The five had always known that Father thought boys and girls should share alike where education was concerned. Joey was to have her chance at a big public school as well as Gavin and Ronnie, and Kirsty was to follow when she was old enough, as surely as little Bingo. But before Gavin had been two years at the preparatory, from which he was out to win an Eton or Winchester scholarship, the news came to the pretty house in Hertfordshire—a house which always seemed to strangers so bewilderingly full of children, dogs and cats—that Major Graham had fallen wounded into the hands of the Huns, during our last retreat in the anxious spring of 1918, and had succumbed to the brutalities of a prison camp in the land of Kultur. His private means had been sunk in an Austrian oil-mine, and were gone beyond recall; he had insured his life, and Mums was left to bring up five healthy, hungry children on the insurance money and her pension—somehow.
Father owned a little square-built stone cottage in a tiny Highland village, four miles north of Crumach. Living was comparatively cheap at Calgarloch, and they had spent the last glorious leave there all together. Mums and the family moved north, and in the rent-free cottage held a council of war to review their resources. Joey could see that picture now; Mums, very slight and fragile-looking in her widow's weeds, and the family sprawling about her, all long of leg and outgrown as to clothes, but fiercely in readiness to fight any notion on Mums' part that she might have managed for them better.
It was then Mums had explained that however economically the family lived in Calgarloch it was only possible that one child could be kept at school at a time. If—Mums stopped herself and substituted "when"—Gavin won his scholarship, Joey could go to school. Ronnie would have to wait until she left; Ronnie was nearly three years younger, so waiting would be possible. Until Gavin fought his way out into a public school the rest of the family must be content with the village school.
"I'll get that scholarship, Mums," Gavin had promised, growing hot and red; and he had kept his word. The name of Gavin Graham had headed the list of Winchester scholars at the end of last term; and Joey's chance had come.
By that time the four younger Grahams had grown used to going daily to the little village school, where the pupils at most numbered fifteen, and the master taught "the Latin" with a strong Doric accent and an absolute enthusiastic love of all learning, which could not help communicating itself to the boys and girls in his care. He taught the secular subjects untiringly, and the minister, Mr. Craigie, poured the "Shorter Catechism," and much else, into the children twice a week so sternly, that it was at first quite a surprise to the Grahams to find him the best of comrades and friends out of school.
It was during a thrilling expedition to the loch for fishing—Shorter Catechism not so much as mentioned—that Joey confided in him to the extent of asking if thirteen and tall for one's age might stand a chance as a pupil teacher at "a proper girls' school." "For if I didn't cost anything, Ronnie could go, and he's over ten now, and would be fearfully old by the time I'm seventeen," she explained. "I suppose I could teach the small kids like Kirsty, and I could always punch their heads if they ragged in class."
Joey never could think why Mr. Craigie should laugh so helplessly at this suggestion; but he was very kind all the same, and said that he would see what he could do. What he did was to talk things over with the schoolmaster, and then to write a letter to:
Miss Jean Craigie,
Redlands College,
Lincolnshire.