Читать книгу The Abbey Girls Play Up - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 5

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“What’s the trouble, Bel?” asked Rosalind.

She had arrived by the morning train from town, and she had come in uniform, for the reason of her visit was a big Guide display during the evening.

Maribel, meeting her at the station, was in uniform also. She explained, after her first greetings—“You’re coming with me this afternoon to see Cecily. Sarah’s in trouble about her. As you’re here you may as well back me up. You’re just as much Cecily’s guardian as I am. I hate rowing anybody!”

“But what is it all about?” Rosalind demanded, as they drove away in the little car.

“Something to do with her village dancing class. A Mrs. Raymond—I don’t know anything about her—takes a class once a week, and for some reason she allowed Cecil to join, though it’s a grown-up class. Cecily’s been enjoying it enormously.”

“Wait a sec! Country or jazz?”

“Oh, country! Don’t be an idiot!”

“Wonder if the lady knows much about it?” commented Rosalind, who went to London classes.

“It all seems very sound, from Cecil’s account; good choice of dances, and she makes the class keen. But the music’s rotten, according to Cecily.”

“Who would be a good judge, of course!” Rosalind mocked. “What does the infant know about it?”

“Apparently they once had a violinist, and she was so much easier to dance to. That’s Cecily’s standard; the regular lady isn’t so easy to dance to.”

“I say! Cécile knows a thing or two!” said Rosalind, with more respect.

“Don’t let her hear you call her Cécile.”

“I’ll be careful. But what’s the row, Bel?”

“Sarah says Cecily was rude to Mrs. Raymond last week, and that the kid’s always so worked up after dancing that she ‘can’t do nothing with her.’ ”

“H’m! What does Cecily say?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out. I gather there was some sort of scene at last week’s class, and Sarah put her foot down and said, ‘Never again.’ But apparently Mrs. Raymond asked last Wednesday where Cecily was, so she hasn’t been upset by the fuss. So Sarah thought she’d better write to me.”

“I expect she’s making more of it than is necessary. But we’d better clear things up,” Rosalind agreed. “I want to hear what happened. I can imagine Cecil being rude; no, not rude, but over-excited.”

“And forgetting whom she was speaking to, or not knowing what she was saying,” Maribel assented. “That’s why I feel we must look into it.”

“In fact,” said Rosalind, “Cécile has peeped out, and Sarah, who doesn’t know Cécile, has lost her head.”

“That’s about it. Cecil’s French side has flared up, unfortunately in public. We may feel we have to explain to Mrs. Raymond, if we can get hold of her.”

“Have we time to see Cecil, and perhaps explain to Mrs. Raymond?”

“That depends where Mrs. Raymond lives. We’ve heaps of time for Cecily. Lunch is ready,” Maribel explained, as she stopped the car at the door. “We’ll race off to Sarah’s as soon as we’ve fed you.”

“Cecily hasn’t joined the Guides yet?” Rosalind asked, as they set out in the car again an hour later.

“Not yet. She’d like to, but there aren’t Guides in her school; Miss Ansell doesn’t care about them, in the school. I’m not satisfied with the village Company for Cecil; they’re slack. I’m hoping there may be changes there soon. Cecily thinks so much of the Guides, that I’d hate her to join a slack crowd.”

“I wish she could join some Company, though. It would be jolly good for her.”

“She’s working hard, without Guides,” Maribel observed. “I fancy she has a struggle to keep up with her form. She’ll have to join straight away as a Ranger when she leaves school and begins training.”

“Has she any ideas as to her future yet?”

“I can’t say she has. I’ve talked to her. She wants to make things! What do you make of that?”

“What sort of things? Hats? Cakes? Frocks?”

“I don’t think so. She says dressmaking wouldn’t be bad if you didn’t have to sew.”

Rosalind laughed. “That’s rather a blow! Does she want to begin at the top, and design Paris models?”

“And millinery might be fun, but she thinks she’d soon be tired of it.”

“Another blow! I should have thought her Cécile side would be good at millinery.”

“I feel rather hopeless about it. She doesn’t want to teach, or to go into an office, or to do anything with figures.”

“Try shorthand. That can be quite amusing, if you look at it in the right light. But she’d need book-keeping. That never strikes me as really a humorous subject, and it certainly has figures in it.”

“Cecily’s book-keeping might be quite humorous,” Maribel remarked. “Isn’t it difficult having a ward, when you’re only twenty yourself? I used to think to be out of one’s teens would seem ancient, but I feel as much a kid as ever I did.”

“Same here. And yet I’m of age! What about training Cecil as a cook? First class, very highest grade, of course. Whatever happens, people will want to eat.”

“Probably. But I can’t quite see Cecily cooking all her life.”

“She could work off her creative instinct on cakes and puddings. That would be ‘making things,’ and jolly good things too,” Rosalind argued.

“You can ask her how she’d like it,” Maribel did not sound hopeful. “She’s only fifteen. We mustn’t hustle her into the wrong thing.”

“Hello! Going all the way round?” Rosalind asked, as the car turned out of the London road.

“I want to leave some bundles of magazines at the hospital. The Guides have been collecting them. It won’t take ten minutes longer to go this way, and it’s a jollier ride.”

When they had passed through the woods and were creeping along the road between open rolling Downs, Maribel stopped the car by Rosalind’s request, and they sat listening to the song of an ecstatic lark.

Rosalind drew a long breath. “Was it really only three hours ago I passed through Clapham Junction? Bel, you lucky child, living here always; you can’t realise how wonderful the silence is.”

“The top of the hill, just up there, is covered with cowslips and white violets,” Maribel remarked. “But I haven’t had time to come out and gather any yet. I work too, remember. Ready to go on?”

“One sec. more! Let’s wait till that little chap drops to his nest—I say! Who’s that?”

From the hill above came the thin sweet notes of a pipe. The Guiders looked at one another wide-eyed.

“It’s ‘Rufty’!” Maribel marvelled. “Well played, too!”

“Strong sense of rhythm!” Rosalind murmured. “I want to dance! Shall we explore?”

Maribel looked up at the hill. There were several clumps of hawthorn bushes, laden with flowers.

“He—she—may be behind any of those. ’Fraid we haven’t time,” she said regretfully. “We’ll ask Cecil. It must be somebody who goes to the class.”

“If they don’t like the pianist, they wouldn’t do so badly with that Pied Piper,” Rosalind remarked.

Maribel started her engine again. “I never expected to hear ‘Rufty’ floating to me over the Downs.”

“It’s beginning ‘The Old Mole,’ ” Rosalind cried. “Bell, let’s wait till the end of the concert! It’s mean to go before the collection!”

Maribel laughed. “I’ll ask Cecil to find the musician for you.”

“Whoever it was, he played jolly well,” said Rosalind, as the car reached the dewpond and the top of the rise, and dropped again between chalk cliffs. “Oh—Chanctonbury! I always want to curtsey!” and she saluted the distant ring of trees.

“Step to the right and honour!” Maribel said laughing. “From any point Chanctonbury is like a queen, and when you come on her suddenly you ought to raise your hat.”

“I’d like to dance ‘Sellenger’s’ round her.”

“My dear child! Some ring! You’d need a thousand couples. Have you any idea how big she is?”

“Yes, ma’am. You’d need a regiment.”

“And you’d fall backwards off the edge,” Maribel said severely. “Now for Sarah and Cecily!”