Chapter Three
When Phyllis awoke the next morning she had the pleasureable sensation down deep in her heart that something very agreeable was about to happen. For a time she lay still, hugging the pleasant knowledge to herself. Then she sat up in bed with a laugh. Nurse had come into the room with Phyllis’s bath, and was pouring the hot water out for her and preparing to help her to dress.
“Well, Miss,” she said, “what is the matter?”
“Oh Nursey! those nice children from the Rectory are coming over to-day, and I mean to give them such a jolly time. The whole four are coming, and we mean to have hide-and-seek in the grounds and in the house. We’ll be a bit wild and we’ll be a bit noisy, but you don’t mind, do you, Nursey?”
“No, darling,” replied Nurse, “I don’t mind; I am glad you have something to cheer you now that the Squire has gone.”
“Oh, I forgot that!” said Phyllis. “I shall miss my darling father, but I am all the more glad that the Rectory children are coming.”
Phyllis rose in high spirits, and presently she and Miss Fleet met in the schoolroom.
In the Squire’s absence they were to have their meals in the schoolroom, and the table was laid now and placed in the cheerful bay-window, and the schoolroom maid was bringing in coffee, toast, and other good things for breakfast.
“I am hungry,” said Phyllis. – “Good-morning, Miss Fleet.”
“Good-morning, my dear,” said Miss Fleet. “Take your seat quietly, please – not quite so noisily. Shall I give you a cup of coffee?”
“Yes, please,” said Phyllis.
As a rule she rather resented Miss Fleet’s remarks, but she was in such good spirits to-day that she determined, as she expressed it, to be extra well-behaved.
“I have been thinking, Phyllis,” said the governess as she slowly ate her own breakfast, “that this is an excellent opportunity for us to begin a more exhaustive routine of work.”
“Exhaustive routine? What is that?” asked Phyllis.
“I will explain to you. We have been going about for so many years that you have never settled properly to your studies. Your father has given me carte blanche to do exactly as I please with regard to your education. I mean to have the carriage this afternoon and to drive into Dartfield, the nearest large town, in order to see about new books for you, and also to get you music-masters, drawing-masters, and a dancing-master; you will probably have to join a dancing-class at Dartfield once or twice a week, and we may have to go there for your music. I, myself, will undertake your English education, and for the present will instruct you in French and German. We cannot quite arrange matters so as to fill up your time before Monday – this is Thursday – but on Monday I trust that we shall have a complete system so that every hour may be occupied.”
“It sounds very dull,” said Phyllis when her governess paused for want of breath. “Is there to be no time for play?”
“Play!” said Miss Fleet, with scorn. “You have played all your life. You want to work now.”
“But ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,’” said Phyllis in a flippant tone.
“Your uttering that remark, dear,” said the governess, “shows how sadly you have been neglected. Of course you shall play after a fashion. You must take regular exercise, and have half-an-hour a day at gymnastics, and I may be able to arrange to take you to Dartfield for tennis and hockey according to the season.”
“But why go to Dartfield for my games?” said Phyllis. “There are the Rectory children.”
Miss Fleet opened her eyes. She did not speak at all for a moment; then she said gently —
“As we have finished breakfast, will you please say grace, Phyllis, and then meet me here in half-an-hour for lessons?” Phyllis muttered her grace in a decidedly cross voice. Miss Fleet immediately afterwards left the room. Phyllis went and stood by the fire. Suddenly she gave a little jump and her eyes danced.
“Why, of course I can’t go with her – horrid old thing! – to Dartfield to-day,” she exclaimed joyfully. “They are coming, the darlings, and I cannot be out of the way on any account whatsoever.”
The remembrance that the Rectory children were coming cheered her immensely, and she danced gaily about the room putting things in order for Miss Fleet.
The moment the governess appeared Phyllis ran up to her.
Chapter Four
“Oh, you have brought all those horrid dingy books!” said Phyllis, seeing that Miss Fleet carried a huge pile of half-worn-out lesson-books in her arms.
“Keep away, Phyllis, a minute; I want to put them on the table,” said the governess.
“What stupid things they are!” said Phyllis, forgetting for a minute the excitement which the thought of her little guests had given her, in her dismay at the appearance of the books.
She took up one volume after another, letting it fall on the table with an expression of great disdain.
“Child’s Guide to Knowledge,” she said. “Horrid book. And oh! what is this? Mrs Markham’s History of England. I hate Mrs Markham. Oh, and this – and this! – I say, Miss Fleet!”
“Phyllis, I wish to speak to you,” said her governess.
“What is it now?” said Phyllis, but she was aroused by the tone.
She looked full up into Miss Fleet’s small grey eyes, and her heart beat fast. For although Miss Fleet was really affectionate to the little girl, and was as a rule gentle, there were times when she could be quite the reverse. Phyllis saw that such a time had arrived.
“I wish to speak to you,” said Miss Fleet. “During lessons you are to be industrious, careful, studious, and respectful. These books are not to be treated with levity; they are to be studied, and pondered over, and digested.”
“Well, let’s begin and get it over,” said Phyllis.
She sat down by the table, drew a blotting-pad towards her and a bottle of ink, and looked up at her governess.
“And, oh, Miss Fleet! I want to say something. I can’t go with you to Dartfield to-day.”
“Why not, pray?”
“The four Hilchesters, the Rectory children, are coming here; I asked them yesterday. They are coming immediately after lunch, and they will stay to supper. I thought perhaps we might have supper in the evenings now that father is away. You don’t mind, do you, Fleetie dear?”
“But I do mind very much indeed,” said Miss Fleet. “What business had you to ask the Hilchesters without my permission?”
Phyllis bit her lips; her face grew scarlet.
“Well, I did, you know,” she said.
“And extremely naughty you were. Did your father know that you had asked them?”
“I never told Dad; I – I forgot.”
“Then you, a little girl of twelve years old, took it on you to ask a party of wild, disreputable, untrained children to this house without either his leave or mine!”
“Please, Miss Fleet,” said Phyllis, who had a very quick temper when roused, “they are not disreputable and they are not wild.”
“I repeat what I have said – disreputable, untrained children. I will have none of it.”
“You cannot prevent it now – you daren’t.”
“Oh, we will see. Take this page of Child’s Guide and learn it carefully. I will be back in a few minutes.”
Miss Fleet went out of the room. Phyllis looked after her until the door was closed; then she gave a wild, sharp scream, and rushing to the window, looked out. From there she had a view of the stables, and presently she saw one of the grooms get on her own special pony, Bob, and gallop off. The groom carried a note in his hand.
“What are you doing, David?” shrieked Phyllis from the schoolroom window.
The man paused, turned round in amazement, and looked up at the excited child.
“I am going with a note to the Rectory, Miss; it is from Miss Fleet.”
“Stop one minute.”
Phyllis dashed to the table, seized a sheet of paper, scribbled on it, “Come and save me; I am in the claws of a dragon,” folded the note, directed it to Ralph, and threw it out of the window.
“Take that note too to the Rectory,” she said.
David picked it up, grinned from ear to ear, and galloped off.
When Miss Fleet returned she found Phyllis bending attentively over her Child’s Guide.
“I hope you know it,” said Miss Fleet.
“I have sent a line to Mrs Hilchester to say that it is not convenient for the children to come to-day. If you are very good I will ask the two girls to tea some afternoon when we have settled to our routine of work. Now don’t say any more about them; attend like a good girl to your lessons.”
“But I’m not going to Dartfield this afternoon,” said Phyllis.
“You are if I desire it.”
Phyllis shut up her lips. She could look very obstinate when she pleased. Her eyes now fixed themselves boldly on the governess’s face, and her eyes seemed to say:
“I am hating you for being cruel; I am hating you right hard.” But Miss Fleet was impervious to the flashing glances of her rebellious pupil.
Lessons went on after a fashion, and at last luncheon was announced. Miss Fleet and her pupil lunched in the library.
“Now go upstairs, Phyllis,” said her governess, “put on your hat, and come down within a quarter of an hour. Tell Nurse to see that your gloves are in order; and you had better wear a jacket; it may rain.”
Phyllis went out of the room without a word. Miss Fleet stood at the library door and watched the little figure as it mounted slowly – very slowly – the winding stairs.
There was something very naughty about that little figure just then, and yet at the same time something pathetic.
“Poor child! I am sorry I disappointed her,” thought the governess; “but I have my duty to perform. I hear on all hands that the four young Hilchesters are the terror of the neighbourhood: so wild, so untrained, so disobedient. I should certainly be unworthy of the position I hold if I allowed Phyllis to have anything to do with them. Yes, I will keep my word, and the girls may have tea here in a week or so, but they shall not be alone with Phyllis; of that I am resolved.”
Meanwhile the little girl, having turned a certain angle of the stairs, stood quite still, uttered a strange laugh, and then, turning quite aside from the nursery, ran down an unfrequented corridor and out into the back yard. She had already secured, in preparation for a certain adventure which she was fully resolved to have, a half-worn-out jacket and a torn and very dirty sailor-hat. She popped the hat on her head and fastened the jacket. Then she stood in the yard and looked around her. The only person within view was David the groom. Somehow, Phyllis expected to see David in the yard.
“Did you give the note?” asked the little girl, turning and speaking to him in an imperious way.
“Yes, Miss. I met the young gentleman all alone in the avenue, and I gave it him.”
“And what did he say?”
“He only said, ‘All right,’ Miss.”
“Thank you, David,” said Phyllis; “I am very much obliged to you.”
She ran across the yard and into a small fir plantation just beyond, and there she stood leaning over the railing. David could see her, and he smiled to himself.
“She is a spirited little miss,” he thought. “Didn’t Master Ralph show his white teeth just, when he read her note. His ‘All right’ meant all right, or I am much mistook. My word! the little miss will get into trouble if she ain’t careful; but I ain’t the one to split on her.”
So when the pony-trap came round to take Miss Fleet and her small charge to Dartfield, nowhere could Phyllis be found. The whole house was searched, and the servants were questioned, but no one had seen the child.
Miss Fleet, in alarm, gave up her expedition and instituted a more vigorous search, but try as she would, nowhere could she or Nurse get a glimpse of the child. David, who alone knew the direction in which Phyllis had gone, had taken care to absent himself, and no one else had the slightest clue by which her whereabouts could be discovered. Presently Miss Fleet, in great anger, started off to drive to the Rectory.
“This really is intolerable,” she thought. “I shall have to write to the Squire. Oh, of course, the naughty, naughty child has gone to those other wicked children. I shall have to give Mrs Hilchester a piece of my mind.”