CHAPTER II

THE KNIGHT'S MOTTO

WE have two weeks' holidays before we begin lessons, and then we shall only have a few weeks of them, and it will be holidays again—the proper summer holidays, for they begin at the end of July.

I am longing to start my plan for earning money, so I thought I wouldn't wait any longer, and I've begun to-day. I don't think I'll tell about it just yet, but I've got father's leave for a little part of it, and I've told him not to tell the others. Lynette never can keep a secret; she wanted to tell me what she meant to do this morning while she was in bed, but I wouldn't let her do it, and I stopped my ears up with my fingers, so she saw it was no good. I'm perfectly certain we shan't keep it secret long; we never can, for some one is sure to tell, or find out. If it was one secret, it would be different, but five secrets couldn't possibly be kept. And I know I shall just long to tell some one mine, for I think it's rather clever—for me.

To-day is Saturday. Aunt Caroline has a practice for church every Saturday afternoon, and we all go to it. It is a dear old church, and I like to think that it belongs to us. Aunt Caroline plays the harmonium—there is no organ, and we have a funny choir; Denys calls it a scratch pack. There is one old man who used to be the clerk, and say the responses when no one else did. He has the most awful wheezy voice, and he is always a good line behind everybody else. He has to clear his throat so often that it takes up the time. His name is Nathan Porter. Denys said to him last Saturday: "Look here, don't you bother to sing so loud; we'll do it for you. I should think you're jolly well tired of sitting in the choir. Why don't you retire, and sit in the middle of the church, and put a cushion behind your back?" He was quite offended, and tapped his stick on the aisle very solemnly: "Look 'ee here, laddy, I be a fixture in these parts; ye passon folk pass away like the grass that withereth. I hath seed four passons in my time, and they all comes and turns us topsy-turvy first year of office, but not one on them turns me out of me seat, what I hath had these forty year or so. I hath singed in this 'ere 'oly sanctury since I were a lad, and sing I will, till I goes up to the sanctury above, and does my singin' there!" Denys felt awfully small, and said nothing at all after that. Then there's a lame young woman who does dressmaking, and the schoolmistress, and four school-children, and Denys and Aylwin and I make up the rest.

I like the choir practices, but the boys rather grumble sometimes. They had been playing cricket in the lower field early this afternoon. I was fielding for them, as Lynette was busy with her secret, and we all came in dreadfully hot, and had a rush to wash our hands and tidy ourselves by four o'clock. The church seemed very cool and still after the hot field outside, and somehow I always feel good when I'm inside it. There is only one painted window in the church, the rest are clear glass, and you can see the green trees waving outside, and the blue sky, while you are singing. It makes me go into dreams, and sometimes as I look-out, I forget where I am, and then the boys nudge me and whisper, "Wake up, Grizzy; look-out for a whopper of a wasp!" They know how I hate wasps, and I almost scream out loud, and then I find they're only humbugging. It is very difficult to be always good when you're with boys; they sometimes make you laugh, and sometimes make you lose your temper. And I have such a longing to be good when I'm in church, or when it's a beautiful day and everything is quiet and still, and especially when I look up into the sky at sunset, and see all the golden flames and pearly blue streaks and crimson clouds. It sends a little shiver over me, and I just whisper to myself, "O God, make me good, make me good!"

Denys and Aylwin have lovely voices; they ring out through the church like—well, I was going to say like a bell, but they're sweeter than that, they're like finger glasses when you wet your fingers and rub the edge of them! Father says I haven't a bad voice, but it's nothing by the side of the boys'. Mother used to sing beautifully—but I don't talk about her—it makes me cry—and then I hate the boys seeing me. I often wonder why it should be such a shameful thing to cry; I suppose it is because it is babyish. Denys is awfully hard on any of us who cries, even if we hurt ourselves awfully. He says the finest people in the world are the North American Indians, and they would smile all the time they were being scalped. But I can cry at the least thing; the tears simply pour out of me, and I can't keep them back. Even the boys' voices at the choir practice make me feel weepy. I wish I was a North American Indian!

When the practice was over this afternoon, I stayed behind in the church with Aunt Caroline to tidy up the choir-books, and father came in. He looked about him with a pleased smile, then walked over to an old tomb in the chancel, and called me to his side. There was a figure of a knight carved in stone—we think it is such a pity that his nose is broken, as it spoils his face, but father pointed out some words that were written on the shield at his feet. "Grisel, those are the words I should like placed upon my grave as an epitaph—that is, if I lived worthy of them. Read them to me, child." So I read them, though I did not understand them: "'Semper fidelis! Semper paratus!'"

"Always faithful, always ready!" said father. "Not sometimes, Grisel. How few of us can put the 'semper' before our virtues!"

I don't always understand father, but I said nothing, until the sun shone through the coloured glass window, and sent patches of red and blue all over the knight. Then I smiled. "Oh, father, isn't it a lovely little church? And aren't you glad it all belongs to you? It's our very own, isn't it? It's so lovely to think of it."

He shook his head at me.

"It is not my church, Grisel; it is my Master's."

"Yes, I know that," I said soberly.

"Only a steward," said father in a low tone, more as if he were talking to himself than to me. "Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful, 'semper fidelis!'"

Aunt Caroline came up to us.

"It is tea-time, Grisel: run along indoors."

I went, feeling rather sorry to leave the cool church. I wish we could have all our meals out-of-doors. Tea in the summer is so hot. I went into the dining-room. The venetian blinds were down; there was a hot steamy smell from the urn which had just been brought in. Aylwin was chasing the flies away from our plates of bread-and-butter, Denys was trying to make Puff walk on his head, and Lynette was nowhere to be seen. I was just going to hunt her up, when she burst into the room. Her hair was flying, her face was red and hot and sticky, her pinafore was sticky too.

She danced round the room, singing at the top of her voice, "I've done it—hurrah! hurrah!" And then she suddenly stood still, and held out a sixpence.

"My first earnings!" she cried. "I've beat you all!"

I approached her cautiously, then said, "I know what you've been doing, I can smell you!"

"You're not to say! Catch, Mr. Treasurer; I'm going to wash!"

She darted out of the room. Puff looked solemnly at me.

"Her 's been making toffee in the kitching!"

The boys began to laugh.

"Easy enough to guess her old secret, but who's given her sixpence for it, I'd like to know?"

"Perhaps father or Aunt Caroline," I said, "but we mustn't try to find out till she tells us. It wouldn't be 'good form.'"

"Good form" is really Denys's word; he's always saying it.

"It isn't 'good form' to be a prig!" he said.

"I know that as well as you!"

"Then don't you be it, Grizzy!"

Aunt Caroline came in, and we stopped; we're so easily in the middle of a fight before we know where we are, but I hate being called Grizzy, and I'm not a prig!

She sat down and poured out tea for us. And then Lynette came in, looking sleek and shiny with the washing she had given herself.

"Dear me, child, how hot you are!" Aunt Caroline said.

And Lynette's face did look like a boiled lobster still.

"I've been working so hard!" she said. "I wouldn't be a cook for a thousand pounds!"

Father came in then; he always sits down and has a cup of tea with us, but he doesn't have his proper meal till eight o'clock. He and Aunt Caroline have that together; it's the only meal we don't have with them.

None of us were very hungry for tea; it was so hot, and there was only bread-and-butter—no cake, and no jam, and no strawberries. Of course we don't have those kind of things every night.

Then the boys went out into the garden, and I had to help Aunt Caroline put out all our best clothes for Sunday, and put buttons on the boys' shirts, and do a lot of mending. She makes even Lynette help on Saturday evening. We only keep two servants, cook and Emma, so they can't do our mending. Emma gives Puff his evening bath, and he leads her rather a dance over it, as his head is washed on Saturday, and he turns head over heels in the water and makes an awful noise and mess.

Lynette is awfully proud over her sixpence. I can't earn any till next Tuesday, but I'm going to have great fun then. And now I must stop writing, for I'm to go to bed. Lynette has just come up to me and said:

"Grisel, do guess how I got that sixpence; I'm dying to tell you."

"It's to be a secret," I said.

"Yes, but you can keep secrets, can't you?"

"I know you sold your toffee to some one," I said, "but I don't know who bought it. Emma did, perhaps; I know she is fond of sweets."

"Emma! As if I would take sixpence from her! A very important person gave it to me, nobody in this house."

That made me curious, but I wouldn't let her see I was.

"Father wouldn't let you sell toffee to strangers," I said.

"This isn't a stranger." Then she whispered into my ear: "Mrs. Ribbon. Don't you tell the boys!"

I gasped. Mrs. Ribbon is a great friend of ours, though we have not known her very long. She keeps the village shop. She is very fat and very good-natured. She has a grown-up son who is great friends with Emma. He has painted outside the shop door a little piece of poetry. We think it is splendid:

"If once you come, you come again, You never come to us in vain."

And Mrs. Ribbon really has everything that everybody wants in her shop. She told us she had everything when first we came, and we didn't believe her. Aylwin went in and asked her for a Brazil stamp—he collects stamps. She said she would have them in a week, for they were on order. We didn't believe her, but on Tuesday, which is market day at Lemworth, she sent her son Tom to a very good stationer's there, where they keep packets of foreign stamps, and he brought back not only a Brazil one, but some others that Aylwin had been trying to get for a long time. Then Denys went to her, and said he wanted to buy a white mouse. She went straight out to the back-yard, and brought one for him to see. I said that she caught a common mouse and painted it white, but he said No, it was a real one, only she wanted more money than he could give for it. We found out afterwards that Tom keeps quite a happy family in the back-yard—pigeons, and guinea-pigs, and mice, and canaries, and a lovely black bull-dog.

There's such a nice mixed smell in Mrs. Ribbon's shop. We sometimes try to describe it to each other. Denys says it's a kind of soapy, oniony, treacley, hot-cakey, coffee sort of smell. I say it's a matchy, bacony, appley, cheesey sort of smell. And Aylwin says it's a sugary, cabbagy, tallowy, leathery kind of smell. I really think it's all those things put together, with a lot more added to them. She is always sitting there smiling, and we love to watch her selling. First it is some peppermints, then a piece of pickled pork, then six yards of calico, then a saucepan, cups and saucers, a pony's halter, bootlaces, some ink, some patent medicine, some turnips, or biscuits—I can't possibly write them all down, but she always knows where everything is, and never loses her head.

I told her one day that keeping shop must be a most exciting thing to do, as you never knew what you would be asked for! And she said, "Bless your heart, missy, I knows their wants better 'n they do theirsel's!" Which shows she is a most clever woman.

"Did Mrs. Ribbon buy your toffee?" I asked Lynette.

"Yes, I took it over and showed it to her, and asked her if she didn't think it good, and I told her I wanted to earn some money. And she said it was lovely, and if it sold well, she'd buy some more from me next Wednesday."

I felt a little jealous. We have always made toffee since we were quite small, so it's very easy. I taught Lynette how to do it first. Of course it was clever of her to think of it, but it's no trouble for her to take it over to Mrs. Ribbon to sell. And when I think of what I have got to do . . . but I mustn't say, in case the boys see this book.

"I don't know if Aunt Caroline will like you using all the butter and sugar up!" I said a little crossly.

"Oh, cook will make that right; she says she will. I'm to give her one penny out of every sixpence I make, and she'll keep it to get more butter if she wants it!"

"I'm sure she won't let you mess in her kitchen every day," I said.

"I shan't do it every day. Cook will let me do it as often as I like; she said she would."

I knew that was true, for Lynette always gets her way with every one, she coaxes so. I don't know why I felt cross, but I did, and then I was cross with myself for feeling cross, and that made me crosser still. Lynette was so awfully pleased with herself that she couldn't keep still.

"None of you have begun to do anything yet," she said; "I'm at the top of you all."

"Go on to bed," I said; "you fuss and bother so that I can't write a bit!"

So she has run out of the room calling me "crosspatch," and I shall have to go to bed too, and say I'm sorry before we go to sleep, because we always do that in case we don't wake up alive in the morning.

We heard a dreadful story once of a boy who wouldn't forgive his sister before she went to sleep, and she never woke up; she died in her bed of heart disease. I am rather glad it is Sunday to-morrow, because none of us can think of earning any money, so we can't get in front of each other. I never do like people getting in front of me; we all like to be the front one ourselves.