Читать книгу The Bravest Girl in the School - Ethel Talbot - Страница 6

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THE sound of the wheels on the drive brought a gardener from the lawn, who took charge of the pony and led it away, while Miss Read ushered the four new children through the front door, and up the stairs that led to the dormitories. Here, on the top step, was standing an imposing person in a stiffly-starched uniform, who surveyed the approaching group with an interested air.

“How are you, nurse?” said the house-mistress. She advanced with an outstretched hand. “Yes, we’ve got here, you see. I arrived ten minutes before these girls’ train came in, so I’ve brought them all up. Will you——”

“Just leave them to me,” said nurse. “They’ll be glad to get their coats off. Come along, all of you. You’ll like to see your cubicles. You won’t be upstairs in your boots again, of course, after you’ve once unpacked, but it can’t be helped for once. Keep off the polish as much as you can.”

Thus adjured, and as much awed by the astonishingly high cap of this personage as by her commanding manner, the four new girls stepped warily behind her. “Nurse!” whispered Sybil—the only one of the quartette who cared to open her lips—“Gretta, is she a nurse? We’re not babies!”

“Sssh!” said her sister urgently, as the uniformed personage drew up at one of the doors. “Two of you will have your cubicles here,” she said. “Margot Fleming—oh, that’s you, is it?”—as Margot took a step forward—“and Margaret Grey. The other two are over there,” and she pointed to an opposite door, through which might be seen a row of white beds.

“Aren’t I going to sleep with Gretta, please?” inquired Sybil.

“No, you and Adela Greaves will sleep here. Make haste, girls; it is getting late, and Miss Slater will see you all before tea.”

Gretta presently, therefore, found herself at the side of a small, white bed looking at Margot, who was tearing off her gloves.

“Glad to get these off, anyway,” she said cheerfully. “I say, how do you think you’ll like it, Gretta?”

“It’s awfully strange, of course,” replied her cousin, “but somehow I believe it’s going to be most awfully nice.”

It did not take long to remove their outdoor garments, and by the time they were ready, nurse had disappeared. It was not very plain to either of them whether they were to descend to regions unknown or to wait for a guide.

“Come along, Gretta,” said Margot. “We can’t stay here for ever. I believe that nurse-person took the others down; let’s go too.”

“Suppose they mean us to wait?” suggested Gretta, feeling somehow that the best thing, at first, would be to walk warily.

“Wait—how silly!” exclaimed her surprised cousin. “We’re ready, you see.” So, feeling dreadfully ill at ease, Gretta followed the independent Margot and, as neither of them was very sure whither they were bound, it was small wonder that in a very short time they were quite lost amidst the passages.

“Let’s try any door,” said Margot cheerily, “then, if anyone’s inside, we can ask them where we have to go! Fun, isn’t it?”

Gretta didn’t think so. She stood nervously by while her cousin turned the handle of the first door. It opened into a dormitory lined with white beds. So did the next, and the next. “Oh, come on,” said Margot, “we’ll be late for tea, and I’m hungry. Let’s go downstairs, and explore there.”

“But suppose there’s rules, or something?” objected Gretta.

“There couldn’t be a rule about such a stupid thing,” said her young cousin complacently. “How could there; this isn’t a prison!”

She had reached the bottom of the stairs by this time, and Gretta was behind her. The first door leading from the passage was shut.

“We’ll try this first,” said Margot. “It can’t be a bedroom, so we needn’t knock.” She turned the handle firmly as she spoke, and entered. A lady, who was engaged in writing busily at a table, looked up in surprise.

“Oh, we’re so sorry. I beg——” Gretta began in alarm as the stranger gazed up at them; but Margot burst cheerily in. “Oh, I’m glad we’ve found someone at last!” she exclaimed. “There was no one in the bedroom they took us to, and so we’ve come down to explore. If you’re one of the governesses, please where is the dining-room?”

During this well-meant speech Gretta had time to study the features of the lady whose work they had so abruptly interrupted. Her face was “young and yet old,” as the child said to herself; for the expression in the grey eyes was full of humour as well as determination, and, while the mouth and chin were strongly moulded, there were few lines or wrinkles in the forehead of the stranger. She would have passed in the opinion of many as a woman of less than middle-age had it not been for the crown of white hair that surmounted her well-shaped head.

Her words, when she spoke, were hardly a surprise to the older girl. “You made a mistake, my dear,” she said, laying down her pen and holding out her hand to Margot, “in not knocking at the door. I am Miss Slater. I had quite intended to send for you, for I am very anxious to make the acquaintance of my new girls.” She rose as she spoke and advanced towards Gretta. “I expect you are Margaret Grey,” she said, “for I have already spoken to your little sister. I hope, my dear, that you will be happy at school.”

“Thank you,” replied Gretta shyly, “and I’m so sorry we——”

“So am I,” declared Margot, “for I suppose you’re awfully busy. But, you see, we couldn’t know where to go, could we?”

Miss Slater volunteered no direct answer to the question. “I think there’s no doubt that you are Margot Fleming—the little girl from Australia,” she said with a smile.

“Why, however can you guess that!” exclaimed Margot in mystification, then stopped to listen as the head mistress opened the heavy door that separated her rooms from the boarders’ quarters, and the sound of laughter and cheerful conversation met the children’s ears.

“I think you should have no difficulty in finding your way, now,” she said, smiling at the two girls. “But I will take you myself and introduce you; then you will feel at home very soon.”

She turned the handle as she spoke, and instantly, as though by magic, the noisy babel of conversation ceased, there was a scrambling as the girls jumped up hurriedly from their seats, and a whisper, deferential, yet delighted, ran round the room. “It’s Miss Slater!”

“I have brought two new girls, Helen,” said the head mistress, smiling at the group, and then turning to a tall and responsible-looking damsel with merry eyes and a thick plait of hair, who advanced as she was addressed. “Margaret Grey and her cousin, Margot Fleming; they will sleep in Dormitory 3, with Stella and Josy. Look after them, please, and do what you can to make them feel at home.”

“Yes, Miss Slater,” said the head girl. Then a scrap of a child, who seemed all pigtail, ran forward to hold the door, and to shut it as the head mistress withdrew. As it closed the uproar of merry voices broke out again with redoubled vigour.

“And she’s been practising strokes all the hols.,” announced someone from the fireplace.

“We went to the meet on our bicycles twice,” screamed a shrill voice from the corner.

“I say, has anyone read ‘The Trail’? It’s the most ripping book. It’s simply thrilling, and my brother says——” declared someone else in piercing tones that broke off suddenly as the speaker flew to answer some question addressed to her by the head girl.

Gretta almost gasped. The room seemed full of voices and swinging legs, and pigtails that varied only in length and thickness. She wondered what was going to happen next.

“Do you like scrambled eggs?” said a voice in her ear solicitously.

She turned suddenly, and almost jumped at the unexpectedness of the question. Beside her was a short girl of about her own age, whose curly hair was strained back into the inevitable plait, and whose face would have looked exceedingly demure had it not been for the expression in the eyes which was suggestive of hidden depths of mischief.

“I’m Josy,” said the new-comer, “or Josephine Mary Pope, if you like that better. Isn’t it a name to have! Helen’s taken your cousin over to Stella, and I thought you looked a bit bored, so I just came. Are you awfully clever? You look it. But for goodness’ sake don’t tell me that you’ll want to bring lesson-books up to our dormer. For one thing I’m head this term, and it’s not allowed; and, for another, it’s such silly swank!”

Gretta’s breath was fairly taken away. She had understood enough of the speech, however, to realize that she mustn’t be branded for ever as “clever,” when she knew herself unable to live up to the character. “I’m not a bit clever; I’m perfectly stupid,” she hastened to reply as emphatically as she could. “Margot is, I expect, though. And I don’t really know about Sybil—you see, she’s my sister.”

“Is that funny new kid, Sybil, your sister!” inquired the stranger in an amused tone. “I must say she’s not like you. She’s not shy, whatever she is. Look at her!”

Gretta turned her eyes towards a far corner of the room, and there, in the centre of a laughing group of girls, stood her little sister, flushed, excited, and evidently enjoying herself hugely.

“I’ve never had brown stockings before, but auntie said——” The words, uttered in Sybil’s shrill treble, floated above the babel.

“Oh, how can she?” said Gretta, aghast. “Sybil!” She took an ineffectual step forward.

“It’s no good, she wouldn’t hear you in this racket,” said Josy, who was evidently exceedingly amused; “and, if she did, she doesn’t look as though she’d take much notice. Not bad for a new kid, is it? But she’ll shake down. Now, do you like scrambled eggs?”

Gretta turned from the vision of Sybil, who was still supplying a fund of amusement to a delighted group, and faced the question for its second time of asking.

“What a funny thing to say,” she remarked shyly. “It’s like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ somehow, isn’t it? Yes, I think so”—here visions of Ann’s inferior cookery rose before her—“that is, if they’re not burnt or cooked all wrong, or cold, or something.”

Her new friend gave a shout of merriment. “There, didn’t I say you were clever! Excuse me laughing, and I’ll tell you why. We always have scrambled eggs for tea on the first night of term, so we always ask new boarders that question. It makes a kind of beginning to conversation, and somehow or other you can find out by the way they answer what kind of girls they’ll be. It’s really rather fun, but I’ve never heard anyone answer like you! How do you know when they’re cooked wrong? You must be clever; I said so, remember, to begin with, and I always knew I was good at character reading!”

Gretta blushed to the roots of her hair. She had hoped so much that she wouldn’t be different from other girls, and here she was on the very first evening at school—yes, even in the very first hour!—convicted of being old-fashioned, and of knowing things that other girls didn’t know. Her discomfiture would have been complete had not a look of contrition in Josy’s face served to reassure her.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said her new friend. “You didn’t mind, did you?”

Gretta made an effort, and tried to smile. “Have you asked Sybil?” she said.

“Oh, rather! at least someone else did, and she was killing. ‘I simply love them!’ she said, and looked all round as though a big helping would at once appear! I say, she’s a jolly little thing, isn’t she? And with those legs she should be a good runner, too. I wonder how she’ll shape for hockey.”

“Do you play hockey here?” ventured Gretta. “I mean, shall we?”

“Rath-er!” declared her friend. “We’d a ripping match here on our ground, last day of last term. Top-hole! Pity you couldn’t have seen some of Helen’s strokes. And all the team played well, Miss Carter said. We beat the Lees girls hollow. But it’s hockey this term, too, of course, so——”

The last sentence was interrupted by the ringing of a deep-toned tea-bell, at the first sound of which, as if by magic again, silence fell on the entire group, and, in an orderly file, they marched quietly along the passage into a large room at its farthest end.

Here two long tables were spread. At the head of one of them stood Miss Read, and nurse, still resplendent in cap and apron, was busy pouring out cups of tea at the second.

Then, in less time and with less noise than Gretta would have imagined possible, the girls seated themselves in their respective places, and the meal began; she, herself, at Miss Read’s direction, having found a place between Margot and Josy. Sybil was at nurse’s table, seated on the left-hand side of that dignitary, of whom she seemed very much in awe. Conversation, spirited enough, if not so loud as that carried on in the sitting-room, began again at once, and Gretta, after several plates had passed rapidly on their way up the table, found herself in possession of a liberal helping of the said scrambled eggs, and—a very good appetite!