The Jolliest School of All, Angela Brazil [rm book recommendations TXT] 📗

Irene rapidly explained her philanthropic intentions, and enlisted both Peachy and Delia in her team. The juniors, amazed and flattered at an invitation from older girls, were ready enough for a game. Irene insisted upon the innovation of what she called "hunting in couples," that is to say, dividing the company into partners who made the course hand in hand. She took good care to choose Désirée for her "running-mate," and as they were both fleet of foot they scored considerably. By the time the bell rang they had beaten the records.

"Look here!" said Irene, addressing the juniors before they scooted away, "you kids are missing a chance. Why don't you make Désirée train for the sports? She can run like a hare! With the start she'd get as a junior she might win you a trophy. Hadn't it ever entered your silly young noddles to see what[56] she could do for your form? Well, you are a set of slackers! That's my opinion of you. We manage our affairs better in the Transition."

"Oh, thank you! Thank you!" gasped Little Flaxen, lingering a moment or two behind the others. "You've been just great! I'll write to Dad to-night to send me some chocs, and I won't eat a single one myself. They shall have them all. They shall really!"

With scarlet cheeks and shining eyes she was a different child from the weeping Niobe who had sat and sobbed on the steps.

"Now if I'd simply coddled her and sympathized she'd have cried a few gallons more and have been no better off," mused Irene, as her protégée danced away. "I fancy those juniors have been fairly nasty to her, though I wouldn't tell her so. Something ought to be done about it, but the question is 'what?' I want to have a talk with Peachy when I can wedge in ten minutes of spare time."

All evening remembrance of Little Flaxen's red eyes and white cheeks haunted Irene. She felt it ought not to have been possible for the child to be so lonely and neglected. Granted that her unpopularity might be partly her own fault, boycotting was nevertheless hard to bear. It was clearly somebody's business to have looked after her, and that duty ought not to have devolved upon a newcomer like herself, who only realized the necessity by the merest chance.[57]

"What's the use of the prefects?" Irene asked herself, but she gave up the answer, and appealed to Peachy at breakfast-time instead.

That cheery young American took the matter more seriously than Irene expected. There was a very kind little heart hidden under her bubbles of fun.

"I'll call a meeting of the Camellia Buds right now," she declared. "I guess we don't want any of those poor babes crying their eyes out. Talk of homesickness! You should have seen me my first week here. I brought four dozen pocket-handkerchiefs to school with me and I used them all. It's not good enough! Prefects, did you say? Humph! I don't call Rachel exactly laid out for this job. Bring your biscuits to the 'Grotto' at interval, and we'll have a powwow about it."

There was a twenty-minute mid-morning break between classes, during which the girls ate lunch and amused themselves as they pleased in the house or grounds. The biscuits, three apiece, were laid out in rows on the dining-room table together with each pupil's glass of milk. As Irene ran in to take her portion she heard a scrimmage going on at the other end of the room. Several small girls were quarreling loudly, and above the noise came Désirée's piping, high-pitched voice:

"I haven't had a biscuit for days and it isn't fair."

"What's all this about?" asked Irene, striding into the crowd just in time to see Mabel and another[58] member of the Transition pass, laughing, through the lower door.

There was a babel in reply.

"Those big girls come and grab our biscuits!"

"It's a shame of them!"

"There ought to be three apiece!"

"And there never are!"

"It's something if you get two!"

"Nancy's taken both mine!"

"Honest injun, I haven't!"

"I tell you I'm famished!"

"Help! Don't all shout at once," decreed Irene. "Let's have a biscuit parade. Each hold out what she's got. Here, Audley, hand one of yours over to Francie. Effie, break that one in half and share with Chris. Désirée, you may have mine this morning, but this business mustn't happen again. I've no time to stop now, but I'll inquire into this, you bet!"

Leaving an only partially satisfied group of small girls behind her Irene sped to her tryst in the garden. She took a short cut, and ran through the orange grove, where the half-ripe oranges were beginning to turn yellow on the trees, then shamelessly jumping over a flower border of stocks and primulas, crossed under the rose-pergola, turned down a creeper-covered side alley, and found herself in a neglected portion of the grounds. Here there was a very dilapidated little arbor, built sixty or seventy years ago when the Villa Camellia had been owned by an Italian count with a weakness for the fine arts. The[59] roof leaked, and a riot of jessamine almost hid the door; the window-sill had fallen, and the floor was a mass of dead leaves. The plastered walls were painted with frescoes—faded and moldy now—of a country château with cypress trees, and three ladies in big plumed hats riding on white horses, and a gentleman in shooting costume and tall boots, who wore side whiskers, and carried a gun, and had four hunting dogs standing in a row behind him. All these were rather stiff and badly painted, yet gave an air of neglected grandeur to the grotto. There were marble seats, and a rickety marble table, and a little broken statue of Cupid in the corner, and the floor under the rubbish was of blue glazed tiles, so that the building, though fallen on evil days, still showed some remnants of its former glory. As it was in an out-of-the-way spot and far from the tennis courts, it was not often visited, and had therefore been appropriated by the Camellia Buds as a suitable place for the secret meetings of their sorority.

The nine were all assembled here waiting impatiently for Irene. She brushed through the jessamine-covered doorway, took her seat, and breathlessly explained the reason of her delay.

"Would you have believed such meanness?" she ended.

Peachy nodded solemnly.

"I told you some of our precious Transition would make you blush. Was it Bertha? I thought so! I knew she had got hold of Mabel. I believe they're[60] buddies, and a charming pair they'll be! We shall have to tackle them somehow. This certainly can't be allowed to go on."

"Isn't it a case for the prefects?" asked Irene, addressing the President.

Agnes's forehead was drawn into a series of puckers.

"We hate telling," she sighed. "The fact is the prefects in this school aren't quite what they ought to be. They think they do their duty, but they're too aloof and high-handed and bossing, and the consequence is they're not popular, and the girls would as soon complain to a teacher as to Rachel or Sybil or Erica. It simply isn't done. Yet those kids need a champion. There are several abuses among them that I've noticed myself."

"Guess we've got to take it on then and 'champ'," murmured Delia.

"Poor little souls, it's a shame to steal their 'bikkies'; we'll have to stand over them and act as fairy godmothers," said Sheila.

Peachy bounced suddenly in her seat.

"Sheila Yonge, you've given me an idea—yes, an absolute brain-throb. What the Camellia Buds ought to do is to turn the sorority into an Amalgamated Society of Fairy Godmothers, and each of us take over a junior to look after and act providence to. It's what those kids are just aching for—only they mayn't know it. What good are prefects to them except as bogies? They skedaddle like light[61]ning if they see so much as Rachel's shadow. They each ought to have one older girl whom they can count on as a friend."

"A kind of buddy?"

"Something of the sort, but more like a foster-mother."

"I vote we ask them all to a candy party, and each adopt one," suggested Delia warmly.

"There are ten of us, and there are nineteen juniors," calculated Jess. "How's it going to work out?"

"Why, some of us must take twins or even triplets," decreed Peachy. "I'm bursting to begin. Let's have that candy party right away. Can anybody raise a lira or two?"

"We'll give you our subscriptions back in the house, if you'll act treasurer and wheedle Antonio. Fairy Godmothers, Limited! It's a brainy notion. When shall you ask those kids? You bet they'll buzz in like bees."

The loud clanging of the garden bell, which seemed to punctuate life at the Villa Camellia, broke up the meeting in a hurry and scattered its members in the direction of their classrooms. At the first opportunity, however, Irene unlocked her cash-box and took out a contribution towards the candy party. She was not yet used to the Italian paper money, and had only a vague idea of its value, but she judged that two lire was the expected amount, and carried it accordingly to Peachy's dormitory.[62]

"You white angel! It's a bountiful 'contrib.' I've squared Antonio. He'll leave the parcel inside the grotto. What we should do without that dear old man I can't imagine. I've told the juniors, and they're simply crazy to come. I've fixed it up for directly after tea."

Antonio, the old concierge who had charge of the gate, was absolutely faithful to his duties as porter, and guarded the Villa Camellia as zealously as a convent, but he was lenient on one point—he was willing sometimes to smuggle sweets, and those girls who knew how to coax could induce him to make an expedition to the confectioner's and fetch them a small private store of what delicacies they fancied. He had his own ideas of how much was good for them, and would never be responsible for more than a limited allowance; neither would he undertake more than one commission per week for any single girl. It was a matter of favor, and to some of the pupils he would only grunt a refusal. Peachy, however, was a champion wheedler; she had a certain command over the Italian language, and could persuade Antonio, in his native tongue, of the absolute necessity of her demands. He was quite generous on this occasion, and slipped a fair-sized parcel of mixed Neapolitan bonbons into the sanctuary of the deserted summer-house.

Nineteen interested juniors, bidden to an unwonted entertainment, dodged their prefect after tea, evaded a basket-ball practice, scattered them[63]selves in the grounds, met in the long pergola, and proceeded to the jessamine-covered arbor, where they were received politely by their ten hostesses. It was, of course, impossible to accommodate them inside, but the grotto was close to the place where Paolo, the gardener, chopped wood for the stoves, so there were plenty of logs lying about that served as seats. In a very short time the guests were settled, hospitality was handed round, the colored papers were removed from the goodies, and there was a general abandonment to sticky satisfaction. Between the first and second distributions Agnes, as President of the Sorority, addressed the meeting.

"We've a proposition to make to you all," she began. "There are some things in this school that aren't always quite what they ought to be, and it's rather hard for juniors to fight their own battles. Sometimes you squabble among yourselves—oh, I know!—and sometimes you get it hot from the seniors or the Transition. Well, we're going to help you. Each of us means to take on one or more of you and be a sort of fairy godmother to you, and responsible for seeing you're decently treated. I understand there's been a little trouble about your lunch biscuits?"

"It's Bertha!"

"And Mabel!"

"They're real mean!"

"They simply grab them!"

"Oh, do please stop it!"[64]

"And we haven't had our turns at the tennis courts!"

"And Winnie borrowed my paint-box and won't give it back!"

Agnes held up a hand to stop the general clamor.

"That'll do!" she decreed. "I'm going to sort you out and give you each to your fairy godmother, and you may pour your woes into her ears, and she'll try her level best to right your wrongs. No, you mayn't say whom you'd like to have. It's we who'll do the choosing, thanks! Anybody who's not satisfied can walk off and she won't get a champion at all or any more candy either. I mean what I say."

Such an awful threat reduced the juniors to order, and they submitted quite peaceably to be apportioned among their various benefactresses. Irene