Harebell's Friend, by Amy Le Feuvre—A Project Gutenberg eBook

SHE stood watching the crowd on the pier; a slim upright little figure, in a shabby waterproof, and a woollen cap crammed down on her head, and hiding the soft silky curls underneath it.

Her small face with its clear pallor, dark speaking eyes, and sensitive lips, struck more than one observer with peculiar interest.

"An intelligent child that," remarked the ship's doctor, as he lounged over the bulwarks, waiting for the gangway to connect them with the shore; "but it's a type that is bound to suffer—too much feeling!"

His companion—a pretty woman of uncertain age—gazed at the small girl reflectively.

"She will be one of the many lonely unattached women, I suppose. No parents or brothers and sisters, I hear; being brought home by the Commissioner of the district in which her parents died. He seems rather in a quandary about her, for there is a doubt as to whether any relatives will turn up. Poor mite! I suppose a school or orphanage will be her fate."

Their voices reached the child's ears. She did not turn her head, but big tears rose to her eyes. Then she brushed them away with the back of her hand. Another voice, and a hand on her shoulder, made her glance up, and in an instant her face was glowing and radiant with delight.

"Well, little Harebell, we're home at last! Now for a scrimmage at the Customs, and then we'll dine together at some hotel! We won't think about to-morrow, will we? I don't fancy anybody on the pier belongs to you, do you think so?"

The big Commissioner—six foot in his stockings—glanced down at his protégée with laughing eyes; but there was a big pity at the bottom of his heart for her future. She slipped her hand into his with great content.

"We'll have a beautiful evening," she said in clear soft tones. "And do you think we might have ice-pudding to-night?"

There was a rush to the gangway; laughter, tears, and fervent embraces were in the atmosphere around them; but he piloted her safely through the crowd. He cast a quick glance around him. Was there any one ready to greet this lonely little one? He had decided in his own mind that there was not.

"I believe you'll have to come to Scotland with me to see my old mother," he said cheerily.

Harebell laughed aloud at the thought. It was what she had been hoping. She cried fervently:

And neither of them noticed that at the sound of the child's clear voice, a tall stately figure moved towards them.

Mr. Graham was startled when he was confronted by a very beautiful woman, with a cold grave face.

"Ah, yes. Well, I was her father's executor! He was ill but twelve hours, poor chap! And I had only the address of his lawyer. I did not know of any relation—there seemed to be no letters—I'm glad she'll have some one to look after her—"

"I was her mother's sister," said Mrs. Keith severely, "but we never corresponded."

Harebell looked up at her new aunt with wondering eyes, then drew back, and clung with a desperately tight grasp to her friend the Commissioner.

And Harebell, somehow or other, dared not resist any longer. With drooping head she dropped Mr. Graham's hand, and placed her own in her aunt's firm clasp. They all went together to the Customs, Harebell's luggage was found, and transferred to a cab awaiting them. There was a hurried agonising farewell taken of Mr. Graham, and a few minutes after, the child found herself driving in a taxi alone with her aunt.

She gazed at her with frightened, miserable eyes. Mrs. Keith looked out of the window and said nothing. She was handsomely dressed in velvet and furs. It was a March day, and cold enough to make the Indian child shiver.

Tears came to Harebell's eyes again, and rolled down her cheeks. Suddenly Mrs. Keith turned to her, and spoke very sharply.

"Long, long ago," said Harebell, choking down a sob. "I was very little, for I didn't know she died at all; I thought she had just walked away to heaven—"

Harebell stared at her. Black garments were unknown to her. She wondered what they were like.

The taxi took them to another station, and then a long railway journey began. Mrs. Keith was silent most of the time. Harebell, from her corner seat, surveyed the strange country with eager interested eyes. She did not want to talk; she was entirely wrapped up in the present. Childlike, she accepted the inevitable, and had no anxiety about the future. Her aunt was merely an aunt, and a grown-up; a necessary belonging, not half so interesting as the plump little lambs playing in the fields, the rabbits darting along a hedge-side, and the quaint country cottages and farms.

But as time went on, Harebell's head and back began to ache, then her eyes were too weary to gaze out any more, and finally sleep came to her.

She was barely conscious of being helped out of the train and placed in a country fly.

As they rumbled along the country roads, she slept again, and it was only when they reached her future home, that she thoroughly roused herself.

Mrs. Keith did not live in a big house, but it was comfortable, and had a rambling garden surrounded with high red-brick walls. When the door opened to them, an old man-servant appeared, and Harebell, looking at him, loved him on the spot.

He was a short square-built man, with grey hair and a round smiling face, and the merriest eyes that Harebell had ever seen.

She looked up at him with confidence, and then to her astonishment, he winked one of his eyes slowly at her.

"He is so funny!" said Harebell, pointing with her finger to the old man, who was now shouldering her heavy luggage as if it were only a featherweight.

Harebell's smile disappeared at once. She followed her aunt up a short wide staircase, and was shown into a room. It was small, but there was a blazing fire in it; bright pictures were on the walls, a little white bed in the corner, and flowered chintz curtains hung in the windows.

"It is beautiful," she cried with shining eyes; "and I think you beautiful too!"

Mrs. Keith stared at her in silence; then turned round and swept out of the room. Speaking over her shoulder, she said:

"Wash your face and hands, and take off your hat and coat, then come downstairs to supper."

Harebell waited till the door was closed upon her. A little ache and longing was in her heart for one kind word. But she had never remembered a mother's love, and was accustomed to grave grown-up society. She never expected much from any one. Now she began to dance in the middle of her room. And as she danced she chanted some words she had learnt from her ayah:

"It's good to be happy and sing—
The birds and the flowers agree—
There's music to make for us all,
And some must be made by me."

Her cap and her coat had been flung off. She was dressed in a soft blue woollen frock; her small head of curls, rather a delicate little neck, and her fragile wisp of a body impressed one who was looking on as peculiarly appropriate to her name. She looked like a nodding blue harebell swaying in the wind.

Harebell started, and stopped her dance in an instant. A grave motherly-looking woman stood in the doorway. She wore a lace cap, and for a moment Harebell wondered if she were another aunt. She saw she had kind eyes, and precipitated herself into her arms without any hesitation.

"I've been so frightened, it's all so strange, but I feel happiness in the room; it has come to me, and so I can't help dancing."

"Bless your little heart, I'm glad to think you're so easy made happy! I'm your aunt's maid and housekeeper, dear; I've been with her twenty years, and I don't know which I loved best when they were little girls, she or your dear mother. You must call me Goody, the same as they did—my name is Goodheart, but I'm still Goody. And I shall have time to slip in and wait on you and dress you. It will be like old times. We're not a very big household. There's only Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, and Lucy and myself. Now let me put a brush to your curls."

"I'm glad you're in the world," said Harebell, as she resigned herself into Goody's hands at once. "I shall be able to talk to you; that lady who brought me here is like a princess in my fairy book. 'Slowly, slowly she turned into stone, very beautiful but cold she was, her face got stiller and whiter, when she spoke she hardly seemed to breathe.' Shall I go on? I know it by heart, and then one day she gets soft, you know! I shall be looking for that day, won't you? What is her name?"

"Your aunt? Dear me, I feel quite bewildered with such talk. Your Aunt Diana she is. Now you must walk downstairs nicely like a little lady, for it's getting late, and supper has been ready this half-hour or more."

Harebell slipped downstairs without another word. In the hall she met Andrews. He took her little hand in his.

"You're going to be friends with old Andy, I know," he said, and his eyes began to twinkle again. "He's an old sailor, and an 'Andy man, see the joke? 'Tis no use dressing him up as a sober butler, he can't play the part! But he's butler and gardener, and carpenter and jack-of-all-trades here. And now he has the honour to tell you that supper is served."

His tone turned from gay to grave, and at the same moment, Mrs. Keith crossed the hall. Harebell followed her into the dining-room.

It was a long low room with red walls and dark oak panelling. Harebell seated herself opposite her aunt, and Andrews waited upon them in deferential silence. Some hot soup, chicken, and a sponge-cake pudding refreshed and exhilarated Harebell so much that silence seemed impossible.

"I like it here, aunt! I like my room, and Goody and Andy, but I want to see Mr. Graham again. Will you ask him to come and stay here?"

Harebell's little head dropped at once. She spoke no more, but when the meal was over, her aunt took her into another room. It was daintily furnished. Mrs. Keith took a seat by the fire, then she made Harebell stand in front of her.

"I want you to understand," she said, "that I am willing to give you a home on certain conditions. I am not fond of children. I have taken you in because you have no other relations, not because I wished to have you. If you are obedient and truthful, you can make this your home; if I ever find you out in a lie, or any kind of deceit, I shall send you off to a boarding-school, which will become your home until you can earn your own living. You will have to do that, for your father's affairs are in a shocking state; and there will be no money left for you after his debts are paid."

"I suppose a boarding-school is a dreadful place? We haven't got them in India, not for white children. Is a mission school a boarding-school? I think they're made with boards, but I'm not sure."

"We won't discuss the matter," Mrs. Keith said coldly. "I have told you the conditions under which you stay in my house."

Harebell looked at her aunt in silence for a minute. Her extreme composure irritated her aunt.

"I have told lies," Harebell said slowly and thoughtfully. "When I was very little I did. I had an ayah who frightened me, and I said I hadn't picked some flowers when I had. I'll try not to tell any to you. Daddy told me it wasn't playing the game if I did. Good-night, Aunt Dinah."

She did not offer to kiss her. Harebell went upstairs very slowly. There was a little choke in her throat. She suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness and misery come over her. She crept into her little bedroom; then throwing herself down on the hearthrug before the fire, she burst into a passion of tears.

"Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do! Nobody loves me here; nobody wants me! Oh, I wish I could run away to Mr. Graham. I wish he'd taken me to see his old mother!"

She was tired and overwrought. Half an hour later, Goody found her lying in the same position, but she had sobbed herself asleep. It was with difficulty that she roused her sufficiently to undress her.

"I never knew you had come to bed. I meant to have sent Lucy to you. We have been having our supper. It's so strange to have a child in the house that I keep on forgetting it. Now won't you say your prayers before you get into bed? You do say some prayers, don't you?"

"Who to?" asked Harebell, looking at Goody with wistfulness. "I used to say them to daddy, but he has gone away, and I haven't said any prayers since!"

"But you say your prayers to God," said Goody in shocked tones; "don't you know that?"

"I talk to God very often," she said; "but I don't say my prayers to Him. It was 'Our Father' I used to say to daddy. I never did understand what it meant, but I learnt it when I was a baby, and he liked to hear me say it."

"Saying your prayers is talking to God; asking Him to forgive you for being naughty, and begging Him to watch over you while you sleep."

"So I do!" said Harebell, a light springing in upon her. "So I do. I never thought of that."

She went down on her knees at once, closed her eyes, and began to whisper. Goody folded up her clothes, but she was rather scandalized at scraps she heard the little girl say.

"I expect you laughed when you made him, God, but I'm so glad he has such a funny face—and if I could find a spell to melt her—would you advise me not to think about it? I should like it soon, please—I must have something to cuddle!"

As the whisper went on, Goody cleared her throat, then coughed. Harebell looked up.

"Do you want to speak to me? It doesn't matter interrupting; God is dreadfully accustomed to interrupting. You see, such millions of people are talking to Him all day long!"

Harebell meekly obeyed her, but the whispering went on even after she had left the room.

"Never in my life have I seen such a child," was Goody's verdict downstairs. "I would say one minute she was fifty years old, and the next as ignorant as a savage! Uncanny, I call her! And yet I feel my heart warm towards her!"

Later that evening Mrs. Keith visited her small niece, candle in hand. She looked down upon the sleeping child with cold bitterness.

"More like her mother than father. I suppose deceit and dissimulation is ingrained in her nature. She will be a continual reminder to me of how I was duped."

Harebell's tired little face looked very sweet and content in her sleep; her dark silky curls clustered round her forehead, and accentuated the whiteness of her skin. She turned over on her side, muttering:

CHAPTER II

HAREBELL arrived downstairs the next morning in the best of spirits. Andy and she had managed to have a good deal of talk together before Mrs. Keith came into the dining-room. They had discussed the weather, the neighbourhood, the difference between black and white skins, the cure for snake bites, and the possibility of a puppy taking up its abode at Gable Lodge. Prayers were had; then Andy brought in the breakfast, and when he had left the room, Mrs. Keith addressed her niece.

"Till I find a governess for you, you can amuse yourself as you like. I am always busy in the morning, and I do not wish to be disturbed. In the afternoon you will walk out with me. There is a small sitting-room at the end of this passage which has been got ready for your use. I expect you to be tidy and always punctual at meals."

"It sounds very nice," she said, "but there's only one thing in the world I want here, and I really don't know how I'm going to live without it—I could do with a very little tiny one! And Andy thinks it could be got if you let him look for it."

She paused, but Mrs. Keith was not in a mood to guess at a child's requirements; so there was absolute silence for a moment or two.

"Quite a baby would do," Harebell went on insinuatingly, with her head on one side; "before its eyes were open, and that would make it cheaper."

"I don't know what you are talking about," said her aunt sharply; "but I must insist upon your talking straightforwardly, and not beating about the bush. It is a most objectionable practice."

"I had to leave all my pets behind. I had a white kid, and a kitten, and three dogs and a puppy, and my pony, and you see they all knew me, and we always talked together. I feel like—you read at prayers this morning—'Rachael weeping for her children, and not being comforted.' I'm simply thirsting for a puppy."

For a moment, Harebell looked as if she meditated a rush from the room. Her cheeks got scarlet, and she stamped with her foot under the table.

Her aunt wisely took no notice of it. In a few minutes the cloud of passion passed away from Harebell's face.

She crept away from the table very silently when breakfast was over. She passed Andy in the hall.

"It's no use," she said tragically; "I shan't be able to live here. I shall die of a broken heart!"

"Oh!" said Andy with his merry twinkle. "You won't die of it with me at hand. I know how to mend hearts when they're broken. I can mend most things, and people's hearts are stronger than they think. Mostly cracks, not breakages."

"How do you know the difference?" she said. "My fairy book tells me of broken hearts—it says nothing of cracks."

"Ah!" said Andy with a nod. "You let me feel yours later in the day, when my work is done, I'll soon tell you; but I'm clearing away the breakfast now."

He went on into the dining-room. Harebell gave a little skip along the passage; her heart felt lighter already. She put her small hands upon it, or upon the place in her chest in which she thought it was.

"I suppose it isn't exactly broken yet," she said to herself, "but I never know how soon it will be, if I don't get a puppy!"

She went on into the little room that was to be her schoolroom. Andy had let her see it before breakfast.

It was plainly furnished; a square table, an armchair, and two others, a cupboard in the wall, and a bookshelf, but the window opened out upon a green lawn, and there were bright crocuses and hyacinths in the flower-beds.

Harebell went straight to the bookcase. A very dingy row of books were there, and though she took them down one by one, there was not one story-book amongst them. The only book she thought might prove interesting was an illustrated encyclopædia. That she decided she would look at and read some other day. She opened the low window, but shivered at the cold blast of air which swept into the room. Then she ran out into the passage again and up the stairs.

In a very few minutes, she got into her warm coat and cap, and a little later was dancing and skipping round the old garden. Presently she came to a green door in the old wall. She tried to open it, then found it was bolted, but after a few valiant efforts she unbolted it, and discovered that it led out into the road.

England seemed extremely dull, as she walked along, for it was a country road, and the two tall hedges on either side quite prevented her from seeing over the tops of them.

"I haven't anybody to talk to," she said, with a pang of self-pity; "all my darlings left in India, and I'm sick, quite sick of grown-up people! They don't understand, and they never will!"

She walked along discontentedly; then suddenly looked up in delight. Round a corner, came a little girl and boy followed by a lady. In an instant Harebell had darted forward, and had held out her hand.

"How do you do?" she said to the little girl. "What is your name? Mine is Harebell, and I only came to England yesterday."

The little girl stared at her, and then smiled in a hesitating sort of way. She was shorter than Harebell, and much fatter; she had pretty flaxen hair which fell down to her waist.

The boy was very much the same height and had the same colouring. He laughed out loud at Harebell's speech.

"Where do you come from? Timbuctoo? Isn't she a funny-looking girl, Miss Forster?"

"Hush!" she said. "Don't be so rude, Peter; and how often am I to tell you that you are to take no notice of strange children."

This much Harebell heard, but no more. They passed her by as if she had been a stone upon the road. She looked wistfully after them.

"In India, I would have asked them to spend the day with me, and they would have been glad. They're very rude and horrid!"

"I shan't be able to live, unless I find somebody to play with. Oh, I wish I had a puppy! I wish I had something to cuddle in my arms, something that would be able to look at me with living eyes!"

She retraced her steps. It seemed no good to go farther on. Evidently people would not make friends with her in England!

"I shall have to make up a friend," she said to herself, and before she had reached her aunt's house she was in the world of dreams.

"They are the Rectory children," said her aunt. "Of course they would not speak to you. They did not know who you were."

"But I could have told them in a minute," said Harebell promptly; "I was ready to tell them everything."

"You ought not to have spoken to them at all. We don't do those kind of things in England."

Harebell said no more. In the afternoon she walked out with her aunt, and for the greater part of the time they walked in silence.

"I can't help it," she said, looking up, and seeing her aunt's glance of surprise; "we never do this kind of thing in India, except the natives, when they're doing a pilgrimage. I was pretending to myself that you and me was doing one; and I wondered when we should stop, and then I began to count your slow, solemn steps, and it made me think of a walking doll I had; and then I thought p'r'aps you walked out for your sins; my ayah told me of some fakirs who did it, and I wondered what your sins were like, and then I laughed, for I was making up some for you!"

"I don't think you are called upon to tell me all your thoughts," her aunt said gravely.

"But I shall really burst if I don't. I feel just like that, unless you would tell me yours. That would be most interesting!"

"If you want to talk," her aunt said, "you can repeat me the dates of the Kings of England, or the multiplication tables."

"Oh," cried Harebell, "I don't know any of them. I won't talk another word! I'll think hard instead."

The walk was over at last. They only met a few countrymen with waggons, and when Harebell returned home, she flew out to the garden, where Andy was weeding. Then her tongue rattled away at an alarming pace; but Andy talked quite as hard, and worked too.

Harebell felt snubbed; but she set to weeding under his direction, and enjoyed herself thoroughly until tea-time.

Her aunt talked a little more to her then, and asked her many questions about her life in India.

She was astonished to hear that Harebell had never held a needle in her hand, and after tea was over, gave her her first lesson in sewing. At half-past seven she sent her to bed.

"It's very amusing to see all the new ways and things," she confided to her; "but this is a very dull house—at least it's a frozen one—that's what I call it. Andy is the only one who can laugh. You must be frozen if you can't laugh. And Aunt Diana is the snow queen; she'll slowly freeze me as she froze poor little Kay. Do you know Hans Andersen, Goody? Gerda found Kay at last, and melted him. I think she did it by crying over him. Kay had got a heart of ice. I couldn't cry over Aunt Diana if I tried ever so! I simply couldn't do it, so she must just go on as she is. But I won't get frozen myself if I can help it. Oh dear, it just seems like a year to-day. Will every day be the same, Goody?"

"I really can't keep pace with you, child! Never did I hear such a chatterer; and you mustn't talk of your aunt so. It isn't nice. She's very kind to have you in her house at all. She was never one for children, and she's lived too long alone now to get any different."

"I don't think you're frozen," she said slowly; "but I can't say anything but that this is a very dull, frozen house!"

The next few days passed in much the same way. A little dressmaker, from the village near, came to measure Harebell for new frocks. She was slightly deformed, but had a good patient face, and Harebell suddenly informed her that she loved her.

"There's a look in your eyes which I haven't seen since a nice missionary lady in India took me on her lap and talked to me about heaven," she said.

"I'm glad you've had talks about heaven," she said, taking some pins out of her mouth and pausing in her fitting. "Is it your home, dearie? It's mine."

"Well, it ought to by rights, but there's some who would feel mighty strange there, and 'tis only for the children of the Kingdom—them that have stepped through the Door?"

"The Lord Jesus Christ is the Door," said the little dressmaker gravely. "Don't you know He says: 'I am the Door, by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved'?"

"I don't see how Jesus Christ can be a door," said Harebell slowly and reflectively.

"I think I know how it's done. He holds out his arms and we run underneath them."

"You run into them, dearie, that's it. 'He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom.'"

"I like that idea about the door," she said. "I always love strange doors, and I always try to get through them to the other side. I wonder if I'm through the Door, Miss Triggs?"

Goody interrupted the conversation at this point, and Harebell's frock was discussed.

"It's a funny thing, Goody, but there's something in the eyes of people that tells you when they're good. Do you think God is inside them, and looks out now and then?"

Goody was, as usual, shocked by Harebell's speeches. The little girl was so much in earnest that she could not see why she was wrong in speaking so, and then Goody went on to talk about Miss Triggs.

"She is a good little woman if ever there was one. She keeps an old mother and a worthless scamp of a drunken brother on what she earns, and the house is like a new pin, never a speck of dust to be seen. She do suffer cruelly, sometimes from her back—and that was done as a child by her drunken father. She's always suffered for the sins of others, I say, and always smiling and happy. If everybody lived as she lives, the world would be a different place."

"I should like to go and see her," said Harebell thoughtfully; "and I'd like to see her brother too. I'm so interested in wicked people. All drunkards are wicked, aren't they?"

But Goody went away. She told Andy downstairs that Harebell gave her such continual shocks when she talked to her, that she was quite "dumbfounded to hear her."

"I have made arrangements for you to do lessons with the Rectory children. You are to be at the Rectory every morning at nine o'clock, and leave again at half-past twelve. I hope you will be very good and give no trouble to their governess. It is very kind of her to be willing to take another pupil. Mrs. Garland will be here this afternoon; she wants to see you."

"It will be perfect!" she exclaimed. "And now those children will have to speak to me, and I shall have somebody to talk to. Shan't I do lessons with them in the afternoon?"

"You may have to go for music lessons in the afternoon, but that has still to be settled. I have another matter to speak to you about. Mr. Graham has written to me, and wants to come down to see you, as he is passing through this part of the country this week. I have asked him to lunch to-morrow."

"Oh, it's too much!" cried Harebell. "Why does it all come at once? And this morning when I got up, I thought you and me were going to live alone together for ever. Isn't it strange how sudden things alter! What a happy time I'm going to have!"

She could hardly finish her breakfast for excitement. She ran out into the garden afterwards and worked off her superfluous spirits by racing round and round the paths.

"Of course," he said; "I knowed good times would come. They always does to all of us. The most dismal day in the year isn't more'n twelve hours long; you go to sleep and, like a Jack-in-the-box, a fresh day is on you, bringing you all sorts of surprises!"

"You've asked me that dozens o' times, and I tells you 'Yes' and 'No.' They be ordinary children, mischievous at times, and forgettin' their manners, but their mother be a fine woman. She has the ways of the quality, for she's one of 'em. Used to live at Cumberstone Hall, fifteen mile from here—her father were my father's squire—and I well remember our school treats at the Hall when Miss Mary used to come and join us—a pretty little maid in white frocks and golden curls."

"Mrs. Garland is coming to see me this afternoon," said Harebell, importance in her tone. "But that's nothing, when I think of my dear Mr. Graham coming to-morrow!"

Mrs. Garland appeared at tea-time, and Harebell came into the drawing-room in her new blue serge frock. She held herself very straight, and put out one little slim hand in silence.

Mrs. Garland was a youngish woman still, and had a good deal to say for herself. She had a bright kind face, and drew Harebell towards her, giving her a kiss.

"Why, Diana, I can see Frances over again! She's the image of what her mother used to be."

"But her eyes are her father's. Well, little one, we shall welcome you for your parents' sakes here. Do you like the idea of coming to learn with my boy and girl?"

"Oh no," said Harebell hastily. "I don't know anything about them, but it's the company I want."

"Harebell is a great talker," she said, "and wants more outlet for her tongue than she can get in this house."

"Oh, well," said Mrs. Garland quickly, "children will be children, and ought to be amongst their kind. We're poor company for them, Diana. But this seems a bit of originality. I hope she'll do my little ones good. They're hardly brilliant—I must own it! I suppose I expect too much; and, after all, genius brings much danger in its path. They're dears, both of them!"

"You want fattening up," she said; "too thin! She's much too thin, Diana. Have you tried Grape-nuts? And Benger's Food?"

"I've come from India," she said; "it's only babies and old people who are fat there!"

"What is your little girl's name?" Harebell asked, looking up at Mrs. Garland with earnest eyes.

"Not such a pretty name as yours. We call her Nan. Her real name is Anne, and my boy is Peter. There are a good many Peters in the world just now."

"Do you think they like me coming to lessons? I saw them out the other day, and they wouldn't speak to me. It was a dreadful disappointment; it almost broke my heart. You see, I was simply longing to talk to them."

Harebell's eyes grew misty. She looked across at her aunt, who had moved to the other end of the room on purpose that Mrs. Garland and Harebell should talk together.

"I feel quite sick for India," she said, putting one small hand on her chest. "It's a frozen house here. Do you think Aunt Diana will ever melt? She's the snow queen, and isn't she beautiful?"

"Ah!" said Mrs. Garland, catching her breath, "you are a little witch, I believe! How much do you know, I wonder! More of people than of books, I expect. I wish I was going to teach you. Well, Diana, I must be going."

"You know how I dislike children. It's a daily penance to me. I mean to do my duty by her, but nothing else. Do you forget that her mother stole my lover? I find myself looking for the same traits in the child. My sister deceived me systematically for two years. She lied and hoodwinked me with a smiling face. Is it any wonder that I cannot bring myself to fondle her daughter?"

"Poor motherless mite!" said Mrs. Garland; but she knew it was useless to say any more.

CHAPTER III

MR. GRAHAM arrived the next day. Harebell flew into his arms with a little choking sob.

"I've not properly enjoyed myself once, since we said good-bye," she cried pathetically; "and England isn't 'home' as everybody calls it in India. It isn't one bit home to me! And I haven't even seen an animal since I came! Not a single one!"

Mrs. Keith had left the room, so Harebell poured out her soul with perfect freedom.

"How very disobliging of the animals!" said Mr. Graham with twinkling eyes. "For we do have some in England, you know."

"There ought to be horses, and cows, and cats, and dogs, and all kinds of pigs and chickens," went on Harebell gravely. "I've seen them in books that come from England, so I know. And there isn't one; no, not a little one in this house!"

"At the bottom of the garden there is a stable," she continued. "Andy uses it for wood, and all kinds of rubbish. He says when this house was first built, the man of it kept a horse and trap. Aunt Diana doesn't like animals; but then, she can't like anything, poor thing—"

With big eyes she waited to see the result her statement would have upon Mr. Graham.

"By tears, hot tears," said Harebell very thoughtfully; "or by fire and sun. That's what people tell me. I haven't seen any ice yet, you know. But I feel it from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes. It's all over the house."

"And, Mr. Graham, I'm getting silenter and silenter; and if it wasn't for doing lessons with the Rectory children, I think my heart would break."

"It's only grown-up hearts that break," said Mr. Graham. "I assure you that yours will be quite safe for a long time yet."

"That's how Andy talks; but I thought you'd understand better. Andy laughs at everything I say—every single thing!"

"I'm not laughing, but I'm glad to hear about the Rectory children. Who are they?"

"Well, you see, I haven't really got to know them yet; but they're sure to be nice, don't you think so? The boy is called Peter, that's an ugly name I think. I wonder and wonder who will be my real friend. I don't think I can like them both; not for a private and special friend, you know. It must be one or the other."

"I should think you and the girl would chum up; you would have the same tastes."

"But we mightn't at all," said Harebell hastily. "I like animals, not dolls; and I like men and boys much better than women and girls. I always wish I'd been born a boy."

"You're a thorough little woman," said Mr. Graham emphatically. "Don't you make any mistake about it. You're mass of contradiction and moods."

"My dear child, you'll enjoy both your young friends. And now listen to an idea that has just come into my head!"

"There! That's how you used to speak on board! And your ideas were always lovely."

"I know what a daring little rider you were in India. Supposing I were to produce a small pony from somewhere, do you think your aunt would give him a home in her stable?"

Of course Harebell went into ecstasies. She danced up and down and flung her arms round Mr. Graham's neck.

"Oh, you darling! Oh, what a glorious idea! Oh, let me call Aunt Diana at once!"

"No, no; I am a prudent man. I will talk to her about it when you are not here."

She sobered down then, but her tongue went chattering on, and when Mrs. Keith came back into the room, she could not keep it still.

Mr. Graham stayed to lunch, and then had his private interview with Mrs. Keith. She was very hard to persuade.

"Couldn't a lad come in from the village? Let me stand the extra expense. She has always ridden. It seems a pity to drop it."

"We will hope her future husband may be able to gratify them," said Mr. Graham. "I don't think Harebell is the sort to remain unmarried for long."

"If you really wish to make her a present of a pony, I will make arrangements for its keep. But I do not know who will accompany her when she rides out."

"Let her trot about the country lanes alone. It won't hurt her. Limit her to a certain time and locality, if you like. You will find her obedient; but she needs a certain amount of freedom to grow. I have known her since she was a baby."

He got his way, and his departure was sweetened to Harebell by the thought of the pleasure in front of her. She got hold of her aunt's hand and squeezed it in her excitement.

"I do thank you. I shall always and for ever be good now. A pony of my own will be simply glorious! You see, Aunt Diana, horses really understand you if you talk to them; they're like dogs, and I do want somebody to talk to."

"You will have the Rectory children as companions," said her aunt coldly. "I want you to understand that this pony must not distract you from your lessons. You are a very ignorant little girl, and have a great deal of lost time to make up."

Harebell could not be quenched. She fled out to Andy and informed him that she was simply "riotously happy."

"I can't think where you get your words from!" he said, shaking his head. "'Happy' is good enough for any one."

"Daddy used to say 'riotously.' I've heard him often. It means, Andy, that I'm bursting with joy! Just think what I've got in front of me!"

In a few days' time her lessons began. She walked to the Rectory one bright morning and was received by Mrs. Garland, who took her straight to the schoolroom. It was not yet nine o'clock. The governess was not there; but Peter and Nan came forward and shook hands with her.

"So do I! But I like to play with boys. I knew two boys in India; they had a screechy whiny sister, who always wanted to play with us, and then cried when she did. They had to go to school in England. I was sorry when they went."

"I'm not a screechy whiny sister," said Nan, tossing her head like a war horse. "I can do everything the same as Peter, and I can run as fast."

"I feel he'll be a more deep friend than you," she announced. "Because he'll belong to me, and to no one else."

Miss Forster's entrance at this moment stopped further conversation. She greeted Harebell kindly, but in a business-like fashion, and lessons began without further delay.

Of course Harebell was woefully backward, though in reading and writing she was as good as the other two children. But though backward, she was intelligent, and interested in everything that she was told. In the middle of lessons, she suddenly looked up at the governess with her bright eyes.

"Not by any means. I only know so much more than you do, that it is my business to teach you."

Harebell thought over this, then she leant her arms on the table and asked earnestly:

"Are there enough books in the world to tell you about everything? There are simply thousands of things I want to know!"

"Take your arms off the table and go on with your sum. After lessons are over, you can ask me questions."

Harebell obeyed instantly, but she was ready with her questions before she went home.

"Grown-up people always turn away when I ask them about things, or they laugh," said Harebell. "Now you promise not to do either, will you?"

Miss Forster promised, a glint of amusement in her eyes, which happily Harebell did not see. Nan and Peter stared at her with open mouth and eyes. She talked to their governess as if she were her equal.

"The first thing I want to know is about spells," Harebell said earnestly. "Spells for making ice people melt specially. There must be some. And spells for making poor dumb things talk; or for making us understand what they say. Chairs and tables have their lives as well as us, haven't they? They were alive and moving when they were trees. You see, I like talking, and if I'm in a room by myself, I look round to see who I'd like to talk to. But they never answer back, and I'm perfectly certain if I could find the right spell, they would. Perhaps I mean I want to break the spell and make them speak; that's what I want."

"You're a funny child," Miss Forster said gravely. "I suppose you believe in witches, and fairies, and all that sort of thing?"

"In India I've seen—oh, I can't tell you—but I know there are fairies in England! Dad used to tell me about them. They dance in the woods. I haven't seen a wood yet. It's like a jungle without the wild beasts and snakes. Do tell me if there's a book of spells."

"Oh yes, there are a good many," said Miss Forster; "but they belong to a past age. I can give you a spell for making an ice person melt—only one thing will do it."

"I'll write it on a paper and give it to you. You can read it, and think over it, and try it when you get home."

Harebell was enchanted. She hardly spoke to Nan and Peter, but trotted home with a piece of paper squeezed tightly in her hand. When she got up to her room she read it. Only two words:

She was very disappointed at first; then she thought about it, and nodded approval.

"Gerda loved Kay, and I have to love Aunt Diana, but mustn't say anything about it to any one. I must do it in secret. I don't quite know how to do it, but I'll try."

It was a happy day when her pony arrived. Andy insisted on taking charge of it himself. He only asked his mistress for a little lad, three days a week, to help him in the garden.

"I was brought up in a stable myself," said Andy proudly, as he patted the brown, silky coat of the little Welsh pony. And Harebell promptly added:

"Like Jesus Christ. I'm sure you must have been a very good child, Andy. You ought to have been."

"There you go now," remonstrated Andy, "like lightning for coupling up things, and never very seemly or respectful to the Almighty, I says! My father was head groom to Lord Walters, and I sat on a horse afore I was in breeches."

"I am so glad Mr. Graham did not tell me his name. For I shall choose one myself for him. He is my pony and he must have a beautiful name."

When she went to the Rectory the next day her thoughts were full of it. The children had half an hour's interval in the morning, when they generally played in the garden; but it was wet, and Harebell was perfectly content to be in the schoolroom.

"I have to find a name for him, and I shall get it from the Bible," she announced. "It's sure to be a good one, then."

"There are no ponies mentioned in the Bible," said Peter. "I can give you a dozen. 'Soft Eye,' Tommy, Brownie, Silky. Is he a he?"

"I shall choose it from the Revelations," she said, "because that's the book of glories."

She took hold of her Bible, which was in her satchel, and sat down on the floor by the window to study it.

"You don't understand what I want, Nan; it must be a name which no one else on earth has. He is so very special!"

She and her brother were not quite sure whether they liked this new comrade of theirs. She was so very self-sufficient and dictatorial. They longed to snub her, but at present were rather afraid of her. The half-hour had nearly gone, before Harebell found her name, then she lept to her feet.

"It's almost the last chapter; it's one of the precious stones in the beautiful city. I love a long name, don't you? A precious stone is a jewel. All the natives have lots of jewels in India. I know all about them, and my pony is a jewel to me, and very, very, very precious."

"Do you know Miss Triggs? She likes Revelations, she told me so. She talks very interesting about heaven."

"She's a dressmaker," said Nan; "what a funny girl you are, to talk to a dressmaker about heaven!"

"Why? She likes it. She was talking to me of the Door into the Kingdom. Have you got through yet? Sometimes I think I have, and sometimes I think I haven't!"

"The Door," replied Harebell a little impatiently. "We're all outside or inside the Kingdom, and the Door gets us in."

"Do you mean the Kingdom of England?" questioned Peter. "We only read about kingdoms in our history-books."

Harebell was beginning to get rather hot in the discussion. Then Miss Forster came into the room, and lessons were recommenced. When they were over, Harebell put on her hat and coat to return home, and Peter and Nan accompanied her to the garden gate. They met the Rector who was coming in. He always had a kindly word for Harebell, and she at once seized the opportunity.

"Mr. Garland, you know all about God's Kingdom, don't you? And what you say must be right. Peter and Nan won't believe me. Can't we get into the Kingdom of Heaven before we die?"

"Indeed you can," said the Rector, smiling down upon the eager face uplifted to him. "We ought to be the subjects of that kingdom down here."

Then he looked at the children in front of him, and said: "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

"And we ought to get inside it, oughtn't we?" pursued Harebell. "Not stay outside."

Then she remembered her pony, and flew off along the road, waving a farewell to the children.

"She's a funny girl," said Peter, "her mind is all tumbled up and pours out anyhow!"

"I think I like her," said Nan, "because she says things so different to everybody else; but, dad dear, she's going to call her pony a most awful name in Revelations—a Chris—something!"

"That doesn't tell me much," said the Rector. "Now run along in, I want to speak to your mother."

"Aunt Diana," said Harebell at dinner; "do you know much about christenings? When I was in India a lady—the governor's wife—christened a yacht. There were pictures of it, and dad told me she poured a bottle of wine over it. Babies have water—what should my pony have? Would it be wicked to christen him like a baby? God made him, didn't he? He belongs to God just as much as a baby does."

"Don't you know that animals have no souls?" said Mrs. Keith. "You cannot play at such games. Ponies don't require christening."

"But I'm giving him a name," said Harebell. "Couldn't I have a little drop of wine, just in a medicine bottle?"

"I don't see why Chrysoprasus shouldn't have a proper christening. Will you come into the stable this afternoon and let us do it?"

"Oh, I'll come fast enough. But I don't like your name. 'Tis a foreign one, reckon. Indian, I should say."

She insisted upon having a ceremony, and dragged Andy off with her. Then she persuaded Lucy, the housemaid, to come as a looker-on. She robed herself in a soft Indian shawl, and having coaxed Mrs. Andrew to give her some home-made lemonade in a bottle, she poured it very solemnly over her pony's head.

"I name thee Chrysoprasus. And Chrysoprasus thou shalt be called to the end of thy life."

Then she made Lucy and Andy cry out with her: "Long life to Chrysoprasus! Hip, hip, hurrah!"

Her Aunt had stipulated that Andy should go with her for the first time. The old man came back and informed his mistress that Harebell was a born rider, and had a perfect seat and hand.

"And the pony is as quiet with her as a sheep," he ejaculated. "She won't come to harm in our quiet lanes."

So Harebell was allowed an hour's ride every day, directly after lunch in the afternoon, and that hour was a golden time with her. Her cheeks began to get rosy, and her thin little face to fill out.

Mrs. Keith took very little notice of her, beyond seeing her at her meals, and for a short time in the evening before she went to bed. Harebell grew accustomed to her aunt's silent ways, and lost her first awe of her; but she told herself over and over again that she could never love her. She talked a great deal to her pony, and no longer felt lonely.

CHAPTER IV

ONE day Harebell paid a visit to Miss Triggs. She rode over to the village to post a letter for her aunt, and saw the little dressmaker at her cottage door. It was a very easy matter to tie Chrysoprasus to the gate-post.

Miss Triggs led the way proudly into her best parlour. The window was shrouded with flowers and muslin curtains. There were fashion papers on the round table, and an unfinished dress or two hanging up on the wall. Harebell thought it a very pretty room; she admired the dried grasses on the chimneypiece, and the bright-coloured pictures on the walls. Then she looked at an illuminated text over the door.

"'He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness.'"

"Yes, isn't it a nice one for a dressmaker?" said Miss Triggs brightly. "I make clothes for people's bodies, but the Lord makes clothes for our souls."

"You're a very good person," she said reflectively. "Do you know, I don't know whether I'm through the Door or not. I have asked God to take me through, but I don't feel any different. How do you know whether you're through or not?"

"That's where faith comes in," said Miss Triggs, with a beautiful smile on her face.

"If you kneel down and ask Jesus to take you through, He will. And you must believe He has done it. Why, my dear, you've just to hold out your arms to Him. He loves you; He wants to have you in His Kingdom. Of course He does. He opened the Door into the Kingdom when He died upon the Cross. It has been standing wide open ever since for us all to go through. You won't have any difficulty in getting through—but there's a lot of difficulties after."

"Well, p'r'aps I shouldn't say so, for He makes it easy. 'Tis the life of the Kingdom. We have to live like children of the Kingdom."

"Subjects," corrected Harebell. "A king has subjects in his Kingdom; Mr. Garland said so. I like the word subject much better than a child. It—it sounds more important and grown-up. I'm a subject if I'm through."

"No, dear, he isn't. He spends most of his time away from me. Will you come in and see my mother? She dearly loves a visitor."

So Harebell went into a bright shining kitchen at the back of the house. There was a sewing-machine in one corner and a table littered with work. Miss Triggs' mother sat in an armchair by the fire. She was very old, but she looked at Harebell with bright eyes.

Miss Triggs went away for a few minutes, and in her absence Harebell asked eagerly:

"I'll have nobody comin' here and abusin' my son, that I won't. He may be foolish, but he be my boy, and he be very good to his old mother."

"Oh!" said Harebell, abashed. "I—I—thought he was a drunkard. I would like to see him."

But Mrs. Triggs muttered angrily to herself, and when Miss Triggs came back, she could not soothe her.

"'Tis you a-callin' your brother such names and tellin' the whole place of his failin'. Take the little maid away. She be like the rest, just abusin' of him, like as you've teached her!"

Harebell retreated to the door, frightened at the old woman shaking her fist in her face.

"Yes—yes, dear, 'tis only mother's way. She loves my brother like a mother, you know, and can't bear any one to miscall him."

Harebell mounted her pony and rode thoughtfully away. But a little farther on, she happened to meet Tom Triggs. He was slouching along with his hands in his pocket. For a moment he looked up and eyed her.

"Are you Miss Triggs' brother? I hoped I would see you. I've been to see your cottage."

"Seen the old woman? Yes, I be Tom Triggs right enough. A thorough bad un, so they say."

"But your old mother is very angry with me," said Harebell looking at him with interest. "Because—you promise not to be angry—I called you her wicked son."

The man's surliness vanished. His eyes twinkled. "You were a bold little un. An' what did her say?"

"I can't tell you, but she was very angry, and Miss Triggs says she loves you, and that's why it was." Then Harebell said cautiously: "Do you drink all day long? Isn't it rather difficult? Now I like eating better than drinking. I wonder if I was to eat all day long whether it would be wicked? I should have to choose my food, for I certainly couldn't eat porridge or bread-and-butter all that time. I think I could manage a good many jam tarts."

Tom Triggs laughed; he straightened himself up and stroked the nose of her pony. Then Harebell told him his name, and they were deep in talk over ponies' names and their habits and tricks, when the Rector came up. Tom Triggs lowered his head, and slouched off, but not before Harebell had called after him:

Then, with an explanatory wave of her hand after the retreating figure, she said:

"It's Miss Triggs' brother, and I like him. I think he and me are going to be friends."

"He's a carpenter by trade. But nobody will employ him, as he won't stick at any job, and lives half his days at the 'Black Swan,' spending his sister's hard-earned money."

"I am afraid my words are wasted. He and I have had many a talk. When a man makes drink his master, he cannot get away from it."

"Ah! You little know your aunt's troubles," he said, and then with a nod, he passed on, and Harebell rode home very thoughtfully.

"Most on us have troubles," said Andy slowly; "and some take 'em softly, and some hardly, but have 'em we must."

"I haven't any just now," said Harebell. "Of course I've had a lot—chiefly in India, you know—mostly deaths I've had. They get killed so quickly in India—'specially puppies. Has Aunt Diana had many deaths belonging to her?"

"Ay, death would have been better, I'm thinkin'; 'twas a bad time for her. But there, I reckon she'd rather have it over again than be without the master as she is."

"Hush you now, and don't be speakin' of it to a soul. The Colonel is not dead—just away in foreign parts. You see, he were very strong-willed, and so is she, and they are both hot-tempered, and he used to struggle hard—that I know to be a fact—to get the better of it, but her sharp words didn't help, and then one day there were a fine rumpus, and she said she'd rather be chained to a brute beast than to him—I heard her myself; but she were so hot that she didn't know rightly what she were saying, and he says:"

"With that he walks right out of the door, and never comes back again, nor sends her one word, and that were six years ago last Christmas. But I knows, he be alive, for he always giv' me a pocket gardener's di'ry every Christmas. Me and him were very good friends; and if you believe me, that pocket di'ry have never missed coming to me every Christmas since he went."

Harebell's face was a study; surprise, excitement, and keen interest flitted across it.

"She's turned hard and cold, but her heart inside be right," said Andy. "I seed her take up my di'ry one day when I laid it on my pantry table, and when she put it down, her lips were all of a quiver."

"Uncle Herbert; but don't you go for to mention his name, or you'll get old Andy into trouble."

"I'll only mention him to God," said Harebell, rather loftily; "and I'll ask God not to tell anybody, if you like."

"'Tis something scandalous the way she talks of the Almighty," he informed Goody later on; "and yet 'tis done quite innocent like. 'Tis to be hoped the Almighty understands her, for I'm sure I don't."

"A good lot has happened to me to-day, darling Chris," said Harebell softly in the ear of her pony, as she wished him good-night that evening. She was getting quite accustomed to give him her confidences.

"It's a great comfort to tell secrets to some one who can't talk," she said to herself.

"You see, Chris, I've heard about one new man, and I've made friends with another, and it's very exciting to hear about an uncle of mine who I never knew belonged to me. I'm very sorry Uncle Herbert was so cross and ran away, but I dare say he's quite good now, sitting in some corner by himself and thinking about Aunt Diana. It's dreadful not to be able to tell him how unhappy she is without him. If he knew she wanted him, he would come tearing back to-morrow. Of course my best plan will be to ask God if He will be kind enough to make him understand. In a dream, or something like that. But I'll leave Him to do it the way He likes best. Isn't it nice, Chris, to have God knowing about everybody and everything and able to speak all over the world in the same minute? wonder if you understand about Him? He made you, so I expect He speaks to you sometimes."

She was a long time over her prayers that evening. Goody waxed rather impatient.

"It's just chattering, not praying that you're doing," she said a little severely, when at last with a happy sigh, Harebell got up from her knees.

"Why, I've been pouring out, simply pouring," she said. "I had an awful lot to pray about."

Goody shook her head in disapproval, but she had learnt not to argue with Harebell.

Harebell never rested till she had another interview with Tom Triggs; and this time she was perched on the garden wall, when he slouched by.

Mrs. Keith had gone out to tea, and Harebell was left to play alone in the garden. She beamed all over when she saw who it was.

"But if there was a fire, and this was a window, you'd have to catch me," said Harebell.

She sat swinging her small legs to and fro, looking down upon him with bright interested eyes.

"I wish," she said slowly, "that you would have a sweet little cottage of your own, Tom, with some nice little children, then you could ask me to tea. I should love to come."

Tom laughed. He took out his pipe and began to fill it with tobacco from a greasy tin box in his pocket.

"But you could work for money, couldn't you? And give up drinking beer, that costs a lot of money."

"Ah," said Tom, "this 'ere pipe and a mug o' beer be better company than anybody else. The women and children be only a burden."

"I didn't say anything about women," said Harebell; "but I s'pose you'd have to have a wife to mind the children when you went to work."

Tom looked at her with twinkling eyes. Then his mood changed. He clenched one on his fists.

"Little missy, I'd give this 'ere right hand o' mine to be quit o' the drink sometimes. There was a lass once who loved me. She and me had set our hearts on that there cottage top o' village agen the old oak. We was for havin' our banns cried, an' I were so dazed wi' the luck in front o' me, I went and drunk more'n a man ought, and then visited my maid, afore the stuff had worked itself out o' me. She were one o' the Maxworthy stock, and held her head high, an' she sent me off, and would have none o' me. So that sent me to the devil!"

"Oh," interrupted Harebell, "I'm sure you didn't go to him. He doesn't live in this world, you know."

"But he does, right enough, missy. He have a tight hold of me—he and the drink together."

Harebell looked startled, then she smiled reassuring. "I know Somebody Who'll make you all right, and so do you."

Tom shook his head; he was ashamed of himself for giving his confidence to this small maiden; but he was attracted by her earnest trustful eyes, and did not seem able to help himself.

"Why, of course, God will. He always helps us to be good. I know what I'd do if I were you."

"I'd get some glue, I think, and stick my lips together, and put some cotton-wool up my nose, and then I would walk past the public-house six times running, and say a kind of spell. I'll make up one for you and bring it to you to-morrow. Will you promise to meet me outside the cottage you meant to live in? I will go with Chris. I know the old oak—"

"What a funny man he is!" she said to herself. Then she settled down on the wall to compose a "spell." From a tiny child on her father's knee she had been accustomed to help him make up rhymes, and after a good deal of frowning and muttering, she evolved the following:—

Beer, beer!
Call me not here!
I shall drink no more,
For it makes me poor.
Beer, beer!
Though you're so near,
I can say good-bye
Without a cry.
So never no more
Will I cross the door
Where beer is sold
Till I'm dead and cold.
Beer, beer, you've spoilt my life,
And now I'll go and get a wife.

She was very pleased with this composition, and climbing down from the wall, she ran indoors, and copied it out in her best handwriting, on the largest sheet of paper she could find. It was shown to Andy, who was awestruck at such a production, as Harebell hoped he would be.

"It's a piece of po'try, Andy. You didn't know I could write po'try, did you? I shall write book upon book when I grow up. It's a kind of spell, you know. To say to yourself when you're passing public-houses and want to have a glass of beer."

CHAPTER V

HAREBELL arrived first at the little cottage the next day. It was a picture, with its thatched roof, and beehives against the wall, and spring bulbs pushing themselves out of the ground. An old bed-ridden woman lived there, with a niece who looked after her.

The oak was magnificent, and spread its branches in all directions. Tom appeared, still smoking his pipe. He looked heavy-eyed and rather surly, but could not keep away from Harebell, and when she presented her rhyme to him, he read it slowly through, weighing every word.

She drew up her pony on the secluded side of the oak-tree. Tom leant against the old trunk, and scratched his head as he slowly read the verses.

"So never no more
Will I cross the door
Where beer is sold
Till I'm dead and cold."

"Oh no," said Harebell earnestly. "I hope you'll be in heaven then. You see 'cold' goes with 'sold'; if people are dead they're quite cold—my ayah told me they were. It means you'll never go into a public-house for all your life."

"That do seem hard," said Tom thoughtfully; then he read the last two lines and brightened up.

"Then you'll have a dear little cottage and some work," said Harebell. "Will you promise me you'll say this over, while you walk outside the 'Black Swan' to-day? It's a spell—it will work, I know it will."

"Bless yer heart, she married five years ago and is in Canada now, I hear tell, wi' a long fam'ly!"

"Well, we must find another. Which shall we find first, Tom? The cottage, or the wife, or the work? Isn't it a pity, people are living here. Oh, look! There's a woman coming out!"

The cottage door had opened, and a young woman came down the path; she had a pleasant smiling face, and carried a basket on her arm. When she reached the gate, she paused. It was in a rotten condition, and one of the hinges was off. She had to untie a piece of rope. Tom looked on with interest.

"Arternoon!" was the gruff response. "Seems as if a bit o' carpentering were wanted there."

"I wish you'd come and do it for us. My aunt would be so glad to have it mended."

She waited for a moment, smiled at Harebell, then walked away towards the village. Harebell bent over from her pony and touched Tom's shoulder.

"You've got your work, Tom; you must mend that gate, and give up beer, and next week marry that woman, and then come and live in this cottage! Oh, it's turning out lovely!"

She clapped her hands gaily. Chris started at once for home, but Harebell pulled him in.

"Oh, Tom! Of course there's a better way for you. The door reminds me—you must get through the Door of the Kingdom, and then you'll belong to God, and He will help you. God can do anything, you know."

"It's like this," she said, "there's a Door we can't see, but it's wide open and it leads into God's Kingdom. We've all got to go through it. Your sister knows about it, for she told me—and I think I'm through. If you're through you're a subjec'—a King's subjec'—and no King's subjec' could ever get drunk—it would be so disgraceful, wouldn't it? You just walk through, Tom—now at once, where you are—it doesn't take any time."

"I must say it very soft to be respeck'ful. It's the Lord Jesus Christ, Tom. I learnt the text, 'I am the Door,' He said, 'by Me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved.' You've got to shut your eyes and hold your arms out, and say very soft: 'Take me through, Jesus, I come to You, and I ask You to take me through!' I did it in bed a few nights ago. I stood right up in bed and did it. And I feel—I feel I'm through!"

"You get through to-night, Tom. I'm sure Jesus will let you through; He says 'any man,' you see, and I wasn't a man at all, and yet I feel I'm through. You're the proper sort he wants."

"I've muddled it all up, Chris—and I'm sure God can help him better than my spell."

She did not know that her words, "You're the proper sort he wants," rang in poor Tom's ears all that day and night.

"Harebell," said her aunt that same evening, when she was sitting by her side hemming a towel, "I hear you have been seen talking to a man called Tom Triggs, a rough bad man. I shall not be able to let you ride about alone, if you pick up undesirable acquaintances. What possessed you to speak to such a man at all?"

"Oh, Aunt Diana, I'm getting so fond of him! He is so nice to me—and we talk about such interesting things—cottages, and wives, and work, and beer—and even the Kingdom's Door!"

"Explain yourself more clearly and don't talk so fast. When did you first meet him?"

"He belongs to Miss Triggs. He's her brother, and Mrs. Triggs was angry when I called him wicked. I don't think he's really wicked, Aunt Diana; he wants to give up drinking beer, but he can't. You see, he was going to have a wife once, but she wouldn't marry him, and then he—he went to the devil!"

"I don't know quite what that means but he won't be with the devil any longer if he gets through the Door. I told him about it, and then he went away from me—and I gave him a spell to say about beer—I made it up myself. Would you like to hear it?"

"I cannot have you talking to such men. You must have nothing more to do with him."

"Oh, please let me, Aunt Diana—I'm so very very interested in him! Please don't say I'm not to speak to him. Why, we've thought of a cottage, and a wife, and some work—and if he never touches beer again you'll let me have him for a friend—"

Harebell had up to this moment been such a quiet sedate little girl in her aunt's presence that Mrs. Keith hardly realized how deeply things touched her.

Her cheeks crimsoned now and her eyes flashed. She brought down one of her feet on the floor with an angry stamp.

"I shall speak to him! I shall run away from you! I don't like you at all. You aren't a bit kind to me, like Tom Triggs, and I like him ever so much better than I do you!"

Then she dashed down her work and fled from the room, banging the door passionately behind her.

Then Mrs. Keith took up a library book and tried to dismiss her small niece from her mind.

Harebell meanwhile was in the stable, sobbing passionately, with her arms round her pony's neck.

Andy found her and brought her back to the house. She sobbed on till she reached her bedroom, and then flung herself down on the soft woolly rug before the fire, refusing to speak to Goody or to be comforted.

"Whatever have you been doing? You're to go to bed at once," said Goody, looking quite worried, as she drew Harebell towards her and begun brushing out her hair.

"Oh, Aunt Diana is so cruel! She's just breaking my heart, and Tom will never be made good—never, never! Me and him were going to plan it all out, and she says I'm never to speak to him again. I shall! I shall!"

"If it's Tom Triggs you're speaking of, your aunt is quite right. He's not fit to be with a little girl like you!"

"I don't want to. I feel so wicked, and I won't be good yet. I—I hate Aunt Diana! I wish I had never known her!"

"You're a very naughty little girl," said Goody severely. She did not leave her till she was in bed; then Harebell lay quite still in the dark, and from being very angry, she now began to feel very lonely and frightened.

"God has turned His back on me; I know He has. I believe he has put me outside the Door of His Kingdom. He won't come near me to-night, and He'll take His angels away, and then the devil will come and get hold of me. Oh, what shall I do! I must say my prayers, but I expect I shan't be listened to, as I've been so naughty."

"Aunt Diana was very provoking, she made me angry; she's unkind; she likes to tell me not to do what I want to do; and me and Tom were going to try to be good, together. She doesn't want Tom to be good, she wants him to be wicked, and she makes me wicked too!"

"She is your aunt and is grown-up; and you're only a little girl, and must do what she tells you," said conscience.

Then the door creaked and slowly opened, and in a panic of fright Harebell hid her head under the clothes.

She heard a slow steady footstep across the room, and then a hand touched the bed. Harebell was beside herself with terror.

"Go away, devil!" she screamed. "I'm going to be good! Oh, God! God, come to me! I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I will be good! Take the devil away!"

The bedclothes were firmly taken away from her head, and Harebell saw through half-shut eyes, her aunt standing with a candle in her hand.

"Oh, please forgive me, Aunt Diana! I'm sorry I was naughty. I'm so glad you're not the devil. I thought it was him!"

Mrs. Keith put her hand on Harebell's forehead; it was moist with perspiration, and the child's face was a deathly white. Her terror had been very real. She clung hold of her aunt's hand.

"Just stay with me. I'm so frightened. I have been so wicked, and I wouldn't say my prayers, and then of course God went away and left me. Do ask him to come back."

"I'm glad to hear you say you are sorry," said Mrs. Keith in a low even tone, "for you quite shocked me by your passion."

Mrs. Keith sat down, and Harebell began to whisper in a shaky voice. Then she got out of bed and knelt down, and said her evening prayer.

Her curly head dropped back on her pillow. Exhausted by her grief and fright, she fell asleep.

The next day found her bright and happy again. She went to her lessons as usual, but just as she was leaving the Rectory, Mr. Garland called her.

"I think you're interested in Tom Triggs, aren't you?" he said. "He has met with an accident, and would like to see you. Would your aunt let you come with me to see him this afternoon? He has been taken to the Cottage Hospital!"

"Well, it seems that he was quite sober. In fact, he had been mending a gate for old Mrs. Crake, and had told her niece he had knocked off the drink altogether. On his way back, a motor swung round the corner and nearly killed a child. He saved the child, but got knocked over himself, and has a leg badly broken."

"Aunt Diana won't let me speak to him ever again. Poor Tom! Is he going to die?"

"I hope not. Shall I come round this afternoon and ask your aunt to let you come with me to see him? I quite understand her not wishing you to be making friends with him, as for some time he has not borne the best of characters. But he is ill now. It makes a difference."

"I hope it may do him good," said Mrs. Keith unsympathetically; "at all events, it will stop his drinking for a time. That poor little sister of his has had a dreadful life of it!"

"He's not going to drink any more," said Harebell with an assured little nod. "Me and him settled he wouldn't."

"You are too small to have anything to say about such things," said Mrs. Keith in her cold lifeless tone.

Harebell was silent. She did not mention the Rector's proposed call, but she ran out to the stable and told Chris the whole story.

"I wish, Chris, that I was grown-up! It must be so lovely to do whatever you like without asking any one! If Aunt Diana doesn't let me go and see him, I shall cry buckets. I feel it coming already!"

The Rector came at three o'clock, and after an interview with Mrs. Keith, Harebell was summoned to the drawing-room.

"You may go to the Cottage Hospital with the Rector," her aunt said. "I do not mind this in the least, but you are not to go again without permission."

So Harebell eagerly promised she would not, and ran off joyfully to get her hat and coat. She chattered incessantly to the Rector the whole way to the hospital, and told him all the conversation she had had with Tom. She even repeated her "spell," as she called it, and Mr. Garland found her very entertaining company.

When they were ushered into the small ward, Harebell's spirits subsided. There were four white beds in a row, and four heads were raised simultaneously to gaze at the visitors. Tom Triggs' bed was farthest off against the wall. He looked quite a different Tom Triggs to Harebell's old friend. This man had a very clean face and tidy hair; but his eyes, as they rested on the little girl's face, had the old familiar twinkle in them.

"Now, Tom," said the Rector pleasantly, "I'm going to read to old Mrs. Green in the next ward; I will leave Miss Harebell to talk to you."

He went away. A sudden fit of shyness seized Harebell. She sat down on a chair by the bedside, and for a moment there was silence.

"Pretty bad just now," was Tom's reply, "but 'tisn't the hurt, 'tis bein' tied by the leg—and having slops to drink, does for me! Now if only you could hand me a tankard o' frothy ale, I'd be spry enough!"

"I expect God made you break your leg!" said Harebell thoughtfully. "He did it to keep you from going to the 'Black Swan'!"

"Oh no," Harebell said cheerfully; "you'll soon be better, won't you? And then it won't take very long to find a cottage and a wife. I can be doing that while you're in bed. It will be so nice to think about, Tom. What shall you wear for the wedding?"

"And a blue tie," said Harebell. "Sky blue, you know, and a rose in your buttonhole."

"And your wife must be in white, of course. People are always married in white; only I should like a wreath of pink roses round her waist, like a sash, you know. Wouldn't they look pretty?"

"And now, who shall she be?" went on Harebell, a serious gleam coming into her eyes.

"Ah!" said Tom with a little groan. "No lass 'ud have me. That be all past wi' me. Beer be my best and only friend."

"You mustn't talk like that," remonstrated Harebell. "You're never going to touch beer again."

"I'm not to speak to you ever again Aunt Diana says, when you get well; it will be dreadful. She doesn't mind to-day when you're ill. What shall we do, Tom?"

"If you had a wife and a cottage," said Harebell craftily, "I'm sure I could come and see you then. You will let me find them for you, Tom, won't you?"

"Oh, I'll give you leave to look for 'em!" Tom's eyes were twinkling again. He added:

"Oh, did she? I quite forgot about her, and what does your mother think of your accident?"

"She's proper upset. Hessie be too good for her'n me. Mother says she'd like to get away from her times, and that's what I feels, too!"

Harebell was very loyal to her friends. Then, with a child's pertinacity, she came back to the subject that never left her thoughts.

"Oh no, I'm sure it isn't! It's wide open and you'll never want to drink beer, if you're through," said Harebell.

"Yes, and I am bad, too. It's dreadful of me, but I'm usually sorry after, and you know God does forgive people."

"If I went right into heaven to-day," said Tom solemnly, "I should want my beer."

Their talk was over, for the Rector came in; he had a word or two with Tom, and then brought Harebell away. She was very downhearted.

"He's like a crooked tree," said the Rector. "He has been crooked so long that no one can make him straight."

CHAPTER VI

"HAREBELL, I am going away for a short time. I have arranged that you shall go to the Rectory and sleep there. Mrs. Garland has been kind enough to say that she will have you."

Mrs. Keith said this at breakfast-time. She had been reading a letter, and her face was flushed and eyes very bright. Harebell stared at her for a moment, then said slowly:

"It does not matter if you don't," her aunt said quickly. "It is exceedingly kind of Mrs. Garland to be troubled with you; and you must be sure to be as good as possible."

Harebell was unabashed. She cocked her head on one side, and regarded her aunt with great interest.

Harebell left the dining-room rather reluctantly. She found Goody upstairs packing her box, and in a great flutter.

"Then you mustn't ask me," said Goody sternly. "Eh, dear! I'm all in a tremble! To think that just a letter arriving by post, should shake our quiet household to the very foundations!"

"Aunt Diana is shaken all up wonderful, isn't she!" said Harebell quickly. "If you ask me, Goody, I should say the ice was heaving and cracking and breaking inside her. She has red spots on her cheeks, and she's like you, all of the tremble! But she's still ice to me. She won't tell me nothing. It's—horrid of her!"

"Hush now! Be quiet. You'll be late for your lessons. You're to stay to dinner at the Rectory, and your box will be sent over the first thing this afternoon."

"Am I going for good now? Then I must say good-bye to everybody, and what about Chris? Is he coming with me?"

"Of course not. Run down now and say good-bye to your aunt pretty. I shall never get done in time, and my best bonnet is being cleaned. 'Tis most vexin'."

"I should think I was! Do you think I'd let your aunt go without me? I've maided her for over twenty years, and it may be a bit of nursing I shall have to do. But I'm ready for anything! I always was. And if good is coming to my dear mistress, and the smiles be coming back to her face—well, I'd be willing to work myself to the bone."

"Oh, do tell me, darling Goody, what it's all about." Harebell was frantic with curiosity. She put her small arms round Goody's substantial waist and held her tight. "Is it anything about—about—a gentleman?"

She sank her voice to a whisper. Andy's words came back to her. "Don't you go for to mention his name, or you'll get old Andy into trouble."

"Go off to your lessons this minute, and mind you behave yourself at the Rectory, and have pretty manners like a little lady!"

Harebell sighed disconsolately. She slipped downstairs. The drawing-room door was open. She peeped inside, and saw her aunt sitting at her writing-table, her head bowed in her hands. Some instinct prevented her from going in. She sang out:

Mrs. Keith started, then came forward and bent down and kissed her. As she did so, a tear fell on Harebell's cheek.

"If Mrs. Garland likes you to do so. Andy will be here, but you must do everything that you are told at the Rectory. It is extremely good of them to have you."

"It's all coming to pass, Andy," she whispered excitedly. "Tears melt ice, and I'm sure my lost uncle is coming home."

"Never heard tell of such fuss and nonsense and mystery," he grumbled. "Mrs. Goodheart is puffed with importance—won't tell a soul what is taking the mistress away."

"You're going to sleep with me," said Nan. "I've been helping Susan to make your bed."

"And Nan and I have been making up a new game," said Peter. "If you're good, we'll let you join!"

There was not much time for talk, for lessons began at once. Harebell was inattentive and restless that morning. Miss Forster reproved her sharply more than once. She told her to take her French book to a side table and learn the verb "aimer." Harebell meekly obeyed, but soon her eyes were roving out of the window, and her lesson was forgotten.

"That's just what I'm doing," said Harebell. "I meant to aimer Aunt Diana, but I've never managed to do it yet, and p'r'aps she's gone away from me for good. There is no telling what is going to happen. Even Andy feels that."

Miss Forster was very patient with Harebell that morning. She saw her aunt's sudden departure had upset her. When she took the children out at twelve o'clock, she made Harebell walk with her, and let her chatter freely of all that was in her mind. Dinner came, and then lessons till three o'clock. After that the children were free.

Peter and Nan dragged Harebell out into the garden and down to the field where they played cricket.

"Now look here," said Peter. "Listen to our game. You two girls are to be my slaves. I'm going to set you some tasks, and I will stand over you with a whip."

"That doesn't sound at all nice," said Harebell. "What tasks are you going to set us?"

"You'll have to pick blades of grass and fill some baskets. It isn't grass—it's cotton flax. And all the time you're picking, you must settle together how you'll run away from me, I shall be walking up and down slashing my whip. And then you must make up something to send me away, and then I'll give you a quarter of an hour's start. You must go off, and I'll track your footsteps, and if I find you, I warn you, I shall tie you to a tree and flog you to death!"

"It's very nice for you," she said, "but you and Nan can be the slaves, and I'll be the master!"

Peter felt that if he did not assert himself now, Harebell would prove too much for him.

"If you don't play as I say, I shan't play at all. I shall go for a ride on the donkey!"

"Oh, do play, Harebell! It will be such fun," said Nan, "and he'll never catch us if we get away a quarter of an hour before he does."

Harebell wavered. Then she saw enchanting possibilities, and agreed to join in the game.

Peter got his whip and cracked it in a bloodcurdling way over their heads, whilst they picked the grass, and put it into some baskets which were fetched from the coach-house.

Harebell giggled. Then she stood up. "Look! Your house is on fire and your wife and children are screaming at the windows!"

Peter looked wildly round, then tore into the house. The little girls raced across the field and got out in the road, then they faced each other breathless.

"Oh, come on to Aunt Diana's! Andy will hide us. He will never come there. No, I tell you a better plan still. You can ride, can't you? Can you stick on behind me if we ride Chris? It will be such fun! He will never track us if we ride away on horseback."

They reached the house unseen. Harebell gave a peal at the bell which brought Andy in an instant to the door; but he did not look very pleased to see the children.

"Now, Miss Harebell! No sooner gone than back again! What do you want? My orders is not to let any one in!"

"I knowed I would have you round after that there 'orse. Well, come along; s'pose I shall have to saddle him."

In five minutes' time, both Nan and Harebell were seated astride on Chris, Nan clinging for dear life, with her arms round Harebell's waist. And then away at a gallop they went, down the country lane, past the end of the village, and then along a quiet road, between woods on either side.

Her eyes and cheeks were bright with colour and excitement; Nan was every bit as eager and delighted as she was.

Chris had not been out of the stable for two days. He was fresh, and he knew how to go. They passed the woods, then came out on an open common. Chris loved the fresh green turf underfoot. Then they came to cross roads, but neither of them cared where they were going, and straight ahead the pony carried them.

"It's a regular John Gilpin's ride," gasped Nan. "Don't you think we might stop now?"

Chris seemed only too glad to rest by the roadside, and was soon munching tufts of grass in a ditch.

"Where do you think we are?" questioned Nan a little anxiously, "I've never been as far as this before."

"In Yorkshire, p'r'aps," said Harebell cheerfully. "We've had a jolly ride, haven't we?"

Nan assented heartily. They were on the high-road, but there were no houses in sight; the trees on either side of them were already bursting into leaf, and in the hedges were sweet-scented clumps of primroses.

"I don't see how we could," said Nan in an old-fashioned way. "You see, we must be in a parish, and if we go to the clergyman, he's sure to know father, and would send us home."

"You can't. Dad told us all England is divided up into parishes, and every one belongs to some clergyman."

"How funny!" said Harebell. "And if you have forests and jungles, do they belong to clergymen?"

"Do you know, Harebell, I believe there are cowslips over in that other field. It looks just like them. Do come and see."

Harebell had never seen cowslips. It was the work of a moment to clamber over a gate and scamper across the field. Nan was right and the two little girls set to work to pick the flowers at once.

"We'll get back in time for tea," said Nan. "What fun! Peter will be looking for us everywhere."

"I hope Chris hasn't moved," said Harebell. "He wouldn't go on without us, would he? He's too sensible for that."

But that was exactly what Chris had done; and when they got back to the road, there was no sign of him. The little girls looked at each other with blank dismay.

"I ought to have tied him up. Now what shall we do? We'd better walk back the way we came, as fast as we can."

They started, but the road seemed unending; and when they came to the cross roads, they were in doubt, as they had not noticed, when they passed them so quickly, which road they had taken.

The signpost was an old one, and the name on it conveyed nothing to their minds.

They trotted on, not liking to confess to each other how tired they were feeling; but presently they came to a small village.

This was done. A small boy driving a flock of sheep pointed it out to them, and Harebell brightened up.

They turned in at a large white gate and walked up a well-kept drive. A long, low white house lay before them.

Nan pulled the bell. She was taking things into her own hands; for she felt that she knew about English clergy better than Harebell did.

Nan pursed her mouth importantly as she spoke. Harebell began to giggle nervously.

"I'm afraid, my dears, I don't know you. Are you out of school. What is it you want?"

"We've come for you to help us," said Nan, trying to speak bravely. "We aren't quite sure how to get home, and our pony has run away!"

"We simply don't know where we are, and it's tea-time, and if Chris tears home without us, they'll think we've fallen off him and been killed on the very spot."

"Why, you must be Garland's little girls! Do you know you're ten miles from home?"

"I don't keep a carriage. My wife is in London. I have only my old horse upon which I ride about, and he isn't fit for you to ride. Sit down, little ones, and I will go out into the village and see what can bedone—"

"There, you see," said Nan triumphantly, "it is quite easy! I told you any clergyman would look after us. And we found one easily."

An elderly servant came into the room a few minutes later, and supplied them with glasses of milk and some cake, which she said her master had ordered for them.

"I do love seeing strange rooms and people," she said. "We're having a jolly time, aren't we, Nan? Of course, there's poor Chris, but I'm quite sure he'll go straight home. He's too sensible to lose himself."

"Perhaps a gipsy will steal him on the way," said Nan. "You see, he is sure to be stopped by some one. Horses don't take walks by themselves with saddles on."

Harebell's spirits fell. This was a new fear. When the Vicar returned she looked up at him anxiously.

"It's all right," he said cheerfully; "I've wired to your father to tell him that you're safe with me. And in half an hour, a farmer will call here and take you home in his cart. He is passing through your village to see a sick brother of his there. But it will be a long drive. I must lend you some wraps, for the evenings are still chilly."

Harebell seemed in a dream. Her eyes and attention were riveted on a picture hanging up.

There was an Eastern shepherd standing at the entrance to a sheepfold. His flock were coming in for the night, and he was holding out his arms. They were passing in under them. The picture was called "I am the door."

"Ever so much," responded Harebell. "I'm so interested about the Door. But I do think some people want a push in. Tom does. He seems as if he can't go in of his own accord—"

"He's a great friend of mine, who has drunk too much beer, but now he's ill in hospital, and I'm trying to find a cottage and a wife for him; only Aunt Diana says I'm never to speak to him again."

She sighed, then she shook her head with vigour. "But talking is no good. I'm sure he wants a push!"

Then, upon encouragement from the Vicar, she plunged into the story of Tom Triggs. He was interested.

"Tell him he has only one step to take; but it is a step down, and he must bend his head, or he will never get through. A good many are too proud to bend, and so they remain outside."

And in a short time, the little girls were packed into a high dog-cart, which a sturdy farmer drove swiftly along in the direction of home.

CHAPTER VII

"Oh, you pickles!" she said, "Did you realise how anxious you were making us? If the telegram had not come, we should all be out now, scouring the country!"

"No. Did you not have him with you? Andrews has been round here inquiring for you; but thanks to the wire, I was able to tell him you were safe."

Nobody seemed to care much about Chris. The farmer was given many thanks, and some refreshment; the little girls were given some supper and packed off to bed. Peter did not greet them very pleasantly.

"Girls never can play the game!" he said. "Sneaking off and getting on horseback! It wasn't fair a bit!"

"Slaves would get on anything to get away," said Harebell sharply. "They don't stop to think; you could have got on the donkey. But oh, dear! Nothing matters but Chris, where can he be!"

She tossed restlessly about in bed, and had a wakeful night. At six o'clock she slipped out of bed, dressed herself, and set off to see Andy.

"I thought for sure you would put him up for the night somewhere! You don't deserve to be given a smart little pony like that, to go off and leave him loose on a high-road. Shame on you, Miss Harebell!"

Harebell began to cry. She returned to the Rectory disconsolately. Miss Forster scolded her for leaving the house without permission.

"You are a great deal too independent!" she said to her. "Whilst you are here you must ask permission to do things, just as you do your aunt."

"But," Harebell said, "that's just what I don't do! Aunt Diana doesn't trouble about me, and I don't trouble about her. She tells me not to do some things, that's all. I keep away from her all I can."

"Oh, I have tried, Miss Forster, I really have! I've said it over to myself hundreds of times in bed, but my inside won't do it."

Harebell was very miserable all that day. Andy and the Rector's groom started off in search of the lost pony, and his little mistress tried to do her lessons, but the day seemed as if it would never end. But at six o'clock Peter came running in from the garden.

Harebell flew out. The next moment her arms were round her pet, and her head resting on his silky mane. Chris bent his head round and nosed her face gently.

"A farmer met him, and stabled him with his horses for the night. He could not make out where he hailed from. But we heard on it and went straight off. I'll exercise Chris till your aunt comes back, Miss Harebell. I dursn't trust him out with you after this!"

Harebell was ecstatic in her joy. She could hardly tear herself away from her pet, till Andy reminded her, he would be wanting his feed; and then she reluctantly let him go, and watched him down the road with adoring eyes.

"Oh!" she said, throwing herself impulsively into the arms of Mrs. Garland, who came out to see what the children were doing, "I have joy again! Isn't it wonderful how different things seem when you're happy?"

Harebell quivered; then looked up at her with big eyes. "I wish I had you for my mother! I want some one like you dreadfully at Gable Lodge—Goody is kind, but she's never stroked my head like you, only brushed it. Mothers are different to anybody else, aren't they?"

"I do believe they are," said Mrs. Garland, smiling. "You must be an adopted daughter of mine for the time; but don't give us many more days like yesterday. They are too tiring!"

"I won't! I won't! Peter will have to do the running away himself the next time. I'll tell him so!"

Then a settled gravity came over her face. She took hold of Mrs. Garland's hands, and squeezed them tightly.

"I want to write Tom Triggs a letter. You will let me, won't you? He is ill, and Aunt Diana said I wasn't to speak to him, but she did let Mr. Garland take me to him, and I saw a lovely picture of the Door, yesterday, and I want to tell him about it. I'm simply thirsting to write to him!"

"Yes, you may write now, if you like. There's a little quiet corner in the drawing-room. Bring your letter there. I am writing too; and Peter and Nan will be having their romp in the schoolroom."

It was a great treat to be invited into the drawing-room. Harebell was delighted. For nearly three-quarters of an hour she was busy with her letter. First she wrote it in pencil, then she copied it out in ink. Mrs. Garland did not ask to see it; she gave her a stamp and told her how to address the envelope.

"I'd like you to see it. I'm afraid it's badly spelt, but I was so awfully earnest, I couldn't stop to think. You see he must, he must get through that Door somehow. And I want him to get through at once."

   "MY DEAR TOM,—I hope you are better. I wonder all day how you are. I saw a lovely picksher yesterday it was the Door—I wood like you to have been there. The sheep were going in fast. It was dark outside and in the distance was a wulf. It was light and comfertabel inside. The Lord was holding out His Arms.

   "Have you got in yet Tom? I wish Someone would push you, but if sheep run in, I'm sure you can if you try. The clergyman said tell him it's one step only—but he must bend his head. He said you wood never get in if you don't bend your head, he said it was proude not to bend. Do bend and get in dear Tom and rite and tell me you are inside.

   "I am in grate truble over you becorse I saw a Bible verse about the wicked who can't inherite the Kingdom of God, and a drunkarde was in them, and you'll never be a drunkarde any more if you get through the Kingdom's Door. I'll begin and find your wife as soon as I have time, but please dear Tom get through the Door first.

   "And rite to me when You are through. I'm asking God every night to give you a push, and I hope you're nearly through.

"Your loving friend,
"HAREBELL."

"This is it: 'I am the door. If any man enter in, he shall be saved.'"

Mrs. Garland sat very grave and still, reading the letter. Then she handed it back to Harebell.

"Yes; God seems to tell me I'm through. But, Mrs. Garland, can people ever run out of the Kingdom again and be lost? I want to know when I'm naughty. Can I be naughty in the Kingdom, or have I to run outside the Door and be it?"

"Lambs are sometimes naughty in the sheepfold," said Mr. Garland slowly. "If Jesus is your Shepherd, Harebell dear, we have His Word that He will keep you. But if you do run away from Him of your own accord, turn back at once when you remember what you're doing, and He will forgive you and receive you again."

And the next moment, Mrs. Garland heard her adding her shrieks to the romp in the schoolroom.

Two days after this, Harebell received rather a dirty-looking letter by the post. She opened it with great importance, and found it was from Tom. Only a few lines, but she came to Mrs. Garland with tears in her eyes over it.

"DEAR MISSY,—Tom Triggs begs to say if drunkards cant inherite, they cant, so outside Tom stays and his leg is herting him shocking, and this place be no place for him with its slops of grool, and such like, and he be like to die here, if he cant get out soon. Yours respeck.

"TOM TRIGGS."

"I've told him all wrong, haven't I?" sobbed Harebell. "Oh, I wish I could go and see him. I'm sure Aunt Diana would let me if you were to take me."

"I think you must wait till your aunt comes back. I have heard from her this morning. She is returning home in about a week's time. Don't fret about Tom, dear. It will do him good to lie there and think, and he won't be able to get at the beer. Now I want you to think about your aunt. She has asked me to explain things to you."

"I'm afraid I don't care about thinking of her," said Harebell, a little crossly. "I like Tom much better—"

"Oh no, you don't! You are interested in Tom, and you want him to give up drinking, but your aunt has fed and clothed you and given you a happy home. You belong to her. Your mother was her sister; and she has had a sad life, and has found it very difficult to have a little wild niece upsetting her house and her quiet ways!"

"That is just what I want to do. Only we must be quiet and undisturbed. There is still half an hour before lessons begin. Shall we go into the garden, as it is such a bright morning? Come with me to the summer-house."

Harebell danced out into the bright spring sunshine. Tom was forgotten for the time.

"Your aunt wants me to explain things to you before she comes back. Did you ever hear of your Uncle Herbert?"

"Yes, Andy told me about him; only he said I was not to tell, or he would get into trouble."

"He told me Uncle Herbert wasn't dead, but was abroad, and that he had gone away one day when he and Aunt Diana were very angry with each other. I felt very sorry, and begged God to find him and send him back. Has Aunt Diana heard where he is and gone to him?"

"Yes, dear. She wants you to know about it. You are a little girl and cannot understand about grown-up people. But we very often are no different to naughty children, only we are bigger; it has been a great sorrow to her, and I am sure it has been a sorrow to him. He has returned to England very ill, and when he reached London, the doctor told him he must have an operation or he would die. Then he wrote to your aunt, and asked her to come to him; and she went off at once, as you know. The operation has been successful, and your aunt is coming home with him next week. She has had a sad life for many years, and now I hope she will have a happy one."

"Oh, she has been a snow queen, you know! I've always felt it. I'm very glad, Mrs. Garland. It will be so nice to have an uncle. Perhaps he will be like Mr. Graham, or is he like Aunt Diana? Does Andy know? He'll be so pleased. He says a house without a master is as bad as a garden without a gardener! It is simply lovely! You know when Andy told me about it, I prayed hard to God about him, and asked Him to bring him back. Then I forgot all about it. That's the worst of me, I never keep on—but there's always fresh things happening. I'm telling God about Tom now, and that's very special—and I can't think of everybody, every day."

"I think you ought to thank God for answering your prayers about your uncle. We so often forget to say 'Thank you' for what He sends us."

"I expect Aunt Diana won't want me, now she will have Uncle Herbert. She never did want me, you know. You said so!"

Mrs. Garland was about to speak, but she was suddenly called to the house by the Rector, and the little talk was over.

"It's so exciting having a new uncle!" she said to Miss Forster. "I keep wondering all the time about him!"

That afternoon Miss Forster took them out for a walk, and Mrs. Garland asked them to take some soup to a bed-ridden old woman.

To Harebell's great delight, the woman proved to be the one living in the cottage by the old oak-tree. She eagerly asked if she might take the soup in, and Miss Forster agreed, sending Nan in with her, whilst she and Peter waited outside. The young woman opened the door and smiled at Harebell, as she recognised her at once. She Was very grateful for the soup.

Then a sudden impulse took possession of Harebell. She asked Nan to take the soup upstairs to the old woman.

Fanny Crake looked a little surprised when Harebell sidled up mysteriously to her.

"I do want to talk to you! I want you to be Tom Triggs' wife, will you? He wants one badly, and he'll give up his beer, and come and live in this cottage with you, if you say 'yes.' He's so ill—poor Tom! He broke his leg—and he's in hospital. He told me he mended your gate, so I hope you'll marry him. I'm very fond of Tom, but Aunt Diana won't let me talk to him any more, so it will be difficult, but if you go and see him in hospital, you can settle it up with him. Will you?"

"What a funny little lady you are! We don't do things in that sort of way, and Tom is not a good match for any respectable girl! He's much too fond of his glass."

"But he hasn't anybody else to be fond of—poor Tom! I do feel so sorry for him! Everybody says he's so wicked, but I don't believe he is. Of course, I haven't seen many really wicked people, so I don't know what they're like. There was a black man in India who killed his little baby girl. Now Tom hasn't killed anybody. He saved a little boy and got hurt himself. And I'm asking God to take him inside the Door, and if you would only say you would marry him, he would cheer up and be happy and good. I've promised him to find him a wife somewhere. And you've got such a nice cottage, that you seem just the one he wants."

"No," said Fanny, smiling and shaking her head; "if a man wants to marry, 'tis his business to get a cottage, and a living, and then the girl may consider the matter, but 'tis not for her to give her husband, her mother's cottage, and make a home for him! 'Tis all the wrong way round—that is!"

"I did hope you would say 'yes.' But if he gets work and a cottage and never drinks any beer, you couldn't simply say 'no' to him. You must be his wife! And I shall help him to get a cottage if he can. We thought of this one, because he was going to have it ever so long ago, but the woman was very unkind to him, so he couldn't marry; and then he said the devil got hold of him. But now God is going to get hold of him. I think He will."

She paused for breath. Nan came downstairs; Miss Forster called to them from outside; and Harebell reluctantly had to go away. Seeing her downcast face, Fanny good-naturedly said:

"Never mind, little miss! If Tom Triggs knocks off the drink and gets in good work, he'll find a wife if he wants one. He's a good workman, Tom is, he's done our gate fine! 'Tis a thousand pities he's let himself down so! You keep on at him to make himself respectful again! He has a good home, and a good mother and sister, and ought to be fair ashamed of himself to live the life he's doing!"

"I've had a great big disappointment. And it seems to me that I'm not a bit of good at all—at least, not for getting wives for people!"

Miss Forster laughingly tried to win her confidence; but Harebell shook her head, and refused to say any more. The next day she asked if she might go and see Miss Triggs. Mrs. Garland hesitated at first; then gave permission. Peter and Nan grumbled.

"You're no good at all," said Peter. "We thought you'd be splendid for games—you don't care for cricket and hockey. You're always full of your own plans, and visiting stupid people in the village. You think of rotten things to do, and like going off and doing them alone."

"And dressmakers and drunkards are so low," said Nan, with turned up nose. "You like them better than us."

"I suppose," she said slowly, "it's because I always like interesting things to happen. Your games don't interest me. It's nothing but hitting balls, and nothing happens if you do win the game; you only begin all over again. Now a lot could happen when I see Tom and his sister—exciting things—and I want to make them come. And if I go to see people, they tell me all kinds of things I want to know, and you don't. You only laugh at me."

"Oh, you're just a little grown-up!" said Nan impatiently. "You might just as well put on long dresses, and turn up your hair, and go about the village as mother does. That's what you like doing!"

"It's all because you think so much of yourself," said Peter. "You're too cocky for us! You like to pretend you're clever, and are too old for games!"

"I love games! And you're very rude! But you and Nan always play together and don't want me, and when I join you, you laugh at me for being so stupid. I don't understand England, and I don't like it half as much as India, and I shall be glad when I go back to Aunt Diana's!"

Harebell flung herself out of the room, feeling hot and indignant. And yet in a measure, she knew what Peter and Nan had said of her was true. She did not enjoy playing with them, her head at this juncture was full of Tom and of his affairs, and she could think of nothing else.

CHAPTER VIII

HAREBELL found Miss Triggs working at her sewing-machine in the back kitchen. Mrs. Triggs was in her armchair, and she was knitting a stocking. Harebell shook hands gravely with both of them.

"I thought I'd like to see you," she said to Miss Triggs, "because you can tell me how Tom is!"

"So I can!" said Miss Triggs cheerfully. "I've been telling mother about him. I went to see him yesterday, and he's doing fine. His leg is healing wonderful, and he's happier like in himself. He let me read a bit to him yesterday."

"Just a story from the old Book; the bit that tells of a poor sick wounded man, and how some one showed love to him, and nursed him, and took care of him."

"Tell me about it. I don't believe I've heard it. I don't know all the Bible, you know."

"I'll baste a bit of this dress, for I can talk better when the machine is not going."

She told in simple words the story of the traveller who was robbed and nearly murdered on a lonely road, and how, though several people would not stop to help him, one good man came and bound up his wounds, and put him on his ass, and took him to the nearest inn, where he said he was to be rested and fed and taken care of, and he would pay his expenses. Harebell listened entranced. And then Miss Triggs said softly:

"I told Tom it was just a picture of him, and the Lord is bending over him, and wanting to cure him, if he'll only let Him do it."

"Ay, that he does, but 'tis his sick soul the Lord wants to handle. I told him he trusted the doctor about his leg, and so why couldn't he just give over his soul to the Lord to be made sweet and whole. He seemed rare softened, he did!"

"It would be lovely!" said Harebell earnestly. "I wish I could go and see Tom! Aunt Diana won't let me; and now she's away. Will you take him a message from me? It's a very solemn one."

"Well, please tell him that Fanny Crake says that the drinking must stop first, and then the work must begot, and then the wife comes next. I don't know about the cottage; that will come last, I s'pose. Will you be sure to tell him Fanny said it. He'll understand, for I think she'd do very well, only she won't think about it now. It's rather nasty of her, because it would cheer him up so, wouldn't it? I'm sure we ought to try to make him happy—poor Tom! He says nobody cares for him!"

Mrs. Triggs had not paid much attention to the conversation, but she now turned her head sharply round.

"Is that my Tom you be speakin' of? His mother cares for him more'n all the world! He was such a handsome baby—took arter his father—who were a fine, upstandin' man, but with a taste for the beer. Tom be made arter the same pattern. An' I says if God and Natur' made him so, why blame the poor lad? An' he never have given his mother an unkind word!"

"I like Tom very much," Harebell answered her eagerly. "And when Aunt Diana comes back I'll beg her with tears to let me go and see him, and I'll find him a wife as quick as ever I can!"

"A wife?" screamed the old woman. "You let my Tom be! What do he want a wife for? He have a good home, and there isn't a girl in this village who'd do him aught but harm. Idle worthless hussies they be! Go on with you! A wife, indeed!"

Harebell looked frightened. She said good-bye and slipped away. Miss Triggs said in a whisper to her:

"Never you mind mother, dear. She don't mean to be rude, but she don't take kindly to a wife for Tom, and I can't say he ought to have one, unless his heart gets changed, and his life too!"

Harebell went back to the Rectory slowly and thoughtfully, but when she found Peter and Nan had put up a swing in the orchard, and were enjoying themselves upon it, she joined them gleefully. They forgot their squabble, and she was a happy light-hearted child again.

The return of her aunt was the next event. Mrs. Garland kept her till after the arrival, and when Harebell went home the next day, the whole house seemed to have altered its ways.

There was a man's coat and hat in the hall. A strange man-servant was sitting in the pantry talking to Andy. A little cheerful bustle pervaded the house. There was a smell of tobacco in the morning-room. Two or three newspapers and pipes lay on the table.

Mrs. Keith came out of the drawing-room to greet Harebell. The child was so startled at the difference in her aunt's face that all fear of her vanished. Putting up her slim little arms, she clasped her round the neck.

And Mrs. Keith did not stare, or frown, or reprove her coldly for such words. She looked tired, but very happy, and there was a light and softness in her eyes that had never been there before. "Would you like to see your uncle? You must be very quiet, as he is quite an invalid at present. But I have told him about you. Come this way."

Harebell trod on tip-toe, with eager eyes and a beating heart. On a couch near the open window was a grey-haired man propped up with pillows. His hands looked white and thin; his face was lined with pain; he had a hooked nose, and thick bushy eyebrows, but when he saw Harebell, both his lips and eyes smiled.

"The little niece! Come and welcome a poor old sick soldier, who isn't worth the trouble he gives."

"I'm so very glad you're here," said Harebell standing before him with clasped hands. "Me and God have talked you over often, and God seemed to tell me He would send you back soon."

If Colonel Keith was surprised at such a welcome, he did not show it. He looked at his wife, and his eyes grew soft and tender. Then he spoke to Harebell.

"Life deals hardly with those who quarrel with her. Don't you let your passions ever get mastery of your love, little woman."

Colonel Keith put his hand on his wife's arm, as she stood by his couch. Her voice softened at once.

"Come and sit down and talk to your Uncle Herbert; I must go away for a little. I have letters to write."

So Harebell took a chair by the couch, and when her aunt had left the room, her tongue began to move, and she poured into her uncle's ear a flood of talk. She told him of her home in India, of Chris, of the Rectory children, of Tom Triggs and his sister and his mother, of Fanny Crake and her mother, and the little cottage. But she did not talk much of her aunt, and Colonel Keith noticed the omission. Harebell found him as good a listener as Mr. Graham. She ended up by saying impulsively:

"I do like you so much, Uncle Herbert! You quite understand what I mean. I haven't to keep explaining; Andy thinks me quite easy and understandable, he says, but Goody is always saying I amaze her. I've always said I like men better than I do women."

"But you can't and must not like me better than your aunt!" expostulated Colonel Keith. "You don't know what trouble I brought upon her by my hot temper and wicked pride! She has suffered, and yet now has no reproach upon her lips. I'm a bad lot, and she's a saint!"

Certainly she found life much gayer now. Her aunt and uncle were much together, and she was left more than ever to her own devices; but when she was with them at meals, her busy tongue was no longer repressed. Her uncle encouraged her to talk, and liked to hear all about her lessons and play. Her aunt's voice was getting softer, her smiles were more frequent. And as for Andy, his old face was radiant with happiness.

"Ah! The good old times have come back," he said to Harebell. "The days of mourning are over for this old house."

"I haven't to hush about the house any more, I can almost make as much noise as they do at the Rectory."

It was not very long before she begged permission from her aunt to go and see Tom Triggs again. Mrs. Keith did not actually refuse her; but she said she must wait. And then one day at the Rectory, Nan informed her that Tom was very nearly well, and was going away from the village altogether. Harebell was much surprised, and rather uneasy.

"Why is he going away? How can he leave his mother? Oh, I must see him, and ask him all about it."

It happened to be a Saturday, and every Saturday, Harebell dined at the Rectory and spent her half-holiday there.

"We'll go and see him this afternoon," suggested Nan. "Peter wants to see him, don't you, Peter? Tom is making him a box with lock and key to keep his birds' eggs in. He's out of hospital, and living with his mother."

"That will be lovely!" exclaimed Harebell. It was only when she was actually starting with them, that she remembered her aunt had not given her permission to do it. With a little hesitation, she told Nan and Peter that perhaps she had better not go.

"Go home and ask your aunt," said Peter; but Nan vehemently opposed this suggestion.

"We have no time. It's such a long way off; and if we go to the village, we can go on to the woods and have some fun."

"I'll go," cried Peter, "on my bicycle. I'll go, and catch you up before you get to the village."

He rode off at full speed, and the little girls walked in the direction of the village. They had barely reached it before he overtook them.

She skipped for joy. Tom's future held a big place in her thoughts, and she was delighted to see him again.

"Oh, do come on," she besought the others when the village sweet shop brought them to a standstill.

He wheeled his cycle up to the shop, leant it against the wall, and then disappeared inside. Nan followed him.

Harebell stamped with impatience: then determined not to wait for them, and walked on quickly to Mrs. Triggs' cottage.

Colonel Keith was coming out of the post office and met her. He was rapidly getting stronger, and now got about in a low pony trap, which for the present, he hired.

Colonel Keith knew all about the forbidden visits; for Harebell had besought him to help her, and he had been doing his best in that way.

"And is it to be a wife, or work, or a cottage?" Harebell laughed, and ran on. She was breathless when she stood at the cottage door.

Tom himself came to open it, and smiled all over his face when he saw who it was.

"Oh, Tom, dear Tom, don't go away! Do stay and have a little cottage here. I don't want you to go."

"Near as good as ever 'twas! You see, missy, I be what you call going on the tack. And I have an offer of work in a town firm. 'Tis a contrac' for some big house, ten mile or so away. 'Twill be a change and a beginning! But I ain't goin' so very far arter all!"

"Did you get any message about Fanny? That's what she said—the drinking to be given up first, and then the work and then the wife?"

"Oh, but I asked her; I besoughted her; I begged her with all my heart, to marry you just as you were, and very quickly too! She was a great disappointment to me; I did hope she would have married you directly you came out of hospital!"

Tom threw his head back, and laughed aloud. There was a clearer look in his eyes, and he held his head higher than he had ever done before.

"I shan't sit down and cry, if her don't want me," he said. "I can't keep a wife just at present. The girls be too expensive in these days."

Harebell was silent. This seemed quite a new Tom; a man who could scorn a wife was beyond her comprehension.

"Ay, well, there be no tellin'; but I ain't visitin' the 'Black Swan' just now."

"Through the Door? You know I almost think you are. And I believe that's the first thing of all to be done. I wonder if you did it first."

"I wonder," said Tom, in a low grave voice, looking over Harebell's head as he spoke.

"I wish you'd tell me. Because we'd be on the same side, then. I ask God every day to keep me on the right side, the inside you know, and not to let me run out."

Peter's shrill voice coming up the garden-path interrupted them. There was no more opportunity for serious talk. Tom took the children to the backyard where he was working, and for half an hour they stayed there chattering and watching him complete Peter's egg-box. Then they left him, and went on to the woods, where they had a very happy time.

"Haven't we had a jolly afternoon? And isn't Tom Triggs nice? Quite different to when he was drinking!"

"You needn't think your aunt gave you leave to go and see Tom, for she didn't. You'd better keep quiet about it, and not let her know you went."

"I didn't!" said Peter, a little sullenly. "You asked me if you could go, and I said, 'Yes.' I didn't say anything about your aunt!"

"There's nothing to make a fuss about! I didn't tell a lie. You needn't say a word about going to Tom. Tell her you went to the woods, if she asks you."

"But I met Uncle Herbert, and told him I was going to Tom, and I told him aunt had given me leave to go!"

"Look here, Harebell, don't you get me into a row. Don't split, will you? You aren't a sneak, and it would be awfully mean to tell tales. You see, your aunt and uncle are coming to dinner to-night at our house, and they'd make a row over it. I only wanted you to have a good time. I needn't have interfered at all, and it wasn't a lie, and of course they'd think it was, they'd never understand. I'll never forgive you if you split!"

"Such a fuss about nothing!" he muttered. "I don't expect your aunt will care where you've been. You can tell her you had to come with us; you couldn't help yourself."

"I have told lies myself in India, but not since I've been in England. I couldn't have done it, as you did!"

Peter left her and joined Nan. They were rather a constrained trio for the rest of their walk. Nan remarked—

When they reached the Rectory, Harebell said good-bye. She kissed Nan, but turned her back on Peter.

CHAPTER IX

HAREBELL had her tea in the schoolroom alone, as she very often did. Andy waited upon her.

"There be visitors in the drawin'-room," he said. "'Tis like old times, gentlemen a-comin' here! For years we've had nothing but ladies, and a few on them. Sir Robert Ferguson and his lady have been to tea, and the Colonel be quite spry. What have you been a-doin' to-day? Somethin' to get a scoldin' for! Mistress says to me, 'Tell Miss Harebell to go to her bedroom after she has finished her tea, and stay there till I come to her.'

"Then she knows," said poor Harebell with a deep sigh. "Did she look very angry, Andy?"

"It's no good," she said to herself as she sat down disconsolately in her little chair by the window, "to say I'm not frightened of Aunt Diana, because I am; and she'll say I've disobeyed her, and so I did. And I never, on my word and honour, meant to be naughty to-day. God knows about me; that is one comfort. He knows I didn't mean to be naughty. And as for Peter, he's the wickedest, meanest boy I ever knew, and I don't think I shall ever be friends with him again!"

Mrs. Keith's face was very hard and stern. "I have come," she said, "to have some explanation from you of your conduct this afternoon. You not only directly disobeyed me, and went off to see that drunken man, but you told your uncle a lie, and said that you had my permission to do so. Do you remember what I told you when you first came here about lies?"

"Yes," said Harebell miserably. "I remember quite well, but I haven't told a lie, I really haven't."

"Don't try to cover up one lie with another; that is only making matters worse."

"I don't know," faltered Harebell; "it was—was a mistake. I—I thought you'd given me leave."

Her aunt looked at her with an expression of disgust. "I suppose I was foolish to think that you were a truthful child. My eyes are open now. If you had only frankly confessed, I might have regarded it more leniently. However, I keep my word, I shall send you to school after the summer holidays. Never will I have a child in my house who deceives, or tries to deceive me."

"Oh," she sobbed in the depths of her despair, "if you were God, you'd understand!"

"Don't add hypocrisy to lies," said her aunt sharply. "You are not to come downstairs to-night. Go to bed, and remember that I might have forgiven your disobedience—but I will never forgive lying!"

"I shall never, never be happy again! I'm not a liar, I'm not even disobedient; it's all a muddling mistake, and it's Peter, and not me, who ought to be punished!"

"He'll go on living and people will think him a good boy, and I shall be thought a liar for ever and ever! And school is a prison, and—oh, I never thought of it! I shall have to leave my darling Chris! My heart will be broken. I wish I could die!"

She lay there sobbing her heart out, and Goody, entering the room later, was much astonished and alarmed.

"I ought to be in bed," she said slowly. "Aunt Diana said I was to go. She thinks I've told a lie, and I haven't, Goody, and I'm to be sent to school in disgrace."

"Dearie me! What an upset! You must get hold of the Colonel. He'll put things right."

"He thinks I told him a lie. He won't help me. I'm what you call doomed, Goody."

She began to undress. She would give no explanation to Goody, for fear of inculpating Peter.

She wondered if her aunt would tell them all there of her wickedness; and if so, how Peter would feel when he heard it. She began to hope that perhaps his conscience would compel him to confess and to clear her. But she remembered that Nan said once that Peter never owned himself to be in the wrong.

It was hours before she slept, and when she did, she dreamt that a school-mistress with flaming red curls and bony hands was pushing her down some steep steps into a dark cellar!

When the morning came, she wondered at first what awful thing had happened to her. The birds were singing. It was a lovely sunshiny morning in June, and when she remembered the trouble in which she was, she felt that some help would come to her.

Yet as she dressed, fear overcame hope. She ran softly downstairs and made her way to the stable. Chris neighed in delight when he heard her step, and rubbed her all over with his nose. Of course he was told all, and Harebell clasped him passionately round the neck.

Then the prayer bell rang, and she slowly went into the house. Her uncle did not come down to breakfast, but had it in his room. He was still quite an invalid. Mrs. Keith hardly spoke to her, but as she was leaving the breakfast-table, she said:

She could hardly say "Good Morning" to Peter. Nan asked her at once what was the matter, and Harebell looked Peter straight in the face as she said:

"I'm in disgrace. Aunt Diana says I've told a lie, when I haven't. I'm going to be sent away to school, and I shall never come back again!"

"Oh yes, you will," said Peter fast and eagerly, whilst his cheeks got hot and red. "School is awfully jolly; and you always come home in the holidays. I wish I could get sent to school. No such luck for me."

"School is enchanting," said Nan. "A girl in the next village goes to a boarding-school, and she loves it. I don't pity you, if you go to school, Harebell."

"You'll have him in the holidays," said Peter; "and p'raps dad will keep him for you when you're away, and we'll exercise him for you!"

"I hate you! I'd like Chris to kick you off and tread on you, if you ever dare to ride him. He knows all about you. I've told him. And I've told God, too, and I'll never play with you again, and I won't speak to you, and if you leave any of your birds' eggs about, I will smash them in bits!"

"She's going to be sent to school, and she doesn't like it," said Nan. "Her aunt is angry with her."

Mrs. Garland tried to discover what had happened, but neither Peter nor Harebell would tell her, and Nan was as much in the dark as she was.

Miss Forster interrupted them, and lessons began. Harebell naturally did hers very badly, but Miss Forster saw she was much upset and made allowances. When twelve o'clock came, they went into the garden to play. Harebell left the others, and wandered round the paths in the shrubbery, feeling very miserable.

"I'm not a bit like a child who is inside the Door," she told herself. "I've been in a temper with Peter, and I'm sure I oughtn't to be. Jesus Christ wasn't angry when He was ill-treated, and I know He doesn't want me to be. But it's very hard not to call Peter names. He is the meanest—sneakiest—oh, I mustn't! But how can I love him when it's all his fault, and not mine at all!"

It was a hard struggle with Harebell. Her sense of justice was great, and her punishment she knew was not deserved. But before she left the Rectory she went up to Peter.

"I'm sorry I said I would like to smash your eggs. I won't. I'll try and forgive you. But you're making me awfully miserable, and you know you are."

"You're making a fuss about nothing," he said; "you chose to think I meant what I didn't mean. It was only a mistake."

He was feeling miserable too, but he would not allow it, and tried to make excuses for himself.

"Such a fuss!" he repeated to himself. "It isn't worth thinking about. I'm sure Mrs. Keith won't really send her to school. She'll forget all about it in a few days."

When Harebell went home she found her uncle pacing the garden paths. He called her to him cheerily, and wished her "Good morning" as usual.

"Very badly," said Harebell, shaking her head. "I've an extra lesson to learn for not attending; but my soul was in such a state, that I couldn't work at sums, so they got jumbled up."

"Do you think I told you a lie yesterday? I didn't. It was a mistake, not a lie, and Aunt Diana won't believe me."

"If Aunt Diana was to burn me, or flog me, or drown me, I couldn't say anything but that I didn't tell a lie!"

"Try and explain," said her uncle gently. "Your aunt has such a horror of deceit and lying that perhaps she did not give you time to speak."

"I can't tell her. She won't believe me. But oh, Uncle Herbert, I can't live without Chris. If she sends me away from him, I shall die. I shall never live to come back. Please don't let her send me away to school."

"Harebell, go into the house. Until you confess your fault you are in disgrace."

Harebell turned disconsolately away. Colonel Keith said something to her aunt, which she could not hear, but she heard her aunt's clear cold voice reply:

"It is her mother over again! I warned her when she came to me. There is no mistake. She disobeyed, told a lie, and sticks to it. I will not undertake the charge of her any more. I shall send her to a strict school, for I will not be responsible for her training."

The following days were very unhappy ones. She grew very quiet, moped about the house, lost her appetite, did not sleep at nights, and got a peaked white look upon her face. But as time passed, she grew accustomed to her aunt's cold displeasure, and as no more was said, began to hope that perhaps she would not carry out her threat.

The summer holidays came. The Rectory children went away to the seaside with their parents.

For over a month, Harebell had not been allowed to ride out on Chris; but now, owing to her uncle's intercession, she was permitted to begin her rides again.

Mrs. Keith hardly ever took any notice of her, but at last one day she called her to her.

"I have made all arrangements about school, and you will go next Monday. Goody will take you. The school is at Eastbourne."

"You have still four days before you. If you will frankly confess, and express real sorrow for the lie you told, I may be induced to forgive you. Your uncle has made me promise that I will."

Harebell's lips quivered, but she said nothing. She knew there was no hope now. Peter was away, and was not coming home till after Monday. Unhappy as she was, the thought never crossed her mind that she might break her promise to Peter.

She watched Goody pack her clothes; Miss Triggs had come round to make her some new frocks, but she, as well as Andy and Goody, considered that going to school was nothing so very bad after all. The only comfort that came to her was hearing from Miss Triggs that Tom was getting on splendidly; he had signed the pledge and was keeping it.

"He's a first-class workman, Tom is, when he's sober, and we've heard his master thinks no end of him."

Harebell was nearly desperate when Sunday came, and when she laid her head on her pillow in the evening a tempting plan came into her head.

This was to get up very early on Monday morning, saddle Chris, and ride off with him out of reach of all the people who were taking part in sending her to school.

"I shall go along and get my food in farmhouses where they make nice hot bread and have cream with their porridge. I have five shillings of my own, and that will last a long time. I will get lost where no one can find me. And then Peter will be sorry and confess what he did, and aunt will be sorry too!"

CHAPTER X

IT was a lovely summer morning. Harebell woke up a little before five o'clock. With a set determined face she got up and dressed herself, stepping about her room as quietly as possible. She tied up a nightgown and brush and comb and toothbrush in a bundle. Then she began to think that she might want more clothes than that. She took a few things out of her drawers, and put them into a red cotton bag which she tied round her waist.

Then on tip-toe, she stole downstairs, and softly unbolted the back-door. It was easy then to find her way to the stable. Andy had taught her how to saddle Chris, and in about half an hour's time she had got free of the house, and was cantering along the country lanes.

Then she remembered that she had not said her prayers. Her conscience began to trouble her. Was this like a child of the Kingdom? Harebell refused to let herself think. In a whisper, she gabbled over her prayers; for she felt that she wanted God to take care of her, though she did not mean to mention her plan in her prayers to Him.

The fresh air and the birds' singing did not seem as enjoyable to her, as she expected they would be. She passed through the village as quickly as she could, and took the road that the signpost said led to London.

"Everybody goes to London," she said. "But I will stop before I get there. I'll find a nice pretty farm, with apples in the garden, and they'll give me some breakfast."

But as time passed she began to feel hungry, and no pretty farm came in sight. The country was singularly desolate. She came upon two or three small cottages by the wayside, and an inn; but none of these seemed to her attractive enough for breakfast. At last she turned up a leafy lane.

"I must try and lose myself thoroughly, Chris," she said; "so that nobody can possibly find me and take me back. I feel quite frightened now, when I think of Aunt Diana finding me gone. How very angry she'll be!"

Childlike, she was living entirely in the present. Her future never troubled her. The lane wound about in a wonderful way, then suddenly ended. A white gate appeared and a high wall on either side of it.

She found the gate open and rode up a neglected drive; nettles and rank grass flourished on either side of a mossy road. Overgrown shrubs and thick trees lined the way.

"It's like the palace grounds of the Sleeping Beauty. I wish I could have a real adventure."

The drive seemed an interminable distance to her, but at last, to her great delight, she saw a big grey house in the distance. It looked still and deserted.

When she came up to the big flight of steps leading up to the front door she persuaded herself that it was, indeed, the Sleeping Palace. Slipping off Chris, she let him turn aside to munch at the long grass on the lawn, and then mounted the steps with eager expectancy. Would the door open at her touch? Would she go in and find the remains of feasting in the great hall, and the servants all asleep at their posts?

Alas! the door was fast shut and barred, the windows were shuttered, and through a small peephole in a broken shutter, she saw that the inside of the house was empty and unfurnished.

Slowly and reluctantly she turned away; then, seeing a side path near the house, she ran along it, wondering if the back of the house would prove more cheerful than the front. She found a side door, and to her joy, as she turned the handle and pushed, it yielded to her touch. The next moment, she was inside a long wide passage. It was light, and looking up, she saw there was a big glass dome high up in the centre. Rather fearfully she made her way along, till she reached the centre hall. A great staircase wound up to a gallery round it. She was just mounting the stairs, when she suddenly heard a man's laugh.

Now she was frightened. Into her brain rushed stories of ogres, giants, burglars, and criminals. Panic seized her; she fled back along the passage, missed her way, got into another part of the house, and could not find an open door anywhere. Then she screamed. It seemed like some hideous nightmare. She beat and kicked against a door with her hands and feet. The horrible thought came to her that she had been purposely locked in, and that some wicked man would come and kill her.

Suddenly, from behind, a big hand laid hold of her shoulder. She screamed louder than ever in real terror, and then she turned to confront Tom Triggs, and to hear him say with a little gasp of bewilderment:

The next moment a door was opened and she was in the fresh air, with the sun shining and the birds singing, and Chris still calmly munching the grass a little distance off. It took some minutes to soothe and calm her, but Tom did it. He was in his working clothes, with his carpenter's apron on, and looked strangely out of place in this great empty house.

"It's the funniest thing out that you should have come straight to the very house I'm workin' at. Me and my mates were havin' our breakfast in the back yard. We are doin' repairs to the stables, and all on a sudden we heard a scream, and it seemed to come from inside the house, an' I come along to find out whether it be a ghost or a h'owl, and then I catches sight of you a-beatin' your fists against a door. Now, do you just tell me what has brought you here. Did you come to find out whether good-for-nothing Tom were keeping off the drink?"

"I didn't think of you. I didn't know you were here. I was a dreadful coward, but I felt I was lost a good deal more than I meant to be. And generally when I'm frightened, I ask God to take care of me; but I couldn't, and I felt He was a million miles away from me, and wouldn't dream of coming near me. And then I knew it was because I must have run outside the Door, and wasn't safe any more!"

She spoke with feverish intensity. Tom looked at her and then at Chris in a puzzled sort of way. Then he sat her down on the broad balustrade at the bottom of the steps.

"Take yer time, missy. Tell me just how you come to be so far away from home this morning!"

Then Harebell poured it all out, every bit of her trouble. She felt that she could even tell Tom about Peter's deceit, after making him promise that he would not tell any one. And Tom listened and rubbed his head, and then delivered his verdict.

Harebell began to cry. She was tired and hungry. She began to wonder how she had dared to run away in such a fashion.

"But she'll be in a terrible state about you now. You can't bide alone in the world, trampin' the roads without food and money. It be a stoopid thing to do—"

"I s'pose you haven't got a cottage yet? Couldn't you take me somewhere? I'm afraid of Aunt Diana now. She'll never forgive me!"

"You must get you back," Tom repeated with conviction. "It be bad you're comin' off in that fashion, but every hour you stay away, it be badder!"

"Oh yes, you can! I'll come a bit of the way with you, and if you trot your pony pretty fast, you'll get home not so very late for breakfast after all. Would you like a sip of hot tea? You wait here a minute."

He disappeared, but soon came back with a hot tin of tea, and some bread and cheese.

"'Tis mos' remarkable you comin' away in a straight line to the house which I be workin' on! How did you do it now?"

"I s'pose God brought me to you, so that you would tell me how wicked I was, and send me back. I used to think when I first knew about you, Tom, that you were much wickeder than I was. Now it's me that is wicked, and you're trying to make me good. It's dreadfully wicked to run away, isn't it? Almost as bad as telling a lie."

"It's a poor thing to do—to run away," said Tom slowly; "but I don't know that I ain't just done it myself! You see, I knowed how my old pals would be gettin' over me, so I come away twelve mile off to make a fresh start where I couldn't be baited!"

"But you didn't run away from home, Tom. Your mother and sister knew you were coming."

"Bless their hearts, that they did! And I be gettin' along fine. And some day I hopes I'll come back and be able to look my fellow-creatures straight in the face. For I shan't be feared then o' nobody. An' I do allow 'tis a happy thing to feel inside the Kingdom's Door, missy. I humbly 'ope I've crawled through, and the Lord be holdin' my feet straight, and my mouth from even wanting the accursed stuff; and He have got me by His hand, so I just steps behind Him, and He goes first."

"Oh, Tom dear, I'm so very glad. I always did know you would get through soon. When did you do it?"

"Well, I can't rightly say as to day an' hour—but I had a try in hospital, and then agen at home—an' it seemed to me as one day I was for goin' in, an' the next for comin' out, an' I didn't get much forrarder, so at last I gets down on my knees and tells the Lord He must please do it all Hisself, for I were come to the Door an' He must do the rest. Bless His name, He seemed to stoop right down an' get hold of me—a reg'lar safe grip—and there I be—very afeared of myself, but very sure o' Him!"

"And do you think I've been naughty and so He's put me outside? Oh, Tom, do you think you're inside now and I'm outside?"

"I ain't no scholar, missy, but there be one chapter in the Bible I reads over and over and over! 'Tis the one you mentioned first about the Door. If we be inside the Door, I take it we be in the sheepfold; and if we be in the sheepfold, we be the sheep; and if we be the Lord's sheep, He has us safe, sure enough, for it says, 'Neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.' You be right enough—just a slip—and you're a-goin' back now to say you're sorry—an' I'm a-comin' a bit o' the way with ye!"

"I haven't said my prayers properly this morning," Harebell confessed with shame. "I gabbled them through. I'll just speak to God here, if you go away—and tell Him I'm sorry."

Tom moved away, rolled up his apron, then caught Chris, and by the time he joined Harebell again, the cloud was off her face.

"There!" he said. "Now 'tis a straight road home, and you can't miss it. Good-bye, little missy; and just put up a prayer for good-for-nothing Tom, will you?"

"I will," promised Harebell, "but p'r'aps You'll never see me again. I'm goin' to be sent to school, you know."

"Ay, 'twas through me, you be in this trouble! Well, p'r'aps I can help of 'ee out."

The little girl added, "And you mustn't tell about Peter, you promised not to; and I don't mean to tell."

He looked after her in perplexity. "If I were a scholar now! But I'll venture on it!"

And Harebell rode on home, feeling more and more frightened and unhappy as she drew nearer the village.

"It all seems as bad as it can be, and when I say I've seen Tom, Aunt Diana will think I went to him on purpose, and it will make her angrier still!"

"Ay! You naughty child, we've all turned out to catch ye! To think of your going off for a ride this very morning when you're to go to school."

"Comin' back! High time, too. The missis an' the master be in a terrible way. What did you go to do it for?"

The house was reached. Andy took her pony, and when Harebell reached the front door, her aunt met her in the hall.

"Come in here," she said. "Where have you been? Did you not know a cab was coming at ten o'clock to take you to the station? It is now nearly eleven."

She drew her into the morning-room. Colonel Keith was not there. Harebell's heart sank within her. She looked up at her aunt. Somehow or other, Mrs. Keith was not looking as angry as she had expected.

"I am very sorry, Aunt Diana, but I meant to run away and never come back again; I quite meant to. And—and—I met Tom—I didn't mean to meet him—he and me think God managed it, and—and—he made me come home again."

"At an old, old house far away. I found it by accident and—" here Harebell's love of romance seized her, and she forgot she was in disgrace—"do you know it was exactly like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. It was still and silent, and the weeds were enormous; and I quite hoped to see everybody asleep, and all that was left of the feast. And then I got into the house and found it empty and dark, and I was dreadfully frightened, and I couldn't find my way out, and I thought I was locked in; and then I screamed and screamed, and Tom heard me and came to me, and he's the carpenter who's mending the stable there!"

Her aunt was silent for a moment. She seemed to be turning over things in her mind.

"Do please forgive me, Aunt Diana. I know it was wicked of me to run away. I knew when I did it that it was, and that made it worse, didn't it!"

"It was Tom. I wasn't even going to do it for him, but when he told me he was inside the Door of the Kingdom and would never drink any more, I was so glad, it made me—well, it made something different in my heart—and I knew I must come back if you—if you whipped me to death!"

"No, but I thought you might," Harebell replied quickly. "I thought of such a lot of things you could do to me; but, you know, it was God and Tom who made me come back. I had to."

"It was exceedingly naughty of you to think of running away. If you had gone on, you might have met with accidents. We should, of course, have followed you and brought you back before the day was over. And nothing then would have prevented my sending you to school to-morrow. A little girl who acts like that wants a great deal more discipline than I can give her. But as you turned back of your own accord, I am going to forgive you. I have received a letter from Mrs. Garland this morning. If you had been here at breakfast-time, you would have heard about it. Of course, the letter has explained what you ought to have explained to me long ago—"

"It seems that Peter has been unhappy a long time, and confessed to his mother yesterday that he was the cause of your disobeying me. Why did not you tell me so before?"

"You had no right to promise such a thing. It was not being frank with me, and led me to think what was not true—"

"I—I told you it was a mistake I made, and not a lie," said Harebell. "I couldn't explain properly; I really couldn't, Aunt Diana."

Tears came into her eyes. She was relieved that she was cleared of untruthfulness, but she still seemed to be in disgrace.

"I want to be fair with you, Harebell. I am deeply thankful to find that you did not tell me a lie, and to think that I can still trust your word. And for the present, I shall not send you to the school I intended for you. As I told you just now, if you had not come back of your own accord, I should still have done it. But as it is, Miss Forster will still continue to teach you. I am sorry to think that there is so little confidence between us that all this trouble has been the result. You ought to have told Peter at once that you could not withhold truth from me. You did not tell me an untruth, but you withheld the truth, and both are wrong. Do you understand me?"

"Not if it helps to deceive. Your not telling about Peter helped to deceive me; and I acted wrongly because of it. I want you to remember this, for people have made themselves and others very miserable because of it. If shielding one person makes another act unjustly, it is wrong. Now I shall say no more—you had better have some breakfast."

She stooped and kissed Harebell, then led her into the schoolroom, where some food was awaiting her.

Harebell began to feel much happier, and when her uncle came in presently, and told her how glad he was to hear that the mystery was all cleared up, she heaved a deep sigh and said:

"I feel as if a heavy weight has lifted out of my chest. And now that aunt has forgiven me, and I'm not going to school, may I tell you about Tom?"

CHAPTER XI

"MADAM,—This is to say as little Miss to my sertain nowledge have not toled a lie. There be anuther party in the bisness wich if you cud discover wud be rather near home but I am pleged to say nothing. They that lives most with her knows and is hidinge the truth.

"Your obedient servant
"TOM TRIGGS."

Mrs. Keith showed this to her husband. As Harebell was cleared, they did not tell her anything about it, but Tom was written to and thanked for his intervention.

And very soon the Rectory party returned from the seaside. Peter and Harebell had a very solemn interview. He was made by his mother to come up and tell Mrs. Keith exactly what he had said; and then he apologised to Harebell.

She took his shamefaced apology very gravely. But when she began to relate to him her runaway ride, he brightened up and was most interested.

"I couldn't have. I couldn't have taken Chris with me. It was him I didn't like leaving."

"Girls never keep things up. They always get frightened and stop in the middle."

"I think I should have told people it was my fault, and then I should have felt obliged to run away after you to find you. That would have been good fun! I should have gone on the donkey, and you bet I should have caught you up!" His eyes gleamed at the idea.

"I'm very glad I didn't go on. It's horrid if you feel you're quite alone in the world. I felt when I was in that empty house, as if I had lost my friends and my home—and the most awful thing of all—that I had lost God, and didn't belong to Him any more."

"I'm glad I'm not you, without a mother. Mother is ripping. She wasn't a bit angry when I told her, only very sorry—and—well—loving. I was rather a cad, and, of course it was a lie I told. I'm never going to tell another as long as I live. If I die for it, I won't!"

His sin, and the burden of it, and then the confession, had made him a different boy. Harebell felt he was a much nicer Peter afterwards, and other people felt so too.

Lessons began again, and life went on with cheerful regularity, varied by picnics on half-holidays, and later on by blackberrying and nutting expeditions. Harebell grew into a strong rosy girl. Her aunt was fast losing her cold indifferent manner towards her, and Harebell now chatted to her as freely and unconstrainedly as to any one else. Then the winter came: but Harebell enjoyed the cold, and welcomed the frost and snow with delight and interest.

Christmas was a most enjoyable time, and she and the Rectory children were inseparable during the holidays.

When the New Year came, there was a good deal of sickness in the village, and many of the old people died. Amongst them was Mrs. Crake and Mrs. Triggs. Tom came to his mother's funeral, and the village hardly knew him. He had gone steadily on in the right way, and was now a respectable sober hardworking man.

Mrs. Keith no longer objected to Harebell's interest in him, and one day she was allowed to go to tea with Tom and his sister. She walked off very proudly, and was soon sitting up at a well-spread table in the little front parlour.

Miss Triggs was in deep mourning and was rather sad. Harebell was too excited to be so. She had never much cared for old Mrs. Triggs, who did not welcome her as a visitor, and made no secret of her dislike to children. And now she could not pretend to mourn for her.

"Do you know, Miss Harebell, I may be going away?" said Miss Triggs with a sigh.

"You'll have to get somebody else to make your frocks for you. I've had an offer from an uncle of ours, who is a big draper in Swansea. He wants me to go there and be one of the skirt hands, and Tom and me have been talking it over, and I think I'd like to go."

"Oh, dear! This is dreadful news," said Harebell in dismay. "And who will live in your cottage?"

"But won't Tom want it? You'll come back and live here again, won't you, Tom? I do want you so much."

"Not yet awhile, missy. I'm feelin' a bit unsettled like. True, the Squire talked about wantin' an estate carpenter now his head man be off to Canada: but that be too good a billet for me. There be a small cottage, too, for the lucky chap who gets it—"

"Oh, but what a lovely thing for you! And then you'd get a wife. Do say you would, Tom. And Fanny isn't married to anybody else, and now she's all alone, it would be just right, wouldn't it, Miss Triggs? She has lost her mother as well as you."

"I'll help you to get ready," said Harebell earnestly; "there seem a lot of cottages ready for your wife. This one, and Fanny's, and the Squire's."

"Have one of these little cakes, dear," said Miss Triggs, who wished to change the conversation.

"You see, Tom, you've given up the beer, and you've got work, and now you've got cottages all round you, and the wife is the last thing and the best of all."

"Well," said Miss Triggs, "I wouldn't go off and leave him, Miss Harebell, if he'd make his home with me. But he won't. 'Tisn't disagreeableness; the fact is, he have kept on sendin' his money home to mother, and he hasn't enough just now to start a house on his own, and he have got proud, and won't let me pay the rent and such like."

"You have spent too much on me all these years," muttered Tom. "Now we'll let my affairs bide for a bit, missy. Do you think you could find room in your home for a little chair I've been making in my odd moments? I brought it back with me when I come—"

He went into the back kitchen and brought out a beautiful little rocking-chair, which he presented to Harebell. Then he showed her some letters carved on the back:

"I'm not a very good scholar, and my tools be not fine enough to carve words, but I've put the first letter, see?"

"Oh, it's beautiful!" exclaimed Harebell. "And so clever! I am sure Aunt Diana will let me have it, and I do adore a thing that rocks! It will be much nicer than a rocking-horse. I used to have one of those in India."

Tom promised to bring it up that night; and Harebell was overwhelming in her thanks.

At last she had to leave her friends, and she trotted home. It seemed to her that it was not chance that made her meet the Squire of the neighbourhood riding home from a hunt, with two other gentlemen with him. It was too good an opportunity to be lost.

Harebell had often seen the Squire in church, and had spoken to him once when he had been calling upon her uncle. She now stepped into the middle of the road and held up her hand authoritatively.

"I want you to stop to listen to me. Tom Triggs is a very good man, and a friend of mine, and he can make beautiful rocking-chairs fit for a queen. Please take him as your carpenter and give him a cottage."

"Upon my word! Tom Triggs! Who is he? Surely not that drunken loafer who spends his days over his beer-pot!"

"Oh, that was long, long ago; he's quite a changed man; everybody says so. At least, he's really the same, only much, much nicer."

"I know him," said one of the Squire's companions. "He's doing up the house I'm buying. Tom Triggs—I know the chap. He isn't a bad workman. My foreman of works says he's the most dependable of the whole lot out there."

"Now may I ask why you and he have chummed up together? An odd companion for you, I should say."

"I liked him when he was wicked, because I'd never seen a wicked man before. And then—well, you know I've been trying to get him to do things, and he's done them all except a cottage and a wife. I could get the wife if you would give the cottage."

"This is most entertaining. So you can get wives for people. Could you get one for me? I haven't one, you know."

"I don't know you well enough. Tom is a very great friend of mine. We talk over things, specially since we're together inside the Door. That's the best thing of all he has done. He has got right through and is quite safe."

"It's the Door of the Kingdom. He likes to call it the sheepfold, but it means the same. It tells you all about it in the Bible."

"I really must see this wonderful carpenter. Send him up to see me—not to-day. To-morrow morning about ten. I shall be in, and I'll have a talk with him."

She told her aunt all about it when she got home. Mrs. Keith told her she must not speak to gentlemen whom she hardly knew when they were riding.

"I was so full of Tom, I didn't stop to think," said Harebell; "and he's made me the most beautiful rocking-chair, Aunt Diana, and he's going to bring it round to-night. You'll let me take it, won't you? And may I tell him the Squire wants to see him to-morrow?"

Permission was given. When Tom arrived, he looked quite confused when Harebell gave him the message.

"Upon my word, missy, you don't let the grass grow under your feet! Why, you be just wonderful with your tongue."

"And you'll tell me if you get the cottage, Tom? You'll tell me directly it's settled."

"There be not much chance of that, missy. The Squire have knowed me in the old days."

However, Tom had his interview with the Squire, and was taken on trial for a month, to his unbounded pride and delight. Harebell went straight off to see Fanny Crake when she heard of it.

Unfortunately, Fanny was away from home. But Harebell was not easily daunted. She came home and procured a piece of paper. In large copper-plate writing she wrote on it:

"Please Fanny, Tom Triggs may have the Squire's cottage. Get ready for his wife. From Harebell."

But she heard nothing from Fanny. And Tom was too busy at work to come near her.

Lessons and games and talks with everybody who came across her path now occupied her time.

"I really dread the development of that child. I don't know which is busiest—her brain or tongue. I hope she won't grow into a chattering woman. I found her having a long dissertation to-day on the back doorstep with a wandering pedlar. She knows his history, and all the names and ages of all his relations, for I heard her repeating it all to Andy in the pantry."

"Oh, she's all right!" said Colonel Keith kindly. "She is interested in her fellow-creatures. It is better to have one's interest circle round them than round oneself."

And then one day Harebell got a letter, and it was a letter that filled her small heart with joy and satisfaction. It was from Tom Triggs:

"MY DEAR MISSY,—I have not yet wrote you a letter but I do so now hoping this will find you well as it leaves me. I write to say the Squire, he have give me the job and I thank you down to the ground for arsking of him to do it. I have the cottage in the wood, and all is going on as you said it ought. Nex April I hopes to get it, and mother's bits will stock it fine. And Fanny Crake and me are walking out, for on looking round I felt as how I ought to oblige you, and there seems no other to soot me, and Fanny says your heart be terrible set on to it. So we hopes if things go on well, to be husband and wife in April. Wishing you well.

"Your obedient servant,
"TOM TRIGGS."

"P.S. The best which has come to me is what I have not the learning to speak on. But I am still I humbly trust, I. T. D."

She carried this letter all day about with her and slept with it under her pillow.

Her aunt found her one evening spelling it out to herself by the light of a candle.

"He's such a good kind of friend," said Harebell in her old-fashioned way, as she folded up her letter and tucked it under her pillow. "He has done every single thing I wanted him to. And not many friends do that, do they?"

"Well, first he gave up drinking, and then he got some work, and then he got his cottage, and now he has got his wife."

"I s'pose the other thing is the really best thing," said Harebell, slowly and thoughtfully. "He has put it last in his letter, but I really believe it came first of all."

"And in April, I mean to go to tea with them in their cottage. I said from the very first I would do it."

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Harebell's friend

HAREBELL'S FRIEND

CHAPTER I