The Youngest Girl in the School

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and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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The Youngest Girl in the School

THE YOUNGEST GIRL

IN

THE SCHOOL

THE YOUNGEST GIRL

IN

THE SCHOOL

BY

EVELYN SHARP

AUTHOR OF ’THE MAKING OF A SCHOOLGIRL,’ ’WYMPS,’ ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. E. BROCK

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.

1906

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1901,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped September, 1901. Reprinted January, 1902.

New edition September, 1906.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.–Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

TO

THE PROFESSOR

CHAPTER I
IN A LONDON SCHOOLROOM

‘It’s no good,’ sighed Barbara, looking disconsolately round the room; ‘we shall never get straight in time. Don’t you think we had better leave it, and let Auntie Anna see us as we really are? She will only be disappointed afterwards, if we begin by being tidy; and I don’t like disappointing people, do you?’

There was a shout of laughter when she finished speaking, and Barbara frowned. She never knew why the boys laughed at her when she tried to explain her reasons for doing things, but they always did.

‘Is that why you have put on your very shortest frock?’ asked Wilfred, who was brewing something in a saucepan over the fire. ‘I believe you think that if Auntie Anna saw you for the first time in your Sunday frock, she might suppose you were a nice, proper little girl, instead of––’

Barbara seized the sofa cushion and aimed it at him threateningly. ‘Instead of what?’ she demanded.

Wilfred was at a disadvantage, owing to his position as well as to the precious quality of the liquid in the saucepan; and he felt it wiser to make terms. ‘Well,’ he observed, ‘you might at least have put on a longer frock for the credit of the family; now, mightn’t you?’

Barbara looked down at her blue serge skirt, edged with certain rows of white braid that only made it look shorter; and she gave it a pull to make it fall a little lower over the slim black legs that appeared beneath it. ‘It’s not my fault that I have just come from a gymnastic class,’ she protested. ‘Besides, my Sunday frock is only two inches longer! What difference does two inches make, even if we have got an aunt coming? You’re so particular, Wilfred.’

‘Stick to your chemicals, Will, and leave the Babe alone,’ growled Egbert, who was trying to read a novel on the sofa and found the conversation disturbing.

It was not often that the eldest of the family troubled himself about the disputes of the others, and Barbara was encouraged to go on. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘there isn’t time to change now. Auntie Anna will arrive directly; and who is going to tidy up the schoolroom if I don’t?’

Certainly, no one responded to her appeal. Egbert and Wilfred became suddenly and suspiciously interested in what they were doing, while the two other boys, who were seated on the edge of the table, continued to swing their legs lazily backwards and forwards without making an effort to help her. Barbara turned upon them reproachfully.

‘It is perfectly horrible of you to sit there laughing, when a strange aunt and a strange daughter may be here at any minute!’ she declared. ‘I think you might do something, Peter.’

‘Not much!’ laughed Peter, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow of fifteen or so. ‘It’s good for little girls to do things, and keeps them from growing out of all their clothes.’

‘Chuck it, Babs!’ advised the younger of the two. ‘What does it matter whether she thinks we live in a pig-sty or not?’

Barbara looked at them doubtfully, then picked up a pile of ragged music and staggered across to the cupboard, shot the music into it, and closed the door just in time to prevent her load from recoiling upon her. A derisive chuckle from the boys on the table greeted her first attempt at tidying up; but she went on resolutely.

‘Visitors have no business to come and see people at a day’s notice like this,’ she complained, as she swept a handful of rusty nails, empty gum bottles, and other evidences of past occupations into a crowded waste-paper basket.

Christopher stopped laughing as she said this, and a change crept over his pale, rather delicate features. ‘When the visitor is an aunt,’ he said with energy, ‘a day’s notice is more than enough.’

He associated the aunt in question with certain reforms that had taken place from time to time in the household; and he had never forgiven her for inducing their father, just two years ago, to dismiss the nurse they had all adored and to send Robin and himself to a hated day-school. There was no knowing what innovations they might not be forced to accept, now that she was going to descend upon them in person.

Peter chuckled again. Most things to Peter were an occasion for a chuckle. ‘That depends on the spirit in which she comes,’ he remarked, and he turned his pockets graphically inside out. ‘An aunt who has a big place in the country, and can afford to travel about in beastly holes like Munich and the Italian lakes––’

‘And can pick up other people’s daughters and adopt them,’ chimed in Christopher, ‘just because their fathers died fighting in the Soudan and their mothers died–how did their mothers die, Egbert?’

‘Penniless,’ grunted Egbert, in response to the kick his book had just received. ‘That’s why the kid got adopted, of course.’

‘Well,’ proceeded Peter, putting his pockets back and nodding wisely, ‘if an aunt like that doesn’t behave decently to her deserving nephews––’

‘And niece,’ added Babs from the back of the sofa, where she had just deposited a bundle of old schoolbooks.

Peter went on unabashed. ‘To her deserving nephews and undeserving niece,’ he said, smiling, ‘then she’ll be an awful old dragon!’

‘There’s something in that,’ observed Wilfred, taking the saucepan over to the window for inspection. ‘Perhaps she’ll give me those new retorts and things I want for my laboratory–if I ever get a laboratory,’ he added with a sigh.

‘Perhaps she’ll send me straight to college without expecting me to grind for a musty old scholarship,’ said Egbert, condescending to take a share in the conversation.

‘If she asks me down to Crofts for the shooting, that will be good enough for me,’ observed Peter, drawing a long breath of anticipation.

Barbara came slowly into the middle of the room and stood there, quite unconscious of her rumpled hair and of the streak of dust that was smeared across her face. ‘I wonder what Auntie Anna will do for me?’ she murmured, more to herself than to the others. ‘I hope, I do hope it will be something new and interesting and beautiful!’

Christopher overheard her, and roused himself. He slipped off the table and walked to his favourite position on the hearthrug, giving an unnecessary pull to the child’s hair as he passed her, which was an attention, however, that she showed no signs of resenting. Babs never resented anything that Kit chose to do to her; besides, she wanted to hear what he was going to say. Whenever Kit stood like that, with his back to the fire and his legs rather wide apart, he was always going to say something. The odd thing was, that there was something so convincing in his way of saying it that the family generally listened.

‘Don’t you fret yourselves, any of you,’ he said decidedly. ‘Auntie Anna isn’t going to make things pleasant for anybody in this house–not she! Hasn’t she persuaded father to do whatever she likes, all our lives?’

‘What is she going to make him do now, then?’ asked Wilfred, who did not mean to give up his dream of a laboratory without a protest.

‘First of all,’ said Christopher, with an air of confidence, ‘she’ll see that Egbert has a crammer next summer holidays; and he’ll either have to get that scholarship, or he doesn’t go to Oxford at all! She’ll talk about discipline, and things like that. Aunts always do talk about discipline, when it’s for other people’s children.’

‘I wish you’d shut up,’ grumbled Egbert, returning to his book. ‘How is a fellow to read when you’re making such a clatter?’

‘Then there’s Peter,’ continued Christopher, calmly. ‘Of course she’ll say he’s much too young to be trusted with a gun, though he is such an overgrown, hulking chap; and why isn’t he in the fifth instead of the upper fourth, at his age?’

‘What do you know about it, you youngest-but-two?’ shouted Peter, wrathfully.

Kit peered at him through his spectacles, and went on as impudently as ever. He was never afraid to speak his mind, for none of the others would have dreamed of laying a finger, except in fun, on the one brother who was not strong enough to defend himself; and Kit knew this, as well as he knew his superiority over them in the matter of brains. The only wonder was that the knowledge had not made him a prig. Perhaps it would have been difficult, though, in the hurly-burly of the Berkeley family, for any one to have been a prig.

‘As for Wilfred,’ he resumed, ‘she’ll upset all his ambitions before he can turn round. Do you suppose she’ll encourage his messing about with things in saucepans, just because he wants to be a doctor? Not she! She’ll talk about some rotten business in the City instead. Aunts always know millions of places in the City where they can shove their unwilling nephews.’

‘Oh, I say, dry up!’ objected Wilfred, who was already sufficiently depressed by the discovery that the brew in the saucepan was not a success.

‘Then she’ll pack Robin off to a preparatory at Brighton–never knew an aunt yet who didn’t want to send you to a preparatory at Brighton!–and she’ll do the same to me, only she’ll choose a beastly inferior place, where I shall be looked after by some woman,’ concluded Christopher, in a tone of scorn. Then he caught sight of Barbara, who was still standing thoughtfully in the middle of the room; and he shook his head at her pityingly. ‘After that, having cleared the house of boys, she’ll turn her attention to the Babe,’ he said, and paused rather abruptly.

Barbara woke up from her reflections with a start. ‘Yes, Kit?’ she said questioningly. ‘What will Auntie Anna do to me?’

Kit’s expression of pity became exaggerated. ‘To begin with,’ he said, with a deep sigh, ‘she’ll let down your frocks, and tie back your hair, and never let you go anywhere alone, not even to the pillar-box at the corner!’

The other boys began to laugh afresh.

‘Think of the Babe with her hair bunched up on the top, and fastened with a bit of ribbon! She’ll look exactly like a French poodle, won’t she?’ scoffed Peter.

‘She’ll have to hold up her skirt in the street, and step in and out of the puddles like this!’ added Wilfred, taking the end of his coat between his thumb and finger, and prancing round Barbara on tiptoe.

Egbert shut up his book, and joined lazily in the general derision. ‘Poor little Babe! will it have to turn into a young lady, and stop talking slang, and learn about box-pleats and false hems and tucks?’ he jeered softly.

Barbara turned her back on the others, and once more appealed to Christopher. Teasing was not the kind of thing that roused her; she had grown accustomed to it, long ago. ‘What else, Kit?’ she demanded impatiently. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’

Christopher nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said ominously, ‘there’s something else. But I’m not going to tell you what it is.’

‘Yes,’ said Egbert, stretching himself, ‘of course there’s something else, Babe. We all know what it is, but we’re not going to tell you either.’

Babs looked swiftly from one to the other. ‘I know!’ she said, shaking the hair out of her eyes. ‘It’s–school!’

Kit nodded again. ‘That swagger place near Crofts, where the adopted kid has been,’ he continued in a solemn tone.

The others copied his manner, and looked at her with a ridiculous pretence of concern. ‘Poor Babe!’ they said in a chorus.

Barbara again shook the hair out of her eyes with a defiant gesture. Then she spun round lightly on her toes, and surprised everybody by laughing scornfully. ‘What a fuss you’re all making!’ she cried. ‘Don’t you know I am simply longing to go to school?’

Judging from their expressions, the Berkeley boys certainly did not know anything of the kind. Even Christopher was puzzled at her curious way of taking his prediction. ‘You’re putting it on, Babs!’ he said doubtfully.

Barbara stopped spinning round, and faced them all breathlessly. ‘I’m not, honour bright!’ she declared. ‘I have always wanted to go to school; I have always longed to have some real friends of my own, and to be with people who are not trying all the time to be funny. You don’t know how tiring it is to be scored off from morning till night. I want a change; I want to do regular, proper lessons, and to get to the top of the school, and to have every one looking up to me! Then, they play games at school, real games, instead of the stupid ones we play in the square, that only graze your knees. Girls are nice and jolly and quiet, and they understand you, and they don’t bother you to do things when you’d sooner read. Of course I want to go to school, dreadfully!’

She paused for breath, and Egbert whistled. ‘Well, I’m bothered!’ he remarked. He had never pretended to understand his little sister, but he could not help being astonished at this totally new side to her character. Peter took refuge as usual in a laugh; and Wilfred stared silently. But Kit looked more solemn than ever.

‘I’m disappointed in you, Babs,’ he said. ‘I should never have thought that you wanted to be a young lady, never!’

‘But I don’t, Kit!’ answered the child in a troubled tone. ‘I want to do something new, that’s all. I–I’m sure father will understand what I mean, if he sends me to school,’ she added, with something that sounded like a shake in her voice.

‘Ah–father!’ replied Christopher, gruffly. ‘Father will not be here, you see.’

A sudden silence came over them; and Barbara turned to the window and flattened her nose against the glass pane, and blinked her eyes with all her might. There was nothing to be seen outside but the blank wall that usually limits the view from the back of a London house; but the child with the untidy brown hair, and the small impish face, and the slender long legs, was able, for all that, to see pictures out there. She always saw pictures when she was excited about anything; and just now she was thrilled with a new dream–a dream of the place that her imagination named ‘school.’ She had always hidden from the boys how much she wanted to go to school; and it was only this afternoon, when their derision provoked her into it, that she had let them have a guess at her real feelings. They had not understood her a bit, as she knew they would not; but that did not matter. Her father would understand, though she never told him much, either, and he had to guess for himself what went on in the quaint little mind of his only daughter; but then, Barbara had a shrewd idea that he always guessed right, and that came to the same thing, really. Just as she was comforting herself with this assurance, the miserable consciousness returned that he was going away, and she would be left at the mercy of a strange aunt; and she found herself staring at nothing but a dismal brick wall, with eyes that were blinking to keep back the tears.

Peter was the first to break the pause that had settled with a kind of gloom on the old London schoolroom. He was always on the alert to resent anything that cast a shadow over the light gaiety of existence.

‘I say, look here,’ he began, giving himself a shake as if to get rid of an unpleasant impression; ‘don’t be so jolly blue, all of you! Father will only be away six months; he said so himself. And as for Auntie Anna, how do we know she isn’t quite a decent old lady? Some old ladies are awfully sporting. Do you remember Merton major’s aunt, Will? She used to give him whopping tips, whenever she came to see him; and he said he quite liked her!’

Christopher persisted in his gloomy view of the situation. ‘Our aunt is not the same as anybody else’s aunt,’ he said. ‘And then, there’s the adopted kid.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Peter, ‘no doubt she’ll be a trial. Five years at a girls’ school and a year abroad doesn’t give anybody a chance, does it?’

‘Oh!’ said Barbara, in a disappointed tone, ‘I did hope she would be nice!’

‘Wonder if she’ll mind the smell of chemicals,’ observed Wilfred, sniffing cautiously at the saucepan he still held in his hand.

‘Of course she will,’ answered Christopher. ‘She’ll hate the whole jolly lot of us, because we’re boys; and she’ll disapprove of the Babe.’

The boys broke into a laugh. There was something irresistibly funny to them in Christopher’s serious way of looking at things. But Barbara was much too worried over his last remark to join in the laugh against him.

‘Kit,’ she begged anxiously, ‘why is the adopted kid going to disapprove of me?’

The air was full of startling discoveries this afternoon, and the idea that the ‘adopted kid,’ for whom she had already formed an imaginary attachment, was not going to like her, was a great shock to her. But before Kit had time to speak, a loud ring at the door-bell drove the words out of his mind and startled the rest of them into an agitated expectancy.

‘That’s her!’ groaned Kit, and he dropped on the sofa and plunged his head into the cushion, as if he wanted to stifle even the thought of the dragon who was coming to work such havoc in the family. His words were proved by the sudden arrival of Robin, who had been posted as scout on the back staircase, and who now flung himself into their midst. He was in far too great a hurry to look where he was going; and he tripped over the saucepan, which had been set down casually near the door, and fell full length into the room.

‘Heigh-ho, Bobbin!’ said Peter, cheerily, as he picked him up again; for, in spite of his nine years, there was always the chance that Robin might be going to cry. But, on this occasion, Robin was too full of news to trouble himself about possible bruises.

‘She’s come; I’ve seen her!’ he gasped. ‘There’s a carriage an’ pair, big spanking chestnuts with red rosettes; and a man–a man with pink tops to his boots and a brush at the side of his hat––’

‘Get on, Bobbin!’ urged Egbert, impatiently. ‘We’ve all seen a carriage and pair before. What about the dragon?’

‘Saw her too!’ said Robin, panting for breath. ‘Got a long black silk thing on, and a bonnet that’s rather like a hat, with pink feathers in it, and a walking-stick with a blue knob to it, an’ white kid gloves,–no, I mean grey kid––’

‘Oh, get on, do!’ interrupted Egbert again. ‘Never mind about her clothes, stupid! What is she like?’

‘Don’t know what she’s like,’ said Robin, a little sulkily. ‘Couldn’t see everything from the back staircase, could I? There was a girl with her,’ he added, as a concession to the general curiosity.

‘The adopted kid!’ exclaimed the others in a chorus.

Babs pressed forward eagerly. ‘Does she look nice, Bobbin? Is she tall or short? Are her dresses quite long, and is her hair done up?’ she cried, pouring out her questions in a jumble.

‘Oh, yes; her skirts trail all along the ground for miles,’ answered Robin. ‘And she sort of rustled like tissue paper. Didn’t see her face, ’cause it was all tied up in a veil,–but she’s awfully tall,’ he added, looking round the circle with his head poised on one side. ‘She’s taller’n any of us–even Egbert,’ he concluded viciously, remembering his recent snubbing.

Egbert put out a long arm, laid the boy dexterously on the flat of his back in the middle of the floor, and pinned him there with his foot. ‘Say that’s a cram!’ he commanded in a stern voice. ‘Say I’m a head taller than the adopted kid, or else I’ll––’

What he would have done to him remained unheard, for Robin set up a wail that completely drowned the end of his sentence. The other boys only shrugged their shoulders; the thing seemed to them a necessary incident in the education of a younger member, and they were not going to interfere. But Barbara sprang forward passionately. That was the kind of thing that did rouse her.

‘Leave him alone, Egbert!’ she cried, but she did not wait to see whether he would. She scarcely supposed that he would stop teasing any one for her; besides, she never stayed to think, when once anything had roused her. So she put her head down and made a charge straight at the offender; and Egbert, being unprepared for the attack, fell backwards over the footstool, with his small sister on the top of him, while Robin wriggled free of them both and set up a louder howl than before in his surprise and dismay.

In the middle of the hubbub the door opened; and a voice, that attracted their attention at once because it was strange to them, made itself heard through the tumult.

‘Is there anybody here who is called Babs?’ asked the new-comer.

CHAPTER II
A WITCH IN A STEEPLE-HAT

Barbara picked herself up and looked towards the door. A girl of about eighteen stood there–an exceedingly pretty girl in a pretty frock, as the Berkeley boys might have noticed if they had been given to noticing things of this kind. But her regular features and her pink-and-white complexion and her reddish-brown hair made very little impression upon them, and they only saw that she was dressed in a grown-up manner that was rather against her than otherwise. They decided, with the hasty judgment of a large family, that she was much too grand to be treated as a companion; and they prepared, quite unnecessarily, to resent any attempt of hers to be patronising.

Nothing was further from Jill’s mind than to be patronising. She had never patronised any one in her life, not even the younger children at school, who always expected to be patronised; and she was not likely to begin now, with a set of schoolboys who frightened her out of her wits. For she had never had anything to do with boys before, and she had been dreading this moment ever since her return from abroad. She fully expected they would play practical jokes upon her, as the schoolboys in books always did; and she was not reassured by the uproar that met her ears when she opened the schoolroom door. It was ridiculous that she should feel shy, after travelling about for a whole year and meeting all sorts of people; but as she stood rather helplessly in the doorway, she certainly found that she was too shy to make the first advances.

The boys hesitated, and waited for one another to begin. Egbert, who could not forget that he had just been rolling on the floor, was brushing himself down and looking self-conscious; and it was Christopher who remembered his manners first and came forward with his hand out.

‘How do you do?’ he began in his solemn, precise way. ‘Won’t you come and sit down? There’s an arm-chair over here, and a cushion too–somewhere. Clear out, can’t you, Peter? I believe we can even rise to a footstool, if it isn’t lost. You might look for it, Bobbin, instead of staring like a stuck pig!’ He installed her in the arm-chair and placed himself in front of her, slightly bending forward, as he had seen his father do when there were visitors in the drawing-room; and although the result was rather funny when Kit did it, he managed to make Jill feel a little more at home. ‘I suppose you are Auntie Anna’s daughter,’ he continued politely, ‘but we don’t know your name. I don’t think we have ever heard it.’

‘I am Jill Urquhart,’ answered the girl. She swept a glance round at the others, who stood listening, and made a little gesture of dismay. ‘What a lot there are of you!’ she exclaimed, without thinking. ‘I shall never remember all your names!’

It was an unlucky beginning, for they at once put down her remark to affectation and counted it against her. They were so used to their numbers themselves, that they could not understand any one else being overwhelmed by them. Peter looked mischievous.

‘It isn’t so confusing as it looks,’ he hastened to tell her. ‘We all answer to our names, and you will find us warm-hearted and obedient.’

Jill glanced at him innocently. ‘Why,’ she said with a little laugh, ‘you talk as though you were all dogs!’

Peter was left staring, and the others tittered. By her perfectly natural remark she had turned the scale in her favour and convinced them that there was stuff in the ‘adopted kid’ after all. Quite unconscious of having said anything funny, though, Jill waited till they stopped laughing, and then turned again to Christopher. ‘Won’t you introduce me?’ she asked.

Kit nodded towards Egbert, who had finished brushing himself down and was waiting to shake hands. ‘That is Egbert, who is just waking up to the fact that you’re here,’ he announced. ‘You will find him rather superior, I am afraid, but we put up with him because of his age and position. Pass along, please!’

Egbert shrugged his shoulders good-naturedly. ‘It’s only Kit’s way,’ he explained to Jill; ‘everybody gives in to Kit.’

Jill smiled. ‘Kit’s way’ had made her forget her shyness, and she was already interested in the delicate-looking lad, with the thin, clever face, who had so promptly taken her under his protection.

‘The next is Wilfred,’ continued Christopher. ‘He is responsible for the unsavoury saucepan that has just been upset on the carpet. He thinks he is going to be a doctor, so he is always making experiments. Of course, he isn’t going to be a doctor, really; the house can’t run to it; but we let him have his fancies. Then comes Peter, whom you have just sat upon. Peter can’t help being funny, so you must try and bear with him. There are so few jokes in this family that perhaps we have encouraged him more than we should.’

‘Wait till she’s gone, that’s all!’ threatened Peter in a whisper, as he passed by after shaking hands with Jill. Christopher looked at him over his spectacles, and went calmly on.

‘I’m next on the list, and my name is Christopher, changed by the vulgar into Kit,’ he was proceeding, when Egbert made a spirited interruption.

‘He is our genius,’ he said, with a flourish of his hand towards the spokesman. ‘We are all very proud of him, for although only thirteen, he has the wisdom and intelligence of one twice his age. He is the only member of the family who can spell, and––’

‘Oh, dry up!’ muttered Kit, but his remonstrance was drowned in the approving jeers of the others. The genius had had it all his own way for about ten minutes, and it was satisfactory to see him ‘scored off’ in his turn. Kit tried to resume his dignified attitude in front of Jill, but the attempt was not particularly successful. It was always impossible in the Berkeley family to remain dignified for long.

‘Are you sure you have got them right so far, or shall I write them down?’ he asked, with so much gravity that Jill looked at him rather suspiciously. He met her glance through his spectacles without wincing, and the others tittered again. They were still a little doubtful about this new cousin of theirs, who was so unlike any one who had come their way before; and it was rather a relief to pretend to be amused.

‘The last of the boys is Robin, or Bobbin if you prefer it,’ continued Kit, glibly. ‘He is the youngest of us all, and the most ill-used. Indeed, when you came in just now, you may have seen the Babe trying to rescue him. That reminds me! I have left out our only girl. She comes between me and Bobbin, and here you may perceive her–the Babe!’

Barbara came slowly round from her hiding-place at the back of the sofa, and stood face to face with Jill. There was rather a wistful look on the small countenance just then; for in all her dreams of the wonderful cousin who was going to be her first girl-friend, Babs had never imagined anything like this grown-up, elegant creature, who did her hair like the ladies in the park and wore her watch dangling from her wrist. The child’s heart sank as she suddenly thought of her short gymnastic frock, and her rumpled hair, and her dirty hands. As for Jill, she stared down at the little person in front of her, and could not help smiling. Whenever she had particularly dreaded being plunged into this family of boys, she had always consoled herself by remembering that there would be one girl among them to take her part. Now, as she looked at the rough little tomboy before her, with her elf-like face and figure, and her bright eager eyes, she had to own again to herself that a large family was a difficult thing to understand.

‘So you are Babs,’ she began, not knowing what else to say. Then she remembered her errand, and added hastily, ‘Will you please go and see mother? She is in the library with Uncle Everard.’

Barbara escaped and sped along the hall, full of relief at having got away from the uncomfortable grown-up feeling that seemed to have come into the schoolroom with Jill. She even paused outside the library door, in her quaint, inconsequent way, to ask herself why Jill seemed so much more grown-up than the nice old gentlemen who came to see her father, with their pockets full of chocolates for her; and she supposed it was because they were really old, while Jill was only grown-up, which was far more alarming because it was so much more mysterious. But hardly had she settled this question in her mind than a fresh one presented itself to her. How was she to know that this other stranger, who was waiting in there to see her, was not also going to stare at her and smile, as Jill had done? Babs gave a troubled sigh, and opened the door with a heavy heart.

A little old lady sat on the sofa beside her father, with her hand in his. She was not beautiful by any means; her back was bent–like an old witch’s, Barbara thought–and she had a nose that might have been described as hooked, and a mouth that turned down at the corners and gave her almost a sour expression. But she had two small, keen black eyes, that took all the ugliness out of her face; sometimes they shone and sometimes they softened, but more often still they twinkled, as they did now, when her little niece stole timidly into the room. The moment the child looked up and met those eyes, she felt she was looking at her father’s sister. If she had but known it, the same eyes, too, were gleaming back at the old lady from the middle of a bush of tangled brown hair.

‘So this is your tomboy, is it?’ said Mrs. Crofton, bluntly. ‘Come here, child, and don’t stand shivering there. Do you think I am going to do anything to you?’

Barbara’s unusual timidity vanished at the sound of that voice. It was sharp and abrupt and determined, but it rang true, and there was nothing in it to frighten anybody.

‘I’m not afraid,’ she said, returning the old lady’s gaze frankly; ‘I am hardly ever afraid of people. Am I, father?’

Mr. Berkeley chuckled in an amused manner. He had been very curious to see this meeting between his wild little daughter and the sister who had managed his domestic affairs for him since the death of his wife. By nature a student, he lived most of his life in his library and in himself, and only woke up now and then to the fact that he had six growing children, who probably needed something besides the affection it was so easy to give them. In these waking moments he would write off to his sister, Mrs. Crofton of Crofts, for whose judgment he had quite a pathetic regard, and would carry out to the letter every suggestion she chose to send him. Only once had he ignored her advice, and that was when she had proposed a governess for Barbara; for he had passed over this idea in silence, and the child had continued to run in and out of his library, reading what books she pleased, and ordering her own upbringing in a way that seemed to him eminently satisfactory. For that matter, his library was open to any of his children at any time that they chose to invade it; and they interrupted him fearlessly as often as they pleased, without provoking anything worse than a good-humoured growl from him, that was never to be taken seriously for a moment. Probably this was why the tie between them and their father had come to be a friendly as well as an affectionate one.

Just lately, something had happened to change the haphazard course of affairs in the old London house. That autumn, Mr. Berkeley had brought out a philosophical work on which he had been engaged for years, and although it had only had a limited success in England, it had made a great sensation in America. The result was an invitation to conduct a lecturing tour in the States, which would take him abroad for something like half a year. Mr. Berkeley had the vaguest notions as to the amount of protection his children needed, but he had a sort of idea that children left in charge of a housekeeper would be considered neglected, and he did not want his children to feel neglected. As usual, he referred his dilemma to Mrs. Crofton, who replied promptly from the Riviera, saying she was on her way home to Crofts, and would stop a week in town to settle his affairs for him. This he forgot to mention to the children until the day she was to arrive, and then, in his innocence, considered their dismay as one of the peculiarities of youth.

‘So you are not afraid of me, eh? Then why won’t you give me a kiss, I should like to know?’ demanded Auntie Anna, as Barbara held out her hand in a boyish fashion.

The child looked surprised, and offered an unwilling cheek. ‘We don’t often kiss in our family,’ she explained; ‘only when the boys go back to school, or when somebody has banged somebody else on the head, or when it’s a birthday and presents. But that isn’t often, you see.’

Mrs. Crofton of Crofts smiled, and her brother pulled his daughter down between them on the sofa.

‘You must forgive her appearance,’ he said apologetically. ‘We haven’t anybody to teach us to be ladylike, have we, Babs?’

The old lady put her finger under Barbara’s chin, and turned the small face round, and looked into it keenly. ‘What’s the matter with her appearance?’ she inquired quickly. ‘Don’t be a goose, Everard! Now, child, tell me! Do you want to go on being a boy for ever, reading all sorts of books you have no business to read, and banging people on the head when they offend you, and looking alarming old ladies in the face without flinching; or do you want to be combed and brushed and smoothed into a young lady, and taught to rave about art and music and poetry, and told to look down when you are spoken to, and never to answer back if the truth is unpleasant? Hey? Which is it to be?’

Barbara was looking puzzled. ‘I don’t think I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘Do you mean that I must be either me or–or Jill?’

‘Well, supposing we put it that way,’ replied Mrs. Crofton, smiling again. ‘Which do you choose to be?’

Barbara did not stop to think about it. ‘I don’t want to be either, thank you,’ she said decidedly. ‘I would much rather be like you or father.’

Mr. Berkeley chuckled once more, and his sister struck her cane on the ground and laughed heartily. ‘A pretty mess you’ve made of your daughter’s education, I must say,’ she remarked. Then she turned again to Babs. ‘Well, child, I see you are going to be like your father in any case; and as for me–well, we’ll see if we can’t prevent such a terrible result as that. And now, I want you to pretend that I am a fairy godmother. Do you think you can?’

Barbara nodded, and her small black eyes glistened. It was not difficult to do that. Already the bonnet with the pink feathers had turned into a steeple-hat, and the black silk mantle into a scarlet cloak, and the blue-knobbed cane into a broomstick. The little impish face was aglow with delight as the old lady went on:

‘Now, I’ve just come down the chimney with a bang, and I am going to give my goddaughter the wish that she wishes most in all the world. But mind–if I have a suspicion that what she asks for is not what she really wants–bang! up the chimney I go again!’

Barbara took a flying leap into the middle of the room, and spun round with her favourite movement on the tips of her toes. Her heart was thumping wildly with excitement at finding herself in the middle of a real fairy story; and when she at last stood still again, she was almost too breathless to speak.

‘May I–may I have all that?’

‘Please,’ she said, clasping her hands tightly together, ‘I want to go to school, a real girls’ school, where there are crowds of girls, and crowds of lessons, and crowds of story-books with nice endings, and crowds of awfully jolly games that don’t pull your hair about and don’t give you bruises. May I–may I have all that?’

Auntie Anna once more struck her cane upon the ground. ‘That shows how much you know about your own daughter, Everard!’ she said, which was a remark that Barbara never understood. ‘You may have all that, little goddaughter, every bit of it!’ she announced to the expectant child; ‘and what is more, you shall have it in a week’s time. Hey-day! Where are you off to in such a hurry, if you please, and why am I allowed a kiss all at once, eh? It isn’t a birthday, is it?’

For Barbara had rushed impetuously to the door, and then scampered back to kiss the face with the hooked nose that peered out from beneath the steeple-hat. ‘Of course I kissed you,’ she cried, ‘because–because you’re such a brick, you see!’ She paused half-way in her second journey to the door, and looked back doubtfully at the old lady on the sofa. ‘May I ask you something else?’ she said.

‘Anything you please,’ answered Auntie Anna. ‘That’s what I’m here for; eh, Everard?’

‘Then–then–are you going to do anything for the boys too?’ stammered Barbara. ‘I–I don’t think it’s quite fair to keep all the niceness to myself, you see!’

‘That depends on what the boys want,’ replied the old lady, gravely. ‘Do you think you can give me any idea?’

Barbara puckered up her eyebrows, and counted off the names on her fingers. ‘First there’s Egbert,’ she began; ‘he wants to go to Oxford without having to get a scholarship first. Then there’s Wilfred; he wants to be a doctor, but Kit says there isn’t money enough and he’s got to get over it. Do you think you’ll be able to make Will into a doctor? And Peter wants lots of shooting; he says he doesn’t mind about anything else, only Kit says he isn’t old enough, and you won’t trust him with a gun. Kit hasn’t seen you yet, you see. Then there’s Kit––’

‘That’s enough for the present!’ cried Mrs. Crofton, who was leaning back, convulsed with laughter, among the sofa cushions. Mr. Berkeley again drew his daughter towards him.

‘You are revealing all the secrets of the prison-house, little girl,’ he remarked.

Barbara looked from one to the other. ‘Auntie Anna did ask me,’ she said reproachfully.

‘To be sure I did,’ answered the old lady, recovering herself with an effort, ‘and I am delighted to hear some of the things I am expected to do. But you must allow that even a fairy godmother has a hard time of it occasionally, and it is a little difficult to provide for all her godchildren at once, you know. However, you shall hear what is going to happen in a week’s time, on the very day that this naughty father of yours takes himself off to America; and if you approve of it, we can see about the other things later on. Is that a bargain, eh?’

‘Oh! What else is going to happen in a week’s time?’ asked Barbara, eagerly. By this time she was prepared for any dream to come true. Her faith in the old lady who was playing at fairy stories was complete.

Mr. Berkeley answered her. ‘Auntie Anna is going to carry you all off to Crofts for the whole six months that I am away,’ he told her; ‘and you are going to Jill’s school at Wootton Beeches, which is only ten miles off. So Kit and Robin will be able to come over and see you sometimes, when the others have gone away, for they are going to have a tutor and stay at Crofts with Auntie Anna and Jill. Isn’t that a fine idea?’

Barbara was speechless with rapture. The expression on her face made them laugh once more. Then she gave a kind of war-whoop that might have been heard in the schoolroom, and bounded again towards the door. ‘I simply can’t bear it another minute,’ she gasped. ‘I must go and tell the boys.’

‘Bear it just one more minute, and hear what else I have to say,’ begged Auntie Anna, raising herself with the help of her stick, and walking slowly after her excited little niece. ‘Can you ride bicycles, all of you?’

The child shook her head. ‘Only Egbert,’ she said; ‘and that is because he stayed with a chap, last holidays, who lent him one. Bicycles are too jolly expensive for this family, you know,’ she added quaintly.

Auntie Anna stood still and pointed the blue-knobbed cane impressively at the child, who stood waiting. ‘What do you say to a bicycle apiece all round,’ she began, ‘and––’

But Barbara did not wait to say anything. Back along the hall she scampered with all her might, and flung herself panting into the schoolroom. She burst out at once with a rapturous medley of news.

‘Boys, boys!’ she shouted at the top of her voice; ‘the dragon isn’t a dragon, she’s like a fairy godmother out of a story-book! And she’s going to send me to the adopted kid’s school, and everybody is going to live at Crofts till father comes back, and there’s going to be bicycles all round–no waiting ’cause you’re the youngest, Bobbin!–and––’

Suddenly she paused and stammered, and paused again. Finally, she stood silent and uncomfortable, with the excitement and the thrill all gone out of her. She had quite forgotten Jill; and Jill, enthroned in the one arm-chair, with the one cushion at her back and the one footstool at her feet, was looking as though she was not there to be forgotten.

‘I’ve just been telling the boys all about it,’ she remarked.

Barbara stared. It put the finishing touch to her distrust of Jill, that she should have told anything to the boys–her boys–before she had time to tell them herself.

‘I–I think it’s a shame!’ she exclaimed hotly, and she bit her lip to keep from crying.

‘Hullo, Babe! What’s up?’ asked Peter, in surprise.

Jill slipped out of the arm-chair, and laid her hand on the child’s shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry, Babs,’ she began softly; ‘I really didn’t know––’

Barbara looked up at her doubtfully. The tone was kind, but then, why did she go on smiling in that irritating way? ‘You don’t understand,’ she said, and twisted herself free from Jill’s grasp, and did not speak again until she was gone.

The boys took no notice of her; they always left the Babe alone when she was in one of her odd moods. But Jill, who had really meant to be kind, went away feeling puzzled. She had got over her first shyness of the boys in a very few minutes, for they were evidently trying to be friendly in their blunt, boyish fashion; but Barbara baffled her. There was something antagonistic in the child’s manner; and Jill, who had always been accustomed to meeting with affection wherever she went, did not quite know what to make of her. Of course it was ridiculous to worry herself about a tomboy of eleven who chose to be sulky; but it was the first time any one had refused to make friends with her, and Jill was a little hurt about it.

‘You’re spoiled, my dear,’ remarked her mother, as they drove away from the Berkeleys’ house; ‘and it is I who have spoiled you. I’m a silly old woman, but I never could bear to deny you all the sympathy you asked. I was afraid, you see, that you might think the world was not a nice place to be in.’

‘I’m glad you spoiled me, and I think the world is a nice place to be in,’ answered Jill, laughing. ‘But what has that to do with Barbara’s not liking me?’

‘Well, you can’t expect every one to like you,’ said the old lady, in her brusque way. ‘Babs will like you well enough when she finds that she is still the Babe of the family, in spite of your being there.’

‘But–but I don’t like to feel that there is anybody anywhere who doesn’t like me,’ complained Jill, with a little pout.

‘No more does the Babe, I expect,’ said Mrs. Crofton, smiling. ‘However, do your best to understand the poor little soul; she has not had much spoiling, and I should like you two to be friends.’

‘Oh!’ cried Jill, laughing again as she recalled the funny little figure that had come bounding into the schoolroom with such a yell and a clatter. ‘But she really is rather impossible, mother dear!’

‘Quite,’ responded the old lady, drily; ‘but she has amazing possibilities, and I thought you might perhaps like to find them. Well, what about the others?’

‘Oh, I like them,’ said Jill; ‘though I wish they would not all talk at once; it’s so confusing. And I’m a little afraid of them, too. You never know why they are laughing at you; and if you take them seriously, they laugh more than ever. Whatever you do, they laugh.’

‘Large families are always like that,’ chuckled Mrs. Crofton.

‘Large families are rather exhausting then, aren’t they?’ said Jill. ‘The boys are rather rough too, and they seem so proud of having scars on their hands, and of being able to see a pig killed without feeling bad–at least, Peter was. Kit is different from the others: I like Kit. And they are frank! They were not ashamed of calling me the “adopted kid” to my face; and they even owned to having nicknamed you “the dragon”!’

The old lady laughed. ‘So I am, as far as they know!’ she replied. Then she patted the girl caressingly on the hand. ‘My dear, it does us all good to be with people who are frank, even if they are a little rough with it. And I want you to help me to put as much love and gentleness as we can into the Berkeleys’ lives, for it strikes me that spoiling is what this large family wants.’

‘Then it’s what this large family will certainly get, if you have anything to do with it,’ answered Jill, softly.

In the schoolroom they had just left, the criticisms were brief and to the point.

‘She’ll do,’ said Peter, condescendingly, ‘when she’s got over that silly way of gaping at us, as though we were beasts at the Zoo.’

‘She’s stunning to look at, and her clothes are just ripping,’ said Egbert, the eldest; ‘but, of course, you kids couldn’t be expected to notice that.’

‘Oh, you think you’re everybody, just because you stayed with a chap last holidays who had a grown-up sister who called you Mr. Berkeley,’ cried Wilfred.

Robin said he liked her soft way of speaking, and she reminded him of Nurse, which set them all laughing, as they recalled that homely-looking person in cap and spectacles. Christopher put in his opinion, when they had all had their say.

‘She wants knowing,’ he said briefly. ‘There’s too many of us in a lump to let her give herself away. When she takes us separately, or in pairs, we shall get on as right as rain. And she really does know something about stamps.’

But the Babe, who sat away in a corner by herself, said nothing. She had forgotten Jill for the moment, forgotten her own fit of jealousy and her shyness of the interloper, and she did not even hear what the others were talking about. She was going to school at last, and nothing else was of any consequence. Indeed, all through the week of whirl and preparation that followed, Barbara went about in a kind of dream. She could hardly yet believe in her good luck. A few short days ago things had seemed likely to go on for ever in the same uneventful way, except that they were going to be made dreary for a time by the absence of the father she adored; and now, just through the coming of an old lady, whom she had been prepared to hate, this amazing change in her future was going to take place. To an imaginative little person like Barbara, it was useless to pretend that there was nothing out of the ordinary in this. She had lived for years in a fairy world of her own, where Kit was a fairy prince and her father a nice old magician, and where numbers of charming princesses, the schoolgirls of her imagination, were ready to sympathise with her whenever the boys had been teasing her more than usual. It was surely to this kingdom of her fancy that a fairy godmother, who had once been a dragon, properly belonged; and all through that week, Barbara wandered in her imaginary kingdom with this new inhabitant of it, pointing out all its beauties to her, and even assuring her that the magician would cure her rheumatism if she were to ask him nicely. ‘Only, you must not make her back quite straight,’ she whispered privately to the magician, ‘because she wouldn’t be a proper fairy godmother if her back were straight!’ She also added strict injunctions to the keeper of her gates, that a certain grown-up cousin, who might be known by her tiresome way of smiling at people, was not to be admitted under any circumstances into her fairy kingdom. ‘It would never do,’ thought Barbara, seriously, ‘to have any one in my kingdom who wanted to laugh at me.’

Meanwhile, the busy preparations went on around her. It was not an easy thing to move a family of six from the home in which they had passed the whole of their lives, especially when their aunt, in the large manner which characterised everything she did, insisted on allowing them to pack whatever they wished.

‘We are only young once,’ she represented to a distracted housekeeper, ‘and possessions are very precious when we are young. Let them bring everything that will help to make the place seem like home to them; there is plenty of room at Crofts. Get tired of the things? Of course they will! We can’t expect them to be wiser than the grown-ups, can we?’

So Wilfred packed explosive liquids in bottles, and Peter packed cricket stumps and hockey clubs, and Christopher found room among Egbert’s collars and ties to stow away microscope-slides and setting-boards and birds’ eggs, and Robin brought innumerable contributions in the shape of torn picture-books and old toys that the others had discarded long ago. None of them ever forgot that last week in their London home; for besides the exquisite joys of packing up, there were also delightful expeditions up to town with Auntie Anna, ostensibly to buy clothes, but in reality to afford amusement to an old lady who had never enjoyed her life so much before; and whether they went alone with her, or in such numbers that the brougham was as full as it could be, the afternoon always ended with a magnificent tea without limitations–‘Even ices to finish up with, and no one saying nothink about your makin’ yourself ill ’cause you mixed things!’ as Robin proclaimed on his return home from one of these expeditions.

Then there was the buying of the six bicycles; and even Barbara forgot for the moment all about school and everything else for the sake of her new two-wheeled possession, soon to be invested in her mind with magic properties and converted into a fairy messenger in her fairy kingdom. She was less patient over the purchase of her school outfit, which kept her standing at the dressmaker’s for whole half-hours together, when she might have been trying her bicycle round the square; and she wondered why it was necessary to have such quantities of clothes, just because she was going to live at school instead of at home. Surely, if her present wardrobe was good enough to pass the critical examination of five brothers, it need not be improved to meet the friendly gaze of a parcel of girls! However, Auntie Anna insisted on more clothes; and Auntie Anna was a witch, so she ought to know. And since she did not take the dressmaker’s part, but even allowed Barbara to have her own way as to the shortness of her skirts, with an added inch or so to satisfy the scruples of the dressmaker, it was impossible to grumble very much at the precious time that was being wasted.

So the week drew swiftly to a close, and the day of departure came at last.

CHAPTER III
BARBARA’S DREAM

Once more, Kit stood with his back to the fireplace, and prepared to address the family. It was just half an hour after Mr. Berkeley had left, and they were all assembled rather sorrowfully in the old schoolroom. In another ten minutes their own cabs would be at the door, and they too would be on their way to a new life. Altogether, it was a solemn moment, and the genius of the family could not resist the temptation to make a speech.

‘Boys,’ he began, nodding his head with mock importance, ‘it is my opinion that Auntie Anna is a jolly wise old lady!’

‘What’s that to do with father going away?’ asked Barbara, rubbing her eyes furiously. She had had her cry on the back staircase, and she felt safe for the moment against a further display of weakness.

‘It’s got a lot to do with it,’ rejoined Kit. ‘Didn’t she take us all to the pantomime, last night–father, too? I suppose you think that was just to amuse herself, don’t you? Well, it wasn’t. It was because she was afraid of our sitting together at home, and saying it was father’s last evening, and–blubbing.’

This he said severely, looking at the weaker members, Babs and Robin, as he spoke. They bore the test heroically, and the orator went on.

‘And why,’ he inquired, ‘did she give us only a week to pack up, and buy clothes and things, when there’s ten days more before you other chaps go back? Of course there’s the Babe’s school, but that could have waited. Girls’ schools never matter.’

‘Well, why, most precocious of kids?’ asked Egbert, with lazy tolerance. Certainly, no one but Christopher would have been allowed to say so much uninterrupted. But then, even Egbert had a kind of secret admiration for his clever young brother, though he did not pretend to understand him.

‘Well,’ continued Christopher, ‘if we’d had more time to think about it, we might not have been so keen on going to live in another person’s house. And, naturally, Auntie Anna didn’t want any ructions over it.’

‘Oh, stop it, Kit! What a lot of rot you are making up!’ objected Peter, impatiently. Of the three elder boys, he was nearest in age to Kit, and was consequently less inclined to tolerate him.

‘Everything points to it, if you’re not too thick-headed to see,’ retorted Kit, crushingly. ‘Look at the way we’re being rushed out of the house, directly father has turned his back. Isn’t that to give us something to think about, so that we shouldn’t mope about the shop, and fancy ourselves? Of course,’ he added blandly, fixing his spectacles on his nose and staring at Peter, ‘some people don’t need anything to set them grinning again.’

‘Christopher, my son, you are a clever child, but your impudence simply isn’t to be borne,’ said Peter; and he stooped down and lifted the fragile figure of the orator high in the air, and set him down lightly outside the door. Kit rearranged his tie, put his spectacles straight, and peered up at the unappreciative listener who towered above him.

‘As I was saying,’ he resumed gently, ‘Auntie Anna can give us all points when it comes to being ’cute.’

The next day or two proved the truth of what, in his shrewd way, he had already guessed for himself. Yet the Berkeleys were hardly to be called unfeeling, because they appeared to take their father’s departure so coolly; for it would have been difficult to remain unhappy long, when there were so many delightful things to distract them. Besides their excitement, town-bred as they were, at finding themselves in a real country-house, with an oak staircase, a secret room, and a ghost story, there were separate joys waiting for each one of them as well. There was a horse for Egbert to ride to hounds, and a well-stocked library for Christopher to bury himself in, and a lumber-room for Wilfred to turn into a laboratory; while Peter was allowed, the very first day, to go out shooting with the keepers, and Robin promptly became the pet of all the men on the estate, and spent long, happy hours with them down at the stables and the farm. If there was any one in the family who was not perfectly content, it was Barbara.

No doubt, she would have been quite as absorbed as the others were in their new home, if she had not been going to another one herself the very next day. As it was, she found it a little difficult to share their enthusiasm since she had a private enthusiasm of her own. But the boys did not understand this at all. They were very affectionate to her in their rough, undemonstrative way, and they were always telling her that she would be sure to ‘pull through all right’; for they naturally supposed that she wanted the kind of pity they wanted so much themselves at the stated, horrible periods when they went back to school. But as to grasping her notion that she was going to enjoy life at Wootton Beeches, that was not to be expected of them. So Barbara felt that her interests, for the first time in her life, were not the same as theirs; and a queer sort of feeling crept over her, that changes–even nice, interesting changes–occasionally had something strange and uncomfortable about them. She grew so perplexed over it, at last, that she even went to Jill for sympathy. Jill was at least a girl, and Jill had been to school, in the same delightful place to which she was going on the morrow; and Jill at least ought to know whether the boys’ idea of school was right or wrong. So, just after tea, on her last evening at Crofts, the child swallowed her natural distrust of her cousin, which, after all, had arisen chiefly from their mutual shyness of each other, and started in search of her.

Jill was in the conservatory, arranging the flowers for the dinner-table; and Barbara’s shyness returned, as the trim, neat figure came walking towards her, along the rows of chrysanthemums. She glanced down at her crumpled pinafore and sighed desperately. Being dragged up a dusty ladder into a cobwebby lumber-room by Wilfred had not proved the best of treatments for a pinafore that really had been clean a couple of hours ago. But Jill suddenly came out in a new light. With no teasing schoolboys to overhear her, she felt that here, at last, was a chance of making friends with her odd little tomboy of a cousin.

‘Have you come to help me with the flowers?’ she asked, with such a friendly smile, that Babs cheered up at once. She forgot all about her crumpled pinafore, and went straight to the point.

‘No, I didn’t come for that,’ she answered simply. ‘I came to ask you about–about school.’

‘Ah!’ said Jill, suddenly picking chrysanthemums at a great rate. ‘Supposing you tell me what you think about it yourself?’

Her mother’s words were running in her head: ‘Do your best to understand the poor little soul!’ and Jill wondered what she could tell her that would not upset her notions of school too cruelly.

‘Oh, well,’ replied Babs, ‘of course, I think it’s going to be beautiful; but the boys–the boys are so funny about it, and it’s made me all in a muddle inside. Do you think the boys know?’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Jill, and she strolled away along the rows of chrysanthemums. It seemed a shame to spoil the child’s illusion; and yet, when she thought of this quaint little untrained object being dropped in the middle of the girls at Wootton Beeches––

Barbara had followed her up closely, and she suddenly interrupted her reflections. ‘You know what a girls’ school is like, don’t you, Jill?’ she continued appealingly. ‘I wish–I do wish you would tell the boys they are all wrong about it. They are wrong, aren’t they?’

There was a suspicion of a doubt in the last words that struck Jill as being rather pathetic. She put her bunch of chrysanthemums down, and drew Barbara towards her. ‘You see, Babs, it is like this,’ she said slowly; ‘school is very nice, if you do not mind things being strange at first, and if you can bear being laughed at, and––’

‘Why, that is quite easy!’ interrupted Babs, with a smile. ‘The boys have teased me always.’

‘Yes,’ said Jill, doubtfully; ‘the boys have teased you; but that is not quite the same thing. Girls–girls are not boys, you see.’

‘Oh no, I know they’re not!’ replied Barbara, happily. ‘Girls are quiet and kind and gentle; and they always understand you, and they are ready to make friends directly they see you. I think I know what girls are like.’

She was thinking of the princesses in her fairy kingdom; and another little smile flickered across her face. Jill glanced at her for a moment, and then suddenly made up her mind how to act.

‘Look here, Babs,’ she began, smoothing the mop of tangled hair with her hands; ‘you go on thinking that girls are like that, and you’ll get along all right!’ Barbara wriggled away from her before she had time to say any more, gave her a swift look and a smile of gratitude, and darted off in search of the boys. ‘They’ll be very stupid if they don’t see what a babe it is,’ added Jill to herself.

At the door of the conservatory, however, the small figure in the crumpled pinafore came to a sudden standstill.

‘I say, Jill,’ the child blurted out, and she clutched a handful of pinafore to give herself courage; ‘I–I want to tell you something.’

‘Do you?’ said Jill, smiling.

‘I want to explain that I hated you at first, because I thought you were going to make the boys like you better than me,’ Babs went on breathlessly. ‘And you frightened me too, because you laughed in such a funny way, just as if you were sneering at me for being in a muck. I thought, perhaps, it was because you were so grand, and your clothes were so grand, and all that; but I couldn’t help being in a muck, because I always am in a muck, you see; and so, you see–you see––’

‘Look here Babs,’ she began, smoothing the mop of tangled hair

‘I see,’ said Jill, quietly; and she looked quite thoughtful for a minute or two. Babs came a step nearer.

‘I don’t hate you now,’ she said frankly. ‘For one thing, the boys don’t like you better than me, after all. They don’t even like you so much as they thought they were going to. But I think you’re awfully nice,–almost as nice as Kit and Nurse and father,–and I shall go and tell them so, now; and then, perhaps, they won’t say you are young-ladyish any more!’

There was a vision of slim black legs and white pinafore disappearing across the hall, and Jill could not help laughing. ‘I must catch the post, and write to that child Jean,’ she decided, after a moment’s reflection. ‘It won’t be so bad for the poor little mite if she has some one to show her round.’

Late on the following afternoon the ‘adopted kid’ found another chance of making her way to Barbara’s heart. Barbara had wandered into the library, with a whole hour to spare before the carriage should come round to drive her to school; and, rather to her surprise, she discovered Kit there, sitting huddled up in the arm-chair, with his shoulders up to his ears. She had thought that all the boys were out ratting, and she had not expected to see any of them until they came in at tea-time to bid her farewell. She was feeling rather doleful, now that the important moment was so near, for she realised that if she was going to everything that was new and delightful, she was also going away from the boys for the first time in her life. It did not cheer her to find Christopher sitting over the fire with an attack of asthma.

‘Kit!’ she cried in distress. ‘I didn’t know you were ill!’

Kit crouched closer to the fire and growled. Asthma always had a bad effect upon his temper, and to-day he had a grievance as well.

‘Of course you didn’t know,’ he muttered. ‘You never know anything now. Can’t think what’s come over you lately.’

Barbara reddened, and the tears welled up in her eyes. No one could hurt her so easily as Christopher. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Kit. I suppose I’ve been thinking about school,’ she said; and she dropped the poker with a bang that made him wince.

‘Lucky for you to be able to go to school,’ answered Kit, crossly. ‘Look at me! Just because of that journey on Wednesday I’ve got to coddle like an old woman.’

Barbara stood gazing at him helplessly. Her heart was full of pity, but no one had ever taught her how to show it. ‘Poor old boy!’ she said awkwardly. ‘Would you like me to tell you a story?’

‘Not I! How can you think of a story when you’re full of that stupid school?’ was the surly answer.

‘But I’m not thinking about school now, Kit,’ persisted the Babe, becoming tearful.

‘Oh, never mind. Don’t cry, whatever you do; I’ve got such a headache,’ said Christopher, hastily.

‘I’m n–not crying; I never cry,’ stammered Barbara, in a shaky voice. ‘I–I want to do something for you, only you won’t tell me what to do.’

Kit answered her with a violent struggle for breath, and the child felt more helpless than ever. It was just as she was making a feeble attempt to raise him in his chair that Jill came in.

‘You poor fellow!’ she exclaimed, taking in the whole scene at once. ‘Here, Babs, give me that piece of brown paper, and run and fetch his medicine, will you? Poor boy! Poor Kit!’

She knelt beside him and supported him with her arm, while she wafted a smouldering tuft of brown paper in front of him. ‘Now, fetch some cushions out of the drawing-room,’ she commanded, when Barbara returned with the medicine; and, delighted at being given something to do, the child sped away on her errand. When she came back with her arms full of cushions, Jill had a delightful plan to unfold.

‘Ring the bell for the lamp, Babs,’ she said, in her soft voice, which was already soothing Christopher’s nerves; ‘and we’ll have tea together before you go. Shall we, Kit, dear?’

‘It’s awfully good of you,’ he answered weakly. The attack was passing off, and he was visibly cheering up. By the time tea was brought in, he was sufficiently recovered to take the lead in his usual determined manner; and Jill humoured him by giving in to him meekly, even consenting, under his guidance, to toast slices of plum-cake at the end of a penknife.

‘It’s very extravagant, when it’s Auntie Anna’s plum-cake instead of the stale stuff cook used to make; but as it’s the Babe’s last evening we may be extravagant, mayn’t we, Jill?’ argued Christopher. ‘Now, Babs, you melt the butter; and for goodness’ sake do remember you’re not at home, and don’t smash the plate.’

His reminder did not wholly make the desired effect upon Babs, for when the boys returned from the farm in a noisy tribe, flushed with the glory of slaying, they found the ‘adopted kid’ scrubbing her gown with a clean handkerchief, while Babs hung over her, covered with confusion.

‘Don’t worry yourself, child,’ Jill was saying consolingly. ‘A lump of butter, more or less, doesn’t make any difference to a frock I’ve worn all the winter.’

‘It just slid off the plate when I wasn’t looking,’ said Barbara, penitently. ‘I can’t think why it didn’t slide on to my frock instead of yours.’

A chorus of merriment rang from behind.

‘You ridiculous Babe!’ shouted Peter. ‘Why, the butter is tired of being spilled down your frock.’

Jill jumped to her feet, and blushed a little. As Kit had predicted, she found it much easier to get on with her cousins when she took them ‘separately, or in pairs’; and she was not used yet to facing them all at once. The sound of wheels outside gave her an excuse for escape, and she put her arm hurriedly round Babs.

‘Come upstairs and put on your hat,’ she suggested, and the two girls hastened out of the room.

Auntie Anna saw to it that the farewells were not prolonged, and Barbara found herself whirled into the covered wagonette with her last words only half said. Kit was allowed time to whisper a gruff apology for being cross with her before tea, but the others had to follow her to the front door to shout their good-byes after her.

‘Don’t get the blues because we are not there!’ cried Wilfred.

‘I’ll write great lots of times,’ declared Robin, who was in tears. ‘I won’t even wait for the lines to be ruled, Babs dear. You won’t mind the spelling, will you? ’Cause it saves so much time if you don’t.’

‘Cheer up!’ was all Egbert said; and Barbara wondered if she was very hard-hearted, because she was not half so wretched as they all expected her to be. Peter even made her laugh outright, as he sprang on the step of the carriage, and went a little way down the drive with them.

‘Don’t funk it, old girl!’ he shouted through the window. ‘And just send for us, if anything goes wrong!’

‘Be off with you!’ said Auntie Anna, shutting up the window; and that was the last that the Babe of the Berkeley family saw of the boys who had been her only companions through life.

She had plenty to think about in her long drive in the dark; and Auntie Anna was wise enough to leave her alone most of the time. A little more than an hour later, however, when the carriage made a sharp turn and drove through some gates, the old lady roused her by a touch on the arm.

‘We are just there, little woman,’ she said in her quick, abrupt way. ‘Not afraid, eh?’

‘Oh no!’ answered Barbara, smiling. ‘I–I’m just excited.’

Mrs. Crofton kissed the eager little face, on which the light shone as they approached the house.

‘That’s right,’ she said, looking pleased. ‘Always be a truthful little girl, and don’t mind if you find you are not like other people.’

Then the horses stopped, and a blaze of light shone down a flight of steps to the carriage door; and Babs, feeling suddenly very small and unimportant, in spite of the extra inch or two on her new serge frock, followed the old lady into the great wide hall of Wootton Beeches.

Her dream was coming true at last.

CHAPTER IV
HOW IT CAME TRUE

Half an hour later, Barbara was being led across the hall by Miss Finlayson, to be introduced to her school-fellows in the playroom. It puzzled her a little to see how calm and unconcerned the head-mistress was looking. Did she not know what a thrilling moment this was to her little new pupil, who tripped along by her side? As Babs was puzzling over it, they reached the baize door on the opposite side of the hall, and Miss Finlayson stooped and fastened it back, disclosing a long passage beyond. At the end of the passage was another door; and through this other door the murmur and hum of many voices drifted to the ears of the excited child. She could hardly contain her impatience; and she wondered why Miss Finlayson did not go on, instead of being so particular about the fastening of the baize door. She even took a step forward in her eagerness; but a hand was suddenly placed on her shoulder, and Barbara glanced up and met the half-amused gaze of the lady who had just seemed so indifferent to her.

Miss Finlayson had a way of looking at a girl that generally made a friend of her at once. Her eyes were a peculiar shade of blue-grey that gave them, as a rule, a cold expression; but they were also capable of a glimpse of humour that completely altered and softened them, and it was the discovery of this quality in them that changed Barbara’s impatience all at once to curiosity.

‘One moment, little girl, before you go through that door over there,’ began Miss Finlayson, and her face was still grave in spite of the betraying twinkle in her eyes. ‘Tell me, have you ever known any girls before?’

‘Only Jill,’ answered Barbara, wondering why she was being asked such an odd question.

‘Ah!’ said Miss Finlayson. The child caught the change in her tone, and went on quickly.

‘I know Jill didn’t approve of me at first,’ she said, in her small, anxious voice; ‘but she does now, I think. Besides, Jill is grown-up, you see; and I don’t think it counts if you are grown-up, does it? I’ve never met any real, nice, friendly girls before, who don’t tease you, or bully you, or anything like that. That’s why I wanted to come to school.’

‘Ah!’ said Miss Finlayson again. Then she put out her hand and patted the cheek of her little new pupil. ‘Do not be unhappy if you find you are not like the other girls,’ she said, just as Auntie Anna had done; ‘and come to me, if everything else fails and you cannot stand by yourself. Only, remember–you are not in the nursery any longer: you have come here to learn how to grow up straight and strong and healthy, just as a plant learns; and I am only the gardener to give you a prop, when you have been in too great a hurry and are trying to grow too fast. Do you think you understand?’ Her voice changed again, and a laugh came into it as she added brightly: ‘Come along now, and be a happy little girl. You will find that most of us are happy in this house.’

She took Babs by the hand, and raced her along the passage to the door at the end, then turned the handle and pushed the child gently into the room.

‘Girls,’ said the head-mistress, in the sudden lull that followed her entrance, ‘here is a new schoolfellow for you.’

Then all the voices broke out again, and Miss Finlayson nodded to Barbara, and went away. It was one of Miss Finlayson’s theories, that a new girl should be left to fight her way by herself; but as she retreated slowly along the passage this evening, she could not help feeling a little anxious about the child with the small, eager face, whom she had just launched into a strange and unfriendly world.