The Youngest Girl in the School Part 7

'No,' said Barbara, simply, not seeing that this too was meant to be a joke. 'She left, two years ago.'

'Well, you ought to have one,' retorted Jean, brusquely. 'She might teach you how to comb your hair.'

'And let down your frock,' added two or three voices together.

'What's the matter with my frock?' asked Babs, opening her eyes. 'It's nearly two inches longer than any frock I ever had before.'

The laughter began afresh, and Barbara gave up trying to explain things.

She was a little hurt, in reality, and was afraid of showing it; for it would never do, after being teased by five brothers all her life, to be ruffled by the laughter of a few schoolgirls. All the same, there was something in their way of laughing at her that hurt, and she did not care to provoke them into doing it any more.

The loud ringing of a bell brought her a sudden respite, by clearing the room of her tormentors. They poured hastily out of two large doors, that slid back in the wall and revealed another square hall beyond, similar to the one at the front of the house. The wide staircase up which the girls were trooping evidently led to their bedrooms, for Barbara, left deserted and forgotten in the playroom, could hear them, directly afterwards, moving about overhead. As she waited there alone, wondering what she was supposed to do next, Jean Murray came hurrying back into the room and looked round for her.

'Oh, bother!' she said, in her ungracious manner; 'what a nuisance you are! I wish you'd do things without waiting to be told.'

Babs explained submissively that she was quite ready to do things if she only knew what to do; but Jean still grumbled.

'Any one with any sense would know,' she declared, hastening out of the door again as she spoke. When she was half-way across the hall, she shouted, without looking back, 'Can't you come along? There's only a quarter of an hour to dress for supper.'

Babs hurried after her, and managed to keep her in sight up the wide staircase and along the gallery at the top. There were doors all round the gallery, and at one of these, marked number twelve, Jean stopped and waited impatiently.

'What a time you are,' she complained, when Barbara caught her up.

'I'm very quick, when anybody doesn't take such an enormous start,'

answered Barbara, panting. 'I can beat Peter twice round the Square and up to the gate, _easily_! And you're not in it with Peter.'

Jean looked at her, and her expression was not a pretty one. However, she only jerked her head at the door in front of them, and told Babs it was her bedroom. 'Finny said I was to show you,' she added. 'Don't know, I'm sure, why everybody thinks I've got to show you things. And you'd better look sharp and dress, because when you're ready you've got to cut along to number two and do the head girl's hair. It's always the business of the youngest in the school to do the head girl's hair. See?'

'But I don't know how to do anybody's hair,' began Barbara, in a fever of dismay. But Jean had already scampered out of hearing; and with her responsibilities weighing heavily upon her, the new girl turned the handle of her bedroom door and went forlornly in. It was a simple little room, very clean and fresh-looking, with everything there that she wanted and nothing that she could do without. The pretty coverlets on the bed and the dressing-table and the muslin curtains that draped the oaken window-sash gave it a look of homely comfort, while harmonising with the plain green colour of the walls and the blue frieze and carpet. As Barbara walked across her small domain and pushed aside the blind to peep out into the clear starlit night, a moment's rest came to her perturbed little mind. The tiny bare room was all hers, and the feeling of privacy and possession was very comforting.

A door in the wall told her there was a room leading out of hers, and the sound made by some one moving rapidly about in it reminded her again of her present woes and of the necessity for dressing as quickly as possible. Her relief at not being obliged to sleep with the other girls was forgotten in her returning consciousness of having to live with them, and to do their hair and to b.u.t.ton their boots. With desperate haste she struggled out of her serge frock and into a muslin one, that had a strange new method of fastening that was extremely baffling; and five minutes later, trembling, uneasy, and flushed with the hurry of her speedy toilet, she stood knocking at the door of number two.

'It's me,' she said feebly, in response to the curt inquiry from within.

Her inadequate explanation was followed by a few quick steps on the other side of the door, which was then flung open with an impatient movement; and the head girl, putting hairpins rapidly into her hair as she stood, was looking down at her sternly.

'You should go to one of the younger ones, if you want to know anything,'

she said crossly. 'Where's Jean Murray?'

'It was Jean Murray who told me to come,' answered the child, looking a pathetic little object in her half-fastened muslin frock, with her hair standing out wildly round her head. 'I'm sure I didn't want to come; I don't know how to do anybody's hair; I told her so. But she said it was because I was the youngest, and----'

'What _are_ you talking about, child?' interrupted Margaret. Her mystified look was lost on Babs, however, as the child stared down in much misery and confusion at the little steel buckles on her new evening shoes. She went on unhappily with her stammering confession.

'She said I'd got to do the head girl's hair because I was the youngest, and I was to make haste, or I shouldn't be in time. I did make as much haste as I could, _truthfully_,' she added, looking up timidly at her frowning questioner; 'but there were such a lot of hooks on my new frock, and I'm not used to hooks. I've always had b.u.t.tons before, you see.'

One or two of the neighbouring doors had opened by this time, and quite a small audience was a.s.sembling to hear Barbara's attempt at explanation. A giggle that swelled into a laugh brought dismay once more into her heart; and a suspicion that she had been hoaxed slowly dawned upon her.

'Isn't it true?' she cried, turning upon them desperately. 'Haven't I got to do the head girl's hair?'

'You'd better do your own first, I should say,' observed one of the onlookers, carelessly; and the others laughed again.

The head girl silenced them peremptorily. 'Don't, Ruth!' she said.

'It's only a babe, after all. You others had better go downstairs; the supper-bell will ring directly.'

The gallery slowly emptied itself, except for the little group of three that still stood outside the head girl's door. The offending Ruth turned to Barbara; she had a good-natured face, and was looking penitent.

'Come here, child, and let me fasten your frock properly,' she said; 'you've done it up all wrong.'

Barbara turned her back to her willingly. 'It's awfully bricky of you,'

she said warmly; 'I've never done up my own frock before, and this one was so complicated, somehow.'

'You must come to me when you want your frocks fastened,' answered her new friend. 'I sleep next door to you, and I always help Angela, whose room is on the farther side of mine. You've only got to tap at the door between, when you are ready. But you mustn't speak in the morning before breakfast, or in the evening after prayers, because that is against the rules.'

She fetched a brush and tried to reduce the tangled hair under her hands to a certain degree of order. Margaret Hulme had disposed of all her hairpins by this time, and was closely watching a door on the other side of the gallery. When it at last opened she straightened herself and prepared for action.

It was Jean Murray who came out of it, rather cautiously at first, then with a pretence of great unconcern. But her jaunty air completely deserted her when she saw the little group outside the head girl's door, and she tried to slink away towards the stairs unnoticed. Margaret called her back authoritatively, and Jean came slowly and unwillingly round the gallery.

'Now,' said the head girl, when she was within easy hearing, 'just you apologise to Barbara Berkeley for hoaxing her just now. If you think there is anything funny in telling an untruth, I'm sorry for your sense of humour, and you'd better not do it again in this house. Now then, make haste about it.'

Barbara tried impetuously to interfere, but Ruth Oliver held her back.

'Hush!' she whispered. 'Leave it to Margaret.'

Jean was shifting from one foot to another, and her mouth began to quiver.

'I didn't know she'd be such a stupid as to believe it,' she muttered.

'My dear child,' said the head girl, blandly, 'n.o.body supposed you were any judge of character. So it would clearly be wiser not to play that kind of joke on any one in future, wouldn't it? Are you going to apologise or not?'

Jean reddened, and a lump rose in her throat. Her worship of the head girl was the most genuine thing about her, and she was suffering keenly under her disapproval. But an apology to a new girl, especially to one who had come to rob her of all her privileges, was next to an impossibility.

Barbara saved the situation.

'I don't want anybody's apologies,' she cried. 'I'm not cross, and I don't know what you're all talking about.' She wriggled away from the friendly grasp of Ruth Oliver, and sped round the gallery till she came to the head of the stairs. Arrived there, the temptation of a long, broad, shining bal.u.s.ter-rail was too much for her; and in another moment the little elf-like figure in the fresh muslin frock was astride of it and flying down to the hall, with her hair once more in rebellion round her face. The exhilaration of the brief rush downwards sent all her troubles out of her head, and she uttered a war-whoop of delight as she landed with a thump on the mat at the bottom. The elder girls, who were just streaming across the hall in response to the supper-bell, stopped and stared aghast. Certainly the new girl was the most impudent of her species, and meant to make her entry into the establishment of Wootton Beeches with a flourish! But Margaret Hulme, it was rumoured, had taken her up; and that meant that the elder girls were no longer in a position to criticise her.

CHAPTER V

THE INK BOGIES

Barbara's disappointment had lost some of its bitterness by the time the seven o'clock bell woke her on the following morning. Perhaps, after all, it was her own fault that things had not turned out so delightfully as she had expected. Even the boys used to call her clumsy and stupid sometimes; so why should she expect any more tolerance from her school-fellows? Anyhow, here was the beginning of another day, and there was still plenty of time for her dream to come true.

It did not seem much like coming true, though, as she stood in the juniors' room after breakfast, jostled from right to left by the girls who were on their way to the different cla.s.srooms, and wondering when somebody would come and tell her where she was to go. She wished rather sadly that everybody in this school would not expect her to know things by instinct.

'Do _you_ know where I am to go?' she begged, catching hold of Jean Murray as she hurried by. Babs had forgotten, if, indeed, she had ever realised, that Jean looked upon her as an enemy.

'Go and ask one of the seniors,' retorted Jean, shaking her off. 'You're much too high and mighty to have anything to do with us.'

'What is she talking about?' asked the amazed Barbara, looking after her.

'Well, it isn't likely she can forget all at once that you got her a scolding from Margaret Hulme,' explained Angela, who was hurrying as usual after her friend, like a shadow.