Читать книгу House-at-the-Corner - Enid blyton - Страница 6

Table of Contents

The summer term began. All the children went back to school. Pam was in the highest form eager to take her scholarship exam and win it, and, to go to college the next term.

“Of course, it doesn’t really matter if I win it, or not,” she told Joan, her best friend. “I’m going to college anyhow. But I might as well win it!”

“Nobody stands a chance against you,” said Joan. “You’ve always been top of your form. But it’s open to other schools as well, you know, and they say that Summerdene School has got some jolly good brains this year.”

“I can win it on my head!” said Pam. “I wish you were going to college too, Joan. Surely you don’t want to go in for Domestic Science?”

“Well, I do,” said Joan. “I haven’t any longings to go into an office and answer the telephone all day long, or write letters dictated to me, or add up rows of figures. I want to be the centre of a home, like women used to be in the old days.”

Pam stared at her. “Whatever do you mean?” she said. “The centre of a home! Why, girls are trying to get out of being in their homes now. Even married women take jobs outside their homes!”

“Yes, I know all that,” said Joan, in an obstinate voice. “But when I look at my mother and see how happy she is in her own home, and how we all love to be there, and when I see all the things she knows how to do so well, I just want to be like her, that’s all. I want a home of my own, and to be in it, to be the centre of everything, to make jam for my family and pickles, and bottle fruit—I want my children to eat the things I’ve made myself, not things out of tins. I want to hear them say, like we say to my mother, ‘Mums, this is the best strawberry jam I’ve ever tasted.’ Or ‘Mummy, you’re a darling to ice my birthday cake so beautifully.’ Well, I can learn all that kind of thing at a Domestic Science School, and that’s why I want to go.”

This was a very long speech for Joan to make. Pam was astonished.

“You’re mad,” she said at last. “Fancy wanting to get back into your home when we girls have got the chance to get out of it! Everyone knows that housework and cooking are drudgery.”

“They’re not, if you do them well, and know how to do them,” said Joan. “You’ve never polished a fine oak table and been pleased to see how it shines. Well, I have. And you’ve never gathered red currants out of your own garden and made them into red currant jelly for your brothers to eat in the winter—you don’t know how good it is to see people enjoying what you’ve made for them. It’s a lovely happy feeling, Pam. I’d rather be the centre of a home, a real home like that, than a little unknown person in somebody’s office, with only a typewriter and a telephone to mess about with.”

“I’ve never heard you make such long speeches!” said Pam. “You sound like my great-aunt Grace. She is always talking like that, nagging at me because I don’t even know how to cook an egg! You’re old-fashioned.”

“No, I’m not,” said Joan. “I’m new-fashioned. I don’t want to rush away from my home as girls have been doing for years—I want to be the centre of it, the star of it, making it lovely, filling its shelves with jams and bottles and pickles and eggs—always having something different to do all the year round, not the same old routine of a musty little office. You’re the old-fashioned one!”

Joan was so heated that Pam was surprised. “We’re not quarrelling, are we, Joan?” she said. “You’ve never said so much before.”

“No. You thought it was a waste of my brains to go and take a thoroughly good Domestic Science course, and learn how to run what all families long for and very few get—a really good home!” said Joan. “So I never said much. I’ve been talking to my mother though, and I know that what I’m doing is right—right for me, anyway!”

“Well, don’t let’s discuss it any more,” said Pam, with a laugh, slipping her arm through Joan’s. “You and my sister Lizzie would get on well together. Lizzie’s always rushing round the house too—poor plain Lizzie, there’s nothing much else she’ll be able to do!”

“I always thought Lizzie was much brainier than you make out,” said Joan. “I heard one of the mistresses discussing her essays once, and she said they were the finest in the school.”

“Well, writing good essays won’t get Lizzie a good job, once she’s left school,” said Pam. “It won’t be worth while sending her to college. She hasn’t enough brains.”

Pam felt a bit ruffled as she left Joan to go to her class. Joan had always agreed with her in everything before. She thought perhaps it was Joan’s mother that had upset her ideas. Pam didn’t like Mrs. Simpson. Mrs. Simpson didn’t laugh and think it was funny when Pam said she couldn’t cook an egg. All she said was, “Well, it would do you good to learn, my dear. You’ll only be half a woman if you miss out things like that.”

Pam tossed back her pretty hair. She would show Mrs. Simpson how smart she was! She would win that scholarship easily, with flying colours, top of the list—she would go to college and do really brilliantly. She would take a marvellous job, and earn a lot of money—she would ....

“Pamela, three times have I asked you to bring your book,” complained Mamzelle. “But always you look out of the window and you smile and smile. There is no one to smile at there. What is the matter with you?”

Pamela blushed and took up her book. Soon she wouldn’t have to be ticked off by Mamzelle any more. She would be living the free life of a college girl. She was just about to go dreaming again, when Mamzelle drew her blue pencil right through the page she was looking at.

“Pamela Farrell, this is not the work I set you. If you have not the brains to do the work, at least try to answer the right questions!”

Pamela went back to her place, her cheeks burning. It didn’t matter being ticked off by Mamzelle when you were in the third or fourth form—but in the sixth! No one else but Mamzelle would dare to do that to her. Mamzelle glanced at her and smiled to herself.

“Aha!” she thought. “The great Pamela is annoyed. Silly, vain child. A little shock will be good for her. She is spoilt. She has everything—brains, beauty, money behind her—and yet she has no character. She would crack like a brittle stick if anything happened to her.”

Not knowing anything of Mamzelle’s queer thoughts, Pamela worked angrily. Wait till she had got that scholarship—she’d toss her hand at Mamzelle then—silly old thing, with her bun of hair and enormous glasses. In her annoyance Pamela quite forgot the endless kindnesses that Mamzelle did, the patience she had for slow pupils, the way she always gave extra time to those who had been away ill. She had annoyed Pamela, and so, for the time being at any rate, she was just a tiresome old French mistress, with a funny bun of hair and enormous glasses.

Lower down in the school, Lizzie was copying out an essay, or rather a story. To her delight a story had been set for this week’s composition, and she had done her very best and enjoyed it. And she had signed it boldly—Elizabeth Farrell. It was ready to give in. Miss Lacy, her form-mistress, took the work and glanced at it. She noticed the signature at the end.

“Ah—you’re going to drop the name of Lizzie and use Elizabeth,” she said approvingly. “Quite right. It’s a pity you’ve always been called Lizzie—it will be so difficult for you to change it if you want to. But perhaps you don’t want to? Lizzie doesn’t really suit you.”

“Oh, I do want to,” said Lizzie, earnestly. “But everyone would laugh if I asked them to call me something different, and it would be very difficult for them to remember, anyhow. I’m afraid I’ll have to put up with it now!”

“Yes, I suppose you will,” said Miss Lacy. “My own name is Margaret, but people have called me Daisy as long as I can remember, and I suppose they always will! I’m not a bit like a daisy, either.”

She wasn’t. Margaret would have suited her well. Lizzie sighed. Names shouldn’t matter, but they did. She felt so different when she was Elizabeth!

Lower down the school still was Delia, in the second form. But she was not doing any lessons. It was the hour set aside for the school garden, and Delia was out there, taking charge! Miss Root, the teacher in charge, was quite willing. Delia knew far more about gardening than Miss Root did! In fact, thought Miss Root, it was quite amazing what she knew, and what she did.

She had taught the class how to double-dig. She had gone to the seed merchant with her brother, David, and had ordered all the right seeds. She had measured and marked the dug ground for the crops. She was, in fact, a perfect godsend to Miss Root, who usually had to go and consult the school gardener, Tapp—and Tapp was a surly bad-tempered fellow, not at all helpful, and quite likely to give poor Miss Root bad advice, just out of spite.

“We’ll have the first row of peas here,” said Delia, in her clear voice. “And we’ll have the lettuces there. And we must watch the broad beans for black fly. Tessie, you can be responsible for that.”

Tessie’s eyes popped. “Black fly? What’s black fly?” she said. “You do give me awful things to do, Delia.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Delia. “It’s the very easiest thing I can think of, for somebody who doesn’t know a spade from a rake!”

She set two children to wheel away rubbish. She told Hilda to weed the path. Miss Root sat on a barrow and watched. Really, Delia was a marvel at gardening—and at all kinds of nature too. There wasn’t a weed she didn’t know. She knew all the birds and could even tell them by their songs. Miss Root felt quite small when she thought of all that Delia knew and she didn’t.

“Miss Root,” said Delia, coming up to her. “You haven’t anything to do, have you? Well, you might clear away those ...”

But that was too much for Miss Root. She rose up with dignity. “Delia, I am in charge here,” she said. “Just get on with your work, please. Really, you Farrells think too much of yourselves at times!”