"Well,"--Audrey in her nervousness was twisting the kitchen 'runner' into cables, and binding her arms up with it--"I began to write one for it.

I--I longed to so--I had to. I wanted to write the play, and I wanted to earn the money. Oh, I wanted it ever so badly--to help father."

"Well?" Irene gasped breathlessly, "are you doing it?"

"I began it--but I have had to drop it. I wrote the first scene--I had just finished it that day Mary cut her finger, and you cooked the dinner.

But I have scarcely touched it since. One wants a good long time at it; five minutes now and then are no good. But there has been so much else to do, and now I feel--I feel quite guilty if I try to get more."

"Poor Audrey!" Irene murmured sympathetically. "I am sure you oughtn't to feel guilty. If one feels as strongly about any kind of work as you do, I think it shows that one is meant to do it. Don't you?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Audrey, with a little puzzled, weary sigh.

She rose to her feet, hung up the 'runner,' and drew towards her a big basket of peas that Job Toms had brought in from the garden. "I think this is what I am meant to do, and, after all, it is--well, I daresay it helps just as much as the prize-money would, even if I were lucky enough to get it."

Irene did not answer, but began sh.e.l.ling peas too. She worked in an abstracted manner though, and was evidently lost in thought.

"Audrey," she said at last, "I am sure you ought to compete for that prize, and I can't see why you can't have a nice long quiet afternoon every day of the week."

"I do then! On Fridays I have to prepare my Sunday School lesson----"

"Well, every other day then."

"I take the children out while Faith sits with mother, or I sit with mother."

"Well, I will take the children out, or play with them indoors. I would love to; and you can have a clear two or three hours every afternoon.

Do take them, Audrey, for your writing. When I have gone home it may not be so easy. Oh, Audrey, how grand it sounds. And some day, when it is finished, we will all act it--wouldn't that be perfectly splendid?"

Audrey's face was alight with excitement; her grey eyes glowed.

"But," she objected, "but----" She hesitated again. "It will probably be no good--a poor, silly thing----"

"You can't possibly tell until you have written it," said Irene, silencing her nervous doubts. "There--there are nine peas in a pod for you, for luck."

"There is no luck in that sort of thing."

"There is for the person who buys them; nine nice fat round peas, instead of three and a dwarf!"

Mary came in with her bucket and kneeler. "Those steps do pay for a bit of extra doing," she remarked, complacently. "Since I've been able to give more time to them, they've improved ever so. You've no idea, Miss Irene."

"Oh, yes I have," laughed Irene. "We have more than an idea, haven't we, Audrey? The steps catch our eye every time we pa.s.s, they have improved so. Why, there are Faith and the children back from their walk. Oh, my, how we have been gossiping."

Faith and the children came strolling in at the back door.

"We came through the kitchen garden," said Faith, "and I have been talking to Jobey Toms, and what _do_ you think? He has actually remembered at last that there is another garden, and 'it ain't no credit to n.o.body.' I told him that everyone had noticed that for a long time past, and hurt his feelings dreadfully. At least, he said I had. Anyhow, he is going to keep the gra.s.s cut and the bushes trimmed, and he is actually going to make a flower bed on the other side of the path."

"Whatever is the meaning of it?" gasped Audrey, looking almost alarmed.

Faith laughed. "I think someone has been twitting him about the way he keeps it, or rather, doesn't keep it. He began to me about it directly he saw me. 'I can't put up with that there front garden no longer,' he said, 'a one-eyed thing. I am going to make it look more fitty by the time the missus is able to come out and see it, or--or I dunno what she'll think of me for 'lowing it to go on looking such a sight. I'm going to cut a bed t'other side of the path, Miss Faith, and make a 'erbashus border.'

I nearly tumbled down in the path, I had such a shock."

"I did not know Jobey knew what a herbaceous border is," said Audrey.

Faith chuckled. "He doesn't. He thinks it is another name for a herb-bed. He has got hold of the idea from someone, poor old man.

He told me he had been talking to John Parkins, 'what's come 'ome from Sir Samuel Smithers's place, where he's 'ead gardener, and John 'e don't seem able to talk of nothin' but his 'erbashus borders, just as if we 'adn't never 'eard of 'em before. Why, I 'ad a 'erb-bed before ever 'e was born, and for 'im to be telling me what mould to use! I never! I soon let 'im see I wasn't goin' to be taught by no youngsters, even if they did grow their 'erbs by the 'alf mile.'" Faith imitated the old man's speech and indignation to the life. "''Alf a mile of 'erbashus border, 'e said 'e'd laid out--and expected me to believe 'im, I s'pose! I says to un, says I: 'I s'pose your Sir Samuel's a bit of a market gardener,' says I.

He pretended to laugh, but I could see 'e didn't like it, and I stopped his bragging, anyway. These fellows, they go away for a bit, and they come back talking that big there's no 'olding with 'em. But, any'ow, we can do with a bit more 'erb, and we're goin' to 'ave it, Miss Faith, and when he comes 'ome next time I warrant I'll show 'im a bed of parsley as'll take the consate out of 'un!'"

Audrey's laughter changed to a cry of dismay. "What _can_ we do? We don't want a herb-bed from the front door to the gate. It is useful, perhaps, but it is not pretty, and as sure as fate, Jobey would plant chibbles and spring onions too. He calls them ''erbs,' and loves the taste of them himself above all others."

"We can't explain to him that herbaceous borders and herb-beds are not the same," said Faith. "For one thing, he would not believe that we knew anything about it; but if he did believe it, he would be so mortified he would never get over it."

"Perhaps," suggested Irene, "we could lead him on from lamb-mint to lemon-thyme, and from lemon-thyme to rosemary and lavender--tell him rosemary is good for the hair."

"Job cares nothing about hair," said Audrey hopelessly, "it is so long since he had any he has forgotten what it is like not to be bald. I think it is too bad that after neglecting the garden all these years he should go and do a thing like that. I have always longed for a bed full of bright flowers; so has mother."

Debby and Tom exchanged glances. "Don't you worry, Audrey. Let Jobey make his bed, perhaps the Brownies will come along at night, and fill it with seeds."

"He would only pull them up, as soon as they showed above ground."

"Oh, no, he wouldn't, he'd think they were young herbs--until it was too late. Then we'd get father to let them stay." Debby was quite hopeful.

"No," burst in Tom eagerly, "I know what we'll do. We'll tell him to leave them 'cause mother likes them. He'd do anything for mother."

Audrey went to the cupboard, and took down a tumbler. "I am going to take up mother's gla.s.s of milk now," she said. There was a new note in her voice, a new light in her eye. Irene's encouragement had filled her heart and brain again with the joy of creating something with her own hand and pen; with the hope of helping others in the way in which help was so greatly needed--and by her own work too. But what added most of all to her new pleasure in her work--though she was not yet old enough to realise it--was the zest of contrast, and the happy, satisfying feeling that the time and the opportunity were her own, and not being taken at the expense of others.

"Audrey, I will take up the milk to mother. You look tired already."

"I am rather," sighed Audrey, "and I haven't half done yet. Irene and I are going to make cakes."

Faith seized the tray with the tumbler on it, and, anxious to help, dashed upstairs with it. By the time she reached her mother's room a considerable quant.i.ty of the milk was spilled over the nice clean tray-cloth.

"Oh, bother!" she cried impatiently, as, in opening the door, she upset a lot more, "it is such nonsense having tray-cloths and all those faddy things. If I had brought it in my hand, without any tray at all, it wouldn't have mattered."

"Would it not? What do you think I drink milk for, Faith?"

"Why for nourishment, of course. To make you strong."

"Well then, does it not matter if you deprive me of a third of my nourishment, of my strength?"

"Oh, mother!" Faith looked shocked, "of course it does."

"And, apart from that, if you had brought it in your hand, and spilled it, you would have ruined the stair carpets, and you know how very, very hard it would be to get new ones."

"Oh! I hadn't thought of that. I suppose that is why one uses trays.

The cloth doesn't matter--that will wash--but I am very sorry I wasted the milk, mother."

"But, darling, the cloth does matter. Everything matters in some way.

Someone will have to wash, and starch, and iron it--all extra work--and someone will have to pay for the soap, and the starch, and the fire for heating the water, and the irons. Don't you see, dear, what big consequences our tiniest actions often have?"

Faith sighed. "I wonder if I shall ever learn to be careful," she said, hopelessly.

"Not until you really want to, dear."