Monitress Merle, Angela Brazil [top rated ebook readers .TXT] 📗

id="id00881">"Some people have all the luck!" remarked Sybil.

"Well, it was lucky, for it was pure guessing of Clive's."

"How did he know what exams you were going to have?"

"Oh, he's heard us talking about them, of course."

"I wish I had a cousin who could guess the questions beforehand."

"We'd all get Honours on those lines."

When Mavis and Merle returned to school after lunch, they each found a little note laid upon their desks marked 'Urgent.'

You are requested to attend a most important meeting to be held in the boarders' sitting-room at the hostel immediately after four.

There was no signature, but the writing was Iva's. The Ramsays were much mystified. As day-girls they had nothing to do with the hostel, and could only go there by special invitation. When afternoon school was over they asked some of the boarders the meaning of the missive. Nobody would explain.

"You'll find out when you get there," was Nesta's cryptic reply.

Puzzled, and considerably distressed at a certain offensive attitude exhibited by Sybil and others, Mavis and Merle walked across the garden to the hostel. Iva had cleared all the younger girls out of the boarders' sitting-room, and was waiting in company with Nesta, Muriel, Aubrey, Edith, and Kitty. As soon as the Ramsays and Sybil came in, she closed the door.

"I've called a general meeting of the Fifth," she said, "because there's something we all feel we ought to go into. Would you like to elect some one into the chair?"

"I beg to propose yourself," piped Aubrey.

"And I beg to second," said Nesta.

Iva settled herself and looked somewhat embarrassed, as if not knowing quite how to begin. She fidgeted for a moment with her pencil, and cleared her throat.

"We're all here," she said at last, "except Fay and Beata, who couldn't stay. What we've met for is to ask Mavis and Merle to explain how it was they got to know some of the examination questions beforehand. It seems to us queer, to say the least of it!"

The Ramsays, overwhelmed with amazement at such a palpable insinuation, turned wrathfully red.

"Why, we've told you! Clive guessed!" gasped Merle.

"Bunkum!"

"How could he?"

"Very convenient guessing, I'm sure!"

"It's no use telling us such utter fibs!"

"They're not fibs! How dare you say so!" flamed Merle.

"It's the absolute truth!" endorsed Mavis.

"Do you stick to that?"

"Of course we do."

"Then I shall have to call on Sybil to tell us something she saw yesterday."

Sybil, who was red, nervous, and even more uncomfortable than Iva, rose from her seat to make her accusation.

"I was in the garden yesterday after school, and I saw Merle come back, hurry among the bushes, and climb in at the study window. I waited, and presently she came out again and scooted off as if she didn't want to meet anybody."

"O—o—oh! You didn't see me! I wasn't there! Was I, Mavis?"

"Most certainly not. You were at home all the time. I can prove that!"

"I think the thing proves itself!" said Iva. "First of all, you're seen by a witness entering the study, where, no doubt, the exam papers were spread out on the table, and then you come to school primed with the questions. There isn't a shadow of doubt."

"Wait a minute!" said Mavis, rising with a very white face. "To begin with, you've got to prove that it was Merle. One witness isn't enough."

"Catie and Peggie saw her down the drive. They told me so."

"What time was it?"

"About five o'clock."

"She was practising at home then. I can bring witnesses to prove that. Besides, if she had really seen the questions, do you think she'd have been silly enough to tell them to you before the exam?"

The girls looked puzzled at that, but Nesta murmured that Merle was silly enough for anything.

"As she's one of the monitresses, we thought we ought to give her a chance to clear herself before we told Miss Mitchell," said Iva.

"She can clear herself and she will. It's not fair to condemn her like this. You must give her time to bring her own witnesses. I ask you all, is it like Merle to do such a thing?"

"Well, no, it certainly isn't like either of you. That's what's surprised us so much."

"You feel you can't be sure of anybody," added Aubrey.

The boarders' tea-gong, sounding at that moment, brought the meeting to an unsatisfactory conclusion. The Ramsays hurried home, bubbling over with indignation, to pour their woes into Mother's sympathetic ear, and were highly put out to find the drawing-room full of callers, and to be expected to hand tea-cups and make pleasant conversation instead of retailing their grievances. They beat a retreat as soon as they possibly could, and, for fear of being asked to play or sing for the benefit of visitors, deemed it wise to escape into the garden.

"We'll sit in the summer-house, only I must have my jersey," declared Merle, catching up the garment in question from its peg in the hall, and pulling it on. "I want some place where I can explode. This is just the beastliest thing that's ever happened to me in all my life."

"I can't understand it!" puzzled Mavis, with her forehead in wrinkles.

Merle was stumping along the path with her hands in the pockets of her jersey.

"Why should they accuse me, of all people in the world, of climbing in through the study window? Sybil must have been dreaming. She's an idiot of a girl. She'd imagine anything from a ghost to a burglar. What are we going to do about it? I wish to goodness they would tell Miss Mitchell! I'd rather she knew. I've a jolly good mind to go and tell her myself. Then I should have first innings and she'd hear our side of it. Hello! There's Clive."

It was that lively young gentleman who came walking along the garden wall and took a flying leap on to the path, just avoiding one of Tom's best flower-beds.

"There's a whole tribe of ladies in the drawing-room!" he volunteered. "I carried my tea into the summer-house! You won't catch me 'doing the polite' if I can help it. Rather not! Have you bunked too? I don't blame you. You're looking down in the mouth, both of you! Exams gone wrong this afternoon? Shall I tell your fortunes again?"

"Your precious fortune has got us into a great deal of trouble," answered Merle. "How did you manage to guess those questions? They were actually in our papers!"

Clive pulled his face into a variety of grimaces.

"Ah! Wouldn't you just like to know!" he retorted. "Perhaps I keep a familiar spirit, or perhaps I read things in the stars. I prophesy you'll fail in all the rest of your exams! There!"

"You young wretch!" cried Merle, chasing him down the path as he fled. She took her hands from her pockets to catch hold of him, and as she did so out flew a penknife on to the grass. Clive pounced upon it immediately and picked it up.

"I've been looking for this everywhere!" he declared.

"How did it get inside my pocket?" asked Merle.

"I never put it there!"

"Clive!" exclaimed Mavis, with a sudden flash of intuition. "Did you wear Merle's jersey yesterday? I remember she found it wet. I verily believe you dressed up in her clothes and went to school."

For answer Clive burst into fits of laughter.

"Oh, it was topping!" he hinnied. "I stuck on her skirt and jersey and tam o' shanter and took in everybody. I walked down the street, and up the drive to the school door, and prowled round the garden. There was a window open, so in I went and found exam questions all over the table. I thought I'd rag you about them!"

"You atrocious imp! Look here! You don't know what a scrape you've got us into. You'll just have to own up and get us out of it again, that's all!"

Irresponsible Clive was full of thoughtless mischief, and it was a long time before the girls could get him to see the serious side of his escapade, and realise what an exceedingly grave charge had been brought against their honour. In the end, by dint of scolding, entreaty, coercion, and even bribery, they succeeded in persuading him to come along with them to 'The Moorings,' where they asked for Miss Mitchell, and told her the whole story.

"I'm extremely glad to know," she said, looking hard at Clive. "The fact is I was deceived myself. He's very like you, Merle! I happened to see him climbing out of the window, and I certainly thought I recognised you. I've felt upset all day about it. I couldn't understand your doing such a thing."

"Will you explain to the boarders, please! I hate them to think me a sneak."

"I'll make that all right."

"And about those exam questions—Mavis and I wouldn't have dreamt of looking them up beforehand, and I don't suppose we should have known them. Wouldn't it be fairer just to cross them off in our papers and not count them? We'd much rather you did."

"Yes, it's the only thing to be done."

Clive, much subdued, blurted out a kind of apology before he left, which Miss Mitchell accepted with dignity. Perhaps she did not think it good for him to forgive him too easily. His evil prophecies about the exams were fortunately not fulfilled, for his cousins, though they did not score brilliant successes, just managed to scrape through without any failures.

The Fifth form, when they heard the true facts of the story, repented their hasty court of justice and made handsome amends.

"It doesn't matter!" said Merle. "You were quite right if you thought we'd been cheating. I should pull anybody else up myself, fast enough. It must have been the acting we did at Christmas that put the idea into Clive's idiotic young head. He was dressed up as a girl then, and rather fancied himself. He really is the limit."

"We shall always be a little uncertain now which is you and which is your cousin!" laughed Iva.

"Oh, he won't do it again! We've put him on his honour, and I don't think he'd break his word."

CHAPTER XIII

The Kittiwake

The great Easter secret, which Merle had surprised and preserved with so much difficulty, was out at last. Clive's father and mother were coming to Devonshire for a holiday; they had taken rooms at a farm in Chagmouth, and they had not only arranged for their own son to join them, but they had also asked Mavis and Merle to be their visitors. The girls thought that no invitation could have been more delightfully acceptable. They adored Chagmouth, and the Saturdays they managed to spend there were always red-letter days, so the prospect of three whole weeks in this El Dorado sent their spirits up to fizzing-over point.

"Bevis will be at Grimbal's Farm!"

"And Tudor will be at home!"

"The Castletons are expecting Morland and Claudia!"

"And, of course, Fay will be there, and Tattie, and the Colvilles!"

"Goody! What a lovely tribe of us to go out picnics!"

"We'll have the time of our lives!"

Burswood Farm, where Mr. and Mrs. Percy Tremayne had taken rooms, was on the hillside above Chagmouth. It was a delightful spot, with that airy feeling about it that comes from looking down upon your neighbours' chimneys.

"I wouldn't live in Chagmouth, not if you paid me hundreds a year!" declared Mrs. Treasure, their landlady. "Once I'm up here, here I stay! I've not been in the town for over six months. I go on Sundays to the little chapel close by, and if I want shops we get out the gig and drive into Kilvan or Durracombe. It isn't worth the climb back from Chagmouth. I carried William up when he was a baby, and it nearly killed me. I set him down in his cradle and I said: 'There, my boy! I don't go down to Chagmouth again till you can walk back yourself!' And I didn't! He was three years old before I went—even to the post office. How do I manage about stamps? Why, the postman brings them for me and takes my letters. The grocers' carts come round from Kilvan, and the butcher calls