Part 5

"Oh, I do," cried Jane-Anne; "gardens are lovelly; but I'll come," she added excitedly. "I'll wait across the road, then you can see me from the window and let me in. Mind you don't forget."

They ran back to the house and Edmund escorted Jane-Anne as far as the kitchen, where Mrs. Dew was standing at the fireplace dishing up.

"Jane-Anne came to see you, Mrs. Dew," Edmund announced loudly from the doorway, "but you'd just gone, so we asked her in to wait till you came back."

Mrs. Dew turned hastily and beheld her niece standing just behind her.

"But I've been back over an hour," Mrs. Dew exclaimed. "Wherever have you been since, Jane-Anne?"

"We asked her to play cricket with us," Edmund explained. "We never heard you come in. Good-bye, Jane-Anne, I must go and wash."

Wagging his curly head meaningly in token of the assignation for the morrow, Edmund departed and Jane-Anne was left face to face with her aunt.

"Well!" that good woman ejaculated. "You've given me a pretty turn. I couldn't think where you was gone; evening and all, and then to think you've been all this time playing with the young gentlemen like one of theirselves, and me never so much as dreaming where you was. What possessed you to come at all, Jane-Anne?"

"I was lonely, Aunt Martha, I wanted to see you."

"You might have seen me over an hour ago if you'd a' chose. Well, now you must run back home before it gets dark. I can't let you wait for me to take you, there's all them dinner things to wash up. How hot you are child! Mind you don't catch cold, and school beginning next week."

Jane-Anne looked wistfully at the sizzling cutlets in the frying-pan. She had started off before her tea and was very hungry. Her aunt had turned again to the range and was absorbed in lifting her cutlets out one by one and setting them to drain on a dish covered with white paper. As she carefully placed the last one, she turned and saw the flushed, wistful little face under the shadow of the inverted pie-dish.

"There, child," she said impatiently, "don't dawdle, it's late enough as it is, and Miss Morecraft 'll be in a fine taking where you can have got to."

"Good-night, Aunt Martha," Jane-Anne said obediently, and held up her face to be kissed.

Mrs. Dew stooped and kissed the child with great kindness and felt in the pocket of her skirt. "You buy a cake for your supper," she said, pressing a penny into Jane-Anne's hand, "on your way back. I can't give you anything here for the food's not mine, and to take my employer's victuals is what I never have done nor never will."

Jane-Anne flung her arms round her aunt's neck. "I do love you, Aunt Martha," she whispered chokily.

"There, there, do get home, and remember that if so be as I'm out when you call, you're to go away again and not come in as bold as brass as if you was a friend of the family--playing with the young gentlemen and all. Folks ought to keep to their proper stations."

"But he asked me to come and play," Jane-Anne expostulated.

"Law bless you, Master Edmund'd ask in a tramp off the road, he's that full of caddle. Now look sharp, child, and get home."

Jane-Anne let herself out at the side-door and went through under the archway into the street. It was quite deserted, and as she passed the dining-room window she stopped, and pressing her face against the glass, looked in.

The electric light above the table had a rose-coloured shade and filled the room with a warm, soft light. A bright fire was burning on the hearth, for the evenings were still cold and a shrewd wind blew down the empty street. To Jane-Anne, shivering now after being much too hot, the room looked inexpressibly comfortable and cheery.

Mr. Wycherly, his white hair shining with a silvery radiance, was standing with Montagu, newly promoted to a dinner-jacket on the hearth-rug. His hand was on the boy's shoulder, and he smiled down at him, for Montagu was talking eagerly. There was evidently such perfect confidence and affection between what Jane-Anne called "the beautiful old gentleman" and the boy for whom she had just been fielding, that she felt a passionate desire to be there too. Surely anyone who looked so gracious and benign would have a kindly word for her. Should she rap at the window and attract their attention? Somehow she was certain that neither of them would be cross. Her eyes filled with tears, and the figures standing on the hearth-rug became blurred and indistinct, but she saw her aunt come in and cross towards the window to pull down the blind. Jane-Anne darted away, the big tears chasing each other down her cheeks.

"I wish I was that kind of orphan!" sobbed Jane-Anne.

*CHAPTER V*

*THEIR MEETING*

"For may not a person be only five, And yet have the neatest of taste alive? As a matter of fact, this one has views Of the strictest sort as to frocks and shoes." AUSTIN DOBSON.

Little Herrick had no companions of her own age except for an occasional visit to cousins. Therefore did she invent comrades for herself and sternly impose them upon her family.

There was "Umpy dear" who, as his name suggested, was a meek, inefficient sort of person, often in trouble of various kinds, but always entirely amiable and desirous of pleasing. Quite other was "Mr. Woolykneeze," a stern, characterful personality who was quoted as an authority on all questions of manners and deportment. Even Janet, the commonsensical, trembled before Mr. Woolykneeze. One day at tea, having toothache, she had ventured to leave a piece of crust upon her plate, when Herrick remarked it and said sternly, "Mr. Woolykneeze thinks it's very impolite to leave bits, 'specially crusts," and poor Janet was fain to soak the crust in her tea and mumble it that way rather than offend this mysterious and invisible censor.

When asked the age of "Umpy dear," Herrick always persisted that he was "three months and one day." He never grew any older and his social solecisms were surely excusable in one of such tender age. "Mrs. Miff" was "Umpy dear's" mother, and her character was believed to have been founded on that of a charwoman who occasionally came to the house. Like her offspring she was meek and rather feckless, frequently arousing the wrath of Mr. Woolykneeze by her untidy and careless habits.

No one knew whence Herrick got the names or how she divined their various characters, but the people were there and had come to stay, and her family had to put up with them.

Her visit to Oxford opened up whole vistas of new possibilities. Here were two real boys with whom she had been allowed to play. It is true that they did not fall into her scheme with that instant understanding and obedience to which she was accustomed from her parents, but still they played after a fashion, a new and piquant fashion, and Herrick went back to the King's Arms after her visit to Holywell chattering incessantly of "Monkagu" and "Emmund," and demanding an instant return to their society. She wept bitterly when she found she could not go back that night, and declared that Mr. Woolykneeze and Umpy dear were equally upset. Her father suggested that these gentlemen might stroll round by themselves, when Herrick, regarding him with tearful astonishment, sobbed out: "They'd never be so unkind as to go wivout me. Besides, Umpy dear might spill something on your uncle's best carpet. Can't _I_ take them?"

"Not to-night, I fear."

"Why?"

"Because, you see, we've been already; it would be troublesome to go twice."

"Why would it be troublesome? I want to play with those little boys again."

"They're not very little boys, you know. They're a great deal bigger than you are. Perhaps they don't care to play with little girls."

At this Herrick opened her tearful eyes wide, repeating in astonishment, "Not care to play wiv _me_? Why not?"

"Well, you see, boys don't always care for the same games that girls like."

"But they're nice boys."

"I'm glad to hear it; still, you know, even nice boys don't always care to play with little girls."

Herrick sighed deeply. It was a horrid suggestion, the more so that she felt secretly assured that the princess game had not been a wild success.

"I want to see the varlet again," she persisted.

"Which is the varlet?"

"The littler one. I do want him to play wiv me."

"Perhaps he will to-morrow."

"D'rectly after breakfas', mind; you promise."

William Wycherly promised, and Herrick went to bed to dream that "Emmund" and "Monkagu" were walking down Holywell arm-in-arm with Umpy dear and Mr. Woolykneeze, and that they all four called at the hotel to take her for a walk in St. John's Gardens.

Next morning Herrick woke very early. Janet, her Scottish nurse, was having a fortnight's holiday, therefore at that time her mother was her sole guardian and attendant. Her bed was in a little dressing-room off that of her mother, the door between the two rooms being left open.

For a little while Herrick was content to sit up and wonder at the floors of the King's Arms Hotel, which are not as ordinary floors, but slope up and down in all sorts of unexpected directions. But she soon got tired of this, and so effectually roused her devoted parents that the three of them were down in the coffee-room and had finished breakfast by half-past eight.

"Now let us go and see your uncle, daddie dear," Herrick suggested as soon as she was lifted down from her chair. It seemed so extraordinary to her that anyone as old as her father should have an uncle, and she never failed to lay great stress upon the pronoun.

"We can't possibly invade them so early as this," Margaret said firmly; "they're probably not downstairs yet."

"Umpy dear thinks they're up and finished breakfast," Herrick remarked in a detached, impersonal tone, "_and_ waiting for me."

"Well, I must beg to differ from Umpy dear. We said we'd call about ten, and it won't be ten for an hour and a half yet. I must write some letters, and you must amuse yourself somehow while I do it. What toys will you have?"

"I'll look out of the window, sank you," Herrick remarked with dignity, and climbed upon a chair that she might see over the wire blind.

Her mother gave one amused glance at the small offended back turned towards her and went upstairs to get her writing-case.

William Wycherly, seeing his daughter apparently engrossed in her inspection of the street, strolled to the bureau to look up trains, for they were to leave that afternoon.

No sooner was he out of sight than Herrick, muttering something to the effect that "Mr. Woolykneeze _knows_ they're waiting," scrambled down from the chair and tip-toed out to the hall and thence into the street.

No one saw her, for none of the other sojourners at the King's Arms were down, and at that moment there was not even a waiter in the hall.

It was a perfect April morning. The sun shone clear and warm, and a shy, caressing wind lifted Herrick's curls and turned them to a haze of golden floss as she stepped daintily to the pavement and looked up street and down street carefully. Then, as fast as her sturdy legs would carry her, she ran till she reached Mr. Wycherly's gabled house.

But there she was met by a difficulty, for she could reach neither knocker nor bell. For a moment she stood undecided in the doorway, but she was not lacking in resource. She couldn't quite see into the windows but she could reach them with her hand. She selected that on the left-hand side of the door and tapped on the glass. No response; evidently there was no one in that room.

She tried the other. Still no one came to see who was there.

A passing boy, who noted her efforts, inquired good-naturedly: "Want to get in, missie?"

"Please! Would you ring for me?" she asked, smiling up at him in bewitching fashion; "there doesn't seem to be anybody in those rooms."

The boy rang loudly, knocked like a postman, and went up the street, where he waited a few doors off to see what happened.

The door was opened.

Mrs. Dew looked down at this hatless, golden-haired person in an elaborate blue linen smock the colour of her eyes, and recognised yesterday's visitor.

"Come in, my dear," she said hospitably. "They're none of 'em down yet, but I can hear the young gentlemen hollerin' and rampagin', so they won't be long----" "Parents want to get her out of the way for a bit, I expect," she thought to herself, "her mamma must get pretty tired of it without no nurse."

Herrick followed Mrs. Dew into the dining-room, where breakfast was laid. "One minute, my dear," said that good woman, "I must just pop back to my bacon and eggs, then I'll come and see to you."

But Herrick had not come to see Mrs. Dew. No sooner was she left alone than she sought the steep, narrow staircase and began to climb upstairs, whispering as she went, "You'd better take my hand, Umpy dear."

Two doors on the landing were open. The bathroom faced her, empty, and very wet. She walked straight through the second open door on the other side of the landing and came upon Montagu brushing his hair at the glass while Edmund, still in his shirt-sleeves, was practising a handspring on the end of his bed.

Montagu saw her reflected in the mirror and in speechless astonishment watched her as she paused well inside the doorway, announcing genially, "We've all three come."

Edmund's feet dropped to the floor with a flump.

"Mercy goodness!" Montagu ejaculated, and dashed for the door that led into Mr. Wycherly's room. On this he thumped loudly; without waiting for permission to enter, he opened it just wide enough to thrust in his head, and repeated, "They've all three come," in a penetrating whisper.

Mr. Wycherly, who was shaving, dropped his razor and turned a soapy and astonished countenance towards Montagu, exclaiming, "What! al----!" when he hastily changed his remark to: "They've come to breakfast with us, have they? How exceedingly kind and friendly; run down at once and ask Mrs. Dew to lay three more places."

Herrick staring at Edmund, heard this and said slowly: "They don't generally lay for them."

"What?" cried Edmund, immensely interested. "Don't you have plates and knives and things?"

"_I_ do," said Herrick; "at least not knives 'cept a silver one, but they never do. They _will_ be pleased."

"But do you mean to tell me," Edmund exclaimed, appalled at the eccentricity of the Wycherly _menage_ as revealed by their daughter, "that they eat things right off the cloth? Whatever do they do when there's gravy?"

"They never has gravy, poor dears," said Herrick sadly.

Edmund sighed. As old Elsa would have said, it was "ayont him"; and they both looked so nice too. It was impossible to imagine Mr. and Mrs. Wycherly gnawing cutlets without so much as a plate between them. He got into his waistcoat and jacket in thoughtful silence. Montagu, who had not paid any attention to these astonishing revelations, being filled with hospitable concern as to whether there would be sufficient bacon and eggs for three extra persons, gave his hair one final thump with the brush and prepared to go downstairs.

"Stop!" cried Edmund; "you haven't said your prayers; hurry up!" Both boys knelt down by the bed, side by side, while Herrick watched their bowed heads with solemn interest.

"Why don't you begin?" she asked impatiently after a minute's silence.

"I've _done_," Edmund announced cheerfully, arising from his knees, when Montagu followed suit and rushed downstairs.

"But you didn't say anything."

"We don't say prayers out loud. It's only very little children say them out loud."

"Oh!" she said, as though suddenly enlightened. "Umpy dear says his very loud, but Mr. Woolykneeze looks into his hat like a grown-up genpleman; you can't hear a fing."

"But," Edmund objected, "one hasn't always got a hat in the morning," and opening Mr. Wycherly's door a very little, he called through: "I say, Guardie, do you always say your prayers into a hat?"

"Really, Edmund," said poor Mr. Wycherly, much perturbed by this second interruption, "I do so dislike doors being opened while I am shaving, especially when as in this instance----"

Edmund banged the door.

"I'm sure he doesn't," he said confidently. "He can't, for his hat's downstairs. P'raps that Mr. What's-is-name you mentioned has a special kind."

"Mr. Woolykneeze has hundreds of hats," Herrick announced magnificently.

"What a lot of room they must take up," said Edmund, much impressed.

"They do," said Herrick, "rooms and rooms."

"Is yon Mr. Woolykneeze a relation?" Edmund asked.

Herrick looked thoughtful. "Not exactly," she said slowly, "but he's a dear fend."

"How many pairs of trousers has he?"

Here was a poser. Herrick was not yet very familiar with the science of numbers. "I've not seen them all," she said cautiously; "he wears different ones every day. Let's come downstairs," she added quickly lest he should ask more inconvenient questions. "You may show me the garden till bretfus is ready if you like."

By the time Mr. Wycherly came down, six places were laid for breakfast and Mrs. Dew had cooked three extra portions of bacon and eggs. She rang the bell loudly and the boys with little Herrick came in from the garden.

"Perhaps you'd better run along to the King's Arms, Edmund, and tell my nephew and his wife that breakfast is ready," said Mr. Wycherly. "I thought, my dear," he added, turning towards Herrick, "that you said your father and mother had come. I hope they haven't gone away in despair because none of us were down."

Herrick looked up at him with candid, forget-me-not blue eyes.

"No," she said gravely, "I never said they'd come for they didn't."

"But you did!" Montagu exclaimed. "You said, 'We've all three come' when you first came upstairs."

"So we have," she said. "Mr. Woolykneeze and Umpy dear and me; not mummy and daddie. I 'spect this is him now," as a loud knock and ring came at the front door.

And sure enough it was William Wycherly, so relieved to see his daughter safe that he forgot altogether to scold her for running away.

Margaret, thinking her husband was in charge of Herrick, had not hurried down and he, returning to the empty coffee-room, concluded that Herrick had been fetched upstairs by her mother. It was not till Margaret came down that they discovered she had apparently vanished into space. William instantly fell into a panic and was for summoning a detective at once, when Margaret calmly interposed with the suggestion that he should first look for his daughter in his uncle's house. After considerable explanation which included the important personalities of Mr. Woolykneeze and Umpy dear, William was fain to go back to the King's Arms without his daughter, and Herrick sat at Mr. Wycherly's right hand, raised high in her chair upon a dictionary and Cruden's Concordance, and had breakfast all over again "wivout a bib" as she joyfully announced. The blue smock also bore testimony to that fact when the meal was over. The extra bacon and eggs were not wasted; Montagu and Edmund consumed the lot.

By the time breakfast was over it was nearly ten o'clock, and Edmund went to the front door to look for Jane-Anne. Sure enough she was there waiting in a doorway just down the street. Jane-Anne saw him and came out from her doorway, advancing rather timidly.

"Where's Aunt Martha?" she whispered.

"Upstairs, making beds," Edmund answered, "so we can't go to the attics, but you can come into the garden. There's only one room looks out into the garden and that's Guardie's study. He's gone there now so Mrs. Dew won't be in that."

"Are you sure?" Jane-Anne whispered again. "She'd be awfully vexed if she saw me."

"Come on. That kid is here and she can't stop long for we're all going out on the river. Hurry up if you really want to see her."

Jane-Anne came in sideways, as though by that means she made herself less conspicuous.

Herrick and Montagu were standing on the lawn under an apple tree, looking at some trumpet daffodils that were growing at its root. Herrick, very gently, was lifting each yellow bell to look inside it.

"Fairies live in these," she was saying, "but it's such a beautiful morning, I 'spect they've all flown away. You have to be very early to catch a fairy. Who's that with Edmund and what's she come for?"

"To see you, I think," Montagu replied. "Jane-Anne's her name and she's Mrs. Dew's niece."

Jane-Anne looked more haggard than ever this morning; pale to ghastliness with dark shadows under her great eyes, she was singularly unattractive. Little Herrick felt both puzzled and repelled, but Margaret's teaching held good and the child walked forward holding out her hand with a little gracious air that was very captivating.

"How do you do?" said Herrick.

To her surprise, this strange-looking person dropped on one knee before her and taking the eggy little hand in both her own, kissed it.

"You're quite right," Jane-Anne remarked to Montagu over her shoulder, "she is like a princess."

"You may kiss me if you like," said Herrick graciously.

"If you please, miss, I'd rather you'd kiss me if you will," said Jane-Anne humbly. "I'd like to think anything so pretty as you had kissed me."

There was something so wistful and pathetic in the pale face that gazed so longingly into her own that little Herrick's warm heart was touched and she flung her arms round Jane-Anne's neck and kissed her heartily.

"Thank you," said Jane-Anne as she rose up to her feet. "I shall never forget it, never."

"Now I," interposed Edmund, who had looked on with astounded disapprobation at this display of sentiment, "I should loathe and abominate anyone who kissed me and I should try to forget it as soon as ever I could."

"So should I," Montagu agreed, "rather--but I suppose girls are different."

"Course they are," Herrick chimed in; "quite different and much better and more precious. Daddie says so."

This point of view did not appeal to the boys.

"I don't know about 'precious,'" Edmund said scornfully. "It depends what you mean by precious."

"_I'm_ precious," Herrick explained, "very, very precious. That's why they were so afraid they'd lost me this morning, 'cause I'm so precious."

"I'm not," said Jane-Anne. "Female orphans never are so far as I can make out, but I'd like to be. Oh, it would be lovelly!"

Herrick had been staring hard at Jane-Anne for some minutes and at last could contain herself no longer.

"Why," she demanded, "do you wear such a funny hat? Do you like it?"

"Why d'you wear no hat at all?" Montagu interposed, vaguely aware that Herrick's question was not tactful.

"I wear a bonnet generally," Herrick remarked with dignity, "but I came out without it this morning 'cause they were in such a hurry. D'you like my smock?" she asked, turning to Jane-Anne. "Mummy made it."

"I like everything about you," Jane-Anne answered, with commendable enthusiasm. "I think you're a dear darling, and I hate all my clothes, but I can't go about without any because people would stare, beside it's generally too cold." And though the sun was shining hot on the lawn, Jane-Anne shivered.

Montagu looked at his watch.

"We'll have to go and get ready," he said. "We're all going on the river this morning--they're going away this afternoon--and I promised to take her back to the hotel at half-past ten to have her face washed. I wish you were coming too," he added kindly, "but it's not our party."

"Good-bye, little girl," said Herrick, "and I hope you'll soon have a nicer hat, a really pretty one." And again Herrick kissed Jane-Anne.

"I'll let you out at the garden door," said Edmund, "then we shan't run into Mrs. Dew."

Quite silently Jane-Anne followed him to the end of the garden where there was a door in the wall. It was seldom used and the key was stiff, but by great efforts with both hands, Edmund managed to turn it.

"Come again, soon," he said hospitably, "and we'll have some more cricket."