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

distressed as I am," continued the Principal. "I was obliged to tell her, in order to explain your absence from your classes. Here she comes now. Perhaps she will be able to persuade you better than I."

"Oh, Miss Roscoe," exclaimed Miss Douglas, entering the study with a hurried step and a heightened colour, "I have just made the most astounding discovery! I happened to look in my purse, and to my amazement and consternation I found half a sovereign which certainly ought not to be there. I am sure I know how I came by it. Yesterday, just before I[242] went into the house to dress the girls who were to sing the Elizabethan madrigal, I bought a box of sweets from Lesbia Gascoyne. I gave her a two-shilling piece, and as she had no sixpences, she ran to Gwen to ask change for my florin. She came hurrying back, and handed me, as we both imagined, three sixpences. I put them in my purse without looking at them. Now I am quite sure that one of these supposed sixpences must in reality have been half a sovereign, given by mistake. I undoubtedly had no ten-shilling piece in my purse. The difference of giving half a sovereign in lieu of sixpence would be exactly the nine-and-six that was missing from Gwen's satchel. Let us exchange the two coins, and the deficit will be made up."

It was such a natural, simple, and self-evident explanation of the situation that its truth could not be doubted. Miss Roscoe heaved a sigh of intense relief.

"I am grateful to you beyond words, Miss Douglas," she returned. "Gwen, I am most delighted that your honour is cleared, and regret I harboured so unjust a suspicion against you. I confess it was the affair of the broken china that prejudiced me in your disfavour. It supplied so strong a motive. Why didn't you come and tell me about that right away when if happened instead of trying to settle it in such a crooked fashion? It wasn't straight and square, was it? Have I heard the whole story?"

Gwen, who had not shed a tear before, was crying bitterly now. Miss Roscoe's present kindly tone hurt more than her former severity. Almost in spite of[243] herself the girl began to blurt put her version of how she had accidentally broken the tea service, had intended to pay for it at once, and how Emma had absconded with the money. The housemaid's part in the drama was news to Miss Roscoe, and she hastened to ask for particulars.

"This must be investigated immediately," she declared. "I shall send for Emma Dalton this afternoon. I happen to know that she has a place as parlour-maid at a house not far away. If I had heard of this I could not have given her a character. Indeed she deserves to be prosecuted for theft. I must write a note to her present mistress."

Miss Roscoe never let the grass grow under her feet. In this case she acted with her usual promptitude, and by two o'clock Emma, in much alarm, and weeping like a waterspout, was ushered into the study and confronted with Gwen and Netta, who were both summoned for the occasion.

"Now, Emma, this is a serious charge. Have you anything to say for yourself?" enquired Miss Roscoe, seating herself at her desk with the air of a magistrate about to try a case.

"I didn't pay the money at Parker's, and I don't deny it," sobbed Emma. "I meant to, but I saw a coat and skirt I wanted, so I thought I'd borrow it, and the bill might just wait for a bit. I've intended to go and settle every month when I got my wages, but it's never seemed the right time. I didn't know Parker's were pressing for it. Oh, dear, I've been a bad girl!"

"You have indeed," said Miss Roscoe. "It was[244] wrong of Miss Gascoyne to ask you to help her to deceive me, but worse for you to defraud her."

"It wasn't Miss Gascoyne that suggested sending back the broken china to Parker's and saying nothing about it; it was Miss Goodwin," declared Emma, pointing at Netta. "She planned the whole thing! Yes, I can tell you she did. She's a deeper one than the other. It was half her fault, I'll be bound!"

Netta's face was a study, especially as Miss Roscoe looked at her keenly, though she made no remark.

"I've brought the money with me," continued Emma, still sobbing, "if Miss Gascoyne will please take it and forgive me."

"You don't deserve any consideration, Emma," said Miss Roscoe.

"For the sake of my mother!" pleaded Emma. "Oh, don't prosecute me! It would brand me for life!"

"Don't send her to prison, please!" interposed Gwen.

"Well, we don't want to be too hard on you and ruin your life. Let it be a warning to you to be honest in future. I am sure Miss Gascoyne has no wish to prosecute you. I shall be obliged to let your mistress know about this, however. I gave you so good a character to her, that it is not fair she should remain in ignorance of so serious a slip. She must be the judge whether she keeps you in her service or not."

"I'll go home to my mother and work at dressmaking," snivelled Emma as she prepared to depart. "Here's the money, Miss Gascoyne; I'm sorry I took it, and thank you kindly for not prosecuting."[245]

Netta fled from the study the moment Miss Roscoe gave her leave to go. She was anxious not to have to speak to Gwen, for she knew she had not behaved well towards her. Emma's unexpected accusation had given rather an awkward turn to the affair, and she had hardly come out of it with the credit she expected. Gwen lingered behind. She felt she could not leave without offering the apology which for seven long months she had wished to make.

"Please, Miss Roscoe, I'm most dreadfully sorry about all this. I know I ought to have come and told you at once when I knocked over the box of china," she blurted out abruptly. "I've been miserable the whole time about it."

"Well, Gwen, it's a lesson to keep square, isn't it? One little step from the straight road often sends us farther out of our way than we have any intention of going. I don't think you will descend to anything so underhand again, will you?"

"Never in all my life!" protested Gwen with energy.

"Then we'll say no more about it."

The news that Gwen had been suspected of appropriating some of the gate money had leaked out, as news always leaks out, and was received with great indignation by the rest of the Fifth.

"Gwen Gascoyne simply isn't capable of doing such an abominable thing!" declared Elspeth Frazer.

"No. Gwen's gauche and brusque, but she's unimpeachable," agreed Hilda Browne.

"I'd rather suspect myself!" said Charlotte Perry.

Much satisfaction was expressed in the Form when the report of the mistake in Miss Douglas's change[246] was circulated, and Gwen's complete acquittal secured. Everybody congratulated her heartily when she returned to the classroom.

"You're the heroine of the hour," said Louise Mawson. "It was an uncommonly disagreeable thing to happen. But in a bag full of change it's very easy to confuse a half-sovereign and a sixpence. By the by, has Miss Roscoe added up all the accounts yet? How much have we made?"

"One hundred and fifty-three pounds altogether," replied Gwen. "We got a hundred and nine pounds by collecting, and the gymkhana has made forty-four."

"Hooray! Then the cot is an accomplished fact."

"We shall all have to pay a visit to the Convalescent Home and see it, as soon as the name is painted up over it," said Hilda Browne.

"Won't it look scrumptious to see 'Rodenhurst Cot' in black and white?" chuckled Charlotte Perry.

"We shall have to publish reports of our special convalescents in every number of the school magazine," suggested Iris Watson. "It will be so interesting to read about them."

At four o'clock, by Winnie's express permission, Gwen went to Parker & Sons and made a final settlement of their account. The relief of being free from her load of debt was very great, and she came out of the shop happier than she had been since the day she first entered it. As Emma had refunded the one pound two and sixpence in full, Gwen had twelve and sixpence in hand, and, in consequence, felt rich beyond the dreams of avarice. The vision of a new tennis racket began to dawn on her horizon. That evening[247] she managed to cajole Father for a short stroll on the moor. It was seldom she could secure such a tête-à-tête walk, but she was longing so much to unburden her mind that she gave him no peace until she had got him all to herself. Once they were seated on the heather, with the wold behind and the sea in front, Gwen began to pour out the story in her usual abrupt, jerky fashion, not omitting the matter of the prize essay which she had sold to Netta.

"Why didn't you tell me all this before, Gwen?" asked Mr. Gascoyne when she had finished.

"Because—oh, Dad, I thought it would worry you! Beatrice said you were so dreadfully hard up."

"It would have worried me far more to feel that you owed money. How much did Netta Goodwin lend you?"

"A sovereign."

"Then I will make up your twelve and six to twenty shillings, and you shall pay her back. I don't like that transaction about the essay at all."

"Netta doesn't deserve it!" exclaimed Gwen.

"I dare say not, but your conscience demands it. Honour forbids you to expose Netta, but the affair was so discreditable that I want your part at least to be set straight. That sovereign was ill-gotten gains, Gwen!"

"Oh, Dad! Are you very angry with me?"

"No, not angry, but I wish you'd trusted me. The whole business, childie, hasn't been on the square."

"I knew it wasn't, all the time," confessed Gwen, scrubbing her eyes. "But—oh, Dad, it was so hard! Why do such hard places come into one's life?"[248]

"To give one the opportunity to get strong. If everything were always pleasant and smooth and easy, we should be poor sort of creatures in the end, with no character worth having. I feel that every day myself, and give thanks for the hard things, and I've had my share of them."

Gwen looked at Father, and a sudden perception of his meaning swept over her. Young as she was, she knew something of the struggles and disappointments, the lack of appreciation, the mistrust, the misconstructions, the slights which had met him in his parish work, and the burden of poverty which he carried so bravely and uncomplainingly—somewhat, too, perhaps, she divined of the hopes he had left behind. Her own little struggles faded into nothingness in the shadow of his.

"Yes, you've had a hard life, Dad," she repeated slowly.

"Sentry duty. That's all! A hard life is the soldier's post of honour," said Father.

He looked far out over the sea as he spoke, and it almost seemed to Gwen as if his face shone.

There was still one point which Gwen was anxious to elucidate, and that was the reason of Lesbia's peculiar conduct in the orchard on the evening of the gymkhana, and where she had obtained the ten and sixpence of which she had spoken. Lesbia seemed very unwilling to discuss the subject, but when the two girls were in their bedroom that night, Gwen held her to the point.

"Oh, Gwen, you've got me in a corner!" protested Lesbia. "I didn't mean to tell a soul about it, except[249] Kitty Macpherson! Well, if you must know, this is what happened. One day Kitty brought a copy of The Gentlewoman's World to school. It had a beauty competition in it, and she urged me to try my luck, so I sent up my photo—that one which Aunt Violet had taken of me when I was staying at Greylands. It actually won a prize, and the magazine sent me a postal order for ten and sixpence. I didn't dare to tell any of you at home, because I knew you'd all think me so terribly vain and conceited. Beatrice is fearfully down on me for that kind of thing, and I knew the boys would tease, and call me 'Proudie' and 'Madam Conceit'."

Gwen laughed long and heartily. She did not tell her little sister of the unjust suspicion she had for a short time harboured against her. The whole affair was so exactly like Lesbia, from the competing for a beauty prize to the careless taking of wrong change.

"How will you explain your new tennis racket?"