For the School Colours Part 3

"Then, what are you?"

"I'm a boarder," announced Adah with dignity.

The junior sn.i.g.g.e.red rudely.

"Boarders have no right to interfere with us, that I can see. We'll do as we like. Come along, girls, follow the leader!" and, turning, she made a long leap across the bed, landing in the edging of blue lobelias.

Adah stood by, raging and impotent. She would have interfered by force, but very fortunately at that moment the school bell rang, and the irrepressible juniors desisted from their occupation and raced one another to the side door. Adah followed thoughtfully. Her brain was a whirlpool of new impressions, most of them not at all favourable, and she had not yet had time to a.s.sort them and put them into mental pigeon-holes. One idea loomed large. Silverside was going to be an utterly different place from what it had been before. That brief tussle had revealed much. Hitherto the little girls had been well-behaved children, rather in awe of their elders, and easily held in check; these new juniors seemed a different generation, and a very perverse and untoward one.

Everything, indeed, was changed. Her form room overflowed with strangers, and there was a new mistress, whose methods were different from those of Miss Hopkins. Adah, mindful of her position as oldest pupil, did the honours of the school, showing teacher and girls where books, exercise paper, and other necessaries were kept, but she performed this charity more in the spirit of _n.o.blesse oblige_ than with any goodwill.

When the last of the day girls had taken her departure after four o'clock, Adah heaved an immense sigh of relief, and sent a scout round to call a boarders' meeting for 5.15 prompt.

Immediately after tea, therefore, all the resident pupils of Silverside a.s.sembled in the summer-house at the bottom of the garden. They had chosen that spot because it was secluded, and they were not likely to be disturbed. Their consultations were to be of a private nature, and they did not wish any mistress to overhear them. The summer-house was not very large--much too small, in fact, to contain twenty-four girls--but some squatted on the steps, and some on the window-sills, and some overflowed on to the lawn. Adah, seated on the little rustic table, looked round to see that her full audience was a.s.sembled, and opened the proceedings in a voice that trembled with indignation.

"It seems to me, and I expect to most of you, that matters here have just about come to a crisis. The school's turned topsy-turvy. It's been invaded by this horde of day girls, and everything is altogether different. Now, Silverside has always existed for the boarders. Miss Thompson has recognized that, and we've had a great many special privileges. It's _we_ who have set the tone of the school, and made Silverside what it is. As long as we outnumbered the day girls that was pretty easy, but, now that this huge flock has trooped in, it may be a difficult matter to cope with them. We must make up our minds what we intend to do. Has anybody any suggestion to offer?"

"I thought of writing to my father, and asking him to take me away at Christmas," propounded Irma, flushing with nervousness at the sound of her own voice.

Adah gazed at her with an expression of mingled amazement and sorrow.

"Irma Ridley, I shouldn't have expected this from _you_! Leave the school, indeed! Where's your loyalty? I hope you haven't been spreading such an abominable notion. No, indeed! We Silversiders mustn't desert the old ship. We've got to stick to her, and steer her course for her through very troubled waters. Don't let anyone suggest ratting again."

Irma, covered with confusion, blushed yet more furiously. The sentiment of the meeting was against her, and she felt that she had blundered badly. She murmured an incoherent apology, and began nervously tying knots in her pocket-handkerchief.

"Surely someone has a better suggestion to offer than this?" said Adah, her clear blue eyes searching the faces of her companions. "Please don't be afraid of airing your opinions."

"Silverside must stick to its traditions," ventured Joyce Edwards. "We mustn't let everything be swamped by the invasion."

"Let's make a Boarders' League," proposed Isobel Norris, "and pledge ourselves to hold together and support one another--a kind of Blood Brotherhood, you know."

"The very thing!" agreed everybody.

The idea was so manifestly satisfactory that each girl wondered why it had not occurred to herself to suggest it. To bind themselves in so close a bond of union seemed picturesque and romantic in the extreme. It appealed to their imaginations tremendously.

"We shall be fighting for the school colours!" said Adah, with a light of enthusiasm shining in her blue eyes. "It's _we_, the little band of old pupils, who are to preserve the ideals of the school. These new girls must be made to realize that they're at Silverside now, and not at The Hawthorns."

"I guess we'll rub it into them," murmured Laura Talbot to the still-confused Irma.

It was a new girl after all, however, who made the really practical suggestion of the meeting. Avelyn Watson had sat very quietly during the proceedings, feeling herself in a somewhat awkward position. She had been a pupil at The Hawthorns for two years, but her mother had never really liked the school, and had removed her from it the preceding Christmas. Avelyn had come to Silverside quite ready to embrace its traditions and to erase The Hawthorns from her memory. To be confronted with more than fifty of her old schoolfellows, some of whom had to-day claimed affectionate intimacy with her, had been somewhat of a shock.

She did not quite know where she stood. She was not sure whether the boarders were disposed to receive her into the bosom of the League, or if they would regard her as among the aliens. One fact, culled from former experience, rose to her lips. She was too shy to state it publicly, but she bent towards Laura Talbot and whispered:

"Tell them, if they want to do anything, they ought to have prefects--you see, I _know_!"

Laura immediately broached the suggestion as her own, and gained the whole credit for it. The idea, hinted at by Annie Broadside and Gladys Wilks in the morning, had been fermenting in Adah's brain all day, and she grasped at it eagerly.

"It would give us just the authority we want," she agreed. "We'd better make a deputation and speak to Miss Thompson about it. Who'll go with me?"

The Princ.i.p.al, busy and burdened with a hundred new cares, sat in her study that evening answering letters from parents. She pushed away her papers rather wearily as the deputation, consisting of Adah Gartley, Isobel Norris, Consie Arkwright, and Joyce Edwards, entered the room with a kind of bashful a.s.surance. She was tired, but she was always ready to listen to what her girls had to say. It had been her invariable rule to meet them half-way. She heard them now patiently, asking many questions, for they were shy in stating their case, and did not at first explain their objects lucidly. When at length she had got at the gist of the matter, she leaned back in her chair and thought for a moment or two before she replied.

"What you say is very true. The influx of another school into Silverside may certainly endanger our old traditions. I look to you boarders, who have been with me for years, to uphold every principle for which we have hitherto stood. I agree that you might find your task very difficult unless you were armed with some authority. We have never had school officers before, but that was because we did not feel them a necessity. I will try the experiment and see how it answers. You four are among my oldest pupils. You know what Silverside has stood for in the past, and you shall help to mould its future. I appoint you prefects, and give you power to report to me, or to any other mistress, breaches of discipline which come under your notice, and in certain cases to take off order marks. Adah, who is the eldest, and was first in last term's examination list, shall be head girl. I will announce this at nine o'clock to-morrow. My great object is to amalgamate the two schools into one as quickly as possible, and I trust that you will not show any favouritism towards old girls, but will give the new ones equal justice."

"We'll do our best, Miss Thompson," declared Adah, Isobel, Consie, and Joyce in an obedient chorus.

And doubtless they really meant to do their best; but schoolgirls are prejudiced beings, and apt to be conservative to the core. They had decided beforehand that the former pupils of Silverside, and the boarders in particular, had the sole prerogative of high ideals, culture, and gentility, and that such refinements could not, and did not, exist among those who had come from The Hawthorns. In their minds the division was as complete as that between the sheep and the goats.

They looked upon the Hawthorners as heathen, and upon themselves in the light of missionaries. They set to work very patronizingly to make their influence felt. Now, there is nothing which most people resent so much as patronage. The Hawthorners had been happy enough in their old school, and they were keenly insulted at being given to understand that they were regarded by the Silversiders as inferiors. They held indignation meetings of their own on the subject.

"Why should those stuck-up things lord it over us?" exploded Annie Broadside.

"They're not as clever as we are. We beat them easily in cla.s.s," added Gladys Wilks.

"I should just think we do. They're simply not in the running at maths.," declared Gertrude Howells.

"And yet they're prefects, if you please."

"At The Hawthorns prefects were always chosen from those who got the highest marks in the examinations."

"You were top last term, Annie, and would have been head girl if the school had gone on."

"You were only two marks behind me, Gladys, and you know Miss Perry hadn't counted the botany papers. It was really a toss-up between us."

"Well, we're both out of it now."

"Very much so."

"I don't call it fair that these four boarders should have all the authority."

"It isn't!"

"If they think we're going to knuckle under to them they're very much mistaken."

"Giving themselves such airs about being old Silversiders, and treating us like inferiors!"

"Can't we do anything?"

"Let's form an 'Old Hawthorners' Guild', and vow to stick to one another. There are more of us than of them, and we'll beat them in lessons and at games, and let them see who's inferior."

"Right you are! You shall be captain, Annie."

"Then you shall be secretary, Gladys."

"I know everybody will be only too delighted to join."

"They will. But don't let those Silversiders know one single word about it."

"They shan't, indeed!"

"We're here, and the school is as much ours as theirs!"