Читать книгу Tomboys at the Abbey - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 4

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“You lot! Anne’s in your form, isn’t she? She’s going to be Joan’s maid for this term; I’m going in for cricket. She’ll tell you all about it.” And Jen was gone, whirling away to find her chum.

“Tell us why!” The juniors crowded round the embarrassed, but proud and happy, Anne. “What did Joan Shirley say? What does Jen Robins mean? Lucky you, to be a maid, when you’re new and such a kid!”

“I’m not such a kid as all that,” Anne retorted, finding her tongue and a new sense of importance at the same time.

The ex-Queen, Nesta, came across to the group. “You seem thrilled about something! What’s up?”

They told her what was up, in an excited chorus.

Nesta raised her brows. “Jen’s going to play cricket? I must inquire into this. Anne—is that your name?—Anne, it’s a great honour to be in the procession. See that you’re good enough. We wouldn’t like to have to tell Joan Shirley she couldn’t have you, because you were always assing about and getting into rows.”

“I won’t, please, Silver Queen.” Anne had become suddenly meek again.

The Silver Queen laughed. “My name’s Nesta, and my nickname is Honesty. All right, but remember! Help her not to forget, all of you. She’s very small and new; I wonder why Joan chose her? We can’t have her letting down the Queens!” And she gathered up her shining silver robe, with its purple border decorated with round white honesty pennies, and went in search of Jen and Jack.

But it was not easy to find them. Jack, a picture of depression, still sat in the gallery, her chin resting on the railing, her gloomy eyes on the gay crowd below. She was slim and neat, with black hair cut like a page-boy’s and very smooth and shining; she wore the regulation white frock necessary for these occasions, but she looked anything but festive.

Jen fell on her from behind. “Cheer up! You’re blue enough to turn the milk sour. It won’t be so bad being a boarder.”

“It will be beastly,” Jack retorted. “You’ll go messing about with those kids, teaching them silly games, and you’ll be running off to stay with Joan, and learning new dances and dressing up, and I shall hardly see you.” She was friendly with all the girls and especially with those who belonged to the Sports Club, but Jen was her chum, and Jen was a keen member of the Hamlet Club and was apt to be preoccupied during the summer term.

“Come into a corner and listen to me,” Jen commanded, and drew her to the back of the gallery.

“Now, listen, Jacqueline Wilmot, and then apologise.”

“I’m sure I shan’t! And don’t call me that! If you do I shall call you Janet.”

“Oh, pax!” Jen said hurriedly. “Anything to avoid Janet! All right, Jacky-boy, but do listen! I can’t do anything about my babies; I must go on teaching them—I couldn’t let them down. And everybody says they’ll have to do some games at the fête again, as people loved them so much last year. But all the rest that you said is rot, so you needn’t go on being so gloomy. I’ve asked Joan to let me off, for this summer, and I’ve found her a new maid, and I’m going in for cricket with you, if you can get my bowling good enough. Now will you apologise?”

Jack rose solemnly from the form on to which she had been firmly thrust, and grasped her friend’s hand. “You brick! You absolute angel! Is it true? Will you really do it?” Her eyes were suddenly radiant and she shook Jen’s hand fervently.

“I will—for you. I wouldn’t, for anybody else,” Jen assured her.

“I apologise several million times! You are jolly decent! I say! Look out! I must do something about it!” And in the narrow space between the wall and the seats she began to turn cartwheels on her hands.

“Jacky-boy! Not in your white frock!” Jen cried.

Jack came upright again. “Not much room here. It’s not the frock that matters but what shows underneath; not like gym things. But it doesn’t matter for you. I had to—to express my feelings. Is it really true? But don’t you mind frightfully? They’ll learn new dances at their practices and you’ll be left out. Can you bear it?”

“I’m quick at picking up figures,” Jen said haughtily. “Joan will tell me about the dances. If I see her,” she added, realising the new state of things suddenly.

Her face fell and she was silent, while Jack eyed her anxiously.

Jen gave herself a little shake. “I’m sure to see Joan sometimes. She’ll tell me what dances they are doing.”

Jack’s face cleared. “I was afraid you were going to change your mind. It is good of you, Jen! I’m terribly touched and grateful. It will make this term altogether different. Am I a pig to let you do it? You’ll have all winter for dancing, when I’ve gone to that loathly London day-school.”

Jen’s arm went round her in sympathy and she squeezed Jack tightly. “I’m afraid we can’t do anything about that, old dear. You must put up with it, if it’s what your people want. But we can make this term quite jolly, with heaps of cricket. We’ll win every match for the school, between us. You will crit. my bowling, won’t you? I must have gone off a bit, but I expect it will come back, if I slog at it and if you watch and tell me, if I slack.”

“I’ll do that!” Jack promised. “I say, Jenny-Wren! I love you quite a lot. I feel different about things now. I believe I’ll have a good term for my last, after all.”

“I’m going to see that you do,” Jen told her.

“You’re sure you won’t go feeling mournful about Joan and the dancing?”

“I’m going to be thrilled about you and cricket. I like cricket! But dancing has always seemed to matter more, to me. I’m going to revive that twist Jandy Mac taught me and see if I can take seven wickets in every match—if they’ll have me in the team!”

“You’ll do it,” Jack said, with conviction, her face aglow.

“Don’t be too sure!” Jen cried, in sudden anxiety. “It may not come off and then you’ll be disappointed.”

“It will come off all right. Does Joan mind?”

“Not really. She said I ought to stand by you. I’ve found her another maid, a new kid called Anne. Some day she ought to be Queen and then she’ll be Queen Anne.”

“Don’t put it into her head! You can’t go choosing Queens for the Club like that. Why don’t they have you for Queen?” Jack demanded. “I’m jolly glad they haven’t bagged you, for you couldn’t have escaped for cricket, if you’d been the Queen. But, all the same, I think you ought to be Queen. You’d do it quite as well as Beetle.”

“Beetle has been here heaps longer than I have,” Jen explained. “Perhaps if I stay for years and years—but even then they’d never want me; I don’t see why they should. I can’t see myself as Queen! And I don’t believe I shall be here for years and years. Mother keeps throwing out hints about wanting me at home for company, and Daddy reminds me that I’m the only daughter of the house and that all the boys have gone away, either married or living in other countries. I don’t want to leave school yet, but I do see that they might feel I was needed at home.”

“Leave school!” Jack jeered. “You don’t know enough about anything yet, not by a very long way. You’ll need at least two years more. There’s plenty of time for you to be Queen.”

“I’d like it, of course,” Jen confessed. “And I’d like two years more. But I don’t believe I shall have them. Daddy’s more gloomy each time I leave home.”

“The old school would seem queer without either you or me in it,” Jack observed. “Oh well! Other people have to decide all that. They’ve fixed things up for me and they’ll do it for you when the time comes.”

“Why didn’t you go to the new school at once? Then you wouldn’t have needed to be a boarder. I know you hate the thought of it.”

“Couldn’t take me; full up,” Jack said briefly. “There’ll be vacancies after the summer. I’m booked all right.”

“I’m jolly glad they couldn’t take you,” Jen acknowledged. “If I’d come back and found you weren’t here and I was never to see you again, I’d merely have died of grief. Things are bad enough, but at least we’ll have this term.”

“Won’t I ever see you again, after July?” Jack asked, in horrified dismay.

Jen squeezed her arm, deeply moved by the terror in Jack’s voice. “For sure you will, old chap. We’ll arrange something. I’ll come to stay with you in London and we’ll do the Tower and Madame Tussaud’s. And you’ll come to us, and we’ll ramble on the moors and roll in the heather. I’m not going to lose you for ever; don’t you think it! Now oughtn’t we to go and ask Sylvia if she’ll propose me as a temporary member of the Sports Club? They let me do that before, for a term.”

“And a lot of use you were!” Jack scoffed. “Oh, I know you shone in two or three matches. But what about that sprained ankle? And getting yourself into quarantine for measles?”

“You were in quarantine too,” Jen retorted. “We had some sport, didn’t we? I can’t ask Sylvia if she’ll have me in the team, but I can ask if I may join the club and practise with you.”

“Sylvia will have you. And I shall say you ought to be in the team. But you’ll have to work up your bowling again,” Jack said earnestly, as they went in search of the cricket captain.