A Popular Schoolgirl, Angela Brazil [most romantic novels .txt] 📗

for she was taken in by quite a nice red-headed boy, a little younger than herself, who, after a manful effort to talk up to her supposed level, thankfully relapsed into details of football-matches. Being a nephew of the house, he proved an adept in attracting the most tempting dishes of fruit or trifle to their particular table, and even basely commandeered other people's crackers for her benefit. She bade him good-by with regret.

"I say, I wish my card wasn't full! I'd have liked a dance with you!" he murmured wistfully as they left the supper-room.

If only she had known people better, and the atmosphere had not seemed so stiff and formal, and she had not been so miserably shy, Quenrede might have enjoyed herself. As it was she began counting the hours. In one of the wallflower gaps of her program she took a stroll into the conservatory. It looked like fairyland with the colored lanterns hanging among the palms and flowers. Somebody else was apparently enjoying the pretty effect—somebody who turned round rather guiltily as if he were caught; then at sight of her smiled in relief.

"I thought you were one of my hostesses come to round me up to do my duty," he confessed. "I'm a duffer at dancing, so I've taken cover in here. I see you don't remember me, but we've met before—at Red Ridge Barrow. My name's Broughten."

"Why, of course! You had a piece of candle and showed us inside the mound. I ought to have known you again, but—you look so different——"

"In evening dress! So do you; but I recognized you in a minute. Look here" (in sudden compunction), "am I keeping you from a partner?"

"No more than I am keeping you!" twinkled Quenrede, pointing to the empty line on her program. "I'm not dancing this, so I came here to—to enjoy myself."

Her companion laughed in swift comprehension.

"I don't know how other people may find it," he confided, "but hour after hour of this sort of thing gets on my nerves. A tramp over the moor is far more my line of amusement. I was wishing I might go home!"

"So was I!"

"But there's still at least another hour and a half."

"With extras, more!" admitted Quenrede.

He held out his hand for her program. "I'm an idiot at dancing, but would you mind sitting out a few with me?"

"If you won't talk about the floor and the decorations and the band, and ask me whether I've been to the pantomime, or if I like golf!"

"I promise that those topics shall be utterly and absolutely taboo. I'm sick of them myself."

Quenrede's shyness, which was only an outer casing, had suddenly disappeared in the presence of a fellow-victim of social conventions, and conversation came easily, all the more so after being pent-up all the evening. Henry Desmond, wandering into the conservatory presently, remarked to his partner, sotto voce:

"That Saxon girl's chattering sixteen to the dozen now! Couldn't get a word out of her myself!"

When Quenrede, sometime about five o'clock in the morning, tried to creep stealthily to bed without disturbing her sister, Ingred, refreshed by half a night's sleep, sat up wide awake and demanded details.

"Sh! Sh! Mother said we weren't to talk now, and I must tell you everything afterwards. Oh, I got on better than I expected, though most of the people were rather starchy. How did my dress look? Well—promise you won't breathe a word to darling Mother—it was just passable, and that's all. Some girls had lovely things. I didn't care. The second part of the evening was far nicer than the first, and I enjoyed the dances that I sat out the most. The conservatory was all hung with lanterns. There; I'm dead tired and I want to go to sleep. Good-night, dear!"

"But you've 'come out!'" said Ingred with satisfaction as she subsided under her eiderdown.

"Oh yes, I'm most decidedly 'out,'" murmured Quenrede.

CHAPTER XIV The Peep-hole

The Foursome League met in Dormitory 2 after the holidays with much clattering of tongues. Each wanted to tell her own experience, and they all talked at once. Fil had a new way of doing her hair, and gave the others no peace till they had duly realized and appreciated it. Verity had been bridesmaid to a cousin, and wished to give full details of the wedding; Nora had played hockey in a Scotch team against a Ladies' Club, and had been promised ten minutes in an aeroplane, but the weather had been too stormy for the flight; the disappointment—when she happened to remember it—quite weighed down her spirits.

"If there's one thing on earth—or rather on air—I'd like to be, it's a flying woman!" she told her friends emphatically. "I'm hoping aeroplanes will get a little cheaper some day, and rich people will keep them instead of motor cars. Then I'll go out as an aviatress. It's a new career for women."

"I wouldn't trust myself to your tender mercies, thank you!" shuddered Ingred. "You'd soon bring the machine down with a crash, and smash us to smithereens."

"Indeed I shouldn't! I'd go sailing about like a bird!"

And Nora, suiting action to words, stood on her bed fluttering her arms, till Verity wickedly gave her a push behind, and sent her springing with more force than grace to the floor.

"You Jumbo! You make the room shake!" exclaimed Ingred. "If that's how you're going to land you'll dig a hole in the ground like a bomb! Do move out, and let me get to my drawer! You're growing too big for this bedroom!"

"Nobody's looked at my new hair ribbons yet!" interposed Fil's plaintive voice. "See, I've got six! Aren't they beauties! Pale pink, pale blue, Saxe blue, navy for my gym. costume, black for a useful one, and olive green to go with my velveteen Sunday dress. Don't you think they're nice?"

"Ripping!" agreed Nora. "We'll know where to go when we want to borrow. There, don't look so scared, Baby! I've chopped my hair so short I couldn't wear a ribbon if I tried! It would be off in three cracks! Stick them back in their box, and don't tempt me! They're not in my line! I'm going in for uniform. You're the sort who wears chiffons and laces and all the rest of it, but you'll see me in gilt buttons before I have done, with wings on them, I hope! I may be the first to fly to Mars! Who knows? You shall all have my photo beforehand just in case!"

Everybody at the College, and particularly at the Hostel, agreed that the first few weeks of the new term were trying. After the interval of the holidays, the yoke of homework seemed doubly heavy, and undoubtedly the prep. was stiffer than ever. Only certain hours were set apart for study during the evenings at the hostel, and any girl who could not accomplish her lessons in that time had to finish them as best she could in odd minutes during the day, or even in bed in the mornings if she happened to wake sufficiently early. Fil, who generally succeeded in mastering about half her preparation and no more, railed at fate.

"I'm so unlucky!" she sighed to a sympathetic audience in No. 2. "I knew the first ten lines of my French poetry beautifully, and I could have said them if Mademoiselle had asked me, but of course she didn't. She set me on those wretched irregular verbs, and they always floor me utterly. As for the 'dictée'—I can't spell in English—let alone French! It's not the least use for Mademoiselle to get excited and stamp her foot at me. I shall be glad when I'm old enough to leave school. I never mean to look at a French book again!"

"How about English spelling?" suggested Ingred. "You'll want to write a letter occasionally!"

"I think by that time," said Fil hopefully, "somebody will have invented a typewriter that can spell for itself. You'll just press a knob for each word, you know!"

"There are about 3000 words in common daily use!" laughed Verity. "If you need a knob for each, your typewriter will have to be the size of a church organ. It'll want a room to itself!"

"Oh, but think of the convenience of it! No more hunting in the dictionary!" declared Fil.

To add to the aggravations of the new term the weather was doubtful, and seemed to take a spiteful pleasure in being particularly wet on hockey afternoons. Day after day, disappointed girls would watch the streaming rain and lament the lack of practice. To give them some form of exercise they were assembled in the gymnasium, and held rival displays of Indian clubs, Morris dancing, or even skipping. "The True Blues" excelled at high jumping, "The Pioneers" at certain rigid balancing feats, "The Old Brigade" were great at vaulting, and "The Amazons" and "The Mermaids" performed marvels in the way of Swedish Boom exercises.

Still, everybody agreed that though the contests were fun in their way they were not hockey, and the girls would much have preferred the playing-fields, however wet, to the gymnasium.

The girls in the hostel had the hour between four and five o'clock at their own disposal. They were not allowed to leave the College bounds, but they might amuse themselves as they pleased in the garden, playground, or gymnasium. In turns, according to the practising list, they had to devote the time to the piano, and a few even began their prep., though this was not greatly encouraged by Miss Burd, who thought a short brain rest advisable. One afternoon Ingred walked along the corridor with a big pile of music in her arms. Just outside the study she met Verity, and saluted her:

"Cheerio, old sport! Here's Dr. Linton left his whole cargo behind him to-day. He rushed off in a hurry and forgot it, and I know he'll be just raging. I'm going to ask Miss Burd if I may run over into the Abbey and leave it on the organ for him. He has a choir practice to-night, so he's sure to find it. Will you come with me? Right-o! We'll both go in and ask 'exeats.'"

The College was erected upon a plot of land which had originally been part of the Abbey grounds. All the old buildings, formerly inhabited by the monks of St. Bidulph's, and by the nuns in the adjoining convent of St. Mary's, had long ago been swept away, and only a few ruined walls marked their sites. The nave of the Abbey, however, had escaped, and was still in use as a parish church, though the beautiful original chancel and transepts had been battered down by Henry the Eighth's Commissioners. It was only a few hundred yards from the school to the Abbey, and Miss Burd readily gave the girls permission to take Dr. Linton's music and leave it for him on the organ. It was the first time either of them had been inside the church when no service was going on, and they looked round curiously. The organ was locked, or Ingred would certainly never have resisted the temptation to put on the fascinating stops and pedals. She tried to lift the lid that hid the keyboards, but with no success.

"He might have left it open!" she sighed.

"But the verger would come fussing up directly you began to play," said Verity.

"I don't see the verger anywhere about."

"Why, no more do I, now you mention it."

"Perhaps he's slipped across to his cottage to have his tea!"

"Perhaps. I say, Ingred, what a gorgeous opportunity to explore. Let's look round a little on our own."

There was nobody to forbid, so they started on a tour of inspection. The places they wanted to look at were those that ordinary church-goers never have a chance of seeing. They peeped into the choir vestry, and Verity gave rather a gasp at the sight of an array of white surplices hanging on the wall like a row of ghosts. They went down a narrow flight of damp steps into a dark place where the coke was kept, they peered into a dusty recess behind the organ, and into a room under the tower, where spare chairs were stored. All this was immensely interesting, but did not quite content them. Verity's ambition soared farther. Very high up on the wall, above the glorious pillars, and just under the clerestory windows, was a narrow passage called the Nuns' Ambulatory. It had been built in the long-ago ages to provide exercise for the sisters in the adjoining convent, to which a covered way had originally led.

"Just think of the poor dears parading round there on wet days when they couldn't walk in their own garden!" said Verity, turning her head almost upside down in her efforts to scan the passage. "I wonder if they ever felt giddy."

"There's a balustrade,