A Bunch of Cherries: A Story of Cherry Court School

Florence's trembling hands smoothed out the rich folds, she placed the dress in the top of the trunk, and before half-past six that morning Mrs. Aylmer was dressed and her things packed.

Then Florence went down again through the house and awoke one of the servants, and got her to wake a groom, who put a horse to a trap and brought it round to a side door, and so it came to pass that before seven o'clock that morning Mrs. Aylmer and Florence had left Cherry Court Park forever.

When they got into the train poor Mrs. Aylmer turned to Florence and begged for an explanation.

"I guess something dreadful has happened, but I can't imagine what it is," she said. "What does this mean, Florence?"

"It means, Mummy," said Florence, "that I have done that which no one but a mother would forgive. Listen, and I will tell you."

And then she told the whole story, from the very beginning, and Mrs. Aylmer listened with a cold feeling at her heart, and at first a great anger there; but when the story was finished, and Florence timidly took her mother's hands and looked into her eyes and said, "Are you a true enough mother to love me through it all?" then little Mrs. Aylmer's heart melted, and she flung her arms round Florence's neck and whispered through her sobs, "Oh, my child! oh, my child! I had a dreadful feeling last night when your Aunt Susan said that you were my daughter no longer; but this – this gives you to me forever."

"Of course it does, Mummy; Aunt Susan will never speak to me again. Oh, Mummy, what it is to have you! What should I do without you now?"

The rest of this story can be told in a few words. It would be impossible to depict the astonishment, the consternation, the amazement which Sir John felt when he read poor Florence's confession. After thinking matters over a short time, he sent for Mrs. Clavering, and he and that good woman had a long conference together. The upshot of it was that the guests were allowed to depart without knowing what had really happened, Sir John saying that he would write to them afterwards.

Bertha Keys was sent for, severely reprimanded, and dismissed from her post with ignominy. She never returned to Cherry Court School, leaving Cherry Court Park for a distant part of the country that very day. This history has nothing further to do with her. Whether she succeeded in the future or whether she failed, whether she turned from the evil of her ways or not, must all be matters of conjecture.

The main fact which concerns us is the following: Kitty won the Scholarship, after all, for the very next day Sir John visited Cherry Court School and told the bare outline of poor Florence's sin and confession. To Kitty was given the purse of gold, and the ruby locket, the crown of bay-leaves and the parchment scroll. They were given to a very sad Kitty, for the thought of Florence's sin completely overpowered both her and Mary Bateman, and indeed every girl in the school.

Sir John returned to his own house a sadder and a wiser man.

"After all, did I do right to offer this great temptation?" he said to himself, and this thought so affected him, and occurred to him so often, that a week later he went down to Dawlish and had an interview with Mrs. Aylmer and Florence, and the result was that Florence was sent to a good school and had a chance of educating herself. She was not too proud to take this help from Sir John, for it relieved her from all claims on her Aunt Susan in the future.

As to Mrs. Aylmer the great, never from the day when Sir John, in a few words, told her what her niece had done, has that worthy woman mentioned the name, Florence Aylmer. She still gives Mrs. Aylmer her fifty pounds a year, but, as she herself declared it, "I have washed my hands of that wicked girl once and forever."

THE END