Just Gerry Part 24

The Lower Fifth gasped a little. Jack had certainly confessed with a vengeance! Somehow it had never before struck the Lower Fifth that Gerry's action on that particular occasion had been plucky.

"But of course, when you come to think about it in the right light, it was plucky of her," Hilda Burns said afterwards, when the matter came up for discussion in the Lower Fifth sitting-room. "It must have needed quite a lot of courage for Gerry to say what she did that evening."

"Yes. It was moral courage," said Jack. "She wanted most awfully badly to stick in with us and be friendly. But she just felt she had to stay out because she felt so sorry for Miss Burton, although she knew how beastly we should all be to her."

But that was afterwards. At the moment the Lower Fifth was scarcely able to view the courage of Gerry Wilmott in any light at all; it was so flabbergasted at having its past delinquencies cast up at it in this manner, and so dismayed at Muriel's suggestion that it should go and acquaint Miss Burton with the full details of the matter.

There was a moment's hesitation, then suddenly Dorothy Pemberton made a movement of acquiescence.

"All right, we will!" she announced. Then, turning round to the rest of the form, she asked briefly:

"Are you all game?"

"Yes," came unanimously from the ranks of the Lower Fifth.

Muriel Paget rose to her feet and faced her visitors with a pleased smile.

"Good kids!" she said approvingly. "Cut along at once and get it over.

And then come back to me afterwards, and we'll see if we can't arrange some sort of public reception to show Gerry that we're sorry for all the things she's had to put up with this term. I think you'll find Miss Burton in her study if you go now."

Then the Lower Fifth, subdued, but resolute in its determination, filed out in a body and wended its way towards Miss Burton's room.

CHAPTER XXV

CLOUDS ARE ROLLED AWAY

It took some time to make Miss Burton acquainted with the true facts of the case. But when at last the mistress realised how very unjust she had been to the girl whose plucky conduct was the talk of the whole school, mistresses and girls alike, she was filled with remorse, and almost as penitent as the Lower Fifth. She hurried off then and there to the sick-room, and made ample amends to Gerry, remitting all the bad marks she had piled upon her unfortunate pupil during that black week, and expressing her regret over and over again.

Sister had to intervene at last and send her away.

"You'll have my patient in a fever between you all before you've done,"

the nurse said impatiently. "There's Miss Oakley been talking to her for a good hour, and Miss Caton and Miss Latham! There isn't anybody going to come in here now for the rest of the evening! And I'm not going to talk to you either, Gerry. You must just read your book and lie quiet."

Gerry was nothing loath to do that. The strain of the past week, indeed of the whole term, culminating in the excitement of the afternoon, had told upon her considerably. She looked so white and tired that it was no wonder Sister had been moved into forbidding any more visitors. But in spite of her tiredness, and her natural sorrow at poor Bruno's untimely fate, the girl was very happy. She curled herself up under the rug, and lay gazing into the fire with her book in her hand and a little smile on her lips. She had made good now in the eyes of the school. n.o.body would ever be able to call her a coward again. And--best of everything, perhaps--Jack was to be her friend.

Gerry knew well enough what that impulsive squeeze of her hand had meant without any explanations. Her first term at Wakehurst Priory was nearly over. It had been rather a terrible term--Gerry gave a little shudder as she looked back over some of its incidents. But many more terms lay in front of her, and though they might bring troubles and trials, yet somehow Gerry felt quite sure that none of them would be quite so bad as the one she had just come through.

She stayed up in the sick-room all the evening, and was served by Sister with a dainty little supper, sent from Miss Oakley's own table--soup and chicken and jelly and cream, with a cup of delicious coffee to finish with. Sister had intended that her patient should go straight to the Pink Dormitory when bed-time came, and not descend to the lower regions again that night.

"I'd send you there at once, but it isn't much good my letting you go until the others are up," she said. "They'll only go waking you up with their noise just as you've got to sleep, and you'd be better lying quietly here. I've a good mind to fetch your things along and let you sleep in the sick-ward to-night. Only you'll probably be all right in the morning, and it hardly seems worth while."

"Oh, no! Please let me go back to the dormitory to-night!" pleaded Gerry in alarm. In spite of her newborn courage, the prospect of spending a night alone in the sick-ward was anything but pleasant.

Gerry was not to outgrow all her old terrors just at once. That perhaps could hardly be expected.

"Very well," agreed Sister. "If you'll promise to lie quiet and not talk to the others, you shall go. There's the Chapel bell just ringing. We'll wait until we hear them come out from prayers, then we'll get you along to the dormitory and into your bed by the time they've done saying good-night to Miss Oakley."

It was the custom at Wakehurst Priory for the headmistress to stand by the doorway of the Great Hall, whither the girls were marshalled when they came out from Chapel, and smile a quiet good-night to them, as they filed by her on their way to bed.

Sister's programme, however, was slightly disarranged after all. She had just got Gerry to her feet, and was preparing to whisk her off to the Pink Dormitory, when Jack Pym burst into the sick-room, a little breathless with haste, and apparently labouring under some intense excitement, with a request from the headmistress that Gerry might be allowed to go down into the Great Hall and say good-night. Sister demurred at first, but a request from Miss Oakley was almost equivalent to a command. And as Gerry had really recovered, except for the tiredness which was a natural reaction from her excitement, she at last agreed to let her go.

"Mind you be quick up though when she's finished with you," she said.

"I shall be waiting for you, to see that you get quickly into bed, so mind you don't dawdle once you've said good-night."

"What does Miss Oakley want me for, Jack?" Gerry inquired, as Jack hurried her through the pa.s.sages. But Jack only mumbled something indistinctly under her breath, and Gerry was obliged to control her curiosity until the Great Hall was reached.

The girls were drawn up in the Hall as usual, but, rather to Gerry's surprise, Miss Oakley was not there. Instead, Muriel Paget occupied the post of honour by the door. Muriel had been making a speech, it seemed, though it was not until some time afterwards that Gerry learned what it was all about. Then it was Jack who told her.

"She'd got permission, you see, from Miss Oakley to tell the girls that you weren't the least little bit of a German, that your father had been an amba.s.sador or something, and that you'd lived in Germany when you were small, and that was how you learned to speak their beastly lingo so well, and that you hadn't done any of the sneaky things we thought you had--that they were all accidents the whole way through," Jack informed her friend some days later during one of their _tete-a-tete_ walks, which soon became a regular proceeding.

When the two girls entered the Great Hall, Muriel intercepted Gerry and retained her beside her, while Jack slipped away to her own place amongst the rest of the Lower Fifth.

"Gerry," said the head girl, raising her voice so that every word she spoke could be heard at the farthest end of the Hall, "we've been talking about you, and I've been explaining some things about you to the girls. And Miss Oakley said we might ask you to come down so that we could tell you a little of what we think of you--not only for your courage in stopping poor old Bruno this afternoon, and probably saving any amount of people from being bitten--but also for all the pluck you've shown this term under very trying circ.u.mstances."

Then, as Gerry turned suddenly crimson with embarra.s.sment, the head girl turned to the expectant school.

"Now, then!" she called. "Three cheers for Geraldine Wilmott! 'German Gerry' no longer! Hip--hip--hip----"

"Hurrah!" shouted the school, and the cheering went on for so long that Muriel had to intervene at last.

"That's enough," she said, holding up her hand for silence. "There's something else I want to say. I want to tell Gerry--Geraldine, I mean," she added, correcting herself, "that n.o.body is going to use her horrid nickname any longer. We're all agreed upon that, aren't we, girls? Geraldine is Geraldine from this time forward."

But there came an exclamation of dismay from Gerry at that.

"Oh, Muriel!" she cried, gazing at the head girl with piteous eyes, and forgetting for the moment her confusion at finding herself the centre of interest like this. "But I'd _like_ to keep the nickname, if you don't mind! Every body calls me Gerry now, and I don't want to be Geraldine again at all. I'd ever so much rather go on being just Gerry."

A ripple of laughter ran round the room at this spontaneous outburst from the shy new girl. Gerry coloured up in still greater embarra.s.sment as she heard it, but Muriel put her hand very kindly on the younger girl's shoulder.

"Gerry it shall be, then, if you want it so," she said, with a smile.

"But we'll drop the prefix, shall we! You don't want _that_. Girls, you've just given three cheers for Geraldine Wilmott. Suppose we give three more for--Just Gerry."

"Gerry, Gerry! Just Gerry!" cried the girls. And the cheers which rang out, accompanied by musical honours this time, confused Gerry so much that she ran out of the room to hide her emotion, and was discovered later by an irate Sister sobbing her heart out for joy on her bed in Cubicle Thirteen--the luck of which had surely changed at last!

"What on earth Miss Oakley meant by letting you send for the child to upset her like this, I don't know!" exclaimed that scandalised official severely, when Muriel and Monica came seeking the runaway with eager penitence. "It's enough to make her light-headed on the top of the shock she's had. Oh, don't talk to me about not meaning it! You just go and let me get her into bed. And for goodness' sake keep the dormitory quiet to-night, if you don't want her in the sick-room with a nervous breakdown in the morning!"

But it isn't tears of joy that hurt people! And after a night of unbroken slumber, the occupant of Cubicle Thirteen awoke refreshed in mind and body--unless you count a slightly swollen nose--to begin a new and happier career at Wakehurst Priory as--Just Gerry.

THE END