The Youngest Girl in the School Part 26

'Margaret and Angela!' came from the panting Barbara, just behind her.

Nothing but the entrance of Finny would have calmed the noisy tumult; but when they saw her standing on the platform, looking down at them with her best Sat.u.r.day smile on her face, the clamour ended in a burst of laughter; and five or six of the more eager of them invaded the platform, and danced round her appealingly.

'Do, do say who's going to win,' begged Barbara, catching hold of her sleeve.

'It's Margaret and the Babe, isn't it?' cried Jean.

'No!' shrilled Angela. 'You mean Margaret and----'

'Charlotte Bigley!' gasped Mary Wells, squeezing herself into the front rank.

Miss Finlayson put out her arms and encircled as many of them as she could, and spun them round the platform with her.

'Dear, dear little girls!' she exclaimed, when she was out of breath and could dance no more. 'Do you know what the Canon ought to have done, if he wanted to please _me_?'

'What? What?' cried a dozen voices.

'He ought to have offered thirty-two prizes, and then I should not have been afraid of any of my children feeling disappointed,' answered Miss Finlayson, nodding at them wisely; and, somehow, it seemed to Jean as if the head-mistress's eyes rested longest of all upon her.

CHAPTER XV

THE GYMNASTIC DISPLAY

The junior division, drawn up in double file, stood a.s.sembled in the anteroom of the gymnasium, on the day of the great compet.i.tion for the Canon's prize. The figure-marching by the whole cla.s.s was over, and the senior division had just begun the wand exercises to the piano accompaniment of the German music-master, who, being the unlucky possessor of an unp.r.o.nounceable name in three syllables, was generally known as 'Scales.' The applause which had followed after the marching had taken away the first shyness of the younger children; and even the prospect of doing separate exercises presently, before an audience of strangers, did not seem to be having much effect on the sixteen little girls in scarlet frocks who were waiting in the anteroom for their turn to come. Hurly-Burly, though supposed to be superintending affairs in the gymnasium, had to look in at the door more than once, to remind them that the crashing chords of 'Scales' did not drown everything; but just as she had succeeded in reducing them at last to order, a piece of information pa.s.sed down the file from Charlotte Bigley, who stood nearest the doorway and had the best view of the gymnasium, upset them all once more.

'Margaret has forgotten the figure,' 'Margaret has put the others out,'

'Margaret has gone wrong,' 'Margaret Hulme has clean forgotten everything, and she's got to step out,' were the various forms in which the news travelled down to the end of the file, the last of all being the version of Angela Wilkins and therefore generally discredited.

'I don't believe a word of it!' said Jean, stoutly.

'Why, Margaret couldn't go wrong if she tried,' exclaimed Barbara, whose belief in the head girl, though slow in coming, was quite equal by this time to Jean's.

'She has, though,' declared Angela, who stood with Mary Wells just in front of Jean and Barbara.

Mary Wells, who had stepped out of rank on hearing the surprising news, now returned, and in her slow and conscientious manner proceeded to reprove Angela.

'How you do exaggerate, Angela!' she said, frowning. 'Margaret only went a little wrong; and she's caught up again all right. Isn't it funny, though?' she was obliged to add immediately, with a thrill of amazement in her voice.

The two children behind her for once were dumb. The head girl, according to their simple creed, could do no wrong; so when she did, what words had they left to use? Babs was the first to see a way out of the difficulty.

'I know,' she said. 'I expect she's nervous. It makes you forget like anything, if you're nervous. Once, when Egbert was being prepared for confirmation, he was so nervous--it was a strange clergyman, you know, and Egbert said he blinked--that he clean forgot his catechism, even the easy first part about your G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers. So that's why Margaret forgot her steps, you see if it wasn't!'

'Nervous!' echoed Jean, incredulously. 'Who ever saw Margaret nervous?

Do you think she'd be able to make every new kid who comes to the school quake in her shoes if she was _nervous_?'

'I don't know,' answered Babs, doubtfully. Margaret Hulme had certainly never made her quake in her shoes, even when she was a new girl; but she did not admit this to Jean. 'Egbert can make people afraid of him too,' she went on, 'and he can thrash any chap you please, and he always washes his head in cold water _every_ morning, even if there's ice, and he has more ties and clothes and things than all the others put together, and he's awfully grand and splendid, Egbert is,--but all the same, he was frightened of that strange clergyman. Can you see Egbert?' she concluded proudly. 'He's at the end of them all, next to Jill. Wasn't it jolly of Finny to put them right in the front row of the gallery?'

Her companions forgot Margaret for a minute or two in their efforts to stand on tiptoe and catch a glimpse through the open door of Barbara Berkeley's five brothers. The various relatives who came to the break-up parties, and never seemed to exist at any other time except on letter-writing days, always caused a good deal of excitement among the girls, and added a temporary importance to the most insignificant of them, provided she was lucky enough to possess a parent or even a cousin among the visitors.

'They're all mine,' said Babs, glowing with the joy of possession. 'I'll introduce them to you at supper, if you like.'

'I'm rather glad I haven't any one belonging to me here,' said Jean, cheating herself into a brief forgetfulness of the little home in Edinburgh. 'I'm so frightened of the introducing part; I never know what to say, and it makes me feel such a goat.'

'Oh,' said Mary Wells, placidly; 'how funny of you, Jean. I always say, "Here's my sister, and this is Charlotte Bigley." That's quite easy, surely.'

'Yes, but it isn't right,' responded Jean, frankly. 'You should hear Margaret Hulme do it--that's something like! It reminds you of mothers, and callers, and At Home days when you wear your best frock and hand the scones.'

Their talk was interrupted by the retirement from the gymnasium of the senior division. Margaret marched into the anteroom, with her eyes staring straight in front of her, and an exaggerated air of confidence in her bearing. There was an obvious lack of enthusiasm among her followers, who were all whispering and looking significantly at their leader; but the noise produced by Scales, who seemed to think that a Beethoven sonata was an appropriate solo to play in the interval, made conversation impossible; and the section that was to do the horizontal bar, led by Ruth Oliver, returned to the gymnasium before the juniors were able to satisfy their curiosity. During the second event of the compet.i.tion, Margaret and the vaulting-horse section exchanged very few remarks, and the feeling that there was something unusual in the air had considerably increased by the time Ruth, looking flushed and totally unlike herself, marched her section back again. The rumour ran down the junior file that Ruth Oliver had been distinguishing herself, and that as much of the clapping as Scales allowed to be heard was on her account. Certainly, the irresolute manner that marked everything Ruth did, as a rule, had quite deserted her as she filed past the triumvirate with her little band.

'Why,' exclaimed Angela, audibly, 'I never knew Ruth Oliver was pretty before!'

'She isn't, is she?' said Jean, just as loudly.

'Of course she is!' declared Babs, warmly. 'She's _beautiful_, and--and cla.s.sic!'

The others laughed, and she wondered why. Somebody had said, only the other day, that Jill Urquhart had cla.s.sic features; and how was she to know that, although she was every bit as fond of Ruth as of Jill, the same adjective would not do for both?

'Look at Margaret Hulme,' whispered Mary Wells, as the vaulting-horse section marched past them. 'She's quite white!'

The little remark was enough to set them all wondering afresh; and Barbara, moved by a sudden impulse, darted up to Ruth Oliver.

'_Did_ Margaret go wrong in the wands?' asked the child, in an anxious whisper.

The smile that had made Ruth look so surprisingly pretty died out of her face, and she glanced gravely down at her little questioner.

'Never mind, baby,' she said gently. 'Go back to your place.' And she came as near snubbing any one then as she ever did in the whole of her school career.

A burst of applause put every one in the anteroom once more on the alert.

'What is it?' pa.s.sed eagerly from one to another. The answer, given by Charlotte from her point of vantage near the doorway, was soon circulated.

Margaret Hulme had easily surpa.s.sed her seven companions by a brilliant performance on the vaulting-horse; and the spirits of the anteroom went up with a bound. Hurly-Burly had mounted the platform at the farther end of the gymnasium, and was comparing notes with Miss Finlayson and the expert from the London training-college, who was acting as one of the judges; so there was no one to restrain both senior and junior divisions from falling out of rank and pressing round the head girl, as she once more marched back to them. They had never once made so much fuss over their idol as they did now that she had shown, for the first time, that even idols are capable of failure.

Hurly-Burly returned and restored order in a stern voice; and they saw Finny standing in the middle of the platform, waiting for Scales to bring the _Erlkonig_ to a thundering close. The next moment she was speaking in that low voice of hers that went straight to the ears of every one in the room.

'It may make the end of the senior compet.i.tion more interesting to you,'

she began, 'if you know how the compet.i.tors stand now. So far, Ruth Oliver is a little ahead of the others----' Even the solemnity of the occasion could not stay the murmur of astonishment that rose in the anteroom at this announcement; but Miss Finlayson waited for it to subside, and finished her speech. 'She and Margaret Hulme are very close, for they are exactly even as regards gymnastics; but Margaret lost a little over the wand figure. So the prize will greatly depend upon the result of the high jump. At the same time, I feel sure you will agree with me that the way in which the other compet.i.tors have worked has greatly added to our enjoyment, and deserves much of our applause.'

A good many downcast faces in the anteroom cheered up as Miss Finlayson made her ingenious reference to the unsuccessful ones, and so contrived to make them feel that the applause at the end of her speech was really for them. Then the whole senior division filed into the gymnasium for the last time, to the slow music of Herr Scales, who had just had a polite rebuke from Hurly-Burly, and was forcing himself desperately to keep the soft pedal down.

The children never forgot the tense feeling of the next few minutes, the thrill that ran through every girl in Wootton Beeches when Ruth Oliver knocked down the rope at four feet four, the answering thrill that followed it when she cleared it at four feet six, the surprise they went through when Margaret also cleared it at four feet six, but knocked it down at four feet eight; and last of all, the enthusiasm of the spectators when Ruth just managed to clear it at four feet eight and Margaret still knocked it down after two tries at it. The people, who clapped and smiled so good-naturedly, little knew that the exciting contest they had just witnessed had upset the traditions of two and a half years and proclaimed the triumph of the most retiring girl in the school.

They only thought how modern and delightful it was for girls to play the same games as boys; and Mrs. Oliver beamed on every one from the platform, and decided that Ruth should stay another year at school instead of leaving at midsummer. But the anteroom was overwhelmed.

'It's--impossible!' gasped Jean, when the news travelled down to the triumvirate. 'Why, Margaret can clear four feet ten _easily_! I've seen her.'