"Sanker! was _he_ the thief?"
"Hold your tongue, Ludlow," returned Sanker, in a fright. "I told you I"d give him a chance again, didn"t I? But I never thought he would come back to take it."
"I would have believed it of any fellow rather than of Vale."
Sanker turned his face sharp, and looked at me. "Oh, would you?" said he, after a pause. "Well, then, you"d _better_ believe it of any other.
Mind you do. It will be safer, Johnny Ludlow."
He walked away into a group of them, as if afraid of my saying more. I turned out at the door leading to the playground, and came upon Tod in the porch.
"What was that you and Sanker were saying about Vale, Johnny?"
I was aware that I ought not to tell him; I knew I ought not: but I _did_. Tod read me always as one reads a book, and I had never attempted to keep from him any earthly thing.
"Sanker says it was Vale. About the things lost last half. He told me, you know, that he had discovered who it was that took them."
"What, he the thief! Vale?"
"Hush, Tod. Give him another chance, as Sanker says."
Tod rushed out of the porch with a bound. He had heard a movement on the other side the trellis-work, but was only in time to catch a glimpse of a ta.s.sel disappearing round the corner.
We went in for noise at Worcester House just as much as they do at other schools; but not this afternoon. Mrs. Frost had been a favourite, and Sanker told us about her funeral. Things seemed to wear a mournful look.
The servants were in black, the Doctor was in jet black, even to his gaiters. He wore the old style of dress always, knee breeches and buckles: but I have mentioned this before. We used to call him old Frost; this afternoon we said "the Doctor."
"You can"t think what it was like while the house was shut up," said Sanker. "Coal-pits are jolly to it. I never saw the Doctor until the funeral. Being the only fellow at school, was, I suppose, the reason they asked me to go to it. He cried ever so much over the grave."
"Fancy old Frost crying!" interrupted Lacketer.
"I cried too," avowed Sanker, in a short sharp tone, as if disapproving of the remark; and it silenced Lacketer. "She had been ailing a long time, as we all knew, but she only grew very ill at the last, she told me."
"When did you see her?"
"Two days before she died. Hall came to me, saying I was to go up. It was on Wednesday at sunset. The hot red sun was shining right into the room, and she sat back from it on the sofa in a white gown. It was very hot these holidays, and she felt at times fit to die of it: she never bore heat well."
To hear Sanker tell this was nearly as good as a play. A solemn play I mean. None of us made the least noise as we stood round him: it seemed as if we could see Mrs. Frost"s room, and her nice placid face, drawn back from the rays of the red hot sun.
"She told me to reach a little Bible that was on the drawers, and sit close to her and read a chapter," continued Sanker. "It was the seventh of St. John"s Revelation; where that verse is, that says there shall be no more hunger and thirst; neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat. She held my hand while I read it. I had complained of the light for her, saying what a pity it was the room had no shutters. "You see,"
she said, when the chapter was read, "how soon all discomforts here will pa.s.s away. Give my dear love to the boys when they come back,"
she went on. "Tell them I should like to have seen them all and said good-bye. Not good-bye for ever; be sure tell them that, Sanker: I leave them all a charge to come to me _there_ in G.o.d"s good time. Not one of them must fail." And now I"ve told you, and it"s off my mind," concluded Sanker, in a different voice.
"Did you see her again?"
"When she was in her coffin. She gave me the Bible."
Sanker took it out of his pocket. His name was written in it, "Edward Brooke Sanker, with Mary Frost"s love." She had made him promise to read in it daily, if he began only with one verse. He did not tell us that then.
While we were looking at the writing, Bill Whitney came in. Some of them thought he had left at Midsummer. Lacketer shook hands; he made much of Whitney, after the fashion of his mind and manners. Old Whitney was a baronet, and Bill would be Sir William sometime: for his elder brother, John, whom we had so much liked, was dead. Bill was good-natured, and divided hampers from home liberally.
"_I_ don"t know why I am back again," he said, in answer to questions; "you must ask Sir John. I shall be the better for another year or two of it, he says. Who likes grapes?"
He was beginning to undo a basket he had brought with him: it was filled with grapes, peaches, plums, and nectarines. Those of us who had plenty of fruit at home did not care to take much; but the others went in for it eagerly.
"Our peaches are finer than these, Whitney," cried Vale.
Lacketer gave Vale a push. "You big lout, mind your manners!" cried he.
"Don"t eat the peaches if you don"t like "em."
"So they were," said Vale, who never answered offensively.
"There! that"s enough insolence from _you_."
Old Vale was Sir John Whitney"s tenant. Of course, according to Lacketer"s creed, Vale deserved putting down for only speaking to Whitney.
"He is right," said Whitney, who thought no more of being his father"s son than he would of being a shopkeeper"s. "Mr. Vale"s peaches this year were the finest in the county. He sent my mother some, and she said they ought to have gone up to a London fruit-show."
"I never saw such peaches as Mr. Vale"s," put in Sanker, talking at Lacketer, and not kindly. "And the flavour was as good as the look. Mrs.
Frost enjoyed those peaches to the last: it was almost the only thing she took."
Vale"s face shone. "We shall always be glad at home that they were so good this year, for her sake."
Altogether, Lacketer was shut up. He stood over Whitney, who was undoing a small desk he had brought. Amidst the things, that lay on the ledge inside, was a thin, yellow, old-fashioned-looking coin.
"It"s a guinea," said Bill Whitney. "I mean to have a hole bored in it and wear it to my watch-chain."
"I"d lock it up safely until then, Whitney," burst forth Snepp, who came from Alcester. "Or it may go after the things that were lost last half-year."
Turning to glance at Sanker, I found he had left the room. Whitney was balancing the guinea on his finger.
"Fore-warned, fore-armed, Snepp," he said. "Who the thief was, I can"t think; but I advise him not to begin his game again."
"Talking of warning, I should like to give one on my own score," said Tod. "By-gones may be by-gones; I don"t wish to recur to them; but if I lose anything this half and can find the thief, I"ll put him into the river."
"What, to drown him?"
"To duck him. I"ll do it as sure as my name"s Todhetley."
Vale dropped his handkerchief and stooped to pick it up again. It might have been an accident; and the redness of his face might have come of stooping; but I saw Tod did not think so. Ducking is the favourite punishment in Worcestershire for a public offender, as all the county knows. When a man misbehaves himself on the race-course at Worcester, they duck him in the Severn underneath.
"The guinea would not be of much use to any one," said Lacketer. "You couldn"t pa.s.s it."
"Oh, couldn"t you, though!" answered Whitney. "You"d better try. It"s worth twenty-one shillings, and they might give a shilling or two in for the antiquity of the coin."
"Gentlemen."
We turned to see the Doctor, standing there in his deep mourning, with his subdued red face. He came in to introduce a new master.