CHAPTER XII

THE FURTHER PURSUIT OF GOOD WORKS

'All the same,' said Jean Murray afterwards, 'it doesn't mean that the Canon's sermon was wrong just because all of you were so stupid in the way you tried to make it work.'

She could not really resist such an enticing opportunity of showing her superiority; but her less fortunate school-fellows found it difficult to appreciate her point of view, and they resented it accordingly.

'It's only just by chance that it wasn't you as well,' Barbara hastened to point out.

'And you know you began by being jealous because _we_ were doing all the sacrificing,' added Angela.

The others, not being in the inner circle of Jean's friendship, did not venture on an open remonstrance; but one of them asked her bluntly what she considered the Canon did mean by his address.

Jean drew herself up complacently. 'Well, of course he meant much bigger things than just picking up people's thimbles and interfering with everybody all round,' she began rather contemptuously.

'He said _little_ things, all the same,' observed Mary Wells, doggedly.

'That,' said Jean, airily, 'was only his way of putting it--and because he was a canon,' she added, struck by a brilliant thought. 'When you are a canon, the things you consider little are the same as the things that ordinary people call big.'

'Bravo, Jean,' said Charlotte Bigley, sarcastically. 'Now, let us hear what the big things are.'

Jean was on her mettle, and she gave herself a moment's desperate reflection.

'Well, things like helping the poor, and taking food to people who are starving, and giving up your pocket-money to buy things for them, and not minding how dirty they are, nor how wicked and dishonest and--and tipsy,' she proclaimed.

The junior playroom was much impressed by this new view of the Canon's sermon.

'Isn't Jean clever?' demanded Angela, proudly, of her immediate neighbours. One of these happened to be Barbara, who fully agreed with her, but still appeared a little puzzled.

'It will be very difficult to do all that,' she observed. 'How can we do things for the poor, when we never see any poor?'

'You never know when the chance may come,' answered Jean, who was rarely at a loss. 'Besides, there's the holidays.'

'What!' said Mary, in a voice of dismay. 'Have we got to wait till the _holidays_ before we can be unselfish?'

'Well,' replied Jean, vaguely, 'you can't say that, for an opportunity may occur at any minute. What we've got to do is to be on the look-out for it.'

This unsatisfactory way of disposing of the Canon's address fell very flat after the recent excitement in the juniors' room concerning it; and most of Jean's listeners grumbled loudly as soon as she was out of hearing. But Babs and Angela unhesitatingly threw in their lot with Jean. They were not quite sure what she meant, but they never doubted her right to be their leader in this as in everything.

'We'll all keep on the look-out,' they said to one another; 'and the first who sees an opportunity of helping the poor must promise to share it with the other two.'

Saturday afternoon came round in another day or two, and on Saturday afternoon the girls could do pretty much as they liked, as soon as the hockey practice was over. It was one of those late wintry days in March which bring with them a promise of spring to come: there was a sharpness in the air, now that the sun was nearing the west, that proclaimed it still to be winter, while a faint earthiness of smell, a tumult of birds' voices in the hedge, and an intense blueness above, all told of the warmer season in store. The triumvirate, as Margaret Hulme had nicknamed Jean and her two inseparable companions, were much too fond of the open air to go indoors before they were obliged; so, while most of their school-fellows voted for the fire and a story-book, they wandered off down the nine-acre field, their arms linked affectionately together. Their conversation was very engrossing, for it turned on the gymnastic competition that was going to be held at the end of the term, for which the Canon had just offered a prize of six morocco-bound books, to be chosen by the successful competitor herself.

'That's where this hole is such a nice hole for a school,' said Jean. 'At the other school I went to, they never asked you what books you'd like; and they always gave you _poetry_.'

'Some poetry is all right. I think I like poetry when it's got a story in it, and the rhymes are not too far away from one another, and the lines jog along without your having to bother about them,' remarked Babs.

'Oh, that kind isn't bad,' admitted Jean. 'I didn't mean Macaulay and Longfellow and all the _real_ poets. But the stuff they gave you at my school was horribly dull, and it never had any sort of story in it, and the lines didn't seem to belong to one another at all; and there was generally a thing called a glossary at the end, which only showed that it wasn't fit for any one to read.'

'I know that kind of poetry; we have lots of it at home,' put in Angela. 'There's a chap called Browning who's rather like that. Have you ever read any Browning, you two?'

'No,' said Jean, flatly. 'Don't believe you have either. My father says Browning didn't understand himself, and I'm sure _you_ don't know more than Browning. So there!'

'Never mind about the poetry,' interposed Barbara. 'I want to hear about the gym prize. Who do you think is going to get it, Jean?'

'Well, Margaret is awfully good, of course, but we shall know better after the trial on Monday afternoon,' said Jean, cautiously.

'What trial?' asked Barbara.

'Why,' exclaimed Jean, in surprise, 'didn't you hear Finny give out that we were all to do the show exercises before her on Monday afternoon, so that she could decide who was to go in for the prize?'

'Of course she didn't hear; the Babe's always asleep!' said Angela, with scorn. 'I watched her all the time Finny was speaking, and she was smiling away to herself as if some one was having a conversation with her.'

'Never mind, she's getting better,' said Jean, approvingly. 'She doesn't gape half so much as she did, and she doesn't jump when you go up and speak to her suddenly. By the way, you've got as good a chance as any one, Babe, of getting the gym prize.'

Barbara, who had taken their frank criticisms of her without a murmur, could not allow this last assertion to pass. She pulled up suddenly in the middle of the field, and looked first at one and then at the other of her two companions. 'What do you mean?' she gasped.

[Illustration: 'Hullo! said Jean. What's the matter?']

'Oh, you're putting it on; don't be affected,' scoffed Angela.

'No, she isn't putting it on; she never does,' objected Jean. 'Look at home, Angela, before you talk about affectation.'

'All the same,' continued Angela, undisturbed, 'you must know you're perfectly splendid at gym, Babs. Now, don't you?'

'I'd quite forgotten,' confessed Barbara, as they resumed their stroll. 'I'm so bad at most things that I'd got out of the way of thinking I could do gymnastics. But, of course, the boys always said I wasn't bad, for a girl; and once I got the prize at my class in London. There were only thirty of us, though,' she added modestly.

They strolled on as far as the gate at the bottom of the field, and stood looking over it into the lane below. The lane was out of bounds, which lent it an added charm; and they liked nothing better than to come here on half-holidays and lean against the gate, and wonder where the grass-grown path led to and what it looked like when it got round the corner by the old elm tree. To-day, they had scarcely taken up their position there when they were startled by sounds of distress from below; and the next minute a small boy came slouching along the lane, crying bitterly.

'Hullo!' said Jean. 'What's the matter?'

The boy was so surprised that he stopped crying and looked up. He was a very pitiable little object, in corduroy garments that could not properly be called knickerbockers and yet were too short for trousers, with a small area of grey flannel shirt appearing above them, and a red worsted comforter twisted round his neck, making an unbecoming patch of colour against his pinched and tear-stained little face.

'What is the matter?' asked Angela, pityingly.

'Have you hurt yourself?' added Barbara, as the child only stared at them vacantly.

With a little more coaxing and the bribe of a piece of dusty chocolate that came from the depths of Barbara's pocket, he was at last induced to mumble out a confused statement of his woes. Between the quaver in his voice and the broadness of his speech they had a hard matter to understand what he said; but Angela, who lived in another part of the same county, managed after a while to translate to the others that he was crying because his father was away looking for work, and his mother could not pay the rent, and they were all going into the 'house' to-morrow. To Bobby Hearne, who was smarting under the remarks of the neighbours' children, it was the last part of his story that seemed the worst; but the triumvirate only grasped the fact that starvation and poverty really stood before them in the person of the small boy with the red comforter round his neck. They looked at one another breathlessly, for the same thought was in all their minds.

'It's the opportunity!' said Jean, solemnly.

'They're really starving!' cried Barbara, clapping her hands joyfully. 'We must go and feed them----'

'And give them clothes,' added Angela, enthusiastically; 'and pocket-money!'

Babs pulled a purse out of her pocket. 'Here's three and sevenpence halfpenny, and I've got ten shillings more in my left-hand corner drawer,' she said earnestly. 'Will that be enough, do you think?'

Jean had been thinking deeply. 'It's no use giving anything to that scrap of a child,' she decided. 'We must go and see his mother first, and find out if his story is true. My father says that indis-indiscrim-in-_ate_ charity does an awful lot of harm. We don't want to do indiscrimin-_ate_ charity, do we? Come along, you two, and look sharp!'

They clambered over the gate and dropped into the lane, one by one. Barbara was the last, and she almost forgot the solemn reason for their expedition in the thrilling thought that they were going to find out at last where the lane went to. She was quite unprepared for the disappointment she felt when they turned the corner by the old elm tree and the forbidden world beyond burst upon their view. After all, the lane was just the same round the corner, except that it was not quite so interesting, for it grew less grassy as it went on, and finally widened out into a kind of cart-track that was anything but romantic. An enchanted princess might flee with a prince down a grass-grown lane that wound away to nowhere in particular but she would never dream of stumbling over sharp flint stones and splashing through puddles in a common cart-track. The other two did not seem to notice that there was anything wrong with the lane, though; they just kept on straight ahead, with Bobby Hearne shuffling along between them, and Barbara had to run a little to catch them up.

'Is it far?' she asked.

'Oop agin the top end o' the village,' explained Bobby, who was fast losing his shyness under the influence of these wonderful young ladies, who carried such funny sticks in their hands, and talked in such a magnificent way about pocket-money.

'That's close to the church, on the way up from the station,' said Jean. 'Is yours the cottage with the red roof, Bobby, or the one with roses all over it?'

Bobby looked vacant again; he did not recognise his home from Jean's picturesque description. 'There be foive pig-styes along of it,' he announced, after long and careful reflection.

The cart-track brought them to a ploughed field, across which they plodded laboriously, and in the end it landed them in the road that ran right through the village. They met a good many inquisitive glances as they hastened along, for the young ladies of Wootton Beeches very rarely left their own grounds, and certainly never appeared in the village except on their way to and from the station. They found their courage slowly evaporating in the face of the curiosity they provoked, and there was very little of it left by the time they arrived at the cottage with the five pig-styes. Talking about good works in the junior playroom was a very different matter, they found, from carrying them out in a strange cottage, where numbers of strange children came out from dark corners and gaped at them without saying a word of welcome. Babs and Angela pushed forward their leader, and peered over her shoulder as she stood hesitating on the threshold.

'Hello, mother!' shouted Bobby, hustling his brothers and sisters out of the way and penetrating into the gloomy recesses of the cottage. 'Here be three yoong ladies come to see ye.'

A harassed-looking woman came in from the back-yard, and started when she saw the three faces in the doorway. 'It be proper good of ye, for sure,' she said, casting nervous glances from her unexpected visitors to a bed that was made up on the floor, near the empty grate; 'but my girl Lilian Eliza, she be ill, she be, and ye'd best not come in, I reckon.'

She did not know the power of the Canon's address. At the sound of her voice, the triumvirate, neither understanding nor heeding her warning, stepped firmly into the room.

'I'm so sorry your daughter is ill,' began Barbara, fumbling hastily in her pocket. 'Would three and sevenpence halfpenny be any good, do you think? And I've got ten shillings more in my----'

Jean nudged her violently, but the woman's eyes had glistened at the mention of money, and Babs emptied her purse impetuously on the table.

'Bless ye, missy, for sure!' said the woman, gratefully. 'Lilian Eliza, she be goin' to the infirmary to-morrow, she be, and I can git her Neighbour Bunce's spring-cart wi' that, I can.'

Her evident gratitude reproached Jean, and she forgot all about the dangers of indiscriminate charity. She took the other two by the hand and pulled them away to the door.

'We'll come back again directly, Mrs. Hearne,' she called out. Then the triumvirate broke into a run, and vanished along the road before the eyes of the bewildered woman.

'What are we going to do?' asked Angela, panting, when they once more climbed the gate at the bottom of the nine-acre field.

'We're going straight to the larder, straight as we can go; and then, we're just going to bag all the food we can carry,' answered Jean, in an odd, determined sort of tone. 'Did you see the look on that woman's face when you gave her the money, Babe? I believe--I believe they've all had nothing to eat for _weeks_! It's--it's horrible to think of!'

There was a sob in her voice, and the other two were silent from sympathy and a kind of awkwardness. They had never heard Jean talk like this before, and it finished the work begun by the Canon's address. There was not the thought of a scruple in either of their minds when they arrived at the back of the house, and Jean bade them climb up by the water-butt and get into the larder through the open window.

'There's sure to be a hook you can undo so as to move the wire netting aside,' she told them. 'If we went round to the door, some one might make a fuss; and there's no time for fusses.'

'Jean knows everything,' murmured Angela, as she found the hook and squeezed successfully through the window.

'What shall we take?' whispered Babs, slipping after her into the dimly lighted larder. 'I think they'd like jam tart and plum-pudding, don't you?'

She shifted the two delicacies dearest to her heart on to one dish, and handed it up to Jean, who stood poised uncertainly on the edge of the water-butt.

'The jelly and the cranberry pie look rather nice,' said Angela, her own mouth watering for them, as she passed them out to Jean.

'Can't you find something substantial?' urged Jean, when she had deposited the second load on the ground beside the water-butt.

The two children in the larder looked round at the well-stocked shelves. There was cold beef, to be sure, and a large tureen of mutton broth; but these did not strike them as being at all the sort of present that any one would like to have.

'Apple dumplings,' settled Angela, swiftly, as her eye fell on a large dish full of them; and they handed the apple dumplings after the other things, and then followed them by way of the water-butt to the impatient Jean, who had already loaded herself with the jelly and the cranberry pie.

'Come along!' said Jean. 'If we're not quick, we shall be late for tea. Besides, we must get back to see Finny, and explain to her what we've done. She might be cross if she found it out for herself.'

'Are you sure she won't be cross anyhow?' asked Barbara, as she staggered along in her wake, carrying the dish that contained the plum-pudding and the jam tart.

'Not if we explain exactly why we did it,' said Angela, gasping for breath just behind her companions. She found the apple dumplings decidedly weighty.

'Nobody,' said Jean, emphatically, 'could mind anything we chose to do in a cause like this. Besides, there wasn't time to ask leave first, was there? When people haven't had anything to eat for weeks, you can't keep them waiting for food while you ask _leave_, can you?'

The shortest cut to the nine-acre field was across the lawn at the side of the house, and then through the little gate in the shrubbery. It was much less secluded than the longer way by which they had come, but detection had to be risked, now that the time was so short. And even if they were caught, as Jean pointed out in a whisper, it would be worth while to suffer in such a noble cause; and as for the Hearnes, Finny would be sure to send them on the things as soon as she heard how many weeks they had been without food.

'But how can we suffer, if Finny isn't going to be cross about it?' argued Barbara, becoming heated in the effort to keep the plum-pudding from rolling into the jam tart and sticking to it. 'You said----'

Her sentence was never finished, for just as they left the shadow of the house and were going to strike across the lawn, they heard the click of the little gate opposite, and two figures emerged suddenly from the shrubbery. There was still light enough to disclose that they were the Canon and Barbara's disenchanted beast, the Doctor.

Even then, the triumvirate might have escaped detection by slipping round to the back of the house again before they were seen; and Jean had the presence of mind to sound a retreat in an agonised whisper, and turned sharply round herself. But Barbara's effort to follow her example was too much for the uncertain balance of the plum-pudding. It chose that very moment to tumble into the jam tart, and the two slid together from the dish and rolled to the feet of the astonished Canon.

'Upon my word,' exclaimed the old gentleman, starting violently, 'Elizabeth's establishment is full of surprises!'

The triumvirate kept very close together at the edge of the grass lawn, and waited for the two gentlemen to approach. Very little of their enthusiasm remained to keep up their spirits, for the erratic behaviour of the plum-pudding made even the pursuit of good works seem foolish and unnecessary.

'What are you children doing here?' asked the Canon, and his voice distinctly took a note of disapproval. He did not know very much about girls, though his niece assured him they were not unlike little boys; but he was quite sure that it was not the right thing for plum-puddings to be rolling across the lawn at that time of day, and disapproval seemed to be demanded by the circumstance.

The effect on the three children of his mild attempt at severity was immediate. Babs was struck dumb by it; anything so dreadful as the anger of a Canon had never occurred to her as a possible result of feeding the poor, and she had to think it all over before she could say anything. Angela put down the apple dumplings, the weight of which had become intolerable, and began to cry softly. Jean pulled herself together with a frantic effort, and clutched the dish she was holding so fiercely that the jelly on the summit of the cranberry pie shivered and shook.

'It was my fault,' she blurted out, looking steadfastly over the edge of the dish at the well-blacked boots of the Canon. 'I made them go out of bounds, and visit the poor, and--and climb into the larder window to fetch things for the woman who looked so hungry. They wouldn't have gone, if it hadn't been for me. I made them--it was my fault.'

'No, it wasn't; it was all our faults,' wept Angela, in a confused mumble.

Babs stepped forward and tried hard not to break down and cry too. 'Please don't rag Jean for it,' she begged. 'The boy was crying, and we all thought it was the opportunity come at last----'

'What opportunity?' asked the Canon, looking extremely puzzled.

'To--to do what you said in your sermon,--good works, and feeding the poor, and all that,' faltered Barbara. Somehow, when she expressed it that way, it seemed like putting the blame on the Canon, and she was sure it could not be right for a little girl to blame a Canon. Added to this, she was possessed with the dread that they had only made themselves look ridiculous after all; and she expected that they would all three be very heartily laughed at, as soon as the old gentleman began to understand their story. She was determined in her own mind that if the Doctor should join in the laugh against them, a certain fairy prince should be turned once more into a beast and banished for ever from her kingdom. She was bound to admit, however, that the Doctor, so far, had not shown the least interest in them or their story.

'But--but I quite fail to understand,' said the Canon, rather testily. 'Who was the boy you speak of, and what had you to do with him?'

'It was Bobby Hearne,' answered Jean, still staring down at his boots; 'and if you only knew how hungry they all looked when we got to the cottage----'

She was interrupted by the Doctor, who suddenly behaved in the most extraordinary manner. For the first time he appeared to be listening to what they were saying, and he sprang right in front of the Canon and grasped Jean by the shoulder.

'Do you mean to say you have been into the Hearnes' cottage?' he cried, shaking her in his impatience until the jelly and the cranberry pie ran some danger of following the example of the plum-pudding. 'Were you stupid enough to go right inside?'

'Yes!' answered the triumvirate, with one voice.

The Doctor took his hand away, and turned with a shrug of his shoulders to the Canon.

'The Hearne girl is down with scarlet fever,' he said in a suppressed tone.

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