Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

Then I had always thought that we all started for school together. We seemed to. But Mr. Mustard's scholars certainly didn't—and I suppose schools all over the world are the same. Nobody came alone. If they started from home by themselves, they yelled and signalled till they were joined by somebody else. Only a few groups arrived by the road, generally hand-in-hand if they were girls, and the boys with their arms about each other's waists. Most, however, ducked through hedges, clambered over stone dykes, crossed ditches by planks, and so finally got to school over broken-down pieces of wire fencing, or by edging themselves between the gate post and the wall. I remember now that I had generally done the same thing myself. But I never knew it till that day I lay on the old willow, watching Mr. Mustard's school gathering for morning lessons.

Seen from a distance Mr. Mustard was a youngish-looking man, getting bald, however, except about his ears. He wore a perfect delta of wrinkles at the corner of each eye. He was teaching Elsie about half an hour, and during this time, his sister looked in twice from the master's cottage, just to see how things were going. I lay still and waited. From the big school-house there came the sound of a hymn sung all together, with Elsie leading. I could distinguish her voice quite well. And then Mr. Mustard said a prayer. It was always the same prayer, and had been written by some bishop or other for the purpose. Then Elsie came out followed by all the infant class, most of them clinging to her skirts, the rest straggling behind, and pausing to pick up stray toddlers of three or four who had fallen on their faces. In Breckonside they send babies like that to school to be out of the way.

At first I did not get much out of my cramped position on the willow trunk. True, Elsie did turn and look twice toward the tall black paling of my father's storehouse yard. But even that I could not be too sure of, for the next moment Elsie had opened the door of the little class-room and passed within with all her tribe scuffling after her.

Then I could hear her begin with another hymn, very simple. Then she set the elder to learn the mysteries of "two and two make four," while she combined a little drill with the teaching of the alphabet to the most youthful of her flock behind a green rep curtain. After that came the turn of the slates, and at the first rasp Elsie, long unaccustomed to that music at close range, put her fingers to her ears. But when she had set the children to their task of drawing lopsided squares, drunken triangles, and wobbly circles, she left the infant class to drone on in the heat of the morning. She arranged the windows, pulling them down to their utmost limit, and springing up on the sill she cleverly tacked bits of white netting over the open spaces. Elsie knew that there is nothing so demoralizing to the average infant class as a visiting wasp of active habits.

The drone of the infant department was behind her. I could see a soft perspiration bedewing the tender skins. Hair clung moist and clammy about bent necks. One or two slumbered openly, their brows on their slates, only to awake when Mr. Mustard came smiling in, satisfied with everything, and particularly commending the wasp protectors. Strange that in twenty years he had never thought of such a thing! He would get his sister to make some immediately.

No need of that! Elsie could tear the required size from her roll in a moment. Would he have them now? No, he would wait till the interval, and then she and Mr. Mustard would put them up together. There was no use troubling Elizabeth. She had her own domestic duties to attend to. Of course, she, that is Elsie, would partake with them of their simple and frugal midday meal? It would be more convenient for all parties—better than going all the way back to the cottage at the Bridge End. Besides, Miss Edgar would doubtless be absent, and no dinner would be ready. Yes (concluded Mr. Mustard), on all accounts it would be much preferable to dine together. He had talked it over with his sister the night before.

I could see her hesitate. But the arrangement was really so much more convenient—indeed obvious, that Elsie, after provising that she would have to arrange terms with Miss Elizabeth, ended by accepting.

I began to hate Mr. Mustard.

What could he be after? It could not be love—fancy that red-nosed, blear-eyed, baldish old badger with the twitchy eyebrows in love! I laughed on my branch. But whatever it was his sister was in it. Yes, Betty Martin was a confederate—yet her brother's marriage would (conceiving for a moment such a thing to be possible) put her out of a place.

It was altogether beyond me. Only as I say, I did not love Mr. Mustard any the better for all this, and if I could have pinked him cheerfully with my catapult, without the risk of hitting Elsie, he would have got something particularly stinging for himself.