The Stokesley Secret

Susan and Mrs. Greville seemed to be getting on very well together; but Elizabeth’s admiration of Ida seemed to be speechless, for they were walking side by side without a word, perhaps too close to their elders to talk.

Annie and David were going on steadily hand in hand a little way off; and Miss Fosbrook chiefly heard the talk of the boys, who had fallen behind; perhaps her ears were quickened by its personality, for though Sam was saying, “I’ll tell you what, she’s a famous fellow!” the rejoinder was, “What! do you mean to say that you mind her?”

“Doesn’t he?” said Hal’s voice; “why, she sent him away from tea last night, just for shying crusts.”

“And did he go?” and there was a disagreeable sounding laugh, in which she was sorry that Hal joined.

“Catch the Fräulein serving me so!”

“She never tries!”

“She knows better!”

“I say, Sam, I thought you had more spirit.  You’ll be sitting up pricking holes in a frill by the time the Captain comes back.”

“And Hal will be mincing along with his toes turned out like a dancing-master!” continued an affected voice.

“No such thing!” cried Hal angrily: “I’m not a fellow to be ordered about!”

The Grevilles laughed; and one of them said, “Well, then, why don’t you show it?  I’d soon send her to the right-about if she tried to interfere with me!”

Miss Fosbrook could bear it no longer; and facing suddenly round, looked the speaker full in the face, and said, “I am very much obliged to you—but you should not speak quite so loud.”

The boys shrank back out of countenance; and Sam, who alone had not spoken, looked up into her face with a merry air, as if he were gratified by her spirited way of discomfiting them.

Osmond tried to recover, and muttered, “What a sell!” rather impudently; but they were now near the churchyard, and Mrs. Greville turning round, all was hushed.

Christabel felt much vexed that all this should have happened just before going into church; she felt a good deal ruffled herself, and feared that Bessie’s head was filled with nonsense, if Hal’s were not with something worse.

The church looked pretty outside, with the old weather-boarded wooden belfry rising above the tiled roof and western gable; and it was neatly kept but not pretty within, the walls all done over with pale buff wash, and the wood-work very clumsy.  Sam and Susan behaved well and attentively; but Bessie fidgeted into her mamma’s place, and would stand upon a hassock.  Miss Fosbrook was much afraid it was to keep in sight of the beautiful bird.  Hal yawned; and Johnnie not only fidgeted unbearably himself, but made his sister Annie do the same, till Miss Fosbrook scarcely felt as if she was at church, and made up her mind to tell Johnnie that she should leave him at home with the babies unless he changed his ways.  Little David went on most steadily with his Prayer-Book, and scarcely looked off it till the sermon, when he fell asleep.

Miss Fosbrook had one pleasure as she was going home.  The children had all gone on some steps before her, chattering eagerly among themselves, when Sam turned back and said abruptly, “Miss Fosbrook, you didn’t mind that, I hope?”

“What those boys were saying? It depends on you whether you make me mind it.”

“I don’t mean to make any rows if I can help it,” said Sam.

“I am sure I hope you will be able to help it!  I don’t know what I should do if you did!”

Sam gave an odd smile with his honest face.  “Well, you’ve got a good spirit of your own.  It would take something to cow you.”

“Pray don’t try!”

Sam laughed, and said, “I did promise Papa to be conformable.”

“And I was very much obliged to you yesterday evening.  The behaviour of the other boys depends so much on you.”

“Yes, I know,” said Sam; “and I don’t mind it so much now I see you can stand up for yourself.”

“Besides, what would it be if I had to write to your father that I could not manage such a bear-garden?”

“I’ll take care that sha’n’t happen,” exclaimed Sam.  “It would hinder all the good to Mamma!  I’ll tell you what,” he added, after a confidential pause, “if we get beyond you, there’s Mr. Carey.”

“I thought you did not mean to get beyond me.”

Sam looked a little disconcerted, and it struck her that, though he would not say so, he was doubtful whether the Greville influence might not render Henry unmanageable; but he quickly gave it another turn.  “Only you must not plague us about London manners.”

“I don’t know what you mean by London manners.  Do you mean not bawling at tea? for I mean to insist upon that, I assure you, and I want you to help me.”

“Oh! not being finikin, and mincing, and nonsensical!”

“I hope I’m not so!” said Miss Fosbrook, laughing heartily; “but I’ll tell you one thing, Sam, that I do wish you would leave off—and that is teazing.  I don’t know whether that is country manners, but I don’t like to see a sensible kind fellow like you just go out of your way to say something mortifying to a younger one.”

“You don’t know,” said Sam.  “It is fun.  They like it.”

“If they really like it, there is no objection.  I know I should like very much to have my brother here quizzing me; but you know very well there are two sorts of such fun, and one that is only sport to the stronger side.”

“Bessie is so ridiculous.”

“She is the very one I want to protect.  I don’t think that teazing her does any good; it only gives her cross feelings.  And she really has more right on her side than you think.  You might be just as honest and bold if you were less rude and bearish.”

“I can’t bear to see her so affected and perked up.”

“It is not affectation.  She is really more gentle and quiet than you are; you don’t think it so in your Mamma, and she is like her.”

“Mamma is not like Bessie.”

“And then about Davy.  How could you go and stop the poor little boy when he was trying to think and feel rightly?”

“He was so funny,” repeated Sam.

“I hope you will think another time whether your fun is safe and kind.”

“One can’t be so particular,” he said impatiently.

“I am sorry to hear it.  I thought the only way to do right was to be particular.”

He grunted, and flung away from her.  She was vexed to have sent him off in such a mood; but, unmannerly as he was, she saw so much good in him, that she could not but hope he would be her friend and ally.

Dinner went off very peaceably, and then Susan fetched her two darlings from the nursery, George and Sarah, of three years and eighteen months old.  Her great perfection was as a motherly elder sister; and even Sam was gentle to these little things, and played with them very nicely.

Miss Fosbrook reminded Hal of his Collect; but he observed that there was plenty of time, and continued to stand by the window, pursuing the flies with his finger, not killing them, but tormenting them and David very seriously, by making them think he would—not a very pretty business for the day when all things should be happy, more like that which is always found “for idle hands to do.”

Evening service-time put an end to this sport; but Miss Fosbrook could not set off till after a severe conflict with Johnnie.  She had decreed that he should not go again that day, after his behaviour in the morning; and perhaps he would not have minded this punishment much if David had not been going, which made him think it a disgrace.  So, in the most independent manner be put on his hat, and was marching off, when Miss Fosbrook stood in front of him, and ordered him back.

He repeated, “I’m going to church.”  It was plain enough that he had heard what those boys had said about not submitting.

“Church is not the place to go to in a fit of wilfulness, Johnnie,” she said; and his sisters broke out, “O Johnnie!” but the naughty boy, fancying, perhaps, that want of time would lead to his getting his own way, marched on, sticking up his toes very high in the air.

Hal laughed.

“Johnnie, Johnnie dear,” entreated Susan, “what would Mamma say?”

John would not hear, and walked on.

“John,” said Miss Fosbrook, “if you do not come back directly, I must carry you.”

She had measured her strength with his: he was only eight years old, and she believed that she could carry him; but he heard the church-bells ringing, and thought he should have his way.

She laid hold of him, and he began fighting and kicking, in stout shoes, whose thumps were no joke.  She held fast, but she felt frightened, and doubtful of the issue of the struggle; and again there was Hal laughing.

“For-shame, Henry!” burst out Sam; and the same moment those two feet were secured, and John was a prisoner.  Miss Fosbrook called out to the rest to go on to church, and she and Sam dragged the boy up to the nursery, and shut him in there, roaring passionately.

Nurse Freeman, knowing nothing about it, could not believe but that the stranger lady had made her child naughty, and said something about their Mamma letting him go to church; and “when the child wished to go to church, it seemed strange he should not.”

Miss Fosbrook would not defend herself, for she was in great haste; but Sam exclaimed, “Stuff! he was as naughty as could be all this morning, and only wanted to go now because he was told not.”

Johnnie bellowed out something else, but Miss Fosbrook would not let Sam go on; she touched his arm, and drew him off with her, he exclaiming, “Foolish old Freeman! she will pet and spoil him all church-time, till he is worse than ever.”

It was lucky for her that she was too much hurried to dwell on this vexation; she almost ran to save herself from being late, and scarcely heard Sam’s mutterings about wishing to break Martin Greville’s head.

“You need not hurry so much,” he said; “there’s a shorter cut, only I suppose you can’t get through a gap.”

“Can’t I?” she laughed; and he led her on straight through the Short-horns.  Some of them looked at her more than she fancied, but she knew she might give up all hopes of Sam if he detected her fears.  Then came the gap, where a tree had been cut down in the hedge, and such a jump down from it!  But she gathered up her muslin, and made her leap so gallantly, that the boy cried,

“Hurrah! well done!” and came and walked close to her, saying confidentially, “I say, do you think we shall ever do the pig?”

“I am sure it might be done.  If you are likely to do it you must know better than I.”

“I don’t know that I much care about it.  It will be rather a bother; only now we have said it, I shall hate it if we don’t do it.”

“I think the pleasure of giving it will be a delightful reward for a little self-command.”

“Only Hal and the girls will make such a work about it.  I’m glad, after all, that Bessie has nothing to do with it, or she would want to dress it up in flowers and ribbons.  Ha-ha!  But what a little crab it is!”

“Don’t be too sure of that.  People may have other designs.”

“Bessie’s can’t be anything but trumpery.”

“Sometimes present trumpery is a step to something better.  ‘A was an Archer’ is not very wise, but it is the road to reading—and even if it were not so, Sam, it is not right to shame people into giving; for what is not bestowed for the true reasons, does no good to giver nor to receiver.”

Sam looked up with a frown of attention, as if he were trying to take in the new light; but he did take it in, and smacking his hands together with a noise like a pistol-shot, said, “Ay, that’s it!  We don’t want what is grudged.”

Miss Fosbrook thought of words that would another time be more familiar to Sam.  “Not grudgingly, nor of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.”

What she said was, “You see, if you plague Bessie too much, to make her like ourselves, when she is really so different, you are driving her to the shamming you despise so much.”

“But ought not she to be cured of being silly?”

“When we have quite made up our minds upon what silliness is.  There, the bell has stopped.”

CHAPTER IV

The most part of church-time Johnnie was eating Nurse Freeman’s plum-cake.  Perhaps this did not make him any easier in the conscience, but he had a very unlucky sentiment, that as he was already naughty and in disgrace, it was of no use to take the trouble of being good till he could make a fresh beginning; and after what the Grevilles had said, he did not think that would be till Papa and Mamma came home; he did not at all mean to give in to a girl that was not even twenty.  So he would not turn to the only wise thing he could have done, the learning of his Collect, but he teased Nurse out of more cake and more, and got what play he could out of little George, and that was not much, for Johnnie was not in a temper to be pleasant with a little one.

Coming home from church, Collects were to be learnt and said before tea: but Hal, after glancing over his own, took up his cap and said, “Come along, Sam, Purday will be feeding the pigs; I want to choose the size of ours.”

“I’ve not done,” said Sam.

“Papa never said we were to say them to Miss Fosbrook.”

“He meant it though,” was all Sam’s answer.  “Don’t hinder me.”

“Well, I’ve no notion of being bound by what people mean,” continued Hal; and no one could imagine the torment he made himself, neither going nor staying, arguing the matter with his elder brother, as if Sam’s coming would justify him, and interrupting everyone; till at last Miss Fosbrook gathered all her spirit, and ordered him either to sit down and learn properly at once, or to go quite away.  She was very much vexed, for Henry had been the most obliging and good-natured of all at first, and likely to be fond of her; but such a great talker could not fail to be weak, and his vanity had been set against her.  He looked saucy at first, and much inclined to resist; if he had seen any sympathy for him in Sam he might have done so, but Miss Fosbrook’s steady eye was too much for him, so he saved his dignity, as he thought, by exclaiming, “I’m sure I don’t want to stay in this stuffy hole with such a set of owls; I shall go to Purday.”  And off he marched.

The others stayed, and said their Collects and Catechism very respectably, all but John, who had not learned the Collect at all, and was sent into another room to finish it, to which he made no resistance; he had had enough of actual fighting with Miss Fosbrook.

Then she offered to read a story to the others, but she found that this was distasteful even to her friend Sam; he thought it stupid to be read to, and said he should see after Hal; David trotted after him, and Susan and Anne repaired to the nursery to play with the little ones and the baby.  She minded it the less, as they all had some purpose; but she had already been vexed to find that all but Davy preferred the most arrant vacant idleness to anything rational.  To be sure, Susan sometimes, Bessie and Hal always, would read any book that made no pretensions to be instructive, but even a fact about a lion or an elephant made them detect wisdom in disguise, and throw it aside.  She thought, however, she would make the most of Bessie, and asked whether she would like to hear reading, or read to herself.

“To myself,” said Bessie; and there was a silence, while Miss Fosbrook, glad of the quiet, began reading her Christian Year.  Presently she heard a voice so low that it seemed at a distance and it made her start, for it was saying “Christabel!” then she almost laughed, for it seemed to have been an audacious experiment, to judge by little Elizabeth’s scared looks and the glow on her cheeks.

“May I say it sometimes when we are alone together?” she said timidly.  “I do like it so much!”

“If it is such a pleasure to you, I would not deprive you of it,” said Miss Fosbrook, laughing; “but don’t do so, except when we are alone, for your Mamma would not like me to seem younger still.”

“Oh, thank you!  Isn’t it a nice secret?” cried Bessie, clinging to her hand: “and will you let me hug you sometimes?”

A little love was pleasant to Miss Fosbrook, when she was feeling lonely, and she took Bessie in her lap, and they exchanged caresses, to the damage of the collar that Miss Fosbrook’s sister had worked for her.

“And you don’t call me silly?” cried Bessie.

“That depends,” was the answer, with some arch fun; but Bessie had not much turn for fun, and presently went on—

“And you saw Ida Greville?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think of her?”

“I had not much opportunity of learning what to think.”

“But her parasol, and her bird!  Did you think her mama very silly to give her pretty things?”

“No, certainly not, unless she wore them at unsuitable times, or thought too much about them.”

“Ida has so many, she does not think of them at all.  And she has shells, and such a lovely work-box, and picture-books; she has all she wants.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Oh, yes, quite sure! and they don’t tease her for liking pretty things; her brothers keep quite away, and never bother about the schoolroom; but she learns Italian and German, and drawing and singing.  Mr. Greville said something about our spending the day there.  Oh! if we do but go!  Won’t you, Miss Fosbrook?”

“If I am asked, and if your Mamma would wish it.”

“Oh, Mamma always lets us go, except once—when—when—”

“When what?”

“When I cried,” said Elizabeth, hanging down her head; “I couldn’t help it.  It did seem so tiresome here, and she said I was learning to be discontented; but nobody can help wishing, can they?”

“There must be a way of not breaking the Tenth Commandment.”

“I don’t covet; I don’t want to take things away from Ida, only to have the same.”

“Yes; but what does the explanation at the end of the Duty to our Neighbour say, filling out that Commandment?”

“I think I’ll go and see what Susie is doing,” said Elizabeth.

Christabel sighed as the little girl walked off, displeased at having her repinings set before her in a graver light than that in which she had hitherto chosen to regard them.

She saw no more of her charges till tea-time, when the bell brought them from different quarters, Johnnie with such a grimy collar and dirty hands, that he was a very un-Sunday-like figure, and she would have sent him away to make himself decent, but that she was desirous of not over-tormenting him.

Sunday was always celebrated by having treacle with the bread, so the butter riot was happily escaped; and Bessie was not in a gracious mood, and the corners of her mouth provoked the boys to begin on what they knew would make her afford them sport.  Hal first: “I say, Bet, didn’t Purday want his gun to-day at church?”

Elizabeth put out her lip in expectation that something unpleasant was intended, and other voices were not slow to ask an explanation.

“Shooting the cocky-olly birds!”

A general explosion of laughter.

“I say (always the preface to the boy’s wit), shall I get a jay down off the barn to stick into your hat, Betty?”

“Don’t, Hal,” said such a deplorable offended voice, that Sam, who had really held his tongue at first, could not help chiming in,

“No, no; a cock-sparrow, for her London manners.”

“No, that’s for me, Sam,” said Christabel good-humouredly.  “A London-bred sparrow; a pert forward chit.”

She really had found a safety-valve; the boys were entertained, and diverted from their attack on their favourite victim, by finding everyone an appropriate bird; and when they came to “Tomtits” and “Dishwashers,” were so astonished at Miss Fosbrook’s never having seen either, that they instantly fell into the greatest haste to finish their tea, and conduct her into the garden, and through a course of birds, eggs, and nests, about which, as soon as she was assured that there was to be no bird’s-nesting, she was very eager.

Bessie ought to have been thankful that her persecutors were called off, but she was in a dismal mood, and was taken with a fit of displeasure that her own Christabel Angela was following the rabble rout into the garden, instead of staying in the school-room at her service.

The reason of her gloom was, that Miss Fosbrook had spoken a word that she did not choose to take home, and yet which she could not shake off.  So she would neither stay in nor go out cheerfully, and sauntered along looking so piteous, that Johnnie could not help making her worse by plucking at her dress, by suddenly twisting her cape round till the back was in front, and pushing her hat over her eyes, till “Don’t Johnnie,” in a dismal whine, alternated with “I’ll tell Miss Fosbrook.”

Christabel did not see nor hear.  She had gone forward with a boy on either side of her, and Susan walking backwards in front, all telling the story of a cuckoo,—or gowk, as Sara called it in Purday’s language,—which they had found in a water-wagtail’s nest in a heap of stones; how it sat up, constantly gaping with its huge mouth, while the poor little foster-parents toiled to their utmost to keep it supplied with caterpillars, and the last time it was seen, when full-fledged, were trying to lure it to come out of the nest by holding up green palmers at some little distance before it.  This was in the evening; by morning it was gone, having probably taken flight at sunrise.

Miss Fosbrook listened with all the pleasure the boys could desire.  She had read natural history, and looked at birds stuffed in the British Museum, or alive at the Zoological Gardens, on the rare days when her father had time to give himself and his children a treat; and her fresh value and interest in all these country things were delightful to the boys.

It was a lovely summer evening.  The sun was low enough to make the shadows long and refreshing, as they lay upon the blooming grass of the wilderness, softly swaying in the breeze, all pale with its numerous chaffy blossoms, and varied by the tall buttercups that raised up their shining yellow heads, or by white clouds of bold-faced ox-eye daisies.

The pear-trees were like white garlands; the apple-trees covered with white blossoms and rosy buds; the climbing roses on the wall were bursting into blossom; the sky was one blue vault without a cloud.

Surely Elizabeth had no lack here of what was pretty.  Then why did she lag behind, unseeing, unheeding of all, but peevishly pushing off John and Anne, thinking that they always teased her worst on Sundays, and very much discomfited that Miss Fosbrook was not attending to her?  Surely the fault was not altogether in what was outside her.

“See!” cry the boys.  Miss Fosbrook must first look up there, high upon the side of the house, niched behind that thick stem of the vine.  What, can’t she see those round black eyes and little beak? They see her plain enough.  Ah! now she has them.  That’s a fly-catcher.  By and by they shall be able to show her the old birds flying round, catching flies on the wing, and feeding the young ones, all perched in a row.

Now, can she scramble up the laurels?  Yes, she hopes so; though she wished she had known what was coming, for she would have changed her Sunday muslin.  But a look of anxiety came on Sam’s face as he peeped into the clump of laurels; he signed back the others, sprang upon the dark scraggy bough of the tree, and Hal called out,

“Gone! has Ralph been there?”

“Ay, the black rascal; at least, I suppose so.  Not an egg left, and they would have hatched this week!”

“Well, Purday calls him his best friend,” said Harry.  “He says we should not get a currant or a gooseberry if it wasn’t for that there raven, as Papa won’t have the small birds shot.”

“Bring down the nest, Sam,” cried Susan; “Georgy will like to have it.”

The children behind, who never could hear of anything to be had without laying a claim to it, shouted that they wanted the nest; but Sam said Sue had spoken first, and they fell back discontented, and more bent on their unkind sport.  Miss Fosbrook was rather shocked at the tearing out the nest, and asked if the old bird would not have another brood there; but it was explained that a thrush would never return to a forsaken nest; and when Sam came down with it in his hand, she was delighted with the wonderful cup that formed the lining, so smooth and firm a bason formed of dried mud set within the grassy wall.  She had thought that swallows alone built with mud, and had to learn that the swallows used their clay for their outer walls, and down for their lining, whereas the thrush is a regular plasterer.