The summer holidays came. The Rectory children went away to the seaside with their parents.
For over a month, Harebell had not been allowed to ride out on Chris; but now, owing to her uncle's intercession, she was permitted to begin her rides again.
Mrs. Keith hardly ever took any notice of her, but at last one day she called her to her.
"I have made all arrangements about school, and you will go next Monday. Goody will take you. The school is at Eastbourne."
Harebell looked at her aunt with frightened miserable eyes.
Then her aunt said in a gentler tone:
"You have still four days before you. If you will frankly confess, and express real sorrow for the lie you told, I may be induced to forgive you. Your uncle has made me promise that I will."
Harebell's lips quivered, but she said nothing. She knew there was no hope now. Peter was away, and was not coming home till after Monday. Unhappy as she was, the thought never crossed her mind that she might break her promise to Peter.
The four days gradually slipped away.
She watched Goody pack her clothes; Miss Triggs had come round to make her some new frocks, but she, as well as Andy and Goody, considered that going to school was nothing so very bad after all. The only comfort that came to her was hearing from Miss Triggs that Tom was getting on splendidly; he had signed the pledge and was keeping it.
"He's a first-class workman, Tom is, when he's sober, and we've heard his master thinks no end of him."
Harebell was nearly desperate when Sunday came, and when she laid her head on her pillow in the evening a tempting plan came into her head.
This was to get up very early on Monday morning, saddle Chris, and ride off with him out of reach of all the people who were taking part in sending her to school.
"I shall go along and get my food in farmhouses where they make nice hot bread and have cream with their porridge. I have five shillings of my own, and that will last a long time. I will get lost where no one can find me. And then Peter will be sorry and confess what he did, and aunt will be sorry too!"
The more she thought about this the more easy and delightful it seemed to be.
"Aunt Diana wants to get rid of me, and, if I go away, she'll be glad!"
Then, after a good deal more thinking, she fell asleep.
CHAPTER X
A LITTLE RUNAWAY
IT was a lovely summer morning. Harebell woke up a little before five o'clock. With a set determined face she got up and dressed herself, stepping about her room as quietly as possible. She tied up a nightgown and brush and comb and toothbrush in a bundle. Then she began to think that she might want more clothes than that. She took a few things out of her drawers, and put them into a red cotton bag which she tied round her waist.
Then on tip-toe, she stole downstairs, and softly unbolted the back-door. It was easy then to find her way to the stable. Andy had taught her how to saddle Chris, and in about half an hour's time she had got free of the house, and was cantering along the country lanes.
Then she remembered that she had not said her prayers. Her conscience began to trouble her. Was this like a child of the Kingdom? Harebell refused to let herself think. In a whisper, she gabbled over her prayers; for she felt that she wanted God to take care of her, though she did not mean to mention her plan in her prayers to Him.
The fresh air and the birds' singing did not seem as enjoyable to her, as she expected they would be. She passed through the village as quickly as she could, and took the road that the signpost said led to London.
"Everybody goes to London," she said. "But I will stop before I get there. I'll find a nice pretty farm, with apples in the garden, and they'll give me some breakfast."
But as time passed she began to feel hungry, and no pretty farm came in sight. The country was singularly desolate. She came upon two or three small cottages by the wayside, and an inn; but none of these seemed to her attractive enough for breakfast. At last she turned up a leafy lane.
"I must try and lose myself thoroughly, Chris," she said; "so that nobody can possibly find me and take me back. I feel quite frightened now, when I think of Aunt Diana finding me gone. How very angry she'll be!"
Childlike, she was living entirely in the present. Her future never troubled her. The lane wound about in a wonderful way, then suddenly ended. A white gate appeared and a high wall on either side of it.
"This must be a house," said Harebell to herself.
She found the gate open and rode up a neglected drive; nettles and rank grass flourished on either side of a mossy road. Overgrown shrubs and thick trees lined the way.
Her heart began to beat excitedly.
"It's like the palace grounds of the Sleeping Beauty. I wish I could have a real adventure."
The drive seemed an interminable distance to her, but at last, to her great delight, she saw a big grey house in the distance. It looked still and deserted.
When she came up to the big flight of steps leading up to the front door she persuaded herself that it was, indeed, the Sleeping Palace. Slipping off Chris, she let him turn aside to munch at the long grass on the lawn, and then mounted the steps with eager expectancy. Would the door open at her touch? Would she go in and find the remains of feasting in the great hall, and the servants all asleep at their posts?
Alas! the door was fast shut and barred, the windows were shuttered, and through a small peephole in a broken shutter, she saw that the inside of the house was empty and unfurnished.
Slowly and reluctantly she turned away; then, seeing a side path near the house, she ran along it, wondering if the back of the house would prove more cheerful than the front. She found a side door, and to her joy, as she turned the handle and pushed, it yielded to her touch. The next moment, she was inside a long wide passage. It was light, and looking up, she saw there was a big glass dome high up in the centre. Rather fearfully she made her way along, till she reached the centre hall. A great staircase wound up to a gallery round it. She was just mounting the stairs, when she suddenly heard a man's laugh.
Now she was frightened. Into her brain rushed stories of ogres, giants, burglars, and criminals. Panic seized her; she fled back along the passage, missed her way, got into another part of the house, and could not find an open door anywhere. Then she screamed. It seemed like some hideous nightmare. She beat and kicked against a door with her hands and feet. The horrible thought came to her that she had been purposely locked in, and that some wicked man would come and kill her.
Suddenly, from behind, a big hand laid hold of her shoulder. She screamed louder than ever in real terror, and then she turned to confront Tom Triggs, and to hear him say with a little gasp of bewilderment:
"Why, I'm blest if it ain't little missy!"
She clung to him in a tempest of sobs.
"Oh, take me out! Dear Tom, save me! Where am I?"
The next moment a door was opened and she was in the fresh air, with the sun shining and the birds singing, and Chris still calmly munching the grass a little distance off. It took some minutes to soothe and calm her, but Tom did it. He was in his working clothes, with his carpenter's apron on, and looked strangely out of place in this great empty house.
"It's the funniest thing out that you should have come straight to the very house I'm workin' at. Me and my mates were havin' our breakfast in the back yard. We are doin' repairs to the stables, and all on a sudden we heard a scream, and it seemed to come from inside the house, an' I come along to find out whether it be a ghost or a h'owl, and then I catches sight of you a-beatin' your fists against a door. Now, do you just tell me what has brought you here. Did you come to find out whether good-for-nothing Tom were keeping off the drink?"
Harebell smiled through her tears, but she kept a tight clutch of Tom's hand.
"I didn't think of you. I didn't know you were here. I was a dreadful coward, but I felt I was lost a good deal more than I meant to be. And generally when I'm frightened, I ask God to take care of me; but I couldn't, and I felt He was a million miles away from me, and wouldn't dream of coming near me. And then I knew it was because I must have run outside the Door, and wasn't safe any more!"
She spoke with feverish intensity. Tom looked at her and then at Chris in a puzzled sort of way. Then he sat her down on the broad balustrade at the bottom of the steps.
"Take yer time, missy. Tell me just how you come to be so far away from home this morning!"
Then Harebell poured it all out, every bit of her trouble. She felt that she could even tell Tom about Peter's deceit, after making him promise that he would not tell any one. And Tom listened and rubbed his head, and then delivered his verdict.
"You must go back, missy; there's no help for it. You must get you back!"
Harebell began to cry. She was tired and hungry. She began to wonder how she had dared to run away in such a fashion.
"Aunt Diana will be so very, very angry."
"But she'll be in a terrible state about you now. You can't bide alone in the world, trampin' the roads without food and money. It be a stoopid thing to do—"
"I s'pose you haven't got a cottage yet? Couldn't you take me somewhere? I'm afraid of Aunt Diana now. She'll never forgive me!"
"You must get you back," Tom repeated with conviction. "It be bad you're comin' off in that fashion, but every hour you stay away, it be badder!"
Harebell looked up at him beseechingly.
"I don't know what to do. I can't go back."
"Oh yes, you can! I'll come a bit of the way with you, and if you trot your pony pretty fast, you'll get home not so very late for breakfast after all. Would you like a sip of hot tea? You wait here a minute."
He disappeared, but soon came back with a hot tin of tea, and some bread and cheese.
"'Tis mos' remarkable you comin' away in a straight line to the house which I be workin' on! How did you do it now?"
Harebell drank the tea thirstily, then she looked at Tom gravely.
"I s'pose God brought me to you, so that you would tell me how wicked I was, and send me back. I used to think when I first knew about you, Tom, that you were much wickeder than I was. Now it's me that is wicked, and you're trying to make me good. It's dreadfully wicked to run away, isn't it? Almost as bad as telling a lie."
"It's a poor thing to do—to run away," said Tom slowly; "but I don't know that I ain't just done it myself! You see, I knowed how my old pals would be gettin' over me, so I come away twelve mile off to make a fresh start where I couldn't be baited!"
"But you didn't run away from home, Tom. Your mother and sister knew you were coming."
"Bless their hearts, that they did! And I be gettin' along fine. And some day I hopes I'll come back and be able to look my fellow-creatures straight in the face. For I shan't be feared then o' nobody. An' I do allow 'tis a happy thing to feel inside the Kingdom's Door, missy. I humbly 'ope I've crawled through, and the Lord be holdin' my feet straight, and my mouth from even wanting the accursed stuff; and He have got me by His hand, so I just steps behind Him, and He goes first."
Harebell smiled for the first time.
"Oh, Tom dear, I'm so very glad. I always did know you would get through soon. When did you do it?"
"Well, I can't rightly say as to day an' hour—but I had a try in hospital, and then agen at home—an' it seemed to me as one day I was for goin' in, an' the next for comin' out, an' I didn't get much forrarder, so at last I gets down on my knees and tells the Lord He must please do it all Hisself, for I were come to the Door an' He must do the rest. Bless His name, He seemed to stoop right down an' get hold of me—a reg'lar safe grip—and there I be—very afeared of myself, but very sure o' Him!"
"And do you think I've been naughty and so He's put me outside? Oh, Tom, do you think you're inside now and I'm outside?"
Harebell's lips were quivering.
"I ain't no scholar, missy, but there be one chapter in the Bible I reads over and over and over! 'Tis the one you mentioned first about the Door. If we be inside the Door, I take it we be in the sheepfold; and if we be in the sheepfold, we be the sheep; and if we be the Lord's sheep, He has us safe, sure enough, for it says, 'Neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.' You be right enough—just a slip—and you're a-goin' back now to say you're sorry—an' I'm a-comin' a bit o' the way with ye!"
"I haven't said my prayers properly this morning," Harebell confessed with shame. "I gabbled them through. I'll just speak to God here, if you go away—and tell Him I'm sorry."
Tom moved away, rolled up his apron, then caught Chris, and by the time he joined Harebell again, the cloud was off her face.
She mounted Chris, and Tom walked by her side till they reached the high-road.
"There!" he said. "Now 'tis a straight road home, and you can't miss it. Good-bye, little missy; and just put up a prayer for good-for-nothing Tom, will you?"
"I will," promised Harebell, "but p'r'aps You'll never see me again. I'm goin' to be sent to school, you know."
She conquered a rising sob.
Tom looked at her thoughtfully.
"Ay, 'twas through me, you be in this trouble! Well, p'r'aps I can help of 'ee out."
"It will be too late. I shall be gone," said Harebell.
Tom rubbed his head.
The little girl added, "And you mustn't tell about Peter, you promised not to; and I don't mean to tell."
"Well, you be doin' a fine thing, a-bearin' his fault."
Harebell rode away, waving her hand to her friend.
He looked after her in perplexity. "If I were a scholar now! But I'll venture on it!"
He returned to his work with a plan in his head.
And Harebell rode on home, feeling more and more frightened and unhappy as she drew nearer the village.
"It all seems as bad as it can be, and when I say I've seen Tom, Aunt Diana will think I went to him on purpose, and it will make her angrier still!"
Presently she met Andy at the entrance to the village. He threw up his hands.
"Ay! You naughty child, we've all turned out to catch ye! To think of your going off for a ride this very morning when you're to go to school."
"I'm sorry, Andy. I'm coming back!"
"Comin' back! High time, too. The missis an' the master be in a terrible way. What did you go to do it for?"
Harebell did not answer. Even Andy, her friend, was scolding her.
The house was reached. Andy took her pony, and when Harebell reached the front door, her aunt met her in the hall.
"Come in here," she said. "Where have you been? Did you not know a cab was coming at ten o'clock to take you to the station? It is now nearly eleven."
She drew her into the morning-room. Colonel Keith was not there. Harebell's heart sank within her. She looked up at her aunt. Somehow or other, Mrs. Keith was not looking as angry as she had expected.
"I am very sorry, Aunt Diana, but I meant to run away and never come back again; I quite meant to. And—and—I met Tom—I didn't mean to meet him—he and me think God managed it, and—and—he made me come home again."
There was silence.
"Where did you meet him?"
"At an old, old house far away. I found it by accident and—" here Harebell's love of romance seized her, and she forgot she was in disgrace—"do you know it was exactly like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. It was still and silent, and the weeds were enormous; and I quite hoped to see everybody asleep, and all that was left of the feast. And then I got into the house and found it empty and dark, and I was dreadfully frightened, and I couldn't find my way out, and I thought I was locked in; and then I screamed and screamed, and Tom heard me and came to me, and he's the carpenter who's mending the stable there!"
She paused for breath.
Her aunt was silent for a moment. She seemed to be turning over things in her mind.
Harebell put her arm out timidly and touched her aunt's arm.
"Do please forgive me, Aunt Diana. I know it was wicked of me to run away. I knew when I did it that it was, and that made it worse, didn't it!"
"What made you come back?" her aunt asked sharply.
"It was Tom. I wasn't even going to do it for him, but when he told me he was inside the Door of the Kingdom and would never drink any more, I was so glad, it made me—well, it made something different in my heart—and I knew I must come back if you—if you whipped me to death!"
She ended her sentence with desperate emphasis.
"I have never yet raised my hand against you," her aunt said gravely.
"No, but I thought you might," Harebell replied quickly. "I thought of such a lot of things you could do to me; but, you know, it was God and Tom who made me come back. I had to."
"It was exceedingly naughty of you to think of running away. If you had gone on, you might have met with accidents. We should, of course, have followed you and brought you back before the day was over. And nothing then would have prevented my sending you to school to-morrow. A little girl who acts like that wants a great deal more discipline than I can give her. But as you turned back of your own accord, I am going to forgive you. I have received a letter from Mrs. Garland this morning. If you had been here at breakfast-time, you would have heard about it. Of course, the letter has explained what you ought to have explained to me long ago—"
Harebell's eyes were open wide.
"What?" she gasped.
"It seems that Peter has been unhappy a long time, and confessed to his mother yesterday that he was the cause of your disobeying me. Why did not you tell me so before?"
"I—he—I promised him I wouldn't tell," faltered Harebell.
"You had no right to promise such a thing. It was not being frank with me, and led me to think what was not true—"
"I—I told you it was a mistake I made, and not a lie," said Harebell. "I couldn't explain properly; I really couldn't, Aunt Diana."
Tears came into her eyes. She was relieved that she was cleared of untruthfulness, but she still seemed to be in disgrace.
Then Mrs. Keith spoke more gently:
"I want to be fair with you, Harebell. I am deeply thankful to find that you did not tell me a lie, and to think that I can still trust your word. And for the present, I shall not send you to the school I intended for you. As I told you just now, if you had not come back of your own accord, I should still have done it. But as it is, Miss Forster will still continue to teach you. I am sorry to think that there is so little confidence between us that all this trouble has been the result. You ought to have told Peter at once that you could not withhold truth from me. You did not tell me an untruth, but you withheld the truth, and both are wrong. Do you understand me?"
"Not quite," said Harebell; "isn't it wrong to tell tales?"
"Not if it helps to deceive. Your not telling about Peter helped to deceive me; and I acted wrongly because of it. I want you to remember this, for people have made themselves and others very miserable because of it. If shielding one person makes another act unjustly, it is wrong. Now I shall say no more—you had better have some breakfast."
She stooped and kissed Harebell, then led her into the schoolroom, where some food was awaiting her.
Harebell began to feel much happier, and when her uncle came in presently, and told her how glad he was to hear that the mystery was all cleared up, she heaved a deep sigh and said:
"I feel as if a heavy weight has lifted out of my chest. And now that aunt has forgiven me, and I'm not going to school, may I tell you about Tom?"
CHAPTER XI
TOM'S LAST EFFORT
THAT very same evening, Mrs. Keith received an ill-written letter from Tom:
"MADAM,—This is to say as little Miss to my sertain nowledge have not
toled a lie. There be anuther party in the bisness wich if you cud
discover wud be rather near home but I am pleged to say nothing. They
that lives most with her knows and is hidinge the truth.
"Your obedient servant
"TOM TRIGGS."
Mrs. Keith showed this to her husband. As Harebell was cleared, they did not tell her anything about it, but Tom was written to and thanked for his intervention.
And very soon the Rectory party returned from the seaside. Peter and Harebell had a very solemn interview. He was made by his mother to come up and tell Mrs. Keith exactly what he had said; and then he apologised to Harebell.
She took his shamefaced apology very gravely. But when she began to relate to him her runaway ride, he brightened up and was most interested.
"It's just like a story! What a pity you came back. I should have gone to sea!"
"I couldn't have. I couldn't have taken Chris with me. It was him I didn't like leaving."
"Girls never keep things up. They always get frightened and stop in the middle."
"What would you have felt like if I had never come back?"
Peter reflected.
"I think I should have told people it was my fault, and then I should have felt obliged to run away after you to find you. That would have been good fun! I should have gone on the donkey, and you bet I should have caught you up!" His eyes gleamed at the idea.
"I'm very glad I didn't go on. It's horrid if you feel you're quite alone in the world. I felt when I was in that empty house, as if I had lost my friends and my home—and the most awful thing of all—that I had lost God, and didn't belong to Him any more."
It was Peter's turn to look grave.
"I'm glad I'm not you, without a mother. Mother is ripping. She wasn't a bit angry when I told her, only very sorry—and—well—loving. I was rather a cad, and, of course it was a lie I told. I'm never going to tell another as long as I live. If I die for it, I won't!"
Peter clenched his fists determinedly.
His sin, and the burden of it, and then the confession, had made him a different boy. Harebell felt he was a much nicer Peter afterwards, and other people felt so too.
Lessons began again, and life went on with cheerful regularity, varied by picnics on half-holidays, and later on by blackberrying and nutting expeditions. Harebell grew into a strong rosy girl. Her aunt was fast losing her cold indifferent manner towards her, and Harebell now chatted to her as freely and unconstrainedly as to any one else. Then the winter came: but Harebell enjoyed the cold, and welcomed the frost and snow with delight and interest.
Christmas was a most enjoyable time, and she and the Rectory children were inseparable during the holidays.
When the New Year came, there was a good deal of sickness in the village, and many of the old people died. Amongst them was Mrs. Crake and Mrs. Triggs. Tom came to his mother's funeral, and the village hardly knew him. He had gone steadily on in the right way, and was now a respectable sober hardworking man.
Mrs. Keith no longer objected to Harebell's interest in him, and one day she was allowed to go to tea with Tom and his sister. She walked off very proudly, and was soon sitting up at a well-spread table in the little front parlour.
Miss Triggs was in deep mourning and was rather sad. Harebell was too excited to be so. She had never much cared for old Mrs. Triggs, who did not welcome her as a visitor, and made no secret of her dislike to children. And now she could not pretend to mourn for her.
"Do you know, Miss Harebell, I may be going away?" said Miss Triggs with a sigh.
"You'll have to get somebody else to make your frocks for you. I've had an offer from an uncle of ours, who is a big draper in Swansea. He wants me to go there and be one of the skirt hands, and Tom and me have been talking it over, and I think I'd like to go."
"Oh, dear! This is dreadful news," said Harebell in dismay. "And who will live in your cottage?"
"I'll give it up. I have only to give a month's notice."
"But won't Tom want it? You'll come back and live here again, won't you, Tom? I do want you so much."
"Not yet awhile, missy. I'm feelin' a bit unsettled like. True, the Squire talked about wantin' an estate carpenter now his head man be off to Canada: but that be too good a billet for me. There be a small cottage, too, for the lucky chap who gets it—"
"Oh, but what a lovely thing for you! And then you'd get a wife. Do say you would, Tom. And Fanny isn't married to anybody else, and now she's all alone, it would be just right, wouldn't it, Miss Triggs? She has lost her mother as well as you."
Miss Triggs smiled, but Tom did not. He got rather red.
"Eh, dear? But you do go on about a wife; I ain't ready for one yet."
"I'll help you to get ready," said Harebell earnestly; "there seem a lot of cottages ready for your wife. This one, and Fanny's, and the Squire's."
"Have one of these little cakes, dear," said Miss Triggs, who wished to change the conversation.
Harebell ate the cake and thought hard. At length she said:
"You see, Tom, you've given up the beer, and you've got work, and now you've got cottages all round you, and the wife is the last thing and the best of all."
"'Tis to be hoped she will be," said Tom, half to himself.
"Well," said Miss Triggs, "I wouldn't go off and leave him, Miss Harebell, if he'd make his home with me. But he won't. 'Tisn't disagreeableness; the fact is, he have kept on sendin' his money home to mother, and he hasn't enough just now to start a house on his own, and he have got proud, and won't let me pay the rent and such like."
"You have spent too much on me all these years," muttered Tom. "Now we'll let my affairs bide for a bit, missy. Do you think you could find room in your home for a little chair I've been making in my odd moments? I brought it back with me when I come—"
He went into the back kitchen and brought out a beautiful little rocking-chair, which he presented to Harebell. Then he showed her some letters carved on the back:
F.T.T.
A.B.S.
I.T.D.
Harebell screamed with delight over the chair, but puzzled over the letters.
Tom at length enlightened her.
"I'm not a very good scholar, and my tools be not fine enough to carve words, but I've put the first letter, see?"
"From Tom Triggs
A black sheep
Inside the Door."
"That do describe me, by God's help."
"Oh, it's beautiful!" exclaimed Harebell. "And so clever! I am sure Aunt Diana will let me have it, and I do adore a thing that rocks! It will be much nicer than a rocking-horse. I used to have one of those in India."
Tom promised to bring it up that night; and Harebell was overwhelming in her thanks.
At last she had to leave her friends, and she trotted home. It seemed to her that it was not chance that made her meet the Squire of the neighbourhood riding home from a hunt, with two other gentlemen with him. It was too good an opportunity to be lost.
Harebell had often seen the Squire in church, and had spoken to him once when he had been calling upon her uncle. She now stepped into the middle of the road and held up her hand authoritatively.
The Squire reined up his horse with a good-natured laugh.
"Well, little maid, are you a suffragette? Or a policeman? What do you want?"
Harebell was nothing if not direct.
"I want you to stop to listen to me. Tom Triggs is a very good man, and a friend of mine, and he can make beautiful rocking-chairs fit for a queen. Please take him as your carpenter and give him a cottage."
"Upon my word! Tom Triggs! Who is he? Surely not that drunken loafer who spends his days over his beer-pot!"
"Oh, that was long, long ago; he's quite a changed man; everybody says so. At least, he's really the same, only much, much nicer."
"I know him," said one of the Squire's companions. "He's doing up the house I'm buying. Tom Triggs—I know the chap. He isn't a bad workman. My foreman of works says he's the most dependable of the whole lot out there."
The Squire looked down upon Harebell with laughing eyes.
"Now may I ask why you and he have chummed up together? An odd companion for you, I should say."
Harebell looked up with big earnest eyes.
"I liked him when he was wicked, because I'd never seen a wicked man before. And then—well, you know I've been trying to get him to do things, and he's done them all except a cottage and a wife. I could get the wife if you would give the cottage."
The Squire laughed heartily.
"This is most entertaining. So you can get wives for people. Could you get one for me? I haven't one, you know."
Harebell shook her head.
"I don't know you well enough. Tom is a very great friend of mine. We talk over things, specially since we're together inside the Door. That's the best thing of all he has done. He has got right through and is quite safe."
"What door?"
"It's the Door of the Kingdom. He likes to call it the sheepfold, but it means the same. It tells you all about it in the Bible."
There was a minute's pause; then the Squire said genially:
"I really must see this wonderful carpenter. Send him up to see me—not to-day. To-morrow morning about ten. I shall be in, and I'll have a talk with him."
He nodded to her, then rode on; and Harebell danced along the road for joy.
"He'll get that cottage, and then Fanny must marry him!"
She told her aunt all about it when she got home. Mrs. Keith told her she must not speak to gentlemen whom she hardly knew when they were riding.
"It makes them think you're a most forward little girl," she said.
"I was so full of Tom, I didn't stop to think," said Harebell; "and he's made me the most beautiful rocking-chair, Aunt Diana, and he's going to bring it round to-night. You'll let me take it, won't you? And may I tell him the Squire wants to see him to-morrow?"
Permission was given. When Tom arrived, he looked quite confused when Harebell gave him the message.
"Upon my word, missy, you don't let the grass grow under your feet! Why, you be just wonderful with your tongue."
"And you'll tell me if you get the cottage, Tom? You'll tell me directly it's settled."
"There be not much chance of that, missy. The Squire have knowed me in the old days."
However, Tom had his interview with the Squire, and was taken on trial for a month, to his unbounded pride and delight. Harebell went straight off to see Fanny Crake when she heard of it.
Unfortunately, Fanny was away from home. But Harebell was not easily daunted. She came home and procured a piece of paper. In large copper-plate writing she wrote on it:
"Please Fanny, Tom Triggs may have the Squire's cottage.
Get ready for his wife. From Harebell."
And then the next day she took the paper and slipped it underneath the door.
But she heard nothing from Fanny. And Tom was too busy at work to come near her.
Lessons and games and talks with everybody who came across her path now occupied her time.
Mrs. Keith said to her husband one night:
"I really dread the development of that child. I don't know which is busiest—her brain or tongue. I hope she won't grow into a chattering woman. I found her having a long dissertation to-day on the back doorstep with a wandering pedlar. She knows his history, and all the names and ages of all his relations, for I heard her repeating it all to Andy in the pantry."
"Oh, she's all right!" said Colonel Keith kindly. "She is interested in her fellow-creatures. It is better to have one's interest circle round them than round oneself."
And then one day Harebell got a letter, and it was a letter that filled her small heart with joy and satisfaction. It was from Tom Triggs:
"MY DEAR MISSY,—I have not yet wrote you a letter but I do so now
hoping this will find you well as it leaves me. I write to say the
Squire, he have give me the job and I thank you down to the ground
for arsking of him to do it. I have the cottage in the wood, and all
is going on as you said it ought. Nex April I hopes to get it, and
mother's bits will stock it fine. And Fanny Crake and me are walking
out, for on looking round I felt as how I ought to oblige you, and
there seems no other to soot me, and Fanny says your heart be terrible
set on to it. So we hopes if things go on well, to be husband and wife
in April. Wishing you well.
"Your obedient servant,
"TOM TRIGGS."
"P.S. The best which has come to me is what I have not the
learning to speak on. But I am still I humbly trust, I. T. D."
She carried this letter all day about with her and slept with it under her pillow.
Her aunt found her one evening spelling it out to herself by the light of a candle.
"You are very fond of Tom Triggs," she said.
"He's such a good kind of friend," said Harebell in her old-fashioned way, as she folded up her letter and tucked it under her pillow. "He has done every single thing I wanted him to. And not many friends do that, do they?"
"Perhaps not."
"It's just five things he has done, and the wife is the last and best of all."
"What things?"
"Well, first he gave up drinking, and then he got some work, and then he got his cottage, and now he has got his wife."
"That is four."
"I s'pose the other thing is the really best thing," said Harebell, slowly and thoughtfully. "He has put it last in his letter, but I really believe it came first of all."
"And what is that?"
"He came to the Door of the sheep and got through it into the sheepfold."
Harebell's eyes were shining and earnest as she spoke.
Mrs. Keith stooped and kissed her.
"Yes, that is the only thing that really matters," she murmured.
And then when she left the room, Harebell added to herself:
"And in April, I mean to go to tea with them in their cottage. I said from the very first I would do it."
She hugged her letter as she spoke, then she fell asleep.
THE END
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.