The Tale of Cuckoo Brow Wood by Susan Wittig Albert

an entire classroom on their own. Deirdre had an abundance of bright red hair, flashing eyes, and a great many freckles—an Irish inheritance, Margaret suspected. And although she was a dreamy child, she knew how to stand up for herself.
    Mrs. Holland chuckled. “Deirdre gave some of it back to him, didn’t she? I saw Harold take a tumble and didn’t regret it a bit. One hates to say it, but he’s an awful bully.” She opened the biscuit tin and took out two for each of them. “It’s good to see that Caroline Longford has befriended her. And Jeremy Crosfield, too.”
    “They are all three orphans,” Margaret said. “Perhaps that’s their common bond. And Jeremy’s had his own taste of Harold’s bullying.”
    Mrs. Holland poured hot water over the tea in the chipped Brighton teapot, a souvenir of one of Miss Crabbe’s long-ago summer holidays. “Caroline is rather a surprise, isn’t she? One would think she’d be doing better.”
    “Yes,” Margaret said. “It’s a puzzle.” Caroline’s school in New Zealand, where she had come from, had not given her a very good start. She should have been able to catch up easily, but something—Margaret had no idea what—was holding her back.
    “Anyway,” Mrs. Holland was going on, “you’d think that Lady Longford’s granddaughter would have a governess, or be sent away to school, rather than attending here in the village. One wonders why.”
    “Oh, haven’t you heard that story?” asked Margaret. “It’s all on account of Miss Potter.”
    “No, I didn’t know,” said Mrs. Holland, with interest. “Tell me about it.”
    And as their tea brewed, Margaret told what had happened the year before, when Miss Potter had helped to persuade Lady Longford that Caroline should be allowed to attend the village school for a year. Now, though, Margaret understood that her ladyship was dissatisfied with Caroline’s performance and had decided to obtain a governess for the girl. Caroline would not be coming back to school after the end of term.
    Margaret sighed. That was the worst part of being a teacher. Just when one became attached to the children, one had to say goodbye.

5
    Caroline and Deirdre Make a Plan
    Caroline Longford was at that very moment relating the same story to Deirdre Malone as they walked up the road between banks of blooming hawthorn and verges bright with buttercups. Caroline, whose mother and father were dead, had come to Tidmarsh Manor the previous summer from a sheep station in New Zealand. Her grandmother, Lady Longford, had disowned Caroline’s father when he stubbornly refused to marry the young woman she had chosen for him, ran off to New Zealand, and married for love. Her ladyship, an elderly autocrat with the unfortunate habit of expecting everyone in the world to follow her orders, had at first refused to take Caroline in. When she finally agreed, it was on the condition that Caroline be sent away to school as soon as a suitable place could be found.
    But Miss Potter had intervened—quite miraculously, it seemed to Caroline—and persuaded Lady Longford to allow Caroline to stay on at the Manor and go to school in the village, at least for a year. Things weren’t perfect, by any means. Grandmama was as ill-tempered and dictatorial as ever. She had recently forbidden Caroline to play with the village children, who were a “bad influence” over her, and kept her from doing well in school—in Grandmama’s opinion. And Tidmarsh Manor was a cold, stiff house, crowded with heavy furniture and fragile bric-a-brac. It was the kind of place that makes laughing or playing, or any other kind of ordinary enjoyment, utterly impossible, and was fit only for reading, or embroidering, or doing lessons. Worse yet, it was the kind of place that makes you feel as if somebody is looking over your shoulder all the time. But Caroline had a pair of guinea pigs and a private journal where she could say anything she felt like saying because she wrote it