Читать книгу Claudine at St. Clare's - Enid blyton - Страница 4

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“Look,” said Bobby, “there’s another new girl. She’s got her things off, too. She looks as if she’d be a fourth-former, I should think.”

The new girl came up, walking quickly as if she had somewhere to go. “Hallo,” said Bobby. “You’re new, aren’t you? What form will you be in, do you know?”

“Fourth,” said the girl. “My name’s Eileen Paterson.”

“We’re fourth form too,” said Pat, and she introduced herself and the others. “Do you want to be shown round a bit? Usually Matron is here to welcome people, but there is a new one this term who doesn’t know the ropes yet.”

The girl looked suddenly annoyed. “I know my way about, thank you,” she said stiffly. “I’ve been here a week already.”

Without saying any more she swung off. The others stared after her. “What’s bitten her?” said Bobby. “No need to be rude like that. And what did she mean—that she’s been here a week? Nobody comes back before the first day of term.”

Mirabel came up, with her friend Gladys. “Hallo, hallo!” said the others. “Nice to see you again. I say, have you spoken to that girl who’s just gone—new girl called Eileen Paterson. Seems to think the whole school belongs to her!”

“No, I haven’t spoken to her yet,” said Mirabel. “But I know her mother is the Matron now—our old one is ill, you know. Eileen is the new Matron’s daughter, and she’s going to be educated here. She came with her mother a week ago, when her mother came to take over the job and see to the linen and things.”

Bobby whistled. “Oh! No wonder she was annoyed when we said the new Matron ought to be welcoming the new girls, and didn’t know the ropes yet!” she said. “And no wonder she knows her way about if she’s already been here a week. I didn’t like her much.”

“Give her a chance,” said Hilary. “You know how you feel sort of on the defensive when you come to anywhere new, and meet girls who’ve been here ages. You feel a kind of outsider at first.”

There were new girls in the other, lower forms, but these did not interest the fourth-formers much. They were glad to see one another again—the twins, Bobby, Hilary, Kathleen, Doris, Carlotta, and the rest. They had all come up together into the fourth form. There were a few old girls left in the fourth form, most of whom the twins liked. Susan Howes was head of the form, a pleasant, kindly girl with a good sense of responsibility and fairness.

The fourth form settled down under Miss Ellis. She was firm and calm, seldom raised her voice, expected good work and saw that she got it. She was interested in the girls and fond of them, and they, in return, liked her very much.

The Honourable Angela Favorleigh looked more like an angel than ever in class, with her bobbed golden hair falling to her shoulders, the ends curling underneath most beautifully. All her school clothes, though cut to the same pattern as those of the others, were really beautiful.

“Do you know, she has every single pair of shoes especially made for her?” said Alison, in a hushed voice to the twins. “And she has a handbag to match every single frock she wears, all with gold initials on.”

“Shut up,” said Pat. “Who cares about things like that? Your darling Angela is a snob.”

“Well, why shouldn’t she be?” said Alison, ready to defend her new friend at once. “Her family is one of the oldest in the country, she’s got a third cousin who is a prince, and goodness knows how many titled relations!”

“You’re a snob too, Alison,” said Isabel, in disgust. “Why must you always suck up to people like that? Don’t you know that it’s what you are that matters, not what you have?”

“I’m not a snob,” said Alison. “I’m pleased that Angela has chosen me for her friend, of course. I think she’s lovely.”

“Pity she hasn’t got more brains,” said Bobby. “Honestly, I don’t believe she really knows her twelve times table!”

Angela Favorleigh certainly was a snob. She was intensely proud of her family, of its wealth, its cars, and her own well-bred looks. She was very particular about making friends. She liked Alison because the girl was pretty and dainty, had beautiful manners and quite plainly adored the lovely Angela from the bottom of her foolish little heart.

Angela liked very few of her form. Bobby she detested because she had said she was like a doll. Carlotta she would have nothing to do with at all.

Carlotta didn’t mind in the least. The dark-eyed, dark-haired girl had once been a little circus-girl, and she was not at all ashamed of it. Her mother had been a circus-rider, but her father was a gentleman, and now Carlotta lived with her father and grandmother in the holidays, for her mother was dead. She had learnt to be lady-like, to have good manners, and was very popular indeed—but she had never forgotten the exciting days of the circus, and she often amused the others by turning cart-wheels, or going completely mad in a foreign, Spanish way that the girls enjoyed very much.

Alison had told Angela the histories of all the girls, Carlotta included, and Angela had turned up her delicate little nose when she heard that Carlotta had actually ridden horses in a circus.

“How can they have her here, in a school like this?” she said. “I am sure my people wouldn’t have sent me here if they had known that.”

“Why did you come to St. Clare’s?” asked Alison, curiously. “It’s supposed to be a sensible, no-nonsense school, you know—not a swanky one.”

“I didn’t want to come,” said Angela. “My mother wanted to send me to a much nicer school, but my father has funny ideas. He said I wanted my corners rubbed off.”

“Oh, Angela! You haven’t any corners!” said Alison. “Honestly, I don’t think you’ve any faults at all.”

This was the kind of thing that Angela loved hearing, and was one reason why she liked Alison for a friend. She looked at Alison out of innocent blue eyes, and smiled an angelic smile.

“You do say nice things, Alison,” she said. “You are far and away the nicest girl in the form. I can’t bear that common Eileen, nor that awful Carlotta, nor that dreadful Pauline Bingham-Jones.”

Pauline certainly wasn’t much of a success. In her way she seemed as much of a snob as Angela, but she could not carry it off so well, because her clothes were not beautifully made, and she had no marvellous possessions such as Angela had. But she too turned up her nose at Carlotta, and disliked the ready-witted Bobby. As for Eileen, she would hardly speak to her at all.

“I don’t see why Eileen should be allowed to join the school just because her mother is here as Matron,” said Pauline, in her rather affected voice. “Good gracious me—we shall have the cook’s daughter here next, and the gardener’s too! It’s bad enough to have Carlotta. She always looks so wild and don’t-carish.”

Carlotta always did look a little wild at the beginning of term, partly because she was no longer under the rather strict eye of her grandmother. But nobody minded Carlotta’s untidiness and wildness. It was all part of the vivacious, amusing girl. Carlotta knew that Angela and Pauline didn’t like her, and she took a real pleasure in talking slang, making rude faces, and unexpectedly walking on her hands in front of them.

Miss Ellis, however, did not encourage things of this sort in the fourth form. Her form was a kind of half-way house, where girls had to learn to shed their irresponsible ways, and to become more serious, reliable members of the school. As soon as they moved up into the fifth and sixth, they had studies of their own, instead of common rooms, and were expected to take a good deal of responsibility.

So Carlotta was often called to order by Miss Ellis, in her low, firm voice, and then Angela and Pauline looked down their noses at the one-time circus-girl, and whispered mocking things to the girl next to them.

Pauline and Angela vied with each other in their boasting. The girls sometimes giggled to hear them.

“My third cousin—the one who is a prince,” Angela would say, “he has an aeroplane of his own, and has promised to take me up in it.”

“Haven’t you been up in an aeroplane yet?” Pauline would say, with affected surprise. “Good gracious! I’ve been up three times already. That was when I was staying with the Lacy-Wrights. Fancy, they had sixteen bathrooms in their house—well, it was really a mansion, of course....”

“I bet you haven’t more than one bathroom in your own home,” said Angela, spitefully. “We’ve got seven.”

“We’ve got nine, if you count the two in the servants’ quarters,” said Pauline, at once. The other girls stared at her in surprise. They could well believe that Angela had scores of bathrooms, for wealth was written all over the little snob—but somehow Pauline didn’t fit in with a number of bathrooms, a fleet of expensive cars and things like that.

“Well,” said Bobby, “let me count my bathrooms. Three for myself—four for Mother—five for Daddy—two for visitors—er, how many’s that?”

“Idiot!” said Pat, giggling. Angela and Pauline scowled.

“I can’t remember whether we’ve got a bathroom at home or not,” said Hilary, entering into the fun. “Let me think hard!”

But no amount of teasing would make either Angela or Pauline stop their vieing with each other. If it wasn’t bathrooms, it was cars; if it wasn’t cars, it was their beautiful, expensively-dressed mothers; if it wasn’t mothers, it was clothes. The others really got very tired of it.

Eileen Paterson did not seem to mind very much being cold-shouldered by Angela and Pauline. She only spoke with eagerness of one thing—her elder brother. He was at work somewhere in the next big town, and it was quite plain that Eileen adored him.

“His name is Edgar,” she said. “We call him Eddie.”

“You would,” said Angela, cattily. “And if he was called Alfred, you’d call him Alf. And if he was called Herbert, you’d call him Herb—or Erb perhaps.”

Eileen flushed. “You’re a beast, Angela,” she said. “You wait till you see Eddie—Edgar, I mean. He’s marvellous! His hair’s curly, and he’s got the loveliest smile. He’s the best brother in the world. He’s working terribly hard at his job. You see, Mother lost a lot of money, so that’s why she had to take a job as Matron, and why Eddie—Edgar—had to go to work.”

“Your family history doesn’t interest me, Eileen,” said Angela, coldly, and went off with Alison. Eileen shrugged her shoulders.

“Little snob!” she said, loudly. “She wants a good spanking.”

Carlotta agreed with her. “Yes—sometimes my hand tingles because it wants to slap Angela hard,” she said. “But now I’m a fourth-former—what a pity! I shall quite forget how to give a slap to any one who needs it!”

“Oh no you won’t,” said Bobby, laughing at the solemn Carlotta. “When you fly into a temper, you’ll forget all about being a fourth-former—you’ll just be the same wild Carlotta you’ve always been!”