He left her and hurried off, still frowning. Just as he turned the corner of the gallery, Egbert and Peter, who had been lying in wait for him some fifteen minutes, sprang out upon him from an open door.
‘How is she?’ they asked eagerly.
‘Really!’ fumed the Doctor, who hated being taken by surprise. ‘The bulletin is with Miss Finlayson; I have no time––’
Peter grasped his arm as he was escaping. ‘Is she going to get better?’ he implored. There was no mistaking the earnestness in the boy’s face, and the Doctor melted in spite of himself.
‘Yes, yes, to be sure,’ he growled. ‘That is, if you leave her alone.’
When he reached the staircase he was again brought to a standstill. The way was entirely blocked by the massive form of the German music-master, who sat on the top stair with his face buried in his large, fat hands. The Doctor tapped his foot on the ground impatiently. If one thing more than another annoyed him, it was the sight of uncontrolled emotion.
‘Pardon me,’ he said briskly, ‘but will you kindly––’
‘Gott in Himmel!’ shouted Herr Scales, springing to his feet as he recognised the Doctor’s voice. ‘Tell me, Herr Doktor, haf I kilt her? Am I a murterer of the lieblichste little Fräulein that ever walked upon––’
‘Nonsense, sir!’ interrupted Dr. Hurst, doing his best to keep his temper. The sight of the tears that streamed down the good-natured face of the music-master was enough, he told himself, to annoy any man who was not a foreigner. ‘Nobody has killed her yet; but what you are going to do, among you, before you have done with her, I shouldn’t like to say.’
‘You do not understand,’ wept Herr Scales, clasping his hands. ‘It was I who nearly kilt her, dummer wretch that I am.’
‘Well, you haven’t killed her, my good sir, and she’s going to get better,’ answered the Doctor, trying to deal gently with him in spite of his irritating foreign behaviour. Then he left him and went quickly down the stairs.
Two more voices assailed him in the hall, as he took down his coat from the peg. Restraining his impatience as best he might, the young man looked round to find Kit and Wilfred at his elbow. Curled up on the rug in front of the stove lay Robin, fast asleep, with his head pillowed on a footstool. Weariness and the shedding of many tears had left their mark on his round, babyish face, and the elder boys looked little more than half-awake themselves. Kit’s face was tear-stained too, and he suddenly found he could not put the question he was longing to ask. It was Wilfred who blurted it out instead.
‘Is she better?’ he asked.
The Doctor had been up all night; he had gone through more anxiety than he could have believed himself capable of feeling; he had found that his heart had gone out unconsciously, eleven weeks ago, to the child who had called him a beast; and he felt that all the glory his profession could bring him was not worth so much as the saving of that one little life upstairs. And then people came and bothered him with their senseless questions. If she were worse, was it likely he would be leaving her now?
He was worn out with want of sleep, and it did not occur to him that the same thing might possibly be true of the white-faced lads before him.
‘Bless my soul!’ he exclaimed testily. ‘How many are there of you? There’s a couple at every corner. How can you expect your sister to get better if you hang about the place and ask questions at the top of your voice? There’s–there’s an atmosphere of nervous sentiment all over the house that’s enough to ruin any case.’
Wilfred was dumbfounded, and stared stupidly. But Christopher suddenly found his tongue, and, being Christopher, he found it sarcastically.
‘Counting Jill, there are only six all together,’ he said, peering up at the irritated young man through his spectacles, ‘so you won’t meet any more.’
‘I don’t care how many there are of you,’ grumbled Dr. Hurst, flinging on his coat. ‘Keep out of her way, that’s all–and mine too.’
‘You may be sure we’ll do that, if we can,’ retorted Wilfred, recovering his courage. ‘Only, you haven’t told us yet how she is.’
‘You seem to forget she’s our sister, and we’re beastly cut up about her,’ added Kit, glumly.
‘She’s not a rotten bacteria, either,’ said Wilfred, in a vicious undertone which the Doctor fortunately missed.
Dr. Hurst felt a little bit ashamed of himself, and was more cross than ever. ‘There, there! She’s better, of course,’ he muttered, pushing past his questioners. Then he saw the sleeping Robin curled up in front of the stove, and he glanced back at the tired faces of the other two. ‘Best thing you can do is to go straight to bed,’ he advised, jamming his hat down on his head. ‘Best thing for the case, too.’
Kit smiled at him indulgently. ‘Let them go to bed who have beds,’ he remarked. ‘I’ve only got an arm-chair.’
The Doctor fled discomfited, and shut the front door in their faces. He did not understand boys, and he did not like them, and he would not have minded if he had never had to meet another boy as long as he lived. In a very few moments, however, he came to the conclusion that although boys were pretty bad, girls could beat them easily, with several points to spare.
His man was walking the cob up and down outside, and the trap was not in sight when Dr. Hurst shut the front door behind him. The occurrence was particularly unfortunate, for as he stood waiting on the steps the whole of the junior hockey team came strolling round the corner of the house. This in itself was sufficiently embarrassing to the young man who stood there; and he hailed the appearance of his trap with deep and earnest satisfaction. But he was not to be allowed to escape so easily. The sound of wheels made the children look round; and some one suddenly called out–‘It’s the Doctor!’ The next moment he found himself, greatly to his consternation, in the middle of a throng of excited young ladies, all in extremely short skirts and all armed with hockey clubs, who were clamouring loudly and persistently to know if Barbara Berkeley was out of danger.
Probably it would never have happened if it had not been the last day of the term, when a sense of unusual liberty prevailed. Certainly, if it had been any other day the hockey team would not have been wandering round by the front door at all, but would have gone straight to the nine-acre field through the orchard at the back. But the Doctor knew nothing of all this. He only realised that the girls were finishing what the boys had begun, and that in another minute he should lose his temper very badly indeed.
Most eager of all was a child with a freckled face and reddish-coloured hair, who somehow seemed familiar to him, though he could not remember where he had met her before. She came right up to where he stood helplessly, with his right foot placed on the carriage-step; and she raised her voice shrilly above all the others.
‘May I see her before she gets worse?’ she implored sentimentally. ‘I should never forgive myself, Mary Wells says I shouldn’t, if anything happened to her, and––’
The Doctor made a great effort and waved them off distractedly, just as Margaret Hulme and some of the elder ones hurried on the scene and called angrily to his tormentors. He seized the opportunity to spring to his seat, and then turned and glared at them.
‘See her before she gets worse?’ he answered back furiously. ‘If you want to see her before you’ve done your best to finish her altogether, you’ll have to look sharp.’
Miss Finlayson suddenly appeared on the doorstep. Nobody knew how much she had seen or heard, but she was looking exceedingly stern. She opened her mouth to speak, just as Dr. Hurst perceived her and broke into a fresh torrent of words. By this time he had lost the last scrap of his patience.
‘What with rascally boys and hysterical schoolgirls,’ he shouted, seizing the whip and cracking it round his head, ‘how can you expect me to pull the case through?’
He tugged violently at the reins; the startled animal sprang forward, and the trap clattered noisily out of sight.
The few short, vigorous sentences with which Miss Finlayson improved the next five minutes sent the girls into the hockey field with a much reduced opinion of themselves. Margaret Hulme stayed behind to vindicate the offenders as well as she could; and the result was that the head-mistress remembered it was the last day of the term, and blamed herself for having almost allowed her feelings for the youngest girl in school to run away with her.
‘Send Jean and Angela up to my bedroom at once,’ she said thoughtfully, when Margaret had finished telling her what had been going on in the playroom that morning.
She waited for them on the landing, and kissed them both very affectionately when they appeared hand in hand. She glanced quickly from Angela’s red and swollen countenance to Jean’s pale and miserable one, and she decided not to say what had been in her mind the minute before. A much better idea struck her, and she acted upon it promptly.
‘If you will promise me to be as quiet as mice,’ she whispered, ‘you shall both have one peep at her.’
The room into which she led them on tiptoe was almost dark. The only light that was admitted came from one small window in the farther corner, and it was just enough to reveal Jill, as she bent over the bed with a cup in her hand. Then she moved away, and the two children, peeping from their hiding-place behind the screen by the door, saw Barbara.
She lay flat on her back among the white pillows; a hillock under the bedclothes showed where the cage protected her broken leg, and a bandage round her head kept the thick, dark hair from tumbling over her face as it usually did. Otherwise, she was not nearly so much altered as her play-fellows had vaguely expected to find her. The bright little eyes gleamed out as impishly as ever from beneath the white bandage, and as she smiled up at Jill they realised to their intense relief that the Babe, with a hole in her head and a cage over her leg, was much the same Babe who had arrived in their midst, with her elf-like look and her happy unconscious smile, three months ago.
‘Why, Jean, I do believe you’re crying,’ said Angela, in surprise, when Miss Finlayson had pushed them outside again, and they were retreating slowly along the gallery. Angela herself felt no further inclination to cry, now that she had seen the Babe and found she was not a bit altered. There was no middle course in Angela’s emotions, and her only wonder now was why any one had made a fuss about Barbara’s accident at all.
But the tears were raining down Jean’s cheeks for the first time, and the hard, queer look was gone from her face. She flung herself away to her own room, and left Angela to puzzle over her behaviour as best she might.
‘Have the girls gone home?’ asked the invalid, about a week later. She had made such strides towards recovery that she was to be allowed her first visitor that day, and she could not help wondering whether Jean Murray was going to be the privileged person. Everything had been so strange and quiet since the morning she had woke up in Finny’s bed; and she had slept away so many hours of the days that followed, that she had lost count of the time altogether. She seemed to have been lying in a kind of delicious enchantment, with people doing things for her just as though she were a princess; while Jill was always at hand to tell her stories in her beautiful soft voice, whenever she grew tired of lying still. For Jill was the nicest person in the world to be with, when one was enchanted; she never bothered, and she always seemed to come to the rescue just in time, when the pain of being strapped in one position began to grow intolerable. Then, there was the Doctor too. No one would have expected the Doctor to turn out such a trump. Only to-day, after being so strict in the morning about what she was to eat, he had run in again after lunch to bring her a packet of sweets. They were very wholesome sweets, as he had assured Jill; but still they were sweets, and a doctor who was a beast would never have thought of bringing them, even if they were wholesome. So, clearly, he was not a beast. Even Jill had been surprised at his coming twice in one day, now that she was so much better; so that showed that he must be a particularly nice sort of doctor. For Jill had once nursed Auntie Anna when she was ill, and she knew a lot about doctors, so she would not have been surprised at his coming twice in one day, if it had been a usual thing for a doctor to do. Babs smiled happily to herself as she settled the Doctor’s claims to niceness; then she remembered that she was going to have a visitor after tea, and she asked again if the girls had gone home.
‘Yes, they went five or six days ago,’ said Jill, without impatience, though she had answered the same question once already. Babs certainly did not need an illness to make her absent-minded.
‘Then who is coming to see me after tea?’ was Barbara’s next inquiry.
‘I said Kit might come; I thought you would like to have him best,’ answered Jill.
‘Kit? Is he going to bicycle over from Crofts?’ asked the child.
‘Why, no,’ explained Jill, smiling. ‘They have all been in the house ever since you were taken ill. Finny invited them to stay, you know, and Auntie Anna too.’
Barbara laughed a little. ‘They’ll never be able to tease me again, now that they’ve stopped in a girl’s school themselves,’ she remarked with a chuckle.
There was a pause, which the invalid occupied in thinking over the things she had been too lazy to consider before. She had a great many questions to ask, but somehow it was too much exertion to ask them. Fortunately, Jill was so clever that she always guessed what she wanted to know without waiting to be asked first; and that saved a lot of trouble. In this way the child had learned that the gymnastic prize was to be divided between Jean and herself; and thinking about the gymnastic prize produced another question from her, rather unexpectedly.
‘Wasn’t it Scales who moved the trapeze away?’ she asked.
Jill looked up surprised. None of them knew how much Babs remembered of what had happened on the night of her accident. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘He has been very unhappy about it, poor man! He writes every day from Hanover to say how miserable he is. But, of course, it was an accident.’
‘Of course,’ said Barbara, looking distressed; and Jill was afraid she had said too much.
‘Shall I write and send him a message from you?’ she suggested quickly. Babs brightened up, and nodded.
‘Tell him it’s awfully jolly to be ill and to have every one doing things for you, and bringing you sweets, and all that,’ she said eagerly. ‘And say that if he wants me to pay him out, just to make us quits, don’t you know, he can think of the awful way I am sure to play my pieces next term.’
‘Very well,’ answered Jill, laughing; and there was silence once more.
Jill looked very pretty as she sat there by the window, working away at her embroidery in the frame; and Babs congratulated herself, with a glow of satisfaction, on having made her a princess in her fairy kingdom. It was so nice of Jill, she reflected, to behave exactly like a princess, and to sit at the window of her lonely turret making tapestry, to while away the time until her prince should come thundering over the drawbridge below. Jill’s prince had not come yet, so of course she would have to go on working by the window till he did; she deserved an extra nice prince too, and Babs sighed as she remembered that she had not been able to find her any sort of a prince so far.
‘It’s a pity, isn’t it, that Dr. Hurst had to be enchanted again so soon?’ she murmured aloud.
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,’ said the princess, from the window.
‘You see,’ continued Babs, solemnly, ‘he began by being a beast; then I disenchanted him and made him into a handsome and gallant young prince; and after that he was so horrid to Jean and Angela in the quarantine that I had to turn him out of my kingdom, and make him wander over the earth once more in the shape of a beast.’
‘Oh,’ said Jill, bending rather closely over the embroidery frame. ‘Let me see, what kingdom was that?’
‘My kingdom,’ answered Barbara, in an important tone. Then she realised that Jill did not know about her kingdom. ‘I’ve never told any one before,’ she went on doubtfully. ‘If I tell you, Jill, will you promise not to laugh?’
Jill promised, and worked on steadily at her embroidery while the small voice from the bed painted her the fairy kingdom she had never described to any one before.
‘And so,’ concluded Barbara, with a sigh, ‘I can’t make it come right, because now there’s a princess without a prince. Do you mind waiting until I find you a prince, Jill?’
‘Not at all,’ answered Jill, turning to the light rather abruptly, and taking quite a long time to choose between two shades of silk.
‘It was so stupid of Dr. Hurst to get himself turned out like that, wasn’t it?’ continued Babs.
‘He–perhaps he didn’t know,’ said Jill, with some hesitation.
‘You can’t be a beast without knowing it,’ answered Barbara, positively.
‘Are you sure he is a beast?’ asked Jill, who was still looking out of the window, though she had chosen her silk some moments ago.
‘Oh, he’s not a beast now. I love him. Don’t you?’ cried the child, enthusiastically.
Jill began putting her work away in a great hurry. ‘It’s time for tea,’ she remarked.
Barbara did not seem to have heard. The dreamy look had returned to her face, and she was almost thinking aloud.
‘You see,’ she murmured, ‘however nice he is now, he must walk round the world seven times, and kill a giant, and rescue a beautiful princess, before he can be disenchanted a second time. You can’t alter that. It’s a pity you haven’t got to be rescued or anything, Jill, because then––’
‘If you talk any more, child,’ interrupted Jill, with decision, ‘you will be too tired to have a visitor after tea.’
Jill was a nice person, Barbara settled again in her mind, as they had tea together out of Finny’s private tea-set that the Canon had given her last Christmas. She was so nice that she even slipped away afterwards, when Christopher came into the room, so that he and Babs could have their talk together without feeling that somebody else was listening. For all that, neither of them seemed to find it easy to begin, and they remained looking at each other in silence for some moments after Jill had closed the door upon them.
Then Christopher made a great effort and addressed her from the end of the bed, where he had taken up his position.
‘Hullo!’ he said, tugging at his collar as if to remove some obstruction to his voice.
‘Hullo!’ answered Babs, faintly, from among her pillows.
Then followed another pause. They both felt there were plenty of things to be said, but somehow they could not think of them just then. Presently, Kit remembered that she was an invalid, and that invalids always had to be kissed. He also decided that the sooner he got it over the better; so he marched round to the side of the bed and kissed her.
‘How are you, Babe?’ he asked, feeling more at his ease now that this formality was over and he was free to climb on the edge of her bed and sit there swinging his legs.
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ answered Barbara, heartily.
They both knew she was nothing of the sort, but in the Berkeley family it was a point of honour with every one, even during a visitation of toothache, to declare himself ‘all right.’
‘How are you, Kit?’ asked Babs, after a little further reflection.
‘I’m all right, thanks,’ answered Christopher, faithfully, and he whistled a tune to fill the next pause. ‘Awfully poor lying here, isn’t it?’ he resumed presently.
Barbara nodded. ‘It’s stale,’ she said expressively.
Kit looked sympathetic. ‘It would make me sick,’ he observed.
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ Barbara hastened to assure him; and he whistled a little more.
‘Jill’s all right too, isn’t she?’ he continued after a while.
‘Oh, Jill’s all right–rather,’ said the child, warmly. ‘How are the other boys, Kit?’
‘They’re all right,’ answered Kit.
‘And Auntie Anna?’
‘She’s all right,’ answered Kit.
Conversation again languished slightly. Barbara’s eyes, wandering round the room in search of inspiration, fell on the little bag of sweets that the Doctor had brought her.
‘Have a sweet,’ she suggested, pointing to the table by the window.
Christopher slipped off the bed with alacrity. ‘It’s awfully decent of you,’ he observed. ‘Sure you don’t want them all?’
‘Oh, no; take the whole jolly lot,’ begged his sister.
Kit’s countenance fell slightly when he peered into the bag. ‘Acid drops,’ he commented briefly, and put a couple critically into his mouth. ‘Who brought them?’
‘Dr. Hurst. He said they were wholesome,’ replied Babs, by way of explanation. She did not want Kit to think she had been such a muff as to choose acid drops in preference to chocolate.
‘That’s just about what he would say,’ remarked the boy, putting several more of them into his mouth.
‘I–I think he’s all right, Kit,’ said Barbara, timidly.
Christopher shook his head vigorously. It was the only form of reply possible to him at the moment.
‘He’s a rotter,’ he said, as soon as he could speak; ‘and so slack, too!’ He peered again into the paper bag. ‘Is it worth while?’ he murmured to himself, and decided that it was not. ‘Pity it wasn’t some one else who got them for you,’ he added with a sigh, as he returned to the bed.
‘He isn’t bad, really, Kit,’ persisted the child, looking troubled.
‘Not bad? Why, he’s an awful old soft, Babe,’ answered Kit, contemptuously. ‘If you were a boy, you’d know.’
‘He isn’t old, anyhow. He’s only twenty-eight; I asked him,’ said Babs, eagerly.
‘Oh, rats!’ laughed Kit, who had quite got over his awkwardness by this time, and was rapidly forgetting that she was an invalid and that he had been told not to tease her. ‘He may be twenty-eight perhaps, if you just count his birthdays, but he’s as old as the hills for all that. He was born grown-up; that sort of chap always is.’
‘He’s been awfully kind to me, Kit,’ persisted the child, her troubled look returning.
‘You always think people are nicer than they are, don’t you?’ observed her brother, with gentle scorn. ‘When we had that beast of a housekeeper who used to smack you and Robin, you always said her Sunday bonnet was beautiful, or something like that.’
‘Oh, Kit!’ was all Barbara felt capable of replying, and the boy rattled on heedlessly.
‘That Doctor is the rottenest of rotters,’ he declared in a cheerful tone. ‘He only pretends to like you because you’re what he calls a “case.” If you’d got asthma, now, he’d treat you as if you were putting it all on, and make you feel a jolly humbug. I know him!’
‘Of course, you’re always right, Kit,’ said Babs, growing more unhappy every minute, ‘but–but––’
‘He treated us all like kids the first day you were ill,’ said Christopher, scowling at the recollection; ‘and once, when Jill was blubbing because you weren’t so well, we got in a funk and went off on our own, Peter and I, to fetch him; and he wouldn’t come. He said no one could do anything for you by just coming and looking at you, and we weren’t to disturb him for nothing at all–or some such rot. Then we found that he’d cooked up an arrangement with Finny not to come unless she sent for him. Just like him!’
Barbara was struggling feebly to keep back her tears. She could not think what was making her want to cry so much.
The boy had stopped scowling, and was chuckling softly to himself. Barbara held her breath, and thought that if he would only talk about something else, she might be able to keep from crying. Perhaps the table by the window might stop swimming about, too.
‘We’ve scored one against him at last, though,’ her brother was saying, in a voice that seemed suddenly to have gone a long way off. ‘He must be quite at the other end of the gallery,’ Babs thought. Yet some one was certainly sitting on the edge of her bed, because she could feel the mattress jumping up and down.
‘We struck that little kid in the yard just now–the one who nearly gave you scarlet fever,’ Christopher went on gaily. ‘He came to know how you were, or something. Bobby Hearne, I think he called himself. Well, we got him to go to the doctor’s house with a message from his aunt, who lives five miles t’other side of Crofts, to say that she had just fallen downstairs and nearly killed herself, and would he go to her at once! Thirty miles there and back, all for nothing! Rather a score, eh? It was my idea, too, not Peter’s!’
He turned to Barbara for approval, and found her sobbing bitterly. She had heard every word he said, with horrible distinctness, though his voice had come from such a long way off. She had tried to stop him, but she could not make a sound till she began to cry.
‘Babe! I say, don’t! What’s up, old girl?’ exclaimed Kit, staring at her in consternation. At any time it was an event, to make the Babe cry, but now that she was so ill, he felt nothing short of a brute.
Jill had slipped into the room and was bending over the excited child.
‘Kit doesn’t understand–he doesn’t know he’s not really a beast–he isn’t a beast, is he?’ gasped Barbara, between her sobs. ‘He’s played a horrible trick on him–he’s sent him seven times round the world; and I never meant him really to walk seven times round the world–you know I didn’t, Jill. It’s all my fault for turning him out of my kingdom–if I hadn’t turned him out of my kingdom, he wouldn’t be wandering seven times round––’
‘Hush!’ whispered Jill, and she gave Christopher a look that sent him stumbling out of the room in a mixture of bewilderment and remorse. Up and down the landing he paced, feeling desperately wicked and desperately foolish by turns, until Jill opened the door of the bedroom and beckoned to him. She held a thermometer in her hand, and she paid no attention whatever to the shamefaced inquiry he stammered out.
‘Send Miss Finlayson here at once, and say I want the Doctor,’ she commanded, and went hurriedly back into the room.
Clearly, she was very angry with him, and it had never seemed possible before that Jill could be angry with any one. But it was not this that suddenly made Kit turn cold and funny all over as he started along the gallery with Jill’s message. He pulled up short with a jerk, and gave a little cry of dismay.
‘What shall I do?’ he exclaimed in a despairing tone. ‘I’ve sent the Doctor fifteen miles in the opposite direction.’
It was nearing seven o’clock and growing dusk when Kit at last struck the high road between four and five miles below Crofts. It was a full ten-mile drive by the road from Wootton Beeches, but Kit had saved over two miles by taking the short cut across the fields. He stopped for the first time since he had started on his mad chase after the Doctor, and looked panting up and down the deserted road.
‘I can’t have been much more than three-quarters of an hour, and I bet it’s four miles,’ he muttered. The mud with which he was splashed up to the collar showed the kind of ground over which he had been travelling, and the way his breath was coming and going told how much of the four miles had been covered at a run. Now that he had exhausted his first impulse to rush after the Doctor and bring him back at any cost, he began to realise what an absurd thing he had set himself to do. Dr. Hurst had had an hour’s start of him at least, and even the short cut across the fields would not make up for that. With a quick-trotting cob like his, he would have reached his destination easily by this time and discovered the trick that had been played upon him, and no effort on Kit’s part would bring him back a moment sooner than he would be coming of his own accord. Besides, if it was any good going after him, Finny would have sent her man on horseback long before this, and he would have outdistanced Kit in any case.
‘If only our bicycles had been there instead of at Crofts, I might have caught him up then,’ cried the boy, as the hopelessness of the position dawned upon him.
Nothing answered him, and the road looked more dreary than ever. A good deal of rain had fallen that week, and the drip drip of the trees overhead added a kind of melancholy to everything. Christopher’s quick imagination called up all the details of the scene he had left behind him: the unwonted anger of his cousin, the anxiety of Finny and Auntie Anna when he had rushed into the drawing-room with her message, and then their eagerness to ring the bell and send some one for the Doctor, whom he knew to be far away on a wild-goose chase of his own making. He pictured with vividness too the consternation that would be caused in the house when Finny’s messenger returned from his fruitless errand, and the look that would come on Auntie Anna’s face when Peter came in from his tramp with the other boys and explained the trick that had been played on the Doctor. No wonder he had hurried straight out of the house and struck blindly across the fields, without stopping to reflect whether it would be any good or not! Even now, though he knew how little he could do, he felt unable to remain inactive; and turning his face in the direction of Crofts, he once more broke into a run and hurried wildly along the muddy, desolate road.
He had been running about thirty-five minutes, only falling into a walk now and then to recover his breath, when the sound of wheels, coming from behind made him draw to the side of the road. He still trudged on, however, with his head down and his hands clenched, and he did not even trouble to look round when the vehicle caught him up and passed him. The light from the lamp flashed across his face as it rolled swiftly by; and immediately afterwards, the trap pulled up just ahead of him.
‘Hullo! Is that Christopher Berkeley?’ said a voice from above.
Kit staggered, and stood speechless. It was the Doctor’s voice; there was no doubt about that. But how came he to be driving towards Crofts instead of away from it? His sudden appearance was so remarkable that the boy’s head felt in a whirl.
‘I–I thought––’ he faltered.
The Doctor gave a quiet laugh, and climbed down from his seat.
‘You thought I was green enough for anything, didn’t you?’ he observed. ‘Just stand by the animal, will you, while I get out of my coat?’
Kit obeyed mechanically. Everything had turned so topsy-turvy all at once, that it seemed no more extraordinary for him to be doing meekly what the Doctor told him than it was for the Doctor to be struggling out of his greatcoat just as the rain was beginning to come on again.
‘Then–then you didn’t go to Bobby Hearne’s aunt, after all?’ he inquired stupidly.
‘Not much!’ answered the Doctor, with another short laugh. He had got his coat off by this time, and he held it out to Christopher peremptorily. ‘Put this on, and look sharp!’ he commanded.
‘But––’ stammered the boy, hanging back.
‘Do you want to keep me here all night?’ cried Dr. Hurst, impatiently; and as Kit still hesitated, he wrapped the coat quickly round him and lifted him bodily into the gig. Then he mounted beside him, and turned the animal’s head. The next instant, they were bowling along towards home, at the rate of ten miles an hour.
For the first five minutes they did not speak. Then the Doctor jerked out a sharp inquiry.
‘Aren’t you going to ask after your sister?’ he demanded.
Kit started. ‘I was afraid you’d rag me for it,’ he muttered awkwardly.
The Doctor flicked the horse with his whip. ‘Sorry you think me such a brute,’ he said shortly. He flicked the horse again, and played it a moment or two, as it tossed its head and jumped about. ‘I don’t think it’s anything serious,’ he went on. ‘I gave her a soothing draught, and everything depends on the state in which she wakes up. But I think she’ll be all right.’
The relief at Kit’s heart nearly choked him. ‘Did Jill tell you it was my fault?’ he asked after a while.
‘I gathered as much,’ said Dr. Hurst. ‘You mustn’t excite her any more, you know, or I won’t answer for the consequences. What was it all about, eh?’
He was evidently making a gigantic effort to be amiable, and Christopher felt he owed him something in return. Besides, it was a kind of relief to put the blame on himself.
‘I said you were a rotter, and she said you weren’t,’ he jerked out; ‘and I said you were only decent to her because she was an interesting case, and she said––’
‘All right,’ said the Doctor, hastily. He supposed truthfulness was an excellent thing in theory, but it added another terror to boys.
As they neared the village Christopher summoned up courage to ask one more question.
‘Did you come out on purpose to bring me back?’ he inquired with an effort.
‘Yes,’ said Dr. Hurst, briefly.
Christopher puzzled over this. ‘But–but how did you know I’d gone after you?’ he asked curiously.
‘Jill told me you’d disappeared, and I guessed,’ said Dr. Hurst. If it had not been so dark, Kit might have seen a smile flicker across the serious face of his companion.
‘Did Jill think about me, then?’ cried the boy, eagerly. ‘Perhaps she isn’t so wild with me after all!’
‘Not so wild with you as you deserve, I dare say,’ remarked Dr. Hurst. ‘Indeed, it was because Miss Urquhart was making such an unnecessary fuss about you, that I promised to come and look for you.’
He thought that the boy, although a boy, would not notice the slip he had made just before in calling his pretty cousin by her first name; but Kit noticed fast enough. He had not much time, however, to think about it before they pulled up with a jerk at the back entrance to Wootton Beeches. He began to mumble out his thanks, while the Doctor helped him out of the overcoat and then put it on himself; but the young man cut him short.
‘Do you suppose I drove all those miles in the rain, at the end of a hard day’s work, for the sake of a scamp like you?’ he growled; and Christopher was left staring after him in the darkness.
In the holidays supper was not before nine o’clock at Wootton Beeches, so the boy had plenty of time to make himself presentable before the bell rang. He looked eagerly round the drawing-room when he went into it, but only the three elder boys were there.
‘Where’s Jill?’ he asked.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ observed Egbert, without answering him. As the eldest of the family, he felt that he ought to administer some sort of rebuke to Kit for the commotion he had caused in the household. Indeed, he had said as much to the others before the boy came in; but there was something about Kit that would make any one fight shy of rebuking him, when it came to the point. So Egbert was rather relieved than otherwise when Wilfred interrupted him.
‘Jill’s upstairs,’ he said, looking over his book at Kit. ‘She wants to be with the Babe when she wakes up, in case she’s excited or anything.’
Kit flung himself into an arm-chair and whistled carelessly. Whatever his feelings were in the matter, he was not going to let the family see them. There was rather an awkward silence, which Peter broke by remarking that it was ten minutes to nine, upon which Egbert said something about a clean collar and went out of the room. There was a feeling of relief when he had gone, Egbert having reached the age when it was never quite possible to say whether he was going to side with the enemy or not.
‘Egbert’s awfully wild with you,’ observed Peter, with smiling frankness. ‘He says you ought to be kicked.’
‘Let him do it,’ grunted Kit, indifferently. Having given the Doctor a glimpse of his real feelings not so many minutes ago, he did not intend to betray himself again yet awhile.
Wilfred, who had been watching him closely, began slowly to understand. ‘It’s all right, Kit,’ he said good-naturedly. ‘Egbert never counts! He only does it because he’s the eldest and thinks we’ve got to be reminded of it. Peter and I are with you!’
‘Awfully kind of you, I’m sure,’ answered Christopher, sarcastically. All the same, he stopped whistling and seemed inclined to come round; and Peter hastened to put in a conciliating word.
‘Of course, we know you didn’t mean to make the Babe excited,’ he said. ‘Jill says so herself.’
‘Oh, shut up!’ said Kit, ungraciously.
‘As for the Doctor,’ continued Wilfred, ‘anybody is justified in ragging him.’
‘Rather,’ chimed in Peter. ‘What do you think Egbert says about him?’
‘Don’t know and don’t care,’ rejoined Kit. Somehow, he felt it was rather mean to join in abusing the man who had gone out after him, all in the rain and the darkness. Still, he was sure he hated the fellow more than ever now, for had he not outwitted him and put him under an obligation to him at the same time? The boys did not notice his diffidence.
‘Egbert says––’ began Peter, and paused to give his words more effect; ‘Egbert says–that–the Doctor is in love with Jill.’
Christopher sat up and gazed at him. For once his quick wit had not been quite so quick as Egbert’s. So that was why Dr. Hurst had called her ‘Jill’; and that was what he had meant just now by his parting words at the gate!
‘Egbert’s hit it,’ he said morosely. ‘The chap is in love with Jill. Poor Jill!’
‘That’s what Wilfred says,’ cried Peter, all ready as usual for mischief. ‘He says Jill has got to be saved from him, or else––’
‘Jill saved?’ echoed Kit, scornfully. ‘As if she needed any saving from that idiot!’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ objected Wilfred, shaking his head. ‘Girls are so rum. Look at Merton major’s aunt––’
‘She isn’t a girl, she’s an aunt!’ interrupted Christopher.
‘Well, it’s all the same, really,’ declared Wilfred. ‘Merton major says she only married that Indian chap because he bothered so, and because she wanted to be obliging.’
‘And Jill is awfully obliging, you know she is,’ added Peter. ‘You can’t tell what may happen, if that Doctor goes on bothering her.’
‘Well, what are we to do, then?’ Kit condescended to ask. ‘We can’t lock him up, can we?’
‘No,’ admitted Wilfred, ‘we can’t lock him up. But there’s lots of other things we can do. We can see that she’s never left alone with him, for instance. Babs is always with them in the sickroom, that’s one thing. But what happens when he comes out of the sickroom, and Jill walks along the gallery with him and sometimes even down to the front door? That’s dangerous, anyhow.’
‘In future,’ said Peter, solemnly, ‘one of us will always be on the look-out to join them the moment they come out of the sickroom. What else, Will?’
Wilfred reflected a moment. ‘Sometimes,’ he said at last, ‘I’ve known her to be taking a walk in the garden, just as he happens to drive up; and then they stay talking ever so long before they go into the house. Once, he even made her take him round the conservatory. That must never happen again.’
‘Never,’ agreed Peter. ‘I’ll see to that.’
‘Look here,’ said Christopher, doubtfully; ‘perhaps Jill won’t like our hanging round her like that.’
‘She may not like it at the time,’ began Wilfred, impressively.
‘But she’ll thank us for it all her life afterwards,’ concluded Peter, with great solemnity.
Jill’s voice at the door made them start like guilty conspirators. She was much too preoccupied to notice their confusion, however.
‘Has Kit come back?’ she asked anxiously. Christopher sprang out of the arm-chair, and her face cleared. ‘I’m so glad; I was afraid you were lost,’ she said, taking his hand gently. ‘Babs has just woke up,’ she explained, as they went upstairs together, ‘and she is still rather upset about something. I think you can calm her, if you will.’
Kit muttered something indistinctly, and she went on talking in her soft voice. ‘The child has got into her head that you have done something to the Doctor, so I want you to assure her that it is all right. Will you, Kit dear?’
‘I’m the biggest brute,’ burst out the boy, ‘that ever––’
‘Nonsense!’ said Jill, putting her hand over his mouth. Then she opened the door of Barbara’s room and they went in.
Auntie Anna was sitting by the child, trying to soothe her.
‘Bless your little heart!’ she was saying as they entered. ‘There’s nothing the matter with the Doctor, my dear. What makes you think such a thing, eh?’
‘You don’t understand,’ said the little fretful voice from the bed. ‘Kit said–Kit said––’
Christopher pushed Jill on one side, and suddenly knew what he had got to do.
‘That’s all right, Babe; I was only rotting,’ he said bluntly, and patted the hot little hand that lay on the counterpane.
The bright, wistful eyes were fixed searchingly on his face. ‘But you’ve sent him wandering seven times round the world,’ she murmured wearily. ‘You said you had, Kit.’
‘It’s all right, Babe,’ said Kit, again. ‘He’s come back now. I’ve just seen him.’
He only partly understood what she was talking about, but he seemed to know how to satisfy her, and the others drew back and left him to do it alone.
‘You’ve seen him?’ asked Babs, wonderingly. ‘But––’
‘You see,’ said Kit, desperately, ‘it doesn’t take long to get round the world seven times, when–when you’ve got a smart little cob like his!’
The worried look faded out of the child’s face, and she smiled for the first time. ‘That isn’t the reason, Kit,’ she told him. ‘It is because he was once a fairy prince.’
‘Oh, is it?’ remarked Kit.
The bright little eyes were closing sleepily, and the aching bandaged head fell sideways on the pillow.
‘He has only got to kill the giant and rescue the princess now,’ she whispered contentedly. And Kit went on stroking her hand till she was sound asleep.
Barbara was none the worse for her relapse, and she made such a good recovery in the weeks that followed, that the Doctor decided she could be moved to Crofts on the last day of the holidays. Miss Finlayson vowed she had never enjoyed her Easter holidays so much before for she had persuaded Auntie Anna and the boys to remain her guests the whole time, to save her, as she said, from the horrible feeling of loneliness that always seized her as soon as the last fly went down the drive with the last box on the top of it, and the last girl sitting inside. ‘At my age,’ she told them laughingly, ‘it is not safe to be left alone. Who knows that I might not begin talking about rheumatism and nerves, if I had a whole month to think about myself?’ And Auntie Anna, who never talked about rheumatism by any chance, though it had bent her back for her ten years ago, nodded her head wisely like the old witch that she was, and consented to remain at Wootton Beeches with her adopted daughter and her noisy young nephews until Barbara was well enough to be taken home. The boys, for their part, enjoyed themselves every bit as well as if they had been at Crofts; for Finny was first-rate company as long as she was with them, and she contrived at the same time to leave them to themselves just as much as they wished to be left. And staying at a girls’ school was by no means such poor fun as might have been expected; for it was big enough for them to make as much noise in it as they pleased without disturbing anybody, while they had the run of a capital gymnasium, and, as soon as their bicycles had been brought from Crofts, could explore the country for miles round as well. Altogether, the Easter holidays were a great success, and there were many groans when the month came to an end, and school once more threatened to darken the joy of their existence.
‘You are a lucky beast, Kit,’ observed Peter, as they sat swinging on the yard gate a couple of mornings before their departure. ‘Wish I was you and needn’t go to school.’
‘You wouldn’t like it, if you were me,’ answered Kit, shortly. Nobody ever guessed how much he wished he were like other boys and could lead the healthy life they professed to despise so much.
Wilfred, who had just strolled up, had occasional glimmerings of understanding where Kit was concerned; and he had one now. ‘Never mind, old chap,’ he said consolingly. ‘You’ve got all the genius, you know.’
Christopher kicked a stone across the yard without speaking; and Peter hastened to change the conversation, which he perceived was in danger of becoming serious. Peter never attempted to understand anybody, but he had a determined objection to anything that was serious.
‘If we’ve done nothing else these holidays, we have at least saved Jill from the Doctor,’ he remarked with a chuckle.
‘What’s the good of that?’ growled Kit. He did not take the keen interest in the salvation of Jill that the others expected from him, though he certainly did not raise any grown-up objections to it, as Egbert would have done. Egbert was going to Oxford in October, and he was getting far too grown-up for ordinary intercourse with the rest of the family. Kit was not in the least grown-up; besides, he hated the Doctor–that was certain, because he so constantly said he did. But it was a pity, the others agreed, that he did not show more enthusiasm over persecuting him.
‘It’s a lot of good,’ retorted Peter. ‘You don’t want her to marry the chap, do you?’
Kit smiled in a superior manner. ‘I’m not interested in marrying,’ he observed. ‘You can’t have marrying, or any of that rot, without girls. And I hate girls.’
‘Do you hate Jill?’ cried Wilfred, staring.
Christopher kicked another stone across the yard.
‘That’s different,’ he said vaguely. ‘Jill’s not a girl, exactly.’
‘What is she, anyway?’ demanded Peter.
Kit’s genius was hard pressed. It was so stupid of people to take him literally. Robin saved his embarrassment by suddenly rushing helter-skelter into the yard, from the direction of the carriage-drive.
‘He’s just driven in at the lodge gates,’ he panted. ‘An’ Jill’s waiting on the front doorstep. If you don’t look sharp you won’t cob them in time.’
The conspirators glanced hastily at one another. ‘It’s your turn, Kit,’ said Wilfred.
Kit started uncomfortably. ‘I don’t think so,’ he objected. ‘I’m not in the mood, and I should make a mess of it. You go, Peter.’
‘All right, I’m on,’ said Peter, and he strode briskly towards the front of the house, swinging his long arms as he went.
Robin danced round the other two gleefully. ‘Silly old Doctor won’t marry Jill, won’t marry Jill, all on a summer’s morning!’ he chanted in a kind of refrain he made up on the spur of the moment.
Kit turned upon him sternly. ‘Chuck it, Bobbin, unless you want your head cuffed!’ he commanded, and walked off before he could be provoked into carrying out his threat.
Upstairs Barbara lay on the sofa by the window and waited for the Doctor’s visit. Her leg was in plaster of Paris now, and she could be lifted on to the sofa by Egbert, every morning. It was less wearisome than lying in bed all day, but even the fun of pretending she was enchanted by an evil fairy did not make up for the dulness of staying in one room all through her first holidays. To be sure, she was going to Crofts the day after to-morrow, and Auntie Anna had promised that Jean and Angela should come and see her the very next Saturday; but that did not make up for everything, and she hoped that if her bad fairy ever bewitched her again, she would manage to do it in term-time instead of when the boys came home.
The Doctor drove up just below as she came to this conclusion, and she forgot her own enchantment in the more thrilling amusement of thinking about his.
It was rather stupid of the Doctor, she reflected, to be such a long time working out the rest of his spell. Any one who had gone round the world seven times, as easily and as cheerfully as he had, might at least take the trouble to find a princess to rescue. He must really want to go on being a beast, she decided, as she craned her neck over the window-sill and watched him dismount from his gig. The princes in the fairy tales never wanted to go on being beasts; and it was very confusing. Just then, Jill came out on the doorstep, and she patted the horse and began to talk to the Doctor. Barbara laughed softly to herself. If only the cruel giant would come along now and clap Jill into a dungeon, the Doctor could rescue her on the spot and then stand before her in his real shape. A prince and princess, who had no giant to bring them together, did not make the right sort of fairy tale at all.
‘Hullo! There is the giant!’ exclaimed Babs, immediately afterwards, as Peter came striding across the lawn to interrupt the conversation on the doorstep. ‘He must be the giant,’ she continued, watching the trio below her with great interest, ‘because the Doctor is looking so angry and Jill has such a funny, frightened look on her face. Besides, Peter looks like a giant; he’s so big and dangerous looking. I wonder if the Doctor will kill the giant now, or–oh, dear! they’ve both come indoors and left the giant outside. I don’t think I ever heard of the prince and princess running away from the giant before. I’m sure that’s wrong. How Peter is grinning–just like a horrid old giant. Coo-ey, Peter!’
The prince and princess came into the room, talking busily.
‘If you don’t come to-morrow,’ Dr. Hurst was saying, ‘I am afraid it will have to be put off indefinitely, as I am going away for ten days. When I come back, you will have gone to Crofts, you see.’
‘I will ask Auntie Anna,’ answered Jill.
Barbara seized the first opportunity to interrupt them. ‘What’s going to happen to-morrow, Dr. Hurst?’ she demanded. ‘Are you going to carry off the princess at last?’
‘I–I don’t think so,’ said Dr. Hurst, sitting down beside her.
‘Why don’t you?’ demanded the child.
‘Well,’ said Dr. Hurst, smiling, ‘I don’t know whether the princess is ready to be carried off. Are you so anxious to get rid of her?’
Both he and Jill were used by this time to her fancy for weaving the people she liked best into a fairy tale. But Jill was not smiling so much as usual this morning.
‘I don’t want to be carried off by anybody, thank you, Babs,’ she said demurely.
‘Oh, that doesn’t make any difference,’ Babs assured her. ‘If you’re a princess, you just have to be carried off whether you like it or not.’
‘Then I’ll be a new kind of princess, and refuse to have anything to do with the prince when he comes. Shall I, Babs?’ suggested Jill, lightly.
Barbara looked at her doubtfully. Jill’s idea was not like anything she had ever read in a fairy tale, and she did not think much of it.
‘You see, you’re not a new kind of princess,’ she answered simply. And the Doctor looked amused; but Jill hurried away to the other end of the room and began talking about temperatures.
The giant must have been very busy all that day, for he did not come near the invalid’s room till just before supper. Kit came, and so did the other boys, but they only said vaguely that Peter was in the barn; and when he ran in at last to say good-night to her, she knew it was no use trying to find out what his plans were for locking up the princess. For Peter did not know that he was a giant, and he did not know that Jill was a princess; and it was better to go on with the story in her own way than to provoke Peter’s great laugh by telling him about it. So she went to sleep and dreamed of the dear old magician, who had been away from her kingdom for four whole months, and was going to be away for two months more; and in her dream he came back and rescued the princess himself, and turned the beast into a prince for her. But that was only a dream, and in the morning the end of the story seemed further off than ever.
‘Do let me see what you have been writing, Peter,’ she shouted through her open window, just before lunch-time. Peter and Wilfred had been more than an hour composing a letter on the lawn below, with Robin jumping round them all the time, jogging their elbows and otherwise provoking them into outbreaks of fury that did not improve his behaviour in the least.
‘Do, there’s a dear, nice, darling boy,’ begged Barbara, as the conspirators looked at one another and hesitated.
‘It’s a secret,’ said Wilfred.
‘I can keep a secret; you know I can,’ cried Babs, indignantly.
‘It’s about Jill,’ explained Peter, ‘and you might do her a great and lasting injury if you were to go and blab. Mightn’t she, Will?’
‘I think it’s a shame,’ protested Babs. ‘Here am I shut up all alone, with a bad leg that hurts and hurts and––’
‘Oh, let her see it. Anything for a quiet life,’ interrupted Wilfred, and Peter strode upstairs with the letter.
‘Promise faithfully you’ll endure any amount of awful tortures, sooner than betray us?’ he demanded threateningly, when he arrived in her room.
‘I’ll be killed first, honour bright,’ said Barbara, solemnly; and the letter passed into her hands. Her countenance grew very perplexed as she read it; for, to tell the truth, she could make neither head nor tail of its mysterious contents.
‘Dearest Jill,’ it ran,–‘We the undersigned are anxious to save you from an awful and terrible fate that is hanging over your head. The barn, we know, is not a place you would choose to spend a happy afternoon in, but Peter has cleaned out as much of the filth as he can (he found several decayed martins’ nests full of insects, two dead rats in an unspeakable condition, and a rotting owlet that made you squirm; so you see it might have been much worse, mightn’t it?) And I (that’s Wilfred) have successfully deposited in a box you will find secreted in the manger, two apples, some seed-cake (sorry it isn’t plum, but there wasn’t any), and a bottle of ginger beer. This, we think, will keep starvation from gnawing at you till the hour of release, which is seven o’clock, when we hope the Doctor will have given up waiting for you. We would put some more things to eat, but they are a little difficult to get without arousing suspicion; and we are afraid of attracting the mice and rats, which are plentiful already, and of which we believe you are afraid. We the undersigned all hope, dear Jill, that you will not attribute base motives to our action in this matter. We do assure you, honest Injun, that though you may dislike us for the moment, you will thank us deeply all the rest of your life.–We have the honour to remain,