Part 28 (2/2)

”Give up Lady? Well, I like that! Coolest idea I've ever heard! Why, I thought of the whole thing, and wrote to Dad, and she was hired specially for me. _Your_ riding lessons were only a copy of my idea. Get a third pony if you can, but I guess I'm not going to give up Lady to anybody. Why should I? Dad said she was to be mine.”

”It's not sporty of you, though,” grumbled Sadie. ”You know perfectly well we _can't_ get a third pony, and everybody in the school is saying how hard it is for you to monopolize one entirely to yourself. There are six other girls who'd be glad to learn riding if they could get a mount.”

”Then let them write home to their fathers to send them ponies.”

”As if they could! But their fathers would let them take lessons if there were a school pony for them. I know that for a fact.”

”Well, they shan't have mine, at any rate,” rapped out Diana defiantly.

”You just needn't think it, so there!”

One afternoon it was Wendy's turn for the school pony. She and Diana and Miss Carr rode away together down the road to Chapelrigg. It was a gloriously fine day. Wild roses starred the hedgerows, and the beautiful blue speedwell bordered the lanes. Larks were singing, and, though the cuckoo had changed his tune, blackbirds still fluted in the coppices.

They had come out on an errand--not a particularly romantic one, as it happened, only to pay a bill for Miss Todd at a farm-house a few miles away. If the errand was prosaic the farm and its surroundings looked attractive; it stood on a hill with a beautiful group of birch-trees behind it, and a small stream came rippling down at the bottom of the garden. The path from the high road was blocked by a cart left standing with a load of straw, so it would be impossible to ride the horses up to the door. The three riders dismounted, and Miss Carr, tying Baron to the fence, said she would walk up the lane and pay the bill while the girls waited for her in the road. Allowing Lady and Topsy to crop the gra.s.s in the hedge bottom, Diana and Wendy sat on the bank lazily enjoying themselves. It was very pleasant that afternoon to be alive. In that northern district although summer came late she made up for it by the extreme beauty with which she clothed the landscape; the view from the hill-side was like one of Turner's pictures.

As the girls sat chatting, watching the ponies, and idly plucking flowers, they heard footsteps coming along the road, and presently a woman carrying a baby appeared round the corner. She was young and dark and gipsy-looking, and wore large ear-rings and a red cotton handkerchief knotted loosely round her brown throat. She stopped at the sight of Diana and Wendy and the ponies, and seemed to consider a moment. Then she walked boldly up to them, looked keenly in their faces, and evidently chose Diana.

”Could you do me a kindness, miss?” she asked. ”I've to go up to the farm for a basket. I don't want to carry the baby with me; she's so heavy. If I leave her here on the gra.s.s would you keep an eye on her till I come back? I shan't be gone five minutes.”

Now Diana was fond of babies, and the little dark-eyed specimen, wrapped up in the plaid shawl, was pretty and attractive and fairly clean. For answer she held out her arms, received baby, shawl, and feeding-bottle on to her knee, and const.i.tuted herself temporary nurse.

”She'll be good till I come back,” said the woman, turning up the lane that led to the farm.

The small person with the brown eyes was probably accustomed to be handed about. She did not jib at strangers, as might have been expected, but accepted the situation quite amiably. She gurgled in response to Diana's advances, and allowed herself to be amused. Perhaps the vicinity of horses was familiar to her, and she felt at home. Diana, hugging her on her knee, freed her from the folds of the shawl and allowed her to kick happily. She was certainly a fascinating little mortal.

In the course of about ten minutes Miss Carr, who had been having a chat at the farm about gardening prospects, returned leisurely down the lane, and was electrified to find Diana sitting by the roadside nursing a baby.

”I didn't see any gipsy woman come up to the farm,” she said, in answer to the girls' explanations. ”You'd better go, Wendy, and see if you can find her, and tell her to come at once and fetch her baby.”

So Wendy went up the lane to the farm, and asked at the front door and the back door, and looked round the stack-yard and the buildings, but there was never a trace of the gipsy girl. A little boy playing by the pond, however, declared that he had seen a woman crossing the field and climbing over the fence on to the road. Wendy returned with this report.

Miss Carr looked annoyed.

”We must go along the road, then, and follow her. We can't wait here till she chooses to come back.”

So Diana carried the baby, and Wendy led Lady and Topsy, and Miss Carr, with an anxious wrinkle between her eyebrows, followed with Baron in the direction that the small boy had pointed out. They walked a mile, and enquired at cottages and from pa.s.sers-by, and from men working in the fields, but n.o.body had seen the gipsy woman. Then they went back to the trysting-place to see if she had returned, but she was not there. They asked again at the farm, and went back to the cottages, and Miss Carr begged to leave the baby there, because its mother would be sure to enquire for it and find it. The occupants of the cottages, however, shook their heads, and were not at all prepared to accept the responsibility. Neither were the people at the farm. They utterly refused to take it in. Then Diana realized that it is one thing to offer to nurse a baby, and quite another to get rid of it again. What were they to do?

”We can't dump the poor mite down by the roadside and leave it,” said Miss Carr distractedly. ”Whatever _can_ have become of its mother?”

No answer was forthcoming to her question, and matters were urgent. She decided that the only thing to be done was to take the baby with them to Pendlemere, leaving messages at the farm and the cottages for the mother to follow on and claim it. Naturally it made a great sensation in the school when Diana arrived holding her foundling in her arms. Miss Carr explained at full length to Miss Todd, who was utterly aghast, but consented to take in the small stranger till it was claimed. Miss Chadwick, who had studied hygiene at the Agricultural College, and had once a.s.sisted at a creche, const.i.tuted herself head nurse, mixed a bottle, and left Miss Ormrod to feed the fowls while she sat in a rocking-chair and soothed the foundling to sleep.

”Surely the mother'll turn up before dark,” she said.

But n.o.body turned up, and Miss Chadwick, who had had to guess at the baby's age and requirements, and had mixed too strong a bottle, spent a wakeful night patting her small guest on the back and endeavouring to still her wails. Next morning Miss Todd reported the matter at the police station, enquiries were made, and it was ascertained that a girl answering to the description given had been in the company of a band of hawkers, but had disappeared and left no trace of her whereabouts. The baby was not hers, but belonged to a woman who had just been arrested on a serious charge and taken to Glenbury jail; the hawkers with whom she had a.s.sociated disclaimed all responsibility for the child.

”The only thing to be done is to send it to the Union,” said the police sergeant.

But by that time the school in general, and Diana in particular, had fallen in love with the poor little baby. They raged at the idea of sending it to the workhouse. They had borrowed clothes for it; and, nicely bathed and dressed and recovered from its fit of indigestion, it looked a sweet thing, and was ready to make friends with anybody and everybody.

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