The Princess of the School | Page 3

everybody!" added Dulcie,
turning on her saddle to wave a parting salute to those who were left
behind on the doorstep.
The two girls walked their horses down the drive, but once out on the
level road they trotted on briskly, with the grooms riding behind. They
formed quite a little cavalcade as they turned from the hard motor track
down the grassy lane where a dilapidated sign-post pointed to Ringfield
and Cheverley. It was a distance of seven good country miles from
Chilcombe Hall to Cheverley Chase, and, as the events of this story
center largely round Lilias and Dulcie, there will be ample time to
describe them while they are wending their way through the damp of
the misty December morning, up from the low-lying river level to the
hill country that stretched beyond.
Lilias was just sixteen, and very pretty, with gray eyes, fair hair, a
straight nose, and two bewitching dimples when she smiled. These
dimples were rather misleading, for they gave strangers the impression

that Lilias was humorous, which was entirely a mistake: it was Dulcie
who was the humorist in reality, Dulcie whose long lashes dropped
over her shy eyes, and who never could say a word for herself in public,
though in the society of intimate friends she could be amusing enough.
Dulcie, at fourteen, seemed years younger than Lilias; she did not wish
to grow up too soon, and thankfully tipped all responsibilities on to her
elder sister. Cousin Clare always said there were undiscovered depths
in Dulcie's character, but they were slow in development, and at present
she was a childish little person with a pink baby face, an affection for
fairy tales, and even a sneaking weakness for her discarded dolls. Life,
that to Lilias seemed a serious business, was a joyous venture to Dulcie;
she had a happy knack of shaking off the unpleasant things, and
throwing the utmost possible power of enjoyment into the nice ones. If
innocent happiness is the birthright of childhood, she clung to it
steadfastly, and had not yet exchanged it for the red pottage of worldly
wisdom.
Ever since Father and Mother, in the great disaster of the wreck of the
Titanic, had gone down together into the gray waters of the Atlantic,
the Ingleton children had lived with their grandfather, Mr. Leslie
Ingleton, at Cheverley Chase. There were six of them, Everard, Lilias,
Dulcie, Roland, Bevis, and Clifford, and as time passed on, and the
memory of that tragedy in mid-ocean grew faint, the Chase seemed as
entirely their home as if they had been born there. In Everard's opinion,
at any rate, it belonged to them, as it had always belonged to the
prospective heirs of the Ingleton family. And that family could trace
back through many centuries to days of civil wars and service for king
and country, to crusades and deeds of chivalry, and even to far-away
ancestors who gave counsel at Saxon Witenagemots. Norman keep had
succeeded wooden manor, and that in its turn had given place to a
Tudor dwelling, and both had finally merged into a long Georgian
mansion, with straight rows of windows and a classic porch, not so
picturesque as the older buildings, but very convenient and comfortable
from a modern point of view. The lovely gardens, with their clipped
yew hedges, were one of the sights of the neighborhood, and it was a
family satisfaction that the view from the terrace over park, wood, and
stream showed not a single acre of land that was not their own.

Mr. Leslie Ingleton, a fine type of the old-fashioned, kindly, but
autocratic English squire, belonged to a bygone generation, and found
it difficult to move with the march of the times. Because he had spent
his seventy-four years of life on the soil of Cheverley, the people
tolerated in "the ould squire" many things that they would not have
passed over in a younger man or a stranger. They shrugged their
shoulders and gave way to his well-meant tyranny, for man and boy,
everybody on the estate had experienced his kindness and realized his
good intentions towards his tenants.
"If he does fly off at a tangent, ten to one Miss Clare'll be down the
next day and set all straight again," was the general verdict on his
frequent outbursts.
Cheverley Chase would have been quite incomplete without Cousin
Clare. She was a second cousin of the Ingletons, who had come to tend
Grandmother in her last illness, and after her death had remained to
take charge of the household and the newly-arrived family of
grandchildren. She was one of those calm, quiet, big-souled women
who in the early centuries would have been a saint, and in mediæval
times the abbess of a nunnery, but happening to