Transcribed from the 1902 Macmillan and Co. “Countess Kate and The Stokesley Secret” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org THE STOKESLEY SECRET * * * * * BY CHARLOTTE M. YONGE * * * * * London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1902 _All rights reserved_ * * * * * RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY _Transferred to Macmillan and Co._, _Limited_, 1901. _Reprinted_, 1902. CHAPTER I. “HOW can a pig pay the rent?” The question seemed to have been long under consideration, to judge by the manner in which it came out of the pouting lips of that sturdy young five-year-old gentleman, David Merrifield, as he sat on a volume of the great Latin Dictionary to raise him to a level with the tea-table. Long, however, as it had been considered, it was unheeded on account of one more interesting to the general public assembled round the table. “I say!” hallooed out a tall lad of twelve holding aloft a slice taken from the dish in the centre of the table, “I say! what do you call this, Mary?” “Bread and butter, Master Sam,” replied rather pettishly the maid who had brought in the big black kettle. “Bread and butter! I call it bread and scrape!” solemnly said Sam. “It only has butter in the little holes of it, not at the top, Miss Fosbrook,” said, in an odd pleading kind of tone, a stout good-humoured girl of thirteen, with face, hair, and all, a good deal like a nice comfortable apricot in a sunny place, or a good respectable Alderney cow. “I think it would be better not to grumble, Susan, my dear,” replied, in a low voice, a pleasant dark-eyed young lady who was making tea; but the boys at the bottom of the table neither heard nor heeded. “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” was Sam’s cry, in so funny a voice, that Miss Fosbrook could only laugh; “is this bread and scrape the fare for a rising young family of genteel birth?” “Oh!” with a pathetic grimace, cried the pretty-faced though sandy-haired Henry, the next to him in age, “if our beloved parents knew how their poor deserted infants are treated—” “A fine large infant you are, Hal!” exclaimed Susan. “I’m an infant, you’re an infant, Miss Fosbrook is an infant—a babby.” “For shame, Hal!” cried the more civilized Sam, clenching his fist. “No, no, Sam,” interposed Miss Fosbrook, laughing, “your brother is quite right; I am as much an infant in the eye of the law as little George.” “There, I said I would!” cried Henry; “didn’t I, Sam?” “Didn’t you what?” asked Susan, not in the most elegant English.