She fetched a brush and tried to reduce the tangled hair under her hands to a certain degree of order. Margaret Hulme had disposed of all her hairpins by this time, and was closely watching a door on the other side of the gallery. When it at last opened she straightened herself and prepared for action.
It was Jean Murray who came out of it, rather cautiously at first, then with a pretence of great unconcern. But her jaunty air completely deserted her when she saw the little group outside the head girl’s door, and she tried to slink away towards the stairs unnoticed. Margaret called her back authoritatively, and Jean came slowly and unwillingly round the gallery.
‘Now,’ said the head girl, when she was within easy hearing, ‘just you apologise to Barbara Berkeley for hoaxing her just now. If you think there is anything funny in telling an untruth, I’m sorry for your sense of humour, and you’d better not do it again in this house. Now then, make haste about it.’
Barbara tried impetuously to interfere, but Ruth Oliver held her back. ‘Hush!’ she whispered. ‘Leave it to Margaret.’
Jean was shifting from one foot to another, and her mouth began to quiver. ‘I didn’t know she’d be such a stupid as to believe it,’ she muttered.
‘My dear child,’ said the head girl, blandly, ‘nobody supposed you were any judge of character. So it would clearly be wiser not to play that kind of joke on any one in future, wouldn’t it? Are you going to apologise or not?’
Jean reddened, and a lump rose in her throat. Her worship of the head girl was the most genuine thing about her, and she was suffering keenly under her disapproval. But an apology to a new girl, especially to one who had come to rob her of all her privileges, was next to an impossibility. Barbara saved the situation.
‘I don’t want anybody’s apologies,’ she cried. ‘I’m not cross, and I don’t know what you’re all talking about.’ She wriggled away from the friendly grasp of Ruth Oliver, and sped round the gallery till she came to the head of the stairs. Arrived there, the temptationof a long, broad, shining baluster-rail was too much for her; and in another moment the little elf-like figure in the fresh muslin frock was astride of it and flying down to the hall, with her hair once more in rebellion round her face. The exhilaration of the brief rush downwards sent all her troubles out of her head, and she uttered a war-whoop of delight as she landed with a thump on the mat at the bottom. The elder girls, who were just streaming across the hall in response to the supper-bell, stopped and stared aghast. Certainly the new girl was the most impudent of her species, and meant to make her entry into the establishment of Wootton Beeches with a flourish! But Margaret Hulme, it was rumoured, had taken her up; and that meant that the elder girls were no longer in a position to criticise her.
Barbara’s disappointment had lost some of its bitterness by the time the seven o’clock bell woke her on the following morning. Perhaps, after all, it was her own fault that things had not turned out so delightfully as she had expected. Even the boys used to call her clumsy and stupid sometimes; so why should she expect any more tolerance from her school-fellows? Anyhow, here was the beginning of another day, and there was still plenty of time for her dream to come true.
It did not seem much like coming true, though, as she stood in the juniors’ room after breakfast, jostled from right to left by the girls who were on their way to the different classrooms, and wondering when somebody would come and tell her where she was to go. She wished rather sadly that everybody in this school would not expect her to know things by instinct.
‘Doyouknow where I am to go?’ she begged, catching hold of Jean Murray as shehurried by. Babs had forgotten, if, indeed, she had ever realised, that Jean looked upon her as an enemy.
‘Go and ask one of the seniors,’ retorted Jean, shaking her off. ‘You’re much too high and mighty to have anything to do with us.’
‘What is she talking about?’ asked the amazed Barbara, looking after her.
‘Well, it isn’t likely she can forget all at once that you got her a scolding from Margaret Hulme,’ explained Angela, who was hurrying as usual after her friend, like a shadow.
‘Igot her a scolding? What do you mean?’ cried Babs.
‘Oh, it’s all very well to be so innocent,’ snorted Angela; and she disappeared too.
Barbara sighed and remained where she was, till she was moved on again.
‘Do get out of the way,’ complained some one else; ‘you’re right in front of my bookshelf.’
Barbara sprang aside hastily, and caught her foot in the leg of a desk and fell down.
‘I don’t mind moving,’ she said, getting up again and rubbing her elbow, ‘but I do wish I knew where to move to.’
‘Can’t you find out?’ asked the owner of the bookshelf inconsistently, as she rushed off with her arms full of books.
Barbara sighed again. Try as she might to make the best of things, it was a little tiring to be such a universal object of complaint.
‘Hullo, Babe! You ought not to be here,’said a cheery voice from the seniors’ room, and Ruth Oliver put her head round the red curtain. ‘This is only the playroom, you know, and, except for preparation or for fetching your books between the classes, you are never supposed to use it in lesson-time. The classrooms are upstairs.’
‘I know I oughtn’t to be here,’ answered Babs, ruefully. ‘I never am where I ought to be.’
‘But Finny sent for you, ages ago,’ said Ruth, looking astonished. ‘Didn’t Jean tell you? She’s a young horror, that Jean. Never mind, come along with me, and I’ll show you the way.’
She hurried the child through the baize door into the front hall, and pointed out a room that was close to the foot of the stairs. ‘That’s Finny’s study,’ she said hastily. ‘You’d better look sharp. Good luck to you!’ She gave her an unexpected kiss that promptly secured her the child’s allegiance from henceforth, and ran off with her books under her arm.
Barbara entered the room, and looked round for Miss Finlayson. Only the head girl was there, however, sitting at the table with a frown upon her face.
‘You ought to have been here before this,’ she began reprovingly. ‘Miss Finlayson couldn’t wait any longer, so I’ve got to miss the history lecture and examine you, instead of her. Why couldn’t you come, directly Jean told you?’
Barbara turned a little red and tried to lookunconcerned, in which she signally failed. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that you’d better ask Jean.’
Margaret looked at her sharply, and muttered something that sounded uncommonly like ‘Little beast!’ which seemed to the child rather more than she deserved, considering that it was really Jean’s fault and not hers at all. She was rather surprised at the head girl’s next words, which seemed quite gentle by comparison.
‘Why, you look blue with cold, child,’ she remarked, and drew her round by the fire. ‘Now, stand there, and tell me what history books you have been using.’
‘I haven’t used any,’ answered Babs. ‘I haven’t had any history lessons, you see.’
‘Do you mean to say you know nothing about the history of England–nothing about wars or kings or laws, or any of those things?’ inquired Margaret, raising her eyebrows.
Barbara’s face brightened. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I know all aboutthemfrom father, and the British Museum, and books. I didn’t know that was history.’
Margaret was a little puzzled. The examination of this new girl looked as though it were going to present difficulties. ‘What kind of books?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘Lots of kinds,’ answered Barbara, glibly. ‘Napier’sHistory of the Peninsular War, and somebody else’sHistory of the Anglo-Saxons, and another one calledThe Four Georges, and–and–oh, that long stuffy one, cut up intovolumes, with ever so many funny words in it, calledCromwell’s Life and––’
‘That’s enough,’ cried Margaret, and she looked in amazement at the small animated face of the new girl. ‘I–I think that will do for history,’ she went on hastily. ‘Now, what about geography? I suppose you know the elements, so I won’t––’
‘What’s elements?’ interrupted Babs.
‘Well, the beginning part,’ explained the head girl–‘the part that tells you the meaning of islands and volcanoes and earthquakes, and what the world is like inside, and things about the moon and the––’
‘But allthatis in Jules Verne’s story-books,’ remarked Babs. ‘Of course I’ve read Jules Verne. Is that what you call elements? I like elements, then, especially theJourney to the Centre of––’
‘Oh, I say, do stop,’ interrupted Margaret, biting her lip. She was divided between perplexity and amusement, and she wished that the head-mistress had stayed to examine this extraordinary imp of a child herself. ‘Haven’t you used any real geography books?’ she asked presently.
Barbara looked vague.
‘Do you know the map of England, for instance?’ pursued Margaret, rather desperately.
‘Oh, yes, I know the map of England,’ answered the child, confidently. ‘It’s so easy to find, because it’s pink. I know America too, because father has gone there to lecture,and he won’t be back for ever so long, not till––’
‘Hush!’ said the head girl. ‘Tell me what arithmetic you have done.’
‘Let me see, that’s figures without letters, isn’t it?’ inquired Babs. ‘I’m afraid I can only add up, because Bobbin hasn’t got any further yet; he’s backward in sums, you see, and I’ve only learnt mine through helping him with his prep. Sometimes, I wish he’d get on a little faster, because I’m getting so tired of––’
‘Then you mean to say,’ interposed Margaret, rather impatiently, ‘that you can only do simple addition?’
‘That’s in arithmetic,’ Barbara hastened to point out. ‘I’ve got as far as fractions in the funny sums that Kit does out of the other book; they’re much easier, because they have letters dotted about to help you. I always do Kit’s sums, when he has asthma; but he says I’m very slow. Then there’s the nice interesting book with pictures of triangles and things; we’ve got up to––’
‘Oh, don’t!’ said Margaret, and Barbara paused, a little surprised. Why did people ask her questions if they did not mean her to answer them? Margaret was drumming her fingers on the table and looking a little worried. ‘Have you learnt any languages?’ she asked suddenly. ‘I mean, anything besides French–German, for instance?’
‘No, I haven’t learnt any German, and I don’t want to, thank you,’ said Babs, decidedly. ‘Eversince the German band complained to father, because Peter tried to stop their noise by shying potatoes at them from the window, we’ve all made a vow never to learn their beastly language. And I don’t know any French either; no more does father. I know Latin up to the deponent verbs, though,–deponent verbsarecatchy, aren’t they?–and I’ve begun Greek with father. I’m afraid that’s all the languages I––’
‘Well, you are a curiosity!’ declared Margaret, giving up the attempt to hide her amusement. ‘So you’ve never had a governess at all? Nor been to classes?’
‘I’ve been to a gymnastic class,’ said Barbara, eagerly. ‘It’s the only thing I can do properly. Have you got a gymnasium here?’
She clapped her hands when Margaret nodded, and bounded towards the door. ‘Mayn’t I go and try itnow?’ she asked in a disappointed tone, when the head girl called her back.
‘There’s plenty of time for that,’ said Margaret, reminding her with a frown that she was only a new girl and was there to be examined; ‘I’ve got to settle first what class you had better go into. But I’m sure I don’t know what I am to say to Finny about you.’ She sighed, and looked at Barbara as if for inspiration. Barbara was quite equal to the occasion.
‘You’d better put me in the bottom class, Ishould think,’ she advised pleasantly; ‘you don’t know what my spelling is like yet.’
‘Thanks,’ said Margaret, drily; ‘I’ve no doubt you are quite competent to examine yourself, and to teach all your betters into the bargain, but that doesn’t help me just now.’ She drummed her fingers on the table again, and Barbara waited and went off into a kind of dream as she stood there. She was aroused by an exclamation from the head girl. ‘I know,’ she was saying in a relieved tone. ‘Can you write compositions, child? I mean, make up things in your head and write them down?’
Barbara smiled. Certainly, that had nothing to do with lessons. She had scribbled over every piece of paper she could find, ever since Nurse had first taught her to form her letters. ‘I can do that all right,’ she said. ‘All except the spelling,’ she added as an afterthought.
Margaret paid her no attention. She was occupied in carrying out her happy idea for concluding the examination of the new girl and leaving herself free at the same time to go to her history lecture. ‘Look here,’ she said, spreading some paper rapidly on the desk in front of her; ‘come and sit in this chair and write about anything you like. You’ll have a good hour and a half before the interval for lunch; and then Miss Finlayson will come and look at what you’ve written, and she will settle what class you can go into.’
‘But what shall I write about?’ asked Barbara, when the head girl had installed herat the table and was hurrying out of the room.
‘Anything you like; it will be all the better test if I don’t give you a subject,’ said Margaret; and she escaped before the child had time to say any more. She felt a little mean about it, for she was positive she could not have done it herself; but she consoled herself by the reflection that the new girl was queer enough for anything. Besides, she did not want to miss the whole of her history class for the sake of examining a child who was ignorant of all the things that other children knew, but had picked up the most extraordinary bits of knowledge by herself. So Babs was left to face the difficulty, for the first time in her life, of writing something within a given time.
It was certainly not easy to think of anything to say, in this unfamiliar, austere little room, with a blank sheet of paper staring at her, and some one preparing to pounce upon her presently, to criticise what she had done. In the library at home such a chance as this would have filled her with joy, and the paper would have been covered in a few minutes with a medley about giants and princesses and dragons, to be told later on to Kit and Bobbin when they clamoured for a story. But here it seemed impossible to get a single word on to her sheet of paper, and she looked at the clock in despair, and wondered what would happen to her when Miss Finlayson returned and found she had written nothing. She plunged her pen desperately intothe ink at last, and wrote the first thing that came into her head. It was a title she remembered noticing on the back of a book with a smart cover–one that had lately been added to her father’s library. She did not know what it meant, and she was not sure what she was going to say about it, but it sounded more like the kind of thing to choose for an examination than one of her fairy stories would have been. Then, just as she had written the heading very crookedly across the top of the page, she found that the pen she had picked up was a quill, and possessed the most entrancing capacity for making splutters. It was the first time she had happened upon a quill, and the discovery was too delightful to be neglected. So she spent the next ten minutes in adorning her paper with fantastic ink shapes, that she named bogies on the spot and wove into a fairy story about an enchanted princess, who had to write a composition in an hour and a half. When this exciting occupation began to pall, she was seized with a sudden desire to explore, and began wandering restlessly round the room. There was very little to examine besides books; but books were always good enough for Barbara, and she became very quiet and absorbed as her inky forefinger travelled slowly along the bottom shelves, until she had exhausted the outsides of all the volumes that came within her reach. Then she stood back, with her hands behind her, and stared up at the ones above her head; and a familiar name, printed in dull gold letterson the back of a solid volume in russet brown, suddenly made her heart leap.
‘Father’s book!’ she gasped. ‘There’s father’s book! And I’ve been in this stupid place all this time, and never discovered it till now! Oh, I must get father’s book!’
There was a sob in her throat when she found that even a footstool, placed on the highest chair in the room, did not mount her up sufficiently to reach the precious volume. Her bright little eyes travelled quickly round the study, to embrace all its resources, and she very nearly uttered one of her wild war-whoops of delight when she spied a step-ladder half hidden in a dark corner. It did not take her a minute to stagger with it across the room and to fix it, more or less securely, against the bookshelf. After that, there was no sound in the little study except the ticking of the clock and the rustling of leaves, until the door opened sharply and the owner herself walked in.
For a moment Miss Finlayson thought the room was empty. Then she saw the small figure with the big book, perched on the top of the ladder; and the quaintness of the picture made her smile irresistibly. ‘What are you doing, Barbara?’ she asked.
She spoke as softly as she could, but the sound of her voice was quite enough to startle the unconscious child. She dropped the heavy book with a thud, and would have lost her balance and plunged after it, had not Miss Finlayson been prepared for the contingencyand put out an arm to save her. Babs caught at it wildly, and found herself lifted down and placed on the floor in safety.
Miss Finlayson had stopped smiling, but she did not look very angry. ‘What were you doing up there, Barbara?’ she repeated gently.
‘I was reading father’s book,’ answered Barbara, rubbing her eyes. ‘I didn’t know it was there, till I looked up and saw it; and then I just climbed up and got it. I think I must have been reading a great long time, because I’ve got such an ache just there.’ She curled her hand under her arm and thumped the middle of her back. ‘Do you ever get an ache in the middle of your back when you’ve been reading?’ she inquired earnestly.
Miss Finlayson did not answer immediately. She stooped and picked up the fallen book first, and replaced it on the shelf. Barbara began to wonder if she was angry, and if that was why she had such an odd, serious look on her face.
‘And do you like your father’s book, Barbara?’ she asked presently.
‘I think it’s the most beautiful book in all the world,’ answered Barbara, without hesitation.
Miss Finlayson was a little startled, but she did not show it. ‘Then I wonder if you can explain it to me,’ she went on; ‘for, do you know, I find some of it rather difficult to understand?’
Barbara threw back her head and laughed merrily. ‘But I don’t understandanyof it,’ she cried. ‘You have to be grown up tounderstand it, father says. And I’m not grown up yet, you see.’
‘No,’ agreed Miss Finlayson. She was looking distinctly relieved, and the twinkle had come back again into the depths of her eyes. ‘I shouldn’t worry about that, though, if I were you,’ she continued, sitting down and taking the child on her lap. ‘Some day, when you are quite grown up, you will be able to understand it; and then we can read it together and help each other over the difficult parts. What do you say to that?’
‘I think it will be beautiful; but it’s a very long time to wait,’ sighed Barbara. ‘When do you think I shall be quite grown up? Jill is grown up, and she is eighteen. Shall I be grown up when I am eighteen?’
‘We will wait and see,’ said Miss Finlayson, but somehow her tone was not encouraging. ‘Meanwhile,’ she went on, patting the hand that was fearlessly lying in hers, ‘supposing we make a bargain that neither of us will read your father’s book until we can read it together? You see, if you were to go on reading it now, you might understand it in quite a wrong way, and then you would never be able to help me over the difficult parts.’
Barbara thought about it for a moment or two. ‘Butyouwill have to do without father’s book all those years!’ she exclaimed suddenly.
‘I have read it once, you see,’ said Miss Finlayson, gravely; ‘I think I can manage to wait, if you will wait too.’
Barbara still looked doubtful. ‘Do you really think I shall be able to help you over the difficult parts?’ she asked.
Miss Finlayson smiled mysteriously. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘One never knows.’
‘Then I’ll wait till I’m grown up before I read it again,’ decided Barbara. ‘It would certainly be a pity to spoil father’s book by understanding it all wrong.’
‘Or by dropping it from the top of other people’s ladders,’ observed Miss Finlayson. That was all the reproof she gave her; and then she turned briskly to the writing-table. ‘Isn’t there something you have written for me?’ she asked.
Barbara jumped away from her in dismay. ‘I quite forgot!’ she said penitently. ‘I did begin to write something, and then–and then––’ She struggled in vain to remember what had happened, and gave it up with a sigh. ‘I don’t know what I did, but I know I never wrote any more than this,’ she added, and produced the sheet of paper in a shamefaced manner.
Miss Finlayson took it, and glanced at the title that was written crookedly across the top of the page. ‘A Comparrisson of the Possition of Women, now and in the eighteenth century,’ was what she read. Below that came quantities of smudges and blots, and at the bottom of all was inscribed: ‘These are the ink bogies that came and wrote the Princess’s compossition for her, and saved her from the awfull anger of the cruel old witch called Finny.’
Miss Finlayson read this over more than once, then she folded up the sheet of paper very carefully, keeping her face averted all the while. Babs was sure she had been very naughty, and she was seized with a panic lest the head-mistress should be too angry this time even to speak to her.
‘I–I know it was very naughty of me,’ she confessed anxiously; ‘I couldn’t think of anything to say about it, and the pen made such beautiful bogies, and–and–are youawfullyfurious?’
Miss Finlayson had to look at her, then; and she made a last effort to keep grave. The next moment the little room was filled with her laughter.
‘My dear little girl,’ she exclaimed, ‘I am afraid I am not a bit furious. The fact is–the ink bogieshavesaved the Princess!’
‘I’m going to be in your class for everything except Latin and mathematics,’ shouted Barbara, flying into the juniors’ room just before dinner. It seemed to her of the first importance that everybody should know which class she was to be in, and she was distinctly surprised when Jean Murray, whom she had addressed, turned her back on her and began talking loudly to some one else. ‘Don’t you hear?’ persisted Babs, coming round in front of her again. ‘I’m going to be in your class for everything except––’
‘Sneak!’ burst out Jean Murray, unable to control herself any longer. ‘Tell-tale! You oughtn’t to be in anybody’s class, you oughtn’t!’
Barbara stood stockstill, and looked at her. All the courage she had regained from her peaceful morning in Miss Finlayson’s study dwindled away again, and left her hopeless of propitiating these strange schoolgirls, who seemed determined on being cross with her whatever she did. Angela knocked roughlyagainst her at the same instant, and surprised her at last into a remonstrance.
‘What have I done?’ she demanded. ‘Won’t anybody tell me what I have done?’
No one answered her. The alliance of Jean and Angela, though Jean was the youngest and Angela the most empty-headed of all the children there, meant the existence of a strong party in the junior playroom; and the poor little new girl stood a very small chance of asserting herself against it. They were much like sheep, both in the upper and the lower playrooms at Wootton Beeches; and the party that followed Margaret Hulme in one room was like the party that followed Jean in the other. In both cases it only needed some one a little stronger than the rest to be the leader; and Jean, in spite of her inferiority in age, supplied the strength, or what her school-fellows mistook for it, in a certain doggedness of temper that pulled them along in her wake. Most of them found it so unpleasant to be in her bad books, that she had very little difficulty in managing them.
Barbara turned appealingly to Angela. ‘Why is Jean so cross with me?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t done anything to her, have I?’
‘Not done anything?’ echoed Angela, looking over her shoulder for Jean’s support. ‘Why, you went and told Margaret Hulme that Jean hadn’t given you Finny’s message, and––’
‘Sneak! Tell-tale!’ sneered Jean again.
Barbara suddenly looked immensely relieved, and smiled in a friendly manner at the enemy. At least this was a misunderstanding that she could clear up. ‘Is that all?’ she cried. ‘No wonder you were cross, if you thought that. Of course I never said a word about it to Margaret Hulme, or any one else; I suppose she guessed, or something. But why didn’t you give me the message? It would have saved such a lot of bother, wouldn’t it?’
‘Well,’ gasped Jean, as though words almost failed her, ‘I never heard such wicked story-telling!’
‘Nor I either,’ chimed in Angela, putting her arm round Jean’s waist. ‘She’s done nothing but tell crams ever since she’s been here. Come away, Jean, dear; she isn’t fit to be argued with.’
The pair of them marched off, consumed with righteous wrath, to the other end of the playroom. Babs, overwhelmed with the incredible idea that any one should suppose her capable of telling an untruth about anything, waited speechlessly for some one to interfere and take her part. But those of her school-fellows who had been listening to the dispute hastily followed the example of their leader, and ignored her entirely. They did not stop to think whether they were being just; if the new girl told stories–and Jean Murray said she did–it was certainly their duty to teach her a lesson. When they looked for her presently, to see how she was bearing theirdispleasure, they found she was no longer there.
Upstairs, in the small, bare bedroom, the one spot where she felt safe from the intrusion of horrible wicked people with horrible wicked thoughts in them, the forlorn little new girl was covering page after page of the ruled note-paper Auntie Anna had given her, with an ill-written, ill-spelt account of her woes.
‘Dear, dear boys,’ she wrote; ‘I am very misserable. Everything is horible. At least, that is not quite true. Finny is nice she is like Auntie Anna and Nurse, and I’ve got a bedroom of my very own we all have but mine is one of the nicest becourse it comes at the corner of the house and looks over a wall into the orchard and there’s a plant with bunches of red beries that climes round my window and nobody else has red berrys round their window but only me. Finny has lots of ripping books in her study and she has father’s book and she is very nice but the girls are beests I hate girls! Girls tell stories and they say you do things when you don’t and they are awfull beests. They laugh at you every time you open your mouth but I don’t mind their siliness so much it’s their untruthfull hatefullness that I hate. I have never been so miserable I wish father had never gone to that beestly America and I wish Auntie Anna would come and fetch me back again. Do do ask her to come and take me away from all those hatefull girls, tell her how miserabble I am you don’t know anyof you what it is to be really misserable, etc. etc.’
She had reached about the fifth page of this wild epistle when her door flew open; and Ruth Oliver looked in, with a perturbed look on her good-humoured face.
‘Why, there you are!’ she exclaimed. ‘Didn’t you hear the dinner-bell? We’re half-way through the first course. Whatever are you doing?’
Barbara began folding up her letter and forcing it with trembling hands into an envelope. ‘I’ve been writing home,’ she said, and her voice quivered. Of course, everything she did was wrong; but what did dinner matter when there was her letter home to be written?
‘My dear child, we’re not allowed to write letters except on Wednesday afternoons. Make haste and put the thing away, do,’ said Ruth, impatiently. The sudden look of distress on the child’s face touched her, and she added more kindly–‘Well, well, bring it downstairs with you, Babe, and perhaps Finny will give you leave to send it to-day. Only, docome.’
Miss Finlayson not only gave her leave, but even offered to deliver the letter herself, as she happened to be going to pay a call near Crofts that same afternoon. It consoled Babs a little to feel that the boys would not have to wait until the morning to learn how miserable she was; at the same time, her present situation was no easier to bear, for all the younger girls took a thoughtless pleasure in talking at her,whenever Jean was present; and it was not nice to be with people who made remarks about her, and yet pretended all the time that she was not there. The early part of the afternoon at Wootton Beeches was given up to playing games in the nine-acre field, which was marked out, during the winter, into hockey grounds; and here Babs found herself, soon after dinner, strolling aimlessly along by the hedge and wondering what there was about her that made eighty-seven girls detest her so heartily. When she suddenly remembered how much she had looked forward to playing real games with real schoolgirls, her disappointment was too much for her, and the tears rolled rapidly down her cheeks.
‘Why, here’s the new girl, Barbara Berkeley. She’ll do,’ said a brisk voice behind her, and the games-mistress descended upon her with a hasty request ‘not to hide away in corners when she was wanted.’
‘I didn’t know I was wanted,’ explained Barbara, following her up the field. ‘I never am wanted, you see.’
‘Nonsense! Everybody is wanted at this school,’ replied the games-mistress, who had a warm complexion, a breezy manner, and a vigorous step, all of which, aided by her name of Burleigh, had secured her the nickname of Hurly-burly. It never occurred to her that the new girl was suffering from anything worse than the ordinary depression natural to her newness, and she decided immediately that thebest thing to cheer her up would be to make her run about. In the eyes of Miss Burleigh, running about was a cure for most things. ‘Here, Charlotte Bigley!’ she called loudly; ‘you ought to have looked after this child instead of letting her escape. She’ll do to play forward on your side. Just put her where you like, and let’s begin.’
There was not much chance, when Miss Burleigh was about, of letting private feuds spoil the game of hockey; and under the influence of her infectious gaiety, the girls even began to show Babs a certain amount of friendliness. Perhaps the fact that Jean Murray was bicycling round the cinder-track, instead of playing hockey, may have had something to do with their change of manner, but Babs did not inquire into that. It was enough for her that she was allowed, for the first time in her life, to run about in the open air without a hat; and she reddened with pleasure when Charlotte Bigley, the captain of her side, actually complimented her on the way she ran. Charlotte was the oldest of the junior girls, and she was going to be moved into the upper Third next term; so she always professed to be rather superior to the leadership of Jean Murray–especially when Jean Murray was out of the way.
‘You’ll make a very good right wing, when you’ve learnt to pass the ball inside instead of poking at it,’ she observed condescendingly, at half-time.
A very little was enough to send up Barbara’s spirits with a bound, and when the bell rang at four o’clock for preparation, she ran indoors with as buoyant a step as the rest, and even whistled gaily to herself as she unlaced her boots in the large cloakroom, where the girls were taking off their outdoor things. Angela happened to overhear her, and at once took upon herself to quench this unseemly appearance of cheerfulness, and to remind her that she was still only a new girl.
‘You’d better look sharp and take off the head girl’s boots, or you’ll catch it,’ she advised her in a threatening tone.
Barbara stopped whistling and became suspicious. ‘Last time I was told to go and do things for the head girl, it was all humbug,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to be taken in twice, so you shut up!’
Angela under the protection of Jean, and Angela by herself, were two very different beings. The unexpected resistance made by Babs was quite enough to change her bullying tone into an injured one, and she began to edge off towards the other girls. ‘This isn’t humbug, anyhow,’ she said in a milder tone. ‘If you don’t believe me, go and see; that won’t hurt you, whether it’s true or not. Of course, if youwantto make Margaret jump on you, it doesn’t matter to me.’
There was certainly something in what she said, and Barbara heaved a sigh for the complications of school life. It was so silly, shefelt, so extremely silly to make such a fuss about the displeasure of the head girl, and to avoid it by doing such stupid things for her. Why couldn’t the head girl take off her own boots, like every one else? However, it did not matter much, one way or the other; and Babs would have taken off anybody’s boots to secure a little friendliness in this most unfriendly of assemblages. So she threaded her way through the crowd of girls to where Margaret Hulme stood talking with the enthusiastic hockey players who formed the first eleven. She had not begun to take off her boots, Babs noticed, so perhaps it was true after all, and the head girl was really waiting for some one to come and do it for her.
‘Ruth would make a splendid half-back if she’d only learn to strike better,’ Margaret was saying earnestly; ‘and if Winifred wasn’t so frightened of tackling, we should have quite a–what is it, child?’
‘Please, I’ve come to know if you want your boots unlaced,’ said Barbara, rather faintly. She was fully prepared to be laughed at again for her pains; and, indeed, it did seem a most ridiculous suggestion to make to any one. But the head girl treated it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
‘Of course I do. Do you want to do them to-day?’ was her reply, and she immediately put her right foot a little forward and went on talking to her eleven.
‘Oh, but I don’twantto take them off,’ cried Babs, eagerly. ‘I only thought––’
But Margaret was too deep in her conversation to pay any attention to the youngest girl in the school; and Barbara knelt down unwillingly and struggled with a stubborn knot in a muddy bootlace. She had hardly begun her unattractive task, when some one dropped suddenly beside her on the floor and laid a hot hand on hers.
‘You leave the head girl’s boots alone!’ said Jean’s voice in her ear. ‘It’s just like your interfering ways, to come sneaking up to her when I wasn’t looking. Go away and mind your own business!’
Now, Babs had just been resenting deeply the absurdity of her position at the feet of the head girl. She did not want to take off anybody’s boots, and she thought it an exceedingly stupid thing to do. But to give up her task because some one came and got cross about it, was quite another matter. A lurking spirit of mischief, helped by the exhilaration she still felt after her two hours in the open air, made her retain her hold on the knot in the head girl’s bootlace.
‘I am minding my own business,’ she retorted stoutly. ‘Ever since I’ve been here, you and Angela have dinned the head girl’s boots into my ears till I’m sick of hearing about the stupid things. Now I’m here, I’m not going to stop till I’ve done them; so you’d better go away yourself.’
‘What in the name of wonder are you children doing down there?’
‘What in the name of wonder are you children doing down there?’
Jean glanced at her furiously, and Barbara tugged away at the bootlace and began whistling again, to show how little she cared whether Jean was angry or not. Above their heads, the gossip went on busily about the style of the first hockey eleven.
‘How about our chances against the Wilford club next month?’ some one was asking.
‘As to that,’ said Margaret, with confidence, ‘if we only keep our heads we shall have no difficulty whatever in standing––’
She did not finish her sentence, for at that instant a violent onslaught on her right foot put a comical end to it by nearly upsetting her balance. She just saved herself by seizing the arm of the nearest girl, and the hockey gossip came to an abrupt finish.
‘What in the name of wonder are you children doing down there?’ demanded Margaret, wrathfully. The knot had come undone by this time, and Jean was tugging at one end of the bootlace, while Babs, with an elfish glee shining in her bright little eyes, was keeping a firm hold on the other end.
‘You go away,’ Jean was gasping in a choked voice. ‘I’ve done this for two years, and I’m not going to give up doing it now.’
‘You told me yourself I’d got to do it, and I’m not going away till it’s done, so there!’ laughed Barbara, in reply.
She made another dash at the foot between them, and the head girl again nearly lost her balance. ‘Stop quarrelling, and leave my footalone, you naughty little wretches!’ cried Margaret, stamping her disengaged foot vigorously. Jean, with two years of discipline behind her, awoke suddenly to the voice of authority and started to her feet, covered with terror at the enormity of her offence. But Babs uttered a yell of delight at finding the victory so easily won.
‘Why don’t you unlace somebody else’s boots?’ she shouted defiantly to her adversary. ‘There’s lots of boots round here waiting to be unlaced.’
Margaret stooped down and lifted her up bodily, and set her on her feet beside Jean.
‘Now,’ she said sternly, ‘what do you both mean by behaving in this disgraceful manner?’
Neither of them answered her. Jean hung her head and looked as if she were going to cry every minute, and Barbara waited to see what would happen next. It did not seem to her that she had done anything so very dreadful, and she wondered why no one saw how funny it all was. Ruth Oliver was looking the other way, so she could not see her face; but the rest of them seemed just as serious about it as the head girl herself.
‘Haven’t you anything to say for yourselves?’ demanded Margaret.
Hot, angry tears began to well up into Jean’s eyes. She never knew she could have hated any one so much as she hated this new girl for coming between her and Margaret Hulme. Barbara caught sight of her tears, and the desire to laugh suddenly left her.
‘You see, we didn’t know who had got to unlace your boots,’ she explained hastily. ‘It isn’t that it’s such an awfully jolly thing to unlace people’s boots, but––’
‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ interrupted Margaret, crushingly. ‘Then you needn’t be in the same difficulty any more on my account, for in future I shall unlace my own boots. Now, go away and do your preparation at once, and don’t let me see either of you again for the rest of the day.’
Babs went off obediently to find her books, and she puzzled greatly as she went over the displeasure of Margaret Hulme. ‘Such a fuss to make aboutboots,’ she remarked to Charlotte Bigley, whose bookshelf was next to hers. But even Charlotte was not proof against the furious account of the matter that Jean Murray had just been giving to a sympathetic circle of friends; and Barbara soon found that she had quite lost the little popularity she might have gained in the hockey field by her behaviour over the head girl’s boots.
‘I think she must be mad,’ declared Angela, in the buzz of conversation that preceeded the call for ‘Silence’ from the presiding French teacher. ‘She looked as though she wanted to kill Jean. I was looking at her all the time, and I was quite frightened. She ought to be watched, I’m certain she ought.’
‘She ought not to be spoken to by any one,’ wailed Jean, hiding behind an open atlas to avoid the scrutiny of Mademoiselle, who sat inthe archway between the two playrooms. ‘Perhaps, if every one leaves her alone she’ll learn how to behave like other people.’
Left alone she accordingly was, since Jean Murray had so decreed it; and this time there were no half-measures about it. At tea-time, and again at the supper table, the girls on either side of her turned their backs upon her and talked busily to their other neighbours; and in the playroom afterwards she found herself just as scrupulously avoided. It was decidedly an uncomfortable state of things for the new girl, as it was meant to be by those who were responsible for making it; but somehow the new girl did not seem to mind it half so much as they would have expected. All the evening she sat in the corner of the juniors’ room by herself, and any one would have said from the look on her face that she did not care whether the others spoke to her or not. Now and then she smiled, as she sat there with her elbows perched on her knees and her chin supported on her hands; and the whole time her look of supreme unconsciousness never left her.
‘She’s hardened, that’s what she is,’ declared Jean, glancing in her direction. This she said to keep up her own resentment against the new girl, which was unaccountably beginning to cool.
‘She thinks it’s grand to pretend not to care,’ added the faithful Angela. This, indeed, was the prevailing opinion among thechildren of the junior playroom; and it was not comforting to their pride.
All the while, Barbara guessed nothing of the comments she was provoking by her manner. It was enough for her that she had got away once more into her fairy kingdom, and that Kit and the magician and the old fairy godmother had just turned out all the princesses who were called schoolgirls, and had shut the gates in their faces.
It was a very weary little new girl who went up to her bed that evening after prayers. She was almost too tired to think over the events that had been crowded into the last twenty-four hours, almost too sleepy to realise that this was the close of her first day at school, the day she had thought would be the happiest day in her life. Perhaps it was a good thing she was not able to think too much about anything, at the end of that first day at school. The moment Fräulein had turned out her light, she went off into a dreamless sleep that might have lasted unbroken till the morning, had not something occurred most strangely to break it.
She did not hear the small pebbles that were thrown up, one after another, at her window; it would have taken more than that to rouse her from her first sleep, though once a handful of mould and gravel that scattered itself all over the glass panes made her stir uneasily and murmur something sleepily. It was just after this that some one began calling ‘Coo-ey’ softly, on two particular notes; and after thishad been repeated two or three times, it gradually worked itself into the waking dream of the little new girl. At the fourth time, she was wide awake and listening with all her might. Another repetition of it, followed by a gentle whistle that only Peter knew how to blow through his fingers, took her with a flying leap to the window. The moon outside was flooding the world with light and revealing every secret in the landscape for miles: it flooded the big nine-acre field beyond the orchard; it flooded the orchard itself, and the wall that ran along it, just under her window; and it showed her five boys sitting astride on the top of the wall, and five–no,sixbicycles leaning against the bottom of the wall.
Barbara pushed open the lattice window as wide as it would go, and leaned out breathlessly. Her finger was on her lips, and she shivered from head to foot with cold and the fear of being overheard. Supposing that any one were to find out they were there, and should send them away before she could get to them?
The five of them made frantic signs of welcome, as soon as they saw the familiar dark head appear at the window. In spite of the graphic description contained in her letter, they were beginning to be afraid of having besieged the wrong window. Then Kit waved a screw of paper and made more signs, and the dark head vanished from view again. It did not take a minute to turn out all the contents ofher corner drawer, and to find the ball of string that Robin had given her for a parting present, and then to fling the end of it down to Kit, who tied on his screw of paper and nodded at her to haul it up.
The moonlight was bright enough to enable her to read the few short pencilled lines without much difficulty.
‘We’ve come to the rescue,’ she read. ‘Auntie Anna has gone away till to-morrow, so we could not wait until then, knowing you were so jolly blue. Come down quickly; there’s a window under yours that you could get through all right.’
Barbara struggled with desperate haste into her pink dressing-gown, thrust her bare feet into a pair of woolly slippers, and glided to the door. In her haste and her half-awakened condition a more elaborate costume than that, considering the urgency of the occasion, seemed quite unnecessary to her. Along the silent gallery she pattered, and down the wide staircase, then through the two empty playrooms into the front hall. She knew the window the boys had meant; she had noticed the red berries tapping against the glass, as she passed it on her way to Finny’s study the morning before.
As she sped across the moonlit hall, she did not see that the study door was ajar and that a chink of light shone out from it. All her attention was absorbed in the one thought that the boys were going to take her away fromthis houseful of unfriendly strangers, and that she would never have to face them and their taunts again.
She clambered on to the window-seat, and unfastened the shutter. That was easy enough, but the bolt of the window baffled her for some seconds. When she did manage to shoot it back, the noise it made filled her with apprehension. In her terror lest she should have been overheard, she did not pause another instant, but threw up the sash and hastily put one slippered foot on the ledge. Once outside and on her bicycle, the boys would take care that no one overtook her; and she would be free at last!
Panting with excitement, she stooped through the open window and prepared to draw her other foot after her. But before she had time to do so, a light step had crossed the hall and an arm was flung round her from behind.
‘Barbara!’ exclaimed Miss Finlayson. ‘Barbara!’
The disappointment was too much. Barbara covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
‘Let me go, do let me go!’ she cried, struggling to free herself. ‘It can’t make any difference to you whether I run away or not, and it does matter to me and the boys!’
‘Barbara!’ repeated Miss Finlayson, very quietly indeed. But the child did not seem to hear.
‘Why won’t you let me go?’ she sobbed passionately. ‘I can’t stop any longer in this horrible place. Nobody wants me here, nobody! Do, do let me go back with the boys.’
Miss Finlayson put her other arm for a moment round the little figure in the pink dressing-gown, and she kissed the only place on the hot, wet cheek that was to be seen. Then she stepped backwards and left her free.
‘You can go, Barbara, if you want to,’ she said, just as calmly as before.
Babs uncovered her eyes and looked at herincredulously. Now that she was free to go the inclination to run away seemed to have left her. Outside, the boys were waiting and wondering why she did not join them. They could just see something at the open window, but the shadow cast by the orchard wall made it indistinguishable. Miss Finlayson shot one glance outwards, that took in the row of figures at the top of the wall, and the row of bicycles at the bottom of it; then she waited passively for Barbara to make up her mind. But this was precisely what the child could not do.
‘Wouldn’t you–wouldn’t youmind?’ she stammered at last.
‘Would it matter to you if I did?’ asked Miss Finlayson.
Babs stood still, in a miserable state of indecision, with one foot still on the window-seat, and the other placed on the ledge outside. She was beginning to feel exhausted by the excitement she had gone through, and she gave a weary yawn that turned into a shiver. Miss Finlayson promptly put an end to the situation by lifting her back into the hall. Directly she did so, a series of thuds in the neighbourhood of the wall, followed by the crunch of footsteps along the gravel path, sounded from without, and the tops of five heads suddenly appeared at the open window.
‘If you please,’ said a voice, pleadingly, ‘it is our fault that the Babe is trying to escape. You won’t rag her for it, will you?’