“Really, my dear Hester, I think you are a little mad. How long have you known all this about me, pray?”
“Oh, for some time since—since the night the essay was changed.”
“Ah, then, if what you stale is true, you told Mrs Willis a lie, for she distinctly asked you if you knew anything about the ‘Muddy Stream,’ and you said you didn’t. I saw you—I remarked how very red you got when you plumped out that great lie! My dear, if I am the meanest and wickedest girl in the school, prove it—go, tell Mrs Willis what you know. Now, if you will allow me, I will get back into the land of dreams.”
Susan curled herself up once more in her bed, wrapped the bedclothes tightly round her, and was to all appearance oblivious of Hester’s presence.
Chapter Forty Four.
Under The Hedge.
It is one thing to talk of the delights of sleeping under a hedge-row and another to realise them. A hayfield is a very charming place, but in the middle of the night, with the dew clinging to everything, it is apt to prove but a chilly bed; the most familiar objects put on strange and unreal forms, the most familiar sounds become loud and alarming. Annie slept for about an hour soundly; then she awoke, trembling with cold in every limb, startled and almost terrified by the oppressive loneliness of the night, sure that the insect life which surrounded her, and which would keep up successions of chirps, and croaks, and buzzes, was something mysterious and terrifying. Annie was a brave child, but even brave little girls may be allowed to possess nerves under her present conditions, and when a spider ran across her face she started up with a scream of terror. At this moment she almost regretted the close and dirty lodgings which she might have obtained for a few pence at Oakley. The hay in the field which she had selected was partly cut and partly standing. The cut portion had been piled up into little cocks and hillocks, and these, with the night shadows round them, appeared to the frightened child to assume large and half-human proportions. She found she could not sleep any longer. She wrapped her shawl tightly round her, and, crouching into the hedge-row, waited for the dawn.
That watched-for dawn seemed to the tired child as if it would never come; but at last her solitary vigil came to an end, the cold grew greater, a little gentle breeze stirred the uncut grass, and up in the sky overhead the stars became fainter and the atmosphere clearer. Then came a little faint flush of pink, then a brighter light, and then all in a moment the birds burst into a perfect jubilee of song, the insects talked and chirped and buzzed in new tones, the hay-cocks became simply hay-cocks, the dew sparkled on the wet grass, the sun had risen, and the new day had begun.