Читать книгу The Abbey Girls Again - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Biddy Devine went flying home from college next day. It was all important that she should get in before Mary. Biddy sighed in relief when she found the door still locked; and entering, shut herself into her own little room, and proceeded to unpack a mysterious case and put its contents out of sight.

With a wistful sigh of delight and anticipation, she shook out a soft pink dress, and hung it in her cupboard, though it was not crushed.

To-night she was to go to Doris’s birthday party, and Doris was seventeen, and so grown up that Biddy, who was only just fifteen, though big for her age, felt uncomfortably childish beside her. They would all be very grown up to-night, and Doris had said teasingly that Biddy would be the baby of the party.

“Baby, indeed! I’ll show them!” Biddy had said to herself, and had resolved to be as grown up as any of them; it would be difficult, but she would manage it somehow.

She was not practised in double-dealing, however, and felt very uncomfortable as she went, at sound of Mary’s key to help to prepare tea. She had not been in the habit of deceiving her sister; it had not been necessary.

She hurried away to dress, and Mary sat dreaming and thinking. Biddy had seemed strange and unlike herself to-night; was she just excited over the party? “I wonder if I could help her to get ready?” she mused. “She’ll be coming for me to hook her frock. I’ll go and offer instead.”

She went across to Biddy’s door. To her amazement it was locked. “Biddy!” she called, startled. “Why have you locked the door?”

For one wild moment Biddy hesitated. But on the whole she was glad. Now Mary would have to know, and there would be no uncomfortable secret between them. It meant a scene; but Biddy always came off best in scenes. She would rather defy Mary than deceive her any day.

She threw open the door. “I’m nearly ready; how do you like the general effect? I simply couldn’t go looking like a child, you know, Mary!”

For one long moment Mary stared at her. Biddy, but a grown-up Biddy, and prettier than Mary had ever dreamed she would be. Biddy in the pink frock, which hung in soft folds nearly to her ankles; with her pretty brown hair done up in the very newest style; how had she learned to do that?

“Where did you get that frock?” Mary was slowly growing less numb and awakening to the full seriousness of the situation. “You didn’t save that off dinners and bus fares!”

Biddy laughed, but with a touch of nervousness, “No, old dear, I didn’t! It’s Vivien Turner’s. It’s perfectly new; she only wore it once or twice, and then her father died and she didn’t go to any more parties. I couldn’t possibly go in last summer’s faded old rag; it would be horribly short for me now, too.”

“I don’t know how you can have thought I would let you go out like this, in borrowed clothes!” Mary pulled herself together and spoke resolutely. “Biddy, I simply won’t have it! Besides, you look ridiculous! You’re only fifteen!”

Biddy glanced at herself in the glass. “I don’t look only fifteen!” she said triumphantly. “Oh, don’t be silly, Mary! Don’t start to make a fuss now! I’m glad you came in. I did want to show you the frock. Isn’t it simply sweet?”

“You’re not going out in another girl’s dress,” Mary said decisively, but with a quiver of fear in her voice. “You may go if you’ll wash your face and take your hair down and put on your own frock.”

“Mary, you’re simply an idiot! As if I would!”

“You’re not going in that frock.” Mary moved towards the door.

With one leap, Biddy caught up hat and big coat and handbag, and reached the door at the same moment. “Don’t be mad, Mary! You know you can’t stop me. Of course I’m going.”

Mary’s blood was up. “I won’t have it, Biddy. It’s hateful of you,” and she clung to the handle.

But she was small and slight, and Biddy was big and vigorous and at least as determined as she. It was hardly a scuffle; Biddy wrenched the handle round and sprang out into the passage, and stood triumphantly on the stairs to finish dressing.

“Sorry! But you can’t stop me that way. Don’t worry, Mary; I won’t be late if I can help it. And I’ll be awfully good for weeks and weeks! If you think about it, you’ll see I couldn’t possibly back out now!” and she ran off down the long staircase.

Cold, and trembling with indignation, Mary turned brokenly back into the bedroom. For some minutes she moved about, mechanically tidying up the confusion, making the room ready so that Biddy could roll into bed when she came home very tired.

When there was no more to be done, she went back to the sitting-room, and stood helplessly before the fire.

“There’s nothing I can do! I can’t control her, and she’s only fifteen! She can do anything she likes; and she knows it. I’ve missed my chance with her somehow, and it won’t come back. Where have I gone wrong? How have I failed?” Her head dropped on the mantelpiece beside the daffodils from Yorkshire, and she stood shaken with sobbing.