CHAPTER VIII

CHARITY PLAYS TRUANT

THE very next day the three little girls met Lionel and Fairfax Melville at the village shop.

Charity was shopping for her aunt, and she was doing it with her most important air. Hope and Faith were outside the door looking in at the window, and wondering if it would be very wicked in war-time to buy two pennyworth of sweets. Suddenly two cyclists dashed up and dismounted. They were boys of fourteen and fifteen, and had come to the shop to buy some machine oil. They did not notice Faith and Hope, but stared at Charity, and then the elder, Lionel, who had a very frank, easy way with him, said:

"I believe you're Carrots, aren't you? The Pater calls you that."

"Yes," said Charity beaming, "and you're Lionel and Fairfax. We've seen your pictures."

She had finished her shopping, and did not like to linger, but as she was going out she said:

"If we were boys, we could chum up together, but we're girls."

"Yes," said Lionel, with an awkward laugh; "I suppose you don't fish? Girls never do."

"We could learn," said Charity. "Good-bye!"

Then she walked out of the shop; and wished harder than ever that she was a boy.

"They're too big for us," said Hope dejectedly. "Charlie is more our sort. I wish he would make haste and get well."

They did not see the boys again for some days, and then Charity met with a nasty accident, and Fairfax came to her aid. She was trying to get some marshmallows that grew by the side of the river, and in stretching out for them, she fell in. Happily a tree stretched over the water, and she managed to get hold of a branch, and cling on to it, whilst she called wildly for help. Fairfax and Lionel were fishing a short distance off, and Fairfax came up and soon pulled her up to the bank again.

"What a little duffer to fall in!" he said.

Charity stood and shivered in her wet clothes, but resented his tone.

"Anybody may have an accident," she said loftily.

"Run home and change your clothes," said Fairfax.

Charity walked away trying to appear dignified, but she was very near tears.

"I'll race you," said Fairfax. "Girls ought to be able to run."

Charity prided herself upon her swiftness. Dignity was forgotten. She sped away, and Fairfax could not outdistance her.

"I say, you can leg it!" he said.

When Charity arrived at the Cottage she stopped, and turned to him quite graciously, though she could hardly speak from breathlessness.

"Thank you for pilling me out," she said. "You're the one that likes books, aren't you?" Fairfax nodded.

"And you're the one who has been reading some of my books in the library," he said, "and my Greek legend book is missing."

"Sir George said I could borrow it. Do you mind?"

He laughed.

"Of course I don't, if you take care of it. We're going to take our lunch out to-morrow, we're walking out to the keeper's cottage the other side of our coverts. It's at the top of Hobbs Hill, it's A1 there. Like to come? Can you do three miles there and three back?"

"Oh, I could easy! Oh, how I should like to come, but we do lessons! And we aren't having holidays like you."

Charity's face fell.

"Take a day off! Play truant! Here's somebody! I'm off!"

He scampered back as Aunt Alice came to the gate. She was so concerned at Charity's wet state that she could not listen to her account of her misfortune. She popped her in bed and gave her a hot drink, and then Hope and Faith came upstairs to hear all about it.

Charity did not like staying in bed and protested loudly; then Aunt Alice scolded her, and said she deserved a punishment for being so careless, and Charity pursed up her mouth in a naughty way, and said:

"Then I shall do it to-morrow."

Hope asked her what she should do, but she would not say.

The next morning they settled down to lessons as usual. From nine to ten they worked steadily, and then Miss Vale took Hope to her music lesson. There was a small piano in the corner of the room. Charity and Faith were working at their arithmetic whilst the music was going on.

Presently Charity slipped out of the room. Nobody noticed her absence or thought it strange till Faith happened to hear the click of the garden gate, and looking out, saw Charity in her coat and hat running away from the cottage as fast as she could. She stared out as if she could not believe her eyes. What was Charity doing? Then she tried to bring her attention back to her sum, but it was quite impossible.

When Miss Vale left the piano and came back, she scolded her sharply for her idleness.

"You have only done one tiny sum this whole half-hour! For shame, Faith!"

Faith hung her head.

"I couldn't seem to think it out," she said.

"Where is Charity? I did not hear her leave the room."

Faith made no reply. After waiting a little, Miss Vale went to the door and called. There was no answer. Aunt Alice came out of the kitchen, and said she had not seen her. Hope was sent upstairs to look for her, and came back to say she was nowhere in the house. Faith's cheeks were burning, and there was such a troubled look in her eyes that Miss Vale noticed it.

"You know where she is, Faith. Tell me."

Faith wriggled in her seat. It was a point of honour with the sisters never to tell tales of each other.

"I don't know where she is now, Miss Vale, I really don't," Faith murmured at last.

"Tell me what you know about her."

Faith shook her head.

"She couldn't tell tales, Miss Vale," said Hope, "'specially if Charity's doing something she oughtn't. It's quite exciting! I do wonder where she is?"

"I'm afraid, Faith, you must tell me what you know," said Miss Vale.

And then Faith began to cry.

"I don't know anything," she sobbed; "I only saw her from the window going out at the gate."

She felt she had betrayed her sister most meanly, but Miss Vale had such a determined way with her, that she was compelled to tell the truth.

It all seemed strange and perplexing.

Then Miss Vale said lessons must continue, and for the rest of the morning she had two pupils with very wandering thoughts and divided attention.

When lessons hours were over, Charity was still absent. Miss Vale went home, and the children had their dinner. Granny was anxious, and Aunt Alice cross.

"I can't conceive how she dared behave so," Aunt Alice said. "She has never before gone off like this."

Then Hope suddenly guessed.

"I believe Fairfax Melville asked her to go out with him to-day," she said. "He pulled her out of the water, you know. Charity told him she couldn't go because of lessons. I shouldn't wonder if she has done it."

"It she has, she will have to be severely punished," said Aunt Alice.

But she and Granny seemed relieved by this possibility.

Faith and Hope played with their dolls in the orchard in the afternoon, but they talked a great deal about Charity.

"Isn't she daring?" said Hope. "I wish children could do those kind of things without getting punished. It's the afterwards that's so dreadful!"

But she spoke in admiring tones, and could not understand why Faith was so distressed about it.

"She has only played truant like children do in books, only it's easier to manage if you go to school."

"But think, when she walks in and has to meet Granny and Aunt Alice," said Faith. "Why, I should be ready to die, if I had to do it."

"Oh, Charity isn't so soft as you. Perhaps she'll get Sir George to bring her back, and then Granny won't be so angry."

"Granny is only sorry, not angry," said Faith; "but Aunt Alice is very angry indeed. She said to Granny that she deserved a whipping."

Hope and Faith looked at each other with awed eyes. The afternoon seemed long to them. Tea-time came and passed, still no Charity. At last, at half-past seven, just as Faith was being sent to bed, the truant arrived. She walked up to the door with firm step and head lifted high, but there was a nervous look in her eyes, and she was pale and was biting her lips, a trick which was her custom when perturbed.

Aunt Alice met her in the passage.

"Well, Charity, what is the meaning of this?"

"I only missed two hours' lessons," said Charity, trying to speak grandly; "and I thought I'd make them up to-morrow. I knew it was no good asking, but I've been spending the day out with Lionel and Fairfax, and—" here she paused, then rushed the words breathlessly and defiantly—"I've had a glorious time!"

This was no repentant sinner.

Aunt Alice marched her upstairs to her own bedroom, and she was closeted there with her a good half-hour.

Faith and Hope were both in bed when Charity came into the room. She had been crying. Her sisters felt sorry for her, but intensely curious. They had hardly ever seen her cry, and they felt that they would not shame her by showing her that they saw it, so they pretended to be asleep and covered their heads over with the bedclothes, leaving a little hole to peep out of, and watch her secretly.

Charity soon discovered this. She faced them boldly.

"You needn't peep at me like that! I'm not going to speak to you or tell you anything at all, so you can just go to sleep."

Then Hope threw back the bedclothes.

"We're so sorry for you, Charity."

"I hate your sorriness!"

Charity's tone was furious, and Hope dared say no more. Very soon she and Faith were fast asleep, but Charity lay awake, and sobbed her heart out. Some time later, the door of the children's room opened very softly. It was Granny. She came to Charity's bed, shielding her lighted candle with her hand, so that the rays should not disturb the sleeping children.

Charity lay very still and quiet, with closed eyes, feigning sleep, but Granny saw the swollen, reddened eyelids.

"Poor little soul!" she murmured, and then she knelt down by the bedside and bowed her head in prayer. Her whispered words were heard distinctly by Charity.

"Oh, Loving Father, pity and forgive, and save this dear child from the evils of self-will and waywardness. May her strong character be for good and not for evil, and teach us how to train her for her Saviour's sake. Amen."

Then there was a convulsive movement in the small bed, and Charity's arms were round Granny's neck.

"I'm awake, and I'm sorry and miserable, Granny, and I never will behave so wickedly again. Don't leave off loving me. Aunt Alice has. She's simply furious!"

"No, no, my darling, your Aunt is vexed. She has a right to be, but she has forgiven you already."

"But I'm to be punished to-morrow."

"To stamp it upon your memory," said Granny; then she kissed Charity very lovingly:

"Tell God what you have told me, my child, and go to sleep. You have a fresh day to begin to-morrow, and wake up good."

Then Granny went away. She never said much to the children, but she knew that Aunt Alice's words to her niece had been many and severe, and she did not wish to add to them.

It was a very subdued Charity who came to lessons next morning. She apologised to Miss Vale for what she had done, and for the whole of that afternoon Charity sat in the schoolroom writing an imposition for her aunt. It was only one sentence she had to write over and over again, many hundreds of times.

"Self-will and independence, unless under authority, always lead to disaster. Charity Blair."

Her back ached, her fingers ached, and her head ached before she had finished, but Charity had learned her lesson, and she never played truant again.

She told Faith and Hope afterwards about her day, and though she joined the boys, and actually caught a fish with a rod which they lent her, and though she had talked and laughed with them and was as jolly as she could be, underneath all was the miserable feeling of having done wrong.

"It doesn't really pay," she said.

Later on the three little girls spent an afternoon at the Hall with some other boys and girls. Charlie was well enough to be out again, and he was there.

Faith felt sorry for him when he could not join the boys in a game of hockey, but his spirits were good, and Sir George took him and Faith to see a small museum of curiosities, which interested them greatly.

He gave them each a small Roman coin with a hole pierced through, and told them that it was used in the time when our Lord was in the Holy Land.

"Do you think," said Faith, "that it could possibly be that Jesus Christ had this in His own Hand. Could He, do you think?"

"I shouldn't like to say," said Sir George.

When Faith got home, she put her coin in a little box which she kept carefully locked, and every night she would open it and finger it lovingly.

Charity warned her against making an idol of it.

Faith asked how a piece of money could be an idol.

"Anything is an idol if you worship it, or love it better than God," said Charity, with her superior air.

"But I don't worship it, and I only love it because it might have belonged to Jesus."

"I think that's very irreverent," said Charity.

"If you don't love it more than you ought to do, will you give it to me?"

"Never, never! It's my very own."

Faith shut up her box hastily and pocketed the key. After that she only took it out and looked at it when she was quite alone.

Lionel and Fairfax soon went back to school, and Charlie began his lessons again.

Then one Saturday afternoon, just before three o'clock, the Pirate's high dogcart appeared in charge of a groom. A note was sent in, which demanded an answer, and it was addressed to "Little Miss Moth."

Faith's fingers trembled as she opened the envelope.

"Will little Miss Moth keep a lonely old man company this afternoon? If so, she must return in the trap.

"W. CARDWELL."

A very short note, but it sent the colour flying into Faith's cheeks and the light into her eyes.

"Oh, Granny, Aunt Alice, may I go?"

Permission was given. Charity and Hope were very disappointed that they were not asked too. They went out and talked to the groom whilst Faith was getting ready to go, and Hope stroked the bay mare's nose and talked affectionately to her. They were not quite so disappointed when they heard that the Pirate was in London.

"It wouldn't be much fun to sit and talk to an old man the whole time," said Hope.

"No," said Charity; "Faith is so funny; she likes talking to Timothy. So dull, I think."

Faith drove off with a radiant face, and she entered the invalid's room with the same expression.

"Ah!" said the old man. "You're glad to come, then? You don't look so perturbed as when you saw me first."

"I love coming," said Faith.

She settled herself down in a chair which was put in readiness for her by the old man's side, and she and he talked away about all kinds of things. Then very mysteriously Faith brought out of her pocket her precious little box.

"I want to show you something wonderful," she said, "I thought you might like to see it."