Читать книгу The Bravest Girl in the School - Ethel Talbot - Страница 3

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“HOW soon will you know it, Sybil?”

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

“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Sybil, throwing down her book and speaking in an aggrieved tone. “You’ve given me too much to learn, I’m sure, Gretta. I can’t possibly get it done by tea-time. Oh—bother!” She was interrupted by the entrance of a dishevelled, slatternly-looking maid who, capless and excited, burst into the untidy room.

“And what am I to do now, Miss Gretta, I’d like to know? Here’s master bringing in a visitor, and if she stays to tea there’s not a scrap of butter in the house. I tell you plainly I’m not going to stand it, and——”

“Perhaps it’s only a patient——” began Gretta timidly.

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

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

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

“Oh, Sybil, do stop and come and help,” cried Gretta distractedly. “If it is Auntie Tib she must be coming to tea, and everything’s so untidy! Here, come and help me, do!”

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

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

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

“Didn’t you get my message?” he continued fretfully. “Can’t you children come any quicker when I specially send for you? Here’s your aunt who has been travelling thousands of miles to see you, and——”

“We didn’t——” Sybil was beginning, but the sound of rapid, flying footsteps cut her short. “My darlings!” said a voice; a “perfectly new voice,” as Sybil said afterwards. “Come and let me see both of you! Why, John, this one is the living image of Margaret!”

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

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

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

“But we never knew you were coming, auntie,” she said, snuggling herself nearer to her new-found relation. “And, oh! where is Margot?”

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

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

Gretta slipped out of the room, and returned, looking rather perturbed, with a yellow envelope. “Here it is, dad!” she said timidly. “I didn’t know that——”

“Tut—tut!” said the doctor irritably. “You should know when things come. You’ve nothing else to do, child.” He tore open the envelope, while Auntie Tib’s eyes turned towards Gretta, into whose cheeks a sudden flush had risen. She noticed the girl’s shabby outgrown frock, her patched slippers, and the clumsy darns on her stockings. Then she drew her little niece towards her and kissed her again. “So you’re the housekeeper, are you, Gretta?” she said tenderly.

“Oh, isn’t she lovely!” said Sybil half an hour later, as the two girls made their way back towards the drawing-room again, after tidying themselves for tea. “I never could have thought she would be such a lovely auntie. Do you know, Gretta, I thought she would perhaps be quite brown, or talk a different language, or something, as she was coming from Australia. Oh, I do wonder if Margot will come in time for tea. Auntie said she’d be here in about three-quarters of an hour!” A loud ring at the front door interrupted her, and the chuff-chuff of a departing motor was suddenly heard outside.

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

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

Sybil, and even Gretta, too, rose to their feet and gazed open-mouthed at the visitor as she embraced her mother, talking in an animated voice all the time. “Oh, mother,” she said, “I guessed, somehow, that this would be the room, and I couldn’t wait, so I just didn’t. Dad’s driven on with the car to the hotel garage, and I told him to put me down here because I wanted to see the cousins just at the very earliest minute, and——” She turned towards Gretta and Sybil with a friendly expression of countenance, and held out her hand.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh!” Sybil was almost inarticulate in her entreaties. Never could she have imagined that such good fortune would come her way. “Oh, it would be too, too lovely! Auntie, darling, do take us!”

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

“No, thank you,” said Gretta steadily. “I think I’d rather stay with dad.”

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

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

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

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

“Good-bye, Gretta darling. I understand why you want to stay,” said Auntie Tib, hugging the rather lonely looking little figure that stood on the step to see them start. “But I shall see you again very soon, because——” She bent down and whispered: “Ask your father, to-night, when he comes home, to tell you the secret that he has for you. Don’t forget. And I do hope that it will please you!”

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

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