Читать книгу Tomboys at the Abbey - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 7

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Joan and Joy followed, curious to hear how Jack received the news. They heard her indignant comment—“Why did you go head over heels like that? You looked quite mad!”

But the news was told before the elder girls reached the nets, Jen pouring out the glorious prospect before them in a torrent of words.

Jack came to meet the Abbey girls, bat under her arm. “Is it true? Or is this child quite off her head? She looked like it, a moment ago. You won’t really have us, will you?”

“Your hostess and—and inviter.” Joan waved her hand at Joy.

“What a word! Would you like to come, Jacky-boy? It will mean hours of cycling, or the train in bad weather. But Jen seems to think it’s worth it.”

“Worth it! I should jolly well think so!” Jen cried.

Jack grasped Joy’s hand and shook it fervently. It was her warmest way of expressing her feelings. “I shall love to come and stay with you. Thank you very much indeed; you’re more than kind! I appreciate it deeply.”

Then, her duty done, she flung away the bat and began to turn cartwheels on her hands.

“Oh, Jack!” Joan laughed. “You’re worse than Jen!”

“I thought the beautiful speech wasn’t natural,” Joy scoffed.

Jack sat looking up at them, her short hair falling in her eyes. “Does Mother know? When she decided to send me here, she said how much she wished the school had been still at the Hall, as it was three years ago, when I was a boarder for a term. I guess she’s pleased, isn’t she?”

“We asked her, and she is willing you should come to us,” Joy said primly.

“Then there’s only one thing left to do,” Jen announced. “But you’ll have to tidy your hair before you do it.”

“As for hair, go and look at yourself in a glass,” Jack retorted. “What’s the one thing? Start at once? Oh—pack, I suppose. We’ll need some clothes, won’t we?”

“No, thank the Head,” Jen explained.

“Oh! Yes, I suppose we’d better do that. I do need you to keep me straight,” Jack admitted. “Let’s go now, shall we?”

“It’s certainly the thing to do, but not the first thing,” Joan remarked. “Go and tidy yourselves, before she sees you. You look like wild creatures.”

“Come on!” Jack picked up her bat and seized Jen’s hand, and they raced together to the school.

“Where have they gone? What did you say to them?” The rest of the cricketers forsook their practice and came crowding round.

“Only invited them to come home with us for the summer,” Joy said airily. “Get over the shock as fast as you can.”

“Oh, but why? Oh, Joy, you didn’t really?” There was an envious shout.

“I did, really and truly. Why not? We want them, and they’ll be glad to get away from all you lot and be on their own.”

“Well, I think it’s a shame. Jen’s always going to stay with you! We want her here.”

Joan swept this aside. “Don’t be silly, Beetle. You’ve done without Jen for two summers and most of one winter—as a boarder, I mean. You’ll see her every day. Where’s my new little maid? Are you trying your hand at cricket, Anne? That’s all right, but you can’t do it in earnest, you know. You must join the Hamlet Club and learn to dance.”

“I want to, please, Queen. But Jen said I’d better learn to bowl, so she’s been teaching me.”

“Those kids were talking about queens and colours yesterday; I heard them,” the reigning queen, Beetle, said. “D’you know what that young maid of yours would choose, if she was ever queen?”

Joan looked at little Anne. “She needn’t bother about it for a few years; it’s a long way off. What would you choose, Anne?”

“Clover, please, Queen; pink clover,” Anne asserted.

“Just a weed!” Beatrice said scornfully.

“You could say that of Speedwell,” Joan retorted, referring to the queen who had come after her. “Clover pink would be pretty with Anne’s brown eyes and hair.”

“And white clovers round the edge of the train, and some four-leaved ones for luck,” Anne added eagerly.

Joan laughed. “You’ve plenty of time to change your mind in four or five years. I shouldn’t worry about it, if I were you.”

“I’m not worrying! But they asked me what I’d be.”

“Oh, I see! But you’ve a long way to go before you’ll be ready for that clover. Come to the next dance-practice and I’ll see if you’re going to make a good dancer.”

“Jen said she’d teach me,” Anne explained. “And then——”

“She can’t! She won’t be there!” There was a chorus from the cricketers.

“She remembered that afterwards,” Anne said, with dignity. “They’ve put her into the school team, because of her bowling, so she won’t have time for dancing. So she said she’d hand me over to the Silver Queen.”

“Nesta will take care of you, and so will I,” Joan promised.

She and Joy were still talking to the crowd when Jen and Jack returned, looking most unnaturally neat but rather crestfallen.

“Won’t the Head let you go? Serves you right!” Beetle jeered.

“The Head’s delighted we should go,” Jen said haughtily. She looked at Joan. “But we’re not to go till Friday, after school. She wants us to—to see our clothes are in good order. As if they wouldn’t be in order! We’ve just come back to school; our mothers saw to all that!”

“We thought we were going home with you right now, this very minute,” Jack said limply, deeply disappointed.

“You couldn’t expect to walk out just as you are,” Joy said.

“I could pack in three minutes, if it was to go home with you,” Jen told her.

“I’m going to Oxford for a music-lesson on Friday. I’ll pick you up at half past four,” Joy promised. “Mind you’re ready on the tick, with everything packed and waiting.”

“We’ll be ready! Joy, you are an angel!”

“You wait!” Joy threatened. “You may not find me such an angel as you think.”

Jack stared at her. “What do you mean? Joan, what does she mean?”

“I’ve no idea. It sounds most alarming,” Joan said seriously. “I hope you won’t have too much of her. You may wish you were back at school. Come along, Joy, before you talk any more nonsense. Jenny-Wren, these people want to get hold of you,” waving her hand towards Nesta and Beatrice and the rest. “They don’t approve of you at all. We’ll leave you to their tender mercies.”

“Oh, have you told them? I suppose they’re green with envy?”

“Sylvia won’t be exactly pleased,” Beetle suggested indignantly. “She will say you’re going to slack on your cricket. She wants you here, under her eye.”

Jack looked at Joan. “You’ll let us practise, won’t you? Jen says it will be all right. I thought perhaps we ought not to go, because of cricket.”

“You shall practise as much as you want—so long as you do your prep. first,” Joan told her.

“And I shall field for you,” Joy announced. “Cricket must come first. We quite understand that.”

“Oh, Joy, will you? Oh, what a joke!”

“I’m quite prepared to be told I’m not good enough to bat or bowl with earnest players like you two, but I can perhaps run after your balls and save your legs in that way,” Joy mocked. “You’d better go and reassure Sylvia. Your cricket practice will be all right; you shall choose a pitch as soon as you arrive. Come on, Joan! You do talk an awful lot, when you come back to school!”

Joan threw a laughing look at Jen, who was breaking into an indignant protest. “Go and tell the rest of the school about your good luck. Remember to say it was Joy’s idea.”

“They’ll all rag us,” Jen said mournfully. “I wish we could go with you now, just to escape from them.”

“You must put up with that. I’m sure you can look after yourselves,” Joan laughed, and left them to face the protests and questions of the crowd.

“You won’t be too mad and crazy, will you, Joy?” she asked, as they drove homewards.

“What makes you think I shall be mad and crazy?” Joy demanded indignantly.

“The silly way you’ve been talking.”

“I had to excite the kids. They’re far more keen to come because I threw out a few hints.”

“What are you going to do? Put things in their beds?”

“I might, if I can’t think of anything more original.”

“Don’t be too infantile! You can be such a baby sometimes.”

“That,” Joy said solemnly, “is what I intend to prove to Jacky-boy. I think Jen knows—or at least guesses the worst.”

“Joy, please!”

“I won’t do anything to upset Aunty. Don’t worry!” was all Joy would say.