Chapter VI: Inez Appears

The little girl seated herself at the extreme end of the tree-trunk; she looked at Diana with a frown. Diana held out her hand, full of primroses and bluebells.

"Have a nosegay?"' she asked.

A shake of the head was the only answer given, and then suddenly the little stranger burst forth:

"I've run away, and I mean to stay away. They all hate me, and I hate them. And Julia is the worst of all. She's a murderer; she drowned my puppy and held my hands tight when I tried to save him. She drowned him in the water-butt and laughed all the time, and, oh, he thought I would save him. He looked at me, and he was such a darling!"

"The wicked woman!" exclaimed Diana, roused to quick indignation.

The little girl buried her face in her hands and sobbed as if her heart would break.

Mrs. Inglefield moved closer to her and put her motherly arms round her.

"My poor little girl, tell me a little more. What is your name? And where do you live?"

"My name is Inez. I used to live in London with Dad and Mother and I was happy there, for I had a kind Nanny. And then she went away and Julia came. And Dad and Mother are out in Spain, and our house in London is shut up, and Mother said it would do me good to come down to the country and stay at the Park with Julia."

She wiped her eyes and regarded Diana with interest. "I'd like to know you," she said; "I haven't any friends here at all, not one!"

"You will have to come and see us," said Mrs. Inglefield. "Would you be allowed to?"

"Julia doesn't care where I go, she only dresses me and puts me to bed; she's going to marry Jim the under-gardener, I think. She's always with him in the garden. Mrs. Ball is the crossest cook I've ever seen. She hates children, always did, she says, so she hates me, and the other maids always tell me to get out of their way. Sometimes they're kind, but I keep away from them all. I like climbing trees and making bows and arrows. I only shoot at targets on trees. I love the birds—I've a tame robin who comes into the nursery. I call him Jack."

Inez was brightening up as she talked.

Then Mrs. Inglefield said that she and Diana must go on to the farm. Inez asked if she might accompany them.

"I told Julia I should run away and kill myself, and never be heard of again," she remarked thoughtfully, "but now I've met you, I don't think I'll do that."

"I'm quite sure you wouldn't really be so foolish and naughty as to try to hurt yourself, because somebody else had done it," said Mrs. Inglefield gravely.

Diana looked quite shocked.

"I don't care what I do when I'm in a temper," said Inez carelessly. "I fight Julia. I pulled all her hair down one day."

"Don't tell us of the naughty things you do, for we don't want to feel unhappy, but tell us of the good things you do," said Mrs. Inglefield cheerfully.

"I'm not a bit good," said Inez, "never!"

"Then you can't be a happy little girl."

Inez was silent, then she began to chatter to Diana, and Mrs. Inglefield let the children talk together.

They soon reached the farm; Mrs. Cobb was upstairs in bed, so Mrs. Inglefield went up to see her, and Diana and Inez climbed the gate and sat on the top rail of it, swinging their legs to and fro, and talking eagerly together.

A pleasant-faced young woman, a niece of Mrs. Cobb's, presently came out of the house with two glasses of milk and two slices of currant cake. The children thanked her, and left their gate and came into the old porch and sat down there to enjoy what was given them. Diana was looking with the greatest interest at a hen and her tiny chicks who were on the bit of grass lawn before the house.

"What darlings!" she said. "How I wish I could have some little chickens of my own! I've never seen them in London."

"We have a lot," said Inez. "I'll bring you one or two if you like, unless the old hen makes a fuss and tries to peck my eyes out."

Diana was delighted. "I'll make a little home for them in my doll's house," she said; "I brought it from London, and the doors all open and shut, so they could run in and out."

They were very busy talking about it when Mrs. Inglefield appeared.

They walked across the fields, and then Mrs. Inglefield told Inez that she had better run home.

"I wonder," she said to her, "if you would like to please me by trying to be nice to Julia when you go back. If you will try, I would like you to come to tea with my children on Monday."

Inez looked up:

"I won't promise," she said earnestly, "for it may be too difficult, but if I'm awfully wicked I won't come to tea with you. That will make me try hard to be good."

Then she ran off. Her woes had been forgotten. She seemed a happy careless child.

"Oh, Mums, I do like her so much!" said Diana. "I've often wished we had another girl in our family. 'Specially now Chris has changed to me. And she loves hearing stories, she says she never gets tired of it. And I'm going to tell her some of mine that I haven't written down. I do like people who listen to them. I have to keep them bottled up so."

"Poor little storyteller!" said her mother, laughing. "I am afraid that busy brain of yours is only working in one corner."

"How?" asked Diana.

"It's working in your imagination corner, and there are several other corners more important: the learning corner—what grown-up people would call the receptive corner, and the spiritual corner. I should like that last corner to spread and spread till it covered the centre of your brain. Do you ever think about your Saviour and about heaven, that happy home prepared for those who love Him?"

Diana had hold of her mother's hand. She squeezed it tightly, but did not speak for a moment; then she said:

"Noel has that corner spreading all over him, but nobody has talked to us as you do. Granny never did."

"Well, darling, I'm going to talk very often about it, because I love to do so, and I want my children to grow up with their little hands placed in the Hands of their loving Saviour; I want them to be led through their lives by Him."

"I wonder if Chris and Noel have got home yet?"

Mrs. Inglefield smiled. She understood her children, and never gave them too much at a time. But she prayed a lot for them, as all good mothers do.

When they reached home they found Chris dusty, hot, and rather cross. He was cleaning his bicycle with some old rags outside the shed in which he kept it.

"Have you had a nice time?" his mother asked. "Where is Noel?"

"I don't know."

Chris spoke sullenly.

"Didn't he come back with you?"

"I think he's sulking in a ditch. I let him ride much more than I did, and then he went on for miles and left me. He wouldn't stop. And when I did come up with him I let him have it, and he yelled, and I told him, he shouldn't get on it again, so I came on home by myself."

"Oh, Chris! He's a little boy. You shouldn't have left him. Where is this ditch? I did think I could trust you to take care of him."

Chris looked ashamed of himself, then he straightened himself and met his mother's eyes frankly:

"I'm sorry, Mums, but he is a little rotter. And he could have walked home quite well. It was at the four cross corner by the Green Farm."

"That is nearly two miles away. I shall have to go and look for him."

Nurse had appeared, and protested as she heard her mistress say this.

"Indeed, you shall not, ma'am. You're much too tired. Master Chris must go himself."

"I can't," said Chris. "The little beast kicked and kicked at my bicycle with all his might, and something is bent, it won't go properly. It began to go wrong just before I got home."

"You can walk as well as your mother," said Nurse sternly.

Mrs. Inglefield hesitated. She was feeling very tired. And Diana's quick eyes had seen it.

"Chris, I'll come with you a part of the way, anyhow," she said. "I'm not as tired as Mums, and I dare say we shall meet him. And I want to tell you all about a strange little girl we met to-day."

"That's right," said Mrs. Inglefield. "I really think I must let you go. It is very silly of me, but I'm not a good walker. I got out of the way of it in India. I hope you will meet him on the way."

So Chris and Diana set off, and Mrs. Inglefield sat down in a big chair in her tiny hall and gave a sigh.

"I wish my three children pulled together better, Nurse. Whose fault is it, do you think?"

"They'll get on all right after a bit, ma'am. It's early days yet. Master Noel has been accustomed to have things all his own way, so it comes difficult to him. I think he wants a little taking down at times, but Master Chris deserves to be tired, leaving him in the lurch like that."

"I shall not let them go out together again. It was an experiment."

It was a long time before the children came home.

Tea-time passed, and Mrs. Inglefield was getting seriously uneasy.

And then, about half-past six, they appeared. Mrs. Inglefield met them at the door with great relief of mind.

Noel was in the middle of them, and looked tear-stained and defiant.

"We've had to drag him along," Diana said breathlessly. "He wasn't trying to come home, he was just sitting there expecting you to fetch him, determined not to walk home at all by himself."

Noel flung himself in his mother's arms with a burst of sobs.

"My legs is nearly broken, I'm so tarred. Chris lost me and left me, and I didn't know the way home. He's a beast!"

"Hush, hush! Now, no more tears. You are growing out of a baby. Go upstairs with Nurse, and you'll feel better after tea."

Nurse took him off and managed to comfort him. Diana toiled upstairs with weary legs, and Chris turned to his mother.

"I've made you angry," he said; "I'm sorry."

"Not angry, only disappointed. I thought I should be able to depend upon you."

"Oh, do, Mums, do! Forgive me. It's all my fault. I was furious with him for not playing fair. I forgot he was only a baby. And he kicks so! When he kicks my shins, I feel I'd like to give him a good thrashing!"

Chris looked at his mother so appealingly that she took him into her arms and kissed him.

"My eldest son," she said softly: "I want to feel that he is my right hand when his father is away!"

Chris gulped down a choke in his throat.

"Oh, I won't fail you next time," he said in a whisper; "give me a next time, won't you?"

"I hope you'll have a good many 'next times,'" said his mother, smiling. "Now off to your tea, my boy, and make your peace with Noel."

She said no more about the matter till bedtime. They had not so much time with her as usual as their tea was extra late, but when Noel was in bed she talked to him very gravely.

He was still very angry with Chris, and began making excuses for himself, but his mother stopped him:

"I generally find that the angry person is the one in the wrong," she said. "Now, Noel, listen, hold your breath and hush! What does God think of you, I wonder! He was there, He saw it all, He heard all you said and saw all you did. You were the first in the wrong, you had no right to go off with Chris's bicycle and refuse to give it up. It belongs to him, not to you. And it was very good of him to let you ride it at all. I must now forbid you to use it again till you have my permission. You can't be trusted with it. You made Chris angry this afternoon, you vexed and worried me by not coming home, and you grieved God. You are His little servant, but this afternoon you changed sides and have been serving the Devil. What are you doing now? You can't go to sleep till you have asked God to forgive you."

Noel lay very still, his angry eyes closed, and he looked like a little angel.

Mrs. Inglefield had one of his hot little hands in hers, and she felt it twitching. She was silent now, and for a few minutes only the rather loud ticking of the nursery clock broke the stillness in the room.

Then Noel opened his eyes and looked at her.

"I'm quite, quite good now," he said calmly; "he's left me very kickly, because God and I turned him out."

"I am glad to hear it, darling. Now, will you tell God that you are sorry?"

"I've told Him. And I fink it's all right. I fink He's forgiven me."

"I'd like you to tell Chris you're sorry, too. If I bring Chris here, will you do so?"

"Oh, but I aren't, not a bit!"

"Noel!"

Noel closed his eyes tightly again.

"I'm afraid," he murmured, "Satan's still inside me; he's left a bit of himself behind."

Mrs. Inglefield got up.

She knew that Noel rather liked to prolong this kind of conversation.

"I am going to fetch Chris," she said; "if you're really sorry—and God will not forgive you unless you are—you will of course, own up to him that it was your fault in the beginning—you know that is true."

She left the room. Noel wriggled about a good deal in bed, and when Chris came in there was nothing visible of him: only a fat lump below the bedclothes.

"Here is Chris," said Mrs. Inglefield; "I will leave you together."

She left the room.

Chris stood by the bed waiting.

Presently a muffled voice was heard.

"I'm sorry!"

"So am I!" said Chris frankly; "I hate making Mums unhappy!"

Noel's curly head suddenly shot up:

"Mums is always happy. It's only wicked people who are mis'able."

"Wicked people make her miserable," said Chris; "at least, we do."

"Did I spoil your cycle?"

"No, not much. I think I can put it right."

"I'm never to touch it again, never! Mums said so. Isn't that a punishment?"

"It was my fault," acknowledged Chris meekly; "I aggravated you."

Noel nodded. "And so I did, too. I've finished telling everybody I'm sorry, and now I'm going to sleep."

Chris looked at him.

"We'll shake hands on it," he said. "That's what we do at school when we've had a fight."

So Noel's fat dimpled hand and Chris's were clasped together, and then Chris crept silently out of the room. His mother was standing by a passage window looking out into the dusky garden. A young moon was rising over a hill in the distance. Her thoughts were away in India with her husband. She was longing, as she so often did, to have him once more by her side.

Chris leant his head against her shoulder.

"We're all right, Mother. I'm so sorry we've made you sad."

She put her arm round him and said gently:

"I've been wondering what kind of boys your father will meet when he comes home. Whether he'll be disappointed in them, and tell me that I have failed to train them rightly: that I have spoilt them. I wish he were here to talk to you, Chris."

"Oh, Mums, we want no one but you," was Chris's fervent reply; "and I'm awfully sorry about this afternoon. It was all my fault. I was cross to him first, and then he did it to spite me, and I left him there and rode off, to spite him! But we've made it up, and it won't happen again, I promise you!"

Then his mother turned quickly and kissed the brown head on her shoulder.

"I want to depend on you; I want to know that Noel won't come to harm when he's with you, and I'm going to trust you again, Chris. I don't believe you'll fail me."

Mrs. Inglefield had no fault to find with Chris for a long time after that. His ambition was to have his mother's trust and confidence.