THE FORBIDDEN ROOM,
OR
“MINE ANSWER WAS MY DEED.”

NEVER within the memory of middle-aged Libbie, the dairymaid, had there been such a bustle of preparation within the walls of Gaybrook Farm, as on a certain June day, not many summers back.

From early dawn—which means somewhere between three and four o’clock—old Mrs. Busson, the farmer’s wife, had been awake and astir.

From the lumber-room in the attics, to the parlour, with its high-arched fire-place, filled in to-day with boughs of green and big bowls of June roses, and from the cheese-room, under the roof, to the brew-house in the yard below, every nook and corner in the roomy old farm had been visited, on some pretence or another, by the time that noon and the dinner-hour arrived simultaneously.

“And yet,” declared Polly, the rosy-cheeked “odd-girl,” “though the Missus hasn’t been off her feet for all these hours, she’s as fresh as a sky-lark.”

“And what’s it all about?” asked Simon, slowly; “I forgets again.”

Polly sighed. Already three times that morning she had given the explanation to the old man, and the importance of being his informant was wearing off.

“What’s it all about?” repeated Simon.

“Don’t you mind, Simon; I told you that the Missus’ ladies, them she was nurse two years ago, are coming down with their children to stay some while at the farm. There! if they were all live princes and princesses the mistress couldn’t fuss more about them. My word! Simon; the cakes, and the pies, and the jams, and the junkets are something to see.”

“Is it boys or gals that is coming?” asked Simon, with a note of alarm in his voice. “Be they young, or the middlin’ mischieevious age?”

“Oh! that I can’t tell yer; they be all sorts, I think.”

“Mussey me! boys an’ girls an’ all sorts,” cried the old shepherd; and, as if to make preparation at once against the approaching foe, he whistled to his equally ancient dog, who was making an exhaustive examination of a bare veal knucklebone, and tottered towards the meadows.

But Simon’s heart was not the only one which, amongst all the pleasant stir of preparation at the farm, was filled with alarm at the thought of the impending visitors.

One Gaston Delzant, a small, black-haired, black-eyed French boy, aged seven, was literally trembling within his patent leather shoes at the prospect of the coming guests.

“Don’t talk that sort of unfeeling way, Busson, before the child,” his wife had admonished him, “for, don’t you make any mistake, though he’s slow to speak, he understands sharp enough all that he hears.”

Indeed, so far as poor Gaston’s peace of mind was concerned, this was only too true.

He understood so perfectly all that the maids said, as they interchanged their fears that the young gentlemen from school would teaze him out of his senses, that on the day of their arrival, Gaston was wildly planning some means of escape from the farm.

But perhaps the general fragrance of cakes and pies which filled the house and imparted a flavour of festivity to the atmosphere exercised a reassuring influence on Gaston, for after all he abandoned his intention of taking refuge in a remote barn, the paradise of owls and bats, and remained instead to face the enemy.

And here it was approaching in very earnest.

The clock was still striking four, and Mrs. Busson was giving her last look to the tea-table, when the sound of wheels became audible, and presently, through a cloud of dust from the high road, emerged the two Noah’s-ark like vehicles, popularly known as the “station conveyances.”

“Boys and gals, and all sorts, I should say it war,” muttered Simon, looking from behind a quick hedge, whilst with one delighted cry of “Bless their dear hearts, there they are to be sure,” the mistress of Gaybrook Farm flung wide her doors and flew to greet her guests.

Yet, although Mrs. Busson’s appearance was hailed by a round of vociferous cheering from the new arrivals, her bright face clouded suddenly as she glanced from one carriage-load to the other.

“Why!” she gasped; “wherever is Miss Agatha—Mrs. Durand, I should say?”

“Left behind, left behind,” came in a chorus of voices. “We’ve all got to take care of ourselves, Mrs. Busson, and we’re all going to be the most awfully good lot that ever were.”

By this time the two flies had been drawn up behind each other, and such was the general bustle and tumult of the alighting that when the last of the “awfully good lot” had actually descended from the carriage, Mrs. Busson found herself holding her head with both hands, in order to make sure that it was still in its place.

As for Gaston, he had made a clean bolt of it, and now from behind the case of a tall Dutch clock, which stood at the foot of the stairs, peeped furtively at the invading host.

THE contents of the first fly did not seem so alarming, at least not as to numbers, for it only contained three occupants, human occupants that is.

On the front seat was a rather demure-looking girl of fourteen, whose general air of youthful anxiety suggested that she was more or less in charge of the party. Beside her was a dark-haired boy about a year younger.

“ ‘Fat, flabby and fractious,’ that’s what you ought to be labelled,” one of his boy cousins had declared at starting, and, though it was an ungracious remark, and not likely to improve Andrew Durand’s temper, yet even in the excitement of arrival, he still did not look, well—quite the reverse of his cousin’s description.

Not only had he taken the lion’s share of the front seat of the fly, but he had almost monopolised the back one too; first, with his feet, which he had comfortably disposed in a line with his indolent overgrown person, and secondly, with his innumerable possessions.

Amongst these was a canary in a cage, a guinea-pig in a box, a huge butterfly net—its extra long handle making it an undesirable addition to luggage—sundry tin cases, with unpleasantly sharp corners, a geological hammer and various tools of a kindred nature, a violin, along with divers other items, which contributed to form the pile of non-squeezable luggage, beside which poor little Marion, the third passenger, had to accommodate herself as best she might.

Marion, commonly known as Marygold, perched herself very contentedly on the edge of the seat, and, always ready to make the best of a situation, announced cheerily:

“I ’spect I’ll manage somehow, for all my hair can sit on the air,” and certainly the cloud of golden hair that surrounded the sweet-tempered little face did seem the most important part of her very small person.

Fly No. 2 was more closely packed. It contained Jack and Phil Kenyon, schoolboy brothers of eleven and ten; their cousin, Diana Durand, who was ten years old yesterday; Tryphoena Kenyon, always called Phoena, who was just a year younger than Di; and last of all, six-year old Hubert, the youngest of the Kenyons.

He was so small that, when the cheering began he jumped up on the seat, for he felt that otherwise he might be overlooked, and he flung his hat so frantically into the air that the latter fell into the road and he himself toppled into Di’s arms.

“Here, hurry up, Miss Annie,” cried Phil, coming to the door of the first fly; “don’t you see that your old go-cart’s stopping the way? I say, can’t you give a hand to Faith and help her with all that pile of rubbish? You don’t mean to tell me that she’s been nursing that bowl of gold-fish all the way from the station?”

“Oh! it’s all right,” began Faith; but Phil went on:

“I think, Mrs. Busson,” said Faith, her soft voice sounding like a dove’s note amongst the chattering of many starlings, “if you will show me Andrew’s room I’ll put away some of his things, and get him to rights first of all.”

“Oh! yes,” jeered Jack, “take the precious baby to his nursery, and let him have all his toys. Shall we come and help you, Fay?”

But Faith gave him an imploring look, such as might soften the heart even of a schoolboy on teazing bent, and, following Mrs. Busson, she disappeared into the house.

The others were content to remain in the old-fashioned roomy porch. Here they made friends with Dragon, the watch-dog, and Thief, a very talkative magpie, who, in his big wicker cage, embowered in purple flowering clematis, made a perfect picture.

“And now, please,” said Mrs. Busson, reappearing presently, “I’ll have to be told who’s who, not but what I can see that you two”—looking at Jack and Phil—“belong to each other, and that you’re Miss Julia’s boys—Mrs. Kenyon, as I ought to say.”

“Right you are,” cried Phil, whilst Diana of the ready tongue added:

“And Phoena and Hubert are Aunt Julia’s children too.”

“Ah! to be sure, I can see you have your mamma’s eyes,” said Mrs. Busson, taking Phoena’s pale face between her hands and looking into the child’s grey thoughtful eyes. “And so your papa and mamma are still in India, are they? And you go to school, do you, as well as your brothers?”

“Oh! no,” said Di; “only Jack and Phil go to school. They’d be there now if scarlet fever hadn’t broken out.”

“Yes,” said Hubert, “it was jolly fine fun for them.”

Whether their natural protectors considered the arrangement “jolly fine fun” too, our readers may perhaps gather from the letter which that week’s Indian mail carried to Mrs. Kenyon, touching the matter:

“My dear Julia, how true it is that troubles never come singly. The outbreak of fever at your boys’ school was tiresome enough, as it forced us to begin the holidays for the children at home sooner than was intended, and upset all our arrangements for the summer; however, we resigned ourselves very happily to the inevitable, and I had made arrangements with dear old Pattie for receiving us all at the farm, and we were actually starting thither this morning, when a wire from Edinburgh arrived at breakfast, summoning me to my mother-in-law. She is very ill, and old Mr. Durand begs me to come at once, so I am obliged to let the children go down to Gaybrook without me.

“Always your affectionate sister,
“Agatha Durand.

WHETHER the new-comers would contribute to the harmony of his life, was troubling Gaston’s mind, when he emerged from his hiding-place behind the clock, and made a cautious survey of the intruders.

“They don’t look very cruel,” he thought, peeping through the crack of the parlour door and eyeing them anxiously as they sat round the tea-table, “still I’m glad that I shall have my tea by myself.”

It certainly was a very happy party that was gathered at Mrs. Busson’s well-spread board, at which the hostess was presiding, helped by the very efficient “nursery-maid-in-disguise.”

Mrs. Busson was quite in her element, flitting round the table, and encouraging her guests to try one dish after the other. But it was hard work to satisfy their curiosity on a hundred points, as well as their healthy appetites.

Such a shower of miscellaneous questions assailed her patient ears:

“Has the grass been cut yet?”

“Dear! yes, the mowing machines have been at work all this day in the long meadow, and there will be plenty of new-mown grass to make hay of to-morrow.”

“And who’s asking about butterflies? Oh! yes, there’s plenty of them.”

“Ah! but are there any Hipparchia Janira out yet?” asked Andrew.

“That’s all you know,” began Andrew, indignantly, “but I’ll tell—”

“There, there,” broke in Mrs. Busson’s soothing tones, “if you did say the name wrong, it’s no wonder, but there’s abundance of butterflies of all sorts to be had here, that I do know, so I wouldn’t worry my poor little head about the name of any particular one,” she added, in blissful unconsciousness of Andrew’s disgust at her misplaced consideration and of the other boys’ keen delight thereat.

Meanwhile, Diana, who liked to have a finger in every pie, was eagerly enquiring as to the day for cheese-making.

“Oh! that’ll be the day after to-morrow, and the next day there’ll be a grand jam-boiling. The girls are gathering the gooseberries already.”

“And what is it you want to know, my dear?”—this to Marygold.

“Will the bees be swarming soon?” enquired that small person.

“Well, that I can’t say for certain; we’ve had a fairish number already, but maybe there’ll be a swarm yet, and then you shall make bee-music, that you shall, to your heart’s content.”

“And—and—” asked Hubert, who between his struggles with a huge bit of cake and attempts to make himself heard was as scarlet as a field poppy, “is there a nice little pond, where I can catch fish with nice pinky wriggling worms?”

“I want to know, please, are there any glow-worms about here?” she asked.

“Bound to be some soon, if there are none yet,” was the reply, “I’ve seen many a one down on the bank in the water-meadow of a summer’s evening, when the twilight’s wearing through.”

“Oh!” burst from Phoena, her face all aglow, but Andrew cut her short.

“What do you know about glow-worms?” he asked, in a tone of unmitigated contempt, “what’s the Latin name for them?”

“She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t want to know,” cried Jack, “so you can keep your mouldy old Latin for yourself.”

“Or talk it to Dragon,” put in Di, whose tongue had unfortunately a rather sharp point, “for it’s only dog-latin, so Phil says.”

Without condescending to note this last insult, Andrew resumed his attack on Phoena.

“You had better leave glow-worms—in fact, all insects—alone,” he remarked, “until you’ve learnt something about them. When I’ve time, I can teach you a lot about them; in the meanwhile, you may carry my insect boxes for me when I go on my entomological expeditions.”

“There, if you young gentlemen want to hunt insecks,” broke in Mrs. Busson, who felt that the atmosphere was becoming rather storm-laden, “I do wish you’d hunt the garden slugs, they’re just ruinating all our green-stuff.”

“Oh! we’ll ruinate them,” cried the schoolboys, but Andrew added, “They are, of course, most destructive garden pests. Now I wonder if any of you know how many teeth a garden slug has.”

“Never had the pleasure of accompanying one to a dentist’s,” said Di. Whereupon there was a general laugh.

“Look here,” cried Jack, “if you talk of that disgusting brute again, I’ll—” but remembering his manners, he stopped short.

“Well,” persisted Andrew, “it has no less than twenty-eight thousand teeth.”

“What a lot of toof-ache it must have,” said Marygold, feelingly.

“But, Andrew,” questioned Phoena, seriously, “which garden slug is that? Is it the grey—”

“It’s the garden slug, I tell you,” said Andrew, impatiently, evidently not appreciating Phoena’s thirst for further knowledge.

“Yes, but there are several kinds,” said Phoena, growing eager now.

“There’s the—”

“Oh, Phoena, do look at your cup,” cried Faith, from the other end of the table, “you’ll upset your tea in another minute.”

But the warning came too late.

Carefulness at meals, or indeed at any other time, was unfortunately not dreamy Phoena’s strong point, and before Faith had finished speaking, the whole contents of her hitherto untasted cup had overflowed its borders and was trickling in a whitey brown streamlet down the table.

“There, there, my dear, never mind,” exclaimed kindly Mrs. Busson, “it’s the first cup of tea you’ve ever spilt in my house, and I do hope it won’t be the last, by a long way.”

THERE was something in its irregular rambling style of architecture that gave to Gaybrook Farm, as Di expressed it, a particularly “holiday-house” look.

Nobody quite knew how old it was, but the various additions to the original building, which had been evidently made at different intervals, suggested the handiwork of several generations, and seeing that, as Mrs. Busson was fond of saying, “Busson’s great grandfather had been born there, and that Busson himself was no chicken, the farm must have been standing, well over a hundred years at any rate.”

But though so strangely irregular, it was a very substantial pile of buildings.

The red, pan-tiled roof of the main portion seemed, as it were, to run up-hill, and from under this the first floor projected, supported by heavy black beams.

It was in this part of the house, in low ceilinged rooms, with little old casement windows, and long window panes, that Mrs. Busson had arranged to bestow her visitors.

For this end of the house, “the up-hill part,” as Hubert called it, comprised all the living rooms of the family. There was the large house place below, with the roomy parlours on either side, the best bedrooms above, and the attics another storey higher.

Beneath the lower roof of the building, which was thatched and much weather-worn, were all the various farmhouse offices.

Over the kitchen was a long, low room, filled with linen-presses, and fragrant with lavender and dried rose-leaves, for Mrs. Busson held fast to old traditions in these matters of household economy; whilst almost adjoining was a huge apple-room, and overhead the vast cheese-loft.

Between the linen room and the apple store was another chamber door (if that door had never been there, this story would never have been written). To judge, however, from the cobwebs which hung like a thick grey mist about its cracks and hinges, that door must have been long, very long unopened.

“Now mind, you girls,” Mrs. Busson had cautioned her hand-maidens, before the children’s arrival, “whatever happens, you never let the little gentlemen and ladies go trying to get in there.”

Unanimously, the girls promised obedience.

But that same evening, directly after tea, their mistress reiterated her commands.

“Whatever you do, don’t drop a hint to Master Andrew of what’s in that room,” she said, “for I’ll be bound he’d be up to some mischief, and so, I suspect, would Miss Phoena too, if they only guessed.”

“Very good, ma’am,” said the trusty Nell (she was cheese-room maid), “chances are, if we manage well, they’ll never so much as notice the door. Young things are mostly for getting out of doors.”

And at starting, it seemed as if Nell was likely to prove a true prophet.

“Like so many sunbeams at play,” Mrs. Busson declared.

Early dawn had found Jack and Phil out in the hay-field, tossing the new hay with more energy than skill, and it had needed all Fay’s gentle persuasions to induce Hubert to attend to the most necessary details of his hurried toilette, before rushing out to join his brothers. As for Di, whose swiftness of foot, combined with her ruddy locks, had long ago earned her the title of “Scarlet Runner,” she too was up with the sun, or very nearly, and had found her way to the little stream which ran through the Crow-bell meadow, and was wading in its shallow waters in search of water-cress.

Little Marygold, her whole person, saving her head, concealed in a holland overall, was standing knee-deep in a tangle of sweet-briar, honeysuckles, climbing roses, and a score of sweet, old-fashioned blossoms which grew together to the left of the flower-garden, in a patch of rank disorder, under cover of which the “posy-border” melted into the orchard beyond, without making a too rude transition.

Marygold was supremely happy, searching the foxglove bells and the dew-brimmed cups of the lilies, in the fond hope of discovering some of those belated fairies, who, she firmly believed, took their night’s rest in these flowery shelters.

“There must be some somewhere,” she cried, in her clear, piping voice.

“Oh, Phoena, do come and help me to look for them.”

But though Phoena was not forthcoming, she was not far off.

Accordingly, she reluctantly obeyed the summons of the loud breakfast bell, with the result, alas! that on her return, she discovered that the thankless snail, after the way of some vagrants, had decamped!

Out of the whole party, Andrew was the only “slug-a-bed,” and even he managed to be ready to go out by nine o’clock, having secured Faith’s attendance on himself as bearer of his butterfly net and sundry other things necessary to the success of his expedition.

“I say,” cried Phil, catching sight of the net, “can’t you leave those poor beggars in peace for to-day at least?”

“Yes,” chimed in Jack, “and I call it awful hard lines on Fay; I bet she doesn’t want to go swinking after you all this hot morning. As it is, she’s had to feed your old gold-fish already, and clean your precious canary. Why don’t you strike, Fay, and tell Miss Annie to look after his own toys?”

“Never mind, Di,” broke in Faith, knowing well how swiftly such gathering clouds might develop into storms, “we’re only going out for a little time, because I must come home and write to mother.”

“Oh! you good Faith,” came in a chorus of heartfelt applause.

THAT first morning at Gaybrook passed like a flash of lightning. There was so much to be seen and explored. From the poultry-yard, where its scores of feather inmates held a world of delight, to the water-meadows, which formed the limit of the farm boundaries, and were so designated because they were intersected by the little river Gay.

Here an old punt proved very attractive to the elder boys, when they tired of the hay-field. To the copse, adjoining the water-meadows, Di retired, partly to practise a little climbing in private—an exercise, which to her regret, she could not well pursue in the London Square garden—and also animated by the hope of surprising some big nest—a pheasant’s perhaps.

Phoena was lost to sight amongst tall rows of peas and French beans in the garden. “Probably preaching sermons to the bees,” Phil declared. Hubert and Marygold agreed to join forces. They started by conscientiously trying to secure a “personal interview” with everything in feathers in the farmyard, Hubert doing his utmost to work the scarlet-wattled turkey-cock into an ungovernable rage. That pleasure exhausted, this young pair next betook themselves to a vast apple-orchard.

This new ground promised scope for endless adventure; it suggested such a wide field for enterprise.

“You don’t think,” said Hubert, a little apprehensively, “that there are any wild beasts hidden about under the grass to spring out and eat us, you know?”

Marygold didn’t feel quite sure.

“Suppose we go and ask Mrs. Busson,” she suggested, standing still.

But Hubert dissented.

“No, don’t let’s,” he said, “because p’raps she’d be afraid for us then, and say we had better not come in, and that would be a pity.”

Marygold thought that on the whole Hubert’s advice was sound.

“Besides,” she added, with some vagueness of speech, “I expect we’d have time to run if any came. Lions roar ever so loud, and tigers’ eyes gleam ever so far off. Besides, you know in the book at home with a man riding a camel on the cover, it says there are no more wild beasts in England.”

Reinforced by these reflections, the small adventurers plunged boldly into the grassy sea, hand-in-hand for the first few steps, but very soon Marygold broke away with a cry of delight from Hubert. Her sharp eyes had discovered a glorious find, the first of many to follow.

It was a currant bush that she had espied, half-buried under the rank growth of grass, the clusters of fruit showing redly amongst the coarse green blades that went near to hiding it altogether.

The children’s glee knew no bounds.

For now, in addition to currant-bushes, red, white, and black, Hubert had lighted on some raspberry canes with ripening fruit too.

“Don’t you know,” went on Marygold, “that in the fairy-book it says, that the white, red, and yellow fruit were really pearls and rubies and topaz and—”

“I expect,” broke in Hubert, whose utterance was somewhat impeded by the handfuls of fruit, which he had been diligently cramming into his mouth, “I expect that it’s really a sort of buried-alive garden, for it is quite real fruit, Marygold, and raver sour.”

“I’ll tell you,” was the reply, “it must belong to the fairies, and Mrs. Busson can’t know anything about it.”

“ ’Spose we keep it all a secret,” said Hubert.

“Oh! but you always say that,” said Marygold, reproachfully, “and then you never do. No, let’s say that we’ve found a garden but we can’t say where.”

“Yes,” cried Hubert, “and let’s get a cabbage leaf and put some of the fruit in it, just to show them that it’s all true.”

The idea was a charming one, but it was not carried out. For on their way to the kitchen garden, Hubert pulled Marygold back.

“Look! look!” he gasped, pointing to the end of the big orchard, “there are some wild beasts.”

Following the direction of his frantically waving arm, Marygold descried the black backs of some dozen little pigs, bobbing up and down in the high grass and looking like a shoal of porpoises leaping in the sea.

“They’re only pigs, little pigs,” said Marygold; but fired by a spirit of adventure, Hubert dashed off in pursuit, declaring that “of course, they were big, wild boars.”

Marygold, who had followed on his heels, was quickly helping Hubert to rise, questioning him anxiously as to the extent of his injuries, when from the depths of a dry ditch, which skirted two sides of the orchard, an odd little figure suddenly appeared and slowly advanced to the scene of Hubert’s disaster.

There was a droll mixture of curiosity and anxiety on Gaston’s small sallow face as he approached this detachment of the dreaded invaders.

Libbie had given him his breakfast in the dairy that morning, when she found that he was too nervous to face the new-comers; and since then Gaston had betaken himself to the shelter of the big ditch in this remote orchard, making sure that there, at any rate, he would be left to his own company and that of the little pigs.

For the latter he entertained quite a warm affection.

But Hubert’s cry of distress had lured him out of his retreat, and having satisfied himself that he was bigger than either Marygold or her cousin, his fears for his own safety abated.

“Ah! where have you harm?” he asked, scanning Hubert carefully, who was still gasping heavily from the shock of his sudden downfall.

“Are you the little French boy?” asked Marygold, by way of answer.

“I am Anatole Jules Gaston Delzant,” was the reply, “And I am more big than you,” he added, as he drew himself up to his full height beside Hubert.

The latter, who was entirely diverted from his injuries by the sight of Gaston, was quite ready to make friends, all the more so when he learned that though the French boy was