Читать книгу Stowaways in the Abbey - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 3

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Jen Robins sat up in bed with a jerk.

“I’ll go and tell Joan now—this minute! It’s seven o’clock; she’s sure to be awake. Gosh! I am in a mess! I must have been pitching about in my sleep. I don’t remember dreaming anything very dreadful!”

She regarded her dishevelled condition severely. Her thick pigtail was loosened and she was shrouded in long yellow locks. She chuckled and began to plait it hurriedly. “Can’t go to call on Joan looking like that! I am a sight! Jack would call me Rapunzel again. That’s better; I look more civilised now.” She flung back the heavy plait and reached for her blue dressing-gown and slippers.

She was spending the week-end at the Hall, with the Shirleys, the red-haired cousins who had been her first friends at school. Though Jen—Jenny-Wren to her chums,—was only fourteen and Joan and Joy Shirley were seventeen, the friendship was real and deep, and Jen, who was a boarder at school, had already paid many visits to the Hall. She was also maid-of-honour to Joan, last year’s May Queen, and she was burning with eagerness to share with Joan the great thought which had seized her mind while she was still only half awake.

“It’s the idea of the century,” she murmured, her blue eyes dancing. “I couldn’t even dress, let alone eat any breakfast, till I’ve talked to Joan. I hope her headache’s better; she felt rotten last night.”

She crept along the corridor to the door of Joan’s room. To her dismay, it opened as she reached it, and Mrs. Shirley came out.

“Oh, Auntie Shirley! How you made me jump!” Jen cried. The relationship was one of adoption only, but her affection for Joan’s mother was unbounded. “I want to speak to Joan,” Jen hurried on. “Is she all right this morning?”

“I’m afraid not. No, don’t go in, Jen.” Mrs. Shirley looked worried. “Joan’s head is still bad and she doesn’t want to talk. Don’t go to Joy either, for a little while. I shall send for the doctor and ask him to look at them both.”

Jen’s face fell. “Oh, what hard luck! They’ll be all right by this afternoon, when Jack comes, won’t they? You won’t have to put her off?”

“We couldn’t let Jack come unless the girls are better. We’ll hope for the best. I’d be sorry to disappoint you and Jack.”

“Is Joy’s cold still bad? She thought perhaps going to bed early would stop it,” Jen said anxiously. “It was dreadful at tea-time, wasn’t it?”

Mrs. Shirley agreed, her troubled look deepening. “I hoped we should be able to check it, but she is quite ill this morning. Joy isn’t strong, in herself, though she’s much better than she was in London. It was on her account we came to live in the country, and I’m always worried when she has any illness. This time I’m afraid—but we can’t be sure till the doctor has been. I may be wrong; I hope I am.”

“Afraid of what?” Jen exclaimed. “Joy isn’t going to be really ill, is she? It’s not pneumonia, or anything like that? Poor old Joy!”

“It’s not as bad as that,” Mrs. Shirley said hastily. “Go and dress, Jen. I’ll tell you more when the doctor has been. But don’t go to either of the girls just now.”

“Give Joan my love; and Joy, too, of course,” Jen added. “Odd that they should both be ill at once! Horribly bad luck on us all! I’ll do anything I can to help, Auntie Shirley. We’ll have to put Jack off; it’s rotten, but you can’t have an extra visitor just now. Will you want me to go back to school?”

Mrs. Shirley smiled at the anxious little face. “I can’t tell you yet, Jen dear. I’ll phone for the doctor; then we shall know.”

Jen went soberly back to her room. “What a blow! And Jacky-boy invited for the week-end, for a special celebration for her birthday! I can’t help wishing Joan and Joy had chosen another time to have colds.”

She dressed, and brushed her long hair, plaiting it in two smooth tails, then flung them back and stood gazing out at the lawn and the glimpse of the Abbey ruins above the trees. “Such a gorgeous day! If Jack hadn’t had to go to school for games club committee this morning, she’d have come with me last night. If she’d been here they might not have sent her home, but as she isn’t here I don’t believe they’ll let her come, if the girls are really ill. They may send me away too. How—how grim! It was to be such a marvellous week-end, with Jack and me, and Joan and Joy! I had such topping plans. As for my new idea, it will have to wait, that’s all.”

Feeling very lonely, she went down to breakfast to join Mrs. Shirley, who was too burdened and anxious to talk much.

“Go into the garden, Jen dear, or into the Abbey,” Mrs. Shirley said, as she rose. “The doctor will be here in an hour, and after he has gone we shall be able to make plans.”

“Are the girls any better? Has Joan had any brekker?” Jen asked, full of sympathy.

“Just a cup of tea. Joy doesn’t want even that.”

“They must be feeling rotten!”

“I’m afraid they are,” Mrs. Shirley smiled slightly. She was becoming more certain what was the matter with every visit to the girls, but there was no use in breaking the news to Jen till her fears were confirmed.

Jen fetched her jersey and went bare-headed across the lawn, her face grave. Jack’s visit was sure to be cancelled; would her own share the same fate? Would a few hours see her back at school?

She went down a path between rhododendron bushes and unlocked an ancient gate. It led her into a tiny garden, filled with blue pansies and yellow snapdragons and low red roses. Looking down on these were wonderful old windows, set in a high wall, and below the windows a doorway, leading to a dark stone passage.

Jen went soberly through the garden and the tunnel and came out on the sunny green lawn in the midst of the Abbey ruins, which Joan called the cloister garth. On her right was the beautiful doorway of the chapter-house, through which she glanced to the fields beyond, as the back wall was broken half away and covered with moss. On her left were the entrance gate and the remains of the cloisters; above the tunnel by which she had come stood the great refectory, with high Perpendicular windows looking over the garth.

Jen crossed the grass to the sunny wall opposite, which screened the site of the vanished church. A scrap of stone-carving marked the place where the Abbot’s seat had been, in the days when the cloisters had gone right round the garth. Just under the seat, in the grass, lay a round furry heap, soft and warm in the sunshine.

Jen flung herself down and put her head on the big cat. “Oh, Mummy! Mother Superior, isn’t it ghastly? Your missus can’t come to see you—Joan’s ill! And I’m afraid they’ll send me back to school! Oh, dear old thing, I could weep, if I was that sort of creature!”

The Mother Superior looked at her and gave a questioning “P-r-r?” A shaggy grey kitten of eighteen months old pranced up, shaking his long fur, and began to play with the yellow plaits that lay on the grass.

Jen whisked them away indignantly. “Timmy, I’ve just done my hair! You think I have these for your benefit, don’t you? My child, I only keep them to please Daddy; he says that after having so many boys, as he’s had a girl at last he wants her to look like a girl. If I had my choice, I’d be as bobbed as Jack. I wonder if perhaps in four years Daddy won’t mind so much? When it comes to putting it in a bun and being a stodgy grown-up, I should think he’d be glad for me to cut it off. I’m the youngest; they’ll feel terribly elderly! I believe it would be curly if I cut it; Daddy might like to have me looking like a little girl. That’s something to hope for! Oh, Timmy, have you heard the awful news?”

She sat up, gazing across the garth with anxious eyes. The Mother Superior looked at her sleepily, then rose and stretched, stepped daintily into the inviting lap, and curled down to sleep again.

Jen laughed, in spite of her troubles. “I’m anchored! You silly old lady, how can I stay here without even a book? You are trusting, aren’t you? Oh, well, I shall just have to sit and think!”

Her mind went back to the idea which had come to her as she woke, and she sighed. “It will have to wait. I was all thrilled about it! But if they send me back to school there’ll be no hope. I wonder how soon we’ll know?”