A small boy with close-cropped brown head and dark eager eyes was drumming with his fingers on the windowpane. He turned his head over his shoulder as he spoke, and his tone was impatient.

Dinah, or Diana as she was really called, lay flat on her chest by the schoolroom fire. Big sheets of paper were before her, and with a good deal of sucking of her pencil she was writing rapidly. She was very thin and pale; her nurse said she was wiry, and her fair hair was bobbed in the usual fashion.

"How do you spell alarming, two l's and two m's?" she asked, without raising her head.

"Hurray! Here's the taxi! Such a lot of luggage! You're too late; you can't see it now."

Diana had dashed to the window. They were at the top of a high London house, in one of the quiet roads of South Kensington, but try as they could, they could neither see the cab nor its occupants now, and the windows were too heavy to be raised.

"Aha!" shouted the boy, dancing round the room. "I saw, and you didn't!"

"What did you see?"

"A monkey, and a parrot, and a black, and a huge bunch of coco-nuts!"

"I don't believe you. Did you see—Mother?" She added the last word in an awed whisper.

He looked at her, then impishly shook his head.

"I dare say she hasn't come. P'r'aps she's drowned in the sea."

"You wicked, wicked boy!"

"You're always making those kind of things in your stories."

Diana stole out of the room on tiptoe. Her brother Chris followed her. Hanging breathlessly over the staircase, they vainly tried to see what was going on in the hall. How could Granny have ordered them to stay up in the schoolroom till sent for, when an unknown mother and brother were arriving from India! It was too tantalizing! They could hear a great bustle in the hall, and then a little shrill voice made itself heard:

"I've gotted new boots with buttons."

"That's him," said Diana.

Chris danced up and down in excitement.

"We must see them," he cried.

"Then Granny or Nurse will only send us to bed. Of course Nurse is down there. I hear her voice. Mean old thing! As if we oughtn't to see Mother before she does!"

But the next moment Nurse came panting upstairs.

"You're to go down at once. Your mother wants to see you. She's in the drawing-room. Are you tidy?"

She passed her hands over their hair, pulled Diana's short brown velvet frock straight, then sent them down. And strange to say, they went very slowly.

"My heart is thumping!" whispered Diana.

Chris stuck his chest out with some bravado.

"My heart never thumps me!" he said. "I wouldn't let it!"

But when they reached the drawing-room door he hesitated.

When you have looked forward to a thing very much and talked about it every day, and many times a day, for quite a month, it is rather stupendous when it actually arrives.

And then he turned the door handle, and politely stood back and let his sister go in before him.

"Ladies first," was one of Nurse's favourite maxims. And just now Chris felt rather glad of it!

Granny was in her easy chair with her arm round a tiny fair curly-haired boy who stood leaning against her knees. Standing on the hearthrug with her back to them, warming her delicate-looking hands on which were many sparkling rings, was their mother. She was tall and slender, and wore a close-fitting green cloth gown. She had thrown off her thick fur coat, but wore a little sable toque over her sunny brown hair. And when she turned round and opened her arms exclaiming, "And here are my big boy and girl!"

Diana felt a lump rise in her throat. Inwardly she said to herself: "My beautiful mother—"

In another moment Diana and Chris were being embraced.

Little Noel regarded them with a pucker in his baby brow. He did not quite like seeing his mother kiss them as she kissed him.

"Now speak to your little brother. He has been longing to see you—haven't you, Noel?"

Noel stood out straight with his hands behind him.

"I've see'd them now, Mummy, and they're just like uvver chil'en. Like the chil'en on board."

He did not offer to kiss them, but Diana put her arms round him and kissed him warmly.

"I think you're a dear little boy," she said. "I like your curls!"

Chris shook hands with him, and said nothing.

His mother laughed:

"Take him up to the nursery or schoolroom, or whatever you call it, and you'll soon be friends. I think I'll have a warm bath, Mother, before dinner. Noel and I had tea in the train. Oh, I'm tired!"

The children left the room, and climbed two flights of stairs in perfect silence.

This new unknown brother with his baby face and flaxen curls was amazingly self-possessed. Diana tried to take his hand, but he pulled it away from her with a jerk. He seemed to find going upstairs a great effort, and put his right foot foremost the whole way. When they reached the schoolroom, at last, he heaved a little sigh.

"It's nearly as high as heaven!" he remarked.

Chris stared at him. He was going to show him the toy cupboard, but Noel suddenly found his tongue. He stood by the fire looking into the red coals with thoughtful face; then he turned to Diana.

"I like fires," he said, "and puppy dogs, and sa'ngwiches that taste hot and have no sweet in them. What do you like?"

"She likes paper and pencil best," said Chris. "Dinah writes lovely stories, Noel, about shipwrecks, and fires, and floods, and earthquakes, and everything exciting, and her people are just going to be killed and then they're saved, and the girls always have golden curls and blue eyes, and the boys black flashing eyes and coal-black hair."

Noel seemed impressed.

"What peoples do you know?" he asked. "I have two peoples always going about with me. Do you know them? God is one, and the Devil is another. God takes care of me and loves me. I love Him when I'm good, and I push the Devil away; but when I'm wicked, I make friends with the Devil."

"Oh!" cried Diana in a shocked voice. "You mustn't talk out loud about things like that. They're only spoken in church on Sundays."

"What's church?"

"Have you never been to church?" asked Chris. "It's a house with a pointed roof or tower. Haven't you got any in India? People go to hear the clergyman read and say prayers, and preach a sermon, and everybody sings hymns."

"It's very dull," confessed Diana. "Grown-up people seem to like it, but there's a lot of kneeling and sitting still. Chris and I would like to run away out of it often."

"What do you do it for?"

"It's to worship God, Nurse says."

"Oh," said Noel with a smile, "then it's like what we have in a tent sometimes, when the padre comes to see us. I went once, and they sang hymns, but we hardly ever have it. I'd like to see a proper church. Is it like the temples where the idols are?"

"We don't know anything about them," said Chris. "You wait and see next Sunday."

Then Diana began to question the little stranger.

"Tell us," she said, with a little hesitation in her voice, "what is Mother like?"

Noel stared at her with his big eyes.

"She's like my darling Mummy, that's what she is!"

"I mean—is she cross or kind? Does she laugh, or is she shocked? We don't know her, and grown-up people are so very different, aren't they, Chris?"

"Yes; Granny says some things are wrong which Nurse sees no harm about! And Nurse is cross about something when Granny is not a bit."

"Where is your monkey, and parrot, and coco-nuts?" asked Diana.

Noel stared at her.

"Shut up!" said Chris, giving his sister a nudge. "I was only pulling your leg. I didn't see them really."

Nurse came into the room at this moment. She took possession of Noel at once.

"Come along, your mother says you'd best go to bed as you're tired out, and I'll bring you your supper, when you've had your bath."

"No, fanks, I'll stay here."

Noel put his hands in his pockets and looked at Nurse defiantly. She said nothing, but she was a big woman and Noel a tiny boy. She simply took him up in her arms and carried him off to bed. And Noel was so astounded that he said nothing. His ayah had been left behind in India, and a young girl who wanted her passage home had taken charge of him on the voyage. The consequence was that he had had things pretty much his own way.

"I rather like him," said Diana when the door had closed upon them. "He's a funny boy."

"He's too cocky," said Chris loftily. "I'll soon teach him!"

"But it's Mother I'm interested in," said Diana. "Oh, Chris, I think she's lovely, and she dresses like a queen, and she's so tall and thin, not fat like Granny, and she had buckles on her shoes that were sparkling like her rings. I wish we could see her again to-night. Do you think we will?"

"We're going away with her soon," said Chris. "Granny says she's going to take us with her to Granny's old home in the country. It's that white house with green shutters in the big garden in the picture over Granny's sofa."

"I know," said Diana, smiling in that soft dreamy way of hers that Chris always called "bunkum." "It's called Wistaria Cottage, and it will be heavenly going with a strange mother into a strange country! So many, many things might happen."

Chris laughed, but not derisively. He had had a feeling in his chest when his mother had put her arms round him and kissed him. He thought he had heard her murmur, "My first-born," but he could not be quite sure. He asked Diana now if he could be a "first-born."

"Of course, you stupid, if you were born first!"

"Oh," said Chris blankly. "I didn't know it meant that! I was thinking it was a Bible word. Wasn't it in the plagues in Egypt?"

Diana nodded.

"You're older than me."

"I know that; you generally forget it."

"I go by size."

This was an insult that Chris could not stand. He was a year older than Diana, but she was as tall as he was, and sometimes it seemed as if she were going to out-top him. Chris prayed in agony sometimes:

"O God, make me grow, make me grow in the night."

He was always measuring himself, and had been found by Nurse one day lying flat on his bed, his wrists and his ankles tied to the head and foot rail of the bed. "I'm trying to stretch myself," he said, and Nurse had laughed at him, and told him he would grow in "God's good time." So now he made a rush for Diana, and she fled round the room. Chairs were knocked over, and when Nurse came in to see what was the matter, there was a writhing mass of legs and arms on the floor. Diana was kicking and screaming for all she was worth. If she were inclined to be the taller, Chris was the stronger, and he was on top of her now. Nurse soon restored quiet and order.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves," she said sternly; "the first evening your mother is here. She'd be ashamed to own you if she'd seen you a minute ago!"

"Shall we see her again?" questioned Diana eagerly.

"No, not unless you're sent for, and I know your Granny won't do that."

But they did see her again, for when they were in bed she came to visit them in turn. Diana and Chris had each a small room of their own, and Diana was the first one to be visited.

She sat up in bed with wide starry grey eyes, as she gazed in rapt admiration at her mother. Mrs. Inglefield had changed her cloth gown, and was in a powder-blue velvet tea-gown edged with sable fur. A string of pearls was round her white throat. Diana had sometimes hung over the banisters and watched some of Granny's friends go into the dining-room when they came to dinner, but though she had admired all their lovely clothes, none of them had ever belonged to her. She put her little hand out and stroked her mother's long open velvet sleeve. And then her mother knelt by her bed and looked at her with laughing eyes.

"Do you remember me, my sweet? Five years ago I brought you and Chris to Granny, and I thought my heart would break. Hasn't she been a good kind Granny to take care of you and keep you for me all these years? You were such a tiny girl, not three years old. I suppose you can't remember me? I'm quite a stranger to you."

Diana gave a little gulp. How she wished she could remember! But she wouldn't tell a lie.

"I'm 'fraid I don't remember," she said with downcast head. "But you aren't a stranger, for we've had your letters, and Chris and I have been counting the days till you came. And, please, we do belong to you as much as Noel, don't we? But of course he knows you better than we do."

"Oh, we shall all know each other very soon and will be a happy family party! Good night, darling, I'm very tired or I would stay longer. Where does Chris sleep?"

Diana told her, and Mrs. Inglefield passed on.

Chris received her very gravely and a little shyly.

"My eldest son," his mother murmured, as she laid her hand caressingly on his short-cropped head. "What talks you and I must have together! I'm very unhappy at being away from dear Dad, but you seem a little bit of him. You have his eyes, Chris. Such frank truthful eyes your Dad has. He has never told an untruth in his life, I believe."

Chris gave a little wriggle. He could not say that of himself, but he liked to think he had his father's eyes. He gazed at his mother adoringly.

What a beautiful mother she was! And he was her eldest son. He smiled at the thought of it.

"Are we going away with you to-morrow?" he asked.

"Oh, no, not for another week. I have a lot of shopping I want to do in town, and I must see something of Granny. She's my mummy, you know."

This was quite a new idea to Chris. He pondered over it, then he said suddenly:

"Noel is very cocky!"

"Is he? I dare say he may be, poor mite. He has lived very much alone in India, and ruled it over the native servants. He's a very quaint little soul with decided opinions of his own, though he looks and is such a baby. You must show him how English boys behave, Chris, and teach him to play fair and give honour to others. Now, good night, darling."

Chris had never been kissed in such a tender fashion before. He lay back with rapt eyes after she had left him. "I'm her eldest son," he murmured to himself.

The sound of it warmed and stirred his heart. He felt it was a new calling, a sudden incitement to heroic deeds. He would take care of her, die for her if necessary. He was a bit of Dad: she had said so. He must behave like Dad.

Then Mrs. Inglefield visited her baby. She thought at first that he was fast asleep, but Nurse shook her head.

"He has been very restless and excited," she said in a low tone. "I suppose it is his arrival here. He slept for an hour straight off and then woke, and I can't get him asleep again."

"Of course you can't," said Noel, hearing the whisper and opening his eyes wide. "It's dreffully hard to get me to sleep. God has to send an angel to do it and he works at me for hours! And then, pop! Off I go!"

Then he seized his mother's hand and held it tight.

"Have you been to those uvver chil'en?"

"Yes, darling. What a happy boy you are to have a little sister and brother to play with!"

"I don't want them. They're too large for me. How many kisses did you give them?"

"Oh, Noel, you funny boy! Half a dozen each, I dare say. I never counted."

"Then you mus' give me double half a dozen. You don't know them like you know me."

His mother looked at him a little anxiously.

"Noel, darling, I love my three children exactly the same. I have thought more of Diana and Chris than of you when we were in India, because they were away from me. Now we are together, and I am going to show my love as much to them as to you. You are all equal in my heart. I shall give you half a dozen kisses now. Not one more. Now then, one on each cheek, one on each eye, one on the top of your darling little nose, and one on your mouth. Good night, my blessing, God bless and keep you."

Noel took his mother's kisses very calmly.

He blew a kiss to her when she reached the door.

"I fink God likes me better than them," he murmured. "Anyhow, I'll ask Him to."

[CHAPTER II]

Wistaria Cottage

The next week seemed full of delightful bustle to Diana and Chris. Their mother was very busy shopping and arranging about their new home; so she did not see much of them in the daytime. Nurse was packing, and fitting Noel out with English clothes. He continued to be a puzzle and interest to his brother and sister. They found him a good playfellow, but difficult to corner. Nothing seemed to shake his good opinion of himself, and he would never acknowledge himself to be in the wrong. Yet he would talk like a little angel of the Unseen World Above, and had a firm, unshaken belief that God was his Best Friend, and Jesus Christ His Saviour. His Indian ayah had been an earnest Christian, and had taught him as she had been taught herself in the Mission School.

His grandmother regarded him with anxious eyes. She asked his mother one day:

"Are you bringing up that child in the crude modern fashion of letting him think himself of more importance than us older folk?"

"No, Mother, but he has an original mind, and I don't want him snubbed and repressed."

Diana heard this, and pondered over it. Another day her Granny said:

"I still doubt the wisdom of your burying yourself in the country. After your time abroad you will feel the loneliness dreadfully. I couldn't stand the country, and came to town, as you know. You will have very few neighbours."

"So much the better. I shall have my children, and I am sick and tired of society life. It is only a year and then Gregory will be home."

Then seeing Diana standing by, her mother turned to her.

"You won't let me be dull, Diana, will you?"

"Not if I can help it," said Diana fervently; and she there and then registered a vow that she would not.

The day of departure came at last.

Three happy children were packed into a taxi with Nurse, and their grandmother drove with their mother in another, behind them, for Mrs. Greyling was coming to see them off at Paddington.

Granny had some conversation with the guard at the station, and the result was that they got a reserved carriage all to themselves.

The English country was strange to Noel; he was delighted to see some lambs at play in the fields, and he took a great interest in the different churches which appeared.

"What a lot of houses God has!" he remarked. "How tired He must get of going round and round and round to them all! Does He never miss any?"

"God is never tired," Diana said rebukingly, "and of course God is everywhere at the same time."

"Isn't it wonnerful!" said Noel with shining eyes.

"I shall go to church next Sunday, shan't I, Mummy?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Inglefield absently as she read her magazine.

"Mummy," said Diana anxiously, "Miss Carr, when we wished her good-bye, said she hoped we wouldn't forget our lessons. But we're going to have holidays for a little, aren't we?"

"Yes, I think so. I have a good deal to arrange, Diana, but I'm going to look to my little daughter to do a lot of things for me."

Diana flushed with importance, but Chris said bluntly:

"Dinah is only good for writing stories; she always forgets everything else."

Mrs. Inglefield was deep in her magazine again.

"Shut up!" said Diana, stretching out one slim leg to give her brother a kick.

Chris retaliated at once. Noel looked at them in delight.

"Have a fight," he suggested cheerfully.

Chris instantly was on his best behaviour.

"Men don't fight women," he said; "they're too sloppy, girls are."

"I've got as much muscle as you," said Diana, baring her arm to the elbow.

Chris grinned at her, and said no more.

It was a long journey; and all the travellers were glad when it was over. A car was waiting for them at their destination. Mrs. Inglefield arranged that the luggage should follow in a cart, and then they drove along a country road till they came to a pretty village with quaint irregular thatched cottages, a corner general shop and post office, and a square green with a big oak tree in the middle of it.

There was an inn with a sign of a bright yellow dog hanging over it, and it was called "The Golden Dog." The children wanted to stop and look at it closer, but on the car went, and never stopped till it came to a white wooden gate a little way out of the village. There was a drive with trees and shrubs on either side, and then a low white house came in view, and over the porch door was a winter jasmine in full flower, and a red japonica was just coming out and was creeping up the house.

"Not a big house, but it is a cosy one," said Mrs. Inglefield, looking at it with content.

The children were delighted with the pretty little entrance hall and the white railed staircase leading up from the middle of it. Nurse took them straight upstairs. She had lived here before with their grandmother, and knew her way about. There was a day nursery, a bedroom out of it where Noel was going to sleep with Nurse; beyond was a little room for Chris, and Diana was going to sleep in her mother's dressing-room. All the bedrooms were on the same landing, and the windows all looked out the same way. Chris and Diana were surprised at the one flight of stairs after their high London house, but Noel found any stairs a difficulty.

"We never has them in India," he said; "and my legs don't like them."

It was nearly dark when they reached the house, so there was no exploring for the children to do out of doors. But they visited every room inside. The pretty little drawing-room with the big round bay window at one end of it, the long low dining-room with the square table in it, and some oil portraits of Granny's family on the wall. The room they liked best was a little boudoir full of beautiful china and pretty things.

"I s'pose," said Diana wistfully, "that we shan't ever be in the downstair rooms."

"My darling," said her mother quickly, "this is going to be your home. You are welcome to every room in it; but the drawing-room I must have kept for special occasions. I shall be generally in the boudoir, I think, until the summer comes, and then we shall all live out of doors." Diana danced up and down softly on the tips of her toes.

"We shall be full, full, full!" she chanted almost under her breath.

"Full of what?" questioned her mother, with laughing eyes.

"Oh," said Diana, waving her small hands in the air, "full of riches, and joys, and—and love."

Her mother gazed at her contemplatively, but Chris was standing by, and he was eminently practical.

"That's all her story-book stuff," he remarked. "Dinah is always full of words, that's what she's full of."

"Oh, you children!" laughed Mrs. Inglefield. "I suppose I shall get to know you soon. I hope I shall. Now we're all tired. We shall have our supper very soon, and then bed. And to-morrow—well, to-morrow we shall see everything. I'm longing to look at the garden."

The little people were very tired, but they managed to peep inside the kitchen, where a stout woman called Mrs. Tubbs was bustling round and produced some delicious little hot scones from the oven. There was also a very fat girl there, her daughter, whose name was Cassy. She was about fifteen, and wore a funny little white cap perched on the top of her head like a big white rosette. Nurse told them that she and her mother and herself were going to run the house together.

"Lizzie Tubbs and I are old friends, went to the village school here together. I never have liked London. It seems coming home to be back here."

After Granny's big house and many servants, this new home seemed very small and cosy; but the children were almost too tired to talk about it. They had a supper of boiled eggs, scones, and a rice pudding, and then went to bed.

The next morning was sunny and bright. They had their eight o'clock breakfast with Nurse in the nursery, and then to their joy she turned them out into the garden. "Your mother has a headache and is having her breakfast in bed. I knew she'd feel it—she's been overtiring herself these last few weeks, so don't you be making a noise in the garden."

"We shan't be making more noise than the birds," said Diana. "I heard them chattering quite early."

They flew off out of the back door, and found themselves in an old square walled garden. There was a big lawn with a group of trees at the bottom. All round it were beds for flowers. Fruit trees were nailed against the walls.

"It's quite large enough for cricket," said Chris, looking at the lawn with satisfaction in his eyes.

Diana walked on to the trees. She stopped beneath an old medlar tree with low branches almost reaching the ground.

"I shall sit up there and write my stories," she said with a rapt smile.

But Noel had trotted on; he had found between some high shrubs a little twisting path which led to two gates. One gate opened into a small kitchen garden. Noel surveyed this, with his chin resting on the top bar of the gate. It did not appeal to him; he turned to the other, opened it and disappeared. Diana and Chris did not miss him, they were so accustomed to only having each other, that they both climbed up into the medlar tree and began to discuss this wonderful new life of theirs.

"Isn't it perfectly lovely!" Diana said. "And when the summer comes, Chris, think of the garden with the flowers and the trees, and Mums in a white dress trailing about, carrying armfuls of roses, and looking like the fairy queen."

Chris nodded.

"Go on, describe it," he said.

"And that fat girl Cassy bringing out a tray for tea on the lawn with strawberries and ices and all kinds of cakes," went on Diana enthusiastically.

"And me on the lawn with a new hat, in white flannels, and a boy friend trying to bowl me out, and Noel fielding for us," put in Chris.

"And I shall be in a hammock swinging backwards and forwards," said Diana, "and writing stories all day long."

"How about lessons?"

"Oh, don't think of them. They belong to London."

"I say, how thick these walls are! I could walk along the top if I could get there," said Chris. "I think I could climb up if I got up that tree leaning against the wall. Shall I try?"

"I'll come, too."

Diana was equal to adventure at any time; but Nurse appeared and called them in.

"Your mother wants you. Where's Master Noel?"

"We don't know."

"Fetch him in then. I can't wait."

But they could not find him, and after calling for some minutes, they thought he must have gone into the house.

Mrs. Inglefield was waiting for them in her boudoir.

"Good morning, darlings. Come and kiss me. I want to have ten minutes' reading out of what Daddy calls our Order Book for the day. And I want all three of you to come to me every morning at ten o'clock, will you? Where's Noel?"

"We don't know. Is the Order Book the Bible?" asked Diana.

"But that's only for Sunday," objected Chris.

"Oh, no, indeed it is not. But I must have my baby. Ah, here he is! I hear his dear stumping feet."

Up the stairs plodded Noel. He came into the room with shining mysterious eyes.

His mother took him on her lap. His curls were full of cobwebs and his knees and hands very dusty.

"Where have you been, sweetheart?"

"You never tolded me that God was going to live next door to us," was Noel's astounding remark.

"I hope," said his mother gravely, "that God lives nearer to us than that."

"I went down the paff," said Noel in his little breathless way. "I sawed a gate and I went frough, and there was a tiny paff and a wall of trees and anuver little gate, and then one of God's houses like we saw in the train, and it's quite, quite close to us. And there are bumps all over its garden and white stones with letters, and then I opened a very big door and went in."

He paused, and his big blue eyes blazed with excitement.

"It was raver dark, but the sun came through a beautiful window all red and blue and yellow, and there were most wunnerful fings in it. Seats, and books, and stools, and little steps into a high box, and a very big book on a stand, and a stone idol lying on his back with a sword, and some flowers on a table. And does it belong to us, Mums? It's a church, isn't it? I never sawed one in India."

"No, darling, we have been far away from a church these last three years. You are right. It is our church, but it doesn't belong to me especially. But Granny was allowed to have a little gate made into the churchyard when she lived here. It saved her a longer walk."

"And I went into a little room where there were white dresses hanging, and then I found anuver door with steps up, and I went up and up and up near the sky, and there was a tangle of ropes like on board ship, and some great 'normous bells, and I climbed and climbed and I came out right frough anuver door to a wall where I sawed the whole world!"

"You got up to the tower through the belfry," said his mother. "No wonder you are dusty, and it was dangerous, Noel: you mustn't go up there by yourself again. You might have fallen."

"May I go there on Sunday?" demanded Noel.

"Yes, to church. We'll all go together. Now I want you to be quiet, and I'm going to begin the Gospel of St. Matthew, about the little Christmas Babe. I think Diana and Chris might read the verses with me."

The children thought their mother's Bible reading very strange, but interesting. When it was over they were sent into the garden again, and their mother told them she would join them there. Noel was rather quiet till they got out of the house, then he said to Chris rather truculently.

"I s'pose you know I'm one of God's specials?"

"What's that?" asked Chris.

"Well, it's His favrit boy. Jesus Christ and me have the same birfday. God borned me on Christmas Day."

"Oh, I see," said Diana; "but that won't make any difference to God."

"I'm a Christmas child," said Noel, staring at her gravely, "that's why I'm called Noel. It means Christmas. It's a very grand and wunnerful thing to have the same birfday as Jesus Christ."

"Oh, come on!" exclaimed Chris impatiently. "You aren't grand or wonderful, Noel. Why, you hardly know how to run! Race me to the medlar. I'll give you ten yards' start. I'll guess at it."

Noel did his best, but he certainly was not a good runner: he waddled and he panted, and several times nearly tumbled headlong. But the run had taken his thoughts off himself, and when Mrs. Inglefield joined them, he was as eager as the others to see everything, and to hear about the time when his mother lived here as a little girl.

"This is where I used to have my garden," she said, taking them to a corner under the high wall. "I remember quite well when I sowed some little shells in it which I had brought from the seaside, and thought that fishes might come up out of the ground! Would you each like a garden?"

There was an eager assent from all three children.

Mrs. Inglefield began to measure out ground in the large herbaceous border.

"What shall we plant in them?" Diana asked.

"Anything and everything you like. I know a dear old gardener outside the village who is a florist and has a nursery for flowers and plants. Shall we all go and see him one day and ask him for seeds and plants? I will give you three shillings each to lay out in seeds."

"Oh, thank you," cried Diana, "but let's go to-day."

"Yes, don't let us wait," said Chris; "not a minute, as they might be growing."

Their mother laughed.

"Perhaps this afternoon I can manage it; but I have letters to write. It is mail day, and poor Daddy would be dreadfully disappointed if I didn't send him a letter."

"You can give him my big love," said Noel, "and tell him I'm going to be a church gardener."

"Are you?" said his mother, smiling at Diana and Chris, who always listened to Noel's statements with open eyes and mouths.

"Yes," nodded Noel, "I've just made it up, but I aren't going to tell nobody how I'll do it. It's a secret."

He would say no more, but pursed up his button of a mouth till it looked like a marble.

Then Mrs. Inglefield showed them the kitchen garden, and a shed in it where they might keep their gardening tools. An old man was in it, and Mrs. Inglefield spoke to him very pleasantly.

"Well, Foster, I see you have kept the garden in beautiful order," she said. "We're quite old friends. You were here before I went to India."

"A've bin fourteen year in this garden this coming midsummer," said the old man importantly.

"And these are my children, Foster. I'm going to try to make them gardeners."

"For mercy's sake, no!" ejaculated Foster, looking at the children with no loving eye. "Dogs an' childer be the garden's curse!"

"Oh, hush!"

Mrs. Inglefield looked really shocked.

"Of course they will have their own bit of ground and keep to it. But you were a boy once, Foster, and I'm sure you were always fond of flowers."

"He's a nassy old man!" said Noel in a loud voice; and his mother, taking him by the hand, left the kitchen garden and returned to the house.

In the afternoon it was a very happy little party that set out down the village. Diana and Chris were losing their shyness, and were able to chatter as freely as Noel to this new mother of theirs. It was of no use to point out to them the pretty thatched cottages, the geese and ducks upon the green, the lambs at play in the fields, the cows going home to be milked, the pale primroses appearing in the hedges, and the budding fresh green on every tree and bush. All these were delightful no doubt when there was nothing else on hand. With three shillings almost burning a hole in their pockets, was it likely that anything could keep them from their goal?

Along a green lane, up a hill, and then a very pretty whitewashed cottage appeared inside a big gate. Glass greenhouses stretched away on a sunny slope behind it. Mrs. Inglefield made her way to one of these, for she recognized Mr. Henry Sharpe, an old man with a white beard, standing at the door speaking to a workman.

And when he saw her, he came hurrying towards her with outstretched hands.

"Why, if it isn't Miss Bessie! Beg pardon, ma'am, but I do forget your married name. You are always Miss Bessie to me."

"I love to be called by the old name," said Mrs. Inglefield with her happy laugh, "and here is my little flock waiting to be made acquainted with you. They are going to start gardens, Henry, but they can make their own choice. Do you remember how I used to tear up to you when my pocket-money was due? What a lot of money I spent on seeds and flowers!"

"You were a born gardener, that you were!"

"Well, I haven't had a nice garden in India; we have moved about so much."

"Mums," said Chris, "may we see the flowers and choose?"

"Aye, come along then, and tell me what you want. Fruit to eat, flowers to smell, or shrubs to grow?"

"Is your daughter still with you?" asked Mrs. Inglefield.

"She is. She married, was left a widow in the war, and came back to me. My grandson is a big boy and goes to school. If I may say so, ma'am, you've a garden round you worth cultivating. Young fruit trees want a lot of training to make them fruit-bearing!"

Mrs. Inglefield looked at her children and then at the old man.

"You are right," she said, "and I'm going to try to do it, and if I get into difficulties I shall come to you. I think I will leave my children with you, and go into the cottage and have a talk with Bessie."

Mr. Sharpe took the children down between the houses to see the rows and rows of spring flowers and seedlings which were all coming on. He was very different to Foster. He loved children, and they all chattered away to him as if they had known him all their life.

By and by, he brought three very happy children back to their mother. Chris and Diana held fat packets in their hands. Noel had his in his pocket, but his blue eyes were shining mysteriously. They had each made their choice, and certainly Noel's choice seemed the strangest of all.

[CHAPTER III]

The Christmas Tree

Old Mr. Sharpe insisted upon the children coming into the cottage and having some refreshment. It was too early for tea, but he produced some home-made ginger beer, and some currant cake. His daughter, a sad-faced young woman, had traces of tears on her cheeks. She had been talking about the young husband killed in the war. But she smiled at the children's eagerness and enthusiasm for the garden.

"Oh, Mums, such rows and rows of daffodils and narcissus! Isn't it a pity it's too late to plant them now?"

"And, Mums, you should have seen the flowers in the hot-houses, but none of them will grow out of doors now!"

"And the little trees, all coming out in pink and white flowers!"

It was not until they were on the way home that Mrs. Inglefield was told of the purchases.

Diana had chosen nothing but flowers. She had a tiny rose tree coming up the next day to be placed in the middle of her bed.

"It will be the queen," she said with the dreamy look in her grey eyes that her mother loved to see; "and I shall have her ladies-in-waiting all round her: Lady Pansy, and Lady Blue Cornflower, and Lady Pink Verbena, and Lady Snapdragon, and Lady Yellow Eschscholtzia; and then her little pages will be Tom Thumb Nasturtiums. Don't you think my bed will be lovely, Mums?"

"Lovely, darling. You have done very well, I think. What is Chris's choice?"

"I've got mustard and cress, and radishes," he said sturdily, "and one strawberry plant. And two red geraniums are coming to me when it's time to put them in the ground. And I've a lot of mixed sweet-peas, and one little gooseberry bush."

"You have a lot for your money. First rate," said his mother. "What has Noel got?"

Diana looked at Chris, and they both giggled.

Noel looked at them angrily, and turned to his mother:

"I'm going to have one fing only, but it's quite big, it's what we never had in India, and what I've always been wanting ever since you read me about it in my fairy book."

"I believe I can guess," his mother said: "it's a Christmas tree."

"Yes, that's just what it is. And Mr. Sharpe and me choosed for ever so long before we found a big one, and it's coming to-morrow."

"But, my darling, won't it be rather a dull garden with only that tree in it?"

"It won't be dull to me," said Noel. "I love it. And it will be ready for next Christmas. It's been wondering when its turn was coming to be taken away, it didn't know it was coming into this lovely garden with me to love it. Don't you r'ember the fir tree that was always finking and being disappointed? I mean to tell mine exac'ly what's going to happen to him."

"You're a funny darling," said his mother, but she kissed him and said no more.

"Mr. Sharpe gave him some flower seeds as a present," said Chris, "but he says he isn't going to put them in his garden."

"No, my Christmas tree won't like them. He likes plenty of room all to himself, and I shall put those seeds where I want to."

Mrs. Inglefield looked at him a little perplexedly.

"You're a funny boy," she said again; "but if your Christmas tree will make you happy, I shall say nothing against it. You've made your choice, so it's all right."

Noel seemed quite content. But he refused to tell Diana and Chris his plan about his seeds. All three of them wanted to go into the garden after tea, but Nurse refused to let them do it.

"It is too cold, and rain is beginning to fall. You must just stay in the nursery."

"We can go to Mums," said Diana.

"No, you can't. The mistress is going to rest. She's been at it all day long."

So they tried to make themselves happy in this new nursery of theirs. Chris got out his paint-box and began to colour the picture in a story-book of his. Diana got out her beloved sheets of paper and commenced a fresh story under the inspiration of this fresh home. Noel got a chair and knelt up at the window, looking out upon the English scene with keen, observant eyes.

Suddenly he looked round:

"What are those green lumps all over the church garden?" he asked.

"Those are graves, of course," said Chris, "where people are buried when they die."

"Why do they crowd into the church garden? Haven't they gardens of 'er own?"

"Oh, that wouldn't be proper," said Chris.

"I s'pose," Noel went on thoughtfully, "they try and get as near to God as they can, poor fings! But they aren't really vere at all, it's only their bodies. It isn't a very pretty garden: God ought to have a better one."

Chris made no reply.

Noel was always dressed first, and then Nurse went to Diana. It was a lovely sunny morning. Directly Nurse's back was turned, Noel slipped downstairs very quietly: then he ran out into the garden, opened the little gate that led to the churchyard and began his operations. Going from one green mound to another, he made a hole with his finger in the middle of each, opened his precious packet of seeds and dropped one or two seeds in it. Then he carefully covered it up with earth, and went on to another. Mr. Sharpe had put several varieties of seed into his packet. There was mignonette, aster, lobelia, and a few other summer flowers. Noel knew nothing about the names or the flowers, but he went on steadily planting seed by seed, and by and by a clergyman came out of the church. He looked at the small boy in surprise. He was a young, cheerful-looking man with a very quick, decided manner.

"Now, what on earth are you doing here?" he asked. "And who are you? We've never seen each other before, have we?"

"I'm Noel. Who are you?"

"I'm John Wargrave, the parson. And this place belongs to me."

Noel looked at him stolidly.

"This is God's garden," he said, "and that place you've come out of is God's house. It all belongs to Him."

"So it does, sonny. You've corrected me. But it isn't nice to make a playground of the churchyard. What are you doing?"

"I'm not playing. I'm working very hard."

Noel spoke in an injured tone. Mr. Wargrave looked at the packets of seeds in his hands, and wondered. Then Noel explained himself.

"I've made myself into God's gardener, and I'm going to make flowers come all over His garden. God loves flowers. Mums told me He did. It's an ugly garden now: not half as nice as ours."

"Do you love God?" Mr. Wargrave asked gently.

Noel nodded.

"It's a very nice thought, my boy, but a lot of people own a bit of ground here. The graves belong to them, and they wouldn't like you to meddle with them. Have you many seeds left?"

Noel spread out three small packets.

"Well, look here. There is a rose tree over the church porch. It is in a bed of its own, and you can plant the rest of your seeds there. I'll come and help you do it now."

Noel was quite willing. Mr. Wargrave produced a trowel from a little room at the back of the church, and they made quite a good job of it. He soon found out who Noel was and where he lived, and he said he was coming to call on Mrs. Inglefield very soon. They were good friends when they parted, and Noel trotted upstairs to his nursery breakfast. Nurse scolded him for his dirty hands, but supposed he had been playing in the garden. He did not tell anyone what he had been doing.

But later in the day when his Christmas tree arrived, and Diana and Chris were busy with their gardens, he was asked where his seeds were.

"God has got them," he said solemnly; "I've given them to Him."

He would say nothing more.

Diana remarked to Chris:

"I can't think why Noel is so religious. He isn't a good boy at all, and yet he is always talking about God."

"He's too little to know he oughtn't to do it," said Chris decidedly.

"Why oughtn't we to do it, I wonder?" said Diana musingly. "The people in the Bible talked about God."

"It isn't respectful," said Chris: "rev'rent, I mean. Granny always hushed us about religious things."

"Yes, but Mums talks about them quite easily: she doesn't whisper."

Chris gave it up.

"I only know Noel wouldn't do it if he was amongst a lot of other boys. They'd laugh at him."

"We laugh at him, but he doesn't care."

"He's a most cocky little beggar!"

The Christmas tree almost overshadowed Noel's small garden. It looked strangely out of place there, and would do so even more when surrounded by spring and summer flowers. Chris and Diana, up in the medlar tree the next day, watched Noel standing, hands in pockets, in front of it. A pert saucy robin came and perched on the topmost branch. Noel stood so still that he did not frighten it away, but he commenced to talk to it.

"You're sitting on my tree. I don't know if you know it. I'm a Chris'mas child and the tree is a Chris'mas tree, and we bofe belong to the best day in the whole year, and that's Jesus Christ's birfday and mine. It will take a long time to come this year, for we haven't got to the summer yet, but I'm going to be patient, and as for my tree, he is finking all the time of the wonderful day that's coming to him: the glorious, beautiful day when he'll be dressed from his head to his feet all over with lovely shining fings of glory, and crowds of chil'en and people will be dancing round him and looking up at him as if—as if he was a king. So, Mr. Robin, if you sit on his branches, you must re'mber you're almost sitting on a king!"

"Isn't he a funny boy?" whispered Diana to Chris.

Then Noel went on talking to his tree:

"I'm going to call you Firry; you must have a name. I hope you're happy in this garden; you haven't got any bruvvers to talk to, but I'd rather talk alone than to Chris. He never understands, and so you must be like me and like best to be alone. And if the trees wiv flowers on laugh at you, tell them that when winter comes—the English winter—they'll be dead and gone, and you'll be alive and glorious, it will be Chris'mas, and the very happiest day in the whole year. I don't want you to be unhappy, Firry. I cried for the poor little Chris'mas tree in Germany that was forgotten when Chris'mas Day was over. I shall never forget you. That's why I brought you here. I'll talk to you all the summer and tell you what's coming to you, and after Chris'mas you shall come back here and live and be happy and get ready for the nex' Chris'mas."

"He's talking drivel!" said Diana, and then she sprang down from the tree with a shout, and Noel, after giving a violent start, walked away and didn't go near his Christmas tree again that day.

The first Sunday came.

To Chris and Diana church was no treat; yet they looked forward to the novelty of going to a strange church and seeing strange people. To Noel this was a momentous day. He had never been to church in England yet. In London, for several reasons, he had not been taken there.

It was a bright sunny morning. Noel was dressed in his white sailor suit. It was a new one, and he felt rather self-conscious in it. As Mrs. Inglefield walked down the garden and through the little gate into the churchyard, she felt proud of her children. Diana had slipped her hand into her mother's, but Chris and Noel were having a tussle the other side of her. Each felt he ought to be nearest to his mother. When they reached the church door, Mrs. Inglefield looked down upon two hot, rather angry faces, and she said immediately:

"Now, boys, I can't have this. I am going to have Diana on one side of me in church, and Noel the other. Chris must be content to be the outside one. He shall sit near the aisle, for he is my eldest son, and that is where his father would sit if he were with us."

Chris brightened up immediately. They took their seats in the middle aisle, not very far from the pulpit. There was a good congregation, and the service was a hearty one. Mr. Wargrave, the young vicar, preached so earnestly and simply that even Noel could understand him. His big blue eyes seemed to be taking in everybody and everything. He was very still; he did not fidget as much as Chris did, and when they came out of church, he looked up at his mother with shining eyes:

"When I grow up, I shall have a white dress on, and stand up in church and preach like that man. I shall be a padre when I grow up."

Mrs. Inglefield looked down upon him tenderly.

"You couldn't be anything better, Noel," she said.

And then an old lady came up to them and shook hands with Mrs. Inglefield in a delighted way.

"I heard you were coming back to these parts. How's your mother? Still wedded to her town life? And are these your children? Bring them to tea with me to-morrow. Four o'clock. Good-bye. So glad to welcome you."

And then she bustled off and got into a car and was whirled away from them before Mrs. Inglefield had time to say a word. She turned to her children.

"That is Lady Alice Herbert. She's an old friend of Granny's. She lives at the Hall, and her husband, General Herbert, is a great invalid."

"And we're all going to tea with her. What fun!" said Chris.

In the afternoon the three children went into the garden whilst their mother rested; but by and by Mrs. Inglefield heard a little tap at the door, and Noel walked in. He did not look very happy.

"Am I asturbing you, Mummy?" he asked in his most angelic tone.

"No, darling, I am not sleeping; come and sit down by the couch here. What have you been doing?"

"I don't like those uvver two," said Noel, shaking his head with a heavy frown. "They're always playing and talking outside me."

"You mean without you; but you see they've not been accustomed to have a third in their games. I hope you're nice to them?"

"I don't want to have nuffin' to do with them. They laugh at me about the Chris'mas tree. You and me, Mummy, can be two as we've always been, and they can be just a two away from us."

"Oh, my darling," said Mrs. Inglefield, half laughing, yet with a perplexed face, "you mustn't talk so! This comes of bringing you up away from them. You all belong to me and to each other, and we must be a very happy little family. I can't talk to you any more now, so if you want to stay with me, get a picture-book from my table over there. There's that one you love about the boys in the Bible."

Noel got the book, and drawing a stool up by his mother's side, was quite happy till tea-time.

Chris and Diana appeared in very good spirits, and if Noel was rather silent, they did not seem to be impressed by it.

They were full of anticipation of going to Lady Alice Herbert's to tea the following day, and talked about it till bedtime.

Very great was their disappointment the next morning when their mother told them that she had received a letter from Lady Alice saying that, as the General was not very well, she would not ask the children, but only herself.

Diana pouted, Chris cried "What a shame!" and Noel stumped up and down the room in real anger.

"Never mind, chicks, she will ask you another day, I am sure, and perhaps it is just as well, for it looks like rain."

And rain it did in an hour's time. The children played contentedly in the nursery all the morning. They had their early dinner downstairs with their mother, and afterwards she took them up to her boudoir, and read a story to them till it was time for her to go off to the Hall. The car came for her a little before four o'clock, and the children watched her depart with envious eyes. They waved their hands to her, standing on the doorstep till they could see her no more, and then very reluctantly they went back to their nursery.

"What is there to do?" said Chris discontentedly as he put his hands deep in his jacket pockets and stood gazing out of the window at the driving rain and sodden garden.

"I'm going to finish my story, and then I'll read it to you," said Diana happily, as she drew her chair up to the table and produced some crumpled sheets of paper out of her pocket. Diana always carried her story about with her, in case of sudden inspiration seizing her.

"Read it to us first, and finish it afterwards," said Chris with a grin.

Noel looked at him contemptuously, and Chris caught the look and resented it.

"What are you going to do, Baby?" he asked.

Noel's eyes flashed.

"I aren't going to play with you," he said, and then, he marched out of the room.

A few minutes later a little figure in sailor cap and overcoat was plodding down the path to the gate, in the rain.

It was Noel. He felt that he could not be shut up in the nursery with his brother and sister all the afternoon, and suddenly thought that he would go and see Mr. Wargrave. Then he changed his mind. He would go into the church if the door was unlocked. There were a lot of things he wanted to see and understand there.

Half an hour later the house was being searched by Nurse for the truant. When she missed his cap and coat she was very angry with Chris and Diana.

"I was only ironing in the kitchen; you might have kept him quiet and out of mischief, the two of you," she said. "He's a child, I'll say that, but if he's wandering about in this rain, he'll be laid up with cold, with his Indian constitootion."

"He's most likely in the garden talking to his fir tree, or in the churchyard," said Chris. "Shall I go and look for him and bring him in?"

"Put on your mackintosh then, and be quick about it," said Nurse. "'Tis your fault he's wandered out, I consider. You're none too kind to him, either of you!"

[CHAPTER IV]

A Nursery Entertainment

Chris was delighted to have an excuse to go out in the rain. He sped away, down the garden, but there were no signs of Noel, then into the churchyard. When he got there, he found the young vicar, Mr. Wargrave, in the church porch. He had the door ajar, and to Chris's mystification seemed to be peeping through the opening.

"Have you seen my little brother?" he asked him.

"Hush!" said Mr. Wargrave, turning round, then he smiled at Chris.

"Don't make a noise," he said, "but have a look at him."

Chris peeped into the church. He caught sight of Noel's fair curly head at once. It was just above the edge of the pulpit, and two small arms were waving in the air. This was what he heard:

"And so you see, my frens, God wants you to be good. And my tex' is 'Fight the good fight,' and that's Satan, and I'll say good afternoon to you now, and mind you come next Sunday and I'll preach about the wind and rain trying to drown the boat. Amen."

Chris giggled loudly. Mr. Wargrave shut the door.

"We won't disturb him," he said.

"But he's no business there," Chris said; "Mums would be horrified. Noel thinks he can do anything he likes. He's going to be a clergyman, he says, so he's practising. He oughtn't to play in the church."

"It isn't play," said Mr. Wargrave. "Would you two boys like to come over to the Vicarage with me? My brother Ted would like to see you on a wet afternoon like this."

"I'd love it," said Chris; "but Nurse sent me to fetch Noel in. He's run away."

"I'll step across with you and ask Nurse to spare you for an hour. I live close here, you know."

Then he opened the church door with a little clatter. Noel darted down out of the pulpit. He looked very uncomfortable when he saw his brother's head peeping from behind Mr. Wargrave.

But he adopted a very careless air as he came down the aisle towards them.

"Are you come to have a—a service?" he asked the young vicar.

"No, I was coming to fetch a book in the vestry," Mr. Wargrave said; "and I want you and your brother to come back to the Vicarage to tea with me. We are going to your house to ask if you may. Perhaps you can get the permission while I get my book, Chris."

Chris sped away as fast as his legs could carry him. Noel stood still in the porch, looking out into the rain with grave thoughtful eyes. Mr. Wargrave was only a moment getting his book, and he joined him before Chris came back.

Putting his hand on his shoulder, he said, smiling:

"You'll be a preacher by and by, but don't hurry. We have to learn a lot before we can teach others."

Noel's cheeks became hot and red.

"Did you see anyone in the pulpit?" he asked in a whisper.

Mr. Wargrave nodded.

"I foughted I was quite alone. I only pretended the peoples. I just wanted to see if I could do it."

"Yes, yes, I understand. We'll forget it."

Mr. Wargrave pitied the small boy's distress and confusion. Chris reappeared, very breathless and happy.

"Nurse says we can come," he said. And then the three of them walked down the road a very little way, and turned in at a big iron gate with a thick shrubbery and a drive, and arrived at an old grey stone Vicarage, with small casement windows and walls covered with creepers.

The vicar took them straight through a long narrow hall to a room at the back of the house overlooking a very pretty garden. It was a cosy room. A bright red carpet was on the floor, and a blazing fire in the grate. There were bookshelves and many pictures lining the walls. On a big red-and-white chintz-covered couch by the fire, reclined a boy with a white face and a cheerful smile. He was a big boy, about fifteen or sixteen. Chris and Noel looked at him in awe.

"Two small neighbours, Ted," said Mr. Wargrave; "the other side of the church. They've come to tea. I'll go and tell Mrs. Hurcombe. You amuse them till I come back. I have my churchwarden waiting to see me."

He left the room. Chris and Noel stood by the side of the couch feeling a little shy of this strange boy, but when he looked at them and laughed, they laughed too.

"Don't think me an awful frump tucked up on a couch like this. It's only for a year. I was at school and hurt my back in the gym. Like to see how I spend my time?"

He drew a table by the side of his couch nearer, and showed them on a wooden tray a complete set of dolls' furniture. There was a most beautiful little cabinet of polished wood, which opened and shut its doors, six chairs with red leather seats, a four-post bedstead, a polished square table, and two chests of drawers.

"Oh!" cried Chris. "Did you make these all yourself?"

"Yes, and a lot more. They go to an Arts and Crafts Depot and sell like old boots. And I made them myself with the help of a book only, so I feel rather swanky over them."

"I wish Dinah could see these," said Chris.

"Here's something you may like better."

He produced a little canoe, and then a tiny tram and a wheelbarrow and a cart.

"It passes the time," he said.

"Don't you never go out of doors?" asked Noel, looking at him gravely.

"Not often. I have to be wheeled out in a flat pram, and I hate it. But when summer comes, I can lie on a rug on the lawn and then I shall feel first rate."

Chris was fingering the toys lovingly.

"I wish I was clever," he said with a little sigh.

"Can you make houses?" asked Noel eagerly. "Could you make a church?"

"He's mad on church," said Chris; "we've only just dragged him out of it. He's been in India, and doesn't know England."

"Tell us about India," said Ted, smiling at Noel.

Noel launched forth at once, waving his hands and getting quite excited as he described his home in India and the native servants, and all the pets he had kept out there. Chris openly yawned, but Ted was interested, and when Mr. Wargrave returned all three boys were talking fast and freely. Tea was brought in by a very smiling housekeeper, and they had a merry time.

But Chris watched Ted gravely, and at last he said to him:

"I couldn't laugh like you do if I had to lie on my back all day long. I'd have to die straight off if I couldn't jump up and run about."

"That's how I felt first of all," said Ted simply. "But of course it doesn't say much for your pluck if you can't face pain. And I came to see that I must make the best of it, and that I could be thankful that I wasn't blind or deaf and dumb, or covered over with loathsome sores. And—I—well, I've been helped along by remembering that there's a suffering corps in God's army, as well as a fighting corps."

Chris looked at him with big eyes.

Here was a big boy talking about God. He could not understand it.

But after tea, he was made very happy by having a lesson in wood-carving from Ted.

Noel went off with Mr. Wargrave to his study.

He sat on the deep window-ledge there, and swinging his legs, told the vicar all about his Christmas tree.

Mr. Wargrave was a good listener.

"I think it's splendid," he told him. "And then at Christmas perhaps you'd be able to make numbers happy. If I had a tree like that, I would ask a lot of children out of the village, and there are some in the Union, about a mile off on the high road. I'm the chaplain there, and I always feel sorry for the children. They don't have many pleasures. If you love Ted, he'll make you a lot of toys for your tree."

"Oh, will he?" Noel was radiant. "And I'll have a very big party. Mums will let me. I'll have all the children who live here. I do wish it was Christmas time."

"Oh, don't wish that. We have the lovely summer coming first. All of us are happy in summer-time. The flowers and the bees and butterflies, and the birds and squirrels and rabbits—they all love the warm sunshine. And you will, too."

"I don't like it when the sun is very hot," said Noel thoughtfully; then his thoughts took another turn. "What's a hypercrit?"

"Someone who pretends to be what he is not."

Noel frowned.

"And a 'cocky beggar'? I thoughted beggars were poor ragged men who asked for money: they were in India."

Mr. Wargrave smiled.

"Oh, that's a boy's expression for anyone who thinks a lot of himself. I suppose your brother has been calling you that?"

"If you speak about God at all, you're a hypercrit," said Noel. "I 'spect Chris doesn't know what it means: it's too long a word for him. I'll tell him so. I don't pretend half as much as they do; they're always pretending in their games. Why is it wrong to talk about God?"

"It isn't wrong; it ought to be the natural thing with every one of us. If we love anyone very much, we can't help talking about them. But—"

Mr. Wargrave hesitated; then he went on:

"Boys and girls, and grown-up people too, are shy sometimes of telling people what they feel deeply in their hearts; and when children play about with each other, they keep their thoughts about God and heaven to themselves, and don't quite understand anybody talking freely about it. I'm not saying they are right. But it makes us more reverent if we speak about God very gravely, almost in a whisper."

Noel listened and nodded his head.

"I'll try."

And then he caught sight of a case of butterflies, and for the next half-hour hung over it entranced, whilst Mr. Wargrave talked about butterflies and their ways.

When Chris and Noel's visit was over, they went home and described all the glories of the Vicarage to Diana, who was quite curious about them.

She was wild to see the dolls' furniture.

"I don't see why I shouldn't go straight in to-morrow. I'll ask Mums if I may. That ill boy would be very glad to see me. Mums was only saying the other day that visiting sick people was a very nice thing to do."

When Mrs. Inglefield returned home, three eager children met her in the hall.

She was quite pleased that the boys had gone to tea at the Vicarage.

"Lady Alice was telling me about that poor boy. It is a dreadful trial for him to be laid up like that for a year, or perhaps longer."

"But he's quite happy," said Chris. "He laughs like anything!"

"Yes, he has a brave cheerful spirit. I shall be very glad for you to know him. He must be a nice boy."

Two or three days afterwards, Diana got her chance. Mr. Wargrave came to call, and spoke to her in the hall as he was leaving. Diana was always outspoken.

"I don't want to be rude," she said, "but I'm just dying to see the dolls' furniture at your house. Could you ask me to, do you think? I wouldn't expect tea. I wouldn't be as mean as that, but just to see them."

"You shall come in now," he said, smiling, "if your mother will let you. Ted will be only too delighted to show you all his toys."

Mrs. Inglefield, who was standing by, gave her permission, and Diana danced off, and was a good hour away. She came back to the nursery with glowing eyes.

"He not only makes toys," she said to the boys emphatically, "but he makes poetry! He said some to me!"

The boys were impressed. Ted and his doings were much discussed amongst them for the following days.

The weather kept them indoors a good deal. It was rain and wind every day, and the nursery was a small room for three active children. One morning Nurse, sitting at her work there, was visited by Mrs. Budd.

Chris and Noel were busy in a corner with their bricks, Diana was finishing her story, but as she scribbled off the last sentence she caught a fragment of conversation between Nurse and her visitor.

"I always felt she would be dull here. She misses the master, of course, and she's been accustomed to a life in India. I feel fair worried when I sees her so quiet knitting for the boys, and tears in her eyes all the time."

"'Twill be better in the fine weather when there's plenty of gentry round her to keep her from dullness."

Diana shut up her papers and went over to the window. She had what Nurse called her "thinking cap" on!

After their early dinner she called the boys to her and said:

"Look here, I promised to keep Mums from feeling dull. It's come upon her, and we've got to do something."

"What?" asked Chris.

"We'll give her an entertainment," said Diana grandly. "And I'll tell her it's coming, so that will take away the dullness, to feel it's coming. We'll do it after tea."

"What can we do?" asked Chris helplessly.

"I've thought it all out. I'll read her my story. It's finished, and she's never heard any of my stories. It's awfully exciting. And you and Noel can learn something to recite, like we did with Miss Carr to Granny once."

"We can dance," said Chris, romping round the room, "and dress up! Oh, that will be the thing, Dinah!"

Mrs. Inglefield was feeling rather lonely that afternoon. She had been writing to her husband, and now she was knitting socks for Chris, and thinking about his schooling. She was in her boudoir. Presently she heard a sharp rattat at her door, a little giggle, and then a note was pushed through the bottom of the door.

She picked it up and opened it.

"OUR DEAR MUMS,—"
"We're sorry you are dull, but we are not going to let you be
any more. At half-past five we invite you to our Grand Entertainment.
Tickets free. The performance will be thrilling."
"YOUR LOVING CHILDREN."
"P.S.—It will be done in the Nursery—punctule."

So Mrs. Inglefield had enough to keep her expectant and smiling. She heard a good deal of noise overhead for the next hour or so. But punctually at half-past five she presented herself at the nursery door.

It was opened by Noel, who had a pink paper cap on his head, and his body and legs all wound round and round with coloured handkerchiefs and ribbons.

He gave her a very low bow and led her to Nurse's armchair, which was draped in an old red shawl.

It was the seat of honour. Then she was presented with a programme.

AFTERNOON ENTERTAINMENT
An acrobatic exhibishon.
Two gentlemen's duel.
An Authoresses story.
Beautiful Poem resited by motor-car and horse.
General Dance and Wind up.
All can join.

A row of chairs divided the audience from the performers.

The entertainment opened by Chris standing on his head in the corner, and Diana balancing a doll's tray of tea-things on his feet. Catastrophe was saved by her snatching the tray away, as his feet began to shake.

Then Noel and Chris had a fencing bout with two hoop sticks. Mrs. Inglefield drew a long breath when it was over and neither combatant was hurt. The next item on the programme was:

"An Authoresses story."

Diana made her appearance in one of Nurse's best gowns. A wreath of ivy was round her head. She had sheets of paper in her hand and commenced to read in a high sing-song voice.

The story was about a miserable ragged little girl in London who was given sixpence and a kiss by a beautiful lady one afternoon when she was selling matches in the streets. The lady's face and dress was described with much detail. Mrs. Inglefield had no difficulty in recognizing herself as the lady. The little girl's name was Sally, and she fell in love with this lady and used to follow her round in London every day, only at a distance. At night she dreamt of her. And then one day the lady was nearly run over by a motor. Sally dashed into the middle of the road and saved her, but got knocked down herself and had her leg broken. Then the lady burst into tears at her bravery, and told her coachman, who had arrived on the scene, to take her home in her carriage. She was carried to the "most beautiful house in London." Her bedroom was "covered with pink satin curtains and cushions all over the place." Sally was placed in bed, and a doctor sent for who mended her broken leg.

"But suddenly Mrs. Field fell on her knees by the bed and seized the broken leg:"

"'It is her, my long-lost daughter,' she cried. 'I know the scar which she had as a baby. My nurse lost her one day when she was wheeling her pram in Kensington gardens!'"

"And all was true, and Sally's leg mended very soon, and she never had to go back to the old woman who made her sell matches, but she lived with her darling mother ever after. And she grew up and married a relation of the Royal Family. But she always remembered her ragged time and gave money to match-girls. This is the moral and the end."

There was much applause when the young authoress sat down.

Then the children retired into the night nursery. After a time, with a rush and a fierce snorting noise, Chris tore backwards and forwards several times.

"A motor-car!" said Mrs. Inglefield, clapping her hands.

Then Noel entered, galloping up and down and whinnying so loud that Mrs. Inglefield called out very quickly:

"A horse!"

And then he and Chris stood together and recited the following poem:

CHRIS. "I shriek and everybody flies!
I tear along beneath the skies,
I stop as quickly, for I feel
My master's hand upon the wheel."
NOEL. "I trot along the hard high road,
To journey slowly is my mode.
We want to see, to feel, to smile,
To scent the beauty of each mile."
CHRIS. "Past meadows, villages I fly,
No time to see as I go by!
The wind, the air is all I feel,
Beside the hand upon the wheel."
NOEL. "My master's hand is on my rein,
His eyes are in the country lane.
I canter on up hill, down dale,
Through grassy fields and lovely vale."
CHRIS. "I scorch up hills, I fly along,
My warning 'honk' is all my song.
Towns, rivers, sea, all pass away.
A hundred miles we do each day."
NOEL. "But cars can't hunt, or ride at will
Through woods, or up untrodden hill,
Nor soak their souls in beauty fair,
That's only done through my brown mare."

[CHAPTER V]

Lesson Days

"Splendid!" cried Mrs. Inglefield enthusiastically, applauding with her feet and hands. "May I ask who is the author of that poem?"

"Ted wrote it," said Diana. "He said it to me when I went over to see him, so I made him write it down, and Chris and Noel have been learning it as fast as they could all the afternoon."

"I think you are all extremely clever," said Mrs. Inglefield. "I am quite proud of you."

"And which do you like best, Mums, a horse or motor?" asked Noel.

"It's easy to see which the poet liked best," said Mrs. Inglefield, laughing. "I think I like them both; if I were rich, I would keep a car to take me long distances, and a horse to ride when I wanted to enjoy the country."

"And now we'll have our dance," said Diana.

There was a great bustle then, clearing the chairs away. Chris had the honour of dancing with his mother, and Diana danced with Noel. They turned their small gramophone on, and all enjoyed themselves. When they at last had to stop from sheer fatigue, Mrs. Inglefield made a little speech in which she thanked them all most gratefully for their successful entertainment.

"It has kept your dullness away," said Diana with a satisfied smile. "I'm so glad. I promised you I would keep you from being dull."

Her mother did not remember the promise, but she was touched by her little daughter's thought for her.

"Did you like Dinah's story?" Chris asked.

"Very much. It was a sweet little story. I did not know I had a daughter who was an authoress. What a proud mother I shall be when her first book is published!"

Diana got rosy red. That was the dream and desire of her heart. She lay in bed at night imagining the time when a real book of hers should be in her hand fresh from the publishers, with her name in big letters across its title page.

A little later that evening they all went down to the boudoir. They always spent an hour before their mother's dinner with her there.

Diana and Noel were looking at a beautiful book of engravings together which belonged to their grandmother and had been left in the cottage. Diana was weaving stories out of every picture, and Noel listened to her with the greatest interest. Chris crept up close to his mother's chair, and sat down on a stool at her feet.

"I wish I was clever like Dinah," he sighed. "I can't write stories, Mums: I've tried and tried and tried. You'll never see a book of mine in print. There'll be nothing for you to be proud about in me."

His mother caressed his smooth brown head with her loving hand.

"Now, Chris, we'll have a little talk together. God gives us all different gifts. It isn't everyone who can write books. I am glad it isn't. We have quite enough books in the world as it is. And, do you know, I am very glad that my eldest son does not write stories. Somehow or other, I don't think it is very noble or uplifting work for strong men to do. A man who spends his life in making up stories of what silly men and women do and say isn't much of a man, to my thinking. Mind, Chris, there are great writers amongst men, and writers who do a lot of good by their pen, but there are men who do the reverse. I would far rather my son went out into the world, and endured hardness and worked hard for his country and fellow-men. I want you to be an Empire-builder, my boy, or an Empire-keeper. You can be a sailor, or a soldier, or a judge, or a policeman, or even a colonist, but if you're putting God first, service for country next, and self last, I shall be proud of my son."

Chris squared his shoulders. His heart caught fire at his mother's words.

"I will make you proud of me, Mums," he said earnestly. "I will work hard all my life till I die."

And then his mother stooped and kissed the top of his head, and a bright tear fell as she said:

"God bless and keep you, my boy, and help you to keep your promise."

Chris was a happy boy that night. He had often bewailed his inferiority to his sister, who was so quick and agile with her words and pen, but now he felt that he had a goal in front of him: a vision in which he saw himself as a doer if not a talker or a writer; and he fell asleep murmuring to himself:

"I'll do, do, do, and Mums will be proud of me!"

The weather cleared in a few days and spring came along in a rush.

Very soon Mrs. Inglefield had made her plans. She had found a good boys' school about six miles away, and though the schoolmaster did not care to take day boys as a rule, he made an exception in Chris's case, and took him as a weekly boarder. Chris was to come home every Saturday and stay till Monday. There was a train which would take him and bring him back. His mother meant to give him a bicycle very soon, but meanwhile, he used the train.

Then a young governess was found in the neighbouring town. Her name was Miss Morgan, and she came every morning at ten o'clock to give Diana and Noel some lessons. She stayed to lunch, took them for a walk afterwards, and then went home. Diana was a very tractable pupil, though she was apt to get dreamy and careless in her work. Noel was difficult. He did not like sitting still, and hated his lessons. He was always ready to talk, but never ready to learn, and Miss Morgan found her patience sorely tried by his inattention and restlessness.

One morning he had been very troublesome: he would not give his attention to an addition sum set down for him on his slate. He kicked his chair, he drummed with his elbows on the table, and he made grimaces at Diana, who sat on the opposite side of the table.

"Noel, if you don't start that sum at once I shall punish you," Miss Morgan said sternly.

"How?" asked Noel, not a bit abashed. "And why are figures so horrid, Miss Morgan? I like letters best: you don't have to add them up. But yesterday I did count up. I counted the bwanches of my fir tree, and I got up to twenty."

"No more talking. Begin your sum."

Noel balanced his slate pencil across his fingers, dropped it under the table, then scrambled down to get it. He was a long time under the table, and then announced that the pencil was broken into a "fowsand bits."

Miss Morgan produced another pencil promptly, and started him at his sum again.

She was giving Diana a French dictation lesson: when she looked at Noel again, she found him leaning back in his chair, his eyes upon the ceiling.

"I'm counting the flies," he said; "they're more interesting than sixes and sevens."

"Very well," said Miss Morgan, "as you are determined not to do that sum, you will stand in the corner till you are sorry for your idleness."

Noel did not like this at all, but he pretended he did. He marched off to the corner and stood with hands behind him and his face to the wall.

Then he began to mutter to himself. Miss Morgan told him to be quiet.

Presently he spoke out loud:

"I'm telling God about you, how unkind you are to me."

"You're displeasing God very much. Ask Him to take away the naughty spirit who is making you idle and disobedient."

"What's his name?" asked Noel, turning round with interest on his face. "Is it Satan?"

Miss Morgan made no reply. Diana giggled.

And then, with a sudden rush, Noel dashed at the door, opened it, and tore downstairs as fast as his two feet could carry him. Down the garden he went, through the little gate into the churchyard, and from there into the quiet silent church.

Miss Morgan went after him, but could not find him. She did not think of going into the church.

As she came back from a fruitless search in the garden, she met Mrs. Inglefield. In a few words she told her about Noel.

"He really is extremely naughty this morning," she said. "He won't do his lessons, and now he has run away."

Mrs. Inglefield looked distressed.

"He has been spoiled by his ayah in India," she said. "He has never been made to do things he doesn't like. Don't spend your time looking for him, Miss Morgan. Leave him alone. He must be punished when he comes back."

She sighed a little, for punishment of any sort was a painful necessity to her.

It was some time before Noel came back to the house. His mother caught sight of him stealing across the garden on tiptoe.

She met him at the garden door.

"Why are you not at lessons?" she asked gravely.

Noel stood still, his gaze irresolute, then he smiled, and when Noel smiled he was adorable.

"Oh, Mums dear, I've been doing a dweffully difficult fing. Casting out Satan like Jesus did in the Bible." Then he dropped his voice to an impressive whisper. "I fink I've left him in the church. I don't know whether he's there still, or where he's going nex'."

"I'm quite sure you haven't been able to cast him out," said Mrs. Inglefield.

She always took Noel seriously.

"Well, no, not 'zackly, but Miss Morgan said he was in me, and I fought I'd better get as near God as I could and then He'd help me. And I walked into the top seat and knelt on the stool."

"Are you good now?"

Noel nodded.

"It wasn't me that was wicked," he said, looking up at his mother with solemn eyes. "It was Satan. God said to him in church, 'Get behind me, Satan,' and he did it."

"I am afraid, Noel, you have vexed Miss Morgan very much. If you have told God that you are sorry, you must now go and tell her. And remember this. No one can make you naughty against your will. You have liked being naughty, and you went on being naughty. And to make you remember that you must not give way to such naughtiness, you must stay up in the nursery this evening and not come down with the others after tea."

Noel began to cry, then he spread out his hands pathetically:

"But I'm good now. You can't puni' me when I'm good."

"I'm very glad you're good now; but you must be punished all the same. If a man gets sent to prison for stealing, however good he feels and is, after stealing, it won't save him from the prison."

Noel stared at his mother. Then he sobbed out:

"But I want to be forgiven."

"Miss Morgan will forgive you if you tell her you are sorry, but you must still be punished."

And then she left him climbing slowly up the stairs to the schoolroom. She longed to take him in her arms and pet him, but she knew it would not be good for him if she did.

Noel went into the nursery a chastened boy.

"I've come to say I'm sorry," he said.

Miss Morgan looked at his red eyes, and wisely did not ask him where he had been.

"I am very glad to hear you say so," she said. "Now, to show me you are sorry, sit down and do your sums."

In silence Noel took up his slate and pencil. Miss Morgan had no cause for complaint of him again.

But when lessons were over Noel said to her:

"And though I'm as good as any angel, I'm going to be punished this evening. It isn't fair."

Miss Morgan asked him to explain. When she heard about it she said to him:

"Whatever your mother does is absolutely fair. It would not be fair to let you go unpunished. It is to remind you next time you are going to be naughty that punishment will surely follow."

Noel said no more. His mother could not have punished him more severely than by preventing him from joining her and Diana for what they called their happy hour.

But after this, he was better behaved in lesson time.

The flowers and bulbs in the garden were now making a good show.

Chris worked away in his garden when he came home on Saturday. His mustard and cress and radishes were quite a success, and he was a proud boy when he presented his mother with the first dish of them.

Diana was as busy as he, attending to her rose tree and seedlings. Noel weeded his plot, and talked to his fir tree whilst he was doing it. He was very delighted one Sunday to see some of his seeds coming up by the church porch.

But when Chris got his bicycle, there was not so much gardening done. Noel insisted upon learning to ride it, and Chris for some time was good-natured about it. The two boys helped each other, and strange to say Noel mastered the machine before Chris.

One Saturday afternoon their mother allowed them to go out with it. She was always anxious that the boys should play and do things together. Noel seemed to have more respect for Chris now he was at school, and was always asking him questions about it and longing to join him there.

Diana, strangely enough, did not take any interest in the bicycle. She tried to ride it one day and had a bad fall and hurt herself. Since then she never touched it.

Mrs. Inglefield, seeing her walking about the garden rather aimlessly, suggested to her that she should come for a walk with her.

Of course Diana was only too delighted to do so. She adored her mother and loved having her to herself.

"We will go and see a farmer's wife, a Mrs. Cobb. I knew her as a little girl. She is getting old, and is not able to leave home as she is stiff with rheumatism. It is such a pretty walk across the fields and through a bit of wood."

"I hope Chris and Noel won't be quarrelling," Diana said in her grown-up tone as she started from the house with her mother. She thought that her brothers would be envious of her when they heard how she had spent the afternoon.

"I hope not," said her mother, smiling. "The more they are together, the better I am pleased. That was why I let them go out by themselves to-day."

Diana gave a little sigh.

"I don't know why it is, but since Chris has gone to school, he turns up his nose at girls. He never used to, and he'd do anything I told him to, and now he won't do a thing, and laughs at me."

"Poor little girl!" said Mrs. Inglefield sympathetically. "I went through that with my brothers, when I was small. It is only when they first go to a boys' school. They get swelled heads, and think that boys are the most superior beings in creation. Chris is very fond of you, Diana; he'll soon come back to you if you take an interest in his cricket and games, and talk to him about his school."

Diana was silent; she knew she had not done this. They crossed some green fields, keeping to the little path which was the right-of-way, and then they came to a wood with a beaten path under overhanging trees. The fresh green foliage, the primroses and anemones and blue hyacinths enchanted Diana.

"In the country," she said as she went down on her knees to pick the flowers, "you have everything without paying for it. We couldn't do this in London. And the flowers in the parks are only to look at, not to pick."

It was a bright sunny afternoon. Mrs. Inglefield, who was in no hurry, sat down to rest herself on a fallen tree-trunk. Then suddenly a rather angry child's voice broke the silence:

"I won't go home—I won't! I won't ever again! I shall stay away till they find my dead body starved to death, a skillington! I hate them all! I'll live up in the trees with the birds. They can hunt and hunt and hunt for me, and will never find me. They'll be only hunting for me to punish me!"

Diana started up. She stood still and listened, and so did her mother. In a moment, pushing herself passionately through a lot of bushes and undergrowth, appeared a little girl about Diana's age. She was shorter than she, and had a short-cropped red head. She was not a pretty child, but there was something wild and graceful in the way she held herself. She eyed Diana and her mother as a young fawn might just before taking flight, but Mrs. Inglefield smiled at her tenderly and held out her hand:

"Are you a little wood nymph? Come and talk to us."

The little girl stood still. She was not a village child. She was dressed plainly but well, and she swung a straw hat in her hand as she walked. Her face had been furious with passion, but surprise and curiosity had taken the temper away. For an instant she wavered, as if meditating flight, and then she thought better of it and walked up to Mrs. Inglefield.

"I saw you in church on Sunday," she said. "You smiled so often! I never know people who smile."

"Oh, what a sad pity! How hot and tired you look, dear child! Come and sit down by me."

[CHAPTER VI]

Inez Appears

The little girl seated herself at the extreme end of the tree-trunk; she looked at Diana with a frown. Diana held out her hand, full of primroses and bluebells.

"Have a nosegay?"' she asked.

A shake of the head was the only answer given, and then suddenly the little stranger burst forth:

"I've run away, and I mean to stay away. They all hate me, and I hate them. And Julia is the worst of all. She's a murderer; she drowned my puppy and held my hands tight when I tried to save him. She drowned him in the water-butt and laughed all the time, and, oh, he thought I would save him. He looked at me, and he was such a darling!"

"The wicked woman!" exclaimed Diana, roused to quick indignation.

The little girl buried her face in her hands and sobbed as if her heart would break.

Mrs. Inglefield moved closer to her and put her motherly arms round her.

"My poor little girl, tell me a little more. What is your name? And where do you live?"

"My name is Inez. I used to live in London with Dad and Mother and I was happy there, for I had a kind Nanny. And then she went away and Julia came. And Dad and Mother are out in Spain, and our house in London is shut up, and Mother said it would do me good to come down to the country and stay at the Park with Julia."

She wiped her eyes and regarded Diana with interest. "I'd like to know you," she said; "I haven't any friends here at all, not one!"

"You will have to come and see us," said Mrs. Inglefield. "Would you be allowed to?"

"Julia doesn't care where I go, she only dresses me and puts me to bed; she's going to marry Jim the under-gardener, I think. She's always with him in the garden. Mrs. Ball is the crossest cook I've ever seen. She hates children, always did, she says, so she hates me, and the other maids always tell me to get out of their way. Sometimes they're kind, but I keep away from them all. I like climbing trees and making bows and arrows. I only shoot at targets on trees. I love the birds—I've a tame robin who comes into the nursery. I call him Jack."

Inez was brightening up as she talked.

Then Mrs. Inglefield said that she and Diana must go on to the farm. Inez asked if she might accompany them.

"I told Julia I should run away and kill myself, and never be heard of again," she remarked thoughtfully, "but now I've met you, I don't think I'll do that."

"I'm quite sure you wouldn't really be so foolish and naughty as to try to hurt yourself, because somebody else had done it," said Mrs. Inglefield gravely.

Diana looked quite shocked.

"I don't care what I do when I'm in a temper," said Inez carelessly. "I fight Julia. I pulled all her hair down one day."

"Don't tell us of the naughty things you do, for we don't want to feel unhappy, but tell us of the good things you do," said Mrs. Inglefield cheerfully.

"I'm not a bit good," said Inez, "never!"

"Then you can't be a happy little girl."

Inez was silent, then she began to chatter to Diana, and Mrs. Inglefield let the children talk together.

They soon reached the farm; Mrs. Cobb was upstairs in bed, so Mrs. Inglefield went up to see her, and Diana and Inez climbed the gate and sat on the top rail of it, swinging their legs to and fro, and talking eagerly together.

A pleasant-faced young woman, a niece of Mrs. Cobb's, presently came out of the house with two glasses of milk and two slices of currant cake. The children thanked her, and left their gate and came into the old porch and sat down there to enjoy what was given them. Diana was looking with the greatest interest at a hen and her tiny chicks who were on the bit of grass lawn before the house.

"What darlings!" she said. "How I wish I could have some little chickens of my own! I've never seen them in London."

"We have a lot," said Inez. "I'll bring you one or two if you like, unless the old hen makes a fuss and tries to peck my eyes out."

Diana was delighted. "I'll make a little home for them in my doll's house," she said; "I brought it from London, and the doors all open and shut, so they could run in and out."

They were very busy talking about it when Mrs. Inglefield appeared.

They walked across the fields, and then Mrs. Inglefield told Inez that she had better run home.

"I wonder," she said to her, "if you would like to please me by trying to be nice to Julia when you go back. If you will try, I would like you to come to tea with my children on Monday."

Inez looked up:

"I won't promise," she said earnestly, "for it may be too difficult, but if I'm awfully wicked I won't come to tea with you. That will make me try hard to be good."

Then she ran off. Her woes had been forgotten. She seemed a happy careless child.

"Oh, Mums, I do like her so much!" said Diana. "I've often wished we had another girl in our family. 'Specially now Chris has changed to me. And she loves hearing stories, she says she never gets tired of it. And I'm going to tell her some of mine that I haven't written down. I do like people who listen to them. I have to keep them bottled up so."

"Poor little storyteller!" said her mother, laughing. "I am afraid that busy brain of yours is only working in one corner."

"How?" asked Diana.

"It's working in your imagination corner, and there are several other corners more important: the learning corner—what grown-up people would call the receptive corner, and the spiritual corner. I should like that last corner to spread and spread till it covered the centre of your brain. Do you ever think about your Saviour and about heaven, that happy home prepared for those who love Him?"

Diana had hold of her mother's hand. She squeezed it tightly, but did not speak for a moment; then she said:

"Noel has that corner spreading all over him, but nobody has talked to us as you do. Granny never did."

"Well, darling, I'm going to talk very often about it, because I love to do so, and I want my children to grow up with their little hands placed in the Hands of their loving Saviour; I want them to be led through their lives by Him."

"I wonder if Chris and Noel have got home yet?"

Mrs. Inglefield smiled. She understood her children, and never gave them too much at a time. But she prayed a lot for them, as all good mothers do.

When they reached home they found Chris dusty, hot, and rather cross. He was cleaning his bicycle with some old rags outside the shed in which he kept it.

"Have you had a nice time?" his mother asked. "Where is Noel?"

"I don't know."

Chris spoke sullenly.

"Didn't he come back with you?"

"I think he's sulking in a ditch. I let him ride much more than I did, and then he went on for miles and left me. He wouldn't stop. And when I did come up with him I let him have it, and he yelled, and I told him, he shouldn't get on it again, so I came on home by myself."

"Oh, Chris! He's a little boy. You shouldn't have left him. Where is this ditch? I did think I could trust you to take care of him."

Chris looked ashamed of himself, then he straightened himself and met his mother's eyes frankly:

"I'm sorry, Mums, but he is a little rotter. And he could have walked home quite well. It was at the four cross corner by the Green Farm."

"That is nearly two miles away. I shall have to go and look for him."

Nurse had appeared, and protested as she heard her mistress say this.

"Indeed, you shall not, ma'am. You're much too tired. Master Chris must go himself."

"I can't," said Chris. "The little beast kicked and kicked at my bicycle with all his might, and something is bent, it won't go properly. It began to go wrong just before I got home."

"You can walk as well as your mother," said Nurse sternly.

Mrs. Inglefield hesitated. She was feeling very tired. And Diana's quick eyes had seen it.

"Chris, I'll come with you a part of the way, anyhow," she said. "I'm not as tired as Mums, and I dare say we shall meet him. And I want to tell you all about a strange little girl we met to-day."

"That's right," said Mrs. Inglefield. "I really think I must let you go. It is very silly of me, but I'm not a good walker. I got out of the way of it in India. I hope you will meet him on the way."

So Chris and Diana set off, and Mrs. Inglefield sat down in a big chair in her tiny hall and gave a sigh.

"I wish my three children pulled together better, Nurse. Whose fault is it, do you think?"

"They'll get on all right after a bit, ma'am. It's early days yet. Master Noel has been accustomed to have things all his own way, so it comes difficult to him. I think he wants a little taking down at times, but Master Chris deserves to be tired, leaving him in the lurch like that."

"I shall not let them go out together again. It was an experiment."

It was a long time before the children came home.

Tea-time passed, and Mrs. Inglefield was getting seriously uneasy.

And then, about half-past six, they appeared. Mrs. Inglefield met them at the door with great relief of mind.

Noel was in the middle of them, and looked tear-stained and defiant.

"We've had to drag him along," Diana said breathlessly. "He wasn't trying to come home, he was just sitting there expecting you to fetch him, determined not to walk home at all by himself."

Noel flung himself in his mother's arms with a burst of sobs.

"My legs is nearly broken, I'm so tarred. Chris lost me and left me, and I didn't know the way home. He's a beast!"

"Hush, hush! Now, no more tears. You are growing out of a baby. Go upstairs with Nurse, and you'll feel better after tea."

Nurse took him off and managed to comfort him. Diana toiled upstairs with weary legs, and Chris turned to his mother.

"I've made you angry," he said; "I'm sorry."

"Not angry, only disappointed. I thought I should be able to depend upon you."

"Oh, do, Mums, do! Forgive me. It's all my fault. I was furious with him for not playing fair. I forgot he was only a baby. And he kicks so! When he kicks my shins, I feel I'd like to give him a good thrashing!"

Chris looked at his mother so appealingly that she took him into her arms and kissed him.

"My eldest son," she said softly: "I want to feel that he is my right hand when his father is away!"

Chris gulped down a choke in his throat.

"Oh, I won't fail you next time," he said in a whisper; "give me a next time, won't you?"

"I hope you'll have a good many 'next times,'" said his mother, smiling. "Now off to your tea, my boy, and make your peace with Noel."

She said no more about the matter till bedtime. They had not so much time with her as usual as their tea was extra late, but when Noel was in bed she talked to him very gravely.

He was still very angry with Chris, and began making excuses for himself, but his mother stopped him:

"I generally find that the angry person is the one in the wrong," she said. "Now, Noel, listen, hold your breath and hush! What does God think of you, I wonder! He was there, He saw it all, He heard all you said and saw all you did. You were the first in the wrong, you had no right to go off with Chris's bicycle and refuse to give it up. It belongs to him, not to you. And it was very good of him to let you ride it at all. I must now forbid you to use it again till you have my permission. You can't be trusted with it. You made Chris angry this afternoon, you vexed and worried me by not coming home, and you grieved God. You are His little servant, but this afternoon you changed sides and have been serving the Devil. What are you doing now? You can't go to sleep till you have asked God to forgive you."

Noel lay very still, his angry eyes closed, and he looked like a little angel.

Mrs. Inglefield had one of his hot little hands in hers, and she felt it twitching. She was silent now, and for a few minutes only the rather loud ticking of the nursery clock broke the stillness in the room.

Then Noel opened his eyes and looked at her.

"I'm quite, quite good now," he said calmly; "he's left me very kickly, because God and I turned him out."

"I am glad to hear it, darling. Now, will you tell God that you are sorry?"

"I've told Him. And I fink it's all right. I fink He's forgiven me."

"I'd like you to tell Chris you're sorry, too. If I bring Chris here, will you do so?"

"Oh, but I aren't, not a bit!"

"Noel!"

Noel closed his eyes tightly again.

"I'm afraid," he murmured, "Satan's still inside me; he's left a bit of himself behind."

Mrs. Inglefield got up.

She knew that Noel rather liked to prolong this kind of conversation.

"I am going to fetch Chris," she said; "if you're really sorry—and God will not forgive you unless you are—you will of course, own up to him that it was your fault in the beginning—you know that is true."

She left the room. Noel wriggled about a good deal in bed, and when Chris came in there was nothing visible of him: only a fat lump below the bedclothes.

"Here is Chris," said Mrs. Inglefield; "I will leave you together."

She left the room.

Chris stood by the bed waiting.

Presently a muffled voice was heard.

"I'm sorry!"

"So am I!" said Chris frankly; "I hate making Mums unhappy!"

Noel's curly head suddenly shot up:

"Mums is always happy. It's only wicked people who are mis'able."

"Wicked people make her miserable," said Chris; "at least, we do."

"Did I spoil your cycle?"

"No, not much. I think I can put it right."

"I'm never to touch it again, never! Mums said so. Isn't that a punishment?"

"It was my fault," acknowledged Chris meekly; "I aggravated you."

Noel nodded. "And so I did, too. I've finished telling everybody I'm sorry, and now I'm going to sleep."

Chris looked at him.

"We'll shake hands on it," he said. "That's what we do at school when we've had a fight."

So Noel's fat dimpled hand and Chris's were clasped together, and then Chris crept silently out of the room. His mother was standing by a passage window looking out into the dusky garden. A young moon was rising over a hill in the distance. Her thoughts were away in India with her husband. She was longing, as she so often did, to have him once more by her side.

Chris leant his head against her shoulder.

"We're all right, Mother. I'm so sorry we've made you sad."

She put her arm round him and said gently:

"I've been wondering what kind of boys your father will meet when he comes home. Whether he'll be disappointed in them, and tell me that I have failed to train them rightly: that I have spoilt them. I wish he were here to talk to you, Chris."

"Oh, Mums, we want no one but you," was Chris's fervent reply; "and I'm awfully sorry about this afternoon. It was all my fault. I was cross to him first, and then he did it to spite me, and I left him there and rode off, to spite him! But we've made it up, and it won't happen again, I promise you!"

Then his mother turned quickly and kissed the brown head on her shoulder.

"I want to depend on you; I want to know that Noel won't come to harm when he's with you, and I'm going to trust you again, Chris. I don't believe you'll fail me."

Mrs. Inglefield had no fault to find with Chris for a long time after that. His ambition was to have his mother's trust and confidence.

[CHAPTER VII]

Inez at Home

On Monday afternoon Inez appeared just before three o'clock. Miss Morgan was just taking Diana and Noel out for their daily walk, but Mrs. Inglefield said that as Inez had come so early, they could all play in the garden together, instead of walking out, so Miss Morgan went home and the children were left to themselves.

Of course the garden was shown to Inez: she was tremendously interested in it all.

"It's so lovely to be able to grow just what you like," she said; "I think I shall get our gardener to give me a bit of ground, but not for flowers. I shall grow pumpkins and pomegranates."

"Oh!" said Diana, awed by this magnificent idea, "Will you be able to do it?"

Inez nodded; then she pointed to Noel's ground.

"I like the idea of growing your own Christmas tree," she said. "I think you were a clever boy to think of it."

Noel was very pleased.

"He's my little friend," he said; "I talk to him a lot. It's very dull for him now, but he knows his grand time is coming. And he's growing like anyfing. Look at his dear little green tips."

When they had seen all over the garden, they climbed Up into the medlar tree, and Diana began telling one of her wonderful stories. She found Inez a better listener than Noel. He presently left them, but the story continued, and was left to be continued.

"I can't make up any more now," said Diana; "I'll tell you the rest when we see each other next!"

Then they got down from the tree and played hide-and seek, and after a time Diana was called indoors by Nurse. Some new shoes had arrived which had to be tried on. Noel and Inez stayed in the garden.

"Would you like to see some flowers I planted for God?" Noel asked, wishing to do his part in entertaining the guest.

Inez looked at him and laughed, then followed him into the churchyard, where he showed her with pride some sweet-peas and blue cornflowers coming up by the church porch. Then he showed her some forget-me-nots growing on a small grave, and on another, some little pink asters.

"I did those," he said with pride, "but Mr. Wargrave stopped me. I do fink God might have a better garden, don't you? Mr. Wargrave says people are God's flowers. They're all sleeping underground now, but they'll come up the most lovely people by and by. At least, I s'pose it's their bodies that will. They get out of them when they die, and go away to God."

"You are a funny boy!" said Inez, staring at him. "Nobody in our house talks about God. Go on, say some more."

"Well, you know," said Noel eagerly, "I'm a Chris'mas child, specially born on the same day as Jesus Christ. Chris and Diana don't understand, so God loves me and I love Him, and I want Him to have lovely flowers in His garden, because He likes them. He made them, you know, so of course He does."

"I s'pose," said Inez, "He made me, but God doesn't like me. I'm too wicked."

"Are you?" said Noel, looking at her curiously. "What kind of wickedness do you do?"

"Well, yesterday I got the garden hose and I turned it on into Julia's bedroom window. It's rather low down, and she was doing her hair and trying on ear-rings, waiting for the gardener to come along and talk to her. She was in such a rage; her face was streaming with water, and then I had to hide from her till she forgot it a bit, and I hid in the best spare-room bed, and then they made a fuss about that."

"I think that's rather fun," said Noel, his eyes sparkling. "I wonder if we have got a hose. It squirts water, doesn't it? We used to have one in India. I should like to squirt my Chris'mas tree. He'd like it, I'm sure."

"I like to squirt people who don't like it," said Inez; "that's wicked, they say. But I don't think I care about God. I hate saying my prayers. I never know what it means, and it's so dull. And church is awfully dull."

"Oh!" gasped Noel; "I think it's beautiful! It belongs to God. He comes there, you know, every Sunday, and in the week besides. I almost fink I see Him sometimes. Mums says that God likes everybody, and calls them to get near Him. He doesn't like them far away."

"But God lives millions and billions of miles away up at the back of the stars," said Inez in a thoughtful tone.

"Oh, but He doesn't stay there," said Noel, shaking his head gravely. "Oh dear, no! He's always close to us. Why, I really do believe He's listening to us now."

There was such an emphatic conviction in Noel's tone that Inez looked quickly round; then she laughed uneasily.

"I hope He didn't hear me say I didn't like church," she said, "and I didn't like Him. But that's how I'm wicked, they all say so. I care for nobody and nobody cares for me. And now let's jump over those flower-beds: we've been grave enough."

They were back in the garden by this time, and of course in jumping the flower-beds Inez missed the distance and landed herself in the middle of one, breaking a young azalea to pieces and making havoc of some small seedlings planted.

"There now, that's a wickedness!" said Inez ruefully, as she surveyed the disaster. "Now, what will your mother say to me? Shall I tell her that a wild dog came in from the road and did it, or some pigs? Do you keep pigs?"

"We've got to tell her truefully if we do fings," said Noel.

Then Diana appeared, saying that tea was ready. She was consulted about the damaged flower-bed.

"Here is Mums coming out," she said. "She won't be angry."

And Mrs. Inglefield was not. She smiled at Inez, called her a little tomboy, and asked her not to do it again. Then they went upstairs to the nursery to tea.

There were hot buttered scones, plum cake, honey, and some fancy biscuits. Inez enjoyed her tea thoroughly.

"I hope you'll come to tea with me very soon," she said; "but I'm afraid they won't give us so good a tea as this. I should like you to come the end of this week: will you? We've a lovely big house to play hide-and-seek in!"

"May Chris come, too?" asked Diana. "He'll be home on Saturday from school. If you asked us then, he'd be able to come. Will Julia like us coming?"

"I shan't tell her till the day arrives," said Inez, "and then there'll be no time for her to do anything. She didn't mind my coming here to-day. She's glad to get rid of me."

"And I'll have time before Saturday to make up a lot more about 'Ada and Gertie,'" said Diana.

"Ada and Gertie" were the two motherless heroines in Diana's story.

They chattered away all tea-time, and afterwards went down to the drawing-room and had games with Mrs. Inglefield.

Inez was very loath to go home. To her surprise, at seven o'clock Julia appeared. She was a very smart young woman with a sharp voice, but she was quite respectful to Mrs. Inglefield.

"I've come to fetch Miss Inez," she announced, and then, whilst Inez was putting on her outdoor shoes, she went into the nursery and had a chat with Nurse.

Nurse spoke to Mrs. Inglefield afterwards.

"I hope the little girl won't be making our children naughty, ma'am. That young woman says she is terribly wild, and she can do nothing with her. She ran out of the house in her nightdress one night, and she has fits of passion in which she threatens to kill anyone who comes near her, and herself in the bargain. 'Tis a pity she has no governess, or isn't sent to school. She's supposed to do lessons with that young person, but she seems to have no influence over her, and the child will learn nothing."

"I think there are faults on both sides," said Mrs. Inglefield. "Mr. Wargrave has been telling me about the child. Her parents don't care for her. They wanted a boy because of the property; and it goes to a distant cousin, for a girl can't inherit. Poor little Inez has never had any love in her life. I feel a great pity for her, and I think we must try and help her."

It had been arranged before Inez left that the children should come over to spend the following Saturday afternoon with her. Mrs. Inglefield had asked Julia if it would be convenient to her, and she had made no objection.

When Chris heard about it, he looked doubtful.

"I don't know that I care about going to tea with a girl," he said.

His mother smiled.

"It won't hurt you, my boy. Inez has a most beautiful home, and you will enjoy seeing it. I used to go to the Park, as it is called, when I was a little girl, and I loved it. I am afraid there are no deer now in the Park, as there used to be, but the gardens are delightful, and perhaps she will take you up to what we used to call the battlements. It is a walk round the roof with a wall outside and places where the cannons used to be fired. It is like an old castle."

This sounded interesting, and when Saturday came, Chris accompanied Diana and Noel without a murmur.

They had to walk a good mile before they came to it.

Chris felt he was in charge of the party, and squared his shoulders as he marched along the road.

"Don't you think Inez is a pretty name?" Diana asked him. "Mother says she is Spanish—at least, her mother is. I can't think why she isn't happy living in a big beautiful house; but she told me that all the rooms were shut up, and that she has only one small room to live in. And she has all her meals alone. Julia likes to have hers with the other servants. It must be very dull for her."

"I wish she had a brother," said Chris; "I wonder if she could play cricket? We might try a game."

Talking together the mile soon came to an end. They turned in at some big iron gates, and up a drive bordered by chestnut trees, which were in full blossom.

Diana insisted upon stopping to gaze up at them. She always had a keen eye for beauty.

"They're wonderful," she said. "It's like going up an avenue to an enchanted castle. Let's pretend Inez is a princess kept in close custody."

"Oh, but how wet and sticky!" said Noel. "I shouldn't like to be kept in custard!"

Diana and Chris shouted with laughter. Noel did not like to be laughed at, and he turned a little sulky; but when they came up to the house he was himself again.

It was an old grey stone, turreted building. Two gardeners were mowing a very big lawn in front of it, and there were beds of spring flowers in front of the big square stone porch. They had to go up a flight of steps to the door, but before they had got to the top Inez had appeared.

"I saw you from the window," she said, a little breathlessly, "and I slid down the banisters the whole way."

Then she looked at Chris.

"Are you older or younger than Diana?" she asked.

"I'm the eldest of the family," Chris replied, drawing up his head proudly.

"So am I," said Inez, dancing lightly up and down on the tips of her toes. "I'm the eldest, and I'm the youngest, too, for there's nobody older or younger than me. I'm the only one."

Chris looked at her with some interest.

"Come along upstairs, and I'll show you where I live, and then we'll have a jolly racket all over the house and garden!"

She pulled hold of Diana's hand; the children followed her through a very large and lofty hall, up a broad staircase, and then along some stone passages through low doorways, until she pushed open the door of a room.

It was not a very cheerful-looking room. There were two windows, but they were small, set in thick grey stone. The carpet was a dingy brown. There was a round table with a red cloth, a horsehair sofa, a glass bookcase with a cupboard underneath it, a few very gloomy-looking pictures. Four chairs stood against the wall.

"You're very tidy," Diana observed as she looked round. "Where do you keep your playthings? You should see our nursery! It's littered all over the floor."

"I haven't got any playthings," said Inez; "I don't care for that sort of thing, and Julia keeps this room tidy. I'm never in it, and if she locks me in I just climb out of the window and walk along the gutter till I get to the battlements. I like playing in the stables and lofts. I have some rabbits I'll show you. I only come up here for meals."

"There's not much to do here," said Diana.

"No, and tea will come very soon. Take off your gloves and things, and come on down to the garden."

This they did, and all agreed that the gardens and shrubberies and stables were the best places to be in.

They had not seen half of them before a tea bell rang, and they had to return to the house. Julia had provided quite a nice tea: bread-and-butter, scones with jam, currant buns, and a big seed cake. She poured out tea for them, and then left them. Inez, with some importance, took her place, and poured out more cups of tea when wanted. Her tongue was very busy, and her little guests listened to her accounts of herself with surprise and awe. There seemed nothing that she could not and would not do.

She rode the cows as well as the horses bare-back, she drove the carts backwards and forwards to the Farm, she had a rope ladder which she fixed to all kinds of dangerous places, and she could climb up and down it like a monkey. Chris's eyes sparkled as he listened: this girl was more like a boy than anything else, he thought, and he began to long to join her in some of her mischievous pranks. When tea was over she suggested they should go to the battlements, and she took them through a narrow door, up a winding stone staircase, till they came out above the house. Here they had the greatest fun, running round the turreted towers and looking through the peepholes down to the country stretching out below them.

"You—you know what I'm going to do when I grow up?" Inez said. "I shall have a flying machine of my own, and fly all over the world."

"You couldn't do it," said Chris. "You'd come a cropper. It wants a proper airman to-fly."

"I'd be a proper airwoman," said Inez obstinately. "Now we'll come down and have some shooting. I have some bows and arrows. I've just one friend, Dick Yorke: he's the boy at the west lodge, and he makes stunning bows and arrows. He and I have shooting matches."

She led them on to the old lawn, left them there whilst she raced off to a shed, and came back in a few minutes with half a dozen bows in one hand and a bundle of arrows in the other.

This sport proved very exciting. Chris enjoyed it as much as anyone. They aimed at big paper targets fixed on some tree-trunks at the bottom of the lawn, and Chris and Inez both reached the bull's-eye.

There was no lack of occupation that evening. They went all over the stables, saw the two white terriers, the rabbits, chickens and turkeys, pigs and goats. They visited the barns, and enjoyed the swing that Inez had got one of the men to put up for her, and then, to their dismay, the big clock in the stable-yard struck seven.

Mrs. Inglefield had told them that they must leave Inez at seven o'clock.

When Chris said they must go, Inez declared that they should not.

"Why, I don't go to bed till eight, and very often I run out and hide somewhere away from Julia, and don't come in till nearly nine. I haven't shown you half yet. I want to take you down to the pond where the fish are."

"We must go now," Chris said firmly. "I promised Mother we should be punctual."

"I don't think you're to be pitied at all, with all this," said Diana, waving her hands about. "I think you live in a lovely house, Inez; I should never, never be dull, and I should write stories about people being shut up in your castle, and soldiers outside trying to catch them."

"It's so dull being alone," said Inez with a pout. "I have nobody with me."

"You have two peoples always," said Noel, staring at her with big eyes.

"I've nobody I like."

"Don't you like God?"

"Oh, shut up, Noel!" said Chris. "And come on. We must not be late."

"Oh, what a good boy am I!" said Inez mockingly. "But I shan't let you go, so don't you think it. You can easily say you didn't know the time."

"But we do know the time, and we don't tell lies."

"I do whenever I want to. What does it matter?"

They were walking towards the house as they spoke, and Diana ran upstairs to get their gloves and scarves that they had taken off before tea.

When she had got them and was coming downstairs again, she heard a great noise in the hall.

It was Inez struggling and fighting with Julia.

She had inveigled Chris and Noel into the big library, and then had run out and turned the key of the door.

"Now I've got you!" she cried, dancing up and down. "And you'll have to be late going home, for I shan't let you go."

Chris and Noel battered at the door, and Julia appeared. Then ensued a struggle for the key. Inez fought and screamed and kicked, and even tried to bite, when Julia wrenched the key out of her grasp and unlocked the door. Diana looked on in horror. Inez seemed to have turned into a little tiger.

"Come on," she said to the boys, "let us get out of this." And then they hastily went out of the hall door.

Inez left Julia and darted after them.

"You are all milksops, and I don't care for one of you! You might have backed me up against that beast of a Julia!"

"I wouldn't fight women," said Chris scornfully.

"And now I suppose you'll go home and tell your mother how wicked I am, and she'll never let me come near you again!"

The children were silent for a moment, then Diana said steadily:

"We tell Mother everything, but she won't be angry, only sorry."

"And now I know who does always live in your house," said Noel in his eager, breathless way: "it's the Devil!"

This statement reduced Inez to silence.

Chris hurried his sister and brother down the drive, and Inez stopped still and gazed after them with tears in her eyes.

"Good-bye," Chris said, looking back and waving his cap, "and thank you for a very nice time."

Inez made no answer: she turned and walked back slowly to the house. Noel's strange words rang in her ears: "Julia says I'm a young devil," she said to herself slowly. "I wonder if it is the Devil that makes me get into such tempers. I don't like to think he lives in the house with me."

Meanwhile Chris was saying to Noel:

"I do wish you wouldn't talk so much about God and the Devil. People don't do it. It makes us quite ashamed of you."

"I don't care," said Noel, setting his lips in an obstinate line. "It was Satan that made her fight like that. I'll ask Mother if it wasn't!"

"She's awfully naughty," said Diana, "but I do like her. She thinks we're prigs, but we couldn't be expected to all begin to fight and kick and scream at poor Julia. I don't wonder she gets cross with Inez!"

"She ought to go to school," said Chris in his superior tone. "She'd soon get licked into shape."

"She told me when her father and mother come home they are going to send her to school, and she says she will like it."

"Oh, will she!" said Chris with a short laugh. "A boy came the other day to our school: his mother and nurse have spoilt him, and he began carrying on high jinks with some fellows. You should have seen how they dropped on him! I felt quite sorry for the kid!"

"What did they do to him?" asked Noel with interest.

"You'll see when you come there. You aren't much better than Inez sometimes, when you can't get your way, so don't preach so much."

"I don't preach. But I shall when I grow up. It's very good to preach."

Chris refused to argue the matter out.

When they reached home they found their mother waiting for them. She was soon taken into their confidence, but as Diana said, she did not feel angry with Inez, only very, very sorry for her.

"I'm not afraid of her doing you harm, for I hope you will do her good."

"But we don't like being prigs," said Chris.

"No. You need not be. Be your own happy bright little selves, and show her that you are happier doing right than when you are doing wrong. That is all."

The children said no more. Diana had been rather afraid that their acquaintance with Inez might be stopped, and she was looking forward to pouring out some of the imaginations in her brain to her. Now she felt quite happy.

"Mother always understands," she said to herself as she laid her head down on her pillow that night, "and if Inez had a mother like ours, I expect she'd be as good as gold!"

[CHAPTER VIII]

The Little Rescuers

"Come on, you little duffer! You're only picking rubbish. We want to get to the wild strawberries!"

"I'm tarred, and moss isn't rubbish! I fink I shall put it round my Chris'mas tree."

Chris, Diana and Noel were taking a walk together. It was the following Saturday, and Mrs. Inglefield, who encouraged independence in Chris, assented gladly when he told her that the baker had told him of a field which contained wild strawberries and that they would all like to go and get them. Chris had never seen a wild strawberry in his life, but he imagined them to be pretty much like those he had seen in the London shops. It was rather a long walk for Noel, and he soon began to lag behind and stop to look in the hedges for spoils. Chris felt impatient; it was a hot afternoon in June, and the country lane was dusty and breathless. No friendly trees shaded them from the glaring sun. Diana trudged along with a smiling face. She was generally wrapt in dreams when she was out of doors, but Noel's plaintive voice roused her.

"Take my hand," she said; "I'll help you along. It isn't much farther now. It's that high field over there by the side of the wood, isn't it, Chris?"

"Yes, that's it. We can sit down when we get there and eat."

"But we must bring some back for Mother."

"I'm raining!" announced Noel; "raining quite fast like I did in India!"

Diana laughed.

"You do say such things!" she said. "Take your handkerchief out and wipe your face. We're all hot."

The lane along which they were walking was very narrow and winding. It was a by-lane, and by the grassy ruts in it showed that it was not much used.

As they rounded a corner they suddenly came upon a motor turned nearly upside down in a hedge, and by the side of it a lady sat reclining against a bank. She did not see them till they were right up to her, for her eyes were shut, and she was groaning in an unhappy sort of way.

The children stood still, and then, doffing his cap, Chris stepped up to her.

"Are you hurt, please? Can we help you?"

The lady started and looked up. Then she put her hand up to her head and pulled her hat straight. She had a very cheerful-looking face and seemed about the age of their mother.

"Thank goodness someone has come by at last! I thought in this benighted country that no one would come to my help! Of course you can help me, little boy, by fetching men from somewhere to right my car and put it into the middle of the road again. If I hadn't smashed or sprained my ankle, I could have walked back to the village and sent someone to bring it along."

"I'll go at once," Chris said cheerfully. "There must be some policemen about, and they'll see to everything."

The lady went into peals of laughter.

"Hark at him! A little Londoner, eh? The police may rescue people in distress in London, but they don't exist in the country, my boy. There's a single one here and there, but my experience is that never by any chance do they turn up when one wants them. You must think of someone better than a policeman. Get to the nearest farm. They'll send some men along."

"There's that farm we passed a little time ago," said Diana. "Run back there, Chris, and ask them to come."

"Of course they may be out in the fields working," said the lady; "but get someone—anyone—quickly, if you can! I seem to have been here hours, and have shouted myself hoarse."

Noel stepped up in front of her when Chris had run off. His eyes were big with thought and anxiety.

"The best person who can help in a naxident is God," he remarked, looking at her gravely; "I fink He's the Person to be asked to send the men you want. For He knows just where they are."

Then the lady threw back her head and laughed more heartily than she had done before.

"Oh, you delicious child!" she said. "I'm sure from your face and curls you must be a cherub just flown down from heaven. Now, aren't you? Confess you are."

"I don't know what a cherub is," said Noel, looking at her stolidly, "but I haven't been in heaven since I was a baby."

"Please excuse him," interrupted Diana. "He's always talking like that. We can't get him to be quiet about God."

She said the last word in a whisper.

"But," said the lady, "I shouldn't wonder if he were right. Could you ask God to help us, as you seem to know Him better than the rest of us?"

She turned to Noel as she spoke, and in a moment he was on his knees in the dusty lane.

"Please, God, send somebody very quickly to help this poor lady. For Jesus' sake. Amen."

Then he got up.

"That's all right," he said calmly. "God always hears when anyone wants help. Mums has told us so."

He looked a little defiantly at Diana as he spoke, for he knew she was thoroughly disapproving of him.

But Diana did not heed him. She had seen the lady make a wry face and clasp her foot with her hand.

"Can I bind my handkerchief round it?" she asked. "Or get some water to bathe it with?"

"You are a little dear to think of such a thing, but I can't get my shoe off, it hurts too much; and I was due to lunch with Lady Alice at two o'clock. It's past three now. What will she think? Do you know where her house is? I took a wrong turn, thinking I would make a short cut, and then ran myself into the hedge in this twisty, twirly lane! It's only the third time I've been out alone with my car. I suppose I was careless."

"I know where Lady Alice lives. Mums has been to tea with her and has shown us the house. It's over there. We can just see its chimneys."

"Well, now, that's splendid! May I send you off there to tell them where I am? They'll send their car for me. And leave the cherub to take care of me."

"I think I can go across the fields," said Diana, peeping over the hedge.

This was an adventure after her own heart. She found a gate into the field and sped away.

Noel heaved a sigh, then suddenly plumped down on the bank beside the stranger.

"I'm so tarred," he said; "we've walked miles. We were going to pick strawberries."

"Were you? How delightful! I hope the strawberries will wait for you. Talk away. Tell me who you are and all about yourself. It will cheer me up."

Noel began at once.

"I've comed from India. The other children haven't been there since they were babies. Mums likes us all alike, but I know her bester than the others, 'cause I've always, always been with her. And I've got a Chris'mas tree. I planted it myself. I'm very fond of him, and I talk to him a lot. He's rather sad now because the flowers are so pretty and he isn't pretty, and he doesn't smell like the roses. But by and by, when Chris'mas comes, he'll be beautiful, grand, and beautiful! And the flowers will be dead and buried. He's really much better than they are, because he lives longer. Chris and Dinah won't laugh at him when he's dressed with beautiful lights and presents, and when he's in the middle of the room and all of us dancing round him. I tell him about it when he feels a little unhappy. And he nods his head and unnerstands."

"I'm most awfully interested," said the lady as Noel came to a pause. "Go on. Tell me more."

Noel drew a long breath, and then he sprang to his feet. "Here's a man in a cart, and I believe it is God's man, and he's got here first of all."

Sure enough, a farm cart was coming round the corner, and the man who was driving got down at once when he saw there had been an accident.

"You'm best get in my cart, mum, and I'll drive 'ee to the Hall," he said when matters had been explained to him. "'Tisn't a one man's job to get that car out o' ditch."

The lady looked at the rough dirty cart which had been used for carting manure, and she smiled very sweetly:

"I think I'll wait, thank you. I've sent a little messenger to the Hall, and they'll be sending a car for me."

The man rubbed the back of his head and looked first at her and then at the car.

"Seems as if I be no use to ye."

"But you must be," Noel said, staring at him, "because God sent you. I asked Him to. Oh, do give a pull to the car and I'll help you."

The man laughed at the tiny boy's offer. The car was a very small one, but he set his shoulder to it, and after much vigorous effort he actually got it righted.

Noel clapped his hands in triumph, and danced round him excitedly:

"I knew you'd do it!"

The lady was very pleased. She presented the man with two half-crowns out of her purse, and then she tried to raise herself to her feet.

"If I could once get in!" she sighed. "But I'm afraid it is of no use. I shouldn't be able to manage the car with no feet, and it is my right one that is hurt. I am not a clever enough driver to do without it."

"Here's Chris coming with some other men," shouted Noel, "but we've done it without them!"

"I think I shall be very glad of their help to bring my car along after me," said the lady, who seemed willing to employ all who came up.

Chris seemed almost disappointed when he saw the car standing on its four wheels in the lane.

"I've brought Mr. Down and Mr. Gates," he said importantly. "They were working in the field and they came at once."

"But God's man got here first," said Noel.

For a moment there was silence; the men stared at each other, and then the lady had a brilliant idea.

"Take one of the cushions out of the car, or perhaps the thick rug would answer as well, two of you catch hold of each end, and I can then be carried off to the Hall, where they are expecting me to lunch."

This was immediately done. She waved her hand to the little boys from her improvised seat.

"Good-bye; you will have to come and see me. I have taken a house for the summer about four miles off, and I am ever so grateful for your help."

She seemed to have forgotten about Diana, and Chris asked Noel where she was.

"She's gone to Lady Alice's. I don't believe she'll ever come back; let's go on and get the strawberries."

After a little hesitation, Chris agreed to this.

"I like that lady," Noel announced as they went on their way. "She laughs so when she talks. And she liked me to talk to her. I told her all about my Chris'mas tree, and she said it was very interessing!"

"I bet she did!" Chris said with an unbelieving laugh.

Here Noel made a rush forwards. They had reached the top of the field, and there was some red amongst the grass along a bank there.

But when Chris reached the spot he was bitterly disappointed.

"They're so tiny, they're not proper strawberries!"

"They taste nice and sweet," said Noel, putting some of the little strawberries into his mouth. "Let's pick a lot of them."

They set to work. There were really a fine number on the bank, and Chris began to wish Diana was with them.

"She's so quick," he said. "She'd pick a lot in no time."

But Diana did not come. There was no sign of her. And by the time they had nearly filled their basket, Chris said they must go home.

On their way back, they passed the place where the accident had happened.

The car was gone, but Noel's quick eyes spied something in the hedge. He pounced upon it at once. It proved to be a small leather purse attached to a little gold chain.

"What shall we do with it, Chris?"

"Take it to her," cried Chris, joyfully pouncing upon it and putting it in his pocket. "Come on, Noel, hurry up! The Hall is ever so far off, but it will be fun going there. I shouldn't wonder if they haven't kept Dinah to tea."

"I found it," said Noel sulkily. "It's mine, it isn't yours."

"What does it matter who found it, you stupid! Why, you're beginning to cry! What a baby! I'll give it to you to give to her when we get there. Come on! What a slow coach you are!"

Noel struggled to keep up with his brother's quick pace, but at last he gave up, and again dissolved into tears.

"I'm tarred. I've walked ever so many miles. I wiss I was home!"

"Then you go home, and I'll go on to the Hall."

"It isn't fair. I found it, and I like that lady. She smiled at me!"

Poor Noel was divided between his longing to go on and the desire to rest his poor little legs. The afternoon had been very warm, and he was tired out. By the time they came to the signpost at the cross-roads which marked the way to the Hall, he had made up his mind to go home.

"We might take it to her to-morrow," he suggested.

"Oh, she must have it at once!" Chris said. "It has money in it. I can hear it jingle. You always give up money at once. Besides, she may be wanting to use it. You go on back to Mums and give her the strawberries, and tell her all about it."

Noel brightened up. To give his mother anything was always a treat, and he dearly liked telling her of any adventure that befell him.

So the little boys parted, and Noel reached home at last. His mother met him at the door.

"Why, my darling, how warm you are!"

"And I'm tarred and firsty," said Noel, "and I'm raining all over me—"

"Where are the others? Come into the dining-room and I will get you a glass of lemonade."

"Here are the strawberries, such tinies! But they taste very nice, Mums. Dinah and Chris have both gone off about a lady who's at Lady Alice's—"

Then he poured into his mother's ears the events of the afternoon. When he had drunk the lemonade and had had his hands and face washed, and was seated in his mother's lap in her boudoir, he began to feel better.

And then he suddenly put his arms round his mother's neck and hugged her.

"I do feel sorry for the poor little boys who can't get on their mothers' laps," he said.

"Ah!" said his mother with a sigh and a smile. "I'm afraid my children will soon get beyond their mother's lap."

"I never shall," said Noel determinedly. "Not when I'm a grown-up big man—"

"You're my baby-man now," said Mrs. Inglefield, laughing. "And I should like to keep you so."

It was not very long afterwards that Chris and Diana came home together. Diana had her story to tell first.

"I thought I should never get to Lady Alice's, it seemed such a long way, and when I knocked at the big door I felt quite frightened. I told the butler about the accident, and he took me into such a beautiful big drawing-room, and there were a lot of people there, and Lady Alice came up and kissed me, for she said she knew who I was, and then she ordered out her car at once, but the chauffeur couldn't be found, he had gone home to dinner, and so it all took time, and Lady Alice gave me a real ice and some cake, and then said I had better go in the car, and she sent her maid as well, and we were coming through the village and had got to the narrow lane when we met two men carrying the lady on a cushion, and so she was put very carefully in, and it hurt her and she gave a little scream, and then she said I must come back with her and tell her all about ourselves, for she wanted to be amused."

"But she wouldn't go to Lady Alice's; she said she must get straight home because of her foot. And she lives in such a pretty little house, Mums, and she has a dear old aunt who lives with her and is very small, not much taller than I am, but so pretty, and she made such a fuss when she heard about her foot. And she's called Constance—the old lady called her Connie, and then one of the servants was sent for a doctor, and old Miss Trent, that's the aunt's name, began to bathe the foot and bandage it, and she let me help, and Miss Constance laughed most of the time, though she called out too, and she said such funny things; she made up a rhyme about herself, about taking out her car, and roaming afar, and having a spill, and then being ill, and it ended up with:"

"'Having contracted a sprain,
I won't drive again;
I'll lie on my sofa
And become a poor loafer.'"

"And then she said she must have visitors to amuse her, and she wants Noel to go to her on Monday."

Diana paused for breath. Noel clapped his hands, and cried out with delight.

"Well now, I'll tell the rest," said Chris. "I went off to the Hall, but when I got to the lodge the woman told me that Lady Alice had sent her car to take the lady home, and I asked where it was, and the woman told me it was called Ladywell Cottage, and was two miles off. I was pretty well done, but as it happened a baker's cart was going that way, and he took me up. It was fun driving along with him! I think bakers' men must have a jolly time of it! And then I went up and knocked at the door, and the doctor had just arrived, but the lady would see me and thanked me for the purse, and I told her that Noel had picked it up, but couldn't walk so far, so that's why she wants to see him next Monday. And then the doctor said he would drive Dinah and me back, for he was going to see Ted at the Rectory and it was all in his way. So we had a jolly drive back in the doctor's car, and here we are!"

Noel's Christmas tree

The old mill-house.

"Noel's Christmas Tree" Frontispiece

NOEL'S

CHRISTMAS TREE

BY

AMY LE FEUVRE

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED

LONDON, MELBOURNE AND CAPE TOWN

MADE IN ENGLAND

Printed in Great Britain by

BILLING & SONS LTD.

GUILDFORD AND LONDON

H2942

CONTENTS