"One of the best chaps I've ever met! A real good sort! I shan't forget what he said to me. I can tell you I've come to look at things in a different light lately. I'll do anything he suggests. I'd trust his advice sooner than that of anybody I know. I'll have a good talk with Bowden, and see if he agrees. By Jove! I shall be a surprise packet to him, shan't I?"

Mr. Bowden was not nearly so much astonished as Everard had anticipated. He took his ward's return quite as a matter of course, and, lawyer-like, at once turned to the business side of affairs. After running away and gaining his own living for so many months, it was neither possible nor desirable for Everard to go back to Harrow. He had broken the last link with his school days, and must face the problem of his future career. His grandfather had wished him to go on to Cambridge, and his guardian also considered it would be advisable for him to take a university degree. Meantime his studies were very much in arrears. He had never worked hard at school, and would need considerable application to his books before being ready to begin his terms at college. By the advice of Major Rogers, Mr. Bowden decided to engage a tutor to coach him at the Chase. The house would be perfectly quiet while the girls and the younger boys were away at school, and as Everard really seemed to take the matter seriously, he might be expected to make good progress.

In the matter of a tutor, Major Rogers was fortunately able to recommend just the right man. Mr. Stacey had been studying for orders at Cambridge when he was called up, and had joined the army. After serious wounds in France he had made a slow recovery, and though perfectly able to act as coach, he would be glad of a period of quiet in the country before returning to Cambridge. He was a brilliant scholar and a thoroughly good all-round fellow, who might be trusted to make the best possible companion for Everard in the circumstances. The whole business was fixed up at once, and he was to arrive within ten days.

"I'm sorry we shall just miss seeing him!" said Carmel to Everard, on the evening before the girls went back to Chilcombe Hall. "But I shall think of you studying away at your Maths. You're clever, aren't you, Everard? I don't know much about English universities, but isn't a Tripos what you work for at Cambridge? Suppose you came out Senior Wrangler! We should be proud of you!"

"No fear of that, I'm afraid, Carmel! I'm a long way behind and shall have to swat like anything to get myself up to even ordinary standard. Burn the midnight oil, and all that kind of weariness to the flesh!"

"But you'll do it!" (Carmel was looking at him critically.) "You've got the right shape of head. Daddy and one of his friends, Signor Penati, were fearfully keen on phrenology, and they used to make me notice the shape of people's heads, and of the Greek and Roman busts in the museums. It's wonderful how truly they tell character: the rules hardly ever fail."

"What do you make of my particular phiz, then, you young Sicilian witch?"

"Great ability if you only persevere; a noble mind and patriotism—your forehead is just like the bust of the Emperor Augustus. You'd scorn bribes, and speak out for the right. I prophesy that you'll some day get into Parliament, and do splendid work for your country!"

"Whew! I'm afraid I'll never reach your expectations. It's a big order you've laid down for me."

"You could do it, though, if you try. Oh, don't contradict me, for I know! I haven't studied heads with Signor Penati for nothing. First you're going to make a good master of the Chase, and then you'll help England."

"Not of the Chase, Carmel," said Everard gently. "We've argued that point out thoroughly, I think."

"No, no! Let me tell you once again that I don't want to be mistress here. I only came over to England to please Mother and Daddy. I'm going back to Sicily to live, as soon as I can choose for myself. Directly I'm twenty-one I shall hand over the Chase to you. You're a far more suitable owner for it than I am. I feel that strongly. It ought never to have been left to me. But I'll put all that right again. Why can't you take it?" she continued eagerly, as Everard shook his head. "Surely I can give it to you if I like? Why not?"

"Why not? You're too young yet to understand. How could I be such an utter slacker and sneak as to accept your inheritance? It's unthinkable. Put that idea out of your little head, for it can never happen. As for the rest of your prophecy, it's a long climb to get into Parliament. I'm nothing like the man you think me, Carmel, though I'm going to make a spurt now, at any rate. Don't expect to find me a Senior Wrangler by Christmas though. Mr. Stacey will probably tell you I'm an utter dunderhead."

"I shall quarrel with him if he does!" said Carmel decidedly.

The three girls went back to school on the following day, half regretful to leave the Chase, but rather excited at the prospect of meeting their companions. Now that Carmel had got over her first stage of homesickness, she liked Chilcombe and had made many friends there. She intended to enjoy the autumn term to the best of her ability. She had brought the materials for pursuing several pet hobbies, and she settled all her numerous possessions into her small bedroom with much satisfaction. She kept the door into the Blue Grotto open, so that she might talk during the process. Gowan, also busy unpacking, kept firing off pieces of information, Bertha flitted in and out like a butterfly, and girls from other dormitories paid occasional visits.

Phillida, who was a prime favorite, presently came in, and installing herself on the end of Dulcie's bed, so that she could address the occupants of both bedrooms, began to draw plans.

"I've got an idea!" she announced. "It's a jolly good one, too, so you needn't smile. It's a good thing somebody does have ideas in this place, or you'd all go to sleep! Well, it's this. I really can't stand the swank of those girls in the Gold bedroom. They seem to imagine the school belongs to them. They're not very much older than we are, indeed Nona is actually six weeks younger than Lilias, and yet they give themselves the airs of all creation. Just now Laurette said to me: 'Get out of my way, child!' Child, indeed! I'm fifteen, and tall for my age! I vote that we start a secret society, just among our own set, to resist them."

"Jolly!" agreed Dulcie. "A little wholesome taking down is just what they need. Laurette's the limit sometimes. Whom shall we ask to join?"

"Well, all of you here, and myself, and Noreen, and Prissie, and Edith. That would make nine."

"Quite enough too," said Gowan. "A secret society's much greater fun if it's small. Things are apt to leak out when you have too many members. I take it we want to play an occasional rag on the Gold bedroom? Very well, the fewer in it the better."

"What shall we call our society?" asked Dulcie.

"'The Anti-Swelled Headers' would about suit," suggested Lilias.

"No, no! That sounds as if we were afraid of getting swelled head ourselves—at least anybody might take it that way."

"There's a big secret society in Sicily called 'The Mafia,'" vouchsafed Carmel.

"Then let us call ours 'The Chilcombe Mafia.' No one will understand what we mean, even if they get hold of the name. Indeed I shouldn't mind casually mentioning it now and then, just to puzzle them. When things get bad, 'The Mafia' will take them up."

"Strike secretly and suddenly!" agreed Dulcie with a chuckle.

"Let's sign our names at once!" declared Phillida enthusiastically.

At Carmel's suggestion, however, they made rather more of a ceremony of the initiation of their new order. The prospective members retired into the wood above the garden, and in strict privacy took an oath of secrecy and service. Then, with Edith's fountain pen filled for the occasion with red ink, they inscribed their autographs on a piece of paper, rolled it up, placed it in a bottle, then solemnly dug a hole, and buried the said bottle under a tree.

"It will be here for a testimony against any girl who breaks her oath!" declared Phillida. "Carmel says the real Mafia sign their names in blood, but I think that's horrid, and red ink will do quite as well. Just as I was coming out now, Laurette said to me; 'Oh, don't go running away, because I want one of you younger ones to do something for me presently.' She said it with the air of a duchess!"

"Cheek!" agreed the others. "It's high time we made up a society against her!"

Many and various were the offences that were laid to Laurette's score. Lilias had a private grievance, because she fancied that Laurette had never been so civil to herself and Dulcie since it was known that their brother was not to inherit the Chase. Gowan, who liked plain speaking, accused Laurette of telling "fiblets"; Bertha had had a squabble over the bathroom, and Prissie a wrestle for the piano.

"Laurette always reminds me of that rhyme that the undergrads made up about the Master of Balliol," said Edith.

"'Here come I, my name is Jowett, All there is to know, I know it; I'm the head of this here College, What I don't know isn't knowledge!'

That's Laurette's attitude exactly. She's so superior to everybody!"

"We'll take her down, don't worry yourself!" smiled Dulcie. "We must just wait for a good opportunity, and then——"

"The secret hand will smite!" laughed Carmel, who enjoyed the fun as much as anybody.

Laurette's aggravatingly superior pose was especially apparent in her attitude towards the mistresses. She monopolized Miss Herbert, treated her almost like a friend, wrote notes to her, left flowers in her bedroom, and walked arm-in-arm with her in the garden. Perhaps the mistress was lonely, possibly she was flattered by receiving so much attention, at any rate she allowed Laurette to be on terms of great intimacy, and gave her a far larger share of her confidence than was at all wise. Laurette, after a hot affection lasting three weeks, got tired of Miss Herbert, and suddenly cooled off. Gowan and Carmel, going into the sitting-room one day, found her discussing her former idol with a group of her chums.

"Do you call her pretty? Well, now, I don't!" she was saying emphatically. "She may have been pretty once, but now she's getting decidedly passee. I can't say I admire faded sentimental people!"

"Sentimental?" said Truie. "I shouldn't call her sentimental at all. She's only too horribly practical, in my opinion!"

"You don't know her as I do! My dear! The things she's told me! The love affairs she's been through! I had the whole history of them. And she used to blush, and look most romantic. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. You'd scream if I were to tell you! First there was a clergyman——"

"Here, stop!" interrupted Gowan, breaking abruptly into the conversation, and turning two blazing blue eyes on Laurette. "Anything Miss Herbert may have told you was certainly in confidence, and to go and blab it over the school seems to me the meanest, sneakiest trick I've ever heard of! You're an absolute blighter, Laurette!"

"Well, I'm sure! What business is it of yours, Gowan Barbour, or of Carmel Ingleton's either? Cheek!"

"It is our business!" flared Carmel, as indignant as Gowan. "It's horribly mean to make friends with any one, and hear all her secrets, and then go and make fun of them!"

"It's playing it low!" added Gowan, determined to speak her mind for once. "And I hope somebody will make fun of you some day just to serve you right! Some day you'll be faded and passee, and people will giggle and say you haven't 'got off' in spite of all your efforts, and they wonder how old you really are, and they remember when you came out, and you can't be a chicken, and they don't like to see 'mutton dressed like lamb,' and all the rest of the kind pleasant things that people of your type find to say. I know! Well, I shan't be in the least sorry for you! It will be a judgment!"

Laurette had made a desperate attempt to interrupt Gowan's flow of words, but she might as well have tried to stop the brook. When Gowan began, she never even paused for breath. Her wrath was like a whirlwind. Laurette's three chums had turned away as if rather ashamed, and began hastily to get out books and writing-materials. They pretended not to notice when Laurette looked at them for support.

"Yes, you needn't think Truie and Hester and Muriel will back you up!" continued Gowan. "Unless they're as mean as you are. There! I've finished now, so you needn't butt in! You know exactly what I think of you. Come along, Carmel!"

The two immediate results of this episode were a bitter feud between Laurette and Gowan, and a sympathetic interest in Miss Herbert by all the members of the Mafia. They felt that her confidence had been betrayed, and they would have liked somehow to make it up to her. They brought so many floral offerings to her bedroom that her vases were almost inconveniently crowded.

Carmel, hearing that she was collecting post cards, sent home for some special ones of Sicily; Dulcie tendered chocolates; Lilias crocheted her a pincushion cover, and Bertha painted her a hair-tidy. She accepted their little kindnesses with mild astonishment, but not a hint of the real reason of their sudden advances flashed across her mind.

"We mustn't let her suspect!" said Dulcie.

"Rather not!" agreed Carmel.

"Not for worlds!" said Gowan emphatically.



CHAPTER XII

White Magic

October passed by with flaming crimson and gold on the trees, and orange and mauve toadstools among the moss of the woods, and squirrels scampering up the Scotch pines at the top of the garden, laying by their winter store of nuts; and flocks of migrating birds twittering in the fields, and hosts of glittering red hips and haws in the hedges, and shrouds of fairy gossamer over the blackberry bushes. It was Carmel's first autumn in England, and, though her artistic temperament revelled in the beauty of the tints, the falling leaves filled her with consternation.

"It is so sad to see them all come down," she declared. "Why the trees will soon be quite bare! Nothing but branches left!"

"What else do you expect?" asked Gowan. "They won't keep green all the winter."

"I suppose not. But in Sicily we have so many evergreens and shrubs that flower all the winter. The oranges and lemons begin to get ripe soon after Christmas, and we have agaves and prickly pears everywhere. I can't imagine a landscape without any leaves!"

"Wait till you see the snow! It's prime then!"

"There's generally snow on Etna, but I haven't been up so high. It doesn't fall where we live."

"Girl alive! Have you never made a snowball?"

"Never."

"Then it's a treat in store for you. I sincerely hope we shall have a hard winter."

"We ought to, by the number of berries in the hedges," put in Bertha. "It's an old saying that they foretell frost.

"'Bushes red with hip and haw, Weeks of frost without a thaw.'

I don't know whether it always comes true, though."

"I'm a believer in superstitions," declared Gowan. "Scotch people generally are, I think. My great-grandmother used to have second sight. By the by; it's Hallowe'en on Friday! I vote we rummage up all the old charms we can, and try them. It would be ever such fun."

"Topping! Only let us keep it to the Mafia, and not let the others know."

"Rather! We don't want Laurette and Co. butting in."

The remaining members of the Mafia, when consulted, received the idea with enthusiasm. There is a vein of superstition at the bottom of the most practical among us, and all of them were well accustomed to practise such rites as throwing spilt salt over the left shoulder, curtseying to the new moon, and turning their money when they heard the cuckoo.

"Not, of course, that it always follows," said Prissie. "On Easter holidays a bird used to come and tap constantly at our drawing-room window at home. It was always doing it. Of course that means 'a death in the family,' but we all kept absolutely hearty and well. Not even a third cousin once removed has died, and it's more than two years ago. Mother says it was probably catching insects on the glass. She laughs at omens!"

"I always double my thumb inside my fist if I walk under a ladder," volunteered Noreen.

"Well, it is unlucky to go under a ladder," declared Phillida. "You may get a pot of paint dropped on your head! I saw that happen once to a poor lady: it simply turned upside down on her, and deluged her hat and face and everything with dark green paint. She had to go into a shop to be wiped. It must have been awful for her, and for her clothes as well. I've never forgotten it."

"What could we do on Hallowe'en?" asked Edith.

"Well, we must try to think it out, and make some plans."

From the recesses of their memories the girls raked up every superstition of which they had ever heard. These had to be divided into the possible and the impossible. There are limits of liberty in a girls' school, and it was manifestly infeasible, as well as very chilly, to attempt to stray out alone at the stroke of twelve, robed merely in a nightgown, and fetch three pails of water to place by one's bedside. Gowan's north country recipe for divination was equally impracticable—to go out at midnight, and "dip your smock in a south-running spring where the lairds' lands meet," then hang it to dry before the fire. They discussed it quite seriously, however, in all its various aspects.

"To begin with, what exactly is a smock?" asked Carmel.

Everybody had a hazy notion, but nobody was quite sure about it.

"Usen't farm laborers to wear them once?" suggested Lilias.

"But Shakespeare says,

"'When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, When ring the woods with rooks and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks,'"

objected Prissie.

"Was it an upper or an under garment?" questioned Noreen.

"I'm sure I don't know. I don't fancy we any of us possess 'smocks'!"

"Then we certainly can't go and soak them in a spring!"

"And there is no 'laird' here, and even if you count an ordinary owner of property as a 'laird,' you don't know where the boundaries are!"

"No, that floors us completely!"

An expedition to the cellar for apples would be an equally hopeless quest, for all the harvest of the orchard had been stored in the loft, and was under lock and key. Some minor experiments, however, might be tried with apple skins, so they determined to pocket their next dessert, and keep it till the magic hour of divination arrived. Hot chestnuts would be a distinct possibility, and a little coaxing at head-quarters would doubtless result in Jones the gardener bringing a bag full for them from Glazebrook.

They felt quite excited when the fateful day arrived. Miss Walters had made no objection to an order for chestnuts, and had even allowed a modicum of toffee to be added to the list. She did not refer to the subject of Hallowe'en, for she had some years ago suppressed the custom of bobbing for apples, finding that the girls invariably got their hair wet, and had colds in their heads in consequence.

The members of the Mafia, well stocked therefore with the apples and chestnuts necessary for divination, remained in their schoolroom after evening preparation, so as to have a gay time all to themselves. To make matters more thrillsome they turned out the light, and sat in the flickering glow of the fire. Gowan, having the largest acquaintance with the occult, not to speak of having possessed a great-grandmother endowed with second sight, was universally acknowledged priestess of the ceremonies.

"Shall we begin with apples or chestnuts?" she asked seriously.

As some said one thing and some another, she held a specimen of each behind her back, and commanded Carmel to choose right hand or left. The lot fell upon chestnuts, and these were placed neatly in pairs along the bars of the grate.

"You name them after yourself and your sweetheart," explained Gowan. "If he pops first, he'll ask you to marry him."

"And suppose the other pops first?" asked Carmel.

"Then you won't marry him!"

"Doesn't it mean that it may be Leap Year, and the girl will 'pop the question'?" asked Dulcie, still giggling.

"No, it doesn't."

"Suppose they neither of them pop?" said Prissie.

"It's a sign that neither cares, but it's not very likely to happen—they nearly always pop."

"I pricked mine with my penknife, though."

"The more goose you! Take them back and try two fresh ones."

It is rather a delicate and finger-scorching process to balance chestnuts on the bars, and as a matter of fact Prissie's tumbled into the fire, and could not be rescued. The party was obliged to watch them burn. They helped her to place another in position, then sat round, keeping careful eyes on their particular representatives. It was forbidden to reveal names, so each kept the identity of her favored swain locked in her breast. It seemed a long time before those chestnuts were ready! Love's delays are notoriously hard to bear. Never were omens watched so anxiously. Slap! Bang! Pop! at last came from Carmel's particular corner, and fragments flew about indiscriminately on to hearth and fire.

"It's 'him'!" cried Gowan ungrammatically. "He's done it most thoroughly too! Carmel, you'll be married the first of any of us! You'll ask us to the wedding, won't you?"

At that moment a chorus of pops came from the grate, causing much rejoicing or dismay from the various owners of the chestnuts, according to the fate meted out to them by the omens. On the whole Cupid was kind, though Lilias and Gowan were left in the lurch.

"I don't care!" said Gowan sturdily. "I've another in my mind, and perhaps I shall get him in the apple-peels."

"And if you don't?"

"I'll meet somebody else later on."

Having eaten more or less charred pieces of chestnut, the girls produced their apples, and once more set to work to try magic. The apple had to be peeled entirely in one long piece, which must then be slung backwards over the left shoulder on to the floor, where it would form the initial of the future lover. It was a matter for skilful manipulation of penknives, not at all easy to manage, so difficult in fact, that Noreen and Dulcie each made a slip, and chopped their precious pieces of peel in the middle, thus rendering them useless for purposes of divination. Lilias, who made the first essay, was completely puzzled by the result, which did not resemble any known letter in the alphabet, though Gowan, anxious to interpret the oracles, construed it into a W. Edith's long thin piece of peel made a plain C, a fact which seemed to cause her much satisfaction, though she would betray no names. Prissie broke her luck in half in the very act of flinging it, but insisted that the two separate portions each formed an O.

It was Carmel's turn next, and her rather broad piece of peel twisted itself into a most palpable E. She looked at it for a moment as if rather taken aback, then her face cleared.

"There are quite a number of names that begin with E," she remarked enigmatically.

Now it was all very well to sit in the sanctuary of their schoolroom trying such mild magic as divination through chestnuts and apple skins. Gowan's northern blood yearned after more subtle witchcraft.

"I shan't be content till I've pulled a cabbage stalk!" she declared. "I don't see why we need wait till midnight! Hallowe'en is Hallowe'en as soon as it's dark, I should think. Who's game to fly up the kitchen-garden?"

"What? Now?"

"Why not? We should only be gone a few minutes and Miss Hardy would never find out."

"It really would be a frolicsome joke!"

"There's a moon, too!"

"I vote we risk it!"

"Come along!"

Nine giggling girls therefore stole cautiously downstairs, a little delayed by Prissie, who, with a most unusual concern for her health, insisted on fetching a wrap. They opened the side door, and peeped out into the night. It was quite fine, with a clear full moon, and clouds drifting high in the sky. The vegetable garden was so near that the ceremony could be very quickly performed. It was, of course, breaking rules to leave the house after dark, but not one of them could resist the temptation, so out they sped to the cabbage patch.

Now when Prissie ran to her bedroom, ostensibly to get a wrap, she had really gone with quite other intentions. She had certainly put on a long dark coat and a soft felt hat, but the whole gist of the matter lay in something that she slipped into her pocket. It was a black mustache that she had brought to school for use in theatricals, and lay handy in her top drawer. She had hastily smeared the under side of it with soap, so that it would adhere to her lip, and once out in the garden, she fell behind the others and fixed it in position. Then she made a detour behind some bushes, so as to conceal herself from the party.

Presently, under the bright moon and scudding clouds, eight much-thrilled girls were hurriedly pulling away at cabbage stalks, and estimating, by the amount of earth that came up with them, the wealth of their future husbands. The general surroundings and the associations of the evening were sufficient to send shivers down their spines. Gowan, looking up suddenly, saw standing among the bushes a dark figure with a heavy black mustache, and she caught her breath with a gasp, and clutched at Carmel's arm. For an instant eight horrified faces stared at the apparition, then Dulcie made a dive in its direction, and dragged forth Prissie.

"You wretch!"

"What a mean trick to play!"

"You didn't take me in!"

"It was very clever, though!"

"You really looked just like a spook!"

"Take it off now!"

"No, no!" said Prissie. "Leave me alone! I haven't finished. Hush! I believe somebody else is coming to try the ordeal. Slip behind that cucumber-frame and hide, and let us see who it is. Quick! You'll be caught!"

The girls made a swift, but silent, dash for the shadow of the cucumber-frame, and concealed themselves only just in time. They were barely hidden when footsteps resounded on the gravel, and a figure advanced from the direction of the house. It came alone, and it carried something in its hand. In the clear beams of the moonlight, the Mafia had no difficulty in recognizing Laurette, and could see that what she bore was her bedroom mirror. They chuckled inwardly. Most evidently she had sallied forth to try the white magic of Hallowe'en, and to make the spell work more securely had come alone to consult the cabbage oracle.

First she placed her mirror on the ground, and tilted its swing glass to a convenient angle at which to catch reflections. Then she pulled hard at a stalk, looked with apparent satisfaction at the decidedly thick lumps of earth that adhered (which, if the magic were to be trusted, must represent a considerable fortune); then, clasping her cabbage in her hand, knelt down in front of the looking-glass, and began to mutter something to herself in a low voice. Her back was towards the cucumber-frame and the bushes, and her eyes were fixed on her mirror.

Prissie, looking on, realized that it was the chance of a lifetime. She stole on tiptoe from her retreat, and peeped over Laurette's shoulder so that her reflection should be displayed in the glass. Laurette, seeing suddenly a most unexpected vision of a dark mustache, literally yelled with fright, sprang up, and turned round to face her "spook," then with a further blood-curdling scream, dashed down the garden towards the house. The Mafia, rising from the shadow of the cucumber-frame, laughed long, though with caution.

"What an absolutely topping joke!" whispered Dulcie.



"And on Laurette, of all people in this wide world!" rejoiced Bertha.

"Congrats., Prissie!"

"You did play up no end!"

"I flatter myself I made her squeal and run!" smirked Prissie. "It just serves her right! I was longing for a chance to get even with her!"

"What about the looking-glass?" asked Carmel. "Won't some of them be coming out to fetch it?"

"Yes, of course they will! We must take it in at once. Let us scoot round the other way, and go in by the back door before Laurette and Co. catch us!"

Prissie seized the mirror, and the nine girls fled by another path to the door near the kitchen, where by great good luck they avoided meeting any of the servants, and were able to bolt upstairs unseen. The Gold bedroom was empty—no doubt its occupants were shivering at the side door—so they were able to restore the looking-glass to its place on the dressing-table as a surprise for Laurette when she returned. Whether she suspected them or not, it was impossible to tell, for she kept her own counsel, and, though next day they referred casually to Hallowe'en observances, she only glanced at them with half-closed eyelids, and remarked that she was quite above such silly superstitions.

"Which is more than a fiblet, and about the biggest whopper that Miss Laurette Aitken has ever told in her life!" declared Prissie, still chuckling gleefully at the remembrance of the startled figure fleeing down the garden.



CHAPTER XIII

The Money-makers

"All Saints'" brought a brief spell of golden weather, a snatch of Indian summer, as if Persephone, loth to go down into the Underworld, had managed to steal a few days' extra leave from Pluto, and had remained to scatter some last flowers on earth before her long banishment from the sunshine. Under the sheltered brick wall in the kitchen-garden Czar violets were blooming, sweet and fragrant as those of spring; the rose trees had burst out into a second crop, and the chrysanthemums were such a special show that Miss Walters almost shook hands with Jones the gardener over them. Little wild flowers blossomed on in quiet nooks at the edge of the shrubbery, and butterflies, brought out by the bright days, made a last flutter in the sunshine. The leaves, which Carmel had grieved so much to see fall, lay crisp and golden on the ground, but the bare boughs of the trees, somewhat to her surprise, held a beauty of form and tint quite their own.

"They are all sorts of lovely soft delicate colors," she remarked. "Quite different from trees in Sicily. I think it must be the damp in the air here that does it; everything seems seen through a blue haze—a kind of fairy glamour that makes them different from what they are!"

"Wait till you see them on a sousing wet December morning!" declared Gowan. "You won't find much romance about them then!"

"But in the meantime we'll enjoy them!" said Miss Walters, who happened to overhear. "Who votes for a walk this afternoon? Anybody who prefers to stop at home and write French translation may do so!"

The girls grinned. Miss Walters did not often give them an unexpected holiday, so such treats were appreciated when they came. Twenty-one enthusiasts donned strong boots, jerseys, and tam-o'-shanters, and started forth for a ramble on the hill-side. They had climbed through the wood, and were walking along the upper road that led to the hamlet of Five Stone Bridge, when they came face to face with a very curious little cavalcade. Two large soap boxes, knocked together, had been placed on old perambulator wheels, and in this roughly fashioned chariot, on a bundle of straw and an old shawl, reclined a little, thin, white-faced girl. One sturdy boy of ten was pushing the queer conveyance, while a younger pulled it by a piece of rope, and the small occupant, her lap full of flowers, smiled as proudly as a queen on coronation day. Against the background of green hedgerow and red village roofs, the happy children made a charming picture; they had not noticed the approach of the school, and were laughing together in absolute unconsciousness. The sight of them at that particular moment was one of those brief glimpses into the heart of other folks' lives that only come to us on chance occasions, when by some accident we peep over the wall of human reserve into the inner circle of thought and feeling. Almost with one accord the girls stopped and smiled.

"I wish I'd brought my camera!" murmured Dulcie.

"They're too sweet for words!" agreed Prissie.

Miss Walters spoke to the children, asked their names, and ascertained that the little girl had been ill for a long time, and could not walk. They were shy, however, and all the spontaneous gladness that had made the first snapshot view of them so charming faded away in the presence of strangers. They accepted some pieces of chocolate, and remained by the hedge bank staring with solemn eyes as the line of the school filed away. The chance meeting was no doubt an event on both sides: the children would tell their mother about the ladies who had spoken to them, and the girls, on their part, could not forget the pretty episode. They urged Miss Walters to make some inquiries about the family, and found that little Phyllis was suffering from hip disease, and had been for a short time in the local hospital. Then an idea sprang up amongst the girls. It was impossible to say quite where it originated, for at least five girls claimed the honor of it, but it was neither more nor less than that Chilcombe School should raise a subscription and buy an adequate carriage for the small invalid.

"That terrible box must shake her to pieces, poor kid!"

"It had no springs!"

"She looked so sweet!"

"But as white as a daisy!"

"Wouldn't she be proud of a real, proper carriage?"

"Can't we write off and order one at once?"

"What would it cost?"

"Let's get up a concert or something for it."

"Oh, yes! That would be ever such sport!"

Miss Walters, on being appealed to, was cautious—caution was one of her strong characteristics—and would not commit herself to any reply until she had consulted the doctor who attended the child, the clergyman of the parish, and the local schoolmaster. Armed with this accumulated information, she visited the mother, then gave a report of her interview.

"They're not well off, but we mustn't on any account pauperize them," was her verdict. "Dr. Cranley says an invalid carriage would be a great boon to the child, but suggests that the parents should pay half the expense. They would value it far more if they did so, than if it were entirely a gift. He knows of a second-hand wicker carriage that could be had cheap. It belongs to another patient of his, and he saw it at their house only the other day. If you girls can manage to raise about L2, 10s., the parents would do the rest. He was mentioning the subject of a carriage to them a short time ago, and they said they could afford something, but not the full price. He thinks this would settle the matter to everybody's satisfaction."

Dr. Cranley's proposal suited the girls, for L2, 10s. was a sum that seemed quite feasible to collect among themselves. They determined, however, to get as much fun out of the business as possible.

"Don't let's have a horrid subscription list!" urged Lilias. "It's so unutterably dull just to put down your name for half a crown. I hoped we were going to give a concert."

"What I vote," said Gowan, "is that each bedroom should have a show of its own, ask the others to come as audience, charge admission, and wangle the cash that way."

"There'd be some sport in that!" agreed Lilias.

"It's great!" declared Dulcie.

"You bet it will catch on!" purred Prissie.

Gowan's scheme undoubtedly caught on. It was so attractive that there was no resisting it. Even the occupants of the Gold bedroom, who as a rule were not too ready to receive suggestions from the Blue Grotto, could not find a single fault, and plumped solidly for a dramatic performance. Each dormitory was to give any entertainment it chose, and while the Brown room decided on Nigger Minstrels, and the Green room on a general variety program, the Blue, Gold and Rose were keen on acting. Miss Walters, who, of course, had to be consulted, not only gave a smiling permission, but seemed on the very verge of suggesting a personal attendance, then, noticing the look of polite agony which swept over the faces of the deputation, kindly backed out from such an evidently embarrassing proposal, and declared that she and the mistresses would be too busy to come, and must leave the girls to manage by themselves.

"Thank goodness!" exclaimed Gowan, when they were safely out of earshot of the study door. "I never dreamt of such an awful thing as Miss Walters offering to turn up! Why, we couldn't have had any fun at all!"

"We'd have had to act Shakespeare, or something stilted out of a book!" shuddered Edith.

"I should simply shut up if any of the mistresses were looking on," protested Dulcie.

"And I should shut down, and crawl under a bed, I think," laughed Noreen. "I say, I hope Miss Walters wasn't offended. We certainly looked very blank when she began asking us the price of 'stalls.' I suppose it wasn't exactly what you'd call polite!"

"Perhaps it wasn't, but it can't be helped," groaned Gowan. "It would wreck everything to have an audience of mistresses. I feel we've escaped a great danger. We must warn the others not to be too encouraging, or give the mistresses any loophole of an excuse to butt in. This particular show is to be private and confidential."

It was decided to hold each performance on a separate day, during the evening recreation time.

"Matinees are no good!" decreed Prissie. "Everybody feels perfectly cold in the afternoon. It's impossible to get up any proper enthusiasm until the lamps are lighted."

"I feel a perfect stick at 4 P. M.," admitted Carmel.

"What will you feel later on?"

"A sort of combination of Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin thrown together, I hope!" twinkled Carmel. "It depends whether you put me on a comic turn or a romantic scene."

"I vote we have a little bit of both," said Gowan. "We'll harrow their feelings first, and end in comedy."

The five bedrooms drew lots for the order of their performances, and the honor of "first night" fell to the Blue Grotto. Its occupants (including Carmel, whose dressing-room was considered an annex) held a rejoicing committee to plan out their play. Squatting on Gowan's bed, they each contributed portions of the plot.

"Shall we write it out and learn our parts?" asked Lilias.

"Certainly not. It would quite spoil it if you were just reeling off speeches by heart, with one ear open to the prompter. I know you! I shall never forget Lilias when we did 'The Vanity Bag.' She said her bits as if she were repeating a lesson, and Bertha——"

"Are we to say anything we like, then?" interrupted Carmel, for Gowan's reminiscences were becoming rather too personal for purposes of harmony.

"We'll map the whole thing out beforehand, of course, but you must just say what comes into your head at the moment. It will be ever so much fresher and funnier. All you've got to do is to get into the right spirit and play up!"

"All serene! As long as no mistresses are sitting looking on, I don't mind."

The Blue Grotto, being the first on the list of performances, was determined to do the thing in style. Bertha and Carmel between them evolved a poster. It was painted in sepia on the back of one of Dulcie's school drawings, sacrificed for the purpose. It represented the profile of a rather pert looking young person with a tip-tilted nose and an eye several sizes larger than was consistent with the usual anatomy of the human countenance. Lower down, in somewhat shaky lettering, was set forth the following announcement:



This they placed temporarily in the passage, but when the girls had giggled over it sufficiently they removed it, for fear its attractions might tempt some of the mistresses into asking permission to attend, a fatality which must at all costs be avoided.

The performers spent a hectic day making arrangements. The time allowed in their dormitory was necessarily limited, so preparations were a scramble. The four beds were moved and placed as seats, and one corner of the room was reserved as the stage. Carmel's dressing-room made an excellent "green room," and gave the Blue Grotto a substantial theatrical lift over other dormitories.

Ten minutes before the hour, five distracted actresses were struggling to complete their impromptu toilets.

"I'm so rocky, I know I shan't be able to say anything at all!" fluttered Dulcie.

"Nonsense! Pull yourself together, child!" urged Gowan. "Get some stiffening into you, can't you?"

"I'm going to have umpteen dozen fits!"

"You've got to reckon with me if you spoil the play, so there! Don't be a silly cockchafer!"

"Are we downhearted?" twittered Bertha.

"No!" answered a stalwart chorus of three, hauling up Dulcie, who was sitting on a chair shivering in the agonies of an acute attack of stage fright.

By this time the audience was trooping in, and seating itself upon the beds, and by frantic clapping clamored for the entertainment to begin. Gowan opened the show, and took the stage in the character of Miss Monica Morton, an elderly spinster. Her make-up was very good, considering the limited resources of the company. Some cotton wool did service for white hair neatly arranged under a boudoir cap; her dress (borrowed from Noreen, who was a head taller than Gowan) fell to her ankles; she wore spectacles, and wrinkles had been carefully painted across her forehead. Bertha, a forward chit of a maidservant (servants on the stage invariably assume a cheekiness of manner that would never be tolerated by any employer in private life), bounced in and handed her a letter, and stood making grimaces to the audience while her mistress—very foolishly—read its contents aloud. It ran thus:

"11 PARK LANE, "MAYFAIR.

"DEAREST MONICA,

"We are sending Dorothea down to you by the first train in the morning, and we beg you will keep a strict eye on her. An individual named Montague Ponsonby has been paying her great attentions, and we wish to break off the attachment. He is well born, but absolutely penniless, and as Dorothea will some day be an heiress, we do not wish her to throw herself away upon him. Please do your best to prevent any such folly.

"Your affectionate sister, "ELIZABETH STRONG."

Miss Morton, on grasping the drift of this epistle, exhibited symptoms of distress. She flung out her arms in a dramatic attitude, and confided to the audience her disinclination to take over the unwelcome task of becoming duenna to her niece. There was no other course open to her, apparently; the idea of sending the girl home by the next train, or of hastily packing her own box and departing somewhere on urgent business did not seem to occur to her. She grumbled, but accepted the responsibility, and Jemima, the pert maidservant, made faces behind her back, till summoned by a violent knocking, when she flew to the door and admitted Dorothea, with bag and baggage.

Lilias, as the fashionable niece, was "got up regardless." Her hair was done in a Grecian knot, a veil was twisted round her picture hat, and she sailed into the room with the assurance of a Society beauty.

Aunt Monica, suppressing the letter of warning, gave the customary greetings, then—with the imprudence characteristic of a stage aunt—announced her intention of going out to do shopping while her niece unpacked her possessions.

Instead of doing anything so sensible as to unpack, Dorothea sank into a chair, and in an attitude of great languor and despair confided her love affairs to the sympathetic and interested servant, who swore fealty and offered all possible assistance. Her kind intentions were put at once to the test, for immediately another violent knocking was heard, she flung open the door, and after a whispered colloquy announced "Mr. Montague Ponsonby."

The entrance of Carmel, as hero of the drama, created quite a sensation. Materials for masculine attire were scanty at Chilcombe Hall, and, as the girls felt rather mean for not having invited the mistresses to their performance, they had not dared to ask for the loan of any theatrical properties, and had been obliged to concoct costumes from anything that came to hand. Carmel had put her feet through the sleeves of her brown knitted jumper, and drawn it up so that the cuffs fitted just below her knees, and made a really striking resemblance to a pair of gentleman's sporting breeches. A coat covered any deficiencies at the waist, a paper collar and a scarlet tie encircled her throat, india-rubber waders did service for top-boots, her hair was tucked under a felt hat (with the trimming wrenched off), and last, but not least, her lip was adorned with the black mustache which Prissie had used on Hallowe'en. She looked such a magnificent and sporting object, that it was no wonder the fashionable Dorothea fell into her arms.

It is perhaps unusual for a gentleman to conduct his love-making with his hat on, but the audience was not "viper-critical" and allowed some latitude to Mr. Montague Ponsonby. They admired the ardor with which he pressed his suit, the fervor of his protestations of fidelity, the dramatic roll of his dark eyes, and the tender tone of his voice. His entrance was considered a very brisk bit of acting, and when he paused for breath, in a graceful stage attitude, sixteen pairs of hands gave a hearty clap.

The lovers, possibly a little sated with the ecstacies of their affection, turned to the sordid details of life, and sitting hand in hand upon the sofa (improvised out of four bedroom chairs and an eiderdown) planned an immediate elopement. They had decided to hire a car and make for Scotland, and were discussing which hotel to stay at, and what they should order for dinner, when the inevitable happened. The pert maidservant rushed in, and in a voice squeaky with tragedy, warned them of the immediate approach of Miss Monica Morton.

Of course, they ought to have expected it. Nobody except two utter idiots would have sat philandering upon the sofa in what might be termed "the lion's den," knowing that "the lion" might at any moment walk in with her shopping-basket and catch them. The surprise and horror depicted on their countenances would have commanded a good salary at a cinema studio. Mr. Montague Ponsonby was for bluffing it, but Dorothea's astute female brains seized a readier way out of the situation. She laid her lover flat upon the sofa, and covered him hastily with her traveling rug, then, opening her suitcase, flung its contents on the floor, and knelt down in the midst of a muddle of shoes, nightdresses, and other paraphernalia.

Aunt Monica exhibited a natural amazement at finding her niece conducting her unpacking in the sitting-room, instead of upstairs, but accepted her explanations with wonderful indulgence. She professed herself tired with shopping, and moved towards the sofa to rest.

Dorothea, with sudden solicitude, sprang up to offer her a chair, and made every human effort to lead her away from the couch. She was a persistent, not to say obstinate, old lady, however, and she meant to have her own way in her own house. Waving her niece aside, and proclaiming her weariness, she sank down heavily upon the sofa. The result was tragic, for a stifled groan resounded through the room, and the top-boots of the luckless Montague Ponsonby kicked wildly in the air. Miss Morton, naturally alarmed, and instantly jumping to the conclusion that he was a burglar, screamed loudly for assistance, and a passing policeman hastened to her call.

It is wonderful how efficient and handy the police always are on the stage. They are invariably at the right place at the right moment, and always step in just in time to stop a murder, prevent an explosion, or rescue the heroine. Dulcie, who in a long blue coat, with a paper helmet and a strap under her chin, represented the majesty of the law, hauled the squirming Montague from the couch, and secured his wrists tightly with a piece of clothes line supplied by the pert servant, who ought to have been ashamed of herself for going back on her promise to help the lovers, but probably felt a deeper obligation to the policeman, who was, no doubt, her sweetheart, which accounted for his very convenient presence on the doorstep.

"I arrest you in the King's name!" declared that officer, when the clothes line was sufficiently knotted, and Montague had ceased struggling. "You will be brought up on trial before the court, and charged with house-breaking and resisting the police."

It was only then that the wretched man began to protest his innocence, and that Dorothea, falling on her knees, explained his name, errand, and intentions, and entreated her aunt to overlook the matter.

Miss Morton wavered visibly. It was evident that her natural kindness of heart gave her a bias towards the lovers—she had, perhaps, been through an affair of the same sort herself in her youth—yet on the other hand her duty to her sister urged her to take stern measures. She drew the letter from her pocket with the seeming intention of strengthening her resolution against the hopes of Montague, and was shaking her head sadly over it, when the obstreperous servant, who had rushed for no apparent reason, except habit, to the door, bounded back, waving a yellow envelope. A well-trained maid usually presents a telegram upon a tray, but Miss Morton must have been accustomed to Jemima's rough ways, or was too agitated to rebuke her; she tore open the missive, glanced at its contents, and with a scream of joy sank fainting into her domestic's faithful arms.

Of course, somebody had to read the telegram aloud. The policeman seemed to think it was his business. He picked it up, and proclaimed it in the manner of a town crier. It was short, but much to the point.

"Please encourage Montague Ponsonby. Uncle has died and left him vast fortune. "ELIZABETH."

Everybody recovered at the good news. Miss Morton rose from the arms of Jemima, apologized to Mr. Ponsonby for having mistaken him for a burglar, and invited him to stay to lunch. He begged her not to mention the matter, and as soon as his wrists had been released by the policeman, he shook hands cordially with his prospective aunt, and made a pretty speech expressing his desire to become a member of the family.

This was undoubtedly the moment for the curtain to descend, but as that most useful of stage adjuncts was conspicuous by its absence, the actors lined up instead, and made their parting bows with much eclat, Dorothea leaning elegantly upon her lover's shoulder, Aunt Monica holding aloft the telegram, the policeman saluting, and the maidservant blowing kisses.

The applause was so thunderous that the performers were obliged to beg the audience to use self-restraint and limit the noise, for fear one of the mistresses should feel in duty bound to pay a surprise visit, and be scandalized at the costumes. Moreover, a clanging bell warned them that the recreation hour was over, so there was a hasty exit and a quick change into normal garments. Miss Hardy was kind that evening, and turned a blind eye to deficiencies of order. She was seen surreptitiously reading the program, and it was the general opinion in the dormitory that she and the other mistresses were much disappointed at having been excluded from the entertainment.

"It did seem rather mean not to ask them," said Gowan, self-reproachfully, "though they'd have spoilt the whole show. I vote we give another some time—a prunes and prism affair without any lovers in it—and let them all come."

"Right you are! But it will be a tame business after this!" agreed Bertha.



CHAPTER XIV

All in a Mist

The Blue Grotto entertainment was very successfully emulated by the occupants of the Gold, Green, Rose, and Brown bedrooms, and quite a sufficient sum of money was raised in the various collections to pay half the expense of the little wicker carriage for the invalid child. The school took a special walk one day to Five Stone Bridge, to see her take an airing in her new chariot, and though they agreed that it did not look nearly so picturesque as the wooden box, it was undoubtedly far more comfortable, and more suitable for one suffering from her complaint. She smiled shyly at the long line of girls, whispered a bashful "Thank you" for the chocolates they gave her, and appeared scared to the verge of tears when they spoke to her.

"I don't blame her, poor kid!" said Gowan, as the school marched on, slightly disappointed. "I shouldn't like to be made a show of myself, and be stared at by everybody. She looked as if she wished us far enough. Never mind! She'll eat the chocs. and enjoy herself now we've gone. She's rather a sweet little morsel, isn't she, after all?"

Christmas was drawing near, and the school turned from schemes of general philanthropy to the more pressing business of making presents for immediate relatives and friends. Various pieces of sewing, which had languished all the term, were taken out and worked at feverishly; there was quite an epidemic of needlecraft, and a wet day was almost welcomed as affording an opportunity for getting on with the gifts. Everybody seemed suddenly in need of embroidery silks, transfers, beads, wools, crochet needles, and other such articles, and a special deputation waited on Miss Walters asking permission to go a shopping expedition to Glazebrook to purchase these indispensables. Miss Walters, who always had an eye to school discipline, made the matter a question of marks, and granted the privilege only to those whose exercise books showed a certain standard of proficiency. Hester, Ida, Noreen, Joyce, Bertha, Carmel, and Doris were the only ones who reached the required totals, so under charge of Miss Herbert they were sent off one afternoon to the town, armed with a long list of commissions from the luckless ones who remained behind.

Chilcombe Hall was four and a half miles from Glazebrook, and there was no motor omnibus service. It was arranged, therefore, for the party to walk on the outward journey, and to return with all their parcels in a couple of taxicabs. They started after an extremely early lunch, in order to do the important business of matching embroidery silks by daylight. It had been quite a fine sunny morning, but clouded over at noon, and although no rain fell the sky was gray and cheerless.

The girls did not much mind the condition of the weather so long as they could see to make their purchases. They spent a considerable time in the principal fancy-work shop of the town, and tried the patience of the assistants by demanding articles that were quite unobtainable. A visit to a stationer's and a confectioner's almost completed their list of requirements, and only a few extras remained to be bought. Some of the party were standing in the entrance of a big general store, waiting while Miss Herbert executed commissions for Miss Walters, when Joyce was suddenly greeted by a friend, a lady who was just about to step into her motor.

"Why, Joyce!" she exclaimed. "Have you been shopping here? So have I—look at my pile of parcels! Have you finished? Are you going straight back to school? I shall pass Chilcombe on my way home, and can take you in the car if you like, and some of your schoolfellows too. There's room for four if you don't mind squeezing!"

It seemed much too good an offer to be refused. Joyce suggested, indeed, that she ought to consult Miss Herbert, who was in an upper department of the shop, but Mrs. Baldwin declared she could not wait.

"I don't see that Miss Herbert can mind. We're quite ready to go, and it will save one taxi," urged Bertha.

So it was hastily decided for Joyce, Bertha, Doris, and Carmel to go in the car, and Noreen ran upstairs to tell Miss Herbert of the arrangement. The latter, with Hester and Ida, was choosing lamp-shades and fancy candlesticks. It was only when Noreen had gone that Carmel remembered suddenly that she had never bought the packet of chocolates which she had promised to bring back for Dulcie. She stopped with her foot on the step of the car, and excused herself.

"There's something I still have to do!" she explained. "I must come back in the taxi with the others after all! I'm so sorry!"

Mrs. Baldwin had an appointment at home, and was impatient to start, so the door was slammed on Joyce, Bertha, and Doris, and they drove away all smiles, and waving a good-by through the window. There was a sweets department close at hand in the Stores, and Carmel bought a present of chocolate for Dulcie and of butterscotch for Lilias, then went upstairs to the lamp-shade counter to rejoin Miss Herbert and the other girls. To her surprise she found they had gone. She searched for them all round the upper story of the shop, but did not see them anywhere. She had kept a watchful eye on the stairs when buying the sweets, and was quite sure that they had not passed down while she was there. She returned to the lamp-shade counter and questioned the assistant, who told her that she had noticed the lady and the three girls in school hats walk down another staircase which led to a side door of the stores. In much alarm, Carmel hurried that way into the street, but not a trace of them was to be seen. She walked as far as the railway station, hoping to catch them there engaging a taxi, but not a solitary conveyance of any description was on the stand. She was indeed in a fix. She saw clearly that, of course, they all supposed she had gone with Mrs. Baldwin in the car, and by this time they were probably on the road to Chilcombe without her. It was nobody's fault but her own.

The feeling that she had only herself to blame did not make the situation any less unpleasant. She was four and a half miles away from school, and unless she could secure a taxi, she would be obliged to walk back. She inquired from a porter, but he shook his head, and said it was unlikely there would be any cabs at the station till the express came in at six o'clock.

Carmel thanked him, and turned away with her eyes full of tears. Owing to her Sicilian education she was not accustomed to going about by herself. England was still more or less of a strange country to her, and she did not know the ways of the land. Lilias, in her place, would have gone to the principal hotel, explained who she was, and asked the manager to find some sort of carriage to convey her back to school. Such a course never occurred to Carmel, however; instead, she tied her numerous parcels together, blinked back her tears, set her teeth, and started forth to walk.

Fortunately, there was no mistaking the high road, and it was still comparatively early. If she put her best foot foremost she might reasonably expect to reach Chilcombe before dark. She had soon left the houses of Glazebrook behind, and was passing between hedges and fields. For the first mile and a half all went well; she was a little tired, but rather pleased with her own pluck. According to Sicilian customs, which are almost eastern in their guardianship of signorinas, it was an unheard-of thing for a young lady in her position to take a country walk without an escort. The remembrance of the beggars and footpads that lurked about Sicilian roads gave her uneasy twinges, and though she had been told of the comparative safety of British highways, her heart beat considerably when she passed anybody, and she scurried along in a flutter lest some ill-intentioned person should stop and speak to her. The farther she went from the town the fewer people were on the road, and for quite half a mile she had met nobody at all. She had been going steadily down a steep hill, and at the bottom she stepped suddenly into a great belt of fog that lay like a white wall in front of her. It was as if she had passed into a country of dreams. She could scarcely see the hedges, and all round was a dense mass of mist, clammy and cold and difficult to breathe. It was silent, too, for no sound seemed to travel through it, not a bird twittered, and no animal stirred in the fields. Carmel felt as utterly alone as if she were on the surface of the moon. All the familiar objects of the landscape were blotted out. It was still light, but this white thick mist was worse than darkness. She stamped along for the sake of hearing her own footsteps. She wished she had a dog with her. She kept to the left-hand side of the road, and followed the hedge, hoping that the fog was only in the valley, and that she would soon pass out of it. On and on it stretched, however, till she must have been walking through it for quite twenty minutes. Then she began to grow uneasy. There was a border of grass under the hedge bank wider than she remembered noticing on the road, and the suspicion assailed her that all unknowingly she must have turned down a side lane and have lost her way.

She went forward now with doubting footsteps. Where was the path leading her? If she could only find some cottage, she could inquire. But there was no human habitation, nothing but the endless hedges and an occasional gate into a field. What was that in front of her? She stopped, and drew back with a cry of fear. Across her track gleamed water. She had almost stepped into it. Whether it was stream, pond, or river the thick mist did not reveal, but it certainly barred her footpath. She shivered, and turning round, walked back in the direction from which she had come, hoping to regain the high road.

Then a wonderful atmospheric effect was displayed. A breeze sprang up and blew aside some of the fog, and the rising moon shone down on a land of white shadows. It was impossible to tell what was real and what was unreal. On the other side of the lane stretched what appeared to be a vast lake, but might only be mist on the meadows; cloud-like masses shaped themselves into spectral forms and rolled away into the dim and nebulous distance, where they settled into weird domes and towers and walls, a veritable elf king's castle. It was so uncanny and silent and strange that Carmel was far more frightened than she had felt before. Old fairy tales of her childhood crowded into her mind, memories of phantoms and ghosts and goblins, the legends of Undine and the water sprites, the ballad of the Erl-King in the haunted forest. She had learnt the poem once, and she found herself repeating the words:

"'Why trembles my darling? Why shrinks he with fear?' 'Oh Father, my Father! the Erl-King is near! The Erl-King with his crown and his beard long and white!' 'Oh! your eyes are deceived by the vapours of night!'

* * * * *

"'I love thee, I dote on thy face so divine! I must and will have thee, and force makes thee mine!' 'My Father! My Father! Oh hold me now fast! He pulls me, he hurts, and will have me at last!'"

And as if that were not bad enough, the ballad of Lenore recurred to her:

"How swift the flood, the mead, the wood, Aright, aleft are gone! The bridges thunder as they pass, But earthly sound is none.

"Tramp, tramp, across the land they speed, Splash, splash, across the sea; 'Hurrah! the dead can ride apace, Dost fear to ride with me?'"

By this time Carmel, alone among the magic mist and moonlight, had reached a state of fear bordering on panic. She longed for anything human, and would have embraced a cow if she had met one. Through the fog in front of her suddenly loomed something dark, and the sound of horse's hoofs rang on the road. A wild vision of Lenore's spectral bridegroom presented itself to her overwrought imagination, and she shrieked in genuine terror, and shrank trembling against the hedge. The rider of the horse dismounted, and slipping his wrist through the bridle, came towards her.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you hurt? Why, great Scott! It's never Carmel!"

"Everard! Everard!" gasped Carmel, clinging desperately to his arm. "Oh! Thank Heaven it's you! I'm lost!"

Everard comforted her for a while without asking any questions; then, when she had recovered calmness, he naturally wished to know why his pretty cousin was wandering in the country lanes by herself on a winter's evening. Man-like, he blamed the school instead of Carmel.

"They ought to have taken better care of you!" he murmured. "Why didn't the mistress hold a roll-call, and count you all?"

"It wasn't her fault. It was my own mistake!"

"Well, whoever's fault it was, the fact remains the same. You'd better get on Rajah, and I'll take you back to Chilcombe."

"Oh! that would be lovely. I'm so tired."

Perched on Rajah's back, with Everard walking by her side, life seemed a very different affair from what it had been five minutes before. Carmel enjoyed the ride, and was almost sorry when they reached the great iron gates of the Hall.

"Won't you come in and see Lilias and Dulcie?" she asked, as Everard helped her to dismount at the door.

"I haven't time to-night. I must get home in a hurry. I've an appointment with Mr. Bowden, and he'll be waiting for me."

"And I've kept you from it! Oh, I'm so sorry, Everard!"

"I'm not. Look here, if you're ever in any trouble again anywhere, you come to me, and I'll take care of you. Don't forget that, will you?"

"I'll remember!" said Carmel, waving her hand to him as she watched him ride away down the drive. Then she turned into the house to set at rest the panic of anxiety which had arisen over her non-appearance with the other members of the shopping party.



CHAPTER XV

On the High Seas

There was quite a merry gathering at Cheverley Chase that Christmas. All the Ingleton children were at home, and with Cousin Clare and Mr. Stacey, they made a jolly party of nine, a satisfactory number, large enough to act charades, play round games, and even to dance in the evenings if they felt inclined. Without exception everybody voted Mr. Stacey "an absolute sport." He seemed to know a little about everything, and could help Bevis to arrange his stamp collection, or Clifford his moths and butterflies; he could name Roland's fossils, give Dulcie tips for the development of her photos, and teach Lilias to use the typewriter. He was so cheery and good-tempered over it, too, and so amusing, and full of fun and jokes, that the young Ingletons buzzed round him like flies round a honey-pot. There are some people in the world whose mental atmosphere appears to act like genial sunshine. Because their uplifting personality demands the best in others' natures, the best is offered to them. Mr. Stacey's lovable, joyous, enthusiastic temperament made a wonderful difference at Cheverley Chase. The constant squabbles and rivalries that had been wont to crop up seemed to melt away in his presence. Never had there been such harmonious holidays, or such pleasant ones. It was his idea to take advantage of a brief frost and flood the lawn, so that the family could enjoy skating there, though the ponds in the neighborhood were still unsafe. It was Carmel's first experience of ice, and she struggled along, held up by her cousins, feeling very helpless at first, but gradually learning to make her strokes, and enjoying herself immensely. Then there was scouting in the woods, and there were various expeditions to hunt for fossils in road heaps and quarries, or to explore hitherto unvisited parts of the district. There was no doubt that Mr. Stacey had a born knack with young folks, and as a leader of Christmas fun he was quite unrivaled.

Among the changes for the better at Cheverley Chase there was perhaps none so great as the marked difference in Everard. Nobody could fail to notice it. Mr. Bowden considered that the six months spent as a chauffeur had "knocked the nonsense out of the lad, and done him a world of good." Cousin Clare said he had grown up, and the younger boys, while not exactly analyzing the altered attitude, admitted that their eldest brother was "a good sort" these holidays.

"Everard always so loved to be 'top dog' before," Dulcie confided to Lilias. "I used to hate the way he bossed us all and arranged everything. He's far nicer now he doesn't pose as 'the young squire.' Even when he used to tell us what he'd do for us when he owned the estate, it was in such a grand patronizing manner that it made me feel all bristles. I didn't want to be helped like that!"

"He is indeed very different!" agreed Lilias thoughtfully.

The only person who did not notice any change in Everard was Carmel, but she had never known him in the old days, so fixed him at the standard at which she had found him. The two were excellent friends. Under her cousin's teaching, Carmel learnt much of English country life; she had the makings of a plucky little horsewoman, and could soon take a fence and ride to hounds. She was very much interested in the gamekeeper's reports, in various experiments in forestry that were being tried, and in motor plows and other up-to-date agricultural implements that she saw in use on the farms.

"It's all different from Sicily," she said one day.

"Yes. You see I'm training you to play your part as an English landowner," replied Everard. "You ought to know something about your estate."

Carmel shook her head emphatically.

"Don't call it my estate, please! I've told you again and again that I don't mean to take it from you. How could a girl like I am manage it properly? You know all about it, and I don't. People can't be made to take things they don't want. As soon as I'm twenty-one, I shall hand it straight over to you. I'd like to see you master of the Chase!"

It was Everard's turn to shake his head.

"That can never be, Carmel! Please let us consider that matter perfectly settled, and don't let us open the question again. It's an utter impossibility for me ever to be master of the Chase. That's final! I may have my faults, but I'm not a sneak or a fortune-hunter."

"You're not cross with me, Everard?" Carmel was looking at him anxiously.

"No, dear, but you're such a child! You can't understand things properly yet. You will when you're older."

"Then what are you going to do, Everard, after you leave college?"

"Study for the Bar, I hope. It's the kind of career that would suit me, I think."

Carmel's dark eyes shone.

"Then I shall come to court, and hear you plead a case! And when you get into Parliament—oh yes! you are going to get into Parliament, I know you are!—I shall sit in the Ladies' Gallery and listen to your first speech. If you won't be Squire of Cheverley, you must become famous in some other way! In Sicily we think a tremendous amount about being the head of the family. You'll be the head of the Ingletons, and you've got to make a name for the sake of the others."

"I know I ought to take my father's place to the younger ones," answered Everard gravely. "I'll do what I can in that line, though I'm not much to boast of myself, I'm afraid. I'm not the good sort you think me, Carmel. But there, you little witch, you've cast your glamour over me, somehow! I suppose I've got to try to be all you want me. Princess Carmel gives her orders here, it seems!"

"Yes, and in things like this she expects to be obeyed!" laughed Carmel. "I told you once before that you hadn't got the same shape of forehead as the Emperor Augustus for nothing!"

It was after the girls had returned to school, during some bitter weather at the end of January, that Lilias caught a severe cold, and was kept in bed. Dr. Martin, sent for from Glazebrook, took a serious view of the case, and asked to consult with Dr. Hill of Balderton, the family physician at Cheverley Chase. They sounded the patient's chest, examined the temperature charts kept by Miss Walters, and decided that the climate of Chilcombe was too damp for her at present, and that she would benefit by spending the trying spring months in a warmer and drier atmosphere. The result of this ultimatum was a large amount of writing and telegraphing between England and Sicily, several confabulations among Mr. Bowden, Cousin Clare, Mr. Stacey, and Miss Walters, and then the remarkable and delightful announcement that the invalid, escorted by a detachment of her family, was to be taken to Casa Bianca at Montalesso on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Greville.

It was, of course, Carmel who had engineered the whole business.

"It's nearly a year since I left home," she explained, "so it's time they let me go and see them. I couldn't take Lilias without Dulcie, it wouldn't be kind, and even Miss Walters saw that, though she held out at first. Then Everard has been working very hard, and needs a change, but, if Mr. Stacey goes with us, they can use Daddy's gun-room for a study, and read for three or four hours every morning. And Cousin Clare must come too, to take care of us all; we couldn't leave her behind. Mother loved her when she came over to fetch me last year. I don't believe she'd have let anybody else take me away. Oh, how I want to show Sicily to you all! Won't we have absolutely the time of our lives? To think of going home and taking you with me!"

It was wonderful how Princess Carmel seemed to manage to get her own way. Mr. Bowden and Miss Walters, who were the natural obstacles to the plan, yielded quite amicably after only a short opposition. Cousin Clare had encouraged the scheme from the first, and Mr. Stacey and Everard were all enthusiasm.

"You'll need us men to look after the luggage," declared Everard, oblivious of the fact that Cousin Clare had successfully piloted Carmel and her boxes across the continent without any masculine assistance, and was quite capable of traveling round the world on her own account.

As Mr. Greville was one of the directors of a line of Mediterranean steamers running from Liverpool to Alexandria, it was decided that the party should book passages in the Clytie, and go by sea as far as Malta, crossing from there in a local vessel to Sicily. The doctors thought that a sea voyage would be better for Lilias than a long tiring train journey across France and Italy, and as it was a novel experience, the idea was attractive to most of the party. Fortunately they were able to engage the accommodation they needed, and set out without further loss of time.

I will not describe the journey to Liverpool, or the wearisome drive through drab streets and along miles of docks till they reached the Clytie. She was a steamer of about 6,000 tons, and, considering the crowded condition of all sea traffic at the time, they might think themselves very lucky to be able to secure cabins without waiting months for the privilege. It was indeed only owing to Mr. Greville's influence that they had been able to do so. With much curiosity they looked round the floating castle which was to be their home for perhaps a fortnight. All seemed new and strange to their wondering eyes—the dining-saloon, with its long table and fixed, crimson plush-covered chairs, that swivelled round like music-stools to allow their owners to sit down on them; the small saloon, with mirrors, piano, and books, specially reserved for the ladies instead of a drawing-room; the smoke-room for the gentlemen, and the steward's pantry. The cramped sleeping accommodation rather appalled the girls, though Cousin Clare, who was a seasoned traveler, assured them it was far more roomy than that given on many other vessels. As a matter of fact, the captain had turned out of his own cabin for them, and was sleeping next to the chart-house on the bridge, so that at any rate they had the best accommodation which the Clytie afforded. Four berths in a space about nine feet square certainly does not allow much elbow room; the girls planned to go to bed in relays, and wondered how they could possibly have managed in the still smaller quarters at which Cousin Clare had hinted. Neatness and order seemed an absolute essential. There was no place except their berths on which to lay anything down, and their possessions had to remain inside their cabin trunks. Each had brought a linen case with pockets, and tacked it on to the wall beside her berth, to hold hairbrush, comb, handkerchiefs, and a few other immediate necessities, but when anything else was wanted, the trunks must be pulled from under the bunks and their contents turned over.

They had hardly arranged their luggage in their cabin, when Everard came in to tell them that the vessel was getting under way, and they all rushed on deck to witness the start. Out from the dock they steamed into the wide estuary of the Mersey, where ships of many nations might be seen, and the pale February sunshine was gleaming upon the gray tidal waters that lay in front, and on the roofs and chimneys of the great city they were leaving behind.

"I can understand emigrants feeling it a wrench to say good-by to England!" said Dulcie, leaning on the rail and fluttering her handkerchief as a parting tribute to her country. "I'd be sorry if I were never coming back any more! Home's home!"

"Yes, and Sicily is mine!" said Carmel with shining eyes. "I can't forget that every day is taking me nearer to Mother! Only a fortnight more, and we shall be at Casa Bianca! How I hope we shall have a smooth voyage, and perhaps we shall get there even sooner. Now we have once started off, I feel as if I can't wait! I didn't know till to-day that I was so homesick!"

The first twenty-four hours on board the Clytie passed very successfully. The Ingletons dined, spent an evening in the saloon, made the acquaintance of other passengers, and next morning amused themselves with deck games. They began to congratulate the captain on the calmness of the passage, but he laughed and told them not to count up their blessings too soon.

"In February we may expect anything in the way of weather," he remarked.

And he was right. Directly they entered the Bay of Biscay they encountered a storm. At first the girls thought it rather fun to feel the vessel heaving its way through the water, to have to hold on to the chairs as they crossed the saloon, and to be nearly jerked off the stairs when they went on deck. But as evening came on, one by one they began to feel the effects of mal de mer, and long before the dinner-gong sounded had retired thankfully to their berths. The time that followed was an absolute nightmare. The heavy seas dashed the Clytie about like a match-box. She pitched and tossed, and rolled, so that one moment the girls, lying on their backs, would find their heels higher than their heads, and the next instant the position would be reversed. The violence of the rolling almost flung them out on to the floor, and they were obliged to cling to the wooden edges of their berths. All their possessions were rolling about the cabin, the linen tidies had tumbled down, and hairbrushes, shoes, sponges, clothing, and trunks spun round and round in confusion. The noise was terrific, the wind blew a hurricane, and great waves broke over the deck with tremendous force. To add to the danger, the cargo in the hold shifted, and an enormous fly-wheel, which, with some other machinery was being taken to Alexandria, broke loose from the chains that held it, and dashed about smashing all with which it came in contact.

Even when morning dawned, the storm did not abate. The girls heard afterwards that the men on the look-out were obliged to be lashed to the rail with ropes, that the captain never left the bridge for twenty-four hours, and that the hatches had been battened down to prevent any passengers from venturing on deck. At the time they were far too ill to care about any such details; Lilias and Dulcie would thankfully have gone to the bottom, and though Carmel and Cousin Clare were more cheerful, the physical discomfort troubled them decidedly more than the danger. The stewardess, who, poor woman, was herself ill, managed to struggle into their cabin, and holding on tightly to the berths, would pass them drinks of tea in cups that could only be filled a quarter full for fear of spilling.

All through that horrible day they lay still, for the violence of the storm made it quite impossible to get up and dress. Towards evening, Carmel, who began to feel better, turned to thoughts of food, and after nibbling a biscuit, begged for something more. Now, when the Clytie was pitching and tossing and generally misbehaving herself, it was manifestly impossible to sit up and wield a knife and fork, for the whole contents of the plate would be whirled away at the next sudden lurch. The stewardess did her best, however, by bringing potatoes baked in their skins, and pears, at both of which delicacies it was possible to nibble while still lying flat, and holding with one hand to the side of the berth. The humor of the situation appealed to Carmel so much that she burst out laughing, and then Cousin Clare, and even Lilias and Dulcie laughed, and were persuaded each to try a potato, too. They snatched intervals of sleep during the night, and woke much refreshed.

Morning found the Clytie off the coast of Portugal, and in comparatively calm waters. Feeling very shaky, the Ingletons managed to dress, and tottered on deck. Everard and Mr. Stacey, both looking pale, though they assured every one that they were all right, found comfortable chairs for the ladies, and tucked them up snugly with rugs. After the long hours in the stuffy cabin it was delightful to sit in the sunshine and watch the gray, racing water. Here and there in the distance could occasionally be seen the funnels of far-away steamers, and then there was much excitement and focussing of opera-glasses and telescopes. They wondered if other vessels had been caught in the same storm, and how they had fared, and Dulcie even hoped they might encounter a wreck, and have the privilege of rescuing passengers from open boats. She was quite disappointed when nothing so romantic happened.

It was interesting to go down to lunch in the saloon, and find the "fiddles" still on the table—long racks with holes in which the dishes and plates exactly fit, so that they cannot be shaken about. There was naturally much conversation among the passengers in relation to the storm, and it was passed round the table as a joke that the captain himself had been seasick, though he would not for a moment admit that he was capable of such a landlubber's weakness.

"If I had known what it was going to be like, I would never have come by sea!" declared Lilias, whose symptoms had been more acute than those of any one else in the party.

"That's what everybody says at first, young lady," returned Captain Porter. "Wait till you get seasoned a little, then you'll find out the charms of Father Neptune's kingdom. I don't mind betting that by the time we get to Malta, you'll have fallen in love with the Mediterranean, and won't want to leave the vessel and will be begging me to take you on to Alexandria!"

"And leave the others to go to Sicily? No, thanks!" laughed Lilias.



CHAPTER XVI

The Casa Bianca

On the following morning the passengers of the Clytie woke to find themselves steaming into the port of Tangiers. They scrambled through their toilets and hurried on deck, in raptures over the view of the old Moorish town against a background of green trees, and the blue waters of the bay in front. As some cargo was to be shipped, there would be time to go on shore, and a party was made up under the escort of Captain Porter and of the Greek agent who had arrived on board with the pilot. Donkeys were hired for the ladies, and a cavalcade set forth to view the Kasbah, or native market, and some beautiful gardens outside the city walls. It was strange to the girls to be in Morocco, with black faces all round them, and to catch glimpses through open doorways of Moorish courtyards, of marble fountains, or of little Arab children chanting the Koran. They were glad indeed of a masculine escort, for their donkey-boys looked such a wild crew that would have been frightened to be left alone with them, and the eastern aspect and general dirt of the place, though picturesque, made them thankful when they were safely back again on board ship.