"Can you tell me how to get home?" she said, with chattering teeth and watering eyes.

"Better come and have a sup o' tea first; you look clemmed wi' the cold," he returned. "We'll tak' you back after wi' the lantern. It's n.o.bbut a step to the farm."

He whistled to the dog and moved on, and Gwen stumbled after him, wondering how she had missed seeing the house when it was so near. She scarcely knew whether to pose in the light of a heroine or a culprit as she walked into Mrs. Rawlins' kitchen, but decided to give as guarded an account of the matter as she could. There would be explanations in plenty when she returned to the Parsonage. She was very glad to sit and thaw by the fire and drink hot tea, despite the difficulty of fencing with Mrs. Rawlins' questions, that good dame being consumed with curiosity, and not restrained by any feelings of delicacy from catechizing her guest.

"Yes. No, I wasn't coming back from school, it's the holidays--yes, I'm generally with one of my sisters--no, I wasn't delivering Parish Magazines, we sent yours by Charlie--yes, I expect my father will be missing me. Thanks very much for the tea; I think I must be going now," said Gwen, gulping her second cup and making a move.

"Here's the lantern, Jim," said Mrs. Rawlins to her husband, "and take Miss Gascoyne round by the road; 'tain't fit to venture over the moor.

It's scarce a night for a Christian to be out--and her with that churchyard cough, too! Goodness, gracious, how it's blowing!"

Gwen reached home so spent and exhausted with her long tramp through the snow, that she had only wits enough left wearily to thank Mr.

Rawlins for his escort, and to stumble in at the front door. Winnie ran forward with a cry of relief, and shouted to Beatrice the welcome news of the arrival.

"Don't ask me anything! Oh, I just want to go to bed; I'm done!"

wailed Gwen, subsiding on to the nearest chair.

Beatrice took the hint, and refrained from any reproaches till she had tucked up the prodigal in warmed blankets, with a hot bottle at her feet, and seen her consume a basin full of steaming bread and milk. Then she observed:

"I suppose you know Father and half the village are out hunting for you with lanterns? They raised the Boy Scouts and broke up the Band of Hope meeting. They telephoned to the Police Station at North Ditton too. I expect you're rather proud of yourself!"

And Gwen turned her face to the wall and sobbed and coughed till she nearly choked.

Next afternoon a very miserable-looking object, with watering eyes and a swollen cheek sat wrapped in a shawl by the fire in Father's study.

Gwen had made her peace with Beatrice and had been forgiven, but she was still "eating the husks" of her escapade in the shape of a thoroughly bad cold and a touch of toothache. She refused to stay in bed, yet the noise of the family sitting-room made her head throb, so finally Father had taken pity upon her, and allowed her to bring her troubles into his sanctum. He had said very little about the events of the day before, but Gwen knew exactly what he must be thinking. She mopped her eyes with her handkerchief, and tried to believe it was her toothache that was making her cry. After a long time she said huskily, a propos of nothing in particular:

"Things always go so hardly with me, somehow, Dad! I don't know how it is. I generally seem unlucky, both at school and at home. I suppose it's partly me, but if things were easier, I'd be better. I should, really."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THINGS GO SO HARDLY WITH ME SOMEHOW, DAD."]

Father did not reply: he was busy addressing the motto-cards that he was sending to his parishioners for the New Year. He handed one to her silently.

And Gwen read:

"O do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle. But you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which has come to you by the Grace of G.o.d."

--_Phillips Brooks._

Gwen sat staring hard into the fire.

"I'll hang this up in my bedroom, Dad," she said presently.

"Do; you'll find it worth thinking about," replied Father, as he blotted the thirty-fourth envelope.

CHAPTER XI

A Prize Essay

Gwen went back to school feeling rather tamed and sober. The bad cold and face-ache, subsequent on her adventure in the snow, had seriously interfered with her plans for the holidays, and she had not accomplished half she intended to do in the time. d.i.c.k Chambers had been laid up in bed with an attack of rheumatism, so she had scarcely seen anything of him, and altogether the much-longed-for month had held its disappointments. She returned to her desk in the Fifth almost glad to begin a fresh term, though she knew many difficulties awaited her. First and foremost was the horrible fact that she owed a whole sovereign to Netta Goodwin, and had absolutely no prospect of paying it. She tried to avoid any private conversation with her chum, but the ruse was not successful for long. Netta was a girl who was accustomed to get her own way, and she followed Gwen round the school until she caught her alone.

"I say, you old slacker, what about that sov.?" she began. "I suppose you got your Christmas presents all right?"

"Oh, yes, I got my presents!" said Gwen, trying to pa.s.s things off airily. "Not quite what I expected, though."

"But you can pay me back?"

"I'm afraid I can't just yet."

Netta's rather pretty face changed its expression considerably.

"When can you, then?" she asked sharply. "I want to know."

"Could you wait a fortnight?"

"It's inconvenient, but I might."

Netta was still scowling. "Will you promise faithfully to bring it by the 1st of February?"

"I'll do my best," agreed Gwen, escaping from what was to both a very unpleasant interview.

She had mentioned a fortnight simply on the spur of the moment to put Netta off, but she knew that the 1st of February would bring no way out of her entanglement. It was something, however, to have even a respite of two weeks; it gave her time to think and to lay plans. She wondered what Netta would do if, as seemed most likely, the debt still remained owing. She did not suppose Netta would turn informer to Miss Roscoe, but she might very possibly mention the matter to Winnie, who would tell Beatrice, who would promptly tell Father.

"Only a fortnight!" groaned Gwen, feeling like a criminal in a condemned cell. "Unless 'something turns up', as Mr. Micawber says in _David Copperfield_. If I were the heroine of a novel, a forgotten uncle in America would suddenly die, and leave me a million just at the opportune moment. But I'm only a very unromantic, every-day kind of person, not the forget-me-not-eyed, spun-gold-haired, wild-rose-petal-complexioned, pearly-toothed sort of girl who gets fortunes; I'm solid fact, not fiction. Most things are nowadays, I suppose."

Certainly the Fifth Form did not offer scope for romance or sentiment.

Its daily doings were most prosaic, a round in which Latin, mathematics, and chemistry were chiefly to the fore, and the only appeal to the imagination was the weekly lecture on English literature from the Princ.i.p.al. Gwen liked these; Miss Roscoe had the knack of making historical dry bones live, and encouraged the girls to read for themselves. All her lessons were interesting, but in this she was inspiring. She was accustomed to give themes for fortnightly exercises, and at the first lecture of this new term she announced as a special subject: "An Essay on any one of the Great Writers of the Victorian Era", promising a volume of Browning's poems as a prize.

"I had intended to offer it for Christmas," she said, "but I thought you were too busy preparing for examinations to be able to give time to such an essay. I hope you'll do justice to the subject now."

It was a large order, thought Gwen, when already their homework had about reached its outside limit. Miss Roscoe was quite unconscionable in her demands on their time and brains. She fixed the standard of the Form so high that only the very bright girls could possibly keep up to it. Many slacked off entirely, but Gwen could not, dared not slack.

She knew Miss Roscoe was watching her work, and that very much depended upon her reports for the next year or two. Father had thrown out a few hints that had stirred her ambition and raised wild hopes for the future. She was aware that there were several good scholarships from Rodenhurst, and visions of College began to dawn on her horizon.

"'Gwen Gascoyne, B.A.', sounds no end. It would be worth the grind. I mayn't be the beauty of the family, but I believe I've got the best share of the brains. Beatrice would be proud of me if I took my degree. I must make something of this essay if I 'burn the midnight'.

Miss Roscoe will expect me to turn up trumps. I'll toil like a navvy!"

So Gwen decided, and stuck to her resolution. She had an undoubted capacity for work, a power of application and of steady plodding that were of immense service, as well as more brilliant gifts. She attacked the question at once. The Victorian writers offered a fairly wide choice of subject. She hesitated at first between George Eliot and d.i.c.kens, and finally selected Thomas Carlyle. Something about the rugged old prophet attracted her, and she thought he would be a congenial theme for her pen. She spent every spare moment in reading his biographies or his works, till she felt she had him at her fingers' ends. Then, with a ma.s.s of notes as a foundation, she began her essay.

Most young writers undergo the same first agonies of composition: the vainly sought simile, the sentence that will not turn nicely, the tiresome word that crops up too often, yet for which there seems no adequate subst.i.tute; the sudden lack of ideas, or the non-ability to clothe those one has in suitable language.

Gwen wrote and burnt, and wrote and burnt again, till at last she managed something, not at all up to the ideal of her imagination, but the best her limited literary experience could produce. She refused to show it to anybody at home, and bore it off to school to read over and correct during the dinner hour. She was sitting at her desk, busy altering sentences and erasing words, when Netta came into the room.

"h.e.l.lo, you old solitary hermit!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing here, with your nose buried in an exercise book? There's no getting at you nowadays. You'll grow old before your time, Gwen, my child! Come out this instant, and play basket-ball."

"Can't, so that's flat," responded Gwen. "Netta, if you love me, if you've any humanity in you, leave me alone. Basket-ball's off till I've finished this."

"Well, you've got to tell me what you're doing, at any rate. Let me look! No, Miss Modesty, you're not going to hide your light under a bushel. I insist! Oho! What have we got here now?"