Part 7

"That's what he said, Miss, and I'm never one to overcharge, especially a young lady like yourself; but it's so risky, I don't see as how I can, for the money. 'Don't you have nothing to do with it,' says my wife, 'or that there female up at the school-house will get you sacked.'"

"Nonsense!" said Trina angrily. "Why, it is ridiculous to talk of 'sacking.' How could Miss Cockran do it? She has never employed your cars for years--said you were impudent, or something--so you won't even lose her custom."

The man's smile was not so affable now, and there was an angry glint in his eyes, though his tone was still oily.

"You seem to know the ways of my business better than I do, Missie--leastways, it's the first I've ever heard of being impudent--but just you think of this now; I ain't out skylarking like you and that young boy, if he belongs to your party, but earning of my living--and I don't take no risks."

"How much do you want, and are you prepared to start at once? I must be there by 10.15."

Trina looked impatiently at her wrist-watch in the moonlight, and the man continued to smile, but with his hand half over his mouth, as though to conceal what was almost a grin.

"Not to disappoint a young lady, Missie, I'd go at--say, thirty shillings, I would."

They fixed it finally at a pound--Trina stamping angrily on the step as she concluded, saying:

"Well, be quick, can't you? I don't want to waste the whole evening."

He vanished, and as her glance fell on Sally, she frowned--no longer amused by her companion's ragamuffin appearance.

"Why, you look worse and worse," she said petulantly. "You ought to be picking up pennies on a London kerb."

"I shall do all right for a Fair, then, shan't I?"

"Yes--but not for a dance--and that's what I'm really going to."

"Well, I'm not. I expect I'll trot back, after I have had enough of the Fair. I said I probably should, so you needn't worry."

Sally saw the elder girl was ashamed of her, and felt hot and angry--especially at the look of relief with which her suggestion was received.

"I daresay that would be best. You'll be able to get up the wall by the rope, and the rest is quite easy."

At this moment the car rattled into view. It was very dusty and smelly, and took a great deal of winding up before it consented to crawl away along the road towards the heath. By the time it arrived, Trina, who glanced at her wrist-watch whenever a patch of moonlight allowed, was in a state of exasperated nerves with both driver and car, while Sally was secretly wishing herself back in bed.

This was not at all the joyous adventure she had imagined as she lay waiting for the clock to strike.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

SALLY AT THE FAIR

The taxi pulled up on the outskirts of a large crowd, chiefly composed of men and boys. Sally, as she put her head out of the window, could see their dark figures outlined against a row of flaring lights.

The Fair was held in a field, surrounded on three sides by a thick hedge, on the other, by a canvas wall, eight or nine feet high. From inside rose the droning jangle of merry-go-rounds and the raucous voices of showmen and hawkers.

"Walk up, ladies! Walk up, gentlemen! Don't miss the most celebrated moving picture of the age," etc., etc.

Entranced by the interest of the scene before her, the girl stood as she had alighted from the car, and did not even notice it drive off, nor that her companion, after calling to her sharply, had moved away alone. When the jerk of someone's elbow in her ribs woke her at last from her dream of contemplation, it was to find herself engulfed in a group of Parchester rowdies, who were fighting their way towards the turnstile. Here, a negro with a red nose, and spots of white paint on his cheeks and forehead, stood beating a drum.

Nearly swept off her feet, Sally was thankful when she arrived inside; but her heart sank, as she saw no sign of Trina Morrison, who, she had fully imagined, would be waiting for her there.

"She knows I can take care of myself--and, of course, I can."

This was the first explanation she offered herself, cleverly turning neglect into a compliment; but it did not completely satisfy her judgment all the same. Rather a voice in another part of her brain kept whispering:

"It was beastly of her not to wait--I shall tell her so." But when, after a few minutes' desultory staring at the booths, she came upon Trina and her friends, she did not do so. Instead, she hung back in the shadow of a tent, overcome by shame as she realised the contrast between herself and this group of civilised merry-makers.

Girls in evening dresses, with light cloaks trimmed with fur; young men in black suits, with starched white shirt-fronts, and shining hair plastered across their foreheads--such were Trina's friends: while she, shock-headed and freckled, in her rough jersey, gym. knickers and torn stockings, belonged obviously to the little group of ragamuffin boys who were trying to insert their heads under the flaps of tents, or secure a ride on the merry-go-rounds for nothing.

At school, Sally had thought her costume a joke. Peter had laughed at it too, when she first saw her in the road, though later, when waiting outside the Black Bull, she had frowned--Peter's moods were dreadfully uncertain. It would be horrible if she, Sally, were to step out and join the group, and then her friend were merely to stare at her, and say something uncomfortable in her cool drawl, that would make them all laugh.

"Stuck-up toads! I hate the lot of them!" the girl muttered, clenching her fists as she watched them throwing Houp-la rings. It seemed to her that Austin, as he handed the rings to his cousin, was staring beyond her mockingly, recognising the unwanted guest, but determined to cut such a disreputable-looking waif, at all costs.

In reality, Sally knew that he could not possibly distinguish her, at the distance she stood, from amongst the boys who leaped and screamed around her, in and out of the shadows made by the tents and booths; but the true soreness lay in the thought that Peter had probably forgotten to mention her at all, so that none of her companions was prepared either to welcome or to scorn her.

"I don't care--not a scrap!"

With the shrug of her shoulders that had often exasperated Mrs. Musgrave as the answer to a snub, Sally strolled away from the Houp-la. It was a silly game, she decided, that only won for the successful hideous china vases and trumpery brooches; she would go, instead, to a moving picture show.

The flaring lights on the platform outside one large tent showed parties of Japanese contortionists, black cats, and men struggling in mines, while a hideous bat, of monster size, flapped over their heads.

Sally was so thrilled by the bat that, for the moment, she forgot Trina, and even the school. It was fun to be a boy out on an adventure, and to wriggle her way through the crowd, with exasperated women tapping her on the head for her impudence, and old men abusing her as she trod on their toes. It was not such fun, however, when, nearing the entrance, she became wedged, just below the platform, between a very stout woman and a bony soldier, who dug his elbows almost into the back of her neck.

The soldier's companion had a blue and yellow tickler, and thought it a great joke that the little crop-headed boy in front objected to having his face washed with it, and lost his temper when she persisted.

"Shut up!" said Sally fiercely.

To which the woman replied with a cheerful wink at her neighbours:

"None of your lip, Charlie, my boy, or my pal there will fetch you one on the mug--see if he don't."

"S'truth I will," said the soldier, with an air of great ferocity. "I'll spoil your beauty for you--there's not a few noses as I've laid flat with their faces, in my time."

And he dug with his elbows so sharply into Sally's neck that she became alarmed. After this, she endured the tickler in silence until they reached the foot of the steps up to the platform. It was as she struggled up there towards the tent doorway, past the man with the drum, that she discovered she had no money: someone in the crowd had picked her pocket.

"Pocket picked, you young varmint? You mean you'd like to wriggle in for nothing--I know your kind," said the man at the door, scowling, as a wave of people threw Sally almost on top of him, and he rose and thrust her roughly back.

Had not a clown, who had been turning somersaults on the platform to the accompaniment of the drum, caught her arm and pulled her into safety beside him, she would have fallen backwards down the steps, and probably have been trodden underfoot by those still fighting their way up.

The very thought made Sally feel sick, but it evidently struck the clown as a good joke, for he asked her loudly if she knew what happened to the grasshopper who chose to cross the road in front of a steam engine.

"It's not my fault--let me go," she said angrily. "I'm off home."

The clown, instead, picked her up and swung her to and fro in the air while he executed a clog dance.

"By, Baby Bunting," he chanted, while the man with the drum, and the Columbine, who stood on either side of him, laughed at this unrehearsed exhibition till the tears ran down their faces.

The humiliation was dreadful. Sally could not imagine how she would ever survive it if Trina and her party were to recognise her in such a position; but when at last the stream of people entering the tent had ceased, she was thankful, as she tore herself from the clown's grasp, that there was at least no sign of them.

Her one desire now was to get back to the school as quickly as she could. Keeping to the shadows, she made her way to the entrance, and with a sigh of relief found herself in a few minutes on the patch of heath outside.

Here, as she paused, uncertain in the darkness which way to turn, she was startled by a yelp of pain, and a puppy came running towards her. It was a mongrel, mainly rough-haired terrier, with ridiculously long ears and a tufted tail. One of the ears was bloodstained, and the tail had a can tied to it, filled with stones.

"You poor little thing," said Sally, who loved animals; and she drew it close, while she bent down and began to untie the string.

"Garn!--leave it alone, can't yer? We are going a-hunting with it"--broke in an angry voice, and a big lad of fifteen, followed by a lot of smaller boys, crowded round her threateningly.

Sally finished untying the string, and looked up. She was trembling nearly as much as the dog, but she said quietly:

"No--you shan't do it any more. He is only a puppy--how can you be so cruel?"

"Quite the little gentleman," sneered one of them, in mock admiration of Sally's voice; while a boy about her own age came up to her, and, doubling his fists, brought one nearly under her nose.

"Cruel! What d' yer mean? 'e's my pup. Can't I drown 'im or tease 'im, if I likes?"

The others laughed and jeered, as, involuntarily, the girl drew back. There were shouts of:

"Go it, Stan!--You're the bruiser. Give the little cad a black eye."

Sally went very pale. She had boxed a little with her brothers, but this was quite a different proposition.

"Let him go, please," she faltered. "He is so frightened."

"Scared as you," retorted Stan briefly. "I'll tie the can on to you as well as 'im, if you don't clear off." And he bent to seize the puppy by its rope collar.

Sally could feel the terrier tremble against her legs, and as she heard it yelp in sudden pain, her fear vanished, and only burning anger remained. Leaning across the dog, she hit Stan hard on his nose, sending him reeling backwards in surprise.

"Take that, you cowardly brute," she said.

In an instant a ring was formed, and Sally found she had partisans as well as enemies. There was an encouraging shout of "Go it, Carrots!" as she warded off a slashing blow from Stan and landed one herself on his jaw; but this was the utmost of her triumph. What the girl knew of boxing was not enough to defend her from a windmill attack of arms and legs that admitted kicking and stamping amongst its tactics.

But for the timely appearance of a policeman, attracted from the gateway by the noise, she would have fared badly indeed. As it was, when the rest had fled, and he laid his hand on her shoulder, one eye was already closed, while she stood trying to stem with bleeding knuckles the tears that flowed from the other.

"Silly young hass, to start fighting at your age," said the policeman reprovingly, but with good-natured sympathy.

"'Ome you go now, sonny, and tell your ma to put raw beef on it. That's the stuff."

"The puppy?" gasped Sally, between her tears. "I tried to save him--the brutes were hurting him."

"There weren't no sign of a puppy as I came up, so I guess he legged it all right," said the man, glancing at her curiously; then:

"Where's your 'ome, sonny?"

Sally's voice was strangely unlike that of the other urchins, whose pranks had made his evening duty at the Fair a burden; and a suspicion began to dawn that she might belong to a preparatory school in Parchester. This was more than confirmed, when "sonny," twisting out of his grasp, made off without returning any answer.

The policeman pursued for a few yards, but he was "fat and scant of breath," the heath had numberless gorse bushes to act as cover and the night was very dark.

[Illustration: THE POLICEMAN PURSUED FOR A FEW YARDS]

"Drat the young brute!" he muttered at last, and stalked back towards the entrance of the Fair, with an air of dignified contempt, as though the quarry he had pursued was quite beneath his notice.

In the meantime "the young brute," bleeding from her eye and knuckles, lay and panted between two bushes, stifling her sobs as well as she could, until she was sure that the search after her had ceased. Ignominious as it must be in any case to return to Seascape House a figure of dirt and fun, it would have been beyond all words of horror to arrive in charge of a policeman. Cecilia had prophesied that her career would end in a reformatory; and Sally had a secret dread that this might indeed be her fate if once the police began to take an interest in her adventures.

For the moment, as the constable's broad back disappeared into the darkness, this immediate danger was removed; and Sally wept unrestrainedly, almost as much with relief as with pain.

Her head ached and her body felt a mass of bruises, but at least she was free, and had, as her brothers would have called it, "kept her end up," in the matter of the puppy. Their approving eyes seemed to rest upon her as at last she stifled her sobs and, pulling herself stiffly to her feet, began to look around her.

The moon was behind the clouds, and in both directions the road lay like a white ribbon, cutting the darkness of the heath, save where the flaring gas-jets of the Fair flamed across it in a yellow patch. As she peered one way she saw a halo of light edging the horizon, and knew that this was Parchester and that she must turn her back on it to reach Seascape House.

Utter blackness, but for the ribbon of road, lay the other way, and with a little shiver at the prospect, Sally, skirting the furze bushes and digging her hands deep into her pockets, began to run across the heath parallel with the road along which she and Trina had so lately driven.

CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH

"JUST SILLINESS"

The road across the heath, when Sally joined it, lay white and clear for about half-a-mile; then scattered firs--wind-blown and bitten--began to appear, and after these a series of pine plantations that as the moon peeped from behind clouds threw their shadows across the sky like the vaulting in some great church.

So far, since she left the neighbourhood of the Fair, the girl had met no one save a solitary car that passed her with blinding lights; but it seemed to her that the wood was alive with strange night birds that brushed the branches above her head, or beasts that ran scurrying through the undergrowth. It was this feeling of being watched, while she could not see, that kept her, in spite of her bruises, running at almost breathless speed; but, exhausted at last, she sank down on a bank beside a ditch, where the road lay open and clear between two clumps of pines.

At once she became conscious of how much her eye had swollen, and putting her poor bruised hands together over it, she sat huddled up, with her elbows resting on her knees. How long she remained there she did not know; but suddenly she rose to her feet and screamed--something had touched her, something soft and wet.

She looked down, and saw it was the mongrel dog, to whose rescue she had come at the Fair. Now, almost as frightened as she had been, he crouched at her feet, slowly wagging his tufted tail, and begging with abject eyes that she would not kick him or send him away. He had lovely brown eyes (mongrels often have) and Sally, forgetting her own hurts, drew him up into her arms, and began to kiss him, while he responded with frantic licks and little whines of satisfaction.

"I love you, puppy, I love you," she whispered, and became indifferent to the loneliness of her surroundings. With what was almost a swagger she put him down at last, and continued her homeward road--this time at a pleasant stroll. She even found courage to laugh at the predicament in which she had landed herself--made worse as it was by this new witness to her naughtiness.

"Friend pup," she said, as he ran joyously beside her, leaping occasionally to lick her hand--"Friend pup, I very much fear that I am in the soup, and you will put the lid on that soup. Never mind, life is no longer dull, and we shall make a fine exit from Seascape House together."

This boast brought her thoughts back with a jerk to Trina Morrison and her friends. How long had she herself lain among the gorse bushes? Perhaps the dance was over, and Austin having already dropped his cousin at the school wall, she was safe in her bed.

If so, would she think of Sally and wonder what had become of her and whether she had also returned in safety?

It was a difficult question to answer, and the girl shuffled over facing it. In her heart, she knew it was quite possible Peter would continue to forget her if it was inconvenient to remember; but she pushed that thought away with a sop to her vanity.

"Anyhow, she knew I was the kind of person who could take care of myself; besides, she warned me of all the risks, so it's not her fault, whatever may happen to me."

This seemed the best conclusion of the matter. If you are faintly conscious that your idol's feet are clay, it is best to leave them decently covered; so Sally gave up speculating about Trina, and began to wonder instead, as she drew near Seascape House, how she should make her entrance, and explain either her own appearance, or the dog. She did not look forward to a cross-examination on how she had spent the evening, by Old Cocaine.

Turning down the lane, she stood for a few minutes gazing irresolutely at the high wall, under the hanging tree. There was the rope that would help her up--within reach, if she jumped--but she knew that her bruises would not let her do this, even if she could solve the problem of how afterwards to lift up the dog.

No, she must turn back, and enter boldly by the front avenue, as though that were the way by which she had left; and thus, when stopped (as she surely would be, and questioned), she would not be in danger of betraying Trina's secret.

This decision made, she called to the puppy, and returned once more to the high road, where a few yards' further walking revealed a new obstacle. The gates were locked, and their iron spikes rose mockingly above her, as she gazed through the bars at the drive.

"I suppose it will be a case of waking 'Ma Jakes' at the lodge," she muttered; but at this minute the puppy, who quite realised his new mistress's desire to enter the forbidden garden, discovered a way in for himself by a ditch at the side of the raised drive. That it was not a large enough opening for Sally, he, however, failed to grasp, and began to whine and bark encouragingly from the other side, only raising his voice a little louder when she whispered to him to be quiet.

"That settles it," said the girl, and with a sudden impulse not to be caught begging for an entrance, began to climb the iron-work; but the exertion was so great that by the time she had pulled herself over the spikes, the sweat was running down her face. Trembling all over at the strain, she rested before she began the descent, and suddenly heard the dog growl.

As she looked over her shoulder, she saw a light approaching down the drive.

With a little cry of panic, she hastened her movements, caught her foot between the bars, released it, and then fell to the ground, doubling it beneath her. The pain this time was far worse than her swollen eye, or any of her bruises; and as the puppy ran to lick her face, she pushed him away--moaning a little.

"Who are you? What are you doing here? Why--it is a boy and a dog."

Sally opened the eye that was not swollen, and saw by the light of an electric torch, Miss Castle, her Form mistress, bending over her. In a flash she remembered the open window as they climbed down from the roof, and a voice calling out to them. It was evident they had aroused Miss Castle's suspicions, and that at the sound of a dog barking she had come out to see what was wrong.

"Oh, I'm so glad it is you," the girl whispered. "You won't be angry with the puppy, will you? It is not his fault."

The other stared at her, at first blankly amazed, and then with dawning surprise and horror.

"Sally!" she said. "Sally Brendan?" And then--"Oh, my poor child, what has happened to you?"

"My foot ... the pain...."