"A Beauchamp gown.… Do you know," said Corona gravely, "it's a most 'stonishing thing I never thought of it, because— I'll tell you why. When I first came to St. Hospital often and often I couldn't get to sleep for thinking how happy I was. Daddy got worried about it, and told me it was a good cure to lie still and fancy I saw a flock of sheep jumping one after another through a hedge.… Well, that didn't answer—at least, not ezactly; for you see I wanted to be coaxed off, and I never took any partic'lar truck in sheep. But one night—you know that big stone by the gate of the home-park? the one Uncle Copas calls the Hepping-stone, and says the great Cardinal used to climb on to his horse from it when he went hunting?" (Nurse Branscome nodded.) "Well, one night I closed my eyes, and there I saw all the old folks here turned into children, and all out and around the Hepping-stone, playing leap-frog.… The way they went over each other's backs! It beat the band.… Some were in Beauchamp gowns and others in Blanchminster—but all children, you understand? Each child finished up by leap-frogging over the stone; and when he'd done that he'd run away and be lost among the trees. I wanted to follow, but somehow I had to stand there counting.… And that's all there is to it," concluded Corona, "'cept that I'd found the way to go to sleep."
Nurse Branscome laughed, and suggested that no time should be lost in going off to call on Mr. Colling, the tailor, and begging or borrowing a scrap of the claret-coloured Beauchamp cloth. Within ten minutes—for she understood the impatience of children—they had started on this small expedition. They found in Mr. Colling a most human tailor. He not only gave them a square yard of cloth, unsoiled and indeed brand-new, but advised Nurse Branscome learnedly on the cutting-out. There were certain peculiarities of cut in a Beauchamp gown: it was (he could tell them) a unique garment in its way, and he the sole repository of its technical secret. On their way back Corona summarised him as "a truly Christian tradesman."
So the miniature gown was cut out, shaped, and sewn, after the unsuspecting Timothy had been measured for it on a pretence of Corona's that she wanted to discover how much he had grown during his rest-cure. (For I regret to say that, as one subterfuge leads to another, she had by this time descended to feigning a nervous breakdown for him, due to his outgrowing his strength.) Best of all, and when the gown was finished, Nurse Branscome produced from her workbox a lucky threepenny-bit, and sewed it upon the breast to simulate a Beauchamp rose.
When Corona's own garments arrived—when they were indued and she stood up in them, a Greycoat at length from head to heel—to hide her own feelings she had to invent another breakdown (emotional this time) for Timothy as she dangled the gown in front of him.
"Be a man, Timmy!" she exhorted him.
Having clothed him and clasped him to her breast, she turned to Nurse Branscome, who had been permitted, as indeed she deserved, to witness the coup de théâtre.
"If you don't mind, Branny, I think we'll go off somewhere— by ourselves."
She carried the doll off to the one unkempt corner of Mr. Battershall's garden, where in the shadow of a stone dovecot, ruinated and long disused, a rustic bench stood deep in nettles. On this she perched herself, and sat with legs dangling while she discoursed with Timothy of their new promotion.
"Of course," she said, "you have the best of it. Men always have." Nevertheless, she would have him know that to be a Greycoat was good enough for most people. She described the schoolroom. "It's something like a chapel," she said, "and something like a long whitewashed bird-cage, with great beams for perches. You could eat your dinner off the floor most days; and Miss Champernowne has the dearest little mole on the left side of her upper lip, with three white hairs in it. When she looks at you over her glasses it's like a bird getting ready to drink; and when she plays 'Another day is done' on the harmonium and pitches the note, it's just the way a bird lifts his throat to let the water trickle down inside. She has the loveliest way of putting things, too. Only yesterday, speaking of China, she told us that words would fail her to describe one-half the wonders of that enchanted land.… After that there's going to be no rest for me until I've seen China for myself. Such a nice lot of children as they are, if it weren't for Marty Jewell. She sits next to me and copies my sums, and when I remind her of it she puts out her tongue; but she has a sister in the infant class at the end of the room with the same trick, so I s'pose it runs in the family.… I'm forgetting, though," she ran on. "You're Brother Timothy now, a Beauchamp Brother, and the Lord knows how I'm to make you sensible of it! I heard Brother Clerihew taking a party around yesterday, and played around close to hear what he had to tell about the place. All he said was that if these old walls could speak what a tale might they not unfold? And then a lady turned round and supposed that the child (meaning me) was following them on the chance of a copper. So I came away.… I've my belief," announced Corona, "Brother Clerihew was speaking through his hat. There's nobody but Uncle Copas knows anything about this place—him and the Lord Almighty; and as the chief engineer told me aboard the Carnatic, when I kept asking him how soon we should get to England, He won't split under a quart. The trouble is, Uncle Copas won't lay up for visitors. Manby, at the lodge, says he's too proud.… But maybe he'll take me round some day if I ask him nicely, and then you can come on my arm and pretend you're not listening.… No," announced Corona, after musing awhile, "that would be deception. I'll have to go to him and make a clean breast of it."
It occurred to her that Brother Manby was a friend of hers. He didn't know much, to be sure; but he was capable of entering into a joke and introducing Timothy to the Wayfarers' Dole. She tucked the doll under her arm and wended towards the porter's lodge, where, as it happened, she met Brother Copas coming through the gateway in talk with the Chaplain.