CHAPTER I

A NEW HOME

THREE little girls were looking out of the window on a very wet afternoon in March. They were so close together in age and height that sometimes two of them were taken for twins, yet there was a year between each of them. And they were unlike each other in looks.

Charity, the eldest, had a quantity of red auburn hair down her back. She was very lively and talkative, and her eyes were always sparkling with fun and happiness.

Hope, next to her in age, had fair golden hair and blue eyes; she was sweet tempered and rather apt to be an echo of anyone with whom she was.

Faith, the youngest, was a quiet child, with short, dark, curly hair, and thoughtful brown eyes. She had a very sweet little face, but looked fragile and delicate beside her rosy, sturdy sisters.

It was not a very cheerful scene outside the window. One of those quiet, dingy streets towards the outskirts of London, where rows of houses faced each other, all exactly alike, and where the only traffic was the tradesmen's carts rattling along, and an occasional cab or motor. But the little girls were talking fast and happily. The rain beating against the window panes did not depress them. The dark grey sky, the wet pavements, the wind whirling the smoke along the street from the chimneys opposite, the people hurrying by under sodden umbrellas, all interested the six bright eyes.

And at last three voices shouted happily:

"Here she comes, Granny! Here's Aunt Alice!"

They left their post at the window and rushed to the door. Mrs. Blair, their grandmother, who was sitting in an easy chair by the fire, knitting small stockings, sprang up as if she were twenty instead of nearly seventy. She took a small kettle off the hob, and poured the hot water into a teapot.

Tea was laid on a round table in the middle of the room. There was only a loaf of bread and a pot of treacle, but everything was very bright and clean; and the little room looked quite cheerful in contrast to the grey, dingy street outside. There was a canary hanging up in the window, and a handsome black cat sat washing its face on the hearthrug. Bright pictures were on the walls, and in the centre of the table was a big bunch of yellow daffodils.

Now the door opened, and Aunt Alice appeared, with a bright, rosy face; and her three small nieces were instantly hanging round her.

"Oh, Granny, she's got some primroses!"

"She's picked them herself!"

"And there's a parcel—very special for you!"

"Now let me speak, chicks! And first I must shed my wet shoes. Charity, run and get me my slippers from upstairs. Yes, Faith, you can take these out into the kitchen, and ask Mrs. Cox to dry them for me."

Aunt Alice bent down and kissed Granny.

"You do look cosy here. I shall be thankful to have a cup of tea!"

In a few minutes all were gathered round the table, and then Granny opened her parcel, which contained a pound of golden butter.

"There!" said Aunt Alice. "What do you think of that? Old Mrs. Horn sold it to me. They are not rationed in butter down there. And, Mother, dear, I have had a very successful day, and the cottage is sweet. I have seen Sir George, and he will let it for ten pounds a year. Think of it, with no rates or taxes, and a garden big enough to grow our own vegetables, and an orchard with six good apple trees in it!"

"And what about the water?"

"Quite a good well close to the house, and these primroses are out of the orchard, and Mrs. Horn who lives only a field away will supply us with milk."

"What is the cottage like?"

"There is a big kitchen and dairy; the kitchen larger than this; a tiny best parlour, which I don't think we will use at all, and four good bedrooms, and cupboards in every room built into thick walls."

Granny's eyes sparkled as brightly as the children's. "And when can we have it?"

"Sir George said he would have it papered and painted throughout. It is in good repair. His coachman lived there for ten years before he went to the war, and his wife was a 'clean body,' so Mrs. Horn informed me. Poor thing, she died a month after she had left it. She had a weak heart, and she heard of her husband's death suddenly, and it just killed her."

"Did you see Lady Melville?"

"Just for a moment. Sir George sent his love to you. He said it would be like old times to see you again."

There was silence. The little girls were busy eating their bread and treacle, but their ears were taking everything in.

"And is the cottage lonely?" asked Granny.

"No, I don't think so. It lies just off a road. There's not much passing, but, Mother dear, you will revel in the peace and quiet after this!"

Aunt Alice waved her hand out of the window. She was smiling brightly. Granny looked at her rather wistfully. "And you have quite made up your mind to give up your war work and come with us? You don't think I could manage with the children?"

"I am sure you could not, Mother. There will be wood to be sawn, and the garden to be tilled. Sir George has given us leave to gather all the wood we want from his woods, but we can get no man or boy to help us. Mrs. Horn told me that. She is running her small farm without any man at all, her two daughters do everything. The children must make themselves useful."

"And what about their lessons?"

Aunt Alice looked grave.

"I don't know. If we can't find any one to teach them, I suppose I must try myself. There is the village school a mile off."

"No, Alice, I shall not let them sink to that."

Aunt Alice laughed and shrugged her shoulders

"Oh, Mother dear, we won't bring them up with empty brains as well as empty purses! They will have to earn their own living, so they must have a good education."

"Well, we will talk about that later."

"And we'll all have a slice of bread and butter now," said Aunt Alice briskly. Then she turned to the children, and began to tell them of all that she had seen and heard since she had left them two days ago.

And when tea was over, Charity slipped out to the kitchen. She was longing to impress Mrs. Cox with the wonderful new life in front of them.

Mrs. Cox was a thin, gaunt woman who came every day from eight o'clock to six in the afternoon. She cleaned, she cooked, she washed and ironed, and was the children's devoted friend. They were never tired of listening to her stories, but Mrs. Cox always enjoyed very dismal subjects. Funerals and illnesses were her chief topics; and her friends seemed to the children to have had the most marvellous diseases, and the most miraculous cures that they had ever heard.

"Oh, Mrs. Cox," cried Charity, dancing up to her, as she sat at the kitchen table enjoying her cup of tea, "we're going to the country to a house all our own, and no lodgers in the top floors of it, a house with a well, and primroses, and apple trees, and we shall have butter—real butter—every day, and a forest with big trees, and we shall pick up wood in it and light our fires. And Aunt Alice will be home all day!"

Mrs. Cox stared at her.

"Ah, well, yer h'aunt did say to me times was hard, and you couldn't h'afford to go on livin' here, that and the h'air raids—but never did I think you'd all sink down to the country! 'Tis only where folks live in their dotage, or sick children be sent for their 'olidays; nobody with brains or money be content with such a hom'! Why, me sister Ivy went down to a place there, an' were that skeered she's never prop'ly recovered since. She left before the end o' her month; she said when you looked out of the windys, there were nothin' but trees tapping their branches on the windy panes, and earwigs a crawlin' inter the beds, if you please, and you walks miles and never meets a single human soul, an' the nights black pitch, so's the evenings out were a crool joke! Not to speak of mud comin' up your legs over your boots—!"

"Go on—how perfectly lovely!" cried Charity with glowing eyes.

But Mrs. Cox shook her head gloomily, and refused to say another word.

"Granny lived in the country when she was little, and our Dad was born in the country, and when Grand-dad was alive, he kept a school in the country for little boys, and Granny used to love them, and they loved her. And George Melville had curly hair, and Granny used to keep a bag of chocolates in her room for him, and now he's grown-up, and has a big house, and he's going to let Granny and us live in one of his small houses. We're going to be awfully happy in the country, Aunt Alice says everything is nice there."

Mrs. Cox gave an unbelieving sniff.

"Once I went on a Mothers' treat. It rained twelve hours on end—and I sat on a damp log o' wood, and was ill in bed of rheumaticks for a month h'after! Give me a proper Lunnon park for beauty. Why, the park flowers beat the country ones holler!"

Charity left her. Mrs. Cox would not understand the joy of looking forward to a move into an unknown country.

Two hours later, the three little girls were in bed in one room upstairs. Aunt Alice and Granny always slept together.

They were talking hard over the prospect in front of them.

"I s'pose," said Hope with knitted brow, "that we're very, very poor. It's only since Granny and Aunt Alice were doing up sums together in their account books that they said they couldn't stay here any longer."

"No," said Charity; "it was when Faith was so ill the other day. The doctor said Granny must take her to the country, and Granny shook her head. And I heard her say to Aunt Alice after:

"'I should like to have something worth selling, my dear, but I've no more jewels, and all our silver is gone, and the bits of furniture left us are worth nothing.'

"Poor Granny! She wiped her spectacles when she said it, and she always does that when she's unhappy."

"And we do wear out our shoes, and eat a lot," said little Faith with fervour. "If we live in a cottage, p'raps it won't cost so much."

"And perhaps we shall be allowed to run about without shoes and stockings," said Hope; "that would be lovely, like we did at the sea, when Aunt Alice took us to Margate."

"I know one thing," said Charity, rolling round in bed in ecstasy; "I mean to get lost in the wood as soon as ever I can."

"And I shall climb the apple trees," said Hope.

"And I shall sit on the well," said Faith, "and draw water up and down in a bucket all day long!"

"And as for Mrs. Cox," said Charity, "she's only talking of the country she's seen—not of our cottage, which is perfectly beautiful. Aunt Alice says so!"

Then sleep overtook them, and when Granny came up to bed, she paid them her usual nightly visit.

"Poor little souls!" she said. "Life will not be so difficult for us in the country; we may be able to give them more pleasures."

The following days were full of bustle and excitement to the children. They had been going to a small private day school a few streets away, but now they were taken away from it, and Charity expressed a hope that they would never go to another school as long as they lived.

"It's our names," she confided to her aunt; "why did our father and mother give us such names? The girls all laugh at us, 'specially me! 'Charity' means everything nasty. If you live on people's charity, it means you're a nobody, and Charity schools are for the very lowest. I hate my name! I'm glad we're going to the country. Mrs. Cox says we shall have nobody there to notice what we're called."

"I like your names," said Aunt Alice laughing. "Don't be a little goose. Your Mother was a saint, and she got your names from the Bible, and so far from 'Charity' being a name to be despised, it is the greatest of all other names. We are told so, you read the chapter about Charity and see all you ought to do if you're worthy of your name."

"Oh, I know! Granny read it to me once. It is in Corinthians, but I couldn't be like that chapter, no, never!"

She shook her red hair vehemently and danced away. Charity was always jumping or running or dancing; she hated keeping her legs still, and school was a real trial to her.

Granny and Aunt Alice packed day after day. Mrs. Cox asked how they were going to manage in the country if they had no one to clean for them, and Hope asked her aunt anxiously about it, but she was laughed at.

"I am going to stay at home, and do all Mrs. Cox's work. I must, that is why I am leaving my work at the War Depôt. Don't you think I am able to keep a cottage clean, Hope? You will all have to help. Granny is not so young as she used to be, and we must spare her all heavy work."

"I love scrubbing," said Hope happily. "I hope you'll let me do that. Are we as poor as Mrs. Cox is?"

"Poorer, I think," said Aunt Alice cheerfully.

Nothing seemed to depress her, and Granny was just as cheerful, so Hope said to Mrs. Cox, "It will be all right, Mrs. Cox. Aunt Alice says it will. We are going to do everything ourselves. We've got very poor, I don't know how, but Granny always says a beggar is happier than a king! And we shall love it all, I know we shall."

The day came when a cab drew up to the door, and the little girls with their arms full of parcels and baskets followed Granny out of the house in which they had spent most of their lives, and rolled away to the big, bustling station. The journey in the train was a delight to them, and when early in the afternoon they arrived at a quiet little station called Deepcombe, and were told by their aunt that they must get out, they looked round them with shining eyes noting every detail around them.

There was a shabby little cart waiting for them outside the station, and it was a tight fit to pack themselves and their luggage into it. A girl drove it, and she and Aunt Alice walked up all the hills. It seemed as if the road was never going to end, but the children had plenty to see as they went along. Lambs in the meadows; primroses on the banks, and pretty thatched cottages and farmhouses standing back from the road.

Charity was loud in admiration and wonder, Hope asked questions about everything. Little Faith was the silent one, she looked up into the blue sky and across the green fields with a dreamy smile upon her small white face.

Granny bent down to her once: "Are you tired, darling?"

Faith's back ached, but she never acknowledged it. She only smiled up at her grandmother. "It's like heaven, I should think!" was all she said.

Granny put her arm round her. Faith was very delicate, and she was continually in her grandmother's thoughts. Granny often said to Aunt Alice that Faith lived at Heaven's gates, and she was afraid that any day she might slip inside them.

At last they reached the Cottage. It had a white gate which had been freshly painted, and the door stood open; and kind Mrs. Horn had lighted a fire, and put a kettle on to boil and was standing outside the door, ready to welcome them.

The little girls tumbled over each other in their excitement to get inside. It seemed at first like a doll's house to them; the stairs were steep and narrow, and the rooms low, and the windows very small, but they loved the quaint cupboards; and then they ran out into the garden and orchard, and visited the well and picked some primroses, and whilst Granny and Aunt Alice were seeing to the luggage being carried in, their tongues wagged fast.

"It's all beautiful," said Charity, "just like the cottages in story books; and I hope we'll never go back to London again in our lives!"

"And we can pick flowers wherever we see them," said Faith, "without paying for them or having the keepers coming up to see what we're doing."

"Where is the wood?" asked Hope.

Charity began to climb one of the apple trees.

"I think I see some trees over there," she said, pointing to the corner of a field a short distance off. They were going to set off immediately in search of it, when they heard their aunt call them in.

"You mustn't run away," she said; "we're all going to have some tea, and then you must help me get your beds made up. There will be lots to do before we go to bed to-night."

"Is this our furniture?" asked Charity, looking round the room, which had only an empty glass-paned cupboard, a square table, a dresser, and six wooden chairs.

"Yes, we've taken over the furniture left here, but we'll make this kitchen quite pretty with nice curtains, and some cushions and some of Granny's pretty things."

So they gathered round the table for their evening meal, and then till bed-time Aunt Alice kept them all busy.

When they at last went up to the sloping-roofed bedroom where they were to sleep, the little girls were too tired to talk any more.

It was Charity who said just before she dropped asleep:

"To-morrow—we'll find the wood, and then our adventures will begin."