CHAPTER III

NEW ARRIVALS

‘Boys are for the most part cattle of this colour.’

――_Shakespeare._

Grif wandered out on to the croquet-lawn, where the others were knocking balls against hoops in a desultory fashion, all playing at once, and arguing at the tops of their voices.

“Where have _you_ been?” asked Jim, trying to stand on the winning-peg, which at once sank over sideways, levering up a portion of the ground.

“Oh Jim, see what you’ve done!” Ann exclaimed in dismay.

“Well, I can stamp it down again.”

“I’ve been choosing my room,” answered Grif.

“What room?” With the handle of his mallet passed under his armpit and projecting well above his shoulder――for it was nearly as tall as himself――Jim took aim at a ball. “Shaved it! Shaved it!”

Ann was indignant. “No you didn’t, Jim; you never touched it.”

“I did. I shaved it.”

“You can’t see it from here,” Grif went on. “And there’s a swallow’s nest under the window-sill.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s our room up there, just over the porch. It’s yours and mine, and Edward’s when he comes.... Clear out of the light.... Oh, rotten luck! My mallet turned!... I’ve bagged the bed near the window.”

“You can bag as many beds as you like. I’m going to have a room to myself.”

“But why?”

“I’m going to have Pouncer with me.... Who brought out the croquet-things?”

“We brought them out ourselves.”

“Why aren’t you playing properly, then?”

“Because Barbara said she’d go first, after Ann and I had bagged the blue and red balls. She’s yellow, and yellow has to play last.”

“I called out ‘first’ before you ever got the balls,” said Barbara, loftily.

“So nobody could be first,” Jim went on, “and we all had to play together.”

“Little silly!” Barbara threw down her mallet and walked away.

“Aunt Caroline says we’re to be good till dinner-time,” said Ann, meekly. “And we’re not to go to the kitchen, because Hannah and Bridget are busy.”

“Who wants to go to the kitchen?”

“I’m afraid _I_ do,” sighed truthful Ann. “Hannah’s going to let Barbara and me make shortbread the first wet day.”

“I say; let’s play a proper game now there’s four of us,” Jim proposed. “Grif and me’ll play you two.”

But at that moment Aunt Caroline, waving a letter in her hand, came from the house. “Do you know what’s happened?” she cried. “You’ll never guess!”

“I’ve guessed already,” murmured Jim, modestly.

Aunt Caroline shook her letter at him. “What have you guessed? I’ve a good mind not to tell you.”

“Edward’s coming to-day instead of next month.”

Aunt Caroline was somewhat taken aback. “Nonsense! How did you know? What’s the use of my trying to give you surprises?”

“The surprise was a very good one,” Jim hastened to console her. “All the others are surprised. I only guessed because I’m good at riddles. I’m making one up at this moment.”

“Well, that’s what it is anyway. And grandpapa knew all about it this morning, and thought he had told me. What do you say to that?”

“It wasn’t very clever,” Ann admitted.

“It certainly wasn’t. Can you guess _why_ he is coming?” she laughed, turning again to Jim.

The little boy hesitated. “I’d rather not, Aunt Caroline.”

“What does that mean, I wonder? I’m afraid you’re a humbug.”

Jim paused. “It would be better for you to surprise us, I think.”

Aunt Caroline laughed once more. “Do you think I’d be disappointed again? Well, it’s because diphtheria has broken out at school. And Edward is bringing a friend with him――I expect you guessed that too?”

“We _knew_ that,” said Ann. “He wrote to Barbara and told her ages ago. It’s a boy called Palmer Dorset. But of course we didn’t know they’d be coming so soon.”

“Well I must say you all seem to be a great deal more behind the scenes than I am. This is the first I’ve heard of Master Dorset’s existence, let alone of his intention to pay us a visit.”

“We can tell you about him, Aunt Caroline; and I know Edward _was_ going to write to you, but I suppose he hadn’t time. He’s frightfully clever, Edward says. He knows all about airioplanes and wireless telegraphy and things of that sort. And he’s won crowds of competitions in papers, and he invented a system of writing six lines at a time, only it takes longer than to do them in the ordinary way. Of course all the lines have to be the same, and you write with a penholder he invented, with branches out of it into which you stick reservoir nibs. They must be reservoir nibs, because it takes so long to fix them and get them all dipped in the ink that it wouldn’t be worth while using any other kind.”

“Didn’t Edward even mention him in grandpapa’s letter?” asked Barbara.

“Oh yes, he mentioned him there, and grandpapa sent a telegram telling him to bring him. But when he had done that he forgot all about the whole thing, so how was I to know?”

“It _does_ seem rather a mix up,” murmured Ann.

“I wish he wasn’t coming,” said Jim, gloomily. “I know what he’ll be like if he’s a friend of Edward’s.”

“I’ll tell Edward you said that,” whispered Barbara.

“Edward’s a nut,” replied Jim. “You can tell him that too.”

“He’s not; and you aren’t allowed to make personal remarks.” She glanced at Aunt Caroline for approval――an action which provoked a hideous grimace from her young brother, who was standing out of his aunt’s observation.

“He is. You should see the ties and socks he wears, Aunt Caroline, and the way he does his hair. You’d think it was painted on the top of his head, it sticks so close. If you want to make him mad all you’ve got to do is to ruffle it. Only it’s not worth while, because you get your hands all over oil.”

“Hadn’t you better go to meet them?” Aunt Caroline suggested, feebly. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to do more than meet them on their way, for the train must be nearly here by this time; but I expect they’ll walk. Ann needn’t go unless she likes.”

“I must go,” Ann declared. “I’m the only one who really knows Balmer. I was with him and Edward one day.”

“Why does she call Palmer Balmer, Aunt Caroline?” Jim asked. “This isn’t personal, it’s a riddle.... Do you give it up?... Because Pouncer bounces, and there’s a ‘b’ in both.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t very fresh,” he added apologetically.

* * * * *

And they set out, though without evincing any undue hurry.

“Perhaps we ought to wait for them here,” said Ann, at the turning of the lane.

Jim had dropped down on the dusty road, and lay with his ear to the ground.

“Jim, get up at once!” Barbara commanded; but the scout remained motionless.

“I can’t hear anything,” he whispered.

Grif poked him gently with his foot. “What do you expect to hear? An earthquake?”

“Look at the mess you’re in!” Barbara went on officiously.

“Oh, leave me alone. It’s the way Indians always listen. You can hear for miles if there’s anybody on the road.”

He got up and brushed some of the dust from his clothes, while Pouncer, who thought he had been looking for rats, proceeded to investigate further.

“I can see them!” piped Ann from the top of the bank. “They’re walking.”

There was a sudden rush, with shouts and halloes, even the correct Barbara joining in. The two schoolboys they had come to meet, however, displayed less enthusiasm. Edward merely waved a lordly hand. “These are the kids,” he said, presenting his brothers and sisters _en masse_ to Palmer Dorset. “I dare say you’ll get used to them in time.”

“How do you do, Balmer?” murmured Ann, holding out her hand shyly. But the greetings of the others were merely vocal, and Barbara gave none at all, being offended at the manner of Edward’s introduction.

Edward bore little resemblance either to Grif or to Jim. He was big for his age, and distinctly the best-looking of the family; very fair, with blue eyes and a pointed chin. One noticed that his clothes hung well upon him. Palmer Dorset, though six months older, was nearly a head shorter. Palmer was very sturdily built, and had bright red hair, dry, crisp, and wavy, and strong as wire. He had a fair, fine skin, much freckled, and his eyes, of a reddish brown, were small, with almost no white showing. When he laughed they lit up and his whole face displayed an extraordinary animation: at other times his expression was grave and uncommunicative. His forehead was broad, his eyebrows nearly invisible, his mouth unusually small and delicately shaped.

“When did you get down?” asked Edward, patronizingly.

“To-day. Just by the train before yours.”

“Aunt Caroline says we’ll see grandpapa to-night at dinner,” Ann murmured in her queer, half plaintive little voice.

“Naturally.”

“After to-night we’re all to have dinner in the middle of the day――all of _us_, I mean. I’m rather afraid of grandpapa.”

Jim, who had been lost in thought for some five minutes, began suddenly: “My first is in ‘bat’ but not in ‘cat.’ My second’s in ‘uncle’ but not in ‘aunt.’ My third is in ‘night’ but not in ‘day.’ My whole was in me this afternoon at tea-time. What is it?” He glanced with a quick smile at Palmer.

“Oh, dry up. I warned you what they were like, Dorset, so don’t blame me. Just smack their heads now and then.”

“No, but guess,” cried Jim, indignantly. “You might guess!... Do you give it up?” He smiled again. “Do you give it up, Palmer?”

“Yes.”

“It’s my own, you know,” Jim told him.

“All right: fire ahead.”

“‘Bun,’” Jim announced complacently. “B――U――N.”

Edward laughed: everybody laughed except Ann.

“What are you all grinning at?” asked Jim, uneasily. “My first is ‘B’――‘B’ in ‘bat’ but not in ‘cat.’ My second is ‘U’――in ‘uncle’ but not in ‘aunt.’”

“‘U’ _is_ in ‘aunt,’ silly.”

“How is it in ‘aunt’?”

“A――U――N――T! That’s how it’s in it.”

Jim blushed. “It’s not A――U――N――T, is it Ann?”

“I don’t know,” Ann whispered.

“Is it, Grif?”

“Jim, don’t contradict,” said Barbara, primly.

But Jim was getting annoyed. “I’ll contradict if I like.”

“You won’t. And if you’re rude I’ll tell Miss Johnson.”

“Tell away. I don’t care.”

“Don’t care came to a bad end.”

“I _don’t_ think.”

“And you know you’re not allowed to say that. Miss Johnson told you you weren’t to.”

Jim put out his tongue. With that simplicity in the expression of preferences which characterizes all dogs and most little boys, he moved away from Edward and Barbara and walked beside Palmer Dorset.

They turned in at the gate. “The birds here seem jolly tame,” Edward muttered, as an adventurous robbin hopped up almost to their feet. “I wish I had my air-gun. We must get some elastic and make caties.”

“Oh, Edward, how can you be so cruel?” exclaimed Ann. “Aunt Caroline feeds the birds every day, and she says they come right up to her when she calls them.”

“That’ll be all the better.”

“Are you fond of Edna Lyall’s books?” whispered Barbara, addressing Palmer for the first time.

Edward laughed. “As if he reads rot like that!” He had been fumbling in his pockets, and now brought out a half-used packet of cigarettes. “We’ll not be able to smoke in the house, Dorset, so we may as well have one while we can.”

There was a silence.

“I’m afraid he’s showing off a little,” murmured Grif, addressing no one in particular, unless it were the robbin, who continued to flutter on their path in the most friendly way possible.

Edward coloured as he struck a match.

“One for you, Angelina!” chuckled Palmer appreciatively.

Edward walked on in offended dignity.

“Why do you call him Angelina, Balmer?”

The remorseless and inevitable question came in Ann’s gentle voice. She had even ventured to take Palmer’s hand, on the strength of their previous acquaintance.

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s always called that.” He glanced at Edward apologetically, the name having slipped out by accident. But Edward, with heightened colour, and staring straight before him, maintained his attitude of indifference.

“It’s a very nice name,” Ann reflected. “I like it. I shall call him Angelina too.”

“If you do, you won’t do it a second time,” her brother mentioned in accents of quiet rage.

Ann was astonished. “Don’t you like it? Why do people call you it then?”

“Nobody calls me it, except a lot of fools who think they’re being funny.”

“Angelina――――” meditated Jim. “I say!――let go――you’re hurting me!”

Edward had caught his ear and was twisting it viciously.

“Ouu!” Jim squealed; and promptly kicked his brother on the shins.

Edward flung him away and pulled up the leg of his trousers. “Little brute!” he spluttered. “Look what he’s done!” He made another rush, but Jim darted behind Palmer, who held the aggressor at arm’s length.

“I say; let him alone; you hurt him first.”

Edward hesitated. Then, with a limp suggesting that each step cost him untold agony, he stalked on alone to the house.

“I’m afraid we’ve made him really angry,” said Ann, cheerfully. “It was your fault, Balmer, too, because you must have known he would get cross. I didn’t. It was you and Jim.”

“He can swear all right,” put in Jim. “Can’t he, Palmer?”

“He never _could_ stand being ragged,” said Palmer dispassionately. “I didn’t mean to call him Angelina――it just slipped out. You’d think he’d have got used to it, considering he hears it about a thousand times a day.”

But by dinner-time Edward had quite recovered his good-humour.

With a round black velvet cap on his bald head Canon Annesley, thin and bent and wrinkled, though intensely alive, sat at the top of the table, having Jim, in a spotlessly-white sailor suit, at his right hand. Jim, at first very quiet and solemn, ventured at length to put his riddle, in an emended form, to grandpapa, substituting “nephew” for “aunt” in the second clause; and grandpapa guessed it.

“Perhaps you have some riddles you would like to ask _me_?” Jim murmured insinuatingly, his bright untroubled eyes fixed upon grandpapa’s wrinkled visage.

Grandpapa only shook his head. “Look not for whales in the Euxine sea, nor expect great matters where they are not to be found.”

This reply, which was in itself a kind of riddle, did not satisfy Jim. “Are there none in your book?” he questioned.

“In _my_ book?”

“The book you’re writing.”

“Oh, I see. I don’t remember any. I might introduce a few.”

“Miss Johnson is writing a novel.”

The clear voice of the little boy was definite as a publisher’s announcement, and Miss Johnson became covered with confusion.

“It’s called _Be True, Fond Heart_,” Jim pursued calmly, “and the hero’s twenty-seven years old, and the heroine’s twenty-two. It’s _his_ heart that is fond. He’s called Reginald. She doesn’t find out about it till he’s dying――I mean about his heart. He gets wounded out shooting, and she nurses him, but it’s no use. And then he tells her that he never told her, because she was an heiress; and she tells him that she was sure all along he was in love with her friend; and a specialist comes from London to see him, and he dies.”

“The accident due to an explosion of his gun, I suppose?”

Jim did not know. “_Was_ it that, Miss Johnson?” he asked.

“You are talking too much, Jim,” the authoress replied. “No; that is not the solution,” she continued after a moment, her pince-nez fixed dreamily on the opposite wall. “I’m afraid it is rather difficult to explain, as the plot is a little complex. It is really his friend who shoots him; though he takes this secret with him to the grave. And almost his last words are, “Be kind to Victor”――that is, his friend, who is a cavalry officer with a somewhat violent temper. Of course I’ve only told the children little bits here and there, bits I thought they could understand.”

“I hope you’ve brought the manuscript with you,” said the canon gallantly. “After hearing so much of the story it would be tantalizing not to know the rest.”

“I believe it _is_ somewhere in my trunk,” the governess admitted. “I am sure I should be only too delighted if you would give me the benefit of your criticism. I have had so little experience. This is my first work. The idea was suggested to me by a very beautiful painting in the Royal Academy, entitled _To Err is Human_. I am sure you remember it. It created a great deal of interest at the time, because nobody could be quite sure which of the persons in the picture had erred, or in what way.”

She paused, and a small voice broke in softly. “The heroine’s name is Angelina.... I’m very sorry, Edward.”

Edward turned crimson, and darted an angry glance at his younger sister. The other boys laughed.

The French windows were thrown open to the warm summer night, and the drawn curtains now were seen to bulge out with stealthy, uncertain movements.

“By Jove! It looks like a burglar,” said the canon. “He must have the deuce of a cold in his head too!”

For the swaying of the curtains was supplemented by considerable snufflings and snortings, which, to the majority of those present, had a very familiar sound. There was a moment of interested waiting: then Pouncer, who was supposed to be shut up in the kitchen with Bridget and Hannah, stepped self-consciously into the room.

“And to whom does _this_ king of dogs belong?” asked the canon gaily.

“He’s Grif’s,” said Jim. “Mother says Grif takes after you, and that he will always be unpractical.”

“Why such pessimistic views on mother’s part?” the canon wondered, regarding Pouncer’s master with a new interest.

Miss Johnson apologized profusely. “I think it will be some people’s bedtime as soon as dinner is over,” she remarked unkindly.

“That’s me and Ann,” Jim whispered to his grandfather. “Say, because it’s our first night here you want us to sit up to have just one game. I mean an intellectual game――one that you can play too, you know――with pencils and bits of paper, writing things down. You choose twelve things――like a flower, or an animal, or a book――and then somebody says a letter, and you write down the names of things beginning with it. You know what I mean? If it was a flower and the letter was D you could write down daisy; and for the animal, dog; and for the book――any book that begins with D. It’s just the sort of game you would love. Besides, I’m awfully good at it and can help you.... Say you want it――quick――quick, or Miss Johnson won’t let us have it.” He clutched grandpapa’s hand vigorously under the table, jigging up and down on his chair, while his eyes shone.

Grandpapa coughed, and with a fine assumption of spontaneity proposed the game. Miss Johnson’s objections were gently waved aside.

“Thanks _fearfully_,” Jim whispered. “I like you awfully. You’re not a bit like what I was led to expect.”

“I wasn’t led to expect anything like you either,” the canon confessed in return.

Jim gazed at him.

“Why are you laughing?”

“With anticipated pleasure. You must remember I hardly ever play games.”

“You can now. We can play every evening――and all day if it’s wet. I’ll try to think of other games you would like.”

“Would you mind telling me how old you are? I know I ought to know, but I’ve forgotten.”

“Nine. Ann’s ten; Barbara’s twelve; Grif’s thirteen; and Edward’s fifteen. I don’t know how old Palmer is, but I expect he’s about the same as Edward.... What made you ask?”

“I was trying to think what I was like at nine. I can’t remember.”

“You were like Grif. Mother says so.”

“I don’t believe I was; and anyway I don’t know Grif very well. Tell me about him.”

Jim was silenced, while he stared hard at his brother. “_I_ don’t think he’s like you,” he declared at last.

“Not in appearance, certainly,” the canon agreed.

“Not in any way.... I can’t tell you about Grif.... I could tell you more about Edward and Barbara and Ann. Edward’s called Angelina at school, and he hates it. That’s why we laughed when Ann said that about the heroine of Miss Johnson’s novel. I expect he’s called it because he thinks such a lot about his clothes and all that. I can beat him at this game we’re going to play.”

“And can you beat the others?”

Jim hesitated. “I don’t think I can beat Palmer.”

“Perhaps you and I together could.”

“Oh, easily. But then――that mightn’t be fair.... You see, he’s your guest.... I mean, he doesn’t belong to you the way we do. I think we’d better let Palmer win if he can.”

“Then you’re not going to help me after all?”

“Well――if you aren’t getting on very well――I might help you a little.”

“I tell you what we’ll do. You and I’ll challenge any other pair to a game of croquet.”

Jim turned over this proposition thoughtfully. “Yes――we could do that.... But don’t you think we’d be beaten?”

“I see you’re doubtful. I’m quite good you know――far better than you’d believe.”

“But _I’m_ not very good, and Edward’s awfully good at all games――I mean outdoor games. He’s splendid at cricket.”

“I dare say; but I shouldn’t mind betting that he hasn’t played much croquet:――not nearly so much as I have. What do you think?”

“We’ll take them on anyway,” said Jim, generously.