Just Gerry Part 4

"Yes, Miss Latham," replied Margaret, a rather nondescript individual who occupied the desk next to the one that had been allotted to Geraldine; and the mistress, gathering together her papers, prepared to leave the room.

"It is a little early yet for your next cla.s.s," she observed, as she rose from her seat. "But I have to see Miss Oakley before going on to the Middle Fifth, so I cannot give you quite your full time this morning. Who is head of this form? You, Hilda? Very well, then, see that n.o.body talks until Miss Parrot comes to you. You can be looking up some of those dates I want you to learn while you are waiting." And the mistress departed from the Lower Fifth cla.s.sroom, leaving an apparently studious and orderly form behind her.

For a few minutes strict silence prevailed in the cla.s.sroom. But after a while the silence was broken by subdued t.i.tterings from the back row, and Hilda Burns, the head of the form, turned sharply round to discover that Phyllis Tressider and Dorothy Pemberton were leaning over Jack Pym's desk. Jack was drawing busily.

"I say, do be quiet. Didn't you hear what Miss Latham said?"

remonstrated Hilda, rather half-heartedly it must be confessed. The three girls in question did not take much notice of her appeal, and after a moment or two she made it again.

Dorothy turned to her with a delighted grin.

"We're not talking--we're only laughing. Hilda, do come and look!

Jack's doing caricatures of the mistresses. Aren't they ripping?"

Several of the girls gathered round Jack's desk, Hilda herself amongst them.

"Oh, I say, how topping! Do do one of Pretty Polly and give it to me!"

"All right, I will presently. Wait till she comes in and then I'll try and do her. I have to see the person I'm caricaturing or else I can't get them properly. I did that one of Miss Latham during the history lesson just now. She never twigged."

"I don't wonder," declared Phyllis admiringly. "I didn't either. I thought you were just making notes. But when did you learn to do it, Jack? Of course I know you always were good at drawing, but I hadn't the slightest idea that you could do such ripping caricatures."

"I didn't know it myself," replied Jack, still busily working with her pencil. "But when we were at the seaside this year we came across a man who did them for the papers. At least I came across him. He saved my shoes and stockings from being washed away by the tide while I was paddling one morning. And then we all chummed up with him and he showed us some of his sketches, and we all started trying to do the people we saw on the beach, and he said mine were quite decent for a kid. There you are, Dorothy, there's your beloved Miss Latham. Who is it you want, Hilda? Pretty Polly? All right, I'll do her if I get the chance."

"Do one for me, Jack, there's a darling," cried a girl sitting close to Geraldine, and then the whole form began clamouring for drawings of their most beloved, or most hated, mistresses. Hilda felt it inc.u.mbent upon her to raise her voice again in protest at last.

"I say, _do_ be quiet! Miss Parrot will be along directly. There'll be an awful bust-up if she catches us talking like this."

But her remonstrance did not have much effect, except that it rather served to increase the confusion. For Phyllis Tressider, crumpling up a sheet of paper into a ball, flung it at her with an injunction to "Shut up, dear old thing!" and the rest of the form promptly followed her example. In a few seconds the head of the Lower Fifth was almost snowed under with missiles of various sorts.

"I say--stop it!" she gasped, dodging an exercise book, only to receive a piece of india-rubber full in the eye. Then, as a quick step sounded in the pa.s.sage outside, she sat up straight in her desk in an att.i.tude of sudden attention.

"Cave--Miss Parrot!" she whispered hoa.r.s.ely. In a moment the Lower Fifth was sitting rigidly at attention again, every sign of the late battle cleared out of sight as though by a miracle. Only Geraldine, new to scenes like this, not realising what this sudden transformation might mean, was still sitting twisted round in her desk in the position from which she had been watching the uproar in interested amus.e.m.e.nt.

She soon realised what the sudden change meant though, when Miss Parrot, the form-mistress of the Lower Fifth, known throughout the school as "Pretty Polly" from her name and her supposed resemblance to the bird in question, came briskly into the room. The mistress's quick ears had caught the sound of the conflict from afar, and she at once pounced upon Geraldine's unconventional att.i.tude as being the only sign of disorder her sharp eyes could perceive.

"Geraldine Wilmott, what are you doing, sitting like that in cla.s.s?

Turn round properly at once. I heard a great deal of noise as I came along--has anything been happening?"

There was no answer to her question; and after surveying the virtuously innocent faces before her the mistress was about to let the matter drop--reflecting that after all it was the first day of term, when a little leniency might be advisable--when her attention was attracted by the sight of a screwed-up paper ball lying on the floor just in front of Geraldine's desk. All the other missiles had been dexterously cleared away; but Geraldine, not realising any necessity for doing so, had failed to remove the one sign of the battle that had fallen near her desk. Indeed, she had hardly noticed that any had fallen there.

Miss Parrot was of a very orderly nature. In her cla.s.sroom nothing was ever permitted to be out of place, and the sight of the ball of paper was too much for her to pa.s.s over.

"What is that untidy piece of paper doing there?" she demanded sharply.

"Is it yours, Geraldine? Bring it here to me."

Thus directed, Geraldine rose from her desk, and picking up the ball of paper took it to the mistress. Having delivered it, she was about to return to her seat, but the mistress stayed her with uplifted hand.

"Wait," she said authoritatively. "I want to see what this is. Some of you have been up to mischief in my absence." And she slowly unrolled the ball of paper, finally disclosing a rough copy of the caricature of Miss Latham, which Jack had discarded for some reason, and which Phyllis, all unaware of what it was, had used as a missile.

Although it was unfinished, the sketch bore a sufficient likeness to the mistress for Miss Parrot to recognise the original. Her face grew stern as she held the paper out to the girl who was standing beside her desk.

"Is this your work?" she asked in a cold tone.

Geraldine glanced at the paper. Then she flushed suddenly crimson with nervous shyness, and stammered out in confusion:

"N--n--no, Miss Parrot."

The mistress looked at her suspiciously.

"Are you _sure_?" she said.

Geraldine's confusion grew still greater, and the mistress felt that her suspicions were justified. The girl's stammered denial did nothing to allay them, and her voice when she spoke again was very stern indeed.

"Geraldine, you are not telling me the truth. You do know something about this paper. I command you to tell me at once what it is you know."

"I--I can't tell you anything about it," said poor Geraldine, not knowing what to do or say. But this answer only served to anger Miss Parrot yet more.

"You will please oblige me by thinking about it until you _can_ tell me something," she remarked icily. "Go and stand over there," pointing to a place facing the rest of the cla.s.s, "until you can remember whether or not this paper belongs to you. If that does not a.s.sist your memory I shall be obliged to take you to Miss Oakley after cla.s.s."

Geraldine made a movement towards the appointed spot, but before she could reach it, Jack Pym rose abruptly in her desk.

"Please, Miss Parrot, I can't see that paper but I don't think it's got anything to do with Geraldine. If it's a drawing, I expect it belongs to me."

Miss Parrot's eyebrows went up.

"Indeed! Wait a moment, Geraldine. Suppose you come here, Jack, and see if you can identify it."

Jack made her way rather sulkily to Miss Parrot's desk.

"Yes, it's mine," she said. "I did it for a joke."

"A joke in very questionable taste, _I_ think," said the mistress severely. "I am afraid I shall have to discourage your sense of humour, Jack, since it hardly accords with my own. You will take a conduct mark, please, and forfeit next Sat.u.r.day's half-holiday. And I hope this may be a lesson to you to refrain for the future from using your undoubted talent for drawing in making vulgar representations of those who are put in authority over you. You may go back to your seat.

And, Geraldine, you may return to yours. I am very sorry that I misjudged you; but really, you looked so guilty that I could not help thinking that you had something to do with the matter. Now, please, we will begin the lesson. We have wasted far too much time already."

The Lower Fifth dutifully turned to its books and plunged at the mistress's bidding into the intricacies of decimal fractions. But although Geraldine acquitted herself fairly well over the lesson that followed, she was not happy. She was miserable at the part she had played in getting Jack into trouble, and she had been, also, acutely conscious of hostile glances from her companions as she made her way back to her seat. Although it was not altogether her fault, she was uncomfortably aware that the caricature episode had not by any means enhanced her popularity with the rest of her form.

School life promised to be rather a difficult affair altogether, Geraldine reflected with a sigh.

CHAPTER VI

THE GERMAN LESSON

Geraldine was not long in discovering that her gloomy forebodings were amply justified. No sooner had morning school ended and the mistress departed from the cla.s.sroom, than Phyllis Tressider stalked up to her desk and confronted her.

"You little sneak!" she said angrily. "Going and getting Jack into a row like that! Don't you know that the first half-holiday in the term is always given up to selecting the hockey team? Now Jack won't be able to play, and it's ten chances to one she'll get left down in the third eleven when she might have been chosen for second with any luck!"

Geraldine remembered then Jack's confidences respecting her prospects for the second eleven, and her heart sank still lower.