Part 6

"I'm not clever enough to answer you," she said at last, in a low voice; "but you know what I think of you, and what a dirty game you have just played--poisoning Sally's mind. One day you will be expelled, and----"

"Probably, and the school saints will sing anthems of joy over one sinner cast into outer darkness."

"It will be for the good of the school--yes."

"And for the good of your darling Sally too, eh? We were talking about her, I think?"

Violet moved a little closer. "What I am afraid of is--that she may be expelled too. She is not the first child you have done your best to ruin, by dragging her into rows. If you do, just remember this, I shall go to Miss Cockran and tell her how much is your fault, and not Sally's. She would run straight if you let her alone."

"You will turn sneak, in fact--is that it? My dear girl, you will make yourself popular."

"I know--I hate sneaks; but sometimes things have to be stopped, and Doris Forbes' brain works so slowly that she doesn't see them."

"Well, it will be amusing to hear how Old Cocaine welcomes you. I don't fancy it will be with approval. Not even a prefect, are you?"

Trina laughed as she spoke, and picked up her hat.

"Tut, tut. What a fuss, and all about a little whippersnapper in the Remove. I'm quite exhausted. Do get out of my way. Oh, bother! There's the child herself coming; she must have been bowled at once."

Violet did not stir. "I'm not just fussing, Trina," she said, "I mean it. Leave Sally alone, or I shall spoil your game."

They looked straight into one another's eyes, and then Violet turned and walked off, without a glance at the younger girl, who, bat in hand, had come rushing up to join them.

"What have you both been saying? Tell me, Peter.... I sent a catch at once, when I saw you were still talking."

Trina Morrison shrugged. There was a smile round her mouth, but it lacked its usual charm; and her eyes were hard, under brows drawn together in a frown.

"Let us forget your missionary," she said petulantly, at last. "She goes nearer to making me lose my temper than anyone else in this place. Dull as water, you call her--I say, as 'ditchwater.'"

"Then give me--some champagne."

Sally looked significantly at the letter crumpled up in the elder girl's hand; and Trina, following her glance, hesitated perceptibly.

"Well, why not?" she said. "Since Violet has dared me and it's your risk, remember--my adventure, at least, was planned for myself alone."

"Oh, Peter, do tell me quick."

They were moving towards the house now, and Trina Morrison's frown had cleared away.

"It's from Austin--the letter--" she said. "He and the others want to meet me at Parchester Fair next Wednesday."

"How scrumptious! I love a Fair. But what time? They will spot we are up to something at once, if we don't go to prep., won't they?"

"Silly! this is an evening affair, when good little school-girls are in their beds. Why, anything of that sort is no fun in the day. Besides, there is to be a dance.... I forgot that... you are rather young for a dance. It's with some friends of Austin, in Parchester."

"I can either dance or look on," said Sally calmly. "You promised you'd take me, Peter. I won't be a nuisance."

"I believe it would be best, if you didn't go--all the same," muttered the other. "I should be leaving here in two terms, anyhow, you see; but it's different for you."

It was difficult to tell from her expression whether a belated attack of conscience or a fear that the younger girl might indeed be in the way was troubling her most.

Sally slipped her arm through Trina's ingratiatingly. "Don't worry about my being expelled," she said; "I don't want to stay here when you are gone."

In the excitement of the moment, she believed this true, and, touched by the passion of affection in her voice, Peter slipped her arm round her.

"Nice kid," she said; "but you know it is a mistake to put all your eggs in one basket. I never do."

"You have so many friends," said Sally, a trifle wistfully, "and I have so many enemies"; adding, in her usual tone of bravado, "but of course I don't care about that."

"No?" said the other, a little mockingly. "Are you quite sure? If not, it would be a pity to get expelled."

"I tell you, I don't care," answered Sally obstinately. "And I'm going to the Fair. What about plans?"

They went into the house discussing them.

CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH

A NIGHT ADVENTURE

It was Wednesday evening. Sally Brendan lay in her bed, with her eyes closed, and the sheet drawn up almost to her nose. Yet she was very far from being asleep; and had anyone turned back the clothes they would have seen that, instead of a nightdress, she wore gym. knickers, and a jersey that belonged to one of her brothers, which she had insisted on packing in a corner of her trunk because it was certain to come in useful.

She giggled softly to herself, as she thought of her appearance, and Peter's last whispered instructions as they came out of Chapel:

"For Heaven's sake, child, remember that whatever you wear, it must be something that doesn't give us away! I don't want anybody at the Fair saying that you came from Seascape House."

"Right oh! Old Cocaine herself would hardly know me," she had whispered back, and hurried off, for fear her friend should question her further and raise objections: she might even at the last minute refuse to take her.

Trina Morrison had been in a very uncertain mood since the scene between them on the cricket field; for the most part, irritable and impatient. Several times she had hinted that, on reflection, she felt sure it would be wiser for Sally not to come; and when that young lady had maintained, "But I am going anyhow--it's no use trying to stop me now," she had warned her that she might have to return alone.

"You see, you are much too juvenile for this sort of a dance, really, and I can't be bothered to act nursemaid. Why, I never meant to bring you into the show at all, until that ass Violet Tremson began to threaten me, and then I felt I must--just to annoy her."

"To threaten you with what?"

"Why, expulsion, of course. She said if I didn't reform my ways, especially with regard to you, she would expound my sins to Old Cocaine."

"What a sneaking cad she is!"

In her heart Sally Brendan found it difficult to apply this description to Violet Tremson, but she was still sore and angry with her. It is said that any stick is good enough with which to beat a dog: besides, it seemed to mollify Peter.

"I dare say you wouldn't be happy here with this crowd when I am gone, and that's a matter of two terms more at most," she had said, in a more friendly tone; and Sally had answered:

"Of course not--I have told you so. I always meant to get expelled, from that first day on the beach."

If not strictly true, the sentiment sounded well, and allowed Trina to put away, with a shrug of her shoulders, any responsibility she might ever have felt.

"All right, then--9.45 sharp--at the landing window; and remember, I shan't hang about for you."

It was for the clock to strike 9.30 that the girl now anxiously waited.

Seascape House went to bed early. The Matron had made her last round of the passages, and Decima Pillditch was snoring heavily, when Sally at last stole out of bed. By pulling to one side the curtain of her cubicle, she could focus the moonlight full on her looking-glass; and without delay she started on the final stage in her make-up.

It was quick and drastic: nothing less than the hacking off of the red curls that had made a fuzzy halo round her small freckled face. When it was completed, she was no longer bobbed, but shorn, and in her costume of knickers and jersey presented a very good picture of a street Arab of eleven or twelve.

The effect was magnificent, but something of a shock in its transformation--even to Sally herself; and she began to wonder how Peter would approve of the disguise--completed by a large hole in the back of her stocking, which she suddenly discovered, and had no time to draw together.

"I will keep on my cap and coat until we leave the garden," she told herself, rather guiltily; and thus wrapped up, opened the door, stole along the passage, and down the back stairs to the landing window.

It was open, and at first she thought that her friend had gone without her; but as she peered out, she heard a voice whisper:

"Come! Do be quick."

And climbing through the opening, she found herself alongside Trina, on the flat roof of the corridor, that ran round three sides of the gymnasium.

Without looking at her, Trina inserted a large wedge of wood between the window and the sash, then pulled the lower pane down to meet it.

"No one is likely to notice that, and we shall be able to lift it all right when we return," she whispered. "But now, follow me and be quiet. We have to crawl along just below the mistresses' windows, stooping, in case they are there--but I think they are all in the sitting-room at this hour. When we come to Miss Castle's, there's a pipe down to the ground, and two bricks out in the wall, where one can put one's feet."

She started off, pulling her dark coat tight round her, and Sally followed, her eyes dancing with excitement. Most of the mistresses' windows were shut, but Miss Castle's was half open, with a curtain blowing slightly in the wind, though there was no light showing.

Trina made a grimace at the blank space, and shook her fist playfully; then began to lower herself over the edge of the roof. Her feet scraped along the pipe before they found their foothold, and Sally, at the noise, caught her breath; but there was no sound from the room above.

"She is not in there yet," the girl decided; and seeing the light in Miss Cockran's study at the end of the passage, wondered idly if she had gone along there.

"Jawing about us in our little beds to Old Cocaine," she said, and giggled as she began her own descent. It was hastened by a sudden flash of electric light in Miss Castle's room, just as she found her first foothold, and thereupon she lowered herself with a rapidity that nearly sent Trina Morrison, just below her, backwards into a flower bed.

"Young ass!" whispered Trina. "You will make me dirty my evening dress."

"'Ware Castle!" Sally returned, and they flattened themselves against the wall in the shadows, as they heard a voice from above call sharply,

"Who's there?"

Again the question was repeated, and as if in response two cats emerged from a bush and fled across the grass, one of them miawing loudly.

This seemed to satisfy Miss Castle, for she partially closed her window, and they heard the curtain drawn across. Keeping to the shadows, they crept along the flower beds till they turned the corner of the house, and came out on the grass of the tennis lawns, from whence they made their way into the shrubberies. No word was said until they had climbed into the tree, with branches overhanging the wall, that Sally knew from her previous adventure.

"I'd better leave my things here, hadn't I?" she whispered. "It's frightfully warm, and my overcoat is a school one"; but the elder girl, without answering beyond a nod of agreement, was already scrambling down the rough stonework, with the aid of a rope she had pulled out of the trunk and hung over a strong branch.

Sally followed her as quickly as she could, but with her shorter legs the drop was not so easy to manage, and Trina was walking rapidly down the road by the time she reached the ground.

"Are you going at that pace all the way to Parchester?" she panted, as she caught her up. "Anyhow, it's no good--we shan't be there before midnight."

"No, silly! The Fair is on the heath, on this side of the town, and anyhow, I have ordered a car at the Black Cull."

There was something very impressive to Sally's ears in the carelessness of her companion's tone, and as she undid her coat in the warm night air, and it fell back, revealing a pretty silk dress, the younger girl gave a gasp of admiration and distress.

"Why, you are most frightfully smart," she said. "I don't know whatever you will think of me."

"Good Golliwogs!"

Trina had turned her round towards the moon, and was staring at her, her own face in the shadows, so that Sally could not tell what she felt.

"You told me to disguise myself," she said half defiantly, expecting anger or scorn--anything but her companion's sudden outburst of laughter.

"My good child! Well, you have cut the painter--you are done for now with Old Cocaine."

"Lost by a narrow shave, instead of escaped by it," said Sally, greatly relieved. "Anyhow, no one at the Fair could possibly recognise me, could they?"

"I should say your own mother wouldn't--when you are returned to her, to-morrow."

Sally's rising spirits received a dash of cold water at the rejoinder. In a flash she suddenly remembered how Mrs. Brendan had begged her not to get expelled, and how she had promised she would try to stop at school. Standing outside the private door of the Black Bull, while Trina Morrison hammered with the knocker, she shuffled her feet uncomfortably, and tried to put out of her mind her mother's eyes, and her consciousness of the furious superior glance that Cecilia would give her, when she turned up once more like a bad penny. After all, she decided, there was no need for them to be caught. Peter had done this kind of thing before, quite safely, and cutting off one's hair was not an unpardonable crime, taken by itself.

"Oh, shut up shuffling, do," she heard the elder girl say. "I want to listen. They are all asleep, or I shall have to go to the public bar, and find someone. It's perfectly disgusting."

At this moment the door flew open, and a man with a red face appeared. He was in his shirt sleeves, with a coat over his arm, which he began to put on while he spoke--leering at them with a disagreeably familiar smile.

"All right, Missie. I booked the order true enough, but I tell you straight I don't fancy it. Thinking it over, after the young gentleman had bin here, I says to myself, 'It will as good as get me sacked, it will, if I'm found out--and that's not exactly a cheering sort of notion for a poor man.'"

"My cousin arranged with you to drive me to the opening of the Fair for ten shillings--an order is an order, isn't it?"

"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.