CHAPTER X.

The next day, according to promise, Miss Row came to call on Miss Ashe. The children were all out and very busy when she came, and did not know anything about the call until Cousin Charlotte came to the garden to them after.

Esther was shelling peas, Penelope was filling flower-pots in which to plant some mignonette seeds she had bought at Mrs. Vercoe's that morning. Angela and Poppy were playing shops. They had the long stool Anna used for her washing-trays on washing-days. This was their counter, and on it they had arranged their stock of goods—a little pile of unripe strawberries, another of currants, a heap of pebbles to represent nuts, gravel for sugar, and earth for tea. One of their greatest treasures was a little tin scoop which Anna had presented to them, and which they took it in turns to use. They both stood behind the stool, with a pile of newspaper cut into all kinds of shapes and sizes in front of them, and were apparently kept as busy as could be by the constant stream of invisible customers which flowed into their shop.

When Miss Charlotte came out she found them as busy as possible. "Penelope," she called, "I want to speak to you, dear. I have something to tell you—something that I think will please you very much, dear."

Penelope looked up from her seed-sowing with a face full of pleased surprise.

"I have had a visitor, Miss Row, and she has offered to give you lessons on the organ if you would like to learn. She tells me she thinks you would. It is very kind of Miss Row, and a great opportunity for you."

"I'd love to, I told her so." Penelope stopped abruptly, her face crimsoning. "Oh, I hope she did not think I was asking!"

"No, dear, she certainly did not think that," said Miss Charlotte reassuringly. "I know my friend well enough to know that she would never have made the offer if she had."

"But where can I learn?" asked Penelope. "I shouldn't be allowed to use the organ in the church, should I?"

"I think so; but Miss Row will settle all that. You see, her father used to be the vicar at Four Winds, and she has been the organist ever since she was sixteen—"

"Sixteen!" cried Penelope. "Can I be an organist when I am sixteen?"

"As I was saying," said Cousin Charlotte, in a slight tone of reproof, "she has been the organist there since she was sixteen, and all for love, so no one would be so ungrateful as to object to her using it."

"Oh, how beautiful, how beautiful, and just the very thing I wanted." Penelope fairly danced with delight. "Isn't it strange," she said, "how one gets just the very things one has been longing for?"

Esther did not make any remark. The old demon jealousy surged up in her heart and forbade her saying anything that was nice or kind.

"Why was it that Penelope always attracted all the notice, and made friends, and got the very things she longed for?" she asked herself angrily. She wished she had said she would like to learn to play the organ, and had made friends with Miss Row; then perhaps she would have had lovely flowers given her, and be thought a lot of. Having finished her task she picked up her things and walked away into the house. Penelope looked after her, a little hurt at her seeming want of interest. Angela and Poppy had dropped their play and were bubbling over with joyful sympathy.

"Angela dear," said Miss Charlotte, "will you go to the henhouse for me, and see if there are any eggs there?"

Angela was delighted. She was always longing to be employed, and she loved anything to do with the fowls or the garden.

Miss Ashe's fowl-houses were models of what fowl-houses should be, airy, snug, and beautifully clean; and her fowls were something to be proud of. Angela ran off at once, found three eggs, and took them into the house. Miss Ashe was busy in the pantry tying down jam.

"I wonder if you could mark them for me," she said. "My fingers are very sticky."

Angela took the pencil and did her best. The figures were clumsy, but they were her neatest. They were something like this—22/6.

She looked up at her cousin with shamed eyes and rosy cheeks as she held out the eggs.

"That will do," said Miss Charlotte kindly. "You will soon be able to make tiny figures." Then, as Esther had done once before, Angela put the eggs in their box; but Esther had forgotten all about her first task in her anxiety to get others.

"Cousin Charlotte, if I learn to write better, may I always collect the eggs and mark them? I'd love to. I love the chicken and fowls, and I'd try to do it properly." She was very eager and very shy about making her request.

"I shall be very glad indeed of your help," said Cousin Charlotte. "Anna seems too busy and Ephraim forgets; he thinks eggs and hens too unimportant for his notice. I, though, think them very important indeed; they make quite a nice little addition to one's income, I find."

"Do they?" said Angela, full of interest. "When I grow up I shall keep fowls too, I think."

"You will have to learn all about them first," said Cousin Charlotte, "but that you can begin to do at once. You have them here always under your eyes, and you must keep your eyes open and take in all you can."

Angela felt, as Penelope had done, that all her dearest wishes were being granted at once. "Is there something else I can do for you, Cousin Charlotte?" she asked.

"Yes, dear, if you will. I want to send those fresh eggs up to Miss Bazeley. She has a lady lodging there who is ill, and Miss Bazeley's hens seem to have all stopped laying just as she most wants fresh eggs."

"I'd like to go. I'll go now," said Angela, running off to get her hat.

"You can take Poppy with you, dear. It is not far, and you can't make a mistake. Miss Bazeley's house is the very last in the village; it stands at the side of the hill on the way to Four Winds."

"I think I know; it has a honeysuckle arch over the gate, hasn't it?"

"Yes, sharp eyes. Now run along."

Esther was up in her room, trying to work herself into a better state of mind. She knew she was jealous of Penelope's good fortune, and she was vexed with herself for being so. When people recognise their weaknesses, and see the wrong of them, they are on a fair way to recovery—if they choose.

Esther did really want to get the better of the nasty moods and tempers that she, better than any one, knew she suffered from, and presently she came down in quite an altered frame of mind, though a little embarrassed to know how to express herself.

Penelope was in the garden alone, busy over her flower-pots once more. Esther went up to her wondering what she could say, but Penelope looked up with so grave a face Esther found her speech at once.

"Aren't you glad?" she asked in surprise.

"Oh yes," cried Penelope enthusiastically.

"So am I," said Esther, and with the same felt her burden of jealousy fall from her. "It will be fine; it was the very thing you wanted. But you don't look glad."

"I am," said Penelope emphatically; "but I was thinking how kind every one is, and I do want to do something for them—and I don't know how. There don't seem to be any ways for children to help grown-ups."

Esther stood very still and quiet for a moment. Then, after a little shy hesitation, she said, "Cousin Charlotte says we can always help each other, only we must not be always looking out for big things to do. If we do the little things, we shall do big things, too, in time."

"Oh," said Penelope. "I suppose I shall get to know what little things to do. What I would like would be to give Miss Row a beautiful organ, and Mrs. Bennett a greenhouse, and Cousin Charlotte—oh, a lot of money and things, and—and—"

"I don't suppose Mrs. Bennett would know what to do with a greenhouse if she had it," said Esther wisely.

"Don't you?" said Penelope disappointedly, and was silent for some time, pondering the matter. "Well," with a sigh of resignation, "I'll give her one of my pots of mignonette when it grows—that will be something—just to show I care, and perhaps—"

But what Penelope intended to say further was lost for ever, for at that moment there was a rush through the house and garden, a chorus of cries and exclamations, and Angela and Poppy and Guard burst on them like a small hurricane.

"Oh, do look!" cried Angela, her face flushed, her eyes dancing with joy— "do look what Miss Bazeley has given me! Oh, it is such a darling! And the poor mite has no mother, or brothers or sisters. And do you think Cousin Charlotte will let me keep it? It is a very good one, Miss Bazeley says. What sort did she call it, Poppy? I said it over and over so as to remember, and have forgotten it after all."

"It was somefin like the name of a sweety," said Poppy, racking her brain so hard she brought a frown to her brow. "Was it somefin drop, or rock, or—"

"I know it was something like Edinburgh Rock."

"Plymouth Rock, perhaps," said Miss Ashe's voice, close behind them. In their excitement they had not heard her coming, and they all sprang around with a start. "What is it, dear?" looking at the little basket Angela was holding so carefully.

As if in reply, a tiny, very forlorn 'che-ep' came from the inside.

"It is a dear little motherless chick, Cousin Charlotte," cried Angela eagerly. "A tiny baby one, and it's an orphan. A fox killed its poor mother, and the other hens won't be kind to it; they are very cruel to it, Miss Bazeley says, and she asked me if I would like to have it. May I, Cousin Charlotte? Do you mind? I will take care of it, and then some day, when it lays eggs, you shall have all the eggs."

"Well, we will see about that when the time comes," said Cousin Charlotte. "Yes, dear, you may certainly keep it. I foresee I shall have a rival poultry-yard in my own garden."

Angela and Poppy ran off in a state of the highest glee; but when they got to the yard, and all the hens ran towards them in expectation, they were afraid to trust their treasure alone among the crowd.

"You will have to try to get one of the hens to mother it," said Miss Charlotte, who had followed them, "or it will die of cold and loneliness."

This presented some difficulty. As soon as the little chick was put down it would run to the nearest hen as if it thought it had found its mother, but the hens would have nothing to say to it; first one and then another pecked it savagely, until the poor little thing was nearly scared to death.

At last Miss Charlotte threw down some oatmeal before a coop where a solemn old hen sat with half a dozen chicks playing about her. As soon as they saw the food, the greedy little creatures poured out, while the mother rose and clucked noisily with annoyance at not being able to follow. Angela put the orphan chick down amongst the others; for a second it cheeped pitifully; then it, too, began to eat. As soon as the last grain had gone some more was thrown into the coop for the old hen. All the chicks poured back helter-skelter into the coop, the orphan amongst them, and the hen took it into her family circle without demur, and the baby Plymouth Rock's life was saved.

After that, to say that Angela was as fussy as a hen with one chick was to speak but very mildly of her condition. She looked on it as the foundation of her fortunes, and, surely, she thought, no one had ever owned such a beautiful chick before.

The next day Penelope went to the church at twelve o'clock to have her first lesson. She went off jubilantly; she returned a little less so. Miss Row was unaccustomed to children, or to teaching, and she had never been considered a patient woman.

"I believe it is going to be dreadfully hard," Penelope confided to the others, as they gathered round her. They had all gone to meet her, and hear her experiences. They had always been so much together that what happened to one was of the keenest interest to all.

"I don't believe I shall ever learn, there are such lots of things to remember, and Miss Row doesn't like to explain a thing more than once, and you've got to remember."

Esther began to feel thankful that she had not expressed a desire to know how to play the organ. She much preferred to do housework and not be scolded. Penelope's next words then came as a shock.

"Oh, and what do you think! Miss Row wants us to sing in the choir! She says we must. She can get scarcely any one to sing, and she says it will be good for us, and we shall be very glad by and by—"

"Oh, I couldn't!" cried Angela, overcome with nervousness. "I haven't got any voice, and I don't know how to; and I couldn't sing with all the people looking at me."

"It will be dreadful," said Penelope drearily. "But Miss Row says we shall be glad later on—"

"People always say that when they want one to do anything one simply hates doing. But she can't make us, can she? I shall ask Miss Charlotte to say we can't. I am sure she will when she knows how much we don't want to. I wish you had never said anything, Penelope, about the organ, and learning to play, and all that. Miss Row would never have thought of it if you hadn't," grumbled Esther; and Penelope, feeling the truth of it, looked more dejected than ever. After her first encounter with Miss Row as a teacher, the prospect before her looked anything but enticing, and she was haunted by a feeling that she had not declined the honour as firmly as she might have done, for the sake of the others.

They all turned and walked homewards very gloomily. The only cheerful member of the party was Poppy. "I wouldn't mind singing in church," she said, "if nobody wouldn't look at me. I can sing 'Once in Royal David's City' all through."

"It doesn't seem so bad if you haven't got to," said Angela miserably. "But when you have, it is awful. I—I almost wish I'd never come to Dorsham, and yet—I loved it so till this happened."

During dinner Miss Charlotte looked at the four from time to time, first with faint surprise, then with anxiety. They were so quiet, so gloomy, so changed. When she had spoken two or three times and received polite, but the briefest of answers, she began to feel she must get to the bottom of the mystery.

"Well, Penelope, did you enjoy your organ lesson, dear?" she asked briskly.

Penelope looked up with the ghost of her old comical smile gleaming in her eyes. "Well, I—I didn't exactly enjoy it," she said, trying to be polite and truthful at the same time. "It is rather hard at first, but— but I wouldn't mind that if—if—"

"If what, dear?" asked Miss Charlotte gently. "Is it anything I can help in?"

"No-o, I am afraid not, thank you. It's the singing—Miss Row wants us all to sing in the choir!"

The great and terrible news was out, the shadow that hung over them was explained, and eight eyes gazed at Miss Charlotte, expecting to read in her face something of the shock and dismay they had felt, instead of which she sat looking quite unmoved and rather amused. "Well, dears, I don't see anything very dreadful in that. Do you?"

"But we can't," cried Esther. "We can't sing, except just a little bit to ourselves." "But you can learn. I don't suppose Miss Row, or any one else, would expect you to sing perfectly at first. She would teach you. You said you wanted to learn all you could, didn't you, dear?"

"Ye-es," said Esther slowly, feeling she was having the worst of the argument, but unmoved in her dread and dislike of joining the choir. "But I never thought of this; this is different."

"Yes; but, dear, you will find very few things happen just as you would have them to. We may miss the best chances of our lives if we insist on that. You told me you wanted to save money and expense—now here is your opportunity. You will gain a knowledge of music and singing such as you could not gain in any other way, for even if we had the means, there is no one here to teach you. I dare say you feel a little shy and nervous, but don't be foolishly so, dears. All your lives you will be thankful you had this chance."

Esther had no word to say. She felt she was in the wrong again, and that is never a pleasant feeling.

"But I could never sing before so many people, Cousin Charlotte," said Angela. "I wouldn't mind so much if it was only just ourselves, but I am sure I couldn't sing before strangers."

"Then, dear, it will be good for you in another way. You must learn to get over your self-consciousness. You must not imagine the eyes of every one are on you. You must try to forget all about yourself. Remember that every one there has a lot else to think about, and that you are only one little person amongst a number." Cousin Charlotte laid her hand on Angela's to take away any seeming severity from her words.

"I know Miss Row is always trying to make up a choir, and she has such difficulty. You would be doing her a real kindness if you help her; and I know you would like to do that," with a smile at Esther.

Esther sighed. "Yes," she said hesitatingly. "But—but can't one ever do things just in the way one likes, Cousin Charlotte? There are lots of kind things I should love to do."

"We may choose, generally, whether we will do a thing or not, or whether we will do it in our way, or the way that is mapped out for us. But usually if we choose our own, it is ourselves we please, and not the person we are doing it for. But this we can always do, dearie—if we have to do a thing we do not like, we can teach ourselves to like to do it."

"It sounds like a riddle," said Penelope.

"It very often is," said Miss Charlotte. "But am sure you will all grow to love your singing and your choir when the first shyness is over, and then you will be glad you gave in, and did not choose your own way. And of one thing you may be quite sure: if, as you think, you have no voices, Miss Row will soon tell you so, and you will not be bothered any more about having to sing."

But, after all, somehow it did not seem to them that that was what they wanted.