Mr. Vaughan laughed so much that he had not the heart to thrash the little rogue, but next morning he devised a punishment for him which Peggy declared was far worse. The body of the dead kitten was securely tied round his neck with a piece of rope, and, like the albatross in the ballad of the "Ancient Mariner," it proved such a weight of shame that the guilty dog did not dare to show his face to his friends, but slunk away to hide his dishonoured head in dark corners of the barn or stackyard.
Mr. Vaughan was inflexible, and would not allow Rollo to be relieved from his burden until the following evening.
"We must teach him a lesson he is not likely to forget," he said. "I cannot have him touching any of the animals on the farm, or we shall have him killing the sheep when he is older."
So Rollo bore his punishment as best he could, and was fed behind the pigsty by the sympathetic Peggy, who, while mourning for the departed Ruffles, forgave her erring pet from the bottom of her heart when she saw the depths of his unutterable woe.
CHAPTER IV
A STORMY DAY
"Alack-a-day, what tears we mingle!
For trouble ne"er, I wot, came single."
Though Gorswen was the most quiet little country spot you could find, it lay only four miles away from Warford, a rising inland watering-place, which boasted not only a Mayor and Corporation, but a pump-room and concert-hall, and had a large and fleeting population of visitors, and, to judge by its growing suburbs, an ever-increasing number of residents.
Lilian and Peggy attended the Warford High School, and Bobby the Grammar School. It was not quite what Father would have wished for them, for he had been a Rugby boy himself, but it was the best he could afford; and certainly the education was excellent, though the pupils were decidedly mixed. Still, as Aunt Helen said, "You have no need to copy the manners of the children you meet. You have been taught at home to behave like gentlepeople, so please to remember you are Vaughans, and keep up the credit of the family."
Every morning at eight o"clock the little governess-car and Pixie, the steady black pony, stood ready at the side gate, and the trio jogged off to school with their lesson-books and their luncheons in their satchels. David could not be spared to go with them, but all the children had been taught to drive, and even Bobby had a firm hand on the reins, and knew the rules of the road as well as many a more experienced coachman; and I think, too, that Pixie had a sense of her responsibilities, and could be trusted not to get the wheel locked with a pa.s.sing waggon, or to race too furiously down a steep hill, whatever feats her drivers might urge her to perform. The pony and trap were put up for the day at a quiet little inn midway between the two schools, and were always waiting for the children by a quarter past four, when, like the traditional donkey, they joyfully turned their noses towards home again.
On one special Monday morning in May Peggy got out of bed in that peculiar frame of mind which Father charitably called "highly strung,"
and Nancy broadly defined as "having black dog on your back." To begin with, it was wet. Not that Peggy minded rain in the least, but if it were fine Mr. Vaughan had intended to go over to a great cattle fair which was to be held that day at Shrewsbury, and had promised to bring her home a guinea-pig. "And now he won"t go," she thought dismally, "and I shan"t have the chance of another until Warford Agricultural Show in the autumn."
Peggy hated Monday mornings. After the delightful freedom of Sat.u.r.day and Sunday at home it was always doubly hard to return to school, and the time until next Friday afternoon seemed an endless prospect. All the nastiest lessons, Peggy thought, came on Mondays--grammar and arithmetic, dates and French verbs, and all those horrid fussy things which take a great deal of learning without being specially interesting in themselves.
On this particular morning the children were late for school, for Pixie had cast a shoe upon the road, and Lilian had been obliged to drive so slowly that the church clock was chiming a quarter past nine as Peggy opened her cla.s.sroom door.
It is rather an ordeal to walk late into a schoolroom full of thirty girls, and the slightly nervous feeling had the unfortunate effect of making Peggy march in with a don"t-care look on her face, and shut the door with a bang.
Miss Crossland glared at her through her eyegla.s.ses.
"If you are so careless as to be late, Margaret Vaughan," she remarked, "the least you can do is to come in quietly without disturbing the cla.s.s."
Rather crestfallen, Peggy threaded her way to her place, and took out her arithmetic books.
"Which sum are you doing?" she whispered to her desk-mate, Emily Thompson; but Emily judiciously pretended not to hear, for she did not wish to waste valuable time in giving Peggy information. She was rather a pretty girl. Her light flaxen hair and pale, fair complexion gave her a smooth, shining appearance, and somehow Peggy always thought her manners were smooth and shining too, for she had a way of wriggling out of any little difficulty and unpleasantness, so that the blame rested upon other people, and was always ready to take a mean advantage, or play some of those little underhand tricks which schoolgirls know only too well.
Peggy"s frank, downright nature held Emily in much contempt, and, as she made no effort to conceal her opinion, the dislike was mutual, and a kind of undeclared war existed between the two. It was unfortunate for Peggy that the third form cla.s.sroom was furnished with double desks, for as Miss Crossland would permit no changing of places, she was obliged to sit by her enemy for the rest of the term, to their equal discomfort and annoyance.
The lesson dragged on wearily for awhile, till they were disturbed by a tap at the door, and a small girl from one of the lower cla.s.ses entered, full of importance at her errand.
"If you please, Miss Crossland," she piped, "Miss Martin would like to speak to you for a moment in the library."
Miss Crossland looked annoyed; she disliked being interrupted in her cla.s.ses, but the head-mistress"s request could not be disobeyed.
"Very well, Gertrude," she replied coldly; then, turning to her cla.s.s: "Girls, I must leave you for a few minutes. I trust you to continue your arithmetic in silence during my absence. Not a word must be spoken while I am out of the room."
For so long indeed as her footsteps echoed in the pa.s.sage her pupils obeyed her order, but the moment she might reasonably be believed to be out of earshot a low murmur began among the little heads bent so discreetly over the arithmetic books. No one attempted to do any work; sweets and apples appeared mysteriously from within desks, and surrept.i.tious bites were offered to appreciative neighbours. One daring spirit even mounted the platform, and waved the pointer in supposed imitation of Miss Crossland"s majestic style.
"What made you so late, Peggy?" asked Nora Pemberton in the intervals of ecstatic delight over a white mouse, hidden away in a desk-mate"s lunchbox.
"Couldn"t help it," replied Peggy, with her mouth full of chocolate.
"Pixie lost a shoe, and we thought she would go lame, so we almost crawled along; and when we got her in, we had to tell them to be sure and have her shod by four o"clock, and of course it all takes time."
"I wish I drove to school every day," said Sissie Wilson, a delicate looking girl who lived in the heart of the town.
"You wouldn"t like it when it was wet," said Peggy. "And if it"s frosty one"s hands get just numb holding the reins, though it"s jolly enough in summer. We have to start ever so early, too, to be here by nine."
"Well, I only wish I had the chance," grumbled the envious Sissie; but she was interrupted by a warning "Hush! Miss Crossland!"
In a moment thirty hair-ribbons were bent over thirty desks, and thirty demure young ladies were adding up figures with the utmost care and attention.
Miss Crossland looked at them suspiciously; perhaps ten years of teaching had caused her to mistrust such amazing diligence.
"Has any girl spoken during my absence?" she inquired sharply.
No one replied. Peggy"s face flushed, and her conscience gave her a sharp twinge. A Vaughan must never have anything to do with the least little bit of an untruth, so she stood bravely up in her place.
"I spoke, Miss Crossland," she admitted.
"And I too," said Nora Pemberton.
n.o.body else followed Peggy"s example. Sissie Wilson bit the end of her pencil in abstruse calculation, Emily Thompson was deep in the pages of her arithmetic, while most of the girls were adding up columns as if for dear life.
Miss Crossland looked grave.
"Very well, Margaret and Nora," she said, "I must give you each a bad-conduct mark, and shall expect you both to stay after four o"clock this afternoon."
The tears rose to Peggy"s eyes at the injustice.
"What a mean set they are!" she said to herself. "I"m sure Miss Crossland might have known they had been talking too; but she is always down upon me."
She opened her desk, and searched for a fresh pencil to hide her tell-tale face, and somehow (she really did not mean it, but perhaps her tears blinded her) the desk-lid slid from her fingers, and fell down with an awful crash, which rang through the whole room.
"Take another bad-conduct mark, Margaret Vaughan," said the calm voice of Miss Crossland. "You must learn not to show temper when you are reproved."
Poor Peggy groaned. Every bad-conduct mark meant six sums to be worked out when school was over. She and Lilian had been very anxious to get home early that afternoon, for they had meant to sow seeds in the garden; and Father was always angry if they kept Bobby waiting, for he did not like him to be loitering about the inn-yard listening to the talk of the stable-boys.
But Miss Crossland was writing a problem upon the blackboard in compound proportion. "If a hen and a half lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs can four hens lay in six days?"
"What a stupid sum!" thought Peggy. "How could there be a hen and a half? I don"t know the least how to state it. Is the answer to come out in hens or eggs or days?"
She put down a few random figures, then her thoughts wandered off to the brown speckled hen at home, and she wondered if the little chicks would hatch out to-day, and whether Nancy would remember to go and see, and put the dear fluffy yellow things in a basket before the kitchen fire.