The Truant Spirit by Sara Seale Page A

make no noise, fascinated by this new version of the singing rhymes she had known in childhood. Willie’s gentle face when he thought he was unobserved had a strange aliveness, and his ungainly limbs only the awkward uncoordination of a very young child’s. One flew east, and one flew west,
    One flew over the cuckoo’s nest . . .
    He saw her and stopped suddenly, shuffling back to his compost heap with a guilty hunch of the shoulders.
    “I don’t know that one, Willie. Is there any more?” Sabina asked, and he grunted something unintelligible.
    “There’s a French counting-out rhyme I know,” she said. “Would you like to hear it?” He made no reply, and she began softly:
    Un, deux, trois, j’irai dans les bois.
    Quatre, cinque, six, chercher des cerises,
    Sept, huit, neuf, dans mon panier neuf. . .
    “It sounds funny, doesn’t it?”
    His attention was captured and he turned his back on the compost heap.
    “Maister Brock sometimes talks like that,” he said slowly. “Yes, he speaks French, I know, though I don’t think he’d bother himself much about silly rhymes.”
    “Silly Willie ... Silly Willie Washer ...” he muttered to himself suddenly, and Sabina knew he must have been taunted with that remark sometime or another.
    “No, Willie, you’re not, ” she said with warmth, “and you knock anyone down who says so!”
    He grinned, revealing a broken tooth in an otherwise perfect mouth.
    “I do,” he said, suddenly delighted. “I goes for’m every time they says it. You’m kind, missy—like Maister Brock—” He advanced and touched her gingerly. “You’m not much more than a little maid, neither. Willie’ll tell ’e some more rhymes some day or t’other.”
    “Thank you, Willie,” she said, shy because she felt that he had made a definite concession. “I’m only afraid I may not stay very long.”
    “You stay, m’dear,” he said with the soothing assurance of a much older person. “Old rectory don’t see much life now, and me, I like the daid lying quiet over yonder.”
    She shivered. The strange affinity of the simple-minded boy with the dead was chilling, or perhaps the afternoon was growing cold.
    “I’d like to stay,” she said gently, but he had gone back to his compost heap and forgotten her, and she returned indoors.
    Tante’s reply came late that night. It was a long, extravagant telegram but quite clear.
    Tell Marthe her letter is received and understood. She should take a holiday at once. I will communicate with her at the old address when I need her. Money will follow if required. My felicitations to my little Sabina for whom my heart is impatient until we meet again.
    Marthe, who had been summoned from her room, stood at the foot of the stairs with the telegram in her hands.
    “But Madame is mad!” she exclaimed, and sounded really bewildered. “She cannot know what she is doing.”
    “You think not?” said Brock politely.
    Bunny had seen the surprise on Sabina’s face at the concluding message in her aunt’s telegram and his lips tightened. Lucille Faivre was playing a game which she, at least, understood very well, and she said quietly: “Madame’s instructions seem quite clear. Are you packed, Marthe? There is an early train to London in the morning. Mr. Brockman
    will drive you to the station.”
    “But I do not understand.”
    “You would like a holiday, would you not? You have friends to go to?”
    “Naturally—and it is not that I have any wish to remain here, you understand, Madame. I do not care for the country or the inconveniences of old houses.”
    “In that case,” said Bunny with finality, “Madame’s wishes should coincide with your own. You will be ready to leave by seven-thirty tomorrow, please.”
    “Mademoiselle ...”
    Sabina felt pity for the woman’s bewilderment. She herself could not understand this sudden amiability on the part of her aunt. The lamplight distorted their four shadows to grotesque shapes, and, standing in