Читать книгу Fifth Formers at St. Clare's - Enid blyton - Страница 3

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St. Clare’s had stood silent and empty during eight weeks of the summer holiday. Except for the sound of mops and brushes, and a tradesman ringing at the bell, the place had been very quiet. The school cat missed the girls and wandered about miserably for the first week or two.

But now everything was different. The school coaches were rolling up the hill, full of chattering, laughing children—St. Clare’s was beginning a new winter term!

“Who would think this was a winter term?” said Pat O’Sullivan, to her twin, Isabel. “The sun is as hot as it was in the summer. We might be able to have a few games of tennis, still.”

“I shall certainly have a swim in the pool,” said Bobby Ellis, whose face seemed even more freckled than usual. “I hope there’s fresh water in today—I might have a swim after tea.”

“Ah, you Bobbee! Always you must play tennis or swim or run or jump!” said Claudine, the little French girl. “And your freckles! Never did I see so many on one face. I have been careful in the hot sun these holidays—not one freckle did I catch!”

The girls laughed. Claudine was always terrified of getting freckles—but never did one appear on her pale face and white hands.

The girls poured into the school, running up the familiar steps, shouting to one another, dumping their lacrosse sticks everywhere.

“Hallo, Hilary! Hallo, Janet! Oh, there’s Carlotta, looking more like a gypsy than ever. Hey, Carlotta, where did you go for your holidays? You look as dark as a gypsy.”

“I have been to Spain,” said Carlotta. “Some of my people live there, you know. I had a grand time.”

“There’s Mirabel—golly, she’s awfully tall now!” said Isabel. “Gladys looks more like a mouse than ever beside her.”

“Hallo!” said the big, strapping Mirabel, coming up. “How’s every one?”

“Hallo, Mirabel, hallo Gladys,” said the girls. “You’ve been spending the hols. together, haven’t you? I bet you played tennis and swam all the time!”

Both Mirabel and Gladys were fond of games, and this term Mirabel was anxious to be sports captain at St. Clare’s. She had been in the fifth form for two terms, and Annie Thomas, the sports captain, had let Mirabel help her. Now Annie had left, and there was a chance that Mirabel might be captain, for there was no one in the sixth form really fitted to have that post.

“Let’s go and look at our classroom,” said Bobby Ellis. “It was going to be re-decorated in the hols., I know. Let’s see what it’s like.”

They all trooped upstairs to the big fifth form-room. Certainly it looked very nice, painted a pale banana yellow. The light was clean and clear in the room, and the view from the windows a lovely one.

“We’ve only got this term here—and then we go up into the sixth form!” said Hilary. “Fancy being at the top of the school! I remember when I first came to St. Clare’s, I thought the fifth and sixth formers were almost grown-up. I hardly dared to speak to them.”

“I expect the young ones think the same thing of us,” said Janet. “I know most of them scuttle out of my way when I come along—like frightened rabbits!”

“I have a young sister in the second form this term,” said Claudine, the French girl. “She came over with me from France. Look—there she is, the little Antoinette.”

The girls looked out of the window. They saw a girl of about fourteen, very like the pale-faced, dark-haired Claudine, standing watching the others. She looked very self-possessed.

“Don’t you want to go down and show Antoinette round a bit?” said Pat. “I bet she feels lonely and new.”

“Ah, Antoinette would never feel so,” said Claudine. “She can stand on her own toes, like me.”

“Stand on her own feet, you mean,” said Bobby, with a chuckle. “You’ll never get those English sayings right, Claudine. Ah—there’s old Mam’zelle!”

The girls watched Mam’zelle going out into the garden, an anxious look on her face.

“She is looking for the little Antoinette,” said Claudine. “She has not seen her for two years. Ah, Antoinette will now be swamped in love and affection! My aunt will think her little niece Antoinette is as wonderful as me, her niece Claudine!”

Mam’zelle was Claudine’s aunt, and this fact was at times useful to Claudine, and at other times, embarrassing. For Antoinette just then it was most embarrassing. The little French girl had been enjoying herself, watching the excited English girls catching hold of one another’s arms, swinging each other round, chasing one another, and generally behaving in the usual school-girl way—a way, however, that the demure Antoinette had not been used to.

Then, quite suddenly, an avalanche descended upon her, two plump arms almost strangled her, and a loud and excited voice poured out French endearments in first one ear and then another. Loud kisses were smacked on each cheek, and then another hug came which made Antoinette gasp for breath.

“Ah, la petite Antoinette, mon petit chou,” cried Mam’zelle at the top of her voice. All the girls stopped playing and stared at Antoinette and Mam’zelle. They giggled. It was plain that Antoinette was not at all pleased to be greeted in public in this way. She disentangled herself as best she could.

She caught sight of her elder sister, Claudine, leaning out of a high window, grinning in delight. She pointed up to her at once.

“Dear Tante Mathilde, there is my sister Claudine who looks for you. Now that she has seen you greet me, she will wish you to greet her too.”

Mam’zelle glanced up and saw Claudine. Still holding Antoinette, she waved frantically and blew kisses. “Ah, there is the little Claudine too! Claudine, I come to embrace you.”

Antoinette wriggled away and lost herself in the nearby crowd of girls. Mam’zelle turned her steps towards the door that led to the stairs. “I come, I come!” she called to Claudine.

“And I go,” said Claudine, pushing away the giggling girls. “Mam’zelle will be quite overcome this term with two nieces here.”

So, when poor Mam’zelle panted into the fifth-form classroom to embrace her second niece, Claudine was not to be found. “I have missed her, but I will find her!” cried Mam’zelle, and she beamed round at the fifth formers there.

“Ah, Bobbee, you have come back—and you Angela—and Alison—all of you, the dear girls! And you are going to work hard for me this term, so hard—for is it not next term that you go up into the top form, the sixth form. That is indeed a solemn thought!”

The French teacher went out of the room, hunting for her dear Claudine. The girls laughed. “Dear old Mam’zelle,” said Hilary, “I shall never forget her, if I live to be a hundred! The tricks we’ve played on her—do you remember those awful stink-balls you had, Janet, when we were in the fourth form? I laughed till I cried then, when I saw Mam’zelle’s face as the smell reached her.”

“There’s only one new girl this term,” said Janet, “in our form, I mean. I saw her name on the list downstairs. She’s called Anne-Marie Longden. And Felicity Ray has come up from the fourth form.”

“About time too,” said Mirabel. “She’s older than most of the fifth already. I think she’s a bit batty.”

“No, she’s not—it’s only that she’s a real musical genius,” said Gladys. “You’ve said yourself heaps of times that she is, Mirabel. She doesn’t seem to care about anything but music—other lessons just roll off her, like water off a duck’s back. She’s always bottom of everything except music.”

“Well, Miss Cornwallis won’t be very thrilled if Felicity takes no notice of anything but music,” said Bobby, who had reason to know that the fifth-form mistress was what the girls called among themselves “a real slave-driver”. “I bet Felicity will know more geography, history and maths. this term than she has ever known all the time she has been at school!”

“Any other girls?” said Mirabel.

“Well, it’s funny, Alma Pudden’s name was down on the list of fifth formers,” said Janet. “But she’s sixth form, isn’t she? I mean, when she came last term, she was put into the sixth form—but now her name is down for our form. Perhaps she’s been put back into the fifth for some reason.”

“Well, I wish she wasn’t,” said Bobby. “I can’t say she thrills me. She’s so like her name—puddeny! She’s a bit like a suet pudding, fat and stodgy and dull.”

“She’s got a beastly temper,” said Hilary. “I guess she won’t be too pleased at coming down into the fifth form!”

Matron appeared at the door of the classroom with a tall, slender, dark-eyed girl, whose pale blonde hair made her eyes seem very black indeed.

“Hallo, fifth formers!” she said, her cheerful smile beaming at every one. “All back? Good girls. Now don’t any of you dare to go down with mumps or measles, chicken pox or anything else! I’ve brought you the only new girl for your form—Anne-Marie Longden.”

Anne-Marie smiled nervously. She was not pretty, but her golden hair and dark eyes made her rather striking. “Hallo,” she said, awkwardly, “are you all fifth formers? What are your names?”

Hilary, who was head of the form, introduced every one quickly.

“These are the O’Sullivan twins, Pat and Isabel. You’ll probably know t’other from which in a few terms! This is Janet, and this is Roberta, commonly called Bobby. You’ll always know her by her freckles! Look out for those two, for they know more tricks than any one else.”

Anne-Marie smiled politely. Hilary went on, dragging first one girl forward and then another.

“This is Doris—she can mimic any one under the sun. She’ll be mimicking you before long, Anne-Marie!”

Anne-Marie did not look as if this thrilled her very much. She thought Doris looked a rather clumsy, stupid girl. She did not see the intelligent eyes and humorous mouth of the born actress that Doris was.

“Here’s Carlotta, dark as a gypsy!” went on Hilary. Carlotta gave her usual cheeky grin.

“And please let me tell you, Anne-Marie, that I was once a circus-girl, and rode horses in a circus ring,” said Carlotta. “Angela is sure to tell you that sooner or later, so I may as well tell you now!”

The golden-haired beautiful girl called Angela flushed with annoyance. It was quite true that she looked down on Carlotta and always had—but she had hoped that Carlotta had not thought of it the last term or two. Carlotta had a very sharp tongue, and lashed out unmercifully at any one she disliked.

Hilary hurried on, hoping to avert a quarrel between the hot-tempered Carlotta and the annoyed Angela. “This is Angela,” she said. “Our dream of beauty!”

“You’ve forgotten the Honourable,” said a malicious voice—Carlotta’s. “The Honourable Angela Favorleigh! Angela must have her label.”

“Shut up, Carlotta,” said Hilary. Angela scowled, making her lovely face quite ugly for a moment. Then she tossed her head and went out of the room. She had learnt by now that beauty and wealth were no match for a sharp wit like Carlotta’s. Angela might be the most beautiful girl in the school and the richest, but Carlotta could always defeat her in a squabble.

“This is Pam, the brains of the form,” said Hilary, pulling a plain, undergrown girl forward, with great big glasses on her short-sighted eyes. “She works much too hard, but nobody can stop her!”

Some one peeped in at the door. It was Claudine, come to see if her aunt was still there.

“It’s all right. Mam’zelle is still looking for you, but not here,” said Carlotta. “Anne-Marie, this is Claudine, the Bad Girl of the form—she only works at what she likes, she always gets what she wants—and she doesn’t care how she does it. She has been here quite a long time already, trying to learn what she calls ‘the English sense of honour’—but she hasn’t even smelt it yet!”

“Ah, you bad Carlotta,” said the good-humoured Claudine. “Always you make fun of me. I am not so bad, and not so good.”

Mirabel and Gladys were pulled forward, and the plain, quiet Pauline, who had once been as big a boaster as Angela, but had learnt a bitter lesson, and was now a much nicer girl.

“There you are—that’s the lot,” said Hilary, “except Felicity, our musical genius, who is coming up from the fourth form, and hasn’t arrived yet—and Alma Pudden who comes down from the sixth. I haven’t seen her about yet, either.”

“I hope you don’t do anything wonderful!” said Bobby, to Anne-Marie. “What with Pam’s brilliant brains, and Angela’s film-star beauty, and Felicity’s musical genius, the fifth form has got enough wonderful people in it! I hope you’re a nice ordinary person, Anne-Marie.”

“Well—I’m not,” said Anne-Marie, flushing red. “I’m—I’m a poet.”

There was a deep silence after this. A poet! What exactly did Anne-Marie mean by that?

“What do you mean—you write poetry, or something?” said Bobby. “Oh, help!”

“You can’t help being a poet, if you are one,” said Anne-Marie. “You’re born a poet. My grandfather was a famous poet, and my great-aunt was a great writer. It’s in the family—and it’s come out in me, I suppose. I’m always writing poetry. Mostly in the middle of the night.”

“Help!” said Bobby, again. “We’ve had many queer things at St. Clare’s—but not a poet, as far as I remember. You and Felicity will make a pair! She gets up in the middle of the night to write a tune—you get up to write poems! Well—you’ll be able to keep each other company!”

Another girl put her head in at the door and the twins yelled to her. “Alison! Where have you been? Come and be introduced to our poet.”

A pretty, dainty girl came into the room, smiling. It was the twins’ cousin, Alison.

“This is Alison,” said Pat. “Our little featherhead. Thinks of nothing but her hair and her complexion an whether she has a shiny nose, and ...”

Alison would have scowled, or burst into tears a few terms before, at this candid introduction, but she was thicker-skinned now. She merely lunged out at Pat, and nodded amiably at Anne-Marie.

“You’d better look out, Claudine,” she said, “your aunt is coming along the passage.”

“You can’t escape now,” said Hilary, “You’ve got to go through with it—go on, it pleases old Mam’zelle. She really is fond of you, goodness knows why!”

Mam’zelle swept into the room, saw Claudine and flung herself on her. “Ma petite Claudine! How are you? How are your dear father and mother, and all the family? I have seen the little Antoinette—ah, how lonely and shy the poor child looked. I have cakes and biscuits for you both in my room—you will come now, this very minute, and eat them with me!”

Claudine let herself be taken off. The others laughed. “Funny to think of Claudine being a fifth-former! Perhaps she will turn over a new leaf now she’s so high up in the school.”

But that was the last thing Claudine meant to do. She went her own way, saying what she pleased, doing what she pleased, and always would. It was surprising that so many people liked her!