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Title: The Wonderful Garden
       or The Three Cs

Author: Edith Nesbit

Illustrator: H. R. Millar

Release Date: August 28, 2016 [EBook #52907]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WONDERFUL GARDEN ***




Produced by Mary Glenn Krause, Emmy, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net







[Illustration: And through it, in trailing velvet, came a lady.—P.
392.]




    THE

    WONDERFUL GARDEN

    OR

    THE THREE C.’s

    BY

    E. NESBIT

    AUTHOR OF
    ‘THE WOULD-BE-GOODS,’ ‘THE AMULET,’ ETC. ETC.


    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. R. MILLAR


    MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
    ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
    1911




_COPYRIGHT_




          TO

    CECILY, KATHLEEN

          AND

      MAVIS CARTER

     WITH LOVE FROM

       E. NESBIT



    CROWLINK, SUSSEX,
    1911.




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER I                   PAGE
    THE BEGINNING                  1

    CHAPTER II
    THE MANOR HOUSE               13

    CHAPTER III
    THE WONDERFUL GARDEN          34

    CHAPTER IV
    IN THESSALONIANS              50

    CHAPTER V
    THE MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE        67

    CHAPTER VI
    HUNTED                        83

    CHAPTER VII
    BEING DETECTIVES              98

    CHAPTER VIII
    THE HEROINE                  119

    CHAPTER IX
    THE MORNING AFTER            132

    CHAPTER X
    BREWING THE SPELL            152

    CHAPTER XI
    THE ROSICURIANS              175

    CHAPTER XII
    THE OTHER BOOK               191

    CHAPTER XIII
    THE ROSY CURE                209

    CHAPTER XIV
    THE MINERAL WOMAN            222

    CHAPTER XV
    JUSTICE                      244

    CHAPTER XVI
    THE APPEAL TO CÆSAR          259

    CHAPTER XVII
    THE LE-O-PARD                282

    CHAPTER XVIII
    THE LEOPARD’S-BANE           298

    CHAPTER XIX
    F. OF H.D.                   319

    CHAPTER XX
    THE WAXEN MAN                340

    CHAPTER XXI
    THE ATONEMENT OF RUPERT      355

    CHAPTER XXII
    THE PORTRAIT                 370

    CHAPTER XXIII
    THE END                      386




ILLUSTRATIONS


         PAGE

  And through it, in trailing velvet, came a lady      _Frontispiece_

  There was a good deal of whispered talk and mystery             15

  ‘You sit next him, Charles’                                     19

  ‘They burned her for a witch’                                   31

  ‘How beautifully everything grows here’                         43

  Of course they all liked to try                                 55

  A hand was raised                                               65

  ‘Just remember we’re yours to the death’                        81

  ‘_I_ believed you—without that,’ said Charlotte                 93

  They were the footprints, beyond any doubt, of a boy           111

  ‘Fetches him a bite of something’                              127

  ‘If I whistle, you lay low’                                    141

  Showed her a green parrot sitting on a nest                    155

  He screwed up his nose                                         165

  ‘It’s a Nihilist bomb, come away!’                             187

  Rupert rolled into bed                                         205

  He looked over his head as though Rupert had not been there    229

  ‘I can’t attend to you. Go away!’                              237

  Found the broken paling and slipped through                    261

  Rupert was bundled into the body of the car                    277

  Something four-footed, spotted, furry, creeping along the
      passage                                                    299

  ‘It’s me; it’s Rupert,’ he shouted                             313

  Charles had his first swimming lesson                          321

  Nothing much happened except smoke                             349

  Charlotte found a thin black-coated shoulder a very good
      place to cry on                                            365

  ‘Take your last look,’ he said                                 379




CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNING


It was Caroline’s birthday, and she had had some very pleasant
presents. There was a blotting-book of blue leather (at least, it
looked like leather), with pink and purple roses painted on it,
from her younger sister Charlotte; and a paint-box—from her brother
Charles—as good as new.

‘I’ve hardly used it at all,’ he said, ‘and it’s much nicer than
anything I could have bought you with my own money, and I’ve wiped all
the paints clean.’

‘It’s lovely,’ said Caroline; ‘and the beautiful brushes, too!’

‘Real fitch,’ said Charles proudly. ‘They’ve got points like needles.’

‘Just like,’ said Caroline, putting them one after the other into her
mouth, and then holding them up to the light.

Besides the paint-box and the blotting-book, a tin-lined case had come
from India, with a set of carved chess-men from father, and from mother
some red and blue scarves, and, most glorious of imaginable gifts, a
leopard-skin.

‘They will brighten the play-room a little,’ said mother in her letter.
And they did.

Aunt Emmeline had given a copy of _Sesame and Lilies_, which is
supposed to be good for girls, though a little difficult when you
are only twelve; and Uncle Percival had presented a grey leather
pocket-book and an olive-wood paper-knife with ‘Sorrento’ on the
handle. The cook and housemaid had given needle-book and pin-cushion;
and Miss Peckitt, the little dressmaker who came to the house to make
the girls’ dresses, brought a small, thin book bound in red, with
little hard raised spots like pin-heads all over it, and hoped Miss
Caroline would be kind enough to accept.

‘The book,’ said Miss Peckitt, ‘was mine when a child, and my dear
mother also, as a young girl, was partial to it. Please accept it,
Miss, with my humble best wishes.’

‘Thanks most awfully,’ said Caroline, embracing her.

‘Thank you,’ said Miss Peckitt, straightening her collar after the
sudden kiss. ‘Quite welcome, though unexpected; I _had_ a bit of
southernwood given to me this morning, which, you will find in the
book, means a surprise.’

And it did, for the book was _The Language of Flowers_. And really that
book was the beginning of this story, or, at least, if it wasn’t that
book, it was the other book. But that comes later.

‘It’s ripping,’ said Caroline. ‘I do like it being red.’

The last present was a very large bunch of marigolds and a halfpenny
birthday-card, with a gold anchor and pink clasped hands on it, from
the boy who did the boots and knives.

‘We’ll decorate our room,’ said Charlotte, ‘in honour of your birthday,
Caro. We’ve got lots of coloured things, and I’ll borrow cook’s Sunday
scarf. It’s pink and purple shot silk—a perfect dream! I’ll fly!’

She flew; and on her return they decorated their room.

You will perhaps wonder why they were so anxious to decorate their
room with coloured things. It was because the house they lived in had
so little colour in it that it was more like a print of a house in a
book—all black and white and grey, you know—than like a house for real
people to live in. It was a pale, neat, chilly house. There was, for
instance, white straw matting on the floors instead of warm, coloured
carpets; and on the stairs a sort of pale grey cocoa-nut matting. The
window curtains were of soft cotton, and were palely lavender; they
had no damask richness, no gay flowery patterns. The walls were not
papered, but distempered in clean pale tints, and the general effect
was rather like that of a very superior private hospital. The fact
that the floors were washed every week with Sanitas gave a pleasing
wood-yard scent. There were no coloured pictures in the house—only
brown copies of great paintings by Raphael and Velazquez and people
like that.

The Stanmore children lived here because their father and mother were
in India and their other relations in New Zealand—all except old Uncle
Charles, who was their mother’s uncle and who had quarrelled with, or
been quarrelled with by, their father and mother in bygone years.

The owners of the house, whose name was Sandal, were relations of some
sort—cousins, perhaps. Though they were called Uncle Percival and Aunt
Emmeline they were not really those relations.

There was one thing about this so-called aunt and uncle—they were never
cross and seldom unjust. Their natures seemed to be pale and calm like
the colours of their house; and though the children had meat every day
for dinner, Mr. and Miss Sandal never had anything but vegetables, and
vegetables are said to be calming.

Now India is a highly-coloured country, as you may have noticed in
pictures, and the Stanmore children felt faded in that grey house. And
that is why they loved colour so much, and made so much fuss about the
leopard-skin and the Indian embroideries and the marigold flowers and
the little old red book and the wreath of gold forget-me-nots outside
it encircling the words _Language of Flowers_.

‘When Aunt Emmeline sees how beautiful it is she’ll want to have the
whole house scarved and leoparded, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Charlotte,
hanging the pink scarf over a picture of a blind girl sitting on an
orange, which is called ‘Hope.’

‘I don’t suppose so,’ said Caroline. ‘I asked her once what old
Uncle Charles’s house was like, that mother said was so beautiful,
and she said it was far too full of things, and somewhat imperfectly
ventilated.’

‘It’s a pity Uncle Charles was quarrelled with, _I_ think,’ said
Charlotte. ‘I shouldn’t at all have minded going to stay with him. I
expect really he likes nice little girls. I wonder what the row was
all about, and why they didn’t all kiss and be friends before the sun
went down upon—like _we’re_ told to?’

I cannot tell you what the row was about, for I know no more than you
do, or than Charlotte did. And you must have noticed that grown-up
people’s quarrels are very large and most mysterious. When you quarrel
with your brothers or sisters it is always about some simple thing—as,
for instance, who left your paint-brushes in the water, or who forgot
your _Water Babies_ out in the hayfield, or whether it was you who
upset the gum over your brother’s map, or walked on the doll’s house
sofa that day when you all upset it scrapping, and the furniture was
put back in a hurry. Anyhow, your quarrels are soon over, because
quarrelling is so uncomfortable, and, besides, you have most likely
been taught, as Charlotte had, that you must not let the sun go down
upon your wrath. But with grown-up people it is different. They seem
sometimes to have forgotten about the sun not going down, and their
quarrels last on and on and on for weeks and months and years, till
you would think that they must have forgotten what the fuss was all
about. But they don’t, and when Aunt Jane comes to tea you will still
hear fragments about how Uncle William behaved, and what a pity it was
about Edward acting as he did. If the grown-ups notice you, they will
tell you to run away and play. You will never hear what the quarrel was
about, and if you did you wouldn’t understand, and if you understood
you’d probably think it was a silly fuss about nothing, and wonder
how they could have kept it up all these years—for it is as likely as
not that Uncle William did that unfortunate behaving of his many many
years ago, and that Edward acted in that extraordinary way long before
you were born. The only thing you can find out for certain about these
grown-up quarrels is that they seem to be always about money, or about
people having married people that their relations didn’t want them to
marry.

No doubt you will have noticed all this, and you will perhaps have
noticed as well that if you suddenly speak of a person, that person
very often turns up almost at once. So that when Charlotte said,
‘I wish Uncle Charles had not been quarrelled with,’ it would have
occasioned you no surprise if Uncle Charles had suddenly walked up to
the front door.

But this did not happen. But some one walked up to the front door. It
was the postman.

Caroline rushed out to see if there were any more birthday-cards for
her. It was now the beginning of the summer holidays, but some of the
girls at the High School might possibly have remembered her birthday.
So she rushed out, and rushed into Aunt Emmeline, who must have been
hurt, because afterwards Caroline’s head was quite sore where it had
banged against Aunt Emmeline’s mother-of-pearl waist-buckle. But Aunt
Emmeline only said:

‘Gently, my child, gently,’ which, as Caroline said later, was worse
than being scolded, and made you feel as if you were elephants. And
there weren’t any birthday-cards for her, either.

All the letters were for Miss Sandal. And just as the leopard-skin had
been spread on the floor she came to the door of the children’s room
with one of the letters in her hand.

‘I have a surprise for you,’ she said.

‘Do come in and sit down,’ said Caroline. That was another nice thing
about Aunt Emmeline. She always treated the children’s room as though
it really was the children’s room, and expected to be treated as a
visitor when she came into it. She never sat down without being asked.

‘Thank you,’ she now said, and sat down. ‘The surprise is that you are
going into the country for your holidays.’

There was a silence, only broken by Charles, and he only said:

‘We needn’t have bothered about decorating the room.’

‘Oh, is this decoration?’ Miss Sandal asked, as though she thought pink
scarves might get on to picture-frames and leopard-skins on to floors,
or marigolds on to mantelpieces, just by accident or untidiness.

‘I may say that I have known for some time that this was likely to
happen—but the letter which has just come makes everything settled. You
are to go the day after to-morrow.’

‘But _where_?’ Caroline asked. And Miss Sandal then uttered the
memorable and unusual words, ‘Did you ever hear of your Great-Uncle
Charles?’

‘The one that was quarrelled with?’ said Charles.

‘I did not know you knew of that. Yes. The quarrel is now at an end,
and he has invited you to spend your holidays at the Manor House.’

There was a deep silence, due to the children’s wanting to shout
‘Hooray!’ and feeling that it would not be manners.

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ said Miss Sandal. ‘It is considered a
very beautiful house, and stands in a park.’

‘Are you going, Aunt Emmeline?’ Caroline asked.

‘No, dear. Only you children are invited. You will be quiet and gentle,
won’t you, and try to remember that your Great-Uncle Charles is a
quiet student, and not used to children. You will have a great deal
of liberty, and I hope you will use it well. You have never been on a
visit before without—without some one to remind you of—to tell you——’

‘Oh, that’s all right, Aunt Emmie,’ said Charlotte. ‘But who’ll sew on
our buttons and mend our stockings?’

‘There is a housekeeper, of course,’ said Miss Sandal. ‘I shall pack
your things to-morrow; and if you will decide what toys you would like
to take with you, I will pack them too.’

‘Yes,’ said Caroline, still feeling it polite not to look pleased.
‘Thank you, Aunt Emmeline.’

‘I hope he’ll like us,’ said Charles. ‘He ought to when we’re all named
after him. I say, couldn’t we all pretend to be called something else?
It’s bad enough now; but it’ll be awful when there’s an Uncle Charles
in the house as well as all us. I say, Aunt Emmie, are we to call him
“Great”?’

‘He means Great-Uncle Charles,’ Caroline explained. ‘I expect we’d
better call him plain “Uncle,” hadn’t we?’

‘He wouldn’t like being called “plain,”’ said Charles.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Caroline, still a prey to politeness. ‘He won’t
mind what little boys call him.’

‘I bet he would if I called him the sort of things you call me. Silly
yourself!’

‘Children! children!’ said Miss Sandal. ‘I thought you’d be so pleased.’

‘We _are_,’ said Caroline. ‘Only won’t you be rather dull without us?
That’s why we don’t seem so glad as you seem to think we ought to seem.’

Miss Sandal smiled, which made her long, whitey-brown-paper-coloured
face look much prettier.

‘Thank you, Caroline. Your Uncle Percival and I are also about to take
a holiday. We are going to Switzerland, the Italian Lakes, and to
Venice. You may be as happy as you like without worrying about us.’

And it was then that the three children felt that politeness and
sincerity might meet in a heartfelt shout of ‘Hooray!’

‘I shall take the leopard-skin and all my other presents,’ said
Caroline.

‘And I shall take the draughts and the spilikins,’ said Charlotte.

‘Mother said there were draughts made of ebony and ivory with lions’
heads and mother-of-pearl spilikins in the drawing-room when she was a
little girl,’ Caroline reminded her.

‘I shall take every single thing I’ve got, and my cricket set as well,’
said Charles.




CHAPTER II

THE MANOR HOUSE


You can imagine the packing, the running up and down stairs, the
difficulty of choosing what to leave behind—for that is, after all,
what it comes to when you are going away, much more than the difficulty
of choosing what you will take with you. Miss Sandal, surrounded by
heaps of toys and books—far too large to have been got into the trunks,
even if all the clothes had been left out—at last settled the question
by promising to send on, by post or by carrier, any little thing
which had been left behind and which the children should all agree
was necessary to their happiness. ‘And the leopard-skin takes so much
room,’ she said, ‘and I believe there are wild-beast-skins as well as
stuffed animals at your uncle’s house.’ So they left the leopard-skin
behind too. There was a good deal of whispered talk and mystery and
consulting of books that morning, and Aunt Emmeline most likely
wondered what it was all about. But perhaps she didn’t. She was very
calm. Anyway, she must have known when, as the cab drew up in front
of the door, the three children presented themselves before her with
bouquets in their hands.

‘They are for you,’ said all three at once.

Then Charlotte presented Aunt Emmeline with a bunch of balm from the
garden.

‘It means sympathy,’ she said; ‘because, of course, it’s nice of you to
say so, but we know that those geography places you’re going to can’t
be _really_ as nice as Uncle Charles’s.’

Charles’s bouquet was of convolvulus. ‘It means dead hope,’ he
explained; ‘but it’s very pretty, too. And here’s this.’ He suddenly
presented a tiny cactus in a red pot. ‘I bought it for you,’ he said;
‘it means, “Thou leavest not.”’

‘How charming of you!’ said Aunt Emmeline, and turned to Caroline, who
was almost hidden behind a huge bunch of ivy and marigolds.

‘The ivy means friendship,’ said Caroline, ‘and the marigolds don’t
count. I only put them because they are so goldy-bright. But if they
_must_ count, then they mean cruelty—Fate’s, you know, because you’re
not coming. And there’s a purple pansy in among it somewhere, because
that means, “I think of you.”’

[Illustration: There was a good deal of whispered talk and mystery.]

‘Thank you very, very much,’ said Aunt Emmeline. ‘I can’t tell you how
pleased I am. It is very sweet of you all.’

This floral presentation gave a glow and glory to their departure. At
the very last moment Caroline leaned out of the window to say:

‘Oh, Aunt Emmeline, when Miss Peckitt comes to finish those muslin
frocks that you’re going to send us, _would_ you try to manage to give
her a Canterbury bell from me? She’ll know what it means. But in case
she doesn’t, it’s gratitude—in the book. And we’ll put flowers in our
letters expressing our feelings. Good-bye.’

Uncle Percival took them to the station and——

But why should I describe a railway journey? You know exactly what it
is like. I will only say that it was very dusty, and so sunny that the
children wanted the blinds down, only a very tailor-made lady with a
cross little grey dog said ‘No.’ And you know how black your hands
get in the train, and how gritty the cushions are, and how your faces
get black too, though you are quite certain you haven’t touched them
with your hands. The one who got the little bit of the engine in its
eye was Charles that time. But some one always gets it, because some
one always puts its head out of the carriage window, no matter what
the printed notices may say. You know all this. What you don’t know is
what happened at the junction where, carefully attended by the guard,
they changed trains. They had to wait for some time, and when they had
looked at the bookstall—which was small and dull, and almost entirely
newspapers—they looked at the other people who had to wait too. Most
of them were of dull appearance; but there was one tall gentleman
who looked, they all agreed, exactly like Mr. Murdstone in _David
Copperfield_.

‘And he’s got David with him, too,’ said Charlotte. ‘Look!’

The Murdstone gentleman, having bought the _Athenæum_, the _Spectator_,
and a seven-penny reprint of the works of Marcus Aurelius, had gone to
a bench on which sat a sulky-looking boy. He spoke to the boy, and the
boy answered. And the gentleman walked off.

‘He’s gone to have a bun all by himself,’ said Charles. ‘Selfish pig!’

‘I say, let’s sit down on the bench. You sit next him, Charles. Perhaps
he’d talk to us.’ This was Caroline’s idea.

They did; and ‘he,’ who was, of course, the sulky boy, did speak to
them. But not till they’d spoken to him. It was Charles who did it.

[Illustration: ‘You sit next him, Charles.’]

‘Are you going on in this next train?’ he said, ‘because, if you are,
we can get into your carriage. We shall be company for you.’

‘What’s the good?’ said the boy, unexpectedly; ‘it’ll only make it
worse afterwards.’

‘What worse?’

‘The being alone.’

‘Well, anyhow,’ said Caroline, coming round to sit on the other side of
him, ‘you’re not alone now. What’s up? Who is _he_?’

‘He’s a schoolmaster. I should have thought you could have seen that.’

‘We thought he was like Mr. Murdstone.’

‘He is,’ said the strange boy; ‘exactly.’

‘Oh,’ said Charlotte joyously, ‘then you’ve read _David_. I say!’

They were all delighted. There is no bond like the bond of having read
and liked the same books. A tide of friendliness swept over the party,
and when they found that he had also read _Alice in Wonderland_, _Wild
Animals I Have Known_, and _Hereward the Wake_, as well as E. Nesbit’s
stories for children in the _Strand Magazine_, they all felt that they
had been friends for years.

‘But tell us all about it, quick, before _he_ comes back,’ urged
Charles. ‘Perhaps we could help you—bring you jam tarts and apples
with a rope ladder or something. We are yours to the death—you won’t
forget that, will you? And what’s your name? And where do you live? And
where are you going? Tell us all about it, quick!’ he urged.

Then out it all came. The strange boy’s name was Rupert Wix, and he
was at a school—not half bad the school was—and old Filon—he was the
classical chap—was going to take Rupert and two other chaps to Wales
for the holidays—and now the other chaps had got measles, and so had
old Filon. And old Mug’s brother—his name wasn’t really Mug, of course,
but Macpherson, and the brother was the Rev. William Macpherson—yes,
that was him, the Murdstone chap—he was going to take Rupert to his
beastly school in the country.

‘And there won’t be any other chaps,’ said Rupert, ‘because, of course,
it’s vac—just old Mug’s beastly brother and me, for days and weeks and
years—until the rest of the school comes back. I wish I was dead!’

‘Oh, don’t!’ said Caroline; ‘how dreadful! They’ve got scarlet fever at
_our_ school, that’s why our holidays have begun so early. Do cheer up!
Have some nut-chocolate.’ A brief struggle with her pocket ended in
the appearance of a packet—rather worn at the edges—the parting gift of
Aunt Emmeline.

‘Is old Mug’s brother as great a pig as he looks?’ Charles asked,
through Rupert’s ‘Thank-yous.’

‘_Much_ greater,’ said Rupert cordially.

‘Then I know what I’d do,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’d run away from school,
like a hero in a book, and have some adventures, and then go home to my
people.’

‘That’s just it,’ said Rupert. ‘I haven’t got anywhere to run to. My
people are in India. That’s why I have to have my hols at a beastly
school. I’d rather be a dog in a kennel—much.’

‘Oh, so would I,’ said Charlotte. ‘But then I’d almost rather be a dog
than anything. They’re such dears. I do hope there’ll be dogs where
we’re going to.’

‘Where’s that?’ Rupert asked, more out of politeness than because he
wanted to know.

‘I’ll write it down for you,’ said Caroline, and did, on a page of the
new grey leather pocket-book Uncle Percival had given her. ‘Here, put
it in your pocket, and you write and tell us what happens. Perhaps it
won’t be so bad. Here he comes—quick!’

She stuffed the paper into Rupert’s jacket pocket as the tall
Murdstone-like figure advanced towards them. The three children left
Rupert and walked up the platform.

‘I’m glad we gave him the chock,’ said Charles, and the word was hardly
out of his mouth before a cold, hard hand touched his shoulder (and his
cheek as he turned quickly) and a cold, hard voice said:

‘Little boy, I do not allow those under my charge to accept sweetmeats
from strange children, especially dirty ones.’

And with that the Murdstone gentleman pushed the chocolate into
Charles’s hand and went back to his prey.

‘Beast! Brute! Beast!’ said Charles.

After this it was mere forlorn-hopishness and die-on-the-barricade
courage, as Charlotte said later, that made the children get into the
same carriage with Rupert and his captor. They might as well have saved
themselves the trouble. The Murdstone gentleman put Rupert in a corner
and sat in front of him with a newspaper very widely opened. And at the
next station he changed carriages, taking Rupert by the hand as though
he had been, as Charles put it, ‘any old baby-girl.’

But as Rupert went out Caroline whispered to him:

‘You get some borage and eat it,’ and Rupert looked ‘Why?’

‘Borage gives courage, you know,’ she said, too late, for he was
whisked away before he could hear her, and they saw him no more.

They talked about him, though, till the train stopped at East Farleigh,
which was their station.

There was a waggonette to meet them and a cart for their luggage, and
the coachman said he would have known Caroline anywhere, because she
was so like her mother, whom he remembered when he was only gardener’s
boy; and this made every one feel pleasantly as though they were going
home.

It was a jolly drive, across the beautiful bridge and up the hill and
through the village and along a mile or more of road, where the green
hedges were powdered with dust, and tufts of hay hung, caught by the
brambles from the tops of passing waggons. These bits of hay made one
feel that one really was in the country—not just the bare field-country
of the suburb where Aunt Emmeline and Uncle Percival lived, where one
could never get away from the sight of red and yellow brick villas.

And then the boy who was driving the luggage cart got down and opened a
gate; and they drove through and along a woodland road where ferns and
blossoming brambles grew under trees very green and not dusty at all.

From the wood they came to a smooth, green, grassy park dotted with
trees, and in the middle of it, standing in a half-circle of chestnuts
and sycamores, was the house.

It was a white, bow-windowed house, with a balcony at one end, and a
porch, with white pillars and two broad steps; and the grass grew right
up to the very doorsteps, which is unusual and very pretty. There was
not a flower to be seen—only grass. The waggonette, of course, kept to
the drive, which ran round to a side door—half glass.

And here Mrs. Wilmington the housekeeper received them. She was a pale,
thin person—quite kind, but not at all friendly.

‘I don’t think she has time to think of anything but being ladylike,’
said Charlotte. ‘She ought to wear mittens.’

This was while they were washing their hands for tea.

‘I suppose if you’re a housekeeper you have to be careful people don’t
think you’re a servant,’ said Caroline. ‘What drivel it is! I say,
isn’t this something like?’

She was looking out of the bow window of the big room spread with a
blue rose-patterned carpet, at the green glory of the park, lying in
the sun like another and much more beautiful carpet with a pattern of
trees on it.

Then they went down to tea. Such a house—full of beautiful things! But
the children hadn’t time to look at them then, and I haven’t time to
tell you about them now.

I will only say that the dining-room was perfect in its
Turkey-carpet-and-mahogany comfort, and that it had red curtains.

‘Will you please pour the tea, Miss Caroline?’ said Mrs. Wilmington,
and went away.

‘I’m glad we haven’t got to have tea with _her_, anyway,’ said Charles.

And then Uncle Charles came in. He was not at all what they expected.
He could not have been what anybody expected. He was more shadowy than
you would think anybody could be. He was more like a lightly printed
photograph from an insufficiently exposed and imperfectly developed
negative than anything else I can think of. He was as thin and pale as
Mrs. Wilmington, but there was nothing hard or bony about him. He was
soft as a shadow—his voice, his hand, his eyes.

‘And what are your names?’ he said, when he had shaken hands all round.

Caroline told him, and Charles added:

‘How funny of you not to know, uncle, when we’re all named after you!’

‘Caroline, Charles, Charlotte,’ he repeated. ‘Yes, I suppose you are. I
like my tea very weak, please, with plenty of milk and no sugar.’

Caroline nervously clattered among the silver and china. She was not
used to pouring out real tea for long-estranged uncles.

‘I hope you will enjoy yourselves here,’ said Uncle Charles, taking his
cup; ‘and excuse me if I do not always join you at meals. I am engaged
on a work—I mean I am writing a book,’ he told them.

‘What fun!’ said every one but Caroline, who had just burnt herself
with the urn; and Charles added:

‘What’s it about?’

‘Magic,’ said the Uncle, ‘or, rather, a branch of magic. I thought
of calling it “A Brief Consideration of the Psychological and
Physiological Part played by Suggestion in So-called Magic.”’

‘It sounds interesting; at least I know it would if I knew anything
about it,’ said Caroline, trying to be both truthful and polite.

‘It’s very long,’ said Charles. ‘How would you get all that printed on
the book’s back?’

‘And don’t say “so-called,”’ said Charlotte. ‘It looks as if you didn’t
believe in magic.’

‘If people thought I believed in magic they wouldn’t read my books,’
said Uncle Charles. ‘They’d think I was mad, you know.’

‘But why?’ Charlotte asked. ‘_We_ aren’t mad, and we believe in it. Do
you know any spells, uncle? We want awfully to try a spell. It’s the
dream of our life. It is, really.’

The ghost of a smile moved the oyster-shell-coloured face of Uncle
Charles.

‘So you take an interest in magic?’ he said. ‘We shall have at least
that in common.’

‘Of course we do. Every one does, only they’re afraid to say so. Even
servants do. They tell fortunes and dreams. Did you ever read about
the Amulet, or the Phœnix, or the Words of Power? Bread and butter,
please,’ said Charles.

‘You have evidently got up the subject,’ said Uncle Charles. ‘Who told
you about Words of Power?’

‘It’s in _The Amulet_,’ said Charlotte. ‘I say, uncle, do tell us some
spells.’

‘Ah!’ Uncle Charles sighed. ‘I am afraid the day of spells has gone
by—except, perhaps, for people of your age. _She_ could have told you
spells enough—if all the stories of her are true.’

He pointed to a picture over the mantelpiece—a fair-haired, dark-eyed
lady in a ruff.

‘She was an ancestress of ours,’ he said; ‘she was wonderfully learned.’

‘What became of her?’ Charlotte asked.

‘They burned her for a witch. It is sometimes a mistake to know too
much,’ said the Uncle.

This contrasted agreeably with remembered remarks of Uncle Percival and
Aunt Emmeline, such as ‘Knowledge is power’ and ‘There is no darkness
but ignorance.’

The children looked at the lady in the white ruff and black velvet
dress, and they liked her face.

‘What a shame!’ they said.

‘Yes,’ said the Uncle. ‘You see she’s resting her hand on two books.
There’s a tradition that those books contain her magic secret. I used
to look for the books when I was young, but I never found them—I never
found them.’ He sighed again.

‘_We’ll_ look, uncle,’ said Charlotte eagerly. ‘We _may_ look, mayn’t
we? Young heads are better than old shoulders, aren’t they? At least,
that sounds rude, but you know I mean two heads are better than yours——
No, that’s not it. Too many cooks spoil the—— No, that’s not it either.
We wouldn’t spoil anything. Too many hands make light work. _That’s_
what I meant.’

[Illustration: ‘They burned her for a witch.’]

‘Your meaning was plain from the first,’ said the Uncle, finishing his
tea and setting down his cup—a beautiful red and blue and gold one—very
different from Aunt Emmeline’s white crockery. ‘Certainly you may look.
But you’ll respect the field of your search.’

‘Uncle,’ said Caroline, from behind the silver tea-tray, ‘your house is
the most lovely, splendid, glorious, beautiful house we’ve ever seen,
and——’

‘We wouldn’t hurt a hair of its head,’ said Charles.

Again the Uncle smiled. ‘Well, well,’ he said, and faded away like a
shadow.

‘We’ll find those books or perish,’ said Charlotte firmly.

‘Ra-_ther_,’ said Charles.

‘We’ll look for them, anyway,’ said Caroline. ‘Now let’s go and pick an
ivy leaf and put it in a letter for poor dear Aunt Emmeline. I’ll tell
you something.’

‘Well?’ said the others.

‘This is the sort of house I’ve always dreamed of when it said
luxury—in books, you know.’

‘Me too,’ said Charlotte.

‘_And_ me,’ said Charles.




CHAPTER III

THE WONDERFUL GARDEN


It was very glorious to wake up the next morning in enormous soft
beds—four-posted, with many-folded silk hangings, and shiny furniture
that reflected the sunlight as dark mirrors might do. And breakfast
was nice, with different sorts of things to eat, in silver dishes with
spirit-lamps under them,—bacon and sausages and scrambled eggs, and as
much toast and marmalade as you wanted; not just porridge and apples,
as at Aunt Emmeline’s. There were tea and coffee and hot milk. They all
chose hot milk.

‘I feel,’ said Caroline, pouring it out of a big silver jug with little
bits of ivory between the handle and the jug to keep the handle from
getting too hot, ‘I feel that we’re going to enjoy every second of the
time we’re here.’

‘Rather,’ said Charles, through sausage. ‘Isn’t Uncle Charles a dear,’
he added more distinctly. ‘I dreamed about him last night—that he
painted his face out of the paint-box I gave Caro, and then we blew him
out with the bellows to make him fatter.’

‘And did it?’ Caroline asked.

‘He burst,’ said Charles briefly, ‘and turned into showers of dead
leaves.’

There was an interval of contented silence. Then—

‘What shall we do first?’ said Charles. And his sisters with one voice
answered, ‘Explore, of course.’

And they finished their breakfast to dreams of exploring every hole and
corner of the wonderful house.

But when they rang to have breakfast taken away it was Mrs. Wilmington
who appeared.

‘Your uncle desired me to say that he thinks it’s healthy for you
to spend some hours in the hopen—_o_pen air,’ she said, speaking in
a small distinct voice. ‘He himself takes the air of an afternoon.
So will you please all go out at once,’ she ended in a burst of
naturalness, ‘and not come ’ome, _h_ome, till one o’clock.’

‘Where are we to go?’ asked Charlotte, not pleased.

‘Not beyond the park and grounds,’ said the housekeeper. ‘And,’ she
added reluctantly, ‘Mr. Charles said if there was any pudding you
liked to mention——’

A brief consultation ended in, ‘Treacle hat, please’; and when Mrs.
Wilmington had minced off, they turned to each other and said:

‘The brick!’

‘The old duck!’ and

‘Something like an uncle.’

Then they went out, as they had been told to do. And they took off
their shoes and stockings, which they had not been told to do—but,
on the other hand, had not been told not to—and walked barefooted in
the grass still cool and dewy under the trees. And they put on their
boots again and explored the park, and explored the stable-yard, where
a groom was rubbing bright the silver buckles of the harness and
whistling as he rubbed. They explored the stables and the harness-room
and the straw-loft and the hay-loft. And then they went back to the
park and climbed trees—a little way, because though they had always
known that they would climb trees if ever they had half a chance, they
had not, till now, had any chance at all.

And all the while they were doing all this they were looking—at the
back of their minds, even when they weren’t doing it with the part you
think with—for the garden.

And there wasn’t any garden!

That was the plain fact that they had to face after two hours of
sunshine and green out-of-doors.

‘And I’m certain mother said there was a garden,’ Caroline said,
sitting down suddenly on the grass; ‘a beautiful garden and a terrace.’

‘Perhaps the Uncle didn’t like it, and he’s had it made not garden
again—“Going back to Nature” that would be, like Aunt Emmeline talks
about,’ Charles suggested.

‘And it’s dreadful if there’s no garden,’ said Caroline, ‘because of
the flowers we were going to send in letters. Wild flowers don’t have
such deep meanings, I’m certain.’

‘And besides we haven’t seen any wild flowers,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh,
bother!’

‘Never mind,’ Charles said, ‘think of exploring the house—and finding
the book, perhaps. We’ll ask the Elegant One, when we go in, why there
isn’t a garden.’

‘We won’t wait till then,’ said Charlotte; ‘let’s go and ask that jolly
man who’s polishing the harness. He looked as if he wouldn’t mind us
talking to him.’

‘It was him drove us yesterday,’ Charles pointed out.

So they went as to an old friend. And when they asked William why
there wasn’t a garden he answered surprisingly and rather indignantly:

‘Ain’t they shown you, Miss? Not a garden? There ain’t a garden to beat
it hereabouts. Come on, I’ll show you.’

And, still more surprisingly, he led the way to the back door.

‘We aren’t to go indoors till dinner-time,’ said Caroline; ‘and
besides, we _should_ like to see the garden—if there really is one.’

‘Of course there is one, Miss,’ said William. ‘She’ll never see you if
you’re quick. She’ll be in her room by now—at her accounts and things.
And the Master’s never about in these back parts in the morning.’

‘I suppose it’s a lock-up garden and he’s going to get the key,’ said
Charles in a whisper. But William wasn’t.

He led them into a whitewashed passage that had cupboards and larders
opening out of it and ended in a green baize door. He opened this, and
there they were in the hall.

‘Quick,’ he said, and crossed it, unlatched another door and held it
open. ‘Come in quiet,’ he said, and closed the door again. And there
they all were in a little square room with a stone staircase going
down the very middle of it, like a well. There was a wooden railing
round three sides of the stairway, and nothing else in the room at all,
except William and the children.

‘A secret staircase,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, it can’t be, really. How
_lovely_!’

‘I daresay it was a secret once,’ said William, striking a match and
lighting a candle that stood at the top of the stairs in a brass
candlestick. ‘You see there wasn’t always these banisters, and you
can see that ridge along the wall. My grandfather says it used to be
boarded over and that’s where the joists went. They’d have a trap-door
or something over the stairway, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

‘But what’s the stair for?—Where does it _go_? Are we going down?’ the
children asked.

‘Yes, and sharp too. Nobody’s supposed to go this way except the
Master. But you’ll not tell on me. I’ll go first. Mind the steps, Miss.
They’re a bit wore at the edges, like.’

They minded the steps, going carefully down, following the blinking,
winking, blue and yellow gleam of the candle.

There were not many steps.

‘Straight ahead now,’ said William, holding the candle up to show the
groined roof of a long straight passage, built of stone, and with stone
flags for the floor of it.

‘How perfectly ripping!’ said Charlotte breathlessly. ‘It _is_
brickish of you to bring us here. Where does it go to?’

‘You wait a bit,’ said William, and went on. The passage ended in
another flight of steps—up this time,—and the steps ended in a door,
and when William had opened this every one blinked and shut their eyes,
for the doorway framed green leaves with blue sky showing through them,
and——

‘’Ere’s the garden,’ said William; and here, indeed, it was.

‘There’s another door the other end what the gardeners go in and out
of,’ said William. ‘I’ll get you a key sometime.’

The door had opened into a sort of arch—an arbour, for its entrance was
almost veiled by thick-growing shrubs.

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Caroline; ‘but when did they make this passage,
and what for?’

‘They made that passage when the folks in the house was too grand to
go through the stable-yard and too lazy to go round,’ said William.
‘There’s no stable-yard way now,’ he added. ‘So long! I must be getting
back, Miss. Don’t you let on as I brought you through.’

‘Of course not,’ every one said. Charles added, ‘But I didn’t know the
house was as old as secret passages in history times.’

‘It’s any age you please,’ said William; ‘the back parts is.’

He went back through the door, and the children went out through the
leafy screen in front, into the most beautiful garden that could be,
with a wall. I like unwalled gardens myself, with views from the
terraces. From this garden you could see nothing but tall trees and—the
garden itself.

The lower half was a vegetable garden arranged in squares with dwarf
fruit-trees and flower-borders round them, like the borders round
old-fashioned pocket-handkerchiefs. Then about half-way up the garden
came steps—stone balustrades, a terrace, and beyond that a flower
garden with smooth green turf paths, box-edged, a sundial in the
middle, and in the flower-beds flowers—more flowers than I could give
names to.

‘How perfectly perfect!’ Charlotte said.

‘I do wish I’d brought out my _Language Of_!’ said Caroline.

‘How awfully tidy everything is!’ said Charles in awe-struck tones.

It was.

There was nowhere an imperfect leaf, a deformed bud, or a misshapen
flower. Every plant grew straight and strong, and with an extraordinary
evenness.

‘They look like pictures of plants more than like real ones,’ said
Caroline quite truly.

An old gardener was sweeping the terrace steps, and gave the children
‘Good morning.’

They gave it back, and stayed to watch him. It seemed polite to say
something before turning away. So Caroline said:

‘How beautifully everything grows here.’

‘Ay,’ said the old man, ‘it do. Say perfect and you won’t be far out.’

‘It’s very clever of you,’ said Charlotte. ‘Ill weeds don’t grow in a
single place in _your_ garden.’

‘I don’t say as I don’t do something,’ said the old man, ‘but seems
as if there was a blessing on the place—everything thrives and grows
just-so. It’s the soil or the aspick, p’raps. I dunno. An’ I’ve noticed
things.’

‘What things?’ was the natural question.

‘Oh, just things,’ the gardener answered shortly, and swept away to the
end of the long steps.

‘I say’—Caroline went after him to do it—‘I say, may we pick the
flowers?’

‘In moderation,’ said the gardener, and went away.

‘I wonder what he’d call moderation,’ said Charles; and they discussed
this question so earnestly that the dinner-bell rang before they had
picked any flowers at all.

[Illustration: ‘How beautifully everything grows here.’]

The gate at the end of the garden was open, and they went out that way.
Over the gate was a stone with words and a date. They stopped to spell
out the carved letters:

    HERE BE DREAMES

         1589

    RESPICE FINEM.

Caroline copied the last two words in the grey-covered pocket-book; and
when Mrs. Wilmington came in to carve the mutton, Caroline asked what
the words meant.

‘I never inquired,’ said the housekeeper. ‘It must be quite out of date
now, whatever it meant once. But you must have been in the garden to
see that. How did you get in?’

An awkward question. There was nothing for it but to say:

‘By the secret passage.’ And Charles said it.

‘No one uses that but your uncle,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘and you were
requested to keep out of doors till dinner-time.’

She shut her mouth with a snap and went on carving.

‘Sorry,’ said Caroline.

‘Granted,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, but not cordially; and having placed
two slices of mutton on each plate went away.

‘It _is_ jolly having meals by ourselves,’ said Charlotte; ‘only I wish
she wasn’t cross.’

‘We ought to be extra manner-y, I expect, when we’re by ourselves,’
said Caroline. ‘May I pass you the salt, Charles?’

‘No, you mayn’t,’ said Charles. ‘Thank you, I mean; but there’s one at
each corner. That’s one each for us, and one over for——’

‘For _her_.’ Charlotte pointed to the picture of the dark-eyed,
fair-haired lady.

‘Let’s put a chair for her,’ said Charlotte, ‘and pretend she’s come to
dinner. Then we shall have to behave like grown-up people.’

‘I never can remember about behaving,’ said Charles wearily; ‘such a
lot of things—and none of them seem to matter. Why shouldn’t you drink
with your mouth full? It’s your own mouth.’

‘And eating peas with your knife. I think it would be as good as
conjuring, doing it without cutting yourself’—Charlotte tried to lift
the peas from her plate with her knife—‘let alone the balancing,’ she
added, as they rolled off among the mutton.

‘Don’t,’ said Caroline. ‘She’s looking at you. Charles, you’re the only
gentleman, worse luck—I wish I was a boy—put a chair for her.’

And a large green-seated chair, whose mahogany back was inlaid with a
brass scroll pattern, was wheeled to the empty space on the fourth side
of the table.

‘Now we must none of us look at her—in the picture, I mean. And then we
can’t be sure that she isn’t sitting in that chair,’ said Caroline.

After dinner Caroline looked up ‘Remorse’s regret’ in _The Language of
Flowers_. It was agreed that Mrs. Wilmington had better have a bouquet.

‘Brambles,’ Caroline said, her finger in the book, ‘they’re Remorse—but
they wouldn’t make a very comfortable nosegay. And Regret’s verbena,
and I don’t even know what it is.’

‘Put pansies with the brambles,’ said Charlotte; ‘that’ll be thoughts
of remorse.’

So the housekeeper, coming down very neat in her afternoon dress of
shiny black alpaca, was met by a bunch of pansies.

‘To show we think we’re remorsish about the secret stairs,’ said
Charlotte; ‘and look out, because the brambles are the remorse and they
prick like Billy-o!’

Mrs. Wilmington smiled, and looked quite nice-looking.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I am sure you will remember not to repeat the
fault.’

Which wasn’t the nicest way of receiving a remorse bouquet; but, then
as Charlotte said, perhaps she couldn’t help not knowing the nice
ways. And anyhow, she seemed pleased, and that was the great thing, as
Charlotte pointed out.

Then, having done something to please Mrs. Wilmington, they longed to
do something to please some one else, and the Uncle was the only person
they could think of doing anything to please.

‘Suppose we arranged all the books in the dining-room bookcase, in
colours,—all the reds together and all the greens, and the ugly ones
all on a shelf by themselves,’ Charlotte suggested. And the others
agreed. So that the afternoon flew by like any old bird, as Caroline
put it; and when tea came, and the floor and sofa and chairs were
covered with books, and one shelf was gay with red books and half a
shelf demure in green—

‘Your uncle isn’t coming in to-day,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘and I’m
sure it’s just as well. _What_ a mess! Here, let me put them back, and
go and wash your hands.’

‘We’ll put them back,’ the children said, but in vain. They had to go
to wash their hands, and Mrs. Wilmington continued to put the books
back all the time they were having tea. Patiently and carefully she did
it, not regarding the colours at all, and her care and her patience
seemed to say, more loudly than any words she could have spoken, ‘Yes;
there you sit, having your nice tea, and I cannot have _my_ tea,
because I have to clear up after you. But I do not complain. No.’

They would have much rather she had complained, of course. But they
couldn’t say so.




CHAPTER IV

IN THESSALONIANS


Now you may say it was Chance, or you may say it was Fate; or you may
say it was Destiny, or Fortune; in fact, you may say exactly what you
choose. But the fact remains unaltered by your remarks.

When Mrs. Wilmington placed a fat brown volume of sermons on the shelf
and said, ‘There, that’s the last,’ she, quite without meaning it, said
what was not true. For when tea was over the children found that the
fat sermon-book had _not_ been the last. The last was _Shadoxhurst on
Thessalonians_, a dull, large book, and Mrs. Wilmington had not put it
back in its place because she had not seen it. It was, in fact, lying
on the floor, hidden by the table-cloth. If Charles had not happened to
want his handkerchief, and gone down to look for it on the floor—its
usual situation when it was needed—they would not have seen the book
either.

Charles picked up _Thessalonians_, and the cover ‘came off in his
hand,’ as the handles of cups do in the hands of washing-up maids.

What was inside the cover fell on the floor with a thump, and Caroline
picked _that_ up.

‘_Shadoxhurst on Thessalonians_,’ Charles read from the cover.

‘This isn’t,’ said Caroline, looking at what had been inside. ‘It’s—I
say! Suppose it was the book—’

She looked up at the picture.

It was certainly _like_ the painted book.

‘Only it hasn’t any brass clasps,’ said Caroline; ‘but look—it _used_
to have clasps. You can see the marks where they used to go.’

You could.

‘Glory!’ cried Charlotte. ‘Fancy finding it the very first day! Let’s
take it to Uncle Charles.’

‘Perhaps it isn’t it,’ suggested Charlotte. ‘Then he’d be furious
perhaps.’

‘We’ll soon see.’ Charles reached out a hand. ‘Let’s have a squint. It
ought to be all magic and Abracadabra and crossed triangles like in
_Ingoldsby Legends_.’

‘I’ll have first look any way,’ said Caroline. ‘I found it.’

‘I found it,’ said Charles. ‘You only picked it up.’

‘You only dropped it. Oh, _bother_——’ she had opened the book, and now
let her hands fall, still holding it.

‘Bother what?’ asked the others.

‘It isn’t English. It’s French or Latin or something. Isn’t that _just_
like things! Here, you can look.’

Charles took the book. ‘It’s Latin,’ he said. ‘I could read it if
I knew a little more Latin. I can read some of it as it is. I know
_quam_, or _apud_, and _rara_. Let’s take it to the Uncle.’

‘Oh _no_,’ said Caroline. ‘Let’s find out what it is, first.’

It was not easy to find out. The title-page was missing, and _quam_,
_apud_, and _rara_, though quite all right in their way, gave but
little clue to what the book was about.

‘I wish we’d some one we could ask,’ said Charles. ‘I don’t suppose the
Wilmington knows any Latin. I don’t suppose she knows even _apud_ and
_quam_ and _rara_. If we had the Murdstone chap handy he could tell us,
I suppose.’

‘I’m glad we haven’t,’ Charlotte said. ‘I don’t suppose he’d tell us.
And he’d take it away. I say. I suppose there’s a church somewhere
near. And a clergyman. _He’d_ know.’

‘Of course he would,’ Caroline said with returning brightness. ‘Let’s
go and ask him.’

Half an hour later the children, coming down a deep banked lane, saw
before them the grey tower of the church, with elm-trees round it,
standing among old gravestones and long grass.

A white faced house stood on the other side of the churchyard.

‘I suppose the clergyman lives there,’ said Caroline. ‘Please,’
she said to a pleasant-looking hook-nosed man who was mending the
churchyard wall, and whistling ‘Blow away the morning dew’ as he
slapped on the mortar and trimmed off the edges with a diamond-shaped
trowel, ‘please, does the clergyman live in that house?’

‘He does,’ said the man with the trowel. ‘Do you want him?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Caroline.

‘Well, here he is,’ said the man with the trowel. ‘What can I do for
you?’

‘Do you mean to say that you’re _It_?—the clergyman, I mean,—I beg your
pardon,’ said Caroline; and the man with the trowel said, ‘At your
service.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Caroline again, very red as to her ears. ‘I
thought you were a working man.’

‘So I am, thank God,’ said the man with the trowel. ‘You see we haven’t
much money to spare. The parish is so poor. So we do any little
repairs ourselves. Did you ever set a stone? It’s awfully jolly. The
mortar goes on so nicely, and squeezes out pleasantly. Like to try?’ he
asked Charles.

Of course they all liked to try. And it was not till each had laid a
stone and patted it into place, and scraped off the mortar, and got
thoroughly dusty and dirty and comfortable, that any one remembered why
they had come.

‘Oh, this?’ said the clergyman—for so I must call him, though anything
less clergyman-like than he looked in his mortar-stained flannels and
blue blazer you can’t imagine. ‘It looks interesting. Latin,’ he said,
opening it carefully, for his hands were very dirty.

‘Yes,’ said Charles with modest pride. ‘I told them it was. I saw
_rara_ and _quam_ and _apud_.’

‘Quite so,’ said the clergyman; ‘_rara_, _quam_, and _apud_. Words of
Power.’

‘Oh, do _you_ know about Words of Power?’

‘Rather! Do you?’

‘Rather!’ they said. And if anything had been needed to cement this new
friendship well, there it was.

‘Look here,’ said the clergyman. ‘If you’ll just wait while I wash my
hands I’ll walk up with you. And I’ll look through the book and
report to you to-morrow.’

[Illustration: Of course they all liked to try.]

‘But what’s it about?’

‘About?’ said he, turning the leaves delicately with the least mortared
of his fingers. ‘Oh, it’s about spells and charms and things.’

‘How perfectly too lovely,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, do read us _one_—just
only _one_.’

‘Right O,’ was the response of this unusual clergyman, and he read:
‘“The seed of the fern if pulverised”—pounded—smashed, you know,—“and
laid upon the eyes at the twelfth hour”—midnight, you know—at least I
think that’s it—“last before the feast of St. John”—that’s to-morrow by
the way—“shall give to the eyes thus doctored”—treated—dealt with, you
know,—“the power to see that which is not to be seen.” It means you’ll
see invisible things. I say I _must_ wash. I feel the dirt soaking into
my bones. Will you wait?’

The children looked at each other. Then Charlotte said:

‘Look here. Don’t think we don’t like you. We do—awfully. But if you
walk up with us will you feel bound to tell uncle about the book?
Because it’s a secret. He’s looking for a book, and we think perhaps
this is it. But we don’t want to tell him till we’re quite sure.’

‘I found it inside Somebody-or-other-quite-dull on Thessalonians, you
know,’ said Charles, ‘and I saw it was Latin because of _quam_ and——’

‘My dear sir—and ladies,’ said the agreeable clergyman, ‘I am the
soul of honour. I would perish at the stake before I would reveal a
centimetre of your least secret. Trust me to the death.’

And off he went.

‘What a different clergyman,’ said Charles; ‘he is just like anybody
else—only nicer.’

‘He said thank God,’ Caroline reminded him; ‘he said it like being in
church too, not like cabmen and people in the street.’

‘He said “Thank God he was a working man,”’ said Charlotte. ‘I wonder
what he meant.’

‘I shall ask him some day,’ said Caroline, ‘when we know him better.’

But any one who had met the party as they went talking and laughing up
the hill would have thought they had known each other for long enough,
and could hardly know each other any better than they did.

       *       *       *       *       *

Charles was dreaming of mortaring the Murdstone man securely into a
first-class railway carriage, and tapping him on the head with a brass
trowel which was also a candlestick, when he was awakened by a pinch
given gently. At the same moment a hand was laid on his mouth, and a
whisper said:

‘Hist!—not a word.’

‘Shut up,’ said Charles, recognising at once the voice of his sister
Charlotte. ‘I’m asleep. Don’t be a duffer. Go to bed.’

‘No, but,’ said Charlotte in the dark, ‘Caroline and I have been
talking about the fern-seed. And we’re going to try it—putting it on
our eyes, I mean. To see whether we can see invisible things.’

‘Silly,’ said Charles briefly.

‘All right. Only don’t say we didn’t ask you to join in.’

‘There isn’t any fern-seed,’ objected Charles.

‘Yes, there is. Mrs. Wilmington’s got some in the room they call the
housekeeper’s room. Under a bell-glass. Stupid little ferns; but I
expect the seed’s all right. Caro saw them when she went in to ask the
Wilmington if we might get up at seven instead of half-past because
of everything being so new and lovely. She meant because of the
charm-book, of course. And she saw the ferns then.’

‘Are you _really_ going to?’ asked Charles, warm in bed.

‘_Yes_,’ said Charlotte in a take-it-or-leave-it tone.

‘Oh, very well,’ said Charles; ‘only don’t forget I told you it was
silly rot. And of course nothing will happen. I was right about the
Latin, you know.’

‘Here’s your dressing-gown,’ said Charlotte, who had been feeling for
it in the mahogany wardrobe. ‘You can scrabble for your shoes with your
feet; I suppose they’re beside the bed. Hurry up.’

Charles got up, grumbling gently. It was not to be expected that he
would feel the same about this wild fern-seed idea as his sisters, who
had thought and talked of nothing else for more than three hours, and
had had to pinch each other to keep awake. Still, he got up, and they
all went down to Mrs. Wilmington’s room, which was warm and seemed
full of antimacassars, china ornaments, and cheerfully-bound copies of
the poets—the kind that are given for birthday presents and prizes,
beautiful outside, and inside very small print on thin paper that lets
the printing on the other side show through. Charlotte found this out
as they waited, by the light of their one candle, for it to be twelve
o’clock.

Caroline was plucking fronds of fern, carefully, so that the lack of
them should not disfigure the plants.

‘It’s all duffing,’ said Charles. ‘Don’t forget I said so. And how are
you going to pound the beastly stuff? You’ll wake the Wilmington and
the Uncle and the whole lot if you pound.’

‘I thought,’ said Caroline, hesitating with the fern-fronds in her
hand, and her little short pig-tail sticking out like a saucepan
handle, as Charles put it later, ‘I thought—it sounds rather nasty, but
it isn’t really, you know, if you remember it’s all _you_—I thought we
might _chew_ them. Each do our own, you know, and put them on our eyes
like a poultice. I know you hated it when Aunt Emmeline chewed the lily
leaves and put them on your thumb when you burnt it,’ she told Charles,
‘but then _her_ chewing is quite different from you doing it.’

‘_I_ don’t care,’ said Charles; ‘it’s only a bit more of your nonsense.
Give us the beastly seeds.’

‘They won’t come off the leaves,’ said Caroline. ‘We shall have to chew
the lot.’

‘In for a penny, in for a sheep,’ said Charlotte cheerfully. ‘I mean we
may as well be hanged for a pound as a lamb. I mean——’

‘_I_ know what you mean,’ Caroline interrupted. ‘Here you are. It’s
just on twelve. Chew for all you’re worth, and when the Wilmington’s
clock begins to strike put it on your eyes. And when it’s struck six
of them take it off. Yes. I’ve thought about it all. I’m sure that’s
right. Now, then, chew.’

‘I hope it’s not poison,’ said Charles; ‘you’ll remember I told you——’

‘Of course it isn’t,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ve often licked ferns, and I’m
not dead. I say—I daresay nothing will happen—but think how silly we
should feel if we hadn’t tried it. And this is the only night. He said
so.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Charles. ‘At any rate, if we do it you can’t be
always saying we ought to have.’

‘Chew,’ said Charlotte; and the clock began to strike.

‘One, two, three, four, five, six,’ said Mrs. Wilmington’s highly
ornamented pink china clock; and each child thrust a little bunch of
fern fronds into its mouth.

‘Seven,’ said the clock.

‘Now,’ said Caroline.

And each child.... But you picture the scene.

‘Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, purr,’ said the clock, and said no
more.

‘I don’t like to take it off,’ said Charlotte, her hands to her eyes.
‘Suppose we _did_ see something.’

‘We shan’t,’ said Charles.

‘You must,’ said Caroline.

‘Oh, well,’ said Charlotte, and took away the little poultice of chewed
fern from each eye.

‘There’s nothing,’ she said.

‘I knew there wouldn’t be,’ said Charles. ‘Perhaps another time you’ll
know I’m right.’

‘Never mind,’ said Caroline. ‘We did it. So we can’t keep bothering
about what might have happened if we had. Let’s go to bed. It was
decent of you to try, Charles, when you didn’t want to so much—Oh!’

‘What?’ said the others.

‘Poisoned,’ said Charles gloomily. ‘I knew it wasn’t safe. I expect you
chewed harder than we did, and—Oh!’

Charlotte had already said her ‘Oh.’ And now all three children were
staring straight before them at the window. And there, where a moment
ago was just black bare outside night, was a face—a white face with
wide dark eyes.

‘It’s true,’ gasped Caroline, ‘it is true—the fern-seed does——’

‘It’s not true,’ said Charles stoutly, his eyes on the face.

‘Oh, but it is,’ said Charlotte. ‘Oh, what’s going to happen now?’

And each child felt that the fern-seed had done what no one had, in
the deep heart, believed that it would do, and that their eyes now
gazed—seeing—upon the unseen.

‘I wish we hadn’t,’ said Charles. ‘I told you not to.’

The lips of the face outside moved, as though it were speaking.

‘No,’ cried Charlotte. ‘I don’t _want_ it to be true.’

A hand was raised—a hand outside the window. Would it knock at the
window? The fern-seed only made you see the unseen, not hear the
unheard. If the hand knocked at the window—and plainly it was going to
knock,—if the hand knocked, would they hear it?

The hand knocked.

[Illustration: A hand was raised.]




CHAPTER V

THE MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE


Now, the fern-seed was only warranted to show the invisible, not to
make the unhearable heard. If there should be no sound when that
raised hand tapped at the window, then the children would know that
the fern-seed was doing what it was warranted to do by the Latin book.
If, on the other hand, the hand tapped and made, in tapping, the usual
noise produced by a common tapper, then one of two things might be
true. Either the fern-seed was stronger than the Latin book bargained
for, and was able to make people hear the unhearable even if they did
not cover their ears with the charm that had covered their eyes, or
else the fern-seed spell was all nonsense and the face outside the
window was a real person’s face and the hand was a real person’s hand,
and the tap that was coming on the window was a really-tap that would
sound hard and rattly on the glass of the window, as taps sound when
fingers of bone and flesh make them.

All the children felt quite sure that they were not at all sure whether
they wanted the face to be the face of a real person, or whether they
wished it to be the Invisible made visible by fern-seed. But when the
hand tapped at the window and a sound came to the children within—a
sound quite distinct, and just the noise you or I might make if we
tapped at a window and didn’t want every one in the house to hear
us—the children, though startled, no longer felt any doubt as to what
they wished that face to be.

‘It’s only a real person,’ whispered Charles, and sighed deeply.

‘It’s only a boy,’ said Caroline. ‘What does he want?’

‘It’s that Rupert chap we saw in the train,’ said Charlotte.

Every one breathed much more freely, and they all smiled and nodded
towards the window; and the face nodded back, but it did not smile.

‘He must have run away,’ said Charles, ‘like I told him to.’

‘It wasn’t you; it was me,’ said Charlotte promptly.

‘I like this much better than its being invisible people,’ said
Charles, changing the subject a little. ‘This is something _like_ an
adventure.’

‘We shouldn’t have had it without coming down for the fern-seed,’
Caroline reminded him. And again they all nodded and smiled. The face
outside moved its lips. It was saying something, but they could not
hear what it said.

‘It _is_ that Rupert boy,’ Caroline insisted; ‘and he’s run away to
_us_. What larks!’

And again she nodded, and so did Charles. But Charlotte said, ‘Don’t
let’s go on nodding like Chinese pagodas. Of course, it wants to come
in.’ And at once the others saw that this was the case.

‘He can’t get in here,’ Charlotte said; and, indeed, to have moved
that table on which the fern-filled bell-glass stood surrounded by
unhappy-looking little ferns in little dry pots, with bits of old
tumbler arched protectively over them, would have been dangerous, and
probably noisy. And, unless they removed the ferny difficulties, it was
quite plain that the window could not be opened.

‘The morning-room is next door—Mrs. Wilmington called it that,’ said
Caroline. ‘It’s a French window. She said so. It opens all right. I
know how the fastenings go.’

‘Why “French”?’ asked Charlotte, eager for information even at that
exciting moment, while Caroline was trying to explain to the face by
signs that if it would just go along till it came to a French window it
would find some one ready to let it in. ‘Why “French”?’

‘Because it’s like a door,’ said Charles, joining in the sign-message.
‘Everything in France is the opposite of here. They say “we” for “yes,”
and “two” is “you,” and “four” is an “oven.” Silly, I call it.’

‘Hush!’ whispered Caroline. ‘Tread softly, and don’t tumble over the
wolf-skins.’

Candle-bearing, the little procession passed along to the morning-room.
The face had understood the signs. At any rate, there it was, framed in
glass panes; and when the French window, which was, indeed, just like a
door, was opened, there was the face, as well as the hands, arms, legs,
body, and feet, of Rupert, the platform boy, or somebody exactly like
him.

‘Come in,’ said Caroline, holding the door open. And Charlotte added,
‘Fear nothing! We will baffle your pursuers. We are yours to the death.’

He came in, a drooping dusty figure, and the French window, which had
permitted itself to be opened with the most gentle and noiseless
submission, now, in closing, uttered what was little less than a
tactless squawk.

‘Fly!’ whispered Caroline, swiftly turning the handle that fastened it.
‘But your boots will betray us.’

Flight was the only thing, you see, and they had to risk the boots.
Yet Rupert in his flight was noiseless as the others, who were all
bath-slippered, and therefore shod with—if you were only reasonably
careful and looked where you were going—the shoes of silence.

When the whole party was safe in Charles’s room, with the door shut,
they blew out the candles and stood holding each other and their
breaths as they listened in the dark for what they fully expected to
hear—the opening click of Mrs. Wilmington’s lock, the opening creak of
Mrs. Wilmington’s door, the approaching rustle of Mrs. Wilmington’s
gown, the mincing amazement of Mrs. Wilmington’s voice.

But all was still—still as the inside of a palm-house, which, as no
doubt you know, is very much quieter than most of the few quiet places
in this noisy world.

The four fugitives let their breaths go cautiously, and again held
them. And still the silence wrapped them round, thick and unbroken as
the darkness in which they stood.

‘It’s all right,’ whispered Caroline at last. ‘Light up.’

Fortunately, each silver candlestick had its box of safety-matches in
a silver holder fastened to its handle by a silver chain. This does
happen in really well-managed houses. The candles were lighted.

‘We are saved,’ said Charlotte dramatically.

‘You came up like a mouse,’ said Caroline to Rupert,—‘a quiet mouse.’

It was then seen that Rupert’s boots were not on his feet, but in his
hand, very muddy, and tied together by frayed boot-laces.

‘I took them off,’ he explained, ‘when I got into your park. My feet
hurt so, and the grass was so soft and jolly. Oh, I am so tired—and
hungry!’ His voice broke a little, and if he had not been a boy I think
he would have cried.

‘Get on to the bed,’ said Charlotte, with eager friendliness, ‘and lie
down. You be a wounded warrior and we’ll be an Arab oasis that you’ve
come to. That’s the tent of the sheikh,’ she added, as Charles gave the
weary Rupert a ‘leg up’ and landed him among the billows of the vast
feather-bed. ‘Repose there, weary but honoured stranger. Though but
humble Arabs, we are hospitable to strangers. We will go and slay a
desert deer for you.’

‘There are lots of biscuits in the sideboard in the dining-room,’ said
Caroline. ‘I’ll stay with the wounded—or else you can stay and I’ll go
with whichever doesn’t.’

Though it was the middle of the night no one even thought of being
sleepy. Perhaps it was the excitement of this most real adventure, or
perhaps the seeds of the fern have an awakening effect. At any rate,
the three C.’s were as ready to begin a new game as though it had been
ten o’clock in the morning of the first day of the holidays, instead of
half-past twelve of a night that wasn’t any night in particular except
the Eve of St. John.

Charlotte and Charles set off, important and tip-toeing, on a
biscuit-hunt, and Caroline, like a good little nurse, fetched a basin
and sponge and washed the face of the stranger, taking no notice of his
objections that he was not a baby, and earnestly hoping that in her
long dressing-gown she looked at least a little like an Arab maiden
ministering to a Feringhee warrior.

‘Now I’m going to wash your weary feet, if you will stick them out over
the side of the bed,’ she said. ‘They always do in Saracen countries;
and if you think it’s like a baby I’ll call it dressing your wounds.’

She brought a chair and a basin of water very carefully, and a big
sponge, and then she peeled off Rupert’s stockings and bathed his
tired, swollen feet with great care and gentleness. And if a little of
the water did go on the bed—well, you can’t think of everything all in
a minute, and she did put a towel under his legs afterwards.

‘That’s jolly,’ said the wounded knight, more graciously.

‘You are terribly wounded,’ said Caroline comfortingly. ‘You must
have been fighting dragons or walking over red-hot ploughshares, or
perhaps it was a pilgrimage with peas in your shoes. We play pilgrims
sometimes, with cockles in our hats and pilgrims’ staffs—only we always
pretend the peas. I think it’s quite fair to pretend the shoes, don’t
you?’

When the others came back from their hunting, with a good ‘bag’ (it was
a tin, really) of biscuits, the Saracen maiden greeted them with—

‘Hist! The stranger sleeps. Let’s pretend he’s fainted, and we’ll rouse
him with a skin of wine. Get some water in the tooth-mug. And where are
the biscuits?’

‘We might as well have turbans,’ said Charlotte, hastily twining a
bath-towel round her head. ‘All really Arab maidens are turbaned
Turks.’

‘Let’s make it more tent-like before we wake him,’ Charles suggested,
drawing the curtains round two sides of the four-poster; ‘and we might
put the candles out of sight and pretend they’re Arabian knights’
lanterns.’

‘Or put them in a line on the chest, and let them be the sun rising
over the sands of the desert,’ said Charlotte, putting the three
candlesticks in a row.

When all was arranged, the three towel-turbaned children climbed into
the tent and looked at the wounded knight, who lay asleep, looking very
tired indeed, his feet still wrapped in the towel and his head half
fallen off the pillow.

‘Let him sleep a little longer,’ said Caroline, ‘ere we rouse him to
eat of the flesh of the deer which my brothers have brought to the
wigwam for the benefit of the poor pale-face.’

‘We’re not Indians, silly,’ said Charlotte. ‘We’re Arabs, and I could
do with a bit of the flesh of the deer myself, if you come to that.’

‘So could I,’ said Charles, his turban over one eye. ‘It’s jolly not
being asleep. They say you get sleepy and cross if they let you sit
up—but look at us.’

‘Yes, look at us,’ the others agreed, and ate the best mixed biscuits
in a contented silence, broken only by the sound of crunching.

The familiar sensation of biscuit in the mouth seemed somehow to calm
the excitement of the three C.’s.

The adventures of the night, which had seemed, as they happened, not so
very wonderful, now began to appear more surprising, and at the same
time more real. And the silence which biscuit-eating demands (unless
you are prepared to behave really badly and talk with your mouth full
and have the crumbs all over the place) was favourable to reflection—a
friend to thought.

‘Do you know,’ said Caroline at last—‘pass the mug, please—do you know,
I don’t at all know what we’re going to do with him.’

‘_I_ was just thinking that,’ said Charlotte.

‘So was I,’ said Charles.

‘But I’ve been thinking——’

‘So have I,’ said the other two together.

‘What?’ asked Caroline, stopping short.

‘What you have,’ said Charlotte, and Charles repeated her words.

‘Then I needn’t tell you what I thought,’ said Caroline briefly.

I think they were all getting, perhaps, a little sleepy—or the effect
of the fern-seed was wearing off.

‘Oh, don’t be crabby,’ Charlotte said. ‘We only meant we didn’t see
what on earth we could do with him. I suppose he must sleep with
Charles. There’s lots of room.’ She leaned back on a pillowy bunch of
featherbed and closed her eyes.

‘No, you don’t,’ said Caroline firmly, pulling her sister up again into
a sitting position by a limp arm. ‘I could go to sleep myself if it
comes to that. Take your turban off. It’ll cool your sleepiness.’

‘I said’—Charlotte spoke very slowly and distinctly, as people do when
they are so sleepy they aren’t quite sure whether they can speak at
all—‘I said, “Let him sleep with Charles.”’

‘Oh yes!’ said Caroline. ‘And be found in the morning when they call
us, and taken alive and delivered back to the Murdstone man. No, we
must hide him, and wake him before they call us. I can always wake up
if I bang my head the right number of times on the pillow before I go
to sleep.’

Charlotte was nodding happily.

‘Get up!’ said Caroline, exasperated. ‘Get up! Get down! Get off the
bed and stand on your feet. Now, then, Charles!’

But Charles was deeply slumbering, with his mouth very much more open
than it ought to have been.

‘That’s it!’ said Caroline, as Charlotte responded to her pull. ‘That’s
it. It’s just you and me! Women always have to do the work of the
world! Aunt Emmeline said so once. She said it’s not “Men must work and
women must weep”; it’s “Men must talk and women must work.” Come on and
give me a hand.’

‘All right. I’m awake now,’ said Charlotte cheerfully. ‘I’ve been
biting my tongue all that awful time you’ve been talking. What’s the
idea?’

‘We’ll make him an upper berth, like in ships,’ Caroline explained,
‘and then we’ll wake him up and water him and biscuit him and explain
things, and get Charles into bed and all traces concealed. It’ll be
just you and me that did it. That’s glory, you know.’

‘Oh, _do_ stop talking,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’ll do anything you like,
only stop talking.’

There was a great mahogany wardrobe in the room, with a mahogany
hanging-cupboard at each side, and between the mahogany cupboards a
space with mahogany drawers below and mahogany shelves above. And the
shelves were like shallow drawers or deep trays, and you could pull
them in and out. There was nothing on the shelves but clean white
paper, and on each shelf a little bag made of white muslin and filled
with dried lavender, which smelt very sweet through the fine mesh of
the muslin.

The girls took out two of the trays and hid them under the bed. This
left as much space above the lowest tray and the highest as they leave
you on a steamer between the upper and lower berths. The girls made up
a shake-down bed with blankets and pillows, and when all was ready they
woke the boys gently and firmly by a damp sponge on the forehead and a
hand over the mouth in case the sleeper should wake up yelling.

But both boys woke quietly. Charles had just enough wakefulness to
submit to being got out of his overcoat and slippers and bundled into
bed, but Rupert was thoroughly awake—ate biscuit, drank water, and
understood exactly where and how he was to spend what was left of the
night, as well as why he was to spend it there and thus.

He got into the wardrobe by means of a chair. The girls took away the
chair and almost shut the doors of the wardrobe.

‘We’ll have a grand council to-morrow,’ said Charlotte. ‘Don’t be
anxious. Just remember we’re yours to the death, like I told you on the
platform.’

‘It was _me_ said that,’ said Charles, almost in his sleep.

‘And don’t move out of here, whatever you do,’ said Caroline. ‘I shall
come quite early, and we’ll hide you somewhere. I expect I shall think
of something in my sleep. I often do. Good night.’

‘Good night,’ said Rupert, in the wardrobe. ‘I say! You are bricks—and
you won’t let them catch me?’

‘Of course not,’ said the three C.’s confidently. (Charles said it
quite in his sleep.)

Five minutes later the others were sleeping as soundly as Charles, and
out Tonbridge way the Murdstone man and his groom and his gardener and
the local Police were still looking for Rupert with anxious feelings,
with lanterns that flickered yellow in the pale grey of dawn.

[Illustration: ‘Just remember we’re yours to the death.’]




CHAPTER VI

HUNTED


I don’t know exactly how it happened. Perhaps Caroline was too sleepy
to bump her head seven times on the pillow before she went to sleep.
Or perhaps that excellent spell cannot always be relied upon to work.
At any rate, none of the children woke till Jane came to draw up the
blinds and let the half-past seven sunshine into their rooms.

Then Caroline woke quite thoroughly, looked at her little watch, and
leaped out of bed.

‘What’s the hurry, Miss?’ asked Jane, as Caroline stood, a little
unsteadily, in the middle of the room, rubbing her eyes and yawning.
‘It hasn’t but just gone the half-hour.’

‘I was dreaming,’ said Caroline; and when Jane was gone she shook
Charlotte and said, ‘I say! _Did_ anything happen last night?’

‘No,’ said Charlotte, behaving like a dormouse.

Caroline caught up her dressing-gown and crept along to Charles’s room.
He was sitting up in bed, looking wildly at the wardrobe. Its doors
were open, and there was nothing on the shelves (which were all in
their proper places) except clean paper and little bags of lavender
that smelt sweet through their white muslin veils.

‘Whatever’s happened?’ asked Caroline, fearing the worst.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Charles, rather crossly. ‘Only I had a silly dream,
and when I woke up I thought it was true, and of course it wasn’t.’

‘_I_ thought it was a dream, too, when I first woke. And Charlotte says
nothing happened last night. What did you dream?’

He told her a little.

‘But I dreamed all that, too,’ said Caroline anxiously. ‘About the
fern-seed and Rupert, and our playing Arab Saracens and hunting the
biscuits. We _couldn’t_ both dream the same thing. Where did you put
the biscuits in your dream—what was left of them?’

‘You put them on the dressing-table.’

‘Well, they aren’t there now,’ said she.

‘Then it _was_ a dream,’ said he; ‘and we both dreamed it.’

The two looked at each other blankly.

‘I dreamed I dressed his wounds—sponged his feet, I mean,’ she added,
after a pause full of doubt. ‘The mud was thick—if it wasn’t a dream
it’ll be in the basin.’

But Jane knew her duty too well for there to be anything in the basin
except a bright brass can of hot water with a clean towel laid neatly
across it.

‘Well, the fern-seed did something, anyhow, if it only made us both
dream like that,’ said Caroline. But Charles wanted to know how she
knew they hadn’t dreamed the fern-seed as well.

‘Oh, you get dressed,’ said his sister shortly, and went to her own
dressing.

Charlotte, when really roused, owned that she remembered Rupert’s
coming. But, if he had come, he had gone and left no trace. And it is
rare for boys to do that.

The children agreed that it must have been a dream, after the eating
of the fern-seed, for all of them, for some reason that I can’t
understand, agreed that the fern-seed eating, at any rate, was real.

Breakfast seemed less interesting than usual, and when, after the meal,
Mrs. Wilmington minced a request to them to go out for the morning,
‘the same as you were requisted to do yisterday,’ they went with slow
footsteps and boots strangely weighty.

‘Let’s get out of sight of the house,’ said Charlotte heavily.

They went away beyond the shrubbery, to the wood where there were
oak-trees and hazels and dog-wood and silver birches and here and there
a black yew, with open bracken-feathered glades between. Here they
found a little glade between a honeysuckle and a sweet chestnut and a
hazel thicket, flattened the bracken, and sat down amid the sweet scent
of it.

‘To hold a council about the wonderful dream we’ve all of us had,’ said
Caroline slowly.

But the council, if it could be called one, was brief and languid.

‘I’d rather think first,’ said Caroline. And the others said so would
they.

‘I could think better with my head on your lap, Caro,’ Charles said.

And Charlotte murmured, ‘Bunch the fern up closer under my back, Caro.’

And when the sun came over the top of the sweet chestnut it fell upon a
warm and comfortable heap of children asleep.

You really can’t stay up all night, or even dream that you stay up,
and then hold important councils next day just as though nothing had
happened.

When the children awoke, because the sun had crept up over the sweet
chestnut and was shining straight into their eyes, everything looked
different and much more interesting.

‘I tell you what,’ said Charlotte. ‘Let’s do fern-seed again.’

‘It’s only on the eve of——’ Charles began, but Charlotte interrupted.

‘The seed goes on when once you’ve planted it—chewed it, I mean. I’m
certain it does. If we don’t _see_ anything, we may _dream_ something
more.’

‘There wouldn’t be time for a really thick dream before dinner,’
Charles objected.

‘Never mind! Let’s try. If we are late for dinner we’d tell the truth
and say that we fell asleep in the woods. There’s such heaps of fern
here it would be simply silly not to try.’

There was something in this. Fern-seed was chewed once more. Bracken, I
have heard really well-educated people say, is not a fern at all, but
it seemed a fern to them. And it certainly did its best to act up to
what was expected of it. For when the three removed the little green
damp pads from their eyes and blinked at the green leaves, there in the
thick of them was Rupert, looking at them between the hazel thicket and
the honeysuckle—a real live Rupert, and no dream-nonsense about him.

‘_Was_ it a dream last night?’ they all asked him, in an eager chorus.
‘When you came to the window?’

‘Of course it wasn’t,’ he said flatly. ‘Only I was so afraid of being
nabbed. So I got out early and put the shelves back and the pillows on
the bed, and I took the biscuits; I thought you wouldn’t mind——’

‘Not a bit. Rather not’—chorus of polite hospitality.

‘And I got out of your dressing-room window and down the ivy; it was
quite easy. And I cut across the grass and in under those fancy sort of
fir-trees, the ones that drag their branches—you know—in the avenue.
And I saw you come out, but the place was all thick with gardeners and
people. So I waited till their dinner-bell rang, and then I crept out
here, and I was just going to say “Hi!” when you stuck that green stuff
on your eyes. It looks nasty. What did you do it for?’

They told him.

‘That’s rummy,’ he said, sitting among them quite at his ease, with one
hand in his pocket. ‘Because I knew fern-seed _made_ you invisible—it
says so in Shakespeare, you know,—and I ate a bit coming along, just
on the chance it might be some good—so that no one should see me,
you know—and nobody _did_ till you did. So,’ he went on more slowly,
‘perhaps I was _really_ invisible until you put the fern-seed on your
eyes.’

‘What a perfectly splendid idea!’ cried Charlotte. ‘Because that makes
it all true. We were most awfully sick when we thought it had only just
made us dream. I say! Do, now, do tell us how you ran away and why—and
what you’re going to do, and everything.’

‘I thought,’ Rupert answered carelessly, ‘of running away to sea. But
it’s a long way to the coast. I would much rather stop here with you.
Couldn’t you hide me in a log-hut or something, like a runaway slave?
Just till they stopped looking for me. And I could write to my father
in India and ask him to let me stay here instead of with old Mug’s
brother. Couldn’t you hide me till the answer came?’

‘We could try,’ said Charles, a little doubtfully.

But Charlotte said, ‘Of course we can—we will! Only, why are you so
different? You seem miles older than you were when we saw you on the
platform.’

‘_You’d_ look miles older if you’d locked your master in his study
and then done a bunk—and been running and hiding for half a day and a
night,’ said Rupert, a little crossly.

‘But what did he _do_ to you?’ they asked.

‘Well, you saw what he was like in the train.’

‘But you seemed so frightened of him. I wonder you dared to run away.’

‘That wasn’t funk—in the train. That was just suppressed fury,’ Rupert
explained tranquilly. ‘I was wondering where I should run to if I had
to run. And then I did have to run—like Billy-o! And when I saw the
name on a sign-post I remembered what you’d said about “true to the
death”—and I kept behind the hedges, because I wasn’t sure about the
fern-seed being any good, and I got up a tree and I saw you go by, and
when you came back with the parson I just followed on quietly till I
got to outside your house. I hoped you’d come out, but you didn’t. And
I hid under one of those fancy firs, and then, I suppose, I went to
sleep, and when I woke up there was a light in a window, and I went
towards it, stupid, like a bird. You know how sparrows come out of the
ivy if you show a light?’

They didn’t.

‘Well, they do. And then I saw you monkeying about. I _was_ glad, I
tell you. And I tapped on the window, and—you know the rest,’ he ended,
like a hero in a book.

‘But what did the Murdstone man _do_ to you?’ Charlotte insisted on
knowing.

‘He was playing up for a row from the very first,’ said Rupert; ‘and
when we got to his beastly house that night’—Rupert lowered his voice
and spoke in a tone of deep disgust and bitterness—‘he gave me bread
and milk to eat. Bread and milk—with a teaspoon! And when I said I’d
rather not, he said I must learn to eat what was set before me. And he
talked about discipline and showed me a cane. He said he was glad there
were no other little boys there—little boys!—because he could devote
himself entirely to breaking me in.’

‘Beast!’ said Charlotte.

‘He thought I was a muff of a white rabbit,’ said Rupert; ‘but he knows
the difference now.’

I hope you will not think base scorn of Charles and Caroline when I own
that they were both feeling a little uncomfortable in the presence of
this young desperado. Fern-seed is all very well, and so is the idea
of running away from school, but that any master should really be so
piglike as to make running away necessary—this came too near to the
really terrible for them to feel quite easy about it.

‘He must be like the Spanish Inquisition,’ said Charlotte indignantly.
‘Why isn’t he put in prison now there are proper laws?’

But Charles and Caroline still felt that it was less likely that
the Murdstone man should be so hateful than that Rupert should be
drawing long-bows to excuse his running away. If he had been timid and
miserable they would have believed him more. As it was, he was easy
when he wasn’t defiant.

You know that feeling—when you are not quite sure of some one you want
to be kind to—when you can’t be quite certain that if you believe what
they say you won’t be being unjust to somebody else. It is a hateful
feeling. There is nothing more miserable than not being able to trust
some one you want to trust. You know, perhaps, what that sensation is?
Rupert, at any rate, must have known it, and must have known that the
others were feeling it, for he suddenly pulled his hand out from his
pocket.

‘Look here, then,’ he said. ‘But—no, I don’t blame you. I know it’s not
the sort of thing you’d expect to be true. Yes. He did it. The first
night. About the bread and milk. Came and did it after I was in bed.
With a ruler.’

[Illustration: ‘_I_ believed you—without that,’ said Charlotte.]

‘It’ was a blue bruise and a slight red graze across the back of the
hand that, till now, had been hidden.

‘_I_ believed you—without that,’ said Charlotte, with hot cheeks. ‘_I_
know there are people like that. Like _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_.’

‘We do believe you,’ said Caroline earnestly. ‘Who said we didn’t?’

And Charles said, ‘Of course we do—what nonsense! We’ll bring you a
paper and pencil and an envelope, and you can write to your father. And
we _will_ conceal you.’

‘Right O!’ said Rupert. ‘Hush!’

They hushed, and, Rupert pointing through the blue gap between the oak
and the honeysuckle, their eyes followed the pointing of his finger. A
figure was coming up the drive—a figure in blue.

‘Go and see what it is,’ whispered Rupert, ‘but don’t let on.’

‘I’ll go,’ said Charlotte, jumping up.

‘But what’ll you say if they ask you what you’ve come in for?’ Charles
asked.

‘I shall say I’ve come in to fetch you a pocket-handkerchief,’ said
Charlotte witheringly, ‘because you wanted one so badly. You always
do.’

She went.

‘Look here,’ said Caroline, once more thrilling to the part of the
protecting Saracen maiden. ‘Suppose they’re after you? Let’s cover you
up with leaves and bracken, so that your tweediness won’t show through
the trees if they look—and bracken over your head. Creep through the
bracken; don’t crush it more than you can help.’

Rupert was entirely hidden when Charlotte returned, very much out of
breath, from an unexpected part of the wood.

‘I came round,’ she whispered, ‘to put them off the scent.’

‘Who?’ asked Rupert, under the leaves.

‘The Police,’ said Charlotte, with calm frankness and a full sense of
the tremendous news she was bringing. ‘They’re inquiring after _you_.
They’ve traced you to Hadlow.’

‘What did they say at the house?’

‘They said they hadn’t seen you, but the Police might search the
grounds.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I wasn’t asked,’ said Charlotte demurely. ‘But I’ll tell you what I
did say. You lie mouse-still, Rupert; it’s all right. I’m glad you’re
buried, though.’

‘What _did_ you say?’

‘I said,’ Charlotte answered, glowing with the pride of a successful
strategist—‘I said we’d help them to search! Come on, the three C.’s.
Round the back way! _We’ll_ help them to search for their runaway
boy—so we will! And when they’ve gone we’ll bring you something to
eat—something really nice—not just biscuits. Don’t you worry. The three
C.’s _are_ yours to the death.’




CHAPTER VII

BEING DETECTIVES


If you are Jack Delamere, the Boy Detective who can find out all
secrets by himself, pretending to be a French count, a young lady from
the provinces, or a Lincolnshire labourer with a cold in his head,
and in those disguises pass unrecognised by his nearest relations and
by those coiners and smugglers to whom in his ordinary clothes he
is only too familiar,—if you can so alter your voice that your old
school-fellows believe you to be, when dressed for the part, an Italian
organ-grinder or a performing bear——

I am sorry, this sentence is too much for me. I give it up. What I was
going to say was that persons accustomed to the detective trade, or,
on the other hand, persons who are used to keeping out of the way of
detectives, no doubt find it easy to play a part and to look innocent
when they are guilty, and ignorant when of course all is known to
them. But when you are not accustomed to playing a part in a really
serious adventure—not just a pretending one—you will find your work cut
out for you. This was what Charles and Caroline felt.

It was all very well for Charlotte to have arranged that they should
help the Police to look for Rupert, and the other two said cordially
that it was very clever of her to have thought of it, and they all
started together for the side door where the policeman was still
talking to Mrs. Wilmington. But their feet seemed somehow not to want
to go that way; they went more and more slowly, and when they were
half-way to the house, Caroline said:

‘I don’t think I will. I don’t know how. I should do something silly
and give the show away. I shall say I’m too tired.’

‘You _are_ too bad,’ said Charlotte, exasperated. ‘I go and lay all the
plans and then you funk.’

‘I don’t,’ said Caroline. And so anxious was she not to have to play
the part of pretending to look for Rupert when all the time she knew
where he was, that she added humbly, ‘Don’t be snarky. I’m only saying
I’m not clever enough. I’m not so clever as you, that’s all.’

I am sorry to say that Charlotte only answered ‘Rats!’ and added, ‘I
suppose Charles is going to cry off next?’ She did not think he was:
she just said it. And Charles most unexpectedly answered:

‘I think I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.’

Charlotte stamped her foot. ‘Oh, all right!’ she said; ‘but for
goodness’ sake come on. They’ll think there’s something up.’ And they
walked on.

‘Look here,’ said Caroline suddenly, ‘I _will_ pretend to help. It was
only that I was so awfully afraid they’d find him. Only if I disappear,
you’ll understand it’s just because I felt sillier than I could bear.
You help too, Charles. I’m sure you can—only don’t pretend too much. I
shouldn’t talk much except asking questions, if I were you.’

‘Right O!’ said Charlotte.

And Charles said, ‘Oh, well, only if I give it away without meaning to,
don’t blame me.’

And by this time they were quite near the house, by whose side door of
many-coloured glass the group of talking grown-ups awaited them. Mrs.
Wilmington was there with her handkerchief over her head. And William
and the gardener’s boy and the gardener, and a tall stout young man
with fat red hands who was the Police.

‘I can’t and won’t,’ Mrs. Wilmington was saying. ‘The Master’s
orders is—are—that he’s not to be disturbed in the mornings on any
pretence—not if the house was on fire. I couldn’t face him with this
vulgar tale of runaway boys. _I_ give you leave to search for him,’ she
said in proud refined accents. ‘I’m quate competent to take _that_ upon
me; quate.’

The Police turned from her to the children, who said ‘Good
morning!’—all but Charlotte, who had said it before.

‘Good morning to _you_,’ said the Police, ‘and so you young ladies and
gents is going to join the search-party?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Caroline.

‘What’ll you do with him if you catch him?’ Caroline asked abruptly.

‘Send him to gaol, in course,’ said the Police, winking at William.
‘An’ you’re all going to help the law in the execution of its duty.
And very useful I daresay you’ll be,’ he added affably, ‘knowing the
place and what not. Now see here,’ he went on, condescending to them
in a way which, it was remarked later, was like his cheek; ‘let’s have
a game of play, make-believe, you know. Let’s pretend this runaway lad
is a friend of yours’ (a cold shiver ran down three youthful backs; for
a moment it seemed that all was discovered, but the Police went on,
still playfully)—‘a friend of yours, and you and him has settled to
play a little game of hide-and-seek. And he’s He. Now where,’ he ended,
more affably almost than they could bear,—‘where would you look first?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Charles miserably.

‘Oh! just anywhere,’ said Charlotte.

But Caroline said slowly, ‘I should look in the wood over there,’ and
pointed straight to the spot where Rupert lay buried in fern and leaves.

‘Right you are,’ said the Police, delighted to have got a suggestion.
‘Then here goes.’

Charlotte dared not look at her sister lest her face should show her
detestation of this traitorous act. Charles put his hands in his
pockets to express indifference, and decided not to whistle for fear of
overdoing his part. He told himself that he never would have believed
it of Caro—never.

And now Caroline was speaking again, looking confidingly up into the
large patronising face of the Police.

‘That’s where I should look,’ she was saying, ‘if we were playing
hide-and-seek. But as it is—— You see we’ve been there all the morning,
and he couldn’t have come into the wood without our hearing him,
you know. Have you tried the other wood, beyond the garden? And the
thatched summer-house? And the lodge that isn’t used? Over by the other
gates, you know.’

‘The old lodge,’ the Police echoed. ‘A very likely spot, I shouldn’t
wonder. You lead the way, young gentleman,’ he said to Charles.

‘Good old Caro—oh, _good_ old Caro!’ Charlotte was saying to herself as
the party started.

‘I’ll dispose my search-party proper later on,’ said the Police
importantly, and turned to say, ‘Ain’t you coming, Miss?’ to Caroline,
who was stooping down, doing something to her foot.

‘I can’t,’ she said; ‘I’ve got a stone in my shoe. And it hurts,’ she
added, standing up firmly on it.

Caroline went indoors, and the search-party threaded the woods and
converged at last on the empty lodge. Its lattice-paned windows were
dusty, its door hung on a broken hinge, and little black balls of
hard moss were dotted between the flagstones of its yard. Its thatch
was loose in places, ruffled like the plumage of an old stuffed bird,
and its garden had been so long untilled that it had ceased to be the
weed-grown earth patch that a neglected garden first becomes, and had
grown green all over, covered itself with grass and fern and bramble
and baby oak-trees, and become just a fenced-in patch of the wood
beyond.

‘Halt!’ said the Police; ‘just the place. I’ll warrant we’ve run the
young gentleman to earth this time.’

But they hadn’t. There was nothing in the lodge but an old hamper with
a hole in it, a litter of straw and old damp paper, some cold ashes in
the grate, and in the upper rooms two last year’s birds’-nests, and a
chair with three legs and half a back.

The Police stooped his helmeted head to the low door lintel, and came
out into the sunshine a disappointed man.

‘Thought we’d got him,’ he said; and that was what he said at the
thatched summer-house and in the larch wood, and at various other parts
of the park and grounds where Rupert was not.

‘Isn’t it nearly dinner-time?’ Charles asked, as the search-party
pushed through a very brambly brake and came out once more at the back
of the deserted lodge.

‘Your kind governess, she put back dinner an hour for you to assist in
the search,’ said the Police reassuringly.

‘Best try the other side, Mr. Poad,’ said William; ‘you’ve drawed this
blank.’

‘I will now whistle to the gentleman as owns the runaway,’ said the
Police suddenly and terribly, and whistled.

‘Where is he?’ Charlotte asked, with a sudden vision of the Murdstone
gentleman seeing everything with half an eye, capturing Rupert and
carrying him off in half a minute. Charles was wondering ‘what they do
to you for helping runaway boys.’

‘Along the road,’ the Police answered, ‘with Mr. Binskin from the Peal
of Bells. Keeping watch. I’d best report to him.’

‘Will he come with us?’ Charles could not help asking.

‘I’m of opinion he’s best where he is,’ said the Police. ‘I’m just
a-going to tell him to keep on up and down outside. The ostler from the
Peal is over the other side, case he gets out that way. Unless he’s had
to get back to his work already.’

‘Let’s go and have another look at those birds’-nests while we’re
waiting,’ said Charlotte, with great presence of mind. And so it was
through the little diamond panes of the lodge that they saw again the
Murdstone gentleman, in evening dress and an overcoat, with his tie
in a crumpled state under one ear, and his face, as Charlotte said,
exactly like the face of a baffled executioner.

He stood talking to the Police for a few moments, with the old familiar
scowl that they knew so well. They felt like that about it, though
they’d only met the scowler, as you know, on one occasion. Then he went
back through the gate, and the children, when they were quite sure that
he was gone, rejoined the Police, rather tired, and feeling as though
this silly game of looking for what they knew, or at any rate hoped,
they weren’t going to find, had been going on for ever, and seemed as
though it would never stop.

‘I thought it best,’ the Police explained to William, ‘to keep the gent
on the outside of the place. He seems peppery-natured, and if he was
to spy his boy among your glass-houses, which is where I propose to
conduct my search in next, I wouldn’t answer for it but what he’d leap
upon him among the glass like a fox at a duck, and damage untold, as
like as not.’

Need I tell you that Rupert was not discovered among the glass?

Less brisk than at its starting, the search-party returned to the
side door where the coloured glass was, to be met on its doorstep by
Caroline, rather out of breath and very hot. She carried her sun-bonnet
by its strings (Aunt Emmeline believed in sun-bonnets and made dozens
of them, as presents for all her friends).

‘Well?’ said Caroline.

‘We haven’t found him, Miss, if that’s what you mean,’ said the Police,
taking his helmet off and wiping his face. ‘I suppose you ain’t seen
anything?’

Caroline looked nervously at the others.

‘I _heard_ something,’ she said, ‘in the wood over there. I went back,’
she went on in a sort of wooden way—and now she was not looking at the
others at all—‘because I left something there; and I heard a rustling
sound, and I saw footmarks, in the boggy part of the wood, and I
thought it looked like boy’s boots.’

Charlotte said afterwards that she really thought she should have burst
into little pieces. And Charles said the same.

To hear their own elder, and till now loved and esteemed sister,
quietly betraying the refugee, and to be quite unable to say what they
thought of her without having to explain the lack of candour in their
own conduct! It was a terrible moment.

‘You don’t say so,’ said the Police, and turned to William. ‘It’s a
thirsty job,’ he added carelessly, and William said he’d ask indoors.

A tray with glasses and a jug of something cool resulted. And the
Police and William both seemed the better for it. The gardener had
retired. It was too far the wrong side of dinner-time for him, he said.

The Police drew a long breath, and wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand.

‘Now then,’ he said; ‘you lead the way, Miss.’

Caroline led. The others followed. They could hardly bear to go, yet
they could still less bear to be left behind. Across the hot sunny
grass they went and into the wood. Even that, though shady, was hot,
and there seemed to be more flies than could possibly be needed for
any useful purpose. Caroline, still carefully avoiding the eyes of the
others, led the way straight to the ferny lair where they had left
Rupert, the others following in helpless fury.

‘Hullo!’ said the Police, ‘this looks something like.’

For there the lair was—plainly to be seen—a lair and nothing else, but
a lair that was deserted.

‘I think we’re on to him now,’ said the Police; ‘which way did you say
them footstepses was, Missie?’

‘Farther on,’ said Caroline. ‘I tied my handkerchief to a tree to mark
the place.’

‘You never!’ said the Police admiringly; ‘why, you deserve to be in the
Force, Miss. It’s not every constable, even, would have thought of
that.’

And I believe he spoke the truth.

Following Caroline and the Police, pushing miserably through the bushes
that sprang back as the others passed through and tried to hit them in
the face, Charlotte and Charles exchanged glances full of meaning.

The whole party made a good deal of noise: there was the rustling
of leaves, both the green and the dead kind; the snapping of twigs
underfoot; the grating of bough against bough as the searchers pushed
through the hazels and sweet chestnuts and young oaks.

‘You’d do fine for keepers,’ said William, coming last. ‘No poachers
wouldn’t never hear _you_ a-coming.’

‘That your handkerchief, Miss?’ the Police at the same moment asked
smartly, and pointed to a white thing that drooped from a dog-wood
branch; ‘you identify the handkerchief?’

‘Yes,’ said Caroline in a stifled voice, ‘and there’—she pointed down.

There were footprints, very plain and deeply-marked footprints, not
very large, yet not small like a girl’s. They were the footprints,
beyond any doubt, of a boy.

‘Now we’ve got him,’ said the Police for about the fifteenth time that
morning, and proceeded to follow the steps, as was remarked later, like
any old sleuth-hound.

William said, ‘Remarkable deep for the time of year,’ but nobody took
any notice of him. The boot-boy took a pleasure in planting his own
steps beside the tracks they were following, till the Police admonished
him.

‘Them tracks is evidence,’ he said; ‘you needn’t tread so nigh them.’

The tracks led them down a steep place, a sort of gorge, and ended at
the tall oak fence.

‘He must have escaped this way,’ said the Police.

‘I’ll take my Sunday Sam he never,’ said William.

‘There’s another footprint here,’ said Caroline anxiously.

‘So there be,’ said the Police. ‘You ’ave been a ’elp, Miss. I shall
name you in my report.’

It was now seen that a further line of footprints led along the fence
to a place where a pale was loose.

‘This is where he got through, you may depend,’ said the Police.

‘I’ll easy wrench another pale loose, if you want to follow on,’ said
William, and as he did so Charlotte saw him wink, distinctly wink at
Caroline. How hateful everybody was! Oh, poor Rupert!

[Illustration: They were the footprints, beyond any doubt, of a boy.]

Every one got through, Charles and Charlotte rather doubtfully looking
up and down the road first to see if the Murdstone master was in sight.
‘Which way?’ the Police now asked himself and the others anxiously.

That was quickly settled. A whitish object lying in the middle of the
road ten yards away, beckoned them to the right. The Police stooped
stiffly, picked it up and examined its corners.

‘Rupert Wix,’ he read solemnly. ‘I shall now sound my whistle and
acquaint the gentleman as owns the boy with our discovery of the
ankercher belonging to the runaway.’

But Caroline laid a hand on his arm and arrested the whistle on its way
to his lips.

‘Isn’t that something else white, farther along?’ she said.

‘Don’t tell me ’e got two ankerchers,’ said William; ‘no boy was ever
bred as ’ad two ankerchers at the one time.’

‘I don’t see nothing,’ said the Police, but he walked in the direction
of Caroline’s gaze.

‘It’s wonderful what eyes you’ve a-got, Miss,’ said William; ‘none of
the rest of us didn’t spy it.’

Charlotte and Charles walked apart from Caroline in a marked manner.

There certainly was something white in the road—a piece of paper with a
stone on it, and also, as the Police saw when he picked it up, writing,
pencilled, with that kind of black blunt pencilledness which happens
when you have a pencil whose point has seen better days, and you
encourage its efforts with your tongue.

‘To any kind Bypasser,’ the Police read out, ‘please put the inside in
the post for me.’

The paper on which this was written was a leaf torn from a note-book
and folded across. Inside was another leaf with a stamp in the corner,
as though it had been a post-card. On one side was an address, ‘Mr. and
Mrs. Wix, The Nest, Simla, India,’ and on the other these lines which
the Police read out:

    DEAR PARENTS—I am running away to sea through being so
    ill-treated by Macpherson. I will write from the first
    port. I shall get a ship at Hastings, I expect.—Your
    affecate son,

                                               RUPERT.

‘Well!’ said the Police; ‘if that don’t beat all! Lucky we saw this.’

‘Yes, ain’t it,’ said William, ‘and this the Hastings road and all. You
ought to catch up easy if you start right away now.’

‘I shall now blow my whistle,’ said the Police as usual, ‘and acquaint
the boy’s guardian with our discovery.’

‘If we can’t be any more use,’ said Caroline hastily, ‘perhaps you
wouldn’t mind our going back to our dinners. They’ll be getting
dreadfully cold for the time of year,’ she added a little wildly.

‘Best go back through the gap,’ said William. ‘It ought to be mended,
though. Here, you,’ he said to the gardener’s boy, ‘go round by the
lodge and tell Peters to get it seen to.’

‘There is no need to detain you,’ said the Police, ‘and thanking you
for your assistance, which shall be mentioned in my report. Good
morning to you.’ He blew his whistle and they hastened back through the
gap.

Once through it the others refused to meet Caroline’s eye. But she did
not seem to notice it.

‘I know listening’s wrong,’ she said; ‘but when you’re playing
detectives the rules are different, and I should like——’

‘Slip along by the pale, Miss,’ said William. ‘“All’s fair in love an’
war,” as the saying is.’

She slipped, and the others could not help following her. William went
too.

The boots of the Murdstone tutor were now heard on the road. Then came
the voice of the Police, explaining how clever he had been in finding
the footsteps, the handkerchief, and the letter. ‘And you’d best read
the letter,’ the Police added.

A brief letter-reading silence was broken by the Murdstone man, very
angry indeed.

‘Monstrous!’ he said; ‘and left in the public road for any stranger to
see! Monstrous! There’s not a word of truth in it.’

‘You can tell that to the Magistrate,’ said the Police. ‘Beg pardon,
sir, I mean I think I’ve cleared up this little difficulty for you.’

‘I suppose I can get a trap in the village?’ the Murdstone man asked.

‘At the Green Dragon, sir.’

‘Right,’ said Mr. Macpherson smartly. ‘Good morning!’ And he turned and
walked quickly away, leaving the Police planted there, as they say in
France.

‘Well—I’m—dished!’ said the Police aloud, after a moment’s silence, to
what he supposed to be solitude; ‘not so much as tuppence to drink his
blooming bad health in. The stingy blighter! He can look for his own
boys after this. And I hope the young ’un gets off, so I do.’

‘Same here,’ whispered William behind the grey oak paling.

The Police walked heavily away.

‘Best go in to dinner,’ said William, and the four walked in silence
across the park. When they got to the side door William spoke.

‘You’re a fair masterpiece, Miss Caroline,’ he said; ‘that I will say.’

‘Thank you,’ said Caroline.

Charles and Charlotte both felt—they owned it afterwards—almost choked
by all the things they wanted to say to Caroline and couldn’t, because
of William. They drew long breaths and almost snorted with mixed
emotions.

‘I say,’ said Caroline eagerly, as William turned away. But Charles
interrupted.

‘We don’t mean to speak to you,’ he said.

And just then Mrs. Wilmington appeared at the door, and no one could
say anything further; anything that mattered, that is.

She escorted the girls to their room. In her superior lady-like way she
was curious about the missing boy. Charlotte told the story briefly,
while Caroline buried her hot face in a big basin of cold water and
blew like a grampus. Then there was dinner, and Mrs. Wilmington stayed
all through that to hear more details. When dinner was over Caroline
disappeared.

‘I expect she’s gone away to cry,’ Charlotte whispered to her brother.
‘I say, I wish we hadn’t. But we did agree we oughtn’t to speak to a
traitor till it was sorry: you said so yourself in the wood.’

‘It’s all very beastly,’ said Charles. ‘I wish it hadn’t happened,
upsetting everything.’

‘I say,’ Charlotte said, ‘let’s forgive her now. I expect she thought
she was doing right, being like a Spartan boy or something. Caro is
silly like that sometimes. Let’s go and find her and forgive her, and
talk it all over comfortably, the three of us.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Charles; ‘let’s find her, if you like.’

But they couldn’t find her.




CHAPTER VIII

THE HEROINE


It was William who, when they had searched house and garden and park
for nearly an hour, greeted the two as they trailed forlornly into the
stable-yard on the last wild chance of finding her there. By this time
both were thoroughly sorry and remorseful, and very anxious indeed to
know what had become of their sister.

‘I suppose you haven’t seen Caroline anywhere about?’ they said to
William, who was sitting in the harness-room door, with a rose in his
button-hole, smoking a black clay pipe.

‘She was out in the garden a bit back,’ he said; ‘give me this ’ere
button-hole. She’s a sister to be proud on, she is.’

‘Why?’ asked Charles blankly.

‘What she done this morning,’ William answered.

‘I suppose she thought it was right.’

‘I don’ know about right,’ said William, scratching his ear. ‘Anyhow
she went down along towards where you was messing about in the wood
this morning. Just after dinner she went with a book under her arm and
her pinny full of roses. I’m coming along that way myself when I’ve
finished my pipe.’

Charlotte and Charles went down slowly to the wood, and they were both
very uncomfortable. However right Caroline might have been....

‘I can’t understand how she _can_—the very place where _he_ was—all
safe only this morning,’ said Charlotte, and walked slower than ever.
They went so slowly that William had almost caught them up before they
had reached the wood.

Just before they turned in among the dappled shadows of the wood,
Charles said, ‘Did you hear that?’

‘Yes,’ said Charlotte; ‘it’s only Caro talking to herself.’ And they
went on. They did not hear any more talking, and when they reached the
lair Caroline was sitting there silent with a splash of red rose colour
beside her among the fern.

‘Oh, Caro!’ cried Charlotte, almost weeping and flumping down beside
her sister; ‘I’m sorry we were horrid. We see now you must have
thought you were being Spartan-boyish or something. And it’s too
perfectly horrid. And do let’s make it up; do.’

‘I did think you’d more sense,’ said Caroline, but she kissed Charlotte
too, ‘or that you’d know that I had—more sense, I mean. And directly I
began to tell you, you said _That_.’ She sniffed. It was plain that she
had been crying.

Charles sat down. ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said handsomely. ‘Now let’s talk
about something else. Our only hope is to forget poor Rupert.’

‘I’ll try to forget him,’ Charlotte said; ‘but he _was_ such a nice
boy. I suppose you had to do it, Caro. But, oh, I do wish he was back
again.’

Here Charlotte began to cry.

‘Oh, don’t!’ said Caroline, putting her arm round her; ‘do you mean to
say you don’t understand yet? I’d no idea you could be so silly.’

‘I don’t think she’s silly at all,’ said Charles loyally. ‘_I_ wish he
was here too.’

‘He _is_ here,’ said Caroline in an exasperated whisper; ‘just behind
you. We thought you might be some one else, so he hid. Come back,
Rupert; it’s only them.’

And from the tangled thicket Rupert put forth a head very rough as to
the hair, which bristled with twigs and pine-needles.

‘Then you didn’t run away to sea?’

‘Not much,’ Rupert answered, leaning on his elbows and showing only the
head and shoulders part of him.

‘But the letter said——’

‘That was _her_,’ Rupert explained, pointing at Caroline with his head.
(That looks odd when you read it, but if you try, you will find that
it is quite easy to do.) ‘That was her. It was all her. I’ll never say
anything about girls being muffs again. She absolutely ran the show.
She’s a brick.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ said Caroline with hot ears.

‘But _what_ did she do?’

‘Took them off the scent. Tell them all about it,’ said Rupert.

‘No, you,’ said Caroline, rolling over and burrowing her nose among the
roses.

‘Well, it was like this. After you’d gone off, I was in a blue funk,
and I don’t mind owning it. And when she came back I thought it was the
Police, and about all being lost except honour—and precious little of
that. Then she explained it all to me, and I got my boots off.’

‘Explained _what_?’ Charles had to ask.

‘Her plan, you duffer; her glorious Sherlock-Holmes plan.’

‘You _might_ have told us,’ Charlotte couldn’t help saying.

‘How could I? All among William and the Police?’

‘Well, go on.’

‘She’d got her pocket-book, and I wrote that letter. She thought of
that too. And I gave her my hankey, and she carried my boots off in her
hand, and when she got to the swampy place she put them on and made the
footmarks.’

‘I stamped them in as deep as I could,’ Caroline broke in, ‘and I found
the fence and got out and put the letter, and simply tore back round by
the lodge. Didn’t you notice how hot I was? I saw the Murdstone man,
but I’d got my sun-bonnet. He was cutting the heads off nettles with
his stick like some one in the French Revolution.’

‘And she led them off the scent completely. They’d have been certain
to find me here, with the fern all trampled about. She thought of that
too,’ Rupert said.

‘But where were you then?’

‘Up that tree.’ He pointed to a leafy beech. ‘I saw you all go by, your
Police with his nose on the ground like any old hound. Not one of you
looked up. She’s a regular A1, first-class brick, if you ask me. And
now if you can hide me a bit here till I’ve written to my people and
got an answer—— Yes, she is a brick. And I shall always stand up for it
that bricks are bricks even if they’re only girls.’

‘You do make such a fuss,’ said Caroline, delighted with his praise and
trying not to be, and feeling it the duty of a modest heroine to turn
the subject. ‘And now I thought we’d be the Royal Order of the Secret
Rose. The rose is the emblem of secrecy. Two buds and a full-blowner
you have to wear. It’s the badge.’

She chose flowers and buds from the crimson heap and presented them to
the others. The needed pins she produced from the front of her pinafore.

‘I’ve got one too,’ said Rupert, grinning from his covert. ‘A badge, I
mean, and——’

‘Hush!’ whispered Charlotte; ‘there’s some one coming. It’s William!’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Caroline said amazingly. ‘William knows. He’s
one of us. He’s wearing the Royal Rose too.’

‘And he isn’t going to tell?’ Charles could hardly believe it of a
grown-up.

‘No, he ain’t a-going to tell’; it was William who answered, pushing
through the leaves and sitting down squarely on a stump. ‘I don’t give
away a good sport like what Miss Caroline is—not me.’

‘But when did you find out?’ Charlotte asked.

‘I had my suspicions from the first—Miss Caroline going off so artful.
And then when she come back, of course I knew.’

‘Why “of course”?’ Charles wanted to know.

‘Well, nobody except the Pleece would cotton to it as a young lady like
Miss Caroline would set out to give away a runaway dog as ’ad trusted
her, let alone a young gentleman.’

Charlotte and Charles never wish to feel less pleased with themselves
than they did then.

‘An’ the bootmarks,’ William went on; ‘much too deep and plain they
was for anybody as was out to get off, with somebody arter them. Let
alone as I see a bit of young master’s jacket up in the tree as we come
over the park. And the ankercher dropped so handy. Not but what I own
I thought it was all up when we come to that letter. I did think that
was a bit too thick. As if people on the bolt ’ud stop to write letters
and lay them convenient like in the middles of roads. I thought you’d
killed the cat with kindness that time. But no—’e swallowed it all, old
Poad did, like mother’s milk it went down. And so did the schoolmaster.
And off ’e goes. And off _he_ goes. And off _you_ goes to your
dinners, and I come along to the young chap in the tree and fetches
him a bite of something, and whistles him down that all’s serene. And
Miss Caroline she comes along and makes me a member of her ancient
order of Rosy Buffaloes, or whatever it is, and here we are as jolly as
you please, and safe as you please. Only my advice is, tell the Master.’

‘We can’t,’ said Caroline earnestly. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. He might
think it was his duty, or something——’

‘Ah!’ said Charles, relieved; ‘we’re not the only ones. We thought that
of _you_. It’s just the same.’

‘There’s only one difference,’ said Caroline—and this was the only time
she hit back that day, so we may forgive her for it—‘one difference,
and that is that I’m right and you were wrong.’

‘Oh!’ said Charles blankly.

‘Best tell the Master.’ William’s tone was persuasive.

‘You said you were ours to the death.’

‘You asked me if I was, and I wasn’t going to contradict a lady,’
William corrected. ‘And as far as keeping my tongue betwixt my teeth,
and lending a hand in the victualling depart: and a rug and a truss
in the straw-loft that I’ve got the key of, and where the Master
hisself wouldn’t presume to show a nose—as far as that goes, I’m your
man. More especially since I seen your governors, teachers, pastors,
and masters in that nasty white rage with his face all twisted. I
wouldn’t ‘and over a blind kitten to _’is_ tender mercies. But my
advice is——’

[Illustration: ‘Fetches him a bite of something.’]

‘Don’t!’ Caroline implored; ‘because really we can’t, you know.’

‘Well, I must be getting along,’ said William, rising stiffly; ‘I ain’t
talked so much since the election. And I wasn’t a-going to say what you
thought I was a-going to say. What I was a-going to say was, get out
of this. It’s all trampled, and some one’s sure to notice—if it’s only
that Jim. You go deeper into the wood, and come night-time I’ll fetch
him away and bed him down all right. So long!’

He tramped away, crunching sticks and stalks as he went.

‘How glorious,’ Charlotte said slowly, ‘to have a real live heroine for
your sister.’

‘Yes, but,’ Charles asked anxiously, ‘are you sure William will keep
the secret?’

‘I’d answer for him with my life,’ said Rupert. ‘You don’t know how
jolly he was when he brought me the bread and cheese, and water in a
medicine bottle. It tasted a little of camphor. Awfully decent chap he
is!’

‘He can’t help keeping the secret,’ Caroline spoke with impressive
earnestness; ‘he wears the Royal Rose and the twin buds, the badge of
secrecy. If you wear _that_ you simply can’t betray a secret. It says
so in the _Language Of_, page 37.’

She picked up the book from under the roses, fluttered its leaves,
found page 37 and read:

‘“The red or damask rose, full-blown and worn with two of its own buds,
is the emblem and pledge of inviolet”—inviolable, I mean—“secrecy, and
he who wears the Royal Queen of flowers accompanied by two unopened
promises of her future magnificence, by this eloquent symbol binds
himself to preserve uncontaminated the secret trust reposed in him
by the more delicate and fragile portion—fragile and delicate as the
lovely flower which is the subject of our remarks—of the human race.”’

‘I see,’ said Charlotte, relieved; ‘then he can’t tell, even if he
wants to.’

‘If the book knows,’ Charles added.

‘Well, it’s all right, you know,’ said Rupert, ‘because I’m a judge
of human nature, and I know that William is the soul of honour, and
wouldn’t want to tell even if he could.’

‘So that’s all right.’ Charlotte breathed deeply. ‘I say, Rupert,
aren’t you afraid?’

‘What of?’

‘The Police.’

Rupert laughed. ‘I think William was right,’ he said, wriggling out a
little farther from the fern so that the red rose in his button-hole
burst suddenly upon public view; ‘if the Police would swallow that
letter they’d swallow anything. And if the eyes of the whole _vox
populi_ were upon me,’ he ended with a grand if vague remembrance of
old Mug’s careful teaching, ‘Caroline would find a _via media_, or way
out.’

‘Rats!’ said Caroline briefly.

‘I say!’ said Charles, gazing awe-struck, ‘what a jolly lot of Latin
you know!’




CHAPTER IX

THE MORNING AFTER


‘Wake up!’ whispered Charlotte, sitting up very wide awake and pinching
her sister gently but firmly.

‘Why?’ Caroline asked, very warm and sleepy. ‘We aren’t called yet, and
it’s quite dark.’

‘Called!’ Charlotte echoed in contempt. ‘And the curtains aren’t drawn,
so of course it’s dark. Wake up, silly; don’t you remember?’

‘All right!’ Caroline murmured, and went to sleep again.

‘You can’t have forgotten yesterday, and how we were detectives, and
you were Sherlock Holmes wrong way out, and about Rupert, Rupert,
Rupert?’

And at that Caroline did wake up, and sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes.

‘Isn’t it glorious?’ Charlotte asked, jumping up and down on the bed;
‘our splendid secret and the rose and everything? I do think we’re
lucky, don’t you?’

‘I suppose so,’ Caroline answered, yawning; ‘but what are we going to
do with him?’

‘Conceal him, of course,’ Charlotte answered briskly, ‘and answer for
him with our lives. Until the answer comes to the Indian letter.’

‘The letter didn’t go, you know,’ Caroline reminded her, and put one
foot out of bed.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Charlotte asked. ‘You don’t seem a bit
keen.’

‘I don’t feel keen,’ Caroline answered. ‘I wish it hadn’t happened.
I feel as if I didn’t want to do anything but to be quiet and have
nothing happen, like it used to. My inside mind feels quite stiff and
sore.’

‘That’s using it so much yesterday; being so clever, you know. Of
course your mind feels stiff. It isn’t used to it,’ said Charlotte
brightly, bounced off the bed and ran to draw the curtains. ‘Oh!’ she
said, and stood quite still with the curtain in her hand.

‘What?’ Caroline asked anxiously, for the tone was tragic.

‘It’s raining,’ said Charlotte; ‘that’s all. Hard.’

‘How awful,’ said Caroline.

Somehow no one had expected it to rain. The sun had shone now for days
and days, and it had seemed as though it must always go on shining.

‘Rupert won’t be able to hide in the wood, will he?’ said Charlotte
after a dismal silence.

‘Oh, Charlotte,’ said Caroline in deep reproach, holding up her little
silver watch, ‘it’s only a quarter to five. I’m going to sleep again.
You know how thin and rotten you feel in the afternoon if you get
up too early. Come on. Perhaps it won’t be raining when it’s proper
getting-up time.’

But it was, as hard as ever. And it was a dismal little
breakfast-party. The dining-room, usually so sunny and delightful at
this hour, was sombre and brown and dull. The books all looked like
lesson-books, and even the portrait of the Lady with the ruff had but
little interest for the children. It seemed as though some one had
turned off all sunshine and all magic at the very meter.

Anxiety about Rupert mingled with the usual wet-day feelings, and every
one was at first too miserable even to tell the others how miserable it
was.

Almost in silence Caroline poured out the milk, Charles served the
bacon, and Charlotte handed the toast. And quite in silence they ate
and drank. But breakfast soon began its healing work, and before it
came to the marmalade, Charlotte was able to say:

‘This is the time to do something desperate. I’ll have some tea,
please, Caro. Aunt Emmeline says it’s a dreadful drug and people take
it instead of beer. I don’t like it,’ she hastened to add. ‘It’s only
to show how desperate we are.’

‘Yes, but your drinking tea won’t help Rupert. He’ll be soaked in the
woods,’ said Caroline heavily.

‘Still, he’ll be safe,’ Charles pointed out. ‘No one will go looking
for him in the sopping wet. I’ll have tea too. Let’s call it a carouse
in the smugglers’ cave.’

But the others thought this was going a little too far.

‘I don’t feel as if we ought to play till we know about Rupert and
whether he’s had any breakfast. And I know the Wilming-cat won’t let us
go out in the rain,’ Charlotte said.

‘One of us must go out and see William, that’s all,’ said Caroline.
‘I’ll go if you like, and chance the Wil-cat. No; we can’t all go.
People notice you so much more if there’s a lot of you.’

Thus William at work in the harness-room was visited by a small figure
in a damp mackintosh and a red tam-o’-shanter frosted with raindrops.

‘Where is he?’ it whispered, ‘and has he had his breakfast?’

‘Now you be off, Miss,’ said William, very loud and plain. ‘I ain’t
up to talking so early. My jaws is hung crooked with talking so much
yesterday. Be off with you.’ As he spoke he pulled a piece of chalk
from his pocket and wrote on the table:

‘Come at 12,’ and smeared it out with his cuff, just as the gardener
came to the door and said:

‘Don’t look like clearing up.’

Caroline understood.

‘We shall be wanting some flowers,’ she said, ‘to send in a letter. And
it’s too wet to go and get them. I thought perhaps William would.’

‘Flowers ain’t William’s business, nor yet his pleasure,’ said the
gardener, ‘or he wouldn’t ’ave a dead un in his button-hole like what
he’s got.’ He pointed to William’s coat, hanging on a saddle-perch and
still bearing in its button-hole the withered rose of secrecy.

‘Perhaps _you_ would, then?’ Caroline suggested. ‘I want four red
roses, no—five, and ten buds. And is there any stephanotis? I think it
means absent friends.’

‘No, there ain’t,’ said the gardener.

‘Well, then, traveller’s joy. That means safety.’

‘Plenty of that—nasty weed,’ said the gardener, but not unkindly.
‘Right you are, Miss. I’ll bring ’em to the dining-room window to save
my boots on cook’s flagstones.’

‘So that’s all right,’ said Caroline, returning to the others. ‘We’re
to go at twelve. Only now we must write to Aunt Emmeline and send her
the traveller’s joy, because I said we wanted to send it in a letter.
Yes, you must, too, Charles. We shall be doing an unselfish act,
because I’m sure no one wants to write to Aunt Emmeline, and she says
unselfishness makes the sun shine on the cloudiest days.’

‘All right, we’ll try it on,’ said Charles, but not hopefully; and soon
there was a deep stillness, broken only by the slow scratching of pens.

Presently the gardener brought the roses and clematis to the window.

‘That’s what you want?’ he asked, handing in the wet red and green
bouquet.

‘Quite,’ said Caroline; ‘and do you know it’s just as well you hadn’t
any stephanotis, because I see it doesn’t mean what I thought it meant.
It means ‘Will you accompany me to the East?’ and Aunt Emmeline would
have been so upset wondering what we meant.’

‘She wouldn’t ’a been the only one,’ said the gardener, and clumped
away on those boots which were not considered suitable for cook’s
flagstones.

When the letters were done, it was only eleven o’clock, and it was
decided that, as Rupert must have had his breakfast, it wouldn’t be
unfeeling to play desert islands, just to pass the time till it should
be twelve.

The dining-room table made an excellent island, and the arm-chair was
a ship which held the three of them, and could, with reasonable care,
be wrecked quite safely on the deep waters of the hearth-rug. The
card-table from the window, turned wrong way up, made a charming raft;
and the girls’ pinafores, fastened to the poker and tongs, did for
sails. You steered with the fire-shovel and brought bags of biscuit
(which looked like cushions) from the good vessel, the _Golden Vanity_,
which, disguised as the sofa, lay derelict across the Carpet Bay. It
was a grand game, and when some one began to say ‘Twelve o’clock,’ the
shipwrecked sailors were quite astonished. The person who began to say
‘Twelve,’ was, of course, the tall clock with the silver face inlaid
with golden roses.

‘We ought to go at once,’ said Caroline, putting the masts back in the
fender; ‘but if we leave everything like this, the Wil-cat——’

‘We’ll clear up,’ said Charlotte with a noble effort, ‘to make up for
being beastly yesterday. You go, Caro. We’ll come out as soon as we’ve
done, and stand in the door till you tell us it’s all right.’

‘That’s jolly decent of her,’ Charles told Caroline. ‘And I say the
same.’

‘Jolly decent of _you_,’ said Caroline, and went.

It was still raining. Caroline stood at the back door with a rose and
two buds in her hand, and watched the rain splashing in the puddles and
on to the sack-covered shoulders of the gardener and the gardener’s boy
and the stable boy as they went off to their dinners. As soon as she
could be quite sure that they had really gone and wouldn’t be likely
to come back for anything they’d forgotten, she ran across to the
harness-room.

‘Here’s your new secret rose,’ she said, ‘and now can I see Rupert? The
others’ll be out directly.’

‘Go and tell them to stay where they be,’ said William crossly; ‘there
won’t be much secret rosing left if you’re all hanging about here. And
Mrs. What’s-her-name’s equivalent to a bit of secret nosing herself,
if you come to that. Hurry up now, afore they comes along.’

The others were not pleased, but they had to own that most likely
William knew best.

Thus it was Caroline alone who followed William through the stable
and up the ladder into the straw-loft, which at first seemed to have
nothing in it but straw, very dark in the corners and very yellow under
the skylight.

‘Where is he?’ Caroline asked, and the straw rustled and opened,
revealing Rupert, rather tousled and strawy about the head, and the
bright eyes and black ears of a small fox-terrier.

‘I hid when I heard you on the ladder,’ he said. ‘You can’t be too
careful.’ He spoke in a low hoarse voice.

‘Now I’ll keep about down in the stable,’ said William, ‘and if I
whistle, you lay low.’

He retreated down the ladder, and they heard him say ‘Over’ to one of
the horses.

‘I wish _this_ was over,’ said Rupert, rather fretfully.

‘It is beastly having it rain,’ said Caroline sympathetically; ‘but
it’ll be fine to-morrow, I expect, and I’ve brought you a secrecy
rose.’ He took it and said ‘Thank you!’ but not enthusiastically.
‘And,’ she went on—‘wait till I get it out—it’s rather a tight fit for
my pocket—I’ve brought you _Robinson Crusoe_, and a pencil and paper
to really write to your father and mother. And I’ll post it as soon as
the rain stops.’

[Illustration: ‘If I whistle, you lay low.’]

‘Well, you are a brick,’ he said. ‘I shall be all right with something
to read. But you’ve simply no idea how slow time goes when you’re in
concealment. I can’t think how those Royalist chaps stood it as they
did; and the Man in the Iron Mask and Sir Walter Raleigh and Mary Queen
Of.’

‘I _am_ sorry,’ said Caroline again. ‘How long will it take to get an
answer from India?’

‘Oh, weeks,’ said Rupert wearily. ‘I was just thinking I couldn’t stick
it, and perhaps I’d better really run away to sea, only not Hastings,
of course. But it doesn’t seem so bad now I’ve got the book, and
Pincher’s rather jolly, and you too, of course,’ he added with sudden
politeness.

‘Tell me all about last night.’ Caroline settled comfortably into a
nest of straw. ‘What happened after we left you?’

‘Oh, William came and brought me in and gave me a rug and the dog and
some more bread and cheese. And bread and bacon this morning.’

‘I say, you _are_ hoarse.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing. I say, don’t think me a pig, but I should like
something to _eat_. I feel as if I’d been eating bread and cheese and
cold bacon for long years, and it’s all fat—the bacon is, I mean.’

Caroline said how stupid it was of her and she’d bring him something
when the men went home to their teas. And then suddenly there seemed to
be nothing more to say.

There was a silence, broken by Rupert’s putting his head under the
blanket to cough in a suppressed manner.

‘I hope you haven’t taken a chill,’ said Caroline with motherly
anxiety. ‘Aunt Emmeline says you never take them if you keep your
windows open at night; but of course you can’t here, because there
aren’t any.’

‘No,’ said Rupert. ‘I say, do you play chess, or draughts, or halma or
anything?’

‘I could bring them,’ she said; ‘but I only know the moves at chess
and when you bring down the Queen and the Bishop, and the other person
is called the Fool’s Mate—only they always see it before you get it
finished.’

‘I’ll teach you,’ said Rupert yawning. ‘I say, everything is pretty
beastly, isn’t it? It’s jolly in India. I wish I was there.’

‘So do I,’ said Caroline. ‘At least I don’t mean that. But I wish you
were not so mizzy.’

‘There ought to be a Society for the Prevention of Schools,’ Rupert
went on; ‘then everything would be all right.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Caroline; ‘I think this is a dumpy day.
I felt quite flat this morning, as if nothing mattered. But it got
better. I’ll look in my book when I get back and see if there’s any
flower that means cheer up. And if there is I’ll bring it to you, and
perhaps it will work a cheering charm on you.’

Caroline herself, sitting among the straw, wrinkling her forehead in
the effort to think of some way of cheering the prisoner, was almost a
cheering charm herself. Rupert perhaps felt something of this, for he
said:

‘I’m all right. Only I feel so jolly rotten.’

‘You write the letter,’ said Caroline. ‘I don’t feel half as flat as I
did. I’ll think of all sorts of things to amuse the captive. And I’ll
bring you——’

William whistled below. The two children stiffened to the stillness of
stone and held their breaths. Voices. Mrs. Wilmington’s voice.

‘Have you seen Miss Caroline, William?’ she was saying. ‘I am afraid
she has run out in the reen.’

‘She’s up in the loft, Mum,’ said William. ‘I let her go up just to
’ave a peep. ’Ere, Miss, you come along down. You seen all there is to
see.’

Caroline rustled through the straw and down the ladder. Mrs.
Wilmington, cloaked and with a brown plaid shawl over her head, stood
in the stable door.

‘I’m quite dry, really I am,’ said Caroline, as William climbed the
ladder to padlock the trap-door.

‘You best come in at once,’ said Mrs. Wilmington. And at that moment a
faint sound was heard from the loft. Rupert had coughed again.

‘What’s that?’ Mrs. Wilmington asked, pausing on one galosh to listen.

‘My dawg’s up there,’ said William; ‘’e catches rats now and again.’

‘It was a strange noise for a dog,’ said the housekeeper with a
thoughtful air.

‘Weren’t it now?’ said William admiringly. ‘Can’t think ’ow they does
it! You wouldn’t believe the noises dogs make when they’re after rats.
It’s the way it takes ’em, you see.’

‘I see,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, and turned away, picking her galoshed
steps delicately, and followed by Caroline, who now ventured to breathe
again, and splashed in all the puddles.

‘Your uncle,’ said the housekeeper, taking off her shawl and shaking it
at the back door, ‘was inquiring for you. He does not weesh you to go
out in the reen.’

‘No,’ said Caroline.

‘And I always understood,’ said the housekeeper, ‘that young ladies
was, were, better away from low company.’

‘If you mean William,’ began Caroline hotly, but Mrs. Wilmington
interrupted her with—

‘I mean dogs in straw-lofts. Now you know.’

Caroline decided to get Mrs. Wilmington a soothing bouquet as soon as
the rain cleared off.

‘Your uncle’s in the dining-room,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Wipe your
shoes on the mat, please.’

From the dining-room came the sound of talking. Caroline heard:

‘You see, uncle, you just sit on the wreck and we’ll come and rescue
you with the raft.’

She paused in the doorway. Could it be true that the Uncle was playing?
No, it could not.

‘Thank you,’ said the Uncle; ‘I feel safer on the wreck. I’m glad
you’ve been having a game,’ he said, blinking kindly at her.

‘I hope you don’t mind the room being a little untidy, uncle,’ said
Caroline. For, indeed, the others had decided that the clearing-up
bargain was off, and had gone on with the game.

‘Not at all, if you don’t break things,’ he said a little nervously.

‘We’re most _awfully_ careful,’ Charles explained. ‘You see we keep the
raft on the carpet for fear of scratching it.’

‘_I_ think it polishes it, being dragged about on this Turkish sea,’
Charlotte told them.

‘And so you’re not dull, even on this rainy day? I feared you might
find it wearisome.’

‘Oh _no_,’ said every one; ‘it’s the loveliest house in the world.’ And
Charlotte asked him kindly how his magic was getting on.

‘Poorly,’ he said; ‘poorly. And yours?’

There was a silence, full of the thoughts of the magic of fern-seed and
of the great Rupert-secret.

‘We’ve invented a Secret Society,’ Caroline said difficultly and in
haste: ‘the Secret Society of the Rose. You wear one full blown rose
and two buds, you see.’

‘I see. And what is the secret?’ asked the innocent and kindly uncle.

Everyone became scarlet except the Uncle, who looked more like oyster
shells than ever, and said:

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘We’d tell you in a minute if we could. But you see it _is_ a Secret
Society.’

‘I see. I am very sorry I was so indiscreet. But tell me this,’ he
added hastily. ‘You haven’t broken anything, have you?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘I thought you wouldn’t,’ the Uncle assured them. ‘Mrs. Wilmington was
of opinion that you would break almost everything in the house. But
that was before she saw you, of course. If you _do_ break anything
you’ll tell me, won’t you?’

‘Of course,’ they answered in various tones of surprise.

‘Quite so. I might have known. I wish I could do something to amuse
you. If you had any friends in the neighbourhood you might have
the carriage and drive out to see them. But of course you have no
acquaintances here.’

‘The clergyman is a friend of ours,’ Charles remarked.

And Caroline said if only they might go and see him.

‘By all means,’ said the Uncle; ‘bring him back to tea with you. I am
sincerely glad to find that you are making yourselves at home.’

With that he went away.

‘Do you think that was snarkasm? About making ourselves at home?’
Charles asked.

‘Not it,’ Charlotte assured him. ‘I’m sure the Uncle’s open as the day.’

‘All the same we’d better clear up,’ said Charlotte, and on the word
Harriet came in to lay the cloth. Mrs. Wilmington followed. And it was
she who cleared up, with pinched lips and a marked abstaining from
reproaches.

The children dined alone, and the cook remarked on the sudden growth
of their appetites. How was she to know that generous double helpings
of beef, Yorkshire pudding, potatoes, summer cabbage, rhubarb pie and
custard were hidden behind the books on the dining-room shelf, for the
later refreshment of a runaway boy at present lurking in the straw-loft?

‘We must put the things in tumblers,’ Caroline said, ‘because plates
would be missed; but the tumblers live in the sideboard, and there are
dozens.’

So a row of tumblers, containing such greasy things as never before had
profaned their limpid depths, stood in a row like beakers on the bench
of a secret laboratory.

‘It’s all very well,’ said Charlotte, replacing the last book and
ringing the bell, ‘but how shall we get them to him?’

‘William will manage it at tea-time,’ Caroline was sure.

‘But we’ve got to bring the clergyman home to tea.’

‘Oh, bother!’ was the remark that sprang to the lips of Caroline. ‘I
never thought of that.’




CHAPTER X

BREWING THE SPELL


It was awkward, certainly. And the awkwardness kept worrying and
worrying at the back of Caroline’s mind all through the pleasure of
going out in the carriage to make a call by themselves, and the delight
of the call, which was diversified by peppermints, a fine collection of
butterflies, and being allowed to try and play the harmonium.

It was while Charles and Charlotte were busy with this in the large
bare room which had been the last rector’s drawing-room, and was now
used for all sorts of parish parties, that Mr. Penfold took Caroline
into the conservatory to show her a pet newt.

‘A friend of mine with an orange waistcoat,’ Mr. Penfold said.

He was a very nice newt, but even his orange-coloured stomach could not
drive away the worries from the back of Caroline’s mind. How were the
tumblers of food to be got to Rupert? Altogether she felt worried; the
whole adventure was beginning to feel too big and too serious. And when
Mr. Penfold, suddenly asking her if she could keep a secret, showed her
a green parrot sitting on a nest behind a big geranium, she longed to
say that she would keep his, and to tell him her own.

What she did say when she had admired the parrot was:

‘You’re a clergyman, and so I suppose you know all about right and
wrong?’

‘I do my best to know,’ he said. ‘Well?’

‘Well, aren’t there some secrets you ought to keep, even if you know
that some people would say you oughtn’t to if they were to know you
were keeping them—only of course they don’t?’

I think it was rather clever of Mr. Penfold to understand this; but he
did.

‘There are some things we all have to judge for ourselves,’ he said.
‘Could you give me an instance of the sort of thing you mean? Not the
real thing you were thinking about, of course; but something like it.’

‘Of course not the real thing,’ she said, and paused.

The temptation to be very clever came to her. She would tell him the
real thing, and he would never think it could be the real one.

‘Well, suppose,’ she said slowly, and stopped.

‘Suppose?’

‘You heard about that boy who ran away, and they were looking for him
yesterday?’

‘He wasn’t found, was he?’ the clergyman asked, carefully picking dead
leaves from a salmon-coloured fuchsia.

‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘Well, suppose the boy had come to you, what would
you have done? You wouldn’t have given him up, would you?’

‘I don’t know any of the facts of the case,’ he answered slowly.

‘But suppose it was a runaway slave.’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Well, then,’ said Caroline.

‘But, you see, it wouldn’t stop with not giving him up. He would have
to be fed and clothed, and have somewhere to sleep, and it would be
impossible, quite impossible, to keep him concealed. They would be sure
to find him.’

‘Ye-es,’ said Caroline; ‘but what could you do?’

‘Well, leaving the boy out of the question—he was just given as
an instance, wasn’t he—suppose _you_ were in any other sort of
difficulty, the thing for you to do would be to tell your uncle. You
take it from me, you can trust him absolutely. He’ll decide what’s
right. Unless you’d like to tell me. I’d help all I could.’

[Illustration: Showed her a green parrot sitting on a nest.]

‘If ever I have a secret I _can_ tell you, I will,’ Caroline promised.
‘We’re a Secret Society just at present. That’s why we’re all wearing
red roses.’

‘I wish I could have joined it,’ said the Unusual Clergyman; ‘perhaps
you’ll let me join later?’

‘If I ever can, I will,’ said Caroline cordially. And then the others
came to look at the newt, and they all went home in the carriage to
tea. The Uncle and the Unusual Clergyman talked about things which the
children did not understand, or perhaps they might have understood if
they had listened, but their thoughts were in tumblers full of beef
and pudding behind the books on the shelves, and though they caught a
few words, ‘golden bough,’ ‘myths,’ ‘folk-lore,’ they did not pay much
attention till they heard the words ‘secret rites’ and ‘symbolic,’ and
then the Uncle suddenly said:

‘Well, come along to my room, won’t you? I’ll show you that passage I
was speaking of.’ And he and the clergyman went off.

Of course the three C.’s hastened to the stable-yard. The men had gone
to their tea and the servants were having theirs, so it was quite safe.
The tumblers of food, now thinly iced with congealed fat and looking
very uninviting, were carried in the side-pockets of Charles and under
the pinafores of the girls.

William received the visitors with marked disapproval.

‘You’re late,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go down to the village to see
about a new axle for the light cart. What’s all that rubbish? Ain’t
what I gives him good enough for his lordship?’ He looked sourly at the
tumblers the children had stood upon the corn-bin.

‘Of course it is,’ said Caroline, feeling that a fatal error had
been committed. ‘We only thought he’d like a change. Don’t be cross,
William. You know you’re our beanyfactor.’

‘Well, beany or no beany, you don’t see ’im to-night. Off with you.
I’ll see ’e’s all right. Yes, you can leave the grub. You come ’bout
eight in the morning if you can, and then we’ll see.’

It was a disappointed party that returned to the dining-room.

‘I did think it would be different,’ said Charlotte. ‘It’s all so dull.
And it’ll go on being like this for weeks.’

‘It’s the dreadful anxiousness _I_ don’t like,’ said Caroline. ‘The
clergyman said secrets were awkward pets to keep, and they are.’

‘Why is everything always different from what it was when you thought
it was always going to be the same?’ Charlotte asked, with the air of
an inquiring philosopher.

‘You see,’ said Caroline, ‘we are rather young for rescues.’

‘Yes, but,’ Charles urged, ‘we couldn’t do anything _except_ rescue. We
can’t do anything else _now_, however young we are.’

They talked about it for an hour, and said the same things over and
over, and then Mr. Penfold came in to say good-bye.

‘I’m translating that book. I’m getting on with it,’ he said; ‘it’s
most interesting. I’ve got some of the manuscript in my pocket.’

‘Oh do let us look!’ they all said at once.

‘Well, just one page then, only one, or I shall be late for the choir
practice.’

He laid down a type-written page and they all sprawled over the table
to read it.

‘To obtain your suit,’ it said. ‘Herbs favourable to the granting of
petitions....’ There was a blank for the names of the herbs, which Mr.
Penfold hadn’t yet had time, he told them, to translate.

‘Suitors to kings and those in high places shall note well these
herbs,’ the translation went on, ‘and offer the flowers and leaves in
bunches or garlands when they go to tender their suit. More efficacious
it is, however, if the herbs be bruised and their juices expressed, and
a decoction given to drink in a little warm sack or strong waters or
any liquor convenient. But for this ye need interest with the household
of the king or him who has the granting of the desire. These herbs have
the virtue to incline the heart favourably towards suitors if gathered
in the first quarter of Luna by the hand of the petitioner in his
proper person.’

That was the end of the page. The children had to own that they
couldn’t understand it.

‘Oh,’ said the Unusual One, ‘it only means if you’re going to ask a
favour of any one. One of the herbs was balsam, I believe. Now I must
fly. Keep the page till to-morrow if you like.’

They did like. And when he was gone Charlotte spoke.

‘Look here. We shall have to tell the Uncle. Let’s decoct him some
balsam and then tell him.’

But the others wouldn’t hear of it. They had to hear of it, however,
next day, when at twelve o’clock William allowed them to visit Rupert
in his loft. Rupert’s eyes were very bright and his hands were very
hot, and he coughed almost all the time—a very little cough, but most
persevering.

‘William,’ Caroline came down the ladder to say, ‘we must tell uncle.
I’m sure Rupert’s ill. He ought to have a doctor.’

‘You’re right, Miss,’ William replied, ‘What did I tell you from the
first?’

Caroline expected stern opposition from Rupert, and even feared that he
might say that rather than have his secret given to an uncle he would
indeed run away to sea. But he only turned his head restlessly on the
straw and said, ‘Oh, I don’t care! Do what you like.’

The day was, most fortunately, fine. So after dinner they all went into
the garden to get the balsam. But they couldn’t find any balsam.

‘I’ll get the _Language Of_,’ said Caroline, ‘and we’ll take the herbs
that seem most likely to make a person do what you want.’

In finding suitable ‘herbs,’ first in the book and then in the garden,
the time went quickly: there was a good deal of talk, of course.

‘I _really_ don’t think we need worry,’ said Caroline again and again.
‘I think with the herbs it’s sure to be all right, and the Uncle will
let us keep him.’ She spoke as if Rupert were a stray kitten or an
ownerless puppy. ‘You see the fern-seed came right, and the sorry
bouquet we gave to the Wilmington came right, and you’ll see this will.
We’ll give him some in his tea as well as the bouquet, and that’ll make
quite certain.’

‘It’s all nonsense,’ said Charlotte. ‘Besides, he’ll spit it out. I
know I should. You can lead an uncle to the teapot but you can’t make
him drink.’

‘We’ll have calceolaria,’ Caroline finally decided, ‘because it means
“I offer you pecuniary aid,” or “I offer you my fortune”; and, of
course, Rupert’ll cost something to keep. And double china aster, if we
can find it, because it means “I share your sentiments.” Straw means
agreement, so we’ll have that too. It needn’t show in the bouquet. And
eschscholtzia, because that signifies “do not refuse me.”’

They got the calceolarias and the eschscholtzias, but the gardener said
the asters weren’t out yet.

‘It’s only two flowers,’ said Charlotte; ‘suppose we wear something in
our button-holes to mean “we trust in you”?’

Nothing meaning just that, however, could be found in the book. The
nearest was heliotrope, ‘I turn to thee,’ and rhododendron, ‘danger.’
A bouquet of rhododendron and heliotrope was, however, found to be
incompatible with the human button-hole, so these flowers were added to
the Uncle’s bouquet.

‘And now,’ said Charlotte, ‘let’s go in and express the juices. We
can’t chew them this time, because it would be disgusting.’

‘Scissors and tea, _I_ think,’ Charles said, and this bright suggestion
was acted on.

The Unusual Clergyman was perhaps partly to blame for what followed.
Calceolaria, rhododendron, and eschscholtzia (a word I spell with
the greatest pain and difficulty) were cut up very fine indeed with
Caroline’s nail-scissors, and secreted in Charles’s handkerchief—a
clean one fetched down for the purpose. When the tea-tray was brought
in, and the maid had gone to ring the bell which summons uncles, the
lid of the teapot was hurriedly raised and a good handful of chopped
leaves and petals thrust in.

The magic bouquet was placed on the Uncle’s plate.

He came in, pale and shadowy as ever, and yet looking, the children
thought, somewhat different, and took up the bouquet. It was rather an
odd one. The eschscholtzias were drooping miserably among the strong
rhododendrons; so was the heliotrope. And the calceolarias seemed
shrivelled and unhappy; and the straw, of which in his enthusiasm
Charles had brought a large double handful, showed much more than
Caroline had meant it to.

‘What’s all this, eh?’ the Uncle asked.

‘It’s a sym-what’s-its-name bouquet.’

‘Simple?’ asked the Uncle; ‘it’s anything but that. Sympathetic?’

‘No,’ said Charlotte, ‘sym- —what Mr. Penfold was saying to you
yesterday about magic.’

‘Symbolic. I see. And what does it symbolise?’ he asked kindly, but
without smiling.

‘We’ll tell you when you’ve had your tea,’ they all agreed in saying.

The Uncle sniffed the bouquet, and that was perhaps why he did not
sniff the tea. They wondered how he could possibly not smell it, for
as Caroline poured it out it seemed to fill the room with its strange
mixed scent. However, he just stirred it and talked about the
weather, not at all amusingly, and presently he lifted the cup to his
lips.

[Illustration: He screwed up his nose.]

Six anxious eyes followed his every movement; and his movements from
the moment the tea entered his mouth were brisk and unusual. He screwed
up his nose in a way that at any less important moment would have been
funny, went quickly to the window, leaned out, and did exactly what
Charlotte had said he would do.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, coming back to the table and taking up the cup;
‘I beg your pardon for that natural if impolite action. I think this
tea must be poisoned. Don’t drink any of it, and please ring the bell.
I must inquire into this.’

Nobody moved.

‘We aren’t going to drink any,’ said Charles.

‘Oh, don’t inquire!’ said Charlotte anxiously.

‘Was it _very_ horrid?’ asked Caroline. ‘I _am_ so sorry.’

‘Will you kindly ring?’ the Uncle asked coldly. It was a terrible
moment, but Caroline met it bravely.

‘No,’ she said; ‘don’t ask the servants, please, uncle; it’s not their
fault. _We_ put the stuff in the teapot.’

‘You put poison in the teapot? For me?’ The Uncle suddenly sat down.

‘No, no, dear uncle,’ cried Caroline; ‘_not_ poison. Only calceolaria
and eschscholtzia and straw and rhododendron; it isn’t poison. It’s
just a little magic spell to make you say “Yes” to what we want.’

‘Have I given you reason to suppose that I could not grant your
requirements without spells?’ he asked severely.

‘Oh no! But we wanted to make sure.’

Charlotte held out the translation and the Uncle read it.

‘But this doesn’t say calceolaria and all the rest of it,’ he objected.

‘No, it doesn’t say. That’s just it. So we had to get the nearest
things we could. Straw for agreement, because we want you to agree
to what we want; and calceolaria, because it means “I offer you
pecuniary aid”; and rhododendron to show it’s dangerous not to; and
es-what’s-its-name for “do not refuse me.”’

‘Do not refuse you _what_?’ said the Uncle in an exasperated voice.

The three of them looked at each other and two of them said, ‘You tell,
Caro.’

Caroline clasped her hands very tight, and drew a long breath, and said
very fast indeed:

‘There was a boy ran away from school called Rupert his master was
cruel to him and he came here and we hid him and put the Police off the
scent and he’s such a nice boy and his father’s in India like ours and
he’s in the straw-loft now with such a dreadful cold and I know the
doctor ought to be sent for and if you give him back to that Murdstone
man I know he’ll die and I can’t bear it and I’m very very sorry it was
silly putting the stuff in your tea but we weren’t taking any chances
and if you’re angry about the tea do punish us but stick to Rupert and
oh uncle I don’t know what to say but what would you have done if you’d
been us?’

‘There, there,’ said the Uncle gently, and not seeming as surprised
as they expected; ‘don’t cry. Don’t _you_ begin,’ he added with more
sternness to Charles, who was becoming subject to sniffs. ‘There, go
and wash your faces. We’ll have some fresh tea made in another pot, and
talk it over.’

‘It’s hopeful, I tell you,’ said Caroline, washing her face; ‘he’s
not said “No.” Oh, I believe the spell’s working. Stop snivelling,
Charlotte. There’s nothing to cry about, _yet_.’

‘You began,’ said Charlotte truthfully.

‘I didn’t,’ said Caroline; ‘and if I did, you put it all on to me, and
I didn’t know what I was saying or doing. Come on down. We mustn’t let
him think it over by himself too long.’

Over tea, for which nobody felt very hungry, the Uncle asked many
questions, and heard the full story of the escape and the Royal Order
of the Secret Rose.

‘And don’t blame William, will you?’ Charlotte begged; ‘because he’s
done nothing but say tell you ever since it began.’

‘I shall not blame William,’ said the Uncle.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ said Caroline; ‘at least next day I did, but it
wasn’t my secret. And Rupert agreed for us to tell now.’

Tea was over and there was a silence. Uncle Charles was looking from
one to another of the children.

‘And you really believed,’ he said slowly, ‘that putting that
abominable stuff in my tea would make me agree to keep your runaway
boy?’

‘There was the fern-seed, you know,’ said Charlotte; ‘and it said in
the book that the decoction of balsam would make you grant our desire,
and calceolaria’s as good as balsam any day.’

‘And you really thought it would?’

‘Won’t it?’ asked Caroline, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, uncle,
if you only knew how I hated giving you that horrid stuff instead of
your nice tea. It hurt me far more than it did you.’

The Uncle laughed faintly, but he did laugh.

‘Then you _will_ grant our desire,’ cried Charlotte. ‘You couldn’t
laugh if you weren’t going to. So you see the herbs did do the magic.’

‘Something seems to have done it,’ said the Uncle. ‘You had better give
me a red rose and two buds and enrol me as a member of your Royal Order
of the Secret Rose.’ He found himself suddenly involved in a violent
threefold embrace.

‘I will give you a word of advice,’ he said, settling his neck-tie when
it was over. ‘Never try to administer philtres or potions _inwardly_.
Outward application is quite as efficacious. Indeed I am not sure but
what your bouquet was in itself enough to work the spell. Something has
certainly worked it. For I may now tell you that Mrs. Wilmington had
her suspicions, and by a stratagem surprised the secret this afternoon.
She told me and wished to send for the Police. But I heard William’s
story, and decided not to send for the Police till after tea. But now
Mrs. Wilmington has seen the boy, you may as well make her a Royal Rose
too. She will not betray you.’

The children looked at each other amazed.

Mrs. Wilmington? It was unbelievable.

‘The doctor is coming at once,’ said the Uncle. ‘I hope it isn’t
measles.’

‘Then, if we hadn’t spelled you, should you have given him up to the
Police?’ Caroline asked.

‘Your telling me, or the spell, or something has stopped that. Now run
away and play in the park. If the illness is not infectious you shall
see your little friend later.’

‘Oh, uncle,’ said Charlotte in heartfelt tones, ‘it’s a long lane that
never rejoices. We have been so sick about it. And now it’s all right.
And you _are_ a dear.’

‘The dearest dear,’ corrected Caroline.

‘I call him a brick,’ said Charles, with the air of a man of the world.

‘There’s only one thing more,’ said the Uncle; ‘go and get me that red
rose, and then I shall know that you’ll let me into the next really
important secret you have.’

They ran to get it, and the Uncle took it and the petition bouquet away
with him to his study.

       *       *       *       *       *

When the doctor had paid his visit they were allowed to see Rupert
for a few minutes before bedtime—not in the straw-loft as they had
expected, but in the blue room, which is hung with tapestry, and has
blue silk curtains to windows and four-poster.

‘They brought me in at tea-time,’ Rupert told them. ‘That Mrs.
Wilmington of yours is first-class. I don’t know what you meant by
saying she was a rotter. And your uncle—isn’t he a brick?’

Charles was glad he had thought of that word himself, Rupert’s using it
showed it was the correct thing to say.

‘I’m jolly glad you told him,’ Rupert went on. ‘Of course we couldn’t
have gone on the other way. And he’s sent a telegram a mile long to my
people in India to ask whether I mayn’t stay on here till school begins
again.’

‘How splendid,’ said Charlotte, awe-struck; ‘how awfully splendid! I
didn’t think uncles _could_ be like that.’

‘Uncles are all right,’ said Rupert, ‘if you treat them properly.’

Then he began to cough, and Mrs. Wilmington came in with lemonade
and honey, and told the others that they were tiring him, and it was
bedtime anyhow.

‘If you treat them properly,’ said Charlotte dreamily, as she brushed
her hair, ‘uncles are all right. Do you think _he_ would have been all
right if we hadn’t treated him just as we did?’

‘No,’ said Caroline. ‘Just unhook me, will you, Char? I don’t. I think
it was the spell.’

‘So do I,’ said Charlotte. ‘Stand still or I can’t unhook you. What the
eye doesn’t see, the hook doesn’t come out of. I expect the tea was
like what Miss Peckitt’s sister’s mistress had when their house was
burglared—nervous shock. I expect that is the same as electric shocks
making people walk that couldn’t before. I expect the nervous shock
made that part of uncle that grants favours wake up and walk, don’t
you?’

‘You make haste into bed,’ said Caroline. ‘What’s the good of talking
all round it? We did what it said in the book, and it happened like it
said in the book it would happen. I believe you could manage everything
with spells if you only knew the proper ones. When I grow up I shall
be a professoress of magic spells and have my business office in a
beautiful palace, and kings and queens will come in their golden
chariots to ask me what spells they ought to do to make their subjects
happy and not poor, and for everybody to have a chicken in the pot,
and——’

‘Talk about talking!’ said Charlotte. ‘Come along to bed; do.’




CHAPTER XI

THE ROSICURIANS


The door of the drawing-room at the Manor House was kept locked, and
Mrs. Wilmington dusted the room herself and carried its key in her
pocket. After the Uncle had said that about Mrs. Wilmington having
expected the children to break everything in the house, the three C.’s
began to wonder whether the drawing-room had always been kept in this
locked-up state, or whether it was only done on their account.

‘Out of compliment to us,’ as Charles put it.

‘I almost think it must be that,’ Caroline said; ‘because of course
drawing-rooms are for people to sit in, and the Wilmington must expect
some one to sit in it or she wouldn’t dust it so carefully.’

‘I looked in the other day when she was dusting,’ said Charlotte. ‘I
couldn’t see much just a bit of the carpet, pink and grey and pretty,
and the corner of a black cupboard-thing with trees and birds and gold
Chinamen on it, and a table with a soup tureen with red rabbits’ heads
for handles, and a round looking-glass that you could see some more of
the room in, all tiny and all drawn wrong somehow—you know the sort;
convict mirrors, Harriet says they are. I asked her.’

‘When?’ said Charles.

‘Oh, I don’t know. Just after. And Harriet goes in to sweep it. She
says its full of lovelies.’

‘Why don’t you ask her if it was shut up out of compliment to us?’
Charles asked.

‘Because I wasn’t going to put ideas into Harriet’s head, of course.’

And Caroline agreed that such a question would have been simply giving
themselves away.

Each of the three C.’s had turned the handle of the drawing-room door
many times to see whether by chance Mrs. Wilmington had just this once
not remembered to lock it. But she always had. And their interest in
the room had steadily grown. And now here was another wet day, just the
day for examining golden Chinamen and looking at yourself in convex
mirrors; and the room was locked up so that no one could enjoy these
advantages.

Rupert was still in bed, the doctor had decided against measles; but
the feverish cold which had given rise to the measle idea was still too
bad for Rupert to be anywhere but where he was. And the others were
only allowed to see him for a few minutes at a time. Mrs. Wilmington
had, so Harriet explained, ‘taken to the new young gentleman in a
way you’d hardly believe,’ and was spending the afternoon reading
_Masterman Ready_ to him after a baffled attempt to read him _Eric, or
Little by Little_, which she fetched from her own room on purpose, and
which Rupert stopped his ears with his fingers rather than listen to.

‘It is _the_ time,’ said Charlotte; ‘there is a time in the affairs of
men that they call the Nick. And this is it. Let’s try to get in. The
Wilmington is safely out of the way. Let’s!’

‘Yes, let’s,’ said Charles.

‘No, don’t let’s,’ said Caroline. ‘The Uncle mightn’t want us to.
Perhaps compliments to us aren’t the real reason. Perhaps there’s some
wonderful secret kept in there, known only to the head of the house and
his faithful Wilmington. The Uncle’s been so jolly decent. Let’s ask
the Wilmington for the key.’

The others laughed, and Charles said, ‘You know well enough _that’s_ no
earthly.’

Caroline did not think there could be a secret, because the Uncle was
now a member of the Royal Order of the Secret Rose, whose unchangeable
motto was ‘halves in all secrets.’

‘So if there’d been anything like _that_ he’d have told us without
preservation,’ Charles added. ‘Yes, I agree with Caro.’

‘And,’ said Charlotte, ‘I don’t see—— Oh, I say, I’ve got an idea!
Let’s have another hunt for that second book the Lady in the picture’s
got under her elbow. We really ought to find it. It’s a sacred duty we
owe the Uncle for being so decent about Rupert.’

‘The drawing-room door’s knob is just the same as this one’s,’ Charles
pointed out; ‘and the morning-room’s and the library’s door knobs are
the same too. Let’s see if this key won’t fit the drawing-room.’ He
rattled the key of the dining-room door as he spoke.

‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s jolly rough on me.
Everybody always blames the eldest. I wish you’d been the eldest,
Charles.’

‘I would have if I could, you bet,’ said Charles. ‘Come on.’

‘No, look here,’ said Caroline desperately, ‘please don’t. And I’ll go
and ask uncle if we mayn’t. There!’

‘But we’re forbidden to disturb him.’

‘I’d rather disturb him than go poking into places he doesn’t want us
to go poking into. Don’t you see? If he doesn’t mind us going in he’ll
say “Yes,” and if he does mind he’ll say “No,” and then we shall be
glad we didn’t without asking him.’

‘But what could be in there that he doesn’t want us to see?’ Charles
wanted to know.

‘Oh, anything! Clouds of live butterflies that are let out after lunch,
and go back to their cages when the tea-bell rings. I think Caro’s
right about asking the Uncle,’ Charlotte said.

‘Butterflies are simply piffle,’ Charles pointed out. ‘They’d be laying
their eggs all over everything and turning into cocoons all the time. I
know, because of silkworms.’

‘Well, a snake then,’ said Charlotte briskly: ‘an enormous
king-serpent, with a crown on its head, and yards and yards long, that
comes out of a cupboard from two to four every day, and twines pieces
of itself round the legs of the furniture, or your legs if you go in.
It wouldn’t mind what legs they were it twined round, I expect.’

‘I like snakes,’ said Charles briefly. ‘Let Caro go to the Uncle if she
wants to.’

They all went. It was deemed respectful to wash a little.

‘They like you to be clean when you ask for things,’ said Caroline.

‘It’s always “wash!” whatever you do,’ Charlotte complained. ‘While
there’s life there’s soap.’ But she washed too.

There was an agitated pause on the sheepskin mat outside the Uncle’s
study door.

‘Shall we knock?’ Charles asked.

‘You don’t knock at sitting-room doors,’ said Caroline, turned the
handle, and opened the door three inches and three-eighths.

‘Who’s that?’ said the voice of the Uncle. ‘How often am I to give
orders that I am not to be disturbed on any pretence?’

‘There isn’t any pretence,’ Charles was beginning, when Caroline broke
in with:

‘It’s a depredation of the Secret Rose.’

‘So I perceive. But I am too busy to play now,’ said the Uncle; and you
could tell by the very way he spoke that he had his thumb in a book and
was afraid of losing his place.

‘It isn’t play. We want to ask your permission for something.’

‘Well, if I receive this deputation, will it undertake not to do it
again for a week, on any pretence? Then come in.’

They came in, to a room that seemed quite full of books. There were
books on the tables, books on the floor, books on the mantelpiece and
on the window-ledge, books open and books shut, books old and new,
books handsome and ugly. The Uncle seemed even to have used books to
cover the walls with, as ordinary people use wall-paper. He was sitting
at a wide green leather-covered writing-table, and sure enough he had
his thumb in a tall brown folio.

They all said ‘Good morning’ politely, and Caroline coughed and said:

‘If you please, uncle, we want to explore the whole house to look for
the other book—the book, I mean, that is lost out of the picture. Dame
Eleanour’s book, I mean. You said we might. But the drawing-room door’s
locked.’

‘Dear me,’ said the Uncle impatiently, ‘can’t you unlock it.’

‘No,’ Charles told him. ‘The Wil—I mean Mrs. Wilmington keeps the key
in her under-pocket.’

‘Oh, she does, does she? You won’t break anything? But of course you
won’t,’ said the Uncle rather in a hurry. ‘Well, as members of the
Society of the Secret Rose, I’ll let you through my secret door.’

He put a folded paper in his book to mark the place, got up, and
crossed the room to a low narrow door by the fireplace that looked as
though it led to a cupboard. He went through the door and the children
followed him. They found themselves in a little carpeted corridor.
At the left was a door, closed and barred; to the right a flight of
stairs, and in front another door. This the Uncle opened.

‘Here is the drawing-room,’ he said; and there it was. They could see a
corner of its carpet, and it was the same pink and grey rose-pattern as
the other corner that Charlotte had seen.

‘Now come up here,’ said the Uncle, and led the way. At the top of
the stairs was another door. The Uncle opened it, and behold, the
well-known corridor, with the stuffed birds and fishes, from which
their bedroom doors opened.

‘I will give you the key of this door to keep,’ said the Uncle, ‘and
then you can visit the drawing-room when you please. If you do not
disturb anything, and refrain from making your visits in muddy boots,
Mrs. Wilmington need never know. It will be a secret between us—my
little contribution to the Society of the Rose. Like a conspiracy,
isn’t it?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Just exactly like,’ every one agreed, and asked whether it was really
a secret staircase.

‘It is now, at any rate,’ said the Uncle. ‘It used to be merely the
humble backstairs, but I had it shut up because I dislike noise.’

‘We’ll always come down in our bath slippers,’ Caroline promised him.
‘Oh, uncle, you are a darling!’

The Uncle submitted to a complicated threefold embrace, and went back
to his brown folio.

‘Now, then,’ said the three, and entered the drawing-room.

You went up three steps to it. That was why you could not reach up from
the outside to look through the windows, of which there were three.
They were curtained with grey and pink brocade that rhymed with the
carpet. There were tall gold-framed mirrors set over marble console
tables with golden legs, and round mirrors whose frames had round
knobs on them, and oval mirrors with candlesticks branching out from
underneath them. There was a golden harp with hardly any of its strings
broken, in one corner, and a piano with inlaid woods of varied colours,
on which Caroline would have dearly loved to play ‘The Bluebells of
Scotland’ and Haydn’s ‘Surprise’; but, as this would have meant Mrs.
Wilmington’s surprise too, it was not to be thought of. There were
carved Indian cabinets with elephants and lions on them, and Chinese
cabinets with mandarins and little-footed gold ladies, and pagodas
in ivory under glass cases, and wax flowers also glass-cased. There
were statues, tall and white and cold, and boxes of carved ivory and
carved ebony, and one of porcupine quills, and one of mother-of-pearl
and silver—a work-box that was. There were cushions and chair-seats
of faded needlework; old and beautiful and straight-backed chairs and
round-backed chairs; two crystal chandeliers that looked like fountains
wrong way up; china of all sorts, including a Chinaman who wagged his
head when you came near him.

In fact, the room was the kind of room you sometimes find in houses
where the same family has lived for many many many years, and each
generation has taken care of the beautiful things left by its
ancestors, and has added one or two more beautiful things, to be
taken care of by the generation that is to come after. You could have
amused yourself there for an hour just by looking; and the three C.’s
remembered joyously that they had not been forbidden to touch.

It is wonderful how careful children can be if they do not allow their
minds to wander from their determination to be careful. The three
C.’s looked at everything and touched a good many things, and did not
break or hurt anything at all. They examined the cabinets, opening
their doors and pulling out every drawer in the hope of discovering
some secret place where The Book might be. But they only found coins
and medals and chessmen and draughts and spellicans, bright foreign
sea-shells, a sea-horse and a snake skin, some mother-of-pearl counters
and ivory draughts, and an ivory cribbage board inlaid with brass that
shone like gold.

‘It’s no good,’ said Charles at last, pulling out one of the lacquered
drawers; ‘let’s play spellicans. It’s a nice quiet game that grown-ups
like you to play, and we owe the Uncle _something_.’

‘Let’s have just _one_ more look,’ Charlotte pleaded. ‘Oh, I say, we
haven’t looked at the books yet.’

There were books, not many, on some of the tables—large books with
pictures, and one, a photograph book, so heavy that Caroline could not
lift it up.

‘I say. Look here,’ she called out; ‘this book’s only got about three
pages of uncles and aunts, the rest is solid, like a box made to
imitate a book. Suppose _the_ book were inside the box part?’

‘Won’t it open?’ The others were crowding close to look.

‘There’s a sort of catch there,’ said Charles, putting his finger on a
little brass button.

‘Oh, crikey!’ he started back. So did the others. For a low whirring
sound had come from the book, and Charlotte had hardly time to say,
‘It’s a Nihilist bomb, come away!’ before the book broke into the
silvery chiming cadence of ‘Home, Sweet Home.’

‘It’s a musical box,’ Charlotte explained needlessly. And then the same
thought struck each mind.

‘Mrs. Wilmington!’ For the musical box was a fine one, and its clear
silvery notes rang out through the room. Mrs. Wilmington must hear
wherever she was. She would hear and come.

‘Fly!’ said Caroline, and they fled. They got out, locked the door,
rushed softly yet swiftly up the stairs and waited behind the upper
door till they heard Mrs. Wilmington’s alpaca sweep down the front
stairs. Then out, and down after her, quickly and quietly, so
that when, having found the musical box playing with sweet tinkling
self-possession to an empty drawing-room whose doors were locked,
and having satisfied herself that no intruder lurked behind brocaded
curtain or Indian screen, she came to the dining-room, she found the
three C.’s quietly seated there each with a book, a picture of good
little children on a rainy day. She could not see that Charles’s book
was a _Bradshaw_ and Caroline’s _Zotti’s Italian Grammar_, wrong way up.

[Illustration: ‘It’s a Nihilist bomb, come away!‘]

‘Oh, you _are_ here,’ she said; ‘did you hear that musical box?’

‘Yes,’ said the children meekly.

Mrs. Wilmington stood a moment in the door. She did not understand
machinery, and to her it seemed quite possible that a musical box might
begin to play all on its own account without any help from outside. On
the other hand, it had never chosen to do it before these children came.

‘You ought not to wear bedroom slippers in the sitting-rooms,’ she
said, and went away without more words.

‘I nearly burst,’ said Charles then; ‘especially when she noticed our
feet.’

‘But she’ll find out,’ Charlotte said. ‘She found out about Rupert.
Let’s go back _now_; because she won’t think we’re _there_ now she
knows we’re _here_. There was another book, all heavy too. We’ll start
that and wake her up again.’

‘I say, isn’t it a lark?’ Charles whispered, as they crept up the
stairs.




CHAPTER XII

THE OTHER BOOK


They found the second book. It was not so heavy as the other, but in
it, too, there were only three or four pages of ladies in crinolines
and gentlemen in whiskers and chokers, leaning against marble pillars
with velvet curtains loosely draped in the background.

‘Be careful,’ Charlotte urged; ‘be quite ready to fly before you start
it.’

But when they pressed the little catch and sprang towards the door
ready to ‘fly,’ no silvery sound met the ear. In an awe-struck silence
they went slowly back to the table.

And now, looking more closely, they saw that the catch was not made
to press down but to slide along. Charlotte pushed it. A lid flew up,
and there was a space that had perhaps once held a musical box, but
now held a reel of silk, an old velvet needle-book with a view of the
Isle of Wight painted on it outside, and inside, needles red with many
a year’s rust; a box of beads with a glass top, a bone silk-winder, a
netting needle, and a sheet of paper with some finely pencilled writing
on it.

‘Bother!’ said Charles; ‘let’s start the other.’

But Charlotte was looking at the beads and Caroline was looking at the
writing.

‘What jolly little different beads, not a bit like now,’ said
Charlotte; and Caroline said:

‘It’s a list of books, that’s all. I say,’ she added in quite another
voice, ‘that Thessalonian book is underlined, _hard_, I wonder why?’
She unfolded the paper and turned it over. ‘There’s another underlined,
Pope’s Ill Something,’ she said.

‘_Iliad_,’ said Charles, looking over her shoulder. ‘I always know
Latin words the minute I see them, even if I don’t know what they mean.
Let’s start the other musical box.’

‘No,’ said Caroline quickly, ‘let’s find Pope’s What’s-its-name.
There’s only those two underlined. It’s a clue, that’s what it is. Come
on and don’t make a row. I feel we’re on the brink of—the very brink.
Punctuality and despatch.’

‘All the books in the dining-room’s names are in a book at the end
of the bottom shelf,’ said Charles. ‘I know, because I thought it was
_the_ book; the cover’s something like the one in the picture.’

It was easy to find Pope’s _Iliad_ in the Catalogue. ‘1 vol. Top shelf.
Case 6. Number 39,’ it said. Then there was a rush for Case 6 and a
dragging of chairs to the spot. Caroline being the tallest, reached the
volume and got it down.

‘The cover feels loose in my hand,’ she said. ‘Oh, I do believe it is!’

It was. From the loose boards whose back pretended that they were
covering Mr. Alexander Pope’s translation of the Greek epic, another
and quite different book came forth. A thin brown book, the second
book of the picture! Charlotte climbed on a chair expressly to compare
the two. There was no doubt of it. The two were the same. Inside was
yellowy paper with a queer sort of waviness about it, and large print
of that curious old-fashioned kind where the s’s are all like f’s,
except at the ends of words.

‘We can read this,’ said Charles hopefully. ‘I mean even _you_ can.
It’s not Latin this time. Let’s take it to uncle and tell him we’ve
found it. _Won’t_ he be delighted with us?’

‘We promised not to bother for a week,’ Charlotte reminded him. ‘Let’s
keep it for a week, and then we’ll give him the two together. He won’t
be able to believe his eyes. It _is_ an eyesore, isn’t it?’

‘I think what you mean’s a sight for sore eyes,’ Caroline suggested.
‘Let’s have a look. Is it spells?’

‘It looks like all about being ill,’ said Charlotte doubtfully; ‘but
it’s very hard with these s’s pretending to be f’s, and the spelling is
rum, isn’t it?’

‘All spelling’s rum, I think,’ said Charles; ‘especially ie’s and ei’s.’

‘I.E., except after C,’ said Charlotte absently, ‘It says, “Government
and Virtues. It is under the Moon!”’

‘What is?’

‘_I_ don’t know. It goes on: “It is a good wound-e herb-e and the juice
taken in wine helpeth the jaundice, and is ſovereign for the plague, if
ſo be the ſufferer be not too far gone in it.”’

‘What does? What is?’

‘“The flowers,”’ Charlotte read on, ‘“be large and yellow in forme and
in others paler and ſmaller. The ſtalk is two feet high and divideth
himſelf into many ſpreading branches.’”

‘What does?’

‘Rugged wort. It’s all about plants, I think, and what they’re good
for.’

‘How glorious!’ Caroline cried and clapped her hands. ‘Now we’ve got
all three. The spells, and the medicine, and the _Language Of_. And
what one won’t do, the other will. Hist! not a word!’ She had only just
time to throw the book into a chair and sit down on it as the door
opened, and Harriet entered with the tea-tray.

The Uncle did not come in to tea. Only Mrs. Wilmington looked in for a
moment to say that Rupert’s cold was worse, and that they had better
not see him again that day.

‘And please don’t be up and down stairs all the time in your heavy
boots,’ she added.

‘Our feet don’t seem to please her to-day, somehow, whatever we put
them in,’ said Charlotte. ‘I wish we could give her something to make
her like us. We might just as well be black-beetles.’

‘What we’ve got to do,’ said Caroline, pouring out milk, ‘is to get
Rupert better. I felt all the time in the drawing-room how hateful it
is for him to be out of things like this. If we could work something
out of the three books, I’m sure he would get all right in no time. A
threefold spell; that’s what we want.’

‘Well, we can’t have it then,’ said Charlotte. ‘I should think _two_
books would be ample. It’s only a cold he’s got. It might want the
three if it was plague or wounds or jauntry—jaundice, or whatever it
is.’

They spread out the book on the table as soon as tea was cleared away,
and put their heads together over the yellow pages. But it was some
time before they could find anything that seemed as though it could
possibly do Rupert any good.

‘What a beastly lot of herbs there are in the world,’ Charlotte
remarked. And Charles reminded her that they called any old flower an
herb in books.

‘What I can’t understand,’ he added, ‘is how people can possibly have
so many disgusting things the matter with them—palsy and leprosy and
quinsy, and all the other things as well.’

‘I don’t suppose people have them now,’ said Caroline consolingly.
‘Aunt Emmeline says Hygiene has got on so nicely, people don’t have
nearly such awful things the matter with them as they used. Look at
the Black Death in fourteen hundred something. You never hear of black
deaths now.’

‘I wonder whether funerals are black because of that,’ said Charles. ‘I
think there’s something in Latin about Black Death knocking the back
of the horseman with an even foot.’

‘I always did think Latin was nonsense,’ said Charlotte.

Their eyes were quite tired of the yellow paper and the long s’s before
the great idea occurred to them. It was Caroline who had it.

‘Let’s look up Roses,’ she said. ‘I’m sure the rose is Rupert’s lucky
flower. Perhaps if we made a conserve, or a decoction, or a tincture or
something——’

‘We promised not to give any one anything for their insides. I’ve just
remembered,’ said Charles. ‘How rotten!’

‘Never mind—let’s look! We’ll make it a spell as well. Out of the
_Language Of_. I expect it’ll work all right. Find Rose.’

They found Rose—pages and pages of it. The author of the _Herbal_ had
plenty to say. As he himself put it: ‘If I ſhould ſet down here all
uſes of the roſe my booke would be already too long.’

But after diligent search they found out that the rose is under the
dominion of Venus.

‘That’s all right,’ said Charles. ‘She had a little boy of her own. So
she’d know.’

Also, that the decoction of roses ‘is proper to cool the heat of
fevers.’

‘Only we don’t know what fever Rupert’s got,’ Charles said. ‘It might
be the scarlet kind or the swine kind, if humans have that.’

They also found that the rose was ‘a conſiderable reſtorative. The
bitterneſs of the roſes when they be freſh is of good uſe to cure
choler and watery humours.’

‘I suppose watery humours means when you’re in the humour to cry; he
isn’t that,’ said Charlotte.

Farther down the page they found: ‘The moiſt conſerve of roſes mixed
with mithridate and taken together is good for thoſe that are troubled
with diſtillations of rheum from the brain to the eyes and the noſe.’

‘That’s it!’ cried Caroline. ‘I knew the rose would do the trick! I
know a cold in the head is rheum. That’s French. I daresay it’s Latin
too,’ she added hastily. ‘But I never knew before that colds come from
your brain. I expect that’s what makes you feel so duffing when you’ve
got a cold.’

If a doubt was still left in any breast, it was set at rest when they
learned that ‘Red roſes procure reſt and ſleep,’ and that ‘a ſtrong
tincture of the roſe maketh a pleaſant julep, calmeth delirium, and
helpeth the action of the bark.’

‘Rest’s what he wants; the Wil-cat said so,’ Caroline shut the book
with a bang, ‘and if roses help the action of the bark, that’s the very
thing. She said the cough wanted easing.’

‘Does bark mean cough?’ Charles asked doubtfully.

‘You may depend it did in those old times,’ Caroline assured him. ‘Aunt
Emmeline told me lots of the words they call slang now, were book-words
once. “Swank” wasn’t slang in Shakespeare’s time, she said. And it’s
stopped raining. Let’s get the roses, and we can think about how we’ll
give them afterwards. Perhaps if he just smelt them.’

‘There was an old Roman Johnny,’ said Charles instructively; ‘he asked
all his friends to a party, and let down tons of rose leaves on them
till they died. Couldn’t we do that to Rupert? Not till he died, of
course, but till he got better.’

‘We might cover him with rose leaves,’ said Caroline, delighted with
the romantic idea, ‘like babes in the wood. Let’s get pillow-cases
full—I know where the linen-room is—and hide them till every one’s in
bed. And then put them over him. We ought to put something out of the
_Language Of_ as well. Iceland moss means health, I believe. Only there
isn’t any.’

A hasty search in the _Language of Flowers_ informed them that
nemophila meant ‘success everywhere’; and as nothing more suitable
could be found, it was decided to mix a few nemophila flowers with the
rose leaves.

‘There was a secret Society once called The Rosicurians. Aunt Emmeline
told me,’ said Caroline. ’_We_ shall be that if the roses cure Rupert.
I like being long-ago things, don’t you?’

The garden was very wet indeed. Even in mackintoshes it was difficult
to avoid getting wet through. Every tree dripped on the children’s
heads, and the water from the soaked rose leaves ran up their sleeves
and down their necks. There were so many fully-blown roses that it was
easy enough to fill the three frilled linen pillow-cases, though of
course it isn’t the sort of thing that is done all in a minute.

It was nearly bedtime when the three dripping children, each carrying a
dripping sack of rose leaves, stood outside the arbour which led to the
secret passage. They had gone out that way.

‘I know we were told not to,’ Charlotte had said, ’but it was only
the Wil-cat who told us, and it was only because the Uncle doesn’t
like other people to use the passage. And of course we’ll tell him
afterwards, and he’ll say it was all right. When we’ve cured Rupert
every one will say how clever.’

Yet now at the last they hesitated.

‘I do wish I could remember,’ said Caroline frowning, ’whether we _did_
promise not to go through the passage or whether it was only that we
were _told_ not to. It really does make _all_ the difference, doesn’t
it?’

(It often happens that grown-up people think children are disobedient
because really and truly the children _can’t_ remember whether they
promised or not, and naturally they give themselves the benefit of the
doubt. Sometimes the grown-ups do not, in their turn, give the children
this benefit.)

Neither Charles nor Charlotte could remember having promised.

‘Then here goes!’ said Caroline, pushing open the door. The candle they
had put there in readiness gave them enough light to fasten the bolts
by, and also to find the recess in the vault of the passage which they
had decided to use to hide the rose leaves in.

They listened at the other door, got safely into the passage and up
to their rooms. Caroline pulled off her wet things, put on her bath
slippers, and crept down with her bath towel to rub away the water they
had dripped on the floor by the door of the room where the secret
staircase was. They feared so wet a patch might prove a clue to Mrs.
Wilmington. But Mrs. Wilmington was with Rupert, putting cold bandages
on a very hot head, and before she left him for the night, the stones
were dry.

Perhaps you would not like to go down a secret staircase in the middle
of the night and into an underground passage, even to fetch rose
leaves to cure a sick friend? But the three C.’s were not afraid of
the darkness. Their mother had always accustomed them to go about in
the dark. It was a sort of game to them, to feel their way about the
house without a light, and to fetch sweets which their mother would put
ready for them. She used to tell them exactly where to find the little
packets, and so the dark was always mixed up in their minds with sweets
and expectation and pleasant things. And they only had to go down the
house stairs in the dark. Directly they got to the secret stair of
course they lighted the candle.

And now you see them in their quilted red dressing-gowns carrying up
the wet sacks of rose leaves. They felt their way to Rupert’s room. In
it a night-light was burning dimly. They lighted the dressing-table
candles.

‘Hullo!’ said Rupert; ’who’s that?’

‘It’s only us,’ whispered Caroline. ‘Is the fever very hot?’

‘It is now,’ said Rupert; ‘it was cold just now. I wish I could go to
sleep. I can’t though. I feel all hot and then all cold. It is beastly.’

‘We’ve brought you something nice and cool,’ said Charlotte. ‘You get
out of bed and you’ll see.’

Rupert, his eyes very shining, and his cheeks a bright scarlet, tumbled
out of bed in a very long night-shirt and rolled into the arm-chair by
the bed head. Caroline threw a blanket over him.

‘I _must_,’ she said, when he protested; ‘they always do when you’re
ill and they’re making your bed.’

The children turned back the bedclothes and emptied three sacks of
dripping rose leaves on to the bed.

‘Now,’ said Charles, shivering a little himself, ‘get in. I should
think that’s enough to cool the hottest fever.’

Rupert rolled into bed. He was really very feverish—if he had not been,
he would never have rolled into that couch of wet red rose leaves.

‘Oh, how ripping,’ he said; ‘it’s lovely; so cold, so cold. You are
bricks to bring them. And how sweet they are. No! don’t cover me up.
That’s what Mrs. Wilmington does. Let me get cool.’

‘They always cover you up,’ said Caroline severely. ‘Lie still, or the
spell won’t work.’

‘Oh, is it a spell?’ said Rupert. ‘I thought it was rose leaves. Sacks
of them, sacks and sacks and sacks and sacks and sacks. Each sack had
a cat, each cat had a kit, you know. I say, if I talk nonsense, it’s
because I want to. You’re not to think I don’t know it’s nonsense.’

‘You’re not to talk at all, even if you could talk sense,’ said
Charlotte, tucking the bedclothes very tightly round his neck. ‘Lie
still and say, “I am much better. I am quite well.” I have an aunt
called Emmeline, and she never has a doctor, and she always says that.’

‘I am much better. I am quite well,’ said Rupert obediently. ‘I am much
better. I am quite well. I am much better. I am a bell. I shall ring
presently for Mrs. Wilmington. I have a clapper inside my head. I am
much better. I am a bell.’ And so on, for a very long time.

‘This is the delirium it talked about,’ said Caroline in a satisfied
tone, and held the blankets down more firmly.

Presently Rupert began to shiver, and Charlotte fetched the eiderdowns
from the beds of the three, while the others held the blankets tightly
round Rupert, who now no longer seemed to know at all what he was
saying, nor who he was saying it to. He talked about India, and seemed
to fancy that Charles was his ayah and Caroline his syce. Charlotte he
mistook for the Murdstone man, which was very painful for her. But they
held the blankets tightly round him, even when he said it was too hot
out there in the sun and begged to have the punkahs set going.

[Illustration: Rupert rolled into bed.]

Then quite suddenly he went to sleep; they waited a little, and
when they were quite sure that he was asleep, they took up the fur
hearth-rug and put that on his bed for fear he should take cold, and
then, very cold indeed themselves, but quite certain that their spell
had cured Rupert, they crept back to their own beds—rather chilly
places without their eiderdowns.

‘I _know_ the spell will work,’ were Caroline’s last words. ‘You’ll
see, Rupert will be all right in the morning.’

       *       *       *       *       *

At five o’clock Mrs. Wilmington crept into Rupert’s room to see if he
needed anything. The floor was strewn with wet, cold, crushed rose
leaves, and on it lay two wet sheets. Rupert, rolled in a tangle of
blankets, eiderdowns, and hearth-rug, was sleeping as a healthy baby
sleeps. She laid her hand very gently on his forehead. It was cool and
soft.

       *       *       *       *       *

By breakfast-time Rupert was much better. The fever had gone.

‘So you see the spell _did_ work,’ said Caroline. ‘Rupert is much
better. I sometimes think we are much cleverer than grown-up people
think we are. Rupert is _much_ better.’

But all the three C.’s had dreadful colds in their heads.




CHAPTER XIII

THE ROSY CURE


When Mrs. Wilmington found Rupert asleep among the remains of the dewy,
crushed rose leaves, she had the sense not to disturb him, but to put
two more blankets over him and to let him go on sleeping, while she
wrapped herself in a shawl and spent what was left of the night on the
blue sofa at the end of the four-post bed.

Uncle Charles, coming down, neat and early, to his study, was met by a
very pale housekeeper with prim lips tightly set, who said:

‘If you please, sir, them children leave this house or else I do. I
mean those children.’

‘What have they been doing now?’ asked the Uncle wearily. He had
thought of a new idea about Coptic magic while he was shaving, and he
wanted to be alone with his idea and his breakfast.

‘Doing their very best to murder that poor young gentleman in his
very bed,’ said the housekeeper, looking like a thin portrait of Mrs.
Siddons.

‘Did they put flowers and things into the boy’s food or drink?’ the
Uncle asked, frowning.

‘Worse, sir, far worse. They put him into flowers and things. And I’ve
taken the liberty of sending for the doctor. And, please, mayn’t I
pack their boxes? No one’s lives is safe—are, I mean.’ Mrs. Wilmington
sniffed and got out her handkerchief.

‘Please control yourself,’ said the Uncle. ‘I will inquire into what
you have told me, and I will see the doctor when he has seen the boy.
In the meantime, kindly refrain from further fuss. And, please, tell
the cook to serve another omelette and some fresh tea. These are no
longer warm enough for human food.’

Mrs. Wilmington put her handkerchief in her pocket and went back to
Rupert, who was now wriggling among the blankets and asking what he
could have to eat.

Rupert was much better. There was not a doubt of it. Harriet had told
the children as much, in confidence, when she brought their breakfast.

‘But Mrs. W. she is in a paddy and no error,’ Harriet assured them. ‘A
regular fanteague she’s in. I wouldn’t be you for something. However
you come to think of such things beats me. An’ she was on at the Master
before he was up a’most about it, going on something chronic.’

‘How do you know?’ Charlotte asked.

‘Oh, I know more then you think, Miss,’ said Harriet, tossing her head.
‘I’ve ways of my own of finding out what _I_ want to know. I know a
sure spell to find out the gentleman’s name you’re going to marry,’ she
added rather in a hurry. ‘I’ll show you some time, if this blows over
and you don’t have to leave on account of it.’

‘Bother marrying,’ said Charlotte briefly. ‘I don’t mean to marry any
one. I shall be an Arctic explorer, and sail in the cold waters of the
North.’

‘It’s hot water you’ll be in first,’ said Harriet. ‘Don’t answer her
back’s my advice. Then p’raps it’ll blow over. Least said soonest
mended’s what I say. They can’t go on at you for ever if you don’t
answer ’em back.’

‘If you don’t answer they say you’re sulky,’ said Charles, who
sometimes noticed things.

‘No, they don’t, Master Charles; not if you keep on saying “Yes’m” and
“No’m” every time they stops for breath. That’s the way to egg-sauce
’em, trust me it is.’

The three C.’s did not quite see their way to exhaust Mrs. Wilmington
by saying “Yes’m” and “No’m” in answer to her reproaches, and they
felt that she would not understand if they tried to explain why they
had done what they did do. So they had rather a poor time with Mrs.
Wilmington, who said a good deal about the rose leaves, and told them
they might have been the death of Rupert, ‘when really,’ as Caroline
said afterwards, ‘they had been the life and soul of his getting
better.’

Mrs. Wilmington also told them that they were not to think of going out
and getting into any more of their dangerous mischief, because their
uncle was going to give them a right-down good talking to as soon as
the doctor had been.

‘But we may go out to-morrow, mayn’t we?’ Charles asked hopefully. And
Mrs. Wilmington replied:

‘Perhaps you won’t be here to-morrow’—a very disquieting remark.

The children remained in the dining-room waiting for that right-down
good talking to; and you know what a hateful thing that is to wait
for. They sat there miserably, wondering whether Mrs. Wilmington could
possibly happen by any extraordinary accident to be right for once,
and whether they _had_ done Rupert any harm. They tried to console
themselves by saying every half minute or so, ‘But Rupert is better,
all the same,’ and ‘Whatever she says, Rupert is better,’ and things
like that.

One thing all felt, that they must see the doctor and know if they
really had done any harm. Thoughts of concealing themselves in the
wardrobe in Rupert’s room, and listening to the doctor’s wise words
at the bedside, were dismissed, partly owing to an honourable feeling
about listening, and partly because Mrs. Wilmington didn’t give them
any opportunities for that sort of concealment. Listening at the
Uncle’s door when the doctor had come down and been shown into the
study was also impossible, for the same reasons. The only thing they
could do was to keep the dining-room door open.

‘And pounce,’ said Caroline. ‘If we pounce, suddenly and well, we shall
be able to say, “How is Rupert; is he really worse or better?” before
any one can stop us. And the doctor is a gentleman. He must answer a
lady’s question.’

‘You’re not ladies, you’re only little girls,’ said Charles. But the
others made allowances. It was a time of trial. Caroline answered with
that soft answer which is sometimes so hard to bear:

‘Yes, dear Charles, we are. Aunt Emmeline says you cannot begin to
be a lady too soon, and that is why you must wipe your mouth before
drinking as well as after, and never interrupt, and put on your gloves
_before_ you go out, and things like that. And when I gave my penny to
the crossing-sweeper, you know, that muddy Friday, he said I was a real
little lady. You _must_ remember that day, Charles—the day you upset
the ink over my _Hereward the Wake_.’

‘Here, I say, chuck it,’ said Charles, rather red. ‘I never——’

‘Oh, Pax, for goodness’ sake,’ said Charlotte; ‘if we begin ragging
just when we ought to stand by each other, we’re like deserters. United
we stand, divided we fall a victim to the Wilmington. Hark! that’s the
Uncle’s door.’

They flung themselves into the hall; and the astonished doctor, just
saying a few last words of politeness to Uncle Charles, was met by a
charge of children all firmly asking, ‘How is Rupert? Is he worse? Is
he better? Did we really do him any harm?’

‘He’s much better,’ said the doctor, rubbing his hands cheerfully;
‘your rose leaves were a variant of what is known as the packing
treatment. You did him a world of good. But,’ he added hastily,
as Uncle Charles, behind him, uttered the ghost of a grunt, and
Mrs. Wilmington, from the top of the stairs, coughed loudly and
expressively, ‘it might have been very dangerous, very. Verdict: not
guilty, but don’t do it again.’

And with that he laughed in a jolly, red-faced way, and went out of the
front door and on to his horse and rode away.

‘And _now_,’ said the Uncle, leading the way back into the dining-room.

I will draw a veil over that scene. A right-down good talking to is
never a pleasant thing to record. And I am not sure whether the three
C.’s deserved this one or not. Was it chance or magic that made them do
exactly the right thing for Rupert? Of course they explained fully to
the Uncle that as it was a threefold spell it was bound to act exactly
as it had acted. He shook his head, did not smile, and went on talking
about responsibility and carefulness and so on. He really did smile
when Charlotte, very near to tears, explained that they had only been
acting like the Rosicurians in olden days. But he hid his smile in his
handkerchief, and the children did not see it.

‘And now—’ said the Uncle once again, and paused. The three children
knew those words well, and each wondered what their punishment was to
be.

‘I hope it won’t be lines,’ Charles told himself. ‘I’d rather anything
than lines.’

‘I hope it won’t be keeping us in,’ thought Caroline. ‘I’d rather
anything than be kept in. And such a fine day too.’

And still the Uncle paused, till Charlotte could bear it no longer.
She did not stop to think what she would rather the punishment was or
wasn’t. She said, ‘Oh, uncle, we really didn’t mean to be naughty! And
it really hasn’t hurt him. But we don’t want to shirk. Only don’t keep
us suspended. Let us know the worst. Are we to be hanged for a sheep as
a lamb? You know you’re hanged twice if you’re hanged quickly. We’ll
do whatever you say, and we don’t mind being punished if you think we
ought. Only don’t do what the Wil—I mean, Mrs. Wilmington, said.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said perhaps we shouldn’t be here to-morrow. Oh!’ said Charlotte,
and began to cry. So did Caroline. Charles put his hands in his pockets
and sniffed.

‘Don’t!’ said the Uncle earnestly; ‘please don’t. I have said what
I felt it my duty to say. But it is all over. I certainly have no
intention of punishing you for what was a mistake. What I blame you for
is—well, briefly, interference, and taking too much on yourselves.’

‘Shoving our oar in,’ sobbed Charlotte. ‘But we did so want Rupert to
be better.’

‘He is better,’ said the Uncle. ‘_Please_ don’t cry. It is over now.
But I must ask for a promise.’

‘We did keep the other promise,’ Charles reminded him.

‘I know you did. This is more comprehensive as well as more definite.
I want you to promise me that you will not only refrain from
administering your remedies internally, but that you will not make any
external application of them to any of your friends—or enemies,’ he
added hastily.

‘Not put them on to people’s outsides?—yes,’ murmured Caroline.

‘Without consulting me. If you wish to try any more experiments, the
simple presentation of a symbolic bouquet should be enough. It was
enough in my case. You remember.’

‘Of course we promise,’ said every one.

‘Oh, uncle, you are kind not to be crosser!’

‘We don’t really mean to do wrong.’

‘But you can’t do right without it turning out wrong sometimes. You
can’t just do nothing,’ said Caroline; ‘though really it’s the only
safe way. Things do so turn out wrong that you didn’t think would.’

‘They do,’ said the Uncle. ‘Now dry your eyes and run out and play. And
if you see your way to letting Mrs. Wilmington know that you’re sorry,
it _would_ perhaps be well.’

‘Of course we will if you want us to,’ they said; and Charlotte added:

‘It _will_ be well. She always says it is.’

‘Always says what is what?’

‘She always says everything’s all very well when we say we’re sorry.’

Then they went round to the terraced garden and sat on the grass and
talked it all over.

‘And if ever there was an angel uncle, ours is it,’ said Charlotte.

‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘and Rupert is better. I’m glad we did it, aren’t
you?’

‘I suppose so. Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know,’ said Caroline. ‘You see the
spell worked. That’s a great thing to be sure of, anyhow.’

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the one thing, however, that they couldn’t persuade Rupert to
be sure of. He was certainly better, but, as he pointed out, he might
have got better without the rose leaves.

‘Of course it was jolly decent of you to get them, and all that,’ he
said; ‘but the medicine the doctor gave me cured me, I expect. I don’t
want to be ungrateful, but what are doctors for, anyhow?’

‘_I_ don’t know,’ said Charles, ‘but I know you jolly well tried
fern-seed when you pretended to be invisible.’

‘I feel much older than I did then,’ said Rupert, biting ends of grass
as he lay on the dry crisp turf. It was the first day of his being
loosed from those bonds which hamper the movements of persons who have
been ill. You know the sort of times when you feel perfectly well, and
yet, merely because you have a cold or measles or something, you are
kept in when you want to go out, and sent out (in what is called ‘the
best of the day’) when you want to stay in, and little driblets of
medicine are brought you when you feel least need of them, and glasses
of hot milk and cups of beef-tea occur just when you are thinking
fondly of roast beef and suet pudding, and you are assured that what
_you_ need is not heavy food like pudding and beef, but something light
and at the same time nourishing. Also you have to go to bed earlier
than the others and not to sit in draughts.

However, all this was now over for Rupert, and he was one of the
others, on a natural meal-footing. His parents, by the way, had
telegraphed thanking Uncle Charles very much, and accepting his
invitation for Rupert to spend the rest of the holidays at the Manor
House. They had also telegraphed to the Murdstone master telling him
that Rupert would not return to him. So that now there seemed to be
no bar to complete enjoyment, except that one little fact that Rupert
wouldn’t believe in spells.

‘But the fern-seed acted,’ said Caroline, ‘and the secret rose acted,
and the Rosicurian rose leaves acted.’

‘I don’t see how you can say the fern-seed acted. I wasn’t invisible,
because you all saw me through the window.’

‘Oh, but,’ said Charlotte eagerly, ‘don’t you see? You _wanted_ us to
see you. You can’t expect a spell to act if you don’t want it to act. I
wouldn’t myself, if I was a spell.’

‘It wasn’t that at all,’ said Caroline; ‘don’t you remember _we_ chewed
the fern-seed to make us see invisible things, and we saw _you_. And
you _were_ invisible, because you’d chewed fern-seed too. It came out
just perfectly. Only you won’t see it. But let’s try it again if you
like—the fern-seed, I mean.’

But Rupert wouldn’t. He preferred to read _The Dog Crusoe_, lying on
his front upon the grass. The others also got books.




CHAPTER XIV

THE MINERAL WOMAN


Next day Rupert felt more alive, as he explained.

‘Now, look here,’ he said at breakfast, ‘suppose we go and discover the
North Pole.’

‘That _would_ be nice,’ said Caroline; ‘the attics? We’ve never
explored them yet.’

‘No, attics are for wet days,’ said Rupert.

‘Not the real North Pole, you don’t mean?’ said Charles, quite ready
to believe that Rupert might mean anything, however wonderful and
adventurous.

‘No,’ said Rupert; ‘what I thought of was a _via medias res_.’

‘Latin,’ explained Charles to the girls.

‘It means a middle way. You ask your uncle to let us take our lunch
out, bread and cheese and cake will do; and to not expect us till
tea-time, and perhaps not then. We’ll just go where we think we will,
and shut our eyes when we pass signposts and post-offices. We might get
lost, you know, but I’d take care of you.’

‘We mustn’t disturb the Uncle,’ Caroline reminded them. ‘We promised.
Not for a week.’

‘Write him a letter,’ said Rupert. And this is the letter they wrote.
At least Caroline wrote it and they all signed their names.

‘Dearest Uncle’ (‘Dearest is rot,’ said Charles, looking at Rupert to
be sure that he thought so too; ‘put Dear’).

‘But Dear is rottener,’ answered Caroline, going on; ‘it’s what you say
to the butcher when you write about the ribs that ought to have been
Sir Something. _I_ know.’

    Please may we go out for the day and take our lunch,
    bread and cheese and cake would do, Rupert says he will
    take care of us, and not expect us home till tea, and
    perhaps not then, with love

                                        CAROLINE
                                        CHARLOTTE
                                        CHARLES.

‘Rupert can’t sign because he’s “he” in the letter. Only the “we’s” can
sign,’ said Caroline. And Harriet took the letter to the Uncle, and the
Uncle wrote back:

    By all means. I am sure you will remember not to
    administer spells internally or externally to any one
    you may meet. Be home by half-past six. If anything
    should detain you, send a telegram. I enclose 2s. 6d.
    for incidental expenses.—Your dearest

                                                UNCLE.

‘How sweet of him,’ the girls agreed, and Charles wanted to know what
sort of expenses he meant.

‘“Incidental”? Oh, if you want an apple or some chocks in a hurry and
don’t happen to have any on you,’ Rupert explained. ‘Or ginger beer.
Or raw eggs to suck as you go along; they’re very sustaining when all
other food’s despaired of.’

The Uncle must have given orders, for Harriet soon brought in four neat
brown-paper parcels.

‘Your lunches,’ she said. ‘Hope you’ll enjoy yourselves. You’ve got a
nice day for your outing. Bring me a keepsake, won’t you? from wherever
it is you’re going to.’

‘Of course we will,’ said Charlotte. ‘What would you like?’

But Harriet laughed, and said she was only talking.

They put on their thinnest clothes, for it was a very hot day, and they
got William to cut them ash-sticks, ‘in case we want to be pilgrims
with staffs,’ said Charles. The girls were very anxious for Rupert to
wear his school blazer, and so flattering were their opinions of it,
and of him, and of it on him, and of him in it, that he consented.
Charles wore _his_ school blazer, and the girls’ frocks were of blue
muslin, and they had their soft white muslin hats, so they looked
very bright and yet very cool as they started off down the drive with
their ash-sticks over their shoulders and their brown-paper parcels in
knotted handkerchiefs dangling from the ends of the sticks.

‘Who shall we be?’ Charlotte asked, as they passed into the shadow of
the woods where the road runs through to the lodge gate.

‘I’ll be Nansen,’ said Charles. ‘I wish we had some Equismo dogs and a
sledge.’

‘It’s Eskimo,’ said Rupert.

‘I know it is,’ said Charles.

‘I don’t believe you did,’ said Rupert, and Charles turned red and the
girls looked at each other uncomfortably.

‘I didn’t say I did,’ Charles answered. ‘Not when I said it first. I
meant I know now you’ve told me. It looked like Equismo in the books.’

This was disarming. Rupert could do no less than thump Charles on the
back and say, ‘Sorry, old man’; and Caroline hastened to say, ‘What
will _you_ be, Rupert?’

‘Why, Rupert, of course. Prince Rupert. He invented Prince Rupert drops
that are glass and crumble to powder if you look at them too hard. And
he fought at Naseby—Rupert of the Rhine, you know. “For Charles, King
of England, and Rupert of the Rhine!”’ he shouted.

‘Oh, I say,’ Charles urged, ‘do let me be Charles if you’re Rupert.
It’s only fair.’

‘You can’t keep changing,’ said Rupert. ‘Besides, Charles had his head
chopped off afterwards.’

‘Well, Rupert died too, if you come to that. You might, Rupert.’

And the girls said, ‘Do let him’; so Rupert said, ‘All right, he didn’t
mind.’

Charlotte said she thought she would be Charles the Second, because he
was a merry monarch; but it was decided that it might be confusing to
have two Charles’s; so she had to be content with being Joan of Arc,
while Caroline was Boadicea.

‘She was British, you see,’ Caroline explained; ‘and Aunt Emmeline says
you ought to support home industries.’

‘Now we all call each other by our play names all day,’ Charlotte said,
‘and if you make a mistake you lose a mark.’

‘Who keeps the marks?’

‘You keep your own, of course—counting on your fingers. And if you did
it ten times, you’d tie a knot in your handkerchief. Aunts do it ten
times if they play often. _We_ don’t.’

Here Boadicea, Joan of Arc, Prince Rupert, and King Charles turned out
of the lodge gate, and the exploring expedition began at seventeen
minutes past ten, precisely. The three C.’s kept up the game, calling
each other by the new names with frequency and accurateness; but Rupert
grew more and more silent, and when Charlotte addressed him as Prince
Rupert the stainless knight, he told her not to be silly.

At a quarter-past twelve, the four children, very dusty, very hot and
rather tired, reached a level crossing. The gates were shut because a
train was coming, and already, as you looked along the line, you could
see the front of the engine getting bigger and blacker, and the steam
from it getting whiter and puffier, and you could feel the vibration of
its coming in the shuddering of the gate as you leaned on it.

The train stopped, in a snorting, panting hurry, at the little
station just beside the gates, let out a few passengers, shook itself
impatiently, screamed, and went on. The big gates across the road swung
slowly back till they stretched across the railway, and the people who
had got out of the train came down the sloping end of the platform and
through the small swing-gates, and the four children, who were crossing
the line, met the little crowd from the train half-way. There were two
women with baskets, a man with a bandy-legged dog, and a girl with a
large band-box partly hidden by brown paper, and—the four children were
face to face with him before they knew that there was any one coming
from that train whom they had rather not be face to face with—the
Murdstone man himself. He was not a yard from them. Rupert threw up his
head and backed a little as if he expected to be hit. The three C.’s
breathed a deep concerted ‘Oh!’ and trembled on the edge of what might
be going to happen. No one knew what Mr. Murdstone’s power might be.
Could he seize on Rupert and take him away? Could he call the police?
Anything seemed possible in that terrible instant when they were
confronted, suddenly and beyond hope of retreat, with the hated master.

And nothing happened at all. The Murdstone man passed by. He gave a
cold, sour, unrecognising glance at the three C.’s, but he never looked
at Rupert. He looked over his head as though Rupert had not been there,
and passed on.

[Illustration: He looked over his head as though Rupert had not been
there.]

Rupert grew very red and said nothing. The girls looked at each other.

‘Let’s walk along by the river,’ said Caroline, ‘and then we’ll tell
you why he didn’t look at you.’

‘You’ll tell me now,’ said Rupert firmly, ‘or I won’t go another step.’

‘He didn’t look at you,’ said Charlotte, ‘because he didn’t see you.
And he didn’t see you because you were invisible just when you wanted
to be.’

‘I didn’t want to be,’ said Rupert; ‘at least—— Oh, well, come on.’

When they had reached a green meadow that sloped pleasantly to the
willow-fringed edge of the river Medway, Charlotte said:

‘You _were_ invisible, to him. That’s the magic. Perhaps you’ll believe
in spells now.’

‘But there wasn’t any spell,’ said Rupert impatiently.

And the girls said with one voice, ‘You take off your blazer and see.’

‘I hate hanky panky,’ said Rupert, but he took off the coat.

‘Look, in there,’ said Caroline, turning back that loose fold which
the button-holes are made in—‘_fern-seed_. Char and I seccotined it
on while you and Charles were washing your hands. We meant to ask you
to wish to be invisible when we went into a shop or something, just
to prove about spells, but you did it without our asking. And now you
_will_ believe, won’t you?’

‘I _can’t_,’ said Rupert; ‘don’t talk about it any more. Let’s have the
grub out.’

They opened the parcels and ‘had the grub out,’ and it was sandwiches,
and jam-tarts packed face to face, and raspberries in a card-board box
that had once held chocolates—that was in Rupert’s parcel—and biscuits,
and large wedges of that pleasant solid cake which you still get
sometimes in old-fashioned houses where baking powder and self-raising
flour are unknown.

‘This is the first picnic we’ve ever had by ourselves; don’t you like
it, Prince Rupert?’

Rupert’s mouth was full of sandwich. He was understood to say that it
was ‘all right.’

‘King Charles is gracefully pleased to like it,’ said Charles.
‘Boadicea had better pour out the Rhine wine, for it’s a thirsty day.’

‘Oh,’ said Boadicea in stricken tones, ‘there isn’t any!’

And there wasn’t. Not a drop of milk or water or ginger-beer or
anything drinkable. No nephew or niece of Aunt Emmeline’s was likely to
do anything so rash as drinking water from a strange river to which it
had not been properly introduced, so there was nothing to be done but
to eat the raspberries and pretend that raspberries quenched thirst,
which, as you probably know only too well, they don’t.

This was why, when they had eaten everything there was to eat, and
buried the bits of paper deeply in a hollow tree, so as not to
spoil the pretty picture of green willows and blue-green water and
grass-green grass, they set out to find a cottage where ginger-beer
was sold. There was such a cottage, and they had passed it on the way.
It had a neat gay little garden and a yellow rose clambering over
its porch, and on one of its red brick sides was a pear-tree that
went up the wall with level branches like a double ladder, and on the
other a deep-blue iron plate which said in plain white words ‘Bateyes
Minerals.’ A stranger from Queen Victoria’s early days might have
supposed this to mean that the cottage had a small museum of geological
specimens such as you find now and then in Derbyshire; but Rupert and
the three C.’s knew that ‘Minerals’ was just short for ginger-beer and
other things that fizz.

So, after making sure that they had not lost their two shillings and
their sixpence, they unlatched the white gate and went in.

The front door, which was green and had no knocker, was open, and one
could see straight into the cottage’s front parlour. It was very neat
and oil-clothy, with sea-shells on pink wool mats, and curly glass
vases, and a loud green-faced clock on the mantelpiece. There was a
horse-hair sofa and more white crochet antimacassars than you would
have thought possible even in the most respectable sea-side lodgings. A
black and white cat was asleep in the sun, edged in among the pots of
geraniums that filled the window. In fact, it was a very clean example
of the cottage homes of England, how beautiful they stand!

The thirsty children waited politely as long as they could bear to
wait, and then Caroline tip-toed across the speckless brown-and-blue
linoleum and tapped at the inner door. Nothing happened. So she pushed
the door, which was ajar, a little more open and looked through it.
Then she turned, shook her head, made a baffling sign to the others to
stay where they were, and went through the door and shut it after her.

The others waited; the sign Caroline had made was a secret one only
used in really serious emergencies.

‘I expect there’s a bird in there and she wants to catch it,’ said
Charles; but the others could not believe this, and they were right.

Quite soon Caroline returned bearing a wrinkled black tray with three
bottles of lemonade, three glasses, and the little round wooden thing
that you press the glass marble down with into the neck of the bottle.

‘Here,’ she said in a hurry, ‘you go round to the other side of
the cottage, and there’s a hornbeam arbour and a bench and table,
and you’re very welcome to sit there. I’ll tell you all about it
afterwards,’ she added, whispering. ‘Only _do_ take it and go.’

‘But what _is_ it?’ Rupert asked.

‘She’s crying dreadfully. I don’t know what it is yet. Oh, _do go_.’

And she thrust the tray on him and went back through the door with an
air of importance which even the others found just a little trying.
However, they were thirsty and loyal, so they did as they were asked
to do; found the hornbeam arbour, and settled down on the blue-painted
benches to drink their lemonade and tell each other how thirsty they
had been, drawing deep breaths between the draughts to say so with.

Caroline, in the meantime, was in the back kitchen of the strange
cottage gently patting the shoulder of a perfect stranger, who sat with
her elbows on the mangle and her head in her hands crying, crying,
crying.

‘Don’t! oh, please don’t!’ said Caroline, again and again; and again
and again the woman who was crying said, ‘Go away. I can’t attend to
you. Go away!’

She was a middle-aged woman, and her dark hair, streaked with grey, was
screwed up behind in a tight knob. Her sleeves were tucked up, and all
round her were piles of those square boxes with wooden divisions in
which lemonade and ginger-beer travel about. The boxes were dotted with
greeny bottles, some full, some empty, and the boxes were everywhere—on
the sink, under the sink, on the copper, on the bricks, and outside the
open back door.

‘Don’t cry,’ said Caroline in a voice that would have soothed an angry
bear. ‘_Do_ tell me what’s the matter. I might be able to help you.’

‘Oh, go along, do!’ said the woman, trying to dry her eyes with a
corner of a blue-checked apron. ‘You seem a kind little gell, but it
ain’t no good. Run along, dearie.’

‘But,’ said Caroline, ‘if you don’t stop crying, how am I going to pay
you for the lemonade I took when you said I might? Three bottles it
was.’

‘Sixpence,’ said the woman, sniffing.

‘You poor dear,’ said Caroline, and put her arms round the woman’s
neck. ‘Now,’ she said comfortably, ‘you just fancy I’m your own
little girl and tell me what’s the matter.’

[Illustration: ‘I can’t attend to you. Go away!‘]

The woman turned her face and kissed Caroline.

‘Bless you for a silly little duck,’ she said. ‘My own little gell’s in
service over Tonbridge way. It’s silly of me taking on like that. But
it come so sudden.’

‘What did?’ Caroline asked. ‘Do tell me. Perhaps I can help. I’ve got
an uncle, and I know he’d give me some money for you, if that’s it.
And, besides, I can make nice things happen sometimes—I really can.’

‘It isn’t money,’ said the woman drearily, ‘and I don’t know why I
should tell you.’

‘It eases the heart, you know,’ said Caroline; ‘my aunt says it does.
Do tell me. I’m _so_ sorry you’re unhappy.’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said the woman, drying her eyes. ‘It’s
silly, I know. But I only heard this morning, and just now it all come
over me when I was sorting out the bottles. I was born in the little
house, you see, and lived here all my life. And now to leave! A week’s
notice too! Where’m I to go to? How’m I to manage? What’m I to get my
living by? You see, being right on the highroad I get all the thirsty
customers as they comes by. Where’m I to go to? There’s a cottage back
by Wright’s farm; ne’er a bit of garden to it, and nobody passes it one
year’s end to another. I’d never sell a single bottle if I lived there
to be a hundred.’

‘But why must you leave here?’ Caroline asked.

‘Gentlefolks,’ said the woman bitterly; ‘got a grand ’ouse of their own
up in London. But they gone and took a fancy to my little bit, ’cause
it looks so pretty with the flowers I planted, and the arbour my father
made, and the roses as come from mother’s brother in Cambridgeshire.

‘“Such a sweet pretty cottage to stay in for week-ends,” they says; an’
_I_ may go to the Union and stay there, week in, week out, and much
they care. There’s something like it in the Bible, only there ain’t
no prophets now like there was of old to go and rebuke the folks that
takes away poor folks’ vineyards and lambs and things to make week-end
cottages of. And of course they can pay for their fancy. An’ it comes a
bit ’ard, my dear. An’ that’s all. So now you know.’

‘But that’s dreadful,’ said Caroline; ‘the landlord must be a very
wicked man.’

‘It ain’t _’is_ doing,’ said the woman, sorting bottles swiftly;
‘’e’s but a lad when all’s said and done. Comes of age in a week or
two. Ain’t never been ’is own master yet, so to say. It’s ’is cousin
as manages the property. ’E’s got it into ’is ’ead to screw another
shilling or two out of us somehow; ’ere, there, and everywhere, as they
say. To pay for the harches and the flags when Milord comes of age, I
suppose. Now you see you can’t do anything, so run along, lovey. You’re
a good little gell to trouble about it, and you’re the only one that
has. It’ll come home to you all right, never fear. Kind words is never
lost, nor acts neither. Good day to you, Missy.’

‘Good-bye,’ said Caroline; ‘but I’m not so sure that I can’t do
anything. I’ll ask my uncle. Perhaps he knows my Lord, whoever it is.’

‘Andore,’ said the woman; ‘but nobody don’t know him about here. He’s
been abroad for his education, being weak in the chest from a child.
But it ain’t no good, dearie. I’ll ’ave to go, same as other folks as
’ad to go afore me.’

‘I shall think of something, you see if I don’t,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ve
got an aunt as well as an uncle, and she says you can make things
happen. You just keep on saying, “Everything’s going to be all right.
I’m not going to worry.” And then everything _will_ be all right.
You’ll see. And I’ll come again to-morrow or next day. Good-bye, dear.’

She kissed the woman, paid the sixpence, and went out to the hornbeam
arbour with the air of one who has a mission.

‘Come on,’ she said; ‘I’ll tell you as we go along. No, I’m not thirsty
now. Oh, well, if you’ve saved some for me. That was jolly decent of
you.’ She drank. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘there’s not a moment to be lost;
it’s a matter of life and death to the Mineral woman. Come on.’

And as they went back along the dusty road she told them what had
happened.

‘I must ask the Uncle _at once_ if he knows Lord Andore,’ she said;
‘and he can telegraph to him like he did to India, and then everything
will be all right.’

‘But,’ said Charlotte, ‘we promised we wouldn’t disturb him _for
anything_. Suppose he doesn’t appear at tea?’

‘Then we must do something else,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s the realest
thing I’ve ever had the chance of doing—except you, Rupert,’ she added
politely; ‘and if we can’t get at the Uncle we’ll try a spell. Every
single spell we’ve tried has come right. First the fern-seed; then
the——’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Rupert hastily, ‘and it’s all right to play at. But
this is a real thing. I’ve got a godfather that’s a baronet. I’ll write
to him to go to the House of Lords and tell this Lord Andore. Appeal
to Cæsar himself, don’t you know. How’s that?’

‘Yes, do,’ said Charlotte; ‘but we’ll work the spell as well. We may as
well have two strings to our harp like that blind girl in the picture.
What spell can we do?’

‘We’ll look it up in the books,’ Caroline said importantly; ‘and,
Rupert, if we pull it off and she doesn’t get turned out of her house,
you will believe the spell, won’t you?’

‘I’ll try,’ said Rupert cautiously; ‘and, anyway, I’ll write to my
godfather. Only he’s in Norway. I’d better telegraph, perhaps?’

‘It’ll cost pounds, won’t it?’ said Charles admiringly.

‘Never mind,’ said Rupert carelessly. ‘Mrs. Wilmington will lend me the
chink till I get my allowance. Let’s do the thing properly while we’re
about it. You may as well be hanged for a sheep as——’

‘As a cow. Yes, indeed,’ said Charlotte with approval.




CHAPTER XV

JUSTICE


The great discovery was Charlotte’s. When they got home and found
that the Uncle had gone to Tonbridge for the day, every one felt that
something must be done, and Rupert began to write out the telegram to
his godfather. It was quite a nice telegram, very long, and explaining
everything perfectly, but Mrs. Wilmington unexpectedly refused to lend
more than ninepence, so it could not be sent. Caroline sat rocking
herself to and fro, with her fingers in her ears to shut out Charles’s
comments and advice, and tried in vain to think of some way of using a
spell to help the Mineral woman.

‘It’s no use, you know,’ Charles said, ‘looking up the spells in the
books until we know how we’re going to use it.’ And Caroline had to
agree that this was so. So she rocked herself and racked her brains and
felt herself growing slowly more and more stupid, as you do when you
are trying very hard to think of something that has made up its mind
that it is not going to be thought about.

‘You see,’ Charlotte went on, ‘we mustn’t give the wicked cousin
anything to eat to make him good, and most likely we couldn’t get at
him to make him eat it, even if we were allowed. What a pity we can’t
get at the Lord with a foreign education, weak from a child. I daresay
we could make him take things. When you’re weak from a child they give
you just anything.’

‘That’s true,’ said Rupert. ‘I knew a chap with a flat chest that had
cod-liver oil given him—with oranges. But he said even the oranges
weren’t worth it.’

‘But we aren’t allowed to give people things to eat,’ Charlotte
reminded him.

‘Besides,’ Rupert reminded _her_, ‘we don’t know the weak Lord’s
address.’

‘I do,’ said Caroline, taking her fingers out of her ears, though
really she could hear almost as well with them in.

‘Then,’ said Charlotte, ‘let’s go and see him. Let’s appeal to Cæsar.’

‘But he’s got two addresses,’ said Caroline, ‘and we don’t know which
he’s at. I mean, the Mineral woman didn’t.’

‘Try both,’ suggested Rupert.

‘But one’s in London,’ said Caroline. ‘The Mineral woman said: “He’s
all right: he’s got the castle and he’s got his mansion in Belgrave
Square; I can’t expect him to bother about me and my little house.”’

Charlotte sprang up. ‘Let’s go to the castle, and if he’s not there,
we’ll get another take-your-lunch-with-you-cheese-and-cake-will-do day
and go to London and see him there.’

The brilliant daring of this idea made the others gasp.

‘Do you mean go _now_?’ said Caroline.

‘Why not? There’s lots of the day left. It’s not half-past three yet.’

‘You don’t know where the castle is,’ Rupert objected.

‘Yes, I do,’ said Caroline; ‘so there! William said the day of the
Rupert hunt—he said, “I hoped the boy’d got into the castle grounds.
Milord’s men ’ud have sent Poad about his business pretty sharp if he’d
gone trespassing there.” So it can’t be far off.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Charlotte. ‘You know uncle said the day
after we’d been Rosicurians would we like the carriage to go and see
Mr. Penfold, only we didn’t, because we knew he’d gone to Canterbury.
Now if we could only persuade William that going to see Lord Andore
is the same thing as going to see Mr. Penfold, and that to-day is the
same as the other day, well then—— People think so much more of you if
you go in a carriage—servants, I mean, and people who don’t know about
sterling worth, and its being better to be good than pretty, and all
not being gold that glitters.’

‘And what will you do when you get there?’ Rupert asked doubtfully.

‘Why, give him a bunch of magic flowers, and tell him about the Mineral
woman.’

‘You’ll look very silly,’ Rupert told her, ‘driving up to a lord’s
house with your two-penny-halfpenny flowers, when he’s got acres of
glass most likely.’

‘I don’t care if he’s got miles of glass, and vineries and pineries of
every modern inconvenience. He hasn’t got flowers that grow as true and
straight as the ones in the wonderful garden. Thomas told me nobody
had in all the country-side. And they’re magic flowers, ours are. Oh,
Rupert, I wish you wouldn’t be so grown-up.’

‘I’m not,’ said Rupert; ‘it’s you that’s silly.’

‘You’re always being different from what we’d made up our minds you
were,’ said Charlotte hotly; ‘there, now it’s out. We were sorry
for you at first. And then we liked you; you were so adventurous and
splendid. And then you catch a cold and go all flat. Why do you do it?’

‘_Non semper vivens arcus_,’ said Rupert, and Charles hung on his
words. ‘You can’t be always the same. It would be dull. Besides, I
got such a beastly cold. And I’d had the adventure. You don’t want to
go on having one dinner after another all day. You want a change. I’m
being sensible, that’s all. I daresay I shall be silly again some day,’
he added consolingly. ‘A chap has to be silly or not _moresuis_, that
means “off his own bat,” Charles.’

‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘I’ll remember.’

‘Well, look here. I’ll go and try it on with William if you like,’ said
Charlotte; ‘but he likes Caroline best because of what she did on the
Rupert hunt day.’

‘You do rub it in, don’t you?’ said Rupert. ‘I wish sometimes you
_hadn’t_ helped me that day.’

There was a silence. Then Charlotte said, ‘You go, Caro. And Charles,
whatever happens, you must wash your hands. Go on, like a sensible, and
do it now, so as not to waste time.’

‘_Cui bono?_’ said Rupert. ‘It’ll be all the same in a hundred years,
or even in five minutes, if it’s Charles’s hands.’

But Charles went, when Charlotte assured him that if he didn’t they
would go without him. The moment the door closed behind him she turned
to Rupert.

‘Now, look here,’ she said; ‘I know what’s the matter with you. You’ve
got the black dog on your back. I don’t know what dog it is or why. But
you have. You haven’t been a bit nice to-day; you didn’t play up when
you were Rupert of the Rhine—not a bit, you didn’t—and you think we’re
silly kids. And you think you’re letting yourself down by playing with
us. You didn’t think that the first day when we saved you. Something’s
got into you. Oh, I do believe you’re bewitched. Rupert, _do_ you think
you’re bewitched? Because if you are we know how to unbewitch you.’

‘You’re a very silly little girl,’ was all Rupert found to say.

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Charlotte brightly. ‘You only say that because
you haven’t got any sisters of your own, so of course you don’t know.
We’ve been as nice to you as ever we could be, and you’re getting
nastier and nastier. If you like to be nice, _be_ nice. If you don’t,
I shall know it’s not your fault but because you’re bewitched, and I
shall pity but not despise you. So now you know.’

Rupert was twisting and untwisting the fringed tassel of a sofa-cushion
and looking at the floor.

‘So you hate me now, I suppose?’ he said.

‘No, I don’t. But I hate the black dog. I thought you were splendid
at first. And even now I think you’re splendid inside, really. Only
something’s happened. It _is_ like bewitchment, I do think. Couldn’t
you do anything to stop it? I’d help you, really I would. I say, I’m
sorry if I’ve scratched too hard.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Rupert with what was plainly an effort.
‘Sometimes I’m like this. I feel as if I was some one else. I can’t
explain. Now you can laugh if you like. I only thought I’d tell you.
Don’t tell the others. It’s perfectly beastly. I suppose I _could_ help
it if I knew the way. Only I don’t.’

‘Suppose you had a bath,’ suggested Charlotte. ‘Aunt Emmeline says when
children feel naughty you should always wash their faces; and if it’s
true of children, it must be true of bigger people,’ she added hastily,
answering Rupert’s frown, ‘because your face is made of the same sort
of stuff, however old you are.’

‘That was part of it,’ said Rupert, ‘when I saw the river to-day. Can
you swim? I can. And I promised my father I’d never go into the water
to swim unless there was some man there, and—— My father’s in India,
you know,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘It was he taught me to swim.’ He
walked to the window and looked out. ‘I thought I was going back to
India with him. And then the doctors said some rotten rigmarole, and my
father went without me, and I was all right again three months after,
and I might as well have gone with him, only then it was too late; and
then things began to happen that I never thought could. And nothing
will ever be right again.’

‘Look here,’ said Charlotte, ‘I’m _frightfully_ sorry I scratched you,
and about your father and your not going. Look here, don’t come with us
this afternoon. You go down to Mr. Penfold’s. He’s the clergyman. He
said the other day he’d teach Charles to swim, so I know he can. If you
go directly, he’ll take you down to the river and you can drown dull
care in the Medway.’

‘Do you think he’d mind?’

‘Mind? He’d love it,’ said Charlotte. ‘Just go and say the three C.’s
said I could swim, and I can too!’

‘I can’t like that,’ said Rupert; ‘but if you sent me with something, a
book or anything, then I could bring in swimming in a natural sort of
way and see what he said.’

‘Say we said was there any more of the translated Latin book we could
have. Will that do? You know Latin, so that will be all right. I say,
I hope they haven’t gone without us. They’re a most awful time. Look
here, cut off to Mr. Penfold’s before they come back, if you like. I
shall just say you’re gone. You just _go_.’

‘You’re not a bad sort,’ said Rupert, thumping her on the back as he
went out, but keeping his face carefully turned away; ‘I think I will.’

Charlotte and Charles met in the doorway, and the meeting was rather
violent, for both were in a hurry—Charlotte to find out what William
had said and Charles to tell her. I am sorry to say that he had not
been washing his hands, as indeed their colour plainly confessed, but
helping William in the toilet of the horse; for Caroline had succeeded
in persuading William that to-day was, for all practical purposes,
the same as the other day, all the more readily perhaps because Mrs.
Wilmington had come out and said that she didn’t think it was, at all.
And Caro had said she thought perhaps they’d better _all_ wash, and
not just Charles. And William said that he would drive them to Lord
Andore’s lodge gates, because he had to go down to the station to meet
the Master anyhow, and it was on the way, or next door to, but they’d
have to walk back. ‘And we’ve forgotten to decide what flowers to get,
and Caro says bring up the books so that she can look at them while
you’re washing your hands. Because William says he must start in a
quarter of an hour.’

Thus Charles ended breathlessly, adding, ‘Where’s Rupert?’

‘He’s not coming with us. Get down Pope IV, and I’ll get the _Language
Of_’; and carrying the books she went up the wide shallow stairs, three
at once.

There was but little time to make a careful selection of the flowers
most likely to influence a youthful peer. Charlotte was all for
repeating, flower for flower, the bouquet designed for suitors, which
had been so successfully used in the case of Rupert and the Uncle. But
Caroline argued that what suited uncles might very well be the worst
possible thing for lords who were no relations, and that it would be
much better to start afresh with an entirely new floral selection.

‘Look in the _Language Of_, then, while I wash,’ she said. ‘Look for
duty and justice and being kind to the poor.’ Charlotte fluttered the
pages obediently.

‘Jealousy, Jest, Joy, Justice. Gladiolus and sweet-scented tussilage.
What’s tussilage?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Caroline, soaping fervently; ‘try the medicine
book.’ The medicine book admitted that tussilage was another name for
_Tussilago Farfara_, or coltsfoot.

‘But coltsfoot comes in February,’ said Caroline, ‘and we don’t know it
when it’s grown up.’

‘There’s rudbeckia: justice,’ said Charlotte hopefully. But the
medicine book, when consulted, pretended not to know anything at all
about rudbeckia, and as the children knew nothing about it either, it
was ruled out.

‘There’s justice shall be done, Cornflower,’ said Charlotte; and the
medicine book, after saying ‘See Bluebottle,’ informed them that
cornflowers ‘being naturally cold and dry are under the dominion of
Saturn’; also that ‘taken with water of plantain or the greater comfrey
is a remedy againſt the poiſon of the ſcorpion.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Charlotte gaily; ‘it must be sharper than a
scorpion’s teeth to have a wicked landlord. Now——’

‘I’ll look now,’ said Caroline; ‘you wash, quick!’

Caroline chose red columbine because it meant ‘anxious and trembling’;
‘and I’m sure we shall be _that_ soon enough,’ she said. The medicine
book confirmed her choice by assuring her that columbine was an herb of
Venus, commonly used, with good success, for ‘ſore mouths and throats.’

‘Ours will be, before we’ve done,’ she said. ‘We shall have to explain
to him a lot.’

The liverwort polyanthus, though signifying confidence, was rejected
as being too difficult to find most likely; but the daily rose (‘Thy
smile I aspire to’) seemed the very thing, and it was agreed that lemon
verbena (‘Unexpected meeting’) would be both scented and appropriate.

‘And I’ve got a little straw too,’ said Caroline—‘I got it while
William was harnessing—it did so well with uncle; and wistaria means
‘Welcome, fair stranger,’ so we’ll have that. There was no time to look
these up in the medicine book, except liverwort, and of this they had
only to read that ‘It is true that Mizaldus and others, yea, almoſt all
aſtrological phyſicians hold this to be an herb of Jupiter, but the
truth is it is an herb of Mercury, and a ſingular good herb for all
ſadness of ſpirit,’ when Charles came to say ‘Hurry up! or William will
be off without us.’

‘To gather the flowers will be but the work of a moment,’ said
Caroline; ‘you two go in the carriage, and I’ll tell William to drive
out by the deserted lodge and pick me up at the garden gate.’

Unfortunately the flowers were not easy to find. The gardener had to be
consulted, and thus the gathering of Lord Andore’s presentation bouquet
was the work of about a quarter of an hour, so that William was waiting
and very cross indeed when Caroline came running out of the garden with
the flowers—a mere bundle, and no bouquet, as Charles told her—in her
held-up skirt.

‘No time now to drop people at the lodge gates,’ he said. ‘I’ll set
you down at the turning, and even that I didn’t ought to do by rights,
being late as it is, and I shall have to fan the horse along something
cruel to get to the station in time as it is.’

So the splendour of driving up to the castle in the carriage was denied
them; they could not even drive to the lodge. And all they got, after
all Caroline’s careful diplomatic treatment of William, was, as she
said, ‘just a bit of a lift.’

‘It saves time, though,’ said she, ‘and time’s everything when you’ve
got to be home by half-past six. I do hope Lord Andore’s in, don’t
you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Charles. ‘I think it would be more noble if we had
to sacrifice ourselves and go to London to see him. We should have to
break open our money-boxes. I’ve always wanted to do that. I do wish
Rupert had been here. He could have made up something to say in Latin,
and then Lord Andore would have had to pay attention.’

‘He’ll have to in English,’ said Caroline quietly, ‘if he’s there. Oh,
I do hope he is! The Mineral woman is most likely crying all this time.
She only stopped for a minute, I’m certain, to sort the bottles because
of the man coming for them with the cart at three. Won’t it be glorious
going and telling her that it’s all right and she needn’t go?’

‘But suppose it all _isn’t_, and she _need_,’ said Charles gloomily.

‘The spells have never failed us yet,’ said Caroline.

‘I believe it’s something to do with the garden and our being the
ancestors of Dame Eleanour,’ said Charlotte; ‘of course it’ll be all
right, Charles.’

‘Rupert didn’t think so.’

‘Rupert doesn’t know as much as we do, when it isn’t Latin,’ said
Charlotte. ‘We’re going to teach Rupert a lot, by and by. You see if we
don’t. All right, William; we’re getting out as fast as we can, aren’t
we?’ for the carriage had stopped, and a voice from the box was urging
them to look slippy.

The carriage rolled away, leaving them at the corner, with the big
bouquet which Caroline had hastily arranged as they drove along.

‘If we see him, you’ll let me tell him, won’t you?’ she said; ‘because
the Mineral woman told about it to me.’ And the others agreed, though
Charles pointed out that the Mineral woman only told her because she
happened to be there.




CHAPTER XVI

THE APPEAL TO CÆSAR


So far all had gone well with the project of calling on Lord Andore to
tell him about his unfortunate tenant and the week-ending admirers of
her cottage. But at Lord Andore’s lodge gate a check occurred.

As the long gate clicked itself into place after they had passed
through it, an elderly person in a black cap with violet ribbons put
her head out of the lodge window and said:

‘No, you don’t!’

‘Yes, we do,’ said Charlotte unguardedly.

‘No village children allowed in,’ said the black and violet cap.

‘We aren’t,’ said Charles. And then the cap disappeared only to
reappear a moment later at the lodge door, on the head of a very
angry old lady with a very sharp long nose, who might have been Mrs.
Wilmington’s grandmother.

‘Out you go, the way you came,’ she said; ‘that’s the order. What do
you want, anyhow?’

‘We’ve got a bouquet for Lord Andore,’ said Caroline, showing it.

‘Keep it till the fifteenth,’ said the woman; a silly thing to say, for
no bouquet will keep a fortnight. ‘No village people admitted till the
gala and fête when his lordship comes of age. You can come then. Out
you go. I’ve no patience,’ she added; and it was quite plain that she
had not.

They had to go back. I wish I could conceal from you that Charles put
out his tongue at her as he passed. It is a dreadful thing to have to
relate, and my only comfort is that Caroline and Charlotte did not do
it. Charlotte made a face, but Caroline behaved beautifully.

Only, when they were out in the road again, it was Caroline who said,
almost ‘between her set teeth’ as heroes do in moments of crisis, ‘You
know that broken paling we passed?’ The others instantly understood.
They went back, found the broken paling and slipped through. It was
Caroline’s dress that was really badly torn. Charlotte’s was only
gathers, which you can tuck into your waistband and it only makes a
lump and the skirt rather uneven lengths, and it was not the fence
but a nail that tore Charles’s stocking so badly.

[Illustration: Found the broken paling and slipped through.]

The shrubbery in which they found themselves was very thorny and
undergrowthy, and nearer to the lodge than they would have chosen. They
could see its white walls quite plainly every now and then, and they
feared that it, or the managing director of it, might be able to see
them. But it makes all the difference whether you are looking for a
thing or not, doesn’t it? And certainly the last thing the cap woman
expected was that any one should dare to defy her.

So, undiscovered and unsuspected, the children crept through the
undergrowth. The thorns and briars scratched at the blue muslins, no
longer, anyhow, in their first freshness, and Charlotte’s white hat
was snatched from her head by a stout chestnut stump. The bouquet,
never the handsomest of its kind, was not improved by its travels. But
misfortunes such as these occur to all tropical explorers, and they
pressed on. They were all very warm and rather dirty when they emerged
from the undergrowth into the smooth spacious park, and, beyond a belt
of quiet trees, saw the pale grey towers of the castle rise against the
sky. They looked back. The lodge was not to be seen.

‘So _that’s_ all right,’ said Caroline. ‘Now we must walk fast and yet
not look as if we were hurrying. I think it does that best if you take
very long steps. I wish we knew where the front door was. It would be
awful if we went to the back one by mistake, and got turned back by
Lord Andore’s my-myrmidons.’

‘I expect his back door is grander than our front,’ said Charlotte; ‘so
we shan’t really know till the myr-what’s-its-names have gone for us.’

‘If we’d had time to disguise ourselves like grown-ups—Char, for
goodness’ sake tear that strip off your hat, it looks like a
petticoat’s tape that’s coming down,’ said Caroline—‘they’d have
thought we’d come to call, with cards, and then they’d have had to show
us in, unless he wasn’t at home.’

‘He must be at home,’ said Charlotte, tearing a long streamer from the
wretched hat, which now looked less like a hat than a fading flower
that has been sat on; ‘it would be too much if he wasn’t.’

They passed through the trees and on to a very yellow gravelled drive,
hot and gritty to the foot, and distressing to the eye. Following this,
they came suddenly, round a corner, on the castle. It was much bigger
than they expected, and there seemed to be no doubt which was the
front entrance. Two tall grey towers held a big arched gateway between
them, and the drive led straight in to this. There seemed to be no
door-bell and no knocker, nor, as far as they could see, any door.

‘I feel like Jack the Giant Killer,’ said Charles; ‘only there isn’t a
trumpet to blow.’

His voice, though he spoke almost in a whisper, sounded loud and hollow
under the echoing arch of the gateway.

Beyond its cool depths was sunshine, with grass and pink geraniums
overflowing from stone vases. A fountain in the middle leapt and sank
and plashed in a stone basin.

There was a door at the other side of the courtyard—an arched door with
steps leading up to it. On the steps stood a footman.

‘He’s exactly like the one in _Alice_,’ said Caroline; ‘courage and
despatch.’

The footman looked curiously at the three children, hot, dusty, and
untidy, who advanced through the trim parterre. His glance dwelt more
especially on the battered bouquet, on Charlotte’s unspeakable hat, and
the riven stocking of Charles.

‘If you please,’ said Caroline, her heart beating heavily, ‘we want to
see Lord Andore.’

‘’Slordship’s not at heum,’ said the footman, looking down upon them.

‘When will he be back?’ Charlotte asked, while Caroline suddenly wished
that they had at least brought their gloves.

‘Can’t say’m sheur,’ said the footman, doing something to his teeth
with a pin; and his tone was wondrous like Mrs. Wilmington’s.

‘We want very much to see him,’ said Charles. ‘You see we’ve brought
him a bouquet.’

‘I see you ’ave—have,’ said the footman, more like Mrs. Wilmington than
ever. ‘Would you like to leave it? It’ll be a surprise for his Lordship
when ’e comes in,’ and the footman tittered.

‘He _is_ here, then,’ said Caroline. ‘I mean, he’s not in London?’

‘His Lordship is _not_ in London,’ said the footman. ‘Any other
questions? Always happy to say me catechism, ’m sheur.’

The children turned to go. They felt the need of a private consultation.

‘Any particular neem?’ said the footman, and tittered again.
‘’Slordship’ll be dying to know who it was called,’ and once more he
tittered.

Charlotte turned suddenly and swiftly.

‘You need not trouble about our names,’ she said, ‘and I don’t believe
Lord Andore knows how you behave when he’s not there. He doesn’t know
_yet_, that is.’

‘No offence, Miss,’ said the footman very quickly.

‘We accept your apology,’ said Charlotte; ‘and we shall wait till Lord
Andore comes in.’

‘But, I say! Look here, you know’—the footman came down one step in his
earnestness—‘you can’t wait here, you know.’

‘Oh yes, we can,’ said Caroline, sitting down on the second step. The
others also sat down. It was Charles who said, ‘So there!’ and Caroline
had to nudge him and say, ‘Hush!’

‘We never called before at a house where they didn’t ask you in and
give you a chair to sit on. But if this is that kind of house,’ said
Charlotte grandly, ‘it does not matter. It is a fine day, luckily.’

‘Look here,’ said the footman behind them, now thoroughly uneasy, ‘this
won’t do, you know. There’s company expected. I can’t have a lot of
ragged children sitting on the steps like the First of May.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlotte, without turning her head; ‘but if you
haven’t any rooms fit to ask us into, I’m afraid you’ll _have_ to have
us sitting here.’

The three sat staring at the bright garden and the dancing fountain.

‘Look here,’ said the footman, weakly blustering; ‘this is cheek.
That’s what this is. But you go now. Do you hear? Or must I make you?’

‘We hear,’ said Caroline, speaking as calmly as one can speak when
one is almost choking with mingled rage, disappointment, fear, and
uncertainty.

‘And I defy you to lay a finger on your master’s visitors,’ said
Charlotte. ‘How do you know who we are? We haven’t given you our names.’

The footman must have felt a sudden doubt. He hesitated a moment,
and then, muttering something about seeing Mr. Checkles, he retired,
leaving the children in possession of the field. And there they sat, in
a row, on Lord Andore’s steps, with the bouquet laid carefully on the
step above them.

It was very silent there in the grey-walled courtyard.

‘I say,’ whispered Charles, ‘let’s go. We’ve got the better of _him_,
anyhow. Let’s do a bunk before he comes back with some one we can’t get
the better of, thousands of stately butlers perhaps.’

‘Never,’ said Charlotte, whose hands were cold and trembling with
excitement. But Caroline said:

‘I wish Mr. Checkles might turn out to be a gentleman, the everyday
kind that we know. Lords’ servants seem more common than other
people’s, and I expect the Lord’s something like them. They say, Like
master like man.’

As if in answer to Caroline’s wish, a door in the wall opened,
showing a glimpse of more garden beyond, and a jolly-faced youth came
towards them. He was a very big young man, and his clothes, which
were of dust-coloured Harris tweed, were very loose. He looked like
a sixth-form boy, and Charles at once felt that here was a man and a
brother. So he got up and went towards the new-comer with the simple
greeting, ‘Hullo!’

‘Hullo!’ said the sixth-form boy, with a friendly and cheerful grin.

‘I say,’ said Charles confidentially, as he and the big boy met on the
grass, ‘there isn’t really any reason why we shouldn’t wait here if we
want to?’

‘None in the world,’ said the big boy; ‘if you’re sure that what you’re
waiting for is likely to come, and that this is the best place to wait
for it in.’

‘We’re waiting for Lord Andore,’ said Caroline, who had picked up the
bouquet and advanced with it. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come, because we
don’t understand English menservants. In India they behave differently
when you call.’

‘What have the servants here done?’ the youth asked, frowning, with his
hands in his pockets.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said Charles in a hurry; ‘at least, I mean, we accepted
his apologies, so we can’t sneak.’

‘I wouldn’t call it sneaking to tell _you_,’ said Caroline confidingly,
‘because, of course, you’d promise on your honour not to tell Lord
Andore. We don’t want to get other people’s servants into trouble when
we’ve accepted their apologies. But the footman _was_ rather——’

At this moment the footman himself appeared at the top of the steps
with an elderly whiskered man in black, whom the children rightly
judged to be the butler. The two had come hastily out of the door, but
when they saw the children and their companion, the footman stopped as
if, as Charles said later, he had been turned to stone, and only the
butler advanced when the youth in the Harris tweed said rather shortly,
‘Come here, Checkles!’ Checkles came, quickly enough, and when he
was quite close he astonished the three C.’s much more than he will
astonish _you_, by saying, ‘Yes, m’lord!’

‘Tea on the terrace at once,’ said the Harris-tweeded one, ‘and tell
them not to be all day about it.’

Checkles went, and the footman too. Charlotte always believed that the
last glance he cast at her was not one of defiance but of petition.

‘So you’re him,’ Charles was saying. ‘How jolly!’

But to Caroline it seemed that there was no time to waste in
personalities, however flattering. Lord Andore’s tea was imminent.
He was most likely in a hurry for his tea; it was past most people’s
tea-time already. So she suddenly held out the flowers, and said,
‘Here’s a bouquet. We made it for you. Will you please take it.’

‘That’s awfully good of you, you know,’ said Lord Andore; ‘thanks no
end!’ He took the bouquet and smelt it, plunged his nose into the
midst of the columbine, roses, cornflowers, lemon verbena, wistaria,
gladiolus and straw.

‘It’s not a very nice one, I’m afraid,’ said Caroline; ‘but you can’t
choose the nicest flowers when you have to look them out in two books
at once. It means Welcome, fair stranger; An unexpected meeting; We
are anxious and trembling; Confidence—no, we left that out, because we
hadn’t any; and Agreement, because we hope you will.’

‘How awfully interesting. It _was_ kind of you,’ said Lord Andore, and
before he could say any more Charlotte hastened to say:

‘You see, it’s not just an ordinary nosegay, please, and don’t thank
us, please, because it wasn’t to please you but to serve our own ends,
though, of course, if we’d known how nice you are, and if we’d thought
you’d care about one, we would have, in a minute.’

‘I see,’ said Lord Andore, quite as if he really had seen.

‘I’m sure you don’t,’ said Caroline; ‘don’t be polite, please. Say
if you don’t understand. What we want is justice. It’s one of your
tenants that had the cottage in your father’s time before you, and
they’re turning her out because there are some week-endy people think
the cottage is so pretty, with the flowers she planted, and the arbour
her father made, and the roses that came from her mother’s brother in
Cambridgeshire. And she said you didn’t know. And we decided you ought
to know. So we made you the nosegay and we came. And we ought to go,
and here’s her name and address on a bit of paper, and I’m sorry it’s
only pencil. And you _will_ see justice done, won’t you?’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Lord Andore slowly, ‘to take so much
interest in my tenants.’

‘There,’ said Charlotte; ‘of course we were afraid you’d say that. But
we didn’t mean to shove our oar in. We just went in for ginger-beer,
and Caro found her crying, and there’s a hornbeam arbour, ever so old,
and a few shillings a week can’t make any difference to you, with a
lovely castle like this to live in. And the motto on the tombs of your
ancestors is Flat Justicia. And it’s only bare justice we want; and we
saw the tomb on Sunday in church, with the sons and daughters in ruffs.’

‘Stop!’ said Lord Andore. ‘I am only a poor weak chap. I need my tea.
Come and have some too, and I’ll try to make out what it’s all about.’

‘Thanks awfully,’ said the three C.’s, speaking all together. And
Caroline added, ‘We mustn’t be long over tea, please, because we’ve got
to get home by half-past six, and it must be nearly that now.’

‘You shall get back at half-past six all right,’ said Lord Andore,
and led the way, a huge figure in the dust-coloured clothes, through
the little door by which he had come, on to a pleasant stone terrace
with roses growing all over and in and out and round about its fat old
balustrades.

‘Here’s tea,’ he said. And there it was, set on a fair-sized table with
a white cloth—a tea worth waiting for. Honey and jam and all sorts of
cakes, and peaches and strawberries. The footman was hovering about,
but Charles was the only one who seemed to see him. It was bliss to
Charles to see this proud enemy humbly bearing an urn and lighting a
spirit-lamp to make the tea of those whom he had tried to drive from
even the lowly hospitality of Lord Andore’s doorstep.

‘Come on,’ said the big sixth-form-looking boy, who was Lord Andore;
‘you must be starved. Cake first (and bread and butter afterwards if
you insist upon it) is the rule here. Milk and sugar?’

They all drank tea much too strong for them, out of respect to their
host, who had forgotten that when he was a little boy milk was what one
had at tea-time.

And slowly, by careful questioning, and by making a sudden rule that
no one was to say more than thirty-seven words without stopping, Lord
Andore got at the whole story in a form which he could understand.

‘I _see_,’ he would say, and ‘_I_ see,’ and then ask another question.

And at last when tea was really over, to the last gladly accepted peach
and the last sadly unaccepted strawberry, he stood up and said:

‘If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you are regular little bricks
to have taken all this trouble. And I am really and truly very much
obliged. Because I do mean to be just and right to my tenants, only
it’s very difficult to know about things if nobody tells you. And
you’ve helped me a lot, and I thank you very much.’

‘Then you will?’ said Charlotte breathlessly.

‘Not let her be turned out of her cottage, she means,’ Caroline
explained.

‘She means the Mineral woman,’ said Charles.

‘Of course I won’t,’ said Lord Andore; ‘I mean, of course, I will. I
mean it’s all right. And I’ll drive you home, and if you’re a minute or
two late, I’ll make it all right with uncle.’

The motor was waiting outside the great arch that is held between the
two great towers of Andore Castle. It was a dream of a car, and there
was room for the three C.’s in front beside the driver, who was Lord
Andore himself.

The footman was there, and the proudest moment of the day for
Charles was that in which Lord Andore gave the petition bouquet into
that footman’s care, and told him to see that it was put in water,
‘Carefully, mind; and tell them to put it on the dinner-table to-night.’

The footman said ‘Yes, m’lord,’ as though he had never seen the bouquet
before. Charlotte’s proudest moment was when the woman at the lodge
gate had to curtsey when the motor passed out.

Rupert was waiting for them at their own lodge gate, and when he saw
the motor, his eyes grew quite round like pennies.

‘Oh, do stop, it’s Rupert,’ said the three C.’s; and Rupert was bundled
into the body of the car, where he travelled in lonely splendour. Yet,
even after that, and when the motor had gone away, and the three C.’s
had told him all their adventures and the splendid success of their
magic nosegay, Rupert only said:

‘It’s Chance, I tell you. It’s just accidental. Co—what’s its
name—incidence. It would all have happened just the same if you hadn’t
taken that hideous old mixed assorted haystack with you.’

‘Still disagreeable?’ said Charlotte brightly.

‘Oh, been all the same, _would_ it?’ said Charles; ‘that’s all you
know.’

[Illustration: Rupert was bundled into the body of the car.]

‘It’s _not_ all I know,’ said Rupert; ‘as it happens, I know heaps of
things that you don’t. And I could find out more if I wanted to. So
there!’

‘Oh, Rupert, don’t be cross,’ said Caroline, ‘just when we’re all so
happy. I _do_ wish you’d been there, especially at tea-time.’

‘I’m not cross,’ said Rupert. ‘As it happens, I was feeling extra jolly
until you came home.’

‘Oh, _don’t_,’ said Caroline; ‘do let’s call it Pax. We haven’t told
you half the little interesting things that happened yet. And if you
can’t believe in the magic, it’s your misfortune. We know you can’t
help it. We know you don’t unbelieve on purpose. We know we’re right,
and you think you know you are.’

‘It’s the other way round,’ said Rupert, still deep in gloom.

‘I _know_ it is, when _you_ think it, and when we think it, it’s the
other way,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh, Pax! Pax! Pax!’

‘All right,’ said Rupert. ‘I had a good swim. Your Mr. Penfold’s not
half a bad sort. He taught me a new side-stroke.’ But it was plain that
Rupert’s inside self still felt cloudy and far from comfortable.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next day the three C.’s and Rupert, in the middle of Irish stew, were
surprised by the sudden rustling entrance of Mrs. Wilmington.

‘A person wishes to see you,’ she said to Caroline; ‘quite a poor
person. I asked her to wait till dinner was completed; but she says
that she hopes you will see her now, as she ought to commence going
home almost at once.’

‘Of course!’ said Caroline; ‘it must be the Mineral woman.’

‘She seemed to me,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘to have an animal face.’

But Caroline was already in the hall, and the figure that rose
politely from the oak chair was plainly—though disguised in her Sunday
clothes—that of the Mineral woman.

‘Oh, Miss!’ she said; ‘oh, Miss!’ She took hold of both Caroline’s
hands and shook them, but that was not enough. Caroline found herself
kissed on both cheeks, and then suddenly hugged; and ‘Oh, Miss!’ the
Mineral woman said; ‘oh, Miss!’ And then she felt for her handkerchief
in a black bag she carried, and blew her nose loudly.

Mrs. Wilmington had gone through the hall very slowly indeed; but even
she could not go slowly enough not to be gone by the time the Mineral
woman had, for the time being, finished with her nose. And as Mrs.
Wilmington went through the baize door, she heard again, ‘Oh, Miss!’

Mrs. Wilmington came back five minutes later, and this time she heard:

‘And it’s all right, Miss; and two bright new five-pound notes “to buy
more rose trees with,” and a letter in his own write of hand thanking
us for making the place so pretty; and I’m to be tenant for life, Miss.
And it’s all your doing, bless your kind heart. So I came to tell you.
I never thought I should feel like I do about any strange little gell.
It was all your doing, Miss, my dear.’

Which was a very mysterious and exciting thing to be overheard by any
housekeeper who was not in the secret. And a very heartwarming and
pleasant thing to be listened to by a little girl who was.

‘You see,’ said Caroline, when she had told the others of the Mineral
woman’s happiness, ‘the magic always works.’




CHAPTER XVII

THE LE-O-PARD


‘We simply must write to Aunt Emmeline,’ said Caroline earnestly.
‘I’ve got three new pens and some scented violet ink. I got it at the
shop yesterday; it’s lovely. And I’ve been counting up the picture
post-cards she and Uncle Percival have sent us. There are forty-two,
and twenty-eight of those have come since we wrote last.’

‘I’d almost rather not have the post-cards; they make you feel so
horrid when you don’t write,’ said Charles. ‘Suppose _we_ send picture
post-cards. You don’t have to write nearly so much.’

I think that would be shirking,’ said Charlotte, who did not want to go
out, and more than half believed what she said. ‘Come on. If we must,
we must. Necessity doesn’t know the law.’

‘You write, too, Rupert,’ said Charles kindly. ‘Put some Latin in.
They’ll love that. Or perhaps you’d tell me some to say. I can put it
in if you say how I ought to spell it.’

But Rupert said he couldn’t be bothered, and took down a book—Jesse’s
_Anecdotes of Dogs_ it was, with alluring pictures and delightful
stories; but he did not really read it.

Caroline, looking up in an agony of ignorance as to the way you spelt
assafœtida, which the medicine book said was good for ‘pains in the
head brought about by much ſtudy of the printed book,’ saw that
Rupert’s eyes were fixed in a dismal stare on the portrait above the
mantelpiece, the portrait of Dame Eleanour.

He was looking at it as though he did not see it, and yet Charlotte
could not help saying, ‘Isn’t she splendid? _She_ knew all about spells
and things. It’s her books we do it out of—at least, most of it.’

‘If she knew all about them, she knew what rotten rot they were,’ said
Rupert. ‘You never try to do anything with your spells except the
things that would happen just the same without your spelling.’

‘What’s that about my spelling?’ asked Caroline, who had made a bold
dash for what she remembered of the way the word looked in the
medicine book, and written, in a violent violet smudge, ‘Aſſerphrodite.’

‘I say your magic isn’t real.’

‘We saw you when you were invisible,’ Caroline began, laying down her
pen, whose wet nib at once tried to dry, turning from purple to golden
green bronze. And then:

‘Yes, I know,’ said Rupert; ‘but if it’s really real, why don’t
you do something with it that can’t really happen _in puris
naturalatibus_?—that means just naturally. Why don’t you bring back
Mrs. Wilmington’s cat that’s lost? Or find my Kohinore pencil. Then
there’s a thing in that book Mr. Penfold’s got. He told me about it.
You make a wax image of your enemy and stick pins into it, and every
time you stick in a pin your enemy feels a pain in the part you stick
the pins into.’

‘How awfully wicked!’ said Caroline in an awe-struck voice.

‘Or you can roast the wax man in front of a fire, and as the wax melts,
the man wastes away,’ said Rupert hardly.

‘Oh, _don’t_!’ said Charlotte.

‘Yes, do,’ said Charles; ‘what else?’

‘Oh, nothing else. It’s better if you get a bit of the enemy’s hair,
and put that on your wax man’s head. Mr. Penfold read me bits out of a
piece of poetry about it.’

‘Didn’t he say it was wicked?’ Caroline asked.

‘Yes,’ said Rupert reluctantly; ‘but I know what’s wicked without Mr.
Penfold telling me, or you either. Just fancy how your enemy would
squirm when he felt the pin-pricks; they’d be like sword-thrusts, you
know, to him.’

‘Don’t!’ said Caroline; ‘don’t, Rupert, it’s horrid. Please don’t. I
don’t want to know about those sort of spells.’

‘Rupert wouldn’t do it, of course,’ said Charles. ‘He’s only talking.’

‘How do you know I wouldn’t?’ said Rupert savagely. ‘Next time you have
a pain in your leg, Caroline, you’ll think it’s growing pains, but
really it’ll be me, sticking a long hat-pin into the wax image I’ve
secretly made of you.’

Caroline got up.

‘Come, Char,’ she said, ‘we’ll go and sit in the drawing-room if
Rupert’s going on like this.’

‘He doesn’t mean it,’ said Charles again.

‘Of course I don’t,’ said Rupert, and suddenly smiled. ‘I don’t know
why I said it. Don’t be silly. There’s lots of things you could try,
though, and not hurt any one. Why don’t you——?’ He looked vaguely round
the room, and his eyes lighted once more on the portrait. ‘Why don’t
you make _that_ come to life? If she was a witch, her picture ought to
be good for that, anyhow.’

‘I wish we could,’ said all the children together, with deep
earnestness.

‘Well, do it then,’ said Rupert. ‘That’s the sort of thing to make me
believe, not the duffing things you’ve kept on doing ever since I’ve
been here.’

There was a silence. Then, ‘How do you spell “impossible”?’ asked
Charles, and then nothing more was heard but the scratching of violet
pens.

But from that time, and in between all other thoughts and happenings,
Charlotte kept on thinking about that idea. If only the picture could
be made to come alive!

And Charles’s fancy played timidly with the idea of the wax man. Not
to hurt the person it was like, of course, but just to see if anything
happened. Not pins. But just pinching its foot a very very very little,
secretly, with the image in your pocket, when the person it was the
image of was there, just to see if the person jumped or called out, as
you do if you’re suddenly pinched, no matter how gently.

Charlotte’s mind busied itself then and later, in and between other
thoughts, with the question of what was the matter with Rupert, and
whether something couldn’t be done to help him.

For there was no doubt of it. Rupert wasn’t at all what they had
first thought him. Sometimes, it is true, he would be as jolly as
you need wish a boy to be. He would start new games and play them in
the most amusing and satisfactory way. But always, sooner or later,
and generally sooner, the light of life seemed to go out of him, and
he would seem suddenly to be not only tired of the game but tired of
everything else, and not only tired of everything, but angry with
everybody.

‘I’m sure he’s bewitched,’ said Charlotte more than once in those
intimate moments when Caroline and she ‘talked things over’ as they
brushed their hair. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if somebody’s made a wax image
of _him_, and it’s when they stick the pins in it that he goes all
savage all in a minute.’

‘I do think _that’s_ nonsense,’ Caroline always said. ‘I’m sure it
wouldn’t be allowed.’

‘How would you make an image of a person’s mind?’ Charlotte woke
Caroline up to ask, one night; and when Caroline with sleepy sharpness
said, ‘You can’t; go to sleep, do,’ Charlotte answered, ‘I believe you
can; there was something written under somebody’s portrait in history,
about painting his mind; and if you can paint a mind, you can make a
wax image of it. I believe that’s what somebody’s done to Rupert, don’t
you? And stuck knives into it? Oh, well, if you _will_ go to sleep!’
said Charlotte.

Rupert grew grumpier and grumpier as the days went on, and seemed to
care less and less for being with the three C.’s. He would go for long
walks by himself, and seemed to prefer to be with William, who ‘put up’
with him, or even with Mrs. Wilmington, who adored him, to being with
the children.

‘And we thought it would be so jolly,’ sighed Charlotte; ‘and the
worst of it is Charles tries to imitate him. He speaks quite rudely
sometimes, even to you, Caro, and you know he always used to like you
best.’

The only thing Rupert seemed truly and constantly to care for was
swimming. He went down to the river with Mr. Penfold almost every day,
or met him at the bathing-place, and they swam together. With Mr.
Penfold, Rupert was nearly always at his best, perhaps because Mr.
Penfold never seemed to notice it when he wasn’t.

The village was growing more and more busy and excited as the day drew
near when Lord Andore’s coming of age was to be celebrated by what the
people called a Grangaileranfeat. This was to be held in Lord Andore’s
park and in certain meadows adjoining; there were to be roundabouts
and cocoanut-shies and shooting-galleries, and a real circus, with a
menagerie and performing elephants and educated seals,—all free. The
children looked forward longingly to the day. Lord Andore had sent them
cards with his mother’s name and his on them in print, and the name of
each child in writing, requesting the pleasure of their company on the
occasion of Lord Andore’s twenty-first birthday. And they had joyously,
and with much violet ink, accepted. And the day came nearer and nearer.
It did not seem worth while to engage in any new magic while there was
this real pleasure to look forward to.

And then, the very day before _the_ day, when the roundabouts had
arrived and been set up, and the menagerie was howling invitingly in
its appointed field, the cup of joy was dashed, as Charlotte said, into
little bits. Lady Andore slipped on an orange pip and broke her ankle,
and the festivities were postponed until September. So said a card
brought by the very footman who had not known their names.

‘He jolly well knows them now,’ said Charles. It was his only comfort.

‘There’s many a pip ’twixt the cup and the lip,’ said Charlotte; and
Caroline said, ‘Oh, bother!’

Rupert said nothing. He had been invited too, of course, and had,
at moments, seemed pleased. Now he just took his cap and went out,
and came home late for tea. The three C.’s learned with feelings of
distress, mingled with anger, that Rupert had been to the menagerie by
himself, and had seen all the beasts, and that he had also witnessed a
performance of the circus people, which they had thought it worth while
to give to such of the villagers as cared to pay for their amusements.
He had seen everything, from the accomplished elephants to the educated
seals.

‘You might have told us you were going,’ said Charles.

‘You could have gone if you’d wanted to,’ said Rupert.

‘Never mind, Charles,’ said Caroline; ‘we’ll ask the Uncle to take us
to-morrow.’

‘They’re off to-morrow,’ said Rupert; ‘that’s why I went to-day.’ He
added something bitter and almost unbearable about a parcel of kids.

But the circus, as it turned out, was not off next day. An accident had
happened. Something was missing, and the circus could not go on its
travels till that something was found.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ said Harriet, when she told them about it
at breakfast; ‘but they’ve lost something they set store by. Some says
it’s an improving seal, and others says it’s a boar-conjector-snake,
and Poad told my gentleman friend it was the white-eyed Kaffir made
a bolt for freedom and India’s coral strand, where he was stole from
when a babe; but I don’t know the rights of it. They sent for Poad. My
gentleman friend’ll know all about it next time I see him.’

‘When shall you see him again?’ Charles asked.

‘I can see him whenever I’ve a mind,’ said Harriet proudly. ‘I’m not
one of those as has to run after their gentlemen friends.’

‘I do wonder what it is,’ Charlotte said. ‘Do see your friend as soon
as you can and ask him, won’t you, Harriet? I do hope it’s not snakes
or bears. You’ll be sure to tell us directly you know, won’t you?’

‘Sure,’ said Harriet.

It was from William, however, that they heard what it was that the
circus had really lost.

‘It’s a tame Le-o-pard,’ said William; ‘him with the spots that you
can’t change, and the long tail.’

‘I know,’ said Charlotte; ‘there’s a leopard’s skin in the
drawing-room. Very spotty they are. And fierce, too, I believe. Oh,
William! I do hope it won’t come this way.’

‘There’s something about it in the book,’ said Caroline, who, as usual,
had her magic books under her arm. She found the place and read,
‘Leopard’s-bane, its government and virtues’—quite a long piece. When
she had done, William said:

‘Thank you very much; quite pretty, ain’t it?’ And Rupert said it was
all nonsense.

‘But it _won’t_ come this way, will it?’ Charlotte repeated.

‘It’s a tame one,’ said William, grinning. ‘At least that’s the
character it’s got from its last place. But it won’t be any too tame
for Poad, I expect. I hear he’s got the job of catching of it. And
serve him right too.’

‘Oh, why?’ asked Charlotte.

‘Because,’ said William shortly, and was told not to be cross about
nothing.

‘’Tain’t nothing, then,’ he said; ‘’twas the way he acted about my dog
license, and the dog only two months over puppy-age, when no license is
taken nor yet asked.’

‘I don’t fancy Poad much myself,’ said Rupert; ‘he needn’t have been so
keen about catching me.’

‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ said William. ‘Hunting of you, that
was no more than Poad’s duty; and if he set about it like a jackape,
well, some is born silly and can’t help it, and why blame the man? But
the dog, ’e worn’t Poad’s duty. He exceeded about the dog, Poad did,
and I don’t bear malice; but I’ll be even with him yet about that dog.’

‘How?’ asked Rupert.

‘Oh, I’ll find a way,’ said William carelessly. ‘No hurry. Acts like
that act what Poad did about my Pincher, they always come home to
roost—them acts do. Now then, Miss Charlotte, leave that saddle soap
alone, and get along into the garden. The gates ’as been locked since
eight this morning, and you’re to go through the secret way to-day, and
not to go outside the garden because of that old speckled Le-o-pard.’

The three C.’s went, but Rupert lingered beside William, fingering
the bright buckles of the harness and passing the smooth reins slowly
through his fingers.

For some time the three C.’s were very busy in the garden, gathering
heart-shaped green leaves and golden fragile daisy-like flowers.

‘I never thought,’ said Caroline earnestly, opening the brown book
and sitting down on the terrace steps with a sheaf of green and
yellow beside her, ‘that we should need it when I read about it in
the _Language Of_, and in the medicine book. Look here, it says: “It
is under Apollo, and the flowers and leaves thereof all leopards and
their kind do fear and abhor. Wherefore if it be ſtrewn in the paths
theſe fearful beaſts do frequent, they may not paſs, but ſhall turn
again and go each to his own place in all meekneſs and ſubmiſsion.
Indeed, it hath been held by the ancients, aye and by philoſophers of
our own times, that in this herb lieth a charm to turn to water the
hearts of theſe furious ſpotted great cats, and to looſe the ſtrings
of their tongues, ſo that they ſpeak in the ſpeech of men, uttering
ſtrange things and very wondrous. But of this the author cannot ſpeak
certainly, ſince the Leopard is not native to this land unleſs it be in
Northumberland and Wales where all wild things might well be hidden.”’

‘So, you see,’ said Caroline.

But Charlotte said it was all very well, only how were they to get the
bane to the leopard?

‘It isn’t as if we were allowed free,’ she pointed out. ‘I wish they
hadn’t been so careful. The leopard would never have hurt us as long
as we carried the bane, and we could have surrounded it, like snakes,
with ash leaves, and it would have had to surrender.’

‘And perhaps it would have talked to us and followed us like tame
fawns,’ suggested Charlotte; ‘or Una; only hers was a lion.’

‘Nonsense!’ said Charles; ‘you know you’d have been afraid.’

‘I shouldn’t,’ said Charlotte.

‘You would,’ said Charles.

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘You would.’

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘You would.’

‘And now you’re both exactly like Rupert,’ said Caroline; ‘and the
leopard wandering about unbaned while you’re wrangling. You’re like
Nero and Rome.’

Twenty minutes had passed before peace was restored, and the
leopard’s-bane lay drooping in the sun, the delicate gold and green
heaps of it growing flatter and flatter.

‘Well, then,’ said Charles suddenly, ‘if you’re not afraid, let’s go.
No one’s forbidden us to, except William.’

‘I will if you will,’ said Charlotte, turning red.

‘So will I,’ said Caroline, turning pale.

‘Rupert said it was nonsense about the leopard’s-bane when you read it
this morning.’

‘That doesn’t make it nonsense,’ said Charlotte sharply.

‘But suppose you meet it?’

‘You can’t—if you keep to the road. Leopards get into trees. They never
walk about in roads like elephants do. Not even when the circus man
is moving. It’s serious what we’re going to do,’ said Caroline; ‘and
what’ll people say about it, depends how it turns out. If we parrylise
the leopard and save the village, we shall be heroines like——’

(‘And heroes,’ said Charles.)

‘Like Joan of Arc, and Philippa who sucked the poison out of the
burgesses’ keys at Calais.’

‘And if we don’t put the stuff in the right place, or the leopard
doesn’t take any notice of it, they’ll just say we were disobedient.’

‘And suppose we meet the leopard face to face?’

‘It’s a _tame_ leopard,’ said Caroline in a faltering voice.

‘Oh, I don’t want to go. I really am frightened. I don’t mind owning
up. I am. I’m so frightened I think we ought to go. I don’t want to so
dreadfully, that I’m sure it’s right for me to go. But I wish you and
Charles would stay here. Suppose the leopard came over the wall and
there was no one here to cope with it?’

She was very pale and she trembled. And when the others, without
hesitation, said, ‘Not much, we don’t!’ she certainly breathed more
easily.

‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘We’ll strew a little here because of the
gardeners. Oh no, of course the roots will make it all safe here. The
gate’s locked; we must go through the secret passage and then creep
through the stable-yard and out along the garden wall, so that the
Wilmington doesn’t see us. And then out by the deserted lodge.’




CHAPTER XVIII

THE LEOPARD’S-BANE


Their minds once made up, the children collected the fading armfuls
of leopard’s-bane and made for the arbour that led to the tunnel.
Inside the door they lighted the candle, closed and bolted the door
as they had been told to, and went carefully down the steps and along
the secret passage. And as they went they heard something moving in
the darkness that lay thick beyond the little wavering light of their
candle.

They stopped and listened. They heard the sound of breathing, and
the next moment they saw, vaguely, in the almost darkness, something
four-footed, spotted, furry, creeping along the passage towards them.
It uttered a low, fierce, snarling growl.

‘Throw it down,’ said Caroline, casting her flowers from her. ‘It can’t
pass it. It can’t.’

A heap of tangled crushed leaves and flowers was all that there was
now between the children and the leopard.

[Illustration: Something four-footed, spotted, furry, creeping along
the passage.]

‘It can’t pass it. It can’t,’ said Caroline again, in an agonised
whisper. Yet none of the children dared to turn and fly. Charlotte had
remembered what she had heard of quelling wild animals by the power
of the human eye, and was trying, almost without knowing that she
tried, to meet the eye of this one. But she could not. It held its
head down close to the ground and kept quite still. Every one felt it
was impossible to turn their backs on the creature. Better to face it.
If they turned and ran, well, the door at the end of the passage was
bolted; and if the flower-spell should fail, then, the moment their
backs were turned, the leopard might—with one spring——

‘Oh, I wish we hadn’t,’ said Charles, and burst into tears.

‘Don’t, oh, don’t!’ said Caroline; and to the leopard, who had not
moved, she said, with wild courage:

‘Down, sir! Lie down!’

The leopard lay down, flat—flatter than you would think a leopard
_could_ lie.

‘It understands,’ said Charlotte.

‘Oh yes.’ Caroline’s voice trembled as much as the hand that held the
candlestick. ‘It does. Poor Pussy! Poor Leopard, then.’

A faint rumbling sound came from the crouching heap of spotted fur.

‘I believe it’s trying to purr,’ whispered Caroline. ‘Of course
leopards’ purrs _would_ be different.’

‘Give a paw, then,’ she said very shakily. And the leopard lifted a
ragged-looking forefoot. But even Caroline had not the courage to reach
out a hand towards it.

‘Go to sleep, good dog, then,’ she said in a distracted whisper. ‘Go to
sleep, go by-by, good little leopard, then.’

The leopard curled up and lay quite still.

‘It’s all right, I tell you,’ said Caroline. ‘Stop snivelling, Charles.
I knew the leopard’s-bane would do it. Now let’s go back backwards,
very slowly, and if it moves, I’ll speak to it again.’

Very slowly, still striving to keep their eyes on the leopard, they
retreated. They had not gone three steps before they heard it move.
They stopped.

‘Lie down!’ said Caroline. And then, to their mingled horror, wonder,
delight, surprise, dismay, and satisfaction, a voice answered them—a
curious, choked, husky voice.

‘Leopard stay still,’ it answered; ‘little lady not be frightened.
Leopard like flowers. Leopard quite good.’

‘Is it?’ said Caroline, speaking as well as she could through the
beating of her heart. ‘Is it the leopard speaking?’

‘Ess, little missy,’ said the choked voice. ‘Pretty flowers loose
leopard’s tonguey, make him talky. Leopard tell a secret. Little ladies
sow seeds, pinky seeds, hearty seeds, the right day, the right way, and
see what come up. Run way now. Leopard done talky. He go sleepy by-by.
So long!’

None of them ever knew how they got to the end of the tunnel, got the
bolts undone, got the door shut again, and stood in the dusky arbour
looking in each other’s paper-white faces.

Charlotte made two steps into the sunlight and threw herself face
downwards on the path. Her shoulders heaved. Charles was still weeping
without moderation or concealment. Caroline stood shivering in the
sunshine.

‘But we’ve got to get back,’ she said. ‘It’s all right this side,
because of the leopard’s-bane. But if somebody came behind the
leopard’s-bane, from the house, you know? We must climb the wall and
get to the house and warn them. Get up, Char. Charles, if you’re ever
going to be a man, be one now. There’ll be plenty of time to howl when
it’s all over. We must climb the wall, somehow.’

One leaves the children in the garden, a locked door between them
and the leopard, trying to find a way of climbing a ten-foot wall. No
gardener was to be found and the gates were locked.

‘We must get over,’ Caroline kept saying. ‘Oh, we must, we must! The
charm worked perfectly. If we can only get to the other end of the
tunnel and throw in some more bane we shall have done the great deed.
Try again, Charles. I’ll give you a leg up. We _must_ get over. Try
again.’

One leaves Charles trying.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now although the three C.’s firmly believed that the magic of the green
and yellow flowers subdued the leopard and caused it to speak—in a sort
of language that somehow recalled the far-off speech of their ayah in
India—I cannot quite expect you to believe this. And I feel that I must
delay no longer to tell you what it is you _can_ believe. To do this we
must go back to Rupert, whom we left with William in the harness-room,
fingering the bright buckles and drawing the long smooth reins through
his fingers.

‘I say, William,’ he said, ‘couldn’t we play a little trick on that
Poad? There’s a leopard skin in the drawing-room. If I got a couple of
pillows and a needle and thread?’

‘Eh?’ said William, staring at him. Then suddenly he smacked his leg
and laughed aloud. ‘You’ve hit it this time, Master Rupert,’ he said;
‘blessed if you ’aven’t. You go along in and get the skin. Careful now,
because of Mother Wilmington.’

‘The drawing-room’s locked,’ said Rupert, ‘and I don’t want to tell the
others.’

‘The drawing-room windows isn’t,’ said William. ‘We’ll watch our time,
and I’ll make a back for you. An’ never you mind about pillows. Straw’s
good enough stuffing. An’ don’t forget the needle and cotton. I expect
you’ll find some lady’s working-box in the drawing-room to get _them_
out of.’

Rupert, once safely landed in the drawing-room, found the leopard skin
easily enough, but the needle and cotton were not so easily found. He
found a work-table indeed, made of satinwood, inlaid with ivory and
lined with faded red velvet, where were reels of silk and flat ivory
winders with thread on them, but all the needles were red with rust,
and fast embedded in their cushions and cases. He looked round. None of
the cabinets looked as though they held needles. And besides, what was
the use of finding more rusty needles? One rusty needle was as useful,
or rather as useless, as fifty could be. He thought of using the
blind-cords instead of cotton, but they were too thick, and one could
not push them through the leopard skin without tearing it. Then he saw
the golden quiet harp standing in its far corner. Its strings perhaps?
But he did not know how to unstring a harp, and when he touched one
of its fine wires, just the thing for sewing with without a needle,
it gave out the thin sweet ghost of a note of music, faint indeed,
but loud enough to warn him of the cry it could and would give if he
attempted violence. The harp quivered under his hands as he gently let
the string go, and something rattled. It was the lid of a sort of box
in the pedestal of the harp.

‘Perhaps they kept spare strings there,’ Rupert thought, and opened the
lid.

‘They,’ it seemed, had kept spare strings here, and here the spare
strings still lay, coiled neatly in little round boxes. Rupert opened
several, and choosing the thinner strings, put them in his pocket. One
box rattled dryly in his hand, and when he opened it there were no
strings, only a number of odd, flat, pinkish heart-shaped seeds. On the
box was written, ‘Seed of the F. of H.D. Sow only in the way and on the
day.’

He put its lid on and thought, then, no more of the box. But
afterwards he remembered it.

And now, with the leopard’s skin in his arms and the wires in his
pockets, Rupert went cautiously to the window. Yes, all was safe; so
William’s signal told him. He dropped the bright skin into William’s
hands, and himself dropped to the ground.

‘I’ve thought of something better than straw,’ he said, when he and
William and the leopard skin were alone together in the harness-room.
And William, when the new thought was explained to him, slapped his leg
harder, and laughed more thoroughly than before.

Rupert had only just entered the secret passage, his first match had
just gone out, when he heard the children at the other end. He went
towards them, fully meaning to explain what sort of leopard he was,
and what sort of joke—he called it a joke to himself—he and William
had arranged to play upon Poad. But when he heard them speak, and saw
the showers of leopard’s-bane fall on the flags of the passage, he,
as he put it later, ‘played up.’ And when the children had gone, he
laughed softly to himself and began to think what would be the best
spot in the tunnel to wait for Poad in. He had noticed, by the light
of that first match, an arched recess, the one, you remember, where the
children stored their sacks of wet rose leaves the night they played
at Rosicurians and cured Rupert. He would hide in this, and then, when
Poad came along, he would jump out at him with that snarl which had
sounded so well when he met the children.

He waited till the garden door was locked, and then felt for his
matches. He could not find them. He must have dropped them when he was
pretending to the children. He felt along the floor, but there were no
matches to be found. Never mind, he could feel his way in the dark. He
knew exactly where the arch was. To the left, about three-quarters of
the way down the passage. He stood up and laid his hand upon the wall,
walked forward till he felt the corner of the recess, and stooped to
curl himself up in it and wait for Poad. He put his hand out to steady
himself as he sat down, and his hand touched, not the stone floor, but
soft warm fur. And not dry hard fur like that which he himself wore,
sewn tightly round him with harp-strings, but living fur, on a living
creature. He drew back his hand, and a cold sweat of horror broke out
on his forehead, and the little hairs on the back of his neck seemed
to move by themselves. His hand still felt the dreadful warm softness
of that fur. It almost seemed to him that he had felt the spots on it.

‘Oh, I wish I hadn’t!’ said Rupert to himself, as so many of us have
said when it was too late to say anything. ‘Oh, I _wish_ I hadn’t!’

He stood perfectly still in the mockery of his sewn-on leopard skin,
waiting for the real leopard to move, or to settle down. Perhaps it
would settle down? The leopard must have crept in when the door into
the garden was opened in readiness for the children to pass through. It
must have gone to sleep there, and perhaps he had not roused it.

‘Oh, why didn’t I go with the others?’ Rupert thought. And then a good
thought came to him.

‘If I had,’ he told himself, ‘I should have been out there, and they
wouldn’t have met me and turned back, and then they might have found
the real leopard, and it might have jumped on them. I’m glad it’s only
me.’

This good thought came to him as he rose up and steadied himself by
the wall. Then in an instant all thoughts were drowned in a flood of
terror, and Rupert found himself almost running, feeling his way by the
wall towards the house entrance. If he could only get out before the
leopard was up and after him! He reached the end of the passage. The
door at the foot of the stairs was shut and locked. He was alone there
in the dark with a locked door at each end of the passage. He crouched
down by the door. In spite of his agony of fear he had enough sense
not to beat on the door and scream for help, which was, of course, his
first mad impulse.

‘Keep quiet,’ he kept telling himself, ‘some one _must_ come soon. If
you keep quiet, the leopard will go on sleeping, perhaps. The children
will open the garden door when they hear the dinner-bell. Then you can
get out. If you make a row, the leopard will wake up and come for you.’

So he crouched and waited. But no one came. Then suddenly he
remembered. When the children heard the dinner-bell they would come
down the passage. They would find the real leopard. It would certainly
wake. His own feelings about the leopard now made him certain that the
children, when they were safe in the sunshine, would see that what
talked to them, dressed in a leopard’s skin, _could_ only have been a
human being dressed up. Most likely they knew already who it was. So
they would come back without fear—come back to find him, Rupert, and
would find _that_!

Then Rupert did what was really an heroic thing. He stood up, and, as
quickly as he could, began to feel his way back along the side of the
passage farthest from the arched recess. He would go to the garden
door, and when the children opened it, he could prevent their coming
in. To do this he must pass the leopard.

A warm delicious glow stole through him. This was worth it. Better than
crouching like a coward at the far side and letting those children come
laughing and talking down the passage to meet _that_, savage from a
sudden awakening. He took off his boots, and crept quietly along. No
sound broke the black silence. He reached the flight of steps, reached
the other door, sat down on the top step and waited.

Nothing had stirred in the silence.

‘Anyhow,’ said Rupert, ‘I feel safer at the top of the stairs than at
the bottom.’

Rupert will never know how long he sat there in the darkness. The
cracks in the door which showed as pale vertical streaks were his only
comfort. He tried to get off the leopard’s skin, but the harp-strings
were too strong. It seemed to him that he had been there a week.

There were voices, many voices, Charlotte’s voice high above the
others. Rupert hoped the leopard was too far away to hear, but how
could he know where the leopard was? It might have crept quite close
to him on its padded noiseless feet, and he would never have known. It
might be within a yard of him now.

Rupert understood in that hour what sort of practical joke it was that
he had prepared for the policeman.

‘Because, of course,’ said Rupert, ‘I should have been just as dreadful
for Poad as _that_ is for me. He’d have thought I was It.’

The voices and footsteps came nearer. They were talking outside.

‘Best shoot it, when it rushes out at us. I’ve got a revolver,’ said
Poad. And a cold shiver ran down Rupert’s back. Suppose he had met Poad
alone in that dark passage as he had planned?

‘Let me get at him with the garden fork,’ said another voice—the
gardener’s.

Then another, a strange voice this time:

‘Don’t hurt the beast. It’s valuable. An’ it’s tame, don’t I tell you?
You leave be. Stand back. I’ll tackle him.’

Rupert wretchedly wondered how he was to be trapped; also, how near the
real leopard really was. He decided that a little noise more or less
couldn’t matter now. He tapped at the door and cried, ‘Let me out. It’s
Rupert.’

[Illustration: ‘It’s me; it’s Rupert,’ he shouted.]

But his words were drowned in the chorus of alarm that rose when he
knocked at the door. And the leopard? In the midst of the babel of
voices a bolt was drawn, the door opened. Rupert sprang out and turned
to shut the door. But his feet and arms and head were entangled in
strings, and he fell to the ground.

‘It’s me; it’s Rupert,’ he shouted; ‘shut the door! The real leopard’s
inside!’

‘Why!’ said the leopard’s owner—he who had thrown the net over
Rupert—‘it’s a beastly boy, dressed up.’ He spoke in tones of deep
disgust.

There was a crowd of people. The three C.’s had managed to scale the
wall by means of a pear-tree. They had brought back William—a prey to
secret laughter, and the leopard’s owner, and a dozen other people. A
score of hands helped to loose Rupert from the net.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I did it for a lark. To take a rise out of some one.
But I’ve been paid out. The leopard’s in there. I touched it, in the
dark.’

Sensation!

‘There,’ said William to the policeman, ‘I told you half an hour ago
there was a good chance the beast ’ad taken cover in the passage, and
you would have it you see his tail up a tree somewhere, and wouldn’t go
down.’

‘I certainly thought I see ’is tail,’ said Poad, scratching his ear;
‘and this gentleman’s pal and half a dozen others is after ’im now,
down by the other lodge. But perhaps it wasn’t really ’is tail. In
fact, it couldn’t be, if the animal’s in here like what the young
gentleman says it is.’

‘I tell you the leopard’s in here, now,’ said Rupert. ‘Oh, get me out
of this beastly skin somebody.’

William unlaced him, and he stepped out, a pale boy in shirt and
knickerbockers.

‘In there now, is he?’ said the leopard’s keeper, rudely taking no
notice of Poad; ‘then if some one’ll get a lantern or two we’ll go in
and get him.’

Some one got a lantern or two—it was William in point of fact; the
lanterns happened to be ready in the summer-house.

The keeper went down the steps.

‘On the right-hand side?’ he said, quite unconcernedly.

And Rupert said, ‘Yes, to the right.’

William and three other men followed warily, but to most of the party
it seemed best to remain by the door. Five people and a net were surely
enough to catch one leopard. But every one crowded round the door, and
some even went down a few steps, bending over to catch the first sounds
of anything that might be happening.

All of a sudden a sound came from the dark passage below, and the
listeners started back—a strange sound, the sound of long, loud
laughter. It echoed and re-echoed through the vaulted passage, coming
nearer and nearer. The crowd drew back.

Out came the leopard keeper, laughing, with his net; out came William,
laughing, with his pitchfork; out came Poad, half laughing and half
angry.

‘What is it? what is it?’ said every one outside. And for a moment none
of those inside could get breath to answer.

‘What is it?’ they asked again, and at last William answered:

‘Mrs. Wilmington’s old cat! Gone in there to have her kittens in peace
away from the children. They’ve caught your little bit all right,’ he
said to the leopard keeper. ‘Look!’ He pointed to something white among
the trees beyond the wall. ‘I told Bill to run up a signal if they
found the rest of him where Poad said he’d seen his spotted tail.’

‘Did you know that before we went in?’ Poad asked sternly.

‘’Course I did,’ said William, his hands on his knees and his ruddy
face deeply creased with the joke. ‘You wouldn’t have catched me going
in there without I’d known where my Lord was, him and his spotted tail.
I thought it was Master Rupert up to some more of his larks, I did. I
wasn’t a-going to spoil sport.’

‘You ’aven’t ’eard the last of this,’ said Poad huffily.

‘No more ain’t you,’ said William, ‘so don’t you think it, James Poad.
You that believed one tale when you’d seen the other. You that wouldn’t
believe the sworn evidence of your own eyes and a spotted tail.’




CHAPTER XIX

F. OF H.D.


You will hardly be able to believe that, owing to the firmness of Uncle
Charles’s instructions that he was not to be disturbed on any pretence,
the whole noisy affair of the two leopards passed entirely unnoticed
by him. The three C.’s did not tell, because they feared that Rupert’s
impersonation of the leopard might not be pleasing to the Uncle. Mrs.
Wilmington did not tell, because Rupert was her great favourite. She
mended the places where the harp-strings had torn the leopard skin, and
put it back in its place and said nothing to any one. William did not
tell; he was a man who could keep a joke to himself, was William. Poad
did not tell, because he never could be quite sure whether the laugh
was on his side or on William’s. And Rupert did not tell, for reasons
that will be clearer later on. So the Uncle went on writing his book
about _Sympathetic Magic_, in complete ignorance of anything leopardish
having happened.

When all the fuss and bustle had died down, and Rupert and the children
were left face to face, words of reproach rose to every lip. But
Rupert, knowing what he had faced in that underground passage for the
sake of the children, still had enough of the warm and comforting
feeling to be able to say:

‘Look here, don’t! I’m awfully sorry if I did really frighten you. I
didn’t know. I’d no _idea_ what it would feel like to be frightened
by a leopard until I thought I was shut up with one. Don’t rub it in;
there’s good chaps.’

A frank appeal such as this could not fail with the three C.’s, and if
anything had been needed to melt the anger of the girls, being called
‘good chaps’ would have supplied that need.

‘Oh yes,’ they said, both together. ‘But do let’s tell each other all
about it,’ Charlotte added. ‘Let’s not say anything till after dinner,
and then have a grand palaver in the garden. I do want to understand
just exactly what you felt when you felt the leopard, Rupert, to see if
it was anything like what we felt when we saw your spots.’

‘All right!’ said Rupert.

[Illustration: Charles had his first swimming lesson.]

And Charles said, ‘It was the most dreadful thing in the world, but it
will give us something to talk about.’

It did. Rupert’s hidden consciousness of having done something ‘rather
decent,’ made him quite like the self that he had seemed to be on the
first night. The children spent a most enjoyable afternoon, and for the
first time for many days, Rupert did not seem anxious to get rid of the
others. He even invited them to come down to the river and see him dive.

‘Though I’m not a patch on Mr. Penfold,’ he said.

They went. And Charles had his first swimming lesson.

‘It would be all right,’ he said, sleeking his wet hair as they went
home, ‘if only you could remember which are your arms and which are
your legs. I never can, in the water, and, anyhow, you seem to have far
too many, and they all feel as though they belonged to somebody else.’

As they went over the bridge, Mr. Penfold said:

‘I’ve done that translation, and I’ve had it typed. So you can tell
your uncle about it and present it to him. He’ll like it awfully, I
know. And I daresay he’ll let you have a copy of the translation. I’ve
had one done expressly for you, with the parts that wouldn’t be of any
advantage to you left out. By the way, there’s something written in
the end about the seventh of July. That’s to-morrow. So you’d better
present it then.’

There was a chorus of thanks, and the presentation was arranged for
the next day. The children took the old Latin book home with them.
Mr. Penfold was to bring the translation; ‘when I’ve corrected the
spelling and the stops,’ he said. ‘I’ll come, if I may, and see the
presentation. There should be flowers, too, I think, symbolic flowers,
suggested by your other book.’

When the children got home they spread the Latin book on the table in
the window, to catch the last rosy sunset light, and Charles said with
proud affection:

‘_Now_, Rupert! We don’t want any old translation when _you’re_ here.’

Rupert frowned, and the girls shrank as sensitive plants shrink when a
finger touches them. They knew the sort of bitter thing about its not
being worth while to do things for kids, which seemed to be trembling
on Rupert’s lips. But quite quickly his face changed. He turned red—or
was it only the deepened red of the sunset?—and said:

‘You know, I’m afraid I’ve kidded you rather about my Latin. I’m not
very good at it as a matter of fact. I’ve only just begun Virgil.’

‘But you do know a lot. You’re always saying bits of it,’ said Charles
anxiously.

‘That was swank,’ said Rupert strongly; ‘silly swank. It was all wrong,
I expect. There, now it’s out!’

The children treated Rupert with added respect.

‘How splendid of him to own up about the Latin,’ said Caroline over
the hair-brushing. And Charlotte reminded her sister that _she_ had
_always_ thought Rupert splendid, which was not true, though she
thought it was.

But this was later. At the moment, ‘Never mind,’ said Charlotte, ‘we
shall have the translation to-morrow, and we’ll try a spell _at once_.
I’m sorry the leopard that spoke was only you, Rupert. We did think
you’d have to believe in spells after that.’

‘There’s something written at the end,’ said Caroline, who was still
examining the book; ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

And there was. In very faint brown ink. They had to carry it quite
outside the front door (which was, as you know, at the side), to get
light enough to be sure that they could not read it because it was
written in Latin. And when they did get enough light, they saw that it
was in English, and that they could. The writing ran:

‘On the seventh day of the seventh month, and at the seventh hour, let
the seed be sown. Seven seeds and no more for the one sowing. In the
garden of peace let them be sown, which same is the seventh garden of
the world. Let him that would sow, take heed to bathe him seven times
in fair water, and let him sow with his face set eastward, with silence
at the lips and, at the heart, faith in all good things and the love of
all things beautiful. After seven weeks the blossom shall appear. Then
let him who sowed the seed eat of the flower. The seed of the F. of
H.D.’

‘What?’ cried Rupert.

‘That’s all,’ said Caroline; ‘it stops short like that. There isn’t any
more.’

There had been more, but some one had scratched the rest out.

‘With a knife or scissors,’ explained Caroline. ‘Oh, what a pity!’

‘I say,’ Rupert was beginning, but Charles interrupted.

He had stooped to look up under the page that Caroline was fingering.
‘There’s some more; look, turn over!’

There was.

‘Until it be granted none knoweth his heart’s most dear desire. But
after it is granted he perceiveth that so and not otherwise was and
must ever have been the true Desire of the Heart.’

‘That’s true, at any rate,’ said Charlotte. ‘I was just wondering what
my heart’s desire really was. Suppose you thought it was going to be
a new paint-box, but the flower knew better, and it turned out that
elephants was what you really wanted?’

‘No, but I say,’ said Rupert hurriedly, ‘look here! You know I don’t
believe in magic. I’d like to, really I would. But I found something.
You’ve got the key of the drawing-room. I believe I know where those
seeds are.’

The drawing-room was almost dark when they got there. Just one last ray
of dusky gold lay across the room; it struck the round mirror and was
reflected with dazzling brightness on some golden object at the end
of the room. ‘The harp!’ whispered Rupert. ‘How queer, because it was
exactly there——’

It was still exactly there. And every one was quite sure that this
little round box held the seeds of which the book told.

‘See,’ said Charlotte, holding them in the ray of yellow light;
‘they’re shaped like hearts, and they’re pink like wishes. I know
wishes are pink. They must be some colour, and why not that?’

‘But ought we to take them?’ was the blighting question of Caroline.

It was settled by a note which Harriet obligingly carried to the Uncle.

    DEAREST UNCLE—There are some pinky seeds in the
    drawing-room. May we have seven to sow?

And the answer was:

    Certainly. Seventy if you like.—Your

                              D.S.T.U.

So, very early next morning they got up. Bathing seven times is no
joke, especially when you dry thoroughly between, and this Caroline
conscientiously insisted on. ‘We must be _quite_ sure we get it _quite_
right,’ she said.

The four children met, by appointment, at the top of the stairs and
crept down in silence. They went out by the French window which had
once admitted Rupert. When they were outside, he said, ‘I bathed seven
times too, because Charles did nothing but bother. But it’s no good
_my_ sowing the things, even if it’s all true. Because I haven’t faith
in my heart, or my head either. I think really it’s the head’s fault.’

‘Oh, never mind your head,’ said Charlotte; ‘we’ll all sow one each,
and the three over we’ll put in all together—all of us.’

The grass was still dewy-wet, but the gardener was at work in the
Wonderful Garden. The children went through the ancient formula of ‘ena
dena dina dus,’ to decide who should approach him, and the lot fell on
Charlotte.

‘Please,’ she said, ‘may we have a bit of garden for our own?’

‘Ay,’ said the gardener, pointing to a vacant plot near the arbour.

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Charlotte, ‘but mayn’t we have a bit in the
garden of peace?’

‘Who learned you to call it that?’ the gardener asked, looking at her
strangely.

‘It’s the right name, isn’t it?’ Charlotte asked with sudden anxiety.

‘It’s the right name right enough,’ he admitted.

‘We want a bit that won’t be disturbed for seven weeks,’ Charlotte
explained, and he looked at her more strangely than ever.

‘Sure you’ve got the right seed to sow?’

Charlotte opened her hand and he stooped and looked at it. Then he
stood up and saluted like a soldier.

‘Why——’ said Charlotte, ‘you—what do you mean?’

‘Nothing!’ he said, straightening his back; ‘only I worked here all my
days, and my father afore me, and his father afore him, and so on back.
You can see our names on the stones in the churchyard, same as you see
Master’s people’s names on the tombs inside of the church. I’ll find
a corner for you, my dear, and no one shan’t disturb the seed, once
you’ve set it. You know how it’s done? No chatter, and which way to
look?’

‘Yes, I know,’ said Charlotte, ‘but how do you know?’

‘Old man’s tales,’ he said; ‘old man’s tales,’ and led the way to the
terrace.

‘Would you like to sow one of them?’ said Charlotte eagerly. ‘I know
the others won’t mind if you would. Would you?’

‘Not me, my dear,’ said the old man, and he sighed. ‘Years agone,
I don’t say. But not now. I’m old, you see. I ain’t got no heart’s
desires nowadays except what I’ll get in the way of nature and in the
Lord’s good time. You go along and set your seeds. I’m glad I seen ’em
though. Over yonder, between the lupins and the larkspurs. That’ll be
your plot, and I’ll mark the place.’

Charlotte, very much impressed, beckoned the others. In silence they
sowed the seed. The gardener watched them, and when they had planted
the seeds and covered them over, he took a pencil and a painted
slip-label from his pocket, wrote on it and stuck it in the ground. The
children stooped to read what he had written.

‘F. of H.D.’ it said.

‘Well!’ said Caroline.

‘Least said, soonest mended,’ said the gardener. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if
seed leaves was to break ground in seven days. It was allus a wonderful
garden, this was,’ he said, and turned to his work.

‘Well!’ said Charlotte again, and they went back through the dewy park.

After breakfast the _Language of Flowers_ was earnestly consulted.

‘It’s no use going on thinking and talking about the F. of H.D.,’
said Caroline, when they had talked of nothing else for an hour and a
half. ‘What we’ve got to do now, is to find the right flowers for the
presentation.’

An hour’s earnest study of Miss Peckitt’s invaluable present yielded an
interesting list. ‘Learning’ had apparently no floral emblem, so blue
salvia, which means ‘Wisdom,’ was chosen to represent it. It was felt
that on an occasion of this sort it was impossible to have too much
of a good thing, so twelve flowers were chosen, and all but one, an
outsider called circæa, which means a spell, of which the gardener had
never heard, were found in the Wonderful Garden.

Rupert prevailed on Mrs. Wilmington to open the drawing-room on the
ground that the clergyman was coming to tea, and she even agreed to
allow the floral tributes to be arranged on a large table in that
hallowed sanctuary, only insisting that a linen drugget should be laid
down before so much as a blade of grass was carried in.

The drugget, white with many a washing, only seemed to add to the
festival air which the drawing-room soon began to put on.

‘Talk of magic,’ said Charlotte; ‘what is it if it’s not that with Mrs.
Wilmington? Rupert can drive her with a rein of darning cotton.’

Mrs. Wilmington had indeed consented to ‘do’ the vases on the
mantelpiece and cabinets, ‘rather than have you children smashing
everything to atoms,’ she said, and even, at Rupert’s request, had
agreed to put only the flowers he handed to her. ‘Though a shabbier
lot,’ she said, ‘it was never my lot to beheuld. More like a passel of
weeds, I should say.’

The selected flowers were certainly none too showy. And the
drawing-room decorations might perhaps have, in the end, looked
what Mrs. Wilmington called ‘mingy,’ if Charlotte had not suddenly
remembered that the rose, as the flower of secrecy, was entitled to be
present, in, as she said, ‘the richest profusion.’

The large table was covered with loose pink rose leaves. That was
Caroline’s idea. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know what it will remind them of.
But reminding doesn’t matter when all’s forgotten and forgiven, and
look how soft and fluffy they look, like pink fur.’

This also reminded one of things. But no one said anything, though
every one tried so hard not to look at the leopard skin that they might
just as well have been staring at it.

‘How pretty the flowers look, reflected in the looking-glasses,’ said
Caroline tactfully; and Charlotte, with less tact but equal goodwill,
moved an embroidered stool between Rupert and the leopard’s spotted
hide.

Tea was a meal of masked excitement, of gigglings scarcely suppressed
by the children, and of a careful air of there being nothing particular
in the wind on the part of Uncle Charles and Mr. Penfold. When the last
cup had been emptied, the last piece of cake reduced to crumbs and
memory, Charles was at last allowed to say the words which had been
arranged for him to say, and which, all through the meal, he had been
bursting to repeat.

‘Please, uncle, there is a meeting of the Society of the Secret Rose
in the drawing-room, and the Rosicurians have got a present for you’—‘a
presentation,’ corrected Charlotte—‘a presentation, and will you please
come and be presented.’

‘It’s all wrong,’ said Charlotte, who had composed the speech for him
and had the natural vanity of an author. But every one was getting out
of their chairs, and in the noise they made, nobody heard her.

The drawing-room certainly looked, as Harriet had said when she peeped
into it before tea, ‘a fair treat’—with its white-spread floor; its
vases and jugs and jars of roses; its rose-leaf-covered table, edged
with the twelve symbolic flowers in jam-pots, white and elegantly
small; and all the splendour of afternoon sunshine real and reflected.
The Uncle looked at the room over his glasses, just as though he had
never seen it before.

‘Beautiful,’ he said; ‘very beautiful.’

Charlotte took him by the hand and said:

‘Dear uncle, this time we make you a presentation, and it’s not to get
anything out of you. But just to show what we think of you. Caroline
will read you what we’ve written, like addresses to mayors, you know.
We hadn’t time to illuminate it to-day, but we will afterwards,
if you like. And when she has read it, we will give you the real
presentation. It is under the basin in the middle. But you mustn’t look
at it till we say——’

She stopped. The others looked at her meaningly.

‘I can’t help it,’ she said, flushing. ‘I’ve forgotten the words. Uncle
saying “Beautiful” put it out of my head. But it means the same as the
words I settled to say, and Charles didn’t remember his either.’

‘Your address was exactly what all addresses should be,’ said the
Uncle—‘short and to the point. I pledge my honour to respect the secret
of the basin until I am permitted to approach it.’

The basin was a great bowl of blue and white china that, reversed,
occupied the middle of the table. On it lay a full-blown rose and two
buds.

Caroline unfolded a large sheet of paper of the size called demy and
the kind which is used to bake cakes on, line boxes with, and drain
fried fish on. Caroline had begged it from the cook, and there was a
good deal of violet ink on it.

‘Hem!’ said Caroline, turning the large pages. ‘Oh yes, it begins here.’

‘To the noblest of known Uncles, Charlotte, Charles, and Caroline
present their compliments and thanks. We have culled in your wonderful
garden the blossoms we think express all the things we want to say.
These dainty floral pets’ (can you tell which part of this address
came out of the _Language of Flowers_, and which was Caroline’s own
invention?)—‘these dainty floral pets represent the most delicate and
appropriate sentiments, and, offered to the beloved object, cannot
fail to convey the deepest secrets of the enamoured heart. All our
hearts are yours, dear uncle, because you are such a brick. The flowers
are’—she pointed to the first pot on the left—‘branch of currants. It
means “you please us all.” Because you do. Next pot—yellow acacia. We
only got leaves, because it flowers a different time, but it means
“secret love.” Our uncle is in a secret society with us and we love him
being in it.

‘“Clematis indicates that beauty of the mind without which the fairest
bodily endowments are but fleeting shows.” Uncle is clever, so we got
clematis. And white pinks mean “talent,” so we got them. Sorrel we got,
partly because it means affection, and partly because it is pretty and
there is lots of it. And plane-tree looks dull, but in reality “it
indicates to the discerning recipient that the giver considers himself
privileged to offer the tribute of its agreeable foliage to the hands
of Genius.” That means the Uncle, because he writes books. Pythagoras
says a lot about plane-trees. “Laurel needs no words to inform the
reader of its meaning. It is too well known as the ornament of the
foreheads of the great. It also signifies success,” and we hope your
book will be a great success. Red clover means industry, because uncle
works so hard every day and not to be disturbed on any pretence. And
“nightshade whose dark leaves and mysterious purple blossoms denote
witchcraft and magic.” We have mixed roses with that, because they mean
love, and uncle loves witchcraft. So do we. And so we have put the
double daisy. “This innocent little flower in its double state has,
humble as it is, a deep meaning to the student of the language of our
floral darlings. It signifies ‘I share your sentiments,’” so we put it
last, because we share uncle’s about magic and things, and we hope he
will share ours about the presentation when he sees it. That’s all,’
said Caroline, very much out of breath.

‘Hear, hear!’ said Mr. Penfold; and the Uncle said:

‘Thank you; thank you very much. The most learned and delightful
address I have ever listened to. And the flowers are beautiful in
themselves as well as in their symbolism.’

‘We’re so glad you like it,’ said Charles, ‘but wait till you see the
presentation. He may look now, mayn’t he, Caro?’

‘Lift up the basin,’ said Charlotte; ‘be careful not to drop it, uncle,
it’s awfully heavy.’

Uncle Charles raised the great bowl in his hands and set it down among
the rose leaves. Under it was a white cloth covering something and on
the cloth another red rose, full blown, and two buds.

‘This is the real inside heart of the presentation,’ said Caroline.
‘Don’t look for a minute. We found them inside Pope’s _Iliad_ and
_Thessalonians_. And we are almost sure they are. And we hope you’ll be
pleased.’

‘I can hardly believe that I could be more pleased than I am already,’
said the grateful uncle, and with that he lifted the white cloth (one
of Caroline’s best handkerchiefs) and laid bare the books.

There was a breathless silence. The Uncle lifted the books and looked
at them.

‘You know,’ he said presently in almost a broken voice, ‘I believe they
are. I am almost sure they are.’ Then he said nothing for a minute and
then, ‘Thank you,’ he said; ‘thank you,’ and opened the book again.
‘It’ll make all the difference,’ he said to Mr. Penfold; ‘absolutely
all the difference.’

‘We found them,’ Charles was beginning, when Mr. Penfold made him a
sign to be silent, and made another sign towards the door. Then he led
the way from the room. The children followed, and when they were all
out he closed the door softly.

‘When people are very happy or very unhappy, they like to be left
alone. I think that just now your uncle is very happy.’

‘How glorious!’ said Caroline.

‘So am I,’ said Mr. Penfold. ‘An angel in human form, called Mr. James
Hodgkinson, has sent me five pounds towards restoring the church. I
have blued the lot on tiles for the roof of the porch. If you like to
come down you can help put them on. Like to?’

‘Rather!’ was the enthusiastic answer of the three C.’s.

Rupert did not answer. And when they looked round to see why he did not
answer, they saw that it was because he was not there.




CHAPTER XX

THE WAXEN MAN


‘You know what Rupert was saying that day,’ said Charles one day when
Rupert as usual was down at Mr. Penfold’s, ‘about doing something real
with our magic?’

‘Like making her come alive,’ said Charlotte, looking up at the picture
of Dame Eleanour.

‘No, like making wax images of people and sticking pins in them. I
should like to do that. I feel as if the _Language Of_ was bust up,
somehow.’

‘Oh, don’t say that,’ said Caroline, pained.

‘Well, not for always, perhaps,’ said Charles kindly; ‘but we did give
the Uncle such a tremendous blow-out for his presentation, and we did
the leopard, and we sowed the F. of H.D., and anything else seems
rather piffling after that. I wish we could make a wax image of some
one.’

‘Not to stick pins in,’ said Caroline firmly. ‘That would be ink-black
magic, I’m certain. And very very wrong and unkind besides.’

‘No pins, I don’t mean,’ said Charles, ‘but just make one. We could
decide what to stick into it after we’d made it.’

‘Caro and I wouldn’t agree to sticking anything into it,’ said
Charlotte; ‘and, anyhow, you haven’t got any wax.’

‘Yes, I have,’ said Charles triumphantly; ‘so there! I’ve been saving
it up ever since he said that.’

‘Where from?’ asked the girls together.

‘The sticking-out bits of candles,’ said Charles, ‘and one or two ends
out of candlesticks in the morning when they are put on the boot-shelf
in the scullery to be cleaned. It’s a good big lump now. Shall I get
it?’

‘It would be fun to model something,’ Caroline admitted, and Charles,
falling flat on his front, felt behind the big books on the bottom
shelf and produced a large ball of a grey semi-transparent nature.

‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Now I’ll tell you what I’ve thought. Only don’t
tell Rupert. We’ll do it first and tell Rupert afterwards. And then
he’ll have to believe.’

‘Well, what is it?’

‘We’ll make,’ said Charles slowly and seriously, ‘a wax image of the
Murdstone man, and we’ll make him hollow, his legs and arms needn’t be,
nor his head, but just his chest. And make his heart separate, and put
it in. And take out his heart and melt it every day. That would soften
his heart, and he would say he was sorry and Rupert would forgive him.’

‘“When hollow hearts shall wear a mask,”’ said Charlotte.

‘That’s only song-nonsense. People die if you take their hearts out,’
said Caroline with conviction.

‘Well, then, don’t let’s make him hollow. Let’s make him solid and then
think what to do.’

‘I know,’ said Charlotte; ‘but if he’s a pig, he’s a pig, however solid
you make him. What’s bred in the bone will come out in the wash. And if
we’re not to stick pins in him, what’s the good?’

‘Oh,’ said Caroline, ‘I think I know. Look here! We’ll make the wax
image and then be kind to it. You can tame wild beasts with kindness.’

‘It kills cats,’ said Charlotte.

‘No, it was Care killed the cat,’ Caroline reminded her, ‘and, anyway,
this won’t be a cat, even if it did. We’ll think of nice things to do
to it. Let’s make it now.’

‘Bags I!’ said Charles hastily. ‘It was my idea, and I collected the
wax.’

‘Like an old bee,’ said Charlotte. ‘All right, fire ahead.’

Charles had been warming the wax between his hands, and now, hardly
waiting for Caroline to fetch and spread a newspaper, he began to
divide the wax into six pieces.

‘One head, two arms, two legs, one body,’ he explained.

The girls watched with breathless interest. Charles rolled the smallest
piece of wax round in his hands till it was like a marble, and the
biggest piece till it was like a fives ball; the remaining four he
rolled lengthwise till they were like thick tobacco-pipes. Then he
stuck the four pipey bits and the round marble on to the fives ball and
held the whole thing out triumphantly.

‘I think it’s awfully like,’ he said, ‘especially the right arm that he
hit Rupert with. I _should_ like to stick just one pin in that.’

‘You mustn’t,’ said Caroline. ‘Yes, it’s awfully nice, but it hasn’t
any clothes. I know statues of Greek heroes don’t have any clothes. But
he’s not a Greek hero. And nowadays people have to have clothes even in
their statues. Look at Mr. Gladstone. And it would be more like real
if it had a nose and ears, wouldn’t it?’

‘I say,’ said Charlotte, ‘let’s get bits of bent twigs and pretend
they’re him, and then make wax clothes. Do let us help, Charles. It
does look so interesting to do. You shall do the first kind thing for
him if you’ll let us help make him.’

‘_I_ think he’s all right,’ said Charles, looking at the blobby thing
he had made, which was more like an imperfect octopus than a man; ‘but
if you promise me to do the first thing, I don’t mind.’

‘Right O! I’ll get the sticks.’

When the sticks had been found, the three children began to model
parts of the Murdstone man, but Caroline and Charles soon stopped
and were content to watch Charlotte. She really seemed to know what
she was about, which the others felt could not be said of them. She
chose suitable twigs, fastened them together with bits of wax, and
then began to clothe them with wax. She produced an arrangement not
at all unlike a jacket and waistcoat. The trousers were a failure.
The most accomplished sculptors have admitted that trousers are
difficult to treat artistically. But they remembered that, last time
they had seen him, the Murdstone man had worn knickerbockers, and in
these, revealing the shape of the stockinged human leg, Charlotte was
considered to have surpassed herself. The head was very difficult,
but even this was managed, the hair question being settled by a large
flat cap with a peak. The new model had a nose and mouth, ears large,
but still ears, and hands each with four fingers and a thumb. And when
Charlotte rolled up the tiniest bits of wax, flattened them and stuck
them on the coat and waistcoat for buttons, Caroline shouted, ‘Bravo!
You’re as good as Praxi—what’s-his-name!’ and even Charles said it
wasn’t half bad.

‘Now,’ said Charlotte, ‘the first nice thing to do for him is to put
him in a bed of rose leaves. That’s what they say when they mean a life
without a sorrow or care.’

‘And then burn incense. We can make the incense out of the proper
flowers,’ Caroline said.

‘Rose leaves are dull,’ Charles said, ‘and perhaps the Murdstone man
doesn’t like incense.’

‘The real one mayn’t. This one’s got to like what we want it to like,’
said Charlotte. ‘We made him and _we_ know what he’s got to like.’

‘Then we might make it so that he’d like having pins stuck into him,’
Charles suggested hopefully.

‘We might; only we shouldn’t be so silly. Come on, bring the _Language
Of_ and the Murdstone man. I’ll get a box and Caro can get the rose
leaves. We’ll go out and find a secret place in the wood.’

A cardboard box that had held Charlotte’s best shoes was filled with
sweet pink petals and the waxen image put in it. It looked better
standing up, but you don’t stand up in a bed, even of rose leaves. A
sort of pedestal was built of old bricks brought with some toil from
the ruins of the deserted lodge’s pig-stye. A flat stone, which took
all three to lift, was placed on top. And on this the box. But the
box, which said ‘Smarm and Simple’s Hygienic Footwear’ in blue letters
outside, troubled the girls because it was ugly, and Charles because it
was untruthful.

‘Whatever he is, he isn’t footwear,’ said Charles. ‘We could make it
true by trampling on him, but you won’t agree to that.’

‘No,’ said Caroline, ‘but look here. Let’s paste a bit of my green sash
on it, and then put moss round. That’ll make it more woodland-like.’

Cook provided the paste, and Caroline cut the sash. She paste-wetted
the first piece of silk so that it came out in wet spots, very messy
looking, as Charles did not fail to point out.

‘Never mind,’ said Caroline, ‘I’ll cut another bit—it’s much too
long—and use less paste.’

‘More paste less speed,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’ll cut mine. Then they’ll
be alike, just as they were before.’

This time the box certainly looked very rich, and the moss round it
looked very fresh and beautiful.

A smaller pile of bricks supported the lid of a cocoa-tin for incense.

_The Language of Flowers_, hurriedly consulted, informed them that
jasmine stood for amiability, St. John’s wort for animosity, Indian
pink for aversion, the pimpernel for change, sage for esteem, and the
hazel for reconciliation. Further, that the tamarisk stood for crime
and the potato for benevolence.

All these were found in the Wonderful Garden except the potato, and
none of the children knew what a potato looks like when it is growing,
and they did not like to ask any one, for fear they in turn should be
asked what they wanted it for.

‘Never mind,’ said Charles, ‘we can save one from dinner. I don’t
suppose it will matter its being cooked.’

That the potatoes that day should happen to be mashed, seemed to all a
mishap yet not a calamity. A quantity, deemed sufficient to influence
Mr. Murdstone through his waxen image, was secreted in the envelope of
a letter from Aunt Emmeline, and not more than an eighth of the potato
escaped into Charles’s pocket through the square hole where the Italian
stamp had been cut out for his collection.

‘We’ll arrange the things we want him to be round the box,’ said
Caroline, ‘and the things we want him not to be we’ll burn and call it
incense.’

Charles owned that he had been wondering what sort of incense you could
make out of mashed potato.

Jasmine, with its white stars, bright Indian pinks, gay tufts of sage,
and the oval-ringed leaves of the hazel, arranged round the box, made a
charming tangle. ‘The silk wasn’t wanted, really,’ said Charles. ‘The
hygienic boots would never have shown through the flowers.’ But the
girls agreed that it was nice to know it was there.

The mashed potato and the rather faded pimpernel were carefully
concealed under the more attractive offerings.

‘It looks fine,’ Charles said, and what he said they all thought.

[Illustration: Nothing much happened except smoke.]

It is very hard to make small pieces of green things burn in a
cocoa-tin lid in the open air by means of a box of matches, and the
fragments of a potato-dampened envelope from an aunt in Italy. Nothing
much happened except smoke, and the head of a match burnt Charles’s
finger.

‘There’s no more paper,’ said he, ‘except the bit we’ve written his
name on.’

‘There’s the match-box,’ said Caroline; ‘let’s make a little bonfire
with twigs and then put the incense things on when it’s burnt up.’ This
they did; and the starry gold of St. John’s wort, the gay brightness of
Indian pinks, and the feathery greenness of the tamarisks twisted and
writhed amid flames and smoke.

‘Now we’ll leave it. Please, Murdstone man, let your crimes and your
animosity and your aversion be burnt away, and may you lie on beds of
roses really as soon as you are changed and amiable. Then when you
are truly benevolent, Rupert and us will esteem you, and the hazel is
for reconciliation. Now let’s go away and leave the incense to do its
healing work, and to-morrow we’ll come and put a fresh rose-bed and
burn new incense.’ Thus Caroline. The others agreed, and after having
put on the box the label with the Murdstone man’s name, so that Destiny
could not pretend to make any mistake as to who the witchcraft was
meant for, they went away through green coverts, in Indian file, to
build a wigwam in another part of the wood with three hop poles, three
red blankets, and their three mackintoshes.

‘I hope Rupert won’t ask a lot of questions about what we’ve been
doing to-day,’ said Charles. But Rupert did not ask any. He came home
singularly silent, and went to bed early, announcing that he was going
to spend the following day, also, with Mr. Penfold.

‘So we needn’t tell him,’ said Charlotte, ‘till the good work is done.
I’m glad of that.’

Next day, with a fresh armful of suitable flowers and some more
potatoes, fried this time and bearing heavy traces of their close
intimacy with the breakfast bacon, the children sought the secret spot
where they had laid the waxen image of Mr. Murdstone on its bed of
roses. The ashes of the incense bonfire were there, the pedestal was
there, the green-covered box was there, half filled with half-faded
rose leaves; but the waxen image was gone!

‘He must have fetched it away himself,’ said Charlotte, breaking an
awe-struck pause; ‘he must have felt what we were doing and made up his
mind to be benevolent. And he fetched it away so that we shouldn’t
waste any more good potatoes on him.’

‘I wish he’d do something to show that he’s changed into a Real
Good and what sort of Good he’s changed into,’ said Charles. And it
certainly is tiresome to work magic and then not to know exactly how
it has acted. That their magic had acted, the children were of course
quite certain. They had done magic too many times, as you know, to
entertain a moment’s doubt as to whether their spells were going to
work or not. And the fact that the spell they had worked was not worked
exactly as the book said, did not trouble them. For, as Caroline said,
‘If you can do harm to wax people, you can do good to them. More
really, I should think. Because one’s wrong and the other’s right.’

But it was a rather disappointed party that took its way through the
greenwood, leaving the secret spot with its trampled flowers and
scattered ashes. They came across their wigwam and spent the rest of
the morning there, and, when the dinner-bell rang, loaded themselves
with the mackintoshes and blankets which had been forgotten yesterday.

As they trailed out of the wood into the drive, Charles, who was first,
dropped his blanket and stopped short, blocking the view of the
others, who were following him down the narrow path.

‘What is it? what is it?’ they asked.

‘Shish!’ said Charles and backed into the hazel bushes, and the girls
pressed forward to see what there was to shish about. Then they in turn
backed into the green covert, and the bushes closed over them as they
stood there holding their breath as footsteps went by them along the
drive. When the footsteps had passed far enough away for the children
to dare to move, they backed with one consent into the wood, not
stopping till they came to an open glade where they could comfortably
look at each other and exclaim, ‘Well!’ They were past all other words.
For what they had seen was Rupert coming up the drive, looking pale but
not unhappy. And beside him, with his hand on Rupert’s shoulder, and
talking to him in the friendliest way, was—the Murdstone man!

‘Rupert will _have_ to believe now!’ was the first thing any one found
breath to say. It was Caroline who said it. The others still had not
breath enough for more than ‘Rather!’




CHAPTER XXI

THE ATONEMENT OF RUPERT


‘I do wonder what has happened,’ Charlotte whispered. ‘I suppose the
Murdstone man was coming to tell Rupert he had been spell-changed into
being nice now. And he must have met Rupert on the way.’

‘But he could have said that in the road and then gone home. There must
be some reason for his coming home with Rupert. He can’t,’ said Charles
hopefully, ‘be going to tell _us_ that he’s changed? That would be
ripping.’

‘I expect he’s telling the Uncle,’ said Caroline. ‘When the wicked
Magician takes off his spell and the wicked Prince turns good, he
always tells everybody at once.’

‘Then he’ll come and tell _us_,’ said Charles. ‘We’re part of
everybody, the same as grown-up people are.’

The three C.’s had come slowly back to the house, and, seeing no sign
of Rupert and the changed Murdstone man, had, with great tact, chiefly
Caroline’s, refrained from going in search of Rupert or of information.

They had just shut themselves into the dining-room, and waited. For
it was quite plain that something more must happen. The once-hated
Murdstone man could not just come to the house and go away again and
the matter end there. But waiting is tiresome work, however proud you
may be feeling of your tact and delicacy, and you are so interested and
anxious that it is idle even to pretend to read. The three C.’s were
very glad indeed when at last they heard footsteps in the hall, and
voices.

‘Now!’ said Caroline. ‘Now they’re coming. We’ll be most awfully nice
to him, won’t we. Now he’s sorry and he’s owned up.’

‘Of course,’ said Charles. ‘Do you think I could ask him to let me have
the wax image of him to keep in memorio?’

‘No,’ said Caroline, ‘of course you couldn’t. Hush! for goodness’ sake,
hush!’

But there seemed to be no urgent need for hushing. The footsteps and
the voices went past the dining-room towards the front door, which
was at the side, as you know. No one listened, yet no one could help
hearing, through the open window, the parting words of Rupert and the
Murdstone man:

‘I’ll do it now. That’ll be the last. Thank you, sir. Good-bye!’

Then came the sound of retreating boots on gravel. The front door
banged, and next moment Rupert came in. His eyes were very bright and
his face very pale. He came in, shut the door, leaned against it, and
seemed to swallow nothing, twice. Then he said, looking straight in
front of him, and Charlotte noticed that his hands were clenched:

‘Look here, I’ve got something to tell you. I don’t suppose you’ll want
to speak to me again after it.’

‘Yes, we shall,’ said Charles, ‘whatever it is.’

Rupert took no notice. He went on, after a moment’s silence:

‘I told a lie about Mr. Macpherson, a beastly lie. He didn’t hit me
like I said he did. I didn’t mean to say it, I just said it, and then I
couldn’t take it back. I’ve been most awfully wretched. That’s all.’

‘But you’ve owned up now,’ was the only comforting thing even Caroline
could think of in that terrible moment. Charles, as pale as Rupert,
with his eyes quite round, said:

‘You _couldn’t_ have!’

Charlotte said nothing.

‘I’d like you to understand,’ said Rupert miserably, ‘before I go away.’

‘Go away?’ said Charlotte quite as miserably. ‘Where?’

‘Back to Mr. Macpherson, of course. Your uncle won’t keep me after
this.’

‘Did he say so?’

‘No, he said I was to come back to him when I’d taken Mr. Macpherson
to the door. But I feel I must tell you first, in case he sends me off
right away.’

‘Oh, Rupert,’ said Caroline, ‘I _am_ so sorry!’ And then she did
something rather heroic. She saw that Rupert wanted to say more, wanted
it desperately, and that he could not possibly say it to all three of
them together, though he could have told it to one of them, either to
her or to Charlotte, if they had been alone. So Caroline got up and
said:

‘Charles, come outside. I want to say something’; and when she got him
outside the door, ‘come out,’ she said earnestly. ‘Yes, you shall.
Rupert doesn’t want the lot of us. Let him talk to Charlotte. He can’t
stand a crowd.’

‘Isn’t it dreadful,’ said Charles in very shocked tones, ‘Rupert
turning out a liar like this?’

‘Oh, _don’t_,’ said Caroline hotly; ‘it must have been awful for him,
all this time. And now he’s sorry and he’s owned up. We’ve got to try
and forget about it. Let’s talk about something else.’

But it was very difficult to talk about something else.

Rupert, left with Charlotte, saw the others go past the window.

‘I wanted to tell you before,’ he said; ‘that day when you talked about
being disagreeable. Only I couldn’t.’

‘Dear old Rupert!’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m so jolly glad you’ve got rid of
it. _That_ was the black dog. I knew there was something. Do tell me,
old chap, unless you’d rather not. The others are off down the avenue.’

Rupert left the door and came to the table, and, half-sitting on it,
with his face turned away, and twisting the table-cloth into pleats, he
said:

‘You know I always thought I was going to be an extra honourable sort
of chap. Father used to say things. I never did anything like it
before. You see I was awfully sick at having to go with Mr. Macpherson
at all. He treated me as if I was a baby. At least that’s what I
thought. He says now he meant to be kind and he thought I was younger
than I am. And the bread and milk. Everything else I told you was true
except hitting me. And he did say there were ways of dealing with sulky
boys. And I decided I would run away. And I hurt my hand on a gate. And
I was so angry, it seemed the only thing to do.’

‘I know,’ said Charlotte.

‘And then, when I was explaining to you, somehow I couldn’t find the
proper words to explain how hateful it was, and I thought you’d think
I’d run away just for nothing. And then my hand hurt, and I thought you
thought something more ought to have happened. And then I said that.
Mean beast!’

‘I do _wish_ you hadn’t,’ said Charlotte.

‘It didn’t seem to matter just at first. I can’t think why. I thought
he meant to hit me next day, and, anyhow, you didn’t know him. And
then I got ill and nothing mattered. But when I got better, it kept on
getting worse and worse and worse, like a corkscrew worming into you
harder and harder and harder all the time.’

‘But why didn’t you own up before?’ Charlotte asked.

‘I couldn’t. I never should have if it hadn’t been for this.’

He pulled his handkerchief with some difficulty from his pocket.
Something was wrapped in it. Rupert, his face still turned away,
unfolded and held out the waxen man.

‘I came back through the woods yesterday, and then I saw you’d been
trying that beastly spell I told you with the pins.’

‘Oh!’ said Charlotte.

‘And I knew it was because I’d told that beastly lie.’

‘Oh, it _wasn’t_,’ said Charlotte. ‘We did everything nice for him, to
make him sorry he was hateful and to make him friends with you. And oh,
Rupert, the spell _did_ work! We did it to make him friends with you.
_And he is._’

‘He’s been jolly decent about it, anyhow,’ said Rupert. ‘I found the
wax thing as I came home from Mr. Penfold’s last night, and I took it
away and put it at the back of my collar-drawer. And this morning I
took it down to Mr. Penfold’s. It made it easier to tell, somehow. And
_he_ was jolly decent too. He took me over to Tonbridge to tell Mr.
Macpherson. And he said a lot of things. He said he’d known all along
I’d got something I wanted to get off my chest. And he said things
about repentance and things. I do like him.’

‘I’m glad we made the image,’ said Charlotte, because it seemed unkind
to say nothing, and she could think of nothing else to say.

‘And I’m going to stick it, whatever it is. Mr. Macpherson is all
right, but it will be hateful leaving here. Only I suppose you’ll all
be glad I’m going.’

‘Rupert!’

‘Well, then, I know _you_ won’t really. I say, Charlotte, you might
tell the others. And tell them I know I’ve been a grumpy brute, but it
was _that_ going on all the time inside me like a beastly Spartan fox.
It’s been like waiting at the dentist’s all the time, and this is like
having all your teeth out at once, twenty times over.’

He tried to laugh, but he did not succeed very well. Charlotte also
tried, and burst into tears.

‘Don’t!’ said Rupert awkwardly. Charlotte came close to him and rubbed
her wet face against his coat sleeve.

‘You’re sorry,’ she said, ‘and you’ve owned up and you’ll never do it
again.’

‘You bet I won’t,’ said Rupert. ‘I say, don’t! It makes it ever so much
worse. Now I’ve got to go back to your uncle and get the kick-out. And
I jolly well deserve it.’

‘Just wait a minute,’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m going to get something I
want to give you before you go. Wait here, won’t you?’

‘Don’t be long then,’ said Rupert in calm wretchedness.

Charlotte dried her eyes and went out, went to her own room and got her
favourite _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_. She wrote Rupert’s name in
it and then marched straight to her uncle’s room, opened the door, and
went in.

Uncle Charles, for once, was not reading or writing. He was sitting
by his table drumming on it with his fingers and looking both sad and
angry.

‘Uncle!’ said Charlotte.

‘Where is Rupert?’ said the Uncle, frowning.

‘He doesn’t know I’m here,’ said Charlotte, answering her uncle’s
thoughts rather than his words. ‘I asked him to wait while I got
something to give him. Uncle, you aren’t going to send him away, are
you?’

‘I feel it only due to Mr. Macpherson to send Rupert back,’ said the
Uncle, ‘to show that we regret the aspersions’—the Uncle spoke as to
a grown-up equal—‘the aspersions cast on him by my abetting Rupert in
his flight and removing him from Mr. Macpherson’s care. If it is a
punishment to Rupert, it is not an undeserved one.’

‘Yes,’ said Charlotte, who hadn’t thought of this, ‘but Rupert’s been
punished—all the time he has. No one else knows but me. He’s been
perfectly miserable. Only he just _couldn’t_ tell. And now he has, has
told everybody, honourably everybody. Oh, dear uncle, don’t; I _am_ so
mizzy!’

‘Come here,’ said the Uncle, and Charlotte found a thin black-coated
shoulder a very good place to cry on.

‘But you see,’ he said, ‘it’s only fair to Mr. Macpherson to send
Rupert back. I am willing to believe that he has been punished enough.’

‘You don’t know,’ said Charlotte; ‘he’s been simply as unbearable as a
bear, he’s been so unhappy.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ said the Uncle slowly; ‘but no, it’s not fair to
that man. Rupert must go.’

Then Charlotte had one of her bright ideas, and its brightness dried
her tears.

‘Look here, uncle,’ she said, ‘I’ve got it—I really have. Wouldn’t it
make up to Mr. Macpherson and show your confidence just the same if you
asked him to come here on a visit?’

‘I _couldn’t_,’ said the Uncle, and it was plain he spoke from
the heart; ‘my work would all go—to pieces. I simply _can’t_
have visitors, grown-up ones, I mean. The books you’ve found,
they’ve revolutionised the whole scheme of my work. Yet,’ he added
thoughtfully, ‘I owe you something for that.’

[Illustration: Charlotte found a thin black-coated shoulder a very good
place to cry on.]

‘Then pay us with Rupert,’ said Charlotte eagerly. ‘Couldn’t you bear
Mr. Macpherson just for one week-end? Then everybody would know you
were friends with him. Oh, uncle, poor Rupert, he is so sorry. And he
did own up.’

‘What was that about a waxen image?’ asked the Uncle. Charlotte told
him, and he nodded now and then and said, ‘Yes, yes!’ and ‘Exactly!’
And at the end he said:

‘Well, you have attained your end. You have reconciled them. The charm
seemed to have worked.’

‘They’ve all worked,’ said Charlotte, ‘every single charm we’ve tried.
Have yours, uncle?’

‘I wish they had,’ he answered, sighing. ‘Charlotte, I wish I could do
what you wish. Don’t try spells to make me, because I can’t. Rupert
must go back to-morrow, for a fortnight at least. But he shall come
back then till the end of the holidays. Will that do? And I’ll explain
to him that it’s not punishment, but just the _consequences_ of what
he did. If he hadn’t told that lie he wouldn’t have had to go back.’

‘But would you have kept him at first, if he hadn’t told it?’ Charlotte
asked.

‘He was unhappy there. That would have been enough,’ said the
Uncle—‘that and your spells.’

       *       *       *       *       *

‘It’s all right,’ said Rupert to Charlotte later. ‘Your uncle’s
forgiven me and I’m to come back. And he explained why I must go. And I
see it. And I can stick it all right. And I’d rather suffer it up and
start fair. I’d rather pay something. I shall have to write and tell my
father. That’s worse than anything.’

‘And when you come back,’ said Charlotte, ‘we shall think it was all a
bad dream.’

He went next day. The three C.’s saw him off at the station, all
wearing arbor vitæ in their button-holes to signify ‘unchanging
friendship,’ and Charlotte at the last moment pressed the _Scottish
Cavaliers_ into his hand.

‘I say, though, wasn’t it _dreadful_, him telling that lie,’ said
Charles as they turned away from the platform. It was a public place,
but one of his sisters shook him, then and there, and the other said,
‘Look here, Charles, if you ever say another word about it, we’ll
never speak to you again. See?’

And Charles saw. ‘I don’t mean I don’t like him and all that,’ he tried
to explain, ‘but you wouldn’t like me not to think lying was wrong,
would you?’

Then the girls saw.

‘You needn’t think we think _anything_,’ said Caroline. ‘You just shut
up, Charles. We’re two to one.’




CHAPTER XXII

THE PORTRAIT


There were now two things for the three C.’s to look forward to: the
return of Rupert and Lord Andore’s coming-of-age party. The magic of
the waxen man had ended so seriously that no one liked to suggest the
trying of any new spells, though Charlotte still cherished the hope
that it might some day seem possible to try a spell for bringing the
picture to life. There were no directions for such a spell in any of
the books.

‘But,’ she thought, ‘considering all the experience we’ve had, we ought
to be able to invent something.’

But the banishment of Rupert had left a kind of dull blankness which
made it difficult to start new ideas. There was a sort of feeling
like a very wet Sunday when there is some one ill in the house and
you can’t go to church. In Caroline and Charlotte there was a deep
unacknowledged feeling that they ought to be very good in order to
make up for ‘poor Rupert.’ And Charles cared little for anything but
swimming, in which art he was progressing so far that he sometimes
knew, even in the water, which were his arms and which were his legs,
and could at least imagine that he was making the correct movements
with all four.

Uncle Charles was less frequently visible even than at first, though
when he did appear he was more like an uncle and less like a polite
acquaintance. The books the children had discovered had meant a very
great deal to him. He told them so more than once. He went away now,
almost every other day, to London to the British Museum, to Canterbury
to its Library, and once, for two days, to look up some old parchments
in the Bodleian Library, which, as of course you know, meant going to
Oxford. Mr. Penfold was very kind, and the children did quite a lot of
building under his directions, but altogether it was a flattish time.

Then suddenly things began to grow interesting again. What began it was
the visit of a tall gentleman in spectacles. He had a long nose and a
thin face with a slow, pleasant smile. He called when the Uncle was out
and left a card. Caroline heard Harriet explaining that the Master was
out, and rushed after the caller in hospitable eagerness.

‘I’m sure uncle wouldn’t like you to go away without resting,’ she said
breathlessly, when he stopped at the sound of her pattering feet on the
gravel, and she caught up with him, ‘after you’ve come such a long way
and such a hot day, too.’

‘After you’ve brought me out so far and made me trot so quick,’ he
answered. And after that of course one could no longer regard him as a
stranger. Charlotte and Charles, in the meantime, had hastily examined
the gentleman’s card in the Russian bowl on the hall table.

‘Mr. Alfred Appleby,’ it said, and added, as Charlotte said, ‘most of
the alphabet,’ beginning with F.R.S., F.S.A., and this mingled with his
name so that when Caroline privately asked them what was on the card,
they could only think of Mr. Alphabet.

Mr. Appleby accepted Caroline’s invitation and turned back with her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘that I can’t take you straight into the
drawing-room, but if you don’t mind waiting in the dining-room a
minute, I’ll get the drawing-room key and take you in there, only I’m
afraid the dining-room’s rather awful, because we’ve been thinking of
playing Red Indians, and the gum is drying on the scalps on most of
the chairs.’

Mr. Appleby declined the drawing-room at any price, and was able to
tell them several things they did not know about Red Indians, wampum,
moccasins, and war-paint. He was felt to be quite the nicest thing that
had happened since what Caroline and Charlotte in private conversation
always spoke of as ‘that awful image day.’ When Mrs. Wilmington came
in to see what those children were up to, Mr. Appleby won her heart by
addressing her as Mrs. Davenant. ‘Took me for the lady of the house at
once,’ she told Harriet. And Mrs. Wilmington drew Caroline aside and
said:

‘If you’d like to ask the gentleman to lunch, Miss Caroline, please
yourself. There’s fowls, as it happens, and a Paradise pudding, and
peas. Perhaps your uncle would wish it.’

So the gentleman stayed to luncheon, and very good company they found
him. He told the most amusing stories, all new to the hearers. He
carved the fowls in a masterly way and had two goes of pudding. And all
the time he looked with exactly the right admiration and wonder at the
portrait of Dame Eleanour in her ruff, with her strange magic philtres
and her two wonderful books.

‘We found those books, Mr. Alphabet,’ said Charlotte. And then the
whole story had to be told. Mr. Alphabet—for so we may call him now—was
deeply interested, and nodded understandingly as the tale of the
different spells unfolded itself to his intelligent questioning.

‘And do you propose to continue your experiments?’ he asked, when he
had heard the tale of the leopard, the last of the adventures which
_could_ be told, for the affair of the wax man was of course a thing
that could never be disclosed.

‘There’s nothing particular that we want to do a spell about, just
now,’ said Caroline. ‘I did think of trying to do one to get father and
mother home, but it might be very inconvenient to them to leave India
just now. You never know, and we shouldn’t like to work a spell that
would only be a worry to them.’

Mr. Alphabet said, ‘Quite so!’

‘What _I_ keep on wanting to try,’ said Charlotte, ‘is to make _her_
come alive,’ she nodded towards the picture; ‘only there doesn’t
seem to be any spell for that in any of the books. She looks such a
dear, doesn’t she? Suppose she made a spell herself and did something
magic to that picture, so that it should come alive if some one in
nowadays-times got hold of the other end of the spell; you know what I
mean?’

‘Quite so,’ said the visitor; ‘why not?’

‘It wouldn’t be the real her, I suppose?’ said Charlotte, ‘but it might
be like a cinematograph and a phonograph mixed up. I want to see her
move and hear her speak, like she did when she was alive.’

And again the gentleman said, ‘Why not?’

‘If only we could find out the proper spell,’ said Charles. ‘You see,
everything came right that we’ve done, from the fern-seed on. Only we
can’t.’

‘I must think it over,’ said Mr. Alphabet; ‘and now I think as I’ve
stayed so long, I’ll take the liberty of inviting myself to stay till
your uncle returns. I should very much like to see this Wonderful
Garden. And perhaps you’ll permit me to smoke an after-dinner pipe
there?’

The afternoon passed delightfully. Mr. Alphabet was one of those people
with whom you feel comfortable from the first. He understood what you
said, which is one of the two feet on which comfortable companionship
stands; and he said nothing that you could not understand if you really
used your brains, and that is the other foot. He told them the names
of many flowers which had been strangers to them, and he talked of
magic—Indian magic and Chinese magic, the magic of Egypt and of Ceylon,
of Australia and of Mexico; and they listened and longed for more, and
got more to listen to. When, after tea, the Uncle returned, and having
warmly greeted Mr. Alphabet took him away to his study, the children
agreed that their new friend was the ‘right sort,’ and that they hoped
they would see him again often.

‘Once a week, at least,’ said Caroline.

‘Once a day,’ said Charles.

They saw him once again, and once only.

And that was when, he and the Uncle having come out of the study
together, the Uncle went to see William about putting the horse in
to drive Mr. Alphabet to the station, and Mr. Alphabet came into the
dining-room to say good-bye to the children.

‘I’ve been thinking over what you said about Dame Eleanour,’ he said
to Charlotte, ‘and I’ll tell you what. You ask your uncle to allow
you to hang a green curtain over her, frame and all, and then make
garlands of suitable flowers. Then hang the garlands across the picture
and wait. You must never lift the curtain, of course, and the curtain
must be green. And you must wish very much to see her move and to hear
her speak. And I shall be very much surprised if you don’t in—let me
see—in about three weeks. The curtain must be green, mind. Nothing else
will do. Don’t let your housekeeper fob you off with a red moreen or an
old blue damask. Green’s the colour.’

‘And do you really think?’ asked Charlotte with gleaming eyes.

‘Well, with any one else I shouldn’t dare to think anything. But you’ve
been so exceptionally fortunate hitherto, haven’t you? With _you_ I
should think there could be no doubt of success. I don’t say you’ll see
her _here_, mind you. I don’t say how or when you will see her. These
things are among the great mysteries. Perhaps one day when you’re at
breakfast, you’ll see the curtain move slightly, and at first you’ll
think it is the air from the open window, and then you’ll see a bulge
in the green curtain—don’t forget it’s to be green—and then a white
hand will draw it back, and she will come stepping down out of her
frame on to the nearest chair, with her rustling silk petticoat and her
scarlet high-heeled shoes. Perhaps that’s how she’ll come. I only say
“perhaps,” mind. Because, of course, you might meet her in the wood,
or in some scene of gay revelry, or in the Wonderful Garden itself—her
garden, which is kept just as she planted it. There’s an old document
your uncle’s been showing me—she leaves her blessing to the family so
long as the garden’s kept as it was in her time—with a long list of the
flowers and a plan of the garden with the proper places for the flowers
all marked. Did you know that? No? I must get your uncle to show you. I
should think she would be very likely to appear in the garden.’

‘You’re not kidding us?’ Charles asked suddenly.

‘Could you think it of me? No, I see you couldn’t. You try my spell,
and write and tell me how it works. All right, Davenant—coming. Where’s
my hat?—oh, outside, yes—and my umbrella, right. Good-bye, all of you.
Thank you very much for a most delightful day.’

‘Thank you,’ said Caroline, and they all said, ‘Good-bye, and come
again soon!’

‘Don’t forget green!’ were this amiable gentleman’s parting words as
he climbed into the dogcart beside William and waved a cheery farewell
with his umbrella to the party at the front door (at the side).

Uncle Charles, when the matter was laid before him, raised no objection
to the curtaining of the picture. He even drove with them to
Maidstone and bought a special curtain for the purpose, soft, wide,
green woollen stuff it was, very soft, very wide, very green. Mrs.
Wilmington hemmed the curtain, and the Uncle himself, tottering on the
housemaid’s steps, hung the curtain in place.

[Illustration: ‘Take your last look,’ he said.]

‘Take your last look,’ he said, coming down the steps and holding the
green curtain aside so that Dame Eleanour looked out of the dusk of the
curtain almost as if she were alive. ‘Take a good look at her, so that
you will know her again if you do see her.’

‘“If”?’ said Charlotte.

‘I mean when,’ said the Uncle, letting the long straight folds of the
curtain fall into place.

The question of garlands now occupied all thoughts, even those of the
Uncle’s.

‘Arbor vitæ,’ said he, ‘means tree of life.’

‘Then we’ll have that,’ said Caroline, ‘especially as it means
“unchanging friendship,” too.’ She thought of Rupert. ‘I hope Rupert’s
back before she appears,’ she added; ‘_that_ would make him believe in
magic, wouldn’t it?’

The Uncle, for the first time, was introduced to the _Language Of_, and
he seemed much struck by the literary style of that remarkable work.

‘“Never did the florographist select from cunning Nature’s wonderous
field a more appropriate interpreter of man’s innermost passions than
when he chose the arbor vitæ to formulate the significance, ‘Live for
me.’” I was not aware that human beings _could_ write like that,’
he said, ‘and I thought you said arbor vitæ meant something quite
different.’

‘They often do,’ said Caroline. ‘We used to think the book didn’t know
its own mind, but we think now it put in new meanings when it found
them out. It’s rather confusing at first. But “live for me” is fine.
It’s just what we want the picture to do, isn’t it? What else?’

‘I leave it to you,’ said the Uncle, laying down the book. ‘Your
author’s style is too attractive. I could waste all the rest of the
daylight on him. Farewell. If I can be of any assistance in hanging the
garlands, let me know.’

They thanked him warmly and hesitated. Then Charles said, ‘It was us
that she was to come alive to, so I expect it had better be us to hang
the garlands.’

‘We,’ said the Uncle gently, ‘not us.’

‘But I meant us,’ said Charles. ‘Not we with you in it.’

‘I was trying to correct your grammar, not your statement,’ said the
Uncle; ‘but never mind. Good-bye.’

Nobody was quite sure what a garland was, because in books people
sometimes wore garlands on their heads, when of course they would be
wreaths, and sometimes twined them round pillars, in which case they
would be like Christmas decorations.

‘We had better have both kinds,’ said Caroline, ‘to be quite sure.’

On a foundation of twigs of the arbor vitæ, twined round with Jaeger
wool originally bought for Caroline to knit a vest for her Aunt
Emmeline (‘but I know I shall never finish it,’ she said), symbolic
flowers were tied, some in circlets or wreaths, others on long straight
lengths. ‘Rye grass which means “a changeable disposition,”’ was
suggested by Charlotte, ‘because we do want her to change: from paint
to alive,’ she said; ‘and pink verbena means “family reunion,” and she
is a relation, after all. Besides pink’s such a pretty colour.’

Caroline ascertained that yew meant life; but Charles was considered to
have made the hit of the afternoon by his discovery that Jacob’s ladder
meant ‘come down,’ which was, of course, exactly what they wanted the
lady to do.

The gardener knew what Jacob’s ladder was, though the children did
not; and their fear that it might be a dull shrub with invisible
flowers was dispelled when they beheld its blue brightness.

‘We ought to wear coronilla ourselves,’ said Caroline—‘a new piece
every day. It means “success attend your wishes.”’ But the gardener
had not heard of coronilla. ‘The book says it’s “a flowering shrub
of the pea family,”’ Caroline read from the _Language Of_, which,
as usual, she had been carrying under her arm, ‘“with small pinnate
leaves”—whatever they are. “An elegant bush with reddish-brown blossoms
when first expanded, varying to yellow at a later period of their
graceful existence.”’

‘Oh, that!’ said the gardener, ‘that’ll be scorpion’s senna. That’s
what that be. Something to do with the shape of the stars in the sky.
Old women sells it for a charm for shy sweethearts.’

‘In our book it says, “Success crown your wishes.”’

‘Just so,’ said the gardener, ‘and she names the day. That’s it, along
there.’

The garlands looked very handsome and the wreaths very beautiful. It
was Caroline who made this distinction. And their dark foliage and the
bright pink and blue and yellow of their flowers showed charmingly
against the green curtain.

‘And now,’ said Caroline, ‘we’ve just got to wait, and Charlotte and
I must stick to our glove and handkerchief cases if they’re going to
be ready to go in time for mother’s birthday. And, Charles, if I were
you, I should get Mr. Penfold to show you chip-carving like he offered
to, and do a box for her. And we mustn’t forget that we’re not to look
behind the curtain.’

‘I shan’t forget that,’ said Charlotte. ‘What I should like to forget’s
my head. It feels twice its proper size.’

‘I’ve got a headache too,’ said Caroline. ‘I expect it’s the sun.’

‘If it was the sun, mine would ache too,’ said Charles, ‘but with me
it’s the nose. I’ve had four hankies since breakfast; and one of those
was the Wilmington’s.’

‘Well, let’s go and get on with our embroidery. All my silks are
frightfully tangled.’

They were not disentangled that day. The headaches were worse. I will
not dwell on the development of the catastrophe. The doctor put it in a
few brief, well-chosen words the next day:

‘The girls have got measles right enough, and the boy hasn’t yet.’




CHAPTER XXIII

THE END


You see the tragedy? Measles, with Lord Andore’s party and Rupert’s
return both fixed for the week after next. No words of mine could
do justice to the feelings of the three C.’s. I think, perhaps, on
the whole, it was worse for Charles, who was suspected throughout of
impending measles, of which he was wholly innocent, his cold being
only a rather violent example of the everyday kind. He was kept out
of draughts and taken for walks by Mrs. Wilmington and not allowed
to bathe, and he became bored beyond description. Really the girls
were better off in bed, with a brightening vista of jelly, beef tea,
fish, chicken, leading to natural beef and pudding and getting up to
breakfast.

When the three were reunited it was the very day of Lord Andore’s
party, and of course they were not allowed to go, ‘for fear of
chills.’ Charles, after tea had been taken away, shut the dining-room
door carefully and said:

‘I’ve got something to confess.’

‘Well?’ said the others, as he stopped short, and displayed no
intention of ever going on.

‘I don’t suppose you’ll ever care to speak to me again when I’ve told
you.’

‘Don’t be a copy-cat,’ said Charlotte sharply. ‘If you’ve done anything
really, say so. You know we’ll stand by you,’ she added more kindly.

‘Well, then,’ said Charles, ‘I’m very sorry; and I do hope it hasn’t
spoiled the whole show; but you don’t know how fed up I was with being
alone, and the Wilmington fussing, and the Uncle never out of his books
for more than a minute at a time. And I did it one day when I felt I
couldn’t bear anything another minute.’

‘Did what, dear?’ said Caroline, trying to be patient.

‘Looked behind the curtain,’ said Charles miserably.

‘I _knew_ you would,’ said Charlotte; ‘at least I mean I should have
known if I’d thought of it. It’s exactly like you, and I’ll never do
any magic with you again.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Charles, ‘rub it in.’

‘I expect it _has_ spoiled it all,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh, Charles, how
could you?’

‘I’m much more sorry than you are,’ said Charles wretchedly, ‘because
the magic had begun. She’d gone out of the frame.’

‘Gone!’ said the girls together.

‘Quite gone. It was all black behind the curtain. She wasn’t there.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Certain sure.’

Both girls sprang towards the curtain, and both stopped short as
Charles hastily grabbed an arm of each.

‘Don’t!’ he said; ‘you wait. I’ve thought about it a lot. I haven’t had
anything else to do, you know.’

‘Poor old Charles!’ said Charlotte. ‘I’m sorry I scratched, but it is
aggravating, now isn’t it?’

‘Not for you it isn’t,’ said Charles. ‘You haven’t looked behind the
curtain. You haven’t broken _your_ part of the magic. It’s all right
for _you_. You’ll see her right enough. It’s me that won’t. You’re all
right.’

‘But I expect your looking broke the spell and she’s back again,’ said
Caroline, reaching out a hand to the curtain.

‘Don’t!’ shrieked Charles, ‘the spell didn’t break. It went on. Because
I looked again to see if it had. And she wasn’t there.’

‘How often have you looked?’ Caroline asked severely.

‘Every day since,’ said Charles in a low voice.

‘And when did you look first?’

‘The day you went to bed,’ said Charles in a still lower voice. ‘She
wasn’t there then, and she isn’t there now. Oh, don’t rag me about it.
I shan’t see her. That’s jolly well enough, _I_ should think, without
you going on at me.’

‘We won’t,’ said Caroline heroically, and turned her back on the
picture. ‘But you won’t look again, will you, Charles?’

‘I shan’t want to, now you’ve come back,’ he said. And this compliment
quite melted the hearts of his sisters. Nothing more was said of
Charles’s unjustifiable indiscretion.

The next day the Uncle asked Caroline if she and Charlotte would care
to dust the drawing-room.

‘Mrs. Wilmington’s going to Lord Andore’s fête,’ he said, ‘and she is
very busy.’

Mrs. Wilmington gave them the key and they dusted with earnest care and
thoroughness. Charles tried to help, but he was not an expert performer
with the duster. More to his mind was the watching of the mandarin’s
old slow nod, his painted smile, his crossed china hands.

‘Oh, to think that the Wilmington’s going, and the Mineral woman, and
Rupert, and everybody but us,’ wailed Charlotte.

‘Never mind,’ said Caroline; ‘there’s the Flower of Heart’s Desire to
look forward to, and Rupert coming back. And think of all the grapes
Lord Andore sent us, and the chocks from Mr. Alphabet.’

She began to move the old silk handkerchief—Mrs. Wilmington considered
the drawing-room too sacred for anything but silk—across the marble of
a big console table, when she saw that something lay on it which was
not usually there. It was a square thing like a letter, fastened with
a sort of plaited ribbon of green and white silk and sealed; and on
the end of the ribbon, which hung down about three inches, was another
large green seal.

‘Look here, Char, how funny!’ said Caroline. ‘It looks awfully old.
Written on vellum or something, and the seal’s uncle’s coat of arms.’

‘Let’s take it to uncle,’ Charlotte suggested. ‘Why, what’s up?’

Caroline was holding the letter out to her in a hand that shook.

‘Look!’ she said, and her voice shook too. ‘Look! the thing’s _got our
names on it_.’

It had. On the square parchment face were the three names written in a
strange yet readable handwriting, in ink that was faded as with the
slow fading of many many years.

         To
      Caroline,
    Charlotte, and
      Charles.

‘You open it, Caro,’ said Charlotte; and Charles, who had come across
from his favourite mandarin, said, ‘Yes, Caro; you open it.’

It seemed a pity to break the green seals, and they were glad that the
plaited silk slipped off easily when the letter was folded a little.
But the second green seal had to be broken. The parchment, crackling in
Caroline’s uncertain hands, was unfolded, and within was writing—lines
in that same strange but clear hand, that same dim, faded ink.

    At eight of the clock, lean on this marble table and
    gaze in the mirror and you shall see and speak with me.
    But look only in the mirror, uttering no word, and wear
    the pink verbena stuck behind your ears and the roses
    on your hearts.—Your kinswoman,

                                          ELEANOUR.

‘Then I didn’t spoil it,’ Charles spoke first; ‘not even for myself.
Because it’s addressed to me the same as to you.’

‘Yes,’ said Caroline; ‘you’d better be between us two, though,
Charles, and you _must not_ look round.’

‘As if I should think of doing such a thing,’ said Charles indignantly.

       *       *       *       *       *

At five minutes to eight that evening the three C.’s stood in front
of the console table with pink verbena behind their ears and red
roses over their hearts. Mrs. Wilmington had ‘done’ the vases in the
dining-room that very morning, and curiously enough, roses and pink
verbena were the flowers she had chosen.

‘It must be a strong magic to have made her do _that_,’ said Charlotte;
‘secrecy and family reunion.’

The room was not dark, of course, at that time in the evening, but then
it was not quite light either.

The three C.’s, Charles occupying a guarded position in the middle,
stood quite still and waited.

And presently, quite surely and certainly, with no nonsense about it,
they saw in the looking-glass the door open that led to the Uncle’s
secret staircase. And through it, in trailing velvet, came a lady—the
lady of the picture. Her ruff, her coif, her darkly flashing jewels,
her softly flashing eyes,—the children knew them well. Had they not
seen them every day for weeks, framed in the old carved frame in the
dining-room.

I am sorry to say that Charles at once tried to look round, but his
sisters’ arms round his neck restrained him.

The lady glided to a spot from which she could look straight into the
mirror and into the children’s eyes.

‘I am here,’ she said, in what Charlotte said afterwards was a starry
voice. ‘Do not move or speak. I have come to you because you have
believed in the old and beautiful things. You sought for my books and
found them; also you have tried to use the magic spells to help the
poor and needy, and to reconcile them who are at strife. Therefore you
see what you desired to see, and when the flowering time is here, you
shall have your heart’s desire. Do not speak or move lest you break
the spell. I will sing to you. And when the last note dies away, close
your eyes and count very slowly twenty-seven—the number of the years on
earth of your kinswoman Eleanour.’

The beautiful presence moved along the room to the harp, that too was
in the field of vision bounded by the tarnished gold of the mirror’s
frame. She seated herself on a chair of faded needlework and drew the
golden harp towards her. Then she sang softly in the starry voice that
was hers in speaking. The song was in a language that none of them knew
(Charles said afterwards that it was Latin), but it was not like any
Latin the girls had ever heard. And the music was starry too. And the
meaning of the song seemed to be love and parting and hope and noble
dreams and the desire of great and good things; a song that made one
very happy and yet made one feel as though one must cry. Softer and
softer the voice grew, softer and softer the gentle, resonant tones of
the harp. The song ended.

‘Now,’ said the lady, ‘farewell!’

The children closed their eyes, Caroline put her hand over Charles’s
to ‘make sure,’ and so moved was he by the singing and the beautiful
mystery of the whole adventure, that he hardly wriggled at all. There
was a soft rustling sound behind them. Very slowly they all counted
from one to twenty-seven. Caroline’s hand was clasping Charlotte’s, and
at the end of the count a long pressure, returned, told each that the
other had finished her counting.

They opened their eyes, turned round. The drawing-room was empty. It
seemed impossible. Yet it was true.

‘It’s all over,’ said Charles.

‘But we’ve seen Her,’ said Caroline.

‘We’ve heard Her,’ said Charlotte.

‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘I intend to be perfectly good every minute, as
long as I live. I wish Rupert had been here. He would never have done
anything wrong again either, like he did when——’

‘It’s very wrong,’ Charlotte interrupted, ‘to remember things other
people have done wrong. Come on, let’s go back to the dining-room. It’s
lonely here without Her.’

They went back to the dining-room and sat talking the great mystery
over, almost in whispers, till it was time to go to bed.

‘And to-morrow we’re to go out,’ were Charlotte’s last words. ‘And the
F. of H.D. ought to be flowering. It’s just seven weeks since we sowed
it.’

‘Of course it is,’ said Caroline; ‘don’t talk as if you were the only
one who remembered it. I say, if you had to say what your heart’s
desire would be, what would it?’

‘To see Her again,’ said Charlotte, ‘and hear her starry voice.’

Next morning there was a discussion about the curtain the moment the
three entered the dining-room. Ought they, or ought they not to remove
the curtain. The girls were for leaving it, and putting up fresh
garlands every day as long as they stayed in the Manor House. But
Charles, who had faithfully put fresh flowers, not always garlanded, it
is true, but always flowers, every day during the measle interval, had
had enough of it, and said so.

‘And she’s had enough of it too,’ he said; ‘it was to make her come and
she came. She won’t come again if you go on garlanding for ever.’

The Uncle, for a wonder, breakfasted with them. Charles appealed to him.

‘We saw her; she did come, her real self,’ he said; ‘yesterday. So the
charm’s worked, and we oughtn’t to go on garlanding, ought we?’

‘You really saw her?’ the Uncle asked. And was told many things.

‘Then,’ he said, when he had listened to it all, ‘I think we might draw
back the curtain. The magic has been wrought, and now all should be
restored to its old state.’

‘I told you so,’ said Charles.

‘Shall I take down the curtain?’ said the Uncle. And the three C.’s
said ‘Yes!’

He pulled at the green folds, and the curtain and drooping soft flowers
of yesterday fell in a mingled heap on the floor. And from the frame,
now disclosed, the lady’s lips almost smiled on them as her beautiful
eyes gazed down on them with a new meaning.

‘But she’ll never speak to us again,’ said Caroline, almost in tears.

‘Or sing to us,’ said Charlotte, not very steadily.

‘Or tell us to count twenty-seven slowly,’ said Charles, sniffing a
very little.

‘But it’s something, isn’t it,’ said the Uncle, ‘to have seen her, even
if only for once?’

       *       *       *       *       *

You will understand that anything Mrs. Wilmington might say was
powerless to break the charm of so wonderful an adventure. Hollow tales
she told of the portrait’s having been borrowed for a show of pictures
of celebrities who had lived in the neighbourhood, and of the picture
being brought back very late the night before, after the servants had
gone to bed; also of a gentleman who told her that Mr. Alphabet sent
his love; also of a lady, a great actress from London, who had taken
part in the Pageant which was one of the features of Lord Andore’s
coming-of-age party—‘a very nice lady she was, too, dressed up to
look the part of the picture, and put down as Dame Eleanour in the
programme, which I can show you printed in silver on satin paper.’

‘I daresay it’s true what the Wilmington says,’ said Caroline when
they were alone, ‘but it doesn’t make any difference. _Our_ Lady wasn’t
dressed up to look the part. She _was_ the picture. Perhaps our heart’s
desire _will_ turn out to be seeing her again. Let’s go and see if the
seed has flowered.’

It had. In that plot of the terraced garden which the old gardener had
marked with the pencilled slip-label, seven tall straight stems had
shot up, perfect and even in each leaf and stalk, as every plant was
which grew in that wonderful soil. And each stem bore one only flower,
white and star-shaped, and with a strange sweet scent.

‘I wish Rupert were here,’ said Charlotte. ‘We ought to wait for
Rupert.’

And as she spoke, there was Rupert, coming to them through the flowers
of the lower garden.

‘So they’ve flowered,’ he said, without any other greeting.

‘Yes, and now we’re going to eat them and get our heart’s desire. Oh,
Rupert, I do wish you believed in it all.’

‘Perhaps I do,’ said Rupert. ‘The decent way old Macpherson has behaved
while I’ve been there makes you ready to believe in _anything_.’

‘Then let’s eat them,’ said Caroline; ‘one each, and the other three
we’ll divide as well as we can.’

Each plucked a white starry blossom. The stalks snapped off clean and
fresh like primrose stalks. Then the four put each a hand on the stalk
of the fifth flower and broke it between them. And so with the sixth
and the seventh. Caroline divided the three flowers with extreme care
and accuracy and handed its share to each child. Then, standing in a
ring in the sunny garden, the four ate the white flowers. The taste of
them was pleasant but strange, something like pineapple and something
like flower-artichokes (which have the most mysterious taste in the
world)—something like spice and something like the fruit you eat in
dreams.

And as they finished eating they heard a foot on the steps of the
terrace and turned, and it was the Uncle, coming towards them with
pale-coloured papers in one hand and a bunch of waxy white flowers in
the other.

Fond as all were of Uncle Charles, no one could feel that the moment
was fortunately chosen, and I am sorry to say that Charles voiced to
some extent the general feeling when he said almost audibly, ‘Oh,
bother!’

The Uncle came towards them smiling kindly.

‘I have come,’ he said, ‘to make a presentation to you.’ He gave to
each a white flower. ‘I have again consulted that entrancing volume
of yours, _The Language of Flowers_, and it tells me that this is the
appropriate flower to convey the sentiments with which I approach you.’

Every one said, ‘Thank you very much.’ And Caroline added, ‘But what
does it mean, Uncle?’

‘What? Has your book taught you so little?’ he asked.

‘You see,’ Caroline kindly explained, ‘I don’t even know what the name
of the flower is, but it’s most awfully kind of you, uncle, all the
same.’

‘Oh, the name of the flower?’ said the Uncle. ‘It’s stephanotis.’

‘But that means, “Will you accompany me to the East?”’ said Caroline.

‘Well,’ said the Uncle, ‘and will you?’

‘To the East?’

‘Yes,’ said the Uncle; ‘let us sit down on the steps and talk over the
idea.’

They sat down and the Uncle explained.

‘Your finding those books,’ he said, ‘has so completely revolutionised
my ideas of magic that I cannot complete my book. I must throw it
into the melting-pot, rewrite it entirely. And to do that I need more
knowledge than I have. And I intend to travel, to examine the magic of
other lands. The first country I shall visit is India, and it occurred
to me that you might like to go with me and visit your parents. I
have been corresponding with them by cable,’ he added, waving the
pale-coloured papers, ‘and your parents are delighted with the idea of
the family reunion (pink verbena). We start, if the idea smiles to you,
next week.’

‘Oh, uncle!’ was all that any one could find to say, till Charlotte
added, ‘But what about Rupert?’

‘Rupert is to go too,’ said the Uncle, ‘as far as Suez, where his
father will meet him.’

‘Is father coming home, then?’ Rupert asked breathlessly.

‘For a year’s leave,’ said the Uncle. ‘But you haven’t any of you
answered the stephanotis question yet. Will you accompany me to the
East?’

Caroline ran to a flower-bed and came back with some leaves and flowers
which she thrust into the Uncle’s hand.

‘Small white bell-flower, wood sorrel, aquilegia,’ she said; ‘they mean
perfect joy; we love you beyond measure; and Yes. Yes! Yes!

       *       *       *       *       *

As they turned to go to the house they saw the seven stems on which
the white starry flowers had grown, and suddenly and surely each child
saw that the Uncle, when he brought them the bunch of pale papers in
one hand and the bunch of stephanotis in the other, was really bringing
to each child its Heart’s Desire.

                              THE END


    _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh._




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Transcriber’s Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 113, “on” changed to “of” (the rest of us)

Page 383, “vitae” changed to “vitæ” (of the arbor vitæ)





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