Anything they might have said in reply to this was drowned by the noisy entrance of Christopher. He bounced into the room and shook his fist wrathfully at his brothers.
"Look here, you fellows!" he shouted. "Next time you shut a chap into a _pig-sty_, perhaps you"ll choose a pig-sty that doesn"t belong to a pig that comes home at tea-time and bangs against the door. I"d like to----"
He was brought to an abrupt pause. It suddenly struck him that there was something a little odd about the way every one was a.s.sembled in the Babe"s room.
"Dry up, Kit!" said Wilfred, with a huge sigh. "You were quite right; the game wasn"t worth it. She didn"t want to be saved, after all."
"She"s just a girl," added Peter, in a tone of deep dejection.
"She"s a _princess_!" insisted Barbara, from the sofa.
Christopher looked swiftly round the room. The att.i.tude of every one seemed a little strained. Jill was cutting enough bread and b.u.t.ter for a school, and the crumbs flew in all directions as she stood there with her back to them all. The Doctor was smiling in a way that was clearly put on, and Bobbin was examining his watch-chain with a familiarity that would not have seemed possible an hour ago.
"Well, I"m bothered!" said Kit, at last. The truth was gradually dawning upon him. "Do you mean to say that you two have been and gone and got _engaged_, while we"ve been trying to save you?" he demanded. "_Have_ you, Jill?"
"Oh, don"t bother," grumbled Jill. "Why can"t you ask Dr. Hurst?"
"_Have_ you?" repeated Kit, turning to the Doctor.
"Ask Jill," replied the Doctor, smiling more than ever.
"Boys," said Christopher, fixing his spectacles firmly on his nose and staring solemnly at his brothers, "we"ve made shocking idiots of ourselves."
Into the middle of them all now walked Mrs. Crofton of Crofts.
"Such a trouble as I"ve had to get back in time, my dear," she was beginning, when she too stopped short and seemed to find things a little unusual.
"Hey-day!" she cried, leaning on her blue-k.n.o.bbed cane and looking sharply round. "What"s every one looking so glum about, I should like to know?"
n.o.body answered her at first. Dr. Hurst put Robin down and rose to his feet, and he stopped smiling at last, while Jill dropped the bread-knife and turned round with a very red face; but neither of them spoke. It was the Babe who came to the rescue, and it was she who explained everything in her small, dreamy voice.
"Dr. Hurst has saved Jill from the giant," she said, "and they are going away to their own kingdom, to live happily ever after! I do wish," she added wistfully, "that the magician would come back too. Then things would be _quite_ beautiful."
CHAPTER XIX
THE MAGICIAN
The triumvirate sat under the old cedar tree at Crofts, and once more they discussed the important affairs of the little world at Wootton Beeches. It was the first Sat.u.r.day in the term; and Auntie Anna, true to her promise, had invited Jean and Angela to drive over and spend it with Barbara. The spring had come in with a rush, and May had dawned in such a flood of warm sunshine that the child was able to pa.s.s most of her time on a couch in the garden. The Doctor, in spite of the ten miles that lay between his house and Crofts, came nearly every day to see how she was; and he hinted at a promise of crutches in ten days" time, after which she was to go away to the seaside and get strong enough to return to school at the half-term. It was very nice, Barbara thought, to see the Doctor so often, now that she was so much better and did not really need him; but Christopher was very sarcastic on the subject.
"S"pose you think he comes to see _you_, don"t you?" he remarked scornfully; and when pressed by Barbara for a more definite explanation of the Doctor"s actions, he condescended to add: "Once a chap gets engaged to a _girl_, it"s the _girl_ who"s at the bottom of everything he does!"
The day was so hot that Kit and Bobbin came out to join the others under the cedar tree, and they flung themselves on the gra.s.s in different stages of exhaustion. Now and then, they threw in a lazy contribution to the conversation that was going on over their heads, though at first this related entirely to the number of new girls, the alterations in the cla.s.ses, and other bits of school gossip. Then, however, it took a personal turn, and Christopher"s comments grew satirical.
"Has anybody asked after me?" inquired Barbara.
"What a question!" scoffed Christopher. "A kid like you!"
"They have, though," declared Jean, making a great effort to overcome her shyness of Barbara Berkeley"s clever brother. "Everybody did, first thing.
You"d never think the Babe had only been there one term."
"Oh, well, that"s because she smashed herself up," said Kit, cheerfully.
"Girls always fuss over you, if you kill yourself ever so little."
"They _don"t_, Kit," objected Babs.
"Guess what Margaret Hulme said about you yesterday," put in Angela, eagerly. Angela was not nearly so shy as Jean, and, much to Barbara"s astonishment, Kit found her "better fun" in consequence. It seemed a little strange that the genius of the family should not be able to appreciate the amazing qualities of Jean Murray.
"What did she say about me?" asked Barbara, only to be interrupted by another jeer from Christopher.
"Never knew such c.o.c.kiness as the Babe"s," he laughed, tilting his straw hat a little more over his eyes.
"Babs always thinks that everybody"s always talkin" about her," added Bobbin, in his shrillest voice.
Barbara stretched as far as she could, and managed with difficulty to knock off Kit"s hat with the end of a stick. Robin was out of reach, so she contented herself with frowning at him severely, and then leaned back again and began to fan herself with her handkerchief. Everything made one feel hot this afternoon. "What did Margaret say about me?" she repeated curiously.
"It was when I was waiting to put away her books, just before dinner yesterday," Angela related with eagerness; "or was it before tea? No!
I think it was before dinner, because----"
"Oh, get on, Angela, do!" interrupted Jean, impatiently. Even the presence of Barbara Berkeley"s clever brother, which was paralysing her, could not keep the leader of the junior playroom from snubbing Angela.
"Well, she said Babs was the most popular girl in the school," continued Angela. "She did, honour bright, and I"m _not_ exaggerating, Jean. She said it to Ruth Oliver, and Ruth Oliver said: "Isn"t it queer? Such a little kid, too." And Margaret said: "That"s just it, stupid!" Then she saw me listening, and she told me not to listen but to make myself scarce; and of course I wasn"t listening at all, I was only----"
"There"s nothing new in _that_" interrupted Jean, looking superior.
"Everybody knows that the Babe----" Here she caught Kit"s eye, and stopped hastily. She was not sure that she liked Barbara Berkeley"s clever brother; he had such a queer way of looking at one. n.o.body in the junior playroom ever made her feel like that.
Barbara was in deep perplexity. "Is that why every one clapped, then, on the night of the display?" she said wonderingly.
Christopher looked in mock reproach at Angela. "You shouldn"t have told her," he said. "She won"t be fit to speak to for a month now."
"Oh, don"t, Kit!" retorted Barbara, more from habit than because she really resented his words. As a matter of fact she had hardly heard them, for she was busy puzzling things over in her mind. "I can"t think what it all means," she went on; "every one used to complain of me so. There was Mary Wells, for instance----"
"Oh, Mary Wells _adores_ you!" cried Angela, in her effusive manner. "She said so directly you broke your leg."
Barbara puzzled still more. "I don"t understand about Margaret Hulme a bit, though," she observed. "Only the day before the display, she told me I was a little nuisance, because I didn"t hear her the first time she spoke to me; so of course I thought she hated me!"
"That was before you broke your leg, though," explained Jean.
"She _adores_ you now," added Angela.
Kit and Bobbin burst out laughing, but Barbara went on puzzling, and did not notice them. Adoration at Wootton Beeches seemed to spring from the strangest causes. After being more or less neglected for a whole term by the greater part of her school-fellows, it was at least surprising to be suddenly placed on a pinnacle of fame, just because she had broken her leg. If she had only guessed at Angela"s envy of that same broken leg--an envy that was probably shared by half the junior playroom--she might have been still further amazed.
The boys strolled indoors to find Auntie Anna and to beg for tea in the garden; and the conversation under the cedar tree grew more intimate.
Jean came out of her sh.e.l.l, and talked about her home in Edinburgh in a way she had never done before, even on half-holidays at school; and Angela, in her turn, gave an elaborate description of her eldest sister"s drawing-room dress, and of the longing it had aroused in her own frivolous little mind to be presented at Court herself.
"And so I shall be, some day; mother says so!" she announced, spreading out the folds of her rough serge skirt, and seeing it in imagination many times its length and composed of shimmering satin.