CHAPTER XVIII.

“WE’RE AWFULLY SORRY NOW.”

“Oh, Fay, wake up, do wake up, there’s burglars at our door!”

It was just midnight, and for the last two hours an unbroken silence had reigned within Gaybrook Farm.

But now Marygold, with her long hair tumbling over her little nightgown, was standing beside Faith’s bed tugging at her sheets with all her might. “There, there it is again,” as a loud but dull thud came against the lower panels of the door.

Poor Faith, who had till this moment been sound asleep, started up in bewildered alarm.

“It is burglars,” repeated Marygold, “and I can’t find the matches.”

By this time, however, Faith had collected both the matches and her wits, and was lighting the candle.

“Who, who’s there?” she asked, in rather unsteady tones.

Then a very frightened little voice made itself heard.

“Oh, please Fay, I can’t find the handle, and I’m so frightened out here in this ghostly passage, and Andrew’s dying.”

In a twinkling, Faith was out of bed, and with her dressing-gown flying loosely behind her, was hurrying down the long passage and up the little flight of steep stairs, which separated the girls’ rooms from those that the boys occupied.

Poor, half-awake Hubert was meanwhile telling his sleepy story to Marygold.

“I _b’lieve_ Andrew’s dying. Phil and Jack are awfully frightened ’cause he is making such a funny noise and doesn’t seem able to _breaf_ a bit. I was to run as fast as I could for Fay, they said, but it was all dark, and I hit my head three times and knocked my elbow _dreffully_.”

“Suppose we go and tell Di and Phoena,” suggested Marygold; “they’ll be ever so frightened,” she added, in a tone of distinct cheerfulness.

“Oh, yes, let’s,” assented Hubert; it was joy to create a sensation.

But before they had succeeded in awakening Di satisfactorily, or in even making Phoena open her eyes, Ruth had swept down on these young “pilgrims of the night,” and arrested their further exploits.

“There, Miss Di, take Miss Marion into bed with you and keep her quiet,” said Ruth, tucking Marygold into a corner of the huge bed in which Di lost herself every night. “And you come along with me, Master Hubert, we don’t want you running over the house in the middle of the night and catching your death of cold.” And with less gentleness than her wont, Ruth caught Hubert up in her arms and disappeared with him, just when Phoena was beginning anxiously to enquire what had happened.

“Hubert says that Andrew’s dying,” said Marygold.

“Who told Hubert so?” asked Phoena, very wide awake now and sitting up in her bed. “Did Fay say so?”

“No, it was Phil and Jack b’lieved it,” said Marygold.

“Oh! that all, I suppose his breathing was bad and they were frightened,” said Phoena.

“I expect if we listen, we may hear if there is much disturbance,” said Diana.

“Yes,” said Phoena, “let’s listen.”

And so she did, but the only thing she heard distinctly was presently the sound of her cousins’ snoring; their anxiety was not keeping them awake! Phoena’s fears, however, were not so easily allayed.

Nor did she feel reassured when after much opening and shutting of distant doors, she finally heard the sound of hasty footsteps on the flags of the stable-yard below, then that of horse’s hoofs. Blackberry, the farmers’ stout cob, which did all the errands, was being led out of the stable, Phoena made that out plainly, and then, a minute later, she heard someone trot off at a round pace.

Phoena began to tremble in her little bed. Andrew must be very ill, she felt sure of that now, and they were fetching the doctor.

“Oh dear! oh dear! I do hope Andrew isn’t very, very bad,” she said half-aloud, “it’s dreadful to lie here and wonder all through the long night. How I do wish the hours would strike faster.”

The clock struck some twenty minutes later, but Phoena did not hear it. She had fallen asleep again and only awoke to hear Ruth bidding Di and herself to get up as quietly as they could and go down the stairs softly to breakfast.

“Poor Master Andrew has been very ill in the night,” she explained, adding, that though he was better before the doctor left, it was of great importance that his sleep should not be disturbed.

“Did the doctor say that he was dangerously ill?” asked Di.

“Dear me! no, I should hope not,” cried Ruth, “we should have to be sending for your Mamma, in that case, Miss Di, but he has had a very nasty attack of asthma, and Dr. Forbes says he needs all the sleep he can get to help him over the exhaustion. There, it’s a good thing it’s Sunday and you’ll all be going to church this morning--all, that is, except Miss Faith.”

“What’s _she_ doing?” asked Di.

“Sleeping, I hope, poor little soul,” said Ruth, “she’s fairly worn out.”

“Oh! Fay likes fussing with steam-kettles and mustard leaves,” said Diana, rather contemptuously.

“I don’t know if she likes it,” retorted Ruth, “but she’s a very clever little nurse, and as to Master Andrew, he’s the best patient I ever saw. Poor boy, how he did suffer and struggle for breath last night, and never a word of complaint.”

“Oh! he’s never half so horrid when he’s ill,” began Di; but by this time Ruth had gone, taking Marygold with her, to ensure that Faith’s belated night’s rest was not interrupted by any inroads from her usual small room-fellow.

“Poor Andrew,” said Phoena, beginning her toilet. “I _am_ sorry he’s ill.”

“Oh! it’s his nature to be seedy,” said Di, speaking rather crossly, because she was in sharp conflict with a tangle in her long wavy hair, “you know that we always hear that he’s such a wonderful saint when he’s ill and he is such a toad when he isn’t.”

“I should think that it must be harder to be nice when you are ill than when you’re well,” remarked Phoena, rather dreamily.

“I’m sure it can’t be,” broke in Di, “because it’s always the way with the horridest people. They enrage you so when they are well, that they make you say and do horrid things yourself, and then they have a trick of getting ill and going to bed and turning into such saints, that somehow you can’t help feeling ashamed of yourself for having hated them when they are well. I call saints of that sort ‘pillow case saints,’ for their goodness slips off their pillow, just as easily as it slips on. And then if they go and die--oh! bother, there’s no tucker in my frock, how I wish Andrew wouldn’t be ill and make Fay stay in bed instead of being here to help me. Andrew always is a bother!”

“It’s very shocking to speak so hard-hearted, Miss Di,” said Ruth, re-appearing at this moment, “maybe you’ll be sorry for it, some fine day.”

“Wouldn’t a wet day do just as well?” retorted Di, pertly, “why are all the nasty things to happen on fine days?”

“That sharp little tongue of yours will bring you into trouble, Miss Di, if you’re not careful,” said long-suffering Ruth, taking pity all the same on Di’s unsuccessful attempts to complete her dressing. “There’s an old saying, you know, that ‘a sharp tongue cuts its owner’s throat.’”

“Oh! you good old Ruth, don’t begin preaching so early in the day,” said Di; “of course, I’m dreadfully sorry for Andrew and I mean to be ever so careful not to disturb him.”

And certainly she kept her word, declaring, as she went down stairs, that she should beg the boys to be very kind to Andrew.

But there was no need for her to exhort them on that point.

Jack and Phil were full of compassion for their cousin, a compassion which as Di guessed, was greatly leavened with compunction.

For though no one, not even Hubert, had divulged a word of the ducking, the schoolboys’ own conscience accused them pretty clearly as to the cause of Andrew’s sharp attack of illness.

And though they might have been heard muttering more than once, “Well, it only served him right!” their tone signified unmistakably, “I wish to goodness that we’d never done it.”

Moreover Andrew’s patience and real pluck in bearing his suffering had appealed to them strongly.

“Poor old beggar,” said Jack, “to see him panting like a steam engine and as white as a turnip, and trying all the time to grin over it, made one feel jolly bad all over.”

“Yes, it’s awful hard luck on the wretched chap,” said Phil, “I wish one could do something for the poor specimen.”

“I expect,” began Hubert, with some practical shrewdness, “if we never called him ‘Miss Annie’ again, it--”

But Jack broke in, “’pon my word, if it wasn’t Sunday, I declare I’d go out and try and catch some of his precious beasties for him.”

“Well, I’ll go and feed his gold fish now,” said Di, getting up from the table, whilst Phoena, without announcing her intentions, went to attend the canary and guinea-pig.

“We’ve all got to start by half-past ten for church, remember,” said Di, looking back from the door.

“All right,” said the boys--they were delightfully docile to-day.

“And you’ll remember to keep quiet, because of Andrew,” added Di.

And so, though Fay was not there to marshal her flock into good order, it was a very well-behaved party that set out from Gaybrook Farm for the parish church, on that summer Sunday morning.

“And they all behaved like models all through the service,” reported Ruth, who had watched them rather anxiously from her exalted seat in the gallery, “I was rather afraid how the young gentlemen might behave, if anything went wrong with the singing, as does sometimes happen, or if the sermon was extra long,” she confided to Mrs. Busson.

“Then more shame for you,” her Aunt had replied severely, “haven’t they always behaved like little gentlemen in my house, so would they be likely to forget manners in the House of God.”

“All the same,” said Ruth, “little Miss Marion did look straight at the sight of the high pews, as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I believe she was a bit frightened.”

Gaybrook Church, with its mossy leaning grave-stones on the outside, and its old-world galleries and pews inside, along with its service which had been unaltered for the last fifty years, were all of the most ancient description. So that both Hubert and Marygold, who had never in their short lives been in a high pew before, were almost alarmed when they were shut into one of these formidable-looking boxes, which, as Marygold remarked afterwards, “didn’t smell at all nice.”

Still it never occurred to them to behave less well than they would have done in their own church at home, although their attention, and their eyes too, would keep wandering to their new surroundings.

They were half fascinated, half awed, by the imposing mural tablets which frowned down on them from over their own and their neighbours’ pews, displaying such a variety of designs and devices. One tablet attracted Hubert greatly, from which a helmet stood out in such bold relief that he wondered if it would take off, whilst Marygold was deeply interested in the white marble effigy of a little girl, almost as big as herself, kneeling in a flowing robe with clasped hands on a level with her chin.

Why was that little girl there, she wondered, and had she been kneeling there for a great, great many years?

“Please tell me what’s written there,” she whispered to Phoena after the service was over; “it must tell about her death, I think.”

“It’s all in Latin,” returned Phoena, scanning the inscription under the little girl’s monument; “perhaps Jack could tell us what it is.” But another monument by the west door of the church was fascinating Jack and Phil, and they had no attention to pay to Marygold.

This was the life-size effigy of a recumbent knight, painted black, and looking ancient and grim beyond description. The shape of his shield and his crossed legs delighted Phoena, as showing that that old knight had been a Crusader, whilst Hubert fell in love with the hound which had crouched for so many years in stony stillness at his master’s feet.

“Now, doesn’t it seem curious?” cried Phoena, eagerly, as they came out of church, “that there should be a real old knight lying there? It seems as if it was to remind us that they really _did_ live once, and did all the grand, brave things one can only read about now.”

“But then they only got buried and painted black,” said Phil, dismally.

“But they’ll never be forgotten,” said Di, quickly.

“I should like to know what great things that grand old chap had done,” remarked Jack, thoughtfully.

They were going through a barley field just then, where the foot-track was so narrow that they were obliged to walk singly between the sea of ripening, drooping ears on either side.

“I wonder,” repeated Jack, “what sort of grand things that old fellow did so many years ago.”

The summer breeze was whispering amongst the gently swaying barley, and Phoena was following closely upon Jack’s heels, so that she might well have heard his musings, and answered them, but nevertheless the words which presently rang in Jack’s ears in reply to his own questioning came neither from Phoena’s lips, nor were they borne on the pleasant breeze, and yet no words ever sounded more distinctly, at least so far as Jack’s hearing was concerned.

“Whatever grand things that old knight might have done,” the voice said, “I’ll tell you what he never would have done. He would never have bullied a poor weakly fellow as you bullied Andrew yesterday, or held his peace and not owned up when his victim was suffering from the consequences.”

“Bother,” said Jack, audibly, “I don’t believe he would have, either.”

As they came through the porch into the house-place the children ran up against Dr. Forbes and Mrs. Busson in grave consultation.

“No, indeed! indeed!” the latter was saying, her usually bright face clouded with distress, “I can’t think, Dr. Forbes, how the poor child could have come by such a chill, for as to letting him sleep in an unaired bed, why, sir, you know me better than to believe----”

But Jack broke in.

“It was my fault, doctor,” he said; “we thought we’d give him a lesson, so we ducked him in the stream yesterday. Is he awfully bad?”

Jack’s voice grew shaky with the last words, and he was red to the tips of his ears.

“Not awfully bad, I hope, my boy,” replied the doctor, “but bad enough to teach you a lesson, young man, not to play such pranks again on a weakly fellow. You’ve caused him a lot of suffering, and a deal of anxiety to others besides.”

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Jack, simply.

“It was just as much our faults,” chimed in Phil and Hubert; “we all helped.”

“Well, you’re all a nice set of young scamps,” said the doctor. “You are a brave woman, Mrs. Busson, to undertake the care of them.”

“Oh! not so brave as you think, doctor,” said the old lady, with returning cheerfulness. “I expect they’ve done their worst now, for they are not the sort of young gentlemen to say they’re sorry and then go and do it again.”

That afternoon a letter directed in Jack’s best writing, and posted only with his and Phil’s knowledge, carried the following lines to Mrs. Durand:

“DEAR AUNT AGATHA,

It wasn’t Mrs. Busson’s fault, or anybody else’s but our’s. We ducked Andrew in the stream, and we’re awfully sorry now.

Your affectionate nephews,

JACK AND PHIL KENYON.”