Robin

“GONE!” said the cook, tragically.

“They can’t be,” said the parlourmaid, with that blank disbelief that is so helpful in times of stress. “Did you look in the cake-tin?”

“Did I look in the cake-tin?” demanded the cook, in tones of fury. “They was never in the cake-tin, and they aren’t now. Wotever may be the custom in your home, Elizer, it’s not my ’abit to pile up fresh cream-puffs in a cake-tin when they’re all filled with cream and just ready for a party. ’Ow’d they look, I arsk you, all messed up, and the cream stickin’ ’ere and there on ’em in blobs? I left ’em spread out singly on them two big blue dishes, same as I could serve ’em in two jiffs. And they’re gone.”

“There’s the dishes, right enough,” said the parlourmaid, still bent on being helpful. She inspected faint traces of cream on their blue expanse, with the air of a Sherlock Holmes. “They been there once, anyone can see. Oh, have another think, Cook, dear—you must have put them on the cake-plates!” She dashed hopefully at a large safe, peered into its recesses, and lost heart visibly on meeting only the cold stare of a big sirloin and a string of pallid sausages.

“Anyone as ’ud think I’d put cream-puffs in the meat-safe—!” said the cook, wearily. “’Ave sense, Elizer, if it’s any way possible. I tell you, I left ’em on the blue dishes; there’s the cake-plates all ready for ’em, clean d’oyleys an’ all. An’ not a cream-puff left! Well, you can search me. I give up.”

“But where can they have gone to?” wailed Eliza, dismally.

“I dunno. But there’s young limbs in this school as is equal to anything. It ain’t the first time things ’ave disappeared from my pantry. Scones I’ve missed, time and again; and there was sausage-rolls last week, and ’alf a jam-sandwidge another time. Lots of little oddments, as you might say. But this is ’olesale, an’ no mistake!”

Eliza was understood to murmur something feebly about the cat.

“Cat!” said the cook. “There’s cats enough and to spare, goodness knows, but cats don’t browse on scones and cream-puffs. It’s two-legged cats, or my name’s not Mary Ann Spinks—you mark my words, Elizer! Not that I’d mention names, nor even red ’air; but I have me suspicions!”

“Red hair!” ejaculated Eliza. “You aren’t thinking of Lucy Armitage? Her that’s a prefect?”

“I am not,” said the cook. “Prefeck or no prefeck, that one ’ud never ’ave spirit enough to come a-raidin’ anyone’s pantry. Not that I ’old with raidin’, Elizer, ’specially when it’s me own pantry. But I was young meself once, an’ I remember there was an apple-tree me an’ me brothers used to visit. Not our own apple-tree. I ’ave me memories. The apples weren’t any too good, ’specially as we always collared ’em green. It wasn’t ’ardly the apples we cared for, but the fun of it. Ah, well, one’s only young once, an’ the school food ain’t any too good either, as I well know.” The cook sighed, and apparently gave herself up to her memories.

“But raiding’s just stealing!” said Eliza, whose youth held no such recollections of buccaneering. She regarded the fat cook with a cold and disapproving eye.

“Not when you’re young it ain’t,” defended the cook.

“Well, I don’t see any difference,” Eliza stated. “Don’t the collect say to keep one’s hands from picking and stealing?”

“Ah, the collecks!” said the cook. “Them as wrote the collecks weren’t young, either. ’Tisn’t all of us lives up to ’em all the time—until we grow up, of course, that’s to say.”

Eliza was thinking deeply.

“Red hair!” she murmured. “Young Robin Hurst has red hair, and so has Annette Riley. Is it either of them you’re thinking of, Cook?”

“I’m not thinkin’ of anyone in particular,” averred the cook, definitely. “Not my business to think. Wot you an’ I ’ave got to bend our minds to is Miss Stone, an’ wot she’s goin’ to say when she finds there’s no cream-puffs for her party.”

“My Hevins, yes!” agreed Eliza. “And she’s that particular about having them always!”

“Don’t I know it!” the cook uttered. “’Cause why, they’re my specialty, an’ always ’ave been, wherever I’ve cooked. ‘Cream-puffs, of course, Cook,’ says she, yesterday, as sweet as sugar; ‘it isn’t a Calton Hall party without your puffs, you know!’ An’, though I says it, Elizer, they was never better.”

“Fair melted in me mouth, the ones you gave me, Cook,” said Eliza, soulfully.

“They would so. I must say, I’d like to see ’ow they manage ’em in the drorin-room, all in their Sunday best,” pondered the cook. “I can’t eat a cream-puff meself without needin’ a wash afterwards. But I s’pose they ’ave their dodges. Well, they won’t get any this afternoon to worry about, an’ that’s that. An’ it’s near four o’clock now, Elizer, an’ we’ve got to think of a substichoot.”

“My goodness!” Eliza uttered. “What are you goin’ to give ’em, Cook?”

“Fancy Mixed!” said the cook, grimly, advancing with slow dignity towards a tin that graced the upper shelf.

“Biscuits!” breathed Eliza, faintly. “She’ll take a fit, Miss Stone will. I never saw biscuits at one of her parties, all the time I’ve been here.”

“No, an’ you never won’t again, if I know it. I reckon I’ll keep the key of me pantry firm an’ tight in me pocket after this. It’s lowerin’ to me pride to send in fancy-mixed, but there it is—I ain’t a jugular, to conjure up a fresh set of puffs in ten minutes. Oh, well, they won’t starve: me scones take some beatin’, an’ there’s the other cakes. But them puffs lend tone to a party, Elizer, as you well know: an’ this particular party’s goin’ to be lackin’ in tone. Just you make the biscuits look as respectable as you can, while I make the tea: the bell’ll go any minute.” And Eliza, sighing deeply, prepared to face the tragedy of the drawing-room.

Meanwhile, under a great pine-tree that stood in the corner of the Calton Hall playground, three girls sat in a state of palpitating expectancy. School was dismissed for the day, and the “crocodile” walk, loathed by the boarders, which usually followed hard upon the heels of the last lesson, was not to take place—a joyful omission which always signalized the afternoons when Miss Stone gave a party, since the junior governesses, who escorted the “crocodile,” were required in the drawing-room to assist in pouring out tea. Sounds of mirth came from the tennis-courts, where a hastily-arranged tournament was in full swing. Across the playground the space sacred to juniors echoed with the shrill cries attending a game of rounders: other enthusiasts made merry over basketball. But the three under the pine-tree, although ready for tennis, were evidently a prey to emotions deeper than could be excited, at the moment, by any ordinary game.

“I know she’s been caught!” Annette Riley breathed, anxiously. “She ought to have been here ages ago.”

“Oh, give her time,” said Joyce Harrison, endeavouring to be comforting. “She might have been delayed in ever so many ways. Ten to one she’s found that the whole thing is no go, and she’s given it up, and is getting into her tennis things.”

“Not Robin,” said Betty O’Hara, quietly.

“Well, Robin can’t do everything she wants to, no matter how plucky she is,” Joyce responded. “And I really do hope she isn’t going to pull this off. She’s been in such an awful lot of rows already this term—Miss Stone’s getting madder and madder about her. I wish that silly ass of a Ruby hadn’t dared her to go raiding the sacred pantry.”

“So do I,” said Annette. “Everyone knows it isn’t safe to dare Robin to do anything. If you told her she wasn’t game to climb feet foremost up the electric-light pole, she’d be doing it in five minutes!”

“Ruby Bennett takes advantage of that,” Betty said hotly. “Half the scrapes that Robin has been in this term have had Ruby’s nasty little jeers at the bottom of them. And Robin’s such a dear old blind bat that she never sees it.”

“Well, Robin seems to like rows,” said Joyce. “But there will be an awful one if she’s caught this time.” She dropped her voice dramatically. “When Mother was down last week Miss Stone talked to her in her very stoniest manner about my being friends with Robin——said all sorts of horrid things about her wildness, and that she had a bad influence in the school. Poor old Mother was quite worried about it, until I made her see that Robin is just the straightest ever—she does mad things, but she wouldn’t tell a lie if she were burned alive!”

“I should just say she wouldn’t!” uttered Betty. “Robin a bad influence, indeed! I never heard such rubbish. Why, there isn’t a junior that wouldn’t lick her boots! Prigs like Lucy Armitage, of course——”

“Oh, old Lucy isn’t bad,” said Annette. “She’s rather overweighted by being a prefect, that’s all. She’s worried about Robin too, because Miss Stone told her she meant to make an example of her, next time she broke a rule. And Robin’s simply incapable of not breaking rules!”

“But she never does an underhand thing, as half of Miss Stone’s pets do,” said Betty. “Everyone knows that girls whose parents have money are all right in this school: Miss Stone keeps her telescope to her blind eye where they are concerned. If Robin’s mean old uncle were a bit more generous to her, she wouldn’t be Miss Stone’s black sheep. He must be a horrid old pig! Robin and her mother have a perfectly vile time at home. It’s no wonder the poor darling kicks over the traces when she gets away from him.” She fanned herself with her racquet. “I wish she’d come—it will be time for out set very soon.”

“Wonder if Miss Stone has caught her and locked her up,” conjectured Joyce, gloomily.

“Not much she hasn’t!” said a cheerful voice—and the three girls sprang up with exclamations of delight as a fourth whirled suddenly into their midst, laughing.

“Robin!—you didn’t manage it?”