"Well, it"s not likely you"ll ever have the chance of living here!"
retorted Winona, taking up the cudgels for her adopted home.
"I don"t know about that," returned Percy. "The house belongs to Aunt Harriet. She"ll have to leave her property to somebody, I suppose, when she shuffles off this mortal coil. I"m the eldest son, and my name"s Percy Beach Woodward. That ought to count for something."
"Aunt Harriet"s not going to die yet," said Winona gravely. "I think it"s horrid of you to talk like this!"
"Oh, I don"t wish the old girl any harm, but one may have an eye to the future all the same," was the airy response. "D"you remember Jack Ca.s.sidy who was a pupil at the Vicarage? His aunt left him five thousand pounds."
"Yes, and I heard he"s muddling it away as fast as he can. Mary James told me. Her father"s guardian of part of his property until he"s twenty-five, you know."
"He"s a topper, is Jack! He"s promised to take me for a day sometime to Hartleburn, when the races are on. Now don"t you go blabbing, or I"ll never tell you anything again!"
"Mr. Joynson said--"
"Oh, for goodness sake shut up! A boy of sixteen isn"t going to be bear-led by an old fogey like Joynson. He has the mater far too much under his finger and thumb for my taste. If you want to be chums with me, don"t preach!"
Winona was silent. Her brother"s infatuation for the Vicar"s scapegrace ward was the affair of a year ago. She had hoped he had forgotten it.
His escapades at the time, in company with his hero, had caused his mother to seek the advice and guidance of her trustee.
"Some one was telling me the other day that old oak furniture is worth a tremendous lot of money now," continued Percy, his eye roving round the room with an air almost of future proprietorship. "If that"s so these things of Aunt Harriet"s are a little gold mine. There was an account of a sale in the newspaper, with a picture of a cupboard that fetched two hundred pounds. It was first cousin to that!" nodding at a splendidly carved old piece which faced him.
Miss Beach"s household goods were inherited from her great-grandfather, and included some fine specimens of oak, as well as rare Chippendale.
Winona was too young to be a connoisseur of antiquities, but she had the curiosity to rise from her chair and join Percy in his inspection of the article in question.
"I tell you they"re as alike as two peas!" he declared. "Same shape, same sort of carving, same k.n.o.bs at the end! The reason why I remember the thing is that the buyer found a secret drawer in it after he"d got it home, with some old rubbish inside, and there was a lawsuit as to who owned these. He claimed he"d bought the lot with the cupboard, but the judge made him turn them up to the family of the original owner. That was why there was a picture of the cupboard in the newspaper. It put an arrow showing the place of the secret drawer. I wonder if there"s one here, too? I"m going to have a try! By Jove, there is!"
A vigorous pull had dislodged a drawer in a very unexpected situation.
Winona would certainly never have thought of its existence, nor would Percy, if the newspaper had not given away the secret. He looked eagerly inside.
"No treasures hidden in here! Absolutely nothing at all, except this piece of paper."
"Perhaps Aunt Harriet has never found it out," ventured Winona.
Percy did not answer immediately. He was reading the writing on the paper.
"You bet she has!" he cried at last, flushing angrily. "I never thought she"d much opinion of me, but I call this the limit! It"s going where it deserves!" and acting on a sudden impulse he flung the cause of offense into the fire.
For a moment Winona did not realize what he had done. By the time she reached the hearth the paper was already half consumed. She made a s.n.a.t.c.h at it with the tongs, but a flame sprang up and forestalled her.
She had just time to read the words "last Will and Testament of me Har--" before the whole sank into ashes. She turned to her brother with a white, scared face.
"Percy! You"ve never burnt Aunt Harriet"s will?"
Ashamed already of his impetuous act the boy nevertheless tried to bluff the matter off.
"It was an abominable shame! When I"m named Beach after her too! I wouldn"t have believed it if I hadn"t read it myself!" he bl.u.s.tered.
"Read what?"
"I shan"t tell you! Look here, Win, you must promise on your honor that you"ll never breathe a word about this."
"Perhaps Aunt Harriet ought to know."
"She mustn"t know: _mustn"t_, I tell you! I say, Win, I"m not at all sure that what I"ve just done isn"t a chargeable offense--I believe they call it a felony. You wouldn"t like to see me put into prison, would you? Then hold your tongue about it! Give me your word! Can you keep a secret?"
"I promise!" gasped Winona (Percy was squeezing her little finger nail in orthodox fashion and the agony was acute). "I promise faithfully."
She was in a terrible quandary. Her natural straightforwardness urged her to make a clean breast of the whole affair. Had she been the actual transgressor she would certainly have done so and faced the consequences. But this was Percy"s secret, not her own. He was no favorite with his aunt, and so outrageous an act would prejudice him fatally in her eyes. The hint about prison frightened Winona. She knew nothing of law, but she thought it highly probable that burning a will was a punishable crime. Suppose Aunt Harriet"s rigid conscience obliged her to communicate with the police and deliver Percy into the hands of justice. Such a horrible possibility must be avoided at all costs. The sound of a latch-key in the door made her start. In a panic she rushed to the old cupboard and pushed back the secret drawer into its place.
When Miss Beach entered the dining-room her nephew and niece were sitting reading by the fireside. Their choice of literature might perhaps have astonished her, for Percy was poring over Sir Oliver Lodge"s "Man and the Universe," while Winona"s nose was buried in Herbert Spencer"s "Sociology," but if indeed she noticed it, she perhaps set it down to a laudable desire to improve their minds, and placed the matter to their credit. Percy took his departure next morning, and Winona saw him off at the railway station.
"Remember, you"ve to keep that business dark," he reminded her. "Aunt Harriet must never find out. She"s been jawing me no end about responsibility, and looking after the kids and supporting the mater and all that. Rubbed it in hard, I can tell you! Great Juggins! Do I look like the mainstay of a family?"
As Winona watched his boyish face laughing at her from the window of the moving train she decided that he certainly did not. She sighed as she turned to leave the station. Life seemed suddenly to have a.s.sumed new perplexities. Percy"s act weighed heavily on her mind. It seemed such a base return for all Aunt Harriet was doing on their behalf. She longed to thank her for her kindness and say how much she appreciated going to the High School, but she could not find the words. Theknowledge of the secret raised an extra barrier between herself and her aunt. So she sat at lunch time even shyer and more speechless than usual, and let the ball of conversation persistently drop.
"Fretting for her brother, I suppose," thought Miss Beach. "She can talk fast enough with friends of her own age. Well, I suppose an old body like myself mustn"t expect to be company for a girl of fifteen!"
She was too proud to let the hurt feeling show itself on her face, however, and propping up the newspaper beside her plate, she plunged into the latest accounts from the Front.
CHAPTER VI
A Crisis
Winona had been more than a month, nearly five weeks indeed, at the Seaton High School. In the first few days of her introduction to V.a. she had told herself that the difficulty of the work consisted largely in its newness, and that as soon as she grew accustomed to it she would sail along as swimmingly as Garnet Emerson, or Olave Parry, or Hilda Langley, or Agatha James. Most unfortunately she found her theory acted in the opposite direction. Closer acquaintance with her Form subjects proved their extreme toughness. She was not nearly up to the standard of the rest of the girls. Her Latin grammar was shaky, her French only a trifle better, she had merely a nodding acquaintance with geometry, and had not before studied chemistry. Her teacher seemed to expect her to understand many things of which she had hitherto never heard, and was apparently astounded at her ignorance. Winona puzzled over her text-books during many hours of preparation, but she made little headway. The royal road to learning, which she had fondly hoped to tread, was proving itself a stony and twisting path.
"_You_ seem to get on all right?" she said wistfully to Garnet one day.
"Why, yes. Of course one has to work," admitted her friend. "Miss Huntley keeps one up to the mark. But one must expect that in V.a. They don"t put scholarship holders in the Preparatory."
"I was all at sea in math. this morning."
"You were rather a duffer, certainly. The problems weren"t as difficult as the ones they gave us in the entrance exam. If those didn"t floor you, why couldn"t you work these?"
"But they did floor me. I barely managed half the paper. I reckoned I"d failed in it."
Garnet looked surprised.
"Then your other subjects must have been extremely good to make up for it. I was told that we should probably stand or fall by maths. You were ripping in everything else, I suppose? Scored no end?"
Winona did not answer the question. She was conscious that none of her papers could have merited such an eulogium. She envied Garnet"s grasp of the form work. Try as she would, her own exercises and translations were poor affairs, and her ill-trained memory found it difficult to marshal the enormous number of facts that were daily forced upon it. Miss Huntley at first was patient, but as the weeks wore on, and Winona still wallowed in a quagmire of amazing mistakes, she grew sarcastic. The girl winced under some of her cutting remarks. Apparently the mistress imagined her failure to be due to laziness and inattention, and sooner than confess that she could not understand the work, Winona was silent.
She never mentioned the long hours she spent poring over her books in Aunt Harriet"s dining-room. After all, it was better to be thought idle than stupid. But it was humiliating to feel that she was counted among the slackers of the Form, while Garnet was already winning laurels. The contrast between the two scholarship holders could not fail to be noticed.
Miss Huntley (privately known to the Form as "Bunty") was a clever, but rather remorseless teacher. She had been on the staff since the opening of the school two years before, and she was determined at all costs to maintain the high standard inaugurated at its foundation. She was herself the product of High School education, and knew to the last scruple how much to require from girls in V.a. To those who appeared to be really trying their best she was ready to give intelligent help, but she had no mercy for slackers. She was possessed of a certain amount of dry humor, greatly appreciated by the form _en bloc_, though each quaked privately lest, through some unlucky slip, she might find herself the object of the smart but withering satires.
Despite her strictness, "Bunty" was popular. She was an admirable tennis player, and a formidable champion in a match "Mistresses _v._ Girls."
Her strong personality fascinated Winona, who would have done much to gain her approval. So far, however, she was entirely on Miss Huntley"s black list.