"Stop, or I'll fire!" declared d.i.c.k, with a suspicious little quaver in his voice.

"If you move an inch, I'll kill you!" roared valiant George, though his weapon was certainly the least deadly of the three.

Cathy let the burglar down a good piece, so that his head and his felt hat now appeared, while his arms seemed to be waving about in a wild demonstration of defiance. Bang! went both revolver and air-gun at the same instant, while the syringe discharged its contents freely over the room, George in his agitation having somewhat miscalculated his aim.

Cathy loosed the rope, and "Bill Sykes" dropped with a heavy plump on to the floor below, his mangold head striking the bed-post with great violence. A dead silence followed.

"Have we done for him, or is he only foxing?" whispered George.

Cathy from above uttered a low groan.

"He's still alive!" gasped d.i.c.k.

"Ay, but he's hurt," said Edward. "We'd better see what damage is done.

Be ready, d.i.c.k, to hold his legs, in case he should jump up suddenly."

They advanced with extreme caution towards the figure, which lay stretched out in a most natural manner, face downwards, in the patch of moonlight which fell through the window. d.i.c.k seized the fishing-boots, and held them securely while Edward made a firm grasp at the arm.

Perhaps something in its consistency felt unusual, for with a cry he turned the burglar over. The sudden movement loosened the mangold head, which we had not been able to fasten on very securely, and, rolling off with a bound, it fell at the feet of the astounded George.

A yell of disgusted wrath arose from the indignant boys, and I could not forbear to run into the room, clapping my hands in my glee, while Cathy peered down through the trap-door in rejoicing triumph.

"Done you this time, old fellows!" cried Cathy.

"Oh, I didn't think you'd be taken in by such an easy fake!" I echoed.

"Made it ourselves!" exploded Cathy from above. "Only Father's old suit stuffed with hay! And you thought you had done for him! I think I could tell you who sent that letter if you were to ask me!"

"Come down, you young wretch!" said Edward. "If you let yourself drop, I'll catch you. Well, of all the sells I've ever had in my life, this is about the biggest. So you wrote that precious letter, did you? It was uncommonly smartly done, too! And as for this countenance, it's simply ripping!"

And he burst into a roar as he picked up the head of our decapitated house-breaker.

I really think the boys laughed as much as we did, for they were good-natured enough not to mind a joke at their own expense.

"You've jolly well taken us in for once," said d.i.c.k. "And I give you the credit for it. I didn't think you girls could have got it all up so neatly. You've scored no end, and I suppose now you'll be satisfied, and cry quits about the antiquities."

CHAPTER VIII

A BREAKING-UP PARTY

"What has this day deserved? What hath it done That it in golden letters should be set Among the high tides in the kalendar?"

Cathy and I went back to school with much regret. After the freedom of our life at Marshlands it seemed difficult to settle down again to the strict discipline of The Hollies, with Miss Percy's manifold rules and regulations. It was exciting, nevertheless, to meet our friends once more, and to hear the accounts of their holiday rambles and sea-side adventures. We made quite a little round amongst the various bedrooms, admiring Janet's new pictures, helping to arrange Olave's books, partaking of Blanche's hospitable offers of cheese-cakes and chocolate, bewailing the lengthened hours of the time-table, and all chattering like a flock of sparrows.

In her quiet, undemonstrative way, Lucy was glad to see me again. I think she had found the holidays a little dull without me, and she listened rather wistfully to my rapturous accounts of my visit to Marshlands. She told me all the home news--how the baby had already learnt to walk, Frank had gone to school, and Cuthbert was in knickerbockers; how the old baby had been shorn of his curls, and Dorothy had begun lessons. My little porcelain tea-service had, alas!

been broken (Blair ought not to have allowed the children to play with it), there was a new carpet in the school-room, and Mary was learning the violin. We talked in whispers for a long time after we were in bed, till Miss Percy, overhearing us, bounced in with such dire threats of penalties to be worked out on the following Sat.u.r.day afternoon, that we were obliged to defer our interesting conversation until the morning.

I found the winter term at "The Hollies" differed in many respects from the summer one. We no longer drank the waters at the pretty little well, and I greatly missed the morning run over the fields. It was now too cold to study in our bedrooms, and evening preparation was held in the school-room under the strict eyes of Miss Percy. When the weather permitted we played hockey, but there were many days when it was considered too wet for us to go out, and we were obliged to take what exercises we could in the play-room. A new feature of our school-life with which we had not hitherto been acquainted consisted of the Sat.u.r.day receptions, which were held during the winter evenings to supply the place of the weekly cricket matches we had enjoyed in the summer-time.

It was part of Mrs. Marshall's system to form our manners and fit us for good society, therefore these "At Homes" were very solemn affairs, conducted with all the ceremony of a genuine party, though none of the enjoyment. At half-past six o'clock, attired in white frocks and our best hair-ribbons, we were received in state in the drawing-room, each girl being duly announced in her turn by the parlour-maid. How I have shivered with nervousness when "Miss Philippa Seaton" was called out, and I was bound to advance with becoming grace, and shake hands elegantly with Mrs. Marshall, her critical eye upon my demeanour, and her censorious tongue ready with comment if my unlucky elbows protruded, or my hand did not give the exact warmth of pressure required!

When we were all seated, Mrs. Marshall would start a general conversation upon some topic, notice of which had been given out previously, and we were each supposed to come primed with some intelligent remarks upon it. It was horribly difficult to think of anything new and original to say, especially as your best ideas were liable to be antic.i.p.ated by someone else airing them first, leaving you racking your brains for any observation to contribute, however stale and commonplace. I remember upon one occasion the subject was botany. Most of the girls said something pretty about flowers and gardens. Janet quoted Wordsworth, and Cathy scored by mentioning exogens and endogens with an air of much knowledge. Mrs. Marshall at length turned to me.

"Cannot you give a fresh direction to the conversation, Philippa?" she asked. "We have spoken so much already of blossoms in spring-time, of pressed wild-flowers, hot-houses, and the beauties of Kew Gardens. It is surely possible to treat the subject from a different stand-point."

There seemed to be nothing left. The topic, to my mind, was plainly exhausted, but I was bound to hazard some remark. In my desperation I ventured:

"Botany Bay is a place in New South Wales where criminals used to be sent. Many of the princ.i.p.al families of Australia are descended from them."

A shudder ran through the room. Though I did not know it at the time, Mrs. Marshall had been born in Australia, and I could not have uttered a more deliberate insult. She flushed a little, and glanced at me keenly.

I think she either realized my complete ignorance, or thought it wiser to ignore the allusion.

"Not quite to the point, my dear," she replied with dignity. "It is well to keep strictly to our subject. I had thought you would have been ready with some remark upon the orchids of your South American forests, or the orange plantations which I have heard you mention. But here comes the coffee. Doris, it is your turn to pour out to-night!"

To hand and receive the cups prettily, and to sit drinking them in graceful att.i.tudes, was part of our evening discipline; and to us a very severe one, for Mrs. Marshall was hard to satisfy, and to clink your tea-spoon or to flop into a chair was a desperate offence. She herself was a tall, elegant woman, erect and stately, with a habit of swimming into the room, and a measured way of speaking, as if each word had been prepared beforehand. The abrupt school-girl type of conversation she would not tolerate, and our sentences must be as carefully chosen as her own. A girl who had spoken slang in her presence would, I believe, almost have been threatened with expulsion. I sometimes think her training made our manners too studied and artificial, but her system was a reaction against the free-and-easy and often ungracious style which was current in many other large schools of the day. After coffee, Mrs.

Marshall would ask for a little music, and we were obliged to take it in turns to play, the lot falling to each girl about once a month. How I hated the pieces which I solemnly practised for these weekly evenings, and in what an agony of nervousness my trembling fingers stumbled through the performance! If I could have bidden the company leave the room, I think I might have acquitted myself better, but to discourse sweet strains with Mrs. Marshall's eye upon me, my music-mistress sitting close by, and an audience of critical school-mates listening, was an ordeal from which many a girl might shrink. The programme was varied by a few songs and recitations, and at half past-eight we all filed out, each in her turn saying good-bye, and thanking Mrs. Marshall for a pleasant evening, a courtesy which I always felt to be most insincere, since I was sure that neither she nor ourselves had enjoyed it in the least.

At the end of the term a large conversazione was held, to which many friends interested in the school were invited, and when we were expected to put into practice those lessons in manners and deportment which were drilled into us during the Sat.u.r.day evening "At Homes". We tried our honest best to be pleasant little hostesses, and the visitors were indulgent, but I often think we must have afforded them much amus.e.m.e.nt by our "improving conversation".

"It always makes me feel so bad, I want to scream, or do something outlandishly improper," said Janet. "Mrs. Marshall set me to talk to old Canon Wavertree, and I simply longed to ask him if his waistcoat b.u.t.toned at the back, and whether he could fasten the middle b.u.t.ton himself, and how he managed to shave into the creases of such a very double chin. Instead of that, I had to look polite and proper while he talked about b.u.t.ter-making. It was such an absurd subject for him to choose, and the worst of it was I thought he said 'batter', instead of 'b.u.t.ter', and so we got completely at cross purposes. I declared we always put eggs in it at home, and he seemed to think I was half an idiot!"

"I got on much better," said Lucy. "I had to talk to Mrs. Graveson, and by sheer good luck she began on church work. You remember it was the 'topic' we had three weeks ago, so I was well primed, and brought out all Miss Percy's best remarks. I heard her tell Mrs. Marshall afterwards that she had rarely met a more intelligent girl, and she thought I should make an ideal clergyman's wife!"

"I had the doctor," I said; "and he's so jolly, he just made fun all the time, and I enjoyed myself immensely. He asked me a riddle he said he'd made up himself: 'Why are school-girls like bottles of medicine? Because they are meant to be shaken.' It's not very good, but of course I had to smile."

"I had Judge Saunders," said Cathy. "He started upon the weather, but I didn't think that was cla.s.sical enough, so I tried to bring the conversation round to poetry and Shakespeare. But he shook his head and laughed. 'It's no use, my dear,' he said, 'I used to be thrashed at school for my defective Latin verses, and I have preferred plain prose ever since. Now you have done your duty, and you will please me better by telling me how you are going to spend your holidays.' So I began about home and the boys, and I'm afraid I didn't remember to 'choose my sentences' or 'keep to the subject', but he patted my shoulder, and said he would tell me a secret, and then he whispered: 'Just forget all your conversation lessons, and be your natural little self; it's ever so much nicer. Only don't let Mrs. Marshall know I said so!'"

If we regarded the conversazione as somewhat of an ordeal, we all thoroughly enjoyed the breaking-up party which took place on the last day before the holidays. It was quite an informal affair, to which no visitors were invited, and we were not expected to keep up such a severe standard of ceremonious behaviour. Indeed, on that day all rules were relaxed--we talked in our bedrooms, we sang in the pa.s.sages, we sat on the school-room desks, and lolled about in easy att.i.tudes under Miss Percy's very nose. During half the term the members of the dramatic society had held secret rehearsals in the small cla.s.s-room, from which outsiders were rigidly excluded, for they were to contribute part of the evening's entertainment, and were busily preparing for the event. It had been a great disappointment to me that I was not permitted to join the society. I had been so successful in the elocution cla.s.s, that many of the girls would have been willing to include me, but Ernestine Salt, who seemed no more friendly towards me than before, had always exerted her influence very strongly against it, and as she was an older girl than myself, and had also been longer in the school, she was able to carry her point. They had arranged to act the casket scene from the "Merchant of Venice", and Cathy, who was one of their brightest members, had been chosen for the role of Portia. As she had no secrets from me, I helped her every day to study her part, and we went over it so often and so constantly, that in the end I knew it as well as she did herself. She was to wear a dress of rose-coloured sateen, with a crimson sash and lace collar, and gold ornaments in her hair, and to carry a large fan of peac.o.c.ks' feathers in her hand. Mrs. Winstanley had sent the costume from Marshlands, and we unpacked the large cardboard box in much curiosity and excitement.

"Let me see it on you, Philippa dear," said Cathy, as, after a private rehearsal in her bedroom to try the effect, I helped her to remove the gorgeous gown. "I can tell much better what it looks like on someone else. Ah! it fits you exactly! I knew it would! And the sequins twist so prettily in your hair! Will you go through the scene just as you are?

and I'll take Ba.s.sanio's speeches. Real actresses always have an under-study, I believe, so I'm going to pretend that you're mine."

The acting, however, was only a part of the excitement of the breaking-up day. The results of the examinations were to be read out, and, as a special encouragement to the literature cla.s.ses, Mrs. Marshall had offered a prize for the best original poem contributed by any girl in the school. We had written essays on various subjects, and even short stories, but verses made quite a new departure, and to most of our companions it seemed an almost impossible compet.i.tion.

"It's not the slightest use my trying," said Janet. "I'm a plain, prosy, matter-of-fact kind of a person. I couldn't even compose a nursery rhyme if my life depended upon it. You and Cathy are the poetical geniuses of the school, and we shall expect to hear something very inspired."

I was fond of scribbling, and had always had rather a turn for versifying, so I thought I should like to compete for the prize. It did not seem very easy to choose a suitable subject, and I covered sheets of exercise-paper with my effusions, varying from sentimental to humorous, according to my frame of mind. I tried to keep my secret, but the other girls suspected my efforts, and I came in for a good deal of chaff.

"Is Pegasus pretty strong on the wing, Philippa?"

"Of course he is! Can't you see her eye with fervid fancy rolling?"

"She's burning the midnight oil. That's why her cheeks are so pale!"

"Look here, Phil, a poetess shouldn't eat so much bread-and-b.u.t.ter. You ought to live on odes and sonnets!"

Though I did not exactly burn the midnight oil, I certainly composed my poem in bed. I suppose the darkness and the quiet were inspiring, for all my best ideas came to me when the lights had been turned out, and only the sound of Lucy's regular breathing broke the silence.