The Madcap of the School Part 22

"Around my ivy-covered porch Earwigs and snails are ever crawling."

"It mightn't be just the best place in the world for rheumatism," she decided, "and probably there'd be just heaps of snails and slugs."

"Shall we shout again?" suggested Aveline forlornly.

The chums called, whistled, halloed, and cooeed until they were hoa.r.s.e, but not a soul took the slightest notice. Time, which had sped so rapidly during their first twenty minutes on the island, now crawled on laggard wings. After what appeared to them an absolutely interminable period, but which was in reality about an hour and a half, the familiar figure of Hermie Graveson suddenly appeared on the mainland close to the water-garden. Raymonde and Aveline started up, and emitted yells that would have done credit to a pair of Zulu warriors on the war-path. Hermie waved frantically, shouted something they could not hear, and ran back towards the house. In a few minutes she returned with Miss Gibbs. That worthy lady picked up her skirts and advanced gingerly to the extreme limit of the stones that bordered the water-garden. She put her hands to her mouth to form a speaking-trumpet, and bawled a communication of which the marooned ones could only catch such fragments as "How ... get ... doing ..."

On the presumption that it was an enquiry into their means of locomotion, they pointed sadly to the floating raft. Miss Beasley now came hurrying up, surveyed the situation, and also attempted to converse, but with no better success. After an agitated colloquy with Miss Gibbs she retired.

"D'you think they'll have to leave us here for the night?" fluttered Aveline anxiously.

"Don't know. It looks like it, unless anyone can swim!" returned Raymonde, with what stoicism she could muster.

"Perhaps they'll hire a cart to the river, and fetch up a punt?"

"It'll take hours to do that!"

The prospect of supper and bed seemed to be retreating further and further into the dim and faraway distance. Aveline remembered that it was the evening for stewed pears and custard, and tears dripped down her cheeks on to her torn blouse.

"Oh! brace up, can't you?" snapped Raymonde. "It gives me spasms to hear you sniff!"

Aveline was bursting into an indignant retort, when her companion nudged her and pointed to the mainland.

Mackenzie, the old gardener, was coming across the orchard carrying on his shoulder a very large wash-tub. The cook followed him, bearing a clothes-prop.

"They've the best brains in the house! He's going to rescue us!"

exclaimed Raymonde ecstatically.

The prisoners on the island watched with deep interest while Mackenzie launched his shallop, clambered in, and seizing the clothes-prop from Cook, pushed off cautiously. His craft was very low in the water and looked particularly wobbly, and they were terribly afraid it would upset. In spite of their anxiety they could not help seeing the humorous side of the episode, and they choked with laughter as the tub gyrated and bobbed about, and the old man clutched frantically at his pole. He made first of all for the floating raft, secured it with a piece of rope, and dragged it to the island. The girls straightened their faces and welcomed him with polite expressions of grat.i.tude.

He received their thanks ungraciously--perhaps he had seen them laughing--pushed the raft to a spot where they could board it, and remarked tartly:

"Ye deserve to stop where ye are the night, in my opeenion. Get on with ye now, and paddle yerselves back. Giving a body all this trouble--and me with my leg bad, too!"

It was possibly a satisfaction to Mackenzie that Miss Beasley shared his views as to the culpability of the delinquents and the necessity of giving them their deserts. They were summoned to the study after prayers.

"What did she say?" whispered Ardiune, Morvyth, and Katherine, as they escorted the crestfallen pair upstairs to the dormitory.

"All recreation stopped for three days, and learn the whole of Gray's Elegy!" choked the sinners.

"Gray's Elegy! You'll never do it! Oh, you poor chickens! The b.u.mble can be a perfect beast sometimes! I say, what was it like on the island?"

"Top-hole!" responded Raymonde, as she mopped her eyes.

The very next day came the news that the farmer had decided to run up a number of corrugated-iron hutments in one of his own fields to accommodate his lady workers, and that the Squire had promised to pay the rent of old Wilkinson's cottage so long as he was left there undisturbed. Everybody felt it was a happy solution of the difficulty.

"After all, the island might have been rather an awkward place for him," admitted Raymonde. "I don't know how he'd have got backwards and forwards without a drawbridge."

"Unless he'd used a wash-tub," giggled Aveline. "I shan't forget Mackenzie in a hurry! It was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life. Talk of people looking sour! He might have been eating sloes.

Cook's taken it personally, I'm afraid. I asked her for some whitening this morning to clean my regimental b.u.t.ton, and she scowled and wouldn't let me have any--nasty, stingy old thing!"

"It's a weary world!" sighed Raymonde. "Especially when you've got to learn the whole of Gray's Elegy by heart!"

CHAPTER XVII

The Fossil Hunters

If Miss Beasley had been asked what was her most difficult problem in the management of her school, she would probably have replied the arrangement of the practising time-table. With the exception of four, all the girls learned music, and therefore, for a period of forty-five minutes daily, each of these twenty-two pupils must do execution on the piano. There were five instruments at the Grange, and, except during the hours of morning lessons and meals, they hardly ever seemed to be silent. At seven o'clock they began with scales, arpeggios, and studies, and pa.s.sed during the day through a selection of pieces, cla.s.sical and modern, in such various degrees of playing, strumming, and thumping as might be calculated to wear out their hammers and snap their strings in double quick time. About half of the girls learned from Mademoiselle, and the remainder had lessons from Mr. Browne, a visiting master who came twice a week to the school. He was a short little man, with sandy hair, and a bald patch in the middle of it, and a Vand.y.k.e beard that was turning rather grey. He was himself an excellent musician, and sometimes the performances of his pupils offended his sensitive ear to the point of exasperation, and he would storm at them in a gurgling voice, blinking his short-sighted hazel eyes very rapidly, and wrinkling up his forehead till it looked like squeezed india-rubber. It was on record that he had once hit Lois Barlow a hard crack over the knuckles with his fountain-pen, whereupon she wept--not so much from pain as from injured feelings--and he had apologized in quite a gentlemanly fashion, and picked up the music that in his burst of temper he had flung upon the floor. In spite of his acknowledged irritability, all the girls who learned from him gave themselves airs of slight superiority over those who only learned from Mademoiselle. Though strict, he was an inspiring teacher, and when, as occasionally happened, he would push his pupil from the stool, and seat himself in her place to show the proper rendering of some pa.s.sage, the music that followed was like a lovely liquid dream of sound.

Professor Marshall also attended the school twice a week to lecture on literature and natural science. He was a much greater general favourite than Mr. Browne; everybody appreciated his affable manner and bland smile, and the little jokes with which he punctuated his remarks.

The girls always felt that it made a change to have anybody coming in from the outside world. The one disadvantage of a boarding-school is that mistresses and pupils, shut up together, and seeing one another week in, week out, are rather apt to get on each others' nerves. At a day school the girls take their worries home at four o'clock, and the mental atmosphere has time to clear before nine next morning; but, when there is no home-going until the end of the term, little trifles are sometimes unduly magnified, and a narrow element--the bane of all communities--begins to creep in. To do Miss Beasley justice, she made a great effort to combat this very evil, and to run her school on broad lines. She recognized the necessity of letting the girls mix sometimes with outsiders. In a country place it was impossible to take them to concerts or entertainments, but they occasionally joined the rambles of the County Antiquarian Society or the local Natural History Club.

It occurred to Miss Beasley that it would be an excellent plan to throw open some of Professor Marshall's lectures to residents in the neighbourhood, asking those people who attended to stay to tea afterwards, thus giving her girls an opportunity of acting as hostesses, and entertaining them with conversation. A short course of four lectures on geology was announced, and quite a number of local ladies responded to the invitation. The girls received the news with mixed feelings.

"Rather a jink!" ventured Ardiune. "It'll be queer to see rows of strangers sitting in the lecture room! Did you say we've to give them tea when the Professor's done talking?"

"Yes, and talk to them ourselves too, worse luck! I'm sure I shan't know what to say!" fluttered Aveline.

"Oh, the monitresses will do that part of the business!" decided Raymonde easily. "We'll stand in the background, and just look ladylike and well-mannered, and all the rest of it."

"Will you, my child? Not if the b.u.mble knows it! She's nuts on this afternoon-tea dodge! (I don't care--I shan't put a penny in the slang box--Hermie isn't here to listen and make me!) Gibbie told me that we're all to act hostesses in turn. We're to be divided into four sets, and each take a time."

"Help! How are you going to divide twenty-six by four? It works out at six and a half. Who's to be the half girl?"

"Oh! They'll make it seven on one afternoon and six the next, I expect."

"That's not fair! It's throwing too much work on those six and not enough on the seven. It's opposed to all the instincts of co-operation and justice which Gibbie has laboured so hard to instil into me."

"Don't see how the b.u.mble can manage otherwise, unless she chops a girl in half. No, I predict you'll be chosen among a select six, and have to pour out tea and hand cakes with one-sixth extra power laid on, and your conversation carefully modulated to your hearers."

"Oh, Jemima!"

"Please to remember that this is a finishing school!" mocked Ardiune.

"Don't on any account shock the neighbourhood by an unseemly exhibition of vulgar slang!"

"It'll slip out, I know, when I'm not thinking," groaned Raymonde.

On the first afternoon of the geological course, an audience of about twenty visitors augmented the usual gathering in the lecture hall.

They were accommodated with the best seats, and the school occupied the third and fourth rows. Directly in front of Raymonde sat an elderly lady in a large black hat trimmed with cherries, which bobbed temptingly over the brim. She appeared to take an interest in her surroundings, glanced about the room, and turned a reproving eye on Raymonde, who ventured to whisper to Aveline. With Miss Gibbs hovering in the background with a now-mind-you-keep-up-the-credit-of-the-school expression, the girls hardly dared even to blink, but Aveline managed to write: "What a Tartar in front!" on a slip of paper, and hand it to her chum.

The Professor, bland as ever, was coming into the room and hanging a geological map over the blackboard. He smiled broadly, showing his large white teeth to the uttermost, and, after a few preliminary remarks of welcome to the visitors, plunged into a description of the earth's crust.

All went well for a while; then an untoward incident happened. The lady with the cherries in her hat, who had possibly taken cold, or was affected by the pollen in the flowers upon the table, sneezed violently, not only once, but twice, and even a third time.