Читать книгу The Girls of the Abbey School - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 8

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‘So you’re going to have companions of your own age at last, Jen!’ Mrs Shirley said kindly. ‘I’m afraid this week has been rather dull for you.’

‘Oh, no, it hasn’t! It’s been topping!’ Jen said swiftly.

She caught Joan as they hurried from room to room, making preparations for the coming of the girls. ‘It’s been a simply topping week, here alone with you and Joy,’ she said hurriedly, with more of shyness than the facing of the whole big school had required, for here her feelings were deeply touched and it was hard to speak freely. ‘And I think it was jolly sporting of your mother to let me come, and of you to be bothered with me. For it must have been a fag sometimes to put up with a kid like me, and I know I’ve been in the way. I think you’re both just awfully kind.’

‘Speech! Speech by Jenny-Wren!’ cheered Joy, coming in with her arms full of blankets.

Jen coloured swiftly. She had purposely tried to catch Joan alone. Then she retorted pointedly, ‘It’s Joan who has put up with me so rippingly, not you! You’ve been quite all right, but she’s taken trouble to see I’ve been all right too.’

‘Jenny-Wren, you see farther into a brick wall than most people. My opinion of you has risen considerably,’ Joy mocked, putting down her load and standing to look the smaller girl over with approval. ‘You have been looking on at us, and watching and making notes, and no mistake! There’s just one thing I’m deadly scared of, though, Joan.’

‘What’s that?’ Joan laughed, as she made up a single bed. ‘Give me those small blankets, Jenny-Wren! Well, Wild Cat?’

‘I’m scared of the things she’ll say to the rest of the kids about us,’ Joy said solemnly. ‘For a week she’s been watching us, with those big, dreamy, blue eyes, and taking us in and weighing us up, and making up her mind about us and all our faults and failings—mine, I mean!—and all your virtues and excellences, and won’t she have a lot to tell the rest of the infants? And she’ll always have an audience, for you know they always listen to any cackle about any of the Queens! She’ll give us away right and left—I mean me, again! She’s head over ears in love with you.’

Joan glanced at Jen curiously, not only to see how she would take this teasing, but because, to tell the truth, the same thought had occurred to her as a possible danger. Was Jen old enough to respect the privileges of the hospitality extended to her so readily? She knew that behind Joy’s mocking tone there was a touch of real anxiety. ‘Jen’s too loyal to do a shabby thing like that, Joy. Don’t be so soft!’ she said brusquely.

‘I’m not so sure,’ Joy teased. ‘I can just see her sitting with a circle of kids round her, and saying——’

‘Yes? Saying what?’ Jen exploded. She had been looking from one to the other during Joy’s mocking tirade, and waiting her chance with difficulty.

Joan glanced at her quickly, struck by her overwrought tone. ‘Help me turn this mattress, Jenny-Wren,’ she said quietly.

Jen, breathing quickly, came to help, then turned on Joy, her voice trembling with pent-up feeling. ‘What d’you think I’ll tell about you? I shall say that you’re a horrid tease sometimes, and that you say heaps of things you don’t mean!’ She looked at Joan, who laughed and nodded leave to say so much.

‘Oh, things like, “They never gave me evening dinner once, and living in a big house like that, too! Just cold meat and rice pudding at one o’clock, and cocoa and bread and butter at half-past eight! Really, I could hardly get enough to eat!” And then you’ll tell them all about the wet day when we went in the kitchen and made toffee, and you found the griddle and told us what it was for, because we poor Londoners didn’t know; and how you made scones for tea, Jenny-Wren—but you called them pikelets!—and Joan made a beautiful sandwich cake, and I could only manage rock buns! And all the kids will say, “Oh, Joy’s no real use! She can tinkle on the piano and play at being a Queen, but she isn’t a scrap of good at things that really matter!” And then you’ll tell them how I had to be told which was the oven damper, and they’ll all roar with laughing. Oh, I know!’

Joan was laughing too, sitting on the mattress to listen. ‘It sounds as if we lived on cold meat and rice pudding!’ she jeered.

Joy picked up the pile of blankets and stalked away. ‘I know, Jenny-Wren! I’m quite prepared for the worst!’

Jen had given in and was laughing, too, greatly relieved that her anger had been unnecessary, since it was only tales such as these Joy expected her to tell. ‘What a silly idiot she is!’ she exclaimed.

‘Now, help me make up this bed, Jenny-Wren. No, she’s not a silly idiot. There was lots of truth behind all that nonsense. I don’t mean that she really thinks you’d repeat anything we should object to, or that there is anything you could repeat, for that matter. I can’t think of anything myself. We haven’t any deadly secrets. But——’

‘But I wouldn’t! You know that!’ Jen said indignantly.

‘Of course I do. But Joy knows she’s just a baby about some things, and she’s beginning to feel badly about it, and she wouldn’t like the girls to know. I’ve helped mother for so long, while Joy’s been out tramping all over the country, you see. She knows every path and track for miles round, even in the dark. You’ve seen what a splendid guide she is when we’ve been for long walks, and how often I have to ask her the way! You can’t know everything, and she is a baby about things in the house. Don’t ever give her away to the girls, will you? She’s afraid of being laughed at. That was the truth behind all her fooling.’

‘I see!’ Jen said soberly. ‘Thank you for explaining. No, I won’t, and of course I’ll never tell anything except about how kind you’ve been. And—and what she said about thinking a lot of you was true!’ And she fled, leaving Joan touched and amused.

In the passage Jen ran full into Joy, still wandering about with her load of blankets. ‘I don’t know where to put these things! O-o-oh! Is that you, Jenny-Wren?’ and she collapsed on the floor under the pile. ‘Go and ask Joan what I’m to do with them, there’s an angel! Have you had a quarrel with Her Majesty, that you’re running away so quick? Oh, that’s bad grammar, and I must set a good example to the young! So quickly, I mean, my child! Make a note of it, I beg of you! Verbs have to be fitted with adverbs to keep them company, not adjectives. I’m getting ready for to-morrow, and the invasion of Miss Macey, three mistresses, four maids, and twenty-one boarders! Oh, by the way!’—she was sitting on the floor, surrounded by fallen blankets—‘what about the twenty-first boarder? Who do you suppose it can be? Have you had any brain-waves yet?’

‘Not a ripple, and I’ve thought heaps,’ Jen assured her solemnly. ‘It gets more puzzling the more I think. For even if she’s counted me in, and she may have, you know, there’s Cissie to be counted out. She won’t be leaving the hospital yet.’

‘That’s so; I hadn’t thought of that. You’ve got a jolly good head, if it is a little one, Jenny-Wren,’ Joy said with approval. ‘No, we’re not going to have Cissie scattering her germs round here! I can’t imagine who——’

‘What are you two doing out there?’ Joan followed Jen out into the passage, then stopped to stare and laugh at sight of Joy squatting on the floor, with blankets all around her.

‘We’re discussing the mysterious twenty-first boarder,’ Joy said, with dignity. ‘I don’t see what you’re laughing at? I wanted to talk—as usual!—and I didn’t know what to do with these things, so I just—er—put them down.’

‘I butted into her. It was my fault,’ Jen laughed.

‘You did! And I doubled right up. Come on, help me pick them up, kid! Now, Joan, direct operations! Where do they go? And who do you suppose is the twenty-first boarder? You’re clever; at least, people think you are! Haven’t you a single idea? Why, even Jenny-Wren’s had one. She says it isn’t Cissie, anyway.’

‘I haven’t a notion. But we’ll know to-morrow,’ Joan laughed.

‘True, O Maiden Aunt, we shall! But I want to know to-night! I’m just a baby, and I don’t like having to wait,’ Joy wailed.

They were all three out at the gate when the first cab drove up next afternoon. Luggage and maids had seemed to be coming all morning, and Miss Macey herself, and Miss Bates, the music-mistress, had also arrived early, Miss Macey full of gratitude to Mrs Shirley and of appreciation of the trouble she had taken, when she found bedrooms prepared for all her homeless flock. ‘Oh, the girls did most of the work!’ Mrs Shirley smiled, and Jen in the background smothered a laugh at thought of Joy buried in blankets on the top landing.

Joy was impulsively asking the question which had puzzled her so much. ‘Did you count in Jen when you said twenty-one, Miss Macey? But even then that makes one too many, for Cissie can’t be here!’

‘I certainly counted Jen,’ Miss Macey laughed. ‘I was giving you the total number you might expect. I have been asked to take in one girl whose parents do not wish her to travel alone by train every day, nor yet to cycle so far. That is the explanation of the mystery, Joy.’

‘Oh! We’ve been frightfully puzzled. And who is the extra one, Miss Macey?’

‘Wait and see when they all arrive!’ the head mistress laughed. ‘Oh, quite a junior! No one you need get at all excited about, my dear Joy!’ and she would say no more.

So the girls, in keen curiosity, raced down to the gate as soon as they heard the whistle and knew that the train had reached the station. Mademoiselle and several girls were in the only cab the village could provide; a shout from within informed Joy that all the rest were walking up with Miss Anskell, the English mistress. Presently a straggling procession came in sight, and Joan laughingly entreated Joy and Jen to come just inside the gate, lest they should stop the traffic.

In the whirl of excited greetings, as the elder girls, feeling their responsibility as hostesses, greeted their companions warmly, a wild, joyous shout rang out above the babel. ‘Jack! You perfect dear! You jolly old sport! How have you worked it, old thing?’ and Jenny-Wren hurled herself on Jacqueline Wilmot in an ecstasy of delight.

‘Hallo! The Wren’s found a friend!’ Joy laughed. ‘Goody! Is it the chum she talks about, that she got engaged to for a week? I suppose she’s the mysterious twenty-first boarder! What luck for Jenny-Wren!’

‘Have you had a good time, Jen? What is it like here? Oh, what a gorgeous house! Is it really Queen Joy’s?’

‘It’s gorgeouser still inside! I’ll show you round! I think I know my way about at last! There’s heaps of it, though! I’m the old girl now, and you’re new! Isn’t it weird? Everything’s turned the other way round!’ Jen laughed excitedly. ‘But why are you here, Jack? Are you a boarder now? What’s happened?’

‘Father doesn’t want me to miss any more school; I missed a lot being ill last winter,’ Jack explained primly. ‘I’m getting all behind. And mother won’t have me go alone by train, and she thinks I’m not strong enough to cycle both ways every day. So she wrote and begged Miss Macey to have me for a boarder for this term. D’you think I’ll like it?’ She was plainly rather nervous of the new experience.

‘You’ll just love it!’ Jen prophesied. ‘I’ll look after you!’ at which they both laughed again. ‘Come and ask if you can sleep in my room. There’s got to be somebody, and I don’t think it’s decided yet who’s to have which bed. I was going to ask for Nesta, but that was before I dreamt you’d be coming. I’ve got the dinkiest little room, and it’s been all mine so far, but now there’s another bed in it, and somebody’s got to have it. It might as well be you, since we’re chums.’

‘Oh, are we?’ Jack laughed. ‘You’ve decided, then? I thought you wanted to be engaged for a week?’

‘We’ve been engaged for more than a week,’ Jen said solemnly. ‘It doesn’t matter that we haven’t been together; “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” you know! I’ve thought about you a lot!’

‘So’ve I. Then I vote we go ahead.’

‘I’m so glad to see you that I’m sure we must be meant to be chums,’ Jen argued.

On promise of very good behaviour, solemnly given by both, they were allowed to share a room. ‘You are friends?’ Miss Macey smiled approvingly on them. ‘I did not think Janet had had time to make friends with any one. I am very glad. You will suit one another excellently, I am sure.’

‘We’ve been engaged ever since the Coronation, Miss Macey,’ Jack explained eagerly. ‘Just to see if we liked it, you know! We’ve decided that we do, so we’re going to go ahead.’

‘And get married,’ Jen supplemented.

‘Being chums, you know,’ Jack added.

‘But you’ve been parted ever since the Coronation!’ Miss Macey smiled.

‘Oh, but we’ve thought about one another a lot!’ Jack assured her seriously.

She laughed. ‘Very well. Run along and be married, or be chums, however you like to put it! But don’t lead one another into mischief!’

‘Oh, we never would!’ they promised in chorus, and she laughed again as she dismissed them.

‘She’s a sport!’ Jen said, with conviction. ‘But if you ever call me Janet, Jack, I’ll—I’ll get a divorce!’