CHAPTER XI

MISS FINLAYSON'S UNCLE, THE CANON

'It's all very well to tell you to do things for other people; but when nobody wants anything done, how are you going to carry it out?' demanded Charlotte Bigley of a circle of attentive listeners.

It was plain-work evening, some five weeks or so before the end of the term; and fifty-five busy little people, on one side of the curtain, sewed laboriously at fifty-five flannel garments, while thirty-two others, in the seniors' room, were cutting out fresh ones and struggling with what Miss Smythe called the 'fixing.' Usually, plain-work evening was the dullest out of the seven, for conversation did not flourish under the depressing dominion of flannel, and Miss Smythe, the needlework mistress who came from the town twice a week to teach them, had never managed to interest her pupils either in herself or in what they were doing. But to-night there was something to discuss that thrilled every one of the workers on both sides of the curtain, and the effect on the flannel garments of this unusual enthusiasm even awoke a faint wonderment in the mind of Miss Smythe. She did not know, never having tried to win the confidence of the children, that the cause of the emotion that was pulsing from end to end of the two playrooms was the temporary residence, under the honoured roof of Wootton Beeches, of Miss Finlayson's uncle, the Canon.

The Canon had always been an object of interest, theoretically, to the girls at Wootton Beeches. They did not know much about him, except that he lived in some cathedral town in the North of England, and came South about once a year and spent part of his holiday at Wootton Beeches; and they were familiar with his portrait, which always stood on the writing-table in his niece's study. That was all they could have told anybody; but the very lack of facts only added to the magic of his name, and as none of them happened to be in touch with a bishop, or even with a dean, Miss Finlayson's uncle the Canon continued to impress them from a distance with his importance. Hitherto, his visit had always happened to fall in the holidays; but, this time, he had unaccountably appeared in the middle of the term, and the excitement of his actual presence among them had given them enough news to put in their letters home for quite two weeks. The day before, he had even replaced the curate in the little chapel, and had not only read prayers but had delivered an address on unselfishness as well; and it was this address that had provided the whole school, on plain-work evening, with a burning topic of conversation.

The problem that had just been put into words by Charlotte Bigley was one that had exercised the ingenuity of everybody since yesterday morning. To do good works was the present ardent desire of all their hearts; but where were the good works to be found?

'I suppose there's always something to be done for somebody, only we've got to discover what it is,' said Mary Wells, after profound reflection.

'He did say life was full of little things that were waiting to be done, but it's so easy to talk like that,' complained Jean Murray. 'Why didn't he say _what_ things?'

'Well, you see, we've got to discover what they are,' persisted Mary. When she did manage to produce an idea, she was always very slow to part with it.

'You said that before,' retorted Jean, impolitely; 'and it doesn't help anybody at all. You can't go round _asking_ people, can you? They'd call you a nuisance.'

Barbara sighed, and laid down the blackened piece of flannel she had been toiling at since the beginning of term. Between the address of the Canon and the shapelessness of her flannel petticoat, life was very difficult to understand just then.

'Besides,' she chimed in, when Jean finished speaking, 'if everybody is doing something for everybody else, there's nobody left to do anything for!'

'Finny always says we are to do things for ourselves as much as we can, and that the way to help other people most is to see that they don't have to bother about _us_. That's not a bit the same thing as going round and finding out what people want done for them,' continued Charlotte, eloquently.

'They can't both be right,' declared Angela, shrilly. 'If the Canon says one thing and Finny says another, what are we to believe, and what is the truth of it all, I should like to know? The _truth_--that's what _I_ want!'

'Yes, you do,' remarked Babs, beginning to chuckle. 'You want it awfully badly, most of the time.'

'You mind your own business, Barbara Berkeley, and I'll mind mine,' advised Angela, threateningly.

'But that's just what we haven't got to do,' retorted Babs, with another laugh. 'I've got to forget my own business and look after somebody else's, and so have you. The Canon said so.'

'The Canon never said anybody was to have enough cheek for two people, anyhow,' returned Angela, rather feebly. She generally ended in coming off the worse in a battle of words with Barbara. On this occasion, however, she had the junior playroom with her.

'You shouldn't joke about serious things, Barbara Berkeley,' said Mary Wells, disapprovingly.

'Barbara Berkeley thinks she can laugh at everything!' cried Angela, with renewed courage.

Miss Smythe came up at the same moment and put the crowning touch on Barbara's discomfiture by examining the luckless flannel petticoat and disclosing the fact that she had sewed it up all the way round.

'How do you expect a child is going to get into that?' asked the needlework mistress, holding up the misshapen garment to the derision of the whole room.

Barbara accepted the criticism and the laughter with equal unconcern. She had never supposed that any child was going to get into a petticoat that only existed for her express torture and the witticisms of Miss Smythe. It had been unpicked so often that it would scarcely hold the large, uneven stitches she repeatedly put into it; and she took up the scissors and began to undo it all over again as a necessary part of the evening's proceedings. Hardly, however, had she snipped at the first piece of cotton, than she was assailed on both sides by eager helpers, thirsting for the painful pleasures of self-sacrifice.

'Let me do it for you, Babe!' exclaimed Angela, quite forgetting their recent dispute on the very subject of the virtue she now was so anxious to exploit.

'No, let me,' begged Mary Wells on the other side.

Barbara looked from one to the other doubtfully. The Canon had said nothing about complications of this kind. Then Mary took the decision and the flannel petticoat simultaneously out of her hands.

'Do, there's a dear,' she said coaxingly. 'Think how I helped you with your German the day before yesterday.'

'It's a shame,' vowed Angela Wilkins, retiring sulkily. 'I did ask first!'

'Never mind,' said Babs, soothingly; 'I'm sure to do it again before long; I always do.'

Angela, however, found a more abiding consolation in Barbara's temporary idleness.

'You're not doing anything for anybody, that's certain!' she threw back at her jeeringly. 'Why, you're the only idle person in the room! Call that being unselfish, indeed!'

Barbara hastened to clear herself of the reproach by picking up Mary Wells's neatly made and spotless piece of white flannel. She was not sure what it was meant for, as it was not sewed together anywhere; and she had never been shown how to do the elaborate scallops that ornamented the edge of it. But a trifle like want of skill made very little difference to a seeker after self-sacrifice; and Babs recklessly plunged her needle into the beginning of the next scallop, and entangled the silk hopelessly. A cry from Mary Wells disturbed her well-meant efforts. The Canon, thought Mary, might say what he liked about people doing things for others, but was it quite fair when they did them all wrong?

'It's for my sister's baby,' she lamented, seizing her handiwork from the zealous Barbara; 'and if I don't finish it soon, the baby will be too big for head-flannels at all.'

'But--I wanted to do something for you,' protested Babs, in a disappointed tone.

'You've stickied the needle, and left a great black finger-mark on it,' wailed Mary Wells, making fresh discoveries, as she went on, of what Babs _had_ done for her.

Miss Smythe came up to know what the fuss was about; and she promptly added her word to the condemnation of Barbara Berkeley.

'What do you mean by touching anybody else's work, you naughty little girl?' she said sharply. 'You are more trouble than anybody else in the school, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.'

Barbara did not look at all ashamed of herself. She never did when people were cross with her. Mary Wells had the grace to come to her assistance.

'Please, Miss Smythe,' she said, swallowing her mortification at the ravages in the head-flannel, 'it was my fault as well. I took Barbara's work, to begin with.'

The needlework mistress stared from one to the other. 'What's come over the children?' she exclaimed. 'Why are you interfering with each other's work like this?'

Barbara assumed an exaggerated expression of meekness. 'Please, it was because we were both trying to sacrifice ourselves,' she announced.

It certainly sounded a ridiculous reason when it was put that way, but it completed the perplexity of Miss Smythe, and that was something.

'It seems to me,' she said severely, 'that you are strangely forgetting yourself, Barbara Berkeley. Commence what I gave you to do at once, and stand up until I tell you to sit down again.'

'Why, the Canon _said_ we were to forget ourselves,' began Babs, mischievously; and there is no doubt that a further penalty would have been added to her punishment had not Jean Murray made a sudden diversion by dropping her thimble. In spite of the want of success that had attended Barbara's attempt at good works, the influence of the Canon was still very strong among the occupants of the junior playroom; and five girls hastily flung aside their work, and bumped their heads together on the floor in their hurry to restore Jean her property. Jean took it with the grudging manner of one who would like to have been in the fortunate position of conferring rather than of accepting a service; and Miss Smythe in despair condemned five more culprits to a standing position.

As luck would have it, the Canon expressed a wish that evening to see what the young people were doing with themselves; and it happened that Miss Finlayson brought him through the curtain into the junior playroom just after the six ringleaders had been ordered to stand up.

'Very nice, very charming, to be sure!' murmured the old gentleman, whose benevolent face had gone a long way in carrying his address home to the hearts of his hearers. 'Such a beautiful and womanly sight, too! I suppose you are all working for the poor, eh, my dears? Very excellent indeed, I'm sure!'

His niece was busy talking with Miss Smythe, and did not correct his mistake; and the children were too shy to do more than look at one another and giggle faintly. The Canon went on, and bent over Mary Wells, who appealed to him at once by the serious expression of her face and her diligent application to the head-flannel.

'And for whom are you working so industriously, may I ask?' he inquired benignly.

'It's for my sister--I mean the baby,' stammered Mary, much flustered at being thus singled out. The Canon felt a little perplexed, not having supposed Mary Wells or her sister to belong to what he largely called 'the poor'; and he passed on hurriedly to where the six culprits stood first on one leg and then on the other, trying to stitch at their work with wavering and unsteadied fingers.

[Illustration: 'Dear me!' he said, slightly taken aback.]

'Dear me!' he said, slightly taken aback. 'Is it--is it quite usual--I mean, do you find it _convenient_ to perform your--your embroidery in that exceedingly arduous position?'

The six girls edged up to one another; and more giggles, very nervous ones this time, greeted the Canon's remark. He put on his eye-glasses, and began slowly to grasp the meaning of their uncomfortable position.

'Ah!' he said, with a knowing smile. 'So you have done something you shouldn't, eh, my dears? Shocking, shocking! Let us see what the cause of offence is, and perhaps we can get the punishment mitigated for you. How would that be, eh?'

He turned to look for Miss Smythe, and the six put their heads together for a hasty, whispered consultation.

'Let's tell him it's through his sermon,' urged Barbara, all agog with mischief. 'It would be such fun!'

'Certainly not!' decided Angela, solemnly. 'He must never know. Didn't he say it was splendid to suffer for righteousness's sake, and isn't this _real_ righteousness?'

She carried the remaining four with her; and by the time Finny and Miss Smythe joined the Canon in front of them, five out of the six faces glowed with the fervour of martyrdom. The sixth was glowing too, but hardly from such a lofty motive.

'Well,' said Miss Finlayson, gently, 'and what is the reason of this?'

Miss Smythe coughed and hesitated. She did not understand her pupils in the least, but she had a certain feeling of loyalty towards them, and she did not want to get them into trouble. Added to this, she really did not know the reason of it.

'They--they were a little tiresome, and I made them stand up,' she explained hurriedly. 'No doubt--only high spirits, and--and so on. I--I could not quite grasp what had been upsetting them this evening, and I always find standing up is--is an excellent remedy for--for high spirits, in short.'

It was the opinion of the junior playroom afterwards that 'Smithy' had got out of it very well; and she went up in its estimation henceforth. But her explanation failed to satisfy Miss Finlayson. There was something about the virtuousness on the offenders' faces that struck her as being overdone; and she turned to the one at the end of the row, whose countenance was a study in suppressed emotions, and tried to get at the truth of the matter.

'What was it, Barbara?' she asked in that tone of hers that would make any girl tell her anything. Not that Barbara, on this occasion, needed forcing.

'It was because of the sermon yesterday,' she said, bubbling over with enjoyment of the situation. 'And we were all trying to sacrifice ourselves, and it was so difficult, because nobody wanted anything done; and then Mary Wells sacrificed herself for me, so I tried to do the same for her, and I only spoiled the baby's head-flannel, and made Smithy--I mean Miss Smythe--wild. That was why I stood up. The other five stood up because they all tried to sacrifice themselves for Jean's thimble; and Miss Smythe hadn't heard the sermon, you see, and she only thought they were being naughty, so----'

'That will do,' said Miss Finlayson, and she turned her back hurriedly on the row of martyrs. The needlework mistress was almost in tears at what she considered a wilfully frivolous manner of referring to a sermon by a real canon. But the Canon just passed his hand across his mouth, and then gave up the attempt to look shocked.

'You are very good little girls to listen so attentively to people's sermons,' he said, smiling openly. 'And I think, if anybody ought to stand up, it should be by rights a certain old gentleman who preaches them. What do you say, Miss Smythe? If I promise to stand up for the rest of the evening, will you let these six young ladies sit down?'

##