"WORN OUT IN A GOOD SERVICE"
Lessons and play were the daily routine now. The children kept out of
scrapes wonderfully. Perhaps it was Miss Falkner's quick interference
before real harm was done, or perhaps it was as she liked to hope,
her pupils were getting more considerate of other people's feelings.
"It is their lively imagination, and their passion for acting out what
they hear or read, that works such mischief," Miss Falkner said to Mona
one day when they were talking over the children. "They are reckless
of consequences. Future results are never taken into consideration."
She said this when she had just stopped Jack from lighting a fire in
the loft.
He was a prisoner in hiding, he informed her, and he was going to cook
himself a meal. Bumps had been foraging for him, and had brought him
a raw piece of bacon.
"I was going to be most careful," he informed her. "Of course I wouldn't
light the hay. I pushed it all away, and had got quite an empty corner!"
But one day the children's energies were turned in another direction. They
were all devoted to Mr. Arnold, and as he lived alone with an old
housekeeper who was really fond of children, they very often found their
way over to the vicarage. Sometimes he invited them to tea with him,
and it was when they returned one evening from this dissipation that
they announced in the drawing-room--
"We are going to get Mr. Arnold a wife!"
Miss Webb exploded with laughter. She was reading the newspaper over
the fire. Mona was consulting with Miss Falkner at a table near about
a certain girls' club in the village that she wished to start. She
turned with a look of horror at the speaker, who of course was Jill;
Miss Falkner was too accustomed to her pupils' speeches to be surprised.
"Yes," put in Jack. "There ought to be a Mrs. Arnold, like Mrs. Errington;
we told him so!"
"To make his tea," said Bumps breathlessly, "and knit his thocks!"
"And have a pretty drawing-room and flowers," said Jill. "He doesn't
sit in the drawing-room like Mr. Errington did. He sits in his study, and
there ought to be a Mrs. Arnold to help him in the village."
"And what are your vicar's opinions on this important subject?" asked
Miss Webb.
"We've told him we'll get him one. We know more people than he does, and
we know just the sort he wants. She must be just like Mrs. Errington,
only not an invalid."
"And we aren't going to tell," said Jack wisely, "but we've picked
out somebody."
"Yeth, and we're going to thend her to Mr. Arnold to-morrow!" burst
forth Bumps excitedly.
Miss Webb threw up her hands in mock astonishment.
"Really! You don't mean it! And when is the wedding going to be?"
Mona here interposed.
"Jill, you are old enough to know better. You must not go to the vicarage
at all, if you talk such nonsense."
"It isn't nonsense!" Jill said indignantly. "Mr. Arnold wants a wife,
he said he did; and we're going to find one for him."
She rushed out of the room like a small whirlwind.
"Who is the happy lady, Jack?" asked Miss Webb inquisitively.
Jack was silent.
"Miss Falkner, you will have to assert your authority and stop this,"
said Mona, half laughing, yet half vexed.
"Let's tell, Jack," said Bumps, who loved giving information.
But Jack shook his head.
"We didn't even tell Mr. Arnold; we said we would send him some one
to-morrow."
"And have you told her her fate?" asked Miss Webb.
"Jill is going to see Miss Grant in the morning," said Jack with dignity,
and not perceiving he had let the cat out of the bag.
Miss Webb began to laugh afresh, and even Mona smiled. Miss Grant was a
lady between fifty and sixty who was an indefatigable parish worker,
but whose strong will and love of interference had always been a sore
trial to her vicar.
"You think she'll make him a good wife?" Miss Webb said, trying to draw
the children out.
"She's just the sort to make tea," said Jack, "and she'll be much more
help to him than Mrs. Errington would be, or any one else."
"I think you will have to keep certain small people hard at lessons
to-morrow, Miss Falkner. This proposed visit must be nipped in the bud."
Miss Falkner took her charges off to the school-room and presently
Jill appeared.
She seemed to have forgotten the subject under discussion, for she was
full of a plan she had talked over with Mr. Arnold of supporting a
children's cot in the local hospital.
"And my bag will begin it, like it did the Bethel Room. Don't you think
it lovely?"
Just before the children went to bed, Miss Falkner picked up an old
copy-book an the floor of Jill's bedroom. She did not often look at
her scribblings, but the first words startled her:
"DEAR MISS GRANT,"--