Читать книгу The Abbey Girls Play Up - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 7

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A chuckle from behind made Rosalind look round. “What’s up, Cecily Brown?”

“We passed Elsie at the corner. I’m so glad! I hoped we’d meet somebody who knows me.”

Rosalind laughed. “You might take her out now and then, if it’s such a great occasion, Bel.”

“It isn’t the first time Cecily has been perched up there,” Maribel took a sharp corner warily.

“It’s the first time I’ve been with two of you in uniform, though,” Cecily explained. “Elsie’s eyes nearly fell out. I wish we could meet Sandy!”

“So do I. I want to see Sandy. Now we can go ahead!” and they raced off up the London road.

Cecily sat in a blissful dream, the whistle in her hand, her red hair blowing wildly. This free rush through the air made her want to sing and shout. She put the pipe to her lips, but the wind blew the sound away, and she laughed and gave up the attempt to express her feelings.

The Guiders spoke a quick word or two in carefully lowered tones.

“What about it, Bel?”

“I’m stunned. She has sides we’ve never suspected. The job’s too big for us, Rose.”

“We’ve done well enough, so far, but we may need help to see her through. We haven’t given her all she needed. Music, for one thing. This dancing has opened new doors in her nature. She ought to have music in earnest, with an ear like that. And Sandy’s playing soothes her; but the dance-music stirs her up. She feels it all. We must help her, Bel.”

“I feel guilty,” Maribel said. “I ought to have tried her with music. It never occurred to me.”

“If she likes Sandy’s fiddle, she’d like yours.”

“I wish I’d thought of it before.”

“Couldn’t think of everything. It’s not too late,” Rosalind said practically. “Pull up in a quiet spot, Bel! We must hear that whistle again.”

“We ought to hurry,” Maribel objected. “But I want to hear it too. Fancy the kid picking out tunes!”

“Yes, she’s worth helping. This will do!”

Maribel drew up where a wide stretch of grass bordered the road. “Don’t stay long, Rose.”

“No. It won’t take five minutes. Now, Cecily Brown, hop down and pipe us a tune!”

Cecily eyed her shyly. “I don’t do it well yet. I’m only finding out the notes.”

“There was no finding out about that ‘Old Mole’ we heard coming from the hawthorn bush!”

“ ‘Old Mole’s’ easy! And ‘Goddesses’ is like coming downstairs.”

Maribel laughed. “Cheers! So it is! Pipe away, Cecily!”

Cecily climbed down from her seat. For some reason she did not understand, she was shy and shrank from their interested gaze.

Standing in the road, her eyes on Chanctonbury’s distant ring of trees crowning a smooth sweep of down, she piped the tunes she knew.

Rosalind’s eyes met Maribel’s. Their feet were tapping to her unconscious rhythm.

“Excellent!” Rosalind murmured. “How ever does she do it?”

“She feels it. She must have music-lessons! A tin whistle isn’t good enough.”

“They learned a new one last week,” Cecily broke off. “Elsie said it was called ‘If all the World were Paper,’ and Mrs. Raymond told them to sing. But Elsie’s a hopeless idiot; she couldn’t remember the tune. And of course I didn’t hear it.”

The Guiders looked at one another. Then with one accord they “armed right,” singing the words, and finished with a set-and-turn-single.

“Oh, do you know it?” Cecily’s face lit up. “Do it once more! Then I’ll know the tune!”

They gravely “armed left,” and at Maribel’s suggestion did the siding also. “I’m afraid that’s all we can manage alone. It’s for a set of eight.”

“Your siding’s topping,” Cecily had watched wide-eyed. “Our crowd doesn’t do it like that. It’s a dinky tune.” She had been fingering the holes on her whistle, and now she played the air, hesitating once or twice.

The interested lieutenants promptly sang the missing notes when she stumbled; their interest was in her far more than in the music, but of that Cecily was unconscious. She had forgotten everything but the quest of the new tune.

“I’ve got it!” she cried triumphantly. “Listen!”

“Extremely smart of you!” Rosalind exclaimed.

“Rose, we must go on,” Maribel urged.

“I keep forgetting the Pier Pavilion!” Rosalind sighed. “Hop up again, Cecilia! That was a real treat. You shall have more tunes.”

Cecily, very bright-faced, sprang up into her back seat. “Every tune I get is one more for my collection!”

“She’s ‘got,’ as she so beautifully puts it, something bigger than a new tune,” Maribel murmured, as they set off. “She has a real gift, and she’s bagged our interest in it, quite unconsciously. She must be trained, but I don’t yet see how, or what will come of it. But with an ear like that, she must be helped.”

“I’m with you! We’ll see her through somehow. But we may have to hunt for some one else to help. You and I have done about as much as we ought, Bel.”

Maribel agreed. “That’s what is troubling me. I can’t ask Father; Mother’s illness has cost a lot, and we have only just enough. And you have your young twins in Switzerland to be educated.”

Rosalind’s thoughts went to John and Gina, the brother and sister still at school. “We never were millionaires. I can’t do much more, Bel, and I don’t suppose our Guides can.”

“We’ll have to think it over. We meant to train Cecil to earn her own living quite soon.”

“She must still do that,” Rosalind said quickly. “Music can only be an extra. There’s no chance of training her musically, Bel. It can’t be done.”

“It ought to be done,” Maribel, musical herself, craved to give her protégée the very best.

“Cecil must be a dressmaker, or a clerk, or a cook, or a shorthand-typist; in her spare time she can be a musician and a folk-dancer. Most of us have to be content with that.”

Maribel sighed. “I suppose you’re right. She must have music-lessons. From Mrs. Alexander, I suppose?”

“Why don’t you teach her yourself? You wouldn’t charge yourself much for her lessons!”

“Rose, I see a signpost. Isn’t this where we turn off for Rayley Park?”

“It is,” Rosalind consulted the map. “And these are private grounds. I begin to feel quaky!”

“Don’t for goodness’ sake! You promised to see this through. If you funk, I shall take you right home.”

“Funk? Me?” Rosalind scorned the suggestion. “Not if it were Buckingham Palace or Sandringham!—Mrs. Raymond’s nice, isn’t she, Cecilia?”

“She’s a dear. But what a big house! I saw it through the trees. I can stay in the car while you talk to her, can’t I, Rosalind?”

Rosalind sighed. “That doesn’t buck me up much! I don’t care if it is a big house! Pull yourself together, Bel, and don’t disgrace your uniform!”

“The uniform’s rather a help,” Maribel observed, as they sped up a long drive through lawns and flower-beds. “We mustn’t be a pair of shy dithery Guides. What a party one could have on these lawns!”

“We will not dither. We will not be shy,” Rosalind said firmly. “All the same, I feel a wee bit queer! What brings her to our villages teaching country-dancing, when she lives in a place like this?”

“We shall find out. Look—a lake!”

“Call it a pond. But it has water-lilies,” Rosalind admitted. “And ducks! It’s a topping place, Bel!”

“I feel rather like a worm or a maggot,” Maribel murmured. “Shall we back out and go home, Rose?”

“We should look silly! Go on, dear idiot. We’ll pull through somehow,” Rosalind said bracingly.