Читать книгу The Twins at St. Clare's - Enid blyton - Страница 5

Table of Contents

The twins soon found that St. Clare’s was quite different from their old school. Even the beds were not nearly so comfortable! And instead of being allowed to have their own pretty bedspreads and eiderdowns to match, every girl had to have the same.

“I hate being the same as everyone else!” said Pat. “Goodness—if only we were allowed to have what we liked, wouldn’t we make everyone stare!”

“What I hate most is being one of the young ones,” said Isabel, dismally. “I hate being spoken to as if I were about six, when the top form or fifth-form girls say anything to me. It’s ‘Here, you—get out of my way! Hi, you! Fetch me a book from the library!’ It’s just too bad.”

The standard of work was higher at St. Clare’s than at most schools, and although the twins had good brains, they found that they were rather behind their form in many ways, and this, too, annoyed them very much. They had so hoped that they would impress the others in so many ways—and it seemed as if they were even less than nobodies!

They soon got to know the girls in their form. Hilary Wentworth was one and the sharp-tongued Janet Robins. Then there was a quiet, straight-haired girl called Vera Johns and a rather haughty-looking girl called Sheila Naylor, whose manners were very arrogant. The twins didn’t like her at all.

“I don’t know what she’s got to be so haughty about!” said Pat to Isabel. “It’s true she’s got a lovely home because I’ve seen a photo of it on her dressing-table—but my goodness, she sometimes talks like our parlourmaid at home. Then she seems to remember she mustn’t talk like that and goes all haughty and silly.”

Then there was Kathleen Gregory, a frightened looking girl of fifteen, who was the only one who really tried to make friends with the twins the first week. Most of the other girls left them alone, except for being polite, and telling them the ways of the school. They all thought that Pat and Isabel were very “stuck-up”.

“Kathleen is funny,” said Isabel. “She seems so eager to make friends with us, and lend us books and shares her sweets. She’s been at St. Clare’s for a year, and she doesn’t seem to have any friends at all. She keeps asking me to walk with her when we go out, and I keep saying I can’t because I’ve got you.”

“I feel rather sorry for her somehow,” said Pat. “She reminds me of a lost dog trying to find a new master!”

Isabel laughed. “Yes, that’s just it! I think of all the girls that I like Hilary the best in our form. She’s so natural and jolly—a real sport.”

The twins were very much in awe of the older girls, who seemed very grown-up to them. The top form especially seemed almost as old and even more dignified than the mistresses! The head-girl, Winifred James, spoke a few words to the twins the first week. She was a tall, clever-looking girl with pale blue eyes and pretty soft hair. St. Clare’s was proud of her, for she had passed many difficult exams, with flying colours.

“You are the new girls, aren’t you?” she said. “Settle in and do your best. Come to me if you are in any difficulty. I’m the head-girl and I should like to help you if ever I can.”

“Oh, thank you,” said the twins, feeling quite overcome at being addressed by the head-girl. Winifred went off with her friends, and the twins stared after her.

“She’s rather nice,” said Isabel. “In fact, I think most of the top form girls are nice, though they’re awfully serious and proper.”

They liked their form-mistress, Miss Roberts, too, though she would stand no nonsense at all. Sometimes Pat would try to argue about something, and say, “Well, that’s what I was taught at my old school!”

Then Miss Roberts would say, “Really? Well, do it that way if you like—but you won’t get very far up your form! Do remember that what suits one school won’t work in another. Still, if you like to be obstinate, that’s your own look-out!”

Then Pat would stick out her lower lip, and Isabel would go red, and the rest of the form would smile to itself. Those “stuck-up” girls were having to learn a lesson!

The art-mistress, Miss Walker, was a merry soul, young and jolly, and very good at her work. She was pleased to find that both twins could draw and paint well. Pat and Isabel loved Miss Walker’s classes. They were very go-as-you-please, much more like their old school. The girls were allowed to chatter and laugh as they worked, and it was often a very noisy class indeed.

Mam’zelle was not so easy-going. She was very strict, elderly, conscientious and fierce. She wore pince-nez glasses on her nose, and these were always slipping off when she was cross, which was fairly often. She had enormous feet, and a rather harsh voice that the twins hated at first. But Mam’zelle had also a great sense of fun, and if anything tickled her she would go off into enormous roars of laughter that set the whole class laughing too.

Pat and Isabel came up against Mam’zelle very much at first, for although they could speak and understand French quite well, they had never bothered very much about French grammar and rules. And Mam’zelle bothered a great deal about those!

“You girls, Patricia and Isabel!” she cried. “It is not enough to speak my language! You write it abominably! See this essay—it is abominable, abominable!”

“Abominable” was Mam’zelle’s favourite adjective. She used it for everything—the weather, a broken pencil, the girls, and her own eye-glasses when they slipped off her big nose! Pat and Isabel called her “Mam’zelle Abominable” between themselves, and were secretly more than a little afraid of the loud-voiced, goodhearted big French-woman.

History was taken throughout the school by Miss Kennedy, and her classes were a riot. Poor Miss Kennedy was a frump, and could not manage any class of girls for more than five minutes. She was nervous and serious, always tremendously polite, listened to every question that was put to her no matter how silly, and explained every difficulty at great length. She never seemed to see that half the time the girls were pulling her leg.

“Before Miss Kennedy came we had her friend Miss Lewis,” said Hilary to the twins. “She was marvellous. Then she fell ill in the middle of last term, and asked the Head to have her friend, Miss Kennedy, until she was well enough to come back. Old Kenny has got umpteen degrees, and is supposed to be even cleverer than the Head—but my word, she’s a goose!”

Bit by bit the twins sorted out the various girls and mistresses, grew to know the classes and the customs of the school, and settled in. But even when two weeks had gone by they had not got used to being “nobodies instead of somebodies” as Pat complained.

One thing they found most annoying. It was the custom at St. Clare’s for the younger girls to wait on the two top forms. The fifth- and sixth-form girls shared studies, two friends having a study between them.

They were allowed to furnish these studies themselves, very simply, and, in cold weather, to have their own fire there, and to have tea by themselves instead of in the hall with the others.

One day a girl came into the common room where the twins were reading and called to Janet, “Hi, Janet—Kay Longden wants you. You’re to light her fire and make some toast for her.”

Janet got up without a word and went out. Pat and Isabel stared after her in surprise.

“Golly! What cheek of Kay Longden to send a message to Janet like that! I’m jolly sure I wouldn’t go and light anybody’s fire!” said Pat.

“And neither would I!” said Isabel. “Let one of the maids light it—or Kay herself.”

Hilary Wentworth looked up from her embroidery. “It will be your turn next!” she said. “Look out next week for sudden messages, twins. If the fifth or sixth want anything doing, they expect us to do it. It’s the custom of the school—and anyway, it doesn’t hurt us. We can have our turn at sending messages and ordering the lower forms about when we’re top-formers ourselves!”

“I never heard of such a thing!” cried Pat, furiously. “I jolly well won’t go and do a thing for any one. Our parents didn’t send us here to wait on lazy top-formers. Let them light their own fires and make their own toast! Isabel and I won’t do a thing! And they can’t make us either!”

“Hoity-toity!” said Hilary. “I never knew such a hot temper. Get further away from me, Pat, you’re scorching me!”

Pat slammed down her book and flounced out of the room. Isabel followed her. All the other girls laughed.

“Idiots!” said Hilary. “Who do they think they are, anyway? Why don’t they get some sense? They wouldn’t be at all bad if only they would shake down. I vote we knock some of their corners off, else we shall hate them like anything!”

“O.K.,” said Vera. “I’m willing. I say, what a shock for them when they find they’ve got to wait on the top-formers too. I hope they get Belinda Towers. I had to wait on her last term, and my word, didn’t she make me skip around! She got it into her head that I was lazy, and I’m sure I lost a whole stone rushing round in circles after her one week!”

The girls laughed. Sheila Naylor spoke haughtily. “The worst of people who think they are somebodies is that so often they are just nobodies. I’m sure I shouldn’t even trouble to know Patricia and Isabel at home.”

“Oh, come off the high horse, Sheila,” said Hilary. “The twins aren’t as bad as all that. Anyway, there are a few shocks in store for them!”

So there were—and they came the very next week!