By BESSIE MARCHANT

“Bessie Marchant is the girls’ ‘Henty’, and a writer

of genuine tales of adventure with a dash and vigour

quite exceptional.”—Daily Chronicle.

Sally Makes Good: A Story of Tasmania.

A Transport Girl in France: A Story of the Adventures of a W.A.A.C.

Norah to the Rescue: A Story of the Philippines.

Cynthia Wins: A Tale of the Rocky Mountains.

The Gold-marked Charm: A Story of the Blue Nile Country.

A Canadian Farm Mystery: or, Pam the Pioneer.

Joyce Harrington’s Trust: An Argentine Mystery.

A Mysterious Inheritance: British Columbia.

The Heroine of the Ranch: Tierra del Fuego.

A Girl of Distinction: A Tale of the Karroo.

A Countess from Canada: Life in the Backwoods.

Daughters of the Dominion: The Canadian Frontier.

Sisters of Silver Creek: A Story of Western Canada.

A Dangerous Mission: A Tale of Russia in Revolution.

Lois in Charge: or, A Girl of Grit.

A Girl Munition Worker: A Story of the Great War.

A Girl and a Caravan: A Story of Persia.

Helen of the Black Mountain: Montenegro.

The Loyalty of Hester Hope: British Columbia.

A Princess of Servia: A Story of To-day.

The Ferry House Girls: An Australian Story.

Greta’s Domain: A Tale of Chiloé.

A Courageous Girl: A Story of Uruguay.

No Ordinary Girl: A Story of Central America.

A Heroine of the Sea: A Story of Vancouver Island.

A V.A.D. in Salonika: A Tale of the Great War.

Molly Angel’s Adventures: A Story of Belgium under German Occupation.

Denvers Wilson’s Double: A Story of New Mexico.

The Adventurous Seven.

The Girl Captives: A Story of the Indian Frontier.

Three Girls on a Ranch: A Story of New Mexico.

LONDON: BLACKIE & SON, Ltd., 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C.

The Youngest Sister

A Tale of Manitoba

BY

BESSIE MARCHANT

Author of “A Girl of Distinction” “The Ferry House Girls”

“A Countess from Canada” “Greta’s Domain”

“Daughters of the Dominion” &c.

ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM RAINEY, R.I.

BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED

LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY

Contents

Illustrations

[“She had reached the boat”]

[Grace meets with an Accident]

[“She was making no headway”]

[“There was a man lying underneath”]

The Youngest Sister

CHAPTER I
The Wonder of It

Bertha heard the commotion as she came round the bend, where the road from Paston led out on to the cliffs. It was a very quiet day, although there was a heavy swell on outside, which meant danger to any small craft that got among the rocks. She was very tired, and there was a horrible stitch in her side from walking so fast. But she was anxious to get home in time to cook supper for Anne, and she had simply raced along the level bit of the road.

Old Jan Saunders, with his wife and the fat German who kept the little store at the bottom of the hill, were standing in an excited group at the edge of the roadway and pointing out to the upstanding rocks called the Shark’s Teeth, which showed grim and deadly a few yards out from the shore.

“What is the matter? What is wrong?” she gasped, panting still, and pressing her hand against her side to quiet the pain of the stitch.

“Ach! Ach!” sobbed the fat German, wringing his pudgy hands, while the tears rolled down his cheeks. “It is a man; he is caught on the Shark’s Teeth, and he will be drowned.”

“Oh, how very, very dreadful!” exclaimed Bertha, turning pale, and wishing that she had gone the other way, although it was so much longer, and she would certainly not have been home in time to get the supper ready.

“We haven’t got a boat,” piped old Jan in his thin, wavering voice. “Nowt but a rope. Our Mestlebury fleet went out on the morning tide, there ain’t a boat nearer than Paston, and with such a sea it would take four hours to row round.”

“He’ll be drowned afoor then, poor chap, he will; for the tide is flowing in fast, and his boat won’t lift more than another foot!” cried Mrs. Saunders, who was weeping like the German.

Bertha turned sick and faint. If only, only she had gone the other way, instead of stumbling on a scene like this! Suddenly old Jan turned upon her with an almost fierce expression on his kindly old face. “You can swim, missie. Tak’ a roop oot to that poor chap yonder, and we will tow you back safe enough, boat and all.”

“Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid!” she cried, covering her face with her hands to shut out the sight of the grey, heaving sea, the little boat wedged in under the rocks, and the man who sat there waiting for death to take him, because he could not swim, and his boat was caught too fast for any effort of his to push it off.

“He will drown! Ah, what a cruel fate it is, and my three boys gone just the same! Dear Lord, when shall it be that the sea will give up its dead?” wailed Mrs. Saunders.

“Ach! Ach! And such a proper man too! Dear Gott in Heaven, don’t let him die before our eyes,” sobbed the German, sinking on his knees in the roadway with his hands clasped in supplication.

“I will run for Anne; she can swim, and she is so brave!” cried Bertha, whose breath was coming in lumpy gasps of excitement.

“No use at all; he would be drowned before school-marm could get here, if she ran every step of the way,” said old Jan hoarsely. “See, the boat bumped that time, and he got a nasty knock, poor chap! It is your chance, missie, and only yours; and it is a man’s life that is hanging on your hands, to save or to throw away.”

Bertha felt as if her brain would burst. A man’s life to hang on her feeble, incapable hands! And it was the wonder of it that roused her to prompt, decided action.

“Fetch the rope!” she said curtly, as she wrenched off her coat and stooped to the buttons of her boots.

A chill dismay came over her then as her hand touched her heavy serge skirt. It would have to come off, and she had nothing underneath but a grey underskirt patched with green. How her sisters had laughed at those two patches with the contrast of colour! But she had been too indolent to alter them. Yet now she winced as she stood before the three, erect and slim, with those two patches of vivid green upon her knees.

“God speed you, missie!” muttered old Jan, as he knotted the rope about her waist. “Swim east when you start, and the current will drift you right down on the boat.”

A man’s life on her futile hands!

What was it Hilda had said to Anne only that morning at breakfast when the porridge was burned and the coffee was half-cold? “Bertha is hopeless; she dreams all day, and wastes every atom of her strength in building castles in the air, while we have to work and to bear all the discomforts of her incompetence.”

And now she, Bertha, the incompetent one, had to save a man’s life or to see him drown!

“Oh, I would rather die myself than see him drown!” she sobbed, and then she took the water with a motion so swift and graceful that the three on the steep, rocky shore gave a wavering cheer of encouragement.

The man in the boat called out something too, but it was a warning to her not to risk her life for him. This she did not hear, however, and would not have heeded if she had.

She was swimming steadily, gliding through the water with quick, curving strokes, which Anne had taught her on the holiday afternoons in summer, when they had gone to bathe from the little strip of sand in front of Seal Cove. Anne held a silver medal for swimming, but Bertha had never even thought of competing.

The water was cold, so cold; for autumn was far advanced. The great storm of yesterday was still leaving its effect upon the sea. Bertha felt the heave and throb of it even in that sheltered little bay, and before she was halfway across to the Shark’s Teeth she knew that it would be an awful struggle to get there. But now there was no thought of turning back. If she had to die she must, but she could not—oh, she could not!—fail that man out yonder whose life depended upon her. Panting heavily, she was swimming almost blindly, struggling forward, yet knowing all the time that the drift of the current had her in its grip, and she was powerless to fight against it.

She could not go much farther, she could not. She would have to fail after all, and her sisters would say, “Bertha is always so ineffectual, poor little girl!”

But she did not want to be pitied, she just hated it. She wanted to do something that was worth the doing; so she struggled and struggled, until it seemed to her that she had been in the water for weeks and weeks.

Then suddenly a strong hand gripped at her shoulder and a voice said in her ears, “Downright plucky you are, and you have saved me from an uncommonly tight corner!”

She had reached the boat, and it was the man whom she had come to save who was helping her to scramble on board. She was fearfully exhausted, but that did not matter. What troubled her most was to think of those bright green patches which were absolutely vivid now because of the wet. She had tumbled into the boat anyhow, vigorously helped by the man, who had at least strong arms, even though he could not swim nor yet extricate himself from a plight into which no prudent person should have fallen.

Whew! How cold she was! She was shivering violently, and her teeth were chattering. The man dived under the seat upon which he was sitting and dragged out a coat. “Here, put this on; it may help a little,” he said, holding it out so that she might slip her arms into it.

The coat was long and roomy, and Bertha dragged it round her dripping underwear, feeling that it was a comfort unspeakable to have it, and then she sat and watched while the three on the shore tugged at the rope, and the man in the boat used the oar as a lever to do his part in getting out of his tight corner.

How the fat German tugged and strove! A gurgle of irrepressible laughter escaped from Bertha when the boat suddenly gave, and the three on the shore tumbled all in a heap.

“I am glad that you are able to get some amusement out of it,” said the man rather curtly, for he too had also fallen with the jerk of the boat and had banged his elbow on the side.

“Please forgive me; I did not mean to make fun, but they did look so comical,” murmured Bertha contritely; and the man, who had supposed that she was laughing at him, was instantly mollified.

The boat was going through the water now by leaps and jerks. The zeal of the fat German was without discretion, and as he was the strongest of the three, he naturally set the pace.

“Hold, hold; careful there; mind the rocks, or you will upset her!” cried old Jan warningly.

The two in the boat were quite at the mercy of the tow-rope, for the man had broken one oar in trying to lever his boat out from the grip of the Shark’s Teeth, and the other had been torn from his hand and lost in that sudden jerk which had upset the three on the shore.

“Oh, the rocks!” cried Bertha, with a gasp of dismay, realizing that unless the towing were very steady, they must be upset when nearing the shore.

Then she thought of Anne, who would be coming home from school to find no supper ready, most likely the fire out, and a general air of discomfort everywhere.

“Oh dear, oh dear, she will think that I did it on purpose!” said Bertha to herself, repressing a sob with difficulty. She had meant so honestly to be all ready for Anne this evening, so it was fearfully disappointing to have failed.

“Mind the rocks! Pull in slowly!” she shouted, reaching out one arm in a roomy coatsleeve, and fending the boat away from a half-submerged rock. But at that moment the German gave a wild tug at the rope, and the boat jerked up against a rock on the other side. The two were pitched violently against each other, and then, before they could sort themselves out at all, they were flung headfirst into the water.

Fortunately they were so near the shore, that old Jan waded in and, with the help of the German, dragged out the man, who had knocked his head against the rock in falling, and seemed helpless, while Bertha scrambled ashore as best she could, terribly encumbered by the big coat, and fearfully worn out with all that she had gone through.

But she had done what was expected of her, and nothing else seemed to matter in the least. The others could look after the man. She did not even stop to see if he were rallying from that desperate blow on the head which he got when the boat was overturned. Thrusting her wet feet into her boots, and gathering her coat, skirt, and hat in her arms, she fled along the road as fast as she could go. If only she could get home before Anne, and slip into dry clothes, it would still be possible perhaps to have some sort of supper ready for the tired eldest sister.

There was a wonderful elation stirring in Bertha’s heart. It was as if something had broken away and set her free. She had saved a man’s life at the risk of her own, and the very thought of it thrilled her into new life and vigour. Her limbs were shaking still, and her breath came in sobbing gasps as she fled along the road; but she was happier than she had ever been in all her life before.

Flip, flap, flop! Flip, flap, flop! Her unbuttoned boots squelched up and down over her wet stockings, and she looked wildly dishevelled as she dashed along Mestlebury Main Street. One or two women standing at the doors of their wooden houses called out to know what was the matter, but she paid no heed at all, and so at length came in sight of the little drab-painted house with green shutters where she lived with her sisters.

She was in time, for the door was still fast shut—sure sign that Anne was not home yet. Thrusting her hand into the place where the key was always hidden when they all chanced to be out together, she drew it out, and, unlocking the door, passed hurriedly in to see if there were any fire still left in the stove. It took but a minute to thrust a handful of dry kindlings among the embers, which were still hot; then, filling the kettle and standing it on the stove to boil, she darted into her own room to shed her wet garments.

The chamber, a small one, was in the wildest confusion. Sheets of manuscript were strewn on table, chair, and bed. Garments of all sorts lay about in the wildest disorder. The bed was unmade, and a liberal coating of grey dust showed on such of the furniture as was not covered with papers or clothes. She gave a groan of dismay at the sight. It was as if the eyes of her mind had been opened at once to see all her defects and shortcomings.

“I can’t stop to tidy it now. But I will do differently to-morrow—oh, I will!” she said, with a fervent outburst, as she dragged on dry garments and twisted her wet hair into an untidy knot at the top of her head.

The wet clothes were all left in a heap in one corner of the room, for her sole idea was to have supper ready for Anne—the very nicest supper which could be managed in the time.

This was one of the nights when Hilda did not come home to sleep, and it was a secret satisfaction to Bertha that she would be able to get her small reforms well under way, before her sharp-tongued second sister appeared on the scene again.

“It will have to be white monkey on toast, I think; that is the quickest thing that I can do,” she muttered, as she darted to and fro collecting the milk, flour, butter, egg, and other ingredients which went to the making of the dish known as white monkey; then, while the milk was getting hot in the double saucepan, she grated the cheese and toasted generous slices of bread, on which the white monkey was to be spread.

There was such a glow of triumph in her heart, and such a sense of elation in her bearing, that for a time it over-mastered her weariness. She had done a brave thing, a really plucky deed, and although she had been in a manner forced into the doing, nothing could take the joy of it from her.

Oh, it was good, it was good to be of use in the world—to do something which but for her must have been left undone. And Jan Saunders had said that the man’s life hung upon her hands!

“My dear Bertha, what have you been doing to yourself?” cried a voice from the door, in a tone of shocked surprise, and Bertha, who had been too busy to notice the sound of approaching steps, turned quickly, to see her eldest sister standing on the threshold, while just behind was a gentleman who was a stranger to her.

Then it flashed upon poor Bertha what an awful object she must look, with her wet hair screwed into a tight knot on the top of her head, and her garments simply pitch-forked on to her person.

And Anne was as neat and trim as if fresh from making a toilet, although in reality she had been teaching the township school all day.

“Is this the musical sister?” asked the stranger, advancing upon Bertha with outstretched hand and a manner glowing with kindness.

A gurgle of irrepressible laughter shook Anne as she thought of what Hilda’s feelings would have been if she could have heard the question, and then she answered hastily, “No, indeed; Hilda is not at home this evening. This is only Bertha, my youngest sister.”

“SHE HAD REACHED THE BOAT”

CHAPTER II
Concerning the Doynes

Anne Doyne was a really striking personality. Had she been born in a different class of society, she might have been a reigning beauty, so perfectly moulded were face and figure, so beautiful her colouring, and so regal the manner in which she carried herself. But she was only the orphan of a Nova Scotian clergyman, with two younger sisters more or less dependent on her, and if sometimes the sense of her overwhelming responsibilities made her a trifle dictatorial, she was surely to be forgiven.

The mother of the three girls had died when Anne was twelve and Bertha only six years old. But then Cousin Grace had been there to mother them, and life had been fairly easy until the death of their father, just five years ago, had thrown the three girls upon their own resources, and this time without any Cousin Grace to bear the heaviest end of the troubles, for she had married and gone west two years before the death of Mr. Doyne. Since then Anne had been the head of the family—father, mother, and breadwinner rolled into one.

Hilda, the middle sister, was bright, keen, and clever. She lacked the beauty of Anne, but she made up for it by a sparkling wit, which, if sometimes a trifle caustic in its tone, was at least always meant good-naturedly.

The two sisters were a really fine pair, and they had made a splendid fight against narrow means, uncongenial surroundings, and those other evils which vex the hearts of girls who, having lost their natural defenders, must face the world and make the best of it for themselves.

Anne taught the township school, earning enough to keep home together, and out of school hours she made their frocks, and did all sorts of things to make the little income go as far as possible. Hilda, on her part, worked away at scales, exercises, and fugues on the little old piano, which had been a wedding present to their dead mother. Then, when by sheer pluck and perseverance she had pulled through sufficient exams to give her a teaching certificate, she had hunted round for pupils. There had been few enough to be found in Mestlebury, which was on the northern coast of Nova Scotia, but she had gone inland among the farmers who were well-to-do, and so had gathered a little teaching connection, the fees from which were added to the family funds.

But Hilda knew very well that she had touched only the barest fringe of musical knowledge, even though she was the best player and the best teacher for many miles round. It was the dream of her life to go to Europe, to get at least a year of study in Germany, and to hear some really good musicians. The dream seemed very far off realization, however, and meanwhile she was travelling long distances, getting cheap pupils, and struggling to keep herself in the public eye, which, after all, is the only way to get on as a travelling music teacher. This she had long since discovered, and she was astute enough to take the utmost advantage of every opportunity which presented itself for making her way.

Bertha was the disappointment of the family, for she was only a dreamer, while the other two were workers, and very hard workers, their lot being all the more toilsome because she did so little. She wrote little poems, in which heart rhymed with part, and that contained many references to soulful yearnings which stayed unsatisfied. Sometimes she even attempted short stories; but these were so morbid in sentiment, that Anne would have turned sick at such mawkish rubbish, while Hilda would have gone into fits of laughter and made fun of them for months afterwards.

But neither sister ever did see them, and Bertha wasted precious hours over her futile scribbling which had been much more usefully employed in looking after the comfort of the two elder sisters, who worked so hard and had no time to waste in dreaming at all.

Poor child! she believed herself to be a genius, and secretly she looked forward to the time when she should burst upon the world with a full-blown literary reputation, without any preliminary preparation of climbing and falling, only to climb again. If anyone had told her that genius was only an infinite capacity for hard work in any given direction, it is to be feared that she would not have believed it, but would have still dreamed on, expecting to wake some day to find herself famous.

If there had been anyone in her little world of whom she could have made a confidante, her eyes might have been the sooner opened to her mistakes; but the three girls kept very much to themselves, and Bertha would just as soon have thought of standing on her head in Mestlebury Main Street, as of confiding any of her aspirations to her sisters.

So she emerged slowly from girlhood, growing more dreamy and futile with every month that passed over her head, until that day in the autumn when she had walked to Paston in the morning with Hilda to help carry some music to the train depot, and had come back by way of the shore, to find the man on the Shark’s Teeth. It was old Jan Saunders who had torn the veil from her eyes and had made her see that it is a finer thing to be up and doing, ready to help where help is needed, than to spend one’s time in thinking noble thoughts, which never by any chance developed into works of practical kindness and utility.

And the firstfruits of her awakening had been an intense but wholly salutary disgust of herself and all her previous doings. It was this feeling which had sent her scurrying along Mestlebury Main Street half-clad, and dripping with water from her swim, in order that she might be home in time to get supper ready for Anne.

But she had not reckoned upon a visitor, and when Anne appeared with the stranger, who was introduced as Mr. Roger Mortimer, from Adelaide, Australia, Bertha was so upset by the thought of what she must look like, that she would thankfully have run away if she could.

There was no chance of this, however, for Mr. Mortimer at once proceeded to make himself so much at home and to engross her attention, that presently she even forgot how frightfully untidy she was. He toasted more bread while she buttered the slices and spread the white monkey upon them; he even made the coffee while she finished setting the table, and by the time that Anne came out of her bedroom ready for supper, Bertha felt as if she had known the genial Australian for quite a long time.

Indeed, as it turned out, he was not a stranger, for he had been an old friend of the Doynes many years before, and he had, as he declared, carried Bertha on his back more times than he could count.

“Do you remember the day we went sleighing to Micmac Cove, Anne, and how the sleigh came to grief, and we had to carry the kids home between us?” he asked, looking across the table at Anne, who appeared to have blossomed into a greater beauty than ever, as she presided over the humble little supper table, with a sweet dignity and graciousness that would not have been out of place in a mansion.

“Oh yes, I remember it perfectly,” replied Anne, with a merry laugh. “But it was Hilda whom you carried then, for she had a bad foot and could not walk; so I stumbled along under the weight of Bertha, and my arms ached more or less for a whole week afterwards, although I do not think that she could have been very heavy, because she was always so small and thin for her age.”

“She is small and thin now, and her face is so white. Don’t you feel well, Miss Bertha?” asked the visitor abruptly.

Bertha, who was conscious of feeling extremely queer, roused herself with an effort, declaring that there was nothing the matter with her except that she was rather tired.

“Girls like you ought never to be tired, not until bedtime, that is, and then they ought to sleep like logs until morning. What have you been doing to get tired?” he asked.

It was Anne who answered, for Bertha was struggling with a desire to laugh or to cry, it did not seem to matter which, so long as she could make a noise or a fuss over something.

“Oh, Bertha never does very much; she has not begun to take life very seriously yet, you see. But she walked to Paston to-day to help Hilda carry some music, and I expect the extra exertion has knocked her up a little.”

Bertha clenched her hands so tightly that the nails entered into the flesh. A little extra exertion—what a joke it was! She wondered what Anne would have said to have seen the struggle to reach the Shark’s Teeth, with the rope that was to save the life of a man. A little extra exertion, indeed! Well, it was quite true it was extra, and then the funny thing was that she suddenly seemed to be in the water again, and doing battle for her own life and for the life of the man whom she was trying so hard to save. She seemed to be crying and laughing all in a breath, then there was more confusion, the sound of many waters in her ears; and then she came to herself to find that Mr. Mortimer was holding her in his arms at the open door, while Anne bent over her with a face full of concern.

“Bertha, darling, what is the matter? Are you ill, dear? You have given us such a shock!” cried Anne, whose eyes were swimming in tears.

Somehow it was the sight of the tears which helped Bertha to rally her flagging powers, and to keep from slipping back into that gulf from which she had but just emerged. It was so rarely that Anne showed any sign of tears, and surely it must be something very much out of the common to induce them.

“Oh, I am all right,” said Bertha slowly. “I was tired, you know, and I was so afraid that I should not have supper ready in time for you.”

A cloud crept over the face of Anne. To her there seemed no reason why Bertha should have been overdone by the walk to Paston and back, while supper had not called for very active preparation. But Bertha always took so long to do the simplest thing, and even then the doing was mostly unsatisfactory.

“She looks clean worn out; I should put her to bed,” said the visitor, with such a clear understanding of just how Bertha felt, that she blessed him in her heart and wondered that he should be so wise.

“Yes, I should like to go to bed,” she murmured faintly, and then suddenly remembering all those new resolutions that she had made, she said hurriedly, as she tried to free herself from the arms which held her, “But I will wait and wash the supper dishes first, for Anne must be so tired with working all day.”

There was a note of derisive laughter from the man, but which was promptly checked as Anne exclaimed, in very real concern, “Oh, I am sure that she is ill, poor darling, because she does not trouble about the supper dishes as a rule!”

“Wait until the morning before making up your mind that she is bad,” said Roger Mortimer. “She may be quite all right when she has had a night of sleep. I will carry her to her room now, then you can put her to bed, and afterwards we will wash up the supper dishes together, you and I; it will be like old times.”

Bertha was drifting again, but she roused at this speech to make quite a vigorous protest—she could not, and would not, be carried to her room by this man, who was a stranger, or almost a stranger. The thought of the awful muddle—the unmade bed and the wild disorder which reigned there—seemed to give her a momentary spurt of strength. She must walk to her bed on her own feet—she must, she must!

But Anne broke in upon her gasping, half-incoherent protests with a quick word of common sense. “Bring her into my room, please. I must have her with me to-night, and mine is the only double bed in the house.”

Bertha dropped quiet with a sigh of relief. If there was no danger of her room being seen, she would just as soon be carried as walk, for her limbs seemed to have lost all power, and she felt quite stupid.

Mr. Mortimer carried her into Anne’s room, which was just a picture of neatness, and laid her on the bed. But Bertha would not let Anne stay for any work of undressing, declaring that as she was so tired, it was too much trouble to take her clothes off yet awhile.

Perhaps Anne did not require much persuading, for sounds from the outer room seemed to point to the fact of the visitor being engaged in very active clearing of the supper table. But she left the door ajar, and Bertha lay for a time in a state of dreamy content, listening to the voices in the next room.

Presently she drifted into slumber, and she must have been sleeping for some time, for the room was quite dark when she awoke, while a gleam of lamplight showed faintly from the room beyond. It was the sound of voices that roused her, a woman’s tones, eager and agitated, while Anne’s voice replied in surprised, almost unbelieving, query.

“But, Mrs. Saunders, Bertha did not say anything about it, and she cannot swim very much, certainly not well enough to take the risk of swimming out to the Shark’s Teeth with a rope in a sea like this, for there has been a heavy swell on all day from the storm of yesterday.”

“Well, Miss Doyne, she did it—as true as I am sitting here, she did it—and we towed the boat ashore with the gentleman in it, though I’m sorry to say the boat fouled the rocks just as we were drawing her inshore, and he got a nasty knock on the head which, he said, made him feel downright stupid. But he was so upset because your sister went away without his having so much as a chance to say thank you to her, so I said that I would just come along and see how she was after getting such a chill and a wetting, for the water is real cold to-day,” replied the voice of Mrs. Saunders in very real concern.

“Then, of course, it was the shock and the excitement which upset her and gave us such a bad scare at supper, when she was first hysterical and then fainted,” said Anne. “I was afraid that she was going to have a bad illness, poor child!”

The voice of Mrs. Saunders took a lower key, and presently Bertha fell asleep again.

It was later still when she roused once more, to find this time that Anne was kneeling beside the bed sobbing, and sobbing in a fashion more stormy than Bertha had ever heard before.

“What is the matter, Anne?” asked Bertha in alarm, in that first moment of confused awakening. She had forgotten all about her brave deed of the afternoon, and only wondered why it was that every bone in her body seemed to be aching with a separate and individual pain.

“My darling, my baby, why did you not tell me how brave you had been, and how you had saved that poor man’s life?” cried Anne, with so much keen reproach in her tone that Bertha was roused to fresh wonder, though the pain of her limbs demanded so much in the way of endurance, that she had little attention to bestow on anything else.

“Mr. Mortimer was here—I could not tell you in front of him; besides, it would not have made any difference,” replied Bertha languidly, not liking to admit that she would hardly have screwed her courage to the pitch necessary to the telling, even if Anne had been alone.

“It would have made a difference—it would have made all the difference!” cried Anne sharply, and her arms, which were round Bertha, tightened their clasp.

“How?” There was a dreamy wonder in Bertha’s tone, but she was so tired, and her limbs ached so badly, that she was only about half-conscious of what was going on, or what Anne was saying.

“Because I have done something to-night that I do not think I should have done, if I had even dreamed that you were going to wake up like this!” said Anne, her voice breaking in another sob. “Don’t blame me, dear, for I was so tired of my heavy responsibility, so I took the easiest way out; but I never would have done it if I had known.”

“It does not matter, things happen so sometimes,” said Bertha vaguely, and then she went to sleep again.

CHAPTER III
Tremulous Beginnings

It was a whole fortnight before Bertha was able to leave her bed and creep about the little drab-painted house again. An anxious fortnight it was for the two elder sisters, who had their own work to do and to nurse Bertha in between whiles. Sometimes Bertha was conscious and sometimes she was not, but always, always, whether sensible or insensible, there was pressing upon her the shadow of a deep disgrace. She had set her hand to do a brave thing, moved thereto by the feeling that she could not stand by and see a fellow creature die whom she might have saved. But the price she had to pay for having saved him was that she herself had to be the most awful nuisance to her two sisters, who worked so hard and had the living to earn.

A little while ago this would hardly have troubled her at all. But now, just as her eyes had been opened to her own very serious shortcomings, and she had made up her mind to set about a wholesale reformation of herself without delay, it was nothing short of tragic that she should have been taken ill. It did not even comfort her to remember that but for that act of daring, which had taken her so completely out of herself, she might still have gone on in the old aimless fashion, remaining futile and incapable to the end of the chapter.

The worry of it was likely to retard her recovery. It seemed to her, in the new mood which had taken possession of her, that she could never do enough to repay her sisters for the nights of broken sleep and the days of worry and hard work which they endured on her account. Then a grain of common sense came to her rescue, and she remembered that the sooner she was well and able to take up her accustomed duties, the sooner they would be able to get some rest and relaxation.

When she arrived at this wholesome state of mind, convalescence set in steadily, and in a very short time she was creeping about the house, making pathetic attempts to be useful, when both Anne and Hilda would much rather that she would sit still and get a little stronger.

They were very kind to her, and never once in those two anxious weeks did she hear one word of complaint from either of them because of the hardness of their lives. There was a difference, too, in their manner of treating her. Bertha thought at first it was a sort of respect such as they might show to one who was their equal at last, and no longer a child to be chidden for indolent ways and careless habits. But as the days went by it began to dawn upon her that the manner of both was tinged with pity—just unmistakable pity!

This first irritated and then frightened her. Did they think she was going into a decline, she wondered? And although she had written yards of feeble poetry about the joys of dying young, the mere prospect of such a thing occurring put her into such a condition of fume, that she made quite extraordinary efforts at getting better, and succeeded even beyond her expectations.

Then Hilda was able to go her long-distance journeys again, and Anne went off to school, and stayed away the whole morning without running back between classes to see how it fared with the invalid.

The first morning that this happened was a cold grey day, when there was a feeling of snow in the air, and Bertha was ordered to take life as easily as possible, and not to burden herself with any duties beyond keeping the fire in. But Bertha had her own ideas on the subject of what she was going to do, and prepared to carry them out to the best of her ability.

There had been no proper meals cooked since she had been ill. Broth, beef tea, and gruel had been prepared for her as she had needed, or the things had been offerings from kindly neighbours as hard-working as the two Miss Doynes, and the girls had just lived on bread and butter, because they lacked the time to do any cooking for themselves. But this sort of thing was coming to an end now, so Bertha told herself with great decision, as she got up out of the rocking chair as soon as Anne had passed out of sight on her way to school.

“I am going to be useful somehow, or perish in the attempt,” she said to herself, with a laugh which somehow ended in a sob. She was so weak still, and everything demanded such a desperate effort to accomplish. But she was thinking of that night when she was first taken ill, and Anne had knelt sobbing beside her bed. Somehow Bertha just hated to think of that night, and she hated to remember the words which her sister had uttered. Indeed, she had tried her very best to forget them, but it seemed as if the more she tried the more vividly they came back to her. There was an uneasy feeling in her heart that somehow, that had been a day of fate in more senses than one. Sometimes she wondered if her sister’s sobbing words had had anything to do with the visit of Roger Mortimer; but she had dismissed the idea as ridiculous, for she had not seen him since, and she had never once heard Anne mention him since, except yesterday, when she herself had asked Anne when he was coming to see them again, and Anne had replied that he was away in Halifax just now, but that he might return next week or the week after.

Anne had gone on to speak of other things immediately, as if the subject of Mr. Mortimer were not interesting enough for discussion. But she had blushed in a vivid and glorious fashion right up to the roots of her hair, and it was the memory of that blush which worried Bertha so much as she moved feebly about, cooking the early dinner.

Oh, how truly awful it would be if one of them were to fall in love and get married just now, when she so badly wanted to show them what a good sister she could be! Indeed, the thought was so much too bad to be borne, that she put it from her, resolved to think no more about it, but to confine herself entirely to the business in hand.

When the cooking was well under way, she set about tidying up the sitting-room, which had to be kitchen, dining-room, and drawing-room combined. The house did really boast two sitting-rooms, but the second one had been taken by Anne for a bedroom. For it seemed so much more desirable to the three girls to have a room each for their private use than to be crowded together at night, to have the doubtful advantage of another sitting-room for use in the day.

Very tired was Bertha when she had done, in fact she had to stop far short of her intentions in the matter of tidying, because her strength gave out so much before her energy. But at least it was a beginning, and she sat down for a brief half-hour of rest before Anne came home, feeling as if her feet were set at last on the steep ladder which had to be climbed to capability and usefulness. It was then, as she sat resting, that she thought of her own room, and the awful confusion awaiting her there.

“I will start on clearing it up when Anne has gone back to school this afternoon,” she said to herself, as she crouched by the stove. The house was very quiet, but outside there was constant sound and commotion, as long streams of migratory birds passed overhead on their way from the cold, rock-bound shores of Labrador and the land round Baffin’s Bay. They were bound for the warm and sunny south, and the air echoed with the plaintive “hawnk, honk” of the geese as they flew in single streams or wedge-like masses.

So quiet was the house, and Bertha was so very tired, that presently she fell asleep, and was still dozing when Anne came in, all blown about, and sweetly fresh with autumn winds and raindrops, for the weather was getting more stormy as the day wore on.

“Oh, Bertha, why did you trouble to cook?” cried Anne, with a little dismay in her tone. The savoury smells resulting from Bertha’s labours were filling the house, and saluted her as she burst in at the door, hungry and tired with her long morning of work in the school.

“It was not any trouble,” said Bertha, starting up and rubbing her eyes with much the same guilty feeling which came to her, when she overslept herself in the mornings, “and it is so long since you have had anything better than roast potatoes and butter for your dinner.”

“Roast potatoes and butter are not to be despised, I can tell you,” laughed Anne, as she sat down at the table to enjoy the unwonted luxury of being waited upon; “but a real stew properly made is something of a luxury, I can assure you.”

What was there in those words to make Bertha wince as if someone had struck her a blow? There would have been nothing, less than nothing, but for that awakened conscience of hers, which reminded her of the many times her sisters had had to sit down to badly prepared and insufficient meals, just because she had been too indolent to bestir herself for the cooking.

“I am sorry it storms so. Hilda will have quite a dreadful journey across to the Sudeleys,” she said presently, as she sat watching Anne, getting a lot of enjoyment out of her sister’s zest for the meal, but eating very little herself.

“Hilda won’t mind that, I fancy,” laughed Anne. “Mrs. Nelson is to be at the Sudeleys to-day, and Hilda is very keen on meeting her, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. I do not believe that I have ever heard of her before. Who is she? The mother of a likely pupil?” asked Bertha, with no lack of interest now; for another pupil, of course, meant more money, and where the means are so straitened every little sum becomes of vital importance.

Anne laughed. “Of course you do not know. I keep forgetting that you have been out of everything for the last fortnight. But we had to keep you as quiet as possible, because you would go off your head every minute that you got a chance for doing it. But when Hilda comes home to-morrow she will tell you herself all about her hopes and fears, and what her chances are. Now I am going to make haste and wash the dishes, because I must be back at school very early this afternoon.”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” said Bertha, giving her a gentle push back into the chair from which she had just risen. “You will sit down and read a book, or go to sleep, or do what you like for as long as it would take you to wash the dishes, then when you have gone I will wash the dishes myself, if you please.”

“Are you going to develop into a domestic tyrant?” asked Anne, with a laugh, as she went over to the rocking chair by the stove and sat gently swaying to and fro, very much at ease.

“I can’t say what I may develop into,” replied Bertha, with a shake of her head, and then, with a great shrinking upon her, she was just going to confide in Anne something of the purposes and resolves that were stirring in her heart, when there was a knock at the door, and a shock-headed boy very much out of breath with running appeared on the threshold, saying that one of the children had burned herself at the school stove, and would teacher please come at once.

Of course Anne had to rush away in a great hurry then, and Bertha’s chance was gone for the time. When the dishes were washed and put away, Bertha turned her steps to her little bedroom, which had scarcely been entered since she was taken sick. At least she could take a look round and decide where to begin the work of clearing up to-morrow.

The window was shut, and the room had a close, musty feeling. Her first move would have been to the window to fling it wide open, but for the moment she could not get there; for a chair laden with papers and clothes had somehow been upset in the middle of the open space, and she had to pick them up and sort them over before she could get across the floor to the window. Naturally she paused to read some of the lines written on those fluttering sheets of paper, and she winced again to think that she could ever have written such mawkish rubbish.

“Oh dear, and it was only two weeks ago; why, it might have been two years!” she exclaimed, as she gathered up the sheets and laid them aside. It was strange how that swim to the Shark’s Teeth had altered her outlook. She had gone to save a man’s life because there was nobody else to do it. But it was her own self that she had discovered when she performed her little act of courage and daring.

The wet garments she had shed in such a hurry, when she came home to get supper for Anne, still lay in a heap in the corner just as she had cast them off, and she lifted them up with a rueful air. One’s clothes are never improved by lying for a whole fortnight in a wet heap on a dusty bedroom floor. But no one was to be blamed—the two elder girls had far too much to do to be able to think of anything outside, and she herself had been too ill to remember. She shook the garments out one by one and hung them from pegs on the wall, meaning to take them out to the other room and dry them one by one at the stove. But the last garment of all puzzled her not a little, for it was a man’s coat of a very roomy description.

“Why, how did that get here?” she exclaimed, and then suddenly remembered that the man whom she had gone to save had dragged a coat out from under the seat of his boat, and had told her to wrap herself in it because she shivered so.

“And of course I came home in it. I remember now how it flapped about as I ran. But I wonder that he did not come for it, or ask Mrs. Saunders to get it for him,” she said, as she picked the water-logged garment up from the floor and shook it out.

Something dropped on to the floor with a thud, and she laid the coat over a chair while she went painfully down on her knees to pick it up. Those two weeks had been so full of rheumatism and similar afflictions, that moving from one position to another still took some time, and also entailed something in the way of endurance. The something was a little morocco case bound with silver at the corners, and looking very much as if it were intended for cigars. There was a spring at one side, and Bertha pressed it to see if the case would open. She had her full share of curiosity, and the little case seemed very heavy. “Perhaps it is money,” she said to herself, with a little shiver of dread; for she was wondering what the stranger must think of her, if it were indeed money that made the case so heavy.

“He might even think that I had found it, and meant to keep it!” she muttered, as she wrestled with the spring, which was rather hard to move.

Presently it flew open with a jerk, and she saw to her relief that it contained not money, but twelve dull grey stones of slightly varying sizes. Pebbles they looked like, and her first thought was that they were geological specimens. Perhaps the man was a scientist, stones being his particular ology.

“He might even have been looking for stones of sorts when he got into such a dangerous place,” she muttered, and for ten minutes or so she tried to make herself believe that these dull grey pebbles were just specimens and nothing more.

But at the end of that time she had thrust the little case right at the back of her one lock-up drawer, and turning the key upon them she went out to the other room, which was warm and pleasant from the glow of the stove. Marching straight to the bookcase, she hunted until she found a little dictionary of common things which belonged to Anne, and turning the pages over hastily she hunted up “Diamonds”.

“Colourless or dull grey stones of exceeding hardness,” she read aloud, and a look of care and perplexity dropped on to her face. If those stones in the case were uncut diamonds, why was the man carrying them in the pocket of his loose outer coat? and why, oh why, had he not sent to enquire for that same coat?

CHAPTER IV
A Series of Shocks

A fit of shivering seized Bertha. Of course she was weak and unstrung still, or the incident would not have struck her as being of such magnitude. As it was, she felt as if she were up against the greatest trouble of her life. Was the man a thief? Had he stolen the diamonds, and so when he lost them was afraid to make enquiries about them through fear of being found out? But that seemed hardly probable, because, of course, he might have come to enquire for his coat. The question which troubled her most was whether he would think that she was a thief. Indeed, her fertile imagination immediately sketched a pretty but wholly improbable piece of fiction, as to how the man had missed his diamonds, but would not enquire for them, being willing to sit down under the loss because she had saved his life.

“Oh dear, oh dear, what shocking nonsense, and I don’t even know that they are diamonds!” she exclaimed, putting the book back into the bookcase, and turning her attention resolutely from the affair because it worried her so.

To-morrow she would go as far as the little house where Jan Saunders lived, and ask for the address of the man she had helped. Then she would send him a letter, telling him what she had found, and ask him to fetch his property or tell her how to send it to him, and so she would be quit of this tiresome responsibility.

That evening was full of petty worries. Anne came home from school very late, because she had been out to a farm which lay far back in the woods, to take home the little girl who had burned herself in the dinner hour. And when she did get home she was most dreadfully depressed, for the mother of the child, instead of being decently grateful for the care and kindness bestowed upon the little girl, chose to consider herself aggrieved, because the children were left to themselves in the noon spell.

“She said that I was paid to look after them, and I ought never to leave them. Just fancy what a hateful time I should have of it if I had to stay in that pokey, horrible schoolhouse for the dinner hour!” said Anne, with more heat than she usually displayed; for she was blessed with an evenly balanced temperament, and was not easily ruffled.

“But no one would expect you to stay, would they?” asked Bertha, opening her eyes very wide. “No reasonable person, I mean.”

“School committee-men are not always the most reasonable of creatures, and as Mrs. Scott declares that she will lodge a formal complaint and ask that the teacher be requested to stay at the school for the noon spell, it is quite probable that I may find myself with a little extra duty tacked on to what I already have,” replied Anne, with a short laugh that had very little mirth in it.

“If it comes to that, I will take the noon-spell duty for you. The committee won’t be particular who it is, provided there is some responsible person there,” said Bertha, with intent to console.

“My dear, you could not manage that rabble,” said Anne impatiently. “They would be quite equal to turning you out of the school and locking the door upon you if you chanced to offend them, or they might take the other course of locking you in. It takes every bit of will power that I possess to master them, I can tell you, and I was born to rule, which you never were.”

“No, I’m afraid I wasn’t,” admitted Bertha meekly, but she felt keenly mortified notwithstanding, because Anne had not seemed more grateful for her offer of help.

Even her request to help in the preparation of the needlework for the class next day met with a refusal, for Anne was irritated with her reception from Mrs. Scott, and she was not sufficiently alert to see how much Bertha wanted to be of service.

So the evening, which might have been so restful and pleasant, was spoiled for both of them, and they were thankful when bedtime came.

“I shall go back to my own room to-morrow, and then you can have your bed to yourself again,” said Bertha, as the two prepared for slumber.

“Yes, that will be better, now that you are quite well again,” Anne answered, in an absent-minded fashion. And she was so silent and absorbed that Bertha chafed in miserable discomfort, wishing she had put her own room straight and aired the bed to-day, then Anne could have had her own room free from disturbance. With this sort of mood upon her, it was not wonderful that Bertha said nothing of what she had found in the pocket of that wonderfully roomy overcoat. Anne might be angry because the coat had been forgotten so long, or she might feel hurt because of the appearance of neglect on her part, in not having hunted round Bertha’s little bedroom to find the wet garments which had lain unheeded so long.

Next morning the sun shone, and although the wind was keen with the breath of coming winter, the air was so pleasant that everything looked easier. Even the prospect of having to stay in school for the noon spell was not so dreadful as it had seemed last night, and Anne set off for her day of work in quite good spirits, just her own serene self, with all the petulance of the previous night quite gone.

Then Bertha brought the coat to the fire, and, drying it carefully, folded it into a neat parcel ready for sending away. When this was done she put on her hat and coat, and, taking a stick, because she felt so waggly on her feet, she set out for the little cottage where Jan Saunders lived. But she did not take the coat with her, for she knew very well that, being a useful garment, it would probably get no farther, as Mrs. Saunders had very stretchable ideas on the rights of property.

Oh, it was good to be out again, even though her feet were not all they should be in the matter of steadiness, and Bertha walked slowly along Mestlebury Main Street, noting all the differences which had come over the face of the gardens and orchards during the time in which she had been shut up in the house.

Mrs. Saunders was out on the cliff as usual, and as usual she was doing nothing but gaze out to sea, while old Jan smoked a pipe in calm content at her side. They both fell upon Bertha with a greeting that was fairly rapturous, and the old woman, with a tear in her bleared old eye, said fervently, “My dear, my dear, you look that delicate that a puff of wind might blow you away!”

“It would have to be a very strong puff—something that was first cousin to a whirlwind or a tornado, I fancy,” replied Bertha, with a laugh, and then she turned to Jan, who might be trusted to tell the truth if he knew it.

“Can you tell me where the man lives whose boat got stuck on the Shark’s Teeth?” she asked.

“Furrin parts somewhere, ain’t it, Mother?” asked the old man, taking his pipe from his mouth and looking across at his wife.

Mrs. Saunders pursed up her mouth in a disapproving pucker and slowly shook her head. “He said something about Peru, but it might have been Australia, or somewhere round that way. Anyhow, he was in a mighty hurry to be off again that night, when we had pulled him out of the water and dried him up so beautiful. Downright ungrateful I called it, for I had arranged for him to sleep with Herr Schmudcht, and I had lent a pair of nearly clean sheets to put on the bed, and then the gentleman would not stay, and Herr Schmudcht has slept in those sheets ever since, so now I expect they will want washing before ever I can lend them to anyone else; it is really downright vexing, so it is,” and Mrs. Saunders heaved a windy sigh over her misplaced kindness, which was meeting such a poor return, but Bertha burst out laughing.

“I should insist on Herr Schmudcht washing the sheets himself; I am sure that he is stronger than you are,” she said, and then becoming suddenly grave, she asked again, and this time with a ring of real anxiety in her tone, “But where did the man go to on that night when he left here, and what was his name?”

“My dear, he wasn’t a man, he was a gentleman,” said Mrs. Saunders, with quite crushing emphasis, and then she went on, “It wasn’t for us to be asking him all sorts of personal questions. I never was one for poking into business what did not concern me, I am thankful to say.”

“But you surely must know something about him; and I want to write to him,” said Bertha impatiently, and then she was surprised to see a flicker of fear in the old woman’s blear eyes.

“Well, I guess that the writing will have to wait a bit. Perhaps he will happen along this way again some day, and then you can say what you want to—a much better fashion than putting things in black and white, so that they can be sweared to in a court of justice,” said Mrs. Saunders, with a toss of her head, and not another bit of information could Bertha get out of her.

“I shall have to ask the girls what I had better do,” she said to herself, as she went slowly back to her home to start on her belated morning’s work.

Even that short walk had tired her so much, that it needed the entire stock of her lately acquired resolution to keep from sitting down and letting things go anyhow. But by a great effort she stuck to her task, and was all ready for Anne, who came rushing home about a quarter past twelve, snatched a hasty meal, and rushed back again, uneasy all the time lest her turbulent charges should get up to serious mischief in her absence.

Then Bertha was left with the long afternoon before her, for Hilda could not be home much before six o’clock. However, there was the house to put tidy, and the work she could not accomplish in the morning was cleared out of the way in the afternoon, and she found herself with an hour of rest before the girls came home.

She was tremendously proud of the tidy rooms, and she kept walking backwards and forwards admiring her handiwork, until some undarned stockings poking from an over-full drawer in Hilda’s room suggested a fresh outlet for her new-found energy, and taking them out to the kitchen, she sat down by the stove and began to darn them. It was the work that she hated most of all, so the voluntary doing of it was the most real self-sacrifice that she could have shown. However, Hilda had been forced to do all sorts of things for her when she was ill, and so it was up to her to make what amends were in her power. Anne was in, and supper was ready, when Hilda came back from Paston, rushing into the house like a whirlwind, and shouting in great excitement—

“Girls! girls! I have got some of the most wonderful news for you. What do you think is going to happen?”

“How should we know?” cried Anne, standing erect and staring at Hilda in amazement; for the second sister usually hugged her dignity too closely for exhibitions like these.

“I am going to Europe!” cried Hilda, stopping in the middle of the floor, and dropping the words out one by one with tremendous emphasis and solemnity.

“You are going to Europe—when?” cried Anne, who was the first to recover the power of speech, while Bertha caught at a chair to steady herself, because the room would keep swinging round at such a rate.

“We start next month, just four weeks to-day. I am to take Mrs. Nelson’s two daughters to Germany for a year. Oh, Anne, Anne, don’t say that I can’t go! It is the chance of my life; I can never hope to get such another opportunity,” said Hilda, casting herself upon her elder sister and hugging her frantically, as if to squeeze a consent out of her in that way.

“It is not for me to say that you may not take a chance when it comes,” said Anne, turning suddenly pale, as pale as Bertha, who still clung trembling to the chair. “Especially I could not say anything to you now, when I have just decided to take my own chance of an easier life. Only it does seem hard for poor Bertha that we should both be going away at the same time.”

“I was afraid you would say that,” said Hilda; and now there was a mutinous look on her face. “But why, oh why, should I have to lose my chance in life because of Bertha? She can surely be boarded out somewhere for a year; I can spare a part of my salary to help pay for it, and we can sell this furniture. Oh, let us be willing to make any sacrifice to meet an emergency like this. I did not venture to put one straw of protest in your way, Anne, when you said that Mr. Mortimer wanted to marry you, so it is hardly fair that you should begrudge me my chance, now that it has come to me.”

“My dear, I do not grudge it to you,” said Anne, with keen distress on her beautiful face. “I was only thinking of poor Bertha, and how hard it would be for her.”

“What is it all about?” asked Bertha, finding her tongue for the first time; but speaking with horrible difficulty, because her heart was beating so fast. “Are you going to marry Mr. Mortimer, Anne? And when?”

Anne came closer, and put her arms round Bertha’s trembling figure, holding her sister in a tight embrace.

“Bertha, darling, I would have told you before, only you have been so ill, and I did not like to worry you until you were quite strong. Mr. Mortimer came all the way from Australia to ask me to marry him, and I said yes, for I was so tired of this awful driving life; but I have been afraid ever since that I put my own happiness and comfort before your welfare, and it has seemed so dreadfully selfish of me. This is why I flew out at Hilda just now.”

“There is no need to worry about me,” said Bertha, in a dazed sort of tone, “only it has all come so suddenly, that I do not seem able to take it in.”

“Of course it looks like trouble to begin with,” burst in Hilda, and her voice was just a wee bit patronizing, or so poor Bertha, in her new sensitiveness, judged it to be. “But next year, when I come back from Europe, as Mrs. Nelson says, I shall be able to charge almost what I like for lessons, and then we can set up house together.”

“Here in Mestlebury?” asked Bertha, not because she particularly wanted to know, but because she must say something, just to keep herself from sobbing like a baby.

“I should sincerely hope not,” laughed Hilda. “I would have left this out-of-the-way corner of the country ever so long ago if it had depended upon me only. But there was Anne’s school to be considered. We could not afford to keep this house on if I lived in lodgings, and so I have had to put up with it, and fearfully wearing work it has been. Think of the miles I have had to travel to earn a dollar, and all the fag, and the wear and tear of my life. Oh, no more of Mestlebury for me, thank you, not when once Anne is married.”

“Where will you live, when—when you are married?” demanded Bertha sharply, as she faced round upon Anne. A sudden dread had assailed her that Anne would have to go right away, and the thought was unbearable.

Anne’s face fell. By instinct she guessed what was in the mind of Bertha, and it seemed such horrible cruelty to take one’s own happiness when it brought so much pain to the others, or at least to Bertha; for Hilda, with her own career in front of her, could not be expected to care so much about the parting.

“Dear, Roger has a big sheep run fifty miles from Adelaide, and that is where our home will be.”

Anne’s tone was low and soft; then, when she had finished, a deep hush fell on the group. Bertha stood white and rigid, like a figure carved in stone, and the other two were afraid to disturb her.

It was shock upon shock, blow upon blow, and it was small wonder that she was left, as it were, battered and breathless, trying to realize all that these changes would mean to her, yet, in spite of it, too dull and numbed with the pain to take it in.

CHAPTER V
Against her Will

It was a week later, and the first snow had fallen, just a thin white coating on the hills and the plains, while the wind moaned with a new mournfulness through the forests of pine and of hemlock, stirring the fluttering pennons of black moss, as in the days when Evangeline’s people, the simple Acadian peasantry, tilled the land and lived upon the products of their industry. But the face of the countryside was changed since the driving forth of the village lovers to the long exile of separation and suffering. Where had stood the forest primeval, the ground was covered with fat orchards, with fruitful fields, and with bustling townships, which had “Progress” for their watchword.

Bertha had lived through the week in a kind of dream. Anne and Hilda discussed the various schemes they were making for her benefit, but at present she was too dazed to take much interest in them herself. It did not seem to matter in the least what became of her, and she found herself wishing sometimes that when she was ill she had been a little more ill, just enough to have carried her through the dark portal, and settled the question of her future once and for all. Of course this was very wrong. It was also very unnatural. But then Bertha at this time was scarcely normal, and so was to be forgiven and pitied, instead of being held up to censure or severe criticism.

Then at the end of the week the mail came in, bringing with it a letter which effectually settled the question of Bertha’s destiny, and that without any chance of appeal. The letter was from Cousin Grace, now Mrs. Ellis, who had been so good to the girls when their own mother died.

“So Anne is going to be married, and is to live in Australia. What a piece of luck for me! Now, girls, what you had better do is to break up your home, let Hilda take a teaching post in a school, where she will have a regular salary to fall back upon, and then I can have Bertha. Oh, you can’t think what it will mean to me to have someone that I can depend upon in the home! Life is really a terror sometimes with so many babies to look after, to clothe and feed, and only my one pair of hands to do it all.”

Anne read so much of the letter aloud, and then she stopped short, with a quiver of breakdown in her voice.

“Why, what a charming idea!” cried Hilda, looking up from a great heap of theory exercises through which she had been laboriously wading. “I wonder that it never occurred to either of us to ask Grace to take Bertha. Why, the arrangement will be perfectly ideal!”

Bertha, who was kneading a batch of bread at the table at the far end of the room, jerked up her head with a quick motion of protest, but before she could utter the words which rose to her lips, Anne, who was sitting back to her, began to speak—

“If I had asked Grace to take Bertha, I do not think that I should have felt so sure that it was the right thing to do. But seeing that the settlement of her future has been, as it were, taken right out of my hands and all arranged for me, I am sure that it must be right. With Grace, Bertha will be as safe as if she were with you or me, and she will be as kindly cared for. Oh, I am too thankful for words!”

“Poor old Anne!” muttered Hilda, and then, sweeping the pile of exercises on one side, she jumped up, and flinging her arms about Anne, she gave her a sounding kiss.

Bertha clenched her fists hard and punched the bread with quite unnecessary vigour, while she winked and winked to keep back the tears she was too proud to shed.

Oh, it hurt her! No one could even guess how it hurt her to think that her sisters had so much trouble to dispose of her. She knew that Hilda had asked Mrs. Sudeley to have her as a sort of mother’s help, but because she was not musical Mrs. Sudeley would have nothing to do with her. Bertha knew that she might have been musical if only she had tried hard enough. It was never any trouble to her to learn anything, but she had never worked at scales and exercises as Hilda had; indeed, she had never worked at anything, and now this was the price she had to pay, that when a home was needed for her no one wanted to be burdened with her.

Mrs. Sudeley’s refusal to have her had been a bitter mortification, although she had said no word about it. Once, nearly a year ago, she had paid a visit to the Sudeley homestead, and had been charmed with all the comfort, and even luxury, which the house contained. It was in most romantic country, too, and Bertha, who was always most strongly influenced by her surroundings, had been filled ever since with the longing to go there again. So it had not made her disappointment easier to bear to know that it was entirely her own fault that she could not teach elementary music and look after the piano practice of the elder children.

And now she would have to go thousands of miles away, right out on to the prairie, away from the sea, away from the forests, into a house crowded with little children, whose mother was overdone with work, and wanted someone to help her drudge through the monotonous, unlovely days!

“Bertha, Bertha, do you hear? Cousin Grace wants you to go and live with her. Do you think that you will like it?” called Anne, holding out her hand with the letter in it.

“It is very kind of Grace, but won’t it be a very expensive journey?” asked Bertha dubiously. She could not say outright that she simply hated the thought of going to Grace, and that if she had to be left with strangers she would much rather they were real strangers. Her memories of Grace were not very vivid, and Mr. Ellis she had only seen twice, and it was dreadful to think of being pitch-forked into a household and in a manner forced to remain there whether she liked it or not.

“Of course it will be an expensive journey,” replied Anne; “but, my dear, think of the comfort of it! Why, I shall be able to take my happiness now with a clear conscience, which so far I have not been able to do. Oh, Bertha, you do not know how bad I have felt about it!” and, to the surprise and dismay of both the girls, Anne, the brisk, brave, and capable, put her head down upon her hands and burst into a passion of tears.

In a moment Bertha had crossed the floor, and was sliding a pair of hands well caked with dough round her sister’s neck.

“Anne, dear Anne, don’t cry like this. Of course it is most awfully good of Cousin Grace to want me, and I expect that we shall get on most beautifully together,” said Bertha, making up her mind that in any case Anne would not be told about it, however unhappy she might be.

“Poor old Anne! you have been overdoing it lately,” put in Hilda, in a tone of pitying common sense, and it restored Anne to composure quicker than anything else could have done.

Somehow Hilda never could bear anything that even verged on emotional display, and Anne was careful not to upset her in this direction. Bertha was quite different; indeed she was a regular bundle of nerves and emotions, with a strong dash of sentimentality thrown in. And when later in that same day Hilda told her that once before Mr. Mortimer had written from Adelaide, asking Anne to marry him, and she had refused because of the two younger girls, for whom she must make a home, that little bit of confidence, joined to the sight of Anne’s breakdown, settled the future for Bertha without any hope of appeal. If her lot in the Ellis household were to be ever so hard or uncongenial, Anne must never know of it. There was something of the spirit of the martyr about Bertha, and she set herself to endure this hard thing which had come into her life with a Spartan disregard for pain.

But oh, the relentless heartache of those next few weeks! There were things in after-life which she could never see nor touch without it coming back to her in waves of pain and homesickness.

There was another letter from Grace, directly she heard of Hilda’s good fortune, and in this second epistle she gave all the necessary directions for Bertha’s journey westward, and with great generosity even enclosed the money to pay for her ticket through to the nearest railway station, which was thirty miles from the farm.

But she wanted Bertha to go at once, before the snow became so very deep. Sometimes in winter even sledges could not get through to the railway for weeks at the stretch, and it would be so very trying if Bertha were to be held up en route in this fashion. Moreover, if the home were to be broken up, there seemed to be no sense in delaying the upheaval.

“That is just what I think!” exclaimed Hilda, when she read the letter. “And if Bertha starts before I do, I can take her to Halifax and put her on the cars myself, then she will be all right until she gets to Winnipeg. I wish that Mr. Ellis could have met her there, but I suppose that is too much to expect. But anyhow, it will be a great relief to be able to start her on the journey myself.”

“Oh, I could manage somehow; I am not a baby, you see,” said Bertha, with a nervous laugh. As a matter of fact, she dreaded the journey horribly, but she was not going to upset Anne’s peace of mind if she could help it.

“It will be better for Bertha to go before the sale of the furniture. Let me see, that is next Wednesday; then Bertha had better go on Tuesday,” said Anne, who was up to her eyes in work of all sorts, arranging for the break-up of the only home they had ever known, making plans for her wedding, which was to take place almost directly; for Mr. Mortimer, having waited so long, was not disposed to wait any longer.

“But that will mean that I shall have to go before you are married,” said Bertha, with a note of protest in her tone.

“It cannot be helped, dear, and, after all, you will be spared a little more sadness,” Anne replied gently. “Weddings are harrowing things at the best of times, and mine must be sadder than ordinary, since it means so much parting for us all.”

Bertha turned away. Of course it was best that she should go away before Anne was married. But it was just horrible, like everything else. And because no one wanted her in the house just then, she thrust her arms into her coat, and, dragging her hat on, she set out through the snow to that part of the shore where the road from Paston came out on to the rocks.

She had only been there once since that day when she swam out to the rescue of the man, who had gone away without saying thank you, or even claiming the coat which was his. The thought of the coat came into her head now as she plunged along the snowy road, where the drifts were not yet packed hard enough to make walking a very pleasant exercise.

Of choice, she would have sent, or taken, the coat along to old Jan Saunders, and had no more responsibility in the matter. But she knew that it would not do to trust Mrs. Saunders even with the coat, and, of course, there was the morocco case with those grubby-looking pebbles which might be diamonds, or might be only the commonest stones of the roadside for aught she knew.

Oh no, it would never do to let Mrs. Saunders know anything about that case. Indeed, Bertha did not feel inclined to trust her in the matter of the coat either, so she had decided that the best thing that she could do would be to give the old people her address, and then they could write to her if the man wrote to them, or even came to interview them on the subject of his missing property.

A moaning wind swept round the headland, and Bertha shivered, for it was as if the wind were voicing her lament at leaving the sea and the rocks and the trees, with all the other beautiful things to which she had been accustomed all her life.