The Youngest Girl in the School Part 16

Jean recovered some of her self-a.s.surance. If she was to be denied the pleasure, in future, of persecuting the new girl, there was no reason why she should not still patronise her.

'Punished!' she echoed. 'That's all you know about it. n.o.body is ever punished here.'

It took Barbara a moment or two to get used to this new idea, and by that time they had reached their rooms. She returned to the subject soon after, however, when Ruth had opened the doors that led from her room into both theirs, so that they could talk across her if they liked.

'Can you be as naughty as you choose in this school?' demanded Babs, in a puzzled tone.

'I don't advise you to try,' remarked Ruth.

'Why not? What would happen if I did?' asked Babs, curiously.

'Well, you'd feel jolly small, and have to come round in the end and behave like other people,' said Jean, raising her voice to make herself heard.

Barbara wandered into Ruth's room to have her frock unfastened, and continued the discussion from there.

'Then, is being good at school the same thing as behaving like other people?' she said doubtfully.

The others seemed to have some difficulty in answering this. 'There!' said Ruth, giving her a little push; 'make haste and get undressed.'

Barbara wandered back into her own room again, and thought it over carefully. 'Being good at home wouldn't be the same thing as behaving like other people,' she observed presently.

'Home isn't school,' answered Ruth. 'And Finny's school isn't like other people's schools,' she added.

'Isn't it?' said Babs, with interest. 'Where's the difference?'

'Ask Jean,' replied Ruth; and Jean took up the tale from beyond.

'I was at another school before I came here, and it was very different, I can tell you,' she remarked. 'There were nothing but rules there, and you always seemed to be breaking one or another of them, without knowing it; and then you got punished. I was punished the whole time I was there.'

'What sort of punishments?' asked Barbara.

'Stupid punishments,' answered Jean, vaguely. 'Punishments that made you feel foolish, and made you hate people. I did hate a lot of people at that school. I thought I was awfully wicked because I hated so many people. And then I came here,' she wound up triumphantly.

'And did you find you were good when you came here?' asked Babs.

'You shut up and get yourself ready for bed, or else Fraulein will catch you,' was all Jean said in reply to this.

Barbara gave one or two perfunctory taps to her head with a brush. 'I suppose that's why we're left so much to ourselves,' she remarked, after a pause. 'We never see the teachers except at meals or in lesson time, do we?'

'Of course we don't,' replied Ruth; 'that's where Finny's school is so different, you see. In most schools you are being watched all day by some one or another, and it makes you whisper because you don't want to be overheard. Nothing makes Finny so furious as to catch any one whispering.'

'Is she ever furious?' inquired Barbara.

'Don't be a young silly,' said Ruth, good-naturedly, a reply which had no effect whatever upon Barbara.

'It seems to me,' she went on thoughtfully, 'that it's very difficult to know what is wrong and what isn't, when there aren't any punishments and no one is there to tell you.'

'Well, you're supposed to have some sense, you know,' explained Ruth.

'Finny's great idea is that you should think for yourself and not go to other people to find out things. She says being good isn't worth much, if you're only good because some one else tells you to be good.'

'That's all very well,' objected Babs, 'but suppose you don't know without being told?'

'Well, if you don't know that behaving like a wild Indian is wrong, it's not much good being there to tell you so,' said Jean, bluntly.

The point of her remark was quite lost on Barbara, who was still puzzling over a question that had never occurred to her before. 'At home,' she observed, 'we never talk about whether a thing is right or wrong. If we did, the boys would call it awfully slack.'

'What do they call it when you nearly kill people by knocking them down and hitting them?' asked Jean, rather suddenly. The application of hot water was causing the bruise on her forehead to smart most unpleasantly.

'Oh!' said Barbara, in a surprised tone; 'I thought you had made it up?'

'Bother making it up,' grumbled Jean, 'when you've got a lump as big as----'

'Why didn't you say so before?' cried Babs, in great concern. 'Haven't you any pomade to put on it?'

Something very like an amused chuckle came from the direction of Ruth Oliver, but Babs was in far too great a hurry to notice that. Flinging everything right and left on the floor, she cleared out two drawers and a box before she succeeded in finding the bottle she wanted.

'Here it is!' she exclaimed, taking it in to her wounded foe. 'It's awfully good stuff, really; and it keeps you from turning blue and yellow.

We always use it at home.'

Ruth's chuckle grew into a hearty laugh. 'I should think you wanted pounds of it in your home, if they're all like you!' she exclaimed.

Barbara wondered what the joke was. 'They're not like me,' she said simply. 'The others are all boys, you see, so they get their own way without fighting.'

And when the German governess came to turn out their lights, she found the three white-robed figures standing together in Jean's room, one of them shaking with laughter, another trying rather unsuccessfully to keep grave, while the third, holding out a bottle in her hand, looked at them both with a puzzled air. There was no end, thought Fraulein, to the caprices of English children. Had not Miss Finlayson been relating to all the teachers downstairs, how the two little ones before her had flown at each other in a pa.s.sion, just before prayers?

The junior playroom felt equally incapable of grappling with the situation, when the new girl marched gaily into it the next morning with her arm linked in Jean Murray's. For once, Jean's followers found themselves at a loss. Not having been informed what actually had taken place in the pa.s.sage the night before, they could hardly be expected to know all at once how to treat this new state of affairs. Nor did Jean trouble herself to enlighten them. Indeed, she was so cross when any one approached her on the subject, that even Angela had to leave her alone; while the junior playroom in general, being less devoted, threw out dark hints about temper as soon as Jean was out of hearing. Angela, however, had the wit to see the one thing that was evident--the feud with the new girl was at an end, and anybody who wanted to keep friends with Jean Murray in future would have to accept Barbara Berkeley as well. So she decided to accept Barbara herself, to begin with; and she set to work at the same time to convert the whole of the junior playroom.

'If you don't behave decently to her, you'll have Finny down on you,'

she advised, in the few moments allowed for conversation after breakfast.

'Anybody could see that, from the way Finny glared at Jean last night.'

'Did _you_ see it?' inquired Charlotte Bigley, with unpleasant directness.

'N--no, not exactly,' admitted Angela, uncomfortably. 'But Mary Wells did, and she told me. And look here,' she went on, shifting her ground hurriedly, 'Jean's made it up with Barbara Berkeley, and the sooner we do the same the better it'll be for us. Besides, why shouldn't we make it up? It's such a bore to have to keep on remembering all the time that you're _furious_ with some one!'

This was more to the point; and the junior playroom, which had never thrown itself with any heartiness into the feud, decided that Barbara Berkeley was to be accepted without any more delay. Unfortunately, Barbara Berkeley, who had never realised that her school-fellows had been leaving her in peace on purpose to annoy her, was quite unprepared for the sudden change in their behaviour.

Charlotte Bigley was the first to put into force the resolution that had been arrived at by the junior playroom. 'If you like,' she observed carelessly, when she met Barbara by the bookshelf, just before the first cla.s.s, 'you can put away Ruth Oliver's desk after preparation, instead of me.'

For her part, she had always felt kindly disposed towards the new girl, and the offer she was making now came straight from her heart, and was the most generous one she could think of at the moment. But Babs only looked dismayed.

'Why must I put away Ruth Oliver's desk?' she demanded. 'I have to put away Margaret Hulme's as it is; and it's so difficult to get dressed in time for supper when there's such a lot of desks to put away first. Of course,' she added with an effort, 'I'll do it to please you, if you really want me to.'

'Why, I thought you'd _like_ to do it!' exclaimed Charlotte, staring at her. 'You're so thick with Ruth, and naturally I supposed----'

'Thanks awfully,' said Barbara, without enthusiasm. 'It's really awfully kind of you, but I think p'raps you'd better go on doing it, if you're used to doing it. Of course, I know some people like doing those stupid things for the big girls, but----'

'All right,' said Charlotte, abruptly; and she went away, feeling distinctly small.