'No one will tell,' said Clement. 'It was done the day I went over to Minsterham. I did all I could to find out.'
'Yes; and made them more obstinate than before,' said Alda.
Another catastrophe here suddenly struck Wilmet, namely, a long and very badly-mended rent in Stella's spotted pink frock, which, to say the truth, did not look as if it were Monday morning.
'Yes,' said Stella, 'I did try to mend it as well as I could, Sister, but there wasn't another work-a-day frock clean.'
'Your mending!' exclaimed Wilmet; 'but how did you tear it?'
'When I tumbled into the brambles, and was lost.'
'Lost, my dear? What does she mean?'
'It is quite true,' said Cherry. 'Angela and Bernard took her out fishing to Ball's hatch on Saturday, and lost her, only luckily we did not know anything about it till she was safe at home again, dear little darling!'
'But, Stella, how was it?' cried the horrified Wilmet, clasping her the closer.
'I could not bear to see the poor worms,' said Stella. 'Bear would cut them up to stick on his hook, so I got away out of sight of them, and gathered the dear little wild roses and honeysuckles; and when I wanted to find them again I couldn't, and nobody heard me when I called, and a robin looked at me, and I thought he wanted to bury me, and I ran away, and a great bush caught hold of me and scratched my legs, and tore out a great piece of the rim of my hat; and just then a good lady came by, and helped me up and to look for them, but we could not see them anywhere; so she took me to her house-such a dear little house all over roses-and she mended my hat, and I mended my frock, and she gave me some tea and plum-cake, and two dear little ponies came to the door, and a carriage, and she brought me home.'
'Who was she?'
'Miss Crabbe; she is new to the place,' said Cherry. 'Mr. Froggatt said she had only been once in the shop before. Tell Sister how you told her about yourself, Stella.'
'She asked my name,' said the child, 'and she said it was a very funny one, and she could not understand it; and then she wanted to know whose little girl I was, and I said, 'Brother Felix's;' and then she said, 'Have you no papa or mamma?' So I told her I hadn't a papa or mamma, but a father and mother up in heaven, and she said, 'I should think so, poor little dear, if there is no one to take more care of you.' I really did think she wanted to take me and keep me for an adopted child, so I told her that I had lots of dear good brothers and sisters that wanted me very much indeed, and I must go home to H. Froggatt and F. C. Underwood, High Street, Bexley.'
'I fancy,' said Cherry, 'that she thought Mr. Froggatt was Stella's grandfather, for she made him quite a speech about the neglect of the child-'such a nice-mannered little girl,' she said; but she would not come in, nor let Alda be called.'
'Nor should I have gone down if Mr. Froggatt had thought proper to call me,' said Alda. 'Imagine me in his office!'
'I can't imagine not going anywhere to thank the person that brought home my little Star,' said Wilmet, holding her arm close round the child, and kissing her repeatedly. 'But what became of the other two?'
'I went out after them,' said Clement, 'and found them rushing wildly about after her, afraid to come home. To do them justice, I believe they were almost out of their minds, thinking she must have tumbled into the river.'
'Oh, indeed,' said Alda. 'That's your account of it.'
'Yes,' said Cherry eagerly, 'all that pretending not to care, and that it was a trick of Stella's, was nothing but reaction. And then, you know, Clem, you
'There!' exclaimed Alda,' you see how it is, Wilmet; nothing but vindication of those two intolerable children! Now, just come, Wilmet, and see if they are to be backed up in this.'
But as Wilmet, perfectly bewildered, and feeling no hope of comprehension among so many, followed Alda from the room and up the stairs, Stella came plunging after, with a cry, 'Alda, Alda, don't hurt them!' just as from a housemaid's closet half way up, Alda was bringing to light a basin containing a dozen tadpoles twirling their shadowy tails.
'Now, Wilmet,' she solemnly said, 'do you approve of all those horrid brutes swimming in my bath?'
'They aren't in the well, I hope,' said Wilmet.
'How can you be so absurd, Wilmet? That's the way those children showed their sorrow that Clement talks about. I'll never believe but he helped them.'
'To weep them,' said a voice above; and Angela's face was seen looking out of her bush of hair over the balusters of the top storey. 'They
'You don't mean that they put them in?' asked Wilmet.
'What else should I mean?'
'And didn't she squall?' shouted Bernard; and then came a duet-
'Dame, dame, what makes your ducks to squall,
Duck to squall, duck to squall, duck to squall?
Meeting o' pollywogs! Meeting wi' pollywogs?'
'Hush, children, this is shocking,' said Wilmet, in the low impressive voice by which she could always still a tumult. 'How could you take advantage of my absence to do this?'
'Because Alda deserved it,' cried Angela, bouncing downstairs. 'There, Alda! I said I should tell of you if you told of us.'
'Angela, that is not the way to speak to your elder sister.'
'She isn't like an elder sister!' exclaimed Angel. 'Stella would be ashamed to do like her, eating up the strawberries Mr. Froggatt brought for poor Cherry when she was ill.'
'I'm sure you had your share!' retorted Alda.
'You would have them in for dessert, and you helped us, only Sister Constance and Clem left all theirs for Cherry, and then you went by yourself and ate them all up.'
The very fact of shouting out such a charge showed a state of insubordination such as might make Wilmet's hair stand on end, and she simply disbelieved so childish an accusation against her own equal in age. 'You should not say such things, Angela,' she answered, in her low tone of reproof; 'there must be a mistake.'
'I am afraid it is quite true,' said Clement's quiet voice, as he stood arrested on his way by the block upon the landing-place.
'The children make such an uproar,' said the exasperated Alda. 'I'm sure I thought Geraldine's had been taken long before, and in this parching weather fruit is quite a necessity to me.'
Wilmet was too much aghast at the admission to speak. It was a strange tangle: Clement standing straight and still on the landing- place; Wilmet, with Theodore humming to himself, as innocent of the fray as the tadpoles that Stella was cherishing in the cupboard doorway; Alda, flushed and angry; and on the upper flight, Angela and Bernard dancing and roaming in vehement excitement between anger and alarm. 'Well that Lance was not in this hubbub! thought deafened and amazed Wilmet.
'What has this to do with the tadpoles?' she asked, in an endeavour to comprehend.
'We said she should be served out,' sung Bernard, 'with a polly- polly-pollywog bath.'
'But, Bernard, hush!-Angel! don't you see it was no business of yours if Alda did forget?'
She was unprepared for the outbreak this brought on her. 'You, too, Wilmet! Every one backs up those children in their behaviour to me! Lady Herbert Somerville, and Clement, and all! If only Ferdinand saw it!'
'Just step up, Wilmet,' said Clement gently, 'and see whether the children are in league with me.'
He followed Wilmet up to the door of the barrack, an attic that he shared with Lance and Bernard, and showed the long beam that crossed it pasted with a series of little figures cut out in paper, representing a procession in elaborate vestments; and at the end a long-backed individual kneeling before the chair of a confessor, who bore a painful resemblance to the Vicar of St. Matthew's.
'We only wanted to make Tina feel at home,' giggled Angela.
'It would be no matter,' pursued Clement, 'if it were merely quizzing myself. I am used to that; but this is trenching on sacred ground.'
'Bless me, your old white beam!' exclaimed Angela, with an affected start.
'It is exceedingly improper and irreverent,' said Wilmet. 'I am ashamed that such a thing should have been done in this house.'
'Really,' said Alda, 'it seems to me very droll and clever, with no harm in it at all; only people like Clement
