CHAPTER IV
AN INCIDENT IN THE DARK
"That's the dining-hall, as you know," said Jack, as she guided Geraldine past the big room in which tea had taken place. "This passage leads out to the Chapel. Like to see it? Come along, then, and I'll take you to have a look."
The Chapel at Wakehurst was part of the original Priory buildings, and such restoration as was necessary had been done with due regard to the beauty of the old architecture. Geraldine gazed round with admiration as Jack held the door open for her to look in.
"We always have prayers in here," said Jack, closing the door quietly. Then as the two girls walked away, she added: "We have prayers twice a day, you know—to say nothing of Sundays! On Sundays one of the curates from St. Peter's comes up to the school to take the Early Service and Matins, and those who want to, go down to St. Peter's on Sunday evenings. Sunday evenings aren't compulsory though, so long as you've attended both morning services, and there's not a huge rush for them as a rule. Goodness knows we get enough church all through the week, without having it three times on Sundays as well!" wound up the graceless Jack.
"Once we always used to have to put our hats on every time we went into Chapel," she went on. "But Miss Oakley isn't so frightfully keen on old St. Paul's ideas about women as the last Head used to be, and she's abolished it for weekdays. Sundays, of course, you have to wear your hat, but not for everyday. It used to waste no end of time, putting them on and taking them off twice a day; and Miss Oakley said she thought it would be much more reverent really if we didn't always have to scramble and rush about with them just before and after service."
"Is Miss Oakley nice?" asked Geraldine.
"Nice? Rather! She's absolutely tiptop! The best Head we've ever had or are likely to have. You can't take liberties with her, though, and she doesn't half know how to jaw you if you're sent up to her. We are all frightfully keen on her here, but we're all half-scared of her too. At least, I know I am! This is the Great Hall, where we have mark-readings and assemblies and special meetings and things. Come on—you don't want to go in there now. You'll see quite enough of it later on. I want to show you the gym."
The gymnasium was a recent addition to the school, and quite a modern building. It was fitted up with all kinds of marvellous and intricate apparatus, and Jack proceeded to expand upon these with great gusto. But, much to her disappointment, she found that Geraldine was not nearly so interested as she might have been.
"Aren't you keen on gym, either?" she asked in surprise; and Geraldine shook her head.
"I've never done any at all," she answered. "I—I don't much think I shall like it. Swinging and climbing always make me feel so giddy."
"Well, you are a rum bird!" commented Jack. "No hockey, no gym—is there anything you can do, I wonder?" And she looked so concerned at the new girl's lack of accomplishments that Geraldine felt very humbled and apologetic.
"I'll have to try and learn," she said meekly, and Jack's face cleared.
"Oh yes, I expect you'll soon pick it up. Well, I think I've shown you pretty nearly everything. Let's go back to the sitting-room, shall we? It must be nearly supper-time now. I'm jolly hungry, aren't you? We'll cut across the mistresses' quarters to get there. We're not supposed to go that way as a rule, but it's ever so much shorter, and as to-day's the first day of term, I don't expect anyone will say very much, even if we are caught."
She opened a green baize door which led into a short passage, closed at the other end by another door—"to keep out the row," Jack explained, as she held it open to let Geraldine through. The second door opened into a square hall, carpeted with rich Oriental rugs, and lighted dimly by a shaded lamp at the far end. A number of other doors opened into the hall.
"The mistresses' sitting-rooms," said Jack, with a wave of her hand towards them.
As she spoke she stumbled over a big black curly-haired retriever dog, who lay stretched out on a rug, almost hidden in the dim light. She pitched forward on her hands and knees over his slumbering form, and Geraldine stopped short with a startled exclamation, as the dog rose lazily to his feet.
Jack laughed merrily as she picked herself up from the floor.
"Bruno! You old wretch, tripping me up like that!" she said, stooping to caress the big fellow. "Why, Geraldine, what on earth's the matter? He won't hurt you," as, looking up, she caught sight of her companion's frightened face.
"Are you—are you sure he won't?" Geraldine asked fearfully.
"Of course he won't! Why, Bruno's the best-tempered dog that ever was; aren't you, Bruno, boy? Look, he wants to make friends with you—he's putting up his paw to shake hands. Don't you like dogs?"
"N—not very much," said the new girl. "Not dogs I don't know. I like some dogs, though. I've got a darling little fox-terrier of my very own at home."
"Bruno belongs to Miss Oakley, but he's often about in the school, and he's a perfect pet," said Jack. "Do shake hands with him! He wants you to so much."
With an effort Geraldine conquered her nervousness sufficiently to take the friendly paw the dog was still holding out to her. And when once the introduction had been effected she lost her fear of him. Bruno, certainly, appeared good-tempered enough, and he seemed to take a fancy to the new girl. He followed the two girls back to the Lower Fifth sitting-room, and once there he sat down as close to Geraldine as he could get. It was quite difficult to persuade him to go back to his proper quarters when at length the supper bell rang.
"Very forgiving of him, considering how rude you were to him to begin with," laughed Jack, when at last they had succeeded in making the big fellow go back to the mistresses' part of the buildings.
Jack stuck to the new girl for the rest of that evening, much to Geraldine's gratitude. She even went so far as to accompany her to the door of the Pink Dormitory when the time came to go to bed, although her own dormitory, the Green Dormitory, was in quite a different part of the house.
"I couldn't do it another night because Alice Metcalfe, my dormitory monitress, is frightfully strict. But she isn't back yet—not coming till to-morrow, so I may as well make hay while the sun shines. Besides, it's first night, and nobody takes very much account of rules the first night," Jack remarked, still chattering gaily in the new girl's ear. In all her school career, Jack Pym had never before come across such a splendid listener as Geraldine Wilmott, and she was forming all sorts of plans in her own mind as to her future relationship with the new girl.
Just before the Pink Dormitory was reached, the lights in the corridor went out with a suddenness that was rather alarming because it was so very unexpected. As a matter of fact, two mischievous juniors had stayed behind and switched them off at the bottom of the stairs for a joke; but the majority of the girls did not guess this, and much laughing and confusion and screaming took place. Geraldine did not actually scream, but she was very near to losing her self-control, and her hand shot out and grasped the arm of the girl next to her with a tense grip which showed how very nearly her command of herself was gone.
The darkness only lasted for a moment. An irate senior hurried back to the switch-board and turned the lights on again, and the culprits decamped with all possible speed. Geraldine came to her senses again, and found to her horror that the girl whose arm she was clasping was not, as she had imagined, Jack Pym, but Phyllis Tressider, who was staring at her with undisguised amazement in her blue eyes. With a hasty apology the new girl loosened her grip of the other's arm, but that one moment of revelation had been enough for Phyllis.
"I say, did you see?" she said in a low voice to Dorothy Pemberton. "That new girl's face—it was as white as white! If she'd seen a ghost she couldn't have looked more scared. What on earth was the matter with her, do you think?"
Dorothy nodded in a satisfied way.
"I saw," she said. "And she was scared too! Downright funky at finding herself in the dark for just those few minutes. Oh, well, if that's the sort of girl she is, we shall soon know how to get even with her if she interferes with us. I say, old girl, we shall have to say good-night to each other here. Now we're so far away from one another it won't be safe for me to go to your cubicle or for you to come to mine—at any rate, not until we see what sort of a monitress Muriel is going to be. Oh, dear! It is sickening to think that we're separated, and that that wretched new kid is going to sleep in my cubie to-night!"
Meanwhile, the wretched new kid was saying good-night to her new-found friend, feeling far happier than she had dared to hope to feel on her first night at school, and quite unconscious of the fact that she had made such a revelation of her inner self to the two girls who were well on the way towards becoming her greatest enemies. With all her new thoughts and experiences filling her head, that little incident in the dark had almost vanished from her mind.
"See you in the morning, then," said Jack gaily, as she disappeared in the direction of her own dormitory. And Geraldine hastened to make her way to Cubicle Thirteen.
CHAPTER V
A CARICATURE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Geraldine was awakened next morning by the loud ringing of the getting-up bell, and she tumbled out of bed in a hurry, having been informed by Jack the previous evening that a bad mark was the result of a late appearance at breakfast. However, on this first morning, she was dressed in plenty of time, and even had to wait a few minutes before the second bell, which was the signal for the girls to leave their dormitories, rang through the school.
When she reached the dining-hall she found that the place she had occupied for her first two meals in the school was no longer vacant, it having been claimed by Vera Davies, the small girl who had been displaced by Monica the day before to make room for Geraldine. Vera was an ardent admirer of Monica Deane, Geraldine discovered later.
"I always sit here," the little girl said in a vigorous whisper as Geraldine came up. "You must find a place somewhere else—there's loads of room."
Geraldine looked about her in rather a helpless way. Then she caught sight of Jack Pym making grimaces at her from the other side of the room, indicating by various gestures and contortions that Geraldine was to come to her table. Not sorry to escape from the small Vera's hostile glances, Geraldine quickly made her way thither and was deposited at an empty place next to Jack at the end of the long table. Jack's immediate neighbour on her other side was Nita Fleming, another member of the Lower Fifth, who leant forward to smile amiably at Geraldine and was introduced at once by Jack.
"Nita's been longing to see you ever since I told her we'd got a new girl in the Lower Fifth," she remarked. "She's hoping that perhaps she won't be bottom of the form any longer, now you're here—aren't you, old thing?" with an affectionate tug at Nita's long, fair pigtail, a proceeding which led to instant retaliation by Nita upon Jack's short locks, and brought down upon the two the wrath of the prefect in charge of the table.
"Jack Pym and Nita Fleming—what are you doing? You're not to sit together, you two, if you're going to behave like this. Change places with that new girl next to you, Jack. Here, you," addressing Geraldine, "sit next to Nita Fleming, will you, and try and keep her and Jack in order if you can."
A mistress came in at this moment to say grace, and then the girls sat down to the meal. Geraldine took her place between Jack and Nita with the rueful reflection that she seemed fated to be the separator of friends at Wakehurst Priory. However, Jack and Nita appeared to bear her no malice, and bandied words with each other across her in the liveliest way, taking her into the conversation with the utmost affability. There was no such friendship between Jack and Nita as there was between Phyllis and Dorothy, Jack being very cosmopolitan in her friendships, and possessing as many different "partners" as there were walks in the week.
After breakfast the girls retired to their dormitories to make their beds and tidy their cubicles. Then came some half-hour or so of free time before the bell went for prayers. After prayers, the girls were marched to the Great Hall, where Miss Oakley, the headmistress, read out the form lists for the term, and made a few remarks appropriate for the occasion. And then the various forms departed to their respective classrooms, where the real business of the day began in earnest.
Although she had never been to school before, Geraldine found that she was not at all behind the rest of the class. She had been very well-grounded by her governesses, and although, of course, she was handicapped a little by not knowing the class methods, her general knowledge compared very favourably with the attainments of the rest of the form. Indeed, she won a word of approval from the Sixth Form's form-mistress, Miss Latham, at the conclusion of the lesson on English history.
"You have evidently had a very good grounding, Geraldine," the mistress said. "You appear to possess intelligence, too. If all your work is as good as your history, you ought to get on well in your form. Margaret, since you are her neighbour, will you show Geraldine some of those historical analyses you did for me last term, so that she may see how I want your preparation done?"
"Yes, Miss Latham," replied Margaret, a rather nondescript individual who occupied the desk next to the one that had been allotted to Geraldine; and the mistress, gathering together her papers, prepared to leave the room.
"It is a little early yet for your next class," she observed, as she rose from her seat. "But I have to see Miss Oakley before going on to the Middle Fifth, so I cannot give you quite your full time this morning. Who is head of this form? You, Hilda? Very well, then, see that nobody talks until Miss Parrot comes to you. You can be looking up some of those dates I want you to learn while you are waiting." And the mistress departed from the Lower Fifth classroom, leaving an apparently studious and orderly form behind her.
For a few minutes strict silence prevailed in the classroom. But after a while the silence was broken by subdued titterings from the back row, and Hilda Burns, the head of the form, turned sharply round to discover that Phyllis Tressider and Dorothy Pemberton were leaning over Jack Pym's desk. Jack was drawing busily.
"I say, do be quiet. Didn't you hear what Miss Latham said?" remonstrated Hilda, rather half-heartedly it must be confessed. The three girls in question did not take much notice of her appeal, and after a moment or two she made it again.
Dorothy turned to her with a delighted grin.
"We're not talking—we're only laughing. Hilda, do come and look! Jack's doing caricatures of the mistresses. Aren't they ripping?"
Several of the girls gathered round Jack's desk, Hilda herself amongst them.
"Oh, I say, how topping! Do do one of Pretty Polly and give it to me!"
"All right, I will presently. Wait till she comes in and then I'll try and do her. I have to see the person I'm caricaturing or else I can't get them properly. I did that one of Miss Latham during the history lesson just now. She never twigged."
"I don't wonder," declared Phyllis admiringly. "I didn't either. I thought you were just making notes. But when did you learn to do it, Jack? Of course I know you always were good at drawing, but I hadn't the slightest idea that you could do such ripping caricatures."
"I didn't know it myself," replied Jack, still busily working with her pencil. "But when we were at the seaside this year we came across a man who did them for the papers. At least I came across him. He saved my shoes and stockings from being washed away by the tide while I was paddling one morning. And then we all chummed up with him and he showed us some of his sketches, and we all started trying to do the people we saw on the beach, and he said mine were quite decent for a kid. There you are, Dorothy, there's your beloved Miss Latham. Who is it you want, Hilda? Pretty Polly? All right, I'll do her if I get the chance."
"Do one for me, Jack, there's a darling," cried a girl sitting close to Geraldine, and then the whole form began clamouring for drawings of their most beloved, or most hated, mistresses. Hilda felt it incumbent upon her to raise her voice again in protest at last.
"I say, do be quiet! Miss Parrot will be along directly. There'll be an awful bust-up if she catches us talking like this."
But her remonstrance did not have much effect, except that it rather served to increase the confusion. For Phyllis Tressider, crumpling up a sheet of paper into a ball, flung it at her with an injunction to "Shut up, dear old thing!" and the rest of the form promptly followed her example. In a few seconds the head of the Lower Fifth was almost snowed under with missiles of various sorts.
"I say—stop it!" she gasped, dodging an exercise book, only to receive a piece of india-rubber full in the eye. Then, as a quick step sounded in the passage outside, she sat up straight in her desk in an attitude of sudden attention.
"Cave—Miss Parrot!" she whispered hoarsely. In a moment the Lower Fifth was sitting rigidly at attention again, every sign of the late battle cleared out of sight as though by a miracle. Only Geraldine, new to scenes like this, not realising what this sudden transformation might mean, was still sitting twisted round in her desk in the position from which she had been watching the uproar in interested amusement.
She soon realised what the sudden change meant though, when Miss Parrot, the form-mistress of the Lower Fifth, known throughout the school as "Pretty Polly" from her name and her supposed resemblance to the bird in question, came briskly into the room. The mistress's quick ears had caught the sound of the conflict from afar, and she at once pounced upon Geraldine's unconventional attitude as being the only sign of disorder her sharp eyes could perceive.
"Geraldine Wilmott, what are you doing, sitting like that in class? Turn round properly at once. I heard a great deal of noise as I came along—has anything been happening?"
There was no answer to her question; and after surveying the virtuously innocent faces before her the mistress was about to let the matter drop—reflecting that after all it was the first day of term, when a little leniency might be advisable—when her attention was attracted by the sight of a screwed-up paper ball lying on the floor just in front of Geraldine's desk. All the other missiles had been dexterously cleared away; but Geraldine, not realising any necessity for doing so, had failed to remove the one sign of the battle that had fallen near her desk. Indeed, she had hardly noticed that any had fallen there. Miss Parrot was of a very orderly nature. In her classroom nothing was ever permitted to be out of place, and the sight of the ball of paper was too much for her to pass over.
"What is that untidy piece of paper doing there?" she demanded sharply. "Is it yours, Geraldine? Bring it here to me."
Thus directed, Geraldine rose from her desk, and picking up the ball of paper took it to the mistress. Having delivered it, she was about to return to her seat, but the mistress stayed her with uplifted hand.
"Wait," she said authoritatively. "I want to see what this is. Some of you have been up to mischief in my absence." And she slowly unrolled the ball of paper, finally disclosing a rough copy of the caricature of Miss Latham, which Jack had discarded for some reason, and which Phyllis, all unaware of what it was, had used as a missile.
Although it was unfinished, the sketch bore a sufficient likeness to the mistress for Miss Parrot to recognise the original. Her face grew stern as she held the paper out to the girl who was standing beside her desk.
"Is this your work?" she asked in a cold tone.
Geraldine glanced at the paper. Then she flushed suddenly crimson with nervous shyness, and stammered out in confusion:
"N—n—no, Miss Parrot."
The mistress looked at her suspiciously.
"Are you sure?" she said.
Geraldine's confusion grew still greater, and the mistress felt that her suspicions were justified. The girl's stammered denial did nothing to allay them, and her voice when she spoke again was very stern indeed.
"Geraldine, you are not telling me the truth. You do know something about this paper. I command you to tell me at once what it is you know."
"I—I can't tell you anything about it," said poor Geraldine, not knowing what to do or say. But this answer only served to anger Miss Parrot yet more.
"You will please oblige me by thinking about it until you can tell me something," she remarked icily. "Go and stand over there," pointing to a place facing the rest of the class, "until you can remember whether or not this paper belongs to you. If that does not assist your memory I shall be obliged to take you to Miss Oakley after class."
Geraldine made a movement towards the appointed spot, but before she could reach it, Jack Pym rose abruptly in her desk.
"Please, Miss Parrot, I can't see that paper but I don't think it's got anything to do with Geraldine. If it's a drawing, I expect it belongs to me."
Miss Parrot's eyebrows went up.
"Indeed! Wait a moment, Geraldine. Suppose you come here, Jack, and see if you can identify it."
Jack made her way rather sulkily to Miss Parrot's desk.
"Yes, it's mine," she said. "I did it for a joke."
"A joke in very questionable taste, I think," said the mistress severely. "I am afraid I shall have to discourage your sense of humour, Jack, since it hardly accords with my own. You will take a conduct mark, please, and forfeit next Saturday's half-holiday. And I hope this may be a lesson to you to refrain for the future from using your undoubted talent for drawing in making vulgar representations of those who are put in authority over you. You may go back to your seat. And, Geraldine, you may return to yours. I am very sorry that I misjudged you; but really, you looked so guilty that I could not help thinking that you had something to do with the matter. Now, please, we will begin the lesson. We have wasted far too much time already."
The Lower Fifth dutifully turned to its books and plunged at the mistress's bidding into the intricacies of decimal fractions. But although Geraldine acquitted herself fairly well over the lesson that followed, she was not happy. She was miserable at the part she had played in getting Jack into trouble, and she had been, also, acutely conscious of hostile glances from her companions as she made her way back to her seat. Although it was not altogether her fault, she was uncomfortably aware that the caricature episode had not by any means enhanced her popularity with the rest of her form.
School life promised to be rather a difficult affair altogether, Geraldine reflected with a sigh.
CHAPTER VI
THE GERMAN LESSON
Geraldine was not long in discovering that her gloomy forebodings were amply justified. No sooner had morning school ended and the mistress departed from the classroom, than Phyllis Tressider stalked up to her desk and confronted her.
"You little sneak!" she said angrily. "Going and getting Jack into a row like that! Don't you know that the first half-holiday in the term is always given up to selecting the hockey team? Now Jack won't be able to play, and it's ten chances to one she'll get left down in the third eleven when she might have been chosen for second with any luck!"
Geraldine remembered then Jack's confidences respecting her prospects for the second eleven, and her heart sank still lower.
"I—I'm most awfully sorry," she faltered miserably. Then she looked round appealingly at Jack, who was putting her books away in stony silence, disregarding the condolences of her form-mates on her hard lot.
"Jack, I'm awfully sorry—truly most awfully sorry," she said pleadingly.
But Jack was feeling very sore about her lost hockey chances, and not by any means in a mood for being sympathised with. The tearful note in the new girl's voice only irritated her, and she said brusquely:
"Oh, all right—there's no need to be sorry. I suppose you couldn't help it." But she said it in a tone that did not make Geraldine feel much happier.
Phyllis gave an audible sniff of contempt.
"Couldn't help it, indeed!" she said ironically.
"Well, but truly, I don't see what else I could have done," said Geraldine unhappily.
"Then you must be an idiot," said Dorothy Pemberton, joining in the fray. "Nobody with any gumption would have let Miss Parrot catch them sitting like that. And you might have cleared away that piece of paper."
"I—I'm awfully sorry," faltered Geraldine again.
"What's the use of being sorry?" cried Dorothy testily. "Being sorry won't take away Jack's conduct mark or make Polly let her off detention on Saturday. You're just a silly, clumsy idiot—if you didn't do it on purpose—and I wish to goodness you'd never come into the Lower Fifth."
"Or to the Pink Dorm," put in Phyllis.
Geraldine cowered visibly under this attack.
"I keep telling you I'm sorry," she protested pathetically. "I never, never meant to give Jack away. I wouldn't have breathed a word about it if only she hadn't owned up like that."
"Just as though she could have done anything else!" cried Phyllis hotly. "We're not that sort in the Lower Fifth, Geraldine Wilmott, whatever you may be! Of course Jack couldn't go letting Pretty Polly think that it was you who'd done that sketch—whatever a sneak like you might have done!"
As Geraldine had not sneaked, this remark was unjust, to say the least of it. But the new girl was too unhappy to protest any further. She returned to the task of putting away her lesson books, and Dorothy and Phyllis left the room arm in arm. Geraldine looked round forlornly at Jack, after the two chums had departed, but Jack was absorbed in conversation with Nita Fleming, and the two presently departed from the classroom, leaving the new girl to her own devices. Geraldine shed a few miserable tears when she was finally left alone in the empty classroom, but she was not allowed much time to indulge her grief. A bell rang loudly through the school buildings, and she had to mop up the tears hastily and hurry out to discover what the next proceeding might be.
Dinner was the next item on the programme, she found, and she joined in the stream of girls who were hurrying into the dining-hall. Jack and Nita were already in their places, and Geraldine made her way rather shyly to the vacant place on Jack's left side.
"May I—am I to sit here again?" she asked timidly.
"If you want to," replied Jack briefly. And Geraldine, not knowing where else to go, took up her position behind the vacant chair. As she did so, Jack murmured a few words in Nita's ear, and the next instant the two girls had exchanged places, so that Geraldine now found herself standing next to Nita instead of next to Jack. The action cut the new girl to the heart. Jack was so offended with her that she couldn't even bear to sit next to her at meals apparently! If there had been anywhere else to move to, Geraldine would certainly have moved, but there seemed to be no vacant places anywhere near, and she was far too shy to bring herself into prominence by going and hunting for one. So she stayed where she was, and when grace had been said, sat down next to Nita.
The meal was a very uncomfortable one for her. Jack and Nita evidently considered that she had been very much to blame over the classroom incident, and beyond seeing that she was supplied with table necessaries, bread, and salt and water, they left her severely alone, making no attempt to draw her into the conversation as they had done at breakfast. And poor Geraldine ate her meal in silence, wishing that Jack's unfortunate caricature had been at the bottom of the sea before she had had anything to do with it.
It was really rather hard upon Geraldine to be blamed like this, for she had never intended to get Jack into trouble, and, in their heart of hearts, the whole of the Lower Fifth knew this. The whole episode would probably have blown over in a day or so, if it had not been for Dorothy and Phyllis. These two, although almost the youngest girls in the Lower Fifth, possessed a great deal of influence in their form, and unfortunately they seemed to have taken a violent dislike to the new girl upon the first day of term. Anything that they could do to hurt and annoy her, they did, and the rest of the form were either too weak or too indifferent to interfere. Not that all the girls were actively unkind to Geraldine—but the majority of them left her severely alone, and the new girl, instead of making friends with her companions, grew more and more lonely and isolated as the days passed by.
Her own manner helped very largely towards this isolation. She was so shy and reserved herself that it was difficult for anyone to make friends with her, and besides she was so absorbed with the longing to make peace with Jack—who still remained coldly aloof—that she really did not give anybody else a chance. She simply played into Dorothy's and Phyllis's hands by her misery and shyness.
"She's so stuck up and superior—she doesn't want to make friends," was Phyllis's frequent assertion. And the rest of the form, not being possessed of any very great discernment, were quite content to accept this version of the case and to leave Geraldine severely to herself.
But if she did not get on well in the social life of the school, Geraldine was quite at home where lessons were concerned. She really possessed abilities considerably above the average, and although she was still new to the ways of the school, she acquitted herself so creditably during her first week as to call forth the special commendation of the form-mistress. It was after the German lesson one morning that Miss Parrot gave expression to her pleasure at her new pupil's accomplishments. Geraldine had distinguished herself during the class, and when Miss Parrot, anxious to see how far her pupil's knowledge of the language really went, had addressed some question to her in German, Geraldine had answered it so fluently, and at such length, in the German tongue, that the class gasped in astonishment.
"Very good, indeed, Geraldine!" said the mistress, and the lesson ended, but not—so far as Geraldine was concerned—the episode. When the new girl entered the Lower Fifth sitting-room after school that morning for the few minutes' interval before the dinner-bell rang, she was immediately accosted by several members of the form, Dorothy and Phyllis amongst them, who demanded to know how and where she had acquired such an intimate knowledge of German.
"I used to live in Germany when I was quite little," answered Geraldine, becoming nervous and confused at once, as she always did when she was questioned abruptly. "Didn't you hear me tell Miss Parrot so, when she asked me how I knew so much?"
"She didn't ask you—you story!" cried Phyllis indignantly.
"Yes, she did—in German," said Geraldine, goaded for once into making a mild retaliation upon her chief foe. "Do you mean to say you didn't know enough German to understand that?"
"Well, perhaps we're not all quite as clever as you," retorted Phyllis cuttingly—"riled," as she afterwards expressed it, by the "swanky air" Geraldine put on. "But I think it's rather suspicious your knowing so much German, added to all your other sneaky ways."
"What do you mean?"
Geraldine swung round angrily upon the speaker, aroused for once from her usual meekness. Phyllis was quick to see that she had succeeded in annoying her opponent, but she was far too astute to give her any advantage by making any definite accusation.
"Mean? Oh, nothing!" she replied airily. "Only, of course, if you did happen to be German, or partly German, it would account for a good deal, you see." And she slipped her hand inside Dorothy's arm and drew her chum away.
Geraldine sprang forward to intercept her as she made towards the doorway.
"If you're implying that I'm German—" she began. But Phyllis interrupted her.
"I'm not implying anything!" she said. "If your guilty conscience makes you imagine things—well, that's not my fault, is it? Come on, Dorothy, there's the dinner bell." And she made haste to escape from the sitting-room before Geraldine could pin her down to anything more than a vague aspersion.
"But, of course, she is German," she argued that afternoon to a select gathering of the Lower Fifth. "Everything points to it. She said she lived in Germany when she was little. I expect her mother was a German, if the truth were only known. And then her sneakiness—that's German, if you like!"
"I don't see that she is so very sneaky," protested Jack, who was still, in spite of her disappointment over the hockey team and her general acquiescence in the form's treatment of Geraldine, somewhat prepossessed in favour of the new girl, to whom she had taken an immense liking on the first evening of the term. "It really wasn't her fault that I made that caricature. And though, of course, she might have hidden the paper out of the way when she heard Miss Parrot coming, yet she was only a new girl—and perhaps she really didn't know."
"Oh, of course—if you're going to take her part——" said Phyllis in such a deprecating tone that Jack made haste to capitulate.
"I wasn't taking her part exactly. I was only pointing out that it seemed a little hard on her to be blamed for that caricature affair."
"And what about you?" demanded Phyllis. "Wasn't it hard on you to have to miss the hockey trial and still be down in B.1 when you might have been in the second eleven? You can sympathise with the new girl if you like. For my part, I think she got off very lightly. Why, most schools would have sent her to Coventry for doing a thing like that—especially when they found out that she was a German!"
"But even if she is a German—and I must say she doesn't look a bit like one; Germans are usually so big and fair and fat, and Geraldine's dark and thin—but even if she is, the war's over now, so I don't see that there's any actual harm in that," remarked Hilda Burns.
"I don't agree with you," said Phyllis darkly. "There mayn't be any harm in it, of course—I don't say that there is. But all the same it isn't nice to think that one is actually at the same school with a German girl—even though the war is over!"
"But why? They're not our enemies any longer," said Jack.
Phyllis regarded her scornfully.
"No, of course not! They're our dearest friends now, I suppose! I suppose you've forgotten all about the Patriotic League we made when the war was on, when we were Upper Third, Jack Pym?"
Jack wriggled a little uneasily.
"Well, yes, I had forgotten a bit," she admitted. "But now that the war's over we don't need that any longer."
"Have you forgotten Rule Six?" Phyllis went on steadily. "'That this League vows and declares that it will for the future have no dealings with any person or persons of German nationality, either in peace or war.' Do you remember that?"
"Y—yes—I remember that," agreed Jack reluctantly.
"And how we all took a solemn oath that we would keep the rules, or else count ourselves traitors to our King and Country?" pursued Phyllis inexorably.
"Yes, I remember," said Jack.
"Well, there you are, then!" declared Phyllis triumphantly. "You can't go and make friends with Geraldine Wilmott, because you're a member of the Patriotic League. We won't send her to Coventry or do anything of that sort, because, of course, we haven't got any real proof that she's a German. But I vote we all steer as clear of her as possible for the future, and take jolly good care she doesn't get to know any of our private plans or secrets. She's just as likely as not to go telling them all to the mistresses if she gets to know them. You can't trust a person who's got German blood!"
And in this decision the Lower Fifth acquiesced, although it was really hardly possible for them to steer more clear of the new girl than they had done during the past week.
CHAPTER VII
GERALDINE MAKES A FRIEND
There was one individual in the school who took no part in the ostracism of Geraldine Wilmott. This was Bruno, the headmistress's big black dog. Bruno had taken a tremendous fancy to the new girl. Perhaps in his big-hearted way he had divined how shy and miserable she was, and wished to comfort her. And poor Geraldine, lonely and home-sick, found an unexpected solace in the dog's companionship. In the nature of things she could not see a great deal of him. Bruno was sternly forbidden the classrooms during school hours, and his presence in the dining-hall during meal-times was equally tabooed. The dog seemed to understand these restrictions, and kept to them faithfully. But at other times he made a special point of seeking out Geraldine and attaching himself to her. And the lonely girl was glad enough of his company during some of her solitary play hours.
Bruno was the cause of her making another queer friend in the person of Bennett, the school porter. One wet Saturday morning—there were no lessons at Wakehurst on Saturdays—the new girl was roaming rather forlornly through the corridors, accompanied by her canine friend, when Miss Oakley came upon her.
"Oh, here's that dog at last! I've been looking everywhere for him," said the headmistress. "He seems to have taken a great fancy to you, Geraldine. But he's got to go and be washed now. It's his bath morning, as he knows perfectly well. Take him along to Bennett, dear, will you? He's waiting for him round by the lobby door."
Geraldine laid her hand obediently upon the dog's collar and led him off in the direction of the lobby. Bennett, a grim-faced, middle-aged individual, who appeared to disapprove of schoolgirls on principle, was awaiting him, with a towel over his arm and a cake of soap in his hand.
"Miss Oakley told me to bring Bruno to you," said Geraldine shyly, as she handed her charge over. It was the first time she had come across Bennett, and she was duly impressed by the grimness of his appearance. Bennett's manner did not relax at her shy approach.
"Thank you, miss," he said dourly. He made a grab at Bruno, who, however, evidently did not relish the coming ordeal at all. In fact, his weekly baths were the bane of his otherwise peaceful existence. He deftly eluded the man's grasp, and, slipping by him, bolted back along the corridor towards the boot-lobby, the door of which happened to be ajar.
With a muttered imprecation Bennett stumbled after him, to find himself, when he was through the door, in the midst of a group of Lower School children changing into their gym shoes for an impromptu drill in the gymnasium. The boot-lobby consisted of three large rooms opening into each other and lined with boot-lockers. It afforded Bruno plenty of space for dodging his pursuer, and an exciting hunt ensued, in which Bruno's part was taken openly by the little girls, most of whom had excellent reasons for disliking the surly porter. Bennett looked upon the Wakehurst girls in general, more especially the smaller ones, as the plague of his life, and was not by any means averse to reporting their misdoings to authority. Many an order mark and conduct mark had been gained through his instrumentality, and his victims were only too glad to assist Bruno in eluding him. Some dozen or so of the little girls joined in the chase with great zest, getting in Bennett's way at crucial moments, and shrieking with laughter at his abortive efforts to lay hands upon Bruno, who barked and dodged and frolicked about, thoroughly enjoying the fun.
The climax was reached at last when Bennett tripped over an outstretched hockey stick and measured his length on the ground. This rather alarmed the Lower School, the members of which hastened to make themselves scarce. By the time the porter had recovered himself, everybody had vanished, except Geraldine, who hurried to his assistance, and Bruno, who stood watching him from a safe corner.
"I say, I do hope you haven't hurt yourself?" said Geraldine solicitously.
Bennett shook his fist angrily in the direction of the departing children as he rose painfully to his feet.
"Young varmints!" he said. "I'll be even with 'em one day. I mayn't know their names but I knows their faces, and one day I'll make 'em sorry for this outrage. Come you here, you brute, you!" he added, addressing himself to Bruno, as he made another dive at the dog.
But Bruno was not disposed to yield himself up as yet, and another hunt followed. This time, however, Geraldine joined in the chase, and finally managed to catch and hold the dog until Bennett could reach him.
"Thank you, missie," said Bennett, more graciously this time. "I'm much obliged to you, I'm sure. Would you care to come and watch him bathed, now—seeing as you've helped to capture him?"
"Oh, I should love to!" said Geraldine, delighted at the idea of something to do this dull, wet morning. And she followed Bennett out to the washhouse on the farther side of the quadrangle, feeling happier than she had felt for some time. Talking to Bennett, surly as he seemed, would be better than talking to nobody at all.
Bennett, however, was not so surly as his outward manner had led her to believe. Geraldine's opportune aid in capturing Bruno, and her anxious inquiries as to whether he had hurt himself in his fall, had quite won his heart. He opened up to her on the subject of his experiences in war,—Bennett was an ex-soldier and had fought both in South Africa and in France,—and Geraldine was immensely interested in his reminiscences.
"I used to live in Germany a long time ago," she told him shyly. "I have been in France, too, but I don't remember much about it, for I was quite a tiny little thing then. Did you learn to talk French when you were fighting there?"
"I can't say as I did, exactly," said the man, scrubbing Bruno vigorously. "I learnt a word or two, here and there, such as 'Bong Jour' and 'Narpoo' and 'Beaucoup de Vin.' But not so as to be able to converse, so to speak. There was one chap in our company who was a regular nailer at speaking the lingo, but it got him into trouble in the end."
"How?" asked Geraldine interestedly.
"Well, miss, he was a rare one for the girls, you see. And being as he could talk to 'em, he used to have 'em all round him like flies round a pot of honey in every billet he were in. I dunno what he told 'em. But whatever it was, he told 'em all the same thing, and they all thought he was in love with 'em and meant ter marry 'em, and after a bit things got too warm for him altogether. And he had to go to the C.O. about it and own up, and get himself transferred to another company. It ain't no joke to have half a dozen sweethearts all after you at once. Not that I've ever had that experience myself. I'm just a-judging by what happened to Bill Sims. I ain't never had but one sweetheart in my life, and she gave me the chuck while I was fighting in South Africa, and I've had no truck with women in that way ever since."
"Oh, how mean of her!" said Geraldine sympathetically. "When you were away fighting for your country, too! She must have been a horrid sort of girl."
"Oh, well, I don't say as she were altogether to blame for it," said Bennett generously. "You see, I hadn't written to her regular like. For two years she never got no letter at all, and she reckoned I was dead or else gone off with some other young woman. So she got herself spliced up to Albert Brown, who lived next door. She was real sorry about it when I come back, and so was he. But it were too late to be altered then, so we all agreed to make the best of it. It ain't no manner of use crying over spilt milk. That's been my motto all my life, and will be to the end of it. After all, being a single man has its advantages, as you'll find, missie, when you gets to my age. There's only one thing I regrets I ain't married for, and that's when it comes to mending of my clothes. Socks I can manage, but patches beats me altogether. This coat I'm wearing now wants a patch terrible badly at the elbow. But though I've got a bit of the stuff it were made of in my pocket at this moment, I can't bring myself to start upon it, like."
"Don't you know any woman who could do it for you?" suggested Geraldine.
Bennett shook his head.
"Not that I could ask, so to speak," he answered. "Cook did say once as how she'd do it for me. But she ain't never noticed it again, though I always make a point of wearing my old coat whenever I'm in the kitchen. And I don't exactly like to remind her. Cook's that particular, you see."
"I'll tell you what! I'll do it for you," said Geraldine, struck by the brilliant idea. "I'm quite good at patching, truly I am. And I'd love to do it. You've been so awfully decent in letting me help you with Bruno. It won't be dinner-time for nearly an hour yet. I'll go and get my mending things and do it for you now." And she jumped to her feet and made her way towards the door.
"It's very good of you, miss, to offer," said Bennett dubiously. "But I ain't sure as I ought to take advantage of it." But Geraldine was already out of hearing and half-way across the quadrangle to fetch her workbag from the dormitory. Fortunately for her project, she met no one on the way, for in her excitement and interest at the thought of being able to do something for somebody at last, she had quite forgotten that it was necessary to ask permission if she wanted to go to the dormitory out of hours. In a few minutes she was safely back in the washhouse again, where, seated upon an upturned packing-case, she proceeded to patch the torn elbow in Bennett's coat with a speed and dexterity which aroused that individual's undisguised admiration.
"Well, now, missie, I'm sure I do thank you," he said heartily, when at last the coat was neatly patched and back on his shoulders again. "You are a real little lady, that's what you are. Which is more than I can say for some of them young varmints up yonder! And if ever there's anything I can do for you in return, you've only got to say the word and I'll do it."
"Thank you," said Geraldine, somewhat embarrassed by his excessive gratitude. "Is Bruno dry now? Shall I take him to Miss Oakley?"
"Yes, if you like, miss. I'll carry him up to the house for you, or he'll get himself all muddy again. My word, ain't he a weight just?" the man added, as he lifted the big retriever in his arms.
The dinner bell rang just as they reached the schoolhouse door, however, so Geraldine was not able to take the dog to the headmistress's room. She took him as far as the mistresses' corridor, and left him there, while she hurried off to brush her hair and wash her hands for dinner.
Nobody had missed her or noticed her absence apparently, which, Geraldine decided, was perhaps just as well. So far as she knew there was no rule at Wakehurst Priory to forbid girls from assisting to bath the headmistress's dog, but possibly somebody might have found some objection to her morning's occupation if they came to know about it. Since they did not, no harm had been done, and Geraldine reflected, with some satisfaction, that in Bennett at least she had found a friend.
And indeed she had! The school porter was at that moment exhibiting his newly-acquired patch to a circle of interested maids in the kitchen, all of whom were unanimous in praising the excellence of the handiwork.
"A grown woman couldn't have done it better," declared Kate, the linen-room maid.
"Little Miss Wilmott, did you say it was?" asked Cook. "She's a real nice little lady, to my way of thinking."
"That she is," said one of the dining-hall maids. "Always 'Please' and 'Thank you' whatever you do for her, and never any grumbling or ordering of you about. Pity there aren't more young ladies like her, I say, quiet though she is."
"And none the worse for that, I dare say," commented Cook.
So Geraldine, whatever her school companions might think of her, had at any rate succeeded in winning golden opinions in the servants' hall.