A World of Girls: The Story of a School

“I hear say that that naughty Miss Forest has done something out-and-out disgraceful,” whispered the nurse.

“Oh, don’t!” said Hester impatiently. “Why should everyone throw mud at a girl when she is down? If poor Annie is naughty and guilty, she is suffering now.”

“Annie not naughty,” said little Nan. “Me love my own Annie; me do, me do.”

“And you love your own poor old nurse, too?” responded the somewhat jealous nurse.

Hester left the two playing happily together, the little one caressing her nurse, and blowing one or two kisses after her sister’s retreating form. Hester returned to the house, and went up to her room to prepare for dinner. She had washed her hands, and was standing before the looking-glass re-plaiting her long hair when Susan Drummond, looking extremely wild and excited, and with her eyes almost starting out of her head, rushed into the room.

“Oh, Hester, Hester!” she gasped, and she flung herself on Hester’s bed, with her face downwards; she seemed absolutely deprived for the moment of the power of any further speech.

“What is the matter, Susan?” inquired Hester half impatiently. “What have you come into my room for? Are you going into a fit of hysterics? You had better control yourself, for the dinner gong will sound directly.”

Susan gasped two or three times, made a rush to Hester’s wash-handstand, and taking up a glass, poured some cold water into it, and gulped it down.

“Now I can speak,” she said. “I ran so fast that my breath quite left me. Hester, put on your walking things or go without them, just as you please – only go at once if you would save her.”

“Save whom?” asked Hester.

“Your little sister – little Nan. I – I saw it all. I was in the hammock, and nobody knew I was there, and somehow I wasn’t so sleepy as usual, and I heard Nan’s voice, and I looked over the side of the hammock, and she was sitting on the grass picking daisies, and her nurse was with her, and presently you came up. I heard you calling me, but I wasn’t going to answer. I felt too comfortable. You stayed with Nan and her nurse for a little, and then went away; and I heard Nan’s nurse say to her: ‘Sit here, Missy, till I come back to you; I am going to fetch another reel of sewing cotton from the house. Sit still, Missy; I’ll be back directly.’ She went away, and Nan went on picking her daisies. All on a sudden I heard Nan give a sharp little cry, and I looked over the hammock, and there was a tall dark woman, with such a wicked face, and she snatched up Nan in her arms, and put a thick shawl over her face, and ran off with her. It was all done in an instant. I shouted, and I scrambled out of the hammock, and I rushed down the path; but there wasn’t a sign of anybody there. I don’t know where the woman went – it seemed as if the earth swallowed up both her and little Nan. Why, Hester, are you going to faint?”

“Water!” gasped Hester – “one sip – now let me go.”

Chapter Forty

A Gipsy Maid

In a few moments everyone in Lavender House was made acquainted with Susan’s story. At such a time ceremony was laid aside, dinner forgotten, teachers, pupils, servants all congregated in the grounds, all rushed to the spot where Nan’s withered daisies still lay, all peered through the underwood, and all, alas! looked, in vain for the tall dark woman and the little child. Little Nan, the baby of the school, had been stolen – there were loud and terrified lamentations. Nan’s nurse was almost tearing her hair, was rushing frantically here, there, and everywhere. No one blamed the nurse for leaving her little charge in apparent safety for a few moments, but the poor woman’s own distress was pitiable to see. Mrs Willis took Hester’s hand, and told the poor stunned girl that she was sending to Sefton immediately for two or three policemen, and that in the meantime every man on the place should commence the search for the woman and child.

“Without any doubt,” Mrs Willis added, “we shall soon have our little Nan back again; it is quite impossible that the woman, whoever she is, can have taken her so far away in so short a time.”

In the meantime, Annie in her bedroom heard the fuss and the noise. She leaned out of her window and saw Phyllis in the distance; she called to her. Phyllis ran up, the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Oh, something so dreadful!” she gasped; “a wicked, wicked woman has stolen little Nan Thornton. She ran off with her just where the undergrowth is so thick at the end of the shady walk. It happened to her half an hour ago, and they are all looking, but they cannot find the woman or little Nan anywhere. Oh, it is so dreadful! Is that you, Mary?”

Phyllis ran off to join her sister, and Annie put her head in again, and looked round her pretty room.

“The gipsy,” she murmured, “the tall, dark gipsy has taken little Nan!”

Her face was very white, her eyes shone, her lips expressed a firm and almost obstinate determination. With all her usual impulsiveness, she decided on a course of action – she snatched up a piece of paper and scribbled a hasty line:

“Dear Mother-friend, – However badly you think of Annie, Annie loves you with all her heart. Forgive me, I must go myself to look for little Nan. That tall, dark woman is a gipsy – I have seen her before; her name is Mother Rachel. Tell Hetty I won’t return until I bring her little sister back. – Your repentant and sorrowful Annie.”

Annie twisted up the note, directed it to Mrs Willis, and left it on her dressing-table.

Then, with a wonderful amount of forethought for her, she emptied the contents of a little purse into a tiny gingham bag, which she fastened inside the front of her dress. She put on her shady hat, and threw a shawl across her arm, and then, slipping softly downstairs, she went out through the deserted kitchens, down the back avenue, and past the laurel-bush, until she came to the stile which led into the wood – she was going straight to the gipsies’ encampment.

Annie, with some of the gipsy’s characteristics in her own blood, had always taken an extraordinary interest in these queer wandering people. Gipsies had a fascination for her, she loved stories about them; if a gipsy encampment was near, she always begged the teachers to walk in that direction. Annie had a very vivid imagination, and in the days when she reigned as favourite in the school she used to make up stories for the express benefit of her companions. These stories, as a rule, always turned upon the gipsies. Many and many a time had the girls of Lavender House almost gasped with horror as Annie described the queer ways of these people. For her, personally, their wildness and their freedom had a certain fascination, and she was heard in her gayest moments to remark that she would rather like to be stolen and adopted by a gipsy tribe.

Whenever Annie had an opportunity she chatted with the gipsy wives, and allowed them to tell her fortune, and listened eagerly to their narratives. When a little child she had once for several months been under the care of a nurse who was a reclaimed gipsy, and this girl had given her all kinds of information about them. Annie often felt that she quite loved these wild people, and Mother Rachel was the first gipsy she cordially shrank from and disliked.

When the little girl started now on her wild-goose chase after Nan she was by no means devoid of a plan of action. The knowledge she had taken so many years to acquire came to her aid, and she determined to use it for Nan’s benefit. She knew that the gipsies, with all their wandering and erratic habits, had a certain attachment, if not for homes, at least for sites; she knew that as a rule they encamped over and over again in the same place; she knew that their wanderings were conducted with method, and their apparently lawless lives governed by strict self-made rules.

Annie made straight now for the encampment, which stood in a little dell at the other side of the fairies’ field. Here for weeks past the gipsies’ tents had been seen; here the gipsy children had played, and the men and women smoked and lain about in the sun.

Anne entered the small field now, but uttered no exclamation of surprise when she found that all the tents, with the exception of one, had been removed, and that this tent also was being rapidly taken down by a man and a girl, while a tall boy stood by, holding a donkey by the bridle.

Annie wasted no time in looking for Nan here. Before the girl and the man could see her, she darted behind a bush, and removing her little bag of money, hid it carefully under some long grass; then she pulled a very bright yellow sash out of her pocket, tied it round her blue cotton dress, and leaving her little shawl also on the ground, tripped gayly up to the tent.

She saw with pleasure that the girl who was helping the man was about her own size. She went up and touched her on the shoulder.

“Look here,” she said, “I want to make such a pretty play by-and-by – I want to play that I’m a gipsy girl. Will you give me your clothes, if I give you mine? See, mine are neat, and this sash is very handsome. Will you have them? Do. I am so anxious to play at being a gipsy.”

The girl turned and stared. Annie’s pretty blue print and gay sash were certainly tempting bait. She glanced at her father.

“The little lady wants to change,” she said in an eager voice.

The man nodded acquiescence, and the girl taking Annie’s hand, ran quickly with her to the bottom of the field.

“You don’t mean it, surely?” she said. “Eh, but I’m uncommon willing.”

“Yes, I certainly mean it,” said Annie. “You are a dear, good, obliging girl, and how nice you will look in my pretty blue cotton! I like that striped petticoat of yours, too, and that gay handkerchief you wear round your shoulders. Thank you so very much. Now, do I look like a real, real gipsy?”

“Your hair ain’t ragged enough, miss.”

“Oh, clip it, then; clip it away. I want to be quite the real thing. Have you got a pair of scissors?”

The girl ran back to the tent, and presently returned to shear poor Annie’s beautiful hair in truly rough fashion.

“Now, miss, you look much more like, only your arms are a bit too white. Stay, we has got some walnut-juice; we was just a-using of it. I’ll touch you up fine, miss.”

So she did, darkening Annie’s brown skin to a real gipsy tone.

“You’re, a dear, good girl,” said Annie, in conclusion; and as the girl’s father called her roughly at this moment, she was obliged to go away, looking ungainly enough in the English child’s neat clothes.

Chapter Forty One

Disguised

Annie ran out of the field, mounted the stile which led into the wood, and stood there until the gipsy man and girl, and the boy with the donkey, had finally disappeared. Then she left her hiding-place, and taking her little gingham bag out of the long grass, secured it once more in the front of her dress. She felt queer and uncomfortable in her new dress, and the gipsy girl’s heavy shoes tired her feet; but she was not to be turned from her purpose by any manner of discomforts, and she started bravely on her long trudge over the dusty roads, for her object was to follow the gipsies to their next encampment, about ten miles away. She had managed, with some tact, to obtain a certain amount of information from the delighted gipsy girl. The girl told Annie that she was very glad they were going from here; that this was a very dull place, and that they would not have stayed so long but for Mother Rachel, who for some reasons of her own, had refused to stir.

Here the girl drew herself up short, and coloured under her dark skin. But Annie’s tact never failed. She even yawned a little, and seemed scarcely to hear the girl’s words.

Now, in the distance, she followed these people.

In her disguise, uncomfortable as it was, she felt tolerably safe. Should any of the people in Lavender House happen to pass her on the way, they would never recognise Annie Forest in this small gipsy maiden. When she did approach the gipsies’ dwelling she might have some hope of passing as one of themselves. The only one whom she had really to fear was the girl with whom she had changed clothes, and she trusted to her wits to keep out of this young person’s way.

When Zillah, her old gipsy nurse, had charmed her long ago with gipsy legends and stories, Annie had always begged to hear about the fair English children whom the gipsies stole, and Zillah had let her into some secrets which partly accounted for the fact that so few of these children are ever recovered.

She walked very fast now; her depression was gone, a great excitement, a great longing, a great hope, keeping her up. She forgot that she had eaten nothing since breakfast: she forgot everything in all the world now but her great love for little Nan, and her desire to lay down her very life, if necessary, to rescue Nan from the terrible fate which awaited her if she was brought up as a gipsy’s child.

Annie, however, was unaccustomed to such long walks, and besides, recent events had weakened her, and by the time she reached Sefton – for her road lay straight through this little town – she was so hot and thirsty that she looked around her anxiously to find some place of refreshment.

In an unconscious manner she paused before a restaurant, where she and several other girls of Lavender House had more than once been regaled with buns and milk.

The remembrance of the fresh milk and the nice buns came gratefully before the memory of the tired child now. Forgetting her queer attire, she went into the shop, and walked boldly up to the counter.

Annie’s disguise, however, was good, and the young woman who was serving, instead of bending forward with the usual gracious “What can I get for you, miss?” said very sharply —

“Go away at once, little girl; we don’t allow beggars here; leave the shop instantly. No, I have nothing for you.”

Annie was about to reply rather hotly, for she had an idea that even a gipsy’s money might purchase buns and milk, when she was suddenly startled, and almost terrified into betraying herself, by encountering the gentle and fixed stare of Miss Jane Bruce, who had been leaning over the counter and talking to one of the shop-women when Annie entered.

“Here is a penny for you, little girl,” she said. “You can get a nice hunch of stale bread for a penny in the shop at the corner of the High Street.”

Annie’s eyes flashed back at the little lady, her lips quivered, and, clasping the penny, she rushed out of the shop.

“My dear,” said Miss Jane, turning to her sister, “did you notice the extraordinary likeness that little gipsy girl bore to Annie Forest?”

Miss Agnes sighed. “Not particularly, love,” she answered; “but I scarcely looked at her. I wonder if our dear little Annie is any happier than she was. Ah, I think we have done here. Good afternoon, Mrs Tremlett.”

The little old ladies, trotted off, giving no more thoughts to the gipsy child.

Poor Annie almost ran down the street, and never paused till she reached a shop of much humbler appearance, where she was served with some cold slices of German sausage, some indifferent bread and butter, and milk by no means over-good. The coarse fare, and the rough people who surrounded her, made the poor child feel both sick and frightened. She found she could only keep up her character by remaining almost silent, for the moment she opened her lips people turned round and stared at her.

She paid for her meal, however, and presently found herself at the other side of Sefton, and in a part of the country which was comparatively strange to her. The gipsies’ present encampment was about a mile away from the town of Oakley, a much larger place than Sefton. Sefton and Oakley lay about six miles apart. Annie trudged bravely on, her head aching; for, of course, as a gipsy girl, she could use no parasol to shade her from the sun. At last the comparative cool of the evening arrived, and the little girl gave a sigh of relief, and looked forward to her bed and supper at Oakley. She had made up her mind to sleep there, and to go to the gipsies’ encampment very early in the morning. It was quite dark by the time she reached Oakley, and she was now so tired, and her feet so blistered from walking in the gipsy girl’s rough shoes, that she could scarcely proceed another step. The noise and the size of Oakley, too, bewildered and frightened her. She had learnt a lesson in Sefton, and dared not venture into the more respectable streets. How could she sleep in those hot, common, close houses? Surely it would be better for her to lie down under a cool hedge-row – there could be no real cold on this lovely summer’s night, and the hours would quickly pass, and the time soon arrive when she must go boldly in search of Nan. She resolved to sleep in a hayfield which took her fancy just outside the town, and she only went into Oakley for the purpose of buying some bread and milk.

Annie was so far fortunate as to get a refreshing draught of really good milk from a woman who stood by a cottage door, and who gave her a piece of girdle-cake to eat with it.

“You’re one of the gipsies, my dear?” said the woman. “I saw them passing in their caravans an hour back. No doubt you are for taking up your old quarters in the copse, just alongside of Squire Thompson’s long acre field. How is it you are not with the rest of them, child?”

“I was late in starting,” said Annie. “Can you tell me the best way to get from here to the long acre field?”

“Oh! you take that turn-stile, child, and keep in the narrow path by the cornfields; it’s two miles and a half from here as the crow flies. No, no, my dear, I don’t want your pennies; but you might humour my little girl here by telling her fortune – she’s wonderful taken by the gipsy folk.”

Annie coloured painfully. The child came forward, and she crossed her hand with a piece of silver. She looked at the little palm and muttered something about being rich and fortunate, and marrying a prince in disguise, and having no trouble whatever.

“Eh! but that’s a fine lot, is yours, Peggy,” said the gratified mother.

Peggy however, aged nine, had a wiser head on her young shoulders.

“She didn’t tell no proper fortune,” she said disparagingly, when Annie left the cottage. “She didn’t speak about no crosses, and no biting disappointments, and no bleeding wounds. I don’t believe in her, I don’t. I like fortunes mixed, not all one way; them fortunes ain’t natural, and I don’t believe she’s no proper gipsy girl.”

Chapter Forty Two

Hester

At Lavender House the confusion, the terror, and the dismay were great. For several hours the girls seemed quite to lose their heads, and just when, under Mrs Willis’s and the other teachers’ calmness and determination, they were being restored to discipline and order, the excitement and alarm broke out afresh when some one brought Annie’s little note to Mrs Willis, and the school discovered that she also was missing.

On this occasion no one did doubt her motives; disobedient as her act was, no one wasted words of blame on her. All, from the head-mistress to the smallest child in the school, knew that it was love for little Nan that had taken Annie off; and the tears started to Mrs Willis’s eyes when she first read the tiny note, and then placed it tenderly in, her desk. Hester’s face became almost ashen in its hue when she heard what Annie had done.

“Annie has gone herself to bring back Nan to you, Hester,” said Phyllis. “It was I told her, and I know now by her face that she must have made up her mind at once.”

“Very disobedient of her to go,” said Dora Russell; but no one took up Dora’s tone, and Mary Price said, after a pause —

“Disobedient or not, it was brave – it was really very plucky.”

“It is my opinion,” said Nora, “that if anyone in the world can find little Nan it will be Annie. You remember. Phyllis, how often she has talked to us about gipsies, and what a lot she knows about them?”

“Oh, yes; she’ll be better than fifty policemen,” echoed several girls; and then two or three young faces were turned toward Hester, and some voice said almost scornfully – “You’ll have to love Annie now; you’ll have to admit that there is something good in our Annie when she brings your little Nan home again.”

Hester’s lips quivered; she tried to speak, but a sudden burst of tears came from her instead. She walked slowly out of the astonished little group, who none of them believed that proud Hester Thornton could weep.

The wretched girl rushed up to her room, where she threw herself on her bed and gave way to some of the bitterest tears she had ever shed. All her indifference to Annie, all her real unkindness, all her ever-increasing dislike came back now to torture and harass her. She began to believe with the girls that Annie would be successful; she began dimly to acknowledge in her heart the strange power which this child possessed; she guessed that Annie would heap coals of fire on her head by bringing back her little sister. She hoped, she longed, she could almost have found it in her heart to pray that some one else, not Annie, might save little Nan.

For not yet had Hester made up her mind to confess the truth about Annie Forest. To confess the truth now meant humiliation in the eyes of the whole school. Even for Nan’s sake she could not, she would not, be great enough for this.

Sobbing on her bed, trembling from head to foot, in an agony of almost uncontrollable grief, she could not bring her proud and stubborn little heart to accept God’s only way of piece. No, she hoped she might be able to influence Susan Drummond and induce her to confess, and if Annie was not cleared in that way, if she really saved little Nan, she would doubtless be restored to much of her lost favour in the school.

Hester had never been a favourite at Lavender House; but now her great trouble caused all the girls to speak to her kindly and considerately, and as she lay on her bed she presently heard a gentle step on the floor of her room – a cool little hand was laid tenderly on her forehead, and opening her swollen eyes, she met Cecil’s loving gaze.

“There is no news yet, Hester,” said Cecil; “but Mrs Willis has just gone herself into Sefton, and will not lose an hour in getting further help. Mrs Willis looks quite haggard. Of course she is very anxious both about Annie and Nan.”

“Oh, Annie is safe enough,” murmured Hester, burying her head in the bedclothes.

“I don’t know; Annie is very impulsive, and very pretty; the gipsies may like to steal her too – of course she has gone straight to one of their encampments. Naturally Mrs Willis is most anxious.”

Hester pressed her hand to her throbbing head.

“We are all so sorry for you, dear,” said Cecil gently.

“Thank you – being sorry for one does not do a great deal of good, does it?”

“I thought sympathy always did good,” replied Cecil, looking puzzled.

“Thank you,” said Hester again. She lay quite still for several minutes with her eyes closed. Her face looked intensely unhappy. Cecil was not easily repelled, and she guessed only too surely that Hester’s proud heart was suffering much. She was puzzled, however, how to approach her, and had almost made up her mind to go away and beg of kind-hearted Miss Danesbury to see if she could come and do something, when through the open window there came the shrill sweet laughter and the eager, high-pitched tones of some of the youngest children in the school. A strange quiver passed over Hester’s face at the sound; she sat up in bed, and gasped out in a half-strangled voice —

“Oh! I can’t bear it – little Nan, little Nan! Cecil, I am very, very unhappy.”

“I know it, darling,” said Cecil, and she put her arms round the excited girl. “Oh, Hester! don’t turn away from me; do let us be unhappy together.”

“But you did not care for Nan.”

“I did – we all loved the pretty darling.”

“Suppose I never see her again?” said Hester half wildly. “Oh, Cecil! and mother left her to me! mother gave her to me to take care of, and to bring to her some day in heaven. Oh, little Nan, my pretty, my love, my sweet! I think I could better bear her being dead than this.”

“You could, Hester,” said Cecil, “if she was never to be found; but I don’t think God will give you such a terrible punishment. I think little Nan will be restored to you. Let us ask God to do it, Hetty – let us kneel down now, we two little girls, and pray to Him with all our might.”