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

at once began to compile the list which Miss Mitchell wanted. She was determined to do it beautifully. Her handwriting was not remarkably good, so she decided to type it. There was a little typewriter in Uncle David's consulting-room, which he allowed her to use, and though she was so far from being an adept at it that it actually took her longer than using pen and ink, she thought the result would justify the trouble. She meant to stitch the sheets together and fasten them inside a cardboard cover, decorated with an artistic design. She set to work upon it with much energy and enthusiasm.

She was leaving school one afternoon when Muriel Burnitt ran up to her.

"By the by, Merle! Can you give me the names of the committee of the
Nature Club? I can't just remember them all."

"What d'you want them for?" asked Merle suspiciously.

"Oh, to write out for Miss Mitchell! She was asking for a list the other day."

"Fay Macleod is secretary of the Nature Club. She'd be able to tell you exactly," temporised Merle.

"So she would! I'll ask her to-morrow."

Merle went home with her head in a whirl. It was quite evident that Muriel had hit upon exactly the same idea as herself, and intended to present Miss Mitchell with a full record of the societies.

"Only, hers will probably be written in an exercise-book and not be half as nice as mine! She mustn't forestall me, though! However artistic my list is, it will fall very flat if Muriel gives hers in first. I've got to finish it somehow to-night and take it to school to-morrow morning. That's certain!"

When Merle made up her mind about anything, nothing could move her. Directly she got home she set to work upon the book-back, and toiled away at it, utterly ignoring her preparation. In vain Mavis urged the claims of Latin verbs and Shakespeare recitation.

"I shan't stop till I've finished this!" declared Merle stubbornly. "Not if I sit up all night over it. Bother the old 'Merchant of Venice' and beastly Latin verbs! I'll glance through them at breakfast-time and trust to luck. Surely Miss Mitchell will understand when she knows how busy I've been over this! I shall give it to her before nine o'clock."

"Can't I help you? I've finished my prep."

"No, thanks! I want it to be entirely my own work."

Merle was not so clever at drawing as Mavis, but she contrived to turn out a very pretty cover all the same. She illuminated 'The Moorings' in large letters upon it, and painted a picture of a boat moored to a jetty below, as being an appropriate design. She stitched the typed sheets, fastened the whole together, and tied it with a piece of saxe-blue ribbon (saxe was emphatically Miss Mitchell's pet colour), then she printed upon the back of it, 'With much love from your affectionate pupil Merle Ramsay.' She sat up over it long after Mavis and Aunt Nellie had gone to bed, and, indeed, finished it hurriedly under the eyes of Jessop, who was waiting to turn out the gas.

"Can't I just look over my Latin?" implored Merle.

"Not a word!" declared the old servant. "Put those books away, Miss Merle, and go upstairs. We'll be having you with brain-fever at this rate! I don't approve of all these home lessons. Why can't they teach you what they want to in school, I should like to know? That's what teachers are paid for, isn't it? I've no patience with this continual writing in the evenings. A nice bit of sewing would be more to my mind. You've not done more than an inch of that crochet pattern I taught you. Being monitress is all very well, I daresay, but I'm not going to let you sit up till midnight, my dearie, over your books. Not if I have to go myself to Miss Pollard, and tell her my mind about it."

Merle had meant to wake up a little earlier and run through her preparation, but she was sleepier than usual next morning, and had to be roused by Mavis. She opened her eyes most unwillingly.

"I never heard Jessop bring the hot water. It can't be half-past seven!
Oh, bother! I'd give all the world to be left quiet in bed! Go away!"

"All right! Stop in bed, and let Muriel give her list to Miss Mitchell!" said Mavis.

Whereupon Merle groaned, sat up, and began to pull on her stockings.

"Guess I'll take the wind out of Muriel's sails!" she murmured.

The list was beautifully wrapped up in a sheet of new tissue-paper, and Merle carried it proudly to school. Miss Mitchell was generally in the study from about 8.45 till 9 o'clock, so there would be nice time to present it before call-over. On this particular morning, however, as fate would have it, the study was unoccupied. Merle peeped in many times, went to the hostel, asked the boarders if they had seen Miss Mitchell, but was utterly unable to find her. She seemed to have mysteriously disappeared, and only walked in, from no one knew where, just in time to take the register. The Fifth form marched away to its classroom, and Merle's offering, for the present, was obliged to be consigned to the recesses of her desk.

Latin was the first lesson, and as far as she was concerned it was a dismal failure. Miss Mitchell looked surprised at her ghastly mistakes, and one or two of the girls glanced at each other. Merle was hot and flustered at the close of the hour, and closed her books with relief. She hoped to manage a little better in 'The Merchant of Venice,' which was at least an English subject. The girls were supposed to learn the notes, and were questioned upon them and upon the meaning of the passages, and she trusted to native wit and successful guessing to supply her answers. The teacher, however, very soon grasped the fact that Merle knew nothing about the lesson, asked her to recite, and found that she broke down at the end of three lines.

"You're absolutely unprepared!" said Miss Mitchell scathingly. "A nice example for a monitress to set to the rest of the form! Come to the study at eleven, and report yourself! I'm astonished at you, Merle!"

A very depressed and humiliated monitress entered the study at 'interval' to receive her scolding.

"I can't understand you! You have been doing so well. Why have you suddenly slacked off?" asked her inquisitor, who believed in getting to the bottom of things if a girl shirked her work.

Merle, who was too much upset even to mention her reason, and who had left the offering inside her desk, said nothing, and only looked unutterably miserable. Matters, therefore, were at rather a deadlock, when there was a tap at the door and Mavis entered bearing the precious parcel.

"Miss Mitchell, please! In case Merle won't tell, I've brought this. She sat up fearfully late last night doing it for you, and that's why she didn't do her prep. Please excuse me for coming in!" and Mavis bolted in much confusion.

Miss Mitchell unwrapped the parcel and looked critically at its contents.

"It's very kind of you to have made this for me, Merle," she said, in a gentler voice. "I only wish it hadn't been at the expense of your preparation. I like the monitresses to do all they can for the school, but they must remember their own work comes first, and that they have to set an example to the rest. Don't let a thing like this happen again! I thought you would have had more discretion. The list could have waited a day or two. I was not in such a hurry for it as all that. It was kindly meant, but a little excess of zeal, wasn't it? Thank you for it all the same! There! I'll put it on my desk so that it will be always ready if I want to refer to it. Now run along, or you won't have time to eat your lunch before the bell rings."

Merle, hurrying to the dressing-room, inwardly congratulated herself.

"I got jolly well out of a bad business!" she thought. "Miss Mitchell wasn't very cross after all, and she liked the list! I've got mine in before Muriel's anyway, and it's going to stay on her desk, so she'll always have something of mine right under her eyes. She fingered that saxe-blue ribbon rather lovingly! It exactly matches her sports coat! I'll make her a calendar for Christmas and put the same kind of ribbon to hang it up by. But I don't mean to tell a single soul, in case Muriel goes and does the same! Miss Mitchell is my property, not hers!"

CHAPTER VI

Fishermaidens

Several Saturdays turned out wet, and it was not until the middle of October that Mavis and Merle were again able to motor with Dr. Tremayne to Chagmouth.

They had made arrangements for a nature ramble, so, after an early lunch at Grimbal's Farm, they went to the trysting-place by the harbour to meet the other members of the club. Beata and Romola turned up alone to-day, unencumbered by younger brothers and sisters or the donkey. They had brought businesslike baskets with them, and were armed with note-books to record specimens, some apples and nuts, and a couple of log-lines.

"We might be able to get some fishing!" they explained eagerly. "Father went out yesterday in old Mr. Davis's boat, and he brought home the most lovely mackerel. Wouldn't it be a surprise if we could get some for ourselves? I don't see why we shouldn't!"

The idea appealed to the others. Fish were undoubtedly a division of zoology and ought to be included in their nature study. Specimens would be no less scientifically interesting from the fact that they could be eaten afterwards. Fay instantly rushed into Helyar's General Store to buy a log-line of her own; Mavis and Merle, after cautiously ascertaining the cost, invested in one between them, while Tattle, Nan, and Lizzie contented themselves with purchasing a few fishhooks and a ball of fine string.

"I suppose we ought really to take some bait with us," remarked Romola casually. "There isn't time, though, to go and dig for lob-worms. What's to be done about it?"

"Oh, we'll use limpets or anything else we can get," decreed Beata. "We'll find something along the rocks, you'll see. Mavis, where are we going? You know all the best walks. We elect you leader this afternoon."

"It's beautiful along the cliffs towards St Morval's Head. There's a path most of the way, and we can scramble where there isn't. I wouldn't have dared to take the children, but I vote we venture it."

"Anywhere you like so long as we don't waste any more time; I'm just crazy to start!" agreed Fay.

So they went by a narrow alley and up steep flights of steps to the hill above the town, and took the track that led along the edge of the cliffs towards St. Morval's Head. It was a glorious autumn afternoon, and, though the bracken was brown and withered, there were specimens of wild flowers to be picked and written down in the note-books. Summer seemed to have lingered, and had left poppies, honeysuckle, foxgloves, and other blossoms that were certainly out of season. Tattie, who was keen on entomology, recorded a red admiral, a clouded yellow butterfly, and a gamma moth, though she did not consider them worth chasing and catching for her collection.

Flocks of goldfinches and long-tailed tits were flitting about, and they spied some black-caps and pipits, and even a buzzard falcon poised in the air high above the cliffs. Here quite a little excitement occurred, for several sea-gulls attacked the buzzard and with loud cries tried to drive it away, following it as it soared higher and higher into the heavens, and finally routing it altogether and sending it off in the direction of Port Sennen.

The path along which the girls had been walking was the merest track through the bracken. So far there had been either a low wall or a hedge as a protection at the edge of the cliff, but now these outposts of civilisation vanished and they were at the very brink of the crags. Tattie, whose head was not of the strongest, turned giddy and refused to go farther; indeed, she was so overcome that she sank on the ground and buried her face in her hands.

"I daren't look down!" she shuddered. "I know I shall fall