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Page 131

“Can you manage?” Len said, “I’m afraid to move, it seems to hurt her so much when I do.”

It began on a certain chilly day at the beginning of February. To be strictly accurate, it began just before Christmas when Joey Maynard received a letter from her old friend Grizel Cochrane, then living in New Zealand. That letter made its recipient think furiously. This is the story of what followed.

It had been bitterly cold that winter, even for Switzerland, where it can be cold. Snow and frost did their fell worst—especially the snow. A freak blizzard topped it up and Joey, spending a few days at Montreux with a friend at the time, had been kept there—the Görnetz Platz, where her home and the Chalet School were situated, was completely cut off—until the road was opened once more and she was able to return home with the three babies she had had with her. Her four elder girls—the sixteen-year-old triplets and Felicity, who was seven—were pupils at the school and she had heard over the telephone that Len and Con, the eldest pair, had had a hair-raising adventure, though they were none the worse for it. As soon as possible, she had shot home to reassure herself. Finding all was well, she invited another old friend, Rosalie Dene, who was secretary at the school and an Old Girl like herself, to come to Freudesheim, the Maynard home, for “English” tea on the Saturday.

“I want you very especially,” she had said mysteriously. “I’ve something to discuss with you. No; you can wait till Saturday, but it’s an idea.”

More she refused to say, and Rosalie had to put up with it until they were both seated comfortably before the big, open fire in the salon at Freudesheim enjoying a lavish tea. The only other creature present was Joey’s big St Bernard, Bruno, who had had his bowl of milky tea and a buttered scone. Now he was stretched out beside his mistress’s chair in a state of bliss.

“Well, we’ve discussed the girls and all school news,” Rosalie said, passing her cup for more tea. “It’s time you told me about this idea of yours.”

Joey filled the cup. “I think you’ll like it, Rosalie! I’m going to have a house-party after Easter and I’m inviting as many of the people who were at school with us that first year in Tirol as I can contact.”

Rosalie gasped and sat back. “But why? In the name of fortune, why?”

“Because Grizel has written to say she’s coming home and intends to break the journey and come on here for a week or two.” Joey nodded. “Yes; it’s true. That being so, I thought it would be fun to collect up all I could and then we could have a lovely time introducing everyone to our new surroundings—new to them, I mean, Loopy!” as Rosalie protested that after six years or more “new” was hardly the word for it. “And we can catch up on everyone’s news as well.”

“Well, I hope you bring it off,” Rosalie said. “It would be worth all the trouble to meet Grizel and our own early contemporaries after all these years. It is years, you know, where a good many of them are concerned.”

“Thim’s my sintimints!” Joey agreed. “I’m not asking any of what you might call the Middle Ages—just foundation stones like our noble selves. More tea? I suppose you know that’ll be your fourth cup?”

“What of it? Are you running short by any chance?”

“Oh, no. Have a dozen more if you like. Only in that case, I shall hail you as ‘Dr Johnson’ on any and every occasion!”

“You dare! Horrid, snuffy old man!”

“You try to stop me!” Joey retorted.

“Oh, I can stop you all right if I want to.”

“Well, don’t blame me if the lining of your tummy turns to leather!”

“You leave me to look after my own tummy. Joey, what put this idea into your head all of a sudden?”

“The fact that, at long last, Grizel is keeping her promise to come and visit us. Do you realize that it’s eight years since any of us saw her? She did make a flying trip to England three years ago when that stepmother of hers had that stroke and someone had to see to the business of signing cheques and so on; but it was ‘flying’ in every sense of the word. She stayed just long enough to fix things up and then she shot back to New Zealand. Now that Mrs Cochrane has died, however, she must be over here for weeks if not months to settle up her father’s estate. I believe he left a most complicated will. But hang on a moment and I’ll get her letter and you can read what she says. Out of the way, Bruno!”

She jumped up and Bruno bounced up as well, hopeful that Missus was thinking about a walk. She clapped one of his flanks before she dived out of the salon, followed by Bruno, still optimistic. Rosalie laughed and sipped her tea thoughtfully as she gazed into the heart of the glowing log fire.

It was the only open fire on the Platz, since everywhere else the houses were heated either by central heating or by the big porcelain stoves usual throughout central Europe. But on first coming to the Oberland, Joey had insisted that she must have one open fire or perish! She had her way and when any of the British colony up at the Görnetz Platz felt homesick for the sight of a good blaze in winter, they were apt to turn up at Freudesheim to revel in firelight and, if they were lucky, “English” tea.

“Here you are!” Joey’s golden voice broke in on Rosalie’s reverie as she tossed a bulky envelope into the latter’s lap and sat down to pour out her own fourth cup of tea. “Sorry, Bruno old man, but walkies are off for today. Look at that snow! It’s a mercy, Rosalie, that Jack had those posts set up across our lawn and along the school-path. At least you can’t very well lose your way.”

Rosalie, who had extracted the sheets from the envelope, looked up. “It is. Heavens, Joey! This isn’t a letter—it’s a novelette!”

“Grizel’s the world’s worst correspondent, but when she does get down to it, she gets down to it,” Joey assented. “Read it and don’t mind me. I’ve a very pleasant novel here.”

Rosalie needed no second telling. The friendship between herself, Joey and Grizel was of many years standing. Grizel was less close to the two in Switzerland than they were to each other—partly because of her long absence in the Antipodes, partly because of her own character. All the same, news from her was always welcome. Rosalie smoothed out the sheets and read:

At this point, Rosalie looked up. “Joey, I don’t like this. Grizel sounds to me as if she were at the end of her tether.”

Joey laid down her book. “I wondered if you’d see it. I knew she was having a baddish time with Deira from her Christmas letter. I must say I think Deira might have put off her wedding until they’d finished with the sale of the business. However, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that she was being selfish about it. And when Grizel gets to England, she’ll be landed with more legal trouble. So I’ve written telling her that she’s to come straight here, prepared to stay for a month at least.”

“When is she sailing?”

“Middle of this month—17th, I think. Or it may be 19th.”

“Next week, then. How long will the voyage take—six weeks or so?”

“Not knowing can’t say. Coming by cargo-boat may mean any time. Anyhow, I’ve had a cable to say she expects to arrive about the first week in April. She’ll break the voyage at Lagos and fly from there. I’m hoping she’ll be here for Easter. We’ll have a week’s quiet and then my party begins. She’ll be better by that time, don’t you think?”

“I hope so.” Rosalie’s eyes were grave and Joey looked alarmed.

“What do you mean—you hope so?” she demanded.

“It may be just my fancy, but I think Grizel’s tiredness is more mental than physical.”

“So you see it, too? I was hoping you wouldn’t and I could think it was only my imagination. You folk always say mine’s too vivid. I’d be glad if this was one time when it was.”

“Does she explain any more further on?”

Joey leaned forward and Rosalie pointed to the paragraph. “No; that’s all she says about that. The rest describes Deira’s wedding and there’s something about Mrs Cochrane and the will business. She never really mentions herself again. Rosalie—what are you getting at?”

“I’m wondering,” Rosalie said slowly. “This second marriage of Deira’s—what, exactly, has Grizel said about this man?”

“Very little. She has mentioned him once or twice, but that’s all. She always was a reserved creature. She’s never said anything to make me think there was any more than friendship there. Oh, Rosalie! If it’s that—poor Grizel!”

“Yes. Anything like that would hit her very hard.”

“Harder than most,” Jo’s voice was full of trouble and Bruno suddenly came to swipe at her face with his tongue. She laid her cheek on the big head and rubbed his ears affectionately. “All right, old boy! But you can’t help at the moment. Bless you, my precious Bruno! What a comfort you are!”

Bruno lay down at her feet, his eyes adoringly on her, and Rosalie laughed.

“That dog does adore you! Well, to return to Grizel! Joey, this is one time when you must not butt in! Grizel would never forgive you if you tried to force her confidence and I always remember something Madame said to me about her.”

“Oh? What was that? She never said anything to me that I remember on the spur of the moment.”

“She said that all Grizel had to hold on to was the tie between her and the school and she would go to almost any lengths to keep that tie unbroken.”

“That’s true.” Joey spoke thoughtfully. “Don’t worry! Butter-in I may be, but I know my limits and Grizel is one of them. Unless she says anything herself, I shan’t breathe a word. But if that’s at the root of the trouble—Oh, well, we can only wait and see. Of course, she ought to have married ages ago. That would have given her roots. As it is, she hasn’t any.” She changed the subject abruptly. “Rosalie, why is it you’ve never married? You’re a good-looking creature; you’re a good mixer; you’ve a sense of humour; above all, you’re understanding and kind. Hasn’t there ever been anyone—not anyone at all?”

Rosalie’s blue eyes were like saucers. Then she went off into a peal of laughter. “Oh, Jo! What will you say next? No, my love, there’s never been anyone and I don’t care if there never is. I’m quite satisfied with my present life. Remember; I have roots. Grizel loathed her stepmother and there wasn’t much love lost between her father and herself. I adore Dad and my stepmother is a poppet. Oh, I don’t say that if I’d stayed at home we shouldn’t have got across each other. We probably should. As it is, we’re real friends. I think a lot of young Peter and Robin and they’re quite fond of me. In fact, believe it or not, Peter tells me all about his latest girl and even asks my advice—which I never give, incidentally. I’ve roots all right, so you stop making a bigger ass of yourself then usual and give me a few details about your plans. How many have you asked and how are you bedding them down?”

“I’ve got hold of about twenty if they all come. Maria Marani is out, of course. Her new infant is due in May. Gisela can’t come because of leaving her youngsters. I wish,” Joey suddenly branched off into a new path, “that Gottfried would rejoin the San. Then we’d have Gisela and her crowd up here for keeps. My own clan will be here; and Juliet Carrick—I mean O’Hara—is coming. Wanda von Gluck, Bernhilda, Sophy Hamel and Stacie Benson have all accepted with cheers. I’ve still to hear from Bette di Bersetti. Evvy wrote to say that they’re coming out in any case for the hols and have booked in at the Villa Caramie. Corney is a law unto herself. She may or may not come. Then, up here we have Biddy, Hilary, your noble self, Nell Wilson, Hilda Annersley and Jeanne de Lachennais who has cancelled another engagement. Matey has to go to England for Easter, but says she’s coming back for the party. And that’s about all, I think——” Joey ended on a rising note and Rosalie was on her at once.

“Joey! You’re keeping something back! Who is it?” Joey chuckled. “Guess! Not girl, by the way, but staff.”

“Not Marjorie Durrant? Oh, but she’s in Jamaica. I heard from her a fortnight ago, and she said then that she was going to spend Easter with Lulu Redmond—I beg her pardon, van Buren—in the Bahamas.”

Joey nodded. “I had a letter myself—from Lulu, though—and she told me she was meeting Marjorie there. Lulu’s taking the three kids and Pieter van Buren is joining them later on.”

“Well, then is it Con Stewart—Kit Stephens——?”

“Earlier than Con and Kit,” Joey interrupted her. “My very own sister-in-law, Mollie Maynard ‘as was’! She’s coming for six months and she’s staying with us practically the whole time.”

“Maynie—Maynie coming after all these years! Oh, Joey, that’s the last touch! When did you hear?”

“This very morning as ever is. I’d given up all hopes of ever seeing her again in this world. She seemed to be rooted on her New Zealand farm and Jack is well and truly tied to the San, of course. However, she says that now her last child is off her hands—that’s young Chris who’s sixteen—she can sit back and take her ease a little. Kenneth will have Cis to keep house for him and when the shearing’s over, he’s coming, too. Bob, their eldest, can see to things quite well and Ken also has a good manager. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

“Miraculous, as the girls would say.” Rosalie got up and went to pick up her big coat. “Well, I must be returning.”

“Why ever? Here, sit down again! We’ve heaps to discuss.”

“Can’t be done, my child. I’m a working woman. I must put in a couple of hours more before I dare call it a day. Honestly, Joey, the correspondence is hair-raising nowadays!”

“You need an assistant secretary.”

“We could do with her,” Rosalie acknowledged as she muffled her head in a thick scarf. “May I take Grizel’s letter? You shall have it back tomorrow.”

“By all means. Oh, by the way, don’t breathe a word about my plans to anyone but Hilda and Nell—oh, and Matey and Jeanne. They must know, but I don’t want it to get out in the school.”

“I’ll say nothing. No; don’t come to the door with me. It’s much too cold. Anyhow, isn’t that Geoff on the yell? What lungs that boy has! Good night, Joey! See you tomorrow with any luck.” And Rosalie slipped off, leaving her hostess to betake herself upstairs to the playroom where she had to read the riot act to a furious Geoff who was objecting to being taken off to bed by Rösli, the Coadjutor, when he was in the middle of a lovely game of his own.

Grizel Cochrane lay in her steamer-chair, gazing unseeingly across the stretches of heaving waters to the horizon. In her lap was a letter which she had already read a dozen times and over which she could not yet make up her mind.

“Joey’s up to something,” she thought. “I’d give a good deal to know what it is. She breaks out in such unexpected places that you never know what’s coming next. All the same, with Madame in Sydney there isn’t anywhere else I want to go. I’ll have to put up with whatever Jo’s planning for me, I suppose. I can always leave and find a hotel in London if she’s too outrageous.”

A tall, dark man came striding along the deck. He paused to remark on the fine day and the pleasantness of the voyage, but Grizel was not forthcoming and presently he left her.

“Doing his daily dozen,” Grizel thought listlessly. “Wish I felt as energetic; but I don’t. I don’t feel as if I wanted to do anything but just lie here. I’m sorry now I said I’d break the journey at Lagos and go on by plane. Thank heaven that at least I had the sense to give the usual line the go-by and travel this way. I’d have had no peace otherwise—not that I’m exactly peaceful now, but at least there’s no one to keep urging me to join in this, that and the other. Oh, sometimes I wish I could just go to sleep and never wake up again!”

Her lips thinned to a straight line and her eyes were very sombre. Then she relaxed, firmly pushing to the back of her mind the thoughts which had given rise to the wish. No help was to be found that way, and though she was bitterly unhappy just then, she would never have done anything to attain that rest. Grizel Cochrane had too much in her for that and her training at the Chalet School had deepened her character. She knew this. Somehow, she thought, she must live through this misery and trust to time healing her wounds.

“Joey will help. She always did—she always will! But oh, how I hate Deira! She’s had her happiness and why must she destroy mine?”

Her fingers closed on the letter at the thought and, as if the action roused her, she opened it and began to read it again.

The postcript brought a fleeting smile to Grizel’s lips. “Yes,” she said aloud, “I certainly would like to get at you, Joey, my child! I only wish I knew just exactly how you intend to celebrate. Heaven send it’s nothing over-energetic, for energy is something I don’t possess these days. All the same——”

“Miss Cochrane, I heard you say you wanted to read this book. I have it with me, so I’ve routed it out for you.” It was the tall, dark man, holding out a book which she had mentioned she would like to read.

Grizel looked up at him, a faint pink flush in her too-pale cheeks. “Oh, thank you, Dr Sheppard! How kind of you! Yes, I did want to read it, but it never came my way. Thank you very much.” She hesitated; then she waved to a nearby chair. “Won’t you sit down for a minute or two? Or haven’t you finished your walking?”

He smiled, pulled up the chair and sat down. “I’d like a chat—and here comes Thomas with our coffee.”

The steward brought the tray with coffee and biscuits. When he had gone again, Grizel said, “Where is your fellow-traveller?”

“Hamilton? Oh, he’s reading on the far side of the deck. Shall I call him to join us?” He laughed. “Not that he’d be pleased. Once he’s buried in a book, he doesn’t thank you for any interruptions.”

“Then leave him, by all means.” Grizel gave a faint laugh. “If he’s like that, it’s just as well he came by cargo-boat. He wouldn’t get much time for reading on the usual voyage.”

“No; they keep you well organized on the big liners,” he agreed as he stirred his coffee. “That’s why I decided to sail via cargo-boat myself. Not that I’m going the whole way to England. I get off at Cape Town. I have a sister living there and I’m paying her a short visit before I go on. Then Hamilton and I are flying the rest of the way.”

“Neither am I going the whole way,” Grizel said. “I’m breaking the journey at Lagos and taking plane from there. I didn’t feel like facing the Bay in March.” She left it at that.

“No, the Bay can be pretty bad then,” he agreed.

There came an interruption. A puff of wind lifted the letter lying in Grizel’s lap and blew it along the deck. She sprang up at once to give chase, but Dr Sheppard was before her. He caught it just in time to save it from going overboard and brought it back to her. Grizel took it, her cheeks pink once more, a light in her grey eyes he had not seen there before.

“Oh, thank you so much! It’s from my dearest friend and I should hate to have lost it.”

He looked at her keenly, a question in his dark eyes, but she was folding it and tucking it into the pocket of her cardigan and saw nothing.

“As you’ve finished your coffee,” he said, “shall we stroll on?”

Since she was on her feet, Grizel had no excuse for refusing. He produced his cigarette case and when he had lighted cigarettes for both of them, she volunteered a little more information about herself.

“I’m not going direct to England. I’m breaking the journey to visit an old friend who lives abroad. I’ve come over on legal business and I felt I must have a break before I got down to it. I’ve had a good deal of that sort of thing already these past months.”

“Surely the voyage itself is a break?” he queried with a smile.

“In one way, yes. It’s a rest, at any rate. But it’s years since I saw Joey and we’ve been friends since our early schooldays, so I’m going there first.”

“And after that?”

“Oh, London—Devonshire—Taverton, to be exact. My stepmother has died recently and there is a lot of business connected with my father’s estate that only I can handle. Once I reach England, I shall be up to the eyes in it. However, it has to be done and if it gets too overpowering, I can always go to Joey for a week or two. She’s the most hospitable creature living.” Then, feeling that she ought to show some interest in his doings, she added, “And you?”

“Oh, I’m taking a vacation first. After that—well, ‘after that’ lies on the knees of the gods. But I expect to be in London some time in May, so perhaps we may meet there.”

Grizel glanced at him under her lashes. “Perhaps we may,” she said. “Don’t they say that if you stroll down Oxford Street you’re safe to meet at least one person you know?”

“Ah, but I meant something more than chance,” he said. “Couldn’t we meet and have dinner and do a theatre after? I believe there are some good shows on just now. If you would give me an address to write to——”

Grizel shook her head. “Can’t do that, I’m afraid. It’ll be some hotel or other, but which, I don’t know.”

“Then suppose I give you my bank’s name. Letters sent there will be forwarded. When you are settled, you could let me know and then we could fix it up. Will you?”

“It sounds as if it might be—fun. It’s years since I saw a London show.” Grizel was startled at his persistency and not very sure what to say. “I should have friends in London, but it’s eight years since I saw any of them and I haven’t kept up with them while I’ve been in New Zealand, so anything may have happened.”

“Then we’ll arrange it like that, shall we?”

“Very well,” she assented.

“Good! I’ll look forward to it.” Again he gave her that searching glance. He knew very well that there was something badly wrong with her. They had travelled together for the past fortnight and more, and during all that time, while she had been quite civil, it had been nothing more. Something was engaging all her thoughts and, judging by what he saw, that something was bad. This was the first time he had been able to draw her out in the least and his doctor’s sense told him that if she were not roused, she was heading for a breakdown. He was thankful for the little he had been able to do today. He wished it could have come sooner, for by this time his interest in her was less as a possible invalid than as a woman.

Grizel was far from realizing it, but she knew that while with him, for the first time for months, she had forgotten her trouble. When they parted and she went to put her letter safely away, she began to wish that she had been more friendly earlier.

“I like him,” she thought. “We dock at Cape Town the day after tomorrow, though. It’s on the late side, now. Once he’s left the boat, he’ll go his way and I’ll go mine and we’ll both forget. That’s always the way with fellow-travellers.”

The black mood swept over her again, but when he next approached her, it receded once more. He chatted easily of New Zealand scenes they both knew; then of books they had both read and plays they had seen. He told her something about his sister and niece and nephew he had not seen for two years. Grizel listened, though her return confidences were few and scanty. He did realise, however, that apart from friends, she had no one. From the little she said he also gathered that she felt her stepmother’s death as no loss. He learned that, without being especially musical, she was a good pianist, and that evening she played to the two men who were the only passengers on board besides herself that trip.

Grizel was a brilliant pianist despite herself. On first going to New Zealand, she had neglected her piano until she found that her playing was a delight to her friend Deira’s little crippled daughter. Moira suffered badly at times and Grizel, finding that music meant a good deal to her, had returned to her own and since then, had managed to practice regularly until the child died. She had scarcely touched the keys since, but her playing was a joy to both Dr Sheppard and young Hamilton. They kept her at it till after midnight and when she finally went to her cabin, it was to fall asleep at once and sleep dreamlessly as she had not done for a long time.

Two days later the Napier berthed at Cape Town, and while the ship unloaded and then took in fresh cargo, the men insisted on giving Grizel a trip round Cape Town and introduced her to Mrs Carrel, Dr Sheppard’s sister. Then it ended, for the Napier was ready to sail with the tide and goodbyes were said.

“If you come this way when you return, mind you let me know,” Mrs Carrel said. “If you like to break the journey, we’ve always a spare bed, so don’t forget.”

“Good luck!” young Hamilton said as he shook hands. “Hope we meet again and you can play that Weber thing to me once more.”

But Dr Sheppard held the slim fingers firmly. “You have my bank and please don’t forget I hope to hear from you as soon as you have an address in London. We’ll have that dinner and show in May.”

Once more the flush filled her cheeks, but she only said, “Thank you. I won’t forget.”

They had to go, for the pilot had come aboard and the captain had no mind to miss the tide. The Napier swung slowly round from the quayside and headed for the open sea. Grizel stood waving until the city was out of sight. Then she went to her lonely deckchair to make what she could of the remainder of the sea voyage, and for the first two days her heart stayed less heavy than it had been. But after that the loneliness brought back the old trouble and it was a very sombre Grizel who boarded her plane for Berne. It needed more than two or three days of a new friendship to shake her out of the shadows.

“Grizel! Oh, Griselda, my lamb!” Joey dashed down the steps leading up to the front door of Freudesheim and caught Grizel in a mighty hug which nearly sent the pair of them headlong, the visitor not having been prepared for quite such an onslaught.

“Woa!” Jack Maynard exclaimed, grabbing them both and steadying them. “Really, Jo, you can be a menace sometimes! Now get on with it while I take the luggage in—only I’d advise the house.”

He vanished to the back of the car to unstrap the big steamer-trunk and Grizel’s head suddenly went down on Joey’s green-clad shoulder and she shook in her hostess’s arms though all she said was, “Joey—oh, Joey!”

“Welcome home!” All Joey’s warm heart was in her voice. “Come in, Grizel, and be at home! This way!”

With an arm still round the slight waist, she drew Grizel up the steps and into the hall where she paused only long enough to strip off her friend’s big travelling coat and cap before leading her into the salon at the far end of the hall. “Come and sit down and warm yourself. It’s been a filthy day, though the mist has thinned a lot now and we’re promised fine weather for tomorrow. Sit down and make yourself comfy while I fly and make tea. The kettle’s boiling so I shan’t be two ticks. Jack’ll see—Telephone! The fruits of living in a doctor’s house, my lamb. Yes; I thought so!”

Jack Maynard looked in at the door. “Sorry, girls, but I must go. Expect me when you see me, and if I’m not back by bedtime, leave the side-door on the latch. Call to Wahlstein—climbing accident!” With which succinct explanation, he bolted, and they heard the sound of the car rolling down the drive and out into the road.

“Oh, well,” Joey remarked resignedly, “it’ll give us a chance to catch up on the hanes—partly, anyhow. I’ll see to tea. Anna has our infants out and the Coadjutor is over at Hilary Graves’, giving her a hand with her three. Help up here, my Honey-bun, is far to seek and we three—Hilary and Biddy and I—more or less share the Coadjutor, though she’s supposed to be part of this establishment. Repose-toi, bien-aimée!” And she vanished, to return a few minutes later wheeling a big, three-tiered trolley on which was set out a noble tea.

“Anna left everything ready for me before she departed,” she explained as she wheeled it up to the fire blazing in the grate and sat down before it. “Pull that little table nearer. Here’s your cup and plate. Now then, Welsh cakes, bread-twists, or buns?”

Grizel’s eyes had been wet, but now she tucked her handkerchief into her sleeve. “Oh, Welsh cakes, please! It’s ages since I tasted them.”

Joey passed the dish and when both were supplied, she settled down to chatter, though she used her eyes as well.

“Hilary has two girls and a boy and Biddy has two boys and a girl. The second boy is very new—arrived a week ago today. Hilary’s boy is seven months old now——”

“Half a minute, Joey. Who is ‘Hilary’? Should I know her? I don’t remember a Hilary Graves.”

“Oh, Grizel! Of course you know her! She was Hilary Burn and she married Phil Graves—Dr. Graves. He’s out here, one of the men on the San staff.”

“Hilary Burn! I’d forgotten all about her. Biddy, of course, is Biddy O’Ryan. She married another doctor, didn’t she—a Swiss, I think you said.”

“Eugen Courvoisier—help yourself to what you like—and her first effort was twins, Pat and Marie. This young man is another Eugen for his papa, but as they don’t want two of the same name in the family, he’s to be known by his second name which is Jean—for Jack and also that Italian stepfather of Biddy’s—remember? He was Giovanni, but they’ve compromised on Jean.”

“And how old are her twins?”

“Nearly two. They were May kittens, but Biddy wouldn’t drown them,” Joey said with a giggle.

Grizel gave a little mechanical laugh which made her hostess draw her black brows together and look at her sharply. Something was very wrong here. But Grizel was speaking again and with a change of subject.

“This is a lovely room, Joey. What a size! And I recognize lots of old friends though I see you’ve been adding considerably as well.”

“When this place was the Pension Wellington, this was the ballroom,” Joey explained, holding out her hand for Grizel’s cup. “On clear days you get a magnificent view of the Jungfrau from that window. Unfortunately, this is not a clear day.”

“No, it certainly isn’t. I know this china, too, Jo. My own wedding present to you. How on earth have you managed to keep it with such a pack of youngsters as you have?”

“Easily! Anna is the most careful washer-up in this world and tea in the salon is a treat until you can be trusted. Besides, I don’t use it every day. This is in your honour, my love.”

“I appreciate it. Consider I’ve curtsied.” Grizel laughed again and Joey proceeded to make inquiries. “What have you been doing with yourself?” she demanded. “You never were chubby, but you’re a regular skinnigalee now.”

“So much the better! Anyhow, you can’t talk!” Grizel retorted. “If I’m thinner, you’re decidedly plumper. Doesn’t it suit you, though!”

“I’ve put on ten pounds since you last saw me. That was Canada. Also, I fear, that middle-aged spread!” Joey heaved a sigh like a small gale.

Grizel laughed again and again Joey pricked up her ears. What was wrong? Grizel’s laughter had lost something; her smiles never reached her eyes. All she said, however, was, “Oh, laugh if you like. It remains true.”

“At the middle thirties? Talk sense, Joey! In any case, no one would think you’d reached more than the middle twenties. You may have lost your scragginess but you’ve retained your youth, my dear. Jack’s the same. Is it the result of Switzerland—or what?”

“Partly, I suppose; partly having a family which persists in regarding us as more or less their own contemporaries. We haven’t much chance of ageing.”

“Oh,” Grizel commented, then, with a sudden change of subject, asked, “Joey, what did you mean by that last letter of yours? How are you going to celebrate?”

Jo chuckled and at that moment there came the sound of the side-door opening. A clatter of small feet followed and the thud-thud of paddy paws. The next moment the salon door was flung open and a large golden and white gentleman burst in and made for Joey who shrieked and pushed the trolley hastily out of the way.

“Bruno—down! Down, old man!” Then as he obeyed she called, “Come along, Anna! Bring the babies and show them to Fräulein Cochrane!”

But Bruno had discovered a stranger and Grizel was making friends with him. “Joey! This isn’t—but of course it isn’t! I remember dear old Rufus dying when you were at Cartref. Is this a son of his?”

Anna and the small fry had come in and Joey was helping small Cecil out of her coat. “No; Bruno was a gift from the school the second term we were up here. I’d been talking of having another dog, but I couldn’t make up my mind to doing it. Then the girls gave me Bruno and he has his own place—though never Rufus’s. There, Cecil! Run along and kiss Auntie Grizel and tell her how glad we are to have her with us. Give me Geoff, Anna.”

A beaming Anna handed Geoff over to his mother and attended to little Phil. Then Joey stood up, a baby astride each hip, and brought them across.

“Here you are, Grizel—our latest. This is Phil and this is Geoff. Redheads, both of them, only Phil’s hair is darkening. But Geoff is a real copperknob.”

Grizel looked from the pair to small Cecil who was standing beside her. She lifted the child to her lap and said solemnly, “Haven’t you made a mistake, Joey? Surely this is Madame’s—she’s the image of her.”

“She’s mine all right,” Joey said with a twinkle. “Robin’s god-daughter and namesake. She’s like Con, too, only her hair curls more. And that’s been a minor shock for she hadn’t a curl when she was born. Those came later, didn’t they, Cecil?”

Cecil nodded gravely. “Mamma says Con and me are ve only darkies in ve lot,” she told her new brevet-aunt.

“How plainly she talks! How old is she, Joey?”

“Five two days ago. She just missed being an April Fool. The twins will be two in June.” Joey set the pair on the floor and Geoff made straight for the trolley. “No, Geoff; Anna will take you three upstairs for milk and spongecakes. Just a minute or two longer.”

Page 22

“Oh, thank you, Doctor Sheppard! How kind of you!” said Grizel.

Geoff stood still and Grizel found time at last for a word with Anna who was an old friend. Joey gathered up the small coats and scarves and tossed them on to a chair at the back of the room. Then she turned, for Anna was coming.

“Time, Anna? Very well. We’ll come up to see them at bedtime.”

“Mamma—Mamma—cakey!” pleaded Geoff, his eyes on a plateful.

Joey laughed. “Very well, then, as it’s Auntie Grizel’s first day, but only one. Hurry up and choose, you three, and then go with Anna. Mamma will come presently. Be quick, Geoff!”

The “cakies” were chosen; Anna picked up the coats and then with a twin clinging to her skirt on either side and Cecil running ahead, she left the room. Bruno had stretched himself on the hearthrug and Joey with a grin pulled the trolley back into place and they proceeded with tea.

When they had finished, the hostess wheeled the trolley out into the hall. She came back to her chair and sat down, taking up her knitting.

Grizel looked across at her and smiled. “You always said you meant to have the longest family of all and you’ve done it. Eleven, isn’t it? I hope you’re satisfied.”

Joey chuckled. “Oh, you never know. I’m waiting until Phil and Geoff are properly on their feet and then I may begin to think of quads as a nice round off.”

“What?” Then, as she caught the wicked look in Joey’s eyes, she calmed down. “Really, Joey! What will you say next? Quads, indeed!”

“And why not? You sound as though having quads was a crime of the worst. I’d love to wheel four babies out in the same pram!”

“Pram? You mean pantechnicon, don’t you? No, no, Joey! Make up your round dozen by all means if you like; but not quads!”

Joey put back her head and the room rang with her laughter. “Oh, Griselda! What a lovely rise! I daresay we’ll have the dozen before we’ve finished. I’d love just one more daughter.”

“Don’t you like boys, then? Don’t say you’re a feminist!”

“Oh, I’m not! I was really thinking about all the frocks I have put away which the other girls have grown out of. There are far more than Felicity and Cecil and Phil can finish, but one more girl might do it and I always did hate waste!”

Grizel giggled helplessly. “I might have known you’d have your own unique reason for such a thing!” Then she sat up. “Joey, please tell me what you mean by a grand celebration of my return.”

“Ah! Prepare yourself, my love. Next week as ever is we’re having a house-party.”

“What? A house-party?” The laughter left Grizel.

“That’s what I said. Fifteen of the folk who were with us at the beginning of the Chalet School are coming for a week and we’re going to catch up on all the news.”

“Joey Maynard! Have you taken leave of your senses?”

“Far from it! Why?”

“Whatever possessed you to do that? I told you I didn’t want to be mixed up with packs of people.”

“Oh, no, you didn’t. What you said was you didn’t want to be mixed up with strangers. You don’t call Frieda, Marie and Simone strangers, I hope? Nor Juliet and Corney and Evvy—though Evvy won’t be staying here. She and her family had already fixed up with the Villa Caramie.”

Grizel gasped and broke into fresh laughter. For the first time light came to her dark grey eyes as she retorted, “No; I certainly wouldn’t call that crowd strangers. Evvy and her family—the stepchildren you told me about, I suppose?”

“And her own boy who will be a year old next week. He’s a lovely baby and Evvy is so proud and happy.”

The laughter left Grizel’s face. “So she ought to be,” she said curtly. “She has everything now—looks, money, her own home and her own family. I hope she knows how lucky she is!”

Joey gave her a quick look. “You may be sure of that. Oh, and as a real top-up, Maynie’s coming—but you’ll probably know about that. You’ve seen her far more recently than we have.”

“Actually, I’ve seen nothing of the Mackenzies for more than a year—I’ve had no time. Neither of us is much good as a writer, either. No; I didn’t know, but I’m jolly glad. I always did like Maynie.”

“She’s coming for six months, so you ought to see plenty of her. Oh, by the way, keep that very dark. I want it to be a shock to the others.”

“Joey, how old are you? Oh, I’ll say nothing. And now, I’d like to wash and brush up and change, so if you’ll escort me to my room——”

“O.K.—don’t fall over Bruno!” Jo’s hand was swiftly extended to steady her and Bruno rose and went round to the other side of his mistress. “I forgot to warn you. He has an awful habit of lying around in the fairway. We all know it and look out for him and I’ve warned you now. Old pest, aren’t you?” she rubbed one ear fondly and the great tail beat against her. “No; you stay here, my lad. Come on, Grizel!”

She led the way up the flight of shallow stairs and turned to the right. “This way; I’ve put you near me in what used to be young Primula’s room. This is ours and that door opposite is Jack’s dressing-room. That one next to ours is the night nursery. This is a bathroom—and here’s yours. Like it?”

Grizel glanced round the room into which Joey had ushered her. Its walls were white, but the hangings, the rugs on the polished floor and the couvre-pied were a soft green. There was a toilet-table with a big mirror; a comfortable armchair stood beside the other window with a steady writing-table by it. At one side of the bed was another table holding a table-lamp; at the other was a small bookcase crammed with a catholic mixture of books. There were two more chairs and a door at the far side opened into a deep hanging closet with shelves top and bottom for hats and shoes. One or two delightful pictures hung on the walls and the broad windowsill held a couple of dainty figurines and a big bowl of daffodils.

Grizel looked round and drew a long breath. “I can rest here. Thank you, Joey!” was all she said; but Joey was satisfied.

“Good! It’s yours for as long as you want it—the rest of your life, if you like. This is Freudesheim—Happy Home, Grizel. For you, too, I hope.” She bent her black head and kissed her friend. “Now I’ll leave you to settle. There are your cases and trunk. If you want me, give me a yell. I’ll be somewhere around.”

She slipped out, leaving Grizel standing with misty eyes. For the first time in years the elder girl felt as if she were wrapped round with warm affection and friendship. She and Deira had been friends, it is true, but Deira had never given her the whole-hearted tenderness that radiated from Jo Maynard. If Grizel had been less self-controlled, she would have cried. As it was, she remained still, revelling in her friend’s unspoken sympathy. At last she roused herself and went to the window.

“I shall rest here,” she told herself. Then she turned to examine her cupboard. A box at the back roused her curiosity and she lifted it out and opened it. It held a set of china for two, with teapot, coffee jug and milk jug. Laid on top was a slip of paper on which was written in Joey’s unmistakeable script, “Tea or coffee as the case may be! Help yourself!”

The tears came then, despite her strong will. Dropping into the armchair, Grizel cried whole-heartedly, the warm flood washing away the worst of the bitterness in her soul. When she finally went downstairs again, she knew that she had obtained relief and that some day happiness would return to her.

Freudesheim had been described as a happy house—a peaceful house—a welcoming house; but never yet had anyone described it as a quiet house. Less than ever did it merit the adjective on the first day of Jo’s house-party.

She had very wisely decided to dispose of her four elder sons and her fourth and fifth daughters once the party had seen them. The triplets she needed to help her generally. The babies would be all right with Rösli the Coadjutor, and she saw no point in upsetting their routine needlessly.

“You’ll all stay until the day after everyone’s arrived,” she informed her assembled family the Sunday before. “I do want to show them all my big family in the lump, so to speak. Next day you boys and Felicity and Cecil are going down to Montreux to stay with Aunt Winifred.”

“Good!” Stephen spoke for his brethren as well as himself. “Must we be here the first night, Ma? Can’t we just go down tomorrow. No one wants to gawk at us, I’ll bet.”

“You’re staying till Tuesday,” Joey said firmly. “And don’t call me ‘Ma!’ It’s the one thing I won’t answer to. Felicity, Lucy Peters is coming with you. Then you won’t feel left among all the boys. Baby Angela is still just a baby. You two must help Aunt Winifred to look after her, and keep an eye on Cecil.”

Felicity nodded until her flaxen ringlets flew wildly. “ ’Course we will! And Lucy and me can practise our dancing steps together. Lovely!”

“Good idea!” Joey turned to Grizel. “The latest idea is that they’re both going in for ballet dancing. Whether it’ll come off or not is another matter, but I’m all for them practising together if that’s what they want.”

“We might start Cecil off, too,” Felicity put in.

“We-ell, see what Aunt Winifred thinks about it,” Joey temporized with a hidden grin. She didn’t think Cecil would take very kindly to ballet training as given by her sister and her sister’s chum, but it would keep them amused.

“You two are taking your cases to Cordelliers tomorrow and leaving them. Papa will call for you after Kaffee und Kuchen and Uncle Peter will take you all down to Montreux in the morning. You’ll be very good and not worry Aunt Phoebe, won’t you? Remember, she isn’t like me. She can’t come flying after you if you get yourselves into any sticky messes.”

“We’ll be angels!” Felicity promised, looking not unlike one with her small face framed in the fair curls, her wide blue eyes, and rapturous expression.

Joey laughed and kissed her. “Mind you are!” Then she dismissed the whole crowd to enjoy themselves and turned to her guest. “Phoebe is really amazingly well these days. She can even use her ’cello on occasion, but she still tires easily. However, Debbie will be there and old as she is, she can keep that lot in order.”

“Why not have Phoebe among us?” Grizel queried. “I know she’s not an Old Girl, but she’s as nearly one as makes no matter.”

Joey shook her head. “I thought of it but she cried off. She finds chattering mobs weary her. I’ve promised to take you all to see her, though—in relays. Now let’s go the rounds and make sure all the rooms are ready. Come on!”

The first instalment of guests arrived shortly after ten next morning when Joey’s own three special friends came racing up the steps to the front door where Joey and Grizel stood to welcome them, and for once Joey was not the important person. After greeting her, they turned with one accord to the wanderer, and by the time they had finished their eager kisses and exclamations Grizel was wondering why she had never come before.

After that, as Len, Joey’s eldest, remarked, everyone simply flooded in! By midday, only one guest was missing and as Joey had carefully refrained from even mentioning her to them, no one missed her. From the Chalet School the two Heads, Rosalie Dene, Mdlle de Lachennais and “Matey”, as they all called her, were there too, and Hilary Graves arrived last of all from the big chalet she and Biddy Courvoisier had turned into two flats, one for each family.

“Hilary, my lamb!” exclaimed a slender, elegant creature with a faintly American accent. “Isn’t this fun? But where’s Biddy?”

“At home in bed,” Hilary said. “Evvy! Surely you knew the new baby is only a fortnight old?”

“What—has Biddy another baby? Why did no one tell me? A fortnight old? Boy or girl? How are they?”

“Boy—Eugen Jean to be known as Jean,” Joey called from the corner where she was dispensing coffee. “He’s a fine specimen—weighed over 9 lbs. Biddy hasn’t been too good. However, she’s making headway now, but we had an anxious few days at first. Coffee, Hilary?”

“Why didn’t you bring your own family?” demanded Marie von Wertheim.

“Soon enough if you see them tomorrow,” Hilary returned. “Use your wits, Marie! How could I bring two young demons and a hefty boy among all this crowd? Oh, yes; Marjory and Lois are demons all right. Winkie looks like following in their footsteps. Still, I shouldn’t have known what to do with a gaggle of baby angels, so it’s just as well.”

“Baby angels—you!” Grizel exclaimed as she came up to hail Hilary. “Was it likely?”

Hilary wrinkled up a pretty nose. “Don’t forget Phil. I believe he was a comparatively mild specimen in his extreme youth. They might have taken after him.”

“Grizel!” A stocky young woman whose most noticeable features were a pair of enormous blue eyes and a chin like a ramrod came up to her. “My, isn’t this a brainwave of Joey’s! How long are you staying? I want you to meet the family.”

“Yes—where are they, Corney?”

“Safe in Berne with Poppa. Not that they’re babies now, but I guess I’ll be too much occupied to keep an eye on them, so he’s in charge just now.”

“Lemon biscuits or bread-twist?” demanded Len coming up to them with a dish in either hand. “I recommend the biscuits. Anna’s speciality!” She fed them and went off laughing. The two friends looked after her.

“Gee!” said Corney, “Can you believe that that young giantess and her trips belong to Joey? And when you remember how she always said she wasn’t getting married for anyone!”

“She changed her mind when Jack made up his,” Grizel said. “Mercy! What a shock I got when Robin broke the news to me!”

“What news?” demanded Joey who had now quitted the coffee urn with the remark that anyone who wanted more could help herself. “Hello, Hilary! How’s Bridget today?”

“Coming on nicely, thank you. She wanted to get up today, but Phil wouldn’t hear of it and Eugen backed him up. However, they may let her have an hour or so tomorrow; but she’ll have to be careful for a while longer.”

Joey nodded and turned again to Grizel to demand, “What news was a shock to you?”

“Your engagement! I simply couldn’t believe Robin when she told me.”

Joey laughed and blushed. “I seem to remember something of it. Oh, thanks, Con! I was just beginning to remember I’d forgotten my own coffee. Biscuits, please, Len. Anna’s lemon biscuits are out of this world and she only makes them for special occasions.”

“I like your trips, Joey,” Corney remarked. “I think my own crowd are pretty nice, but there really is something extra about those three. By the way, where’s the Head? I’m sending Ronny and Val Pertwee back in September so I must warn her to keep vacancies for them.”

“She’s over there, having a lovely natter with Bernie and Wanda. Isn’t Wanda a picture still? It’s amazing when you think of all she’s gone through, poor girl! But she can still give even Marie spades and aces and beat her hands down. I say, Corney, what about the picturesque Yseult? Isn’t she coming back, too?”

“I guess you’re mixing the ages. Yseult left school two years ago. She’s twenty now and she’s engaged, what’s more—going to be married in the summer vacation. She’s way back home, filling her hope chest. But she sent her love to everyone.”

“What’s that?” demanded Miss Annersley who had come up in time to hear this. “Are you telling us that any man has been brave enough to propose to Yseult?”

Corney laughed. “That’s pretty good proof how long it is since you saw her, Miss Annersley. Gee, when I think of those first months with her! But that’s all over. She soon forgot all the romantic flummery, once she reached Boston. When her momma died and she had to take hold with Ronny and Val, she did it real well. Those two think a mighty lot of Sister, I can tell you. She’s a real nice girl got to be. I always said,” Corney concluded, “that it was cutting her hair did it finally.”

“Floor me with a feather!” gasped Joey. “At that rate, Cornelia, you must have taken a very high hand with her at first. Myself, I’d have said nothing much could be done. Still,” she added with a grin, “I did remark that she might be obstinate, but you were worse!” After which left-handed compliment she departed in a hurry to talk to someone else.

Cornelia chuckled. “Joey hasn’t altered much, I guess—not in looks or anything else. How come she stays so young? She don’t look a day over twenty-five.”

“It’s a habit she’s got,” Hilary returned. “Wait till you see her with her girls. They’re chums as well as mother and daughters. Oh, look who’s here! Stacie Benson, this is great! I didn’t know you’d be coming.”

The tall, distinguished-looking woman who had come up to them laughed. “When I got Joey’s letter I simply leapt at it. How are you, everyone? I’ve been hearing all about your babies, Hilary and Corney. Grizel, this is good!”

Grizel smiled. “And I’ve been hearing about your D.Litt. Dr Eustacia Benson! Very dignified! I must say you look it,” she added.

The learned doctor chuckled. “Is that an insult or a compliment?”

“It’s meant as a compliment. I see you’ve grown your hair again; but thank goodness you don’t yank it back as you used to!”

“And yours is still short. As for yanking it back; at Oxford, let me tell you, we’ve put paid to the untidy blue-stocking who looked it. It pays to be trim and chic. When are you coming to stay with me, Grizel?”

Hilary got up. “You two can have a nice natter. I’m off to bag Sophie Hamel for one on my own account. I haven’t seen her since our coming-of-age celebrations. Amuse yourselves, my dears!” She went off laughing.

Mittagessen was at the school. Miss Annersley had pointed out to Jo that large though the Speisesaal at Freudesheim was, it would hardly hold such a crowd comfortably and Mittagessen and Abendessen had better be taken at school. Karen the cook was staying, for she knew all the visitors, having been with the school from its early days. She was delighted to have a hand in this celebration and Joey, with an eye to Anna’s work, had agreed cheerfully. So at 13.00 hrs—1 p.m., by western time—the party crossed over the lawn and along the path above the school’s rock-garden to assemble round the big staff table in the school’s Speisesaal and feast on a purely Tirolean meal.

“I see you keep to the old ways, Miss Annersley,” observed Lady Watson—once Evadne Lannis.

“What did you expect?” demanded Miss Wilson, co-Head with Miss Annersley and, to quote Joey, another of the school’s foundation stones.

“I wondered if you’d go all grand and sit us down to double damask and crystal. I’m mighty glad to see the dear old checked cloths and coloured glasses.”

“It never entered our heads,” Miss Wilson said serenely.

“Say, Bill!” Cornelia called down the table, “are we touring the school after this?”

“I imagine so. You wouldn’t all like the usual half-hour in deckchairs in Hall, would you?” “Bill” laughed.

“I guess not.” Evadne spoke with decision. “Bill, when are you coming to see my son and the steps? And can you take our little girls in September? I told my husband it was time Thea and Marcia came. Marcia’s just on ten.”

“Ask Hilda Annersley. That’s her job—Yes, Wanda?” she turned to Marie’s sister, Wanda von Gluck, who was sitting on her other side.

The first course had been removed and they were all busy with Karen’s famous Apfeltorte mit saurer Sahne when the door opened very quietly and a big, fair woman, buxom and sonsy, stood smiling at them. Joey, who had been on pins and needles for the last half-hour, was the first to see her. With a strangled yelp she bounded to her feet, over-turning her chair and her lemonade as she did so, and raced to catch the newcomer in a mighty hug.

“Mollie—Mollie Maynard! Oh, how marvellous to see you again!”

“Don’t strangle me!” her sister-in-law gasped. “And look what you’ve done to the clean cloth, Jo! Oh, my dear, isn’t this joyous!”

Not even she heard Jo’s response, for with one accord the tableful forgot their sweet and surged round with exclamations of surprise and delight.

“Maynie! How wonderful to see you again after all these years!”

“Fräulein Maynard—aber nein, ’zist Frau Mackenzie, nicht wahr?—ach, es ist eine erstaunliche Überraschung!”

“Mais comme je suis heureuse, ma chérie, de te revoir!” Mdlle de Lachennais caught Mollie Maynard’s—or Mackenzie’s—hands in hers and gave her an ardent double kiss.

“Joey! Why did you not tell us?” came from Evadne Watson.

But above it all rang out clarion tones. “Maynie! But it can’t be! Maynie was as slender as they come when she left us and look at her now! Oh, gee! I guess that’s done me!” And Cornelia clapped her hands over her mouth and turned a brilliant scarlet.

“Cornelia Flower!” exclaimed the newcomer. “I’d know that voice anywhere! But it isn’t Flower now, I know. What is it, someone?”

“It’s van Alden,” the culprit replied for herself.

“Married a Dutchman, Corney?”

“No indeedy! He’s as good an Amurrican as I am myself!” Cornelia returned indignantly.

Mrs Mackenzie sat down at the table and beamed benignly on them all. “Now I know I’m back at the Chalet School! Oh, danke sehr!” This last to the smiling Miggi who set a loaded plate before her. “Sit down, everyone, and watch me eat while I take a dekko round and see how many of you I can remember.”

“And don’t forget, Jo, to pay your fine into the fines box,” Matron put in severely. “That was a clean cloth!”

Mrs Mackenzie broke into a peal of laughter. “And that settles it finally! Matey, you haven’t changed a little bit. Bernhilda, I see you’re putting on weight—like me, alas! Wanda—Marie—Simone—Frieda—Frieda, you’re very thin!—Sophie Hamel—unmistakeable!” as fat, amiable Sophy gave her beam for beam.

“Ja, ich bin es. Ach, Sie sind sehr willkommen, gnädiges Fräulein!”

“ ‘Frau’, if you please! Do you people realize that my eldest boy is twenty-two and my youngest fifteen?”

“D’you mean you’ve nothing but boys?” Evadne demanded.

“The twins are girls—my share of the family twins. I haven’t gone baldheaded at it like Joey, but since I’m a twin myself, I was bound to have one set. Dollie and Cis followed Bobby. They’re twenty-one this June.” Then as the watchful Miggi changed her plate, “Oh, Nan!” she turned to Miss Annersley. “Isn’t this an occasion!”

“Heavens!” Miss Annersley exclaimed. “This does take me back! No one ever calls me ‘Nan’ now. The staff use my Christian name and the school call me ‘the Abbess’—strictly behind my back, of course.” She flashed a smile to the far end of the table where the crimson triplets were sitting.

“Oh, you’ll always be Nan to me. Bill, I thought Joey said your hair had gone snow-white after that awful escape of yours in Tirol? But it isn’t—at least only partly so. I might have known she was exaggerating!”

“I wasn’t!” Joey protested. “It really was white at the time. But I’ve noticed the red bobbing up again, Nell. What’s done it?”

“Oh, it began a long time ago—after that motor accident we had the term Miss Bubb came to fill in. You may remember that I turned up with short hair. They cut it then because I had sundry cuts and bruises on my scalp.”

Joey grinned. “My dear, if you’d turned up completely scalped I doubt if I’d have noticed it. I was raging mad at the time and when I began to simmer down, we had all that bother with Gay running away and bringing german measles back with her. Stephen was teething for dear life and I didn’t know which end of me was uppermost.”

“I know I had to read the riot act to you or you’d have departed and left us flat! Oh, it’ll never get back its old colour completely, but it’s distinctly patchy.” Then she carried the war into the enemy’s country. “And what about you? What on earth have you been doing to get so stout? You used to be slim!”

“Goodness knows! I’m going to consult Jack and see if he can do something. I haven’t had much time for fussing about my appearance. A farmer’s wife hasn’t, you know. And then the babies came so fast. Peter and Chris topped the limit. Peter arrived on New Year’s Day and Chris came Boxing Day in the same year. We stopped there—mercifully. But for years I had a whole string of babies to run after.”

“What are the others called?” Marie demanded.

“Hugh and Frank. Hugh’s nineteen and Frank’s eighteen. Dollie is Dorothy-Mary after her own mother and Cis is Cicely-Jane after Kenneth’s. Dollie’s married but Cis isn’t. She’s teaching maths in Christchurch. No; I haven’t any grandchildren yet, but you never know what the future may bring. Joey, where’s Jack? Why isn’t my twin brother here to welcome me?”

“Taken the boys to Berne for the day,” Joey said. “You’ll see all my family this evening. Only the triplets are here at the moment. Stand up, you three!”

The triplets rose, very pink, and their aunt surveyed them critically. “Heaven preserve us! What lengthy creatures! Do any of them overtop you, Jo?”

“Margot does—by a quarter of an inch. Len and I are exactly the same height and Con is an inch and a half shorter. She’s never grown as much as the other two. O.K.; sit down, you three. Everyone! Listen to me for a moment, please. There are too many of us to go about in one body, so the three girls and I are taking you in turns to show you all our special places round here. That will fill in the first four days. Then we’ll have a trip to Interlaken and do the lakes. After that—we’ll see. Now, Hilda, as everyone seems to have finished, let’s have Grace and then——”

“And then we’ll have coffee in my salon,” Miss Annersley said, standing up. “Grace, please, girls!”

And with a joyous feeling that they really were back at school, the company rose for the old Latin Grace they remembered so well before accompanying the Head to her salon, where they scattered in groups, everyone talking hard and trying to “catch up” on everyone else as soon as she could.

The next day began with a disappointment. Hilary Graves rang up to announce that she must be counted out of any expedition that day. Her small son had roused her in the small hours of the morning by loud wails. A new tooth was on its way and, until it was safely through, Hilary was not leaving the boy. He had cut the last one with a convulsion fit which had terrified her, and she was running no risks with him.

“I can quite understand,” Joey said in reply to the phone-call. “I know what it’s like. You may remember that Mike cut one or two of his the same way and I was scared nearly out of my wits. You have all my sympathy. Let’s hope the wretched thing arrives quickly, though. I don’t want you to miss more of this reunion than can be helped.”

“Reunions are not for mothers with teething infants,” Hilary said with conviction. “Bring the party here for mid-morning coffee as we planned, though, Joey. That will be all right. It’s simply that I won’t leave Winkie for the moment. Anyhow, Biddy wants to see them.”

“Right! Expect us around 10.30, then,” Joey replied. “I’m taking them on to the Auberge after and, just this first day, we’re sticking together. No one has got through half the gossip yet. Biddy O.K.? Good! Be seeing you!” She hung up and went to announce the news to all and sundry.

The Graves-Courvoisier chalet was some two-and-a-half miles from Freudesheim so, with an eye to the later walk, Joey coaxed her husband to run the party there in the minibus which was the delight of the family. It was a crowded business, especially as Bruno came too, by special invitation. Jack looked dubious about it, but Joey insisted.

“It’ll give him a good walk, which he always loves, and we can’t cart him round to most of our other places,” she said.

“Have it your own way,” he said resignedly. Then he grinned. “He’s never been to the Auberge, has he? I wish I could come with you to see his reactions.”

“Come, then! Oh, Jack, do! The San won’t fall down if you’re not there for one day!” she coaxed.

But he refused. “Probably not, but I can’t come with you and take Felicity and Cecil and the boys down to Winifred’s. I’ll try to fit in one trip later on in the week. You must enjoy the Auberge and its special attraction without me, I’m afraid.”

At ten o’clock, Joey said goodbye for a week to the younger members of her family, warned them to be ready for Papa when he came back to pick them up at Freudesheim, and scrambled into the minibus, accompanied by the faithful follower. Bruno lay down on the floor, but Joey had to be accommodated with a seat on Hilda Annersley’s lap and that lady observed that it was fortunate that it was a short journey.

“It’s as well we’re picking up Nell Wilson at Adlersnest, for we certainly couldn’t have got her in here, even with a shoehorn!”

“Minnie wasn’t built to take a whole gang of hefty women,” Jack told her with a grin. “It’s as much as we can do to pack the family in comfortably. What’s going to happen in five years’ time is beyond me.”

“Oh, by that time the boys will have mo-bikes, won’t they?” Stacie Benson said, laughing. “They can each take a triplet as pillion passenger and you’ll be able to tuck the rest in comfortably—unless Joey really goes for those quads she was talking about last night.”

“Don’t wish quads on to us!” he protested. “We’ve got triplets and twins already and that’s enough for any family.”

He duly decanted them at Adlersnest, turned Minnie, and went back along the road to pick up his second load and make for Montreux. The feminine party shook itself, Miss Annersley gently massaging her knees before Miss Wilson, who had been waiting near the gate, came up to demand why she was doing it.

“I nursed Joey the whole way here and she’s no light weight,” Miss Annersley returned. “Joey, put that dog on leash, for goodness sake!”

Joey called Bruno to her side and clipped the light chain to his harness. Then they walked sedately up to the door where Hilary was waiting for them.

“How’s Winkie?” Joey called.

“Sleeping at the moment, but he’s dribbling like a Niagara and his gums are very hot, so we’re for it,” her hostess returned. “Come in, everyone! Welcome to Adlersnest! Into the salon, Joey! We’ll have our coffee first and then you can visit Biddy’s portion in twos and threes. Hello, Bruno! Coming to stay with us while Missus introduces her visitors to our beauty-spot?”

“No; he’s coming with us for the walk,” Joey explained as she led the way into Hilary’s salon. It was smaller than her own and, by the time everyone was assembled, it was crowded. Coffee and biscuits were ready for them, and the triplets waited expertly on everyone. They were not going to go to the Auberge, but were returning home when the rest set out for the Auberge, having sundry chores of their own to attend to.

Hilary showed off her new home with justifiable pride. Besides the salon, there was a big Speisesaal, another room which Dr Graves used as a study, four good bedrooms and, close at hand, a hut which was the playroom for her own trio and Biddy’s little family. The kitchen was next door to the Speisesaal, with a hatch between. Unlike Joey, she had mainly modern furniture and her floors were polished, with a scatter of rugs.

“I couldn’t be bothered with carpets,” she told her guests. “Now some of you had better call on Bridget while I show off the playroom. Don’t stay more than a few minutes or she’ll be tired to death and I’ll hear all about it from Eugen when he comes home.”

Grizel had already visited her old friend, but she ran upstairs to the upper apartment to lead the way to the big white bedroom where Biddy Courvoisier lay on a huge sofa, the baby beside her in the big, old-fashioned cradle which had rocked four generations of little Courvoisiers already. She sat up to welcome her old friends with pink cheeks and gloriously blue eyes glowing with pleasure.

“Oh, but this is a real brainwave of Jo’s!” she exclaimed joyously. “Wanda—Corney—Evvy—Sophy! Come and see our second son! Grizel, you’ll take them to the nursery and introduce them to Pat and Marie presently, won’t you? There! Isn’t he a size?”

They gathered round the cradle where the big, fair baby was sleeping peacefully.

“But he is a giant, Biddy Liebling,” Wanda said.

“How did you do it?” Cornelia demanded with a glance at Biddy, who was very small and slight. “Even my young Meg wasn’t this size and we all thought she was a mighty big specimen!”

Biddy laughed. “Sure, how should I know? It just happened. And now you must see our twins. Take them to the nursery, Grizel, and then come back for a moment.”

Grizel nodded and led the party off to the playroom where they were introduced to the twins and Marjory and Lois Graves, two impish-looking small girls of five and two-and-a-half. Pat was the picture of his mother, with her black curling hair and blue eyes. Small Marie was, as Grizel said, more like her father. She had his fair hair and grey eyes, but she had her mother’s delicate features. None of the tinies was shy and they quickly made friends. Grizel left the others to it and ran back to Biddy, meeting four more of the party on the way.

“Biddy looks very frail,” Stacie said, “but she tells me she’s better every day.”

“Oh, she is!” Grizel replied quickly. “It’s only a question of time, now.” Then she vanished into the bedroom.

“I’m here, Biddy. Hurry up, though, for the others will be coming.”

“I just wanted to say if the mob gets too much for you, come to me for refuge,” Biddy said. “A crowd like that can be very tiring.”

Grizel stooped to kiss her. “Thank you, Biddy. That’s kind. But I’ll be all right for just one week. I’ll come to you when they’ve gone. Now here come the others. Sure it’s not too much for you?”

“No; I’m much better today. By this time next week, I’ll be on my feet again. Sure, I’m not going to play the invalid and don’t you be thinking it!”

Grizel laughed. Then, as four more people came in, she departed. Ten minutes later, they were waving goodbye to Hilary before they followed Joey to the mountain railway, which they crossed with Bruno still on lead.

“Now for the Auberge!” their guide cried when they had passed a big tangle of bushes and found themselves at a cleft between the mountain wall and an enormous boulder. “Through here and then it’s straight ahead. You couldn’t lose yourselves if you tried.”

“How come?” Evadne asked as they set off along a narrow path guarded on the outward side by a low natural wall of rock. “Oh, does this go all the way along?”

“No; but where there isn’t wall, there are bushes, and where there aren’t bushes there’s a lovely sheer drop right down to the valley. Somehow,” said Joey solemnly, “I don’t see any of you trying to wander in that direction!”

“And certainly the mountain itself is quite impossible,” Wanda said with a laugh. “Yes, Joey, meine Blume, you are right. We shall stay with you.”

“Quite so. You may break now, girls!” Joey spoke primly and there were shouts of laughter at this reminder of schooldays.

“If you’ll tell me how we can break on this catwalk, we’ll break with pleasure,” Grizel told her. “This means single file, my love.”

“You wait!” Joey retorted. “Come on, Bruno! We’ll lead!”

With Bruno trotting along beside her, she swung off along the path and the rest followed, laughing and chatting as hard as they could. The narrow path continued for some distance. Then it suddenly widened into a small shelf, the rock-wall of the mountain sweeping back while, on the outer edge, it fell sheer to the valley far beneath.

“Keep well away from the edge,” Joey warned them as they emerged and paused to look at the view. “We’ve had one hair-raising experience here and I don’t want another.”^[1]

Simone nodded. She knew the story and so did Frieda and Marie. The rest clamoured for it as they gazed at the long range upon range of mountains opposite and then advanced near enough to the edge to look down into the valley and exclaim at the toylike clusters of chalets, the river like a silver string, and the autobahn running parallel to it like a white thread.

Mdlle de Lachennais shuddered and Miss Annersley slipped an arm round her.

“We won’t think of it, Jeanne. Joey may tell the story, and you and I will go on to the Auberge and order coffee and wine to have with our meal. Coming, Nell?” She looked at Miss Wilson who nodded.

“Why, was it so very terrible?” Evadne asked.

“It might have been.” Joey spoke seriously. “This is where my unofficial god-daughter and namesake saved Emerence Hope’s life.”

“Emerence—that is Margot’s great friend with whom she is going to spend the summer vacation, nicht wahr?” Wanda asked as she patted Bruno’s head. “But who is your unofficial god-daughter, then, my Jo?”

“You never knew Maisie Gomme, did you?” Joey asked, squatting on a convenient tree-trunk while Bruno stretched out at her feet. “No; St Scholastika’s came to the Tiern See after you and Bernie had left school.”

Cornelia gave a chuckle. “I remember that all right. And I remember Maisie Gomme,” she added. “She was a mighty pretty girl with few brains and very little commonsense—though she was very pleasant, I will say.”

“That’s her,” Joey said with a sweet disregard for grammar. “Well, Maisie married almost straight from school and they had one daughter—Jo Scott. During that Mau Mau business they came home, and Maisie found out where both the school and we were. She sent Jo to the school and wrote to tell me that the kid was my unofficial god-daughter and ask me to give an eye to her.”

“But what a burden!” Sophy Hamel exclaimed.

But Joey shook her head. “No burden at all. Jo Scott was—and is—chockful of sense. She’s a thoroughly nice girl and when she was a prefect, she was an excellent one. I’m very proud of her as well as fond—dear Jo! Well, we were having a flower show at the school and they wanted moss as a backing for flower pictures. As you can see for yourselves moss grows here all right. Emmy Hope—who was one of the world’s worst imps—tripped up over one of those slabs near the edge and would have gone clean over, but Jo, who was near, grabbed an ankle and held on to her like grim death until help came, which it did at once. Between them, they got Emmy hauled back to safety, but Jo strained a shoulder badly and had to be out of the fun and also the sports. But it was a near thing.”

“It sounds horrible,” Bernhilda said with a shudder.

“It was! And now, let’s get cracking or we’ll never reach the Auberge and Hilda and Nell will be tootling back to see if one of us has shoved all the rest over the edge in a violent attack of insanity. Hup, boy!” This last to Bruno, who got to his feet and moved off with her.

Once they left the little shelf, they found that the path narrowed again and was partly hemmed in by bushes. Then it broadened once more into a much larger shelf, and at last they had reached the Auberge.

The visitors looked round. The building was typically Swiss, built into the mountain wall at the back with steeply-pitched roof of logs securely roped, and weighted against the winter storms by great boulders, also roped. The walls were plastered and frescoed elaborately. Before it was a big courtyard, fenced at the edge with close-set palings and stakes driven into the rock. In the courtyard itself were set half-a-dozen long narrow tables with benches on either side, and at one of them the three mistresses were waiting.

“Come and look,” Joey said, collecting her party round her as she walked to the fence through the wicketgate which shut off the courtyard from the footpath. “See how the valley below has narrowed. I’ve often said it wouldn’t be too big a job to bridge the gap if anyone felt like it.”

“Joey! It would need a bridge the size of the one over Sydney Harbour!” Dr Benson exclaimed.

“Think so?” Joey said coolly. Then she pursed up her lips and whistled a brief, birdlike phrase. Even as she ended, the notes were flung back to them, echoing and re-echoing with elfin charm as the party stood silent with delight.

“Listen!” she said as they died away and, lifting her head, she sang the first line of Schubert’s lovely song, “Hark, Hark, the Lark”. They came back, transmuted to almost unearthly beauty and “the girls”, as they all thought of themselves, exclaimed with ecstasy.

Only one person seemed to disapprove. Bruno knew his mistress’s voice, but this queer repetition of her song was something quite new to him, he never having visited the Auberge till now. Once they were safely in the courtyard, Joey had slipped his chain and now he circled round the yard looking thoroughly bewildered.

When Cornelia tried her hand at rousing the echoes with a prolonged, “Yoo-hoo!” and it came back again, it was too much for him. He rushed up to the paling, barking furiously. Back came his barking, and he looked wildly round to see where the other dog was. No dog was there, and he woofed loudly again, only to be mocked again. He crouched down, growling deeply in his throat, too deeply for the sound to carry, but when he indulged in another fusillade of barks, that infuriating answer came hurtling back at him. What was more, by this time everyone was in fits of laughter and poor Bruno seemed to himself to have got into a strange world full of bodiless dogs and people who were making fun of him.

In a sudden access of fury he hurled himself at the palings and Jo’s laughter changed to a shriek as she shot across the courtyard to clutch her pet’s harness and try to drag him away. The palings were strong, but Bruno was a heavyweight and fifteen or sixteen stone of raging St Bernard flung at them might have meant a tragedy in the Maynard family. The others were quick to go to her aid, but it took them all their time to get him away, and then Joey had to squat down on the stones and clasp him firmly while she scolded him with many love-names until finally he was soothed sufficiently to consent to lie down at her feet, and even then she chained him to one leg of the bench on which she, Sophy, the two Heads and Cornelia were sitting.

“Even Bruno can’t drag free from all that weight,” she said. “But never again does Bruno come here! I never thought it would affect him like that! My poor old man! You did give Missus a fright!” She bent down to hug him again, and a calmed Bruno wagged his tail and swept her face with his tongue.

“Well,” observed Cornelia as, their Mittagessen eaten, they left the place, “I guess your Auberge won’t be forgotten by anyone here in a hurry. Gee, Joey, when he was chucking himself at that fence I thought he’d have the whole thing down and himself into the bargain.”

“I thought that myself,” Joey acknowledged. “But never again!”

She looked positively pale and they all hastened to turn her thoughts in another direction by demanding to know what the arrangements were for the morrow. This lasted them until they were once more safely on the Görnetz Platz and heading for Freudesheim and Kaffee und Kuchen.

That evening, when what Jack called “the locals” had departed and Jack himself had gone to take Bruno for his final walk, Joey described her arrangements to the remainder of her guests.

“I’m a reasonable woman. I don’t ask impossibilities of anyone. We had a late night last night and now I’m pushing you all off to bed. If you’re not sleepy you ought to be. We’ve been on the go all today and you’re all as full as you can hold of fresh air and good food——”

She got no further just then, for the younger members of the party fell on her with shrieks of protest at this rude remark. She wriggled free, made for the end of the salon where the grand piano stood and barricaded herself in before inquiring plaintively, “What have I done to deserve this assault?”

“A nice hostess you are!” Marie retorted. “Actually accusing your innocent guests of gormandizing——”

“Oh, I didn’t—I never did!” Joey exclaimed in shocked tones. “I wouldn’t be so ill-bred! If you really want to know, I only added that last phrase because it rounded off my sentence so nicely. We’ll let it go, shall we? What I want to say now is that I’m sure you’ll all be glad of early bed after our dissipations of last night and this morning’s horrid shock. And that reminds me. Bruno stays firmly at home during our coming expeditions. Hear that, you three?” She looked at her daughters. “No trying to coax for his company. It’ll be waste of breath!”

Len shuddered. “I, for one, don’t dream of coaxing. I had enough this morning. I thought he’d be over the edge for a certainty!”

“Nor I.” Con had turned pale at the memory, and Margot backed up her sisters.

“We’ve had enough of that sort of thing. Honestly, Mum, you needn’t worry on that score.”

Joey glanced sharply at them but made no comment. Instead, she went on to explaining the morrow’s plans. “There are fifteen of you and our four selves. Hilary and Biddy are out where expeditions are concerned, but we’ve Nell, Hilda, Rosalie and Jeanne to add. Matey won’t come, either. She can’t walk as far and she told me she meant to cry off during the daytime. So that gives us twenty-three all told. We’re going off in parties of six with a Maynard at the head of each. Yes, Frieda? What is it?”

“Only that four into twenty-three goes five times and three over,” Frieda said demurely; but her eyes were dancing.

Joey tilted her chin. “I know my tables as well as you do. What I was going to add if you’d only waited was that I had a letter this morning from Peggy Burnett who had to go home for Easter itself as Mary’s twins were being baptized on Easter Day. She’s coming on today and should be here by tomorrow morning, so after that, we shall be twenty-four which does give us six each.”

Her sister-in-law chuckled. “It’s no use. No one ever caught Joey out—or not for long! You should have remembered that, Frieda. Go ahead, Jo, and tell us the worst. What have you planned for us for tomorrow?”

Jo left her refuge and came to sit down. “Grizel, you’re going with Con to Wahlstein, which is the terminus for our railway, and right round the mountain to the south. Nell, you’re going with them and so is Rosalie. Mollie, you’re coming with my crowd, and Corney, you and Evvy are together—I know you’ve piles of past history to make up!—with Con, and Hilda is going with you so I shall feel at ease about you——”

“Gee! I could kill you sometimes, Joey!” was Cornelia’s reaction to this.

“Hush, my angel-pie! Don’t give vent to such evil thoughts! Besides, I don’t know if they hang for murder here, but just think how unpleasant it would be for you if they do!”

“Now that’s enough!” Mollie Mackenzie announced. “You stop being morbid and go on with your job. Who’s to be in Margot’s party?” She shot a smile at Margot.

“Margot is having Jeanne de Lachennais and four other folk. As for the rest of you—sort yourselves, as the parish clerk said after the parson had married eight couples at one blow! Remember, time flies, so if you have any special confidences for anyone in particular, seize your chance now.”

They hurriedly consulted and after twenty minutes or so, the parties were arranged. Joey then firmly bade everyone good night and shooed them off upstairs, with a final reminder not to wake her babies.

“I know all my family learn to sleep through most things at an early age,” she said, “but all the same, I know your patent shrieks, Corney, and I’d just as soon the twins were not startled awake.”

They all laughed, but they went off quietly and Joey had no complaints to make. The twins slept sweetly and once she herself had made her usual rounds she retired to her own room, where Jack already was, having returned with Bruno and gone straight to bed. He was practically asleep, so she made no remarks and very shortly afterwards the house was in darkness and everyone slept.

“How do we get to—what’s its name—Wahlstein?” Grizel asked Con next morning when she joined that young person at the gate.

“Train up, I thought. It’s rather much of a climb,” Con explained. “There’s a Gasthaus up there, so I thought we’d go for coffee and then visit the glacier; then picnic on the grass somewhere, if it’s dry enough, and after that we can visit the little shop at the Gasthaus. They sell woodcarvings and lace and embroideries if anyone wants to buy. There’s a tiny museum there, too. After that we’ll go and have a dekko at the Jade Lake and then if anyone feels like it, I thought we might walk down—so far, anyway. There are half-a-dozen stations between here and Wahlstein, so if anyone gets tired, we can drop her at the nearest to come back in the train. They go every half-hour or so, so no one need think that once she’s started to walk she must keep on, tired or not. How’s that?” Con eyed her party, which had all arrived in time to hear most of this, and waited for comments.

“Sounds good to me,” observed Rosalie Dene. “But one moment, Con. Is anyone likely to suffer from mountain sickness? It’s a good 6000 feet higher than this and the atmosphere’s distinctly rarefied. What about it, people?”

They all laughed the idea to scorn, so they set off, picking up Miss Wilson at the gate of St Mildred’s house half-a-mile further on. They caught the train easily enough, but it was crowded and they had to part. Grizel and Rosalie found seats at the back of the second of the little coaches and Nell Wilson, who had waited to see them all in, contrived to squeeze into a seat just in front. Con and the others had to go into the front coach where Con got the last vacant seat, right up at the front. Most of the other passengers were people from the valley, going to visit friends or relatives living on the upper slopes, but there were a few visitors. Two of them were seated across the aisle from Con and as she squeezed into the six inches or so left her by a large, beaming woman, they glanced up.

They were climbers, obviously, for they wore climbing kit and carried ropes and ice-axes. One was a tall, lean man in the early forties. His companion was a much younger fellow, red-headed and freckled. He took a second look, for Con was worth looking at—an attractive young thing with her clearcut features, eyes of a deep brown set, under long lashes, in a pink and white face, and with a mass of black hair drawn back from broad brows to hang in a thick pigtail to her waist.

Con herself took little notice of either. Once she was seated, clinging to the rail in front in case she fell off into the aisle, she sat gazing out of the window, her eyes dreamy with what Margot called “that poetry look”. Of all Joey’s family she was the one who had inherited the largest share of her mother’s writing gifts and already a line for the opening of a sonnet was drifting through her mind. Mercifully, she had to give too much of her attention to keeping on her seat for it to come to much just then. Con, as all her family and the school knew, was hopeless once she was in the throes of a new poem!

The journey took a little over twenty minutes. Then the train reached its terminus and came to a standstill. Everyone who had not already left it at one or other of the intermediate stations got out and scattered. Con, almost the last, jumped down to find that her party had walked to the edge of the shelf, Grizel in the middle of them, and Miss Wilson and Rosalie were naming the peaks to be seen in the ranges before them as far as they could.

The two men had also left the train and, after shouldering their rucksacks and generally settling their gear, were proceeding to head along the shelf towards the glacier. They glanced at the cluster of women and girls and at that moment Stacie Benson turned to Grizel to demand, “How do these compare with your New Zealand Alps, Grizel?”

Her clear, incisive voice carried on the thin air and the elder man checked and glanced across at them. Then he went on, but Con had seen it—the only one to do so—and wondered. Later, she talked it over with her sisters but it was not for some time that they learned the explanation.

Grizel laughed. “They aren’t ‘my’ New Zealand Alps,” she said. “I’m not a New Zealander. In any case, I’ve only visited them once and I didn’t get a chance to see much. I came down with flu the day after I got there and by the time my holidays ended, I was only really fit enough to go out, so I saw precious little of them.”

“Poor you!” Dr Benson sympathized. “What a glorious view this is!” Her quiet grey eyes went back to the wave after wave of giants heaving austere shoulders against the blue of the late April sky. “I wish I dared do a little climbing, but that’s not for me—worse luck!”

“But why not, Stacie?” asked big Sophie Hamel in her strongly accented English. “You are not fat as me, but slim.”

“My back—you remember that accident I had my first term at school. Oh, I’m really all right now, but there is a slight weakness still and I daren’t risk any climbing even now.”

“Then you’ll go down by train when we do return,” Nell Wilson said firmly. “No straining yourself on this occasion, my dear!”

Stacie laughed. “I suppose it’ll come to that; but we’ll see.”

“It’s jolly hard luck!” Con said sympathetically. She knew the story, of course. It had passed into the Chalet School legends long since. Then she changed the subject. “Auntie Nell, shall I run on ahead and warn Frau Elsner to have the coffee ready?”

“It might be an idea,” Miss Wilson agreed. “I’ll bring this crowd along as soon as they’ve had enough of gazing and exclaiming!”

Con chuckled and went off, running swiftly and well, her long pigtail bumping joyously against her back. She passed the men and the elder man smiled at her as she went. She smiled back shyly, but ran on.

“Pretty kid, that!” the younger man said. “Lord, how she can run! Fleetfooted Thetis would have had nothing on her, Sheppard!”

“No,” his friend agreed. “Ah! She’s evidently going to order coffee. Like a cup before we go on, Hamilton?”

“Oh, lord, no! We’ve coffee in our flasks. I want to get on a bit and crossing that glacier isn’t a picnic from all I’ve heard. Better get that behind us before we stop.”

Neil Sheppard said no more and they went on past the Gasthaus, and by the time the crowd had reached it, they had vanished between the pines that grew close to the glacier path and were out of sight. Con had glimpsed them as she ran up the shallow steps leading to the railed-off veranda at the front of the building.

“Wonder why that man came up with a jerk when Stacie was speaking?” she thought as she pushed the door open and went in.

For a wonder, she held her tongue about it. Usually, she was apt to come out with whatever was in her mind but for some reason she could not fathom, she said nothing about the two and the others had hardly noticed them—Grizel, not at all. The coffee was waiting for them, hot, strong, and bitter with chicory. Nell Wilson had known what to expect, however, and she produced a packet of extra sugar to make it palatable.

They sat chatting for about twenty minutes. Then they set off for the glacier in their turn. Rosalie and Con took the lead and Grizel came immediately behind them with Miss Wilson. They passed through the scatter of stunted pines, past bushes of thorn and alpenrose which were dotted here and there, and then swung round a spur and began the upward climb to the glacier.

It was steep in places and the uneven footing made it a toilsome business. However, all of them carried alpenstocks which were a help and at last they passed through a cleft and were standing above the glacier itself. Here, they paused to rest and recover their breath and most of them mopped their faces.

Remembering what Stacie had said about her back, Miss Wilson turned to her as she leaned on a jut of rock. “Back all right, Stacie? This isn’t too much for you?” she asked.

Dr Benson shook her head. “I’m all right, thanks. I can do a fair amount. It’s just alpine climbing I daren’t tackle.” She glanced down at the Head’s foot and added, the colour flushing her normally pale face, “What about your foot? Is it all right?”

‘Bill’, as the school at large had always called her, stared at her. “My foot? Goodness me, I haven’t given that a thought for years unless the wind’s in the north. Stacie! You silly girl! Do you mean to say you’re still worrying over that old affair? Snap out of it!”

“It was my fault,” Stacie said. “I’ve never really forgiven myself for it.”

“Then for pity’s sake forgive yourself now and be done with it! My foot is as good as anyone’s—a lot better than your poor back! I’m as active as, and far more so than, a good many women of my age, let me tell you. Con!” She raised her voice and Con, who had been chattering to some of the others turned. “We’d better be moving now. Lead on! But not too far and do watch your footing.” She turned back to Stacie and Grizel, who had joined them now. “The path gets quite nasty further along and we’ve had one sensational episode here and don’t want another.”

Wanda, overhearing, threw up her hands. “But is every place about here marked for you by such things? Joey shows us one yesterday. Today, you speak of another up here. How many more?”

“And what was it?” Grizel demanded curiously as they began to move along the path with due caution.

“One of our young mistresses nearly came to a sticky end. She would have done if it hadn’t been for Mary-Lou Trelawney.^[2] The overhanging slab on which she was standing, taking in the glacier, suddenly parted company with the path. From what they all said, it just sliced clean down and crashed on to the ice. Mary-Lou always vows she doesn’t know what told her there was danger. All she knows is that she grabbed Kathy Ferrars’ arm and yanked her back as hard as she could a split second before it happened. Kathy and Nancy Wilmot had brought the prefects up here for an expedition and the poor lambs had a horrid fright. Kathy’s arm and shoulder were badly wrenched and Mary-Lou, who had been badly hurt two terms before in a toboggan accident upset her back all over again.”^[3]

“Mary-Lou,” Grizel repeated. “I remember her—a stocky, sturdy youngster very fair with two pigtails and blue eyes and a trick of talking to everyone as if she was their contemporary. You couldn’t call it cheek, but it was rather startling on occasion. A nice child, if plain,” she added.

Rosalie laughed. “Aren’t you behind the times! Our Mary-Lou is tall and slim and a very handsome young woman. As for her hair, they had to shave her head after the accident—she was very badly concussed—and when the hair grew again, it came in curls!”

“Impossible!” Grizel exclaimed. “Her eyes were lovely and she had a nice fair skin, but when you’d said that, you’d said all.”

“Wait till you see her!” Con turned to put her oar in. Then she added sadly, “Though it’s not very likely just now. She and Verity—her sister-by-marriage, do you remember?—are up at the Platz now with Auntie Doris—Mary-Lou’s mother. Auntie Doris is dying——”

“Who told you that?” Bill demanded.

“Mamma did, actually, but we’d guessed it before that.”

“What’s wrong?” Grizel asked. “Is that really true, Bill?”

“Quite true,” Miss Wilson replied. “Jack Maynard told me yesterday that she may linger for another two or three weeks or she may go at any time; but, short of a miracle, there’s no hope.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that!” Simone exclaimed. “What will those two poor girls do? There are no other relations are there?”

“I believe Verity has some cousins in Ireland, but Mary-Lou will have no one left.”

“Yes, she will! She’ll have us!” Con cried. “Verity’s going to be married, anyhow, and Mary-Lou will go on with her career. But she knows that home will be with us. Mamma told her so.”

“Ye-es,” Grizel said slowly. “I suppose I needn’t have wondered. Your mother would dash to the rescue at once. She always did—she always will. That’s Jo!”

“Here we are!” Con had reached a little platform and now she stopped. They came crowding round her to gaze across the groaning, greenish-blue ice of the glacier. The air was full of its queer, sour smell and even under the sunlight it was desolate-looking.

Just here, it swung round in a wide curve and some distance beyond them they could see two figures crossing the ice with careful movements, though they were too far off to be recognized clearly. Stacie, however, had noted the climbers when they left the train.

“Why,” she cried, “those must be the two men who were on the train with us. Didn’t you see them, Wanda? A tall, dark man with a thin, clever face and a much younger one with the reddest hair I’ve ever seen—redder even than your young Geoff’s, Con.”

“I saw them,” Con agreed. “I guessed they were going climbing. They’ll be crossing up there and then they go on and over the shoulder of the mountain. Where they’ll end up, I can’t tell you. Probably crossing the next pass and dropping down into Italy.”

No one was looking at Grizel at the moment or her face might have given her away. She could guess who the pair were and, in spite of herself, a sudden feeling of happiness was lighting up her eyes and touching her face with extra colour. She took a grip on herself and when finally they turned to look in the other direction, she had herself well in hand.

Stacie Benson gave a sudden shudder. “Are we going further?” she asked.

“We are not,” Bill said briefly.

“Oh, but a photograph!” pleaded Sophy, producing her Kodak. “A photo I must have—and here where we are up at a glacier. Stand closer, all, so that I may get you in. Here is the sun! That is well! Now still, please!”

Laughing, they crowded close together and she got her snap. Then Nell Wilson, with an eye on Dr Benson’s face, insisted that they must turn. It would take a little time to get down the shelf again and by the time they had done that, they would be ready for a meal.

She went ahead with Stacie and the others followed, Con coming last. They had reached the big jut of rock behind which they must pass when Con glanced back. The next moment the queer, groaning noises of the slowly-moving ice were drowned in a sudden roar and wild crashing.

“What’s that?” Grizel exclaimed, swinging round. Then, with horror in her voice, “That place where we were standing—it’s gone!”

They all followed the direction in which she was pointing with horrified eyes. It was as she had said. It had sheered clean off by the mountain slope. All could see the great raw wound in the earth where pebbles were still sliding down to scatter over the ice or slide down into the crevasses. Most of them paled as they realized by what a hairsbreadth they had escaped a nasty accident. Stacie looked ready to faint and even Rosalie Dene, self-contained as she was, felt sick for a minute or two.

“Let’s—get down—to the shelf,” Con said shakily. Then as Bill led the way, one arm round Stacie, who was trembling: “Gosh! That’s been a near shave!”

No-one said anything more until they had reached the tiny plateau, but more than one heartfelt thanksgiving went up to heaven as they scrambled down the rough path. They reached the trees at last, and then Wanda spoke.

“I do not think I shall ever visit another glacier. But thank God it did not fall until we were safe.”

“Thank God indeed!” Nell Wilson said gravely. “Con, can you run ahead and ask Frau Elsner for coffee? I think a hot drink will do us all good.”

Con went as quickly as she could when her knees were still, as she graphically told her sisters that night, knocking together like castanets, and the coffee came very soon after they had reached the Gasthaus. Con had told Frau Elsner what had happened and the good woman was full of excitement. Luckily, the excitement wiped most of her German off her memory and no one but Con really understood the Schweizer-deutsch in which she held forth. But it was quite a relief when, their meal ended and some purchases made in the little shop, they were all able to say goodbye and go to admire the Jade Lake with its wonderful deep green colour and its icy-cold water. Just the same, no one attempted the walk down, not even Con. They were too thankful to take the train back to the safety of their own Görnetz Platz.

Grizel stirred, turned over, opening her eyes, and finally sat up. It was early—much too early for most people—but though she had slept well during the night, she was wide awake now. Lying in bed once that happened was no weakness of hers. She put on her dressing-gown, slipped her feet into her bedroom slippers and went to lean out of the wide-open lattice and gaze round. Downstairs, the old grandfather clock which had told the time for nearly three hundred years at Pretty Maids, the former Maynard home, but which had been brought to Switzerland after Jack had agreed to let the Government have the place for their own purposes, chimed six bell-chimes and Grizel drew her ruffled head in and decided that morning tea was indicated.

She plugged in the electric kettle, got out the china and then went along to the table on the landing where a big jug of milk was always set each night. She was very quiet in her movements, for though Joey’s family could sleep through most things, she knew that they were also early birds and she did not want to disturb her hostess or anyone else before the twins began to give tongue on their own account. Joey had been overcome the night before when she heard the story Con’s party had to tell and Jack had been worse.

She drank her tea and then dressed, washing in one of the further bathrooms as a precaution. Finally, she pulled on her big coat, for the morning air had a decided nip in it, and slipped out of the house by the side-door. By now it was nearly seven o’clock and the sun was up. Grizel strolled down the drive and out into the road, breathing deeply and giving herself up to the full enjoyment of what looked like being a glorious day.

“I’ll stick to the Platz,” she thought. “Now why didn’t I bring Bruno? He would have enjoyed an early morning run. Shall I go back for him? No; better not. He’d be safe to bark and I’d rather be alone just now and think things out—if I can.”

She had reached the hedge between the Freudesheim garden and the school grounds when the school gates opened and a tall slim girl slipped out. She paused for a moment, looking round, even as Grizel had. The next instant a cry broke from her.

“It’s Cocky! Cocky herself!” The next moment the girl was running to meet her and Grizel found herself looking into a face that was vaguely familiar. Yet there was something different about it and she looked at the newcomer with a puzzled air.

She saw a girl of nineteen or twenty, whose head of tumbled golden-brown curls was a good half-inch above her own. The very blue eyes had shadows beneath them and the round cheeks were paler than looked natural. All the same, memory suddenly awoke and Grizel caught the long-fingered hands in her own.

“Mary-Lou Trelawney!” she cried. “Goodness, Mary-Lou, how you’ve changed since I last saw you! I’m so glad to meet you again after all this time!”

Mary-Lou returned the grip on her fingers and then freed herself. “And you’ve changed, too,” she said in low tones which were certainly something fresh. Grizel remembered her as speaking in almost as clear a clarion as Cornelia herself. “It’s eight years ago, of course, and I was just a kid. You’d expect me to grow, at any rate.”

Grizel laughed. “But not to the extent you have done.”

“Oh, that was concussion three—no; four years ago. I had begun already, but I just shot up during those weeks in bed. Uncle Jack says it’s quite usual with a head injury if you’re still in the growing stages.” She touched her curls. “That’s when I got these as well.”

Grizel laughed again. “So Miss Wilson was telling me yesterday—or was it Rosalie? One of them, I know. Aren’t you very early? Joey said you were down at that place Unter den Kiefern.”

Mary-Lou nodded. “Verity and I are both there. You remember Verity, don’t you?”

“The girl who refused to sing German carols?^[4] Of course I do. I could have slain her with pleasure that afternoon. Did she come up with you?”

Mary-Lou shook her head. “No; I wanted to see the Head alone. And I must be getting back. I don’t want her to wake and find I’m not there.”

Grizel suddenly remembered why Mary-Lou and Verity were at Unter den Kiefern. She also realized that though the girl had seemed pleased to see her, she had never smiled and her whole aspect was subdued. Mary-Lou’s voice broke across her thoughts.

“If you’re going nowhere in particular, why not walk with me a little way?”

“I’d love to.” Grizel nerved herself for the question. “Mary-Lou—I hope—How——”

“Mother is quite well now,” Mary-Lou said gravely, though her lips quivered.

“You mean—Oh, Mary-Lou, my dear, I’m so sorry—so very sorry!”

“I’m not!” Then, as Grizel stared at her aghast, she went on. “Oh, I’m sorry for myself all right. Who wouldn’t be? Mother was all I had of my very own, for Gran died years ago. But for her, I’m glad! Her suffering and sorrow are ended now and she had more than her share of both—especially of sorrow. My father was killed when I was a small kid. Then Dad, my stepfather, died last year after years of pain and operations that didn’t do any real good. Gran died before that and Gran meant a lot more to her than most. She never knew her own parents and Gran just took hold and mothered her—she told me so once. And then for years she’s been delicate and had bad attacks of illness. But that’s all over now. She’ll never be ill again and she’s with the people she loved best. Oh, can’t you see how much better it is for her? How can I not be glad for her?”

“But what about you?” Grizel demanded.

“Oh, I know. Just at present, when there’s so much to do and I’m so glad Mother’s well and happy, I haven’t much time to think about me. But I know that later on it’ll come home much more sharply. But I’m not going to be a selfish ass and fret. I’m not utterly alone though I haven’t any real relations left. You can’t really count Verity and she’ll be married in June, anyhow. But there’s still Clem and Tony Barrass. They’re almost as good as brother and sister to me. And there’s Auntie Joey and Uncle Jack and all their crowd. Oh, I shall miss Mother horribly. I’ve had to look after her for so long now, for Dad was often too ill to do anything about it. And Verity, bless her, is a clinging vine, so I’ve just had to be an oak. It’s going to be jolly lonesome sometimes. But I’m not going to be a selfish pig and make other folk miserable just because I’m not so awfully happy myself.” She caught her breath on a sob and turned away.

Grizel was silent for a moment. “You’re being very brave,” she said at last.

“No, I’m not.” Mary-Lou had control of herself again. “Deep down inside me I’m not in the least brave. But I do know that I might be a lot worse off. Lots of folk are left with no one at all, but I’ve the finest friends anyone could ask, who’ll never let me feel that I’m stranded. And I’ve plenty to do. God’s seen to that. I shan’t have time to pity myself just now. And that’s a good thing. The more you pity yourself, the worse things seem and the more miserable you are. I’ve seen it happen with other people and whatever else I do, I’m not turning into a self-pitying, why-should-things-like-this-happen-to-me mortal! Not if I know it!” Her head went up.

“ ‘One who never turned his back but marched breast forward’,” Grizel quoted.

“That’s Browning, isn’t it? And there’s that bit out of ‘Invictus’—you know: ‘I am the master of my fate’.”

“And,” put in Miss Annersley’s voice from behind them, “there is something even finer and of more help than either of those—Job’s cry in the midst of all his troubles: ‘Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!’ I’m glad I caught you, Mary-Lou. I’ve found the paper you wanted. Here it is, dear. I’ll be down at Unter den Kiefern later on this morning and we can settle plans finally then.” She gave Mary-Lou a long envelope, nodded to both of them and turned back, leaving them to go on along the road.

Mary-Lou looked after her. “And there’s another help He’s given me. Miss Cochrane, I didn’t mean to barge in on this week at all. I hoped I wouldn’t meet any of you just now. Promise you won’t let—all this—well—upset things for you. I’ll be all right, and I’ll look after Verity. And when we are back at Carn Beg, she’ll have Alan Trevor. Presently, she’ll have him for keeps and then,” again that lift of her head, “I’ll start afresh.”

Grizel was silent. Before this girl’s courage in meeting such a blow, she was feeling that she herself had showed very badly. Mary-Lou’s life was shattered at the moment, but she was prepared to set to work and build it over again and Grizel guessed that, however she felt, she would turn a bright face to her world and never whimper.

They walked on without talking until they reached the head of the path. There, Mary-Lou stopped. “This will be goodbye for the present. Uncle Jack is taking all three of us to Calais in the minibus. Mother wanted to go home again, so he’s arranging it. We’ll go later on today, I think. Auntie Jo told me you’d be staying with her and you’d be over here for some months, anyhow. I expect we’ll meet again later on. Meantime, I shall be at Carn Beg for the present. If—later—would you like to come to stay with us? Not until Verity’s safely off my hands perhaps; but later on, in the summer. Goodness knows there’s plenty of room. Carn Beg isn’t just a cottage. It’s mine, you know. Gran left it to me. Uncle Jack is my trustee until I’m of age, and what I’ll do after that, I don’t know. But at least it’ll be there for the next two years or so. I’m not twenty-one till June next year and I shall probably go back to Oxford and take my degree as we’d always planned. So if you’d care to come, let me know. I mean it. I’d like to have you.”

“Thank you, Mary-Lou,” Grizel replied. “I’ll remember that. I can’t give you a settled address yet. I have to go to Taverton in Devonshire, but it will mean staying in rooms. The house was sold years ago when my stepmother became helpless. She was in a nursing home all the last years of her life. Part of the time, I’ll be in London. But if you should want to get in touch, send it to Joey and she’ll forward to me. That’s the best I can do for the moment. Later, I’m thinking of trying to pick up a little secondhand runabout. I can drive, you know. When—things are smoother for both of us, you might like to do a short tour with me—after Verity’s wedding, of course. Oh, by the way, please give her my very best wishes for her happiness. You might let me know if there’s anything she would especially like for a wedding-present.

“As soon as she can attend to things like that, I’ll find out and let you know,” Mary-Lou promised. “At present, though——”

“I know,” Grizel said briefly. “Mercifully, she has someone to comfort her.”

“Oh, she has. Alan’s a dear and he does understand her. Verity will be happy again presently. Now I must go. Goodbye, Miss Cochrane. After all, I’m glad I met you. You mayn’t believe it but you—you’ve helped.”

Mary-Lou swallowed and Grizel, standing on the platz a little above her, stooped and kissed her. “I’m glad if I have, though I can’t see how. Goodbye, Mary-Lou. And,” she added hurriedly, “you’ve helped me.”

She turned and sped off back to Freudesheim then, leaving Mary-Lou to hurry back to Unter den Kiefern, very sad at heart, but strong in her determination to keep her chin up and make something of her life later on.

Grizel slackened her pace, once the girl was out of sight. It was early yet and she wanted to think things out a little. Somehow, the worst of the bitterness she had felt against her old friend Deira had gone, and with it had gone the sharpness of her pain. It would be some time, she thought, before she could be happy again, but she knew that happiness would come later. In the meantime, she must do as Mary-Lou was doing—set to work to rebuild her world afresh. It would be harder for her. She was much older and she lacked Mary-Lou’s very sane outlook on life; but the girl’s forthright courage and selfless outlook on a future that must, by its very nature, be a lonely one at first, made her feel ashamed of the feelings she had been bottling up.

“I think,” she pondered as she walked, “that as soon as this tamasha of Joey’s is over I’ll get her alone and tell her—something, at any rate. She guesses, I know, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk of it before. Now—well, now I feel differently. Mary-Lou isn’t going to let loneliness and loss embitter her life. She’s going to find something else to fill it. So will I. I’ll stop thinking about my unhappiness and, once I’ve got all the business settled, I’ll turn to on a new career. It’s too late to think of P.T. now, but there must be something else I can do. But oh, Grizel Cochrane, what a feeble creature you’ve been—self-pitying, giving way like a baby! Well, that’s going to stop from this day forth. From this very moment, in fact. You’ll find something else to fill your life and you’ll find it as soon as you can. That will give you something to think about and perhaps help you to grow into something worthwhile after all.”

She had stopped short while she was pondering. Now she roused herself and set off for Freudesheim in earnest. Joey met her in the drive and saw at a glance that something had happened, but Grizel gave her no chance to comment. She tucked her hand into her old friend’s arm.

“Joey—I met Mary-Lou. She told me about her mother.”

Joey nodded. “It was yesterday afternoon. Mary-Lou was with Doris when haemorrhage started. She rang at once for Nurse, but though she was only next door, it was all over by the time she got there. Grizel, Hilda won’t be with us again, I’m afraid. She’s going with the girls to Carn Beg and she’ll stay until Mollie Bettany can get there and take over. Jack rang Dick up yesterday evening from San and told him, and Mollie is going as soon as she can fix up something for Daphne—Daphne? The Bettany Afterthought. She’s only five so it wouldn’t do to take her to Carn Beg at present. Hilda must come back for the beginning of term, of course, but I’ll be going later, and once we’ve got Verity well and truly married, I mean to try to bring Mary-Lou back here. If not, she must come for the holidays.”

Page 45

“Mollie—Mollie Maynard! Oh, how marvellous to see you again!”

Grizel nodded. “I thought you’d do that. And Joey—when you have time to spare, I want a talk with you. I thought at first I couldn’t, but now I can. But it can wait for the present.”

Joey gave her a quick glance. “I’ll make time once this—this beanfeast is over, Grizel. But whatever you want to say, just remember that we’re old friends and old friends stand by each other. Oh, and by the way, don’t mention Mary-Lou’s affairs to the rest, please. I promised her they shouldn’t know until my party ends, at least. There’s the gong, so we must fly. Scram!”

Whenever any member of the house party thought of that day later on, she thought of it as the day when one thing after another seemed to happen. Quite apart from Grizel’s and Mary-Lou’s private affairs there was a variety of mishaps, most of them minor, some of them funny and one, at least, hair-raising at the time, though Joey leapt on it as an episode for the school-story she proposed to begin later on.

It all began with Jo’s deciding to use a new tablecloth for Frühstück. It was an elaborate tablecloth of heavy damask, bordered with a deep, knotted fringe of the linen thread. Sophy Hamel had brought it as a gift for Joey and it seemed good to that young woman to use it out of compliment to Sophy.

That same morning, Sophy herself elected to don a new dress adorned with carved ivory buttons of unusual size. The belt had a matching buckle, and when she was in it, Sophy was delighted with her own appearance.

None of all this need have mattered, but when she was talking at table, Sophy had a trick of leaning forward. As she was a large creature she had not very far to lean, as Evvy Watson had remarked. Sophy sat facing Grizel and, towards the end of the meal, she was chatting animatedly with her about old times.

Having seen that everyone had finished, the hostess rose with a command to Margot to run and tell Anna that she could clear as soon as she liked, but first, her mistress wanted a word with her in the study.

Everyone jumped up, eager to get off in good time, Sophy among the rest. She turned to leave the table and the next thing was the cloth going with her. With it went crockery, coffee-pot and hot-milk-jug, honey-jars, butter-dishes, marmalade-jars—everything, in fact. The only thing that escaped was a cut-crystal jar which Len grabbed with a yell as it slid past her. The yell was echoed by Marie when the dregs of coffee and hot milk tilted firmly over her. Joey, making a wild effort to save what she could from the holocaust, leaned over to grab the cloth and steady it, leaned too far, lost her footing on Anna’s well-polished floor, and sprawled ungracefully down the table, kicking so wildly that she caught Cornelia’s arm with one foot and Cornelia, not expecting it, tripped and fell headlong over Con, bringing them both down with a crash.

Everyone shrieked in concert and Bruno added to the noise by barking furiously from the hall where he was relegated during meals, there not being room for a huge St Bernard as well as all the guests. Anna, bustling in from the kitchen, added to the general noise with an entirely new version of the book of Lamentations as she saw the awful havoc. It is hardly to be wondered at that Jack Maynard, who had been to the station to collect his mail-bag, came sprinting up to the house and into the Speisesaal under the impression that at the very least something must have exploded!

“What in thunder——” he exclaimed as he burst into the room; and silence fell as he gazed on the appalling mess and the stricken faces round him.

“Oh, Dr Jack!” Sophy cried, nearly in tears over what she had done. “It was my fault. My dress—the buckle of my belt and a button caught in the fringe of Joey’s so-beautiful cloth and when I stood up—behold!” She waved a tragic hand at the devastation.

“I might have known that Joey couldn’t have a house-party without having some sort of sensation to impress it on everyone’s memory. Sophy, if you start to howl, I’ll empty that vase of flowers over you, so beware!”

Sophy, who had been on the verge of lifting up her voice and weeping, thought better of it. She knew Jack Maynard of old.

“Pipe down, all of you!” Joey said firmly. “It serves me right for trying to swank with Sophy’s lovely cloth. That’s right, Len,” as her eldest began to clear the mess of broken china into a clothes-basket she had brought from the kitchen. “Luckily, it’s only the old everyday set and I was getting sick to death of it, anyhow, we’ve used it for such ages. Now Jack will have to buy me a new one. Hurrah!”

“But, Joey, no! I will send him from Innsbruck when I return,” Sophy protested. “Indeed, you shall come home with me and choose him yourself from Vater’s Laden. There is a big department for china now and you shall choose what you will.”

“I can’t return with you, Sophy, but I’ll love to pay you a visit later. In the meantime, I can use our other old service. I’m not saying no to a good offer,” Joey said. “That’s right, Margot,” as that young woman bundled up the maltreated cloth, now freed from the last of the fragments. “Put it into cold water and leave it. Anna will see to it presently. That Grannie’s marmalade jar, Len? Well, I’m glad that’s safe, anyhow.”

“And there are seven cups all safe,” added Grizel, who had been picking out the unbroken stuff. “How many saucers, Corney? Nine—oh, that isn’t too bad.”

“And seven plates, too,” put in Frieda. “And as your coffee-urn and milk-jug are silver, they, too, are unbroken. See! Not even a bruise on them!”

Even so, the damage was bad enough. Not a honey-jar but was either cracked or smashed to atoms; the two china milk-jugs were handleless; the bowls containing the sugar were done for. It was a blessing that Joey always served her rolls and twists in baskets for they, at least, were unharmed. As for Anna’s beautiful floor, the less said about it the better.

Sophy’s new dress was honey from waist to hem and Marie’s skirt had suffered badly from the mingled coffee and milk dregs. Joey took command at once.

“Everyone go and wash. Marie, you’ll have to change. Give Anna your skirt and your frock, too, Sophy. Hurry up, everyone, or half the day will be over before we get off. Jack, take a dekko at the mailbag, will you, in case there’s any mail for someone here. Mollie was hoping for a letter from New Zealand, I know. Anna, this isn’t the Judgment Day, so don’t look so stricken; nothing that hot water, soap and repolishing won’t set right. I’ll ring up the school and ask if one of the maids there can come and give you a hand. Now I must go and make myself respectable and have a word with my babies, then we’ll get off. Meet me in the drive in ten minutes’ time, everyone, and mind you aren’t late!”

Before her cheerful energy they fled, but the result was that they started out a full hour later than they had intended and the people from School had come to see what was happening before they set off at last.

Peggy Burnett had arrived early that morning and tacked herself on to Margot’s party, which contained Grizel, Evadne, Frieda, Juliet O’Hara and Hilary Graves, who had arrived announcing triumphantly that the troublesome tooth was through and Karen from school had come to take charge at Adlersnest for the day, so she was free to come with them.

“What’s our objective?” she demanded as they waved goodbye to the others and headed for the traffic-bridge over the brook where they would pick up the postal-coach.

“Lauterbrunnen,” Margot said, falling into step beside her. “We’re going to see the Trummelbach Falls and the Staubbach as well if there’s time. But we’ve started so late we mayn’t be able to fit that in. Where’s Auntie Hilda, anyone? I thought she was coming with us today.”

“Not coming,” Peggy told, looking serious for a moment, for she knew what had happened. “In fact, we shan’t see any more of her, I’m afraid. She’s had news that’s taking her to England this afternoon, I believe, and she won’t be back until the Saturday before term begins. She sent her love to everyone and she hopes you’ll all have such a good time that you’ll come back before very long and she can see you all then.”

Grizel had looked sharply at Peggy. She guessed the young mistress knew all there was to know, but she made no remark. Instead she suggested that they had better hurry or they might miss the postal-bus which would put paid to their trip.

“How right you are!” Margot laughed. “Come on, Tant Frieda! Let’s show them!” And she tucked a hand into Frieda von Ahlen’s arm and led her off at a spanking pace. The others followed suit and they caught the bus comfortably and with time to spare. There was only another couple in it and once they were rolling along the road, Grizel set Peggy and Evadne rocking with laughter as she described to them the contretemps after Frühstück.

“Poor old Sophy!” Evadne exclaimed. “I’ll bet a cookie she was nearly weeping her eyes out over it!”

“Dad didn’t give her a chance,” Margot said with a wicked grin. “He threatened to empty a flower vase over her if she began to cry. Hold tight, everyone! We turn down here and it’s on the steep side.”

“Why didn’t we go by train?” Juliet demanded.

“Too many of us. Anyhow, it gives you folk a chance to see Lake Thun. The autobahn runs along the shore, you know. Then we go straight along the Hoheweg when we get to Interlaken, to the Ostbahnhof. It’s a lovely run.”

A lovely run it was. They all exclaimed with delight at the blue waters of the lake and at the charm of the little towns through which they passed. Then they reached Interlaken and went down the long street of the Hoheweg where Margot pointed out sundry objects of interest. Finally they reached the station where they were decanted in good time for the train.

“That’s the Lütschine,” Margot said, pointing out the river. “The line runs parallel to it practically the whole way. At Lauterbrunnen, where we leave the train, it forks. One branch goes to the Kleine Scheidegg and the other to—to Grindelwald, I think.”

“If only you’d try to be more accurate!” Peggy told her severely. “By the way, we’re in the through coach, I hope? I don’t want to have to change at Zweilütschinen if I don’t have to.”

“It’s O.K. I made for the front coach,” Margot returned insouciantly.

“Good! Juliet, this is Wilderwil. It’s quite a pretty place where people who want to escape the crowds often stay. This is where we cross the river.”

“Is there anything famous at that other place—what did you call it?” Evadne inquired.

“Zweilütschinen? There used to be a famous smithy there run by a man called Jorg,” Hilary said. “I’ve heard that he was specially known for his ice-axes and he could make you one while you waited.”

“How the river rips along!” Juliet commented. “Does it ever flood?”

Margot was well primed. “It may have done ages ago, but the monks from the Interlaken monastery dug a deep ditch to drain off the river into Lake Brienz and I don’t think it does flood nowadays. I’ve never heard of it myself, anyhow. They drained the Bodeli, too, the place where Interlaken stands. It used to be all marshes, but they ditched and dyked and then, of course, the river kept on bringing down—silt, isn’t it?—and added to it and now it’s all dry land.”

“We’re getting slower,” Grizel observed.

“Well, seeing we rise nearly 1000 feet to Lauterbrunnen, that’s not surprising,” Peggy informed her. “The gradient’s pretty steep. On the way to Mürren—up there,” she waved a hand—“there’s one place where it simply has to crawl. That’s another 3000 feet higher, you know.”

They reached Lauterbrunnen, where they left the train, and Margot led the way to the town square where, seated round one of the fountains to be found wherever one goes in Switzerland, they ate their sandwiches, cake and fruit before finding a pâtisserie where coffee was served. After that, they made their way to the autobus which was waiting for them in the Bahnhofplatz. They were early, so were able to get good seats. This was as well, for the fine, sunny day had tempted a crowd of tourists and, when the bus set off, it was packed.

“I can’t see why you had us all bring our macs,” Evadne complained to Margot. “It’s a glorious day.”

Margot laughed. “Wait till we reach the Lower Fall. You’ll see why then.”

“Well—why?”

“If there’s any sort of wind,” Hilary said, despite Margot’s urgent frown to make her silent, “the spray is blown every which way, so it’s as well to wear a mac. You can get quite a drenching when there’s a high wind.”

“Oh! In that case, thanks, Margot.” Evadne hastily pulled it on and the rest followed suit. “How come it’s like that?”

“It’s the force of the water. It plunges right down into a natural rock basin which is smallish and the water just hurtles out in great gobs,” Margot explained. “The spray can be terrific sometimes.”

“I’m looking forward to this,” Juliet remarked.

Margot looked severe. “I should hope so! It’s one of the most famous sights of Switzerland—after the mountains.”

They left the autobus at the foot of the Lower Fall. There was a light breeze blowing and the heavy spray from the fall was blown about by it. The air was full of the noise of the water as it came roaring down to the rock basin it had hollowed for itself, to boil violently for a brief space before flinging itself over the rim and come pouring down to join the river.

“Come on!” Margot said. “Let’s get into the lift. Of course,” she added as they queued up for tickets, “the ideal thing is to stay at the Scheidegg hotel overnight, but we haven’t time for that. However, you’ll see everything and oh, boy! It’s worth it!”

There were other people besides themselves in the lift, among them a German lady with a girl of eighteen or nineteen with her, and a tall, bearded man with a jolly schoolboy. As the lift began slowly to rise, the girl clutched at the lady with a little shriek of “Ach, Täntchen!”, to which the lady replied sharply, “Be quiet, Gredel! There is no danger—nothing to fear! Ach, see the water; in what a torrent it hurls itself down. Wonderful—magnificent!”

Grizel thought this was almost an understatement. The weight of the water thundering down its rocky clefts, here breaking into masses of spume as it fought its way round rocks and spurs in the narrow channel, there flowing past in a smooth black stream, was a sight never to be forgotten. The lift deadened the sound slightly, but even so, the continuous roaring was stunning. They gazed at the furious cataract in awed silence, broken only by one or two exclamations at some especially spectacular effect in the glow of the cleverly-planned lighting.

Steadily, smoothly, the lift ascended. Halfway up, it happened. The lights went out and the lift stopped dead!

Everyone cried out at the suddenness of it. Gredel screamed and screamed again, this time to be cut short as if someone had shaken her. Margot, standing beside her, heard above the din of the falling waters, “Silence, girl! All these others are foreigners. Would you have them think you less brave than they? Silence, I say!”

Gredel stopped screaming, but Margot could hear her whimpering. She stretched out a hand to try to comfort her, but in the darkness contacted instead a hard, boyish hand which was instantly snatched away. The boy spoke loudly.

“How long d’ye think this is going on, Uncle Dick? How’ll they get us out, anyway?”

As if in reply, the light flashed on again and for about sixty seconds, the lift began to inch its way upwards. Then it failed once more and through the darkness they heard a fresh scream from Gredel. “Ach, du lieber Gott! We shall all die here among the water and the rocks!”

The light had lasted long enough for Margot to see exactly where she was. She hurriedly lunged out with one hand in the darkness. There was the sound of a smart slap and Gredel’s hysterical screaming stopped dead. Very clearly came Margot’s yell of, “Stop that noise, Dummkopf! Coward! Is it worse for you than for anyone else? This child at your other side sets you an example, you who are years older than he! Be silent!”

There was a sudden snort of smothered laughter and Grizel wondered what the boy would think if he understood Margot’s German. The light suddenly came on again, this time to remain on, and the lift mounted stolidly upwards until finally it drew up before the last platform just as the boy asked his uncle, “What was that girl saying, Uncle? Who did she call a child? I heard her say something like ‘dieses Kind’. That means ‘this child’, doesn’t it?”

‘Uncle Dick’ glanced at her with twinkling eyes, but all he said was, “Rot, Ricky! You couldn’t make out what anyone said in all that din! Don’t imagine things!”

Margot blushed and Ricky looked at her suspiciously as they left the lift to make their way to the hotel for coffee, but he held his tongue.

Apologetic officials had met them as they came out into the sunlight to see the great volume of the Upper Fall with rainbows dancing among the tumbling waters. Hilary, assuming the lead, waved aside the apologies.

“Oh, bitte sehr!” she said, laughing. “It was a little adventure—something to remember. That is all.”

The weeping girl, however, declared that nothing—but nothing—would induce her to enter any lift again. She would rather climb thousands of flights of stairs than risk it.

“That is a pity,” her aunt said drily, “for in that case how, pray, will you return to my apartment which is served by a lift only?”

Gredel sobbed loudly and Margot glared at her. Grizel stepped forward hurriedly in case she was meditating a second onslaught. But Hilary was even quicker.

Accosting the lady, she offered her a couple of tablets with the remark that her niece seemed to be badly unstrung and perhaps a little tranquillizer would do her good. The lady looked at her searchingly. Then she suddenly smiled.

“Danke, gnädige Frau, danke! Gredel! Hier!”

Gredel came up still sobbing. “That—that girl—hit me!” she sobbed, pointing to the suddenly scarlet Margot. “She slapped my face!”

“Well I’m sorry,” Margot said, “but someone had to do something or you’d have been in raving hysterics.”

‘Uncle Dick’, who had been listening, intervened. “Quite right. Gnädige Frau,” he turned to the lady, “may I suggest the tablets this lady has offered you and a good cup of coffee. That will certainly cure all Fräulein Gredel’s woes.”

“We’re going to the hotel ourselves,” Peggy Burnett put in. “Come along, Gredel!” She took Gredel’s arm in a friendly hold and marched her off to the Hotel Trummelbach, while her aunt, announcing herself as Frau Steindahl, joined forces with Hilary and the whole party moved away to seek Kaffee und Kuchen at the hotel.

The schoolboy looked at Margot, who had stopped blushing by this time.

“Jolly good job you did stop her squalling,” he said disgustedly. “Silly little ass!”

“Oh, it’s the only way to tackle hysteria,” Margot said airily. “You have to give them a countershock, Dad says. That’s what I did.” She added impressively, “And Dad knows, you know. He’s a doctor.”

Then they reached the hotel and turned their attention to delicious coffee and cakes before descending to the valley once more and returning to homes or hotels.

When Joey heard the tale that night, her comment was Joian in the extreme. “So odd things can happen to other people besides me? I shan’t forget!”

“What a day!” Joey spoke with deep disgust as she surveyed the prospect from one of the end windows of the salon. A thick white mist pressed up against them, blanketing everything from sight. She turned away to her guests. “Well, my loves, I’m sorry, but there’ll be no expeditions today—not in that! You’ll have to resign yourselves to a nice, quiet day at home. This looks like continuing all day.”

“Well, you ought to be weatherwise after all these years,” Cornelia conceded. “You’ve lived up here quite a time, now.”

“Oh, it might clear up later,” Len said hopefully. “Mamma, we three are taking charge in the playroom. Anna wants to do some baking and needs Rösli’s help. We’ll see to elevenses for everyone, too, so don’t bother about that either.”

“Very well,” Joey agreed. “And do you think you could also keep an ear open for the telephone? If anyone rings for Papa, say he’s at the San and they must ring him there.”

“At the San? I thought he was at the Rösleinalp!” Margot exclaimed. “Didn’t that old pest Miss Gray call him early on?”

“She did; and he’s going directly to San when he’s finished with her.” Joey turned to the others. “Miss Gray is our biggest bugbear. She yells for Jack if she so much as sneezes twice in the night. It’s no use trying to wish any of the other men on to her, either, for she won’t have them if she can possibly help it. She calls him ‘my Dr Maynard’ and goes all coy on him—I’ve heard her on the phone! My only wonder is that he hasn’t given her a tidy dose of prussic acid long before this!”

“Why on earth doesn’t he take a firm stand with her?” his sister exclaimed. “He can suppress other folk hard enough when he likes!”

“He would—but though she’s all right at present, she did come here in pretty bad shape four years ago. He pulled her through somehow, and as long as she stays up here—or somewhere like it—she’s all right. But when anyone is like that, it doesn’t do to agitate them badly.”

Con suddenly chuckled. “And does she resent it if he takes even half a day off when she wants him! Remember when you had that op. two years ago, Mum?^[5] She rang up for him while you two were in England and I took the call as I was here—Auntie Hilda had sent me over with some papers and things he wanted—and you should have heard the fuss she made when I told her he was in England and wouldn’t be available for a few weeks. She even had the cheek to say that she couldn’t understand how he could be absent from his duties for so long. I was so mad I nearly hung up on her!”

“Don’t blame you,” her Aunt Mollie said. “What did you do?”

Joey regarded her daughter with some trepidation. At that time, Con had been in the habit of saying exactly what came into her head.

Con smirked—there is no other word for it. “Oh, I just said that there were several other capable doctors at the San and if she would ring there, one of them would come to her. Then I wished her good morning and hung up.”

Joey heaved a deep sigh. “Thank goodness! And why, by the way, was I never told about this? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”

“I didn’t think of it again,” Con explained. “We were going scatty about you, and then Richenda Fry had that accident to her eyes, and honestly, I never thought of it again till just now.”

“I remember. Well, you seem to have handled it all quite nicely; but,” Joey added, “I wonder your father hasn’t said anything about it.”

Len chipped in. “I don’t suppose he ever knew. I met Matron Graves the next day and she told me Miss Gray had rung up and Dr Courvoisier had gone up and he’d told her that doctors required breaks as well as anyone and if they didn’t get them, they were as liable to break down as the next.”

“In that case, I’m not surprised,” Joey agreed. “Well, I’ll leave the phone to you three. Come for me, of course, if I’m wanted or you can’t cope.”

They assented and then departed for the top of the house to take over the playroom and the twins while Joey turned to her guests.

“It’s a relief to know that Con kept her head. She might have said anything—especially as she says she felt mad. Hello!” She broke off to make a dive for the french window. “Rosalie!”

She had it open in a moment and Rosalie Dene stepped in. Her raincoat and sou’wester were glistening with moisture and those nearest the window shivered as the chill swept into the room with her, though Joey slammed it shut almost before she was well inside. Mollie Mackenzie waved at her.

“Hello, Rosalie! How on earth did you find your way through that?”

Rosalie pulled off her outdoor apparel and kicked off her goloshes. “I ought to know my way by this time. Anyhow, I brought my torch and those posts of Jack’s would have kept me straight. The others are coming along presently, Jo. Peggy has letters to write and Jeanne was busy washing stockings. Nell Wilson rang us up to tell us not to wait for her as she wasn’t crossing the door for anyone in this weather. She said I could tell you that she was quite aware she couldn’t die young at this date, but she saw no reason for pushing the event any further forward than she must.”

“Just as well,” Jo said callously. “I’ve no money to spare for wreaths unnecessarily! Go and hang your things up and you’d better pop into the cloakroom and give your hair a rub. The front looks drenched.”

Rosalie laughed and vanished and the rest found seats, most of them producing needlework of some kind. Joey looked round them, deep distaste in her face.

“For pity’s sake put all that ghastly sewing or what-have-you away! I never saw such people! Can’t you be happy without a needle in your fingers?”

“Can’t you be happy with one?” Juliet O’Hara retorted.

Rosalie, returning in time to hear this, laughed. “It’s constitutional with Jo. She always did hate sewing. Well, what are we going to do?”

“Enjoy ourselves, I hope. I’ve been considering——”

She got no further.

“Joey!” Mollie Mackenzie turned on her. “Please remember that we are mature women. Not even for you will I descend to ‘Nuts in May’ or ‘Rachel and Jacob’!”

“Shouldn’t dream of suggesting it!” Joey said haughtily. “If that’s the best you can do, just leave it to me. I’ve got a few ideas.”

“Oh, bon dieu! Can none of you think of something quickly?” Simone cried. “You know what she is when she begins to have ideas!”

“Where are the girls?” Rosalie asked, looking round.

“Upstairs. They’re in charge of the playroom this morning. Anna wants an orgy of baking, it seems, and needs Rösli’s help.” Then she suddenly leapt to her feet. “Excuse me a moment!”

“Now what?” Her sister-in-law began to fold up her work resignedly.

The others followed her example and when Joey returned bearing an armful of photograph albums, they were all sitting idly chatting.

“Come on, everyone! Bring all the tables nearer the fire! I’ve got snaps here of all of us from the very beginning of the school. We’ll have a dekko at them.”

This was quite an innocuous idea and they crowded round the tables on which she laid out the albums as well as a box crammed with snaps. “There you are! The history of the school by Kodak! These are the early ones. I’ve plenty more but they’re all of later date and not of so much interest at the present moment. Come along and we’ll refresh our memories!”

In less than five minutes, the salon was ringing with their comments and exclamations. Joey had indeed collected snaps of almost every event in the school’s career, and happenings long forgotten came back to them as they looked.

“Oh, look at this one of us coming down from the Mondscheinspitze that first time we celebrated Madame’s birthday! Look at your hair full of straws, Grizel! And yours, too, Frieda!”^[6]

“Remember the milk that man gave us to drink?”

“And oh, look at this one of Frieda when she was caught in the thornbush!”

“What a size her mouth looks!”

“What’s this? Joey, what were you doing? You look as if you were preparing to leap into the lion’s mouth!” Wanda stopped short and began to giggle. “But I remember! Look, all! This is when Joey was unable to walk further along the goat-track above the Tiernsee and insisted on trying to jump down——”^[7]

“And leapt right over the ditch and the path, right into the lake!” Frieda joined in. “But oh, what a splash you made, my Jo!”

“But who took it?” Grizel demanded. “And who on earth are those dripping objects at the side?”

“I took it!” Juliet shrieked with laughter. “Don’t you remember? Amy, Robin and Simone had fallen into the ditch. I had my camera with me—I’d had an idea of taking a snap of the lake in a turmoil—and I was just going to take them when Joey sprang. But how did you get hold of this, Jo?”

“Madge,” Jo said succinctly. “You gave her a copy. I found it when I was helping her to turn out some boxes after we left Tirol and I snaffled it.”

So it went on. One episode after another was recalled and by the time Con and Margot arrived with coffee and biscuits for the party, everyone was weak with laughter.

“Oh,” gasped Sophy, mopping her eyes, “never have I laughed so much!”

“Oh yes, you have!” Joey reached for an album they had not yet opened, flicked over the pages and finally pointed to a postcard enlargement. “Remember St Clare’s orchestral concert, anyone?”^[8]

Quite a number of them did, and Cornelia van Alten blushed furiously.

“Corney with a saxophone,” Joey said. “Remember, Corney de-ah?”

She nodded and scrubbed her eyes. “Oh, dear! I’m sore with laughing. I wonder where that sax is? Seems to me it ought to be up in a garret somewhere. I’ll look when——”

Joey clutched her brow distractedly. “Corney—Corney—don’t! I don’t want to be murdered and I can just see your husband catching the first plane from Boston to do the deadly deed once you get going on that sax! Remember my large family and spare us all!”

This was where the coffee arrived, so the subject was dropped, for the time being at all events, as Joey went to help carry round the cups.

“Aren’t you people having any?” Grizel asked Margot as she took hers.

“We’ve had ours,” Margot said. “We only came to bring yours. The twins are having their morning nap and Len said she’d stay in case they woke.”

“What are you people doing?” Joey asked.

“Well, if you must know, we’re rearranging the furniture in La Maison des Poupées,” she confided. “The whole thing needed dusting and tidying.”

“You three play with dolls’ houses?” their aunt exclaimed.

Joey grinned. “I enjoy doing it myself. Those two houses in the playroom are a complete joy, even to an elderly party like myself.”

“Elderly my foot!” Margot commented. “You’ll never be elderly if you live to be over a hundred!”

“Thank goodness!” Con added in heartfelt tones.

“You disrespectful hussies!” Mollie cried.

“No,” Con said thoughtfully. “We respect her all right. It’s only that we’re so jolly glad she can be the same age as us when she likes.”

“And she can also be the stern Mamma when she likes,” Margot added with a wicked twinkle.

“You stop giving me away to my contemporaries,” Jo commanded.

“We will. Everyone’s served now,” Con replied. “Come on, Margot! I know Len will never get that salon right if we leave it to her!”

They left the party to itself and vanished upstairs.

“And that cuts us down to size!” Grizel remarked. “Joey, how do you propose to entertain us next?”

“Wait and see!” was all she got.

However, when she removed the coffee-cups she also removed the albums, and when she came back, she brought a sheaf of paper and pencils with her and set them all to playing paper games, which was another reminder of their schooldays.

After Mittagessen Rösli went up to the playroom to relieve the girls of their charge, and when they came into the salon, it was to find yet another reminder of school, for Joey had insisted that everyone must rest for half-an-hour and there must be no talking. Some people were reading, but quite a number had taken her at her word and gone off to lie down for the period. She herself was curled up comfortably in a big armchair with her head down on a cushion.

“What on earth——” Len gasped.

Her mother opened one eye. “Hush!” she said imperatively. “This is rest period. No talking!”

With delighted giggles, the triplets sprawled on the huge bearskin before the hearth, where Bruno was also reposing, and there was silence. When it was over, the hostess bounded to her feet to proclaim, “Kaffee und Kuchen at 16.00 hours. After that—charades! We four,” she indicated her daughters and herself, “will pick up. Each group must entertain the rest for at least twenty minutes. There’s a prize for the best guesser and chocolates for the best charade. Dresses, Marie? Make them, my dear girl!”

“But how?” Marie wailed. “Oh, Jo, you do think of mad things!”

“Use the materials at hand, of course. All I ask is that you won’t cut up my curtains or tablecloths for the purpose. Margot, you’re the youngest so you have first pick. Get cracking!”

Laughing and protesting, they found themselves being divided up into four groups, after which they scattered, each group seeking a different room for discussion. From then until Kaffee und Kuchen, they were busy deciding on their words and then on their scene. Then they had to manufacture any fancy dresses they might need. They took Joey at her word and weird were the collections they made. Anna gasped when Grizel came flying to the kitchen to demand a pair of pan-lids. Rösli in the playroom stood with dropping jaw while Frieda collected all the dolls from the toy-cupboard.

Outside, the mist remained, thick, woolly and almost impenetrable, but no one at Freudcsheim cared in the least. They were all far too busy. As for Anna, she was accustomed to her mistress doing unexpected things, but when Mrs Mackenzie, who was surely middle-aged and therefore far too old for such childish goings-on, came to demand a large clothes-basket and the big, old-fashioned clothes-horse to which Anna clung with determination though Joey had provided her with the very latest thing in driers, she made up her mind once for all that there must be something about the Chalet School that affected all connected with it with mild insanity!

The charades were a great success. Anna and Rösli, invited to join the audience, enjoyed themselves thoroughly, but no more than the actresses did. When the end of the evening came, Wanda dropped into the nearest chair and lay limp.

“But oh, how silly!” she choked. “Joey, I thought all my girlhood had gone; now I know it is still there! Indeed, I have not laughed so much since schooldays.”

Joey chuckled. “You look just as you used to. I suppose you know your hair is coming down?”

“How much I wish I could say, ‘Yours also!’ but you have on a net and it is still neat.”

Joey smirked complacently. Len, who had left the room a few minutes earlier, broke into the conversation by summoning her mother to the telephone. When Jo came back, it was plain that something had sobered her. All she said was that it was time for supper. Rosalie, however, held her back when the others streamed into the Speisesaal, and Grizel, also guessing, joined them.

“Was that from England?” Rosalie asked. “Have they arrived safely?”

“Hilda Annersley ringing. She’s taken them safely to Howells and will remain there for the present—a week, anyhow.”

“How are the girls?” Grizel asked anxiously.

“Very tired, she says. Verity has cried on and off practically the whole time. Mary-Lou is still keeping a stiff upper lip—too stiff by half, if you ask me. Gwensi Howell had opened up the house and lit fires and done beds and so on; and Mollie—Mollie Bettany, I mean—arrived a couple of hours before they did and there was a decent meal waiting for them. Ernest Howell has made all the arrangements for the funeral which will take place tomorrow. I—I know we’ve got to keep going for the sake of the others, but oh, how I wish I could have gone with them! I shall be thinking of this all the rest of the time.”

However, something was to happen that took her thoughts and those of the other two completely off England and Carn Beg and its sorrow.

Joey was up early and before Frühstück she had rung up England for the latest news. She heard that Verity was asleep thanks to a sleeping-draught from the local doctor. Mary-Lou was still being brave, but she was reaching her limit. Once Doris Carey had been laid beside her second husband and her mother-in-law, the Head meant to take matters into her own hands. It was all very well to keep a stiff upper lip, but Mary-Lou looked like overdoing it.

“I’ll ring you later this evening,” the Head said, “and let you know how matters stand. What are you all doing today?”

“Expeditions, since the mists have cleared, praise be! I’m taking my crowd to the lakes for a steamer trip as it looks like being a glorious day. Con and her lot are going to Lauterbrunnen. Margot and hers are off to Wahlstein. Len has decided on the Wettertal. Now you know where we’ll all be.”

They rang off after that. Joey turned from the phone swallowing hard and blinking furiously. Then, her self-control once more asserted, she went to see if Anna needed help with Frühstück and, so far as most of the party were concerned, was her usual self when they all sat down.

“My turn to have you today, Aunt Grizel!” Len said as she and Grizel stood waiting at the gate for the others to join them.

Grizel looked at her. Tall and slim, with her mother’s delicate, mobile features, curly mass of dark chestnut hair caught back from her face in a ponytail, eyes of deep violet sparkling in the softly-tinted oval of her face, she was very good to look at. Most people considered Margot of the red-gold hair, vividly blue eyes and apple-blossom colouring the pick of the basket, but Grizel disagreed with them.

“Margot has the more showy looks,” she thought, “but there’s something in Len’s face that appeals to me far more. What is it? A steadfastness, I think. I doubt if I’d trust Margot as far as I could see her; and Con’s writing looks like always coming first with her. Len is different. She feels people, just as Joey always has done. Yet she’s no prig. Not that I could ever imagine Joey producing a prig in her family! Priggishness would never have any chance with her around all the time!” Aloud she said, “And what do you propose to do with us?”

“Yes—what?” demanded Marie, coming up to join them.

“Oh, a lovely place we didn’t really discover until the Christmas hols,” Len said eagerly. “You’ll love it! We knew of it, of course. Dad has patients there. But we never bothered with it before. In fact, we only discovered it by accident when Mother said we’d go off for the day, her and us three, and just wander.”

The others were with them by this time, requesting to be told the day’s programme, and she gave it to them delightedly.

“We take the postal coach to Maulhausen—that is a good way along the motor road. We get off there and go up a zig-zag path till we reach the Wettertal. It’s a shelf as big as this with a stream meandering through it and halfway along, a village called Wetterdorf. It’s a lovely place and practically all the people belong to the same family. I don’t believe,” Len finished solemnly, “that there are more than three families that aren’t Emmerichs.”

They left the gate, Cornelia, the last, having arrived breathless, for she had broken a shoelace and had had a fine hunt for another. They swung off round the curve in the lane leading to the highroad, making for the stone bridge over the stream known as the Dorfen which splashed down the mountainside, across the motor-road and over the edge of the precipice that fell steeply to the valley below. Here, they caught the postal-coach.

“Do we come back by coach?” Evadne demanded.

“Anyone who thinks she can’t tackle the walk may,” Len replied. “The rest of us, I want to take you by the path we four went when we found Wetterdorf. It’s lovely and you get such magnificent views from it. It ends at another little village called Bertental. There’s a Post there, so if anyone feels too dead, we can ring up home and ask them to send a car. That O.K.?” She glanced round them anxiously.

“It sounds swell,” Cornelia said, speaking for them all.

“How do the people at Wetterdorf live?” Simone asked.

“Wood-carving, mainly. The women do the most gaudy embroideries and make thread lace. In between-whiles, they farm and see to the cattle and goats—oh, and they make cheese—jolly decent cheese! Herr Jakob Emmerich keeps the Gasthaus, which is where we’re feeding, and a cousin of his, Franz Emmerich, has a shop where you can buy the work if you want to. There’s a Herr Doktor Emmerich, and his sister has a kind of chemist’s shop where you can get herbal remedies and the stuff he prescribes, and soap and things like that. Then there’s the church and a tiny school—the church is served from the same monastery as us, but the school mistress is another Emmerich—I told you there were only about three families who weren’t.” Len broke into a peal of laughter. At the same moment, the coach swung round a sharp curve and—she had been standing—she staggered and sat down abruptly on Grizel’s lap.

“Oh, I say! Have I hurt you?” she asked.

“Not in the least.” Grizel pushed back the sleeve of Len’s coat and her woollen jumper and looked carefully at the bare arm.

“What on earth are you looking for?” Len demanded, greatly intrigued.

“To see if the scar is still there.”

“Scar? What scar?” Len stared.

“Have you really forgotten that accident the term before you crowd went to Canada?^[9] I set you on fire, throwing lighted matches around, and if Carola Johnstone hadn’t been very much on the spot—well, things might have been very nasty.”

“I’d forgotten all about it.” Len pushed up her sleeves which Grizel had released and examined her arm carefully. “There isn’t a mark now. I wasn’t so very badly burned—it was surface, you know, and Carola had that fire out in half no time. How she did bang me!” Len giggled. “I minded that far more than the burn and all Mother said when I complained was that a good time seemed to be had by all! Wasn’t it exactly like her? She’s never given any of us the least chance of being sorry for ourselves.” Then she changed the subject by remarking that before they started out home she must ask Herr Jakob if the path was all right.

“How do you mean?” Stacie Benson queried. “Why should there be anything wrong?”

“They’ve had one or two bad landslides there in the last three or four years. If there’s been one this winter, the path might be blocked and then we couldn’t use it. But he’ll know all right.”

“It’s to be hoped he does. If he doesn’t, we’ll go back the way we came. We’re running no silly risks,” Grizel said flatly.

“The main risk would be that if we got halfway along, we’d have to turn round and walk back and that would mean missing the last coach,” Len explained. “But he’ll know all right if anything’s happened. You needn’t worry about that. Every blessed villager keeps an eye on the mountain paths and reports the least thing.”

The conversation turned to something else and presently they reached Maulhausen, a tiny hamlet consisting of half-a-dozen huts and a couple of small chalets. Here, they left the bus and, led by Len, set off up a zig-zag path which was narrow, but clearly marked. The gradient was easy enough for the first two-thirds of the way. After that, it steepened and the final couple of hundred yards or so was a real scramble. Finally, they emerged on the broad shelf where Wetterdorf lay, with its chalets and huts flanking either side of the stream which ran through the wide, grassy platform on which the little village stood.

By that time they were all hot and tired, and the first thing to do was to make for the fair-sized chalet which was the Gasthaus, where Herr Jakob welcomed them genially and hastened to have coffee and twists of fancy bread with pats of ivory butter set before them. He greeted Len jovially, asking her where die Mutter und die Schwestern were, and she explained in her fluent German. While this was going on, the others were enjoying their snack and the glorious views to be seen through the two big windows.

“Which way are we looking, Len?” Dr Benson asked.

“South—we’ve come a good way round the mountain,” Len explained as Herr Jakob left them to go and attend to two other visitors who had just come in.

“This is jolly good coffee,” Grizel remarked. “Not much like the stuff we had up at that place Con took us to the other day.”

Len laughed. “You mean up at Wahlstein? Oh, Frau Elsner doesn’t pretend to do much in that line. But I believe they get a fair number of visitors up here in the season. If you’re all finished, shall we go and explore? Herr Jakob says that Mittagessen will be ready for Mittag as we ought not to be late setting off if we mean to go by the mountain-path. Part of it lies in the shadow and, though it’s safe enough, he thinks we would rather do it in broad daylight.”

“He is right about that,” Marie replied. “Did he say if the rest of the path was safe, Len? Some of his dialect was beyond me!”

“Quite safe, he says. Two of the boys came along it early this morning and they said it was all right then. No, Aunt Grizel; Mother’s arranged all about payments with him. Anyhow, we should settle for the lot after Mittagessen.”

“Trusting of him,” Evadne said with a laugh. “We might go off without either that or paying. After all, we’re strangers to him.”

“Yes; but Papa isn’t,” Len told her. “Everyone round here knows Papa. Let’s leave our rucksacks and coats, shall we? We don’t need them. What wind there is is from the east.”

They did as she suggested and then strolled out and about the village in twos and threes. The stream brawled noisily along, almost bank-high as Grizel noticed. It was crossed by a couple of stout plank bridges, whose planks ran for some distance on either side of it. The waters were greyish, giving evidence of the stream’s glacial birth, and where boulders rose in the bed, they were encircled with thick, yeasty foam.

“Where does it go from here?” Cornelia queried as they crossed one of the bridges to make for the shops.

“I’m not sure. I think it goes off through the pines there—see?—and then turns down somewhere further along. We crossed one or two streams in the postal-coach before we reached here,” Len said. “It might be any of those. Here’s the shop. Anyone want to buy anything?”

They all did. The carvings were delightful and the embroideries and laces beautiful. They took it in turns to go in and choose, for the shop was small. Meanwhile, Len escorted the others round the village, pointing out the church with its onion spire; the tiny schoolhouse which served the children from the upper alpes as well as those living in Wetterdorf itself; a small chalet where Hans Emmerich plied the trade of cobbler, making boots and shoes as well as mending them; a second church with a little parsonage beside it where the Lutheran pastor and his tiny wife and rosy children all crowded in somehow. She also pointed out a rather larger building where a plaque stated that here the poet Heinrich Heine had stayed for some weeks and written some of his most beautiful poems.

The people all spoke standard German more or less as well as the Schweizer-deutsch of the mountaineer, so everyone found it easy to make purchases. Len, equally fluent in either language, was welcomed heartily by many of them who remembered her from that Christmas walk and were delighted to see the daughter of the great Doctor Maynard.

Grizel, remembering Joey’s craze for woodcarving, invested in a beautiful little chamois. Cornelia bought bears for her nursery party, a box for her husband’s cigars, and presented Len with a pair of carved ivory bracelets. Then she went on to invest in yards of lace and embroidered cloths. But she was a millionairess in her own right although, as Marie remarked, you would never have thought it to look at her! Evadne spent lavishly as well, and the others also bought mementos of their first visit. Len herself fell in love with a finely carved model of Barri, the famous St Bernard who saved so many lives, but the cost was far beyond her pocket. When Grizel saw her disappointed face, she offered to lend her the money, but Len refused promptly.

“It’s sweet of you, Auntie, but we aren’t allowed to borrow from anyone.”

“The young lady may take it and owe me the money,” Herr Franz suggested.

Len shook her head again. “I’d love to, but that’s another forbid.”

“Then,” he said, “I will set him to one side—see! When the gracious young lady has the money she will come and claim him, nicht wahr?”

Len’s face brightened. “Would you really? I have some money with me, but not enough. May I give you what I have and the next time my father or someone else is along here, he can bring the rest and fetch the great Barri home to me.”

Herr Franz agreed with a smile. He packed up the model, labelling it with her name. He knew he was quite safe. He had known it was safe enough to have let her take it without paying. Jack Maynard’s name was sufficient in that part. However, home training won even over Len’s longing and she left the shop beaming with satisfaction.

“I wanted him for Mamma,” she explained to Grizel while they waited for the others. “She’d simply love him for her animal cabinet. I know she has St Bernard book-ends, but that’s not the same thing.”

Shopping done, they walked along the bank of the river for some distance. Then they returned to the Gasthaus where Mittagessen awaited them. Joey had ordered the meal when she had rung up the previous day and asked Herr Jakob to give her guests a typical meal. As the village was close to the border of the Valais, he had produced a meal that would give the stranger ladies samples of both Valaisian and Berner dishes. They began with Kaassuppe, a cheese soup which is a speciality of all central Switzerland. Next came roast fowl served with tiny golden balls of potato, very hot and crisp outside and melting inside, with a mushroom sauce poured over all that was delectable to the last degree. This was followed by Fladen, rich fruitcake, made with pears, nuts and almond paste. A light Valaisian wine was served with the meal and the whole was topped up with coffee blanketed in whipped cream.

The elders smoked with this, but Len declined when Grizel held out her cigarette-case.

“Thanks a lot, Auntie, but we’ve promised not to begin until we’re eighteen. Anyhow, I don’t think I could manage even a smoke,” she added with a giggle. “I know I couldn’t eat another bite—or if I did, I’d never walk home; you’d have to roll me!”

“What a picture!” Dr Benson exclaimed with a shout of laughter. “Not that I don’t feel rather that way myself. I hope we can sit for a few minutes before we have to set out, just to let things settle.”

“Half-an-hour,” Len replied after a glance at her watch. “Oh, by the way, when we came in, Herr Jakob told me to leave all the parcels. Friedrich Emmerich is walking to the Görnetz Platz tomorrow to see his sister who married one of our men last year, and he’ll bring the lot.”

“Gott sei Dank!” Marie murmured. “It will be just as well to have no more to carry than we must.”

“You are sure you know the way?” Frieda queried. “I do not wish to be lost!”

“Oh, you couldn’t lose the way,” Len said. “All you have to do is to stick to the path and it’s quite plain. Well, if you’ve all finished, what about getting a move on? Give me the parcels and I’ll take them to the office.”

The parcels were deposited with Herr Jakob, who repeated his promise that Friedrich would leave them at Freudesheim on the morrow—“Unless the good God forbids,” he added piously.

They said goodbye then and Len led the way down the valley to where a well-trodden path ran through the pines, out of sight.

“Up here!” she said. “I’ll lead for the present. We’ll have to go single file until we get right up. It’s too narrow for anything else just here. It’s a lovely walk, though, and I’m sure you’ll all love it. En avant, mes amies!”

With a ringing laugh she set off at the mountaineer’s steady pace which is unhurried but which covers the miles, nevertheless. The others followed her, all laughing and talking gaily. None of them even dreamed of the nightmare horrors that lay just ahead of them.

The path ran on through the pines which cloaked the mountain slopes for some distance. As Len had said, it was easy enough to follow. Here and there trees had been felled to keep it open and at no part was it less than four feet wide. Presently, however, it began to climb more steeply and by the time they had reached its highest level, they were all hot and breathless and one or two had aching legs and backs.

“Can’t we have a breather here?” Evadne asked when the last one was up. “I’m boiling! What a scramble!”

“Yes; but isn’t it worth it?” Len demanded, waving her hand towards a gap in the trees through which they could see a glimmer of snow-capped mountains standing clearcut against the blue sky.

“How beautiful!” Marie said softly.

“Just the same,” Evadne reverted to her request, “I’m baking and my legs are aching. Do let’s have five minutes at least, Len.”

Len glanced at her watch. “O.K.; but only five minutes. We’ve some distance to go before we reach the worst part and I’d like that behind us before we make a real pause.”

One or two fallen tree-trunks gave them seats and most of them subsided thankfully. The agile schoolgirl stood before them, grinning.

“Do you honestly feel as done as all that? Truly, it isn’t bad after this. For one thing, this lies level for a good way and when it does begin to drop it’s so gradual you hardly notice it.”

“You’re young and sprightly,” Dr Benson said with mock severity. “You forget our greater years.”

“Greater years! Pooh!” Len scoffed. “You’re all round Mother’s age, I know, and you couldn’t say she was elderly.”

“Your mother seems to have drunk at the Castalian spring, my child,” Grizel told her.

“I beg your pardon?” Len looked blank.

“The spring of eternal youth,” Grizel returned, only to be interrupted by the shocked Dr Benson.

“Grizel Cochrane! How can you so mislead the young? The Castalian spring gave the power of creating music and poetry. It had nothing to do with eternal youth.”

Marie chipped in. “No; but she certainly seems to have been fed on ambrosia. That, you may remember, was the food of the gods and did give eternal youth.”

“Oh, help!” Len said flippantly.

Frieda stood up. “We have rested long enough. We do not wish to stiffen or we shall ache the more. Stacie, if your back troubles you, would you go back and down to the road and wait for the coach? I will come with you, if you like.”

Dr Benson shook her head. “My back is all right—it’s my legs. I don’t get much in the climbing line these days and I’m out of practice.”

“Did you remember to bend the knees a little at each step?” Frieda queried. “You did not? Oh, but Stacie, how have you forgotten? When we move again do remember and you will soon find the aching relieved.”

“And we’re moving on now!” their guide informed them. “I’d like to get that bad bit behind us before we take a real rest.”

“Is it dangerous?” Grizel asked sharply. “I thought you said none of it was dangerous.”

“Oh, no! Not dangerous. It has a kind of wall—a low one—of natural rock for most of the way on the outer side. It’s just that the overhanging of the cliff makes it rather darksome and you could trip over a snag if you weren’t watching your feet the whole time. But there is nothing dangerous about it. The path is never less than three feet wide all along there.”

Dr Benson stood up. “I’m like Len. I’m not fond of shadowed paths and I agree it would be better to tackle this one in broad daylight. Come along everyone! We’ll set off again, I think.”

“Is it a sheer drop there?” Evadne asked as they scrambled to their feet and lined up again.

“No; I told you there’s a low rock wall most of the way there. It’s sheer all right if you go over that, but I can’t imagine anyone doing it except near the very end and there, the path widens in places—slabs of rock sticking out here and there. All you have to do is to keep close to the right-hand side and you’re O.K.,” Len said as she set off.

“Well, don’t you get too far ahead,” Grizel remarked. “No skipping off out of sight, please, Len!”

Len moderated her pace. “Will that do you? Don’t scowl at me so portentously, please, Aunt Grizel. I haven’t the least intention of taking any risks.”

“Was I scowling?” Grizel laughed. “I’d no idea. I didn’t mean to. But all the same, you keep within sight, young Len!”

Len chuckled and marched ahead, singing ‘Die beiden Grenadiere’ as she went.

The trees still rose round them at first, but now they began to thin out until at last they vanished after a steady half-hour of walking. Len stopped there and flung out her arm.

“Look!” she said. “The Valaisian Alps!”

They paused and a chorus of cries of delight broke from them as they gazed across the valley to where, rank after rank, the great mountains rose as far as eye could see. The afternoon sunlight gleamed on snowy caps and here and there was a glitter that told of ice. Far below, the mountain slopes were dark with trees and, like a silver thread, the river running through the valley glimmed between its grassy banks.

“Oh, wonderful—marvellous!” Evadne exclaimed.

“Aber das ist grossartig—prachtvoll!” Sophy joined in.

“Ach, ’z ist rühmlich!” Frieda said softly. “Eine schöme Aussicht, mein Blümchen!”

“Miraculous, isn’t it?” Len asked, rather as if she were responsible for it.

“It is miraculous,” Grizel agreed. “Yes; I know that’s one of the words you people have taken to using to avoid ‘marvellous’; but in this case, it’s the right and fitting word. Such loveliness is miraculous.”

Len went pink, but all she said was, “We’ll have to move on, but I did want you to see it.”

“Which way are we facing?” Cornelia asked as she turned after a last look to follow the party.

“Southwest. The path begins to curve presently and we go steadily westwards and round to the north. That’s where the overshadowed part begins. Then it swings due west again until we reach Bertental. We’ll stop there for coffee and have a good rest before we tackle the last of the way.”

“What’s that like?” Marie asked, slipping a hand through Stacie’s arm.

“It depends on what we feel like. We can either go on through the woods until we come out by our own brook and walk down to the stone bridge. Or, if you feel too tired by that time, we can drop down to the highroad which makes a much shorter walk.”

“It’ll probably be the highroad,” Grizel observed. “Stacie, at any rate, oughtn’t to do much more than that, I imagine and—heavens! What’s that?”

There came a noise like thunder and they all stopped short.

“It’s only a mountain stream,” Len said calmly. “When we came this way at Christmas, it was practically frozen over. I suppose that now the thaw’s on it’ll be going full spate. It ought to be a gorgeous sight!”

They swung round a wide curve and then all stopped short again. The stream was, indeed, in full spate and it came plunging and thundering down the mountainside across the path which here was some four feet wide, to hurtle over the edge to the valley beneath.

“How under the canopy do we get across that?” Cornelia gasped. “Yes, Len; I can see that there are stepping-stones, but just look at them! If you think that I, for one, am going to risk my life on them you’ve another think coming! Why, they’re barely above the water in places!”

“But it’s quite a narrow crossing,” Len pleaded, “and so far as I know, it’s the only way. Anyhow, we can’t go climbing round to look for another—not at this point. Look! It’s easy enough!” And before anyone could stop her, she was skipping across the stones in the airiest way.

“It may be easy for you,” Cornelia said stubbornly, “but I’m no mountain goat and never was. No, Len! If that’s the way of it, I’m turning back, tired or not, and going down to the road. I’ve a husband and a family to think of!”

“Why on earth didn’t you warn us about this?” Grizel demanded sharply.

“I never thought of it,” Len owned. “When we were here before, it was harmless enough and it never dawned on me it would look like this.” She had to shout to be heard above the noise of the torrent and Grizel, realizing that any recriminations would lose most of their force just there, said no more. Inwardly, she meant to have a few telling moments with Miss Len when they were safely back home.

“How far along are we?” Marie yelled at Len who was still on the far side.

“About halfway,” Len screamed back.

“Then that settles it!” Grizel as the eldest felt she must take charge. “If we turn back, Corney, it’ll be all hours before we get back to Freudesheim. We’ve missed the coach any way, so even if there is another, it’ll mean waiting. Now listen to me—and hold your tongue for a minute! I’m crossing and when I’m there, I’ll stand on the last stone. Sophy, you’ve a good head. You get Corney in front of you and hang on to one hand. I’ll be waiting to grab her as soon as you let go. Corney, you are to do it! It’s only a narrow crossing, when all’s said and done. I don’t suppose you’ll be left unheld for one second.” She spoke with all the authority of the Head Girl she had been when all those present but Len had been Middles at the Chalet School and, automatically, Cornelia responded to it.

“Well, if I must I must. But just you remember I didn’t come here to commit suicide.”

“Even if you step into the water, you would hardly drown,” Marie said. “Yes; I know its coming down full force, but between the lot of us you couldn’t be carried away. Come, Corney! Don’t be such a funk!”

Cornelia looked round them. “O.K. I can see you’ll all be ready to murder me in cold blood if you have to turn back for me. I’ll take a chance, but for the love of Pete, Grizel, get on with it!”

Grizel laughed and set off on her journey across the stones. She was sure-footed and had a steady head and she reached the other side easily enough.

“You wait till we’re safely home, Len Maynard,” she told that young woman as she made sure of her stance on the final stone—luckily, a flat-topped slab of some size. “I’ll tell you exactly what I think of you then. Now be ready to give me a hand if I need it and for pity’s sake don’t over-balance into that water.” She raised her voice. “Ready, Corney! Then come on!” And she stood with outstretched arm, fingers ready to close on Cornelia’s the moment they were within reach.

Cornelia, gripping Sophy’s hand, cautiously stepped on to the first stone. Sophy waited until she had both feet on the next and then took her vacant place. The third brought Cornelia within reach of Grizel’s long arm and as their hands met and clutched, the elder woman gasped. Cornelia had her eyes tightly shut!

“Corney! Open your eyes at once and stop making an ass of yourself!” she shouted. “You’ll be into the water in a moment!”

Cornelia squawked and opened her eyes. Then she was on the fifth stone. Grizel, moving back to the bank where Len was waiting anxiously, called encouragingly, “Only one more and it’s flat as a pancake! Come on, Corney!”

Cornelia negotiated the last stone safely. There was only the final step to the bank to make now and Sophy, who had followed her from stone to stone, waited thankfully for it. Cornelia stretched out a foot and—stepped off firmly into the water!

She was in no danger. Like lightning, Len stooped to grab her arm and Grizel had never let go. Between them they yanked her out so forcibly that she sprawled headlong over the path while Sophy finished the passage and came rushing to help her up.

Cornelia was all prepared to say what she thought, but Grizel got in first.

“Honestly, Corney, how much of an ass can you be? It was your own fault, so just pipe down and get the water wrung out of your skirt. Anyhow, you only went in knee-deep. O.K., Marie! Come on!”

Marie crossed easily. She was followed by Evadne and Frieda and finally only Stacie was left. The tall, slim doctor regarded the water with loathing and Grizel gave an exclamation.

“Stacie! Why didn’t you remind me! And you’ve a lot more reason than Corney to dislike flooded streams! Wait, my dear! I’m coming!” She crossed back and took Stacie’s hand. “I’ll give you a hand across. It isn’t too bad. Those stones are all flatfish except the fourth, and look! Len’s waiting ready to grab you. Come on! Steady does it!”

Dr Benson set her teeth and made the crossing in safety; but when she reached the other bank, Marie gave an exclamation and burrowed in the big pockets of her coat. She produced a little flask, the cap of which she filled from its contents. She held it to Stacie’s lips.

“Drink it, Stacie! It’s only Schnäppsen. Go on; down with it!”

Stacie swallowed it and the colour came back to her face in a moment or two. “Thanks, Marie,” she said. “I’m all right now and we’d better go on. That business has taken quite a few minutes.”

“First,” said Evadne, “just warn us, Len, if there are any more crossings like that to tackle. For however bad they may be, we’re not going back and Corney must get across somehow if we have to drag her through the water!”

“There aren’t,” Len said with a giggle at the idea. “The only other stream doesn’t cross the path at all. It falls into a kind of basin which is the wide part of a funnel in the rock and comes out feet below the path.”

“Good!” said Grizel. “Come on, Sophy. You couldn’t get another drop out of that skirt of Corney’s if you tried from now till next Christmas. Put it on, Corney, and buck up! Heavens!” as Sophy shook out the skirt she had been wringing with powerful hands. “It looks like a dishcloth! Get into it, Corney, or you’ll end up with a chill. At least it won’t drip!”

Cornelia eyed with melancholy what had once been an expensive and well-cut skirt, before she sadly pulled it on and fastened it. It flapped, damp and dismal round her legs, but Grizel was right. There wasn’t a drip left in it. Marie brought her flask and dosed the disconsolate owner, which helped to warm her considerably, and at last they were able to go on.

Len led the way again, going at a smart pace which soon removed any chill they felt after the wait by the stream. When the path began to swing round in another wide curve, however, she slowed down a little.

“This is where we turn west and the path narrows so it’ll be better if we take it a little more easily,” she said. She glanced up at the sky where the blue was beginning to change. “O.K. We should be well past the dark place before the light really begins to fail. Only we mustn’t exactly loiter. Let’s sing, shall we?” And she broke into ‘La Marseillaise’. They all joined in, and to that martial song they stepped out in fine style until the path took a turn so sharp that it merited the description of “hairpin bend”. Here, they left the sunlight behind them and found themselves going along a path overhung by great crags making it so gloomy that no one was surprised that Len wanted to be out of it before the light failed at all.

Presently they heard the now familiar distant thunder of water in spate, but Len called, “O.K. This is the funnel business I told you about. Look!”—as the noise swelled—“There it is! Oh, isn’t it a magnificent sight?”

Magnificent it was. The cliffs fell back a little here and the torrent poured down them, grey and yeasty with froth, to vanish into a natural rock-basin some twenty feet or more above the path. Spray leapt out into the void but the stream itself vanished, to appear below in a tremendous cataract, crashing down the precipice far out of sight until, as Len explained, it reached a deep pool, whence it flowed at a much quieter pace to join the river below.

“How do you know?” Frieda asked. “Have you seen it?”

“No; but Dad and some of his pals explored all round here one weekend last month and found out what happened to it.” Len stopped short and considered. “That has an odd sound. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. You all know what I mean. I say! We’d better get cracking a little.”

They went on, but presently she paused again, and called them to lean over the wall of natural rock, some three feet high just here, and pointed down.

“See that path? That goes on right along to the lane leading up to Bertental. The cliff falls pretty sheer towards that end,” she pointed along the way they had come. “It ends at the fall of that first stream. If you didn’t know, you might think it was quite a decent path. It would be a bit of a blow when you reached the stream and found it ended there! We didn’t try it because one of the Bertental people had warned Dad and he told Mother.”

Dr Benson, who had been leaning on the wall, looked up. “I wonder the authorities don’t continue this wall right along,” she said. “It would make the path much safer.”

“Oh, it’s safe enough,” Len said unconcernedly. “I don’t suppose many tourists find this out and everyone else is accustomed to paths like this.”

“The trees and bushes are beginning to grow up along here,” Evadne said. “Look, there’s a birch down there; and over there—isn’t that a fir? And just before it there’s a thornbush. It isn’t nearly so steep, either.”

“Oh, yes; we’re well past the really bad drop,” Len replied. She stood up. “We’d better get on with it. I don’t know about anyone else, but I could do with a good big cup of coffee and something to eat. Shall we trot?”

“I could surely do with dry clothes,” Cornelia said plaintively.

“I’ll ring up Anna when we reach Bertental and tell her to have everything put into the airing-closet with the heat full on so you can get into warm clothes when you’ve had a hot bath,” Len promised. “Unless you’d rather go straight to bed, that is,” she added.

Cornelia grinned at her. “Nix on the going-to-bed act!” she retorted. “Think I’m going to miss anything? But I guess that’s a swell idea of yours about having my things put into the airing-closet,” she added.

“Then we’d better get cracking!” Len laughed. “Pick up your feet, everyone. Round that curve we turn west again and I’ll bet there’s a gorgeous sunset waiting for us. That’s the last lap before Bertental and we’ll be home in no time after that.”

“What are you planning?” Grizel asked her quietly when they were tramping along with renewed vigour.

Len looked at her, mischief in her eyes. “How do you know I’m planning anything, Aunt Grizel?”

“I’ve seen that look of yours on your mother’s face dozens—hundreds of times when she was up to something. It’s a bit of a shock to see it on her daughter’s, but I do know what it means.”

“Oh, well,” Len tucked her hand chummily through her brevet-aunt’s, since at this point the road suddenly broadened again, “I’m going to tell Anna to find someone to fetch the car to the foot of the lane leading to Bertental and we’ll pack Dr Benson and Mrs van Alton and Tant Frieda and anyone else who likes in and they’ll be at home in ten minutes.”

“Quite an idea! Stacie, certainly, has had about all the walking she should do and Corney ought to get out of those wet things as soon as possible.”

“And Tant Frieda can’t do quite as much as some,” Len added. “Even Tante Simone might go with them. It’ll be the runabout, I expect, and it won’t hold more; but Tant Marie and Fräulein Hamel and you and I can do the rest of the walk, can’t we? We won’t say anything, but just let them have a surprise when we get down.”

“Len, you baby!” But Grizel laughed.

“What’s the joke?” Marie asked.

“Just Len being a baby,” Grizel told her. “Tired, Marie?”

“I’ve felt fresher, but I’m all right. Once we get that coffee Lens been mentioning, I’ll be as fit as a fiddle again. Remember, I have sons who walk me all over at home. I’m accustomed to using my legs,” her friend said. She added, “For Stacie’s sake, I hope it won’t be long. She’s beginning to look worn out. How much further, Len?”

“Only about fifteen minutes,” Len replied, quickening her pace a little. “Can you all hang out that long? We’re just on the curve and after that it’s easy as pie.”

“I’m thankful we started off this week with something milder than this,” Evadne observed as she trudged cheerfully along. “I could never have tackled such a walk on the first day. Not that it hasn’t been jolly well worth it. Those views of yours really were something, Len.”

“Yes; but I’d no idea the streams would be like that,” Len rejoined, easing up a little. “I rather think we must have seen them at their best.”

“They were wonderful,” Simone agreed, speaking for the first time for some minutes. Like Stacie and Frieda, she was not as strong as the others and she was beginning to feel footsore and weary.

“There isn’t much further to go now, Tante Simone,” Len said. “Round the bend there and—”

The sentence was never finished. She had been walking steadily on. Now she trod on a flat, narrow slab of rock, one end of which projected right out from the path over the drop to the valley. There came a groaning and an upheaval in the path. Len screamed once and the rest screamed with her, for in that second, the slab broke away to go hurtling down—down—down into the void and Len went with it!

For one instant everyone on the path felt petrified. Then Grizel sprang to the wall, careful to keep well away from the raw gash where the slab had been and from which scree and loose earth were still falling. She bent over, searching the lower path with keen eyes. There was just a chance that Len might have fallen there. For ten seconds which seemed like ten hours to the rest, she said nothing. Then she gave a cry.

“O.K.; she hasn’t gone right down. She’s caught in that fir. Keep back! We don’t know how far that fault may extend!” This last as Frieda, Marie and Simone made a movement. “Len! Can you hear me, Len?”

Len, caught in the branches of the fir, turned a pearly white face to her. “I’m—all right! At least—do get me out of this—please!”

“Faint if you dare!” Grizel’s voice was imperious. “I can get you down safely, I think, but only if you keep your head now. Are your clothes caught?”

“I—don’t—know. Don’t think so.”

“Thank goodness you’re in breeches! Keep quite still and say your prayers!”

“O.K. But—be quick—please!”

Grizel stepped back and gave her orders to the rest. “Marie, you’re the best runner. Get round that gap—all of you get round it—and go for all you’re worth to the village for help. Tell anyone you meet on the way.”

Marie nodded and promptly sidled round the gap before setting off as hard as she could go to seek help. Grizel turned to the others.

“Evvy, get Stacie round and away from here. She can’t help with that back of hers, anyhow. Simone, I want the belt from your coat—and Corney’s, too. Frieda, hang over the edge and talk to Len. Keep her attention whatever you do. Sophy, stay beside her and watch the edge in case of any further trouble.”

With that, she was off to a place a little further along where she thought she could get down to the lower ledge without too much trouble. They all obeyed her implicitly. Once they were round the wound in the path, Evadne, with an arm round Dr. Benson, hurried her along to a safe distance and made her sit down on a convenient boulder. Frieda began to talk frantically, saying anything that came into her head. Keen-eyed Sophy stooped over the rockwall, watching for the slightest sign of any further fall, and Simone and Cornelia tore the stitched belts off their coats and at a word from Grizel, buckled them together to make one long one.

“What are you aiming to do?” Cornelia jerked out.

“Wait and see. Is that thing fastened?”

“As securely as we can fasten it,” said Simone, who had removed her brooch and pinned it into the ends for further security.

“Right! Wait there and, when I call, obey me at once.”

With the long belt fastened round her waist, Grizel swung herself over the edge and began her downward scramble. She had to be quick for the tree which had saved Len so far was a young one and firs rarely root deeply. If it should tear away before she could carry out her plan, nothing could save Len. If the girl had the nerve to do exactly as she was told, she had a fighting chance, but everything depended on her nerve and obedience, on Grizel’s own strength and balance, and on the speed with which they could work.

“If we fail, well, we’ll both go,” she thought as she reached the ledge, some twenty feet below the upper path. “These belts aren’t likely to hold against any heavy strain. However!”

By this time she had raced along the ledge and was standing beneath the fir tree. Len was peering down at her between the branches and Grizel saw that though she was very white, her jaw was set firmly. She also saw that her fears were justified. Already the roots of the little fir were beginning to pull away from the cleft which held them. What was done must be done instantly.

“Len!” she called. “Can you move along that bough just a little? Let your legs drop down, but keep hold. When I say, ‘Now!’ let go and drop. I’ll catch you. Understand?”

“Ye-es,” came falteringly, but Len edged a little way while Grizel, praying inwardly for help, tied the free end of the belts as well as she could round a little jut she had marked down and straddled herself as firmly as she could, one foot wedged hard in a crack in the path.

She looked up and saw Len hanging, straight as an arrow. Pressing her body against another small spur, she shouted, “Now.”

On the instant, Len let go, falling straight into Grizel’s arms. The shock of her weight nearly sent the pair of them hurtling over the ledge, then as Grizel strained back, she hit her spine violently against the outjutting rock. The force of the blow and the sudden violent pain which tore through her turned her sick. Almost fainting, she yet managed to hold Len until the girl could grip the rock and both of them were standing pressed against the cliff away from the edge.

They were not yet out of danger. Len gulped and then lifted her firm little chin with a gesture anyone at school would have recognized.

“Come on, Aunt Grizel,” she said, her voice shaking for all her determination. “We’d better get out of this pronto!”

“Belt!” Grizel gasped. “Undo—belt!”

“It’s bust already. Can you manage—you’ve hurt yourself, haven’t you?”

“I—can—manage. Go—on!”

For reply, Len, moving cautiously, put her arm round Grizel and then moving with tiny side-steps, got her about three yards further along the ledge. There, Grizel’s endurance gave out. Every movement was agony and as the frightened girl drew her to a sudden brief widening of the path, she gave a cry and sank to the ground.

“I—can’t!” she gasped. “You—go!”

Len had already dropped beside her. “Not me! I’m staying till help comes.”

Grizel was in too much pain to argue. She closed her eyes and lay limply against Len’s knee. Up above Sophy, with the tears pouring down her face, called down to know if she should try to join them.

Len looked up. “Better—not! No room!” she called back.

But better help was close at hand. Even as Frieda at Sophy’s side called “Grizel—Len! Answer! Oh, du lieber Gott, answer!” there came a shout in a man’s voice and then two men came tearing along the upper path to them.

“Where?” the first demanded as he reached them. “Down there?” as Sophy, choking with sobs, silently pointed down. “Ah! I see!”

Len looked up again. “Please come quickly! And someone ring up the San. for an ambulance. She’s hurt—badly!”

“O.K.,” he said shortly. “Can you cope for a little longer?”

“Yes; but she must go to San. I think it’s her back. She cried out when I put my arm round her shoulders.”

“Right! Chin up! We’ll be with you in a minute or two!”

He drew back and looked round the frightened women. “Who’s the best runner? I must keep Hamilton here with me to help with the lifting.”

“Simone,” Frieda said quickly. “Oh, here’s Marie!” as Marie came up to them, panting and catching at her side.

“Stitch?” the big man asked. “Sit down and get your breath. Now—which is ‘Simone’? You, Mdlle? Then run to the Gasthaus at Bertental and ring up this Sanatorium—is it close at hand?”

“The far end of the Görnetz Platz,” Frieda replied. “They have motor ambulances. Simone, ask for Doktor Jack and tell him, and ask them to make all possible speed to——” she looked at the men. “Which will be best, to come up here or to that lower path?”

“The lower path.”

“Ah, oui! Je comprends bien. Maintenant, je vais chercher aussi vite que possible!” And Simone set off in her turn.

Having seen her go, Len had turned her attention to Grizel. “It’s all right, Grizel,” she said eagerly, forgetting the honorary title in her ardour. “Tante Simone has gone to ring up San. and there are some men here who will carry you further along. Dad will be coming and he’ll give you something to help the pain, I know.”

Grizel opened eyes dark with pain. “My back!” she moaned.

“I know; but honestly Dad will see to it and you know how the ambulances rip along when they get an urgent call like this. Here! Hang on to my hand. It helps to grip something when you’re in bad pain.” Len slipped her warm hand into the chilly fingers and Grizel gripped it.

“You’re safe!” she gasped between the moans that came to her lips. “I’ve made up!”

Not knowing what she meant, Len merely said soothingly, “Take a tight hold! It’ll be better presently.”

Grizel closed her eyes again, but the schoolgirl was secretly terrified at her looks. There was no colour in her face; even her lips were white. Her hand was limp and icy-cold and the sweat stood on brow and cheeks so that the loose tendrils of hair clung dankly to the skin. There was nothing more she could do, but if it had not been for those faint moans and the clutch on her own fingers, Len would have thought her dead. She sat as still as she could, for the slightest movement on her part brought another of those heart-rending moans which were the most frightening part of the whole affair to poor Len.

Mercifully, her ordeal ended fairly quickly after that. The men had quickly seen a place where it would be an easy job for experienced mountaineers to get down to the lower path. Ten minutes or so after they had first arrived, they were down and speeding along to the two huddled figures there.

Len looked up with almost piteous relief in her eyes as they came and the elder man knelt down beside Grizel.

“Thank God you’ve come!” she said. “Can you manage? I’m afraid to move, it seems to hurt her so much when I do.”

He nodded. “All right. Stay as you are for the moment.” Then he bent to look and gave an exclamation. “Grizel Cochrane!”

Grizel dragged her eyes open and looked straight up into his face. “Neil—Sheppard!” she whispered. “Oh—safe—now!”

It was her final effort. On the last word she fainted in good earnest. Dr Sheppard glanced swiftly at wide-eyed Len who, however, had the tact to be silent. Then he took hold of a wrist. The pulse was beating far too rapidly. All he had with him was a flask of whisky. He would have given worlds for his medical case or, failing that, brandy. The whisky had to do.

“We’ll just lift her a little if you think you can slide out from under her,” he said briskly to Len. “Hamilton, here, will give you a hand. Get your arms under her, Ham, and lift her gently out when I say the word.”

“Won’t it hurt her?” Len asked fearfully.

“I don’t think so. She’s quite unconscious. Ready, Ham?”

Young Hamilton nodded and slid his arms under Len’s armpits. Dr Sheppard, moving carefully, slowly raised Grizel just enough for the younger man to draw the girl back. Once she was clear, he lowered Grizel to the path. She moaned slightly, but that was all. Meanwhile Len had discovered that her legs and thighs were quite dead. She had had Grizel’s weight resting on them for the last twenty-odd minutes and had never stirred until they lifted her. As the blood began to flow again, she gasped with the cruel cramp that seized her, but she bit her lips to keep from crying out. Young Hamilton heard her and he spoke gruffly.

“Cramp? You poor, plucky kid! Hang on a minute and I’ll lift you over her and some of your friends can give you a spot of massage. That’ll help.”

He got to his feet and, stooping, raised her; and soon she was further along the path which, at this point, went on broadening. Then he looked up.

“Two of you come and give the kid massage. She’s cramped pretty badly. ’Fraid I’m needed otherwise.”

“I know,” Frieda said. “Come, Corney! We can get down over there.”

They clambered down by the same path the two men had taken and presently they were kneeling beside Len, rubbing the feeling back into her limbs. The pain brought tears, but she choked down her sobs.

“Sorry to be—such a kid!” she muttered unevenly.

“Kid be blowed!” Cornelia murmured, rubbing away. “You’ve been a heroine!”

“Not me—Grizel!” Len gasped. “O-ow! That hurts!”

Meanwhile, Dr Sheppard, surveying the still unconscious Grizel, satisfied himself that no bones were broken so far as he could find out, but that she had done some serious damage to herself seemed all too certain. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment. He produced his whisky and rubbed a spot under her nostrils and more on her lips and wrists.

“Can she swallow?” young Hamilton asked.

“Better wait for that. You don’t want to choke her. Ah! That’s better!” as the long lashes quivered. “Go and see if you can see anything of that ambulance, will you, Hamilton. We can’t move her unless we must. There may be internal injury. Oh, and get those women off to the Gasthaus and tell them to have coffee or something. They must be all in by this time. What about the child? Can she stand yet?”

Young Hamilton went to inquire and found that Len was just getting to her feet. She was white and shaky and her eyes were wet, but the worst of the cramp was over.

“How’s Aunt Grizel?” she asked at once.

“A shade better,” he said, “but we’re keeping her where she is till the stretcher-bearers come. Meanwhile, Dr Sheppard wants you all to go on to the Gasthaus at Bertental and have coffee or something. We’ll be along as soon as we can.”

Stacie Benson who had joined them with the others, asked, “Couldn’t we get something in the village—a table top or a mattress or something like that?”

“That’s an idea,” he agreed. “See if you can get hold of a couple of men and send them along with what they have—flat surface, please, and firm.”

“I’ll go and hurry them on,” Evadne said, starting off at a run.

He went back to his friend and Grizel, while big Sophy put an arm round Len to help her along and the rest followed, all but Frieda who insisted on remaining.

“If Grizel came to and she was with strangers, she might be alarmed,” she said. “Better if one of us stays with her.”

She also claimed their raincoats and brought them to lay over the patient. Neil Sheppard nodded and helped her spread them.

“That’s a good idea. I think she’s beginning to come to a little. Can you come round here beside me. Then she can see you if she rouses fully.”

Frieda managed it and squatted down beside her friend. She took one cold limp hand between her own warm ones and held it firmly while Dr Sheppard used the whisky again. Grizel was still not conscious, but a little colour had come to her lips and the greyness of her face was lightened.

Seeing that he was not needed at the moment, the red-headed Mr Hamilton had gone along the path to see if he could hear the ambulance or the villagers. The sooner Miss Cochrane was out of the cold wind that was beginning to blow, the better. Raincoats were not much help against that.

He was met by Simone who had returned with the news that Dr Maynard was coming with the ambulance and had forbidden any attempt at moving Grizel. Two men were with her, carrying blankets, however, but they brought nothing else. After Jack Maynard’s message, Simone had felt it better to leave things alone. She herself had a big can of coffee and some mugs and a spoon. Dr Sheppard contrived to get a few drops of the coffee between Grizel’s teeth and when she swallowed, he mixed a drop of whisky with it. She opened her eyes presently, but though Frieda spoke to her, there was no recognition in them. But she was perceptibly warmer now, and her colour was better.

“She’s coming round nicely,” he said in an undertone to Frieda. “All the same, I wish they’d hurry up with that ambulance. She ought to be in a surgeon’s hands as soon as possible. I don’t know if there are internal injuries, Madame, but she has damaged her spine somehow. Of that I am certain.” Then as she looked at him. “I’m a doctor myself—Neil Sheppard. Hamilton is a fledgling doctor.”

“Oh, I am so glad,” Freida said. “And when our own Dr Maynard is here, all will be well.”

“Is the kiddy all right?” he asked as he tucked the blankets more closely round Grizel.

“She had very bad cramp, but yes; apart from that and the shock, I think she is all right.”

“Good! What happened, by the way? Can you bear to tell me?”

Frieda shuddered, but she explained and it was his turn to shudder when he heard the story. “They might both have been killed!” he exclaimed.

“Yes; but der liebe Gott was good and in time Miss Cochrane will be well again, will she not?” she asked.

“I hope so. If it’s just the back, it may mean some time in bed, but that should be all. And indeed, Madame, I begin to think it may be only the back. The pulse is certainly better and see, her colour is better, too. Ah!” as his quick ears caught a new sound. “I think our vigil is ending. Yes; here come the stretcher-men.”

Jack Maynard came striding along the path to them. He nodded to the two strangers, gave Frieda a smile and then motioned her imperiously out of the way.

“Up you get, Frieda!” he told her. “Can you begin to walk on to the Gasthaus? Then be off with you. Tell the others I’m coming as soon as I’ve seen Grizel into the ambulance. I’ve brought Minnie and no one is to try to walk home. Got that? Then off!”

Frieda got up and went off feeling happier while he took her place. For some minutes the two doctors conferred together. Finally, the men were called, Grizel was moved on to the stretcher, packed round with blankets and hot-water bottles and they set off on the slow tramp down to the high road where the ambulance awaited them. Jack had given her an injection, so she suffered no pain. When they had begun their journey, he turned to the strangers.

“There’s room for you in the ambulance if you care for it,” he said. “I must collect the girls in Minnie and get them home. I’ll probably be at the San. before you. Matron has everything ready and waiting, though. Now I must get that crowd and just take a look at my own girl. I understand she was mixed up in this somehow. See you at the San.”

He nodded to them and clambered to the upper path, heading direct for Bertental and the Gasthaus, while the other two followed the stretcher along the lower path.

It was now well past sunset and the stars were beginning to shine faintly in the darkening skies. By the time he reached the Gasthaus, it was dusk. He found the party waiting for him, eager to hear what he had to tell them about Grizel.

“Can’t say much until we’ve examined her,” he told them. “Had coffee? And something to eat? Then come along! Minnie’s waiting for you beside the ambulance. I’m running you all home before I go on to the San. While we go, you can just tell me what’s been happening. Len, you don’t look up to much! You all right? Not hurt anywhere?”

“A bit bruised and scratched, but nothing to write home about,” his daughter said stoically. “Aunt Grizel isn’t badly hurt, is she?”

“Tell you better later. Now come along! Back aching, Stacie? You all look a bit under the weather, I must say. Never mind! Joey and her crowd are waiting for you and you can all go to bed after you’ve had a proper meal. Jo will tell you the latest about Grizel when we know it.”

Talking easily, he got them down the long lane and into the minibus before the carefully-treading stretcher-bearers ever reached the lane, and it was as well that Switzerland has no speed limit, for he would certainly have broken it.

Joey was waiting for them and she greeted them with a smile and the information that hot baths, bed and a good meal awaited them. Then she turned to Len, her arms going out.

“My darling! I don’t know what’s been happening, but I do know you’ve had a narrow escape.”

“Yes; but Aunt Grizel saved me,” Len replied, going straight into the outstretched arms. “If it hadn’t been for her, I shouldn’t be here now.”

Joey shivered. “We won’t talk about it—yet. Upstairs, all of you! Now which do you prefer, bed and supper or supper and bed?”

With one accord they voted for supper and bed after they had washed and changed, all but Cornelia, who was inclined to shiver and was given no choice.

“You’ll go to bed at once, Corney,” said Matron suddenly appearing. “I’m bringing you a dose of my anti-cold when you’re safely there. No arguments, please! We don’t want sniffles as a wind-up of this party!”

And even as she had done during her schooldays, Cornelia said meekly, “Yes, Matron!” And went.

The others remained up, though Len was ordered off after a meal and went, escorted by her sisters. Jack arrived two hours later to find a very weary-looking crowd waiting to hear his news.

“No internal injuries, thank God!” he said. “But she’s cracked her spine. Not too bad a break, luckily, but it’s going to mean some time in bed, I’m afraid. The worst of it all is that she was very run down when she came and she hasn’t had much time to pick up properly. That’s going to hold things up, but once she gets over the shock of the whole thing, she’ll be all right. Now you can all go to bed. You’re none of you looking your bonniest and brightest and I advise nine or ten hours sleep and a quiet day tomorrow. How’s Len, Joey?”

“Sound asleep. I ran up just before you came and she was sleeping like a baby. Jack, you’re sure Grizel will be all right in time?”

“As sure as I can be of anything. Once she’s over the first few days, she ought to go ahead or I don’t know my Grizel!”

So after all their terrors and adventures, they were able to go to bed with minds at rest.

“Well, the next time you plan a house-party—or any kind of a party!—I hope you’ll also plan events that don’t mean adventures of the most hair-raising description for everyone concerned!” Thus, Jack Maynard a week after the trip to Wetterdorf.

Joey shuddered. “Don’t, Jack! I don’t think I’ll ever plan a house-party again. I’ve had all I can take with this one. All I can say is thank God that it didn’t end in tragedy as it very well might. As it is, Len’s on edge; Con’s started walking in her sleep again; and Grizel is still faced with the prospect of spending the next few weeks at least in plaster.”

He gave her a quick look. Then he came across the room to sit down on the arm of her chair and give her a hug. “My precious girl! None of it was your fault—or the fault of anyone, for that matter. Don’t you talk to me about other folk being on edge. You’re on edge yourself. Don’t worry about the girls, either. Len is pulling up and once she gets back to school and is plunged into the thick of things, she’ll be all right. Mercifully, she is a sane, well-balanced young thing with an uncommon sense of proportion. Also, she may be highly-strung, but she has a good constitution. Con’s only walked the once and I’ve told you before it’s constitutional with her. I doubt if she’ll ever outgrow it. As for Grizel, from one point of view three months in plaster would be a very good thing for her.”

“What? Jack Maynard! What a thing to say!”

He lit his pipe and not until it was going properly did he reply.

“I mean it, Joey. Just think a moment. What were Grizel’s plans before all this happened? To go back to England with Stacie and throw herself headlong into all sorts of complicated legal business. And how far was she fit for such a thing?”

“Not at all!” Joey returned promptly. “Anyhow, I hadn’t the least intention of letting her go.”

“My good girl, how did you propose to prevent it? Grizel’s free, white and twenty-one. There isn’t a soul with any real right to control her movements. She’s as obstinate as a mule and if you’d tried to coerce her, she would have blown up and then where would you have been?”

“In the soup!”

“Exactly! But now she’s well and truly tied and whether she likes it or not, we can make her rest. From that point of view, it’s the best thing that could have happened to her.” He added, smiling, “I’ll tell you something which Grizel won’t know. We intend to keep her in bed until we’re sure her general health is up to par again. She will probably be fit to walk, as far as her back is concerned, some time before we allow her to try. That threatened breakdown must be averted and only rest will do it. Grizel wouldn’t consent to stay in bed merely for that, but while she thinks her back is too bad for her to try to walk she’ll stay put without any trouble.”

Joey gaped at him. “Jack Maynard! What a thing to do! All the same——” she looked thoughtful. “You’re right! She’ll believe the back injury is bad when she wouldn’t believe any talk about a breakdown. Jack—she did crack her spine, I suppose?”

“She did, but not so severely that she couldn’t walk about while she’s in plaster if she had to for any reason. It’s not so much the spine injury that is making her feel so ill, it’s the shock, her wrenched muscles and her very low condition of health. It’s bound to be some time before her arms and shoulders stop hurting. Len’s weight falling on her like that wrenched them badly.”

Joey nodded thoughtfully. “Yes; I see. Furthermore, Jack, my lad, if that expedition to Wetterdorf hadn’t taken place, the chances are they—I mean she and Neil Sheppard—might not have met again after all. Oh, I know he asked her to meet him when they were in London and he meant to take her out on the town, but at best things would have gone very slowly. Grizel wasn’t in the mood to trust anyone. As it is, we can hope that things will get moving before long.”

“I hope they will. I like Sheppard. He’s straight and a good sort and he’s deeply interested in her.”

“I know; but you know what she is. She’s got into a habit of thinking that real happiness wasn’t likely to come to her. Now——”

“Now, she’s been jolted right out of that,” he interrupted her. “She’s still not fit for any such excitement as becoming engaged, but Neil won’t wait a day longer than he must.”

“Wouldn’t it be glorious!” Joey looked up at him with eyes ablaze. “Oh, Jack, you don’t know how much I want Grizel to know the happiness I know. At least part of it. After all, old man, there’s only one Jack Maynard in the world, and I’ve got him!”

“Idiot woman!” he retorted. “Thanks for the flowers, all the same.”

“And apart from Grizel, this has meant prolonging my party, some of it, anyhow. Oh, I know the rest have had to go home, but Stacie and Corney and Sophy are still here. What’s more, Stacie and I have been having a few good long natters together and she’s decided to leave Oxford and come out here to live. She says that even with all the shocks she’s had she feels pounds better than she’s done for ages. Oxford may be her native heath, but there isn’t a doubt that it’s far too relaxing for her.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Any idea what she’s going to do about quarters?”

“Yes; I want her to have those rooms poor Doris had. We never use them except in wild emergencies and they’re right away from our own living quarters. I thought if you’d agree we could let her have them and the rooms immediately above, including the bathroom. They have their own staircase, too. Her old Bessie would come with her and do for her, and we wouldn’t be on top of each other all the time. If she did want us we’d be there. And then, Jack, that back of hers—if it bothered her, you’d be at hand to look after her. So if you’ll agree, everything would be hunkydory!”

“Where you get your expressions, I can’t imagine,” he said. “Have her, by all means. As you say, we don’t use the rooms. I could get a light partition run up between those rooms and the rest of the house and then she’d be private.”

“And there’s another thing. She’s owned to me that there are times when she feels horribly lonely. She doesn’t make many friends, you know—and not easily, either. She’s always been a good deal of a hermit-crab. But among all of us, that would be at an end. You’re sure you don’t mind? She would insist on paying rent, of course——”

“No reason why she shouldn’t. She’s pretty well off and she’d probably feel much more comfortable if we did it in a businesslike way. Let’s see! She’d have two rooms downstairs and—how many up?”

“Four and the bathroom. I thought the bigger one could be her bedroom and Bessie could have the one next door. Then the two small ones at the back would give her a kitchen and a spare room and the two rooms downstairs could be study and dining-room.”

“Good idea! Yes; fix it up by all means. And now I’ve something to tell you.”

“Oh? What?”

“You know Gray is leaving us to partner that uncle of his? I’ve asked Sheppard if he’d like the appointment.”

“Jack!” Joey sprang out of her chair, incidentally nearly upsetting him. “That would mean we’d have Grizel up here for keeps! Oh what a—an inspiration!”

“Steady on! We’ve only mentioned it casually, more or less. We haven’t gone fully into the matter. I do know he’s left his New Zealand job, but he’d have to look at it all round. Still, he seemed quite pleased at the idea.”

“Oh, I hope he will agree! The more of my old pals I have round me, the better I’m pleased.”

“Right. Well, now I’m going to go through my mail before I make tracks for San. Like to come along with me and have a short visit with Grizel?”

“Oh, rather! I had intended looking through the girls’ things—school begins next Thursday—but it can wait. They won’t mind. Corney is taking Wanda and Sophy and Stacie down to Berne to meet her family. I wonder if she’d like to have the girls as well? I’ll just fly and ask her.”

“One moment, Jo! Not a word of the San business to Grizel. Nothing is settled, remember; and apart from that, she must have no excitement.”

“No; I do realize that. I’ll be careful. But really, if anything so wonderful happened as that Grizel should live here, I’d be thrilled to the teeth!”

He laughed and sauntered off to attend to his letters while Joey scrabbled her own together, tossed them into a drawer of her desk and then went to find Cornelia and see if she had any objection to adding the triplets to her party.

Mrs van Alden agreed cheerfully. “Good! I’ll see to the lot. Say, Joey, how are the patients down at Montreux? Wasn’t that Winnie on the phone before Frühstück?”

“It was. Oh, they’re all coming along nicely, but they’re still covered with rash and as infectious as they can be. I daren’t go near them yet, what with the girls and the babies. Just why they all had to start chickenpox at this juncture, I wouldn’t know. The boys and Felicity will miss at least a fortnight of school, not to speak of Winifred’s anxiety about Baby Angela. And by the way, Corney, don’t, if you meet her, address her as ‘Winnie’ or hair and skulls will fly. She loathes it!”

“O.K. I’ll remember if I can.”

With that they parted, Cornelia to collect up her party and Joey to make a dash for the garden where daffodils and jonquils were tossing their heads gaily in the light breeze. She returned to the house with a golden armful, fled upstairs to make herself tidy, and was ready when Jack called her from the car.

At the Sanatorium, Grizel lay in plaster on a high white bed. She had been very ill from shock and pain for two or three days, and at first all visitors had been forbidden, but the day before Joey had been permitted to see her for five minutes. Only a sentence or two had passed between them, for everyone at San insisted that the patient must be kept very quiet.

“How long may we have?” Joey demanded as she descended from the car.

“Not more than half-an-hour; and that will depend on how Grizel stands you. Nurse will look in from time to time and if she gives you the password, don’t loiter.”

Page 168

“Oh how nice! Joey, you dear! Bruno, I’m so glad to see you, old chap!”

“Very well; but I hope we manage to have the full time. Where shall I find you when I do leave her?”

“No idea; you can ask Matron. She’ll know.”

She nodded to him and went off to the sunny little room where Grizel, still pale and thin, lay flat, gazing out of the window. The nurse who was “specialing” her left Joey at the door and the visitor entered. Grizel turned her head with an exclamation of joy when she saw who had come in.

“Joey! Oh, how nice!”

Joey dropped the flowers at the foot of the bed and bent to kiss her. “This looks better! You’re still an awful scrag, but you don’t look quite so washed-out as you did yesterday. Had a good night?”

“Much better! I slept nearly four hours without stirring, Nurse said.”

“How’s the back? Pain easier?”

“Oh, yes. It’s subsided to a dull ache and that’s quite bearable.”

“I guessed you must be much better when Jack said we might have half-an-hour today so long as I didn’t tire you. Yesterday it was a peep and a sniff; how-d’ye-do and goodbye, all in one breath. However, we can talk today.”

“Pull up that chair and sit down. Joey, what lovely flowers! Nurse will see to them when she comes, but you’d better shove them elsewhere in the meantime. Now tell me. How’s Len? I keep on thinking about her. Is she all right?”

“Oh, well, slightly nervy, which isn’t to be wondered at. But like you she’s had a really good night—slept through till she was called. Her appetite’s returning, too. She ate quite a hefty breakfast. She and the others have gone off to meet Corney’s family. Would you like to see Len tomorrow? Right! Jack shall bring her along with them. Do you want Con and Margot, too?”

“Not this time. Anyhow, I don’t suppose they’d let all three in at once. I’ve had it well rubbed in that the quieter I keep now the sooner I’ll be better. Visitors are to be severely rationed until the end of next week, anyhow. I’m glad Len’s all right again. It was a horrible ordeal for her!”

“Don’t think like that!” Joey scolded her gently. “Len herself doesn’t. She told me that she was so grateful to God for saving you both that she hasn’t much room for anything else.”

Not for worlds would she have told Grizel of the first few nights when Len had kept waking from restless sleep, crying out and clinging frantically to her mother when Joey came to her. The girl was still big-eyed and paler than usual, but sensible treatment, nourishing food and the love she felt all round her were steadying her shaken nerves. Jack had provided a tonic which helped, and Len herself, with a sane, healthy outlook on life, had never been given to brooding.

“As a matter-of-fact,” Mrs Maynard observed, “the one who seems to have been most affected was Con.”

“What? Has Con been sleep-walking again?”

Joey nodded. “And how!” She gave an irrepressible chuckle. “She gave poor old Sophy the fright of her life four nights ago. You know we put Sophy into Len’s bedroom. Well, Con marched up there in her sleep and began feeling about the bed. The howl Sophy let out was enough to rouse the entire Platz! She did rouse the house, including the twins who howled with equal vehemence, and Bruno, who seemed to think we had burglars and nearly barked his head off! Mercifully, Jack was at home for once and Wanda kept her head. I dashed upstairs to Sophy while Wanda saw to the twins, and Jack, having taken Con back to bed, settled Bruno. I’m bound to say, though, that Bruno was the least easily settled of the lot. Phil and Geoff were soon over again, and as soon as Sophy had had a minute or two to pull herself together, she was all right. But Bruno went on growling at intervals for a good twenty minutes before he finally piped down and went to sleep again. Anna, I may add, got up and boiled a positive sea of milk for everyone. In fact,” Joey wound up with a gurgle, “we had a most hectic half-hour or so.”

Grizel laughed a little, but though she stopped short since any movement still hurt her, her eyes were dancing with amusement. “I can just imagine it! But Joey, I thought Con had got over her sleep-walking tendency?”

“No such luck! Jack says he doubts if she ever will. She goes for ages and we get all hopeful about it. Then something happens to upset her equilibrium and off she goes, strolling around and generally contriving to give someone a shock!”

“Where on earth does she get it from? You used to give us some hair-raising experiences, but I will say for you you never sleep-walked.”

Joey chuckled reminiscently. “I did keep you all alive, didn’t I? Oh, it’s some kink in her make-up, I suppose. She’s a highly-strung girl and she takes it out that way. Now Margot has another kind of outlet. Remember her ghastly rages?”

“I should think I do! But she has outgrown all that now, hasn’t she?”

“Very largely. Oh, she still has a hair-trigger temper, poor lamb, but she can usually sit on it in time these days. Do you remember the day when she flew into a rage with Steve and pushed him into the meadow pond? She was about eight at the time. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen him in a fury, but before I could do anything about it, he’d scrambled out, grabbed her, and dragged her in and soused her well!”

“Joey! How could he? Steve can’t have been more than five.”

“Yes, but he was a big sturdy boy and Margot wasn’t expecting it. What a splash they made! I got them out in short order and when they’d been cleaned of mud and weed, they were both packed off to bed for the day, which calmed their troubled spirits considerably. But I thought you knew about it at the time? Oh, I believe it happened during the summer hols, so you mightn’t have heard. How angry Jack was with them when he heard about it! They’d chosen the shallow end of the pond, mercifully, but it might just as well have been the other and that might have been serious.” Then she changed the subject. “Shall I bring the twins along to see you next week? They keep on asking where Aunti Gwizzie is.”

“For heaven’s sake, Joey, don’t let them call me that! It’s almost worse than ‘Grizzle’ which some people insist on. I’ve always been Gri-zelle—emphasis on the last syllable—and I object to anything else.”

“I don’t blame you. Oh, I religiously use your proper name to them, but they find it difficult at present. It’ll come in time.”

“Then I suppose I’ll have to put up with it,” Grizel said resignedly. “Joey, would they let you bring Bruno? I’d love to see him again, dear old man!”

“I doubt it. Dogs are personae non gratae——”

“What? What are you saying?”

“Forgotten your Latin, my love? Tut-tut! We must turn Stacie on to you.”

Grizel stared. Then she suddenly grinned. “Wretch! But what about Bruno?”

Before Joey could reply, the door opened and Nurse entered. She looked keenly at the patient, but Grizel, with a faint pink in her cheeks, eyes full of laughter, did not look as if Joey had been too much for her.

That young woman smiled amiably and asked, “Nurse, may I bring a gentleman to visit Miss Cochrane some time next week?”

“I expect so. She’s allowed visitors for short periods now, you know,” Nurse said innocently. “Shall I put your flowers in water, Miss Cochrane? Aren’t they lovely? And when I bring them back, Mrs Maynard, I’m afraid you’ll have to say goodbye. We don’t want to tire Miss Cochrane.”

“What gentleman are you bringing?” Grizel asked suspiciously.

“The one you said you’d like to see, of course. We’ve got permission from Nurse—you heard her yourself.”

Grizel gaped at her. Then she understood and began to laugh. “Oh, Joey! What a wretch you are!—and don’t make me laugh! It hurts! Nurse, you don’t understand. The gentleman in question has four feet and a huge tail.”

Nurse gasped. “What?”

“Only Bruno,” Joey said demurely.

“You may raise that question with Matron,” Nurse said firmly. “I don’t imagine she’ll agree for one moment. But next week, if this weather continues, we are going to wheel Miss Cochrane’s bed out on to the balcony. It’s a ground-floor room, so if you like to bring Bruno to stand below, that will be quite all right.” She gathered up the flowers and went off grinning.

Joey heaved a tremendous sigh. “I was afraid it would end like that. O.K., Grizel; we’ll manage that way. And what about the babies?”

“It won’t frighten them to see me like this, will it?”

“Oh, no. And I won’t let them climb up on top of you. If I bring them on Monday, Len can come with me and when you’re tired of them, she can take them off while I finish my visit. Well, I suppose I must go. I haven’t tired you, have I?” She looked anxiously at Grizel.

“Far from it! You’ve done me good. Only I’d rather not laugh much just yet. But come again as soon as you can, won’t you? And the others—Corney and Wanda and Sophy. When are they going?”

“Wanda and Sophy next Tuesday. Corney is going to Berne, but she’ll be up quite often, I expect. The others had to go—home belongings and duties, you know. Stacie’s still here, by the way. And here’s some news for you. She’s leaving Oxford and coming out here to make her home. As she says, she can do her work quite as well here as there. She’s having a suite in Freudesheim,” Joey said grandly. “Her old maid will come with her and Jack is going to have the rooms boarded off so that she can feel quite private. But if she wants company at any time, we’ll be under the same roof.”

“Good old Stacie!” Grizel said quietly. “I’m glad. I fancy from one or two things she’s said that she gets very lonely sometimes.”

Nurse arrived, bearing two vases of flowers. “The doctor is waiting for you, Mrs Maynard, and Miss Cochrane ought to have her milk and a rest now.”

“Right! I’m coming. Tell the doctor I’ll be along in a minute, will you, Nurse?”

Nurse deposited her burdens on the windowsill and went out, leaving the two friends to say goodbye in private. Joey bent over the high bed.

“Turfed out! But I’ll be along again shortly now that visitors are permitted. Anything I can bring you? Books, or anything like that?”

“Not just yet. Later on, though, please.”

“O.K. Now mind you drain that milk and then have a nice nap or they’ll say I’ve overwhelmed you and not let me come again in a hurry. Goodbye, Grizel! Get well as fast as you can. Then we can begin to discuss your future arrangements. I rather gather they’re going to need quite a lot of discussion; but it can wait for the moment.”

The pink in Grizel’s cheeks deepened. “I—I shouldn’t be—surprised. But you—you never know, and—well——”

Joey kissed her and stood up. “Grizel,” she said quietly, “it’s more than time that you gave up expecting bad things and looked forward to good ones. Everyone eats white bread once in his life, as the Italians say. I rather think your time for that is close at hand, and no one will be gladder than I when it does come. Think about that, if think you must. Don’t be afraid. Things are all changed now and all you have to do is to go forward joyfully and bravely. It’ll be all right.”

Then she fled, leaving a tired but very much happier friend behind her. When Grizel had sipped her milk and Nurse had settled her for a nap, she dropped off to sleep almost at once and woke to eat a better meal than she had done since the accident. Indeed, from that time, she began to pull up the long slope to renewed health and strength more steadily than she had done before. She had a long way to go, but at long last she sloughed off the last of her morbid fear of the future and, as Joey had bidden her, prepared to go forward with joy and courage.

“Len! Are you ready? Come on, girl! I’m waiting for no one!”

Len came flying downstairs. “Sorry, Dad! I was playing with the kids and I forgot the time. But I’m quite ready.”

“Out, then, and into the car! Your mother is over at the school, so there’s no need for you to go hunting for her.” Jack ushered his firstborn out of the house and hunted her down the steps and into the car. He went round to slide into the driver’s seat and a moment later they were gliding down the drive and out into the lane from which they emerged into the highroad.

“When are you going to teach us to drive?” Len inquired.

“Well, not today. Wait until the summer holidays and then we’ll see. In any case, you won’t be old enough for your licence until November.”

Len giggled. “If you teach Con and me during the hols when Margot will be in Australia, she will be mad!”

“She can’t expect to have everything,” he said serenely. “Now drop it and listen to me. I want to give you a tip or two before you visit Grizel. First and foremost, don’t talk her to death. She’s better, but she can’t stand a lot yet and I know what you girls are like once you get going.”

“That’s a libel!” Len cried. “I’m sure we don’t talk as much as all that!”

“That’s what you think!” he said teasingly. “Now be quiet and let me finish. The second thing is, don’t talk about last week’s affair unless she says anything first. The sooner the pair of you put it out of your minds, the better for both of you.”

“I’m not likely to say anything!” Len shivered. “O.K., Dad! I’m not going to make an ass of myself, but I want to forget it as far as I can.”

“Well, luckily term begins next week and once you’re back at school I don’t see you getting much time to brood—not if I know the Chalet School.”

“Not to mention Jack Lambert,” Len put in. “That kid is a human question-mark. What’s worse, she seems to think I’m a human encyclopedia and can tell her every blessed thing she wants to know.”

He laughed. “Poor old lady! Never mind; it’s good practice for you when you begin teaching properly.”

“Gosh! I’ve always thought Jack was unique! She’s still far more boy than girl, even at nearly fourteen. And she’s the most ghastly I-want-to-know kid that I ever met. It strikes me if I’m likely to run into more of her kind when I do start teaching I’ll have to think again.” She changed the subject. “Any more tips to offer?”

“No-o; I think not. Use your common sense; that’s all. Thank goodness you aren’t lacking there.”

“Consider I’ve curtsied,” Len said with a giggle. “There isn’t room in this vehicle for the real action. There’s one mercy,” she went on.

“Oh? What’s that, may I ask?”

“No public exams for me this term! Matric next year, but that can wait. I mean to sit back and take things easily—or as easily as I can. As you’ve just reminded me, there’s always something going on at school and, of course, we do have the Sale this term. I wonder what we’ll do about it this time? We seem to have exhausted most ideas.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt some of you will be able to dream something up. Ask your mother if you get stuck.”

Len shook her head. “No thank you! I’d only be told to use my wits and not depend on someone else’s. You know how she is about standing on your own feet if you possibly can.”

“Then do it, my child. Anyhow, don’t come to me. Ideas for Sales-of-Work setting aren’t in my line at all. I leave that sort of thing to female brains. Here we are, and there’s Sheppard at the doors. Hop out and he can take you along to Grizel. She’s in a private ward, you know.” He drew up and hung out of the car to wave to Neil Sheppard who was standing on the step. “Hi, Sheppard! Run this girl along to Grizel, will you? Matron seemed to be in a bit of a spin when she rang through. I’d better go and see what she wants. By the way, in case you don’t recognize her—she was looking like something the cat had brought in when you last saw her!—this is Len, our eldest by half-an-hour. Off you go, Len! I’ll come for you or send for you when I’m ready, but if Grizel looks tired before then, just come away and wait around in the hall for me. I don’t suppose I’ll be long.”

Dr Sheppard laughed as he opened the car-door for Len to scramble out. He looked appreciatively at the bonny schoolgirl whose head reached his own chin. “Do I call you Miss Maynard, or shall it be Len?” he asked as Jack, slamming the door shut, drove off round the building to the parking ground.

Len turned a horrified look on him. “Oh, for mercy’s sake! Make it ‘Len’, please. I’m not seventeen yet and I’ll have plenty of being ‘Miss Maynard’ later on. As long as I’m at school, I’m giving it a miss.”

“Right! ‘Len’ it is. It’s a pretty name. Rather unusual, surely? Or is it short for something?”

“Oh, I’m really ‘Helena’—after my godmother, Miss Wilson. No one ever calls me that, though, unless they’re going to give me a good ticking-off. When the Head begins, ‘Helena!’ I shiver in my shoes. I know I’m for it.” Len laughed blithely. “Anyhow, it’s a stiff sort of name.”

“It’s a very good name,” he told her. “Len is pretty, I grant, but your proper name is musical and stately. Has a good meaning, too.”

“Oh? What, please? I don’t think I ever heard. I’ve certainly never bothered about it.”

“My dear girl, all names mean something.”

“Yes; I did know that. You learn it in religious knowledge when you’re a kid. But I can’t say I’ve ever worried about the meanings of any other names.”

“It means a torch—a light. Don’t you know Charlotte Yonge’s History of Christian Names? I must introduce you to it. She compiled that book a century ago, but it still remains the standard work on the subject, though a good many more names have been added to the list since her day. For example, she doesn’t mention the name ‘Doris’, which is quite common nowadays. Others that she says are obsolete or nearly so have been revived and are all the rage while those that were popular in her day such as Edith, Henrietta, Flora, are hardly ever heard unless they happen to be bestowed on hapless infants because they’re family names.”

“Mrs Graves’ elder kiddy is Marjory Edith,” Len said thoughtfully. “But there’s one boy’s name that’s quite gone out and I’m glad, for I think it’s just awful—Albert!” She glanced at him and saw that he was grinning. “Oh! what have I said that’s funny? Oh, it isn’t your name, surely?” She turned bright pink.

“Sorry, but it is—my second name. I’m Neil Albert. They tacked my grandfather’s name on to ‘Neil’. I agree with you about it, though, although it has a fine meaning and one that the lamented Prince Consort exemplified throughout his life.”

“What is it?” Len asked, growing cooler.

“ ‘Nobly bright’. And if ever a man lived up to his name Prince Albert did. It could have been no picnic to be married to Queen Victoria and have to try to acquire English standards and English habits—especially in his day!”

“I don’t know anything about him, really,” Len owned. “I must see what we have in the library when I get back to school.”

By this time they had reached Grizel’s room. The door was standing ajar and she had caught the last sentence. Now she called. “That you, Len? Who is it you’re going to read up? Come along in!”

Len ran in and bent down to kiss her. “Oh, Auntie Grizel! How lovely to see you again!” Her voice was warm with affection.

Grizel returned the kiss. “And how nice to see you! Stand back a little and let me look at you. Oh—Dr Sheppard——” Her voice faltered and a soft pink flooded her pale face.

Len saw it. She also saw the look in the doctor’s eyes as he greeted Grizel. Being as romantic as most girls of sixteen, she promptly put two and two together and made at least seven of them.

“Oh—oh!” she thought. “Is that what’s going to happen? How absolutely gaudy! I never thought of that, though.” However, she had the sense to keep her thoughts to herself for the present.

“Dad brought me and handed me over to Dr Sheppard as Matron wants him,” she explained, pulling up a chair to the bedside. “We’ve been talking about the meaning of names. He says mine means ‘a torch’. What does Aunt Grizel’s mean, Dr Sheppard?”

“ ‘Stone heroine’,” he said.

“Oh—o-oh!” Len was rather taken aback. “Well, at least it means heroine,” she added hastily. “And what does your ‘Neil’ mean, Dr Sheppard?”

“ ‘A champion’,” he replied. “Well, now that I’ve done my duty and delivered you safely, I must go and see if your father wants me. I’ll see you get that book, Len—or rather, books. It’s in two volumes.”

“That’ll be fabulous!” Len replied. “I’ve read a lot of her historical yarns and some of the ones about the time when she lived. I just love The Daisy Chain and Pillars of the House. I’d like to read her history of Christian names, though.” She laughed mischievously. “I can just see the rest crowding round to ask what their names mean!”

“Well, keep the book to yourself,” he warned her. “It’s old and worn. It won’t stand a lot of knocking about.”

Grizel smiled. “Len’s been taught the proper care of books or I don’t know Joey Maynard. She won’t pass it round, will you, Len?”

“Of course not—not a book like that!” Len cried, rather shocked.

He laughed and left them and Len pulled her chair further up the bed and sat down. “You look a lot better than I expected, Auntie. How do you feel?”

“Much better than I was. I don’t say I feel like starting off for a good tramp just this minute, but I really am better, Len. My back isn’t too bad and I enjoyed my breakfast this morning, so my appetite is coming back.”

“I’m glad! What did you have?”

“A boiled egg broken over breadcrumbs and a cup of coffee.”

“Oh! Well, do you know how long you’re likely to be here?”

“Some months, worse luck. I made your father tell me. It’s rather tiresome,” Grizel said, talking to Len as if they were contemporaries. “I ought to be in England this very moment, attending to business. All this is going to hold things up considerably.”

“Dad won’t let you hoe in at anything like business until you’re really fit again,” Len said, regarding her with thoughtful eyes. “Still if you feel so much better today, ought it to take as long as that?”

“I’m afraid so. Your mother really did it,” Grizel said. “She did me lots of good when she was here yesterday. You may tell her from me that she’s as good as a spring breeze. She sweeps the dust out of all the corners.”

“Yes; that describes her awfully well.” Len agreed with a chuckle. “I’ll tell her what you say.” Her face lit up with laughter. “May I say she’s a regular Boreas—from you, you know?”

Grizel chuckled and broke off short. “Ow! It still hurts to laugh! Yes; tell her that by all means. It’s true enough. She can be thoroughly eastwindy when she likes, as I know by long experience.”

“Yes; can’t she? All the same, she’s a real poppet.”

“Yes; you people are lucky to have her for a mother.”

“We know it,” Len said briefly.

“She’s so extraordinarily understanding,” Grizel went on, again forgetting that she was talking to a schoolgirl and Joey’s own daughter at that. “What’s more, she is so kind.”

“Well, of course she is.” Len stared. “You wouldn’t expect her to be unkind.”

Grizel woke up with a start. Then, as she met the puzzled violet eyes, she said quietly, “No; one shouldn’t expect unkindness as a rule. But Joey always manages to see what will hurt other people and to avoid it if it’s possible. Not many people have that gift.”

“No; I see what you mean. All the same, if she thinks she ought to tick you off, she jolly well does it! I’ve had some!” Len grimaced as she remembered one or two occasions when her mother’s words had brought her up short.

“I don’t imagine you’ve had much of that,” Grizel said.

“Oh, I’ve had my share. Not that I haven’t deserved every word she’s said to me. I always did. But—somehow it matters when she does it. Oh, well, I never was a swe-eet little angel-child!” The big eyes brimmed over with mischief. “You know, it’s just as well. I don’t think, somehow, an angel-child would get on very well in our family!”

“Someone like ‘Elsie Dinsmore’?” Grizel suggested with a twinkle; and Len doubled up with laughter.

“Oh, have you read those books? Mamma always says she used to revel in them, though she skipped all the Bible quotations. I rather loved some of them myself when I was a small child. But honestly, Aunt Grizel, do you believe there ever was a child as angelically good and pi as she was? Mamma always says if she had ever produced a twin to her, she’d have had it bottled in spirits of wine and sent to the nearest museum!”

Just in time Grizel remembered not to laugh. “How exactly like Joey!” she said. “Oh, I suppose you might find an odd one here and there; but definitely never in any family she had anything to do with. She and your father both have far too much sense of humour for that. That’s what’s wrong with ‘Elsie’, you know. She had none, and what humour there is in the books is forced. She tries to be ‘sprightly’.”

“Oh, gosh! What a ghastly word that is! Well, it certainly couldn’t be applied to any of us. Besides, Dad always tells us not to talk our religion but to live it. I rather think,” Len pursued, thinking it out as she went along, “that if any of us started in quoting from the Bible and so on, we’d be told to pipe down.” She went off at a tangent. “Talking of the Bible reminds me, did you ever hear what Con told the Head when she asked her what happened when they put Daniel in the lions’ den?”^[10]

“Never! What was it?”

“She said Daniel bit the lions!”

It was no good. Grizel simply had to laugh and though she groaned loudly at the pain, she enjoyed it for all that.

“Oh, Auntie!” Len exclaimed penitently. “I’m awfully sorry. I should have remembered. Dad warned me not to lean against the bed and shake you.”

“Never mind. It hasn’t really hurt me and I wouldn’t have missed that for a lot. Did she really, Len?”

Len nodded. “She did. Of course, she was just a kid of ten or so. It was a stand-up class and she was dreaming and the Head pulled her up and she just blurted that out. Poor old Con! Don’t ever let her know I told you, will you? She’s been awfully ragged about it more than once.”

“I won’t let her know,” Grizel promised.

“Thanks a lot. Look here, you said ‘some months’. How long, exactly, is it, or don’t you know?”

“Not for certain. Your father and Dr Sheppard both seem to think it could be about three months, though.”

“Oh, what rotten luck! I was hoping that at least you’d be able to come to the Sale if you were here. But it takes place at the end of June so that won’t give you any leeway. Perhaps you’re like Mary-Lou, though. I remember when she had her accident everyone thought she’d be flat for ages, and she was up and back at school again after Christmas.^[11] Of course, all games and gym were off for her and she had to be jolly careful for months, but she was able to get about.”

“What did she do to herself?” Grizel queried. “I knew she was badly concussed and had damaged her spine, but I never heard what, exactly, was wrong.”

“Frightfully bad bruising right deep in and some kind of inflammation, I think. I know Dad said her back was a positive rainbow all green and purple and black.”

“I’m afraid mine’s a lengthier thing than bruising. I’ve cracked my spine and it means being in plaster for a while as well as staying flat for the present.”

“Oh, poor you!” Len exclaimed.

Grizel was silent a moment. Then she said, “I can’t say I’m pleased, but when I think of what might have been, not only for me but for you as well, I can only be thankful it’s no worse. And the pain really is better now. So don’t be too sorry for me, Len.”

“Mother always says that if you look round hard enough, you can find something good coming out of everything but actual sin,” Len said thoughtfully. “I heard Dad tell her that you were tired to death and ought to have a proper rest before you were up to the neck in business. Probably if this hadn’t happened, you’d have dug in for all you were worth and then, sooner or later, you’d have crashed. Now you’ll have to rest. You can’t help yourself. Isn’t that one good thing coming out of it? And here’s another. You’ll be up here ages so you’ll have a chance to make new friends and that’s always fun. And that’s only two good things I’ve thought of. There may be others as well. You never know.”

Again the soft pink flooded Grizel’s face as a third thing came to her mind—one she imagined Len knew nothing about. She had forgotten the girl’s age and the fact that she wasn’t Joey Maynard’s daughter for nothing. But this prolonged rest would mean that she would get to know Neil Sheppard much better than she might otherwise have done; and Neil Sheppard was beginning to mean a great deal in her life. She said no more and Jack arrived a minute later to retrieve his daughter and take a look at his patient.

“Top o’ the morning to you, Grizel!” he said breezily. “Hope Len hasn’t quite deaved you with chatter. Let’s look at you.”

“Oh, are you taking her away?” Grizel said. “Honestly, I think she’s done me good. She’s Joey’s own girl for sweeping away the cobwebs.”

Len went scarlet. “I wish I could think so! I’ll come again when they let me, though, only it’ll have to be during the next day or two. School begins next week, you know.”

“I think you’ve done her good,” Jack said with a meditative look at his daughter. “Come on, brat! Eugen is dropping you at Biddy’s for elevenses and a dekko at the kids. I’ll be here for another hour or so, but I’ll pick you up at Adlersnest when I get through. Or if I can’t, I’ll get on to Reg Entwistle to collect you.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll come, Aunt Grizel——”

“Hussy—begone!” Her father pushed her gently from the room. “I want to examine Grizel and you’re holding me up!”

Len made a face at him, blew a kiss to Grizel and went off laughing to seek Biddy’s husband, who was due to go on his rounds, but took time to drop her at Adlersnest where Biddy, now making real headway, welcomed her with open arms.

Meanwhile Jack was busy with Grizel. He pronounced her improving in herself and added that the back was knitting well.

“And if I’m fit in myself that’ll all be a help, won’t it?” she demanded.

“Naturally it will. The better you are and the more cheerful you are the more likelihood there is that the trouble will clear up steadily. So you remember that, young woman, and keep jolly. Well, on Monday we may consider wheeling your bed out on the balcony and then Joey can bring Bruno to pay his respects. And Grizel, though this means a certain period of invalidism, it needn’t all be in San. Just as soon as we think you can stand it, we’ll have you back at Freudesheim. Meanwhile, buck up! And I haven’t said it before, but don’t forget that you have all the right in the world to look on us as your home and your own people. You saved Len’s life and at the risk of your own. That makes you one of us for keeps.”

Grizel flushed and her eyes shone like stars. “Oh, Jack! What a lovely thing to say! And—and it’s worth everything to hear it. But I couldn’t have done anything else, you know. Oh, I know I acted from instinct partly, but don’t forget that I also owed you Len’s life.”

He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

But at the first reminder of that long-ago accident when the school had been on St Briavel’s Island off the south coast of Wales, he stopped her. “What a lot of rot! You forget that—hear me? It’s past and exhumation is a thing I’ve never liked. Now I must scram. Oh, here’s someone else coming, so you won’t be lonely. You’ll get no time to brood here, I can tell you! Come on, Sheppard! I’m just going, but she’s making real headway now. See what you think about it.”

He made way for the other man and left with a wave of the hand, but as he went, he saw their two faces and pursed up his lips in a soundless whistle when he was going down the corridor.

“So Joey is right, bless her heart! Well, I don’t know that I’d have chosen a cracked spine as the ideal method of smoothing things out for Griselda, but it looks to me as if we’d better be saving our pennies. Wedding presents are coming to the front with a run!”

It was early on Sunday afternoon. Grizel had enjoyed a meal of delicately steamed chicken and potato beaten to a cream in hot milk, followed by something pink and fluffy and tasting of strawberries. Since then she had had a quiet nap after Nurse had sponged her hands. Now she had roused and was lying gazing at all the view she could see—the spring sky where fluffy white clouds sailed tranquilly across the fresh blue—the mountainside with its mantling of trees—and, nestling at the foot, a couple of small chalets. She was still lying flat and, for the first time since the accident, she wished she could be raised, if it were ever so slightly.

She was alone, for Nurse had looked in a few minutes before she roused and had gone away again on seeing that she was asleep. Again for the first time, Grizel wished she had something to read.

She thought back to the morning’s events—Joey’s visit when she had brought the twins and also the news that the chickenpox patients were all doing nicely and Winifred Embury had said that she would be thankful when it was all over. No one was really ill, now, and all of them were lively: then the triplets, one at a time, each staying only a few minutes and following on the heels of the other.

“What delightful girls they are!” Grizel thought. “Margot is thrilled about her Australian visit. In a way it’s rather a pity I shan’t be in New Zealand at the time. She’d have loved it. However, I’m not. I might ask Deira to invite her and what’s-her-name—Emerence—for a week or two. I’ll think about it. Emerence’s people mightn’t like it, though. Oh, well, plenty of time yet.”

Len had told her that in the evening Miss Wilson and Rosalie Dene proposed to walk along to the Sanatorium to pay her a visit. That would make another break in the day which was beginning to seem long, now that she was awake so much longer. Her special nurse had been taken off that morning. The Sanatorium was very full and they were short-handed at the moment. Grizel knew this, but for all that she rather wished Nurse was still there.

At this point, she heard slight noises of a disturbance somewhere to the front of the building. Her room was at the back, so the noise was very slight, but Grizel was ready to welcome anything for a change. She listened eagerly.

“A new patient?” she wondered. “They’re making rather a fuss about getting whoever it is into the place, surely. I wonder what’s up.”

Brisk steps sounded in the corridor outside. The door opened and Nurse appeared. She was in a state of wild giggles and Grizel stared at her in amazement. What on earth had happened?

She voiced this aloud. “Goodness, Nurse, what on earth are you all doing? And what is the joke?”

Nurse gulped noisily. Then she managed to steady her voice. “A visitor for you, Miss Cochrane.”

“Oh, good! I was beginning to feel frightfully bored with life. But who under the sun is it? And why are you giggling like that?”

Before Nurse could reply there came the creaking of heavy wheels outside and Grizel turned eager eyes on the widely-opened french window. A big dray-horse was coming into view, the sun gleaming on his bright bay coat and mild face with its blazon of white from forelock to nose. Behind him came a flat cart and on it, seated on cushions and stools, sat the entire Maynard family, accompanied by Hilary Graves and her small fry. Binkie was asleep on her lap and small Marjory and Lois were cuddled up beside her. But though Grizel was delighted to see them, there was someone else as well—a large golden and white gentleman, sitting with crossed paws dangling over the edge of the cart and with Con and Margot on either side, each holding on to his harness. He looked extremely pleased with himself and Grizel gave a gasp.

“Bruno!” Then she collapsed into giggles on her own account. “Oh, how like Joey! Oh, Bruno, dear old man! Jack Maynard, who on earth——”

Jack tossed the reins to Joey, who had Geoff securely in one arm, stepped off the cart which he had drawn up so that it was level with the top of the balustrading along the balcony, jumped down, and marched into the room where Grizel was lying, alternately giggling and groaning.

“Calm yourself—calm yourself!” he said. “Nurse, where’s that pillow affair? Good! Now give me a hand. Keep still, Grizel, and don’t do a thing. Nurse and I will do it all for you. Ready? Raise her head gently.”

Nurse’s hand came under her head and tipped it slowly and carefully up. Jack slid a hard, white-covered pillow under it and Nurse laid her back. Grizel gave a little cry of delight. Her head was raised nearly six inches and she could see quite a little more of her surroundings.

“There!” he said, stepping back a little. “That’s better! How does it feel—comfy? Nurse, I think we might turn the bed just a little, don’t you? Now then, handsomely—handsomely!”

They moved the bed so that she could look directly out of the window. Then they stepped back and Grizel gave a little sigh of pleasure.

“Oh, how nice! Joey, you dear! Bruno, I’m so glad to see you, old chap!”

Bruno rose and set a huge paw on the balustrade, but Con and Margot were on the watch and they clung heavily to his harness.

Joey was watching, too. “Hang on to him, you two!” she exclaimed in alarm. “Down, Bruno—down! Yes; I know Grizel is going ahead by leaps and bounds but that doesn’t mean that she’s fit to be leapt and bounded on! Hello, Griselda! How’s this for a brain-waggle?”

At his mistress’s command, Bruno had sat back on his haunches and now sat grinning at the invalid. Grizel, boredom completely forgotten, giggled again.

“Who dreamed this one up?” she demanded. “You—or Jack?”

“Both of us,” Joey said serenely. “I told Jack you were dying to see Bruno again—Hi! Lie down! Yes; I know I said your name, but just keep quiet!—and I said if only we could manage to fake up a kind of moving platform to bring him to the level of your eyes, I knew you’d be pleased. Jack said it was a pity we didn’t seem to run to any sort of lorry in these parts and then I remembered Emil Gutscher had this flat and good old Weisskopf here, so I suggested we might be able to fix something up with that and Jack was all for it. In fact, the entire family was. He dashed over to Ste Cecilie to see if we could hire the outfit for the afternoon and—well—here we are!”

“And,” Hilary put in, “as if it weren’t enough for the whole crazy crew of them to promenade along the Platz, where I’ll bet they got more to look at them than to give them anything, they called in at Adlersnest where they nearly gave Biddy heart-failure with shock and insisted on fetching me and the family along with them. How are you, Grizel? You look a lot better than I expected. How’s the poor back?”

“Not too bad. Oh, it is nice to see you again, and Bruno and everyone. Jack, am I to keep this pillow for good now or is it just a brief effort for the occasion?”

“We’ll see how it affects your spine,” he said. “So long as it doesn’t start up any pain, you may keep it. But if you feel the slightest discomfort, Grizel, you’re to let Nurse know at once. Promise me or I’ll take it away when the present session comes to an end.”

“Oh, I’ll promise all right. I’ve had all the pain I want, thank you! But honestly, Joey, this really is an inspiration! Bruno, old chap, I am glad to see you after all this time.”

Bruno acknowledged this with a short “Woof!” just as the door opened and Matron arrived, anxious to know how Mrs Maynard’s latest freak had affected her patient. One glance told her that she had no need to worry. Grizel looked as if she had had a dose of an extra strong tonic and her whole face was alight with laughter. Satisfied, she crossed over, stepped out on to the balcony and rubbed Bruno’s ears affectionately while she exchanged a few words with Hilary Graves, who was also her sister-in-law. She kissed the small fry all round and then found that she herself was being kissed wetly and thoroughly. She pulled back in a hurry.

“Oh, no, Bruno! I love you very dearly, but I don’t like your kisses. They’re much too wet and effusive! Well, people, I’m delighted to see you. How many folk gaped at you on your way here, Joey?”

Joey chuckled. “You didn’t believe I’d do it, did you? But it’s done her good, not harm. Just look at her! Grizel Cochrane, I believe you love Bruno best of all the family.”

“Oh no, I don’t! But he is a pet and he does so remind me of dear old Rufus and the old days in Tirol. Are you people coming to pay me a proper visit or do you propose to sit there in state?”

“Sit here in state, my love. I’ll be along tomorrow in the morning some time and I know Nell Wilson and Rosalie Dene are calling this evening and you had us this morning. That’s quite enough for the moment. By the way, Jack said if you could bear the pillow, you might have some of your mail. It’s been collecting during the past ten days or so but it was no use bringing it along before. There are letters from all the party but Evvy and she’s coming to see you later on in the week. There’s a thick envelope from Mary-Lou as well as a couple from New Zealand and a very official-looking affair from London. You may have them two at a time for the present. What will you have first?”

“Not the London one, anyhow,” Jack interposed. “She’s decidedly better, but she’s not up to tackling any business yet, eh, Grizel?”

Grizel wrinkled up her brows. “I think you’d better open that yourself, Jack, and see if it’s anything that needs immediate attention. If it is, handle it for me if you can. I’ll give you power of attorney if that’s necessary, but I simply can’t face any sort of business yet.”

“O.K.,” he said quickly. “I’ll see to it for you. Don’t worry about it, my dear. I don’t suppose it’s anything that can’t wait, but if it is, I’ll deal with it.”

Grizel heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness!”

“Then whose letters shall I bring tomorrow?” Joey asked to take her mind off the business side.

“Oh, bring me Juliet’s. She and I have always been chummy. And I’d like Mary-Lou’s. How is she going on?”

“She’s coping as we all knew she would. Hilda had to come back—she arrived late last night and is coming to see you tomorrow—but Mollie and Dick are with them. By the way, Verity’s wedding is coming off almost at once—well, in eight weeks’ time. Then Mary-Lou is going to finish up what she can and she’s coming out to here to spend the summer holidays with us. So you’ll see plenty of her later on. But I expect she’s told you all about it in her letter.”

“Good!” Grizel changed the subject. “Where’s Maynie? Why didn’t she come with you?”

“Said she flatly refused to be made a show of,” Len explained, seeing that her mother was occupied in restraining Geoff from trying to pull out her hairpins. “She went to spend the afternoon with Auntie Hilda. I expect they’re nattering madly about old times. She sent her love and said she was dropping in on you some time tomorrow but she thought our latest insanity was about all you’d be fit to cope with. That’s exactly what she did say.”

Grizel laughed cautiously. “I can hear her saying it!”

“You’ll have plenty of visitors tomorrow,” Margot put in. “You won’t mind if we don’t show up, will you? Len and I are going to help Matey with the linen room and Aunt Rosalie has bagged Con for the stationery. We always help out with those two if we’re here in time.”

“You do really look lots better than I thought, Aunt Grizel,” Con said thoughtfully. “Your face is thinner and you’re looking a bit tired, but otherwise, you’re like your usual self. It’ll be lovely when you are all right again.”

“Has this been a surprise?” Len asked with a chuckle. “The way we came, I mean. We didn’t meet a lot of people. We’re rather between seasons just now and there aren’t many visitors. What we did meet stared with all their eyes, though.”

“I’m not surprised. I’d have gaped good and hard at you myself.”

Matron glanced quickly at her, but not more so than Jack. Grizel’s face was still bright but there was a weary note in her voice.

“This visit has lasted long enough,” he said firmly. “Hang on to Bruno, you two. Len, take Geoff from your mother. Roll along, Joey! Grizel’s had enough for the time being.”

Grizel could not deny this. She made no effort to detain them.

“Come back again, all of you, including—what did you call the horse? Weisskopf?—and bring Bruno, too. It really was a brainwave and I’ve enjoyed it.” Grizel tried to speak briskly, but she was still weak and she knew it now. The visit had been a treat, but by this time all she wanted was to lie quietly.

Joey plumped Geoff down beside his eldest sister and gathered up the reins. “We mustn’t tire you. Matron won’t let us come again in a hurry if we do. Goodbye, Griselda, my lamb. Have a nice little snooze now and you’ll feel as bright as a daisy when you wake up. Come on, Weisskopf. Vorwärts!” She clicked at him in a highly professional manner and Weisskopf lifted his head from the grass where he had been enjoying a pleasant mouthful or two and began to move off.

Grizel watched with a smile at his majestic progress, but when the flat had rolled out of sight, she gave a weary sigh. Jack and Matron bent over her.

“I’m all right, honestly,” she said. “It’s only that I seem to be tired with all the excitement.”

“Ah, well, that’s natural weakness,” Matron said as she and Jack moved the bed back to its old place and then set to work to make their patient more comfortable.

“Oh, I’ve loved it!” Grizel assured them. “I was getting so bored before it happened. Thank you—that’s really comfy.” She gave a little yawn. “I’m sorry! I think I could—go to—slee-eep——”

Her voice trailed off as the long lashes fell over her eyes. She gave a little contented sigh and was asleep at once. Jack laid his fingers on one wrist and paused for a moment. Then he stood up and nodded to Matron.

“Tired; but that’s all. The pulse is good, but she can’t stand much in the way of excitement yet, of course. Let her sleep all she will, Matron. It’s her best medicine.”

Matron drew up the sheet and blankets, tucking her in. “Shall you look in on her later on?”

“I don’t think so. Sheppard said something about coming this evening. I’ll leave it to him. Now I’d better get off and see what’s happening to that equipage of ours. I saw Jo drive over to the back way, so I expect she’s letting the youngsters stretch their legs a little while they wait for me. Oh, hello, Nurse! No need to sit with our patient. She’s sleeping like a baby and when she wakes up, she’ll be nicely ready for some milk. Just look in at her from time to time, but she’ll be all right. Our party has tired her, but she enjoyed it thoroughly until the end. Ready, Matron?”

He and Matron left the room and as they went down the corridor he added, “I was a wee bit doubtful about Bruno’s visit, but it hasn’t done her any harm.”

Matron laughed softly. “Far from it! It’s cheered her up. Any injury to the back is a nuisance and of course she was worn out when she reached you, you told me.”

“That’s true. She can do with a good long rest, quite apart from her back. And those X-rays proved that there was nothing wrong with the ankle. I was rather afraid she might have done something there when she complained of the pain two days ago; but it was only the general strain. She’ll do now, thank God. It’s only a case of letting Nature do her job.”

Matron nodded. Then she said, “Are you going to take a look at Miss Bubb?”

“Is she worse?”

“No—except that she’s just a little further down than yesterday.”

“There’s nothing we can do there. She’s just slipping slowly away. Poor soul! She left things too long for us to be able to do much. In confidence, Matron, I’ve been amazed that she’s gone on all this time. All we can do now is to ease her through these last weeks. It isn’t likely to go on much longer and, for her own sake, one can’t wish it.”

He took leave of her then and presently she saw him striding rapidly across the short, thymey turf to what they called the back way, by which they meant the path that ran round the Platz under the mountain slope. She herself went back for another look at Grizel, but the patient was sleeping sweetly and if the excitement of the visit had tired her, it had clearly done her no harm.

Matron left the little ward quietly and went to seek an hour’s well-earned rest in her own pleasant sitting-room. She chuckled as she went. You couldn’t permit a great dog to wander about the San, but she might have known that once Miss Cochrane had expressed a wish to see him Joey Maynard would manage it somehow.

“The Platz must have enjoyed quite a sensation this afternoon,” she thought as she sat down to await the coming of her tea-tray.

Slowly Grizel made progress—too slowly, she thought, as she lay in bed watching the lovely burgeoning of the Alpine spring. On the day after that eventful Sunday, rain had come and for three days it continued to pour down with very few breaks. Visitors brought news of flooded streams and, in one or two places, landslides. The heavy clouds which seemed to rest on the summits of the mountains darkened the whole place so that lights burned early and late. Hilary Graves did take advantage of one fine interval and, of course, the doctors came and went, no matter what the weather was like; but the folk at Freudesheim were housebound and so were the people at school. Thursday arrived with periods of sunshine and rain, however. Even then, as Jack informed his patient, the girls had to return to the Platz by way of the rack-and-pinion railway instead of by the big motor-coaches the school generally used.

“I’m sick of this!” Grizel said petulantly. “Isn’t it ever fine in the spring in these parts?”

“Of course it is. Snap out of it, Grizel! You, of all people, should know what alpine weather can be like when it really gets going. Once this ends we’ll probably have days and days of glorious sunshine and then out you’ll go on the balcony. Till then, hold your horses, my girl!”

All the same, he was concerned about her pale face and lacklustre eyes. Nurse had told him that her patient’s appetite was poor and she was sleeping badly. If this went on, they would be back where they were. And, as luck would have it, Joey couldn’t go to her. On the day school began, she turned her ankle at the top of the stairs and went crashing down to the foot, ending up with a head-on collision with a corner of the dower chest.

Jack brought that item of information in the evening when he looked in on Grizel during his evening round of the wards.

“Why doesn’t Joey come to see me?” she had asked fretfully.

“Joey, my sweet child, is in no condition to visit anyone,” he informed her blandly, “nor will be for quite a few days to come.”

“What? What has she been doing to herself?”

“Trying to kill herself—or so I imagine. I haven’t got the whole story yet. She was in no state to tell me anything when I picked her up——”

“You picked her up? Jack! What on earth has she been doing? Tell me at once!”

“All I can tell you is that I was in the den before Mittagessen when I heard a series of screeches, interspersed by loud thuds, and I rushed out just in time to see her ladyship turn a somersault on the bottom step and cannon with a terrific crash into the dower chest. The girls were over at school and Anna was outside hanging up some washing so she didn’t hear a thing. I carried Joey up to bed and there she stays for the moment.”

“She isn’t badly hurt, is she?”

“Well, she’s got the headache to end all headaches and the most magnificent black eye I ever saw. She was a bit stunned, but she soon came round and I’m not exactly worried about her, for there’s nothing broken. But she’s bruised and shaken. Matey from school came over when I rang them and Nurse has come in to take hold. Joey certainly won’t be doing anything much for the next day or two. So you’ll have to do without her.”

“Do without her? Oh, Jack!” Grizel gave a wail. “I ought to be at Freudesheim looking after her and here I am—tied to this wretched bed and not able even to so much as darn a sock for her!”

“What Hilda would say to your English, I don’t know—splitting your infinitives like that!” Then, as he saw that she was really upset, he changed his bantering tone. “My dear, the best way you can help Joey is by pulling yourself together and recovering that appetite you seem to have lost. Then she can stop worrying about you. If I described what you look like at the moment, she’d be up off that bed and legging it for here at the rate of no man’s business.”

“Don’t you let her—don’t you dare to let her! Tell her I’m quite O.K.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, old lady, but it can’t be done. I’ve never yet been able to lie convincingly to Joey. She always sees through me.”

“Well, tell her all the same and I will be! I promise! I’ll clear every tray they bring me and I’ll be cheerful, too. Now then!”

“Sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Think I’m going to let Joey run any risks of messing herself up for my sake? What do you think I am? Do the girls know, by the way?”

“Not yet. Time enough for that when she looks a little less awful than she does at the moment. I don’t want them haring over the very day school begins, thank you!”

“I see. No; of course you couldn’t—Oh, here’s Nurse! Nurse, I know I’m an awful nuisance, but could I have a—a glass of milk, please?”

Nurse’s eyes widened though she said nothing. It wasn’t so long since she had had to remove an untouched supper-tray. Jack saw her, though Grizel didn’t and he took a hand.

“What about supper, Nurse? Has Miss Cochrane had hers yet?”

“No; I’ll go and fetch it,” Nurse said promptly. “There’s some delicious soup and a little custard pudding that I could eat myself.”

“Then she’d better get down to it. I’ve a few minutes in hand. If you’ll bring it along, I’ll stay here while she has it.”

Nurse went off and came back with the tray. Jack took it, sent her away and sat down to watch Grizel eat.

“Attagirl!” he said when both dishes were empty. “That’s something like! I’ll give Joey your message and mind you keep it up. Try to sleep, too. That’s almost best of all for you.”

“I’ll try.” But though she kept her word and did her best by whatever food they brought her, sleep was another affair. Next night, when she had owned to him that all she had had since Sunday was odd catnaps, Neil Sheppard took matters into his own hands. He gave her a sedative which brought her eight hours of quiet sleep and after that, things improved once more.

It was a full week before Grizel saw Joey again, for that young woman flatly refused to appear in public looking like a prize-fighter.

“People would start giving you a reputation as a wife-beater,” she calmly informed Jack. “You can ask Hilda to let the girls come along to see me, though, and I don’t mind any of that lot visiting me. But not another soul! It’s a mercy Mollie came back when she did. At least the house is in decent order. I wish she wasn’t going on Thursday. Still, the sooner it’s over, the sooner we’ll have her back. Isn’t it weird, Jack? Both my sisters-in-law are called Mollie and both have been enormously stout as the result of glands. Only, thank goodness, Maynie’s isn’t from goitre and there’s no op. to face for her.”

By this time the weather had slowly cleared up and on the Thursday morning in question, when Nurse had finished bed-bathing Grizel and had put her into a fresh nightdress, she produced a charming pink bedjacket.

“Oh, how dainty!” Grizel exclaimed. “Where did that come from?”

“Mdlle de Lachennais left it with me when she was here last night,” Nurse replied. “She said you were to wear it the first time we got you out on the balcony. That’s in a few minutes, so let’s put it on. It’ll be quite warm. She’s lined the nylon with a knitted angora lining—see!” She showed Grizel the lining of paler pink angora wool and then inducted her into the truly dainty thing. By the time it was on and the ribbons that fastened it tied in Nurse’s most stylish bows, Neil Sheppard had arrived, bringing with him the longed-for second pillow. He and Nurse raised Grizel’s head and slipped it in before he touched a spring that freed the rubber wheels, and very slowly and carefully they wheeled her out on to the balcony through the french windows.

There was still more to come. When they had settled her, he disappeared, to return wheeling a bed-table. When that was in position, he produced a reading-desk with suckers at the bottom and put it into just the right spot for her before feeling in one of his big pockets and producing a book.

“Only half-an-hour,” he said, smiling as he perched on the balustrade beside her while Nurse went off to another duty. “That’s Joey Maynard’s new book. Her advance copies came yesterday and she asked me to bring it to you. She’s coming along herself later in the morning, but she thought you’d like to have it at once.”

“Oh, I would—I do!” Grizel lifted the book to admire the attractive jacket. “None so Pretty! What an odd title! One of her historical novels, to judge by the girl on the jacket.”

He nodded. “About Quebec in the early years of the last century, she told me. She bestowed a copy on me, too, but strictly as a loan.” His eyes glowed suddenly, but he did not tell Grizel what Joey had said when she gave it to him.

“You can borrow this if you like. It shouldn’t be worthwhile giving you one!”

Grizel laughed as she opened it and turned to the dedication page. “Who’s she honoured this time? ‘To my Highland friends, Shiena, Fiona and Flora.’^[12] Those must be the three girls she had living with her during the war. Their home was on a little island—Erisay—in the Outer Hebrides, but the Government bagged it for something or other and the family had to turn out. Shiena was going into the W.R.N.S., anyhow—she’d been called up by that time—and the twins were sent to the Chalet School. Later on, Shiena was drafted out to Canada where she met her husband and when the girls finished school, they joined her in Quebec. Shiena’s still there, but I believe Fiona married someone in Winnipeg and Flora, I know, is living in Prince Edward Island. They were pretty creatures, all of them. Oh, how Highland they were when they first came to school! They’d got out of it mostly before they left, but it came back when they were excited about anything. Let’s see. The elder brother was Archie and I think he married, too, and went back to Erisay when the Government released it. There was a much younger brother—now what was he called? I can’t remember and anyhow, I never knew him. The twins, of course, I did know. Not that I taught them. Neither took music. Still, I came across them quite a good deal. And I met Shiena when she was on leave. I know they and Joey still correspond. She was very fond of them and the twins thought her the cat’s bathmat!”

He broke into laughter. “Talk of coincidence! I know Kenneth Macdonald and I’ve heard about his elder sister Shiena and the twins, too. It must be the same, for there couldn’t be two Macdonald families with just those names and all complete, down to twins! Kenneth’s in a big bank in New Zealand and doing very well. He’s married, too—to a New Zealand girl. Their boy was one of the last patients I attended before I finished with my practice there.”

Grizel laughed. “Oh, what fun! You must tell Joey; she’ll be thrilled! This is news!”

“What is?” Mollie Maynard had come through the little private ward and was standing at the window, beaming at them. “Hello, Grizel! This is a really good step forward. Don’t you look good in that pink jacket! Pink’s your colour, my child—not a doubt of it!”

“Jeanne made it for me. It is pretty, isn’t it? She does work beautifully. Oh, and look what Joey’s sent me!”

“The new book? She said she was giving you a copy. I’ve got one, too, to take away with me.”

“Take away with you? But—you aren’t going, I thought you were here for six months?”

“So I am—or even longer perhaps. All the same, I’ve come to say goodbye for the present. I’m off this afternoon.”

“You aren’t? Where are you going? And how long for?”

“To a Klinik in Germany where they’re going to treat me. When next you see me, I hope to be slim and sylphlike again.”

“Oh, have they found out what’s caused it?”

“Glands, my dear. So I’m going to this place for treatment. I’ll be there for three months, but when it’s over, I shall be slim and beautiful again—I hope! What’s more, as I refuse to be cheated out of my full holiday, I’ve written to tell Ken that I propose to stay here till after Christmas at least. I’d like a Christmas with Jack again. What I’m expecting,” she added with an irresistibly wicked grin, “is that he’ll come over here at a run to argue with me. Once he’s here, I’ll keep him here. He can quite well be spared. We have a good manager and Bobby coming on, too. And then when we really must get back, we’ll have a second honeymoon somewhere and fly back after that. Oh, and I nearly forgot! I’m hoping to coax Joey to come along with us. She can bring Cecil and the twins, and the rest are all at school, so they won’t matter.”

“It sounds most intriguing,” Grizel agreed, “but I’m not so sure that you’ll bring off that last part of it. The twins are growing out of babyhood and everyone tells me that, when that happens, Joey goes and has another baby. So I shouldn’t bet on it if I were you.”

“Another baby! Mercy on us! The girl’s got eleven now! How many more does she want?”

“Quads next time!” Joey herself stood below the balustrade, looking up at them with a broad grin and eyes alight with mischief. “It’s seven years since I threatened all concerned with quads and I haven’t brought it off yet. Better luck next time, I hope!”

“I always said you were mad,” her sister-in-law told her severely. “Poor old Jack! What he has to put up with!”

“Don’t you worry about Jack. He’s like me—likes a big family. Why not quads? Fifteen would be a nice round number and by the time the quads were trotting about, I’d probably have had enough of babies—though I can’t imagine it!—and I’d be all set for grandchildren!”

“Grandchildren? Joey Bettany—I mean Maynard—have you taken leave of your senses? Your triplets are only sixteen now.”

“That would make them twenty-one or two. Heaps of girls are brides at that age. What about your own Dollie? Move out of the way, Neil. I’m coming up.”

He rose with a startled air and moved to one side. Joey backed, took a running jump and hauled herself up to the balustrade.

“And that’s the girl who’s talking of her grandchildren! I give up!” Mollie Mackenzie said helplessly. “Really, Jo! At your age!”

Joey swung her legs over and squatted comfortably down on the broad shelf of the balustrade. “To hear you talk, anyone would think I was verging on fifty. Just you remember I was only twenty-one when my own triplets arrived. Besides, I haven’t let myself go. I do my daily dozen most religiously, and my family expects me to play tennis with them and to go climbing and swimming and all the rest of it. What’s more, they’d loathe it if I gave up and became all motherly and—and aged. The girls have often said how thankful they are that I’m not like that. I can play mother all right if I have to. Let it go. Grizel, you look a perfect vision this morning. Oh, and you’re lifted further up—one more pillow! That’s more like it! Neil, when can I have her back at Freudesheim?”

“Not yet,” he said with a smile at Grizel. “She’ll have to be on her feet before any of us will agree to that.”

Joey heaved a gusty sigh. “Doctors!” she said in a tone of loathing. “Once they get hold of you they keep you if they can. Never mind, Griselda; I’ll come along whenever I have a spare moment.”

“Yes; well, you come along over here now and let me look at that eye of yours,” Grizel ordered. “Jack told me he’d never seen a worse one.”

“Nothing to see—now. It’s not even bloodshot any more. I’ll admit I was enough to scare a horse from his oats for the first two or three days. However, that’s water under the bridge by this time.”

Grizel had been regarding her carefully. “Yes; I can see it’s been a bad one. There’s still some discolouration to be seen. You know, Joey, if you don’t take more care you won’t be alive when those grandchildren you were talking about come along.”

“Yes; and I want to know what all this means,” her sister-in-law chimed in. “Which of them is it—Margot? She seems to be the most grown-up of them.”

“She isn’t, you know. Oh, I’ll grant you she’s more sophisticated than the other two, but it’s very surface sophistication. Anyhow, so far as the girls are concerned, it isn’t any of them—yet.”

Her auditors stared at her, dumbfounded, and she condescended to explain.

“It isn’t her at all; it’s him—Reg Entwistle.”

“Young Dr Entwistle!” Grizel exclaimed.

Joey nodded. “He’s hinted to me once or twice that he finds our young Len more than attractive. Whether it’ll come to anything or not, I couldn’t tell you. Len isn’t seventeen yet and she’s far too occupied with school affairs to think about that sort of thing. She likes boys all right as chums, but as far as I know, she hasn’t begun to think of them in any other light. I don’t doubt it’ll come, but as yet she’s chiefly preoccupied with being a prefect and looking forward to Oxford and teaching. She really does want to do that, you know.”

“Then what are you talking about?” Mollie Mackenzie demanded.

“Well, don’t let anyone know I’ve told you, but last Sunday Reg and Jack had a talk. Reg, it seems, wanted to know if we’d mind if he spoke to her in a year or so’s time.”

“What did Jack say?” Mollie asked curiously.

“Told him that it would depend on Len herself. She certainly isn’t ready for anything of that kind at the moment. In a year or two, she very well might be. She’s fond of Reg, I know. She always has been since they were tinies of four and he was fourteen or thereabouts. Whether that’s a good enough foundation for anything as serious as marriage is more than I can say. It worked in our case. Jack and I were pals from the time I was thirteen. It might very well work out the same way with Len and Reg. However, Jack made him promise to say nothing to her until her schooldays ended. Besides, he ought to have more to offer her than he has at the moment—and I’m not referring to money. Reg’s old great-aunt left him all she had and it was a shock when we heard how much it was. He has quite a nice little private income apart from anything he may earn. And Len will have her share of Grannie Maynard’s legacy when she comes of age. So far as all that goes, it’s good enough. But they’re both too young. He’s not twenty-six and this is his first job. If he makes good in it and she cares enough, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t make a go of it later on. But she hasn’t met a lot of boys so far and she ought to before she comes to a final decision. Oh, Winifred Embury’s crowd and Roger and Roddy Richardson, of course, but they don’t count.”

“I don’t really know Dr Entwistle,” Grizel said thoughtfully. “What sort of a lad is he? Len’s a poppet and she ought to have the best.”

“Oh, he’s a dear fellow. We’re all fond of Reg. As a kid he used to be huffy and sulky at times, but Jack soon got him out of that. He’s honest and upright; very keen on his job and really ambitious to do well; and he’s kind-hearted. You ask Phoebe Peters. He was awfully good to her years ago before we met either of them. If it’s what Len really wants, I think he would probably make her very happy. But she must be old enough in mind to be absolutely certain that it is what she wants. She certainly isn’t now and we don’t want her to be hurried into it. If it is, though, neither Jack nor I will try to put a spoke in their wheel. Oh, well, nothing can come of it for at least two years to come. I shan’t worry about it until I must.” Then Joey changed the subject and for the rest of her visit, they discussed school affairs with a good many “Do you remembers”, most of which reduced Neil Sheppard to fits of laughter.

When they had gone, Nurse brought milk and biscuits and after that insisted on a rest. But though she was left alone, Grizel lay awake for a while. She was thinking a good deal about the girl she had grown to love so dearly and was wondering what the future would hold for her.

“I hope it will be real happiness and I do hope it won’t be delayed too long,” she thought before she finally closed her eyes. “Dear Len! But I must know Dr Entwistle thoroughly. I’ll ask—Joey—when I——”

She was asleep.

By the middle of June, Grizel was sitting upright again. The pain in her shoulders and arms had entirely disappeared. She should have been walking easily by this time. The plaster jacket was a thing of the past, but unfortunately the rest cure which Jack and Neil had agreed was so necessary was making walking difficult because of her long disused muscles.

“Shan’t I be able to walk properly soon?” she asked Jack after the first attempt left her trembling and tired.

“Yes,” he said. “You needn’t be afraid of that, Grizel; but it’s bound to take a little time. Remember, you’ve been in bed for weeks now and you’re weak still from that. A little patience, my dear. We’ll try again tomorrow. Your poor muscles are all flabby. We must give you a course of massage to buck them up. Cheer up, old lady! I promise you that by the end of the summer you’ll be running about all over the shop.”

She laughed and he left her feeling happier. At the same time, if her legs were weak and shaky, in other ways she had improved by leaps and bounds. She had already begun to regain her lost weight and, thanks to the long days spent on the balcony, her old colour had come back. Her hair was curling and waving and gleaming and she had lost her bitterness. Her laugh had its former ring, too. In short, as Jack told Joey, her mind was healed and physical recovery would not be long delayed.

He and Joey had been in England for a fortnight since the last week in May, and when Joey dashed along to see the patient the day after her return to the Platz, she had exclaimed delightedly at the improvement she saw.

“You’re not the same creature!” she informed Grizel. “Glorianna! What a change! And how pretty you are, Griselda! Neil Sheppard will see a slight alteration when he gets back, I can tell you!”

Whereat Grizel had blushed furiously and become deeply engrossed in the pattern of the matinee coat she was knitting for small Jean Courvoisier.

So far, Neil Sheppard had said nothing definite. He knew his Grizel by this time and he realized that, although they were growing closer every day, she was still not ready for him. He had gone off to England to wind up various business affairs before coming out to take his place as one of the staff at the Görnetz Sanatorium. He wrote regularly two or three times a week and Grizel knew that he was staying with Ian Hamilton in rooms at Hampstead.

“Ian has invested in a mo-bike,” he wrote on one occasion. “He slogs hard all the week, but at weekends, he’s off, scouring the countryside. He suggested I should go with him as pillion passenger, but I declined with thanks. The next thing was that he picked up a second-hand side-car and last weekend we spent touring the coast of Sussex. We fetched up at Rye on Saturday and put up at an ancient hostelry where they do you very well. We spent Sunday exploring Romney Marsh and I stayed on till Monday night and returned to London by train. Do you know it? I’m taking a chance that you don’t and sending you a couple of books about it that I picked up in a very good second-hand bookshop. Hope you enjoy them. I’d have liked to have you with me. You would have enjoyed it, I know.”

The books lay on the table at Grizel’s side, waiting until she had finished little Jean’s coat. The knitting was done and she was stitching up the seams. Nurse, bringing her coffee and biscuits in the middle of the morning, looked at it admiringly.

“It really is lovely—much too pretty for a mere boy!” she said, laughing. “Here’s your coffee, so you’d better put it aside until you’ve had it. Mustn’t risk any splashes on anything as dainty as that.”

Grizel laid it down on the books and took the little tray. “Mrs Maynard sent a note last night to tell me to prepare for a visitor this morning,” she said. “She didn’t say when, nor who and when I asked Dr Jack, he only chuckled and told me to wait and see. Aggravating object!”

Nurse laughed comfortably. “Oh, they’ll be here shortly, I expect,” she said. “Here’s someone coming, anyhow.”

It was Dr Entwistle who arrived to stand beside Grizel and ask how she felt today. Grizel had held to her determination to know him better and now they were quite good friends. She looked up with a smile at the very tall, dark young man who perched himself on the balustrade. Reg Entwistle was a pleasant-looking fellow with a delightful smile and twinkling dark eyes. With Len in her mind, Grizel had watched him keenly and had decided that, on the whole, he was quite satisfactory.

“Back O.K.?” he asked, smiling at her. “Good! You’re something like a patient! No; I’m not staying. Just looked in to tell you I’ll be along later for a little more walking practice. Oh, of course you must,” as Grizel gave him a protesting look. “It’s the only way to get your muscles back into trim.”

Grizel sighed. “Oh, I know; but it’s an awful trial. Still, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life sitting round. I want to get on to my feet again and say goodbye to hospital life.”

“How ungrateful!” Nurse laughed, picking up the tray. “Here come your visitors, Miss Cochrane. Don’t talk too much and overtire yourself, will you?”

“Yoo-hoo-oo!” Joey’s call confirmed Nurse’s statement and Grizel turned her head very carefully.

Joey was swinging along with her usual free grace and beside her was someone at sight of whom Grizel gave a cry of delight.

“Mary-Lou! This is a surprise! I thought you weren’t coming till the end of the month.”

Mary-Lou smiled and waved. “I know. But—well, things have been rushed on rather, so here I am.” She scrambled up on to the balcony, followed by Joey. “I say! You look pounds better than I expected. What a gorgeous colour! When are they letting you out?”

“You talk as if I were a convict on ticket-of-leave,” Grizel said severely after they had kissed. “Hello, Joey! I forgive you.”

“What for?” Joey demanded. “I’ve done nothing.”

“And please forgive me, but I’m going,” Reg put in. “See you later, Miss Cochrane. ’Bye, everyone.” And he departed. Nurse had already gone.

“Here you are, Mary-Lou.” Joey handed her one of the garden-chairs Nurse had left at the other end of the balcony. “Now we’ll hear all the hanes!”

“Yes; tell me everything!” Grizel commanded. “Is Verity here? But how on earth can you manage it with the wedding so near?”

“Wedding’s over and done with,” Mary-Lou said. “It was last week. Verity’s been Mrs Trevor for a week now. Alan had to take his holiday a fortnight sooner than he expected so that meant hurrying everything up. You knew Auntie and Uncle were in England, didn’t you?”

“Yes; but I thought it was just business connected with the San over there.”

“Just the annual meeting,” Joey said. “We went a little earlier to give a hand with the wedding and so that Jack could give young Verity away. He did it very nicely, all things considered. Of course, he’s had practice. He gave Daisy away when she married Laurie Rosomon. By the way, Griselda, hurry up and get walking. Daisy’s all settled in at Ste Cecilie and wants you to go and visit them. She’s dying to show off her family. Oh, and here’s news for both of you—only heard this morning when Daisy rang up. Primula’s engaged! A budding solicitor! He’s in partnership with his father—twenty-nine, so he’s five years older than she is and a very nice difference, too.”

“Primula engaged! Then that,” said Grizel with a chuckle, “will mean more practice for Jack—or will Sir Jem do the giving away?”

“Probably. They won’t be married for a year because they’ve got to redecorate and furnish their house. Oh, yes; they’ve a house already. It belongs to Nick Garden’s father—his name’s Nicholas Garden, by the way—and as it’s empty at the moment, he’s giving it to them for a wedding present, so Daisy says. Mrs Garden is furnishing the drawing-room and Daisy and Laurie will give them a canteen of cutlery——”

“Then I’ll see to the kitchen,” Grizel said decidedly. “It’s an expensive business, furnishing a kitchen these days. I’ll see to Primula’s kitchen.”

Mary-Lou leaned forward. “And I’ll do them a bedroom. Prim can come and choose what she wants out of the furniture we have—goodness knows there’s far more than ever I can use and Verity has all her granny-people’s and that’s enough to furnish two houses the size of hers. My dears, there are three dinner services, one of them a double one, if you please! All in Royal Worcester—so useful for every day! The other two were Crown Derby and Minton. I gave her a modern set in fire-proof which will be useful.”

“Eureka!” Jo clapped her hands. “The girls can do likewise for Prim! I know they’ll want to give her something and come to me for ideas. That would be excellent. And the boys and the babies can weigh in with household linen. You can never have too much of that, as I know from experience.”

“Considering all the beds you have to supply, I should imagine you would,” Grizel told her.

“I gave Verity linen, too,” Mary-Lou remarked. “A lot of hers was on the aged side so I gave her six sets of everything. She was thrilled.”

“And there are Mollie and Dick to be heard from and all their crowd,” Joey put in. “And of course Madge and Jem will want to give her something really decent. They gave Daisy and Laurie their silver, but Daisy’s attending to that, so they’ll have to dream up something else. Oh, at this rate, we’ll have Primula very nicely furnished before the year’s up.”

“Where will they live?” Mary-Lou asked.

“In Devonshire. Did you ever see a little country town called Etherleigh?”

Mary-Lou shook her head. “Don’t forget that I was only a kid when we left Cornwall. I think I’ve heard of it—the name seems to ring a bell—but I know I’ve never been there. Where is it—on the coast?”

“No; more or less in the heart of the country,” Grizel said. “It’s about fifteen miles from Taverton—my old home. Joey, don’t you remember?”

“Vaguely; but, like Mary-Lou, I was just a kid when we left Taverton.”

“I think I’ve seen Taverton,” Mary-Lou said while Grizel sat watching her thoughtfully. “There are mines somewhere near, aren’t there?”

Page 204

Joey came to a dead stop and grinned, “Oh ho, sits the wind in that quarter? When does the wedding take place?”

“The tin mines—yes. At least there’s the Corah mine. Not that it’s anything very big. When we sold our old house before we went to Tirol, the company bought it as a permanent house for their managers. Actually, the mine is about six miles away and the miners and their families lived in a village much nearer than Taverton. We didn’t see much of them, I know.”

While Joey and Mary-Lou were talking, Grizel was still considering Mary-Lou. She didn’t like what she saw. The girl was much thinner and though her cheeks were pink enough at the moment, when she was not animated she looked very pale and there were shadows under her eyes.

“She’s bottling things up,” Grizel thought. “It’s bad for her—I should know that. She’ll have to let go sooner or later or she’ll end by cracking up altogether. She looks as if she were on the verge of it now, poor kid!” Then she woke up to the fact that Joey was addressing her.

“Grizel Cochrane! Will you stop dreaming and listen to me! Rude isn’t the word for you! If you’re tired of us say so and we’ll depart. If not, wake up!”

“Oh, sorry!” Grizel said, reddening. “I was—thinking.”

“You looked like it. You were miles away. What I was saying is that Mary-Lou will be with us until September. That being the case, what about you coming back to us at Freudesheim?

“Oh, Joey, I’d love it; but will they let me?”

“We can ask, can’t we? We’ve all got tongues in our heads. I’ll tell you what I’m planning,” Joey went on more quietly. “You know that lift affair we have at Freudesheim? We’ve never used it, first because Jack wasn’t sure how safe it was and with boys like our youngsters around, it seemed safer to keep it locked and risk no wild experiments—you know what Mike is! Second, I refused flatly to let Anna use the drying-room, even with the lift to cart the baskets up and down. In bad weather the drying’s done in that annexe place behind the kitchen. But we’ve had the electricians up to overhaul it and it’s quite safe now. The boys are away most of the year and in any case, Steve is quite responsible and he’ll see to it that Mike and Felix don’t play any monkey tricks with it. Now here are my ideas. You’ll sleep in your own room, but we needn’t bother about the stairs because you’ll use the lift. During the daytime, you’ll be out when it’s possible, of course. If you have to be indoors, you’ll use my study when you want to be alone. I’ve got my last M.S. off and I’m not starting anything more until after the holidays, by which time you’ll be fit again. If I have Mary-Lou at hand, I can manage beautifully, babies or not. How about it?”

Grizel’s eyes glowed. “What a gorgeous idea! Oh, it isn’t that I’m ungrateful. They’ve been awfully good to me here and in some ways I’ve been very happy. But to be living in a real home again—oh, Joey I’d love it! But don’t forget,” she added, “that as soon as I’m well I simply must go and settle up all the business.”

“That can wait until the autumn. Even flying can be very tiring and though you will be all right, you’ll need to take care for a while.”

“That’s true enough,” Mary-Lou said. “I know what I was like after my accident and I didn’t do anything like the damage you’ve done. Mine was only bruises—oh, bad ones, of course, but still bruises. All the same, for more than a year after if I overdid things or strained myself, my back used to ache madly. Matey used to bung me off to bed, but I suppose no one can exactly treat you that way.” Mary-Lou suddenly grinned and the sadness left her face.

“Don’t you believe it!” Grizel retorted. “Joey could; and if Matey took a hand, believe me, I’d go like a lamb. We all love her dearly, but she does know how to—to—well, to make herself felt.”

“How right you are!” Joey murmured. “Didn’t you see me go meekly to pay my fine into the box when I upset my lemonade over the cloth that first day?”

Her auditors both giggled. Mary-Lou had not seen it, but she had heard about it.

Mary-Lou turned to Grizel. “Do say you’ll come if the doctors agree,” she pleaded. “I’d love to help with you, Grizel, as long as you needed it. Honestly, I would. I do feel so lost sometimes, with no one to look after!”

Grizel made up her mind. “If the doctors will agree, then—yes,” she said. “I’ve had enough of institutional nursing and care. They’re all dears here, but oh, I’d love to be back at Freudesheim!”

“Then that’s settled!” Joey said, getting briskly to her feet. “And now, Mary-Lou, we have three miles to walk so we’d better be on our way. Oh, before I forget, here’s a letter for you from New Zealand, Grizel. It came this morning, so I brought it along. Nearly forgot to give it to you.”

“Hang on a minute, then, until I open it and see what news there is,” Grizel said, picking up a spare knitting-needle and slitting the envelope. “Not an awful lot, I must say. Oh! Oh! Oh, how simply marvellous! Oh, I am glad! How too wonderful for words!” She glanced up. “Listen to this, you two. It’s from Deira. I’ll read you the important bit. Where—oh, here! Listen!” And, with a voice thrilled with excitement, she read, “ ‘And now you must be the very first after ourselves to hear the news. Grizel, I’m going to have a baby. In January, they think. You don’t know how happy I am. I’ve wished, even with Tony and all his goodness to me, that my precious little Moira could have lived to share it all with me. But I do know that’s selfishness on my part. It’s better for her as it is. She could never have been strong and well and she suffered so at times, poor pet! But now there’s to be this new child for me. It will never take Moira’s place. That’s hers and always will be. But it will have its own. Grizel, it’s the only thing I wanted to make me as perfectly happy as anyone can be in this world. And Tony is thrilled about it, too. How I wish you were here to share it all! You must come back as soon as you can—perhaps for Christmas? Anyhow, do write to me soon.’ And that’s about all,” she said, folding up the sheets. “But isn’t it wonderful? Oh, I’m so glad for Deira!”

Joey glanced at her. Her eyes were very soft, but all she said was, “So am I. And there seems every chance that this baby will be born strong and healthy.” To herself she thought, “Whatever was between Grizel and Tony Merton, it’s completely finished with now. I shall tell Neil Sheppard to go ahead as soon as he likes. Grizel is ready for him. Oh, thank God! Thank God!”

“Oh, it’s marvellous to be walking properly again!” Grizel, moving carefully, crossed the salon at Freudesheim and sank down in a chair by the open french window with a deep sigh of satisfaction. “It’s equally marvellous to be back here again after all these months. No thank you, Mary-Lou; I don’t want any more cushions. I’m quite comfy as I am. I refuse to be an invalid any longer. Don’t forget that before long I simply must go to England and see to Steppy’s and my father’s affairs, so the sooner you all give me a chance to become completely independent, the better for all of us! There’s only one thing I feel like at the moment, and that’s a cup of tea. I could do with that!”

Joey laughed. “Oh, all right, Independence! You shall have your tea. I left the trolley all ready before we came to fetch you. Anna and Rösli have the infants out for a picnic, so you go and plug the kettle in, Mary-Lou, will you? We’re on our own at the moment. They won’t be back till bedtime.”

Mary-Lou, with the pink back in her cheeks, the shadows gone from under her eyes and the strained look vanished from her face, nodded and scurried off to the kitchen. She was still graver than Mary-Lou of old used to be, but she was much more like her old self. Grizel noticed it and she looked at Joey who had established herself on a humpty nearby.

“What have you done to Mary-Lou?” she asked.

“Made her cry,” Joey said quietly. “It happened one evening last week when we two were alone in the house. We were in the rose-garden actually. I don’t know what came over me, but I began remembering aloud how Doris had loved it when she was with us last year. That did it. Mary-Lou jumped up and cried, ‘Stop—stop!’ The next moment, she was on her knees at my side, her head buried in my lap, and crying her heart out.”

“Poor kid!” Grizel said involuntarily.

“Not in the least. When the storm was over—which wasn’t for quite a while—she hugged me and said she felt lots better. I shot her off to bed and when I went up later, she was sound asleep. Next morning, she was more or less as you see her now. She’s still much too serious, but her fun will come back by degrees. Quite time, too! Do you know that except for the first hour or two that girl had never allowed herself to cry, no matter how bad she felt? It’s three months since Doris died and she’s kept all her grief bottled up inside her the whole time. No one can go on like that indefinitely, but none of us could break through. I did it quite by accident—I wasn’t thinking at all when I began to talk. Anyhow, Jack’s satisfied about her now. He told me that he had been getting thoroughly worried—I was myself for that matter.”

“I was feeling uneasy, too,” Grizel agreed. “She didn’t look like herself in the least and—oh, well——”

The sound of the trolley put a stop to the talk and Grizel was thankful. She was not in the least sure just how to explain herself. As for Joey, she was thinking what a change there was in her old friend. The Grizel of earlier days would scarcely have concerned herself about someone else like that, nor would she have noticed, in all probability, the girl’s looks.

“Whatever else all her troubles have done, they’ve made her much nicer,” Joey thought as she got up to open the door.

Mary-Lou pushed the trolley in and wheeled it across the room and out of the window on to the wide step which led down to the terrace. “The kettle’s nearly boiling but I thought tea under the walnut would be rather an idea. Give me a hand with this, Joey, please. I don’t want to spill everything off it on to the ground.”

“You dare—some of my prettiest china!” Joey exclaimed, springing to the rescue and helping to lift the laden trolley down. “The walnut? Well, that’s O.K. At least we shan’t be bothered by the flies.”

“And the swing hammock’s there already,” Mary-Lou supplemented. “Come on, folks! You settle yourselves and I’ll go and fetch the teapot and hot-water jug.”

Grizel laughed and went slowly along to the selected spot, pausing on the way to admire the rose-garden which was sunk right down so that it was well sheltered from wind. Trees and bushes round three sides gave shade from the sun and in the centre bed, an antique fountain Jack had unearthed in a junk-shop sent up a slender spray of water.

“And this was once a cabbage patch?” she asked Joey while Mary-Lou dashed back to the kitchen. “It seems unbelievable.”

“Cabbages it was, though,” Joey said, laughing. “We rooted those out in short order, I may tell you, and for the first year or two, it was simply lawn. Then Jack had it all dug out as you see it. He had lorry-loads of good soil brought along and—well, now you behold the result.”

“Worth it all the time!” Grizel pronounced as she came to drop into one corner of the hammock and submitted to having cushions tucked in at her back. “It really is lovely, Joey. Of course, when I was here before, it wasn’t anything like this. The roses were all packed up in straw and sacking and the fountain wasn’t playing. And there weren’t any pansies. I do like the way they seem to carpet the ground under the roses!”

“That was me. I insisted on having heartsease in my own rose-garden,” Joey said. “We grew our own seedlings from seed and I spent days planting the seedlings out when they were ready. Anna helped and so did Beth Chester who was with us then to help with the kids. Beth? Oh, she’s married and has a daughter who’s—what—four this year, I believe. There are so many of these grandchildren of the school’s that I can’t keep track of all their ages.”

Mary-Lou arrived at this point, bearing the big, pot-bellied teapot and hot-water jug. “Here we are! I made sure the kettle was boiling madly before I made the tea, so it ought to be all right,” she proclaimed, setting down her burden and then sprawling comfortably if inelegantly in the garden-chair Joey had pulled up for her.

Joey chuckled. “Glad to hear it! After sampling what you can do when you’re in a hurry——”

“Not fair! It was Jack’s own fault!” Mary-Lou cried. “He rushed me till I didn’t know if I was rightside up or not. The kettle was steaming and I thought it was boiling. I nearly had a fit when I saw the leaves floating round the cup!”

Joey chuckled again as she poured out. “He heard all about it from me. But he really was in a hurry, Mary-Lou. Here you are, Griselda. Wrap yourself round that. What will you have—bread-and-butter, twists, cakes? Help yourself! Mary-Lou—and here’s mine. Now isn’t this nice?”

“Very nice; it’s home,” Grizel sighed as she helped herself to a twist.

“I should hope so. But after this, my honey-bun, you’re going upstairs to lie down for an hour. Oh, yes, you are! You’ve done far more than you’ve done for ages and you can’t afford to overdo. ‘A fast in Lent, my dear—a fast in Lent’.”

They all giggled at this, a reminiscence of one of Mary-Lou’s own howlers when she was a junior middle at the school and, faced with a column of well-known Latin expressions, had produced the phrase as a construe of festina lente.

“Pig!” she said to Joey. “I’ll bet you produced as many howlers as anyone in your time.” Then she changed the subject. “What a send-off you had, Grizel! Talk of V.I.P.s! If you’d been the Queen of Sheba they couldn’t have made more fuss. I’ve shoved your flowers into water, by the way. After you’ve had your rest, you can arrange them in vases, but they won’t hurt for the present.” She glanced at Joey and the old mischief lit up her eyes. “Have you honestly not told Dr Sheppard that Grizel has come home, Joey? He’ll get a shock when he comes back to the San and goes looking for her!”

Joey grinned. “He’s not due here until the day after tomorrow. I thought that would give you time to settle in comfortably, Grizel. In fact,” she added, “not a soul outside the San and ourselves knows, and I made the people at San swear not to give us away. I’m giving a welcome home party on Sunday and we’ll spring it on them then. Grizel, I do like that pink frock of yours! It suits you down to the ground. You know,” she went on chattily, “that accident has really done you good. You look years and years younger to start off with. What’s more, you’ve had a thorough rest, mind and body. When you do go to England, you’ll just skim through the business and then, when it’s all finished, you’ll come straight back here and settle down on the Görnetz Platz for the rest of your life.”

“Shall I?” There was mischief in Grizel’s eyes now. “I thought you and Jack had planned to go back to England when the first ten years were up.”

“That was at the beginning. Now—well, now we seem to be settled here. Oh, I don’t say we mayn’t decide to go back when Jack retires and the family is all grown-up and out in the world. That lies in the far future, however, so we won’t worry about it until it comes.”

Grizel laughed. “Somehow, I don’t see Jack ever retiring. Still, this is a lovely place to live in. Oh, by the way, Joey, is there any mail for me?”

“No; but I’ve had a letter from Corney. There hasn’t been time to tell you, but you’ll be interested to hear, Mary-Lou, that our picturesque Yseult is well and truly married. Corney enclosed a whole bunch of snaps of the wedding, including two of her new abode—Yseult’s, idiot! At the moment, she’s honeymooning at Niagara. Corney says she’s bringing the official photos when she comes to bring Ronnie and Val back to school in September—she thinks it’ll be safer.”

Mary-Lou giggled. “I simply can’t imagine Yseult married! She was so frightfully picturesque!”

“It’s true all right, though. What’s more, she isn’t picturesque any longer—merely très, très chic, as Jeanne de Lachennais would say. Oh, and Evvy will be coming then to bring her step-daughters and she’s coming here to stay, so mind you’re back at Freudesheim by that time, Grizel, and we’ll have another little reunion.”

“That must depend on whether I can get through in the time. But I’d love to see Corney and Evvy again.”

“I’m going back with you when you do go,” Mary-Lou said thoughtfully. “I’ve a good deal to see to at Carn Beg, and I want a week or two here before I go back to Oxford. We might be able to arrange so that we could come back together.”

“I’d like that. No, Joey; I couldn’t eat another bite, but I’d like one more cup of tea if there is any.”

“I’ll squeeze the pot,” Joey said, amiably proceeding to do so. “There you are. Mary-Lou, I think I could manage just one more cup for you.”

Mary-Lou shook her head. “Thanks, but I couldn’t. Have it yourself.”

“Well, I will. I can’t abide waste!”

However, she never got it. At that moment, a shadow fell across Grizel and Neil Sheppard’s voice remarked, “You’re here, then!”

“Neil!” It came from Grizel and at what she saw in her friend’s face, Joey sprang to her feet.

“Sorry you’re too late, but I’ll go and make fresh tea. In fact, I’ll bring you a tray. We’ve rather denuded this lot. Come on, Mary-Lou! Grab those plates and fetch them along. Grizel can entertain Neil until we come back. Sit down, Neil. Shan’t be a minute! Come on, Mary-Lou!”

She seized the trolley and propelled it as fast as she could to the house, Mary-Lou following with the empty cake-plates and a stunned look on her face.

“What’s the why of all this?” she demanded when she and Joey were safely in the kitchen.

“Use your eyes and your common sense! You come and help me. When we’ve finished, we’ll take Corney’s letter and the snaps on to the front lawn. Those two won’t want us for ages!”

Mary-Lou gasped. Then she suddenly went off into giggles as she had not done for many a long day. Joey merely set to work to wash up, but her eyes were dancing and her usually pale face was pink with excitement.

Meanwhile, Neil Sheppard had sat down beside Grizel, who felt suddenly breathless and shy. Gently he put a hand under her chin and tilted her face to his.

“Is it ‘Yes’ Grizel?” he asked quietly.

She glanced up and what he saw in her eyes gave him his answer.

“Jack’s going to have a little more practice in giving brides away this summer,” he said when at last they could think of more mundane things.

“How—what do you mean?” Grizel stammered. “I—we must wait till I’m absolutely fit, Neil.”

“Wait nothing! You can walk now and that’s all that’s necessary.”

“But—but—there’s all Steppy’s business.”

He silenced her firmly and for a minute or two no more was said. Then he replied, “You’re not going to England to be away for weeks on end from me. I’m coming with you and we’ll make those solicitor chaps get a move on. Then, when everything’s in train, we’ll summon everyone and have a nice little wedding in England before we wind up the loose ends. When that’s done, we’ll come back here to take over the chalet I’ve just nailed and settle down as an old married couple.”

Grizel was scarlet, but the eyes she lifted to his were brimful of happiness. “Am I to have no say in the matter?”

“None at all. There’s no need to wait, my darling. We’ve been two lonely people, but now we’ve found each other. Let’s be lonely no longer.” His voice deepened. “I want the right to take care of you, beloved.”

“Oh, Neil!” And with that, Grizel surrendered.

It was an hour later when Joey, having decided that the pair had had plenty of time, came tramping round the house, whistling like an intoxicated blackbird. Neil’s arm was still round Grizel and on her left hand flashed a ring she had not owned before. Joey came to a dead stop and grinned.

“Oh-ho! Sits the wind in that quarter? When does the wedding take place?”

“Oh, Joey! You—you——” Grizel was suddenly in Joey’s arms.

“Bags me,” said Mary-Lou later on, “to be the one to tell the school.”

Joey looked at her. “Go ahead!” was all she said however.

Clad in her going-away kit, Grizel stood in one of the bedrooms at Carn Beg alone with Joey. The bridesmaids, marshalled by Mary-Lou, had gone flying downstairs to get good places for throwing rose-petals and confetti at the happy pair. The bride picked up her bag and gloves. Then she turned to the faithful friend who had stood by her all these years.

“Joey, I’ve owed you a lot, one way and another, most of my life; but my biggest debt is to the house-party you planned and carried out. If it hadn’t been for that and all that came out of it, I might never have known what real happiness is. Thank you, more than I can say.”

“Phooey!” Joey retorted. “Neil had made up his mind long before the house-party. Oh, I don’t say all that affair with the accident didn’t give things a shove on; but it would have happened sooner or later. I know!”

“Yes; but oh, how glad I am that it’s sooner!”

“Jack and I are very glad, too,” Joey replied, her voice changing. “And Grizel, believe me this happiness is going to last and deepen. I know what it is myself. Some day—and not so long either, I hope—you’ll agree with me.” She flung out her hand towards the window through which the sun was streaming in. “You’ve walked long enough in the shadows. Now you’re going to walk along sunlit ways.”

Grizel made no spoken reply, but her kiss was enough for Joey.

They were interrupted by calls for the bride and Mollie Mackenzie, not exactly sylphlike even now, but decidedly slimmer than she had been, came bursting into the room to announce that if Grizel did not come at once, they would miss the plane for Ireland.

The bride caught up her bag and gloves which she had dropped for that last embrace and then, running gaily, Grizel Sheppard went downstairs to the hall for the goodbyes. Finally, her hand caught in Neil’s, she took to her heels and, in the mid-September sunshine, raced down the path under a perfect hail of confetti and, amid shouts of good wishes, out into the car waiting at the gate and then away into the sunshine of her new life and the future that stretched so brightly before her.

[End of The Chalet School Reunion, by Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer]