Fifty-Two Stories For Girls Part 22

CHAPTER I.

"I say, Bee, are you coming?"

Claude Molyneux, in all the glory of fourteen summers and a suit of new white flannels, stands looking up with a slight frown of impatience at an open bay-window. It has been one of the hottest of August days; and now at four o'clock in the afternoon the haze of heat hangs over the sea, and makes a purple cloud of the distant coast. But, for all that, it is splendid weather; just the kind of weather that a boy likes when he comes to spend his holidays at the seaside; and Claude, who is an Indian-born boy, has no objection to a good hot summer.

As he stands, hands in pockets, on the narrow pebbled path under the window, you cannot help admiring the grace of his slim, well-knit figure, and the delicate moulding of his features. The fair skin is sun-tanned, as a boy's skin ought to be; the eyes, large and heavy-lidded, are of a dark grey, not brilliant, but soft; the light, fine hair is cropped close to the shapely head. He is a lad that one likes at the first glance; and although one sees, all too plainly, that those chiselled lips can take a disdainful curl sometimes, one knows instinctively that they may always be trusted to tell the simple truth.

Anything mean, anything sneaky, could not live in the steady light of those dark-grey eyes.

"I say, Bee-e!" he sings out again, with a little drawl, which, however, does not make the tone less imperative. Master Claude is not accustomed to be kept waiting, and is beginning to think himself rather badly used.

"Coming," cries a sweet treble; and then a head and shoulders appear above the row of scarlet geraniums on the window-sill.

She is worth waiting for, this loitering Bee, whose thirteen years have given her none of the airs of premature womanhood. Her smooth round cheeks are tinted with the tender pink of the sh.e.l.l; her great eyes, of speedwell blue, are opened frankly and fearlessly on the whole world.

Taken singly, not one of her features is, perhaps, quite faultless; but it would be hard to find a critic who could quarrel with the small face, framed in waves of ruddy golden hair that go tumbling down below her waist. You can see a freckle or two on the sides of her little nose, and notice that her slender hands are browned by the sea-side sun; for Bee is one of those lucky girls who are permitted to dabble freely in salt-water, and get all the benefit that briny breezes can bestow.

"I couldn't come sooner," she says in a tone of apology. "We always have to learn a hymn on Sat.u.r.days, and I've had _such_ a bother with Dolly.

She _would_ want to know where 'the scoffer's seat' was, and if it had a cus.h.i.+on? And it does so worry me to try to explain."

"Oh, you poor thing--you must be quite worn out!" responds Claude, with genuine sympathy. "But make haste; you haven't got your hat on yet."

Bee makes a little dive, and brings up a wide-brimmed sailor's hat with a blue ribbon round it. She puts it on, fastens it securely under the silken ma.s.ses of her hair, and then declares herself to be quite ready.

In the next instant the girl and boy are walking side by side along the sh.o.r.e, near enough to the sea to hear the soft rush of the tide. The blue eyes are turned inquiringly on Claude's face, which is just a shade graver than it ought to be on this delightful do-nothing day.

"Bee," he says after a silence, "I don't quite approve of your being great friends with Crooke--Tim Crooke. What a name it is! He may be a good sort of fellow, but he's not in our set at all, you know."

"He _is_ a good sort of fellow," she answers. "There's no doubt about that. Aunt Hetty likes him very much. And he's clever, Claude; he can do ever so many things."

"I dare say he can," says Mr. Molyneux, throwing back his head and quickening his pace. "But you needn't have got so _very_ intimate. We could have done very well without him to-day."

"He's Mr. Carey's pupil," remarks Bee quietly. "Aunt Hetty couldn't invite Mr. Carey and leave out Tim."

"Well, we could have been jolly enough without Mr. Carey. It's a mistake, I think, to see too much of this Tim Crooke; he isn't a gentleman, and he oughtn't to expect us to notice him particularly."

"He doesn't expect anything; we like him; he's our friend." The soft pink deepens on Bee's cheeks, and her ripe lips quiver a little. She loves Claude with all her heart, and thinks him the king of boys; but, for all that, she won't let him be unjust if she can help it.

Claude tramps on over sand, and pebbles, and seaweed, with lips firmly compressed and eyes gazing steadily before him. Bee, as she glances at him, knows quite well what Claude feels when he looks as if his features had got frozen into marble. And she knows, too, that he will be painfully, frigidly, exasperatingly polite to her all the evening.

Matters cannot go on like this, she says to herself in desperation.

Claude arrived only yesterday, and here they are beginning his holiday with a dreadful disagreement. She has been counting the days that must pa.s.s before she sees him; writing him little letters full of sweet child-love and longing; wearing a pinafore over her newest frock, that it may be kept fresh and pretty for his critical eyes. And now he is here, walking by her side; and she has offended him.

Is it Heaven or the instincts of her own innocent little heart that teach this girl tact and wisdom? She doesn't proceed to inspire Claude with a maddening desire to punch Tim's head, by recounting a long catalogue of Mr. Crooke's perfections, as a more experienced person would probably have done. But she draws a shade closer to her companion, and presently he finds a tiny brown hand upon his white flannel sleeve.

"You dear old Empey," she says lovingly, "I've been wanting you for, oh, _such_ a long time!"

The frozen face thaws; the dark grey eyes s.h.i.+ne softly. "Empey" is her pet name for him, an abbreviation of "Emperor;" and he likes to hear her say it.

"And I've wanted you, old chap," he answers, putting his arm round the brown-holland waist.

"Empey, we always do get on well together, don't we?"

"Of course we do,"--with a squeeze.

"Then, just to please me, won't you be a little kind to poor Tim? He's not a splendid fellow like you, and he knows he never will be. I do so want you to forget that he's a n.o.body. We are all so much more comfortable when we don't remember things of that sort. You're not angry, Empey?"

"Angry; no, you silly old thing!"

And then she knows, without any more words, that he will grant her request.

The little boat that Claude has hired is waiting for them at the landing-place, and Bee steps into it with the lightest of hearts. Aunt Hetty and the rest will follow in a larger boat; but Mr. Molyneux has resolved to row Miss Beatrice Jocelyn himself.

He rows as he does everything, easily and gracefully, and Bee watches him with happy blue eyes as they go gliding over the warm sea. How still it is to-day! Beyond the grey rocks and yellow sands they can see the golden harvest fields full of standing sheaves, and still farther away there are low hills faintly outlined through the hot mist. The little town, with its irregularly-built terraces, looks dazzlingly white in the suns.h.i.+ne; but the church, standing on high ground, lifts a red spire into the hazy blue.

"I could live on the sea!" says Bee ecstatically. "You don't know what it costs me to come out of a boat; I always want this lovely gliding feeling to go on for ever. Don't you?"

"I like it awfully," he replies; "but then there are other things that I want to do by-and-by. I mean to try my hand at tiger-shooting when I go out to the governor."

"But, oh, Empey, it'll be a long time before you have to go out to India!"

Her red mouth drops a little at the corners, and her dimples become invisible. He looks at her with a gleam of mischief in his lazy eyes.

"What do you call a long time?" he asks. "Just a year or two, that's nothing. Never mind, Bee, you'll get on very well without me."

"Oh, Empey!"

The great blue eyes glisten; and Claude is penitent in an instant.

"You ridiculous old chap!" he says gaily. "Haven't you been told thousands of times that my dad is your guardian, and as good as a father to you? And do you suppose that I'd go to India and leave you behind?

You're coming too, you know, and you'll sit perched up on the back of an elephant to see me shoot tigers. What a time we'll have out there, Bee!"

"Do you really mean it?" she cries, with a rapturous face; blue eyes s.h.i.+ning like sapphires, cheeks aglow with the richest rose.

"Of course I do. It was all arranged, years ago, by our two governors; I thought Aunt Hetty had told you. But I say, Bee, when the time _does_ come, I hope you won't make a fuss about leaving England!"

"Not a bit of it," she says st.u.r.dily. "I shall like to see the Ganges, and the big water-lilies, and the alligators. But what's to become of Dolly?"

"I don't know; I suppose she'll have to stay with Aunt Hetty. You belong to _us_, you see, old girl; so you and I shall never be parted."

"No, never be parted," she echoes, looking out across the calm waters with eyes full of innocent joy.

CHAPTER II.

As soon as the boat grates on the shallows, two small bare-legged urchins rush forward to help Miss Jocelyn to land. But Bee, active and fearless, needs no aid at all, and reaches the pebbled beach with a light spring.

"Is tea nearly ready, Bob?" she asks, addressing the elder lad, who grins with delight from ear to ear.