On a certain morning, just a week before Christmas, the little world of school at Chilcombe Hall was awake and stirring at an unusually early hour. Long before the slightest hint of dawn showed in the sky the lamps were lighted in the corridors, maids were scuttling about, bringing in breakfast, and Jones, the gardener, assisted by his eldest boy, a sturdy grinning urchin of twelve, was beginning the process of carrying down piles of hand-bags and hold-alls, and stacking them on a cart which was waiting in the drive outside.

Miss Walters, dreading the Christmas rush on the railway, had determined to take time by the forelock, and meant to pack off her pupils by the first available trains, trusting they would most of them reach their destinations before the overcrowding became a serious problem in the traffic. The pupils themselves offered no objections to this early start. The sooner they reached home and began the holidays, so much the better from their point of view. It was fun to get up by lamp-light, when the stars were still shining in the sky; fun to find that rules were relaxed, and for once they might chatter and talk as they pleased; fun to run unreproved along the passages, sing on the stairs, and twirl one another round in an impromptu dance in the hall.

The particular occupants of the Blue Bedroom had been astir even before the big bell clanged for rising, so they stole a march over rival dormitories, performed their toilets, packed their hand-bags, strapped their wraps, and proceeded downstairs to the dining-hall, where cups and plates were just being laid upon the breakfast-table. It was quite superfluous energy on the part of Lilias, Dulcie, Gowan, and Bertha, for as a matter of fact not one of them was on the list of earliest departures, but the excitement of the general exodus had awakened them as absolutely as the advent of Santa Claus on Christmas mornings. They stood round the newly-lighted fire, warming their hands, chatting, and hailing fresh arrivals who hurried into the hall.

"You going by the 6.30, Edith? You lucker! My train doesn't start till ten! I begged and implored Miss Walters to let me leave by the early one, and wait at the junction, but she would not hear of it, so I've got to stop here kicking my heels, and watch you others whisked away. Isn't it a grisly shame?"

Gowan's round rosy face was drawn into a decided pout, and her blue eyes were full of self-pity. She had to be sorry for her own grievance, because nobody else had either time or much inclination to sympathize; they were all far too much excited about their own concerns.

"Well, you'll get off sometime, I suppose," returned Edith airily. "There are twelve of us, all going together as far as Colminster. We mean to cram into one carriage if we can. Don't suppose the train will be full, as it's so early. I thought you were coming with us, Bertha, but Miss Hardy says you're not!"

"Dad changed his mind at the last minute, and promised to send the car to fetch me. It's only forty miles by road, you know, though it takes hours by the train. He seemed to think I should lose either myself or my luggage at Sheasby Junction, and it is a horrid place to change. You never can get hold of a porter, and you don't know which platform you'll start from."

"How are you going home, Lilias?" asked Noreen, who with several other girls had joined the group at the fire.

Lilias, squatting on the fender, stretching two cold hands towards the blazing sticks, looked up brightly.

"We're riding! Astley and Elton are to fetch Rajah and Peri over for us. Grandfather said they needed exercise. I don't suppose he'd have thought of it, only Dulcie wrote to Cousin Clare and begged her to ask him. Won't it be just splendiferous? We haven't had a ride the whole term, and I'm pining to see Rajah!"

"Grandfather had promised to let us ride to school in September," put in Dulcie, "but Everard and a friend of his commandeered the horses and went to Rasebury, so we couldn't have them, and we were so disappointed. I do hope nothing will happen to stop them this time! Everard was to arrive home yesterday, so he'll be before us. I shan't ever be friends with him again if he plays us such a mean trick!"

"It's 'coach—carriage—wheelbarrow—truck,' it seems to me, the way we're all trotting home!" laughed Edith. "If I could have my choice, I'd sprint on a scooter!"

"Next term we'll travel by private aeroplane, specially chartered!" scoffed Noreen.

"I don't mind how I go, so long as I get off somehow!" chirped Truie. "Thank goodness, here come the urns at last! I began to think breakfast would never be ready. We want to have time to eat something before we start."Miss Walters' excellent arrangements had left ample time for the healthy young appetites to be satisfied before the taxis arrived at the door to convey the first contingent of pupils to the station. Sixteen girls, under the escort of a mistress, took their departure in the highest of spirits, packed as tightly as sardines, but managing to wave good-bys. Their boxes had been dispatched the previous day, their hand-bags had gone on by cart before breakfast and would be waiting for them at the station, where Jones, that most useful factotum, would, by special arrangement with the station-master, be taking their tickets before the ordinary opening of the booking-office.

Though the departure of sixteen girls made somewhat of a clearance at Chilcombe Hall, Miss Walters' labors were not yet over. There was a train at eight and a train at ten, and the young people who had to wait for these found it difficult to know how to employ the interval until it was their turn to enter the taxis. By nine o'clock Lilias and Dulcie, ready in their riding habits, were looking eagerly out of the dining-hall window along the drive which led to the gate.

"I know Elton would be early," said Dulcie. "It's always Astley who stops and fusses. It was the same when Everard went cub-hunting. You don't think there's a hitch, do you?" (uneasily). "Shall we get a horrid yellow envelope and a message to say 'Come by train'? It would be too bad, and yet, it's as likely as not!"

Dulcie's fears, which in the course of twenty minutes' waiting and watching had almost conjured up the telegraph boy with his scarlet bicycle and brown leather wallet, were suddenly dispelled, however, by a brisk sound of trotting, and a moment later appeared the welcome sight of her grandfather's two grooms riding up to the house, each leading a spare horse by the rein. Those schoolfellows who had not yet departed to the station came to the door to witness the interesting start. A sleek, well-groomed horse is always a beautiful object, and the girls decided unanimously that Lilias and Dulcie were lucky to be carried home in so delightful a fashion. They watched them admiringly as they mounted. Edith stroked Rajah's smooth neck as she said good-by to her friends.

"Riding beats motoring in my opinion," she vouchsafed, "though of course you can go farther in a car. Perhaps I shall pass you on the road."

"No, you won't, for we're taking a short cut across country. We always choose by-lanes if we can. Write and tell me if you get a motor-scooter. They sound fearfully thrillsome. Good-by, see you again in January!""Good-by! and a merry Christmas to everybody!" added Dulcie, turning on her saddle to wave a parting salute to those who were left behind on the doorstep.

The two girls walked their horses down the drive, but once out on the level road they trotted on briskly, with the grooms riding behind. They formed quite a little cavalcade as they turned from the hard motor track down the grassy lane where a dilapidated sign-post pointed to Ringfield and Cheverley. It was a distance of seven good country miles from Chilcombe Hall to Cheverley Chase, and, as the events of this story center largely round Lilias and Dulcie, there will be ample time to describe them while they are wending their way through the damp of the misty December morning, up from the low-lying river level to the hill country that stretched beyond.

Lilias was just sixteen, and very pretty, with gray eyes, fair hair, a straight nose, and two bewitching dimples when she smiled. These dimples were rather misleading, for they gave strangers the impression that Lilias was humorous, which was entirely a mistake: it was Dulcie who was the humorist in reality, Dulcie whose long lashes dropped over her shy eyes, and who never could say a word for herself in public, though in the society of intimate friends she could be amusing enough. Dulcie, at fourteen, seemed years younger than Lilias; she did not wish to grow up too soon, and thankfully tipped all responsibilities on to her elder sister. Cousin Clare always said there were undiscovered depths in Dulcie's character, but they were slow in development, and at present she was a childish little person with a pink baby face, an affection for fairy tales, and even a sneaking weakness for her discarded dolls. Life, that to Lilias seemed a serious business, was a joyous venture to Dulcie; she had a happy knack of shaking off the unpleasant things, and throwing the utmost possible power of enjoyment into the nice ones. If innocent happiness is the birthright of childhood, she clung to it steadfastly, and had not yet exchanged it for the red pottage of worldly wisdom.

Ever since Father and Mother, in the great disaster of the wreck of the Titanic, had gone down together into the gray waters of the Atlantic, the Ingleton children had lived with their grandfather, Mr. Leslie Ingleton, at Cheverley Chase. There were six of them, Everard, Lilias, Dulcie, Roland, Bevis, and Clifford, and as time passed on, and the memory of that tragedy in mid-ocean grew faint, the Chase seemed as entirely their home as if they had been born there. In Everard's opinion, at any rate, it belonged to them, as it had always belonged to the prospective heirs of the Ingleton family. And that family could trace back through many centuries to days of civil wars and service for king and country, to crusades and deeds of chivalry, and even to far-away ancestors who gave counsel at Saxon Witenagemots. Norman keep had succeeded wooden manor, and that in its turn had given place to a Tudor dwelling, and both had finally merged into a long Georgian mansion, with straight rows of windows and a classic porch, not so picturesque as the older buildings, but very convenient and comfortable from a modern point of view. The lovely gardens, with their clipped yew hedges, were one of the sights of the neighborhood, and it was a family satisfaction that the view from the terrace over park, wood, and stream showed not a single acre of land that was not their own.

Mr. Leslie Ingleton, a fine type of the old-fashioned, kindly, but autocratic English squire, belonged to a bygone generation, and found it difficult to move with the march of the times. Because he had spent his seventy-four years of life on the soil of Cheverley, the people tolerated in "the ould squire" many things that they would not have passed over in a younger man or a stranger. They shrugged their shoulders and gave way to his well-meant tyranny, for man and boy, everybody on the estate had experienced his kindness and realized his good intentions towards his tenants.

"If he does fly off at a tangent, ten to one Miss Clare'll be down the next day and set all straight again," was the general verdict on his frequent outbursts.

Cheverley Chase would have been quite incomplete without Cousin Clare. She was a second cousin of the Ingletons, who had come to tend Grandmother in her last illness, and after her death had remained to take charge of the household and the newly-arrived family of grandchildren. She was one of those calm, quiet, big-souled women who in the early centuries would have been a saint, and in mediÆval times the abbess of a nunnery, but happening to be born in the nineteenth century, her mental outlook had a modern bias, and both her philanthropy and her religious instincts had developed along the latest lines of thought. She had schemes of her own for work in the world, but at present she was doing the task that was nearest in helping to bring up the motherless children who had been placed temporarily in her care. To manage this rather turbulent crew, soothe the irascible old Squire, and keep the general household in unity was a task that required unusual powers of tact, and a capacity for administration and organization that was worthy of a wider sphere. She might be described as the axle of the family wheel, for she was the unobtrusive center around which everything unconsciously revolved.

But by this time Lilias and Dulcie will have ridden up hill and down dale, and will be turning Rajah and Peri in at the great wrought-iron gates of Cheverley Chase, and trotting through the park, and up the laurel-bordered carriage drive to the house. There was quite a big welcome for them when they arrived. Everard had returned the day before from Harrow, Roland was back from his preparatory school, and the two little ones, Bevis and Clifford, had just said good-by for three weeks to their nursery governess, and in consequence were in the wildest of holiday spirits. There was a general family pilgrimage round the premises to look at all the most cherished treasures, the horses, the pigeons, the pet rabbits, the new puppies, the garden, and the woods beyond the park; there were talks with the grooms and the keepers, and plans for cutting evergreens and decorating both the house and the village church in orthodox Christmas fashion.

"It's lovely to be at home again," sighed Lilias with satisfaction, as the three elder ones sauntered back through the winding paths of the terraced vegetable garden.

"And such a home, too!" exulted Dulcie.

"Rather!" agreed Everard. "That was exactly what was in my mind. The first thing I thought when I looked out of the window this morning was: 'What a ripping place it is, and some day it will be all mine.'"

"Yours, Everard?"

"Why, of course. Who's else should it be? The Chase has always gone strictly in the male line, and I'm the oldest grandson, so naturally I'm the heir. It goes without saying!"

Dulcie's pink face was looking puzzled.

"Do you mean to say if Grandfather were to die, that everything would be yours?" she asked. "Would you be the Squire?"

"I believe I'm called 'the young squire' already," replied Everard airily.

"But what about the rest of us?" objected Dulcie.

"Oh, I'd look after you, of course! The heir always does something for the younger ones. You needn't be afraid on that score!"

Everard's tone was magnanimous and patronizing in the extreme. He was gazing at the house with an air of evident proprietorship. Dulcie, who had never considered the question before, revolved it carefully in her youthful brain for a moment or two; then she ventured a comment.

"Wouldn't it be fairer to divide it?"

"Nonsense, Dulcie!" put in Lilias. "You don't understand. Properties like this are never divided. They always go, just as they are, to the eldest son. You couldn't chop them up into pieces, or there'd be no estate left."

"Couldn't one have the house and the other the wood, and another the park?"

"Much good the house would do anybody without the estate to keep it up!" grunted Everard. "Dulcie, you're an utter baby. I don't believe you ever see farther than the end of your silly little nose. You may be glad you've got a brother to take care of you."

"But haven't I as much right here as you?" persisted Dulcie obstinately.

"No, you haven't; the heir always has the best right to everything. Cheer up! When the place is mine, I mean to have a ripping time here! I'll make things hum, I can tell you—ask my friends down, and you girls shall help to entertain. I've planned it all out. I suppose I shall have to go to Cambridge first, but I'll enjoy myself there too—you bet! On the whole I think I was born under a lucky star! Hallo! there goes Astley; I want to speak to him."

Everard whistled to the groom, and ran down the garden, leaving his sisters to return to the house. At seventeen he was a fair, handsome, dashing sort of boy, of a type more common thirty years ago than at present. He held closely to the old-fashioned ideas of privileges of birth, and, according to modern notions, had contracted some false ideals of life. He had lounged through school without attempting to work, and was depending for all his future upon what should be left him by the industry of others. All the same, in spite of his attitude of "top dog" in the family, he was attractive, and inclined to be generous. Like most boys of seventeen, he had reached the "swollen head" stage, and imagined himself of vastly greater importance than he really was. The sobriquet of "the young squire" pleased his fancy, and he meant to live up to what he considered were the traditions of so distinguished a title.