Angela Brazil

“ This door was kept locked, Miss Beasley and Miss 52 Gibbs each having a key. Every day, girls pressed inquisitive noses against the wire netting to peep at the tantalizing prospect beyond. They could just see round the corner of a winding oak staircase on to a dim, mysterious landing beyond. Once or twice Miss Gibbs had gone to her attic laboratory and had left the door open behind her, and a few bold spirits had ventured upstairs, but, as the door of her room had also been wide open, they had not dared to pass it and risk discovery, and had been obliged to beat a hasty retreat. ”

“ Miss Gibbs was fast arriving at the disappointing conclusion that patriotism costs dearly: in other words, that if you take away eighteen girls to do strawberry picking, you cannot expect them, immediately on their return, to settle down again into ordinary routine and everyday habits. An atmosphere of camp life seemed to pervade the place, a free-and-easy, rollicking spirit that was not at all in accordance with Miss Beasley’s ideas of propriety. ”

“ It was an unfortunate truth that Miss Gibbs was not very popular at the Grange. She was clever, conscientious, and well-meaning, and preserved a high ideal of girlhood. Much too high for practical use, so her pupils maintained.
“This isn’t a school for saints!” grumbled Valentine one day. “If we followed all Gibbie’s pet precepts we should have halos round our heads.”
“And be sprouting wings!” added Raymonde. “A very uncomfortable process too. I expect it would hurt like cutting teeth, and it would spoil the fit of one’s blouses. I don’t want to be an angel! ”

“ Being the Bumble’s birthday—if you grin, Ardiune Coleman-Smith, I’ll pinch you!—Being, as I have observed, the Bumble’s birthday, it seems only right and fit and proper that the other bees in the hive should buzz in sympathy, and take a holiday, and go and sip nectar. Let us copy Nature’s methods! ”

“ Until that time the camp was not really quiet. The university students were a lively set, apt to keep up their fun late, and the secondary school girls often talked persistently, to the annoyance of their neighbours. At last, however, all lights were out, and a profound silence reigned. Not even an owl hooted to-night, and, as Dandy had been banished from the field, even his crunching of the grass was absent. Raymonde crept from her blankets and listened. ”

“ Here, duly shod in rubber waders, a few enthusiasts toiled almost daily, planting iris and arrow-head and flowering rush, and sinking water-lily roots in old wicker baskets weighted with stones. There was even a scheme on hand to subscribe to buy a punt, but Miss Beasley had frowned upon the idea as containing too great an element of danger, and of consequent anxiety for teachers.
“I don’t want a set of Ophelias drowning themselves among the willows and the long purples!” she remarked firmly. “If we bought a punt, we should need a drag and a life-belt as well. ”

“ Miss Gibbs, acting on the advice of a book entitled Education out of School Hours, was determined that every moment of the day should be filled with some occupation that led to culture. She carefully explained that the word “recreation” meant “re-creation”—a creating again, not a mere period of frivolity or lotus-eating, and advocated that all intervals of leisure should be devoted to intellectual interests. She frowned on girls who sauntered arm-in-arm round the garden, or sat giggling in the summer-house, and suggested suitable employments for their idle hands and brains. ”

“ Had Miss Beasley or Miss Gibbs been taking a survey of the attics? No matter who it was, the horrible result remained the same. What was she to do? She beat wildly at the door, hoping to break it in, but sixteenth-century oak and bolts were made of stuff too strong for a girl’s hands. She shouted and called, knowing all the time that it was of little avail. Whoever bolted the door must have gone away. Miss Gibbs’s laboratory was at the other side of the house, and she might scream herself hoarse without anyone hearing her. ”

“ Life began at the camp soon after 5 a.m., when the more energetic spirits tumbled off their hay sacks, flung on dressing-gowns, and scrambled for turns at the bath tent. Fetching water for the day was the first business of the morning, and those on bucket duty trotted off to the stream, two fields away, joking and making fun as they went, but returning more soberly with the heavy pails. The 6.15 breakfast tasted delicious after their early outing, and most of the workers seemed in good spirits. ”

“ She may be a blighter in some things, but she doesn’t funk!”
“No more do I,” declared Aveline, suddenly assuming an air of dignified abandon, reminiscent of the heroes of coral-island stories. “I’m ready to brave anything, especially for the sake of old Wilkinson. Don’t tip the thing so hard at your end! You’ve made me trap my fingers!”
They launched their craft from the water-garden, treading ruthlessly on Linda’s irises and Hermie’s cherished forget-me-nots. It seemed to float all right, so they crawled on, and squatted on the cross-beams on either side of it to preserve its balance. ”

“ I propose a deputation to the Bumble, to state that the gratitude and devotion of the hive can only work itself off on water. Yes, Ardiune Coleman-Smith, I did say ‘the hive’, my sense of poetry being more highly developed than my love of exact science. You needn’t lift your eyebrows, it’s not a pretty habit.”
“Who’s going to make the deputation?” asked Fauvette.
“You, for one. You’re our strongest point. You look naturally affectionate and clinging and docile, and ready-to-be-taught-if-taken-the-right-way, and easily led, and all the rest of it. ”

“ Fauvette was one of those girls who all their lives lean upon somebody, and at present she had twined herself, an ornamental piece of honeysuckle, round the stout oak prop of Raymonde’s stronger personality. She was a dear, amiable, sweet-tempered little soul, highly romantic and sentimental, with a pretty soprano voice, and just a sufficient talent for acting to make her absolutely invaluable in scenes from Dickens or Jane Austen, where a heroine of the innocent, pleading, pathetic, babyish, Early Victorian type was required. ”

“ It was on record that he had once hit Lois Barlow a hard crack over the knuckles with his fountain-pen, whereupon she wept—not so much from pain as from injured feelings—and he had apologized in quite a gentlemanly fashion, and picked up the music that in his burst of temper he had flung upon the floor. In spite of his acknowledged irritability, all the girls who learned from him gave themselves airs of slight superiority over those who only learned from Mademoiselle. ”

“ Everybody’s sins are stuck on to me. Gibbie lets forth the vials of her wrath, the storm’s over, she feels better, and nobody else is much the worse.”
“Not even you—you heroic victim?”
“Bless you, child, I’m as used to scolding as eels to skinning. Neither the Bumble Bee nor the Wasp worry me. I let them both buzz. It seems to please them! Indeed, I think they expect it. When one’s got a reputation, one’s bound to live up to it.”
Raymonde Armitage would certainly not have won a medal for exemplary behaviour, had any such prize been offered at the school. ”

“ Miss Beasley picked up her copy of The Graphic and laughed.
“As a rule, we may trust the girls themselves to do any necessary pruning. They’re the strictest Socialists that could be imagined. They instinctively have all the principles of a trade union about them. On the whole, it’s good for Maudie to be restrained. A little innocent practical joke will do her no harm for once. She must be able to take her share of teasing. Humour is her one deficiency.”
“I think I can guess who’s at the bottom of the business,” sniffed Miss Gibbs. “Raymonde Armitage is the naughtiest girl in the school.” ”

“ The examinations were drawing most horribly and imminently near, and the Fifth Form, feeling themselves for the most part ill prepared for the ordeal, were shivering in anticipation. Armed with textbooks, they made desperate efforts to pull up arrears, and stock their brains with an assortment of necessary facts. Ardiune crammed dates at every available moment, Morvyth studied the map of Europe, Valentine devoted herself to Virgil, and Magsie wept over French verbs, while the rest tried to fill up any educational gaps and holes where they knew they were lacking. ”

“ The girls sat subdued and demure, outwardly the pink of propriety, but inwardly smouldering, and listened obediently while the visitor, mindful of his educational position in the establishment, held forth upon subjects calculated to improve their minds.
“I don’t believe Gibbie likes him either!” opined Katherine, after Monday night’s supper.
“Of course not! He beats her on her own ground. As for the Bumble, she’s quite distraught. She keeps glancing at us as if she expected somebody all the time to spill her tea, or break a plate, or pull a face, or do something dreadful. ”

“ Mademoiselle, whose mental scales always tipped naturally towards the side of pleasure, thought it 179 was a beautiful idea of the dear girls to want to give their headmistress a fête on her anniversary. So sweet to go upon the water, and while the weather was so pleasant! It would be an event to be remembered for ever in their young lives, when sterner lessons might be forgotten; at which remark Miss Gibbs sniffed, but restrained herself. Miss Beasley vibrated for some minutes between the practical and the ideal aspects thus presented to her, but finally decided in favour of the latter. ”

“ Having listened, awestruck, to Veronica’s accounts of a séance, they were apprehensive lest the tables should turn sportive and caper about the rooms rapping out spirit messages, or boisterous elementals should bump the beds up and down and fling the china about.
“That only happens if there’s a powerful medium in the house,” Veronica had assured them, and the girls devoutly hoped that none of their number possessed the required mystic properties.
“Look here,” said Raymonde one day to Ardiune, “I’m getting rather fed up with this spook business.” ”

“ I was talking of opportunities, and never in the whole of our school-days shall we get such another as next Thursday. How are we going to make use of it? I vote for a beano in our dormitory.”
“What’s a ‘beano’?” demanded Fauvette’s plaintive voice. “You’re always saying things I don’t understand.”
“You’re young, child!” returned Raymonde indulgently, “and you can’t be expected to know everything. A beano is a bean-feast. Now don’t look alarmed! We’re not going to eat beans; we’ll have something far more appetizing—sardines, and tinned peaches, and biscuits, and anything else we can get. ”

“ The Grange certainly contained ample space for interests of every description. The old farm buildings made sheds for carpentry and wood-carving, or any other work that was too messy for the schoolrooms. Under the direction of Miss Gibbs, some of the elder girls were turning the contents of a wood pile into a set of rustic garden seats, and other industrious spirits had begun to plait osierwithes into baskets that were destined for blackberry picking in the autumn. The house itself was roomy enough to allow hobbies to overflow. ”

“ Among the flights of fancy in which the Fifth Form were forced to indulge were a railway collision, a fire, a bicycle accident, an escape of gas, the swallowing of poison, the bursting of the kitchen boiler, a case of choking, and an infectious epidemic. On the whole they rather enjoyed the fun of airing their views, and when asked to propose fresh topics had suggested such startling catastrophes as “A German Invasion,” “A Revolution,” “A Volcanic Eruption,” “A Famine,” and “A Zeppelin Raid.” ”

“ Though Dandy might make a gallant beginning, he had no intention of breaking the record for speed, and at the end of a few hundred yards dropped into an ambling jog-trot, a form of locomotion which seemed to jolt the badly hung little gig to its uttermost.
“It’s rather a painful form of exercise!” gasped Aveline, setting her feet firmly in an attempt to avoid the jarring. “I believe something must be wrong with the springs. Can’t you make him go faster?” ”

“ With Ardiune and Morvyth on terms of distant iciness, Valentine and Katherine constantly sparring over trifles, Fauvette preserving an attitude of martyred dignity, and Aveline, out of sheer perversity, striking up a friendship with Maudie Heywood, matters were not very brisk in the Fifth.
“I’m getting just about fed up with you all!” 175 said Raymonde irritably. “I never saw such a set! How can we have any fun, when everybody’s grousing with everyone else? For goodness’ sake, buck up! I’ve a blossomy idea in my head! ”

“ Raymonde’s harum-scarum mind was for once really filled with a wish to help. She meant to do her full share of work. Also she was determined to enjoy herself. The prospect of camp-life was alluring. There was a gipsy smack about it that satisfied her unconventional instincts. It seemed almost next door to campaigning.
“If I’d only been a boy, I’d have run away to the front long ago!” she announced.
“Girls have their own chances in life as well as boys now,” said Hermie. “Wait till you’ve finished with school, then you must try to find your niche in the world. ”

“ Dandy don’t be one to overwork hisself. I reckon you’ll have to use the whip to he!”
Neither of the girls had even the most elementary experience of driving, but Raymonde, as the elder, and the one who in general possessed the greater amount of nerve, boldly seized the reins and armed herself with the whip. Geordie released Dandy’s head, and gave him a sounding smack as a delicate hint to depart, a proceeding which brought clouds of dust from his shaggy coat, and caused him to scramble suddenly forward, and plunge down the lane at quite an adventurous and stylish pace. ”

“ Schoolgirls are ruthless beings at best.
Bang! Rattle! Bang! Bump! She woke with a start. Projectiles were falling upon the roof with terrific force. At the same moment shrieks issued from the dormitory, and a wild shout of “Zepps!” Miss Gibbs’s presence of mind did not desert her. It took her exactly three seconds to put on her dressing-gown and bedroom slippers, two more to sweep her watch, purse, and a little packet of 76 treasures (placed nightly in readiness) into the ample pocket of her wrapper, and the next instant she was flashing her torchlight in the dormitory. ”

“ Again, a girl with no æsthetic sense may be enraptured with the wonders of the microscope, and those who find a difficulty in mastering the technical terms of botany may yet excel in the extent of their collections of specimens. Who would have imagined that Veronica Terry would develop an interest in geology? I had always considered her a remarkably dull child, but her fossils formed the nucleus of the school museum. I have hopes at present that one or two of my girls are developing tastes that will last them for life. ”

“ Someone’s got to make a sacrifice for the good of the assembly, and you see the lot’s fallen on you,” said Raymonde consolingly. “You ought to be proud to have your bed chosen!”
“I’d just as soon it had been yours!” grumbled Cynthia. “I shan’t like sleeping in a puddle of oil!”
“If you grouse any more, I’ll empty the can of peaches on your pillow, so shut up!” commanded the mistress of the ceremonies. “A beano’s a beano, and we’re going to enjoy ourselves.”
“If we make too much noise, though––” suggested Maudie Heywood. ”