THE GIRLS AT PRESTON MANOR.
The Wyndhams were out in the grounds when Anne Dodd’s handsome motor-car
was seen whirling down the avenue.
Molly uttered an exclamation. “Dear me, who can be coming now?” she
thought.
Jessie, however, who was far sharper than her sister, saw the colour of
the car, and said, in a disgusted voice, “Why, if that isn’t the Dodds’
car! Well, really, I never knew anything so cheeky! They have certainly
not lost time.”
“Did you invite them to come, Jess?” asked Molly.
“Oh, in a kind of general way,” replied Jessie. “I simply said that I
knew mother would be glad to see them at Preston Manor during the
holidays.”
“But what can you expect from those sort of people?” here interrupted
Kitty, who, in her handsome crimson frock and smart little squirrel-cap
and jacket, all of which she owed to the Dodds, was standing by. “Those
kind of people haven’t the slightest idea how to behave themselves. Give
them an inch and they take an ell.”
[Illustration: “GLORY BE!” ANSWERED PEGGY; “YOU ASK KITTY IF SHE’D LIKE
ME TO FINISH THAT SENTENCE.”—_Page 243._]
“Well, I suppose you are glad that one of the Dodds is coming,” said
Peggy, who was also walking up and down before the drawing-room windows,
and wondering eagerly when she could escape to the poultry-yard. “They
are your friends, you know,” she added, “however low down you may
consider them. Oh, wurra, then,” she continued, “and I like them, too;
that Grace isn’t half bad, although——” She stopped and fixed her bright
eyes on Kitty.
Kitty turned first red and then white. Oh how she hated Peggy Desmond!
“What were you going to say, Peggy?” asked Jessie, who saw that Kitty
was annoyed; “you ought to finish your sentences, you know.”
“Glory be!” answered Peggy; “you ask Kitty if she’d like me to finish
_that_ sentence, bedad.”
“Don’t bother about her,” was Kitty’s indignant remark. She put a hand
through Jessie’s and dragged her along. “Oh,” she said, “I know it’s
wicked of me, but I almost hate your cousin.”
“And I tell you she’s not my cousin, Kitty.”
But Kitty was sharp enough; she was not going to be under the thumb of
any one. She had got her _entrée_ into Preston Manor, and now she meant
to make the best of it. Hitherto she had been very subservient to Jessie
Wyndham; but now she might as well get the girl a little bit under her
power. Only a trifle, of course, but still it must be done.
“All I can say is this,” Kitty remarked now, “that whether Peggy is your
cousin or not matters very little—less than nothing, in fact—when she’s
so fussed over by your father. Did you see the welcome he gave her last
night? Why, he took her in his arms and kissed her over and over, and
inquired how she was—oh in such a loving voice! And then he—after
dinner, you know—he took Peggy away with him into his smoking-room, and
I heard them chattering like a pair of magpies and laughing like
anything.”
“But how could you hear if you weren’t in the room?” said Jessie.
Kitty coloured faintly. “I hope I didn’t do wrong,” she said; “but I
couldn’t sleep. I suppose I was too excited at coming to this heavenly
place, so I thought I’d go down to the library and find a book, in order
to read it to put me asleep, and the door of the smoking-room was a
little open; that’s how I heard them laughing. They were talking about
me, too, for I heard the word Kitty quite distinctly; but I’m far too
honourable to listen, of course.”
“Good gracious!” exclaimed Jessie, “_of course_, you’re too honourable
to eavesdrop, Kitty; do you think if you did such a thing you’d be
allowed to come here? But it was very funny about the smoking-room door
being open, for daddy always shuts it, as mother can’t bear the smell of
smoke.”
“Well, it was open,” said Kitty; “you don’t suppose I opened it?”
“Of course I don’t, Kitty.”
“Well, then, I think you needn’t speak to me in that tone; it isn’t very
pleasant for me; and if you have any suspicions I’d better go to poor
auntie; she’s breaking her heart about me; she _was_ so looking forward
to having me with her for Christmas.”
“Kitty, I don’t suspect you of anything. Of course the door was open,
because you say so; but you really have a funny way of contradicting
yourself, doubtless without meaning it, for when mother sent you an
invitation to spend Christmas here, and I said that I was afraid your
aunt would be disappointed, you said that, on the contrary, it would be
the greatest possible godsend and relief to her, as she was going to
visit some titled friends in the north who had forgotten to give you an
invitation. You ought to remember these things, Kitty, for in this house
we _always_ say what we mean. Father and mother wouldn’t allow anything
else.”
“Then, however do you get on with the Irish girl?”
“Get on with her!” cried Jessie. “We don’t get on with her, at least I
don’t; but if she has a fault it is that she is too straight. She’s the
opposite to you in every way, Kitty.”
Just then one of the footmen appeared. “If you please, miss,” he said to
Jessie, “Miss Dodd has called from Hillside, and she hopes it isn’t too
early, but she particularly wants to see Miss Merrydew for a few
minutes.”
“Oh, then, she didn’t call on us,” said Jessie. “We’ll see her, of
course, in a minute or two; but you had better have a chat with her
first, Kit. I suppose it’s one of your innumerable secrets that you and
she are always confabbing over.”
“I’ve shown Miss Dodd into the blue drawing-room,” said the servant.
Kitty, feeling extremely cross, shook out her crimson skirts, tossed
back her mane of black hair, and walked in the direction of the blue
drawing-room. It was a large room facing north, a beautiful room in
summer, because it opened onto a great expanse of flower-garden; but
dreary at this time of year, notwithstanding the fact that it was heated
with hot pipes.
Anne was standing, feeling very restless and nervous, by one of the
windows. She knew she ought to have asked for one of the Wyndhams as
well as Kitty, but in her agitation had forgotten this until it was too
late. She glanced apprehensively round the room; she was accustomed to
wealth and show, and this room bore traces of wealth; but there was no
attempt at show; it was essentially quiet, restful, and refined. The
paper on the walls was of a delicate shade of blue, the paint one or two
shades darker. There was one lovely landscape over the mantelpiece, and
no other picture in the room; but that landscape was a gem, done by one
of our greatest landscape painters, and was worth thousands of pounds.
Anne knew nothing about art, but the whole effect of the room depressed
her. She knew she could never live up to such a room.
Just then the door was opened and Kitty flashed in; wearing the finery
which Anne had bought for her, she looked at once radiant and very
cross. “Now, what have you come about? Don’t you know you oughtn’t to do
it?”
“Oughtn’t to do what?” asked Anne.
“To come here like this the first morning of the holidays, although you
were asked in a kind of way.”
“Oh, don’t scold me, Kitty; I’ve come about you, to save you. After all,
it doesn’t matter so vitally to Grace and me. At the worst we’ll only
get a bad scolding; but you—it will ruin you, Kitty, and it must be
stopped.”
“What _are_ you talking about, Anne? Oh dear!”
But just then the door was opened, and Molly, looking very pretty and
sweet, entered.
“Mother sends her compliments to you, Anne, and hopes now that you have
come that you’ll stay to lunch. Mother is sorry she is not down to
receive you; but she seldom comes down until lunch-time. Would you like
to come round and see the greenhouses? We have some lovely orchids in
bloom.”
“Yes, of course, you’d like that,” said Kitty. She was really now on
thorns to be alone with Anne, but knew better than to show her fear. The
three girls went from one orchid-house to another, and by-and-by the
great luncheon-bell rang, and Anne was taken upstairs by Molly in order
to wash her hands and brush her hair. Molly acted the part of a very
charming little hostess, and Kitty could not get a word alone with Anne.
She was inclined to tear her hair, her brain was in a perfect whirl.
Molly and Jessie were under the impression that they were doing their
guest a great kindness by ridding her of Anne’s society, and Anne
herself was dimly wondering how she could accomplish the object of her
visit. Kitty, however, was not The Imp for nothing. Imps can squeeze
their way into round and square holes alike.
As lunch was drawing to an end, Kitty looked up suddenly. “Oh Molly,”
she said, “I’ve got such a good idea!”
“What is that?” asked Molly.
“Well, you know the charades that we are to act on Christmas Eve in the
hall for the benefit of the servants. I can drive into Downton with Anne
when she’s going back, and choose some bright-coloured cheap sort of
stuffs to make up for our costumes. If you will trust me with a pound or
so I can make the money go a long way, and we ought to begin to-night,
if we are to have anything effective.”
“But how are you to get back from Downton?” inquired Molly, “for I’m
ever so sorry, but all our carriages will be out this afternoon. Mother
has to pay calls, and she wants us both to go with her, and the
motor-car and the omnibus are going to the train to meet our cousins,
the Franklins and the Arbuthnots.”
Kitty did not know anything about these arrivals.
Anne now came to her aid. “I can have the use of the car for the greater
part of the day,” she said, “so I can drive you back from Downton to the
lodge-gates, after you have made your purchases, Kitty.”
“How kind of you, Miss Dodd!” said Mrs. Wyndham, in her stately tones.
“Yes, that would be a real help. I am very much obliged.” She spoke
cordially to the girl, who, plain as she was, rather took her fancy.
Thus it came to pass that Kitty and Anne found themselves alone.
“Kitty, you are clever!” exclaimed Anne, as the smooth-rolling car took
them quickly over the king’s highway. “I was puzzling my brains to know
how I could possibly manage to be alone with you; of course, I came over
for no other purpose. Even I know that it was a little forward, a little
pushing of me to call at the Wyndhams’ to-day; but there was no help for
it. I had to see you, and alone. Oh Kitty, you are clever! I believe if
any one in the world can get us all out of this scrape, you are the
girl.”
Kitty gave a profound sigh. “Sometimes,” she said—a queer, unexpected
look of pathos visiting her handsome little face—“sometimes,” she
continued, “I almost wish I were not so clever. I tell you what it is,
Anne, it’s an awful mistake for a poor girl, a poor girl like me, to be
in a school with rich girls like most of the rest of you.”
“Oh but a lot of us aren’t rich,” interrupted Anne. “Priscilla, I know,
isn’t, and I don’t think Rufa is, and Hannah is poor, and so—so is
Sophy.”
“Don’t talk to me about either Hannah or Sophy; they’re a pair of cads,
both of them.”
“I don’t think so,” faltered Anne; “I think, on the contrary, they’re
very courageous.”
“Courageous!” echoed Kitty. “I wonder if you will believe in their
courage when you feel yourself in that scrape which sooner or later must
happen? But, as I said, I am often sorry that I am clever; I should not
have done half the things I have done but for my cleverness. Mother
wasn’t a bit like that. I don’t remember her very well, but I have a few
of the letters which she left, not to me but to father. Perhaps I take
after father; I never saw him, you know, but I do know one thing, and
that is that Auntie Gloriana is very like me, only not a quarter as
sharp and smart and knowing. Oh dear; oh dear! When a girl is handsome,
as I know I am, and is put in a school with a whole lot of rich
girls—for most of you are rather rich, whatever you may like to say to
the contrary—she is in a nest of temptation, nothing less. And then,
when I see, as I do see, how easily I can get the upper hand of you all,
why, I just _get_ the upper hand, and there I am. But now, my dear Anne,
what is the mystery? It must be pretty bad or you wouldn’t have come
tootling along here this morning.”
“It is pretty bad. You know Miss Weston?”
“The dressmaker? Rather. That reminds me that I really think, after a
time, we ought to go to a more stylish person. I was looking last night
at Mrs. Wyndham’s dress, and though, of course, what suits an elderly
lady is not suitable for a schoolgirl; nevertheless there is a cut about
them that Miss Weston, with all her trying, could never aspire to. Yes,
I really do think we ought to go to a better class of dressmaker
by-and-by.”
“Kitty!” said Anne, “Kitty!”
“Oh my dear Anne, what a doleful note! Well, here’s Kitty, Kitty.”
“Don’t laugh at me, Kitty, for goodness’ sake! Do you really suppose
that Grace and I are always to dress you, to provide you with your smart
things?”
“I don’t know what you feel about it,” was Kitty’s rejoinder; “but for
the present I look upon you both as the people who clothe me. It’s very
funny, isn’t it?” Kitty gave a merry laugh. “And very nice too,” she
added; “and your father is doing a lot of good without knowing it.
What’s that verse in the Bible which says, ‘Let not your right hand know
what your left hand doeth.’ Well, that’s what your father is doing for
me.”
“Oh Kitty, I wish you wouldn’t talk like that! Do you know, it’s
dreadful!”
“Is it dreadful, poor little Anne, poor little Anne?” Kitty stroked
Anne’s arm as she spoke; but Anne pulled it away with almost violence.
“No,” she said, “I can’t stand it—I can’t, Kitty. I have something
dreadful to say to you, and I must say it. Do you know that father is
awfully angry about our account being so large at Miss Weston’s? Now you
know perfectly well that the account wouldn’t be large at all but for
you, Kitty. It’s that frock you’re wearing now, and the blue velvet with
the real lace—oh surely you might have done with imitation lace!—and
that primrose evening dress, and those two white muslins, besides lots
of odds and ends—those black silk stockings, for instance, and those
nice little shoes. Oh dear! oh dear! and that hat you have on your head
now, with that great big ostrich feather in it! It’s those things which
have run up the bill.”
“Very likely, my dear—very likely, but what of that?”
“Only this, Kitty, that father intends to see the items; he intends to
see: ‘One crimson cashmere dress, to Miss Katherine Merrydew; one blue
velvet dress with real lace, to Miss Katherine Merrydew,’ &c. And when
he sees those items, do you know what will happen?”
Kitty was very pale now, and very silent. She did not speak at all for a
minute.
Anne looked at her. “The letter with the items will arrive any day now,”
she continued. “What are we to say about Miss Katherine Merrydew?”
“I suppose you are too timid to tell your father that you made poor
little Kitty Merrydew a couple of trifling presents?”
“A couple of trifling presents, Kitty! Why, they have cost pounds and
pounds. That red dress that you are wearing came to over five pounds,
and the blue velvet to more than eight, and the—— Oh I can’t count them
all; but I know that the very few dresses we got last term came to
hardly anything, for we stinted ourselves in order to clothe you.”
“And didn’t I tell you, Anne—didn’t I tell both you and Grace—that you
were to be sure to make Miss Weston put ‘To account rendered.’ That
would make it so easy. What was the difficulty? Why didn’t you do it?”
“We did do it, Kitty—we did; but father saw the total, and he
immediately desired mother to write to Miss Weston and get the items
from her, and mother has written. And oh, oh, oh Kitty! what is to be
done?”
Kitty sat very quiet.
“I know quite well what will happen,” pursued Anne. “It will be dreadful
for us; but it will be ten times worse for you, poor Kitty, because, for
some extraordinary reason, father has taken a great dislike to you. What
did you do to turn him against you, Kitty? Why, this time last year he’d
have given you those frocks and not said a word, and he’d have given you
a lot more, and he’d have invited you to spend all the holidays with us.
What have you done to turn him?”
“Never mind,” said Kitty.
“You know what you have done?”
“I guess it.”
“Kitty, won’t you tell me?”
“No, no; you had much better not know. He has never told you, has he?”
“No, he hasn’t, and he hasn’t told mother either. We both asked mother
last night, and she says she hasn’t the least idea, not the slightest.
We can’t make out what it is; we can’t make out what is the matter.”
Kitty breathed a short, sharp sigh of relief.
“And,” continued Anne; “oh dear! we’re nearly in the town now, and we
haven’t done anything at all yet. I tell you what I have done, Kitty, I
tell you what I have done, dear. I am sorry for you; I am sorry from the
very bottom of my heart, and this morning I sent a telegram to Miss
Weston telling her on no account to forward the items until she heard
from me again.”
“Did you really do that for me, Anne? Well, you are a brick!” Kitty bent
forward and suddenly kissed her companion. “I have despised you
sometimes, Anne; but you are a brick,” she repeated. “That was a very,
very good thing to do—I—that helps me; yes, that helps me.”
“Well, I wish you’d tell me how it will help you, for, of course, if
Miss Weston doesn’t send the bill in at once father will write a stormy
letter himself. You know one of his fads is every last day of the year
to look round at us all and say, ‘Here I am, and I don’t owe a farthing
to any one in the wide world.’ He prides himself on that; he’d no more
allow Miss Weston’s bill to remain unpaid before the New Year than he’d
fly. It will be Christmas Day in three days from now, and you know how
quickly New Year will come round. We have no time to lose, and father is
harping and harping on the matter. He spoke to us both about it before
we were five minutes in the house. Oh Kitty, what is to be done?”
“Suppose nothing is done, what will happen?” said Kitty.
“Well, I tell you what will happen. Father will go straight to see Mrs.
Fleming.”
“But isn’t Mrs. Fleming away?”
“You know she’s not; she’s staying at The Red Gables the whole of these
holidays to watch the building of the new wing. Father will go and see
her, and he will tell about you, and you will be expelled. Oh Kitty,
Kitty, it is true! There’s a feeling against you in the school. I can’t
really make out why, but there is; and, Kitty, I don’t believe Mrs.
Fleming would be very sorry to expel you.”
“I dare say not,” said Kitty. Her hand trembled a little. After a minute
she said, “Can we go to the post-office when we get to Downton?”
“Why, of course.”
“I want to write to Miss Weston, and I want to post the letter, and when
the reply comes, will you and Grace promise me one thing?”
“What is that?”
“To make no remark of any sort. You will see when the account comes in
what I have done, and you’re not to make any comment. It is the only
thing to be done; if you do anything else I’ll tell about the black silk
stockings. You know what I mean.”
“Oh, you couldn’t—you couldn’t!” said Anne, turning crimson.
“My dear, when I am desperate I can and will. A person who is drowning
catches at straws, and if I am expelled from The Red Gables it is much
the same as if I were drowned. There will be no mercy in me towards you
unless you show mercy to me now.”
“Kitty, you can’t accuse us of not showing mercy. I’m sure all our days
we were doing everything for you.”
“Well, all you have to do now is to be silent when Miss Weston’s account
comes in.”
“Oh dear, I wish you’d tell me what you are doing about it.”
“No, no; I should not think of doing such a thing. However, I shall
require from you and from Grace twenty pounds when we return to The Red
Gables. Can you manage to get that for me?”
“I don’t know. I feel afraid to promise anything.”
“You can easily do it. You have but to sell one of your jewels. I can
manage that for you.”
“Oh I don’t think we need sell our jewels. I will see what I can do.
Well, I do feel pretty miserable!”
“It will be all right. You will be blamed a little, but the worst will
be avoided. Now then, shall we drive to the post-office?”
The girls did so. There Kitty spent some time writing a letter to Miss
Weston.
This letter was received by the dressmaker on the following morning. She
read it in great amazement, she pondered over it for some time, she said
to herself, “No, no, no, I won’t do that; no, I won’t do that.” Then she
went out and took a walk. She came in after a long walk, still murmuring
to herself, “No, I won’t do it.”
As the day wore on, she began to feel a certain weakening of her
resolution, and she murmured once, “Poor child; after all, it would be a
frightful thing for her, and she’s very pretty; and, after all, twenty
pounds would be a great help to me. People think that dressmakers make
no end of money; but if they knew the expenses they have, and what a
long, long time they’re left out of their money, they’d say differently.
Anyhow, it would be an awful thing to lose Mr. Dodd’s custom, and he
does pay so sharp to the very day; although people say that he was a
poor man, as I am a poor woman, yet he does pay up, I will say that.”