to make a pudding," she said. "I think we shall do now very well."

Susy and Tom quite agreed with their mother. Susy rose and prepared supper, and at the crucial moment the new-laid egg was laid on Mrs. Hopkins's plate. It takes, perhaps, a great deal of poverty to truly appreciate a new-laid egg. Mrs. Hopkins was delighted with hers; she thought Tom the noblest boy in the world for having denied himself in order to give it to her. Tears filled her tired eyes as she thanked God for her good children.

Susy and Tom watched her as she ate the egg, and thought how delicious it must taste, but were glad she had it.

The following day dawned bright and clear, with a suspicion of frost in the air. It was, as Tom expressed it, a perfect day. Susy went to church with her mother in the morning, the dinner being all