Monitress Merle Part 20

"_I_ never put it there!"

"Clive!" exclaimed Mavis, with a sudden flash of intuition. "Did you wear Merle's jersey yesterday? I remember she found it wet. I verily believe you dressed up in her clothes and went to school."

For answer Clive burst into fits of laughter.

"Oh, it was topping!" he hinnied. "I stuck on her skirt and jersey and tam o' shanter and took in everybody. I walked down the street, and up the drive to the school door, and prowled round the garden. There was a window open, so in I went and found exam questions all over the table. I thought I'd rag you about them!"

"You atrocious imp! Look here! You don't know what a sc.r.a.pe you've got us into. You'll just have to own up and get us out of it again, that's all!"

Irresponsible Clive was full of thoughtless mischief, and it was a long time before the girls could get him to see the serious side of his escapade, and realise what an exceedingly grave charge had been brought against their honour. In the end, by dint of scolding, entreaty, coercion, and even bribery, they succeeded in persuading him to come along with them to 'The Moorings,' where they asked for Miss Mitch.e.l.l, and told her the whole story.

"I'm extremely glad to know," she said, looking hard at Clive. "The fact is I was deceived myself. He's very like you, Merle! I happened to see him climbing out of the window, and I certainly thought I recognised you.

I've felt upset all day about it. I couldn't understand your doing such a thing."

"Will you explain to the boarders, please! I hate them to think me a sneak."

"I'll make that all right."

"And about those exam questions--Mavis and I wouldn't have dreamt of looking them up beforehand, and I don't suppose we should have known them. Wouldn't it be fairer just to cross them off in our papers and not count them? We'd much rather you did."

"Yes, it's the only thing to be done."

Clive, much subdued, blurted out a kind of apology before he left, which Miss Mitch.e.l.l accepted with dignity. Perhaps she did not think it good for him to forgive him too easily. His evil prophecies about the exams were fortunately not fulfilled, for his cousins, though they did not score brilliant successes, just managed to sc.r.a.pe through without any failures.

The Fifth form, when they heard the true facts of the story, repented their hasty court of justice and made handsome amends.

"It doesn't matter!" said Merle. "You were quite right if you thought we'd been cheating. I should pull anybody else up myself, fast enough. It must have been the acting we did at Christmas that put the idea into Clive's idiotic young head. He was dressed up as a girl then, and rather fancied himself. He really is the limit."

"We shall always be a little uncertain now which is you and which is your cousin!" laughed Iva.

"Oh, he won't do it again! We've put him on his honour, and I don't think he'd break his word."

CHAPTER XIII

The Kittiwake

The great Easter secret, which Merle had surprised and preserved with so much difficulty, was out at last. Clive's father and mother were coming to Devons.h.i.+re for a holiday; they had taken rooms at a farm in Chagmouth, and they had not only arranged for their own son to join them, but they had also asked Mavis and Merle to be their visitors. The girls thought that no invitation could have been more delightfully acceptable. They adored Chagmouth, and the Sat.u.r.days they managed to spend there were always red-letter days, so the prospect of three whole weeks in this El Dorado sent their spirits up to fizzing-over point.

"Bevis will be at Grimbal's Farm!"

"And Tudor will be at home!"

"The Castletons are expecting Morland and Claudia!"

"And, of course, Fay will be there, and Tattie, and the Colvilles!"

"Goody! What a lovely tribe of us to go out picnics!"

"We'll have the time of our lives!"

Burswood Farm, where Mr. and Mrs. Percy Tremayne had taken rooms, was on the hillside above Chagmouth. It was a delightful spot, with that airy feeling about it that comes from looking down upon your neighbours'

chimneys.

"I wouldn't live in Chagmouth, not if you paid me hundreds a year!"

declared Mrs. Treasure, their landlady. "Once I'm up here, here I stay!

I've not been in the town for over six months. I go on Sundays to the little chapel close by, and if I want shops we get out the gig and drive into Kilvan or Durracombe. It isn't worth the climb back from Chagmouth.

I carried William up when he was a baby, and it nearly killed me. I set him down in his cradle and I said: 'There, my boy! I don't go down to Chagmouth again till you can walk back yourself!' And I didn't! He was three years old before I went--even to the post office. How do I manage about stamps? Why, the postman brings them for me and takes my letters.

The grocers' carts come round from Kilvan, and the butcher calls once a week, and what can you want more? I say when I've got a nice place like this to live in I'll stay here, and not worry myself with climbing up and down hill."

Though Mavis and Merle might not hold with Mrs. Treasure's depreciation of Chagmouth, they thoroughly agreed with her eulogy of Burswood. There was a view of the sea from the farm, and it had an old-fas.h.i.+oned garden with beehives and hedges of fuchsia and blue veronica, and at the back there was a small fir wood, with clumps of primroses and opening bluebells. The girls christened it 'Elfland.'

"You can almost see the fairies here," said Mavis. "Why is it that some places feel so much more romantic than others?"

"Because you're in the right mood, I suppose. This is almost as nice as Blackthorn Bower."

"Not quite. Nothing can ever come up to that! When Bevis gets The Warren he's going to build up the Bower again."

"Why doesn't he do it now? The Glyn Williams would let him if he wanted.

It's his property."

"He wouldn't care to ask them; especially after what happened there between him and Tudor."

"They've forgotten that, surely!"

"Well, I sympathise with Bevis. He doesn't care to interfere with anything until The Warren is really his own. I think he feels they'd laugh at the Bower, and so they would!"

"It's not in their line, of course."

However much we may love old and familiar scenes, there is always a novelty in something new, and the bird's-eye aspect of Chagmouth was attractive, especially to those whose young limbs did not mind the climb.

Mr. and Mrs. Percy Tremayne were most enthusiastic about their quarters.

They were charming people, and ready to fall in with the young folk's plans and give them a thoroughly happy holiday. They had brought a motor- bicycle and side-car, and took some excursions round the neighbourhood, going over often to Durracombe to see Dr. and Mrs. Tremayne, glad to have the opportunity of a private chat with them while their lively son was safely picnicking with Mavis and Merle. Picnics were the established order of the day. The girls declared that Society at Chagmouth this Easter began with a big S. The Castletons were a host in themselves. They were all at home, and all equally fascinating. Musical Mavis attached herself to Claudia with a great admiration, and Merle found a devoted knight in ten-year-old Madox, who clung to her with the persistency of a chestnut burr, chiefly because she had the charity to answer his perpetual questions. "The interrogation mark," as he was called by his own family, was a typical Castleton, and most cherubic of countenance, though his curls had been sheared in deference to school, spoiling him, so his father declared, for artistic purposes. He was a mixture of mischief and romance, and Merle, who accepted his temporary allegiance, never quite knew whether his embraces were marks of genuine affection or were designed for the chance of dropping pebbles down her back.

Some delightful friends of the Castletons were also spending a holiday in rooms at Chagmouth--Miss Lindsay, an artist, and Lorraine Forrester, a chum of Claudia's, both of whom were sketching the quaint streets and the quay and the harbour with the wildest enthusiasm. Morland had also taken a sudden fancy for painting, and insisted upon going out with them daily, producing some quite pretty little impressionistic pictures, with a touch of his father's style about them. In Morland the family talent ran high but never rose to genius. His touch on the piano was perfect. He scribbled poems in private. His achievements, however, in either music, art, or poetry were insufficient to justify taking one of them for a vocation.

"I'd rather make him a chimney-sweep!" declared Mr. Castleton eloquently.

"The public nowadays don't appreciate pictures! They'll look at them in galleries, especially when the admission is free, but you can't get them to buy. They hang their drawing-rooms with cheap prints instead of water- colours, and go to the photographers instead of the portrait-painter. If you can design something to advertise mustard or cocoa you may make a little money, but not by pure art! It's as dead as the ancient Greeks.

This is a commercial age. Music's as bad. Your pianists are glad to take posts to play at the cinemas! I wish Claudia success; but her training is the business of the college, not mine, and _they'll_ have to bring her out. I've nothing to do with it. No; Morland must realise he's living in the twentieth century, and has to earn his bread and b.u.t.ter. Art doesn't pay, and that's the fact! Have it as a hobby if you wish, but don't depend upon it!"

So Morland, who, like many young fellows of artistic calibre, had a general affection for the muses but no very marked vocation for anything, had been pitchforked into engineering, and was making quite tolerable progress, and would possibly support himself later on, but always with the feeling that life was commonplace and unromantic, and that a splendid vision had been somewhere just round the corner, only unfortunately missed. He allowed his artistic temperament to run loose during the holidays. He would go up to Bella Vista and play for hours on the Macleods' new grand piano, improvising beautiful airs, and sending Fay into raptures.

"Why don't you write them down right away?" she demanded.

"What's the use? No one would publish them if I did. The publishers are fed up with young composers wanting a hearing. I've made up my mind to be just an amateur--nothing more."