A College Girl by Mrs George de Horne Vaizey (reading in the dark .TXT) 📖

meal in one small basket, placing layers of paper in those left empty. The young people looked at each other with raised eyebrows as they watched these proceedings, the meaning of which they knew only too well. It was forbidden to gather roots from the woods, but no authority had dreamt of forbidding visitors to carry away soil, and this was just what Mrs Garnett invariably insisted upon doing. The red-brown earth, rich with sweet fragments of leaf and twig, was too tempting to be resisted when she thought of her poor pot-bound plants at home; therefore, instead of swinging homewards with baskets light as air, the boys were doomed to bear even heavier weights than on the outward journey.

“Mother!” cried Clemence in a deep tone of protest. “Not yet! Remember the walk across the fields. Plenty of time to get soil in the Amphitheatre!” And Mrs Garnett put down her trowel with quite a guilty air and resigned herself to wait.

“Well! Perhaps it would be best ... Mrs Vernon and I would like an hour’s rest before going on. What are you going to do now?”

Every one waited for every one else, and no suggestion was forthcoming. The boys were once more beginning to roll about on the grass, poking and pulling at each other in a manner which foretold the beginning of war. Clemence and Vie were gazing sentimentally through the branches. Plain Hannah, stretched flat along the ground, was barricading the movements of a tiny beetle, and chuckling over its persistent efforts to outwit her schemes. Dan sat with arms clasped around his knees, a picture of patience on a monument. The sight of his twisted lips, his tilted, disconsolate chin fired Darsie to action. It was her doing that he was here at all; it was her duty to make the time pass as agreeably as possible.

“Sports!” she cried quickly. “Competitive sports. We’ll each plan an event, and take them in turns. Dan shall be judge, and the one who gets most marks shall have a prize.”

“What prize?”

That was a stumper. Darsie could suggest nothing better than a general subscription.

“If we each paid a penny entrance—”

“Oh, be bothered the pennies! I’ll give a prize!” cried Dan loftily. Darsie saw with joy that he had brisked up at the prospect of sports and was already beginning to cast his eye around in professional manner, taking in the lie of the land, the outstanding features of the position. As judge and manager he was in his element, and each suggestion of an event was altered and amended with a lordly superiority. It is somewhat difficult to introduce much variety into a programme of impromptu sports, but one or two of this afternoon’s events had the advantage of novelty. A flower-gathering race, for instance, the object of which was to see how many varieties of wild flowers each competitor could gather in a given time, and a Roman water-carrier event, which consisted in balancing the hot-water jug on one’s head and seeing how far one could walk without spilling its tepid contents over neck and shoulders. Plain Hannah was the only one of the girls who took part in this event, and to her joy succeeded in travelling a longer distance than any of the male competitors. The final and most elaborate event was the obstacle race, without which no competition of the kind is ever considered complete, and the united wits of the company were put to work to devise traps for their own undoing. Harry discovered two small trees whose trunks grew so close together that it seemed impossible that any human creature could squeeze between, and insisted upon it being done as a sine qua non. Russell decreed that competitors should travel over a certain route without touching the ground, swinging themselves from branch to branch like so many monkeys, and as girls were plainly disqualified for this feat an alternative test was invented which should score equally to their credit. Hopping races, races complicated by arithmetical and other such baffling problems, were also devised, and at the last moment Darsie came forward with a thrilling novelty.

“Run to the hamper, turn round three times, seize a jam puff, eat it in two bites, and hop back to the goal!”

“Good!” cried the judge approvingly, and after that the competitors might storm and lament as they would; the event was fixed!

The two mothers had retired from the scene of the fray and with backs resting against two friendly trees were peacefully discoursing on household trials; there was no one to preach concerning indigestion, and the perils of rapid eating; hot and gasping from their previous trials, the competitors ran, twirled, hopped and gobbled, and finally subsided in paroxysms of laughter on the mossy bank. The sports were over; the prize had fallen to Russell, as every one had known from the start that it must inevitably do; he sat snoring with pride, waving aside Dan’s inquiries as to the nature of his prize in a gentlemanly manner worthy of his reputation, until the two mothers, becoming conscious that the afternoon was passing away, rose heavily from their seats and announced that it was time to start on the second half of the day’s expedition.

The three-mile walk lay for three parts of the way through fields, which to the town-livers afforded a refreshing change from noisy and dusty streets, and when the little village was reached, “our old woman’s cottage” was found to be as clean and neat and hospitably attractive as of yore. It was a tiny whitewashed cottage standing back from the lane in a garden bright with old-fashioned flowers, and the stone-floored kitchen boasted an old oak dresser and table which were the envy of all beholders.

“They’re always after it!” our old woman would announce, chuckling. “Titled gentry I’ve had, driving up in their own carriage, a-coaxing and wheedling so as never was. ‘No,’ I says, ‘they was my mother’s afore me, and her mother’s afore that, and it’s a poor tale if I can’t have the pleasure of them while I live! If it’s waluable to you, it’s waluable to me, too. That’s only common sense...’ And what’s your fancy today, lovies? boiled eggs and buttered toast, same as afore?”

Boiled eggs and buttered toast it was, despite the protests of the mothers, who thought that really, after such a lunch—! And after tea our old woman provided buttonholes for each member of the party, and hobbled to the gate to see them off, assuring them, as was her yearly custom, that “the gamekeepers was getting very crusty of late, but you leave the roots alone and nobody can’t say nothing about a few bits of flowers.” That yearly threat of the gamekeeper lent a soupçon of excitement to the scramble over the sloping woods, which surrounded as an amphitheatre a deep green meadow through which meandered a tiny stream.

At any moment, as it appeared, a stalwart figure in velveteen bearing a gun over his shoulder might appear round the trunk of a tree, demanding your licence or your life. It was interesting to discuss exactly what you would do or say under the circumstances, and the very worst thing in punishments which could possibly be your fate!

To-day, however, no such interruption took place, and the dear old playground looked, if possible, more beautiful than ever. The ground was carpeted with buttercups, and when one stood on the top of the steep banks and looked down on the green and the gold, and caught glimpses of the blue sky beyond—well, it was as near an approach to fairyland as one could hope to find within twenty miles of a big manufacturing town.

Mrs Garnett packed her basket full of the soft, loamy soil; the girls roamed up and down making up bouquets of wild roses, honeysuckle, and fragrant meadowsweet; the boys were blissfully happy, risking life and limb in an exciting endeavour to travel from top to bottom of the bank without once touching grass. An occasional tree-trunk was permitted as a foothold, otherwise you swung yourself from one branch to another, or took flying leaps into space, and trusted to fate to catch hold of something before you fell.

Russell’s hairbreadth escapes would have terrified his mother had she been there to see, but the boys were wise in their generation and had quietly worked their way round to the opposite bank before beginning their experiments. It took a considerable time to call them back and rally forces in time to catch the eight o’clock train, and it was a dishevelled and by no means aristocratic-looking party which climbed over the high stone stile leading into the high-road.

It seemed hard luck that this last mile, when every one was feeling tired and a trifle flat, should have to be traversed along a dusty, uninteresting road, and the straggly line grew even farther and farther apart as the distance to the station decreased. Dan led the way, walking in the middle of the road, his head flung back with the old proud air of detachment. The two mothers plodded steadily in the rear. Russell, scratched and dusty, and looking more like a street arab than a youth renowned for gentlemanly demeanour, scuffled in the gutter, kicking up the gathered dust which enveloped him as in a cloud; Harry and John bore the big hamper slung on a stick, the ends of which they frequently released for the purpose of straightening their backs and rubbing their tired hands. Plain Hannah limped on the sideway, being afflicted with corns which, as she expressed it, always “came on” at the end of a day’s pleasuring. Vie and Clemence, arm-in-arm, were deep in sentimental conclave. Darsie, the last of the line, hung back of intent until a curve in the road hid the others from sight. A shadow of melancholy had descended upon her spirit during the last hour; that fear of “the last time” which at times makes cowards of us all, was strong upon her; the possibility of separation suddenly became a terror which gripped her breath and left her faint and weak.

Mother—Father—Home! The dear delights of the sea. Could she—could she bear to give them up? Darsie whimpered miserably, and stopped short in the middle of the road to pull out her handkerchief, and wipe a threatening tear. She really did not think she could, and yet every one seemed to take it for granted that Aunt Maria’s choice would fall upon herself. Was there nothing, nothing that she could do to lessen the probability? Nothing to make herself look ugly, unattractive, unsuited for the post of lady’s companion?

A stranger walking along the high-road at this moment would have been amused to see a pretty, disconsolate-looking young girl deliberately twisting her features into one grimace after another, and critically examining the effect in the back of a small silver watch. Every new grimace necessitated a pause for inspection, so that the distance between Darsie and her companions increased more and more, until on turning the next corner of the winding road she was surprised to find no one in sight—surprised and a trifle startled, for the early dusk was already casting its shadow over the landscape, and the solitude of a country road has in it something eerie to a lifelong dweller in towns. Darsie forgot her grimaces and set off at a trot to make up lost ground, and even as she ran a sound came from afar which quickened the trot into a run—the scream of an engine! the engine of the approaching train which was to bear the picnickers back to town.

The next turn of the road showed that the rest of the party had taken alarm also, for the flying figures of Vie and Clemence could be seen disappearing in the distance, evidently following hastily after those in front.

“They’ll catch it—they’ll rush down the steps just as it’s going to start, bundle in anyhow, into