The Youngest Girl in the Fifth: A School Story, Angela Brazil [most popular novels of all time .TXT] 📗

Peggie, with breathless interest, followed, and saw her putting the stolen[258] goods into her desk; then, having witnessed as much as they considered necessary, they flew in hot haste to lodge the information with their own Form mistress. Miss Broughton, amazed at what they told her, sought Miss Roscoe, who summoned Ida and Peggie, and listened attentively to their story.

"This must be enquired into promptly," she declared. "Come with me at once to the Fifth Form."

The girls had just assembled for afternoon school when the Principal entered, bearing the substituted pile of envelopes, and accompanied by Ida and Peggie.

For Miss Roscoe to arrive at such a time was an absolutely unprecedented occurrence. A dead silence at once reigned. Everybody wondered what had happened, and why Miss Roscoe should have brought the two children with her. The headmistress walked straight up to Netta's seat.

"Netta Goodwin," she said, "such an extraordinary incident has just been reported to me that I feel it is my duty to investigate it immediately. I wish to see what you have here," and, throwing up the lid, she began to investigate the contents of the desk.

Netta gave a gasp as if an earthquake had opened at her feet, and turned deathly white. She did not venture to say a word. All in the room waited in mute suspense, realizing that the matter must be of vital importance. With a sad face Miss Roscoe drew out the nineteen envelopes and compared them with those which she held in her hand.

"I have a very serious charge against you, Netta[259] Goodwin," she said sternly. "You were observed in the act of taking these letters from my study, and substituting a similar set which you had yourself written. Ida Bridge and Peggie Weston can testify that they themselves witnessed your deed. I have a strong suspicion of your motive, and I am going to open the envelopes to ascertain if I am correct."

Putting each pile separately, Miss Roscoe rapidly tore open the two ballot sets, and glanced over them.

"It is a peculiar circumstance," she remarked icily, "that in the original voting papers your name occurs only nine times, and in the substituted papers eighteen times."

A wave of indignation passed round the Form. The girls at last understood the point, and realized the full significance of Netta's action. The excitement was intense, though awe for the headmistress forbade anybody to speak.

"To make absolutely certain," continued Miss Roscoe, "we will take the voting again. Miss Douglas, will you kindly deal a sheet of exercise paper to each desk? Now I put everyone on her honour to repeat the names of the two candidates that she wrote this morning."

For a moment the girls scribbled, then folded the papers and handed them to Miss Douglas, who went round the room to collect them. Miss Roscoe examined them attentively, and compared them with some figures she had jotted down.

"They correspond absolutely with the papers which I have just found in your desk, Netta Goodwin! Ida[260] Bridge, come here! It is only fair that Netta should hear your accusation. Tell me again, in her presence, exactly what you witnessed."

"Please, Miss Roscoe," began Ida in her high-pitched voice, "I saw Netta come out of your study before dinner, and come here. I peeped round the door, and she was writing something on half-sheets of paper, and putting them inside envelopes. Then I told Peggie, and afterwards we watched her go into your study again and put her pile of envelopes on your table, and take yours away and pop them into her desk."

"Do you endorse this statement, Peggie Weston?"

"Yes, Miss Roscoe, it's quite true," murmured Peggie nervously.

"Netta Goodwin, have you anything to answer in reply to this charge?"

But Netta kept her eyes on the ground, and did not reply. Miss Roscoe, who was still standing beside the open desk, began to turn over some of the loose pieces of exercise paper which it contained, and shook her head as she noticed the names of various candidates scrawled in different handwritings, evidently for practice. Determined to investigate the affair thoroughly, she pulled out yet more papers, and among them a small roll fastened by a brass clip. At this she glanced with attention, then with marked surprise. "Netta Goodwin," she continued, "this is an entirely different matter, but one which I should like explained nevertheless. Last term you gained a prize for an essay on Thomas Carlyle. How is it that there is a manuscript of this essay in your[261] desk, signed 'Gwen Gascoyne'? Yes, and in Gwen's handwriting, too, which I know well."

Netta glanced hastily at Gwen, who had turned as red as fire. Perhaps feeling that she had already been so entirely exposed that an added circumstance would make little difference, and wishing to get Gwen also into trouble, Netta suddenly resolved to make a full confession.

"I suppose I may as well tell everything," she volunteered sulkily. "Yes—I did want to get the tennis championship, and I altered the names because I didn't think I had a chance otherwise. About that essay, it was Gwen Gascoyne's. She wrote it, but she sold it to me for a sovereign."

"And you passed it off as your own?"

"I'd paid for it, so I just copied it. I couldn't see where the harm came in!" said Netta doggedly.

"Netta Goodwin, have you absolutely no sense of right and wrong, or any vestige of conscience?"

"I can't see that I'm worse than some other people," replied Netta, with a spiteful glance at Gwen.

"Gwen Gascoyne, did you sell this essay to Netta?"

"Yes, Miss Roscoe," gulped Gwen, covered with shame, and too much embarrassed to offer any explanation.

"I shall have a word with you later on. Netta, by your own confession you admit appropriating a schoolfellow's work last term, and altering the voting papers this afternoon. Forgery is a very ugly word and one which I am sorry to use, but there is no other name for what you have done. In all the[262] years of my headmistress-ship here such a thing has not occurred before. I have had unruly and disobedient girls occasionally, but in the whole of my experience never a girl so deliberately bad as you. It is well for the school that this has occurred, and that I have discovered your true character; your influence must have been most pernicious, and I can only hope that it has not already done harm. It is, of course, impossible for me to allow you to remain at Rodenhurst. It is the first time I have been obliged to expel a pupil, and I much regret the necessity, but I feel that to keep you would be to retain a source of moral infection. You will go home at once. Your books and any other articles belonging to you will be sent after you, and I shall write to your parents, informing them of the circumstances under which you have been sent away. I am grieved for the sorrow which I know it will cause them. Go!"

Miss Roscoe pointed peremptorily to the door, and Netta, all her jaunty, self-confident airs gone for once, with downcast eyes that did not dare to meet the scorn of her schoolfellows, and white lips that quivered with passion, slunk ignominiously from the room. The Principal waited a few minutes to allow her time to go downstairs, then she ordered Ida and Peggie back to their own classroom, and turned with a sigh to Gwen.

"You will come with me to the study," she said briefly. Gwen followed in a state of abject misery. Was she never to finish reaping that harvest of tares, the sowing of which she had already so bitterly re[263]pented. One initial slip had indeed plunged her into undreamt-of trouble.

"Well, Gwen, you had better tell me all about this unhappy business," said Miss Roscoe as soon as they were alone. "Let us get to the bottom of everything this time, and leave nothing concealed."

Hard though it was to make confession, Gwen was almost glad to have the opportunity of doing so, and of at last setting straight the last threads of the tangled web she had woven. She felt that she would have told before about the essay if Netta had not been implicated, but her father had agreed that she could not in honour expose her schoolfellow. By skilful cross-questioning Miss Roscoe soon gathered the facts of the case.

"I understand," she said thoughtfully; "I am glad you paid back that sovereign, Gwen! It gives me a higher opinion of you than I should otherwise have had. I judge that your own conscience and your father's disapproval have punished you so severely that I can add little more in the way of reproof. I can trust you not to do such a thing again. Do I now know absolutely the whole of that transaction?"

"Every scrap!"

"Then we will consider the slate wiped clean."

"Thank you just a thousand times!" said Gwen, as Miss Roscoe with a nod dismissed her from the study.

[264]

CHAPTER XXII The Tennis Tournament

Netta's expulsion naturally made a great sensation in the school. To prevent misconceptions Gwen told her classmates the entire story both of the breaking of the china and the selling of her essay. They already knew so much, that she felt it was better for them to learn the whole; they could then form their own judgment of the case, and decide upon what terms they would receive her back amongst them.

"I'm fearfully sorry about it," she said in conclusion; "I know I don't deserve you to be decent to me."

"I'm extremely glad you've told us," said Hilda Browne, acting mouthpiece for the rest. "It explains so very much. We never could understand why you were friends with Netta, and it made us think badly of you that you seemed so chummy with such a girl. But of course this accounts for it. I won't whitewash you, but since you're sorry, I vote we all agree to drop the thing."

"Yes, anyone who refers to it will be a sneak," agreed Elspeth Frazer. "Gwen's made a fresh start, and it's not fair that any old scores should be raked[265] up against her. Netta's gone, of which I'm heartily glad, and I hope now there'll be a better tone altogether throughout the whole Form."

Elspeth mentioned no names, but she looked meaningly at Annie Edwards, Millicent Cooper, and Minna Jennings, and the three reddened beneath her glance. They were not bad girls, but they were weak, and under Netta's sway they had been very silly, and sometimes dishonourable.

"We must all try and help each other to keep rules," said Hilda Browne quickly and tactfully. "I'm sure none of us like cheating, and that we'd every one be willing to promise to be absolutely square in our work, and in games and everything. Shout 'Aye!' those who agree."

Eighteen voices were raised in unison, Annie's, Millicent's, and Minna's among the heartiest.

"Carried unanimously!" said Hilda, with a sigh of satisfaction.

"Now the matter's thrashed out, let's talk about tennis," said Edith Arnold. "Do you know, Gwen Gascoyne, that you were elected one of our Form champions?"

"Oh! oh!" gasped Gwen.

"Yes, you and Hilda Browne were the pair chosen, and we look to you both to win the trophy."

"You take net, then, Hilda, and I'll take back," suggested Gwen.

"Netta was certainly very good at back-balls," began Minna Jennings, but Elspeth Frazer struck in immediately:

"Let us please agree that Netta Goodwin's name[266] is not mentioned again in this Form. She's best forgotten. I think Hilda and Gwen will work together splendidly. They must practise as much as they can before Friday."

Thus forgiven and reinstated both by Miss Roscoe and the Form, Gwen felt she had at last started quite anew, with her bygones to be remembered only as danger signals for the future. Her elevation to the proud position of Form champion half elated and half weighed her down. It was an enormous responsibility to have to compete for the trophy, and she hoped her play would justify the girls' choice. Friday afternoon was to be given up to the match, the Forms allowed to take part being the Sixth, the Fifth, the Upper, Middle, and Lower Fourth, handicaps, of course, being arranged by the Committee. The event was one of the chief excitements of the term, and when Friday arrived the whole school turned out to act audience. The Fifth was drawn to play first with the Lower Fourth, and in spite of a heavy handicap scored an easy victory.

"Not much triumph in beating those kids," remarked Gwen. "They're simply not in the running."

"Our trials are all to come," agreed Hilda. "We're against the Upper Fourth now, and if we beat them, then we