The School by the Sea

All eyes were fixed eagerly on the piece of stick, which was already commencing to circle round in the water. If it found its way successfully through the gap, and was washed down by the stream, it was a sign that St. Perran had it safely and would attend to the matter; but if it were stranded on the edge of the basin, the wish would remain unfulfilled. Round and round went the tiny twig, bobbing and dancing in the eddies; but, alas! the water was low this February, and instead of sweeping the twig triumphantly through the aperture, it only washed it to one side, and left it clinging to some overhanging fronds of fern that dipped into the spring. Evie heaved a tragic sigh of disappointment.

"I'm done for at any rate!" she groaned. "St. Perran won't have anything to say to me this year. Oh, and it was such a lovely wish! I'll tell you what it was, now it's not going to come off. I wished some aviator would ask me to have a seat in his aeroplane, and take me right over to America in it!"

The girls tittered.

"What a particularly likely wish to be fulfilled! No, my hearty, you can't expect St. Perran to have anything to do with aeroplanes," said Betty Scott. "The good old saint probably abhors all modern inventions. I'm going to wish for something easy and probable."

"What?"

"Ah! wouldn't you like to know? I shan't tell you, even if I fail. Shall I try next?"

Whatever Betty's easy and probable desire may have been, the result was bad, and her stick, after several thrilling gyrations, tagged itself on to Evie's under the cluster of fern. She bore her ill luck like a stoic.

"One can't have everything in this world," she philosophized. "Perhaps I'll get it next year instead. Deirdre Sullivan, you deserve to lose your own for sniggering! This trial ought to be taken solemnly. We'll get St. Perran's temper up if we make fun of it."

"I thought he was out at sea, attracting the fishes!" said Deirdre.

"I'm not sure that Cornish saints can't be in two places at once, just to show their superiority over Devonshire ones. Well, go on! Laugh if you like! But don't expect St. Perran to take any interest in you!"

It certainly seemed as though the patron of the well had for once forsaken his favourite haunt. Girl after girl wished her wish and repeated her spell, but invariably to meet with the same ill fortune, till a melancholy little clump of eight sticks testified to the general failure.

"Have we all lost? No, Gerda Thorwaldson hasn't tried! Where's Gerda? She's got to do the same as anybody else! Gerda Thorwaldson, where are you?"

Gerda for the moment had been missing, but at the sound of her name she scrambled down from the rocks above the well, looking rather red and conscious.

"What were you doing up there?" asked Dulcie sharply. "It's your turn to try the omen. Go along, quick; we shall have to be jogging back in half a jiff."

Gerda paused for a moment, and with face full towards the sea muttered her wish with moving lips; then turning to the tree, she carefully counted the third bough from the bottom, and the third twig on the bough. Breaking off her due portion, she twisted it round three times, and holding it between the third fingers of either hand, dropped it into the water, while she rapidly repeated the magic formula:

The girls watched rather half-heartedly. They were growing a little tired of the performance. They fully expected the ninth stick to drift the same way as its predecessors, but to everybody's astonishment it made one rapid circle of the basin, and bobbed successfully through the gap.

"It's gone! it's gone!" cried Betty Scott in wild excitement. "St. Perran's working after all. Oh, why didn't he do it for me?"

"How funny it should be the only one!" said Elyned Hughes.

"I believe the water's running faster than it did before," commented Romola Harvey. "Has the old saint turned on the tap?"

"Shall I get my wish?" said Gerda, who stood by with shining eyes.

"Of course you'll get it—certain sure. And jolly fortunate you are too. You've won the luck of the whole Form. Don't I wish I were you, just!"

"You're evidently St. Perran's favourite!" laughed Annie Pridwell.

"Come along, it's nearly time for call-over. We'll be late if we don't sprint," said Barbara Marshall, consulting her watch, and starting at a run on the path that led back to the Dower House.

"It was a funny thing that our sticks should all 'stick', and Gerda's just sail off as easily as you like," said Deirdre that evening, as, with Dulcie, she gave an account of the occurrence to Phyllis Rowland, a member of the Sixth. As one of the elect of the school, Phyllis would not have condescended to consult the famous oracle, but she nevertheless took a sneaking interest in the annual ceremony, and was anxious to know how St. Perran's votaries had fared.

"Did you do it really properly?" she enquired. "An old woman at Perranwrack once told me it wasn't any use at all if you forgot the least thing."

"Why, we hung up our garlands and then wished, and said the rhyme, and threw in our sticks."

"Oh, that isn't half enough. Where were you looking when you wished? Facing the sea? Your stick should be chosen from the third twig on the third branch, and it ought to be turned round three times, and held between your third fingers. Did you do all that?"

The faces of Deirdre and Dulcie were a study.

"No, we didn't. But Gerda Thorwaldson did it—every bit. And the water came down ever so much faster for her turn, too."

"Probably she went behind the well, and cleared the channel of the stream. That's a well-known dodge to make the water flow quicker, and help the saint to work."

"I certainly saw her climbing down the rocks," gasped Dulcie.

"Then she's a cleverer girl than I took her for, and deserves her luck," laughed Phyllis. "Look here, I can't stay wasting time any longer. I've got my prep to do. Ta, ta! Don't let St. Perran blight your young lives. Try him again next year."

Left alone, Deirdre and Dulcie subsided simultaneously on to a bench.

"It beats me altogether," said Dulcie, shaking her head. "How did she manage to do it? How did she know? Who told her?"

"That's the puzzler," returned Deirdre. "Certainly not Phyllis, and I don't believe anybody else ever heard of those extra dodges. Gerda's only been a fortnight at the school, and says she's never been in Cornwall in her life before, so how could she know? Yet she did it all so pat."

"It's queer, to say the least of it."

"Do you know, Dulcie, I think there's something mysterious about Gerda. I've noticed it ever since she came. She seems all the time to be trying to hide something. She won't tell us a scrap about herself, and yet she's always asking questions."

"What's she up to then?"

"That's what I want to find out. It's evidently something she doesn't want people to know. She ought to be watched. I vote we keep an eye on her."

"I really believe we ought to."

"But mind, you mustn't let her suspect we notice anything. That would give the show away at once. Lie low's our motto."

"Right you are!" agreed Dulcie. "Mum's the word!"

CHAPTER IV

"The King of the Castle"

"They'd have a Herculean task before them if they did!" sniggered Annie. "Betty, your head may be empty, but it's jolly heavy, all the same. I wish you'd kindly remove it from my shoulder."

"You mass of ingratitude! It was a mark of supreme affection—a kind of 'They grew in beauty side by side', don't you know!"

"I don't want to know. Not if it involves nursing your weight. Oh, yes! go to Barbara, by all means, if she'll have you. I'm not in the least offended."

"That big basket-chair oughtn't to be monopolized by one," asserted Evie Bennett. "It's quite big enough for two. Here, Deirdre, make room for me. Don't be stingy, you must give me another inch. That's better. It's rather a squash, but we can just manage."

"You're cuckooing me out!" protested Deirdre.

"No, no, I'm not. There's space for two in this nest. We're a pair of doves:

"I'll say something more to the point, if you don't take care. What a lot of sillies you are!"

"Then please deign to enlarge our intellects. We're hanging upon your words. Betty can stop her ears, if she thinks it will be too great a strain on her slender brains. What is it to be? A recitation from Milton, or a dissertation on the evils of levity? Miss Sullivan, your audience awaits you. Mr. Chairman, will you please introduce the lecturer?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, I hasten to explain that owing to severe indisposition I am unable to be present to-night," returned Deirdre promptly.

"Oh, Irish of the Irish!" laughed the girls. "Did you say it on purpose, or did it come unconsciously?"

"I wish I were Irish. Somehow I never say funny things, not even if I try," lamented Dulcie.

"Because you couldn't. You're a dear fat dumpling, and dumplings never are funny, you know—it's against nature."

"It's not my fault if I'm fat," said Dulcie plaintively. "People say 'Laugh and grow fat', so why shouldn't a plump person be funny?"

"They are funny—very funny—though not quite in the way you mean."

"Oh, look here! Don't be horrid!"

"You began it yourself."

"Children, don't barge!" interrupted Romola Harvey. "You really are rather a set of lunatics to-night. Can't anyone tell a story?"

"I was taught to call fibbing a sin in the days of my youth," retorted Betty Scott, assuming a serious countenance.

"You—you ragtimer! I mean a real story—a tale—a legend—a romance—or whatever you choose to call it."

"Don't know any."

"We've used them all up," said Evie Bennett, yawning lustily. "We all know the legend of the Abbess Gertrude—it's Miss Birks's favourite chestnut—and what she said to the Commissioner who came to confiscate the convent: and we've had the one about Monmouth's rebellion till it's as stale as stale can be. I defy anybody to have the hardihood to repeat it."

"Aren't there any other tales about the neighbourhood?" asked Gerda Thorwaldson. It was the first remark that she had made.

"Oh, I don't think so. The old castle's very sparse in legends. I suppose there ought to be a few, but they're mostly forgotten."

"Who used to live there?"

"Trevellyans. There always have been Trevellyans—hosts of them—though now there's nobody left but Mrs. Trevellyan and Ronnie."

"Who's Ronnie?"

More than half a dozen answers came instantly.

"Ronnie? Why, he's just Ronnie."

"Mrs. Trevellyan's great-nephew."

"The dearest darling!"

"You never saw anyone so sweet."

"We all of us adore him."

"We call him 'The King of the Castle'."

"They've been away, staying in London."

"But they're coming back this week."

"Is he grown up?" enquired Gerda casually.

"Grown up!" exploded the girls. "He's not quite six!"

"He lives with Mrs. Trevellyan," explained Betty, "because he hasn't got any father or mother of his own."

"Oh, Betty, he has!" burst out Barbara.

"Well, that's the first I ever heard of them, then. I thought he was an orphan."

"He's as good as an orphan, poor little chap."

"Why?"

"Nobody ever mentions his father."

"Why on earth not?"

"Oh, I don't know! There's something mysterious. Mrs. Trevellyan doesn't like it talked about. Nobody dare even drop a hint to her."

"What's wrong with Ronnie's father?"

"I tell you I don't know, except that I believe he did something he shouldn't have."

"Rough on Ronnie."

"Ronnie doesn't know, of course, and nobody would be cruel enough to tell him. You must promise you'll none of you mention what I've said. Not to anybody."

"Rather not! You can trust us!" replied all.

It was perhaps only natural that the affairs of the Castle should seem important to the dwellers at the Dower House. The two buildings lay so near together, yet were so isolated in their position as regarded other habitations, that they united in many ways for their mutual convenience. If Miss Birks's gardener was going to the town he would execute commissions for the Castle, as well as for his own mistress; and, on the other hand, the Castle chauffeur would call at the Dower House for letters to be sent by the late post. Mrs. Trevellyan was a widow with no family of her own. She had adopted her great-nephew Ronald while he was still quite a baby, and he could remember no other home than hers. The little fellow was the one delight and solace of her advancing years. Her life centred round Ronnie; she thought continually of his interests, and made many plans for his future. He was her constant companion, and his pretty, affectionate ways and merry chatter did much to help her to forget old griefs. He was a most winning, engaging child, a favourite with everybody, and reigned undoubtedly as monarch in the hearts of all who had the care of him. It was partly on Ronnie's account, and partly because she really loved young people, that Mrs. Trevellyan took so much notice of the pupils at the Dower House. On her nephew's behalf she would have preferred a boys' preparatory school for neighbour, but even girls over fourteen were better than nobody; they made an element of youth that was good for Ronnie, and prevented the Castle from seeming too dull. The knowledge that he might perhaps meet his friends on the headland gave an object to the little boy's daily walk, and the jokes and banter with which they generally greeted him provided him with a subject for conversation afterwards.

The girls on their part showed the liveliest interest in anything connected with the Castle. They would watch the motor passing in and out of the great gates, would peep from their top windows to look at the gardeners mowing the lawns, and would even count the rooks' nests that were built in the grove of elm trees. Occasionally Mrs. Trevellyan would ask the whole school to tea, and that was regarded as so immense a treat that the girls always looked forward to the delightful chance that some fortunate morning an invitation might be forthcoming.

Mrs. Trevellyan had been staying in London at the beginning of the term, but early in February she returned home again. On the day after her arrival the girls were walking back from a hockey practice on the warren, swinging their way along the narrow tracks between last year's bracken and heather, or having an impromptu long-jump contest where a small stream crossed the path.

"It's so jolly to see the flag up again at the Castle," said Evie Bennett, looking at the turret where the Union Jack was flying bravely in the breeze. "I always feel as if it's a kind of national defence. Any ships sailing by would know it was England they were passing."

"I like it because it means Mrs. Trevellyan's at home," said Deirdre Sullivan. "A place seems so forlorn when the family's away. Did Ronnie come back too, last night?"

"Yes, Hilda Marriott saw him from the window this morning. He was going down the road with his new governess. Why, there he is—actually watching for us, the darling!"

The girls had to pass close to a turnstile that led from the Castle grounds into the warren, and here, perched astride the top rail of the gate, evidently on the look-out for them, a small boy was waving his cap in frantic welcome. He was a pretty little fellow, with the bluest of eyes and the fairest of skins, and the lightest of flaxen hair, and he seemed dimpling all over his merry face with delight at the meeting. The girls simply made a rush for him, and he was handed about from one to another, struggling in laughing protest, till at last he wriggled himself free, and retiring behind the turnstile, held the gate as a barrier.

"I knew you'd be coming past, so I got leave to play here. Thank you all for your Christmas cards," he said gaily. "Yes—I like my new governess. Her name's Miss Herbert, and she's ripping. Auntie's going to ask you to tea. I want to show you my engine I got at Christmas. It goes round the floor and it really puffs. You'll come?"

"Oh! we'll come all right," chuckled the girls. "We've got something at the Dower House to show you, too. No, we shan't tell you what it is—it's to be a surprise. Oh, goody! There's the bell! Ta-ta! We must be off! If we don't fly, we shall all be late for call-over. No, you're not to come through the gate to say good-bye! Go back, you rascal! You know you're not allowed on the warren!"

As the big bell at the Dower House was clang-clanging its loudest, the girls set off at a run. There was not a minute to be lost if they meant to be in their places to answer "Present" to their names; and missing the roll-call meant awkward explanations with Miss Birks. One only, oblivious of the urgency of the occasion, lingered behind. Gerda Thorwaldson had stood apart while the others greeted Ronnie, merely looking on as if the meeting were of no interest to her. Nobody had taken the slightest notice of her, or had indeed remembered her existence at the moment. She counted for so little with her schoolfellows that it never struck them to introduce her to their favourite; in fact they had been totally occupied among themselves in fighting for possession of him. She remained now, until the very last school sports' cap was round the corner and out of sight. Then she dashed through the turnstile, and overtaking Ronnie, thrust a packet of chocolates, rather awkwardly, into his hand.

The bell had long ceased clanging, and Miss Birks had closed the call-over book when Gerda entered the schoolroom. As she would offer no explanation of her lateness, she was given a page of French poetry to learn, to teach her next time to regard punctuality as a cardinal virtue. She took her punishment with absolute stolidity.

"What a queer girl she is! She never seems to care what happens," said Dulcie. "I should mind if Miss Birks glared at me in that way, to say nothing of a whole page of Athalie."

"She looked as if she'd been crying when she came in," remarked Deirdre.

"She's not crying now, at any rate. She simply looks unapproachable. What made her so late? She was with us on the warren."

"How should I know? If she won't tell, she won't. You might as well try to make a mule gallop uphill as attempt to get even the slightest, most ordinary, everyday scrap of information out of such a sphinx as Gerda Thorwaldson."

CHAPTER V

Practical Geography

There was no subject, however, in Miss Birks's estimation which led itself more readily to practical illustration than geography. Every variety of physical feature was examined in the original situation, so that watersheds, tributaries, table-lands, currents, and comparative elevations became solid facts instead of mere book statements, and each girl was taught to make her own map of the district.

"I believe we've examined everything except an iceberg and a volcano," declared Betty Scott one day, "and I verily believe Miss Birks is on the look-out for both—hoped an iceberg might be washed ashore during those few cold days we had in January, and you know she told us Beacon Hill was the remains of an extinct volcano. I expect she wished it might burst out suddenly again, like Vesuvius, just to show us how it did it!"

"Wouldn't we squeal and run if we heard rumblings and saw jets of steam coming up?" commented Evie Bennett. "I don't think many of us would stay to do scientific work, and take specimens of the lava."

"Where are we going this afternoon?" asked Elyned Hughes.

"Mapping, Miss Birks said. We're to make for the old windmill, and then draw a radius of six miles, from Kergoff to Avonporth. Hurry up, you others! It's after two, and Miss Harding's waiting on the terrace. What a set of slow-coaches you are!"

It was the turn of Vb to have a practical geography demonstration, and they started, therefore, under the guidance of the second mistress, to survey the physical features of a certain portion of the neighbourhood, and record them in a map. Each girl was furnished by Miss Birks with a paper of questions, intended to be a guide to her observations:

1.—Using the windmill as a centre, what direction do the roads take?

2.—What villages or farms must be noted?

3.—What rivers or streams, and their courses?

4.—What lakes or ponds?

5.—The general outline of the coast?

6.—Are there hills or mountains?

7.—What historical monuments should be marked with a cross?

Armed with their instructions, pocket compasses, and note-books, the girls set off in cheerful spirits. They dearly loved these country rambles, and heartily approved of this particular method of education. It was a beautiful bright afternoon towards the middle of February, one of those glorious days that seem to anticipate the spring, and to make one forget that winter exists at all. The sky was cloudless and blue, not with the serene blue of summer, but with that fainter, almost greenish shade so noticeable in the early months of the year, and growing pearly-white where it touched the horizon. There was a joyous feeling of returning life in the air; a thrush, perhaps remembering that it was St. Valentine's Eve, carolled with full rich voice in the bare thorn tree, small birds chased each other among the bushes, and great flocks of rooks were feeding up and down the ploughed fields. In sheltered corners an early wild flower or two had forestalled the season, and the girls picked an occasional celandine star or primrose bud, and even a few cherished violets. The catkins on the hazels were shaking down showers of golden pollen, and the sallows were covered with silky, silvery tufts of palm; the low sycamores in the hedge showed rosy buds almost ready to burst, and shoots of bramble or sprays of newly-opened honeysuckle leaves formed green patches here and there on the old walls.

The girls walked at a brisk, swinging pace, in no particular order, so long as they kept together, and with licence to stop to examine specimens within reasonable limits of time. Miss Harding, who was herself a fairly good naturalist, might be consulted at any moment, and all unknown or doubtful objects, if portable, were popped in a basket and taken back to be identified by the supreme authority, Miss Birks.

Though they fully appreciated the warren as a playground, it was delightful to have a wider field for their activities, and the opportunity of making some fresh find or some interesting discovery to report at head-quarters. Miss Birks kept a Nature Diary hung on the wall of the big schoolroom, and there was keen competition as to which should be the first to supply the various items that made up its weekly chronicle. It was even on record that Rhoda Wilkins once ran a whole mile at top speed in order to steal a march on Emily Northwood, and claim for Va the proud honour of announcing the first bird's nest of the year.

The special point for which the girls were bound this afternoon was a ruined windmill that stood on a small eminence, and formed rather a landmark in the district. From here an excellent view might be obtained of both the outline of the coast and the course of the little river that ambled down from the hills and poured itself into the sea by the tiny village of Kergoff. No fitter spot could have been chosen for a general survey, and as the girls reached the platform on which the building stood, and ranged themselves under its picturesque ragged sails, they pulled out their note-books and got to business.

It was a glorious panorama that lay below them—brown heathery common and rugged cliff, steep crags against which the growing tide was softly lapping, a babbling little river that wound a noisy course between boulders and over rounded, age-worn stones, tumbling in leaps from the hills, dancing through the meadows, and flowing with a strong, steady swirl through the whitewashed hamlet ere it widened out to join the harbour. And beyond all there was the sea—the shimmering, glittering sea—rolling quietly in with slow, heavy swell, and dashing with a dull boom against the lighthouse rocks, bearing far off on its bosom a chance vessel southward bound, and floating one by one the little craft that had been beached in the anchorage, till they strained at their cables, and bobbed gaily on the rising water. Only one or two of the girls perhaps realized the intense beauty and poetry of the scene; most were busy noting the natural features, and calculating possible distances, marking here a farm or there a hill crest, and trying to reproduce in some creditable fashion the eccentric windings of the river.

"That little crag below us just blocks the view of the road," said Deirdre. "I can't get the bend in at all. Do you mind, Miss Harding, if some of us go to the bottom of the hill and trace it out?"

"Certainly, if you like," replied the mistress. "I'm tired, so I shall wait for you here. It won't take you longer than ten minutes."

"Oh, dear, no! We'll race down. I say, who'll come?"

Dulcie, Betty, Annie, Barbara, and Gerda were among the energetically disposed, but Evie, Romola, and Elyned preferred to wait with Miss Harding.

"We'll copy yours when you come back," they announced shamelessly.

"Oh, we'll see about that! Ta-ta!" cried the others, as they started at a fair pace down the hill.

The road was certainly the most winding of any they had attempted to trace that afternoon. It twisted like a cork-screw between high banks, then hiding beneath a steep crag plunged suddenly through a small fir wood, and crossed the river by a stone bridge. The girls had descended at a jog trot, trying to take their bearings as they went. Owing to the great height of the banks it was impossible to see what was below, therefore it was only when they had passed the wood that they noticed for the first time an old grey house on the farther side of the bridge. It was built so close to the stream that its long veranda actually overhung the water, which swept swirling against the lower wall of the building. Many years must have passed since it last held a tenant, for creepers stretched long tendrils over the broken windows, and grass grew green in the gutters. The dilapidated gate, the weed-grown garden, the weather-worn, paintless woodwork, the damp-stained walls, the damaged roof, all gave it an air of almost indescribable melancholy, so utterly abandoned, deserted, and entirely neglected did it appear.

"Hallo! Why, this must be 'Forster's Folly'!" exclaimed Barbara. "I'd no idea we were so close to it. We couldn't see even the chimneys from the windmill."

"What an extraordinary name for an even more extraordinary house!" said Deirdre. "Who in the name of all that's weird was 'Forster'? And why is this rat's-hall-looking place called his folly?"

"He was a lawyer in the neighbourhood, I believe, and, like some lawyers, just a little bit too sharp. It was when the railway was going to be made. He heard it was coming this way, and he calculated it would just have to cut across this piece of land, so he bought the field and built this house on it in a tremendous hurry, because he thought he could claim big compensation from the railway company; and then after all they took the line round by Avonporth instead, five miles away, and didn't want to buy his precious house, so he'd had all the trouble and expense for nothing."

"Served him right!" grunted the girls.

"They say he was furious," continued Barbara. "He was so disgusted that he never even painted the woodwork or laid out the garden properly. He tried to let it, but nobody wanted it; so he was obliged to come and live in it himself for economy's sake. He was an old bachelor, and he and a sour old housekeeper were here for a year or two, and then he died very suddenly, and rather mysteriously. His relations came and took away the furniture, but they haven't been able to sell the house, it's in such a queer, out-of-the-way place. Then everybody in the neighbourhood said it was haunted, and not a soul would go near it for love or money."

"It looks haunted," said Dulcie with a shiver. "Just the kind of lonely-moated-grange place where you'd expect to see a 'woman in white' at the window."

"Never saw anything so spooky in my life before," agreed Deirdre.

"Did you say it used to belong to Mr. Forster, the lawyer?" asked Gerda. "The one who had business at St. Gonstan?"

"I don't know where he had business, but it was certainly Mr. Forster, the lawyer. I don't suppose there'd be more than one."

"When did he die?"

"About five years ago, I fancy. Why do you want to know?"

"Oh, nothing! It doesn't matter in the least," returned Gerda, shrinking into her shell again.

"It's the weirdest, queerest place I've ever seen," said Deirdre. "Do let's go a little nearer. Ugh! What would you take to spend a night here alone?"

"Nothing in the wide world you could offer me," protested Betty.

"I'd go stark, staring mad!" affirmed Annie.

"Hallo!" squealed Dulcie suddenly. "What's become of Gerda? She's sneaked off!"

"Why, there she is, peeping through one of the broken windows!"

"Oh, I say! I must have a squint too, to see if there's really a ghost!" fluttered Annie.

"You goose! You wouldn't see ghosts by daylight!"

"Well, I don't care anyhow. I'm going to peep. Cuckoo, Gerda! What can you see inside?"

When Annie Pridwell led the way, it followed of necessity that the others went after her, so they scurried to catch her up, and all ran in a body over the bridge and into the nettle-grown garden. Gerda was still perched on the window-sill of one of the lower rooms, and she turned to her schoolfellows with a strange light in her eyes and a look of unwonted excitement on her face.

"I put my hand through the broken pane and pulled back the catch," she volunteered. "We've only to push the window up and we could go inside."

"Oh! Dare we?"

"Suppose the ghost caught us?"

"Oh, I say! Do let us go!"

"It would be such gorgeous sport!"

"I'm game, if you all are."

As usual it was Annie Pridwell who led the adventure. Pushing up the window, she climbed over the sill and dropped inside, then turning round offered a hand to Gerda, who sprang eagerly after her. It was imperative for Deirdre, Dulcie, Betty, and Barbara to follow; they were not going to be outdone in courage, and they felt that at any rate there was safety in numbers. There was nothing very terrible about the dining-room, in which they found themselves, it only looked miserable and forlorn, with the damp paper hanging in strips from the walls, and heaps of straw left by the remover's men strewn about the floor.

"We'll go and explore the rest of the house," said Annie, with a half-nervous chuckle. "Come along, anybody who's game!"

Nobody wished to remain behind alone, so they went all together, holding each other's arms, squealing, or gasping, or giggling, as occasion prompted. They peeped into the empty drawing-room and the silent kitchen, where the grate was red with rust; hurried past a dark hall cupboard, and found themselves at the foot of the staircase.

"Oh, I daren't go up; I simply daren't!" bleated Barbara piteously.

"Suppose the ghost lives up there?" suggested Betty.

"My good girl, no self-respecting spook likes to make an exhibition of itself," returned Annie. "The sight of six of us would scare it away. I don't mean to say I'd go alone, but now we're all here it's different."

"We've been more than Miss Harding's ten minutes," vacillated Deirdre.

"Oh, bother! One doesn't often get the chance to explore. Come along, you sillies, what are you frightened at?"

So together they mounted the stairs and took a hasty survey of the upper story. Here the remover's men had evidently done their work even more carelessly than down below, for though the furniture had been taken away, enough rubbish had been left to provide a rummage sale. All kinds of old articles not worth removing were lying where they had been thrown down on the bedroom floor—old curtains, old shoes, scraps of mouldy carpet, the laths of venetian blinds, broken lamp shades, empty bottles, torn magazines, cracked pottery, worn-out brushes, and decrepit straw palliasses.

"Did you ever see such an extraordinary conglomeration of queer things?" said Annie. "I wonder they didn't tidy the house up before they went. No wonder nobody would take it! And look, girls! They've actually left a whole bathful of old letters! Somebody has begun to tear them up, and not finished. They ought to have burnt them. Just look at this piece! It has a lovely crest on it."

"Oh, has it? Give it to me; I'm collecting crests," cried Deirdre, commandeering the scrap of paper. "It's a jolly one, too. I say, are there any more? Move out, Annie, and let me see!"

"Look here," remonstrated Barbara; "I don't think we ought to go rummaging amongst old letters. It doesn't seem quite—quite honourable, does it? They are not ours, Annie. I wish you'd stop! No, Gerda, don't look at them, please! Oh, I say, I wish you'd all come away! Let's go. Miss Harding will think we're drowned in the river, or something; and at any rate she'll scold us no end for being so long. Do you know the time?"

There was certainly force in Barbara's remarks. Their ten minutes' leave had exceeded half an hour, and Miss Harding would undoubtedly require a substantial reason for their delay.

"Oh, goody! It's four o'clock!" chirruped Betty. "I'd no idea it was so late! We don't want to get into a row with Miss Birks. I believe I hear Romola shouting in the road. They've come to look for us!"

"We'd best scoot, then," said Annie, and flinging back the letters into the bath, she turned with the rest and clattered downstairs.

Miss Harding, grave, annoyed, and justly indignant, was waiting for them on the bridge. She received them with the scolding they merited.

"Where have you been, you naughty, naughty girls? You're not to be trusted a minute out of my sight! I gave you permission to go straight to the bottom of the hill and back, and here you've been away more than half an hour! What were you doing in that garden? You had no right there! Come along this instant and walk before me, two and two. Miss Birks will have to hear about this. A nice report to take back of your afternoon's work at map drawing!"

Map drawing! They had forgotten all about the maps. The girls looked at one another, conscience-stricken; and Deirdre, with an awful pang, realized that she had left her note-book on the mantelpiece of the dining-room. She had been disposed to titter before, but she felt now that the affair was no joking matter.

"Miss Harding mustn't know we've been inside the house," she whispered to Gerda, with whom in the hurry of the moment she had paired off.

"No one's likely to tell her, and she couldn't see us come out of the window from where she was standing," returned Gerda.

"We shall get into trouble enough as it is. I didn't think Miss Harding would have cut up so rough about it. I say, just think of leaving those old letters all lying about! I got one—at least it's a scrap of one—with a lovely crest, a boar's head and a lot of stars—all in gold."

"What!" gasped Gerda. "Did you say you found that on a letter?"

"Well, it's a piece of a letter, anyway."

"Oh, do let me see it!"

"Is Miss Harding looking? Well, here it is. Be careful! She's got her eye on us! Oh, give it me back, quick!"

Gerda had turned the scrap of paper over and was glancing at the writing on the other side. She reddened with annoyance as Deirdre snatched back her treasure.

"Let me see it again!" she pleaded.

"No, no; it's safe in my pocket! Better not run any risks."

"You might give it to me. I'm collecting crests."

"A likely idea! Do you think, if I wanted to part with it, I'd present it to you? No, I mean to keep it myself, thanks."

"I'd buy it, if you like."

"I don't sell my things."

"Not if I offered something nice?"

"Not for anything you'd offer me," returned Deirdre, whose temper was in a touchy condition, and her spirit of opposition thoroughly aroused. "We don't haggle over our things at the Dower House, whatever you may do in Germany."

Gerda said no more at the time, but at night in their bedroom she returned once more to the subject.

"You won't get it if you bother me to the end of the term," declared Deirdre, locking up the bone of contention in her jewel-case and putting the key in her pocket.

"What do you want it for so particularly, Gerda?" asked Dulcie sharply.

"Oh, nothing! Only a fancy of my own," replied Gerda, reddening with one of her sudden fits of blushing, as she turned to the dressing-table and began to comb her flaxen hair.

CHAPTER VI

Ragtime

"It's so particularly aggravating, because Miss Hall has to go up to London on Monday and won't be back for weeks, so probably she won't be able to arrange to take us again this term," grumbled Romola.

"It's too—too triste!" murmured Deirdre in a die-away voice, arranging a cushion behind her head with elaborate show of indolence.

"Weally wetched!" echoed Dulcie lackadaisically, sinking into the basket-chair with an even more used-up air than her chum.

"Good old second best!" laughed Betty. "Whom are you both copying now? Have you been gobbling a surreptitious penny novelette? I can generally tell your course of reading from your poses. These present airs and graces suggest some such title as 'Lady Rosamond's Mystery' or 'The Earl's Secret'. Confess, now, you're imagining yourselves members of the aristocracy."

"I believe the penny novelettes are invariably written in top garrets by people who've never even had a nodding acquaintance with dukes and duchesses," said Barbara. "The real article's very different from the 'belted earl' of fiction. The Clara-Vere-de-Vere type is extinct now. If you were a genuine countess, Deirdre, you'd probably be addressing hundreds of envelopes in aid of a philanthropic society, instead of lounging there looking like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. Don't glare! I speak the solemn words of truth."

"You make my he—head ache," protested Deirdre with half-closed eyelids, but her complaint met with no sympathy. Instead, several strong and insistent hands pulled her forcibly out of her chair and flung away the cushion.

"I tell you we're sick of 'Lady Isobel' or whoever she may be. For goodness' sake be somebody more cheerful if you won't be yourself. Can't you get up an Irish mood for a change? A bit of the brogue would hearten up this clammy afternoon."

"Oh, isn't it piggy and nasty!" exclaimed Annie, stretching out her arms in the agony of an elephantine yawn. "I want my tea! I want my tea! I want my tea! And I shan't get it for a whole long weary hour!"

"Poor martyr! Here, squattez-ici on the hearth-rug and I'll make you a triscuit."

"What on earth is a triscuit?"

"Oh, you're not bright or you'd guess. It's a biscuit toasted nicely brown and eaten hot. Don't you twig? A biscuit means 'twice cooked'; therefore if it's cooked again it must be a triscuit. That stands to reason."

"Is it to be a barmecide feast? I don't see your precious biscuits."

"'"I've got 'un here," sez she, quite quiet-like,'" returned Betty, who was a Mrs. Ewing enthusiast, and quoted Dame Datchet with relish. "Half a pound of cream crackers, and I mean to be generous and share 'em round. Don't you all bless me? Now the question is, how we're going to 'triscuit' them."

The girls crowded round with suggestions. Toasting biscuits was certainly more entertaining than doing nothing. Deirdre forgot for the time that she was a heroine of fiction, and plumped down by the fender with a lack of high-born dignity that would have scandalized "Lady Isobel".

"You'll smash them up if you try sticking your penknife through them," she observed. "It'll burn your fingers too to hold them so close to the fire. Try the tongs."

"Some of them might be tilted up in the fender," volunteered Gerda, whose rare remarks were generally to the point. "They'd be getting hot, and we could finish them off afterwards."

"Right you are! Stick them up in a row. Now if I take this one with the tongs and hold it just over that red piece in the fire——"

"Be careful!"

"Remember it's fragile."

"There, I knew you'd smash it! Oh, pick the other half out, quick! It's burning!"

"What a Johnnie-fingers you are! It's done for."

In the end—and it was Gerda's quiet suggestion—the tongs were placed over the fire like a gridiron and the biscuits successfully popped on the top and turned when one side was done. Everybody appreciated them down to the last crumb, and awarded Betty a vote of thanks for her brilliant idea.

"The worst of it is, they're finished too soon," sighed Evie, "and we've nothing else to fill up the gap till tea-time. I want to do something outrageous—break a window or smash an ornament, or damage the furniture! What a nuisance conscience is! Why does the 'inward monitor' restrain me?"

"Probably the wholesome dread of consequences my dear. You might cut your hand in a wild orgy of window smashing and there'd be bills to pay afterwards for reglazing and medical attendance."

"But can't we do anything interesting?"

"Let's play a trick on Va," suggested Annie. "It would do them good and shake them up. My conscience gives me full leave."

"It's celebrated for its well-known elasticity!" chuckled Evie.

"But what could we do?"

"Oh, just rag them a little somehow. It would be rather sport."

"Plans for sport in ragtime wanted! All offers carefully considered. Now, then, bring on your suggestions."

Everybody stared hopefully at everybody else, but no one rose to the occasion.

"Going—going—going—a first-rate opportunity for mirth-provoking——"

"Could we get them into the passage and one of us hide behind the curtain of the barred room and act ghost?" proposed Romola desperately.

Her suggestion, however, was received with utter scorn.

"Can't you think of anything more original than that?"

"We're fed up with that ghost trick. Nobody even calls it funny now."

"Besides, Miss Birks said she'd punish anyone who did it again. She was awfully angry last time."

Duly squashed, Romola subsided, and the silence which followed resembled that of a Quakers' meeting.

"I've got it!" shouted Betty at last, clapping her hands ecstatically. "The very thing! Oh, the supremest joke!"

"Good biz! But please condescend to explain," commented Evie.

"Oh, we'll try thing-um-bob—what d'you call it? Mesmerism—that's the word I want. With dinner plates, you know."

Apparently nobody knew, for all looked interested and intelligent, but unenlightened.

"Do you mean to say you've never heard of it? Oh, goody! What luck!"

"Look here," interposed Annie, "you're not going to rag us as well. It's to be for the benefit of Va if there's any sell about it."

"All right! They'll really be enough, and you shall act audience. Only with fourteen of you it would have been so——"

"Betty Scott, give us your word this instant that you won't play tricks on your own Form."

"I won't—I won't—honest, I won't!"

"And tell us what you're going to do."

"No, that would spoil it all. You must wait and see. Barbara, go to the kitchen door and cajole Cook into lending us seven dinner plates. Say you'll pledge your honour not to break them. And purloin a candle from the lamp cupboard. Be as quick as you can! Time wanes."

Barbara executed her errand with speed and success. She soon returned with the plates and set them down on the table. Betty lighted the candle, laid one plate aside, then held each of the others in turn over the flame till the bottoms inside the rims were well coloured with smoke. The girls watched her curiously.

"Now, I'm ready!" she announced, "but I want a messenger. Elyned, you go and tap at Va door and say we shall be very pleased if they care to come and try a most interesting experiment. Mind you put it politely, and for your life don't snigger."

Now Va had been spending an even duller and more wearisome afternoon than Vb, for they had not had the diversion of toasting biscuits. They were yawning in the last stages of boredom when Elyned arrived and delivered her message. Usually they considered themselves far too select to have much to do with the lower division, but to-day anything to break the monotony was welcome. They accepted the invitation with alacrity, and came trooping in to the rival classroom with pleased anticipation in their faces.

"It's a most curious experiment," began Betty. "I learnt it from a cousin who's been out East. He saw it practised by some Chinese priests at a josshouse. I believe it's one of the first steps of initiation in Esoteric Buddhism. My cousin's not exactly a Theosophist, but he's interested in comparative theologies, and he went about with a lama, and found out ever so many of their secrets. He wrote down the formulary of this for me."

"What's it about?" asked the elder girls, looking considerably impressed.

"It's a species of mesmerism—or animal magnetism, as some people prefer to call it. You make certain passes, and repeat certain words after me, and then you all get into the hypnotic state. Of course it depends how psychic you are, but anybody with even undeveloped mediumistic powers will sometimes give replies to questions they couldn't possibly answer in the normal state."

"I suppose it won't hurt us?" asked Agnes Gillard rather gravely.

"Oh, not at all! It's wonderful sometimes to find how people who've never even suspected they possessed psychic gifts bring out absolutely unaccountable pieces of information. It really would be quite uncanny, except for the latest theory that it's merely utilizing a natural power once cultivated by man, but long forgotten except by a few priests in the Tibetan monasteries. The Theosophical Society, of course, is trying to revive it."

"I'm afraid I don't know anything about Theosophy," murmured Hilda Marriott.

"It's akin to the Eleusinian mysteries and the cult of Isis," continued Betty unblushingly. "You have to understand 'Karma' (that's reincarnation) and 'Yoga' (that's flitting about in your astral body while you're asleep), and—and—" But here both memory and invention failed her, so she hurriedly changed her point. "Oh! it would take me years to explain, and you couldn't understand unless you'd been initiated. Let's get to the experiment. Will you all stand in a row?"

"Aren't any of you going to try?" asked Irene Jordan, addressing the members of Vb, who, solemn as judges, stood slightly in the background.

"We can only do it with seven, the mystic number—and there are eight of them, and they can't agree who's to be left out," said Betty hurriedly. "It's always done with six neophytes and one initiated. If you're ready, we'd best begin, and not waste any more time."

She arranged her neophytes in a line, and gave to each a plate, telling her to hold it firmly in the left hand. Then, taking her stand facing them, she raised her own plate to the level of her chest.

"Now you must do exactly as I do!" she commanded. "All fix your eyes on me, and don't take them off me for a single instant. The concentration of the seven visual currents is of vital importance. Put the middle finger of the right hand beneath the plate exactly in the centre, then describe a circle with it on the under side of the plate. Be sure the circle follows the same course as the sun, or we may break the mesmeric current. Watch what I'm doing. Now describe a circle on your face in the same manner, beginning with the left cheek. Copy me carefully. And now we must repeat the cabalistic formulary (the oldest in the world—Solomon got it from El Zenobi, the chief of the Genii): 'Om mani padme hum'. Let us say it slowly all together seven times, performing the orthodox circles at each."

The neophytes played their parts admirably. They never removed their gaze from the face of their instructress; they copied her every movement, and repeated the mystic words to the very best of their ability. "Om mani padme hum" rolled from their lips seven times, and seemed to suggest the dreamy atmosphere of the occult.

"The mesmeric current is forming! I can feel it working!" declared Betty. "It only requires further visualization for the hypnotic state to follow. To complete the magnetic circle, will you all kindly turn and face each other?"

Still holding the plates, the obedient six swung round, stared at one another, then gasped and shrieked. And well they might, for, one and all, their countenances were besmirched with black in a series of concentric rings which caused them to resemble Zulu chiefs or American-Indian warriors on the warpath.

"Oh! oh! oh!" came from the members of Vb, who, having been stationed behind the neophytes, had been in equal ignorance of the trick that was being played on them. Then everybody exploded.

"Oh, you look so funny!"

"Is the magnetic current working?"

"Is it the cult of Isis?"

"Oh, my heart! Oh! ho! ho!" gurgled Betty. "You didn't twig your plates were smoked and mine wasn't! Oh, I've done you! Done you brown, literally!"

"You p-p-p-pig!" spluttered the victims.

"Don't break the plates! Here, put them on the table! Oh, don't look so indignant, or you'll kill me! I've got a stitch in my side with laughing. Here, don't stalk off like offended zebras! I'll apologize! I'll go down on my bended knees! It was a brutal rag—yes—yes—I own up frankly! I'll grovel! Peccavi! Peccavi! Miserere mei!"

"I've got some chocolates here," murmured Annie Pridwell. "I was keeping them for Sunday, but do have them," handing the packet round among the outraged upper division.

The occasion certainly seemed to warrant some form of compensation. Evie hastily followed Annie's example, and sacrificed a private store of toffee on the altar of hospitality. Blissfully sucking, the six seniors allowed themselves to be mollified. As connoisseurs of jokes, they were ready to acknowledge the superior excellence of the trick played upon them; moreover, they found one another's appearance highly diverting.

"Betty Scott, you'll be the death of me some day," remarked Rhoda Wilkins. "Oh, Agnes! If you could only see yourself in the glass!"

"It's the pot calling the kettle! Look at your own face!"

"Do you think we could possibly work it on the Sixth?"

"No, they'd smell a rat."

"I want my tea," said Annie. "Oh, cock-a-doodle-doo! There's the first bell! Hip-hip-hooray! I say, you six, if you don't want to give Miss Birks a first-class fit, you'd best be toddling to the bath-room, and applying the soap-and-water treatment to your interesting countenances."