Diana's Foundling
There was very little doubt in the minds of Miss Todd and of other
mistresses at Pendlemere Abbey that Diana was a spoilt child. Her
parents, far away in Paris, made up for their enforced absence by
sending her a larger assortment of presents than usually falls to the
lot of a schoolgirl. She had practically everything that she could want,
and a great many things beside. There was one subject, however, upon
which she had coaxed her father for a long time. In every letter she had
written lately she had assured him that life was not liveable in the
summer term without a pony. Diana had a passion for horses. She had
ridden much in America, and her ideal of happiness was to be on
ponyback. She was occasionally allowed to mount Baron, but, as Miss Todd
would not permit her to take him into the lanes alone, she had to
confine her gallops to the paddock, which she considered very poor
sport. She thought the matter over till she evolved an idea; then she
confided it to Miss Carr. Miss Carr was also an enthusiast about horses,
and was secretly longing to ride Baron. Diana's scheme was that she
should ask her father to allow her to hire a pony for the rest of the
term, have it stabled at the farm near, and go with Miss Carr for rides.
When she made up her mind to a thing she was apt to press the subject
hotly. A series of such very urgent letters went to Paris that Mr.
Hewlitt yielded, and wrote to Miss Todd asking her to be so kind as to
arrange the matter. Very fortunately for Diana the idea appealed to Miss
Todd; she wished to encourage riding amongst her girls, and was quite
willing to allow the experiment to be tried. She commissioned Mr.
Greenhalgh, a neighbouring farmer, to procure a suitable mount for a
young lady of fourteen, and to take charge of it in his stable. Diana
had to wait a week, in great impatience, while he made enquiries and
interviewed horse-dealers; then one red-letter afternoon she was taken
by Miss Todd to the farm, and introduced to the prettiest possible
little white pony. "Lady" was getting on in years, but still had some
spirit left in her, and she was accustomed to the saddle. Her owner,
considering that she needed a rest, was glad to hire her out for such
light work. Diana flung her arms round the pony's neck, and at once
began the process of making love to her, cementing the new friendship
with several lumps of sugar which she had brought in her pocket.
Then began a series of perfectly delightful rides. Miss Carr and Diana
would start out after tea, and explore all the bridle-roads in the
neighbourhood. Sometimes they would go up on the moors, and enjoy a
canter over the soft grass, or ride alongside the beautiful little lakes
that lay like gems among the hills. Diana did not much mind where they
went, so long as she could be upon Lady's back. Her new possession
naturally aroused wild longing in the breasts of a considerable number
of her schoolfellows. If it had been possible Miss Todd would have
arranged for a riding-master to bring horses to Pendlemere and give
lessons to some of the girls, but matters had not yet adjusted
themselves sufficiently after the war for such an ambitious scheme as
that, so she did the next best thing, hired a second pony, and sent
certain girls, whose parents wished them to learn riding, out in relays.
These elect few were regarded as favourites of fortune, but they were
obliged to take their luck in turns. They could only have one ride a
week each, and that was not nearly enough to content them. They wanted
at least two.
"If Miss Todd could hire another pony," sighed Wendy, "that would mean
we each got in a second lesson a week."
"Mr. Greenhalgh has tried, and says he can't hear of one anywhere,"
lamented Tattie. "Horses are scarce since the war, and ponies seem
particularly wanted in the summer. It's very difficult to get
riding-ponies."
"Glad I secured Lady," chuckled Diana.
"I think it's very mean of you to keep Lady all to yourself," retorted
Sadie, airing a grievance. "Why can't you let her be the second school
pony, and take your turn with the rest of us? It would be far fairer."
"Give up Lady? Well, I like that! Coolest idea I've ever heard! Why, I
thought of the whole thing, and wrote to Dad, and she was hired
specially for me. _Your_ riding lessons were only a copy of my idea. Get
a third pony if you can, but I guess I'm not going to give up Lady to
anybody. Why should I? Dad said she was to be mine."
"It's not sporty of you, though," grumbled Sadie. "You know perfectly
well we _can't_ get a third pony, and everybody in the school is saying
how hard it is for you to monopolize one entirely to yourself. There are
six other girls who'd be glad to learn riding if they could get a
mount."
"Then let them write home to their fathers to send them ponies."
"As if they could! But their fathers would let them take lessons if
there were a school pony for them. I know that for a fact."
"Well, they shan't have mine, at any rate," rapped out Diana defiantly.
"You just needn't think it, so there!"
One afternoon it was Wendy's turn for the school pony. She and Diana and
Miss Carr rode away together down the road to Chapelrigg. It was a
gloriously fine day. Wild roses starred the hedgerows, and the beautiful
blue speedwell bordered the lanes. Larks were singing, and, though the
cuckoo had changed his tune, blackbirds still fluted in the coppices.
They had come out on an errand--not a particularly romantic one, as it
happened, only to pay a bill for Miss Todd at a farm-house a few miles
away. If the errand was prosaic the farm and its surroundings looked
attractive; it stood on a hill with a beautiful group of birch-trees
behind it, and a small stream came rippling down at the bottom of the
garden. The path from the high road was blocked by a cart left standing
with a load of straw, so it would be impossible to ride the horses up to
the door. The three riders dismounted, and Miss Carr, tying Baron to the
fence, said she would walk up the lane and pay the bill while the girls
waited for her in the road. Allowing Lady and Topsy to crop the grass in
the hedge bottom, Diana and Wendy sat on the bank lazily enjoying
themselves. It was very pleasant that afternoon to be alive. In that
northern district although summer came late she made up for it by the
extreme beauty with which she clothed the landscape; the view from the
hill-side was like one of Turner's pictures.
As the girls sat chatting, watching the ponies, and idly plucking
flowers, they heard footsteps coming along the road, and presently a
woman carrying a baby appeared round the corner. She was young and dark
and gipsy-looking, and wore large ear-rings and a red cotton
handkerchief knotted loosely round her brown throat. She stopped at the
sight of Diana and Wendy and the ponies, and seemed to consider a
moment. Then she walked boldly up to them, looked keenly in their faces,
and evidently chose Diana.
"Could you do me a kindness, miss?" she asked. "I've to go up to the
farm for a basket. I don't want to carry the baby with me; she's so
heavy. If I leave her here on the grass would you keep an eye on her
till I come back? I shan't be gone five minutes."
Now Diana was fond of babies, and the little dark-eyed specimen, wrapped
up in the plaid shawl, was pretty and attractive and fairly clean. For
answer she held out her arms, received baby, shawl, and feeding-bottle
on to her knee, and constituted herself temporary nurse.
"She'll be good till I come back," said the woman, turning up the lane
that led to the farm.
The small person with the brown eyes was probably accustomed to be
handed about. She did not jib at strangers, as might have been expected,
but accepted the situation quite amiably. She gurgled in response to
Diana's advances, and allowed herself to be amused. Perhaps the vicinity
of horses was familiar to her, and she felt at home. Diana, hugging her
on her knee, freed her from the folds of the shawl and allowed her to
kick happily. She was certainly a fascinating little mortal.
In the course of about ten minutes Miss Carr, who had been having a
chat at the farm about gardening prospects, returned leisurely down the
lane, and was electrified to find Diana sitting by the roadside nursing
a baby.
"I didn't see any gipsy woman come up to the farm," she said, in answer
to the girls' explanations. "You'd better go, Wendy, and see if you can
find her, and tell her to come at once and fetch her baby."
So Wendy went up the lane to the farm, and asked at the front door and
the back door, and looked round the stack-yard and the buildings, but
there was never a trace of the gipsy girl. A little boy playing by the
pond, however, declared that he had seen a woman crossing the field and
climbing over the fence on to the road. Wendy returned with this report.
Miss Carr looked annoyed.
"We must go along the road, then, and follow her. We can't wait here
till she chooses to come back."
So Diana carried the baby, and Wendy led Lady and Topsy, and Miss Carr,
with an anxious wrinkle between her eyebrows, followed with Baron in the
direction that the small boy had pointed out. They walked a mile, and
enquired at cottages and from passers-by, and from men working in the
fields, but nobody had seen the gipsy woman. Then they went back to the
trysting-place to see if she had returned, but she was not there. They
asked again at the farm, and went back to the cottages, and Miss Carr
begged to leave the baby there, because its mother would be sure to
enquire for it and find it. The occupants of the cottages, however,
shook their heads, and were not at all prepared to accept the
responsibility. Neither were the people at the farm. They utterly
refused to take it in. Then Diana realized that it is one thing to offer
to nurse a baby, and quite another to get rid of it again. What were
they to do?
"We can't dump the poor mite down by the roadside and leave it," said
Miss Carr distractedly. "Whatever _can_ have become of its mother?"
No answer was forthcoming to her question, and matters were urgent. She
decided that the only thing to be done was to take the baby with them to
Pendlemere, leaving messages at the farm and the cottages for the mother
to follow on and claim it. Naturally it made a great sensation in the
school when Diana arrived holding her foundling in her arms. Miss Carr
explained at full length to Miss Todd, who was utterly aghast, but
consented to take in the small stranger till it was claimed. Miss
Chadwick, who had studied hygiene at the Agricultural College, and had
once assisted at a creche, constituted herself head nurse, mixed a
bottle, and left Miss Ormrod to feed the fowls while she sat in a
rocking-chair and soothed the foundling to sleep.
"Surely the mother'll turn up before dark," she said.
But nobody turned up, and Miss Chadwick, who had had to guess at the
baby's age and requirements, and had mixed too strong a bottle, spent a
wakeful night patting her small guest on the back and endeavouring to
still her wails. Next morning Miss Todd reported the matter at the
police station, enquiries were made, and it was ascertained that a girl
answering to the description given had been in the company of a band of
hawkers, but had disappeared and left no trace of her whereabouts. The
baby was not hers, but belonged to a woman who had just been arrested on
a serious charge and taken to Glenbury jail; the hawkers with whom she
had associated disclaimed all responsibility for the child.
"The only thing to be done is to send it to the Union," said the police
sergeant.
But by that time the school in general, and Diana in particular, had
fallen in love with the poor little baby. They raged at the idea of
sending it to the workhouse. They had borrowed clothes for it; and,
nicely bathed and dressed and recovered from its fit of indigestion, it
looked a sweet thing, and was ready to make friends with anybody and
everybody.
"Bless her, she _shan't_ go the workhouse!" declared Diana, kissing the
small fist that clung round her finger.
There was a wild idea among the girls that the foundling might be kept
as a "school baby".
"We're taught gardening, and poultry-keeping, and bee-keeping," said
Wendy quite seriously, "so why not the care of children? We could learn
to bathe her, and mix her bottle, and do heaps of things for her."
Miss Todd, however, thought otherwise. Theoretical hygiene of infants
was all very well as part of the curriculum, but the practical side of
it was disturbing to the school. Miss Chadwick had other duties besides
that of nursing a baby. Rows of plants needed attention, and young
chickens claimed her care.
"If the mother gets a heavy sentence," said Miss Todd, "I think the
child would be received into a 'Home for Destitute Children'. In the
meantime----"
"_Not_ the workhouse!" pleaded Diana. "Isn't there anybody in the
village who'd take her in?"
"Mrs. Jones would have her, but she would charge twelve and sixpence a
week; nobody will take in a baby for less now."
"What's that in dollars? About three, isn't it? Dad will fix that up
easily. I'll write to him to-night. It's as good as settled."
"Diana," said Miss Todd emphatically, "I shall _not_ allow you to write
to your father and ask him for anything more. If you care to give up
your pocket-money for the baby's sake that's another matter; but you're
getting into a bad habit of expecting your father to pay for every whim
that comes into your head. It's cheap charity to suggest something
that's to cost _you_ nothing. You want to have all the credit of the
generosity at your father's expense."
Diana flushed up to her hair, and down over her neck.
"Do you think me a slacker?" she asked.
"Yes; in this respect I certainly do. If you were prepared to deny
yourself anything it would be different, but you're not. You like to
call the child _your_ foundling, but personally you've done nothing for
her. It's Miss Chadwick who's had the wakeful nights."
Diana did not urge in self-defence that she would willingly have taken
the baby to bed with her if she had been allowed; she knew it was
useless to offer arguments or excuses. She was busy thinking. Miss
Todd's reproaches stung her like a whip. She would let the school see
that she was not the pampered, spoilt darling that they imagined. On
that score she was determined. Sacrifices! She was quite prepared to
make sacrifices if they were necessary. Nobody should again have the
chance of telling her that she did her generosity at other people's
expense. An idea swept through her mind, and she set her teeth.
"Does it cost more than twelve and six a week to keep Lady?" she asked.
"Considerably more; though I don't suppose you've ever concerned
yourself about the cost," returned Miss Todd sarcastically.
"Might I hand Lady over to the school for the rest of the term, then,
and pay for the baby instead? I'd square it up with Father. He wouldn't
mind about the riding when I explained."
Miss Todd looked Diana squarely in the face. Pupil and mistress met each
other's eyes. The Principal's voice softened when she spoke.
"Yes; if you like to do this, Diana, I could arrange it. We want another
school pony. You could take your turn with Lady once a week, the same as
the other girls. By the end of the term we should know whether the
'Home' would receive the baby. Meantime, Mrs. Jones would take good care
of her."
"Then I guess it's fixed," said Diana rather hoarsely.