"Cheero, old sport! Don't get raggy!"

Pioneers were penetrating the virgin forest on all sides. From right and left came squeals, giggles, or chuckles, as the girls investigated the capacities of the island. Some kept to the banks and cut dry reeds to make the bonfire burn quickly, while others were in quest of more solid fuel.

"If we'd only had a hatchet or a saw," sighed Raymonde, "we might have cut off some quite nice logs. There really isn't much to pick up on the ground."

"Wish we could take that rotten tree along with us," murmured Morvyth, pointing to a decayed old stump that stood upright with two withered boughs like scraggy arms outstretched on either side of it.

"Too big a job, my child; but we might break off one of those branches," opined Raymonde. "No, I know we can't reach it from below, that's self-evident. Your humble servant's going to climb. Here, Ave, you bluebottle, give me a leg up!"

"Oh! Suppose it topples over with you! Don't, Ray!"

"Bunk.u.m! It won't! I'm not scared, thanks!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "FAUVETTE IN PARTICULAR LOOKED RAVISHINGLY PRETTY"]

As a matter of fact, Raymonde knew perfectly well that she was going to perform rather a risky feat. She did it because she was in a don't-care frame of mind, also because she had quarrelled with Morvyth earlier in the afternoon, and wished to astonish her. Morvyth was standing now, elevating her eyebrows, and looking as if she did not believe that Raymonde would really carry out her boast, which was all the more reason for the latter to put speech into action.

Aveline obediently rendered the required a.s.sistance, and with a swing and a clutch Raymonde managed to scramble up the trunk to the place where the boughs forked. One of these was in a particularly crumbling and decrepit condition, and she thought that with a strong effort she might succeed in breaking it off. It was not an easy matter to balance herself on the fork and stretch out to pull at the branch.

"You'll be over in a sec.!" called Morvyth.

"Bow-wow!" responded Raymonde airily.

She leaned a little farther along, seized the branch with both hands, and gave a mighty tug. The result was more than she antic.i.p.ated. The poor old tree had reached a stage of such interior decay that it was really only kept together by the bark. The violence of the wrench upset it to its foundations; it tottered, swayed, and suddenly descended. The girls picked up Raymonde out of a cloud of dust and a ma.s.s of touchwood. By all strict rules of retribution she ought to have been hurt, but as a matter of fact she was only a little bruised, considerably choked with pulverized wood, and very much astonished.

When she recovered her presence of mind, she set to work to break off pieces from the boughs, which were just exactly what was wanted for the bonfire fuel.

"Don't tell Gibbie!" she besought the others.

"Right-o! Mum's the word!" her chums a.s.sured her. "Bless its little heart, we wouldn't get it into a sc.r.a.pe! Don't think it of us!"

Miss Beasley's signal sounded at this critical moment, so the Mystic Seven filed off like vestal virgins to feed the fire which Miss Gibbs, with her accustomed energy, had already lighted. Their contribution of wood was so substantial that it drew comment from the rest of the party, but they received the congratulations with due modesty, and did not divulge the source of their supply. Most of the girls were too much interested in proclaiming their own adventures to care to listen to anybody else's, and the mistresses were busy watching the kettles.

It seemed like camp life over again to be sitting in a circle, drinking tea out of enamelled mugs, and eating thick pieces of bread and b.u.t.ter. Miss Beasley had provided a large home-made plum birthday cake, with a sixpence baked in it, the acquisition of which was naturally a matter of keen interest to each several girl, until the lucky slice fell to the lot of Cynthia Greene, who fondled the coveted coin tenderly.

"I'll have a hole bored through it, and wear it on my chain always, in memory of you, dear Miss Beasley!" she declared in emphatic tones.

"Little sycophant!" sneered Morvyth enviously.

"She ought to give it to the soldiers!" snapped Raymonde.

But Miss Gibbs was rattling a row of mugs together as a delicate hint that the feast was finished, and the Princ.i.p.al was consulting her watch, and calling to the boatmen to make ready. The monitresses swept all remaining comestibles into the baskets, stamped out the fire, emptied the kettles, and proclaimed the camping-ground left in due order. One by one the boats started on their way down the river, drifting easily now with the current, and leaving long trails of ripples behind them. The sun was sinking low in the west, and there was a lovely golden light on the water, the shadows on the willowy sh.o.r.e were deep and mysterious, a kingfisher flashed along the bank like a living jewel. The spirits of the school, already risen to fermenting point, effervesced into stunt songs composed on the emergency of the moment, and pa.s.sed on from boat to boat.

"For we've had such a jolly good day-ay-ay, As we only get once in a way-ay-ay!

I can tell you it was prime, Oh! we've had a topping time, And we wish a little longer we could stay-ay-ay!

With a rum-tum-tum And a rum-tiddley-um, We will make the river hum; So come, come, come, Don't be glum, glum, glum!

But pa.s.s the stunt along and just be gay-ay-ay!"

CHAPTER XVI

Marooned

Amongst other cardinal virtues the practice of philanthropy was zealously cultivated at Marlowe Grange. The girls made garments for the local hospital, contributed towards a creche for soldiers'

children, and on Sunday mornings put pennies into a missionary box.

Charity is apt to wax a trifle cold, however, when you never see the object of your doles; and though ample statistics were provided about the creche babies, and literature was sent describing the Chinese orphans and little Hindoo widows, these pieces of paper information did not quite supply the place of a real live protege. It was felt to be a decided a.s.set to the school when old Wilkinson loomed upon their horizon. The girls discovered him accidentally, engaged in the meritorious occupation of carrying his own water from the well. He had opened a gate for them, and had touched his forelock with the grace and fervour of a mediaeval retainer. His pink cheeks, watery blue eyes, snow-white hair, and generally picturesque personality made the more enthusiastic members of the art cla.s.s anxious to paint his portrait.

It was ascertained that he subsisted upon an old-age pension of five shillings a week, and resided in a romantic-looking, creeper-covered cottage just between the Grange and the village. To visit old Wilkinson, and present him with potatoes from their own little war-gardens, became an immediate inst.i.tution among the girls. There was no doubt about his grat.i.tude. All was fish that came to his net, and he accepted anything and everything, from tea and tobacco to books which he could not read, with the same toothless smile and showers of blessings. If, as Miss Gibbs suggested, his cottage would have been improved by a little more soap and water, and a good stiff broom, that did not really matter, as he was generally sitting outside on a bench beside a beehive, with a black-and-white Manx cat upon his knee, and a tame jackdaw hanging in a wicker cage by the window, exactly like a coloured frontispiece in a Christmas number of a magazine.

It was a tremendous blow to the school when the news was circulated that old Wilkinson had received notice to quit his cottage. The girls were filled with indignation against his landlord. The fact that that long-suffering farmer had received no rent for the last six months, and badly required the cottage as a billet for lady workers on the land, went for nothing in the estimation of the Grange inmates.

Wilkinson, so they considered, was a persecuted old man, about to be evicted from his home, and a very proper object for sympathy and consideration.

"Something's got to be done for him--that's flat!" declared Raymonde.

"You don't suppose we can allow him to be taken to the workhouse? It's unthinkable! He'd break his poor old heart. And we'd miss him so, too. Won't the landlord change his mind and let him stay?"

"Miss Gibbs went to see him about it," vouchsafed Aveline agitatedly, "and she came back and shook her head, and said she couldn't but feel that the man was only doing his duty, and women were wanted on the land, and must have a place to live in, and someone had to be sacrificed."

"He's a victim of the war!" sighed Morvyth. "One of those outside victims who don't get Victoria Crosses and military funerals."

"He hasn't come to a funeral yet!" bristled Raymonde. "The old boy looks good for another ten years or so. Don't you go ordering tombstones and wreaths!"

"I wasn't going to. How you snap me up! All the same, I heard Miss Beasley tell Miss Gibbs that if he has to go to the workhouse it will be enough to kill him."

"Then we've absolutely got to keep him alive! Won't anybody in the village take him in?"

"No, they're all full up, and say they can't do with him, and he hasn't any relations of his own except a drunken granddaughter in a town slum."

Raymonde sighed dramatically.

"I'm going to think, and think, and think, and think, until I find some way of helping him," she announced. "It'll be hard work, because I hate thinking, but I'll do it, you'll see!"

Raymonde was abstracted that evening, both at preparation and at supper. In the dormitory she put aside all conversation with a firm: "Don't talk to me, I'm thinking!" She borrowed Fauvette's bottle of eau-de-Cologne, and went to bed with a bandage tied round her head to a.s.sist her cogitations.

"Of course I shan't go to sleep," she a.s.sured the others. "I must just lie awake until the idea comes to me. Old Wilkinson's on my mind."

"Glad he's not on mine," gurgled Aveline, settling herself comfortably on her pillow. "Couldn't you leave him until to-morrow?"

"Certainly not! I shall wake you up and tell you when my idea arrives."

"Help!" murmured her schoolmate, half-asleep.

That night, when the whole household at the Grange was soundly wrapped in slumber, Aveline was suddenly brought back from a jumbled dream of punts, cows, and Latin exercises by feeling somebody shaking her persistently and urgently.

"What's the matter?" she asked, sitting up in bed. "Is it Zepps?"

"Sh--sh! Don't wake the whole dormitory, you goose!" came Raymonde's voice in a whisper. "Remember Gibbie's door's wide open, can't you?

I've just got my idea."