The Stokesley Secret | Page 4

to the general public assembled round the table.
"I say!" hallooed out a tall lad of twelve holding aloft 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 rather pettishly the maid who
had brought in the big black kettle.
"Bread and butter! I call it bread and scrape!" solemnly said Sam.
"It only has butter in the little holes of it, not at the top, Miss
Fosbrook," said, in an odd pleading kind of tone, a stout good-
humoured girl of thirteen, with face, hair, and all, a good deal like a
nice comfortable apricot in a sunny place, or a good respectable
Alderney cow.
"I think it would be better not to grumble, Susan, my dear," replied, in a
low voice, a pleasant dark-eyed young lady who was making tea; but
the boys at the bottom of the table neither 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 young family of genteel birth?"
"Oh!" with a pathetic grimace, cried the pretty-faced though sandy-
haired Henry, the next to him in age, "if our beloved parents knew how
their poor deserted infants are treated--"
"A fine large infant you are, Hal!" exclaimed Susan.
"I'm an infant, you're an infant, Miss Fosbrook 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 the eye 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 the most elegant English.
"Why, Martin Greville twitted us with having a girl for a governess,"
said Henry; "he said it was a shame we should be taken in to think her
grown up, when she was not twenty; and I said I would find out, and
now I have done it!" he cried triumphantly.
"Everybody is quite welcome to know my age," said Miss Fosbrook,
the colour rising in her cheek. "I was nineteen on the last of April; but I
had rather you had asked me point blank, Henry, than tried to find out
in a sidelong way."
Henry looked a little surly; and Elizabeth, a nice-looking girl, who sat
next to him and was nearest in age, said, "Oh! but that would have been
so rude, Miss Fosbrook."
"Rude, but honest," said Miss Fosbrook; and Susan's honest eyes
twinkled, as much as to say, "I like that;" but she said, "I don't believe
Hal meant it."
"I don't care!" said Sam. "Come, Mary, this plate is done--more bread
and butter; d'ye hear? not bread and gammon!" and he began the chant,
in which six voices joined till it became a roar, pursuing Mary down to
the lower regions:-
"Thick butter and thin bread, Or it shall be thrown at Mary's head;
Thick bread and thin butter, Is only fit for the ducks in the gutter."
Elizabeth looked appealingly at Miss Fosbrook; but Miss Fosbrook was
leaning back in her chair, her handkerchief up to her mouth, in fits of
laughing, seeing which, the children bawled louder and louder; and
Elizabeth only abstained from stopping her ears because she knew that
was the sure way to be held fast, and have it bellowed into them.
Little Annie blundered in her eagerness upon
"Thick bread and thin butter,"
whereupon there was a general outcry. "Nanny likes thick bread and
thin butter, let her have it!" and Sam, Henry, and Johnnie directed a
whole battery of their remaining crusts towards her cup, which would
presently have been upset into her lap but for Miss Fosbrook, who
recovered herself, and said gravely, "This must not be, Sam; I shall
send you away from the table if you do."
Sam wanted to see whether she would, and threw the crust.

"Sam," she said very decidedly, though there was a quiver in her voice,
as if she were frightened.
Sam looked up, and did not move.
"Oh, Miss Fosbrook!" cried Susan, "we were all just as bad. Don't
punish Sam!"
"It is time that Sam should show that he has the feelings of a manly
boy," said Miss Fosbrook, looking full at him. "He knows that I must
keep my word, and that I have no strength to fight with him.--Sam, go
and finish your tea on the window-seat."
Her clear brown eyes looked full at him as she spoke, and all the young
population watched to see what he would do. He hesitated a moment,
then took up his cup and plate, and