It was, of course, a most unorthodox thing for Ingred to blurt out family affairs, and Father and Mother would have been justly indignant had they known, but she was impulsive, and without much worldly wisdom, and Mr. Hardcastle seemed sympathetic, so on the spur of the moment she told him the urgency of Athelstane's need, and how she was trying to meet it. He sat quite quiet for a short time, staring into the fire, then he said, very gently and kindly:

"My dear little girl, you needn't part with your dog. I believe I can lend your brother all the medical books he wants."

"You! But you're not a doctor?" exclaimed Ingred.

"No, but my boy was studying medicine at Birkshaw. He had just pa.s.sed his intermediate M. B. when he was called up. I've got all his books. He won't want them again now. He was flying over the German lines, and his machine crashed down. One comfort, he was killed instantly! He had always hoped he'd never be taken prisoner. I think he'd have liked his books to be put to some use. I'll hunt them out, and send them across to your brother, and the microscope, and any other things I can find. He may just as well have them."

There was a huskiness in the old gentleman's voice, but he coughed it away.

"I don't know how to thank you!" stammered Ingred.

"I don't want any thanks. It's only a neighborly act. Take your dog home, and say nothing about all this. I'll write to your brother. I wonder I never thought about it before!"

Mr. Hardcastle was as good as his word, for next Monday evening quite a large consignment arrived for Athelstane, with a note offering the loan of books and microscope if they would be of any service in his medical studies.

"Why, they're absolutely the very things I wanted!" exclaimed that youth rapturously. "What a trump he is! A real good sort! I say, you know, it's really most awfully kind of him! I wonder what the d.i.c.kens put it into his head?"

But on that point none of the family could enlighten him, for only Ingred and Derry knew the secret, and Ingred was at school, while Derry, belonging to the dumb creation, expressed his opinions solely in barks.

When the household was reunited for next week-end, the clouds had cleared from Athelstane's horizon, but seemed to have settled more darkly than ever round Egbert. There was a horrible feeling of impending storm in the home atmosphere. It lent a constraint to conversation at meals, and put an effectual stopper on the fun which generally circulated round the fireside. It was all the more uncomfortable because n.o.body voiced the cause.

"Father looks unutterables, Mother's plainly worried to death, Egbert is sulks personified, Queenie won't tell, Athelstane and Hereward either don't know or don't care what's the matter, but it makes them cross.

What is one to do with such a family?" thought Ingred on Sunday afternoon.

It had been wet, and, though a detachment of them had ventured to church in waterproofs, they had not been able to take their usual safety valve of a walk across the moors. Seven people in a small house seem to get in one another's way on Sunday afternoons. Father was dozing in the dining-room, Mother, Athelstane and Hereward were in the drawing-room, interrupting each other's reading by constant extracts from their own books; Ingred, who hated to pause in the midst of _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ to hear choice bits from _The Young Visiters_ or _Parisian Sketches_, sought sanctuary in her bedroom, only to find the blind drawn and Quenrede with a bad headache, trying to rest. There seemed no comfortable corner available, so she slipped on her thick coat, put her book in the pocket, and walked down the garden to sit in the cycle-shed.

Even in the rain it was nice out of doors; clumps of purple and yellow crocuses showed under the gooseberry bushes; lilies were pushing up green heads through the soil; the flowering currant was bursting into bud; roots of polyanthus flaunted mauve and orange blossoms; under a sheltered wall were even a few early violets, whose sweet fresh scent seemed as the first breath of spring. A missel-thrush on the bare pear tree sang triumphantly through the rain, and a song-thrush, with more melodious notes, trilled forth an occasional call; the robin, which had haunted the garden all the winter, was sc.r.a.ping energetically for grubs among the ivy on the wall, and scarcely troubled to fly away at her approach.

Ingred drew great breaths of sweet-scented wet air, and, with almost the same instinct as the thrush, broke into "Thank G.o.d for a Garden!" the song that Mother loved to hear Quenrede sing in the evenings when the day's work was over.

Delightful and refreshing and soothing as Nature may be, however, it is rather a wet business to stand admiring crocuses in the streaming rain, so Ingred made a dash through the dripping bushes to the cycle-shed. If she had calculated upon finding solitude here she was disappointed. It was occupied already. Egbert, looking as gloomy as Hamlet, was tinkering with the motor-bicycle. He greeted his sister with something between a sigh and a grunt, whistled monotonously for a moment or two, then burst into confidence.

"Look here, Ingred; I can't stand this any longer. I wish I were back in the army! I've a jolly good mind to chuck everything up, and re-enlist!"

"Is it as bad as all that?" asked Ingred.

"Yes, I'm about fed up with life. If it weren't for the little Mater I'd have cleared out before this. Perhaps she'll miss me, but I don't know that anybody else will, and I don't care!"

"How about Miss Bertrand?" asked Ingred, obeying a sudden impulse of mischief.

Egbert flung down a spanner, and turned to her the most astonished face in the world.

"What do _you_ know about Miss Bertrand?" he queried.

Ingred chuckled delightedly. To use her own schoolgirl expression, she felt she "had him on toast."

"More than you imagine! Who went into the Abbey Church, I should like to know, and sat in a pew for ever so long, and looked tender nothings? Oh yes! _I_ saw you, and a pretty sight it was, too!" she teased.

Egbert was gazing at her as if he could scarcely believe his senses.

"But--but--where were you?" he stuttered.

"In the peep-hole!" exploded Ingred. "I could see right down into the church, and I watched you come in! I've been saving this up!"

Egbert drew a long breath.

"If I'd only known before!" he said slowly. "Ingred, stop laughing! You don't understand. Look here, will you go and tell Dad that you saw me there, and the exact day and time when it happened. You can remember that?"

"Why, surely Father's the very last person you want to know?" said Ingred, sobering down.

"No, he isn't, he's the one it's most important should hear about it from a reliable witness whom he can believe. I don't mind telling you about it now" (as Ingred expressed her astonishment in her face), "I'd got myself into a jolly old mess, and you'll be able to clear me! It was this way; I slipped out from the office one afternoon for an hour, and went into the Abbey as you saw. Well, when I got back, somebody had been into Dad's room during his absence, and a small sum of money was missing. He taxed me with taking it!"

"_You!_ But why you?" exclaimed Ingred indignantly.

"Because I was the only person who had access to his private room. I told Dad I had been out--which made him angrier still--but none of the clerks had happened to see me go or come back, and I had no other witness to prove my words. As a matter of fact, I went out before Father, and came back after he had returned, but he wouldn't take my word for it. You know what he is when he's angry. You simply can't argue with him! Then you made things ever so much worse by blurting out how I'd taken you to tea at the cafe, and bought you a bag. Father glared as if it proved I'd been spending stolen money!"

"You were rather flush of cash that day," commented Ingred.

"Yes, the fact is I'd been writing a short story, and it had been accepted by a newspaper. It's a poor enough thing, and I didn't sign my own name to it. I didn't want to tell them at home I was trying to write until I could do something better. Anyhow, I'd just cashed the check, and thought I'd give you a treat for once. I knew it was no use to explain to Father. Mother has stuck up for me, but I can tell you I've been having a time of it this last fortnight."

"But, Egbert," said Ingred, frankly puzzled, "couldn't you have got Miss Bertrand to tell Dad where you were? It would have been better after all than letting him think you took the money."

Egbert's face darkened again tragically.

"I wouldn't appeal to Miss Bertrand to clear my character if it were a charge of murder. I'd be hanged first! I met her the very day after we were in the Abbey together--she was walking with some idiot of an airman--and she stared straight in my face and cut me. I've done with girls! They're all of them alike!" and the gloomy young misanthrope picked up the spanner and began energetically tightening nuts on the motorcycle.

Ingred shook a sympathetic head. She had not much experience in love affairs, but she fancied that this one did not go very deep.

"You'll get over it," she consoled. "And she wasn't a very nice girl, anyway. Queenie always loathed her. If Dad's had his nap, I'll go and tell him how I saw you in the Abbey. I know it was a Tuesday, because I'd had my music lesson, and was taking the books that Dr. Linton left behind him."

"Good! That's what's called proving an alibi. I don't know who walked off with those notes, but as long as Dad's satisfied I had nothing to do with it, that's all I care. He can thrash it out with the clerks now, or leave it alone."

Mr. Saxon questioned Ingred closely, but accepted her account of the matter, which set his doubts at rest concerning his son. The relief in the family circle was enormous. Mother's face was beaming, and it seemed as if the storm-clouds had blown away, and the sun had shone out. Tea was the most comfortable meal that the household had taken together for a fortnight.

"I haven't spent quite all that check I got from the _Harlow Weekly News_," whispered Egbert to Ingred that evening, "and I'm going to buy you a box of chocolates on Monday. I'll leave them for you at the Hostel. You deserve them!"

"You mascot! I can't quite see that I _do_ deserve them, for I really meant to rag you about that Abbey business. But I won't say 'No, thank you!' to chocks! Rather not! We'll have a gorgeous little private feast in No. 2 to-morrow night."

CHAPTER XVI

An Easter Pilgrimage

The thirteen weeks between Christmas and Easter dragged much more slowly than those of the autumn term. The weather was cold and variable. As fast as Spring stirred in the earth, Winter seemed to stretch forth chilly fingers to check her advent. Nature, like a careful mother, kept the buds tightly folded on the trees and the yellow daffodil blossoms securely hidden under their green cas.e.m.e.nt curtains. Only the most foolhardy birds ventured to begin building operations. The rooks in the elm trees near the Abbey had begun to repair their nests during a mild spurt in January, then put off further alterations till late in March.

Morning after morning the girls would wake to find the roofs covered with h.o.a.r frost. Ingred, who hated the cold, shivered as she crossed the windy quadrangle from the college to the hostel, and congratulated herself that she lived in the days of modern comforts.

"How the old monks and nuns managed to exist in those wretched chilly damp cloisters I can't imagine," she said, as she squatted by the stove warming her hands. "Were they allowed to take hot bricks to bed with them in their cells? Think of turning out for midnight services into an unwarmed church! It sounds absolutely miserable!"