She slid down the rope again, and Jean saw how her eyes were glowing and shining, and she felt a little more puzzled than before.
‘Then, Angela wants to get it because she’s always bottom in everything else,’ continued Barbara. ‘That’s not much of a reason, I think, especially when she hasn’t got any brothers–only millions of sisters, who don’t count; but still, she’ll be awfully disappointed if she doesn’t get it, won’t she?’
‘Yes,’ said Jean.
Babs curled the rope round her waist, and swung herself gently to and fro. The movement seemed to aid her reflections. ‘Why doyouwant to get it, Jean?’ she asked softly.
It was never easy to induce Jean to talk about herself; but if any one could do it, Barbara was the person. And, this time, she succeeded.
Jean drew another long breath, and clenched her fists.
‘Because I want to be first,’ she said slowly. ‘I want to be first ineverything. I’d sooner be bottom than second! Of course you’ll think I’m a conceited pig,’ she added, almost fiercely, ‘but I can’t help that; I don’t expect you tounderstand.’ Then she muttered in a lower tone,–‘Nobody ever does, excepting only mother and father.’
Barbara’s eyes were fixed on her face, and there was a warmth in their blackness that Jean had only seen there once, and that was when she was writing to her father in America.
‘Good old Jean!’ she murmured. ‘It’s awfully hard to understand; but I’ll try–truthfully. And I’d like you to get the prize–I would, really. I didn’t want you to have it before; but I do now, Jean, old girl!’
‘I ought to wantyouto have it, but I don’t,’ sighed Jean, trying vainly not to be behindhand in unselfishness; ‘I just want it myself, so it’s no good pretending I don’t.’
There was silence between them for an instant; and from the other end of the gymnasium drifted the monotonous war-cries of Mary Wells and Angela Wilkins.
‘Margaret and Charlotte Bigley!’ shouted one.
‘Margaret and Jean Murray!’ added the other.
The enthusiasm was too infectious to be resisted. With a wild scream of glee, Jean and Babs raced the whole length of the room and flung themselves into the fray, without a thought of the opposite sentiments they had just been expressing to each other.
‘Margaret and the Babe!’ yelled Jean, brandishing an Indian club.
‘Margaret and Angela!’ came from the panting Barbara, just behind her.
Nothing but the entrance of Finny would have calmed the noisy tumult; but when they saw her standing on the platform, looking down at them with her best Saturday smile on her face, the clamour ended in a burst of laughter; and five or six of the more eager of them invaded the platform, and danced round her appealingly.
‘Do, do say who’s going to win,’ begged Barbara, catching hold of her sleeve.
‘It’s Margaret and the Babe, isn’t it?’ cried Jean.
‘No!’ shrilled Angela. ‘You mean Margaret and––’
‘Charlotte Bigley!’ gasped Mary Wells, squeezing herself into the front rank.
Miss Finlayson put out her arms and encircled as many of them as she could, and spun them round the platform with her.
‘Dear, dear little girls!’ she exclaimed, when she was out of breath and could dance no more. ‘Do you know what the Canon ought to have done, if he wanted to pleaseme?’
‘What? What?’ cried a dozen voices.
‘He ought to have offered thirty-two prizes, and then I should not have been afraid of any of my children feeling disappointed,’ answered Miss Finlayson, nodding at them wisely; and, somehow, it seemed to Jean as if the head-mistress’s eyes rested longest of all upon her.
The junior division, drawn up in double file, stood assembled in the anteroom of the gymnasium, on the day of the great competition for the Canon’s prize. The figure-marching by the whole class was over, and the senior division had just begun the wand exercises to the piano accompaniment of the German music-master, who, being the unlucky possessor of an unpronounceable name in three syllables, was generally known as ‘Scales.’ The applause which had followed after the marching had taken away the first shyness of the younger children; and even the prospect of doing separate exercises presently, before an audience of strangers, did not seem to be having much effect on the sixteen little girls in scarlet frocks who were waiting in the anteroom for their turn to come. Hurly-Burly, though supposed to be superintending affairs in the gymnasium, had to look in at the door more than once, to remind them that the crashing chords of ‘Scales’ did not drown everything; but just asshe had succeeded in reducing them at last to order, a piece of information passed down the file from Charlotte Bigley, who stood nearest the doorway and had the best view of the gymnasium, upset them all once more.
‘Margaret has forgotten the figure,’ ‘Margaret has put the others out,’ ‘Margaret has gone wrong,’ ‘Margaret Hulme has clean forgotten everything, and she’s got to step out,’ were the various forms in which the news travelled down to the end of the file, the last of all being the version of Angela Wilkins and therefore generally discredited.
‘I don’t believe a word of it!’ said Jean, stoutly.
‘Why, Margaret couldn’t go wrong if she tried,’ exclaimed Barbara, whose belief in the head girl, though slow in coming, was quite equal by this time to Jean’s.
‘She has, though,’ declared Angela, who stood with Mary Wells just in front of Jean and Barbara.
Mary Wells, who had stepped out of rank on hearing the surprising news, now returned, and in her slow and conscientious manner proceeded to reprove Angela.
‘How you do exaggerate, Angela!’ she said, frowning. ‘Margaret only went a little wrong; and she’s caught up again all right. Isn’t it funny, though?’ she was obliged to add immediately, with a thrill of amazement in her voice.
The two children behind her for once were dumb. The head girl, according to their simplecreed, could do no wrong; so when she did, what words had they left to use? Babs was the first to see a way out of the difficulty.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I expect she’s nervous. It makes you forget like anything, if you’re nervous. Once, when Egbert was being prepared for confirmation, he was so nervous–it was a strange clergyman, you know, and Egbert said he blinked–that he clean forgot his catechism, even the easy first part about your godfathers and godmothers. So that’s why Margaret forgot her steps, you see if it wasn’t!’
‘Nervous!’ echoed Jean, incredulously. ‘Who ever saw Margaret nervous? Do you think she’d be able to make every new kid who comes to the school quake in her shoes if she wasnervous?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Babs, doubtfully. Margaret Hulme had certainly never made her quake in her shoes, even when she was a new girl; but she did not admit this to Jean. ‘Egbert can make people afraid of him too,’ she went on, ‘and he can thrash any chap you please, and he always washes his head in cold watereverymorning, even if there’s ice, and he has more ties and clothes and things than all the others put together, and he’s awfully grand and splendid, Egbert is,–but all the same, he was frightened of that strange clergyman. Can you see Egbert?’ she concluded proudly. ‘He’s at the end of them all, next to Jill.Wasn’t it jolly of Finny to put them right in the front row of the gallery?’
Her companions forgot Margaret for a minute or two in their efforts to stand on tiptoe and catch a glimpse through the open door of Barbara Berkeley’s five brothers. The various relatives who came to the break-up parties, and never seemed to exist at any other time except on letter-writing days, always caused a good deal of excitement among the girls, and added a temporary importance to the most insignificant of them, provided she was lucky enough to possess a parent or even a cousin among the visitors.
‘They’re all mine,’ said Babs, glowing with the joy of possession. ‘I’ll introduce them to you at supper, if you like.’
‘I’m rather glad I haven’t any one belonging to me here,’ said Jean, cheating herself into a brief forgetfulness of the little home in Edinburgh. ‘I’m so frightened of the introducing part; I never know what to say, and it makes me feel such a goat.’
‘Oh,’ said Mary Wells, placidly; ‘how funny of you, Jean. I always say, “Here’s my sister, and this is Charlotte Bigley.” That’s quite easy, surely.’
‘Yes, but it isn’t right,’ responded Jean, frankly. ‘You should hear Margaret Hulme do it–that’s something like! It reminds you of mothers, and callers, and At Home days when you wear your best frock and hand the scones.’
Their talk was interrupted by the retirementfrom the gymnasium of the senior division. Margaret marched into the anteroom, with her eyes staring straight in front of her, and an exaggerated air of confidence in her bearing. There was an obvious lack of enthusiasm among her followers, who were all whispering and looking significantly at their leader; but the noise produced by Scales, who seemed to think that a Beethoven sonata was an appropriate solo to play in the interval, made conversation impossible; and the section that was to do the horizontal bar, led by Ruth Oliver, returned to the gymnasium before the juniors were able to satisfy their curiosity. During the second event of the competition, Margaret and the vaulting-horse section exchanged very few remarks, and the feeling that there was something unusual in the air had considerably increased by the time Ruth, looking flushed and totally unlike herself, marched her section back again. The rumour ran down the junior file that Ruth Oliver had been distinguishing herself, and that as much of the clapping as Scales allowed to be heard was on her account. Certainly, the irresolute manner that marked everything Ruth did, as a rule, had quite deserted her as she filed past the triumvirate with her little band.
‘Why,’ exclaimed Angela, audibly, ‘I never knew Ruth Oliver was pretty before!’
‘She isn’t, is she?’ said Jean, just as loudly.
‘Of course she is!’ declared Babs, warmly. ‘She’sbeautiful, and–and classic!’
The others laughed, and she wondered why. Somebody had said, only the other day, that Jill Urquhart had classic features; and how was she to know that, although she was every bit as fond of Ruth as of Jill, the same adjective would not do for both?
‘Look at Margaret Hulme,’ whispered Mary Wells, as the vaulting-horse section marched past them. ‘She’s quite white!’
The little remark was enough to set them all wondering afresh; and Barbara, moved by a sudden impulse, darted up to Ruth Oliver.
‘DidMargaret go wrong in the wands?’ asked the child, in an anxious whisper.
The smile that had made Ruth look so surprisingly pretty died out of her face, and she glanced gravely down at her little questioner.
‘Never mind, baby,’ she said gently. ‘Go back to your place.’ And she came as near snubbing any one then as she ever did in the whole of her school career.
A burst of applause put every one in the anteroom once more on the alert.
‘What is it?’ passed eagerly from one to another. The answer, given by Charlotte from her point of vantage near the doorway, was soon circulated. Margaret Hulme had easily surpassed her seven companions by a brilliant performance on the vaulting-horse; and the spirits of the anteroom went up with a bound. Hurly-Burly had mounted the platform at the farther end of the gymnasium, and wascomparing notes with Miss Finlayson and the expert from the London training-college, who was acting as one of the judges; so there was no one to restrain both senior and junior divisions from falling out of rank and pressing round the head girl, as she once more marched back to them. They had never once made so much fuss over their idol as they did now that she had shown, for the first time, that even idols are capable of failure.
Hurly-Burly returned and restored order in a stern voice; and they saw Finny standing in the middle of the platform, waiting for Scales to bring theErlkönigto a thundering close. The next moment she was speaking in that low voice of hers that went straight to the ears of every one in the room.
‘It may make the end of the senior competition more interesting to you,’ she began, ‘if you know how the competitors stand now. So far, Ruth Oliver is a little ahead of the others––’ Even the solemnity of the occasion could not stay the murmur of astonishment that rose in the anteroom at this announcement; but Miss Finlayson waited for it to subside, and finished her speech. ‘She and Margaret Hulme are very close, for they are exactly even as regards gymnastics; but Margaret lost a little over the wand figure. So the prize will greatly depend upon the result of the high jump. At the same time, I feel sure you will agree with me that the way in which the other competitors have worked hasgreatly added to our enjoyment, and deserves much of our applause.’
A good many downcast faces in the anteroom cheered up as Miss Finlayson made her ingenious reference to the unsuccessful ones, and so contrived to make them feel that the applause at the end of her speech was really for them. Then the whole senior division filed into the gymnasium for the last time, to the slow music of Herr Scales, who had just had a polite rebuke from Hurly-Burly, and was forcing himself desperately to keep the soft pedal down.
The children never forgot the tense feeling of the next few minutes, the thrill that ran through every girl in Wootton Beeches when Ruth Oliver knocked down the rope at four feet four, the answering thrill that followed it when she cleared it at four feet six, the surprise they went through when Margaret also cleared it at four feet six, but knocked it down at four feet eight; and last of all, the enthusiasm of the spectators when Ruth just managed to clear it at four feet eight and Margaret still knocked it down after two tries at it. The people, who clapped and smiled so good-naturedly, little knew that the exciting contest they had just witnessed had upset the traditions of two and a half years and proclaimed the triumph of the most retiring girl in the school. They only thought how modern and delightful it was for girls to play the same games as boys; and Mrs. Oliver beamed on every one from theplatform, and decided that Ruth should stay another year at school instead of leaving at midsummer. But the anteroom was overwhelmed.
‘It’s–impossible!’ gasped Jean, when the news travelled down to the triumvirate. ‘Why, Margaret can clear four feet teneasily! I’ve seen her.’
‘And Ruth has never done more than four feet six before,’ added Angela, forced by the seriousness of the moment into a strict statement of facts.
‘Margaret was nervous; I’m certain she was,’ said Barbara, positively. ‘It was the same with Egbert, when he forgot his godfathers and godmothers; he said there was a silly idiot at the bottom of his form, who didn’t mind the strange clergyman blinking at him a bit, and he even got through the duty to his neighbour. And Ruth wasn’t nervous, you see.’
‘What nonsense you are talking,’ remarked Mary Wells, who loved to be literal. ‘Why, Ruth is more shy than any one in the whole school!’
That was certainly true, and Babs went on puzzling over it, long after Margaret and Ruth had retired hand in hand to the other end of the anteroom. For whatever the head girl felt about her failure, she did not mean to let any one guess that she cared. Her easy self-possession was all her own again, as she kept tight hold of Ruth’s hand and chatted lightly to the girls about her; and one or two of the others, who tried to patronise her with theirconsolation, received such sarcastic replies that they were very soon put back in their place again. Margaret Hulme was not going to forget she was head girl, even if that roomful of strangers had robbed her of the power she had wielded for two and a half years.
Scales struck up a march of his own composition; and at a vigorous sign from Miss Burleigh, Charlotte Bigley hastily marshalled her scattered troop and led them into the gymnasium for the Indian club performance. They were all very much subdued by the time they had separated to their various places, for the peep they had stolen through the anteroom door had given them no idea of what it really felt like to stand in the middle of this staring crowd of people, who filled the gallery above and the platform at the end, and even spread thinly round the room close up to the wall. Jean clenched her teeth and frowned fiercely, and would have endured twice the shyness that tortured her sooner than forget one of the exercises she had to go through; and as for Barbara, she took no notice of the people at all, but began to work mechanically, as soon as the first bars of the familiar valse fell on her ears. Angela, however, lost her head and one of her clubs at the same instant; and a harmless aunt, who sat near, only escaped a severe blow from the latter by the dexterity of another visitor, who put out his hand just in time and caught it as it flew past him. It was neatly done, and the audience applaudedvigorously, while Hurly-Burly gave the command to stop practice, and the stranger restored her property to the confused and unhappy Angela. Then Babs recognised him. It was the Doctor who had come out in this surprisingly new light; and even Kit, with whom she immediately exchanged glances, was looking down at him approvingly.
‘Did you see Dr. Hurst?’ whispered Babs to Jean afterwards, as they filed out of the gymnasium again.
‘Of course I did, directly I got in,’ answered Jean. ‘Couldn’t think who it was looking so glum and thundery! Wonder why he came to a show like this? He doesn’t look as though he went in for gymnastics, does he?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Babs, trying to be fair even to the beast who had not shown himself worthy to be a prince. ‘It was very smart the way he caught that club. Perhaps he is good at gym, though he can’t take a joke.’
Angela required so much consolation from them both on account of her blunder, that they forgot all about the doctor, and spent most of their time, while Charlotte’s section was displaying on the horizontal ladder, in assuring her, with more or less confidence in their tones, that when it came to the rings no one could hope to compete with her. Then Charlotte Bigley returned at the head of her section, trying unsuccessfully to look as if nothing had happened; and Mary Wells proudly informed all those who cared to hear, that if anybodythought she was going to do the rings as well as Charlotte had just done the ladder, she was much mistaken!
‘Oh, you shut up!’ rejoined Babs. ‘You haven’t seen Angela yet.’
‘Or Jean!’ echoed Angela, faithfully.
The third voice for once was wanting. Jean Murray stood waiting for the signal to advance; and her determined, almost dogged look was blotting out every other expression on her thin, clever face.
Babs understood, and sprang forward to her place at Jean’s side.
‘It’s all right, Jean,’ she said earnestly. ‘I must try my very hardest, because Finny made us all promise; but–but I do want you to win, all the same.’
‘Oh, stop it, Babe,’ Jean threw back at her, in a tone that startled and hurt her; and the child shrank into herself again, and had a hard fight to keep back the tears that rushed into her eyes for the first time in many weeks.
Their persistent encouragement of Angela made her go through the first exercise on the rings successfully. It was a swing and a pull up in front, and she managed it more neatly than either of her supporters. Then came the swing and turn, and here Angela’s temporary courage deserted her. Perhaps she was flurried by the little attempt made by the gallery to applaud her the second time she came forward; in any case, the glimpse she had of Kit, whocaught her eye and nodded cheerfully just as she was beginning, did not help to compose her. She turned too soon and too vigorously, and spun round helplessly in the air, until Hurly-Burly came to her aid and helped her to drop ignominiously to the ground. After that, it was evident that the issue of the competition rested with Jean and Barbara, for they soon showed that they were much more finished and thorough in their work than any one else in their section; and everybody was prepared for the statement made by Miss Finlayson in the next interval. She announced that Charlotte Bigley, Jean Murray, and Barbara Berkeley were exactly even up to that point, and that the result would have to be determined by the rope-climbing.
The rope-climbing, however, left the result still undetermined. Both Jean and Babs reached the top in six seconds, blew the trumpet they found there with a vigour that sent the spectators into a peal of merriment, and slid down again, much pleased with themselves and the interest they were exciting. Charlotte Bigley on the third rope excelled them in speed and reached the top in five seconds, but forgot to blow the trumpet, and so made things even once more. The junior division filed out again, while Miss Finlayson and the expert and Hurly-Burly put their heads together on the platform, and Herr Scales thought the moment an appropriate one for a performance in his best manner of his favourite composition, whichwas calledSonnenscheinand had been thumped out in the holidays to half the parents in the room.
Miss Finlayson rose to her feet again. As the three competitors she had already mentioned were still equal, she must call upon each of them to do one of the advanced exercises, Charlotte on the ladder and the other two on the rings; they were to choose their own exercises, and if they again proved themselves equally good, the prize would be divided. The spectators were in a pleasant state of interest by this time, and the three little rivals were greeted with enthusiasm when they stepped out of the anteroom for the last time and took up their positions in front of the platform. They looked very small and slight as they stood there in their short red frocks against a solid background of people; but they had quite lost every suspicion of bashfulness, and Babs even began to look upon the whole thing as an immense joke. She nodded gaily to the boys in the gallery, and smiled happily at Auntie Anna, who had the place of honour on the platform next to the Canon; and in the silence that followed, while Charlotte Bigley was jumping from rung to rung of the horizontal ladder, she occupied herself in trying to decide on her own exercise. If Jean chose leaving go with one hand, she should swing and let go and catch on to the trapeze beyond–at least, if Hurly-Burly would only be decent and give her leave. She half hoped that Jeanwouldchoose the other;for she had practised the trapeze one, only last week, and––
A sudden murmur, followed by a faint attempt at applause, roused her; and she saw Charlotte Bigley walking slowly back to the anteroom with her eyes fixed on the ground.
‘What happened? I didn’t see,’ she whispered, nudging Jean.
‘Hand slipped, fell off,’ answered Jean, briefly, as she went forward and grasped the rings.
She did choose swinging and letting go with one hand, and she went through it very successfully, and earned every bit of the applause that greeted her when she finished. Barbara was so delighted that she went on clapping her loudly after everybody else had stopped, and did not notice what she was doing till the audience began to laugh and Hurly-Burly came up and spoke to her.
‘May I have the trapeze let down?’ whispered Babs, eagerly. ‘I want to let go of the rings and catch on to it at the end of my swing–like I did the other day.’
Hurly-Burly looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure you can manage it?’ she asked.
Barbara pleaded, and the games-mistress gave in. It was always difficult for any one so practical as Miss Burleigh to understand the odd little pupil, who at one moment could throw herself into a game as heartily as a boy, and at another was liable to exasperate her companions by going off into a dream and completelyforgetting what she was doing. But it was impossible to help liking the child, and Hurly-Burly, who had a sneaking conviction that the trapeze exercise would decide the prize in her favour, could not resist the temptation to let her have her own way and secure to herself at the same time a little reflected glory. For it was she who had taught Barbara the exercise, and she had every reason to be proud of her pupil. So she let down the trapeze from the roof and held it back with her hands, ready to drop it forward when the child had worked up her swing.
The eyes of the German music-master were filled with sentimental interest, as the youngest girl in the school stepped up to the rings. He knew very little about gymnastics, though a German; for his life had been passed almost entirely in other lands, and during the brief period he had spent in his own country he had been so absorbed in his art that he had completely neglected the physical culture that is of so much importance to most Germans. As for girls’ gymnastics, his experience in them had been entirely confined to a few occasions like the present, when he was asked to play instead of the junior music-mistress. But he never assisted at the usual lessons, when the junior music-mistress was considered good enough to perform; so Miss Finlayson’s remarks on the merits of the three competitors conveyed very little to him. Still, he managed to gather that Barbara stood a good chance of winning theprize, and his fat, benevolent face beamed with satisfaction in consequence. It was true that the little Fräulein with the black, black eyes and the wonder-clumsy fingers had no more talent for music than his tabby cat, while the performances of Fräulein Vilkins were the joy of his heart; but it was the little one who asked him so many questions about his beloved Germany, which she seemed to regard as being about the size of Kensington Gardens, and he forgave her all her excruciating false notes for the sake of her warm heart, which wascolossal. When he saw her standing there all alone, he quite gave up trying to be brilliant and dropped into a little simple melody of his own, which he had never thought important enough to name, but which Barbara had always told him in her funny English was ‘awfully fine.’ Unfortunately, just as she recognised the notes and nodded at him with a little smile, Jean brought him a message from the games-mistress, asking him not to play at all until the exercise was over.
‘It’s rather a difficult exercise, and you might put her out,’ explained Jean, seeing that he looked puzzled at such a peculiar request. Her explanation did not help him much, for Jean did not trouble to translate it into his own language; and, never having witnessed the exercise that was coming, he failed to see the point of Hurly-Burly’s message. However, he was glad of the opportunity to descend from the platform and get a better view of the little Fräulein’s performance; and he placed himself,rather inconveniently, just in front of the games-mistress, and prepared to miss nothing of what followed.
Everybody in the room was smiling genially at the youngest girl in the school. She had already prepossessed them in her favour by her frank admiration for Jean Murray; and now, as she stood there waiting for the sign from Hurly-Burly to begin, there was something about her happy unconsciousness that appealed irresistibly to her audience. Suddenly, the five boys in the gallery began to stamp their feet encouragingly, and Peter shouted ‘Go it, Babe!’ at the top of his voice. In a moment, the cry was taken up in the anteroom. ‘Go it, Babe!’ said twenty voices or more in a breath. The enthusiasm was infectious, and the words were repeated with many a laugh all over the room. ‘Go it, Babe!’ cried the people on the platform, and the people in the gallery, and the people who sat near her by the wall, until every one in the gymnasium was stamping and clapping and saying ‘Go it, Babe!’ to the little person in the short scarlet frock.
Barbara held the rings tightly, and her breath came rather quickly and unevenly. She was bewildered by the noise, and waited for it to subside before she began the exercise. It was so difficult to know what it all meant. Of course, the boys wanted her to win; and perhaps the other people did too, because they were grown up, and grown-up people always were jolly and kind to her. She could understandwhy the Doctor, stern as he was, smiled away at her and clapped her as heartily as any one, from his place on the platform; and she thought she knew dimly what was making Jean stamp on the floor till the dust flew. But the enthusiasm of her other school-fellows, who were pressing forward from the anteroom door, amazed her greatly. Could it be that they had suddenly forgotten how young and unimportant she was, and how much she needed correction, and how often she required to be told that she was the youngest in the school? Were these the girls she had hated so heartily only three months ago, the disgraced princesses she had turned out of her kingdom so passionately?
The applause died down at last, and Miss Burleigh made her the signal to begin. Babs walked back as far as she could, stood stretched for a second on the tips of her toes, then shook the hair out of her eyes with the old familiar movement, and took a sharp run forward. The next minute, the slim scarlet form was flying backwards and forwards, with graceful, regular movements. The onlookers gazed and admired, wondering with some curiosity what her exercise was going to be; and their interest increased when she uttered a sharp ‘Now!’ just as she was sweeping backwards from her highest swing. Only one person in the room failed to notice that it was Miss Burleigh who let the trapeze drop forward instantly, so that it hung ready for the small performer to grasp on her return swing.
The music-master had been wholly absorbed in watching the little Fräulein, from the first moment she had begun to swing. He thought he had never seen anything so graceful as the way she swept to and fro, nor anything sohübschas the expression and the rose-red complexion of the youngest girl in the school. It was trulygrossartig! His eyes followed her closely all the time, from end to end of her swing; and that was how he contrived to be looking away at the precise moment when Hurly-Burly let down the trapeze. The murmur that rose from the people who surrounded him, as they realised what Barbara was going to do, made him look round; and he saw the thing hanging there, as though it had dropped from the roof by accident, and in another second would get in the way of the child who was swinging so deliciously. Viewed afterwards in the light of ordinary common-sense, it seemed to himwunderbarthat he could so have deceived himself. At the time, not a doubt was in his mind as to what he thought had happened. The trapeze had fallen down by accident and was going to embarrass the little Fräulein, if not to hurt her; and the people around him were all exclaiming aloud, because they too had realised her danger. Nevertheless, nobody seemed to know what to do, and the little Fräulein was already sweeping straight towards it on her downward swing. All these reflections rushed through his brain in the flash of a moment. There was no time to hesitate. Hemust be the one to rush out and come to her aid. With a loud German exclamation, the music-master hurled himself forward and snatched back the trapeze just as the child let go of the rings.
He had a dim recollection afterwards of being gripped by Hurly-Burly just an instant too late, and of seeing the little scarlet figure twist in the air above him and drop with a nasty thud at the edge of the last mattress, of finding himself in the midst of a huge concourse of people, who suddenly rose up with a great roar and bore down upon him, uttering shriek after shriek,–and then, of coming miserably to himself again, with his heart thumping and his head throbbing painfully, just as a deathlike silence succeeded the uproar, and a voice like Miss Finlayson’s said something that sounded like ‘Doctor!’
Some one had sprung from the platform with a flying jump the moment the accident happened, and was forcing a passage through the throng of people. There was not a sound to be heard in the great gymnasium as the Doctor knelt down on the floor and put out his hand to the little still spot of scarlet that lay on the edge of the last mattress.
In the annals of Wootton Beeches there had never been so dismal a packing-day as the one that dawned on the morrow of the gymnastic competition. Generally, packing-day was the most delightful day in the term: it came just after the break-up party, and just before going home, and everything that happened on it seemed filled with a peculiar interest of its own. First of all, there was the joy of rushing up to the bedrooms directly after breakfast, to put out all the clothes in tidy little heaps, ready for packing later on; then, the less delightful business of clearing the bookshelves and tearing up the old exercise-books–an occupation which contrived, in spite of itself, to present a certain amount of charm, simply because it belonged to the last day of the term. And the nicest part of all was the indescribable feeling that it was the last day of the term, that there were no more lessons to prepare and no more penalties to avoid, no more scales to practise and no more stockings to mend, and, best of all, nomore rules to bother about, so that Fräulein and Mademoiselle could both be addressed, much to their own distraction, in the British tongue, and anybody who pleased could run up and down stairs to her heart’s content without asking leave first. All these privileges made packing-day, as a rule, something to look forward to. But to-day nothing was happening as it usually did.
Breakfast had been gone through almost in silence, and the accustomed rush to the bedrooms afterwards had taken place quite quietly and tamely. The tidying of the bookshelves, which could generally be made to linger so pleasantly over the whole morning, was accomplished for once in an hour or so; and the girls found themselves, at eleven o’clock, with nothing further to do until Miss Tomlinson should send for them to pack their things. On any other packing-day the playroom would have been cleared of chairs and tables in a few minutes, and somebody would have been dragged to the piano to play a valse, and there would have been plenty of amusement for every one until dinner-time. But to-day nobody wanted to dance, and hardly any one talked.
Jean Murray sat motionless on one of the window-seats in the senior playroom. On packing-day all ordinary restrictions were suspended, and the younger children wandered in and out of the two rooms as they pleased. Jean had taken advantage of this privilege to escape from her usual play-fellows, who wereremaining behind from force of habit in their own domain. The way Angela persisted in crying was enough to drive any one away; she had cried all through prayers, and had begun again directly after breakfast. Mary Wells, forgetting how much she had endured on former occasions from the triumvirate, sat with her arm round Angela’s neck, calling her ‘Poor darling!’ at intervals, with an occasional sob of her own to keep her company. Some of the others cried a little too,–at least, they did when they came near Angela,–and Charlotte Bigley was in such a temper that no one dared speak to her. All together, the juniors’ room was more than Jean could bear just then. Jean was not crying herself: she had not cried a drop since she saw the streak of scarlet twist round in the air and drop with a thud that still sounded in her ears.
It was not a bit like the last day of the term. ‘Tommy’ did not once come to the door and call out the name of the next girl who was to go upstairs and pack. Nobody in the room was exchanging addresses with any one else, or promising to write weekly letters during the holidays. Margaret was as cross as Charlotte Bigley, it seemed, for she allowed no one but Ruth Oliver to come near her; and the other big girls were scattered about the room in idle, listless groups, conversing a little, now and then, in hushed tones. None of them noticed Jean; and Jean never saw them. She just sat rigidly on the window-seat, and looked straightin front of her, with the odd, hard expression on her face that had been there since the night before.
Margaret was sitting at the table tracing interminable circles on the back of an old envelope with a pair of compasses. The presence of Ruth at her elbow, as she absorbed herself in this pursuit, was very comforting. Ruth was a slow old thing, as every one knew, but in time of need she was invaluable.
After a while, the head girl dug the point of the compass into the table, and cleared her throat nervously.
‘She’s such an awfully nice little kid,’ she said. She spoke hurriedly, and her face had turned rather red.
‘Yes,’ answered Ruth, staring down at the maze of circles on the back of the envelope.
Margaret went on, with an effort: ‘She has such a queer way of getting at you,’ she said. ‘I never knew how much I cared about the child, till–till now.’
‘No,’ answered Ruth, softly.
‘Supposing––’ began Margaret, and stopped abruptly. ‘Do you think––?’ she began again, and again hesitated.
‘Hurly-Burly said they couldn’t tell till the Doctor’s next visit,’ replied Ruth. ‘She hadn’t recovered consciousness when he left, you see.’
‘Don’t!’ muttered Margaret, hastily. She dug the compass a little deeper, and cleared her throat once more. ‘When did you see Hurly-Burly?’ she asked.
‘Just after prayers,’ said Ruth. ‘She said I wasn’t to tell the younger ones, so don’t split. The Doctor stayed till five this morning, and he’s coming again presently. He’s rather cut up, she says.’
‘ThatDoctor? Don’t believe it!’ said Margaret, shading some of the circles with a pencil.
‘Hurly-Burly said so,’ maintained Ruth, in her resolute way. ‘Perhaps he isn’t so stiff and stupid as he seems. I saw him last night, talking to Jill Urquhart, and he looked quite young and jolly. You never know, do you?’
‘Perhaps not. It doesn’t matter, does it?’ said the head girl, indifferently.
‘Hurly-Burly is pretty bad, too,’ continued Ruth. ‘She thinks it’s her fault, because there was a gap in the mattresses, so that the Babe fell half on the boards. That’s how she cut her head. You see, the mattresses were arranged for the rings, and when Hurly-Burly altered them for the trapeze she didn’t stop to test them to see if they were in the right place. Anybody else might have done the same, with the whole room waiting for her; but still, she is reproaching herself like anything.’
‘She needn’t,’ said Margaret, with quiet vehemence. ‘It’s only the fault of that idiot Scales.’
‘Poor Scales!’ murmured Ruth. ‘I saw him too wandering about the hall; and he was crying just like a baby, and he didn’t seem tomind my seeing him a bit. I suppose foreigners are always like that.’
Margaret curled her lip contemptuously. ‘I shouldn’t waste my pity on him, if I were you,’ she remarked. ‘No one but a foreigner would have anything to cry about.’
Ruth glanced at her timidly. ‘I think, perhaps, it is worse for Scales than any one,’ she ventured to say. ‘Of course, he’s a hopeless idiot, but he didn’t mean––’
‘Oh, never mind about Scales!’ interrupted Margaret; and Ruth took up the compasses and began drawing invisible circles on the tablecloth.
A bit of conversation drifted across to them from the juniors’ room.
‘Her brothers stopped all night; so did the old lady,’ Mary Wells was saying. ‘I saw their breakfast going into Finny’s study this morning, when Tommy called me back into the dining-room to fold my table-napkin.’
‘How could you notice a thing like that?’ came in plaintive, reproving tones from Angela. ‘I wish I was able to bear up like you, Mary.’
‘Poor darling!’ said Mary Wells, tenderly.
‘Was Jill there too?’ asked another voice.
‘She’s up in Finny’s bedroom, withher,’ answered Angela, quickly. She was almost restored to a normal condition by the desire to tell something that nobody else knew. Then she remembered herself, and subsided into a proper state of tearfulness. ‘I was hanging about upstairs, to see if I could find out howshewas, when Jill passed me in a white apron, looking just like a real nurse,’ she went on, with a long-drawn sigh. ‘I tried to speak to her, but I was too upset.’
‘Poordarling!’ cried Mary Wells, more fervently than before.
Margaret stirred impatiently, and flung down her pencil. ‘I say,’ she said to Ruth, ‘what can we give those children to do? I’m sure Finny wouldn’t like them to go on drivelling like that. Angela is such a little idiot!’
‘I think she’s really fond of the Babe,’ observed Ruth, as she followed the head girl across the room.
‘Oh, yes,’ admitted Margaret, with a shrug of her shoulders; ‘Jean told her she’d got to be.’
At the window-seat she stopped and forgot Angela for the moment. The sight of the child who sat there, looking so white and wretched, touched her.
‘Cheer up, kiddie!’ she said, sitting down beside her. Ruth Oliver discreetly moved on.
‘Get away!’ gasped Jean.
Margaret stroked her hand, but Jean drew it away sharply, and shifted her position so that she looked out of the window. Her eyes wandered across the drive and fell on the little building in the field, where she and Angela had passed their eight days of quarantine with the youngest girl in the school. Somehow, Jean could not bear the sight of it to-day, and she moved round restively, till she faced Margaret again.
‘Oh, do leave me alone!’ she said fiercely; and the head girl felt rather helpless, and left her.
In the junior playroom, Angela had relapsed at the sight of Ruth Oliver into a fresh fit of crying.
‘Whatisthe matter, Angela?’ demanded Ruth, for once almost losing her patience.
‘Matter?’ sobbed Angela, leaning back for support on the substantial arm of Mary Wells. ‘I’m full of re–remorse, and–and penitence! So would you be, if–if you were as bad and–and as sinful as me!’
‘Why, what have you been doing now?’ inquired Ruth, keeping her temper with difficulty.
Angela stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, and recovered sufficient control over herself to take it out again and make her confession.
‘Last week,’ she faltered, ‘sheasked me to help her with her French; and–and–I was cross, and–and–I wouldn’t.’
She burst into tears again, as Charlotte Bigley looked up from the book she was pretending to read and put in a curt remark.
‘Who’sshe?’ she demanded bluntly.
Angela stopped crying to stare at her. ‘You know fast enough, Charlotte!’ she mumbled indistinctly.
Charlotte tossed her head scornfully. ‘If you mean Barbara Berkeley, why on earth can’t you say so?’ she exclaimed. ‘She hasn’t losther name because she fell off the rings,hasshe?’
Mary Wells spoke her mind solemnly. ‘We all knowyouhave no feeling, Charlotte Bigley,’ she was beginning, when some one near the window announced that the Doctor had just driven round the corner of the house.
This in itself was enough to reduce Angela to further depths of contrition. ‘What shall I do,’ she wailed, ‘if she dies before I can ask her forgiveness?’
Margaret Hulme suddenly stood over her, and shook her by the shoulder.
‘Stop it, child!’ she said, not unkindly, for even Angela’s tears made her own feel uncomfortably near the surface. She turned to the others quickly.
‘Every one will get ready and go into the field for a hockey practice,’ she commanded.
Charlotte shut her book with a bang. ‘What’s the good of hockey?’ she grumbled crossly.
‘What’s the good of anything,’ sighed Margaret, ‘with that poor little kid lying ill up there?’
Charlotte looked at her swiftly, and then turned away, blinking her eyes furiously; and the head girl took her arm with astonishing condescension, and walked silently into the cloakroom with her.
A little later, Dr. Hurst came out of Miss Finlayson’s bedroom upstairs, and closed the door softly behind him. The head-mistressstood waiting for him on the landing. Their eyes met, and hers were full of anxious inquiry. In his there shone a gleam of something that had not been there before.
‘Better,’ he said, and drew a long breath. He put his hand on the baluster-rail to steady himself. ‘She’ll do, now that consciousness has returned,’ he went on in a businesslike tone; ‘the concussion was only slight, after all, and the fracture to the leg could hardly be in a better place. Wonderful what children will do to kill themselves without succeeding! She’ll pull through in no time, with rest and quiet–perfect quiet, mind! Don’t let those boys go near her, whatever you do; and keep your girls from weeping on her neck as much as possible. Good morning.’
Miss Finlayson smiled, and retained his hand a moment. No one would have thought that this practical man of medicine, who pretended to regard his little patient merely as an interesting case, was the boyish-hearted fellow who had sat by her bedside all night to watch for her returning consciousness.
‘Must you go?’ she said. ‘Why not rest on the sofa in my study for an hour, and stay to lunch with us? You must be worn out.’
The Doctor drew himself up and frowned. ‘Not at all, not at all!’ he said, looking vexed. ‘Room full of patients waiting for me at home–I must wish you good morning.’