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CHAPTER V
THE BLACK SHEEP'S CHRISTMAS

FIVE days before Christmas the school of the Misses Ryder emptied its pupils and teachers into the bosoms of more or less gratified families, and closed its doors for the holiday season.

The principals lingered for two days after the girls left, in order to see that the furniture was covered, the furnace fires were allowed to die, the gas was turned off, the shades were decorously drawn, the regular butcher's, baker's and milkman's supplies were stopped. Then they, too, went out into the world, for they always spent Christmas with the old aunt who lived upon the ancestral Ryder acres in New Hampshire.

Five of the servants had joined the exodus. Only Ellen, the fat cook, and Rosie, the laundress, were left in the basement, and in the back hall bedroom on the top floor was the Youngest Teacher, who had submitted to enthusiastic kisses from her departing girl adorers, had responded cheerfully to pleasant adieus from her employers, and had settled down to face a somewhat depressing situation. On Christmas Eve she was still facing it pluckily.

A storm of wind and sleet was beating at the windows, and the little hall bedroom, unheated for days past, had taken on the chill that seems to have body and substance.

In a wicker chair, beside the small table, Belinda, wrapped in blankets and with a hot-water bag under her feet, sat reading by the light of a kerosene lamp which threw weird, flickering shadows on the ugly gray walls.

As a particular vicious blast shrieked at the window the girl dropped her book into her lap, drew the blankets more closely about her, looked around the room, and made a heroic effort to smile.

Then she smiled spontaneously at the lamentable failure of the attempt, but the smile left the corners of her mouth drooping.

She was tired of being brave.

Somewhere out across the night there were love and laughter and friends. She wondered what the home folk were doing. Probably they missed her, but they were together and they had no idea how things were with her, for her letters had been framed to suggest festive plans and a school full of holiday sojourners.

She had written those letters with one eye upon the Recording Angel and the other upon her mother's loving, anxious face, and it had seemed to her that the Recording Angel's smile promised absolution.

She was glad she hadn't been frank, but – she wanted her mother.

The quivering face was buried in the rough folds of the blankets, and a queer, stifled sound mingled with the noise of the storm.

The Youngest Teacher was only twenty-two, and this was her first Christmas away from home.

But the surrender did not last long. Belinda sprang to her feet, hurled a remark that sounded like "maudlin idiot" at a dishevelled vision in the mirror, picked up the lamp, and went down to the gymnasium on the second floor. When she came back she was too warm to notice the chill of the room, too tired to think. She pulled down the folding bed, tumbled into it, and dreamed of home.

Christmas morning was clear and cold.

Belinda awoke late, and, as the realities crowded in upon her, shut her eyes and tried to dodge the fact that there was no one to wish her a merry Christmas.

She was crying softly into her pillow when the room door was opened cautiously and two ruddy Irish faces peered through the crack.

"A merry Christmas to ye, Miss!" shouted two voices rich in creamy brogue.

Belinda opened her eyes.

"Sure, Oi said to Rosie, 'It's a shame,' sez Oi, 'the young leddy up there wid divil a wan to wish her luck. Let's go up,' sez Oi. So we come."

Then Ellen, who was an excellent cook and a tough citizen, had the surprise of her life, for a slim, pretty girl sprang out of bed, threw her arms around the cook's portly form, and kissed the broad, red face. Rosie had her turn while Ellen was staggering under the shock.

"Bless you both," said Belinda, looking at them through wet eyes.

The cook opened and shut her mouth feebly, but her own eyes held a responsive moisture.

"Aarrah, now, was it ez bad ez that?" she asked with rough gentleness.

"We were thinkin' maybe we'd be so bold as to ask wud ye come down to the kitchen and have a drop av coffee and a bit av toast wid us. It's bitter cold the mornin' to be goin' out to an eatin'-house, and there's a grand foire in the stove."

The invitation was accepted, and the guest stayed in the warm kitchen until Rosie's young man materialised. Then Belinda retreated to her own room, made her bed, tucked herself up snugly in the big chair, and once more turned to the consolations of literature.

She was still grimly reading when, at eleven o'clock, Ellen tapped on the door.

"If ye plaze, Miss, there's a man wud loike to be spakin' wid yez."

Belinda looked blankly incredulous. Then a gleam of hope flashed across her face. By a miracle, Jack's boat might have come back – or somebody from home —

"Yis; he sez his name's Ryder."

"Ryder?" echoed Belinda.

"He wuz afther askin' fer Miss Ryder and Miss Emmiline furrst, and he luked queer loike when I told him they wuz gone away.

"'Who's here, onyway,' sez he, sort o' grinnin' as if it hurt him.

"'There's Miss Carewe,' sez Oi, 'wan av th' tachers.'

"'Ask her will she see me fer a minute,' sez he; an' wid that I come fer yez."

"What's he like, Ellen?"

"Well, he's bigger than most and kind av gruff spoken, as though he'd as lave hit ye if he didn't loike yer answers; but it's nice eyes and good clothes he has. He's a foine figger av a man, and he do be remindin' me some way av Miss Ryder. I doubt he's a relation."

Belinda was straightening her hair and putting cologne on her swollen eyelids.

"I'll have to go down. Where is he?"

"In the back parlour, Miss."

"Did you raise the shades?"

"Divil a bit. It's ez cheerful ez a buryin' vault in there."

It was. John Ryder had grasped that fact as he sat waiting, upon one of the shrouded chairs. He turned up his coat collar with a shiver.

"Lord, how natural it seems," he muttered. "They did the same sort of thing at home. Give me the ranch."

The portière before the hall door was pushed aside and the man rose. He was prepared for a gaunt, forbidding, elderly spinster. He saw a girl in a dark blue frock that clung to the curves of the slender figure as though it loved them. He saw a waving mass of sunny brown hair that rippled into high lights even in the darkened room and framed a piquant face whose woeful brown eyes were shadow-circled.

"Merry Christmas!" he said abruptly.

"Merry Christmas!" Belinda replied before she realised the absurdity of it.

"You don't look it," commented John Ryder frankly.

Belinda crossed the room, threw up the shades, and turned to look at the amazing visitor, who stood the scrutiny with imperturbable calm.

"I am Miss Carewe. You wish to see me?"

The tone was frigid, but its temperature had no apparent effect.

"Yes. I'm John Ryder," the man announced tranquilly; then, seeing that she didn't look enlightened, he added, "I'm Miss Ryder's brother, you know."

Belinda thawed.

"Why, I didn't know – " she began, then stopped awkwardly.

"Didn't know the girls had a brother. No; I fancy they haven't talked about me much. You see, I'm the 'black sheep.'"

The statement was brusque, but the smile was disarming.

"I've been thoroughly bleached, Miss Carewe. Don't turn me out."

She had no intention of turning him out. His voice had an honest note, his eyes were very kind, and she lacked supreme confidence in her employers' sense of values; so she sat down upon an imposing chair swathed in brown Holland and looked at the "Black Sheep."

"What have they been doing to you?" he asked.

"I'm homesick." She essayed gay self-derision, but her lips trembled, and to John Ryder's surprise he found his blood boiling, despite the icy temperature of the room.

"Did they leave you here all alone?"

"Nobody left me. I stayed."

Belinda was conscious that the conversation had taken an amazing leap into intimacy, and clutched at her dignity, but she felt bewildered. There was something overpowering and masterful about this big, boyish man.

"Nobody else here?"

"Servants."

"House shut up like this?"

"Naturally."

"No heat?"

"I can't see that the matter concerns you, Mr. Ryder – unless – "

"Oh, no. I'm not thinking of staying."

Her attempt at rebuff had not the smallest effect.

"No gas, either, I suppose?"

She didn't answer.

He said something under his breath that appeared to afford him relief.

"No friends in town, evidently?"

Belinda rose with fine stateliness.

"If there's nothing I can do for you, Mr. Ryder – "

"Sit down."

She sat down involuntarily, and then felt egregiously foolish because she had done it; but John Ryder was leaning forward with his honest eyes holding hers and was talking earnestly.

"Please don't be angry. I've been out in the Australian bush so long that I've forgotten my parlour tricks. Men say what they think, and ask for what they want, and do pretty well as they please – or can – out there. I've hardly seen a woman. I suppose they'd cut down the independence if they entered into the game. But, see here, Miss Carewe, you're homesick. I'm homesick, too – and I'm worse off than you, for I'm homesick at home. It's rather dreadful being homesick at home."

There was a note, half bitter, half regretful, in the voice and a look in the eyes that was an appeal to generosity.

Belinda's conventionality crumpled up and her heart warmed toward the fellow-waif.

"I've been counting a good deal upon a home Christmas," he went on; "more than I realised; and this isn't exactly the real thing."

Belinda nodded comprehension.

The "Black Sheep" read the sympathy in her eyes.

"It's good of you to listen. You see, I've been away twenty years. It's a long time."

He sat silent for a moment staring straight before him, but seeing something that she could not see. Then he came back to her.

"Yes; it's a long time. One imagines the things one has left stand still, but they don't. I thought I'd find everything pretty much the same. Of course I might have known better, but – well, a fellow's memory and imagination play tricks upon his intelligence sometimes. I liked New York, you know. It's the only place, but I made the mistake of thinking I could fill it, and it was bigger than I had supposed. I swelled as much as I could, but I finally burst, like the ambitious frog in the fable. I'd made a good many different kinds of a fool of myself, Miss Carewe."

He hesitated, but her eyes encouraged him.

"I'd made an awful mess of things, and the family were down on me – right they were, too. The girls were pretty bitter. It was hard on them, you see, and I deserved all I got. Emmy would have forgiven me, but Lou was just rather than merciful. You know justice is Lou's long suit. Well, I cut away to Australia, and I didn't write – first because I hadn't anything good to tell, and then because I didn't believe anybody'd care to hear, and finally because it had got to be habit. It'd a' been different if mother had been alive. Probably I'd never have run – or if I had run I'd have written, but sisters – sisters are different. Mothers are – "

His voice stuck fast with a queer quaver, and Belinda nodded again. She knew that mothers were —

He found his voice.

"I struck it rich after a while and I was too busy making money to think much; but by-and-by, after the pile was pretty big, I got to thinking of ways of spending it, and then old New York began bobbing into my world again, and I thought about the girls and the things I could do to make up, and about the good times I could give some of the old crowd who had stood by me when I was good for nothing and didn't deserve a friend. And then I began planning and planning – but I didn't write. I used to go to sleep planning how I'd drop back into this little village and what I'd do to it. Finally I decided to get here for Christmas. The schoolgirls would be away then and I would walk in here and pick Emmy and Lou up, and give them the time of their lives during the holidays. All the way across the Pacific and the continent I was planning the surprise. I've got two ten-thousand-dollar checks made out to the girls here in my pocket, and I've got a list a mile long of other Christmas presents I was going to get for them. I even had the Christmas dinner menu fixed – and here I am."

He looked uncommonly like a disappointed child. Belinda found herself desperately sorry and figuratively feeling in her pocket for sugar-plums.

"Your friends – " she began.

He interrupted.

"I tried to hunt up five of the old crowd, over the 'phone. Two are dead. One's in Europe. One's living in San Francisco. The other didn't remember my name until I explained, and then he hoped he'd see me while I was in town. It's going to be a lively Christmas."

Suddenly he jumped up and walked to the window, then came back and stood looking down at the Youngest Teacher.

"Miss Carewe, we are both Christmas outcasts. Why can't we make the best of it together?"

Belinda flushed and sat up very straight, but he went on rapidly:

"What's the use of your moping here alone and my wandering around the big empty town alone? Why can't we spend the day together? You'll dine with me and go to a matinée, and we'll have an early supper somewhere, and then I'll bring you home and go away. We can cheer each other up."

"But it's so – "

"Yes, I know it's unconventional, but there's no harm in it – not a bit. You know my sisters, and nobody knows me here – and anyway, as I told you, I'm bleached. Word of honor, Miss Carewe, I'm a decent sort as men go – and I'm old enough to be your father. It would be awfully kind in you. A man has no right to be sentimental, but I'm blue. The heart's dropped out of my world. I'm not a drinker nowadays, but if I hadn't found you here I'm afraid I'd have gone out and played the fool by getting royally drunk. Babies we are, most of us. Please come. It will make a lot of difference to me, and it would be more cheerful for you than this sort of thing. Come! Do, won't you?"

And Belinda, doubting, wondering, hesitating, longing for good cheer and human friendliness, turned her back upon Dame Grundy and said yes.

Half an hour later a gay, dimpling girl, arrayed in holiday finery, and a stalwart, handsome man with iron-gray hair but an oddly boyish face, were whirling down Fifth Avenue, in a hansom, toward New York's most famous restaurant. The man stopped the cab in front of a florist's shop, disappeared for a moment, and came out carrying a bunch of violets so huge that the two little daintily gloved hands into which he gave the flowers could hardly hold them.

The restaurant table, reserved by telephone while Belinda was making a hasty toilette, was brave with orchids. An obsequious head waiter, impressed by the order delivered over the wire, conducted the couple to the flower-laden table and hovered near them with stern eyes for the attendant waiters and propitiatory eyes for the patron of magnificent ideas.

Even the invisible chef, spurred by the demand upon his skill, wrought mightily for the delectation of the Christmas outcasts – and the outcasts forgot that they were homesick, forgot that they were strangers, and remembered only that life was good.

John Ryder told stories of Australian mine and ranch to the girl with the sparkling eyes and the eager face: talked, as he had never within his memory talked to anyone, of his own experiences, ambitions, hopes, ideals; and Belinda, radiant, charming, beamed upon him across the flowers and urged him on.

Once she pinched herself softly under cover of the table. Surely it was too good to be true, after the gloom of the morning. It was a dream: a violet-scented, French-cookery-flavoured dream spun around a handsome man with frank, admiring eyes and a masterful way.

But the dream endured.

They were late for the theatre, but that made little difference. Neither was alone, forlorn, homesick. That was all that really counted.

After the theatre came a drive, fresh violets, despite all protest, an elaborate supper, which was only an excuse for comradeship.

As the time slipped by a shadow crept into John Ryder's eyes, his laugh became less frequent. He stopped telling stories and contented himself with asking occasional questions and watching the girl across the table, who took up the conversation as he let it fall and juggled merrily with it, although the colour crept into her cheeks as her eyes met the gray eyes that watched her with some vague problem stirring in their depths.

"We must go," she said at last.

John Ryder pushed his coffee-cup aside, rose, and wrapped her cloak around her, without a word. Still silent, he put her into the cab and took a seat beside her.

"I shall go to-night," he said after a little.

"Go? Where?"

Belinda's voice was surprised, regretful.

The man looked down at her.

"It's a good deal better. I belong out there. There's no place for me here, unless – "

He stopped and shook his head impatiently.

"I'd better go. I'd only make a fool of myself if I stayed. I'll run up and spend a day with the girls and then I'll hit the trail for the ranch again. I'll be contented out there – perhaps. There's something here that gets into a man's veins and makes him want things he can't have."

"I'm sorry," Belinda murmured vaguely. "It's been very nice, hasn't it?"

He laid a large hand over her small ones.

"Nice – that's a poor sort of a word, little girl."

The cab stopped before the school door. The two Christmas comrades went slowly up the steps and stood for a moment in the dark doorway.

"You are surely going?"

"Yes, I'm going."

"You've been very good to me. I shall remember to-day – "

"And I." He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "I'm forty-five and I'm – a fool. You've given me a happy day, little girl, but some way or other I'm more homesick than ever. I've had a vision – and I think I shall always be homesick now. Good-by. God bless you!"

Belinda climbed the stairs to her room with a definite sense of loss in her heart.

"Still," she admitted to herself, as she put the violets in water, "he was forty-five."

CHAPTER VI
THE BLIGHTED BEING

KATHARINE HOLLAND was distinctly unpopular during her first weeks in the Ryder School. Miss Lucilla Ryder treated her courteously, but Miss Lucilla's courtesy had a frappé quality not conducive to heart expansion. Miss Emmeline showed even more than her usual gentle propitiatory kindliness toward the quiet, unresponsive girl, but kindliness from Miss Emmeline had the flavour of overtures from a faded daguerreotype or a sweetly smiling porcelain miniature. It was a slightly vague, impersonal, watery kindliness not calculated to draw a shy or sensitive girl from her reserve.

The teachers, all save Belinda, voted Katharine difficult and unimpressionable. As for the girls, having tried the new pupil in the schoolgirl balance, and having found her lamentably wanting in appreciation of their friendliness, they promptly voted her "snippy," and vowed that she might mope as much as she pleased for all they cared – but that was before they knew that she was a "Blighted Being."

The moment that the cause of Katharine's entrance into the school fold and of her listless melancholy was revealed to her schoolfellows, public opinion turned a double back-somersault and the girl became the centre of school interest. Her schoolmates watched her every move, hung upon her every word, humbly accepted any smallest crumbs of attention or comradeship she vouchsafed to them. No one dared hint at a knowledge of her secret, but in each breast was nursed the hope that some day the heroine of romance might throw herself upon that breast and confide the story of her woes. Meanwhile, it was much to lavish unspoken sympathy upon her and live in an atmosphere freighted with romance.

Amelia Bowers was the lucky mortal who first learned the new girl's story and had the rapture of telling it under solemn pledge of secrecy to each of the other girls. Sentiment gravitates naturally toward Amelia. She is all heart. Possibly it would be more accurate to say she is all heart and imagination; and if a sentimental confidence, tale, or situation drifts within her aura it invariably seeks her out. Upon this occasion the second-floor maid was the intermediary through which the romantic tale flowed. She had been dusting the study while Miss Lucilla and Miss Emmeline discussed the problem of Katharine Holland, and happening to be close to the door – Norah emphasised the accidental nature of the location – she had overheard the whole story.

Norah herself had loved, early and often. Her heart swelled with sympathy, and she sped to Amelia, in whom she had discovered a kindred and emotional soul.

Fifteen minutes later Amelia, in one of her many wrappers, and with but one side of her hair done up in kids, burst in upon Laura May Lee and Kittie Dayton, who were leisurely preparing for bed. Excitement was written large upon the visitor's pink and white face. She swelled proudly with the importance of a bearer of great tidings.

"Girls, what do you think?" She paused dramatically.

The girls evidently didn't think, but they sat down upon the bed, big-eyed and expectant.

"Cross your hearts, hope to die?"

They crossed their hearts and solemnly hoped they might perish if they revealed one word of what was coming.

"You know Katharine Holland?"

They did.

"Awful stick," commented Laura May.

Amelia flamed into vivid defence.

"Nothing of the sort. I guess you'd be quiet too, Laura May Lee, if your heart was broken."

With one impulse the girls on the bed drew their knees up to their chins and hugged them ecstatically. This was more than they had hoped for.

"Yes, sir, broken," repeated Amelia emphatically.

"How d'you know?" asked Kittie Dayton.

"Never you mind. I know all about it."

"She didn't tell you?"

"No, she didn't tell me, but I know. She's madly in love with an enemy of her house."

"Not really?" Laura May's tone was tremulous with interest.

Kittie gave her knees an extra hug. "It's like Romeo and Juliet," she said. Kittie was a shining light in the English Literature classes.

Satisfied with the impression she had made Amelia gathered her forces for continuous narrative.

"You see, her folks have got lots of money, and she's their only child, but her father's an awful crank and her mother don't dare say her soul's her own."

"Don't Katharine's father like her?"

Amelia was annoyed.

"If you'll keep still, Kittie, I'll tell you all about it. If you can't wait I won't tell you at all."

Kittie subsided, and the story flowed on.

"He adores her, but he's very stubborn, and there's a man he hates worse than poison. They had some sort of a business quarrel a long time ago, and Mr. Holland is as bitter as can be yet and never allows one of his family to speak to one of the other family. He said he'd shoot any Clark who stepped a foot on his grounds."

Amelia's face was radiant with satisfaction. Her voice was hushed for dramatic effect.

"There's a Clark boy," she went on; then, not pleased with the ring of her sentence, began again.

"The hated enemy has a son." That was much better, and it gave her a good running start. "He's handsome as a prince, and perfectly lovely in every way." Miss Lucilla hadn't confided this fact to Miss Emmeline, but there are some things one knows instinctively, and Amelia believes in poetic license as applied to drama. "He's been away at school, but he came home last June, and he and Katharine got acquainted somewhere. She didn't dare tell her father she had met him, but she loved him desperately at first sight." Once more Miss Lucilla's bald facts were being elaborated.

"Did he fall in love that way, too?" Kittie was athirst for detail.

"He was crazy over her the minute he set eyes on her, and he just had to see her again, and he got a friend to take her walking and let him meet them, and it went on that way until they got so well acquainted that he could make love to her, and then they got rid of the friend and used to go walking all by themselves, and finally somebody saw them and told Katharine's father. My, but he was mad. He sent for Katharine and she wouldn't lie to him. She said she and the young man were engaged and she was going to marry him, and her father swore something awful, and her mother cried, and Katharine was just as white as marble, but she kept perfectly calm." Amelia was warming to her work. "And they imprisoned her in her room, and her father used to go and try to make her promise she'd never speak to her lover again, and her mother used to cry and beg her to give him up. But they couldn't break her spirit or make her false to her vows, and finally they decided to send her away, so they wrote to Miss Lucilla and told her all about it. Miss Lucilla said she hated to have such a responsibility, but that they offered so much money she didn't feel she could refuse to take the girl – and that, anyway, the parents probably knew best, and it was for Katharine's best interests she should be separated from the boy. So Mr. Holland brought Katharine here, and she's not to stir out without a teacher, and she's not to have any mail save what passes through Miss Lucilla's hands and is opened by her, and she's not to receive any callers unless they bring a note from her father, and she's not to write letters except to her mother."

"How'll they help it, I'd like to know? They can't watch her all the time," chorused the two listeners, each mentally devoting her inkstand, pen, stationery and services as postman to the cause of unfortunate love.

"How we've misjudged her," sighed Laura May.

"I thought it was funny she came here when she's so old. She must be eighteen, isn't she?" asked Kittie.

"Pretty near. I'd elope and defy my cruel parents if I was eighteen, but she says she won't elope – that she'll wait until she's twenty-one, and then if her father won't give in, and can't show her anything bad about the man, she'll marry him anyhow. Miss Lucilla had a talk with her, and she said Katharine seemed to be a very nice girl and very reasonable except when it came to breaking off her love affair, but that she was just as stubborn as a rock about that."

"What do you suppose they'll do?"

Amelia meditated, turning the searchlight of memory upon her favourite novels.

"Well, she may waste away. She's pretty thin. I guess her father would feel dreadful when he stood by her deathbed. And then her lover may persuade her to fly with him. I wish she'd let me help her fly. Or she may just wait till she's twenty-one and then leave home with her father's curses on her head, and if she did that her mother'd probably die of grief, and everything her father'd touch would fail, and finally he'd be a lonely, miserable old man and send for Katharine to forgive him, and she'd bring her little daughter to him and – "

"Why, Amelia Bowers!" protested Kittie, whose slow brain had been following the rapid pace with difficulty, and who had not lost her schoolmate in the cursed and married heroine.

"Well, it's pretty dreadful any way you fix it. She's a Blighted Being," said Amelia cheerfully. "We must be very considerate of her. Good-night."

She hurried away, intent upon spreading her news before the "lights-out" bell should ring, and with each telling the tale grew in detail and picturesqueness.

The next morning the girls began being considerate of Katharine. If the Blighted Being noticed the sudden change of attitude it must have occasioned her some wonder, if not considerable annoyance. She was not a girl to air her wrongs nor bid for sympathy, although she was not brave enough to assume a cheerful manner and keep her heartache out of her face. She learned her lessons, did her tasks, was respectful to the teachers, polite to the girls, but she held aloof from everyone – was, in the arrogant fashion of youth, absorbed in her own unhappiness. Occasionally, when she met Belinda's smiling, friendly eyes, her face softened and an answering smile hovered around her sensitive lips, but the relaxing went no further.

Amelia and her mates found the victim of parental tyranny an absorbing interest. They missed no word or act or movement of hers when she was with them. They offered her caramels and fudge with an air of fervent sympathy. They left the best orange for her at breakfast. They allowed her to head the crocodile during morning walk, day after day, and allotted the honor of walking with her to a different girl each day, the names being taken in alphabetical order.

They gave her the end seat on the open cars, in church, at the theatre. They surreptitiously sharpened her pencils and cleaned her desk for her. They made offerings of flowers. They volunteered to loan her their novels even before they had read them.

And Katharine, not understanding the spring from which all this friendliness flowed, unbent slightly as the days went by, paid more attention to the life around her, yet kept the tightly closed lips and the unhappy eyes. She was very young, very much in love, and her pride suffered even more than her heart. Mr. Holland's method of parental government was, to put it mildly, not diplomatic.

James, the handy man of the school, was the only person upon whom she was ever actually seen to smile, but she appeared to have a liking for James. Amelia several times saw her talking to the man in the hall, and once something white and square passed from the girl's hands to the man's.

"She's getting James to mail letters," announced Amelia breathlessly, breaking in upon Laura May and Kittie.

"Bully for James!" crowed Kittie inelegantly. "But won't he catch it if Miss Lucilla finds out."

Miss Lucilla didn't find out, but an avenging Nemesis apparently overtook James, for a few days later he failed to appear at the school in the morning, and the cook had to attend to the furnace.

Later came a most apologetic note from the missing handy man. He was ill – seriously ill. The doctor had forbidden his leaving the house for at least a week. He was greatly distressed – in English of remarkable spelling – because he was inconveniencing Miss Ryder, but he didn't want to give up the place altogether, and if he might be allowed to send a substitute for a week or so he would surely be able to take up work again at the end of that time. He had a friend in mind – a nice, respectable young fellow who would do the work well and could be trusted even with the silver – a bit youngish, perhaps, but willing and handy. Should he send him?