The Rebel of the School by L. T. Meade (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

afterwards. You daren't refuse it. It means—oh, it means all the difference in your whole life."

"I know," said Ruth. "Cassandra, I will write to you. I can't decide just now. I am awfully obliged to you; I can't express what I feel. You are good; you are very, very good."

Ruth caught one of Cassandra's hands and raised it to her lips.

"You are very good," she said again.

Meanwhile Kathleen O'Hara, after walking a very short way with Susy Hopkins, gave her an abrupt good-bye and started running in the direction of the Tennants' house. She did not care a bit for Susy; but being a member of the Wild Irish Girls, and not only a member, but one of the Cabinet, she must on all occasions be kind to her. Nevertheless a commonplace little girl like Susy Hopkins had not one thing in common with Kathleen.

"Everything is going splendidly," she said to herself. "No fear now that I shall not have plenty of excitement in the coming by-and-by. I mean to write to father and ask him whether I may not invite some of the members of the Cabinet to Carrigrohane. Wouldn't they enjoy it? Kate Rourke, of course, must come; and dear little Ruth Craven. How pale and sweet Ruth looked to-day! She is far and away the nicest girl in the school. I am so glad I have taken steps to prevent that horrid friendship with Cassandra coming to anything! Ruth mustn't love anybody in the school very, very much except me. Oh, things are going well, and Alice little guesses what she is driving me to by her extraordinary behavior."

Kathleen entered the house, banging the door loudly after her, as was her fashion.

Another little girl had also reached home, but she did not bang the door. She entered her mother's shop to encounter the flushed and much-perturbed face of her parent.

"Well, Susy," said Mrs. Hopkins, "I wouldn't have thought it of you."

"Why, what is it, mother?"

"There's nineteen-and-sixpence taken out of the till," said Mrs. Hopkins. "Some one must have come into the shop, for the accounts are nineteen-and-sixpence short. When I left the house yesterday there were three pounds in the till—three pounds and fivepence-halfpenny. You sold, according to your own showing, a penn'orth of paper, which makes an extra penny; but when I went into the accounts this morning I found that the whole amount was only two pounds one shilling and a halfpenny. Nineteen-and-sixpence is missing. Susy, what does this mean?"

"I am sure, mother, I can't tell you. No one came into the shop; certainly no one stole the money."

"My dear child, seeing is believing. I assure you there are only two pounds one shilling and a halfpenny in the till. I scarcely took a penny this morning, and that nineteen-and-sixpence makes it impossible for me to pay my rent, as I meant to do, to-day. Who can have come in and stolen very nearly a pound's worth of my hard-earned money?"

"Nobody, mother dear. Do let me examine the till."

"Are you quite positive that no one came into the shop?"

"Nobody, mother."

"You did not leave the shop even for a moment?"

"Yes; I went to sit in the parlor."

"Oh, Susy? there you are! I trust you with my house and property, and you leave the shop without any one in it Did you lock the till?"

Susy had an unpleasant memory of having found the till open when she returned to attend to a customer.

"No" she said, hanging her head.

Mrs. Hopkins uttered a heavy sigh.

"Oh, dear!" she said. "And as you sat in the parlor you could see the shop. You did not leave the parlor, did you?"

For one minute Susy remembered that she had gone upstairs for an exercise-book, but she determined not to tell her mother of this further enormity.

"I was either in the shop or in the parlor all the time. I only went into the parlor because I could not do my exercises in the shop. But I sat where I could see everything."

"You couldn't have done so. This money would not have gone without hands. How am I to manage I don't know. I have lost a large sum for such a poor woman."

Susy pitied her mother, tried to assure her that the fault was not hers, was convinced that the money would be found, and went on talking a lot of nonsense until Mrs. Hopkins fairly lost her temper.

"Examine the drawer for yourself" she said. "I tell, you what it is, Susy, I won't be able to buy you a new winter frock at all this year; and you will have to have your boots patched, for I can't afford a new pair. I was trying to collect a pound towards your winter things, but this puts a stop to everything."

"Mother doesn't know what a lovely blouse I've got," thought Susy. "When she sees me in that she'll be quite cheered up."

The moment she thought of the blouse the little girl felt a frantic desire to run upstairs to look at it.

"Mother," she said, "I don't mind a bit about the winter dress; and if my boots are neatly patched and well blacked every day, I dare say I can do with them a little longer. And I will sit with you this afternoon, mother, and help you to sew. I can't understand who could have stolen the money. Perhaps it is a practical joke of Tom's; you know he is fond of doing things of that sort now and then."

"No, it isn't, for I asked him. Who can have come into the shop? Do you think you fell asleep over your work?"

"Oh, no."

"Then it is a mystery past bearing. If nobody came in, and you never left either the shop or the parlor, that money was taken out of the till as though by magic."

"We will find it, mother; we are sure to find it," said Susy; and the way she said these words aggravated poor Mrs. Hopkins, as she said afterwards, more than a little.

CHAPTER XII. TOM HOPKINS AND HIS WAY WITH AUNT CHURCH.

It was quite true that Mrs. Hopkins could ill afford to lose so large a sum as nineteen-and-sixpence out of her small earnings. During her husband's lifetime the stationer's shop had gone well and provided a comfortable living for his wife, son, and daughter. But unfortunately, in an evil moment he had been induced to put his hand to a bill for a friend. The friend had, as usually is the case, become bankrupt. Poor Hopkins had to pay the money, and from that moment the affairs in the stationer's shop were the reverse of flourishing. In fact, the blow killed the poor man. He lingered for a time, broken-hearted and unable to rouse himself, and finally died about about three years before the date of this story. For a time Mrs. Hopkins was quite prostrate, but being a woman with a good deal of vigor and determination, she induced one of her relatives to lend her one hundred pounds, and determined to keep on with the shop. She could not, of course, stock it as fully as she would have liked; she could never extend her connection beyond mere stationery, sealing-wax, pens, and a very few books, and Christmas cards in the winter. Still, she managed to support herself and Tom and Susy; but it was a scraping along all the time. She had to count every penny, and, above all things, to avoid going in debt. She was only in debt for the one hundred pounds, which had been lent to her by an aunt of her husband's, an old woman of the name of Church, who lived in a neighboring village about four miles away.

Mrs. Church was quite rich, according to the Hopkinses' ideas of wealth. She lived alone and hoarded her money. She had not been at all willing to lend Mrs. Hopkins the hundred pounds; but as she had really been fond of Mr. Hopkins, and had at one time meant to make him her heir, she had listened to Mrs. Hopkins's lamentations, and desired her to send Tom to her to inspect him, and had finally handed over the money, which was to be paid back by monthly installments within the space of three years.

Mrs. Hopkins was so relieved to get the money that she never thought at all of the terrible tax it would be to return it. Still, by working hard morning, noon, and night—she added to her gains by doing fine needlework for several ladies, who said that no one could embroider like Mrs. Hopkins—she managed to make two ends just meet together, and she always continued to send Mrs. Church her two pounds fifteen shillings and sevenpence on the first of every month. Tom was the one who generally ran across to the old lady's with the money; and so fond was she of him that she often gave him a piece of cake, and even on one or two rare occasions kept him to dinner. Tom enjoyed his visits to Mrs. Church, and Mrs. Hopkins was sure to encourage him to go to her, as she hoped against hope that when the old lady died Tom would be left some of her money.

It was on a Wednesday that Susy sat in the parlor and forgot all about the interests of the shop; it was on that very night that the tramp had come in and helped himself to a ten-shilling-piece and some silver out of the till; and it was on the following Saturday that Mrs. Hopkins, for the first time since she had borrowed the hundred pounds from Aunt Church, as she called the old lady, found that she could not return even a portion of what had just fallen due. She called Tom to her side.

"Tom," she said, "you must go and see Aunt Church this afternoon as soon as ever you come in. You must go, and you must tell her."

"Of course I'll go, mother," answered the boy. "I always like going to Aunt Church's; she is very kind to me. She said next time I came along she'd show me things in her microscope. She has got a beetle's wing, mother, mounted on glass, and when you gaze down at it it seems to be covered with beautiful feathers, as long as though they were on a big bird. And she has got a drop of water full of wriggly things all alive; and she says we drink it by the gallon, and it is no wonder we feel bad in our insides. I'll go, right enough. I suppose you have the money ready?"

"No, Tom, that's just what I have not got. I told you how that night when I had the misfortune to go and see your aunt and look after her sick child, some one came into the shop and stole nineteen-and-sixpence out of the till. I am so short from the loss of that money that I can't pay Aunt Church for at least another week. Ask her if she'll be kind enough to give me a week's grace, Tom; that's a good boy. I can't think how the money was stolen."

"Why don't you put it into the hands of the police?" said Tom.

"Why, Tom," said his mother, looking at him with admiration, "you are a smart boy. Do you know, I never thought of that. I will go round to the police-station this very afternoon and get Police-Constable Macartney to take it up."

"But, mother, the thief, whoever he is, has left the place long before now. The money was stolen on Wednesday, and this is Saturday morning."

"Well, Tom, there's no saying. Anyhow, I will go round to the police-station and lodge the information."

Accordingly, while Susy was again trying on her lovely pale-blue cashmere blouse behind locked doors upstairs, Tom and his mother were plotting how best to cover the loss of the nineteen-and-sixpence. Naughty Susy, having made up her mind to deny herself a new frock and new boots, had given the matter no further consideration. She was accustomed to the fact that her mother was always in money difficulties. As long as she could remember, this was the state of things at home. She had come to the conclusion that grown-up persons were always in a frantic state about money, and she had no desire to join these anxious ones herself. As she could not mend matters, she did not see why she should worry about them.

Tom had a scrap of dinner and then ran