“Never mind my things to-day,” said Annie; “you’re not fit, and that is the simple truth. You ought to go downstairs, Susan, and get your mother to take you into the park; that is what you want.”

“I may want it, miss,” said Susan, “but I won’t get it, for mother have her hands full with the parlour lodger and the drawing-room lodger. Much time she do have for walking out with me as though I were a fine lady.”

“Poor Susie!” said Annie; “and you so clever, too.”

“Ah, miss, nothing frets mother like me thinking myself clever. She says that all I want is to know the three R’s – reading, writing, and ’rithmetic – that’s how she calls ’em. She hates my books, miss; and as to my thoughts – oh, dear Miss Brooke! you are the only one in all the world as knows about them.”

“And I want to help you,” said Annie. “I have come here all the way this morning to ask you to lend me that manuscript book of yours. I mean to show your lovely poems to a great, clever, and learned man, and if by chance he should publish any of them, you would be famous, Susan, and you need never do this horrible grinding work any more.”

“Oh, miss,” said the poor girl, “you don’t say so!”

“I do say so, Susie; and I suppose I ought to know. Give me the book, dear, at once; don’t keep me, for I haven’t a minute. These are school hours, and I had to pretend I had a headache in order to get away to see you. You must let me manage about your poetry, Susie; and of course you will never tell.”

“Why, miss, is it likely?”

“Well, fetch the book, then.”

Susie crossed the room, went on her knees before an old chest of drawers, and with the colour now high in her wasted cheeks and her light eyes darker with emotion, she presented the treasured book to Annie.

“There is my last bit, miss; you will find it at the end. It’s ‘Thoughts on the Sunset’ I was thinking them in reference to my own early death, miss, and they’re very affecting indeed. Perhaps you will show them the first, miss, for they seem to me the very best I have done.”

Susie looked with a world of pathos at Annie. Her eyes said as plainly as eyes could speak, “Oh! do read the poem before you go, and tell me what you think of it.” Annie read the message in the eyes, but had not an idea of acceding to poor Susie’s wish.

“You will have your book back in a few days,” she said, “and I do hope I’ll have good news for you; and here is half-a-crown, and you needn’t hurry about my things. Good-bye, Susie. Do go into the park if you can.”

Susan nodded. She felt so grateful to Annie, and so excited, that she could not speak. With the book tucked under her arm, Annie flew downstairs.

She was much annoyed at being intercepted in the passage by Mrs Martin.

“I do ’ope, miss,” said that poor woman, “that you ain’t been ’ard on my girl. She does do her very best; for, what with the unpickin’ of your old dresses, and what with tryin’ to turn ’em into new ones, it don’t seem as though it were worth while. You pays her very little, miss; and what with never givin’ her anythin’ new, it don’t seem worth the trouble, that it don’t.”

“Oh! I am so sorry,” said Annie, who in her moment of victory was inclined to be kind to any one; “but, you see, I take an interest in Susan for other matters. She is not well, and she wants rest. I am so glad to have some one to alter my old things, and if I did not give the work to Susan, I should have to employ a girl I know at home. But I will try – I really will – to give her some new plain cotton dresses to make for me later on. In the meantime, Mrs Martin, I have been recommending her to go for a walk in the park. She has great talent, and her life ought not to be sacrificed.”

“There, miss!” said Mrs Martin, putting her arms akimbo and looking with great dissatisfaction at Annie. “It’s you as encourages her in scribblin’ of that poetic stuff. Never did I hear such rubbish in all my born days. If it wasn’t for you, miss, she would burn all the stuff instead of sittin’ up a-composin’ of it. What with sunsets, and deathbeds, and heartaches, and green grass, and other nonsense, I don’t know where I be when I listen to her words; I don’t really. I see you’ve got the book under your arm now, miss; and I do wish you’d burn it – that I do!”

“It would hurt her very much indeed if I did,” said Annie; for a further thought had darted through her brain at Mrs Martin’s words. Here would be an easy way to hide her own deed for ever and ever. If Mrs Martin sanctioned the burning of her daughter’s book, surely Annie’s wicked scheme would be concealed for ever.

“I agree with you,” said Annie, “that it is bad for poor Susan to write so much poetry. Her heart is set on it, I know; still, if you disapprove – ”

“That I do, miss; I wish you’d give me the book now, and I’ll keep it under lock and key.”

“No, no,” said Annie eagerly. “Don’t do that on any account whatever. I have thought of a much better plan. She has lent me the book, for I promised to read her poems, poor girl! and to talk them over with a friend of mine. I need not give them back to her for the present.”

“Oh, miss! I’d be that grateful if you’d keep them altogether.”

“I don’t see that I can quite do that. Still, if you wish it – ”

“I do, miss; that I do.”

“Well, good-bye for the present. You mustn’t keep me now, as I am in a great hurry.”

Mrs Martin moved aside, and once more Annie pursued her way up the dusty road. The postern door presented no hindrance when she reached it, and by-and-by, with a sigh of relief, she found herself in the cool shade of the grounds. How inviting looked that hammock under the trees! But she had not a moment of time to indulge in rest just then. Unperceived by any one, she managed to reach her room. She locked the door. She made a quick selection from poor Susan’s verses. She then calmly dressed, washed her face and hands, and when early dinner was announced, took her place at table.

The girls were all pleased to see her, and when she assured them that she was as well as ever they all congratulated her. Priscilla Weir sat at table near Annie. Priscilla was not looking well. The headache which Annie pretended to have was in reality possessed by poor Priscilla. She was easily startled, too, and changed colour when any one addressed her in a hurry.

Towards the end of the meal, as the girls were about to leave the room, she bent towards Annie and said:

“Is it really true that Mabel Lushington is going to read some poems at four o’clock this afternoon?”

“She is going to read some of her own poems. Why not?” said Annie. She spoke defiantly.

“Her own poems?” echoed Priscilla, a world of scorn in her voice.

“Yes. Why not?” said Annie.

Priscilla was silent for a minute. Then she said in a very low voice:

“I know how clever you are; but even your genius cannot rise to this. I have seen you struggle to make even the slightest rhyme when we have been playing at making up verses. You can’t manage this.”

“Never mind,” said Annie. She jumped up almost rudely. The next minute she had seized Mabel by the arm. “We have half-an-hour. Come with me at once to my room.”

Mabel did so. When they reached the room Annie locked the door.

“Now then,” she said, “who’s a genius? I said I would find a way out. Sit down immediately before my desk and write what I tell you.”

“Oh Annie, what do you mean?”

“I mean exactly what I say, and the fewer questions you ask the better. I will dictate the poem, and you shall copy it.”

“But – but,” said Mabel, turning from red to white – “it isn’t, I hope, from a printed book. I have thought of that I have been so frightfully miserable that I’ve thought of everything; but that would be so terribly unsafe.”

“This is not unsafe at any rate,” said Annie, “Now you begin. Write what I tell you.”

Annie’s look of triumph and her absolutely fearless manner impressed Mabel. She wrote as best she could to Annie’s dictation, and soon two of poor Susan Martin’s attempts at verse were copied in Mabel’s writing.

“There you are!” said Annie. “That ‘sunset’ one will take the cake, and that pretty little one about ‘my favourite cat’ will come home to every one.”

“But I haven’t a favourite cat,” said Mabel, “and why ever should I write about it?”

“Did you never in the whole course of your life,” was Annie’s answer, “hear of a poet’s licence? You can write on anything, you know, if you are a poet.”

“Can I?” replied Mabel. “Then I suppose the cat will do.”

“It will do admirably.”

“I hope,” said Mabel, “they won’t question me afterwards about the animal. It sounds exactly as though it were my own cat, and every one in the school knows that I can’t even touch a cat.”

“What a pity you didn’t tell me that before,” said Annie, “and I would have chosen something else! But there’s no time now; we must fly downstairs immediately.”

“You are clever, Annie. I can’t think how you got these poems. But the ‘sunset’ one sounds dreadful too. I never even looked at a sunset. And then there’s the thoughts about dying – as if – as if I could know anything of that.”

“You must read them as pathetically as you can,” said Annie, “and make the best of a bad job. I believe they’ll go down admirably. Now then, fold them up and put them away; and don’t let’s be found closeted together here.” Sharp at four that afternoon Mabel appeared before her assembled schoolfellows and read – it must be owned rather badly – first some “Lines to a Favourite Cat,” and then “Thoughts on the Sunset.” The poems were not poetry in any sense of the word; nevertheless, there was a vague sort of far-off suggestion of poetry about them. It is true the girls giggled at the thought of Mabel and her cat, and were not specially impressed by the violet and rose tints of the sunset, or by the fact that florid, large, essentially living-looking Mabel should talk of her last faint breath, and of the time when she lay pale and still and was a corse.

She read the lines, however, and they seemed thoroughly genuine. When she had finished she looked at her companions.

“Well, I’d like to say, ‘I’m blowed!’” said Agnes; while Constance Smedley, the head-girl of the school, said in a low tone:

“I congratulate you, Mabel; and I’m very much surprised. There is no saying what you will do in the future, only I hope you won’t speak of dead people as corses, for I dislike the term.”

“And of course after this,” said a merry, round-faced girl who had hitherto not spoken, “we will expect to have further lines on pussie, poor, pussie; and, oh, Mabel, what a cheat you are! And you always said you loathed cats!”

At this instant one of the youngest girls in the school rushed up and flung a tabby-cat into Mabel’s lap. The cat was large; a very rough specimen of the race. Being angry at such treatment, it unsheathed all its claws. Mabel shrieked with terror, and flung the poor animal aside with great vehemence.

“Oh, poor pussie, poor pussie!” laughed the others; “but she loves you all the same.