"Like dear boys, do go out quietly," said Cecil; "Mrs. Rogers has spent a very suffering night, and I don't want to wake her."
"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Jimmy; "what with no sugar, and having to keep as still as mice, how is a fellow to have a chance? I say, Maurice—— Oh, I say, I didn't mean it; no, I didn't, Ceci, not really."
The boys clattered off; Cecil heard them tumbling and scrambling downstairs; she uttered a faint sigh for Mrs. Rogers' chance of sleep, and then walked to the window to watch them as they ran down the street. They attended the Grammar School—the far-famed Grammar School of the little town of Hazlewick; the school was at the corner of the street.
"How Maurice grows!" thought Cecil, as she watched them. "Of course, I know this sort of thing can't go on. There's not money enough; it can't be done, and how are they to be educated? I wouldn't tell dear old Maurice what brought the black lines under my eyes last night. No, it wasn't study,—not study in the ordinary sense,—it was that other awful thing which takes more out of one than the hardest of hard work. It was worry. Try as I would, I could not stretch my cloth to cover the space allotted to it. In short, at the end of the year, if something is not done, I, Cecil Ross, will be in debt. Now, I'm not going into debt for anyone. I promised mother six months ago, when she died, that somehow or other I'd keep out of debt, and I'll do it. Oh, dear, dear! what is to be done? I suppose I must give up that delightful scheme of Molly's, that I should go to Redgarth for two or three years, and perfect myself in all sorts of learning, and then take a good post as head-mistress of some high school. I don't see how it's to be done—no, I really don't. What would the boys do without me?"
At this point in Cecil's meditations, there came a knock, very firm and decided, at the sitting-room door.
"Come in," she said, and Miss Marshall, her landlady, entered the room.
"Now, Miss Ross," she said, "I've come to say some plain words. You know I'm a very frank body, and I'm afraid I can't keep you and those boys any longer in the house. There's poor Mrs. Rogers woke up out of the first sleep she's had the entire night. Oh, I don't blame 'em,—the young rascals,—but they simply can't keep quiet. What are they but four schoolboys? and all the world knows what it means when there are four schoolboys in a house."
"I promise that they shall behave better in future," said Cecil; "they must take off their outdoor shoes in the hall and——"