[Illustration: “WHAT IS THAT?” WHISPERED SOPHY SHARPLY,
AND PAM’S HEART GAVE A SUDDEN LEAP]
A
Canadian Farm Mystery
Or, Pam the Pioneer
BY
BESSIE MARCHANT
Author of “The Unknown Island”
“Joyce Harrington’s Trust”
“A Girl and a Caravan”
“Molly Angel’s Adventures”
&c. &c.
_Illustrated by Cyrus Cuneo_
BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
LONDON AND GLASGOW
Zenith Library
_BOYS_
=In the Great White Land.= Gordon Stables.
=The Disputed V.C.= Frederick P. Gibbon.
=The First Mate.= Harry Collingwood.
=The Boy Castaways.= H. Taprell Dorling.
“=Quills.=” Walter C. Rhoades.
_GIRLS_
=A Canadian Farm Mystery.= Bessie Marchant.
=The Youngest Sister.= Bessie Marchant.
=A Princess of Servia.= Bessie Marchant.
=A True Cornish Maid.= G. Norway.
=Meriel’s Career.= Mary B. Whiting.
_Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow_
Contents
I. HER GREAT IDEA
II. BUSINESS ENTERPRISE
III. THE SURPRISE PARTY
IV. WHAT THEY FOUND
V. THE NEXT DAY
VI. WHERE HAS HE GONE?
VII. SEARCHING
VIII. THE FIRST SNOW
IX. MAKING THE BEST OF IT
X. SOMEONE’S DESPERATE PLIGHT
XI. WHO WAS IT?
XII. SUGARING
XIII. JUST A DOUBT!
XIV. FROM AN UNEXPECTED QUARTER
XV. PAM’S BIG ADVENTURE
XVI. WHY DID HE GO?
XVII. WHAT REGGIE SUSPECTS
XVIII. MET ON THE TRAIL
XIX. THE STRANGER’S ERRAND
XX. WEDDING PLANS
XXI. HOW IT WAS DONE
XXII. GOOD NEWS
XXIII. THE MYSTERY CLEARED
XXIV. THE END
Illustrations
I. “WHAT IS THAT?” WHISPERED SOPHY SHARPLY,
AND PAM’S HEART GAVE A SUDDEN LEAP
II. THE DOG AND THE UNKNOWN FURY WERE ROLLING
OVER IN THE DEADLIEST OF COMBATS
III. PAM WAS DRAGGED UP AND TUGGED HERE AND
PULLED THERE
A Canadian Farm Mystery
Or, Pam the Pioneer
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
Her Great Idea
“Jack, Jack, I have had a truly wonderful inspiration!” cried Pam as she
came dashing down the stairs like a whirlwind.
Unfortunately Barbara, the little maid-of-all-work, was at that moment
toiling upwards with the soup tureen and a pile of plates on a tray. She
was near the top, too, and very much out of breath. She had no strength
to stand against the violent impact, but went down before it, being
brought up in a heap at the turn of the stairs while tray, tureen, and
plates went careering to the bottom, accompanied by a stream of soup.
“Now you’ve done it!” exclaimed Jack, with an ominous growl in his
voice, as, leaning on his stick, he came limping from the kitchen to
survey the ruins.
“Oh, haven’t I just!” cried Pam in heartfelt contrition. Then she
gasped: “Whatever will Mother say?”
The afflicted Barbara, who still lay at the bend of the stairway where
she had fallen, burst into noisy crying at this. She had been dismissed
from her last place for ravages among the crockery, and if she had to
leave the house of Mrs. Walsh for a similar cause, where would her
character be?
“Dry up!” burst out Jack impatiently. “We have too much moisture here
already by the look of it.” As he spoke he hopped aside to let a rivulet
of soup go past him. Such good soup it had been too! The savoury odours
steamed up under his nose, and as he was desperately hungry the waste
was all the more exasperating.
Just at this moment the green baize door at the top of the stairs opened
smartly, and Greg called down: “Jack, Mother says don’t let Barbara
bring up the soup for another ten minutes, because Colonel Seaford has
’phoned to say that he can’t be here till then.”
“What luck!” exclaimed Pam. “Come along, Barbara, we can make a fresh
lot of soup in ten minutes, and we will serve it in a salad bowl and
porridge plates. Dear me, nothing is ever so bad that it might not be
worse!”
“You can’t make soup out of nothing, and there is not a teacupful of
stock in the house,” growled Jack.
“Wait and see!” laughed Pam, as she lightly sprang over the ruins at the
bottom of the stairs, dodged brown rivulets of soup that meandered along
the floor, and darted in at the kitchen door. “Come along, Barbara!
England expects, &c.”
“If you had done your duty and looked where you were going, the soup
would not have been spilled,” growled Jack, but Pam was too busy to heed
him.
Seizing the empty soup saucepan, she half-filled it with hot water from
the boiler and set it over the fire. Then she darted to the table, where
she stood busily stirring, mixing, and pounding, calling all the time
for a succession of things which Barbara was quick to supply. “There,
that will do, I think,” she exclaimed in great satisfaction. “Corn
flour, tomato powder, salt, pepper—a good lot of that—Worcester sauce,
burnt sugar, and a dash of shrimp sauce just by way of piquancy. Very
nice to look at, and interesting to taste; not very nourishing, perhaps,
but that will not matter for once.”
The hot water was poured on the concoction, the stuff was returned to
the saucepan and brought to the boil; then, the ten minutes being up,
Pam carried the emergency soup to the dining-room herself, while Barbara
collected the fragments of broken earthenware and swabbed up the river
of soup with a grubby mop.
“Well, you take the cake, and no mistake about it, in rising to the
occasion!” admitted Jack with grudging admiration, as he limped about
the kitchen, getting ready for the fish course, and seeing that other
things were keeping in a state of readiness.
Pam’s merry laugh rang out. “It is a mercy I can do so much, for it is
my fate to be always creating situations that call for dispatch and
skill in the managing.”
Jack looked at her in silent wonder. Somehow he always was wondering at
Pam. It was barely more than half an hour by the clock since she had
been drowned in tears because of that curt letter from Lady Dalby, who
had written to say that as she could not have Miss Walsh when she needed
her so much, she had secured another governess. Pam’s salary had not
been much, but in poverty like theirs every little counts. There was the
doctor’s bill for Muriel’s illness, with all the other bills which had
sprung from the same source, while winter was coming on. But it was of
no use to “grouse” over things, it did not make them the least bit
better. So he left off speculating about Pam, and ordered Barbara round
in fine style for the next twenty minutes, and the courses of the dinner
went up one by one until it was all over.
When coffee had been taken to the drawing-room, Greg and Sid cleared the
dinner-table, and then came down to their supper in the breakfast-room,
which opened out of the kitchen. Pam, who had rushed upstairs to see if
Muriel was comfortably asleep, came hurrying back to help in washing up
the silver and glass.
Then, “What is your great idea?” asked Jack, who was seated on a high
stool at the table, and was rapidly polishing the spoons and forks which
Pam had washed.
She glanced round, saw that the door of the scullery, where Barbara was
washing plates and dishes, was a little way open, and darting across the
room closed it softly.
“Jack!” she cried, with positive rapture in her tone, as she plunged her
hands into the soapy water again, “Jack, I am going to ask Mother to let
me go to Grandfather!”
“You can’t go alone—you are only a girl!” he exclaimed, dropping a
handful of spoons with a clatter because he was so amazed at the daring
and audacity of Pam’s great idea.
She laughed softly; it always amused her to hear Jack talk in this
fashion. She was four years older than he was, and although she lacked
his steadiness and balance, she knew that she was vastly ahead of him
when it came to dealing with an emergency. “You are a dear, Jack, but
you have your limitations. You are quite early Victorian in your ideas
of what girls should or should not do. But you have got to widen your
outlook a bit before Mother comes down from the drawing-room, because
you must back me up in this. We can always influence Mother when we
stand solid, and my great idea is for the general good.”
“For instance?” Jack had retrieved the fallen spoons, and was polishing
vigorously. Pam had a good many great ideas of one sort and another, but
he had a cautious streak, and was not going to back her up in any wild
scheme just because she wanted him to do so.
“Grandfather told Mother to send one of us out to him, and he promised
to pay a salary. He said one of the children, but he did not mention
whether it was a boy or a girl that he would prefer.” Pam put out her
facts with a calm decision, and Jack nodded approvingly. “Very well, you
can’t go. It will be another month before you can walk without a stick,
and when you can, there is your work at Gay & Grainger’s waiting for
you, while until you go back they are paying you——”
“A mere pittance—half a crown a week, accident insurance!” he groaned.
“If only I had been over sixteen I could have had the proper State
Insurance. It is a rotten shame, and the grossest injustice!”
“Be quiet, and let me talk!” Pam lifted an impatient hand to stay the
tide of his eloquence, sprinkling him with soapy water in the process.
“You have this pittance, and work waiting for you, but I have nothing.
You also are twice the help to Mother that I am. Don’t interrupt!
Compliments are not necessary at this juncture; we are out for facts
without trimmings, and don’t you forget it. Suppose that you had gone
out to Grandfather this month. Mother says the winters in New Brunswick
are dreadfully cold. Being a boy, you would naturally have had to work
out of doors, and if there is no woman in the house, you would have had
little comfort when you came in. Now, if I go, the dear little old man
can hardly send me out into the forest chopping trees down when the
temperature is miles below zero, but I can make him so comfortable in
the house that by the spring he will be wanting the lot of us.”
“Query as to that.” Jack shook his head, and reached for the plate
basket to put away his spoons.
“Oh, but he will. I shall lay myself out to win his heart; then when he
has got so fond of me that he simply can’t bear me out of his sight, I
shall turn home-sick. I shall refuse my food, and tell him that I am
pining for my family, that I can bear the cruel separation no longer. He
will soften towards Mother then, and write her an imperative letter to
sell up and come out to him without a moment’s unnecessary delay. Oh, I
can manage him, I have no doubt of it at all!”
“I don’t think that I have either, if you go straight at it,” admitted
Jack, who spoke from experience, knowing himself to be weak as water in
the hands of Pam when she had really made up her mind to influence him.
“The question in my mind is whether Mother and he will hit it off
comfortably when they live together. She is mistress here, and does as
she likes; but it would not be happy for her if the old man took to
ordering her round as I do Barbara.”
“Indeed, no; but I tell you he can be managed, he must be managed for
his own good,” she said earnestly. “If he is very happy and comfortable,
he will not want to be tiresome. Think how good it will be for Muriel to
have a country life for the next few years. Think, too, what it will do
for the boys. Greg is growing much too fast. He ought to have quiet
evenings, and to be in bed by eight o’clock, instead of which he and Sid
are working hard until after nine on most evenings, waiting at table and
clearing away, qualifying for posts as footmen and butlers, but missing
all the free and easy life of boyhood that they ought to have.”
Jack drew a long breath which ended in a whistle.
“My word, if you talk to the old man like that, he will be sending for
us all by the next boat! I will back you up for all I am worth, see if I
don’t. Three cheers for Pam the Pioneer, the intrepid and the brave! Of
all the great ideas you ever had, this is the greatest!”
Pam flushed with pleasure. Jack had the balance and steadiness which she
lacked; he was apt to sit in judgment on her, and that sort of thing is
rather unbearable as a rule. Her mother was always holding Jack before
her eyes as a model to be studied and copied, which, of course, was more
unbearable still; so that the present moment was sweet indeed,
compensating for many a bad quarter of an hour which had come before.
“I must hurry up to Muriel now,” she said, ten minutes later, when they
had discussed the scheme in all its bearings. “Be sure you stick by me,
Jack, when it comes to the arguments, for you know I do not shine
there.”
“Oh, I’ll stick by you, never fear,” he answered in a cheery tone. “I
would do a good deal to see a way out of this boarding-house business.
This stewing and grilling down here every night, to give those people
upstairs a chance to overfeed themselves, gets on my nerves. The folks
who are so keen on big dinners at eight o’clock at night ought to have
to cook for themselves; then they would soon be cured of the habit.”
“I daresay they would, but think what a crowd of people would suffer
from loss of income.” Pam laughed as she gave him a bear-like hug by way
of showing her gratitude. “Think, too, what a slump there would be in
the medical business, for Dr. Scott said yesterday that it was the
people who ate too much who provided the doctors with a living.”
But Jack only grunted by way of answer, and then, taking his stick,
limped out to the scullery to see if Barbara had fastened up for the
night.