“NO, NO, IT IS NOT JUST.”
“I wonder what sort of grand things _he_ will do,” said Andrew with a
sneer at Gaston, who, at the close of the banquet ran off to tell of his
new honours to Ruth. “Not much fear of his carrying off the prize from
any of us.”
“Not much,” laughed the schoolboys.
“It doesn’t seem to me,” remarked Phil after a pause, “that it’ll be an
easy matter for any of us to get a chance of doing anything really
swagger.”
“Just what I was thinking,” said Jack; “if only one had the chance of
slashing off a few Turk’s heads it would be easy enough to get famous,”
and as he lay on his back amongst the high grass, Jack made a ferocious
onslaught with his stick at the tall blades waving above his head. “But
you see where it is, however much those youngsters may break down the
fences and rob the cherry orchards, we can’t go and slice off _their_
heads.”
“I should think not, indeed,” cried Faith; “why you know that you must
not even strike them.”
“We shall see about that,” said Jack, very ominously, “when the time for
action comes; but depend upon it, my fellow knights,” he added, with a
knowing wink at Phil, “it was not customary to hold councils of war in
the presence of gentle ladies.”
“Of course not,” said Andrew; “knights brought their trophies to their
fair ladies to win their praises, but they didn’t tell them beforehand
how they were going to get them.”
“They’d have been bigger duffers than I take them for if they did,”
remarked Jack.
“Perhaps in those days,” remarked Andrew, “the ladies had more go in
them than the meek and mild Fay has.”
“Now, I say, don’t _you_ jeer at Faith,” cried Phil, quickly.
“You’d better not,” cried Phoena, “or you’ll be disgraced and degraded,
Andrew, as recreant to your vows.”
“Come on,” said Jack, springing to his feet, and thrusting his cap in
true schoolboy fashion at the back of his head with the peak well over
his left ear, “come on, fellow conspira---- knights I mean, I’ve an
idea.”
“May I come, too?” asked Hubert, timidly.
“And I, too?” enquired Gaston, returning at that moment.
There was a whispered conference between the elders, then Andrew said
audibly:
“As my valet, you know, he will be under my control, and we might find
him useful.”
“Oh! yes, I’d be werry useful,” shouted Hubert, fervently. He was
trembling with fear lest on the very threshold of his new career he
should meet with a rebuff.
“Well, you understand,” said Jack, turning rather a grim countenance on
the small suppliant, “that you’ll have to knock under to us; if you
don’t you’ll get toko, mind that.”
“What’s toko?” asked Gaston, under his breath.
“Only a whacking,” said Hubert, as gaily as if it had been a plum bun.
“I don’t mind that.”
“Then you’re the right sort of man, old chap,” cried Phil.
At this bit of praise Hubert swelled almost visibly with pride.
“And may Gaston come?” he asked.
“He’ll have to come as knight, you know,” said Jack to Phil.
“Yes, and Andrew would be sure to fight him and spoil sport that way,”
whispered the latter in return.
“May Gaston come too?” asked Hubert again.
“No! Gaston mayn’t come too,” answered Andrew, mimicking Hubert’s tone;
“we don’t want the company of a French frog on this occasion; do we,
you fellows?” he added, addressing the other boys.
“No, he had better not come,” they agreed.
“So hop off, Master Frog, till further orders,” jeered Andrew.
“Never mind, Gaston, you’ll go with them next time,” comforted Faith.
But Gaston, seeing all the boys disappear without him, and thus
realising that, in spite of their promise, he was to be excluded from
their games, was deaf to consolation.
He stood motionless, like a small monument of stony grief, his sorrowful
eyes fixed on the opening in the thick bushes through which the others
had vanished.
“Never mind, dear little Gaston,” said Phoena, kindly, running up to him
and putting her hand on his arm, “you shall be my own knight, and we
will do something grand between us.”
“You are good,” he said, slowly, but so mournfully that even Di’s heart
was touched, “but it is not just; no, no, it is not just.”
Then he turned, and, with almost a majestic step, he walked out of the
wood. A minute later he might have been seen executing a kind of
war-dance on the top of the steep bank which separated the wood from the
fields, and muttering in his mother tongue words to this effect:
“Ha! I am a French frog indeed! Yes, yes, a frog! Ah! it is well; they
shall see, they shall see.”
Fay, meanwhile, and the other girls were speculating rather anxiously as
to what might be the outcome of the boys’ conclave.
“I do hope they’re not going to do anything very dreadful,” said Fay,
“but the boys are so foolhardy.”
“Yes,” said Phoena; “though I’m sorry for Gaston’s disappointment, I’m
glad he didn’t go with them.”
“I wish they hadn’t taken Hubert,” said Faith.
“I don’t,” said Marygold, like a cunning little woman, “’cause I expect
Hubert will tell us all about it when they come back, and the others
wouldn’t.”
But Marygold was somewhat disappointed.
Hubert had been bound over to secrecy, and consequently his reticence as
to the affairs of the meeting--at this early stage of the proceedings at
any rate--was not to be shaken.
“Nuffin very important was to happen till to-morrow evening,” was all he
could be coaxed into divulging.
“I’m going to start a kind of diary,” announced Phoena at breakfast next
morning, “where I shall enter everything grand that anyone does in the
day. It’ll make it easier to settle up at the end, you know.”
“Capital notion,” said several voices.
“I expect you’ll have a not half bad entry for to-night,” said Jack,
mysteriously, upon which all the boys chuckled meaningly; and, to judge
from their long absences during the day, and their very pre-occupied
airs during meals and on all other public occasions, it was clear that
something was brewing.
“I guess,” said Di, “that at last they’ve found a wasps’ nest, and are
going to blow it up; that’s why they are in such a hurry for tea.”
For Hubert had just come to say that they had asked Mrs. Busson to have
tea half an hour earlier than usual.
“For _particular_ reasons,” Hubert had explained.
Diana’s guess was wrong, however.
What was actually planned was never let out by the conspirators, nor
indeed what actually took place, for Phoena was called upon to make no
entry in her book that evening. Only mere fragments of information
leaked out from Hubert. They were told in strict confidence to Marygold,
and, being pieced together by her elders, furnished the following
story, which was practically the true one.
By way of beginning their new career, the boys had determined to turn
their attention to the trespassers, who vexed Busson’s soul so sorely
and so persistently by straying from the footpaths through his grass
fields, and making short cuts instead.
“We’ll give them such a lesson in trespassing,” the boys agreed, “that
old Busson will bless us for ever after.”
With this laudable result in view, it would appear that they had
arranged to lie in wait, “armed to the teef” as Hubert expressed it,
_i.e._, provided with stout sticks, and concealed behind hay-stacks and
hedges, in order to fall upon the first evil-doer who should stray from
the right path. Their dream was to capture as many of these malefactors
as possible, and to drag them to the farm bound in chains.
The chains were to be represented by some strong whipcord, upon the
purchase of which the knights expended a considerable amount of their
week’s pocket money. They made their plans with much care. They had
learnt the “lay of the land” by heart, they had reconnoitred their
positions again and again, and had rehearsed their manœuvres at least
a dozen times during the day. Hubert had been well drilled in his part,
with a good allowance of “toko,” which he had taken in excellent part as
belonging of right to the fortunes of war; yet, despite all these
preparations, when the moment for action came the result was a failure,
and rather an ignominious one too.
They were to wait till well after dusk before beginning operations,
twilight being the time when the trespassers were always abroad. Each of
the boys was to occupy a separate position, and to be ready to spring
upon the foe or foes the instant that there was a deviation from the
lawful path, and by judicious out-flanking no culprit was to be suffered
to escape. Hubert was concealed in a deep ditch which ran so close to
the foot-path that he could not fail to note the passers-by, but he was
specially charged not to blow his whistle unless the individual did
actually transgress and forsake the beaten way.
“They must be caught red-handed,” the boys had decreed.
Loyally did Hubert fulfill his duty, though he literally hungered to see
each passing pair of feet stray into forbidden paths. But none of the
tired labourers who passed along the field showed any inclination to
wander. Hubert had to let all go by with a heavy sigh and an increased
longing for “really bad ones” to come soon.
At length, when it was growing very dusk, a short figure was seen to
vault over the stile at the further end of the field, and without
attempting to approach the foot-path, run boldly across the meadow.
Here, at last, was the longed-for malefactor.
Before even Hubert could whistle, Andrew, who was nearest to the stile,
had darted out of his hiding-place and was attacking the foe.
But instead of meeting him face to face, as had been agreed should be
done, according to the accepted canons of fair fighting, Andrew had
allowed his victim to pass him, and had then followed him and struck him
with his stick.
“I am just glad to be the very first of them all to be in the field,” he
was saying to himself, but he didn’t say it twice.
In another second the figure, who was one of the odd men on his way to
see to some yearling colts in the upper meadow, had rounded upon Andrew
and seized him by the collar. Then he shook him so roughly that feeble
cries for “he-elp” were nearly choked in his throat.
And if Phil and Jack had not come to the rescue and recognised Ned, with
whom they had already chummed over the boat, that individual, so he
solemnly assured them, would have well-nigh broken every bone in
Andrew’s personal possession.
“And sarve him jolly well right, too, for hittin’ a chap over the head
in the dark, and from behind, too,” Ned said.
“Well, you _have_ gone and made a fool of yourself, and of us too,”
cried his cousins, in deep disgust, as Ned departed. “Why on earth
couldn’t you observe our laws and behave like a man? Now, at any rate,
hold your tongue and don’t blab a word of what has happened. We wouldn’t
let the girls know for anything.”
“And so you mustn’t never say one word of it to anyone,” Hubert gravely
told Marygold, who had forthwith taken the earliest opportunity to
repeat “only a little bit of it” to Phoena, and a little more to Di, and
pretty nearly the whole to Faith.
Happily for Hubert, _they_ kept their own counsel.