"One of the best chaps I've ever met! A real good sort! I shan't forget what he said to me. I can tell you I've come to look at things in a different light lately. I'll do anything he suggests. I'd trust his advice sooner than that of anybody I know. I'll have a good talk with Bowden, and see if he agrees. By Jove! I shall be a surprise packet to him, shan't I?"
[146]Mr. Bowden was not nearly so much astonished as Everard had anticipated. He took his ward's return quite as a matter of course, and, lawyer-like, at once turned to the business side of affairs. After running away and gaining his own living for so many months, it was neither possible nor desirable for Everard to go back to Harrow. He had broken the last link with his school days, and must face the problem of his future career. His grandfather had wished him to go on to Cambridge, and his guardian also considered it would be advisable for him to take a university degree. Meantime his studies were very much in arrears. He had never worked hard at school, and would need considerable application to his books before being ready to begin his terms at college. By the advice of Major Rogers, Mr. Bowden decided to engage a tutor to coach him at the Chase. The house would be perfectly quiet while the girls and the younger boys were away at school, and as Everard really seemed to take the matter seriously, he might be expected to make good progress.
In the matter of a tutor, Major Rogers was fortunately able to recommend just the right man. Mr. Stacey had been studying for orders at Cambridge when he was called up, and had joined the army. After serious wounds in France he had made a slow recovery, and though perfectly able[147] to act as coach, he would be glad of a period of quiet in the country before returning to Cambridge. He was a brilliant scholar and a thoroughly good all-round fellow, who might be trusted to make the best possible companion for Everard in the circumstances. The whole business was fixed up at once, and he was to arrive within ten days.
"I'm sorry we shall just miss seeing him!" said Carmel to Everard, on the evening before the girls went back to Chilcombe Hall. "But I shall think of you studying away at your Maths. You're clever, aren't you, Everard? I don't know much about English universities, but isn't a Tripos what you work for at Cambridge? Suppose you came out Senior Wrangler! We should be proud of you!"
"No fear of that, I'm afraid, Carmel! I'm a long way behind and shall have to swat like anything to get myself up to even ordinary standard. Burn the midnight oil, and all that kind of weariness to the flesh!"
"But you'll do it!" (Carmel was looking at him critically.) "You've got the right shape of head. Daddy and one of his friends, Signor Penati, were fearfully keen on phrenology, and they used to make me notice the shape of people's heads, and of the Greek and Roman busts in the[148] museums. It's wonderful how truly they tell character: the rules hardly ever fail."
"What do you make of my particular phiz, then, you young Sicilian witch?"
"Great ability if you only persevere; a noble mind and patriotism—your forehead is just like the bust of the Emperor Augustus. You'd scorn bribes, and speak out for the right. I prophesy that you'll some day get into Parliament, and do splendid work for your country!"
"Whew! I'm afraid I'll never reach your expectations. It's a big order you've laid down for me."
"You could do it, though, if you try. Oh, don't contradict me, for I know! I haven't studied heads with Signor Penati for nothing. First you're going to make a good master of the Chase, and then you'll help England."
"Not of the Chase, Carmel," said Everard gently. "We've argued that point out thoroughly, I think."
"No, no! Let me tell you once again that I don't want to be mistress here. I only came over to England to please Mother and Daddy. I'm going back to Sicily to live, as soon as I can choose for myself. Directly I'm twenty-one I shall hand over the Chase to you. You're a far more suitable owner for it than I am. I feel that strongly. It ought never to have been left to me. But I'll[149] put all that right again. Why can't you take it?" she continued eagerly, as Everard shook his head. "Surely I can give it to you if I like? Why not?"
"Why not? You're too young yet to understand. How could I be such an utter slacker and sneak as to accept your inheritance? It's unthinkable. Put that idea out of your little head, for it can never happen. As for the rest of your prophecy, it's a long climb to get into Parliament. I'm nothing like the man you think me, Carmel, though I'm going to make a spurt now, at any rate. Don't expect to find me a Senior Wrangler by Christmas though. Mr. Stacey will probably tell you I'm an utter dunderhead."
"I shall quarrel with him if he does!" said Carmel decidedly.
The three girls went back to school on the following day, half regretful to leave the Chase, but rather excited at the prospect of meeting their companions. Now that Carmel had got over her first stage of homesickness, she liked Chilcombe and had made many friends there. She intended to enjoy the autumn term to the best of her ability. She had brought the materials for pursuing several pet hobbies, and she settled all her numerous possessions into her small bedroom with much satisfaction. She kept the door into the Blue Grotto open, so that she might talk during[150] the process. Gowan, also busy unpacking, kept firing off pieces of information, Bertha flitted in and out like a butterfly, and girls from other dormitories paid occasional visits.
Phillida, who was a prime favorite, presently came in, and installing herself on the end of Dulcie's bed, so that she could address the occupants of both bedrooms, began to draw plans.
"I've got an idea!" she announced. "It's a jolly good one, too, so you needn't smile. It's a good thing somebody does have ideas in this place, or you'd all go to sleep! Well, it's this. I really can't stand the swank of those girls in the Gold bedroom. They seem to imagine the school belongs to them. They're not very much older than we are, indeed Nona is actually six weeks younger than Lilias, and yet they give themselves the airs of all creation. Just now Laurette said to me: 'Get out of my way, child!' Child, indeed! I'm fifteen, and tall for my age! I vote that we start a secret society, just among our own set, to resist them."
"Jolly!" agreed Dulcie. "A little wholesome taking down is just what they need. Laurette's the limit sometimes. Whom shall we ask to join?"
"Well, all of you here, and myself, and Noreen, and Prissie, and Edith. That would make nine."
[151]"Quite enough too," said Gowan. "A secret society's much greater fun if it's small. Things are apt to leak out when you have too many members. I take it we want to play an occasional rag on the Gold bedroom? Very well, the fewer in it the better."
"What shall we call our society?" asked Dulcie.
"'The Anti-Swelled Headers' would about suit," suggested Lilias.
"No, no! That sounds as if we were afraid of getting swelled head ourselves—at least anybody might take it that way."
"There's a big secret society in Sicily called 'The Mafia,'" vouchsafed Carmel.
"Then let us call ours 'The Chilcombe Mafia.' No one will understand what we mean, even if they get hold of the name. Indeed I shouldn't mind casually mentioning it now and then, just to puzzle them. When things get bad, 'The Mafia' will take them up."
"Strike secretly and suddenly!" agreed Dulcie with a chuckle.
"Let's sign our names at once!" declared Phillida enthusiastically.
At Carmel's suggestion, however, they made rather more of a ceremony of the initiation of their new order. The prospective members retired into the wood above the garden, and in strict[152] privacy took an oath of secrecy and service. Then, with Edith's fountain pen filled for the occasion with red ink, they inscribed their autographs on a piece of paper, rolled it up, placed it in a bottle, then solemnly dug a hole, and buried the said bottle under a tree.
"It will be here for a testimony against any girl who breaks her oath!" declared Phillida. "Carmel says the real Mafia sign their names in blood, but I think that's horrid, and red ink will do quite as well. Just as I was coming out now, Laurette said to me; 'Oh, don't go running away, because I want one of you younger ones to do something for me presently.' She said it with the air of a duchess!"
"Cheek!" agreed the others. "It's high time we made up a society against her!"
Many and various were the offences that were laid to Laurette's score. Lilias had a private grievance, because she fancied that Laurette had never been so civil to herself and Dulcie since it was known that their brother was not to inherit the Chase. Gowan, who liked plain speaking, accused Laurette of telling "fiblets"; Bertha had had a squabble over the bathroom, and Prissie a wrestle for the piano.
"Laurette always reminds me of that rhyme that the undergrads made up about the Master of Balliol," said Edith.
[153]
"'Here come I, my name is Jowett,
All there is to know, I know it;
I'm the head of this here College,
What I don't know isn't knowledge!'
That's Laurette's attitude exactly. She's so superior to everybody!"
"We'll take her down, don't worry yourself!" smiled Dulcie. "We must just wait for a good opportunity, and then——"
"The secret hand will smite!" laughed Carmel, who enjoyed the fun as much as anybody.
Laurette's aggravatingly superior pose was especially apparent in her attitude towards the mistresses. She monopolized Miss Herbert, treated her almost like a friend, wrote notes to her, left flowers in her bedroom, and walked arm-in-arm with her in the garden. Perhaps the mistress was lonely, possibly she was flattered by receiving so much attention, at any rate she allowed Laurette to be on terms of great intimacy, and gave her a far larger share of her confidence than was at all wise. Laurette, after a hot affection lasting three weeks, got tired of Miss Herbert, and suddenly cooled off. Gowan and Carmel, going into the sitting-room one day, found her discussing her former idol with a group of her chums.
"Do you call her pretty? Well, now, I don't!" she was saying emphatically. "She may have been pretty once, but now she's getting decidedly[154] passée. I can't say I admire faded sentimental people!"
"Sentimental?" said Truie. "I shouldn't call her sentimental at all. She's only too horribly practical, in my opinion!"
"You don't know her as I do! My dear! The things she's told me! The love affairs she's been through! I had the whole history of them. And she used to blush, and look most romantic. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing. You'd scream if I were to tell you! First there was a clergyman——"
"Here, stop!" interrupted Gowan, breaking abruptly into the conversation, and turning two blazing blue eyes on Laurette. "Anything Miss Herbert may have told you was certainly in confidence, and to go and blab it over the school seems to me the meanest, sneakiest trick I've ever heard of! You're an absolute blighter, Laurette!"
"Well, I'm sure! What business is it of yours, Gowan Barbour, or of Carmel Ingleton's either? Cheek!"
"It is our business!" flared Carmel, as indignant as Gowan. "It's horribly mean to make friends with any one, and hear all her secrets, and then go and make fun of them!"
"It's playing it low!" added Gowan, determined to speak her mind for once. "And I hope[155] somebody will make fun of you some day just to serve you right! Some day you'll be faded and passée, and people will giggle and say you haven't 'got off' in spite of all your efforts, and they wonder how old you really are, and they remember when you came out, and you can't be a chicken, and they don't like to see 'mutton dressed like lamb,' and all the rest of the kind pleasant things that people of your type find to say. I know! Well, I shan't be in the least sorry for you! It will be a judgment!"
Laurette had made a desperate attempt to interrupt Gowan's flow of words, but she might as well have tried to stop the brook. When Gowan began, she never even paused for breath. Her wrath was like a whirlwind. Laurette's three chums had turned away as if rather ashamed, and began hastily to get out books and writing-materials. They pretended not to notice when Laurette looked at them for support.
"Yes, you needn't think Truie and Hester and Muriel will back you up!" continued Gowan. "Unless they're as mean as you are. There! I've finished now, so you needn't butt in! You know exactly what I think of you. Come along, Carmel!"
The two immediate results of this episode were a bitter feud between Laurette and Gowan, and a sympathetic interest in Miss Herbert by all the[156] members of the Mafia. They felt that her confidence had been betrayed, and they would have liked somehow to make it up to her. They brought so many floral offerings to her bedroom that her vases were almost inconveniently crowded.
Carmel, hearing that she was collecting post cards, sent home for some special ones of Sicily; Dulcie tendered chocolates; Lilias crocheted her a pincushion cover, and Bertha painted her a hair-tidy. She accepted their little kindnesses with mild astonishment, but not a hint of the real reason of their sudden advances flashed across her mind.
"We mustn't let her suspect!" said Dulcie.
"Rather not!" agreed Carmel.
"Not for worlds!" said Gowan emphatically.
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