The Madcap of the School Part 17

Everybody decided that the wood was worth the walk. They spent a delicious afternoon lying under the tall straight pines, with the sweet-smelling needles for a bed, watching the delicate and illusive effects of light filtering among the shimmering leaves of birches.

"I feel as if I ought to be picking something!" laughed Katherine, throwing pine cones at Raymonde. "If I live to be a hundred, I'll never forget this strawberry-gathering business. One got to do it automatically."

"You know the story, don't you, of the old man who described himself in the census as a picker?" said Miss Barton. "When he was asked to explain, he said: 'Well, in June I picks strawberries, and then I picks beans, and then I picks hops, then when them's over I picks pockets, and then I gets copped and sent to quod, and picks oak.u.m!' I shouldn't wonder if some of your gipsy friends, Raymonde, could boast of a similar record."

"I don't care--they're top-hole!" declared Raymonde, sticking up for the tribe.

"Who wants tea?" said Miss Lowe. "We've asked Miss Nelson and Miss Porter from the camp, and if we don't hurry back at once, we shall find them waiting for us when we return, and slanging us for being rude. Come along!"

Miss Lowe had casually informed Mrs. Marsden that she expected a few friends to tea, but had not mentioned anything about special preparation, thinking that they would carry the cups and saucers into the garden, and have it under the trees. Little did they know the surprise their enterprising landlady had in store for them. When they arrived at the farm they found her, dressed in her best attire, waiting at the door to receive them, and she proudly ushered them into the sitting-room, where she had spread forth a meal such as might be set before a particularly hungry a.s.semblage of Sunday School scholars.

A large ham, not yet quite cold, adorned one end of the table, and a big apple-pie the other, while down the centre were seven round jam-tarts, each measuring about seven inches in diameter. The cruets had been put in the middle of the table instead of Miss Barton's bowl of flowers, and there were several substantial platefuls of currant-bread. It was an extremely warm afternoon, and even to school-girl appet.i.tes the sight of such plenty at 4 p.m. was appalling. Miss Lowe's convulsed apologies sent the visitors into explosions.

"Look at the tarts!" choked Miss Barton. "They're all made with black-currant jam! There's one apiece for us, counting the apple-pie.

And the currant-bread is half an inch thick! Who'll take a slice of lukewarm ham? Oh, it's positively painful to laugh so hard! I never saw such a bean-feast in my life!"

"We certainly can't consume all these!" echoed Miss Lowe. "The children must eat up some of them for supper. It will take days to get through such a larderful! For once they'll be satiated with jam-tarts.

Well, I suppose it's an ill wind that blows n.o.body good. Still, if the baby comes to an untimely end through acute dyspepsia, I shan't be in the least surprised."

Mrs. Marsden seemed determined to entertain her guests, and had yet another surprise in store for them. She beckoned them into a little private parlour of her own, and showed them the paintings of her eldest boy, a youth of eighteen, who, she proudly a.s.sured them, had never had a drawing lesson in his life. It was not difficult to believe her, for the specimens were so funny that the spectators could hardly keep their faces straight. Horses with about as much shape as those in a child's Noah's ark, figures resembling Dutch dolls in rigidity, flowers daubed on with the crudest colours, and the final effort, a bird's-eye view of the village, consisting chiefly of tiled roofs and chimney-pots in lurid red and black.

"No doubt it has afforded him the supremest delight," whispered Miss Lowe to Miss Barton, "and it's evidently a subject of the utmost satisfaction to his mother, so I won't make carping criticisms, but take it as a moral for the necessity of due humility over one's own productions. Perhaps mine would be as diverting to an Academician as his are to me."

In the same room Mrs. Marsden showed her visitors a mysterious oil-painting, black with age and hideous beyond compare, which she informed them was an original portrait of Nell Gwynn. She supposed it to be immensely valuable, and was keeping it safe until prices rose a little higher still, after the war, when she had hopes of launching it on the auction rooms in London, and realizing a sum that would make her family's fortune.

"An ambition she'll never realize in this wide world," said Miss Barton afterwards, "for the thing is absolutely not genuine. It's not the right period for Nell Gwynn, and it's so atrociously badly painted that it's obviously the work of some village artist. She's in for a big disappointment some day, poor woman! I hadn't the heart to squash her, when she seemed so proud of it--especially as she was still a little huffy that we hadn't consumed her black-currant tarts!"

Though physically they were rather weary, the girls were sorry when their week's strawberry picking came to an end. It was found that when their canteen bills had been paid, and railway fares subtracted, they had each earned on an average a little over five shillings; some who were quicker pickers exceeding that amount, and others falling below.

They decided to pool the general proceeds, and present the sum cleared--4, 16_s_. 8_d_.--to the Hospital for Disabled Soldiers as their "bit" towards their country. They went back to school feeling highly patriotic, and burning to boast of their experiences to those slackers who had chosen the parental roof for their holidays.

"I'd have loved it!" protested Fauvette, "but I really did have a very nice time at home. My cousin was back on leave. He's in the Flying Corps, and he's six feet three in his stockings--and--well--I've got his photo upstairs, if you'd like to look at it."

"Oh, we're all accustomed to gipsies and poachers now, and don't think anything of airmen!" returned Morvyth nonchalantly (she was apt to sit on Fauvette). "You should see my snapshots of the strawberry pickers!"

"And mine!" broke in Cynthia Greene. "By the by, I wrote my name and school address on a card, and packed it inside one of my strawberry baskets. I put on it: 'Will the finder kindly write to a blue-eyed, fair-haired girl who feels lonely?'"

"Cynthia, you didn't!" exploded the others.

"I did--crystal! Why shouldn't I? Lonely soldiers beg for letters, and it's as lonely at school as in barracks any day, at least I find it so!"

"Suppose somebody takes you at your word and sends an answer?"

"I heartily and sincerely hope somebody will. It would be absolutely topping!"

CHAPTER XIV

Concerns Cynthia

"Look here!" said Hermie to Raymonde two days later, when the latter was helping the monitress to put away the wood-carving tools; "what's the matter with Cynthia Greene? She's behaving in the most idiotic fashion--goes mincing about the school, and sighing, and even mopping her eyes when she thinks anybody's looking at her. What's she posing about now?"

"She says she feels lonely--and fair-haired and blue-eyed--at least that's what she wrote inside her strawberry basket," volunteered Raymonde.

"What in the name of the Muses do you mean?"

Raymonde explained. The monitress listened aghast.

"Well, I call that the limit!" she exploded. "The little monkey! Why, Gibbie would slay her if she knew! Such an atrociously cheeky, unladylike thing to do, and putting her address here at the Grange!

Bringing discredit on the school! I don't suppose whoever finds it will take any notice."

"She's hoping for an answer," said Raymonde. "I believe she's just yearning to be mixed up in a love affair."

"At thirteen!" scoffed Hermie. "The silly young blighter! I'd like to shake her!"

"If you do, she'll be rather pleased than otherwise," returned Raymonde. "She'll pose as a martyr then, and say the world is unsympathetic. I'm beginning to know Cynthia Greene."

"I believe you're right!" said the monitress thoughtfully.

Sentiment was not encouraged at the Grange. Miss Beasley very rightly thought that girls should keep their childhood as long as possible, and that premature love affairs wiped the bloom off genuine later experiences. The school in general a.s.sumed the att.i.tude of scoffing at romance, except in the pages of the library books. It was not considered good form to allude to it. Tennis or hockey was a more popular topic.

"So Cynthia's trying to run the sentimental business," mused Hermie.

"It'll spread if we don't take care. It's as infectious as measles.

I'm not going to have all those juniors wandering about the garden, reading poetry instead of practising their cricket--it's not good enough. Yet it's difficult for a monitress to interfere. As you say, Cynthia would take a melancholy pride in being persecuted. Look here, Raymonde, you're a young blighter yourself sometimes, but you don't go in for this kind of rubbish. Can't you think of some plan to nip the thing in the bud before it goes further? You're generally inventive enough!"

"If I might have a free hand for a day or two, I might manage something," admitted Raymonde with caution.

"I'd tell the other monitresses to let you alone. I don't mind how you contrive it, as long as you knock the nonsense out of the juniors.

Cynthia Greene of all people, too! The former ornament of The Poplars, who used to keep up the tone (so she says) and set an example to the rest. What is she coming to? I should think they'd want that bracelet back, if they knew!"

The Mystic Seven had a special Committee Meeting before tea, and pledged one another to utmost secrecy. The result of their confabulations seemed satisfactory to themselves, for they parted chuckling.

The next morning, when Cynthia Greene went to her desk to take out a lesson book, she found inside a letter addressed to herself. She opened it in a whirl of excitement. It was written in a slanting, backward kind of hand, with a very thick pen. Its contents ran thus:

"Dear Miss Cynthia,

"Being the fortunate recipient of the card placed in a strawberry basket, and bearing your name, I am venturing to answer it. I, too, am lonely, and long for friendship. I admire blue eyes and fair hair; I myself am dark. I should like immensely to meet you.

Could you possibly be at the side gate of your garden shortly after seven this evening? I shall arrive by motor, and walk past on the chance of seeing you.

"Yours respectfully but devotedly, "Algernon Augustus Fitzmaurice."

The conduct of Cynthia during the course of the day was extraordinary.

She exhibited a mixture of self-importance and fluttering antic.i.p.ation that was highly puzzling to her companions. She refused to explain, but dropped sufficient hints to arouse interest. It was presently whispered among the juniors that Cynthia had received a love-letter from somebody highly distinguished and aristocratic.

"Did it come by post?" asked Joan Butler.