Just Gerry Part 14

"I'm most awfully sorry, Jack," she said miserably. "If only my beastly pocket hadn't burst it would have been all right! I always seem to be getting you into trouble! I am such a stupid a.s.s over things!"

"Oh, that's all right," said Jack, trying to be magnanimous, although she could not help agreeing with Gerry about her stupidity. Gerry certainly seemed an expert at doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.

"You couldn't help your pocket bursting, of course."

But in spite of her words, Gerry could not help feeling that both her companions blamed her a little for the unfortunate accident--Nita more so, perhaps, than Jack. It would have been some consolation if she had been allowed to share fully in the punishment, but Jack, with that scrupulous honesty of hers, had effectually prevented her from doing that. Gerry would gladly have done the lines for all three of them, but that, of course, was impossible, and she could only bear her own share of the burden laid upon them.

The organ recital was over by the time the three reached the Lower Fifth sitting-room again, and the members of the form had returned to their usual Sunday evening occupations. Grumbling greatly at their affliction, Jack and Nita got out their pens and paper and made a beginning at their punishment task, for they knew that it would be all that they could do to get the lines finished by the required time. The rest of the Lower Fifth listened sympathetically to their tale of woe, and many were the censures upon the new mistress for her unsportsman-like manner of dealing with the affair.

"Of course she ought to have lectured you herself, and let you off with a conduct mark at most," exclaimed Dorothy Pemberton. "Fancy taking you up to the Head for a little thing like that!"

"But what a silly a.s.s you must have been, Gerry Wilmott, to go letting them drop just when she was going away," said Phyllis Tressider.

Phyllis still bore a grudge against Gerry because of the rowing the head girl had given her on Gerry's behalf, and she had acquiesced very unwillingly into taking the new girl into favour.

"I couldn't help it, my pocket burst," said Gerry. And Jack, although she herself blamed Gerry a little for the accident, hastened to take her part.

"Shut up, Phyllis, and leave Gerry alone. It wasn't her fault. It was that beast of a Miss Burton! Never mind, though, we'll be revenged upon her to-morrow. Won't she be wild when she finds that we've none of us done a single stroke of the work she set!"

"She'll report us to Miss Oakley, right away--you see if she doesn't,"

prophesied Hilda Burns gloomily. "If she'll report a little thing like roasting chestnuts, she's sure to take a big matter like refusing to do our work up to the Head, too. We're in for an awful time, in my opinion. I think we were a.s.ses to have done it. It would have been better to have got even with her in some safer way."

"Well, it's too late now to begin repenting about it," said Jack cheerfully. "And, anyway, we're all in it together, whatever happens."

And then she and Nita and Gerry settled down to their punishment lines.

CHAPTER XV

THE LOWER FIFTH IS MUTE

The first lesson on Monday morning was with Miss Latham. The Lower Fifth, by way of marking the contrast, or perhaps in order to soothe their guilty consciences, had given extra attention to their preparation for the English mistress, and matters progressed swimmingly in consequence. Miss Latham dealt out good marks lavishly. Then, with a word of praise for the careful manner in which the form had prepared its work, she made way for Miss Burton.

It was the German lesson first.

"Let me see--I set an essay for your preparation, didn't I?" began the new mistress briskly. "Hilda Burns, you are head of this form, kindly collect the papers and bring them to me."

Hilda rose from her desk, then hesitated, while her eye swept round the cla.s.sroom. Every member of the form sat rigidly at attention, while every desk was bare of essay papers. With a little gasp of nervousness, Hilda endeavoured to break the news of the Lower Fifth's unpreparedness for the lesson.

"If you please, Miss Burton, I don't think there are any essays to be given in."

Miss Burton stared at her in undisguised amazement.

"No essays? What do you mean, child? Do you mean to tell me that n.o.body in the whole form has had time to do their preparation?"

"I--I don't think there are any essays done," evaded Hilda.

Miss Burton continued to stare at the head of her form for a moment or two. Then a grim expression came over her face and she turned to the other girls.

"Hands up, please, those of you who have done the essay that I set,"

she commanded.

Not a hand was raised. The whole form sat in rigid stillness; and the mistress put her question in a slightly different form.

"Hands up those of you who have not done it," she said.

With a promptness that would have done the form credit in a drill display, a hand shot up from every girl, while a stifled giggle ran round the room at the look of blank astonishment that spread over the mistress's face.

"I shall be obliged if someone will enlighten me as to why this work has not been done," Miss Burton said at length in her stiffest manner.

But although she waited for an answer, none came. Once more she turned to Hilda.

"Hilda Burns, will you please explain why the form has not done the preparation that I set?" she demanded. But there was no satisfactory explanation to be got out of Hilda. The head of the form blushed and stammered and fidgeted, but no coherent answer was forthcoming from her, and at last the mistress gave up the attempt to elicit one.

"Since you refuse to give me any explanation, I can only put down your omission to prepare the essay to rank laziness," she remarked icily.

"Possibly you thought that as I was a newcomer, you could do what you liked in my cla.s.ses. You will find that you have made a mistake, for I a.s.sure you that I am going to stand no nonsense. Of course, there will be no marks for this lesson, and you will write the essay for the next German cla.s.s in addition to the fresh work which I shall set you. I had intended to read your essays aloud and criticise them in cla.s.s, but since they are not written I cannot, of course, do that."

"Thank the Lord they aren't written, then," muttered Jack in an aside to Phyllis Tressider. Unfortunately for Jack, Miss Burton's quick ears caught the remark and she pounced upon the offender in a trice.

"Joanna Pym, take a bad mark," she snapped. Then she resumed her address to the rest of the form.

"Since I cannot carry out my original intention of criticising your essays, I am going to ask you questions in German which I shall expect you to answer in that language. Dorothy Pemberton, you are sitting at the end of a row, I shall begin with you. Everybody pay attention, please. Dorothy, 'Was hast du wahrend deinen Sommerferien getan?'"

It was a question to which Dorothy could have found any amount of suitable answers, but, mindful of the compact with the form, she sat in silence and the question pa.s.sed to her next-door neighbour, Phyllis.

Phyllis also pa.s.sed it, and thereafter Miss Burton went from one girl to another without receiving any attempt at a reply. When the whole form had pa.s.sed the question in dead silence, the mistress, quivering with anger, propounded another.

"'Warum halten die Dichter der Fruhling fur die schonsten der Jahreszeiten?'" she inquired, with a ferocity which was rather at variance with the peaceful tenor of the question.

Once again it was Dorothy's turn to answer. Once again she pa.s.sed the question, and once again it travelled right round the form without eliciting a response in German or in any other language.

"Does anybody know the meaning of this sentence?" asked Miss Burton sarcastically, still struggling to preserve her self-control.

Everybody knew it, of course, but n.o.body would condescend to say so, and the cla.s.s retained its stubborn demeanour.

Then the mistress could contain her wrath no longer. The storm broke, and for a quarter of an hour the Lower Fifth sat and listened to a raging denunciation of its stupidity, its cra.s.s ignorance and unbelievable insolence, poured out upon them in no measured terms. By rights, the Lower Fifth should have writhed in its seats as it listened to the fiery condemnation of its new form-mistress. But in reality it did no such thing. It was delighted at having aroused the enemy to such indignant anger, and the members of the form drank in with unholy joy the richness of the abuse poured out upon them.

Towards the end of the lesson, however, Miss Burton suddenly calmed down.

"It is evidently no use _my_ saying anything to you," she said. "We will see what Miss Oakley has to say when she hears about it."

It was a threat for which the Lower Fifth were prepared, certainly, but one which filled them with considerable uneasiness, nevertheless. The German lesson was over at last, but it was followed immediately by an algebra cla.s.s which Miss Burton was also supposed to take. Absolutely no attempt had been made to touch the preparation set for it, and as soon as she had ascertained this fact, the mistress adopted a line of action for which the Lower Fifth was totally unprepared.

"Kindly put all your books and papers away in your desks. Pencils and indiarubbers, too, and rulers. Has everybody put everything away?

Then you will all of you kindly sit in silence during this next hour.

I do not intend to waste my time in trying to teach a cla.s.s which refuses to allow itself to be taught. Since you have all elected to do nothing this morning, you can sit and _do_ it, while I correct exercises for the Upper Fourth."

And to the form's dismay, the new mistress immediately set to work upon a pile of exercise books, leaving the Lower Fifth to sit idle and silent until the lesson should be over.

It is one thing to do nothing while an angry mistress is trying to make you work! Quite another to sit doing it in deadly boredom for a whole hour! The Lower Fifth had not known before how long an hour could be.

There were not even pencils to fidget about with, and the form felt that it would almost rather have been marched at once to Miss Oakley than have to endure this dreadful inaction any longer. But Miss Burton, having made up her mind to the penance her form should do, was adamant. She sat industriously correcting exercises, and addressed no remark at all to the rebels, except to deal out order marks when people fidgeted more than usual. By the time the hour was over quite a lot of these distinctions had been gained.

"Well, we shall have some marks to give in, anyway," said Jack, when the Lower Fifth was released at eleven o'clock recess to refresh itself with cocoa and biscuits in the dining-hall. "Better have bad marks to give in, I suppose, than none at all!"