"Then you won't yield us the palm?" laughed Miss Walters.

"I love it all, I do indeed, but Sicily will always be the most beautiful place in the world to me, because it's home!"

CHAPTER VII

An Old Greek Idyll

After the picnic at Bradstone, Carmel, possibly from something she heard the girls say about her, seemed to make a supreme effort to overcome her homesickness, and to settle down as an ordinary and rational member of the school. She was undoubtedly a favorite. Even Lilias admitted her charm, though she had not fallen under her spell so completely as Dulcie. At the bottom of her heart, Lilias could not quite forgive Carmel for supplanting her brother at the Chase. From the night he had said good-by and motored to Balderton, not a word had been heard of Everard. He had not returned to school, neither had he visited any relations or friends, and indeed since he stepped out of the car at the railway station all trace of him seemed to have vanished. Mr. Bowden did not take the matter too seriously. He considered Everard was more of a man now than a schoolboy, and that, if he had fulfilled his threat of running away to sea, the brief experience of a voyage before the mast would do him no harm, and that when the vessel returned to port he would probably be only too glad to come back and claim his share of the inheritance.

This easy view annoyed Lilias. She had a share of the Ingleton pride, and she would have liked his absence treated with more concern. She thought Mr. Bowden ought to advertise in the Agony Column of _The Times_, beseeching Everard to return home, but their guardian only laughed when she suggested such a course, and a.s.sured her that her brother would turn up in time when he was tired of managing for himself.

"I've been in the law for thirty years, my dear, and I know human nature better than you do," he declared indulgently.

"But you don't know Everard as I do!" protested Lilias.

She could not take Mr. Bowden's view of the case. Everard had left the Chase in such deep anger and resentment that the chances of a speedy change in his outlook seemed remote. Lilias longed to write to him, but knew of no address to which it was possible to post a letter. She worried often over his mysterious absence, and was quite angry with Dulcie for not taking the matter more keenly to heart.

"But Mr. Bowden and Cousin Clare think he's all right!" protested that easy going young damsel.

"How do they know? I think you might show a little more interest in your own brother, who, after all, has been treated extremely badly. It seems to me hardly decent to circle round Carmel as you do!"

Dulcie opened her blue eyes wide.

"Do I circle round Carmel? Well, really, and why shouldn't I like her?

She's my cousin, and a jolly good sort too! I believe she'll give us all a far better time at the Chase than Everard would have done. He always wanted everything just his own way. None of us ever had an innings when he was at home. I never could see why the eldest of a family should lord it so over the others."

"You never had any proper sense of propriety!" retorted Lilias indignantly. "_I_ believe in keeping up the traditions of the Ingletons, and the estate has always descended strictly in the male line. It's only right it should have been left to Everard instead of to a girl, and I'll always say so. There!"

Dulcie shrugged her shoulders.

"Say what you like, Sister o' Mine! The twentieth century is different from the Middle Ages, and people don't bother so much nowadays as they did about descent and all that. The owner of an estate hasn't to fight for it. Oh yes, of course I'm glad I'm an Ingleton, but Carmel's an Ingleton too, as much as we are, and if the Chase is hers we can't help it, and we may just as well make the best of it!"

With which piece of philosophy, Dulcie turned away, leaving Lilias to shake her head over the decay of family feeling, and the degeneracy of younger sisters.

It was perhaps Carmel's rendering of the Pastorale dance that suggested to Miss Walters a scheme of entertainment for the garden fete which the girls were to give in aid of the "Homes for Waifs and Strays." She decided that the garden of Chilcombe Hall would make an excellent background for some cla.s.sic representations, and that nothing could be prettier than old Greek costumes. By a stroke of great good luck she managed to engage Miss Adams, a former pupil who had been studying cla.s.sic dancing in Paris, to come for a few weeks and train the performers. Miss Adams was a tremendous enthusiast, and arrived full of ideas which she was burning to teach to the school. The girls were delighted with her methods. It was quite a new phase of dancing to trip barefooted on the lawn, holding up garlands of flowers. They liked the exercises which she gave them for the cultivation of grace, and practised cla.s.sic att.i.tudes on all occasions, with more or less success.

"You go about the school so exactly like Minerva!" complained Noreen to Phillida, rather dismayed by the sudden change in her lively friend from bounding spirits to a statuesque pose. "Need you always walk as if you were thinking of the shape of your ankles?"

Phillida shook her head carefully, so as not to disarrange the Greek fillet she was wearing.

"It's been too hot lately to tear round and play tennis. I think, too, that what Miss Adams says is quite right. English girls _are_ lacking in grace and dignity. Just look at the way Ida and Joyce are flopping about now. An artist would have fits to see them!"

"Well, of course they're not sitting for their portraits. Oh yes! I love dancing, but I don't want to worry about being graceful all day long!"

"That's just the point, though," persisted Phillida, who was a zealous convert. "The dances are to make you graceful _always_. You so get into the poetry of motion that it's quite impossible for you ever to flop again!"

"Is it? Oh, Kafoozalum!" burbled Noreen, exploding into a series of chuckles. "'She never flopped again!' We ought to make a parody on that from the poem of 'The White Ship.'

"Miss Adams to the school came down, The cla.s.sic wave rolled on: And what was cricket's latest score To those who danced alone?

"From dawn they practised att.i.tudes Until the sun did wane; And fast confirmed in Grecian pose, They never flopped again!"

"You may mock as much as you please!" retorted Phillida, "but it's sheer envy because you know you won't be chosen as a wood nymph. Play cricket and tennis if you wish, by all means! But _I_ think when we're having a performance we may just as well give our minds to it, and do it properly, especially when Miss Adams is here to teach us."

"Right you are! Float on, O G.o.ddess! You're getting too ethereal for the school. I shall be glad when the entertainment's over, and we can have a cricket match again. It's decidedly more in my line!"

Miss Adams, with all the enthusiasm of youth and a new vocation, was determined to make the entertainment a success. She spared no trouble over constant rehearsals, and having weeded out those girls who could not adapt themselves to her methods, she kept the rest well at work in any time that was available. She determined not only to have dances, but to give in addition a short Greek play, and selected for that purpose the famous fifteenth idyll of Theocritus.

"But we're not to act it in Greek, surely!" objected Edith in alarm.

"It's bad enough to have to learn French plays! We'd never be able to tackle Greek!" urged Dulcie, absolutely aghast.

"Don't look so scared!" laughed Miss Adams. "I'm not going to ask you to give it in Greek. Probably few people would understand it if you did! I have a delightful translation here. It ought to take very well indeed with the audience. Come and squat on the gra.s.s, and I'll read it aloud to you first, and then I'll allot parts."

"Is it _very_ stiff and educational?" groaned Dulcie, obeying unwillingly.

"Wait and see! Come under the shade of the lilac bush, it's so hot to sit in the sun."

The girls composed themselves into att.i.tudes of more or less cla.s.sic elegance, and Miss Adams, book in hand, began to read.

"IDYLL XV

"_Gorgo._ Is Praxinoe at home?

"_Praxinoe._ Dear Gorgo, how long it is since you have been here! She _is_ at home. The wonder is that you have got here at last. Eunoe, see that she has a chair. Throw a cushion on it, too.

"_Gorgo._ It does most charmingly as it is.

"_Praxinoe._ Do sit down.

"_Gorgo._ Oh, what a thing spirit is! I have scarcely got to you alive, Praxinoe! What a huge crowd! What hosts of four-in-hands!

Everywhere cavalry boots, everywhere men in uniform. And the road is endless: yes, you really live _too_ far away!

"_Praxinoe._ It is all the fault of that madman of mine! Here he came to the ends of the earth, and took--a hole, not a house, and all that we might not be neighbors. The jealous wretch, always the same, ever for spite!

"_Gorgo._ Don't talk of Dinon, your husband, like that, my dear girl, before the little boy. Look how he is staring at you! Never mind, Zopyrion, sweet child, she is not speaking about papa.

"_Praxinoe._ Our Lady Persephone! The child takes notice!

"_Gorgo._ Nice papa!

"_Praxinoe._ That papa of his the other day--we call every day 'the other day'--went to get soap and rouge at the shop, and back he came to me with salt--the great, big endless fellow!"

"But, Miss Adams," interrupted Dulcie, "surely this isn't an old Greek play? It sounds absolutely and entirely modern!"