have so many enemies"; adding, in her usual tone of bravado, "but of
course I don't care about that."
"No?" said the other, a little mockingly. "Are you quite sure? If
not, it would be a pity to get expelled."
"I tell you, I don't care," answered Sally obstinately. "And I'm
going to the Fair. What about plans?"
They went into the house discussing them.
CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
A NIGHT ADVENTURE
It was Wednesday evening. Sally Brendan lay in her bed, with her
eyes closed, and the sheet drawn up almost to her nose. Yet she was
very far from being asleep; and had anyone turned back the clothes
they would have seen that, instead of a nightdress, she wore gym.
knickers, and a jersey that belonged to one of her brothers, which
she had insisted on packing in a corner of her trunk because it was
certain to come in useful.
She giggled softly to herself, as she thought of her appearance, and
Peter's last whispered instructions as they came out of Chapel:
"For Heaven's sake, child, remember that whatever you wear, it must
be something that doesn't give us away! I don't want anybody at the
Fair saying that you came from Seascape House."
"Right oh! Old Cocaine herself would hardly know me," she had
whispered back, and hurried off, for fear her friend should question
her further and raise objections: she might even at the last minute
refuse to take her.
Trina Morrison had been in a very uncertain mood since the scene
between them on the cricket field; for the most part, irritable and
impatient. Several times she had hinted that, on reflection, she
felt sure it would be wiser for Sally not to come; and when that
young lady had maintained, "But I am going anyhow--it's no use trying
to stop me now," she had warned her that she might have to return
alone.
"You see, you are much too juvenile for this sort of a dance, really,
and I can't be bothered to act nursemaid. Why, I never meant to
bring you into the show at all, until that ass Violet Tremson began
to threaten me, and then I felt I must--just to annoy her."
"To threaten you with what?"
"Why, expulsion, of course. She said if I didn't reform my ways,
especially with regard to you, she would expound my sins to Old
Cocaine."
"What a sneaking cad she is!"
In her heart Sally Brendan found it difficult to apply this
description to Violet Tremson, but she was still sore and angry with
her. It is said that any stick is good enough with which to beat a
dog: besides, it seemed to mollify Peter.
"I dare say you wouldn't be happy here with this crowd when I am
gone, and that's a matter of two terms more at most," she had said,
in a more friendly tone; and Sally had answered:
"Of course not--I have told you so. I always meant to get expelled,
from that first day on the beach."
If not strictly true, the sentiment sounded well, and allowed Trina
to put away, with a shrug of her shoulders, any responsibility she
might ever have felt.
"All right, then--9.45 sharp--at the landing window; and remember, I
shan't hang about for you."
It was for the clock to strike 9.30 that the girl now anxiously
waited.
Seascape House went to bed early. The Matron had made her last round
of the passages, and Decima Pillditch was snoring heavily, when Sally
at last stole out of bed. By pulling to one side the curtain of her
cubicle, she could focus the moonlight full on her looking-glass; and
without delay she started on the final stage in her make-up.
It was quick and drastic: nothing less than the hacking off of the
red curls that had made a fuzzy halo round her small freckled face.
When it was completed, she was no longer bobbed, but shorn, and in
her costume of knickers and jersey presented a very good picture of a
street Arab of eleven or twelve.
The effect was magnificent, but something of a shock in its
transformation--even to Sally herself; and she began to wonder how
Peter would approve of the disguise--completed by a large hole in the
back of her stocking, which she suddenly discovered, and had no time
to draw together.
"I will keep on my cap and coat until we leave the garden," she told
herself, rather guiltily; and thus wrapped up, opened the door, stole
along the passage, and down the back stairs to the landing window.
It was open, and at first she thought that her friend had gone
without her; but as she peered out, she heard a voice whisper:
"Come! Do be quick."
And climbing through the opening, she found herself alongside Trina,
on the flat roof of the corridor, that ran round three sides of the
gymnasium.
Without looking at her, Trina inserted a large wedge of wood between
the window and the sash, then pulled the lower pane down to meet it.
"No one is likely to notice that, and we shall be able to lift it all
right when we return," she whispered. "But now, follow me and be
quiet. We have to crawl along just below the mistresses' windows,
stooping, in case they are there--but I think they are all in the
sitting-room at this hour. When we come to Miss Castle's, there's a
pipe down to the ground, and two bricks out in the wall, where one
can put one's feet."
She started off, pulling her dark coat tight round her, and Sally
followed, her eyes dancing with excitement. Most of the mistresses'
windows were shut, but Miss Castle's was half open, with a curtain
blowing slightly in the wind, though there was no light showing.
Trina made a grimace at the blank space, and shook her fist
playfully; then began to lower herself over the edge of the roof.
Her feet scraped along the pipe before they found their foothold, and
Sally, at the noise, caught her breath; but there was no sound from
the room above.
"She is not in there yet," the girl decided; and seeing the light in
Miss Cockran's study at the end of the passage, wondered idly if she
had gone along there.
"Jawing about us in our little beds to Old Cocaine," she said, and
giggled as she began her own descent. It was hastened by a sudden
flash of electric light in Miss Castle's room, just as she found her
first foothold, and thereupon she lowered herself with a rapidity
that nearly sent Trina Morrison, just below her, backwards into a
flower bed.
"Young ass!" whispered Trina. "You will make me dirty my evening
dress."
"'Ware Castle!" Sally returned, and they flattened themselves against
the wall in the shadows, as they heard a voice from above call
sharply,
"Who's there?"
[Illustration: "'WARE CASTLE!"]
Again the question was repeated, and as if in response two cats
emerged from a bush and fled across the grass, one of them miawing
loudly.
This seemed to satisfy Miss Castle, for she partially closed her
window, and they heard the curtain drawn across. Keeping to the
shadows, they crept along the flower beds till they turned the corner
of the house, and came out on the grass of the tennis lawns, from
whence they made their way into the shrubberies. No word was said
until they had climbed into the tree, with branches overhanging the
wall, that Sally knew from her previous adventure.
"I'd better leave my things here, hadn't I?" she whispered. "It's
frightfully warm, and my overcoat is a school one"; but the elder
girl, without answering beyond a nod of agreement, was already
scrambling down the rough stonework, with the aid of a rope she had
pulled out of the trunk and hung over a strong branch.
Sally followed her as quickly as she could, but with her shorter legs
the drop was not so easy to manage, and Trina was walking rapidly
down the road by the time she reached the ground.
"Are you going at that pace all the way to Parchester?" she panted,
as she caught her up. "Anyhow, it's no good--we shan't be there
before midnight."
"No, silly! The Fair is on the heath, on this side of the town, and
anyhow, I have ordered a car at the Black Cull."
There was something very impressive to Sally's ears in the
carelessness of her companion's tone, and as she undid her coat in
the warm night air, and it fell back, revealing a pretty silk dress,
the younger girl gave a gasp of admiration and distress.
"Why, you are most frightfully smart," she said. "I don't know
whatever you will think of me."
"Good Golliwogs!"
Trina had turned her round towards the moon, and was staring at her,
her own face in the shadows, so that Sally could not tell what she
felt.
"You told me to disguise myself," she said half defiantly, expecting
anger or scorn--anything but her companion's sudden outburst of
laughter.
"My good child! Well, you have cut the painter--you are done for now
with Old Cocaine."
"Lost by a narrow shave, instead of escaped by it," said Sally,
greatly relieved. "Anyhow, no one at the Fair could possibly
recognise me, could they?"
"I should say your own mother wouldn't--when you are returned to her,
to-morrow."
Sally's rising spirits received a dash of cold water at the
rejoinder. In a flash she suddenly remembered how Mrs. Brendan had
begged her not to get expelled, and how she had promised she would
try to stop at school. Standing outside the private door of the
Black Bull, while Trina Morrison hammered with the knocker, she
shuffled her feet uncomfortably, and tried to put out of her mind her
mother's eyes, and her consciousness of the furious superior glance
that Cecilia would give her, when she turned up once more like a bad
penny. After all, she decided, there was no need for them to be
caught. Peter had done this kind of thing before, quite safely, and
cutting off one's hair was not an unpardonable crime, taken by itself.
"Oh, shut up shuffling, do," she heard the elder girl say. "I want
to listen. They are all asleep, or I shall have to go to the public
bar, and find someone. It's perfectly disgusting."
At this moment the door flew open, and a man with a red face
appeared. He was in his shirt sleeves, with a coat over his arm,
which he began to put on while he spoke--leering at them with a
disagreeably familiar smile.
"All right, Missie. I booked the order true enough, but I tell you
straight I don't fancy it. Thinking it over, after the young
gentleman had bin here, I says to myself, 'It will as good as get me
sacked, it will, if I'm found out--and that's not exactly a cheering
sort of notion for a poor man.'"
"My cousin arranged with you to drive me to the opening of the Fair
for ten shillings--an order is an order, isn't it?"
"That's what he said, Miss, and I'm never one to overcharge,
especially a young lady like yourself; but it's so risky, I don't see
as how I can, for the money. 'Don't you have nothing to do with it,'
says my wife, 'or that there female up at the school-house will get
you sacked.'"
"Nonsense!" said Trina angrily. "Why, it is ridiculous to talk of
'sacking.' How could Miss Cockran do it? She has never employed
your cars for years--said you were impudent, or something--so you
won't even lose her custom."
The man's smile was not so affable now, and there was an angry glint
in his eyes, though his tone was still oily.
"You seem to know the ways of my business better than I do,
Missie--leastways, it's the first I've ever heard of being
impudent--but just you think of this now; I ain't out skylarking like
you and that young boy, if he belongs to your party, but earning of
my living--and I don't take no risks."
"How much do you want, and are you prepared to start at once? I must
be there by 10.15."
Trina looked impatiently at her wrist-watch in the moonlight, and the
man continued to smile, but with his hand half over his mouth, as
though to conceal what was almost a grin.
"Not to disappoint a young lady, Missie, I'd go at--say, thirty
shillings, I would."
They fixed it finally at a pound--Trina stamping angrily on the step
as she concluded, saying:
"Well, be quick, can't you? I don't want to waste the whole evening."
He vanished, and as her glance fell on Sally, she frowned--no longer
amused by her companion's ragamuffin appearance.
"Why, you look worse and worse," she said petulantly. "You ought to
be picking up pennies on a London kerb."
"I shall do all right for a Fair, then, shan't I?"
"Yes--but not for a dance--and that's what I'm really going to."
"Well, I'm not. I expect I'll trot back, after I have had enough of
the Fair. I said I probably should, so you needn't worry."
Sally saw the elder girl was ashamed of her, and felt hot and
angry--especially at the look of relief with which her suggestion was
received.
"I daresay that would be best. You'll be able to get up the wall by
the rope, and the rest is quite easy."
At this moment the car rattled into view. It was very dusty and
smelly, and took a great deal of winding up before it consented to
crawl away along the road towards the heath. By the time it arrived,
Trina, who glanced at her wrist-watch whenever a patch of moonlight
allowed, was in a state of exasperated nerves with both driver and
car, while Sally was secretly wishing herself back in bed.
This was not at all the joyous adventure she had imagined as she lay
waiting for the clock to strike.
CHAPTER THE TWELFTH
SALLY AT THE FAIR
The taxi pulled up on the outskirts of a large crowd, chiefly
composed of men and boys. Sally, as she put her head out of the
window, could see their dark figures outlined against a row of
flaring lights.
The Fair was held in a field, surrounded on three sides by a thick
hedge, on the other, by a canvas wall, eight or nine feet high. From
inside rose the droning jangle of merry-go-rounds and the raucous
voices of showmen and hawkers.
"Walk up, ladies! Walk up, gentlemen! Don't miss the most
celebrated moving picture of the age," etc., etc.
Entranced by the interest of the scene before her, the girl stood as
she had alighted from the car, and did not even notice it drive off,
nor that her companion, after calling to her sharply, had moved away
alone. When the jerk of someone's elbow in her ribs woke her at last
from her dream of contemplation, it was to find herself engulfed in a
group of Parchester rowdies, who were fighting their way towards the
turnstile. Here, a negro with a red nose, and spots of white paint
on his cheeks and forehead, stood beating a drum.
Nearly swept off her feet, Sally was thankful when she arrived
inside; but her heart sank, as she saw no sign of Trina Morrison,
who, she had fully imagined, would be waiting for her there.
"She knows I can take care of myself--and, of course, I can."
This was the first explanation she offered herself, cleverly turning
neglect into a compliment; but it did not completely satisfy her
judgment all the same. Rather a voice in another part of her brain
kept whispering:
"It was beastly of her not to wait--I shall tell her so." But when,
after a few minutes' desultory staring at the booths, she came upon
Trina and her friends, she did not do so. Instead, she hung back in
the shadow of a tent, overcome by shame as she realised the contrast
between herself and this group of civilised merry-makers.
Girls in evening dresses, with light cloaks trimmed with fur; young
men in black suits, with starched white shirt-fronts, and shining
hair plastered across their foreheads--such were Trina's friends:
while she, shock-headed and freckled, in her rough jersey, gym.
knickers and torn stockings, belonged obviously to the little group
of ragamuffin boys who were trying to insert their heads under the
flaps of tents, or secure a ride on the merry-go-rounds for nothing.
At school, Sally had thought her costume a joke. Peter had laughed
at it too, when she first saw her in the road, though later, when
waiting outside the Black Bull, she had frowned--Peter's moods were
dreadfully uncertain. It would be horrible if she, Sally, were to
step out and join the group, and then her friend were merely to stare
at her, and say something uncomfortable in her cool drawl, that would
make them all laugh.
"Stuck-up toads! I hate the lot of them!" the girl muttered,
clenching her fists as she watched them throwing Houp-la rings. It
seemed to her that Austin, as he handed the rings to his cousin, was
staring beyond her mockingly, recognising the unwanted guest, but
determined to cut such a disreputable-looking waif, at all costs.
In reality, Sally knew that he could not possibly distinguish her, at
the distance she stood, from amongst the boys who leaped and screamed
around her, in and out of the shadows made by the tents and booths;
but the true soreness lay in the thought that Peter had probably
forgotten to mention her at all, so that none of her companions was
prepared either to welcome or to scorn her.
"I don't care--not a scrap!"
With the shrug of her shoulders that had often exasperated Mrs.
Musgrave as the answer to a snub, Sally strolled away from the
Houp-la. It was a silly game, she decided, that only won for the
successful hideous china vases and trumpery brooches; she would go,
instead, to a moving picture show.
The flaring lights on the platform outside one large tent showed
parties of Japanese contortionists, black cats, and men struggling in
mines, while a hideous bat, of monster size, flapped over their heads.
Sally was so thrilled by the bat that, for the moment, she forgot
Trina, and even the school. It was fun to be a boy out on an
adventure, and to wriggle her way through the crowd, with exasperated
women tapping her on the head for her impudence, and old men abusing
her as she trod on their toes. It was not such fun, however, when,
nearing the entrance, she became wedged, just below the platform,
between a very stout woman and a bony soldier, who dug his elbows
almost into the back of her neck.
The soldier's companion had a blue and yellow tickler, and thought it
a great joke that the little crop-headed boy in front objected to
having his face washed with it, and lost his temper when she
persisted.
"Shut up!" said Sally fiercely.
To which the woman replied with a cheerful wink at her neighbours:
"None of your lip, Charlie, my boy, or my pal there will fetch you
one on the mug--see if he don't."
"S'truth I will," said the soldier, with an air of great ferocity.
"I'll spoil your beauty for you--there's not a few noses as I've laid
flat with their faces, in my time."
And he dug with his elbows so sharply into Sally's neck that she
became alarmed. After this, she endured the tickler in silence until
they reached the foot of the steps up to the platform. It was as she
struggled up there towards the tent doorway, past the man with the
drum, that she discovered she had no money: someone in the crowd had
picked her pocket.
"Pocket picked, you young varmint? You mean you'd like to wriggle in
for nothing--I know your kind," said the man at the door, scowling,
as a wave of people threw Sally almost on top of him, and he rose and
thrust her roughly back.
Had not a clown, who had been turning somersaults on the platform to
the accompaniment of the drum, caught her arm and pulled her into
safety beside him, she would have fallen backwards down the steps,
and probably have been trodden underfoot by those still fighting
their way up.
The very thought made Sally feel sick, but it evidently struck the
clown as a good joke, for he asked her loudly if she knew what
happened to the grasshopper who chose to cross the road in front of a
steam engine.
"It's not my fault--let me go," she said angrily. "I'm off home."
The clown, instead, picked her up and swung her to and fro in the air
while he executed a clog dance.
"By, Baby Bunting," he chanted, while the man with the drum, and the
Columbine, who stood on either side of him, laughed at this
unrehearsed exhibition till the tears ran down their faces.
The humiliation was dreadful. Sally could not imagine how she would
ever survive it if Trina and her party were to recognise her in such
a position; but when at last the stream of people entering the tent
had ceased, she was thankful, as she tore herself from the clown's
grasp, that there was at least no sign of them.
Her one desire now was to get back to the school as quickly as she
could. Keeping to the shadows, she made her way to the entrance, and
with a sigh of relief found herself in a few minutes on the patch of
heath outside.
Here, as she paused, uncertain in the darkness which way to turn, she
was startled by a yelp of pain, and a puppy came running towards her.
It was a mongrel, mainly rough-haired terrier, with ridiculously long
ears and a tufted tail. One of the ears was bloodstained, and the
tail had a can tied to it, filled with stones.
"You poor little thing," said Sally, who loved animals; and she drew
it close, while she bent down and began to untie the string.
"Garn!--leave it alone, can't yer? We are going a-hunting with
it"--broke in an angry voice, and a big lad of fifteen, followed by a
lot of smaller boys, crowded round her threateningly.
Sally finished untying the string, and looked up. She was trembling
nearly as much as the dog, but she said quietly:
"No--you shan't do it any more. He is only a puppy--how can you be
so cruel?"
"Quite the little gentleman," sneered one of them, in mock admiration
of Sally's voice; while a boy about her own age came up to her, and,
doubling his fists, brought one nearly under her nose.
"Cruel! What d' yer mean? 'e's my pup. Can't I drown 'im or tease
'im, if I likes?"
The others laughed and jeered, as, involuntarily, the girl drew back.
There were shouts of:
"Go it, Stan!--You're the bruiser. Give the little cad a black eye."
Sally went very pale. She had boxed a little with her brothers, but
this was quite a different proposition.
"Let him go, please," she faltered. "He is so frightened."
"Scared as you," retorted Stan briefly. "I'll tie the can on to you
as well as 'im, if you don't clear off." And he bent to seize the
puppy by its rope collar.
Sally could feel the terrier tremble against her legs, and as she
heard it yelp in sudden pain, her fear vanished, and only burning
anger remained. Leaning across the dog, she hit Stan hard on his
nose, sending him reeling backwards in surprise.
"Take that, you cowardly brute," she said.
In an instant a ring was formed, and Sally found she had partisans as
well as enemies. There was an encouraging shout of "Go it, Carrots!"
as she warded off a slashing blow from Stan and landed one herself on
his jaw; but this was the utmost of her triumph. What the girl knew
of boxing was not enough to defend her from a windmill attack of arms
and legs that admitted kicking and stamping amongst its tactics.
But for the timely appearance of a policeman, attracted from the
gateway by the noise, she would have fared badly indeed. As it was,
when the rest had fled, and he laid his hand on her shoulder, one eye
was already closed, while she stood trying to stem with bleeding
knuckles the tears that flowed from the other.
"Silly young hass, to start fighting at your age," said the policeman
reprovingly, but with good-natured sympathy.
"'Ome you go now, sonny, and tell your ma to put raw beef on it.
That's the stuff."
"The puppy?" gasped Sally, between her tears. "I tried to save
him--the brutes were hurting him."
"There weren't no sign of a puppy as I came up, so I guess he legged
it all right," said the man, glancing at her curiously; then:
"Where's your 'ome, sonny?"
Sally's voice was strangely unlike that of the other urchins, whose
pranks had made his evening duty at the Fair a burden; and a
suspicion began to dawn that she might belong to a preparatory school
in Parchester. This was more than confirmed, when "sonny," twisting
out of his grasp, made off without returning any answer.
The policeman pursued for a few yards, but he was "fat and scant of
breath," the heath had numberless gorse bushes to act as cover and
the night was very dark.
[Illustration: THE POLICEMAN PURSUED FOR A FEW YARDS]
"Drat the young brute!" he muttered at last, and stalked back towards
the entrance of the Fair, with an air of dignified contempt, as
though the quarry he had pursued was quite beneath his notice.
In the meantime "the young brute," bleeding from her eye and
knuckles, lay and panted between two bushes, stifling her sobs as
well as she could, until she was sure that the search after her had
ceased. Ignominious as it must be in any case to return to Seascape
House a figure of dirt and fun, it would have been beyond all words
of horror to arrive in charge of a policeman. Cecilia had prophesied
that her career would end in a reformatory; and Sally had a secret
dread that this might indeed be her fate if once the police began to
take an interest in her adventures.