CHAPTER I

LUCKIE JEAN'S ODD-AND-END SHOP

"There was a small kid called Jennie, A millionaire with a penny; But this her disgrace is She blued it on laces, And so all the rest hadn't any!"

"But Joe _isn't_ Jennie," objected Bingo, as Gavin chanted the last line of this lyric in a cheerful jigging sing-song, and a voice that would have done credit to a cathedral choir.

"And Mums wanted me to get shoe-laces," Joey added. "You see, these haven't any tags, and the ends are all frayed out."

"What's wrong with stiffening up the ends with Bingo's play-wax?" demanded Gavin the resourceful. "I never thought that _you'd_ come to spending the one penny going on silly shoe-laces, when we have to go to Luckie Jean's odd-and-end shop, and might have bought bull's-eyes, or at least pear-drops."

Joey cast a glance down at the very dilapidated laces securing her shabby shoes. Her indifference to her own personal appearance was supreme, but Mums had seemed worried about those shoe-laces, and it was a point of honour in the Graham family to protect Mums from all possible worries. All the same she agreed with Gavin: it was a waste to be going all the way to Crumach and Luckie Jean's odd-and-end shop without so much as a penny to spend among the five of them--Gavin, Ronnie, Kirsty, Bingo, and herself. She considered the question.

"But Joey isn't Jennie!" objected Bingo once more with determination. Bingo never left a question till he got an answer; even when Gavin smacked his head for bothering, which happened now and then. Father--the big, cheery father to whom the five had said their last good-bye one chilly morning close on two years ago at Crumach Station--had called Bingo "the little bull-pup," because you couldn't make him let go.

Gavin knew that, and answered the objection. "Why, you little ass, Joey won't rhyme with anything, that's all, and Jocelyn's even worse. And of course anyone can see who's meant, because Joey's the only one of us who has so much as a brass farthing to bless herself with."

"And she's going to spend all her farthings on boot-laces," observed Bingo sorrowfully, and the corners of his mouth went down. Bingo was only six; that was his excuse--and he was the only member of the Graham family who had been known to cry for years. They hadn't got a tear out of Gavin when he fell off a hayrick and dislocated his shoulder, and it was put back by the local bone-setter--a process which is far from pleasant when unaccompanied by chloroform. Joey hastened to avert the tragedy which might have disgraced the name of Graham if Bingo were left in suspense too long.

"If you're _sure_ that play-wax will fix up my lace-ends so that Mums won't worry, we'll use the penny on anything you like," she said.

Her words produced quite a sensation. Gavin patted her violently on the back; Kirsty jumped three times into the air like a young chamois, with a great display of long, thin, scratched legs--no one in those parts ever saw anything like the way those Graham children grew!--and Bingo hugged her ecstatically before burrowing in the pocket of his tiny knickers for a small and grubby piece of yellow play-wax.

They all sat down on the high heathery moor to mend the laces there and then. "Lots of time," Gavin pronounced, consulting the gold hunting-watch which Father had said his eldest boy was to have if he never came back. "The postman never gets to Crumach till four, and it's not three."

"But there may be soldiers come by the south train," suggested Bingo. "We'll want some time to see them."

"Heaps of time," declared Gavin, pinching bits off the lump of play-wax. "Only three miles from here to Crumach, and we can see the soldiers after we've done Mums' shopping and got the post, if we don't before."

Joey looked up from her refractory laces, shaking her thick fair hair out of her eyes.

"But _the_ letter might have come by the post, Gav. If it has, Mums will want to know at once, won't she?"

"'Course. I'd forgotten that letter might have come," Gavin answered more soberly. "There, leave that lace to dry hard, old girl, and you'll have a topping tag. Did the minister expect it so soon?"

"He said he just thought it might come."

"Will it come if you've failed to get the scholarship?" Kirsty asked.

Joey considered. "I don't know, but I shouldn't think they would write to everybody to tell them that they'd failed. Mr. Craigie said there were seven hundred and eighty-two candidates. Just think of all the stamps!"

The family did think, with a gasp. When they thought at all about money, it was as a thing which must be kept for boots and bread and margarine--never as a thing that you could squander recklessly on luxuries like stamps.

"No, I shouldn't think there would be a letter if you've failed," Ronnie agreed sadly. He had a right to be serious, for he was, after Joey, the person most immediately concerned with the all-important letter, which it was remotely possible that the postman might bring to Crumach to-day.

The five had always known that Father thought boys and girls should share alike where education was concerned. Joey was to have her chance at a big public school as well as Gavin and Ronnie, and Kirsty was to follow when she was old enough, as surely as little Bingo. But before Gavin had been two years at the preparatory, from which he was out to win an Eton or Winchester scholarship, the news came to the pretty house in Hertfordshire--a house which always seemed to strangers so bewilderingly full of children, dogs and cats--that Major Graham had fallen wounded into the hands of the Huns, during our last retreat in the anxious spring of 1918, and had succumbed to the brutalities of a prison camp in the land of Kultur. His private means had been sunk in an Austrian oil-mine, and were gone beyond recall; he had insured his life, and Mums was left to bring up five healthy, hungry children on the insurance money and her pension--somehow.

Father owned a little square-built stone cottage in a tiny Highland village, four miles north of Crumach. Living was comparatively cheap at Calgarloch, and they had spent the last glorious leave there all together. Mums and the family moved north, and in the rent-free cottage held a council of war to review their resources. Joey could see that picture now; Mums, very slight and fragile-looking in her widow's weeds, and the family sprawling about her, all long of leg and outgrown as to clothes, but fiercely in readiness to fight any notion on Mums' part that she might have managed for them better.

It was then Mums had explained that however economically the family lived in Calgarloch it was only possible that one child could be kept at school at a time. If--Mums stopped herself and substituted "when"--Gavin won his scholarship, Joey could go to school. Ronnie would have to wait until she left; Ronnie was nearly three years younger, so waiting would be possible. Until Gavin fought his way out into a public school the rest of the family must be content with the village school.

"I'll get that scholarship, Mums," Gavin had promised, growing hot and red; and he had kept his word. The name of Gavin Graham had headed the list of Winchester scholars at the end of last term; and Joey's chance had come.

By that time the four younger Grahams had grown used to going daily to the little village school, where the pupils at most numbered fifteen, and the master taught "the Latin" with a strong Doric accent and an absolute enthusiastic love of all learning, which could not help communicating itself to the boys and girls in his care. He taught the secular subjects untiringly, and the minister, Mr. Craigie, poured the "Shorter Catechism," and much else, into the children twice a week so sternly, that it was at first quite a surprise to the Grahams to find him the best of comrades and friends out of school.

It was during a thrilling expedition to the loch for fishing--Shorter Catechism not so much as mentioned--that Joey confided in him to the extent of asking if thirteen and tall for one's age might stand a chance as a pupil teacher at "a proper girls' school." "For if I didn't cost anything, Ronnie could go, and he's over ten now, and would be fearfully old by the time I'm seventeen," she explained. "I suppose I could teach the small kids like Kirsty, and I could always punch their heads if they ragged in class."

Joey never could think why Mr. Craigie should laugh so helplessly at this suggestion; but he was very kind all the same, and said that he would see what he could do. What he did was to talk things over with the schoolmaster, and then to write a letter to:

MISS JEAN CRAIGIE, Redlands College, Lincolnshire.

A few days later he called on Mrs. Graham, accompanied by the schoolmaster, and with the answer to that letter in his pocket.

Redlands offered a scholarship once in every four years to be competed for by girls under fourteen; the scholarship provided four years free at the great fen-country girls' school, and forty pounds annually for books and clothes! He wanted to enter Joey for the scholarship, though the entrance examination loomed only six weeks ahead.

"She seldom remembers the Shorter Catechism, but the child has a brain," he said; "and what is more important, she has grit. I don't say that she can win the Redlands Scholarship, of which my sister, the mathematical mistress there, writes full particulars, but I do say that she might, although the competition will be enormous. Let her try."

And Mums had thankfully said, "Yes."

Joey worked early and late during those six weeks, in spite of holiday-time for the rest of her world. She lived between the manse and the schoolmaster's, and the two clever men coached her untiringly. And then the sealed papers came down (by special permission) to Mr. Craigie; and for three days Joey, hot, inky, and anxious, was shut up in the minister's study, answering the terrible questions the examiners had set. And then Mr. Craigie packed her sheets of foolscap off to Redlands, and there was nothing left to do but to wait. She had been waiting now for ten long days.

The postman did not come to Calgarloch. People fetched their letters, when they expected any, from the little post office at Crumach; but the Grahams thought that no hardship; a walk over the corner of the moor, and across the lower shoulder of the hills that lay between Calgarloch and Crumach, was always fun, especially if there were anything to spend in the town. But to-day the comparative merits of bull's-eyes and pear-drops seemed unimportant; they were all thinking of the letter.

Ronnie dropped behind with Joey when the shoe-laces were finished with, and the party ready to go on.

"If you get it, I could go to Christopher's this term," he said. "You know Christopher told Mums there was the one vacancy, and he'd keep it on the chance, because of Gav having done so well."

"Yes, and if you got a Winchester Scholarship like Gav has, in three and a half years, Kirsty would only be twelve just--heaps of time for coming on to Redlands," Joey remarked hopefully, and then, as a wave of doubt swept over her:

"But I'll never get it--out of seven hundred and eighty-two girls. I went some awful howlers, I know."

"P'r'aps the others did too," suggested Ronnie.

"I'm afraid Mums will mind if I fail," Joey said. "Of course she'll pretend she doesn't, and say all she cares about is my trying--but she won't take us in with her dearness."

"'Course not; but you'll have to let her think she does," Ronnie announced, from the depths of past experience, and then he and Joey were silent while they plodded round the shoulder of the hill, and dropped down into Crumach. Ahead Gavin could be heard gaily discoursing to Kirsty and Bingo on the Homeric exploits of Winchester "men"; but then it was different for Gavin. He had won his scholarship.

Either the shoe-laces had taken longer than the children had expected, or the gold hunting-watch had not been entirely reliable, for it was fully four o'clock when they turned at last into the main street of Crumach. Gavin stopped and waited for the other two.

"The post'll be in. We'd better go to Luckie Jean's first, and get Mums' things after."

As a matter of fact one got a good many of the "things" at Luckie Jean's, though Mums had a certain odd favouritism for the newly established grocer at Pettalva, who sent a cart in twice a week to Crumach and had biscuits that were really fresh. But the family plumped to a man for Luckie Jean. True, the fingers with which she ladled out your provisions were snuff-stained and not over-well acquainted with soap and water; but the recesses of her shop were so dark and mysterious, her goods so various and unexpected, and, best of all, her stories were so thrilling that no ordinary shopman who drove a cart could dream of comparing with her. The family trooped joyfully in a body to Luckie Jean's forthwith.

She had the post office, not so much on account of her competence, as because hers was, at the time the postal authorities had decided to open a branch at Crumach, the one and only shop there. Later, when a polite gentleman from Pettalva, rendered desperate by complaints from the English people who came up for the shooting, suggested politely to Luckie Jean the advisability of putting the charge into the hands of a younger woman, he thought himself fortunate to escape with his eyes still intact in his head. Luckie Jean, half blind and wholly ignorant as to all but local names and places, kept the post office; and English visitors went on adding to the national revenue by writing unavailing letters of bitter complaint.

It was this redoubtable old woman who looked up fiercely over her horn-rimmed spectacles as the young Grahams trooped in a body into the odd-and-end shop.

She was bending over the post-bag as it lay on the counter, sorting the letters and papers into little heaps, and keeping up a vigorous undercurrent of grumbling all the time.

"Na! na! You can't come worrying for sweeties now. Be off, there's douce bairnies. I'm busy."

"No hurry," said Gavin politely. "We'll wait."

And he began to wander round the shop, hands in pockets, attended by his constant adorers, Kirsty and Bingo. Joey stood staring at the post-bag and the piles of letters, and Ronnie stood near her, breathing hard. It was no use to interrupt Luckie Jean when she was busy with the post-bag; it would probably mean ignominious expulsion with boxed ears, for Luckie Jean in a temper was no respecter of persons.

"Hillo! The 'Englishy' cake full of currants is gone from the window. You've had it there these three months--'member how I brushed the dead flies off last time we came, and cleaned it up?" Gavin remarked with interest.

Luckie Jean happened to have just come to the end of a pile, so did not fall upon him for interrupting.

"Ou ay. I selled yon to the Englishy gentleman, with the niminy-piminy voice on him, that's at the Widow Macintyre's up the street for the painting," she answered, with a chuckle. "Fine she'll recognise it, will the widow; she having tried to pit me off with ane of the bonnets she wore afore the deleterious trembles took her man, for payment when yon cake was fair new. But her lodger he paid a good Englishy price for it, and I don't take nowt back."

"He'll have to be hungry before he gets through it," Gavin opined; but Luckie Jean had gone back to her letters and took no notice.

"Evelyn Bonham, _Esquire_," she grumbled; "what for should it be the Englishy way for to gi' a manfolk the name of a wumman? And staying at 'The Neste' near Crumach. I've heard tel of Nests. Yon must wait till I've cried on the tinker-body, as should be round in the tail of the week; that body kens a'body's business."

"I think 'The Neste' is that jolly little new house under the hill; we could leave it as we go back, Luckie, if you liked," ventured Joey.

Luckie Jean looked up at her consideringly.

"You keeps your eyes in your head, bairn. Maybe I'll trust you wi' it, but a postwoman must be gey particular, ye ken."

"I know," Joey agreed, in all good faith, though it was hard to attend to ordinary remarks like that when one was just trembling with eagerness to know what letters were for the house of Graham.

"You'll mebbe like to take a bit of a look at they scrawly anes as I've pit in the pile ower yonder?" inquired Luckie Jean, unbending still more. "There're what they ca's 're-directed,' but there's not mony writes plain for all their fine schuling, bairn. They anes 'ull likely need to wait till my niece comes from Pettalva, as have the gey expensive spectacles.... Na, laddie, ye'll not be distairbing the postmistress at her duties. Bacon--you canna be needing more--you had the half-pound Monday."

The customer, a small bare-footed boy, clasping a coin tightly in his hand, looked apprehensively at the postmistress. "But ma mither...."

"Be off, and tell your mither you've ate your half-pound far too quick," thundered the autocrat; but Gavin came to the rescue, stifling a laugh.

"I say, mother, can't _I_ weigh it out for the youngster? You showed me how, ages ago."

"Ou ay, ye'll still be meddling," growled Luckie Jean over her post-bag, but she did not say no, and Gavin served her customer, and put the money into the till in a very professional manner.

Joey in the meanwhile got to the pile of redirected letters, and soon succeeded in sorting them, the writing in most cases hardly justifying the severe criticism of the Crumach postmistress. Then, at last, she ventured the question she had been burning to put all the time:

"Have you come on any for us yet?"

Luckie Jean, busied in making a final scoop all round the bag with her long, thin arm, jerked her head in the direction of a little pile at the end of the counter.

"There you be--twa or three letters, and a newspaper for your maw. That's aal."

Five Grahams hurled themselves simultaneously on the little pile, while Luckie Jean tied the rest up in lots according to their destination. Gavin was there first; he looked and flung them down, one after another in deep disappointment.

"The blue one--that'll be from Cousin Greta--see the crest! The white one with the small, screwgy writing--that's from Uncle Stafford. _That's_ a bill, and this is a newspaper; nothing from Redlands, Joey!"

Joey bit back a little gulp of disappointment.

"I didn't really think there would be," she said. "Can we leave any more letters for you on our way, Luckie Jean?"

"Ye'll mind not to get playing and forgetting of them?" asked the careful postmistress, and as she spoke she put a tied-together packet into Joey's hand. The string was insecurely fastened, and the eight or nine letters came to the floor in a heap--all except one, the bottom one, which stayed in Joey's hand. Luckie Jean's heading had been at fault again, for this letter--mixed up with Sir Henry Martyn's, and Miss Martyn's, and Captain Kingston's--was directed quite distinctly to:

MISS JOCELYN GRAHAM, Pilot Cottage, Calgarloch, Near Crumach, N.B.

Something seemed to catch at Joey's throat, so that for a moment speaking was quite difficult. She always remembered afterwards the way things looked as she saw them then: the dusty, low-roofed shop, with its dim recesses, where brooms and brushes and oil-casks lurked; the choked windows with articles of food displayed; the open box of coarse cottons and crochet wools; the flitches of bacon; the gay tins of salmon; Gavin behind the counter; Luckie Jean closing the post-bag. Then Joey swallowed hard and opened the letter. This is what she read:

"The Trustees of the Redlands Scholarship Fund have much pleasure in informing Miss Jocelyn Graham that she obtained the largest number of marks in the recent examination, and the Redlands Scholarship has accordingly been awarded to her.

"She is therefore entitled to four years' free residence and tuition at Redlands College, and an annual grant of forty pounds for necessary expenses."

"I've ... I've got it!" Joey said.