Читать книгу Queen of the Dormitory and Other Stories - Angela Brazil - Страница 4

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“D’you know,” said Meg Chadwick, sitting on Muriel Cameron’s bed, with one arm round the waist of Loie Donaldson and another clasped round the neck of Natalie Robyns. “D’you know, I can’t think what’s come over Daisy Davenport lately. She’s quite changed, isn’t she?”

“Rather!” agreed Loie emphatically. “She’s not the same girl. I used to be chums with Daisy last term; but now—it’s altogether off!”

“It’s ever since the holidays,” chimed in Muriel. “She stayed with some cousins in London and came back with her head full of all sorts of highfalutin notions. Thinks she’s a peg above the rest of us, I believe!”

“Cheek!”

“Looks like it, though!”

“I say, if she’s going to try that on with us——”

“Sh-sh! Here’s my lady herself!”

The girl, who at that moment strolled into the dormitory, unmistakably wore the air of one who holds a good opinion of her own capabilities. She walked to the wardrobe, opened a drawer, and then with rather a conscious sigh turned to the trio seated on the bed.

“I really wish you girls would be tidier!” she drawled. “There are half of your things spread over the dressing-table again. I told you about it before. Why can’t you keep them in your own places?”

“Shows how generous we are!” tittered Meg. “We like to share our goods. D’you think I want to keep a clothes-brush and a ribbon-box and a hanky case all to myself? No; I give you the pleasure of having a look at ’em! They’re chubby, and I leave ’em specially for you to revel in!”

“Revel, indeed! They’re not half as topping as mine! There’s no room to put one’s nice things out in this wretched crowded dormitory. I wish to goodness we could have proper cubicles, with our own furniture in each. There’d be some satisfaction in bringing a silver-backed brush to school then!”

“Perhaps you’d like a separate bedroom all to yourself?” chirped Loie facetiously.

“My cousin Gwendolen has one at Hillcrest College,” retorted Daisy, fixing a reproving eye on the cackling Loie. “I don’t think you’ve any notion of what a school ought to be. Of course, when one stays with people who go to really big and famous schools one begins to find out the difference.”

“It’s certainly hard for you!” Meg’s voice was quivering with mock sympathy. “I dare say it does look rather a poor place here, and no doubt we seem a second-rate lot!”

“Oh, I’m not saying anything against you,” patronizingly; “but, of course, those big colleges get a tone of their own. It’s only natural. There’s a style about Gwendolen. You’d know a Hillcrest girl if you met her anywhere.”

“Then may the Muses defend me from ever meeting one! I guess she and I wouldn’t mix, somehow. Thank goodness I go to Seaton House and not to Hillcrest College!”

“You know nothing at all about it!” declared Daisy crushingly, tying her hair-ribbon afresh in front of the mirror and sailing airily out of the room.

There were six beds in No. 4 Dormitory, and up to the present time their occupants had never complained of lack of proper accommodation. They had been a jolly little set, enjoying endless jokes together, and priding themselves upon their bond of union. Since the Christmas holidays, however, all had been altered. Daisy, once the life and soul of the community, was a changed character. She, who erstwhile had been prime mover in practical jokes, now turned up a contemptuous nose at such follies as apple-pie beds, declared booby-traps vulgar, and did not even smile at the witticisms of her companions. Nay, worse than that, she had assumed an easy superiority of manner and an air of patronage that were rightly aggravating to her former chums. She would ask them to perform small services for her as if conferring a favour by so doing; she insisted on having first turn at the bathroom, dawdled over her dressing, and monopolized the mirror.

All these things, though most exasperating, might have been borne if she had not continually insinuated that she was somehow on an entirely different level from her room-mates and, therefore, in a position to dictate to them and to lay down the law on every subject. Queen Daisy of No. 4 Dormitory (so her nickname ran) was a self-constituted monarch, and instead of finding obedient vassals, ready to submit to her wishes, she was raising a state of red-hot rebellion.

Matters came to a crisis one morning. Daisy, who had insisted on being the first to perform her ablutions, happened to be sleepier than usual, and instead of getting up when the bell ceased clanging, she turned comfortably over, and closed her eyes again. Barbara Hurst, scuttling hurriedly into a dressing-gown, took advantage of the delay to tear along the passage and appropriate the bath, so that when Queen Daisy, with many yawns, finally made her exit from the dormitory, she found the bathroom door locked and an ostentatious splashing going on within. She was hugely indignant.

“You know I always have it first!” she shouted through the keyhole.

“Don’t care!” retorted a defiant and slightly spluttering voice. “If you can’t get up and bag it for yourself you can’t expect it to be kept for you! You must take your turn, same as other folks. Stop rattling that handle! It makes me slower instead of quicker. I’m not going to hurry one bit, so I just tell you!”

In high dudgeon Daisy returned to the dormitory and vented her wrath upon the other occupants.

“Cheero!” purred Meg, with aggressive optimism. “We’ll ask Miss Roland to reserve this top floor bathroom specially for the sole and particular use of Your Majesty, and allow us commonalty to share the second-floor one with Nos. 2 and 3. It’ll be a scramble in the mornings, I dare say, but it’s worth it for the Queen to have her own.”

“You think you’re very sarcastic, no doubt!” fluttered Daisy.

“Oh, dear me, no! I’m all sympathy, I assure you. I think your position here isn’t quite understood, and it ought to be settled once and for all. If we don’t mind we shall be losing you. You might take yourself off to Hillcrest College with your cousin Gwendolen—and think what a blow that would be for the school! There’d be nobody left to keep the tone up!”

In private, Meg talked the matter over with her room-mates, and they arrived at the conclusion that something ought to be done.

“Daisy used to be as decent a girl as any in the dormitory. It’s only lately she’s turned bounder. We’ll play a rag on her, and make her see for herself what a grizzly idiot she is,” declared Muriel Cameron.

“What shall we do? She sniffs at apple-pies or stitched-up sleeves.”

“Well, I agree with her they’ve grown rather stale. I’m a scrap fed up with them myself. Fact! No; I’ve a top-hole idea in my mind. Oh, it’s precious, I assure you. Thought it over in bed last night, and believe it will work out just fine. Listen and I’ll whisper!”

The reply to Muriel’s low-breathed communication was a yell of delight from her friends.

“You old sport! The very thing! Yes, do it this morning, by all manner of means.”

“Oh, it will be a stunt!”

They parted; Barbara, Loie, and Meg to keep an eye on Daisy and see that she was safely occupied, while Muriel descended to the dressing-room, where, with the aid of a pair of scissors and a needle and thread, she did a little juggling among the school hats. She also removed the mirror from the wall and hid it behind a locker. At 12.30 the school assembled to get ready for the short walk which was always taken before dinner-time.

As Daisy sat changing her shoes, Meg strolled casually up.

“Hallo!” she exclaimed, with well-feigned amazement. “Whatever’s the matter with your head? It looks uncommonly queer!”

Daisy’s hand sought her hair-ribbon, but finding it in place, she returned indignantly:

“There’s nothing wrong!”

“But there is!” Barbara assured her. “It’s most peculiar. It looks—well—kind of swollen!”

“It’s twice its usual size!” declared Loie, with shocked commiseration.

“It’s bulgy somehow over the eyes,” urged Natalie, “as if you’d had a bad knock at hockey.”

“I wonder if it’ll turn blue?” added Muriel.

“You’re ragging, and it’s not at all funny,” said Daisy, in her most superior manner. “I wish you’d leave me alone!”

She had finished lacing her shoes, and she now took her hat from its hook. But when she attempted to put it on she did not succeed. It was manifestly many sizes too small for her. She glanced swiftly inside the hat; yes, it was marked in plain letters, “D. Davenport.” There could be no mistake about it. For the first time an uneasy expression crossed her face, and she turned to seek the looking-glass. It was missing, however, from its accustomed place on the wall. She put her hand to her head anxiously. The chums all chimed together:

“It’s a fact!”

“You can believe me!”

“Oh, you do look queer!”

“Swollen up like anything!”

“Big as a balloon!”

“Gives me the spasms to look at you!”

“Brace up! They’ll ’phone for the doctor!”

But Daisy, with a wild yell of terror, had fled from the dressing-room, and, totally against the rules, was rushing to consult the mirror in her own dormitory. Her room-mates collapsed on to the lockers and gave vent to a series of gurgling explosions.

“How did you work it?” spluttered Natalie. “It was absolutely topping!”

“Borrowed one of the kids’ hats, that’s all,” murmured Muriel complacently, “and changed the linings. It didn’t take me long, though it was a little awkward to fit. Flatter myself I made rather a good job of it. Oh, we really did take her in for once! Hold me up! I get a stitch if I laugh too hard!”

It was a rather subdued and sulky Daisy who, after an exchange of hats with a ruffled member of the First Form, joined the school crocodile in its daily promenade along the common; but apparently she took the hint, for she rarely, if ever, again mentioned the advantages of Hillcrest College or the superior tone of her cousin Gwendolen. If she was inclined to lay down the law or claim special privileges, a distended cheek or an eloquent finger describing a circle round a head would remind her sharply that general opinion was against her. The girls were determined to stand no more nonsense, and they rubbed in their joke pretty freely. One against five is an unequal match, so Daisy wisely abandoned her rôle of Queen, and by the end of the term she had sunk back to her ordinary position in the dormitory.