A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl (23 page)

"Mr. Greenhalgh has tried, and says he can't hear of one anywhere," lamented Tattie. "Horses are scarce since the war, and ponies seem particularly wanted in the summer. It's very difficult to get riding-ponies."

"Glad I secured Lady," chuckled Diana.

"I think it's very mean of you to keep Lady all to yourself," retorted Sadie, airing a grievance. "Why can't you let her be the second school pony, and take your turn with the rest of us? It would be far fairer."

"Give up Lady? Well, I like that! Coolest idea I've ever heard! Why, I thought of the whole thing, and wrote to Dad, and she was hired specially for me.
Your
riding lessons were only a copy of my idea. Get a third pony if you can, but I guess I'm not going to give up Lady to anybody. Why should I? Dad said she was to be mine."

"It's not sporty of you, though," grumbled Sadie. "You know perfectly well we
can't
get a third pony, and everybody in the school is saying how hard it is for you to monopolize one entirely to yourself. There are six other girls who'd be glad to learn riding if they could get a mount."

"Then let them write home to their fathers to send them ponies."

"As if they could! But their fathers would let them take lessons if there were a school pony for them. I know that for a fact."

"Well, they shan't have mine, at any rate," rapped out Diana defiantly. "You just needn't think it, so there!"

One afternoon it was Wendy's turn for the school pony. She and Diana and Miss Carr rode away together down the road to Chapelrigg. It was a gloriously fine day. Wild roses starred the hedgerows, and the beautiful blue speedwell bordered the lanes. Larks were singing, and, though the cuckoo had changed his tune, blackbirds still fluted in the coppices.

They had come out on an errand--not a particularly romantic one, as it happened, only to pay a bill for Miss Todd at a farm-house a few miles away. If the errand was prosaic the farm and its surroundings looked attractive; it stood on a hill with a beautiful group of birch-trees behind it, and a small stream came rippling down at the bottom of the garden. The path from the high road was blocked by a cart left standing with a load of straw, so it would be impossible to ride the horses up to the door. The three riders dismounted, and Miss Carr, tying Baron to the fence, said she would walk up the lane and pay the bill while the girls waited for her in the road. Allowing Lady and Topsy to crop the grass in the hedge bottom, Diana and Wendy sat on the bank lazily enjoying themselves. It was very pleasant that afternoon to be alive. In that northern district although summer came late she made up for it by the extreme beauty with which she clothed the landscape; the view from the hill-side was like one of Turner's pictures.

As the girls sat chatting, watching the ponies, and idly plucking flowers, they heard footsteps coming along the road, and presently a woman carrying a baby appeared round the corner. She was young and dark and gipsy-looking, and wore large ear-rings and a red cotton handkerchief knotted loosely round her brown throat. She stopped at the sight of Diana and Wendy and the ponies, and seemed to consider a moment. Then she walked boldly up to them, looked keenly in their faces, and evidently chose Diana.

"Could you do me a kindness, miss?" she asked. "I've to go up to the farm for a basket. I don't want to carry the baby with me; she's so heavy. If I leave her here on the grass would you keep an eye on her till I come back? I shan't be gone five minutes."

Now Diana was fond of babies, and the little dark-eyed specimen, wrapped up in the plaid shawl, was pretty and attractive and fairly clean. For answer she held out her arms, received baby, shawl, and feeding-bottle on to her knee, and constituted herself temporary nurse.

"She'll be good till I come back," said the woman, turning up the lane that led to the farm.

The small person with the brown eyes was probably accustomed to be handed about. She did not jib at strangers, as might have been expected, but accepted the situation quite amiably. She gurgled in response to Diana's advances, and allowed herself to be amused. Perhaps the vicinity of horses was familiar to her, and she felt at home. Diana, hugging her on her knee, freed her from the folds of the shawl and allowed her to kick happily. She was certainly a fascinating little mortal.

In the course of about ten minutes Miss Carr, who had been having a chat at the farm about gardening prospects, returned leisurely down the lane, and was electrified to find Diana sitting by the roadside nursing a baby.

"I didn't see any gipsy woman come up to the farm," she said, in answer to the girls' explanations. "You'd better go, Wendy, and see if you can find her, and tell her to come at once and fetch her baby."

So Wendy went up the lane to the farm, and asked at the front door and the back door, and looked round the stack-yard and the buildings, but there was never a trace of the gipsy girl. A little boy playing by the pond, however, declared that he had seen a woman crossing the field and climbing over the fence on to the road. Wendy returned with this report. Miss Carr looked annoyed.

"We must go along the road, then, and follow her. We can't wait here till she chooses to come back."

So Diana carried the baby, and Wendy led Lady and Topsy, and Miss Carr, with an anxious wrinkle between her eyebrows, followed with Baron in the direction that the small boy had pointed out. They walked a mile, and enquired at cottages and from passers-by, and from men working in the fields, but nobody had seen the gipsy woman. Then they went back to the trysting-place to see if she had returned, but she was not there. They asked again at the farm, and went back to the cottages, and Miss Carr begged to leave the baby there, because its mother would be sure to enquire for it and find it. The occupants of the cottages, however, shook their heads, and were not at all prepared to accept the responsibility. Neither were the people at the farm. They utterly refused to take it in. Then Diana realized that it is one thing to offer to nurse a baby, and quite another to get rid of it again. What were they to do?

"We can't dump the poor mite down by the roadside and leave it," said Miss Carr distractedly. "Whatever
can
have become of its mother?"

No answer was forthcoming to her question, and matters were urgent. She decided that the only thing to be done was to take the baby with them to Pendlemere, leaving messages at the farm and the cottages for the mother to follow on and claim it. Naturally it made a great sensation in the school when Diana arrived holding her foundling in her arms. Miss Carr explained at full length to Miss Todd, who was utterly aghast, but consented to take in the small stranger till it was claimed. Miss Chadwick, who had studied hygiene at the Agricultural College, and had once assisted at a crèche, constituted herself head nurse, mixed a bottle, and left Miss Ormrod to feed the fowls while she sat in a rocking-chair and soothed the foundling to sleep.

"Surely the mother'll turn up before dark," she said.

But nobody turned up, and Miss Chadwick, who had had to guess at the baby's age and requirements, and had mixed too strong a bottle, spent a wakeful night patting her small guest on the back and endeavouring to still her wails. Next morning Miss Todd reported the matter at the police station, enquiries were made, and it was ascertained that a girl answering to the description given had been in the company of a band of hawkers, but had disappeared and left no trace of her whereabouts. The baby was not hers, but belonged to a woman who had just been arrested on a serious charge and taken to Glenbury jail; the hawkers with whom she had associated disclaimed all responsibility for the child.

"The only thing to be done is to send it to the Union," said the police sergeant.

But by that time the school in general, and Diana in particular, had fallen in love with the poor little baby. They raged at the idea of sending it to the workhouse. They had borrowed clothes for it; and, nicely bathed and dressed and recovered from its fit of indigestion, it looked a sweet thing, and was ready to make friends with anybody and everybody.

"Bless her, she
shan't
go the workhouse!" declared Diana, kissing the small fist that clung round her finger.

There was a wild idea among the girls that the foundling might be kept as a "school baby".

"We're taught gardening, and poultry-keeping, and bee-keeping," said Wendy quite seriously, "so why not the care of children? We could learn to bathe her, and mix her bottle, and do heaps of things for her."

Miss Todd, however, thought otherwise. Theoretical hygiene of infants was all very well as part of the curriculum, but the practical side of it was disturbing to the school. Miss Chadwick had other duties besides that of nursing a baby. Rows of plants needed attention, and young chickens claimed her care.

"If the mother gets a heavy sentence," said Miss Todd, "I think the child would be received into a 'Home for Destitute Children'. In the meantime----"

"
Not
the workhouse!" pleaded Diana. "Isn't there anybody in the village who'd take her in?"

"Mrs. Jones would have her, but she would charge twelve and sixpence a week; nobody will take in a baby for less now."

"What's that in dollars? About three, isn't it? Dad will fix that up easily. I'll write to him to-night. It's as good as settled."

"Diana," said Miss Todd emphatically, "I shall
not
allow you to write to your father and ask him for anything more. If you care to give up your pocket-money for the baby's sake that's another matter; but you're getting into a bad habit of expecting your father to pay for every whim that comes into your head. It's cheap charity to suggest something that's to cost
you
nothing. You want to have all the credit of the generosity at your father's expense."

Diana flushed up to her hair, and down over her neck.

"Do you think me a slacker?" she asked.

"Yes; in this respect I certainly do. If you were prepared to deny yourself anything it would be different, but you're not. You like to call the child
your
foundling, but personally you've done nothing for her. It's Miss Chadwick who's had the wakeful nights."

Diana did not urge in self-defence that she would willingly have taken the baby to bed with her if she had been allowed; she knew it was useless to offer arguments or excuses. She was busy thinking. Miss Todd's reproaches stung her like a whip. She would let the school see that she was not the pampered, spoilt darling that they imagined. On that score she was determined. Sacrifices! She was quite prepared to make sacrifices if they were necessary. Nobody should again have the chance of telling her that she did her generosity at other people's expense. An idea swept through her mind, and she set her teeth.

"Does it cost more than twelve and six a week to keep Lady?" she asked.

"Considerably more; though I don't suppose you've ever concerned yourself about the cost," returned Miss Todd sarcastically.

"Might I hand Lady over to the school for the rest of the term, then, and pay for the baby instead? I'd square it up with Father. He wouldn't mind about the riding when I explained."

Miss Todd looked Diana squarely in the face. Pupil and mistress met each other's eyes. The Principal's voice softened when she spoke.

"Yes; if you like to do this, Diana, I could arrange it. We want another school pony. You could take your turn with Lady once a week, the same as the other girls. By the end of the term we should know whether the 'Home' would receive the baby. Meantime, Mrs. Jones would take good care of her."

"Then I guess it's fixed," said Diana rather hoarsely.

Ambitions

The poor little foundling, pending her mother's trial at the Assizes, was boarded out in the village with Mrs. Jones, and Diana had permission to see her twice a week. Miss Todd communicated with the "Home for Destitute Children", and received the reply that, should the mother be convicted, as seemed only too probable, they would be ready to receive the baby, and would apply to the judge for an order for entire charge, so that it should not be claimed and taken away to a possibly criminal life when the mother's term of penal servitude was over.

For the present, therefore, there was nothing more to be done except take an interest in their protégée. Diana set to work to make her a dress--a really heroic effort, for she hated sewing--and sat stitching at it on those afternoons when the other girls were riding Lady. It was typical of Diana that she would not discuss her arrangement about the pony with anybody, not even Wendy.

"I've done it for reasons of my own, and that's enough!" she said rather crossly. "You've no need to thank me--it wasn't particularly to please
you
! I suppose I can do as I like!"

"Of course you
can
, but you needn't flare up so!" retorted Sadie. "
Most
people would
expect
to be thanked. What a queer girl you are, Diana!"

At which remark Diana grunted and turned away.

It is a funny thing that a burst of self-sacrifice often leaves us in a bad temper. Diana was no model heroine, only a very ordinary and rather spoilt girl. The reaction after giving up her pony had sent her spirits down to zero, and if all her doings are to be faithfully chronicled, it must be confessed that for a day or two she did not display herself at her best. She was snappy even with Loveday, and matters came to an open quarrel with Hilary, who, as prefect, was inclined to be dictatorial. A war of words followed; Hilary threatened to appeal to Miss Todd, and Diana, defeated but unrepentant, retired vowing vengeance.

"I'll pay you out some day; see if I don't!" she declared hotly.

"You're not worth noticing!" retorted Hilary, shrugging her shoulders.

Diana retired to the ivy room, had a thoroughly good cry, and came down with red eyes, but feeling better. She did not speak to Hilary again, however, for days.

Meantime, examinations were drawing near. Although Miss Todd conducted her school on absolutely modern lines, she still clung to examinations as being some test of a girl's attainments. The seniors in especial were anxious to distinguish themselves. It was their last chance before they left, and all, with the exception of Stuart and Ida, who were to remain as gardening students, were leaving at the end of the term. The breaking up of her school-days meant an anxious time for Loveday. When they were alone in the ivy room she sometimes confided her troubles to Diana.