Monitress Merle Part 24

And hid her face when we began?

'Twas Connie.

Who was it left with many a sigh, As to the farm we said good-bye, And wanted sheets wherein to cry?

We all!

The very best of things, however, must come some time to an end; schools were reopening, college terms recommencing, Mr. Tremayne's duties claimed him in London, and, most prosaic of all, another batch of visitors was expected at Burswood, so that they could no longer have the rooms. After tremendous leave-takings the jolly party separated, Dr. Ramsay fetching Mavis and Merle in the car, while Mr. and Mrs. Tremayne took Clive home with them, for he was to try another term at his preparatory school. It seemed quite quiet at Bridge House without their lively young cousin, though in some ways his absence was rather a relief. After his many escapades at Chagmouth the girls felt that discipline under a headmaster would be very wholesome for him. They themselves were busy with the work of the coming term, and not sorry to be free from his continual interruption of their preparation time. There were other things besides lessons. They meant to take up tennis very seriously, and practise both on the school courts and at home. Miss Mitch.e.l.l was a tennis enthusiast and also Miss Barnes.

"If we can only persuade Miss Hopkins and Mademoiselle to do their duty we could have a match 'Mistresses versus Girls,'" sighed Merle. "It would be something new at 'The Moorings,' and such an excitement for every one."

"I wish they would!"

"If I were a boarder I'd simply _make_ them! What they want is somebody to keep them up to it. Day-girls are really very much hampered.

They haven't half a chance when they go home from school at four o'clock.

I really sometimes think I'd like to be a boarder, just for the fun of it."

It is not very often we get what we want, but on this occasion Fortune waved a fairy wand and gave Merle the luck she coveted. It happened that the cook at Bridge House developed a sore throat, and Dr. Ramsay, having his suspicions, had the drains examined and found them to be in an exceedingly wrong condition. It was necessary to take them up at once, and as the process would probably be unpleasant, Mrs. Ramsay arranged for the girls to stay at 'The Moorings' until everything was once more in good sanitary condition.

"You can't be too careful where young people are concerned," was her motto. "Mavis is so marvellously well now that we don't want to run any risks, and Merle, too, strong though she is, will be better out of the way of drains. We elders can take our chance."

To be temporarily transformed into boarders was a novel experience for the girls. To Merle it meant an opportunity for making a much more intimate acquaintance with her idol Miss Mitch.e.l.l, with whom she would now be at close quarters. To sit at the same table with her for meals seemed an unspeakable privilege. Merle was at the age for enthusiastic hero-wors.h.i.+p, and in her eyes the popular mistress almost wore a halo.

That she bestowed no particular tokens of favour made the devotion none the less, because it gave an added incentive for trying to win at least a glance or a smile.

Though Merle's schoolgirl affections centred in Miss Mitch.e.l.l, whose modern, up-to-date, twentieth-century methods and opinions entirely appealed to her, Mavis was glad to see something more of Miss Pollard and Miss f.a.n.n.y. She had loved 'The Moorings' best as it was a year ago, a little 'homey' school, where the cla.s.ses had been like working with a private governess. She immensely admired the two sweet, grey-haired sisters, with their refined, cultured atmosphere and beautiful, courteous, dignified manner. They seemed the epitome of the nineteenth century, and marked a different era, a something very precious that was rapidly pa.s.sing away. If flowers are the symbols of our personalities she would have set them down as rosemary and lavender. They had withdrawn almost entirely from teaching, so that the day-girls now saw little of them, but in the hostel they still reigned supreme, and kept to their old custom of amusing the youngest boarders for half an hour before bedtime.

The elder ones, owing to the large amount of preparation required under the new regime, could very rarely find time now to come and join this pleasant circle, which met in quite an informal manner in Miss Pollard's room. To Mavis it was a bigger attraction even than tennis, and she would give up her turn at the courts, or would hurry over her home-work, in order to creep in among the juniors for that cosy half-hour.

"Have you written down any more Devons.h.i.+re folk-tales?" she asked once.

"I do so love your stories of the neighbourhood. It makes the pixies seem almost real when you tell about them!"

"They seemed real to the old people from whom I heard them years ago, and who had learnt them from their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. I loved them when I was a child. Yes; they're written in my little ma.n.u.script book. I put them carefully down for fear I might forget them.

Read you one? If the others would like it! We haven't had a fairy tale for quite a long time, have we, Doreen?"

As the younger children plumped for a story, Miss Pollard fetched her ma.n.u.script volume, and hunted for something they had not yet heard. She was a most excellent reader, having that charm of voice and vividness of expression which makes a narrative live before its hearers. It was as if some electric cord linked her with those who listened, and restless little fidgets would sit quite quietly for as long as she chose to go on.

The tale which she selected to-night was:

GINNIFER'S DOWRY

In the days when good King Arthur ruled all the west country from Exeter to Land's End, a maiden named Ginnifer lived with her father in a little, round, stone hut on the top of Dartmoor. They were poor, but she was a good girl, and she could spin, and weave baskets, and do many things about the house. One day a young hunter knocked at the door and asked for hospitality, and as there was much game to be had in the neighbourhood he remained for many weeks as a guest of the cottage, going out every day fis.h.i.+ng or fowling, and sharing his captures with his hosts. No doubt Ginnifer's blue eyes and gentle glances were the main attraction, and in a short time indeed the young folk became attached to one another. It was only when Ginnifer's father at length questioned the youth, that he confessed to being the son of the great lord of the neighbourhood, who lived in the big Castle beside the river beyond the moor. This was sad news for Ginnifer, for in those days a young n.o.ble might not wed with a poor girl, and must marry a bride who could bring a rich dowry with her of jewels and ornaments and silver money. So she quietly told her sweetheart to go back to his father, and learn to forget her; and he went away very sadly, vowing he would get permission to return and marry her, or else he would never wed anyone. When he was gone, Ginnifer went out over the moor among the heather, where she might fight her grief alone, with only the birds and the flowers to see her weep. She lay on the short moorland gra.s.s among the sweet bog-myrtle and asphodel, until the sun was setting in a red ball over the hillside. Then, all of a sudden, she heard a rustling and a whispering like countless leaves blown by an autumn wind.

"Who is this?" said a voice. "Who dares to lie in our pixie ring?"

"It's a mortal! A mortal!" cried another.

Ginnifer raised her head. All the moor was alive with tiny pixies, whose green garments were like moving fronds of fern. They crowded eagerly round her.

"It's Ginnifer!" they said. "Ginnifer who lives in the stone hut on the moor! Ginnifer who tended the plover with the broken wing, and watered the harebells that were withering in the burning sun, and who treads so lightly that the birds don't trouble to fly away from her. We know her kindness and her gentle heart, for the 'good folk' watch over the children of the earth, and, unseen, we have followed her through all her simple life. Pretty Ginnifer, tell us your trouble. The pixies cannot bear to see you weep."

They stroked her hair with their tiny fingers, they bathed her eyes with dewdrops and wiped them with the petals of a wild rose. At first Ginnifer was frightened, but the little folk were so kind that she took courage and told them her trouble. They began to dance and jump about with delight, and clapped their little hands.

"Is that all?" they shouted. "Would he wed you if you were a great lady?

Tell us what dowry his father would expect his bride to bring?"

"Silks and jewels!" sobbed poor Ginnifer, "and rich embroidered dresses, and trinkets of gold, and caskets of silver money! And I have nothing at all!"

The pixies laughed l.u.s.tily, throwing up their wee green caps into the air and catching them again for sheer joy.

"Ginnifer dear! We'll find you your dowry! Quick! Let us set to work! We must finish our task before daybreak."

By this time the moon had risen and had flooded the moor with light. Like a flight of busy buzzing bees the little people went flitting up and down. They pulled the gossamer from the gorse bushes and wove it into the finest silk; they caught the great brown moths and sheared their soft fur and spun it on the daintiest little spinning-wheels in the world; and with skilful touches they wove together the harebells and the wild rose petals into the most wonderful of embroidered gowns. The tears which Ginnifer had shed in her sorrow lay s.h.i.+ning among the gra.s.s, and gathered up by magic fingers they turned into pearls and diamonds fit for a queen.

The gorse flowers became golden ornaments, and the little smooth pebbles in the brook changed into pieces of silver money.

The pixies dressed Ginnifer in the softest of the gossamer silk robes, they clasped the golden bracelets round her arms and twisted diamonds into her hair.

"Now she is a fairy princess," they said. "There is none lovelier in all Elfland. We must build her a palace worthy of her!"

Hither and thither they ran, gathering up the dewdrops, and piling them one above the other till the most wonderful Castle rose up on the hillside: as clear as gla.s.s, it shone with all the colours of the rainbow, and here they stored the silks and the beautiful ornaments and the caskets of silver money.

Next morning Ginnifer's lover came riding back to tell her that his father forbade the match, but that he meant to marry her whether or no.

And lo and behold! he found her at the door of a pixie palace, and directly he set foot inside it, it sank through the ground and carried them both with it into Elfland. And there they have lived ever since, as happy as the pixies themselves, though no one on earth saw them any more.

But sometimes when the late sickle moon s.h.i.+nes over the moor, travellers who have lost their way have been set in the right path by a lovely lady in gauzy green garments, who sprang up, as it seemed, from nowhere, and vanished away again into the mist, and to this day the children, hunting for bilberries on the hillside, call the s.h.i.+ning dewdrops 'Ginnifer's tears.'"

"Have you ever seen any pixies yourself, Miss Pollard?" asked Doreen eagerly.

"No; but I've seen the dewdrops s.h.i.+ning just like diamonds, and I've seen the mist make wonderful pixie castles in the moonlight. We can live in a fairy world of our own if we look at the right things. It depends on your eyes. Those people who keep their childhood have the pixies all round them."

"You have!" said Mavis, as Miss Pollard rose to say good-night to her circle of listeners. "You're like Peter Pan, and never grow old!"

"I had such a happy childhood! And it seemed so much the best part of life that I've always been reluctant to let the glamour go. Children ought to be brought up on fairy tales! They're incipient poetry, and should be woven into the web of our lives as a beautiful border, before all the dark prose part follows. If the shuttle only weaves matter-of- fact threads it spoils the pattern!"

CHAPTER XVI

The Tadpole Club

It was quite interesting to be a boarder at 'The Moorings,' though it had its more sober side, particularly for Merle. Her trouble lay in the fact that though she was a school officer from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M., out of those hours her authority was non-existent. Iva and Nesta were hostel monitresses, and they had quite plainly and firmly given her to understand that they did not expect any interference. They were perfectly within their rights, and Merle knew it, but she chafed nevertheless. The fact was that Iva and Nesta, accustomed to the old traditions of 'The Moorings,' when there were only about a dozen boarders, were quite unable to cope with the new order of things, and girls who had been to other schools took decided advantage of their slackness. Merle, whose motto was 'once a monitress always a monitress,' could not see why she might reprove Norma Bradley in the playground, but must allow that damsel ostentatiously to do exactly the same act in the recreation room under her very nose.

"It's so bad for the kids!" she raged. "They know Iva and Nesta are weak and just pretend not to notice, so as to have no fuss. I'm sure Miss Mitch.e.l.l can't know all that goes on or she'd make some different arrangement. You feel in another element when you get into the hostel.

It's 'do as you like and don't bother me so long as you don't go too far and aren't found out.' It might be all very well in the old days last year, but it's wrecking the show now. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it with my own eyes."

The chief offenders were three Third form girls, Norma Bradley, Biddy Adams, and Daisy Donovan, who, with those former firebrands Winnie Osborne and Joyce Colman, had formed a kind of Cabal, whose object seemed to be to find out how far rules might be evaded.

"They've more time than we have, and they simply 'rag' about and 'play the giddy goat'!" complained Merle to her sister.

"They don't seem to have enough to do with their spare time," commented Mavis. "It's all very well to say they must have absolute recreation, but both they and the babies turn it into a sort of bear-garden. You were rather a terror yourself when you were that age! I remember Mother used to quote, 'Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands'."

"Was I? And now I'm a monitress!"