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

invaded their platform, and also began to unpack tea-cups.

Merle, who did not like other people to trespass upon her rights, frowned and turned her back upon them, and probably each little party would have taken its meal separately had not an unforeseen and utterly untoward accident happened. Mavis knocked their thermos flask with her elbow and sent it spinning over the cliff. Here was a pretty business! Their tea was gone, and the flask, if they found it, would be utterly smashed.

"It's not worth climbing down to pick it up!" lamented Mavis contritely.
"I'm so sorry, Merle! It was horribly clumsy of me!"

"Do have some of ours!" suggested one of the strangers sympathetically.
"We've heaps! Two flasks; and that's more than we shall drink ourselves.
You might just as well!"

"I say, it was awfully decent of you to call to us not to go on to those rocks!" put in another. "We didn't know about the current."

The third girl made no remark, but she smiled invitingly and held out one of their flasks.

So it came about that Mavis and Merle moved nearer and joined the others, so that they formed one party. For a few minutes they sat in polite silence, taking in the items of their neighbours' appearance. When the Ramsays compared notes afterwards they decided that they had never before seen three such pretty girls. The two who had worn the red bathing caps were evidently sisters, for they had the same clear-cut features, fair complexions, cupid mouths, and beautiful dark-fringed eyes. Their companion, whose brown hair was drying in the breeze, was a complete contrast, with her warm brunette colouring and quick vivacious manner, "like an orchid between two roses," as Mavis described her later. It was she who spoke first—quite a conventional inquiry but decidedly to the point.

"Are you staying in Chagmouth?" she asked.

"We've only come over for the day from Durracombe," answered Merle.

The three strangers looked immediately interested.

"Durracombe! Why, we're going to start school there next week!"

"Never at 'The Moorings'!" gasped Merle excitedly.

"That's the place! Do you go there too? Oh! I say! Do tell us all about
it! We've been just crazy to know what it's like. You two look sports!
What are your names? Are the rest of the school jolly, and is Miss
Pollard nice?"

With such a common interest as 'The Moorings' to talk about, the ice was completely broken, and the five girls were soon chatting in friendly fashion.

Mavis and Merle, having given a few details about themselves and how they often motored over to Chagmouth with Dr. Tremayne, drew in turn some information from their new acquaintances. The two fair-haired girls, aged respectively fourteen and thirteen, were Beata and Romola Castleton, and their father, an artist, had lately removed from Porthkeverne in Cornwall, and had taken a house at Chagmouth. Their friend Fay Macleod, a year older than Beata, was an American, whose father had come to Europe in search of health, and being attracted to Chagmouth by his love of sketching, had settled there temporarily for a rest-cure, and was enjoying the quiet and beauty of the quaint place and its surrounding scenery.

"I suppose you'll all be weekly boarders?" ventured Mavis, when Fay had finished her communications.

"No, we're to be day-girls. Six of us from Chagmouth are joining in a car and motoring every morning and being fetched back at four—ourselves, Nan and Lizzie Colville, and Tattie Carew. It will be rather a squash to cram six of us into Vicary's car! We've named it 'the sardine-tin' already. I hope nobody else will want to join us!"

"Babbie Williams is to be a day-girl this term. She lives over there at
The Warren."

"We haven't room for her."

"She's going in their own car."

"That's good news for the sardines! I was thinking some of us would have to ride on the footboard or the luggage-carrier. Is Babbie fair, with bobbed hair? Then I've seen her in church. Seven of us from Chagmouth! We ought to make quite a clique in the school!"

"Oh, we don't want any cliques," said Merle quickly. "We had enough of that sort of thing when Opal was there. Miss Pollard told mother that the new mistress, Miss Mitchell, is going to reorganise everything, and bring it up to date, so I expect we shall find a great many changes when we start again. Have you been at school before?"

"Romola and I went to The Gables at Porthkeverne," replied Beata. "We loved it, and we were dreadfully sorry to leave. Fay, of course, has been at school in America."

"And we used to go to a big High school in the north until we came to Durracombe. 'The Moorings' seemed a tiny place at first, and then we grew to love it. We adore Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny. I hope you'll like them too! I'm so glad we've met you, because we'll know you when you arrive at school, and we can show you round. I'm afraid we shall have to be going now, because Uncle David will be back from the sanatorium and waiting for us. Thanks most immensely for the tea. We'll look out for you on Tuesday. Good-bye!"

As Mavis and Merle walked back along the cliffs to Chagmouth their tongues wagged fast in discussion of their new acquaintances. Mavis was charmed with Beata and Romola, and Merle had utterly lost her heart to Fay.

"I feel as if I could like her!" she declared. "She's a sport, and really we want somebody to wake us up a little at 'The Moorings.' I believe this term is going to be jolly. My spirits are rising and I see fun ahead. I only wish Daddy could go and live at Chagmouth and we could go to school every day in 'the sardine-tin.' They'll have the time of their lives, the luckers! Don't I envy them, just!"

"I don't think I'd like to be packed quite so tight, thanks!" objected Mavis. "On the whole, I much prefer going backwards and forwards to Chagmouth in Uncle David's car. Merle! Do you know it's after five! We must simply scoot—oh, I daresay I did promise you might eat blackberries, but you haven't time now. You shouldn't have stayed so long at the cove if you wanted a blackberry feed! If you don't hurry up I shall run off and leave you and go home with Uncle David by myself! There! Oh, you're coming! Good! I thought you'd hardly care to spend the night upon the cliffs with the sea-gulls!"

CHAPTER II

A School Ballot

Mavis and Merle started for school on Tuesday morning confident of finding many changes. Hitherto 'The Moorings' had been a modest establishment where about twenty-four children had been educated by Miss Pollard and her sister Miss Fanny, who were the daughters of the late Vicar of the parish. They were neither of them particularly learned or up to date, but they had a happy knack with girls, and had been especially successful in the care of delicate pupils. The remarkably mild climate of Durracombe made the place peculiarly suitable for those who had been born in India or other hot countries, and so many more boarders had been entered for this term that the school was practically doubled. Recognising the fact that this sudden enlargement in numbers ought also to mean a march forward in other ways, the sisters were wise enough to seize their golden opportunity and completely reorganise their methods. They were fortunate in being able to get hold of the house next to their own, and, turning that into a hostel for boarders, they devoted the whole of 'The Moorings' to classrooms. They engaged a thoroughly competent and reliable mistress, with a university degree and High School experience, and gave her carte blanche to revise the curriculum and institute what innovations she thought fit. They allowed her to choose her own assistant mistress, and made fresh arrangements for visiting teachers, reserving for themselves only a very few of the classes, and concentrating most of their energies on the management of the hostel. These new plans gave great satisfaction to both parents and pupils.

"It will be rather nice to have somebody modern at the head of things, so long as Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny aren't entirely shelved," declared Merle.

"They're perfect dears! We couldn't do without them," agreed Mavis.

"But they're not clever!"

"Um—I don't know! It depends what you call clever! They mayn't be B.A.'s and all the rest of it, but they're well read, and they can sketch and sing and play and do a hundred things that a great many graduates can't. I call them 'cultured,' that's the right name for them. They're such absolute and perfect ladies. It's a style you really don't meet every day. And they're so pretty with their pink cheeks and their silver hair, like the sweet old-fashioned pictures of eighteenth-century beauties in powder and patches. I love to look at them, and to listen to the gentle refined way they talk—I think they're adorable!"

"So they are—but you want something more in a school. I hope the fresh teacher will be a regular sport, and that she'll use slang sometimes, and play hockey. That's my ideal of a head mistress."

Miss Mitchell, the new peg upon which so much was now to depend at 'The Moorings,' might not have been blamed for regarding Tuesday morning as somewhat of an ordeal. If she was nervous, however, she managed to conceal her feelings, and bore the introduction to her prospective pupils with cheerful calm.

Forty-six girls, taking mental stock of her, decided instantly that she was 'the right sort.' She was tall, in her middle twenties, had a fresh complexion, light brown hair, a brisk decisive manner, and a pleasant twinkle in her hazel eyes. She was evidently not in the least afraid of her audience, a fact which at once gave her the right handle. She faced their united stare smilingly.

"I'm very pleased to meet you all!" she began. "I hope we shall work together splendidly and have an extremely happy term. As Miss Pollard has just told you, there have been so many changes at 'The Moorings' that it is practically a new school. It's a tremendous opportunity to be able to make a fresh start like this. We can make our own traditions and our own rules. Some of you have been at the school before and some have been at other schools, but I want you all to forget past traditions and unite together to make 'The Moorings' the biggest success that can possibly be. We're all going to love it and to be very loyal to it. We hope to do well with our work, and well with our games. I must explain to you later about all the various societies which we mean to start, but I want to tell you that though there is plenty of work in front of you there's also plenty of fun, and that if every girl makes up her mind to do her very best all round we shall get on grandly. Now I am going to read out the lists of the various forms, and then you can march away in turn to your own classrooms."

In making her arrangements for the reorganisation of the school Miss Mitchell had decided to have no Sixth form as yet. The girls were all under seventeen, and she did not consider any of them sufficiently advanced to be placed in so high a position. The Fifth was at present to be the top form, and consisted of eleven girls, all of whom she intended should work their uttermost and fit themselves for the honour of becoming the Sixth a year later.

Mavis and Merle, both of whom were included in this elect eleven, walked demurely away to their new classroom. Five of their old companions were with them, Iva Westwood, Nesta Pitman, Aubrey Simpson, Muriel Burnitt, and Edith Carey, and the remaining four consisted of Beata Castleton, Fay Macleod, and two strangers, Sybil Vernon and Kitty Trefyre. Romola Castleton had been placed in the Fourth, together with Maude Carey, Babbie Williams, Nan Colville, Tattie Carew, and several other new girls.

The Fifth, as the top form, was to be mainly Miss Mitchell's; Miss Barnes, the fresh assistant mistress, was to take the Fourth; and the teaching of the three lower forms would be shared by Miss Hopkins, Mademoiselle, and Miss Fanny Pollard. Lessons, on a first morning, are usually more or less haphazard, but at any rate a beginning was made, the pupils were entered on their class registers, their capacities were tested, and they began in some