Etheldreda the Ready | Page 4

of her many philanthropic
schemes to a deliberate conclusion.
They were all stored up in the family archives--the histories of Dreda's
charitable enterprises! The factory girl to whom she was going to write
regularly every week, and whose address was lost in a fortnight--the
collecting cards beyond number, for which, in the first ardour of
possession, subscriptions were extorted from every member of the
household, and which were rescued from stray hiding-places at the last
possible moment and despatched with odd offerings of twopences and
threepences from "A Friend" scribbled in, to fill up the empty spaces.
Everyone understood that the "friend" was Dreda herself, and that she
might be expected to be correspondingly short in tuck money for some
time to come! Never a society did Dreda hear of but she panted to
become a member on the spot, and never a society but received her
resignation, accompanied by a goodly sum in fines, before six months
had run their course.
Closeted with parent and teachers, the girl received numberless lectures
on the dangers of a thoughtless and unstable character, and was moved
to ardent vows of repentance; but, alone with Maud, her confidante and
admirer, she was wont to cast a kindly glamour of romance over her
own delinquencies. "It's my heart," she would sigh pathetically. "My
heart is so sensitive. It's like an Aeolian harp, Maud, upon which every
passing breeze plays its melody. I'm a creature of sensibility!" And she
rolled her fine eyes to the ceiling, the while Maud snorted, being
afflicted with adenoids, and wrinkled her brows in the effort to put her
fingers on the weak spot in the argument, the which she felt, but had
difficulty in explaining.
"Your heart is hard enough at times!" she said at last. "I suppose the
strings get so thin with being everlastingly twanged that they break, and
then the breeze can moan as much as it likes without waking a sound.
When you let that poor little puppy lie for two days without any food,
for instance--"

"You're a beast!" retorted Dreda with fervour. "You don't understand.
No one does. I'm misunderstood all round. At any rate I'd rather reach
the hilltops sometimes than everlastingly crawl along in the mire, like
some people I can mention. It's better to have soared and fallen than
never to have soared at all!"
Dreda, like most of us, was tender towards her own failings, and
resented the criticism of her peers. This afternoon she kept her eyes
glued upon the landscape, affecting to be ignorant of Gurth's sly hit,
and presently it was balm to her wounded spirit to be able to win the
game for herself and her partner, and with a squeal of triumph to point
to an upper window in a row of tenement houses, where two erect ears
and a pair of yellow eyes could be clearly discerned over the edge of a
wooden box filled with miniature fir trees of funereal aspect.
The game was over, and with it had disappeared all disposition to
quarrel. Henceforward, to the end of the journey, the four young people
chatted amicably together, discussing various subjects of interest, but
invariably returning to the one absorbing question of the hour--what
could have happened to account for the hasty and mysterious summons
to the solitary home in the country at a time when all their interests and
pleasures were centred in town?
CHAPTER TWO.
Mr and Mrs Saxon welcomed their children on the threshold of their
country home, but a chill seemed to settle on the young people's spirits
as they entered the great square hall, which looked so colourless and
dreary. As a rule, The Meads was inhabited during the summer months
alone, and the children were accustomed to see it alight with sunshine,
with doors and windows thrown wide open to show vistas of flower
gardens and soft green lawns. In such weather, a house was apt to be
regarded merely as a place to sleep in, but now that it would be
necessary to spend a great part of the day indoors, it was regarded more
critically, and found far from attractive.
The Meads was one of those square, uncompromisingly ugly white

houses which are so often to be found in rural England, and which were
built at that architecturally unhappy period when old traditions had
been cast aside and the modern craze for art was as yet undeveloped.
There were plenty of rooms in the house, lofty and spacious enough,
but as to outline just so many boxes, with four straight walls, and never
a niche or an alcove to break the severity of line. The hall was another
square, and the staircase ascended straightly to the first landing, where
a monstrosity of a stained-glass window lighted