Transcribed from the 1902 Macmillan and Co. “CountessKate and The Stokesley Secret” edition ,
BY
CHARLOTTE M. YONGE
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1902
All rights reserved
Richard Clayand Sons, Limited,
LONDON AND BUNGAY
Transferred to Macmillan andCo., Limited, 1901. Reprinted, 1902.
“How can a pig pay therent?”
The question seemed to have been long under consideration, tojudge by the manner in which it came out of the pouting lips ofthat sturdy young five-year-old gentleman, David Merrifield, ashe sat on a volume of the great Latin Dictionary to raise him toa level with the tea-table.
Long, however, as it had been considered, it was unheeded onaccount of one more interesting to the general public assembledround the table.
“I say!” hallooed out a tall lad of twelve holdingaloft a slice taken from the dish in the centre of the table,“I say! what do you call this, Mary?”
“Bread and butter, Master Sam,” replied ratherpettishly the maid who had brought in the big black kettle.
“Bread and butter! I call it bread andscrape!” solemnly said Sam.
“It only has butter in the little holes of it, not atthe top, Miss Fosbrook,” said, in an odd pleading kind oftone, a stout good-humoured girl of thirteen, with face, hair,and all, a good deal like a nice comfortable apricot in a sunnyplace, or a good respectable Alderney cow.
“I think it would be better not to grumble, Susan, mydear,” replied, in a low voice, a pleasant dark-eyed younglady who was making tea; but the boys at the bottom of the tableneither heard nor heeded.
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” was Sam’s cry,in so funny a voice, that Miss Fosbrook could only laugh;“is this bread and scrape the fare for a rising youngfamily of genteel birth?”
“Oh!” with a pathetic grimace, cried thepretty-faced though sandy-haired Henry, the next to him in age,“if our beloved parents knew how their poor desertedinfants are treated—”
“A fine large infant you are, Hal!” exclaimedSusan.
“I’m an infant, you’re an infant, MissFosbrook is an infant—a babby.”
“For shame, Hal!” cried the more civilized Sam,clenching his fist.
“No, no, Sam,” interposed Miss Fosbrook, laughing,“your brother is quite right; I am as much an infant in theeye of the law as little George.”
“There, I said I would!” cried Henry;“didn’t I, Sam?”
“Didn’t you what?” asked Susan, not in themost elegant English.
“Why, Martin Greville twitted us with having a girl fora governess,” said Henry; “he said it was a shame weshould be taken in to think her grown up, when she was nottwenty; and I said I would find out, and now I have doneit!” he cried triumphantly.
“Everybody is quite welcome to know my age,” saidMiss Fosbrook, the colour rising in her cheek. “I wasnineteen on the last of April; but I had rather you had asked mepoint blank, Henry, than tried to find out in a sidelongway.”
Henry looked a little surly; and Elizabeth, a nice-lookinggirl, who sat next to him and was nearest in age, said,“Oh! but that would have been so rude, MissFosbrook.”
“Rude, but honest,” said Miss Fosbrook; andSusan’s honest eyes twinkled, as much as to say, “Ilike that;” but she said, “I don’t believe Halmeant it.”
“I don’t care!” said Sa