Читать книгу The Second Term at Rocklands - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 4

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“TOMMY” COMES TO TEA

Jen’s first tea-party was to consist only of Betty and Rhoda. She would have liked the juniors to come too, but her mother advised that they should wait.

She was lying in the garden when they arrived, for the autumn days were as warm as those of summer, with the added beauty of wonderfully tinted trees. Jen’s couch was placed under a drooping golden birch, its white satiny stem shining in the afternoon sun. She was looking stronger than at the end of her journey, and was eager to tell about her holiday and to show piles of snapshots.

“Oh, I’m getting better every hour! This air is so glorious after the heat down south. I loved the place, but I wanted to get out on the hills whenever I could. I don’t go up and down stairs yet; they’ve made me a bedroom in the little library, so that I can step out of the window into the garden. But I can walk a little farther every day, and when I go upstairs for the first time I shall send postcards to every one I know to boast about it! Look what I’m doing!” and she proudly showed a length of wide crochet lace, kept beautifully clean and worked with greatest care. Three sides of a square were finished, with elaborate corners; it represented hours of patient work spent in hospital.

“It’s lovely! What is it for?” Betty asked admiringly.

“It’s to go round an afternoon teacloth. It’s a wedding present for Madam. She’s the one who told us we were all wrong in our dancing,” she said laughing, to Rhoda. “She’s just got engaged. So as soon as I heard about it, I started on this for her. It’s the biggest piece of work I ever did in my life! But then I never lay still for so long before. I’m desperately afraid something will happen to it before I get it finished! I won’t feel safe till it’s sent off. You see, I really have given a lot of time to it! I’d be awfully upset if anything happened to it now.”

“Oh, but it won’t! You’re being so careful of it. You’ve kept it beautifully clean,” Betty said warmly.

“Are you strong enough for a surprise?” Rhoda asked seriously. “I think it will be a jolly one; but I don’t want to send your temp. up.”

“Oh, I’ve stopped having relapses! What is the surprise?” Jen asked eagerly.

“I’ve been teaching somebody to dance ‘Jockie,’ and she wants you to see her and criticise, now that you’ve seen the real thing. Could we have the gramophone?”

“Oh, who is it? Tickles?” Jen cried in delight. “Joan will fetch the record; won’t you, old dear? But where is your kiddy, Rhoda? Did you leave her at the gate? What a shame!”

“She’s not exactly a kid,” Rhoda’s lips twitched. “She’s awfully keen on morris. She came up with us, but she’s sitting out in the heather. She wouldn’t come in till I’d told you about her.”

“Oh, do fetch her! Betty and Joan will see to the music. Is it one of your mistresses? Or an old woman from the village?”

“Wrong! Quite wrong! I’ll fetch her. You may know her already.”

Jen’s eager eyes widened in delight when Rhoda returned, followed up the drive by a tall, sunny-faced girl in khaki tunic and breeches and big boots, a shady hat covering her yellow hair, which was tied in a bunch of curls behind. Rena was tanned and healthy and straight, strong with a year’s work in the moorland garden at Rocklands, and very pleasant to look at. Her gardening outfit was neat and useful, and suited her, and she looked ready for tramping the heather, digging, mowing, tennis, or morris dancing at a moment’s notice.

She touched her hat in a boyish salute, as she came up to the couch. Jen stretched out her hands with an eager cry. “I know you by sight! I’ve always wanted to speak to you, but I never quite dared; you always look so businesslike! You always seem to be going somewhere in a hurry! But you look so jolly and so much a bit of the moor. Have you seen me out cycling? But I didn’t often go towards Rocklands. It was on the moor I saw you.”

“I tramp across it twice a day, from my cottage under the Edge. I lodge with Mrs. Thynne. I have seen you often,” Rena looked down at her anxiously. “Are you really better? Will you be able to dance again? I was hiding among the trees with Lisabel, that night you danced and were a fairy, for Wriggles. I’d never seen anything like it before.”

“It was horribly badly done!” Jen said, laughing. “Oh, I’ll be all right again quite soon! They all say so. At first I was afraid they were only saying it to satisfy me,” she said gravely. “I was ill, you see, and you get so horribly nervy. I was afraid there might be more the matter than they wanted me to know. But mother and daddy and Joan have all told me solemnly it isn’t so; there really is nothing wrong that won’t get perfectly all right. I know they wouldn’t cheat me. And I can feel that I’m stronger every day. So I’m quite happy; I don’t mind waiting! And I had a gorgeous time; I can always be happy thinking about it. Has Rhoda really been teaching you? How sporting of her! Do let me see ‘Jockie’! Do you do it in boots?”

“They’re not high-heeled boots!” Rhoda reassured her earnestly, but with laughing eyes. “Your morris men must have danced in boots; don’t you think so?” She pulled out two big khaki handkerchiefs, and threw her hat on the grass.

Jen chuckled. “If you bobbed your hair, in the same way they’ve done mine, you’d look just a boy! But those curls give you away; the top half of you doesn’t fit the bottom half!”

“Rex Courtney always calls me Tommy, but then Rex is rude,” Rena said lightly. “He’s Wriggles’s brother, and comes sometimes in holidays. I’ve enjoyed my lessons with Rhoda tremendously; there’s something in morris that fills a want in my nature! But my capers aren’t like yours, and I’m not fond of side-step. I love all the rest, but I don’t suppose it’s good.”

“Oh, but it is good!” Jen and Joan cried in delight, at the end of the dance, as Rena paused and waited for criticism.

“I like your morris!” Jen said eagerly. “It’s like a man’s, and that’s the real thing. It’s sturdy and solid and businesslike; isn’t it, Joan?”

“Yes, it’s very good, but it’s all her own,” Joan remarked. “That’s as it should be, of course. Rena puts something of herself into it. She hasn’t your lightness, Jenny-Wren; but her dancing is full of life, and very individual.”

“Oh, I’m a heavy lump, I know!” Rena laughed. “When I remember that blue dancing fairy on the lawn in the twilight, I feel like a sack of sand!”

“Oh, but all that talk about fairies is silly when you’re speaking of morris!” Jen insisted. “Morris was danced by village men, in boots, as you say; not by fairies, dressed in spiders’ webs! I think your morris is good; it’s more like the real thing. I hope you’ll do some more.”

“I’d love it. I like the dances with sticks, too; they’re real sport!”

“Here comes tea. Oh, you’re not going away!” Jen cried indignantly, as Rena picked up her hat hastily. “After just getting to know you, I’m not going to let you go like that! It isn’t likely! I’ve been shy of speaking to you all spring and summer, because you always look so determined, and—and in a hurry to get to some job you’re keen on! You aren’t in a hurry now, are you?”

“Purposeful!” Rhoda laughed. “That’s how I always say she looks!”

“I’m not in a special hurry, but you don’t want me——”

“Then don’t be daft!” Jen said peremptorily. “I do! I want to show you my photos of men doing morris. Another cup, Alice, please. Now, Joan, come and be mother and pour out! Rena and Rhoda can wait on themselves and me.”

As tea came to an end, Betty asked, in mock anxiety, “Could you stand another shock, Jen? Has the tea strengthened you a lot?”

Jen laughed. “Heaps and heaps! I can stand anything now! Is your shock as jolly as Rhoda’s?”

“Mine’s a real shock, I’m afraid. Tickles and her crowd have found out something you ought to know; and we’ve been ordered to break it to you gently.”

Jen’s eyes laughed again. “Come and hold me up, Joan! Feel my pulse; is it good and strong? Get it over, Betty, there’s a dear!”

“Rose, down in Tin Town, has been making a present for you,” Betty said solemnly, going straight to the point for once. “It’s a jumper, and she’s been working at it for weeks. And I’m sorry to say it’s the most hideous thing you ever saw; a violent purple and a ghastly yellow, in stripes. Rose knew you liked bright colours.”

Jen’s eyes, which had filled with eager light on hearing of Rose’s kind thought, dilated in horror. Then she lay back in Joan’s arms, and laughed till she cried.

“Oh, but how awful!” she gasped, when she could speak. “How perfectly sweet of the kid! But how simply fearful! Stripes! Up and down, of course, to make me look longer than ever! I’ve grown two feet while I’ve been ill! What am I to do with the thing? Have you seen it, Betty?”

“No, but the kids say it’s absolutely ghastly. You’ll never be able to wear it. They wanted to get hold of it and drown it before you saw it; but I said you ought to know.”

“Oh, rather! I’m thrilled to think the kid had the idea at all; and still more thrilled that she’d do all that work for me! But—oh, why didn’t she ask some one about colours? I shall have to wear it! Girls, what can I do?”

“Margot says you’ll be ill when you see it, and if you try to wear it you’ll die,” Betty said gloomily.

“And Tickles calls it the hideosity,” Rhoda added encouragingly.

Jen began to laugh again. “Oh, I’m tired!” Rena laughed, and rose. “I’ve some work to do, so will you excuse me now? I’m helping Lisabel to swot for her entrance exam. at college, and she’s still miles below the standard. We’ve got to put in two hours’ steady work at French and maths. this evening.”

“How jolly of you to help her! Good-bye, Tommy! Come and see me again soon!” said Jen warmly.