It was soon school-time, and leaving
her brother, who needed no instructions to send for
her should any one call, Hazel Thorne hurried to her
duties, read prayers with wandering mind, and then,
fully resolved upon what course to pursue, she started
the children at their various lessons, and at last,
in the midst of the noisy buzz, went to her desk and,
quite in a fit of desperation, wrote to Mr William
Forth Burge, simply saying that she was in great trouble,
and would he as a friend come and give her his help
and counsel?
As soon as she had finished and folded
the letter she began to hesitate, asking herself whether
she ought not first to have written to Miss Burge;
but she came to the conclusion that she had done right
and picking out the most trustworthy girl she could
think of at the time, she bade her take the letter
up to Mr Burge’s house.
Hazel Thorne was excited enough during
all these proceedings but her excitement would have
increased had she been aware of the fact that one
of the partition shutters was slightly lowered, and
from this point of vantage Mr Samuel Chute was from
time to time inspecting her every act.
For Mr Chute was a good deal exercised in his spirit.
“If it isn’t to be friends
it shall be enemies,” he said; and he not only
set himself to watch, but told his mother to
use his own words to have an eye on the
next-door people, a commission which Mrs Chute seized
upon with avidity, it being one greatly to her taste.
Samuel Chute, then, knew of Percy
Thorne’s coming before Hazel, and also who the
tall, overgrown lad was. He knew of the arrival
of the business letters that morning, and after due
debate in his own mind, he came to the conclusion
that there was something wrong.
“They won’t get over me
in a hurry,” he muttered; and taking it that
there was a conspiracy of some kind afloat, he went
quite early into the school and lowered the shutter,
ready to keep a watch upon Hazel’s movements,
and to be ready he only knew why with
movements of his own.
So it was there that he saw Hazel
looked agitated and ill at ease, and also saw her
write a letter and call up one of the girls, fat Ann
Straggalls the slow, innocent and sure being
selected for the task.
Mr Chute thrust his hands through
his hair and made it stick up fiercely as he left
his desk, frowned all round the room, said “Sh!
sh!” in several classes, and then walked quickly
to the door, turned and gave a glance round to find
every eye in the school directed at him, and then
stepped out into the front just in time to find Ann
Straggalls engaged in a struggle with Hazel’s
missive, which refused to be tucked down into the
bosom of the stout young maiden’s dress, consequent
upon the tightness of certain strings.
“Here! Hi! Straggalls!”
cried Chute, and the girl crawled shrinkingly to him
in the same way as the boys would have turned, a sharp,
quick call from Mr Chute always suggesting impending
punishment to the youthful mind.
“How is it you are not in school,
Ann Straggalls?” said the schoolmaster importantly.
“Plee, sir, teacher, sir, sent
me with this letter, sir. I’ve got to
take it, sir.”
“What letter, Straggalls?”
“This letter, sir,” said the girl, holding
out the crumpled missive.
“Letter? Ah, a letter
for you to take, eh?” he said, after a glance
at the direction; and his teeth gritted together as
he thought that Hazel had never written to him.
He would have detained the missive,
but he dared not, and half turning upon his heel,
he saw that the vicar’s sisters were coming down
the street, an observation which impelled him to make
a quick retreat.
“There, go on,” he said; “and mind
and make haste back.”
“Yes, sir, plee, sir, that’s what teacher
told me to do.”
“Writing to Burge, eh?”
said Mr Chute as he re-entered his school. “That’s
to tell him that I spoke out to her yesterday.
Ah! just let him take her part and I’ll soon
give him a bit of my mind. She’s carrying
on with him, is she? I know it as well as if
I’d been told; but perhaps I shall be one too
many with all of them yet.”
The next minute he was bitterly regretting
that he had not detained and read the letter, though
he knew all the time that he dared not, and he finished
up for the present by having another peep at Hazel
through the slit above the shutter, expecting, as
his brain suggested, that she would be writing another
letter, but only finding her busy with one of the
classes.
Meanwhile, with her cheeks flushed
and eyes brightened at the escape she had just had,
Ann Straggalls stumped eagerly along to perform her
commission, but only to encounter the Lambent sisters,
before whom she stopped short compelling them also
to stop or else turn off to right or left, unless
they were willing to fall over her. For, according
to traditional instruction at Plumton Schools, it
was the proper thing for every schoolgirl who met
the vicar’s sisters to make a bob to each, and
these two bobs Ann Straggalls diligently performed.
“Not in school, Straggalls?”
said Rebecca, in a stern, inquisitorial tone of voice.
“No, ’m, please, ’m.
Teacher’s sent me with a letter, ’m.”
“Indeed!” cried Beatrice,
thrown by excitement off her guard. “To
Mr Canninge?”
“No, ’m, please ’m; to Mr William
Forth Burge, ’m.”
“To Mr William Forth Burge!”
cried Rebecca, excited in her turn. “What
is Miss Thorne writing to him for?”
“Please ’m, I don’t
know, ’m. Teacher said I was to take this
letter, ’m, and I don’t know any more.”
“It is very strange, Beatrice,” said Rebecca
querulously.
“Strange indeed,” replied
her sister, who felt better on finding that her suspicions
were incorrect, and worse at having betrayed the bent
of her own thoughts, and not troubling herself about
her sister’s feelings in the least.
“Ought we to do anything, Beatrice?”
said Rebecca, whose fingers itched to get hold of
the letter.
“Do anything?” said Beatrice.
“Yes,” said Rebecca in
a low tone, unheard by Ann Straggalls, whose large
moist lips were some distance apart to match her eyelids,
as she stared at the vicar’s sisters; “ought
we to let that note go?”
“Oh, I could not think of interfering,”
said Beatrice, shaking her head. “Besides,
it would be impossible. Henry gives the new mistress
great latitude, and possibly he might approve of her
corresponding with Mr Burge.”
“I I don’t
like letting her go,” said Rebecca, hesitating,
a fact of which her sister was well aware. “I
don’t think it is proper, and it seems to me
to be our duty to take some steps in such matters as
these.”
“I shall not interfere with
Miss Thorne in any way,” replied Beatrice.
“Henry is, I dare say, quite correct in his views
respecting the mistress’s behaviour, and I certainly
shall not expose myself to the risk of being taken
to task again by my brother for interfering, as he
called it at the schools. You had better make
haste, Straggalls, and deliver your message.”
“Please, ’m, it’s
a letter, ’m,” said Ann Straggalls in open
eyed delight at catching the speaker tripping.
“Make haste on and deliver your
letter, child,” said the lady with dignity;
and the girl made two more bobs and hurried away.
“It was quite impossible, Rebecca,”
said Beatrice reprovingly. “The letter
is no business of ours.”
“Are we going down to the school to-day?”
asked Rebecca.
“Not now,” replied her
sister; “but we might call upon Mrs Thorne.
I wonder what Mr Chute has had to do with that letter
to Mr Burge.”
“Yes, I was wondering too.
He was certainly talking to the girl Straggalls as
we came into sight.”
And then, itching with curiosity, the sisters walked
on.
Ann Straggalls held her head a little
higher as she went on up the street through the market-place.
She felt that she was an ambassadress of no little
importance, as she had been stopped twice on her way.
As luck had it, she came upon the
Reverend Henry Lambent as he was leaving the Vicarage
gates, looking very quiet and thoughtful, and he would
have passed Straggalls unnoticed, had not that young
lady been ready to recognise him, which, nerved as
she was by her pleasant feeling of self-satisfied
importance, she did by first nearly causing him to
tumble over her, as she made the customary bob by way
of incense, and then saying aloud
“Plee, sir, I’ve got a letter.”
“A letter, child! Let me see oh,
it is Straggalls.”
“Yes, sir Annie Straggalls, sir,
plee, sir.”
“Then why don’t you give me the letter,
child? Who is it from?”
“Teacher, plee, sir.”
A flush came into the vicar’s
pale cheeks, and he raised his drooping lids as he
impatiently held out his hand and waited while Ann
Straggalls struggled to produce the letter.
She had had some difficulty in placing it in what
she considered to be a safe receptacle, forcing it
down below the string that ran round the top of her
frock. That struggle, however, was nothing to
the one which now took place to release the missive,
for the note had crept down to somewhere about Ann
Straggalls’ waist where it was lying so comfortable
and warm that it refused to be dislodged, in spite
of the pushing of one hand, and the thrustings down
of the other. The young lady posed herself in
a variety of attitudes, reaching up, bending down,
leaning first on one side, then upon the other, but
all in vain. She grew red in the face, her hands
were hot, and the vicar became more and more impatient;
but the letter was not forthcoming, and at last she
exclaimed, with a doleful expression of countenance
“Plee, sir, I can’t get it out.”
“You’ve lost it,” cried the vicar
angrily.
“No, sir, I ain’t, plee,
sir. I can feel it quite plain, but it’s
slithered down to my waist.”
“You tiresome girl!” cried
the vicar impatiently, for it was an awkward dilemma,
and he was beginning to think of the penknife in his
vest pocket, and the possibility of cutting the note
free without injury to the young lady’s skin,
when she solved the difficulty herself by running
off to where she saw a little girl standing, and the
result of the companion’s efforts was so successful
that Ann Straggalls came running back beaming with
pleasure, the letter in her hand.
“Good girl!” exclaimed
the vicar, thrusting a sixpence into her palm, as
he eagerly snatched the letter, devoured the address
with his eyes, and the flush died out of his cheeks.
“Why, the letter is for Mr Burge,” he
said excitedly.
“Yes, sir; for Mr William Forth Burge, plee,
sir.”
“Take it,” exclaimed the
vicar huskily, and thrusting the note hastily into
the girl’s hands, he turned sharply round and
walked back into the house, thoroughly unnerved by
the incident, trifling as it may seem.
“He’s give me sixpence!”
said Ann Straggalls wonderingly; and then “Didn’t
he seem cross!”
At last, after these interruptions,
which duly published the fact that Hazel Thorne openly
wrote to Mr William Forth Burge, the note came to
that gentleman’s hand, for Ann Straggalls reached
the gate, pushed it wide open, and knowing from experience
what a splendid gate it was, she passed through, and
stopped to watch it as it swung back past the post,
with the latch giving a loud click, and away ever so
far in the other direction; then back again with another
click; away again with another, and then to and fro,
quicker and quicker, click click click click
clack, when the latch caught in its proper notch, and
Ann Straggalls smiled with satisfaction, and wished
that she had such a gate for her own.
The clicking of the gate took the
attention of Mr William Forth Burge, who was busy
amongst his standard rose-trees, with a quill-pen and
a saucer, using the former to brush off the abundant
aphides from the buds into the latter. He smiled
with satisfaction as he released from its insect burden
some favourite rose, whose name was hanging from it
upon a label like that used for the old-fashioned
medicine bottles “one tablespoonful
every four hours” but, all the same,
it was undoubtedly unpleasant for the aphides that
were being slaughtered by the thousand.
Miss Burge had her work and a garden-seat,
and she was looking up from time to time, and smiling
her satisfaction at seeing her brother so happy, for
of late he had been dull and overclouded, and did not
take to his dinners and his cigars so heartily as
of old.
She too looked up as the gate clicked,
and together the brother and sister watched the coming
girl, who had not seen them yet, but was staring,
open-mouthed, at the various flowers. First she
made a pause before one, and her fingers twitched
with the intense desire she felt to pick it; then
before another which she bent down to smell, and so
on and on slowly, fighting hard and successfully against
temptation, till she came to a rose in full bloom,
before which she came to a complete standstill.
“Oh, you beauty!” she
cried aloud as she bent down and began sniffing with
all her might. “Oh, don’t I wish
Feelier Potts was here!”
But Feelier Potts was not there, fortunately
for Mr William Forth Burge’s Gloire de Bordeaux,
for that young lady would have felt no more scruple
in ravaging the bush than in picking the buttercups
and daisies of the fields; so at last Ann Straggalls
turned with a sigh of regret, to find herself face
to face, with the owner of the garden, who was smiling
at her blandly.
“Plee, sir, I’ve brought
a letter, sir, from teacher, sir.”
Little Miss Burge felt startled as
she saw the change that came over her brother’s
face, for, in place of its customary ruddiness, it
grew mottled, and he stood gazing at the girl as if
her words could not be true.
“A letter? For me?”
“Yes, sir, plee, sir; teacher sent it.”
“Take her in, Betsey; give her
some cake or biscuits,” he said hastily, as
he almost snatched the missive.
Little Miss Burge sighed as she took
the girl by the hand and led her away, Mr William
Forth Burge following directly after with the letter,
which he took into his study, for it was too sacred
to be read out in the open air.
It only took a minute to seat Ann
Straggalls in the hall with a big lump of cake in
her hand, portions of which she transferred to her
mouth and worked at with machine-like regularity,
and then Miss Burge hurried to the study, to find
her brother walking up and down in a great state of
excitement.
“Betsey,” he cried hoarsely,
“she’s written to me she’s
sent for me!”
“Oh, Bill, has she?” cried the little
woman sadly.
“Yes; she’s written to me she’s
sent for me.”
“Bill dear, I don’t like that.”
“What?”
“It don’t please don’t
be angry with me but it don’t seem
nice.”
“Not nice not nice!”
he cried almost fiercely. “Why, read here.
Poor gal! she’s in trouble. There’s
something wrong. Here, where’s my best
coat. I’ll go down.”
“Oh! that’s different,”
cried little Miss Burge, who seemed greatly relieved.
“Poor girl! Why, whatever can be the matter?”
“I don’t know. You
mustn’t stop me, Betsey,” he cried.
“I must go directly I must.”
“Oh, Bill! Bill!
Bill!” sobbed the little lady, throwing her
arms round his neck and bursting into tears.
“I can’t help it, Betsey,”
he cried; “I can’t help it. I never
had it before, but I’ve got it badly now, dear;
and I ain’t a bit ashamed to own it to you.”
“Oh, Bill!”
“Don’t try to stop me, Betsey.”
“But you won’t do anything foolish, dear?”
“It wouldn’t be foolish if it was her,”
he said excitedly.
“No, Bill, I suppose not; but I don’t
like her sending for you to come.”
“There, there,” he cried,
“I won’t hear another word.”
And he proved it by hurriedly taking his hat and
going down straight to the school, leaving his sister
in tears, and Ann Straggalls deep in cake.
Mr Chute was on the look-out, and
saw him pass, and directly after the schoolmaster
took up a slate and a pencil, and placing the slate
against the partition, began to write thereon, with
his back to the boys, but with his eager eyes gazing
through the slit at where Hazel was busy with her
pupils.
A minute later he saw Mr William Forth
Burge enter the schoolroom and shake hands.
Hazel spoke to him, but the words did not reach Chute’s
ears; and soon after, as the hands pointed to twelve,
the children were dismissed, and Hazel and Mr William
Forth Burge were alone, but, to Chute’s great
disgust they went out and into the cottage.
“Well, of all the shabby Oh,
I can’t stand this!” cried the schoolmaster,
stamping his feet. “It’s too bad.”
But, bad or good, he had to submit
to it for his chance of overhearing the conversation
was gone.