A Popular Schoolgirl, Angela Brazil [big screen ebook reader txt] 📗

reign, and even her powers of description failed for once and the lesson became a mere catalogue of events and dates. Ingred, bored stiff with listening, secretly opened her desk, and, taking a selection of treasures from it, began to fondle them surreptitiously upon her lap. It was, of course, a quite illegal thing to do. She glanced at them occasionally, but for the most part kept her eyes upon her teacher. Beatrice, however, who sat near and had an excellent view of Ingred’s lap, gazed at it with such persistent and marked attention that she attracted the notice of Miss Strong, who followed the direction of her looks and pounced upon the offender.

“Ingred Saxon, what have you there? Bring those things to me immediately and put them on my desk!”

With a crimson face Ingred obeyed, and handed over into the teacher’s custody:

A black velvet cat.

A small golliwog.

A piece of four-leaved clover.

A stone with a hole in it.

An ivory pig.

Miss Strong smiled cynically.

“At fifteen years of age,” she remarked, “I should have thought a girl would have advanced a little further than playthings of this description. The Kindergarten would evidently be a more fit form for you than Va! You lose five order marks.”

Five order marks! Ingred gasped with amazed indignation. One at a time was the usual forfeit, but to lose five “at one fell swoop” seemed excessive, and would make a considerable difference to her weekly record. She blazed against the injustice. No girl in the form had ever had so severe punishment.

“Oh, Miss Strong!” she protested hotly. “Five! I haven’t really done anything more than heaps of the others. It’s not fair!”

Now if Ingred had really hoped to get her sentence remitted she could not have done a more absolutely suicidal thing. A mistress may overlook some faults, but she will not stand “cheek.” The discipline of the form was at stake, and Miss Strong was not a mistress to be trifled with. Her little figure absolutely quivered with dignity, and though physically she was shorter than her pupil, morally she seemed to tower yards. She fixed her clear dark eyes in a kind of hypnotic stare on Ingred and remarked witheringly:

“That will do! I don’t allow any girl to speak to me in this fashion! You’ll take a cross for conduct as well as losing the five order marks. You may go to your seat now.”

Ingred walked back to her desk covered with humiliation. To be publicly rebuked before the whole form was an unpleasant experience, particularly for a warden. Beatrice, Francie, and several others were holding up self-righteous noses, though their desks contained an equal assortment of mascots. Ingred, still seething, made little attempt to listen to the rest of the lecture, and was obliged to pass the questions which came to her afterwards on the subject-matter. She was heartily thankful when eleven o’clock brought the brief ten minutes “break.”

“Well, you have been a lunatic this morning!” said Beatrice, passing her, biscuits in hand, in the cloakroom. “What possessed you to go and lose the tennis-court for the form?”

“If you hadn’t stared so hard at me Miss Strong would never have noticed.”

“Oh, of course! Throw the blame on somebody else! You’re always the ‘little white hen that never lays astray.’ ”

“Kitty and Evie and Belle and I had arranged a set!” grumbled Cicely Denham. “It’s most unfair, this rule of punishing the whole form for what one girl does!”

“Go and tell Miss Burd so then!” flared Ingred. “It hasn’t been very successful so far to tell teachers they’re not fair, but you may have better luck than I had. She’ll probably say: ‘Oh, yes, Cicely dear, I’ll rearrange the rules at once!’ So like her, isn’t it?”

“Now you’re sark! Almost as sarky as the Snark herself!” commented Cicely, as Ingred, choking over a last biscuit, stumped away.

There is much written nowadays about the unconscious power of thought waves, and certainly one grumbler can often spread dissatisfaction through an entire community. Perhaps the black looks which Ingred encountered from the disappointed tennis-players in her form turned into naughty sprites who whispered treason in the ears of the juniors, or perhaps it was a mere coincidence that mutiny suddenly broke out in the Lower School. It began with a company of ten-year-olds who, with pencil boxes and drawing books, were being escorted by Althea Riley, one of the prefects, along the corridor to the studio. Hitherto, by dint of judicious curbing, they had always walked two and two in decent line and had refrained from prohibited conversation. Today they surged upstairs in an unseemly rabble, chattering and talking like a flock of rooks or jackdaws at sunset. It was in vain that Althea tried to restore order, her efforts at discipline were simply scouted by the unruly mob, who rushed into the studio helter-skelter, took their places anyhow, and only controlled themselves at the entrance of Miss Godwin, the art mistress.

Althea, flushed, indignant, and most upset, sought her fellow-prefects.

“Shall I go and complain to Miss Burd?” she asked.

“Um⁠—I don’t think I should yet,” said Lispeth a little doubtfully. “You see, Miss Burd has given us authority and she likes us to use it ourselves as much as we can, without appealing to her. Of course in any extremity she’ll support us. I’ll pin up a notice in the junior cloakroom and see what effect that has. It may settle them.”

Lispeth stayed after four o’clock until the last coat and hat had disappeared from the hooks in the juniors’ dressing-room. Then she pinned her ultimatum on their notice board:

“In consequence of the extremely bad behavior of certain girls on the stairs this afternoon, the prefects give notice that should any repetition of such conduct occur, the names of the offenders will be taken and they will be reported to Miss Burd for punishment.”

“That ought to finish those kids!” she thought as she pushed in the drawing-pins.

There was more than the usual amount of buzzing conversation next morning as