The Youngest Girl in the School Part 13

here goes again--"Bacteriollodgy." Then Auntie Anna winked at Jill, and we went upstairs and left the Beast with the Rector, which was a punishment he more than deserved, as I told Jill. She said she was afraid we boys were spoiling her manners, and Auntie said, "Of course they are!"

as if it was a good thing, which of course _we_ know it is. I had to go to bed then, and Jill said it was awful desolation and despair when I'd gone, because Auntie Anna began her conversation all over again with old Barnaby, and the Beast instead of having the sense to join in it went and sat with Jill all the evening. Which shows his puerrility and blightedness. She sang to him too, and he got up to go the moment she had finished which was beastly rude, I think. If he did think she sang badly he might have played up better. But he's a beast, and you can't get over that. He's very ugly and sulky looking, and he's about fifty I should think, but Jill says not so old. That's her grown-up charitableness which she can't get over. Anyhow----'

The mist in Barbara's eyes threatened to become so serious at this point that she put down Kit's letter hastily and returned to her own. Whatever happened, she was not going to cry before all these girls, who never understood anything she did. She was hard at work again by the time Ruth Oliver pushed aside the curtain and looked in from the next room.

'Barbara Berkeley!' she called. 'Has any one seen Barbara Berkeley?'

One or two of the girls looked round casually at the slim figure on the floor, but n.o.body roused her. Ruth Oliver was too good-natured a person to inspire much authority in the junior playroom, and the children would sooner risk her displeasure any day than Jean Murray's. If it had been any other girl in the First, half a dozen of them would have hastened to do her bidding at once.

'Angela!' called Ruth, impatiently, coming into the room as she spoke; 'don't you know where the Babe is? She has got to go and see the doctor at once.'

On the other side of the curtain, both Barbara and her nickname met with the popularity that was denied to them in the junior playroom; and the note of familiarity in the elder girl's words sent Angela's impudent chin up in the air.

'We don't know anybody of that name in here,' she said, and went on talking flippantly to the girl beside her.

Ruth Oliver was not born to be a leader, and she was horribly afraid of some of the younger ones, who had been quick enough to detect this long ago, and naturally presumed upon it. But there were limits even to her endurance, and she laid a stern hand on Angela's shoulder.

'If you don't want to be reported to Margaret Hulme, you'd better fetch Barbara to me at once,' she commanded, with a firmness she certainly did not feel.

Angela rose with a very bad grace, and strolled as slowly as she dared to the other end of the room. 'If you'd only said that at first, it would have saved all this fuss!' she muttered, as soon as she was at a safe distance.

Babs still lay face downwards on the floor, with her heels in the air and her whole attention fixed on the paper she was covering with her large round handwriting. If she did not finish her letter before the prayer-bell rang, it would have to wait until next Wednesday. So she did not take any notice when some one came and said something or another in her ear. She was always in somebody's way, and if she moved, she would only be in somebody else's way. So she stayed where she was.

'Don't you hear? You've got to go and see the doctor,' repeated Angela, loudly and with impatience. Thoughtless and empty-headed as she was, even Angela Wilkins had the sense to see how absurd it was that the new girl should turn on her persecutors by ignoring them.

Barbara rolled over on her side and glanced up at her.

'Oh, all right! I know how much of that to believe,' she answered; and she rolled back again into her old position and continued her letter to Kit.

'She says she doesn't want to see the stupid doctor, and nothing will induce her to come, and she doesn't care what you say or anybody else either,' was Angela's version, on her return to Ruth Oliver, of the way in which Barbara had received her message.

The elder girl looked down at her suspiciously. 'Did she really say that?'

she inquired.

'Go and ask her, that's all,' cried Angela, full of righteous indignation at having her word doubted. For she was really under the impression that she had correctly described the att.i.tude of the new girl towards the doctor and Ruth Oliver.

'Well, I will,' answered Ruth, and she threaded her way among the girls until she too stood over the prostrate figure of the offender.

'Babs,' she called, bending down.

Barbara flourished her black legs in the air with an impatient movement.

'How you do bother!' she complained, stifling a sigh. 'That's the second in five minutes. Why can't you leave me alone?'

There was a start of surprise in the group that surrounded her. It is probable that few of her listeners saw the ridiculous side of the new girl's request to be left alone, when that was the punishment that had been meted out to her ever since her second day at school; but any one of them could have told her that that was not the way to speak to a girl in the First.

Ruth turned a little red from sheer nervousness; and the girls immediately decided that she was afraid of the youngest child in the school, and began to giggle with one accord. Barbara sighed again at this new interruption; and raising herself on her knees, she sat back on her heels.

'Oh, it's you!' she observed, shaking the hair out of her eyes. 'Why didn't you say so? I thought it was just some one who wanted to bother.'

'You've got to go and see the doctor in Finny's study. Make haste, Babe,'

said Ruth, who was smarting under the giggle, and wanted to get back into the other room among her equals. But the Babe showed no signs of making haste.

'Why have I got to see the doctor?' she asked, opening her eyes. 'I'm not ill or anything; and I want to finish my letter home. Don't you think it's a mistake?'

'No, I don't,' said Ruth, forgetting her nervousness all at once, and lifting the child boldly off the floor. 'You've got to be examined to see if you can do gymnastics, that's all. He's in Finny's study, waiting for you.' She carried her playfully under her arm and set her down on the further side of the curtain. Whatever the other tiresome children might think of her, she knew that the Babe never criticised her, and that gave her confidence.

Barbara was still a little dubious about the sense of seeing a doctor when she did not feel ill; but she trotted across the hall obediently and went into Finny's study. She was only half conscious of what she was doing, for she had been taken from her letter too abruptly to have had time to wake up properly; and Babs always required plenty of time to wake up, when she had been absorbed in anything. So the solemn-looking young man, who sat in the low arm-chair, was a little upset when she not only gave him her hand to shake but also put up her face to be kissed as a matter of course.

Dr. Wilson Hurst, in spite of Kit's idea of his age, was only twenty-eight and quite young enough to feel extremely bashful. He jerked back his head suddenly; and Barbara woke up.

'Oh, I'm so sorry,' she said, smiling. 'I wasn't thinking. Of course you don't want to be kissed; I shouldn't have dreamed of kissing you at home, you know, because the boys feel just like you about kissing. But Ruth kisses me such lots, and everybody seems to kiss everybody else here, so I suppose I've rather got into the way of----'

Here Miss Finlayson said 'Hush!' very softly; and the doctor pulled something so queer and interesting out of his pocket at the same time, that Barbara forgot everything else. 'What are you going to do with that funny thing? Is it a speaking-tube?' she asked curiously.

'I'm going to see whether your heart is in the right place,' answered the doctor, and he was immediately so overcome at his stupendous levity in making a joke over a medical examination, that he did not speak another word till it was completed. As for Babs, she was immensely interested the whole time, and never took her bright little eyes off his face once.

'Is it in the right place?' she asked him, when he put the queer-looking thing back in his pocket again.

'Yes,' said the doctor, briefly.

'Is anybody's in the wrong place?' pursued Babs, leaning against his knee in the most friendly way imaginable.

'Sometimes,' said the doctor. He marvelled at himself for not feeling more irritated by her, when as a rule he found children so worrying.

'Is yours in the right place?' persisted Barbara.

'I--I hope so,' said the doctor, struggling with a grim smile.

'Same place as mine?' continued Barbara, eagerly.

Miss Finlayson put out her hand to stop her; but Babs did not see. The doctor saw, and did not take any notice.

'I imagine it is in the same place,' he said feebly.

'But how do you know, unless some one else finds it for you?' inquired Babs. 'You can't listen to your own heart through that funny thing, can you?'

'N--no, some one else has to find it,' admitted the doctor, and she supposed he had remembered something that made him feel shy, for he coloured furiously and rose to his feet rather hurriedly.

Babs stood gazing up at him attentively, while he exchanged parting words with Miss Finlayson. 'It's an awful pity you didn't go to see Kit when he was ill,' she remarked, directly there was an opportunity. 'Kit's doctor was a beast.'

The long oval face turned slightly red again; and Miss Finlayson said something very quickly about the wet evening.

'Yes,' replied the doctor, stammering a little; 'I am sorry the evening is so late,--so wet, I mean, and that I am so late in calling--positively the first minute I've had to-day,--extremely busy this time of year----'

A hand was stealing inside his, and he had to stop and look down again.

'Do you think you could go and see Kit next time he is ill?' asked Babs, appealingly. 'It isn't nice to have a beast for a doctor, when you're ill, is it?'

The doctor went on looking down at her with an odd sort of smile on his face. 'That reminds me,' he said--though how it reminded him the child could not for the moment imagine--'that your cousin Miss Urquhart charged me with a message for you. She sent you her love and promised to write soon. I hope I have given it correctly.'

'Oh!' cried Barbara, with great excitement. 'Do you know Jill?' The doctor kept hold of her hand and nodded. 'And Auntie Anna? And the boys--_all_ of them? Then you must know Kit!'