"That is weak!" said Rachel. "I received the boy's word, and it is my business to deal with the breach of promise."
So down went Rachel, and finding the boys rushing about the garden, according to their practice, before her arrival, she summoned Conrade, and addressed him with, " Well, Conrade, I knew that you were violent and disobedient, but I never expected you to fail in your honour as a gentleman."
"I'll thrash any one who says I have," hotly exclaimed Conrade.
"Then you must thrash me. You gave your word to me not to take your Aunt Grace's thrush's nest."
"And I didn't," said Conrade, boldly.
But Rachel, used to flat denials at the village-school, was not to be thus set aside. "I am shocked at you, Conrade," she said. "I know your mamma will be exceedingly grieved. You must have fallen into very sad ways to be able to utter such a bold untruth. You had better confess at once, and then I shall have something to tell her that will comfort he."
Conrade's dark face looked set as iron.
"Come; tell me you are sorry you took the nest, and have broken your word, and told a falsehood."
Red colour flushed into the brown cheek, and the hands were clenched.
"There is not the smallest use in denying it. I know you took it when you and Hubert went away together. Your Aunt Grace found it gone this morning, and one of the poor little birds dead below. What have you done with the others?"
Not a word.
"Then I grieve to say I must tell all to your mother."
There was a sort of smile of defiance, and he followed her. For a moment she thought of preventing this, and preparing Fanny in private, but recollecting that this would give him the opportunity of preparing Hubert to support his falsehood, she let him enter with her, and sought Lady Temple in the nursery.
"Dear Fanny, I am very sorry to bring you so much vexation. I am afraid it will be a bitter grief to you, but it is only for Conrade's own sake that I do it. It was a cruel thing to take a bird's-nest at all, but worse when he knew that his Aunt Grace was particularly fond of it; and, besides, he had promised not to touch it, and now, saddest of all, he denies having done so."
"Oh, Conrade, Conrade!" cried Fanny, quite confounded, "You can't have done like this!"
"So, I have not," said Conrade, coming up to her, as she held out her hand, positively encouraging him, as Rachel thought, to persist in the untruth.
"Listen, Fanny," said Rachel. "I do not wonder that you are unwilling to believe anything so shocking, but I do not come without being only too certain." And she gave the facts, to which Fanny listened with pale cheeks and tearful eyes, then turned to the boy, whose hand she had held all the time, and said, "Dear Con, do pray tell me if you did it."
"I did not," said Conrade, wrenching his hand away, and putting it behind his back.
"Where's Hubert?" asked Rachel, looking round, and much vexed when she perceived that Hubert had been within hearing all the time, though to be sure there was some little hope to be founded upon the simplicity of five years old.
"Come here, Hubert dear," said his mother; "don't be frightened, only come and tell me where you and Con went yesterday, when the others were playing at bowls." Hubert hung his head, and looked at his brother.
"Tell," quoth Conrade. "Never mind her, she's only a civilian."
"Where did you go, Hubert?"
"Con showed me the little birds in their nest."
"That is right, Hubert, good little boy. Did you or he touch the nest?"
"Yes." Then, as Conrade started, and looked fiercely at him, "Yes you did, Con, you touched the inside to see what it was made of."
"But what did you do with it?" asked Rachel.
"Left it there, up in the tree," said the little boy.
"There, Rachel!" said the mother, triumphantly.
"I don't know what you mean," said Rachel, angrily, "only that Conrade is a worse boy than I had thought him, end has been teaching his little brother falsehood."
The angry voice set Hubert crying, and little Cyril, who was very soft-hearted, joined in chorus, followed by the baby, who was conscious of something very disagreeable going on in her nursery. Thereupon, after the apparently most important business of comforting Miss Temple had been gone through, the court of justice adjourned, Rachel opening the door of Conrade's little room, and recommending solitary imprisonment there till he should be brought to confession. She did not at all reckon on his mother going in with him, and shutting the door after her. It was not the popular notion of solitary confinement, and Rachel was obliged to retire, and wait in the drawing-room for a quarter of an hour before Fanny came down, and then it was to say--
"Do you know, Rachel dear, I am convinced that it must be a mistake. Conrade assures me he never touched the nest."
"So he persists in it?"
"And indeed, Rachel dear, I cannot help believing him. If it had been Francie, now; but I never knew Conrade tell an untruth in his life."
"You never knew, because you always believe him."
"And it is not only me, but I have often heard the Major say he could always depend on Conrade's word."
Rachel's next endeavour was at gentle argument. "It must be dreadful to make such a discovery, but it was far worse to let deceit go on undetected; and if only they were firm--" At that moment she beheld two knickerbocker boys prancing on the lawn.
"Didn't you lock the door? Has he broken out? How audacious!"
"I let him come out," said Fanny; "there was nothing to shut him up for. I beg your pardon, dear Rachel; I am very sony for the poor little birds and for Grace, but I am sure Conrade did not take it."
"How can you be so unreasonable, Fanny--the evidence," and Rachel went over it all again.
"Don't you think," said Fanny, "that some boy may have got into the park?"
"My dear Fanny, I am sorry for you, it is quite out of the question to think so; the place is not a stone's-throw from Randall's lodge. It will be the most fatal thing in the world to let your weakness be imposed on in this way. Now that the case is clear, the boy must be forced to confession, and severely punished."
Fanny burst into tears.
"I am very sorry for you, Fanny. I know it is very painful; I assure you it is so to me. Perhaps it would be best if I were to lock him up, and go from time to time to see if he is come to a better mind."
She rose up.
"No, no, Rachel!" absolutely screamed Fanny, starting up, "my boy hasn't done anything wrong, and I won't have him locked up! Go away! If anything is to be done to my boys, I'll do it myself: they haven't got any one but me. Oh, I wish the Major would come!"
"Fanny, how can you be so foolish?--as if I would hurt your boys!"
"But you won't believe Conrade--my Conrade, that never told a falsehood in his life!" cried the mother, with a flush in her cheeks and a bright glance in her soft eyes. "You want me to punish him for what he hasn't done."
"How much alike mothers are in all classes of life," thought Rachel, and much in the way in which she would have brought Zack's mother to reason by threats of expulsion from the shoe-club, she observed, "Well Fanny, one thing is clear, while you are so weak as to let that boy go on in his deceit, unrepentant and unpunished, I can have no more to do with his education."
"Indeed," softly said Fanny, "I am afraid so, Rachel. You have taken a great deal of trouble, but Conrade declares he will never say a lesson to you again, and I don't quite see how to make him after this."
"Oh, very well; then there's an end of it. I am sorry for you, Fanny."
And away walked Rachel, and as she went towards the gate two artificial jets d'eau, making a considerable curve in the air, alighted, the one just before her, the other, better aimed, in the back of her neck. She had too much dignity to charge back upon the offenders, but she went home full of the story of Fanny's lamentable weakness, and prognostications of the misery she was entailing on herself. Her mother and sister were both much concerned, and thought Fanny extremely foolish; Mrs. Curtis consoling herself with the hope that the boys would be cured and tamed at school, and begging that they might never be let loose in the park again. Rachel could not dwell much longer on the matter, for she had to ride to Upper Avon Park to hold council on the books to be ordered for the book-club; for if she did got go herself, whatever she wanted especially was always set aside as too something or other for the rest of the subscribers.