The Nicest Girl in the School Part 6

During an interval in the hockey practice that afternoon, Muriel found an opportunity to speak to her cousin.

"How stupid you were this morning, Patty!" she said. "What possessed you to lean over my desk and whisper?"

"What else could I do, when you'd asked me how to work that sum?"

replied Patty.

"Why, of course you should have written me a note back, and handed it to me underneath the desk."

"But I'm afraid that wouldn't have been fair," objected Patty.

"Quite as fair as whispering."

"I didn't know either was wrong. You shouldn't have asked me."

"Oh, don't begin preaching to me! You contrived to make it very unpleasant for me, at any rate, and I shan't soon forget."

"Muriel! You know I never meant----"

"I don't care what you meant. Enid Walker has been telling Phyllis Chambers, and Phyllis won't put my name down for the hockey final. It's too bad."

"I'm dreadfully sorry."

"What's the use of being sorry? You should have managed better. I'm out of the match on Friday, and it's entirely your fault. I wish you'd never come to The Priory at all!" And Muriel walked away with such a sulky expression on her face, that no one at that moment would have called her pretty.

Patty knew it was no use trying to justify herself further. Muriel was determined to be angry, and having secured what she considered a grievance against her, would make that an excuse for avoiding her altogether. She could only hope that her cousin would not give a distorted version of the story in any of her letters home, and allow Uncle Sidney to believe that she had been unkind. That would indeed be most unjust, especially as she would have no opportunity of ever explaining the true facts of the case.

"She surely couldn't!" thought Patty. "It would be too untruthful. I hope she never mentions me at all when she writes. Oh, dear! How hard it is when you know you ought to be friends with someone and you can't! If only Muriel were Enid or Jean, how different it would be! I shouldn't have a single trouble left in the world, and life at The Priory would be just delightful."

CHAPTER VI

Alb.u.ms

"I want you to put something in my alb.u.m, Patty," said Winnie Robinson one afternoon, producing a dainty little volume reserved for souvenirs of her friends. "You're clever at drawing, so please let it be a picture, and if you can colour it, so much the better."

"I hope I shan't spoil your book," replied Patty, turning over the leaves to look at the various artistic efforts and poetical quotations with which about half the pages were filled.

"Of course you won't! I expect yours will be one of the nicest. I want every girl in the cla.s.s to either paint or write something, and then I shall have a keepsake of the Upper Fourth. Maggie Woodhall drew this pretty little dog, and Ella Johnson those roses, and Enid has promised to make up a piece of poetry on purpose."

"It was only half a promise," declared Enid.

"Then you must write half a poem."

"Suppose the Muse deserts me?"

"Oh, rubbish! You can always make up verses. They seem to flow just as if you turned on a tap."

"Have you an alb.u.m, Patty?" enquired Avis.

"No," said Patty. "I never saw one like Winnie's before. It's something quite new to me."

"Oh! then you must get one. They're the fashion just at present, and every girl in the cla.s.s has one."

"We're rather fond of fads at The Priory," explained Winnie. "We have a rage for some particular thing, and are quite silly over it for a while, until we grow tired of it, and take up something else. This is about the fifth craze since I've been at the school. They never last long."

"The first was foreign stamps," said Enid. "Don't you remember how keen we were about collecting them, and how we envied May Firth because she had an uncle in Persia?"

"Maggie Woodhall got several stamps from Mexico," said Avis. "I think her collection was one of the best."

"I was very enthusiastic about mine," said Enid. "I exchanged three new lead pencils once for a j.a.panese stamp, and I asked Mother for an alb.u.m for my birthday present. It was a beauty, too. Then, in the holidays, I went to stay with my G.o.dmother, and she had a whole pillow-case full of old letters, mostly foreign ones. She let me tear the stamps off all the envelopes, and I got at least twenty new kinds. I was delighted with them; but when I came back to school the fashion had changed, everybody was tired of stamps, and n.o.body cared to look at mine, so I gave the book to my brother. The boys in his cla.s.s were collecting, and he was only too pleased to have it."

"I believe crests came next," said Avis reflectively. "Vera Clifford introduced them, because she was so proud her family has one of its own.

She put it on the front page, and showed it to everybody."

"Yes, and she never forgave Doris Kennedy for making fun of it."

"What did Doris say?"

"Well, you see, the Clifford crest is a lion holding a sh.e.l.l, and the motto is a Latin one which means, 'Do not touch!' Doris said the lion was holding a purse, and the motto meant, 'What I've got I'll keep'. It was a good hit at Vera, because she's very stingy, although she has plenty of pocket money. She only gave twopence to the Waifs and Strays Fund--it was less than anybody else in the cla.s.s; and she'll hardly ever lend her things, either, though she often borrows from other girls."

"She used all my Indian ink last term, and never gave me any back when she bought a new bottle," said Winnie. "She's certainly rather mean."

"The crests looked beautiful when they were pasted into alb.u.ms," said Avis. "Beatrice Wynne used to paint borders round hers in red, and blue, and gold. Her book was like an old illuminated ma.n.u.script."

"It was a difficult craze, though, to keep up," said Winnie, "because we couldn't most of us collect enough crests to fill a book. Post-marks were much easier. We used to arrange them according to the different counties they were in. Miss Harper encouraged that fad; she said it taught us geography."

"So it did; but we made the most absurd mistakes sometimes. I remember putting Abingdon down under Devonshire, and Ilkley under Lincolnshire. I used to have to look the places up in the atlas. It was rather too like lessons to be very popular, so we all took to drawing pigs instead."

"Drawing pigs!" exclaimed Patty.

"Yes, with your eyes shut. It's most amusing to have a pig book. You get each of your friends to close her eyes tightly, and then draw a pig, putting in its tail and its eye, and to sign her name to it afterwards.

You can't think what funny pictures people make. The eye's generally in the middle of the pig's back, and the tail twirling away anywhere but in the right place."

"All except Miss Harper's pig," said Winnie, "and that was because she drew the eye first. It wasn't quite fair, because you're supposed to put it in last of all; but of course none of us dared to tell her so. I have it in my book still, signed E.J.H.; it's got the most impertinent snout, and large peaked ears. I'm sure she must have been practising drawing pigs before she did it."

"Ghost signatures were nearly as much fun," said Enid.

"What are those?" enquired Patty, to whom all these schoolgirl pastimes were unknown.

"You have a special autograph book for them," explained Enid. "You double a page in half, and write your name inside exactly on the crease of the paper; then you fold the two halves together again without blotting it and press hard. It smudges your signature into such a queer shape. Everybody's comes out differently. One looks like a caterpillar, and another like a b.u.t.terfly, or perhaps a fish's backbone. Ella Johnson's was the exact image of an oak tree."

"And Maud Greening's was like a pressed fern," said Winnie. "Do you remember the fad we had for pressed flowers and skeleton leaves? We used to keep them inside all our books."

"Yes, we soaked the leaves in water till they turned into skeletons. We pressed the flowers in blotting paper, and they were often lovely."