Read Ebook: The Bravest Girl in School by Talbot Ethel

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Ebook has 618 lines and 42208 words, and 13 pages

FACING PAGE

"'I'm coming to that,' declared Stella, 'if you'll only wait'" 102

"Helen made an unexpected and brilliant stroke, thus winning the match by a single goal" 160

The Bravest Girl in the School

A SECRET

"How soon will you know it, Sybil?"

The speaker turned anxious eyes in the direction of her younger sister, who sat kicking her heels on the faded carpet, and tilting her chair backwards and forwards as she chanted a French verb in a sing-song voice.

"Patient? Not likely!" snorted the maid. "Why, she's in the drawing-room at this instant, and, what's more, she's your auntie, and you'd best be going straight up to see her!"

At the sound of this extraordinarily unexpected announcement both little girls opened their eyes in amazement and stared. Sybil, after an instant's pause of incredulity, recovered herself first.

"Why, whatever do you mean, Ann?" she asked excitedly. "Dad didn't say anyone was coming. Oh!" and here she turned in amazement to her sister. "Gretta, can it be Auntie Tib from Australia? And can she have brought Margot, too? Oh, hurrah! hurrah!" and she began to dance wildly round the room.

But Sybil still danced on regardless of entreaties. "Put away your things yourself," she shouted. "You spend all your time playing your precious fiddle, instead of housekeeping; now you can just clear up alone!"

"Here, for goodness' sake don't be so selfish, Miss Sybil," said Ann, her good temper suddenly returning. "Look, now, my dears, you pop up and talk to your auntie while I'm off down to the grocer's for a pound of Best Fresh. I'll make buttered toast in no time. Maybe she won't have tasted any for years, if she's just back from foreign wilds!"

Her words were interrupted by the sound of the opening drawing-room door, and then came their father's footsteps along the passage. "Gretta! Sybil! Where are you?" he began in an irritated voice, then stopped as the two little girls nearly fell into his arms.

Gretta found herself hugged by two motherly arms, and, as her aunt kissed her, found tears on her cheeks in memory of the mother who had died a year ago, and who had been Auntie Tib's only sister; then, recovering a little from the shock of the unexpected embrace, she had time to survey the new relation, who had now turned all her attention to Sybil.

She was a tall woman, dressed in rich furs. She had removed her gloves already, and Gretta noticed the bracelets and rings that she wore, and wondered. Truly, it was ages since such magnificence had come to the doctor's house!

But the new-comer did not seem at all concerned with her own grandeur. She sat down in the little drawing-room, and did not appear to notice that not only was there no fire in the grate, but that Ann had neglected to remove the ashes since last Sunday. She drew the children to her again, kissed her namesake, Sybil, and carried on a flow of conversation with her, at once sympathetic and gay. Sybil, a host in herself, made up for the shyness and consequent shortcomings of the rest of her family by her excited chatter.

"Oh, Margot's coming presently; and, darling, I sent a telegram," exclaimed her aunt. "Have you not had it?"

The doctor wheeled round suddenly at the sound of her last words. "Telegram!" he ejaculated; "but when?"

"It's Margot! It's Margot!" exclaimed Sybil in the wildest excitement, racing into the drawing-room with the news, while her older sister followed almost as quickly. The two grown-ups within stopped in the midst of a very earnest conversation and turned to listen, as the opening of the front door by Ann was followed by the sound of an eager voice outside.

"I'll go right in, thank you," said a very assured voice, and then someone opened the drawing-room door very firmly, and entered.

This must be Margot, their cousin, of course; but, dressed as she was in a plain leather topcoat and motoring goggles, she was--to say the least of it--quite unlike the cousin of the children's imaginings. However, when, at the suggestion of her mother, these impedimenta had been removed, the real Cousin Margot emerged.

She was taller than Sybil, whose senior she was by six months, and weedier. Her mouse-coloured hair was thick and rather short, cut straight across her forehead and tucked away behind her ears; her grey eyes looked out very straight and clear at the world from under dark eye-lashes, and her mouth was a good-humoured and a capable one. Add to this a determined, rather self-willed little chin, and you have a fairly good picture of the Australian cousin, to the making of whose acquaintance the children had been so greatly looking forward.

Both of them fell in love with her at once in their own respective ways. Sybil, talking sixteen to the dozen in no time, asking questions that needed no answers, making comments, and compelling attention; and Gretta, content to sit and watch and listen, making up her mind, nevertheless, very firmly the while.

Tea followed almost at once, and with the tea Uncle Bob arrived. It was during the course of the unusually cheery meal that the new uncle made his very unexpected announcement.

"Margot thought we'd better come over to fetch her mother back in the car after her conversation with you," he said, addressing the doctor, "and take the chance of seeing you all at the same time. There's plenty of room for the children, if you like to spare them to us for a day or two. We could pack them both into the back seat, and take them with us. Margot wants to have them."

"And we'd like to have you, too, of course, you know," remarked that damsel cheerfully, turning to her uncle with a friendly smile and nod, "only, mother says that you can't take a holiday."

"No, I can't easily do that, young lady," said the doctor, surprised and rather amused by the assured ways of his Australian niece. "But if your parents like to shoulder the responsibility, there's no reason why your cousins shouldn't take advantage of the offer."

"And what about you, Gretta?" said Mrs. Fleming, turning to the older girl; "will you come, too?"

"No, thank you," said Gretta steadily. "I think I'd rather stay with dad."

There was a moment's silence, and the doctor got up from his seat. "Well, I must be off. Sorry, but there's a patient who can't be left. Settle it with your aunt, children. She'll do what's right."

"Think it over, Gretta," said her uncle when the doctor had left the room; "your father will be safe enough."

"I think I'll stay, thank you," said Gretta hesitatingly. Margot slipped her hand under the table and pressed her cousin's fingers in a friendly way for a minute. Evidently she understood what was passing in Gretta's mind.

After tea there was a tremendous bustle and hurry. Sybil's little bag had to be packed, and soon she was standing, pink-faced and tremendously excited, waiting for the reappearance of the car that was to take her away.

"Good-bye! Good-bye!" The car was starting. With waving of hands, and kisses from Sybil, it turned the corner and was lost to sight. Gretta was free to go into the house again, and went, but with a feeling as though somehow everything was changed.

She went into the lonely drawing-room, from which Ann was removing the remains of the meal, and sat down to wait for her father's return, while Auntie Tib's last words rang in her ears. What, oh, what could be the secret that she was to hear?

GOING TO SCHOOL

"Your aunt wishes to send you both to the school where she has arranged to send Margot."

It was the doctor who was speaking, and Gretta clutched the coffee-pot and stared with amazement at his surprising announcement.

To go to school! She, Gretta! So this was auntie's secret! At first the shock of surprise at the unexpected news held her speechless, almost breathless; then the shock was followed by an overwhelming wave of delight. The great wish of her life, that she had never voiced to anyone before, was really to come to pass: she was to go to school--to school! She sat silent, almost stunned with excitement and joy.

"You would like to go, of course?" said her father. At the sound of his voice she glanced up, and a whole set of new feelings took the place of the delighted ones that had filled her mind a moment before.

"How selfish I am!" she said to herself. "I'd quite forgotten that I'm dad's housekeeper. Oh, I can't go and leave him all alone with Ann! How lonely he'd be! And he might even get ill. Sybil can go, but I don't see how I can!"

"Oh!" Gretta's face crimsoned with pleasure at the idea. "Dad," she ventured, "but could you spare me?"

"Spare you! Why not?" said her father. "It'll be the making of you. I could never have afforded the school she has chosen, and the best thanks you can give her is to make the most of her offer. It is generous in the extreme."

"Well, yes," said her father. "But we can't get good things for nothing in this world, and it'll be worth while to be lonely at times if I know that you and Sybil are being turned out as your mother would have liked." He opened his paper again, and Gretta said no more. So seldom did he speak of her mother that the child knew by his last remark that the arrangement was settled, and that he did not wish to say any more about it.

"But talk it over with your aunt when she brings back Sybil to-morrow," he remarked, as he brushed his hat in the passage preparatory to starting on his rounds. "Good-bye, child; you mustn't turn into a woman too soon, you know."

How much she longed to go she believed that no one in the whole world knew. No one? Well, perhaps her fiddle did, the child thought to herself; for Gretta, since her mother's death, had been thrown very much upon her own resources, and she would have felt even more solitary and companionless had it not been for the hours she spent with her beloved violin.

Could auntie have discovered all this, Gretta wondered--she was lovely enough for anything! For, as she had offered the violin lessons, too, she surely must have guessed how her elder niece had longed and longed for proper ones! Gretta's mother had played and had taught her, herself, but when mother died, a year ago, there had been no one to help the child with her music, and she had been forced to muddle along alone.

"How did Auntie Tib know about my violin?" she inquired of the doctor at dinnertime that day.

"I don't know, my dear. Probably your mother wrote to her about your music," said the doctor, who could not distinguish one note of music from another. "She seems to wish you to keep it up at school."

"Where is it? The school, I mean?" ventured Gretta timidly.

"Oh, a most healthy, bracing spot; sea-air and fine views, I believe. The house is built on a sandy soil, and there is every modern convenience conducive to health; sanitary arrangements splendid; you're a pair of lucky children!"

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