"Who sent you to England?"
"Mr.--Bindon."
The lady sat down on a chair. She stared in speechless silence at the new arrivals. Then, rising, she rang the bell. The servant appeared.
"Tell your master I wish to speak to him in the drawing-room."
Scarcely had the housemaid turned her back than there came a loud ringing at the front-door bell. Another servant entered--the cook--in her hand a cablegram. Mrs. Harland was conscious that the envelope was addressed to Mr. Harland. As a rule enclosures addressed to him she held inviolate, but on this occasion she broke the rule. She tore the envelope open with a hand which slightly trembled. With her eyes she devoured the words which were written on the sheet of paper it had contained:
"Girls shipped by mistake. Boys following.--Bindon."
Those were the words which had been flashed across the seas. She read them over and over again. It seemed as though she could not grasp their meaning. She still held the telegram extended in her hand when her husband entered the room. That gentleman paused upon the threshold. Retaining the handle of the door in his hand, he appeared to be making an effort to comprehend the meaning of the scene within.
"What is it you want, Maria?"
"I--I want nothing." The lady put her hand to her brow with a gesture which was almost tragic. "This is Mr. Bindon"s latest shipment."
She stretched out her hands towards the strangers in a manner which really was dramatic. The girls had dried their eyes to enable them, perhaps, to study Mr. Harland to better advantage. They stood in a row, the tallest at one end and the shortest at the other. The line of height descended in an agreeably graduated scale. Mr. Harland stared at the girls. Then he stared at his wife. "I don"t understand," he said.
"Read that!"
The lady thrust the cablegram into his hand. He read it. He read it once, he read it twice, he read it even thrice. Then crumpling it up he thrust both hands into his trouser pockets and he whistled.
"This is a pleasant state of things," he said.
"Is that all you have to say?" inquired his wife.
"Well, my dear, I may have a little more to say if you will give me a little time to reflect upon the situation. It is a situation which requires reflection." He stared at the row of girls in front of him.
He reflected. "This is a truly pleasant state of things. Your father, young ladies----"
"He is not our father," interposed the tallest of the row, Clara Mary.
"Not your father? Mr. Bindon is not your father?" Mr. Harland referred to the crumpled cablegram. "I am afraid that again I do not understand."
"We"re the Miss Dixons. Ma"s a widow. Mr. Bindon shipped us off to Europe the very day he married her. We never knew that we were going till just before we started, and I don"t believe Ma knew it either."
Again the handkerchiefs were raised in a simultaneous row to tearful eyes.
"J. Bindon," murmured Mr. Harland, "_must_ be Jolly Jack. You will be pleased to learn, young ladies," he added in a louder key, "that you have been shipped to Europe by mistake. I don"t at this moment understand altogether how the mistake arose. There are eight of you--I perceive that there are eight--and one would think that a mistake to that extent would be one which it would be rather difficult to make.
Still, you will be gratified to learn, it has been made. Mr. Bindon has telegraphed to tell me so. We expected a shipment to consist of an a.s.sorted lot of sons, possibly five--possibly seven. I am informed in the telegram that that shipment is following. But whether we are to return at once the shipment which consists of you, or whether, so to speak, we are to give it warehouse room, there are no instructions yet to hand."
The row of girls stared at Mr. Harland, dry-eyed and open-mouthed.
He spoke in a tongue which was strange to them.
"Andrew," cried his wife, "I am ashamed of you! How can you talk like that!"
Mr. Harland continued, almost as if he were speaking to himself. "It occurs to me that I have read somewhere, it was perhaps in some old book, that in American schools they run--I believe the term is a correct one--the boys and girls together. I hope Mr. Bindon is not under the impression that such a system obtains in Duddenham."
"Andrew, it is shocking! Upon my word, I feel inclined to cry."
"Do not cry, Maria; do not cry. Suppose, instead of crying, you come with me to the study, and let me say a word to you alone."
"Andrew," cried the lady, as she closed the study door, "I really am ashamed of you. How can you say such things--a man in your position?"
"A man in my position, Maria, is justified in saying anything, even d.a.m.n. It is because my tongue inclines to adjectives, strong and pithy adjectives, that I endeavour to let off the steam in another way."
"What are you going to do with those poor girls?"
"What are you going to do, Maria? Girls are more in your line than mine."
"I believe he"s done it on purpose, that Bindon man. I don"t believe it"s possible to make such a mistake; shipping girls in mistake for boys, indeed!"
"Not in the case of an ordinary family, Maria. But it is not an ordinary family, Mr. Bindon"s." There was a pause. The lady walked excitedly up and down the room. The gentleman sat back in an arm-chair, his hands in his trouser pockets, his legs stretched out in front of him. "You will have to provide them with bed and with board, Maria, till we have turned the matter over in our minds, or till we have heard further from Mr. Bindon."
They had to.
They provided the young ladies with bed and board.
"As," remarked Mr. Harland, when the days went by, and there still came no further instructions from America, "these young ladies bid fair to remain with us an indefinite length of time, I think, in order to do something which will ent.i.tle me to the proper fees, I will lay on something in the shape of a daily governess. They shall receive their education in the parlour. If Mr. Bindon could only see his way to making a few more errors in the "shipment" line I might, on my part, see my way to running a school for young ladies in connection with my establishment for boys."
The eight Misses Dixon arrived on a Tuesday. Nothing--that is, nothing unusual--happened during the whole of the ensuing week. But on the Wednesday week, eight days after their arrival, an incident, slightly out of the common way, did vary the monotony. A fly drove up to Mulberry House, and in it, on the back seat, sat a solitary boy. Mr.
Harland happened to be leaving the house just as the fly drove up. He eyed the boy, the boy eyed him. The flyman touched his hat.
"If you please, sir, seems as how this here boy"s for you. Leastways, it says so on his ticket." Turning round on his box the driver addressed his fare. "This here"s the schoolmaster, and this here"s Mulberry House."
The boy opened his mouth. Sounds issued forth. But they were sounds without form, and void. He appeared, judging from the grimaces he was making, to be suffering from an attack of facial convulsion. The flyman descended from his box.
"Seems, sir, as how this here boy"s got a stutter. It is a stutter too. I never see nothing like it. They"ve been and stuck a lot of tickets all over him, so that people might know where he was going to.
He"d never have made them understand."
When the boy came out of the fly Mr. Harland perceived that what the coachman said was correct. A square, white card was sewed on his coat, another on his waistcoat, and a third in a most prominent situation on his breeches. The writing on this latter, by dint of constant friction, had become so worn as to be unintelligible. On the other two was written, in a bold round hand, so that he that ran might read:
"Frank J. Samuel Bindon, Mulberry House School, Duddenham, England.
Note.--This Boy Stutters."
"I suppose," said Mr. Harland, as he eyed the youth, "that you are one of the a.s.sorted lot."
The boy opened his mouth.
"B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b--"
"I wouldn"t speak to him much if I was you, sir," said the flyman.
"Every time he opens his mouth I expect to see him have a fit. I"ve seen some stutters, but I never see one which came within a hundred mile of his."