Fifty-Two Stories For Girls Part 16

which she read aloud to her brother. A minute afterwards, as she turned the brown-spotted leaves, there fell out a packet, a letter superscribed, "Miss Anna Clare; to be read on her twenty-first birthday, and when quite alone." Katie gasped, "Oh, look!" and dropped the paper as if it burned her fingers. Aubrey sprang forward, prepared to slay a giant spider, but when his eyes fell upon the writing which had so startled his sister, he too seemed petrified. They gazed fixedly into each other's eyes for a minute, then Aubrey said emphatically,--

"It's _that_!" And both rushed precipitately downstairs, exclaiming, "Auntie, auntie, we've found it!"

Now Miss Clare was just partaking of that popular refreshment "forty winks," and was some time before she could understand what had so greatly excited her young relations; but when at last it dawned upon her, she hastily brought out her spectacles, and lit the lamp, while every moment seemed an hour to the impatient children. When would she leave off turning the yellow packet in her fingers, and poring over the faded writing outside? At last the seal is broken, and two pairs of eager eyes narrowly watch Miss Clare's face as she scans the contents.

"It _is_ the long-lost letter!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "Where did you find it?"

Both quickly explained, adding, "Do read it, auntie; what does Miss Marjorie say?"

So in a trembling voice Miss Clare read the words penned by a dying hand fifty years before,--

"MY DEAREST ANNA,--I feel that I have but a short time longer to live, and but one thing disturbs my peace. It is the presentiment that sooner or later the thoughtless extravagance of your brother George will bring you all into trouble. It is little I can do to avert this calamity, but years of economy have enabled me to save 280_l._ (which is concealed beneath the floor in my room, under the third plank from the south window, about ten inches from the wall). I wish you, niece Anna, to hold this money in trust, as a profound secret, and to be used _only_ in case of an emergency such as I have hinted. In the event of none such taking place before your sister is of age, you are then to divide the money, equally between yourself, George and Lucy, to use as you each may please. Hoping that I have made my purpose clear, and that my ever trustworthy Anna will faithfully carry out my wishes, I pray that the blessing of G.o.d may rest richly on my nephew and nieces, and bid you, dearest girl, farewell.

"MARJORIE WESTFORD.

"January 2nd, 1825."

Miss Clare's eyes were dim when she finished these words, sounding, as they did, like a voice from the grave, while Kate and Aubrey sat in spellbound silence. The boy was the first to speak.

"Do you think it is still there?"

"There is no reason why it should not be," replied Miss Clare; "indeed it seems that this legacy, so strangely hidden for half a century, and as strangely brought to light, is to be the means by which our Father will bring us out of our present difficulties."

"Get a light, Katie, and let's look for the treasure; that will be the best way of making sure that our adventure isn't the result of a mince-pie supper," suggested Aubrey, producing his tool-box.

So they all proceeded to the room, now seldom entered, where Marjorie Westford breathed her last. It was almost empty, and the spot indicated in the letter was soon determined upon. Aubrey knelt down on the floor, and commenced, in a most unsystematic way, his task of raising the board; while Katie, trembling with excitement, dropped grease spots on his head from her tilted candlestick.

Aubrey's small tools were wholly inadequate to their task, and many were the cuts and bruises his inexperienced hands received before he at length succeeded in prising the stubborn plank.

There lay the mahogany box, which, with some trouble, owing to its weight, they succeeded in bringing to the surface. It fastened by a simple catch, and was filled with golden guineas.

When Kate bade Aubrey good-night upon the stairs, he detained her a minute to murmur with a soft light in his dusky eyes,--

"I'm so very, very glad your sacrifice isn't to be made, darling, but the will is just the same as the deed. I shall love you for it as long as you live; and better still," he added, with deepening colour and lowered voice, "G.o.d knows, and will love you too."

"THE COLONEL."

BY MARION d.i.c.kEN.

d.i.c.k was only thirteen years of age, but he was in love, and in love too with Captain Treves's wife, who, in his eyes, was spick-span perfection.

In their turn Mrs. Treves's two little boys, aged six and five respectively, were in love with d.i.c.k, who appeared to them to be the model of all that a schoolboy ought to be.

It was in church on Easter Sunday that d.i.c.k first realised his pa.s.sion, and then--as he glanced from Mrs. Treves to the captain's stalwart form--the hopelessness of it! He remarked, afterwards, to his brother Ted, a lieutenant in Treves's regiment, that Mrs. Treves looked "ripping" in grey. But Ted was busy with his own thoughts, in which, if the truth be told, the sermon figured as little as in those of his younger brother.

d.i.c.k was on very friendly terms with the Treves and was rather surprised to find that the captain and his wife treated him more like a little boy than a "chap of thirteen--in fact, almost fourteen," as he put it to himself. He used to take Jack and Roy out on the river and to the baths, where he taught them both to swim. To use Ted's own expression to a brother-sub, "d.i.c.k was making a thorough nursemaid and tutor of himself to those kids of the captain's." He _was_ teaching them certainly, unconsciously, but steadily, a great many things.

Jack no longer cried when he blistered his small paws trying to scull, and when Roy thought of d.i.c.k, or the "colonel," as they called him, he left off making grimaces at, and teasing, his baby sister, because d.i.c.k had answered carelessly when Jack once offered to fight him, "No thanks, old boy, I only hit a chap my own size." Roy recognised the difference between tormenting a girl and fighting a boy.

About three weeks after d.i.c.k went back to school for the summer term, both the little Treves's fell ill, and Jack cried incessantly for "the colonel." Yet when kind old Colonel Duke came to see him one afternoon, and brought him some grapes, the child turned fretfully away and still cried, "'Colonel'; I want the 'colonel'!"

"But, Jack dear, this is the colonel," remonstrated his mother, gently smoothing the crumpled pillow.

But Jack still wailed fretfully, and would not be comforted.

Colonel Duke happened to remark on the incident at mess that evening, and Ted Lloyd knitted his brows, as if trying to solve some mental mystery. The result of his cogitations was an early visit to Mrs. Treves next day.

The children were worse. Roy was, indeed, dangerously ill; and neither his father nor mother could persuade Jack to take his medicine.

"We cannot think whom he means by 'colonel'," added the poor lady despairingly.

"That's just what I've come about, Mrs. Treves; they used to call my young brother that at Easter."

"You are sure, Mr. Lloyd?"

"Quite. I heard them myself more than once. I'll trot round and see the Mater, and we will wire for him if it will do any good."

That afternoon d.i.c.k received a telegram which sent him off full speed to his housemaster for the necessary permission to go home.

"Is Mater ill?" he asked breathlessly, as he bundled out of the train on to Ted, who bore the onrush heroically.

"No, she's quite well, only Treves's kids are ill."

"Well?" queried d.i.c.k rather indignantly, as he thought of the cricket-match on the morrow, in which he had hoped to take part.

"Well, you see, d.i.c.k, they're seriously ill, and they can't make the little 'un take his physic."

"Well, I can't take it for him, can I? queried d.i.c.k, as they started home.

"n.o.body wants you to, you little duffer. But the kids used to call you 'colonel,' and now he keeps crying for you. Perhaps if you order him to take the physic, he will--that's all."

"Oh!" briefly responded d.i.c.k.

He was sorry to hear that his whilom chums, the "captain" and "lieutenant," were ill. But weren't kids always having something or other, and would he always be sent for to dose them? "Rot!"

However, these thoughts abruptly left him, when, directly after tea, he went to the captain's and saw Mrs. Treves' pale and anxious face, and instead, his old allegiance, but deeper and truer, returned.

"Thank you, d.i.c.k," she said kindly in reply to his awkward tender of sympathy. And then they went upstairs.

By Jack's bed a gla.s.s of medicine was standing. A nurse was turning Roy's pillow, and Captain Treves stood by her, gnawing his long moustache.

Just then Jack's fretful wail sounded through the room for "'Colonel!'

Daddy, Jack wants the 'colonel'!"

"I'm here, old man," said d.i.c.k, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

"Drink this at once," he added, taking up the gla.s.s, as he remembered his brother's suggestion.