HEAD OF
THE LOWER SCHOOL

"But Joe isn't Jennie," objected Bingo, as Gavin chanted the last line of this lyric in a cheerful jigging sing-song, and a voice that would have done credit to a cathedral choir.

"And Mums wanted me to get shoe-laces," Joey added. "You see, these haven't any tags, and the ends are all frayed out."

"What's wrong with stiffening up the ends with Bingo's play-wax?" demanded Gavin the resourceful. "I never thought that you'd come to spending the one penny going on silly shoe-laces, when we have to go to Luckie Jean's odd-and-end shop, and might have bought bull's-eyes, or at least pear-drops."

Joey cast a glance down at the very dilapidated laces securing her shabby shoes. Her indifference to her own personal appearance was supreme, but Mums had seemed worried about those shoe-laces, and it was a point of honour in the Graham family to protect Mums from all possible worries. All the same she agreed with Gavin: it was a waste to be going all the way to Crumach and Luckie Jean's odd-and-end shop without so much as a penny to spend among the five of them—Gavin, Ronnie, Kirsty, Bingo, and herself. She considered the question.

"But Joey isn't Jennie!" objected Bingo once more with determination. Bingo never left a question till he got an answer; even when Gavin smacked his head for bothering, which happened now and then. Father—the big, cheery father to whom the five had said their last good-bye one chilly morning close on two years ago at Crumach Station—had called Bingo "the little bull-pup," because you couldn't make him let go.

Gavin knew that, and answered the objection. "Why, you little ass, Joey won't rhyme with anything, that's all, and Jocelyn's even worse. And of course anyone can see who's meant, because Joey's the only one of us who has so much as a brass farthing to bless herself with."

"And she's going to spend all her farthings on boot-laces," observed Bingo sorrowfully, and the corners of his mouth went down. Bingo was only six; that was his excuse—and he was the only member of the Graham family who had been known to cry for years. They hadn't got a tear out of Gavin when he fell off a hayrick and dislocated his shoulder, and it was put back by the local bone-setter—a process which is far from pleasant when unaccompanied by chloroform. Joey hastened to avert the tragedy which might have disgraced the name of Graham if Bingo were left in suspense too long.

"If you're sure that play-wax will fix up my lace-ends so that Mums won't worry, we'll use the penny on anything you like," she said.

Her words produced quite a sensation. Gavin patted her violently on the back; Kirsty jumped three times into the air like a young chamois, with a great display of long, thin, scratched legs—no one in those parts ever saw anything like the way those Graham children grew!—and Bingo hugged her ecstatically before burrowing in the pocket of his tiny knickers for a small and grubby piece of yellow play-wax.

They all sat down on the high heathery moor to mend the laces there and then. "Lots of time," Gavin pronounced, consulting the gold hunting-watch which Father had said his eldest boy was to have if he never came back. "The postman never gets to Crumach till four, and it's not three."

"But there may be soldiers come by the south train," suggested Bingo. "We'll want some time to see them."

"Heaps of time," declared Gavin, pinching bits off the lump of play-wax. "Only three miles from here to Crumach, and we can see the soldiers after we've done Mums' shopping and got the post, if we don't before."

Joey looked up from her refractory laces, shaking her thick fair hair out of her eyes.

"But the letter might have come by the post, Gav. If it has, Mums will want to know at once, won't she?"

"'Course. I'd forgotten that letter might have come," Gavin answered more soberly. "There, leave that lace to dry hard, old girl, and you'll have a topping tag. Did the minister expect it so soon?"

"He said he just thought it might come."

"Will it come if you've failed to get the scholarship?" Kirsty asked.

Joey considered. "I don't know, but I shouldn't think they would write to everybody to tell them that they'd failed. Mr. Craigie said there were seven hundred and eighty-two candidates. Just think of all the stamps!"

The family did think, with a gasp. When they thought at all about money, it was as a thing which must be kept for boots and bread and margarine—never as a thing that you could squander recklessly on luxuries like stamps.

"No, I shouldn't think there would be a letter if you've failed," Ronnie agreed sadly. He had a right to be serious, for he was, after Joey, the person most immediately concerned with the all-important letter, which it was remotely possible that the postman might bring to Crumach to-day.

The five had always known that Father thought boys and girls should share alike where education was concerned. Joey was to have her chance at a big public school as well as Gavin and Ronnie, and Kirsty was to follow when she was old enough, as surely as little Bingo. But before Gavin had been two years at the preparatory, from which he was out to win an Eton or Winchester scholarship, the news came to the pretty house in Hertfordshire—a house which always seemed to strangers so bewilderingly full of children, dogs and cats—that Major Graham had fallen wounded into the hands of the Huns, during our last retreat in the anxious spring of 1918, and had succumbed to the brutalities of a prison camp in the land of Kultur. His private means had been sunk in an Austrian oil-mine, and were gone beyond recall; he had insured his life, and Mums was left to bring up five healthy, hungry children on the insurance money and her pension—somehow.

Father owned a little square-built stone cottage in a tiny Highland village, four miles north of Crumach. Living was comparatively cheap at Calgarloch, and they had spent the last glorious leave there all together. Mums and the family moved north, and in the rent-free cottage held a council of war to review their resources. Joey could see that picture now; Mums, very slight and fragile-looking in her widow's weeds, and the family sprawling about her, all long of leg and outgrown as to clothes, but fiercely in readiness to fight any notion on Mums' part that she might have managed for them better.

It was then Mums had explained that however economically the family lived in Calgarloch it was only possible that one child could be kept at school at a time. If—Mums stopped herself and substituted "when"—Gavin won his scholarship, Joey could go to school. Ronnie would have to wait until she left; Ronnie was nearly three years younger, so waiting would be possible. Until Gavin fought his way out into a public school the rest of the family must be content with the village school.

"I'll get that scholarship, Mums," Gavin had promised, growing hot and red; and he had kept his word. The name of Gavin Graham had headed the list of Winchester scholars at the end of last term; and Joey's chance had come.

By that time the four younger Grahams had grown used to going daily to the little village school, where the pupils at most numbered fifteen, and the master taught "the Latin" with a strong Doric accent and an absolute enthusiastic love of all learning, which could not help communicating itself to the boys and girls in his care. He taught the secular subjects untiringly, and the minister, Mr. Craigie, poured the "Shorter Catechism," and much else, into the children twice a week so sternly, that it was at first quite a surprise to the Grahams to find him the best of comrades and friends out of school.

It was during a thrilling expedition to the loch for fishing—Shorter Catechism not so much as mentioned—that Joey confided in him to the extent of asking if thirteen and tall for one's age might stand a chance as a pupil teacher at "a proper girls' school." "For if I didn't cost anything, Ronnie could go, and he's over ten now, and would be fearfully old by the time I'm seventeen," she explained. "I suppose I could teach the small kids like Kirsty, and I could always punch their heads if they ragged in class."

Joey never could think why Mr. Craigie should laugh so helplessly at this suggestion; but he was very kind all the same, and said that he would see what he could do. What he did was to talk things over with the schoolmaster, and then to write a letter to: