The Gap in the Fence | Page 5

down Snap!" rather crossly and in a voice that the children knew quite well; and almost before they had time to think how funny it was that he should know their dog's name, or, indeed, to wonder about anything at all, Snap made another frantic leap, and seizing hold of the old gentleman's white beard, dragged it off his chin, and darted off round the table with it in his mouth, shaking it as if it were a rabbit or a rat!
"Philip! Oh, Philip!" cried the children.
And Philip it was; naughty Philip, who had dressed himself up that wet afternoon to pretend that he was the foreign gentleman from the Grange; and, indeed, he had taken them all in finely.
"Oh, Philip! Philip! Why didn't I guess who you were?" cried Mary, as her brother leant back laughing against the sofa-cushions. "And fancy my not knowing my own sash!" pointing to the crimson waistcoat, which--now that her brother had thrown off his coat--she saw was her own best silk sash wound round and round him.
"And father's great coat!" said Ruth.
"And the white horsehair stuff out of the fireplace," said Philip, pointing to the empty grate. "It made a good beard, didn't it?"
"And the cap, Philip? Where did you get the cap from?" asked Mary.
"It's the lining out of my old straw hat," said Philip laughing. "Oh, didn't I take you all in!"
The next day the three elder children went back to school, and would very likely have forgotten all about the new people at the Grange if Tom and Norah had not written long letters from home telling them some of the strange tales which were being told in the village about the Grange tenants.
The foreign gentleman--Monsieur Gen as he was called--only left the grounds once a week, when he drove to the station in a closed carriage, and no information could be got out of the two old men-servants, who were the only other people in the house besides the little girl and her elderly nurse.
"Queer kind of folk too, them servants be," Giles, the baker, said one day to Rose, the little maid who usually took the children for walks when their mother was too busy to go with them. "There's one of them jabbers double-Dutch, and the other talks Dutch-double--except the few English words he's picked up since he's been here; and the names of all the foods--he knows them right enough!" And Giles laughed aloud at his own joke.
The children listened eagerly. They were always interested in hearing anything about the people at the Grange, and Norah often lay awake at night weaving strange fancies about the little girl who looked so sad and who must lead such a lonely life.
October was nearly at an end, however, before they saw the little foreign girl once more.
It was a bright, sunny afternoon; and Norah and Dan had gone to look for chestnuts in the wood.
They often went out alone, these two, when Tom was doing lessons with his father and Rose busy about the house; for, although rather a harum-scarum little damsel as a rule, Norah was always careful of Dan; and Mrs. Carew knew that so long as they kept away from the main road, with its never-ending whir of motorcars, Norah could be trusted with Dan anywhere; and the little girl felt very proud and happy as she pushed Dan's invalid chair down the drive, and knew that her little brother was in her charge for the afternoon.
Dan had fallen out of his perambulator when quite a tiny baby, and had twisted his back in some way, so that he would never be tall and strong like Stephen and Philip, or sturdy and straight like Tom; but he was a very happy little boy all the same, after a strange, quiet fashion of his own, and he liked best of all to be alone with Norah in the woods or by the river, when they would make up all sorts of fancies about queer little elves and fairies who, they said, lived in the trees or bushes, and in the sticklebacks' nests in the river.
It was so warm in the wood, this afternoon, that it felt almost like summer as the children hunted for chestnuts among the leaves, Dan leaning out of his chair and poking about with a walking stick, and Norah bringing the burrs to him as she found them, so that he might break them open and thread the nuts on to a piece of string he had brought with him.
"Dan," said Norah suddenly, when they had found quite a lot of chestnuts and were beginning to be rather tired of looking for them, "shall we go and see if the gap in the fence is still there? It's quite early still, and