"Oh, that kind isn"t bad," admitted Jean. "I didn"t mean Macaulay and Longfellow and all the _real_ poets. But the stuff they gave you at my school was horribly dull, and it never had any sort of story in it, and the lines didn"t seem to belong to one another at all; and there was generally a thing called a glossary at the end, which only showed that it wasn"t fit for any one to read."
"I know that kind of poetry; we have lots of it at home," put in Angela.
"There"s a chap called Browning who"s rather like that. Have you ever read any Browning, you two?"
"No," said Jean, flatly. "Don"t believe you have either. My father says Browning didn"t understand himself, and I"m sure _you_ don"t know more than Browning. So there!"
"Never mind about the poetry," interposed Barbara. "I want to hear about the gym prize. Who do you think is going to get it, Jean?"
"Well, Margaret is awfully good, of course, but we shall know better after the trial on Monday afternoon," said Jean, cautiously.
"What trial?" asked Barbara.
"Why," exclaimed Jean, in surprise, "didn"t you hear Finny give out that we were all to do the show exercises before her on Monday afternoon, so that she could decide who was to go in for the prize?"
"Of course she didn"t hear; the Babe"s always asleep!" said Angela, with scorn. "I watched her all the time Finny was speaking, and she was smiling away to herself as if some one was having a conversation with her."
"Never mind, she"s getting better," said Jean, approvingly. "She doesn"t gape half so much as she did, and she doesn"t jump when you go up and speak to her suddenly. By the way, you"ve got as good a chance as any one, Babe, of getting the gym prize."
Barbara, who had taken their frank criticisms of her without a murmur, could not allow this last a.s.sertion to pa.s.s. She pulled up suddenly in the middle of the field, and looked first at one and then at the other of her two companions. "What do you mean?" she gasped.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Hullo! said Jean. What"s the matter?"]
"Oh, you"re putting it on; don"t be affected," scoffed Angela.
"No, she isn"t putting it on; she never does," objected Jean. "Look at home, Angela, before you talk about affectation."
"All the same," continued Angela, undisturbed, "you must know you"re perfectly splendid at gym, Babs. Now, don"t you?"
"I"d quite forgotten," confessed Barbara, as they resumed their stroll.
"I"m so bad at most things that I"d got out of the way of thinking I could do gymnastics. But, of course, the boys always said I wasn"t bad, for a girl; and once I got the prize at my cla.s.s in London. There were only thirty of us, though," she added modestly.
They strolled on as far as the gate at the bottom of the field, and stood looking over it into the lane below. The lane was out of bounds, which lent it an added charm; and they liked nothing better than to come here on half-holidays and lean against the gate, and wonder where the gra.s.s-grown path led to and what it looked like when it got round the corner by the old elm tree. To-day, they had scarcely taken up their position there when they were startled by sounds of distress from below; and the next minute a small boy came slouching along the lane, crying bitterly.
"Hullo!" said Jean. "What"s the matter?"
The boy was so surprised that he stopped crying and looked up. He was a very pitiable little object, in corduroy garments that could not properly be called knickerbockers and yet were too short for trousers, with a small area of grey flannel shirt appearing above them, and a red worsted comforter twisted round his neck, making an unbecoming patch of colour against his pinched and tear-stained little face.
"What is the matter?" asked Angela, pityingly.
"Have you hurt yourself?" added Barbara, as the child only stared at them vacantly.
With a little more coaxing and the bribe of a piece of dusty chocolate that came from the depths of Barbara"s pocket, he was at last induced to mumble out a confused statement of his woes. Between the quaver in his voice and the broadness of his speech they had a hard matter to understand what he said; but Angela, who lived in another part of the same county, managed after a while to translate to the others that he was crying because his father was away looking for work, and his mother could not pay the rent, and they were all going into the "house" to-morrow. To Bobby Hearne, who was smarting under the remarks of the neighbours"
children, it was the last part of his story that seemed the worst; but the triumvirate only grasped the fact that starvation and poverty really stood before them in the person of the small boy with the red comforter round his neck. They looked at one another breathlessly, for the same thought was in all their minds.
"It"s the opportunity!" said Jean, solemnly.
"They"re really starving!" cried Barbara, clapping her hands joyfully. "We must go and feed them----"
"And give them clothes," added Angela, enthusiastically; "and pocket-money!"
Babs pulled a purse out of her pocket. "Here"s three and sevenpence halfpenny, and I"ve got ten shillings more in my left-hand corner drawer,"
she said earnestly. "Will that be enough, do you think?"
Jean had been thinking deeply. "It"s no use giving anything to that sc.r.a.p of a child," she decided. "We must go and see his mother first, and find out if his story is true. My father says that indis-indiscrim-in-_ate_ charity does an awful lot of harm. We don"t want to do indiscrimin-_ate_ charity, do we? Come along, you two, and look sharp!"
They clambered over the gate and dropped into the lane, one by one.
Barbara was the last, and she almost forgot the solemn reason for their expedition in the thrilling thought that they were going to find out at last where the lane went to. She was quite unprepared for the disappointment she felt when they turned the corner by the old elm tree and the forbidden world beyond burst upon their view. After all, the lane was just the same round the corner, except that it was not quite so interesting, for it grew less gra.s.sy as it went on, and finally widened out into a kind of cart-track that was anything but romantic.
An enchanted princess might flee with a prince down a gra.s.s-grown lane that wound away to nowhere in particular but she would never dream of stumbling over sharp flint stones and splashing through puddles in a common cart-track. The other two did not seem to notice that there was anything wrong with the lane, though; they just kept on straight ahead, with Bobby Hearne shuffling along between them, and Barbara had to run a little to catch them up.
"Is it far?" she asked.
"Oop agin the top end o" the village," explained Bobby, who was fast losing his shyness under the influence of these wonderful young ladies, who carried such funny sticks in their hands, and talked in such a magnificent way about pocket-money.
"That"s close to the church, on the way up from the station," said Jean.
"Is yours the cottage with the red roof, Bobby, or the one with roses all over it?"
Bobby looked vacant again; he did not recognise his home from Jean"s picturesque description. "There be foive pig-styes along of it," he announced, after long and careful reflection.
The cart-track brought them to a ploughed field, across which they plodded laboriously, and in the end it landed them in the road that ran right through the village. They met a good many inquisitive glances as they hastened along, for the young ladies of Wootton Beeches very rarely left their own grounds, and certainly never appeared in the village except on their way to and from the station. They found their courage slowly evaporating in the face of the curiosity they provoked, and there was very little of it left by the time they arrived at the cottage with the five pig-styes. Talking about good works in the junior playroom was a very different matter, they found, from carrying them out in a strange cottage, where numbers of strange children came out from dark corners and gaped at them without saying a word of welcome. Babs and Angela pushed forward their leader, and peered over her shoulder as she stood hesitating on the threshold.
"h.e.l.lo, mother!" shouted Bobby, hustling his brothers and sisters out of the way and penetrating into the gloomy recesses of the cottage. "Here be three yoong ladies come to see ye."
A hara.s.sed-looking woman came in from the back-yard, and started when she saw the three faces in the doorway. "It be proper good of ye, for sure," she said, casting nervous glances from her unexpected visitors to a bed that was made up on the floor, near the empty grate; "but my girl Lilian Eliza, she be ill, she be, and ye"d best not come in, I reckon."
She did not know the power of the Canon"s address. At the sound of her voice, the triumvirate, neither understanding nor heeding her warning, stepped firmly into the room.
"I"m so sorry your daughter is ill," began Barbara, fumbling hastily in her pocket. "Would three and sevenpence halfpenny be any good, do you think? And I"ve got ten shillings more in my----"
Jean nudged her violently, but the woman"s eyes had glistened at the mention of money, and Babs emptied her purse impetuously on the table.
"Bless ye, missy, for sure!" said the woman, gratefully. "Lilian Eliza, she be goin" to the infirmary to-morrow, she be, and I can git her Neighbour Bunce"s spring-cart wi" that, I can."
Her evident grat.i.tude reproached Jean, and she forgot all about the dangers of indiscriminate charity. She took the other two by the hand and pulled them away to the door.
"We"ll come back again directly, Mrs. Hearne," she called out. Then the triumvirate broke into a run, and vanished along the road before the eyes of the bewildered woman.
"What are we going to do?" asked Angela, panting, when they once more climbed the gate at the bottom of the nine-acre field.
"We"re going straight to the larder, straight as we can go; and then, we"re just going to bag all the food we can carry," answered Jean, in an odd, determined sort of tone. "Did you see the look on that woman"s face when you gave her the money, Babe? I believe--I believe they"ve all had nothing to eat for _weeks_! It"s--it"s horrible to think of!"
There was a sob in her voice, and the other two were silent from sympathy and a kind of awkwardness. They had never heard Jean talk like this before, and it finished the work begun by the Canon"s address. There was not the thought of a scruple in either of their minds when they arrived at the back of the house, and Jean bade them climb up by the water-b.u.t.t and get into the larder through the open window.
"There"s sure to be a hook you can undo so as to move the wire netting aside," she told them. "If we went round to the door, some one might make a fuss; and there"s no time for fusses."
"Jean knows everything," murmured Angela, as she found the hook and squeezed successfully through the window.
"What shall we take?" whispered Babs, slipping after her into the dimly lighted larder. "I think they"d like jam tart and plum-pudding, don"t you?"