The first evening pa.s.sed pleasantly enough, though there was a noticeable effort on the part of each member of the family to keep the conversation from touching upon the subject of Ralph's affairs. Any reference to Cambridge was taboo, as Darsie swiftly discovered, but there were many points of interest left, which were both pleasant and amusing to discuss.

The next morning--the last morning of the year--broke fine and bright, and the view seen through the long windows of the dining-room was almost as beautiful as in summer itself. The park showed the same stretch of velvet green, a belt of evergreens and tall Scotch firs filled up the far distance, while the leafless boughs of elms and beeches made a lace- like tracery against the sky. To the right the old cedar stood calm and unmoved, as it had stood while generations of Percivals had lived, and loved, and sorrowed, and died.

When breakfast was over--and breakfast in the country is a meal which pursues a calm and leisurely course--the four young people strolled into the porch to discuss the programme for the day.

"Darsie is nerving herself to look at the horses' tails!" said Ida laughingly. It was a Percival peculiarity, agreeable or irritating according to the mood of the hearer, that they never by any chance forgot a remark, but continually resurrected it in conversation for years to come. Never a morning had Darsie spent at the Manor that she had not been reminded of scathing comments on the habit of daily visits to kennels and stables, as delivered by herself on the occasion of her first visit. To-day, however, she had only time to grimace a reply, before Ida continued cheerfully--

"You won't be asked, my dear! We have something far more important on hand. You have walked right into the jaws of the tenants' annual New Year's treat, and will have to tire your hands decorating all the morning, and your gums smiling all the evening. It's an all-day-and- night business, and we get home at c.o.c.k-crow in a state of collapse--"

"It's held in the village hall," Noreen took up the tale, slipping unconsciously into what Darsie called her "squire's-eldest-daughter- manner."

"Quite a nice building. We make it look festive with wreaths and bunting. They think so much of decorations!" ("They" in Percival parlance alluded to the various tenants on the estate.) "We try to think of something novel each year as a surprise. They like surprises. We've arranged with half a dozen girls to be there to help. Quite nice girls, daughters of the princ.i.p.al farmers. You must be _quite_ sweet to them, Darsie, please! It is our princ.i.p.al meeting of the year, and we make a point of being friendly."

"Must I really?" Darsie a.s.sumed an expression of dejection. "What a disappointment! It's so seldom I get an opportunity of being proud and grand. What's the good of staying at a Manor House, and driving down with 'the family,' if I have to be meek and friendly like any one else?

Couldn't you introduce me as the Lady Claire, and let me put on airs for a treat? It would act as a contrast to your 'friendly ways,' and make them all the more appreciated."

The girls laughed as in duty bound, and declared that it _would_ be sport, and wondered if they dared, but Ralph sharply called them to order.

"Rot! As if everybody in this neighbourhood didn't know Darsie by heart! Put on your hats, and don't talk rubbish. It will take us all our time to get through with the hall before lunch."

Town-bred Darsie privately hoped that the motor would appear to carry the helpers to the hall three miles away, but the Percivals themselves never seemed to dream of such a possibility. In short skirts and thick boots they plodded cheerfully across boggy meadows and muddy lanes, climbed half a dozen stiles, and arrived at last in the High Street of the little village, close to the entrance of the unpretentious wooden building which called itself the Village Hall.

Darsie thought that she had never beheld an interior which seemed so thoroughly to need, and at the same time to defy, decoration!

Whitewashed walls, well splashed by damp; a double row of pegs all round the walls at a level of some five or six feet from the ground; wooden forms, and a small square platform, made up a whole which was bare and ugly to a degree.

A group of five or six girls stood beside a pile of evergreens; a youth in shirt-sleeves was in process of unpacking crumpled flags and flattened j.a.panese lanterns from an old tin box; two ladders stood against the walls.

The entrance of "the family" was marked by a general movement among the little company, and Darsie watched the greetings which ensued with twinkling amus.e.m.e.nt.

Noreen and Ida were _so_ pleasant, _so_ full of grat.i.tude for the presence of each individual helper, _so_ anxious to be a.s.sured that they could _really_ spare the time. Ralph was so laboriously polite, while the girls themselves, pleasant, kindly, and well-educated, were either happily unaware of the thinly disguised patronage, or had the good manners to conceal their knowledge. There was no doubt which side appeared to best advantage in the interview!

"The first thing we must do is to decide upon a scheme of decoration,"

Ida declared. "Darsie, suggest something! You have never done it before, so your ideas ought to be novel. What can we do to make the hall look pretty and cheerful?"

"Rebuild it!" was Darsie's instant and daring reply, whereat the farmers' daughters laughed _en ma.s.se_, and the Percivals looked haughtily displeased.

"Father built it!"

"Awfully good of him! _And_ wicked of his architect. I shan't employ him to build my house!"

"I think," said Noreen loftily, "that we had better confine ourselves to discovering the scheme of decoration. It is too late to interfere with the structure of the hall. We generally make wreaths and fasten them to the gas brackets, and drape the platform with flags."

"Then we may take it as settled that we _won't_ do that to-day. What happens to the pegs?"

"They hang their things on them, of course--hats, and coats, and m.u.f.flers--"

"That _must_ be decorative! How would it be to make them leave their wrappings at the entrance to-night, or put them under their own chairs, and to arrange a broad band of holly round the room so as to hide the pegs from view? It would be so easy to tie on the branches, and it would have quite a fine frieze effect."

"'Mrs d.i.c.k, you are invaluable!'" quoted Ralph gaily. "It's a ripping idea. Let's set to at once, and try the effect."

No sooner said than done; the little band of workers spread themselves over the room, and began the task of trying p.r.i.c.kly holly branches to the line of pegs in such fashion as to form a band about two feet deep, entirely round the room. Berries being unusually plentiful that year, the effect was all the more cheery, and with the disappearance of the utilitarian pegs the hall at once a.s.sumed an improved aspect. A second committee meeting hit on the happy idea of transforming the platform into a miniature bower, by means of green baize and miniature fir-trees, plentifully sprinkled with glittering white powder. The flags were relegated to the entrance-hall. The j.a.panese lanterns, instead of hanging on strings, were so grouped as to form a wonderfully lifelike paG.o.da in a corner of the hall, where--if mischievously disposed--they might burn at their ease without endangering life or property. The ironwork of the gas-brackets was tightly swathed with red paper, and the bare jets fitted with paper shades to match. From an artistic point of view Darsie strongly opposed the hanging of the timeworn mottoes, "A Hearty Welcome to All," "A Happy New Year," and the like, but the Squire's daughters insisted that they liked to see them, and the farmers' daughters confirming this theory, up they went, above the evergreen frieze, the white cotton letters standing out conspicuously from their turkey-red background.

It was one o'clock before the work was finished, and a tired and distinctly grubby quartette started out on their three-mile return walk across the fields. Certainly country-bred folk were regardless of fatigue! "If I owned a motor I should _use_ it!" Darsie said to herself with a distinct air of grievance as she climbed to her own room after lunch, and laid herself wearily on her couch, the while the Percival trio trotted gaily forth for "just a round" over their private golf-links.

The evening programme was to begin with a concert, alternate items of which were to be given by the villagers and members of the surrounding "families."

At ten o'clock refreshments were to be served, in adjoining cla.s.srooms, and during the progress of the informal supper chairs and forms were to be lifted away, and the room cleared for an informal dance, to be concluded by a general joining of hands and singing of "Auld Lang Syne"

as the clock struck twelve.

The Percival ladies and their guests from the surrounding houses made elaborate toilettes for the occasion. The villagers were resplendent in Sunday blacks, "best frocks" and bead chains, the small girls and boys appearing respectively in white muslins and velveteen Lord Fauntleroy suits; the Squire opened proceedings with expressions of good wishes, interspersed with nervous coughs, and Noreen and Ida led off the musical proceedings with a lengthy cla.s.sical duet, to which the audience listened with politely concealed boredom.

To Darsie's mind, the entire programme as supplied by "the families" was dull to extinction, but to one possessing even her own slight knowledge of the village, the contributions of its worthies were brimful of interest and surprise.

The red-faced butcher, who, on ordinary occasions, appeared to have no mind above chops and steaks, was discovered to possess a tenor voice infinitely superior in tone to that of his patron, the Hon. Ivor Bruce, while his wife achieved a tricky accompaniment with a minimum of mistakes; the sandy-haired a.s.sistant at the grocer's shop supplied a flute obbligato, and the fishmonger and the young lady from the stationer's repository a.s.sured each other ardently that their true loves owned their hearts; two school-children with corkscrew curls held a heated argument--in rhyme--on the benefits of temperance; and, most surprising and thrilling of all, Mr Jevons, the butler from The Manor, so far descended from his pedestal as to volunteer "a comic item" in the shape of a recitation, bearing chiefly, it would appear, on the execution of a pig. The last remnant of stiffness vanished before this inspiring theme, and the audience roared applause as one man, whereupon Mr Jevons bashfully hid his face, and skipped--literally skipped--from the platform.

"Who'd have thought it! Butlers are human beings, after all!" gasped Darsie, wiping tears of merriment from her eyes. "Ralph, do you suppose Jevons will dance with me to-night? I _should_ be proud!"

"Certainly not. He has one square dance with the mater, and that finishes it. You must dance with me instead. It's ages since we've had a hop together--or a talk. I'm longing to have a talk, but I don't want the others to see us at it, or they'd think I was priming you in my own defence, and the mater wants to have the first innings herself. We'll manage it somehow in the interval between the dances, and I know you'll turn out trumps, as usual, Darsie, and take my part."

Ralph spoke with cheerful confidence, and Darsie listened with a sinking heart. The merry interlude of supper was robbed of its zest, as she cudgelled her brains to imagine what she was about to hear. Ralph was evidently in trouble of some sort, and his parents for once inclined to take a serious stand. Yet anything more gay and debonair than the manner with which the culprit handed round refreshments and waited on his father's guests it would be impossible to imagine. Darsie watched him across the room, and noted that wherever he pa.s.sed faces brightened.

As he cracked jokes with the apple-cheeked farmers, waited a.s.siduously on their buxom wives, and made pretty speeches to the girls, no onlooker could fail to be conscious of the fact that, in the estimation of the tenants, "Master Ralph" was as a young prince who could do no wrong.

For reasons of his own, Ralph was tonight bent on ingratiating himself to the full. For the first half-hour of the dance he led out one village belle after another, and it was not until waltz number five had appeared on the board that he returned to Darsie's side.

"At last I've a moment to myself! My last partner weighed a ton, at least, and I'm f.a.gged out. Got a scarf you can put round you if we go and sit out?"

Darsie nodded, showing a wisp of gauze, and, laying her hand on Ralph's arm, pa.s.sed with him out of the main room into the flag-decked entrance.

For the moment it was empty, the dancers having made _en ma.s.se_ in the direction of the refreshment-tables. Ralph looked quickly from side to side, and, finding himself un.o.bserved, took a key from his pocket and opened a small door leading into the patch of garden at the back of the hall. The moonlight showed a wooden bench fitted into a recess in the wall. Ralph flicked a handkerchief over its surface, and motioned Darsie towards a seat.

"It's clean enough. I gave it a rub this morning. You won't be cold?"

"Oh, no; not a bit." Darsie wrapped the wisp of gauze round her shoulders, and prepared to risk pneumonia with as little thought as ninety-nine girls out of a hundred would do in a similar case. The hour had come when she was to be told the nature of Ralph's trouble; she would not dream of losing the opportunity for so slight a consideration as a chill!

Ralph seated himself by her side, rested an elbow on his knees, the thumb and first finger of the uplifted hand supporting his chin. His eyes searched Darsie's face with anxious scrutiny.

"You didn't hear anything about me before you left Newnham?"

"Hear what? No! What was there to hear?"

Ralph averted his eyes, and looked across the patch of garden. The moonlight shining on his face gave it an appearance of pallor and strain.

"Dan Vernon said nothing?"

"No!" Darsie recalled Dan's keen glance of scrutiny, the silence which had greeted her own remarks, and realised the reason which lay behind.

"Dan is not the sort to repeat disagreeable gossip."

"It's not gossip this time; worse luck, it's solid, abominable fact.

You'll be disappointed, Darsie. I'm sorry! I _have_ tried. Beastly bad luck being caught just at the end. I was sent down, Darsie! It was just at the end of the term, so they sent me down for the last week. A week is neither here nor there, but the parents took it hard. I'm afraid you, too--"