CHAPTER VI

THE BOOTS OF THE HEAD GIRL

'I'm going to be in your class for everything except Latin and mathematics,' shouted Barbara, flying into the juniors' room just before dinner. It seemed to her of the first importance that everybody should know which class she was to be in, and she was distinctly surprised when Jean Murray, whom she had addressed, turned her back on her and began talking loudly to some one else. 'Don't you hear?' persisted Babs, coming round in front of her again. 'I'm going to be in your class for everything except----'

'Sneak!' burst out Jean Murray, unable to control herself any longer. 'Tell-tale! You oughtn't to be in anybody's class, you oughtn't!'

Barbara stood stockstill, and looked at her. All the courage she had regained from her peaceful morning in Miss Finlayson's study dwindled away again, and left her hopeless of propitiating these strange schoolgirls, who seemed determined on being cross with her whatever she did. Angela knocked roughly against her at the same instant, and surprised her at last into a remonstrance.

'What have I done?' she demanded. 'Won't anybody tell me what I have done?'

No one answered her. The alliance of Jean and Angela, though Jean was the youngest and Angela the most empty-headed of all the children there, meant the existence of a strong party in the junior playroom; and the poor little new girl stood a very small chance of asserting herself against it. They were much like sheep, both in the upper and the lower playrooms at Wootton Beeches; and the party that followed Margaret Hulme in one room was like the party that followed Jean in the other. In both cases it only needed some one a little stronger than the rest to be the leader; and Jean, in spite of her inferiority in age, supplied the strength, or what her school-fellows mistook for it, in a certain doggedness of temper that pulled them along in her wake. Most of them found it so unpleasant to be in her bad books, that she had very little difficulty in managing them.

Barbara turned appealingly to Angela. 'Why is Jean so cross with me?' she asked. 'I haven't done anything to her, have I?'

'Not done anything?' echoed Angela, looking over her shoulder for Jean's support. 'Why, you went and told Margaret Hulme that Jean hadn't given you Finny's message, and----'

'Sneak! Tell-tale!' sneered Jean again.

Barbara suddenly looked immensely relieved, and smiled in a friendly manner at the enemy. At least this was a misunderstanding that she could clear up. 'Is that all?' she cried. 'No wonder you were cross, if you thought that. Of course I never said a word about it to Margaret Hulme, or any one else; I suppose she guessed, or something. But why didn't you give me the message? It would have saved such a lot of bother, wouldn't it?'

'Well,' gasped Jean, as though words almost failed her, 'I never heard such wicked story-telling!'

'Nor I either,' chimed in Angela, putting her arm round Jean's waist. 'She's done nothing but tell crams ever since she's been here. Come away, Jean, dear; she isn't fit to be argued with.'

The pair of them marched off, consumed with righteous wrath, to the other end of the playroom. Babs, overwhelmed with the incredible idea that any one should suppose her capable of telling an untruth about anything, waited speechlessly for some one to interfere and take her part. But those of her school-fellows who had been listening to the dispute hastily followed the example of their leader, and ignored her entirely. They did not stop to think whether they were being just; if the new girl told stories--and Jean Murray said she did--it was certainly their duty to teach her a lesson. When they looked for her presently, to see how she was bearing their displeasure, they found she was no longer there.

Upstairs, in the small, bare bedroom, the one spot where she felt safe from the intrusion of horrible wicked people with horrible wicked thoughts in them, the forlorn little new girl was covering page after page of the ruled note-paper Auntie Anna had given her, with an ill-written, ill-spelt account of her woes.

'Dear, dear boys,' she wrote; 'I am very misserable. Everything is horible. At least, that is not quite true. Finny is nice she is like Auntie Anna and Nurse, and I've got a bedroom of my very own we all have but mine is one of the nicest becourse it comes at the corner of the house and looks over a wall into the orchard and there's a plant with bunches of red beries that climes round my window and nobody else has red berrys round their window but only me. Finny has lots of ripping books in her study and she has father's book and she is very nice but the girls are beests I hate girls! Girls tell stories and they say you do things when you don't and they are awfull beests. They laugh at you every time you open your mouth but I don't mind their siliness so much it's their untruthfull hatefullness that I hate. I have never been so miserable I wish father had never gone to that beestly America and I wish Auntie Anna would come and fetch me back again. Do do ask her to come and take me away from all those hatefull girls, tell her how miserabble I am you don't know any of you what it is to be really misserable, etc. etc.'

She had reached about the fifth page of this wild epistle when her door flew open; and Ruth Oliver looked in, with a perturbed look on her good-humoured face.

'Why, there you are!' she exclaimed. 'Didn't you hear the dinner-bell? We're half-way through the first course. Whatever are you doing?'

Barbara began folding up her letter and forcing it with trembling hands into an envelope. 'I've been writing home,' she said, and her voice quivered. Of course, everything she did was wrong; but what did dinner matter when there was her letter home to be written?

'My dear child, we're not allowed to write letters except on Wednesday afternoons. Make haste and put the thing away, do,' said Ruth, impatiently. The sudden look of distress on the child's face touched her, and she added more kindly--'Well, well, bring it downstairs with you, Babe, and perhaps Finny will give you leave to send it to-day. Only, do _come_.'

Miss Finlayson not only gave her leave, but even offered to deliver the letter herself, as she happened to be going to pay a call near Crofts that same afternoon. It consoled Babs a little to feel that the boys would not have to wait until the morning to learn how miserable she was; at the same time, her present situation was no easier to bear, for all the younger girls took a thoughtless pleasure in talking at her, whenever Jean was present; and it was not nice to be with people who made remarks about her, and yet pretended all the time that she was not there. The early part of the afternoon at Wootton Beeches was given up to playing games in the nine-acre field, which was marked out, during the winter, into hockey grounds; and here Babs found herself, soon after dinner, strolling aimlessly along by the hedge and wondering what there was about her that made eighty-seven girls detest her so heartily. When she suddenly remembered how much she had looked forward to playing real games with real schoolgirls, her disappointment was too much for her, and the tears rolled rapidly down her cheeks.

'Why, here's the new girl, Barbara Berkeley. She'll do,' said a brisk voice behind her, and the games-mistress descended upon her with a hasty request 'not to hide away in corners when she was wanted.'

'I didn't know I was wanted,' explained Barbara, following her up the field. 'I never am wanted, you see.'

'Nonsense! Everybody is wanted at this school,' replied the games-mistress, who had a warm complexion, a breezy manner, and a vigorous step, all of which, aided by her name of Burleigh, had secured her the nickname of Hurly-burly. It never occurred to her that the new girl was suffering from anything worse than the ordinary depression natural to her newness, and she decided immediately that the best thing to cheer her up would be to make her run about. In the eyes of Miss Burleigh, running about was a cure for most things. 'Here, Charlotte Bigley!' she called loudly; 'you ought to have looked after this child instead of letting her escape. She'll do to play forward on your side. Just put her where you like, and let's begin.'

There was not much chance, when Miss Burleigh was about, of letting private feuds spoil the game of hockey; and under the influence of her infectious gaiety, the girls even began to show Babs a certain amount of friendliness. Perhaps the fact that Jean Murray was bicycling round the cinder-track, instead of playing hockey, may have had something to do with their change of manner, but Babs did not inquire into that. It was enough for her that she was allowed, for the first time in her life, to run about in the open air without a hat; and she reddened with pleasure when Charlotte Bigley, the captain of her side, actually complimented her on the way she ran. Charlotte was the oldest of the junior girls, and she was going to be moved into the upper Third next term; so she always professed to be rather superior to the leadership of Jean Murray--especially when Jean Murray was out of the way.

'You'll make a very good right wing, when you've learnt to pass the ball inside instead of poking at it,' she observed condescendingly, at half-time.

A very little was enough to send up Barbara's spirits with a bound, and when the bell rang at four o'clock for preparation, she ran indoors with as buoyant a step as the rest, and even whistled gaily to herself as she unlaced her boots in the large cloakroom, where the girls were taking off their outdoor things. Angela happened to overhear her, and at once took upon herself to quench this unseemly appearance of cheerfulness, and to remind her that she was still only a new girl.

'You'd better look sharp and take off the head girl's boots, or you'll catch it,' she advised her in a threatening tone.

Barbara stopped whistling and became suspicious. 'Last time I was told to go and do things for the head girl, it was all humbug,' she said. 'I'm not going to be taken in twice, so you shut up!'

Angela under the protection of Jean, and Angela by herself, were two very different beings. The unexpected resistance made by Babs was quite enough to change her bullying tone into an injured one, and she began to edge off towards the other girls. 'This isn't humbug, anyhow,' she said in a milder tone. 'If you don't believe me, go and see; that won't hurt you, whether it's true or not. Of course, if you _want_ to make Margaret jump on you, it doesn't matter to me.'

There was certainly something in what she said, and Barbara heaved a sigh for the complications of school life. It was so silly, she felt, so extremely silly to make such a fuss about the displeasure of the head girl, and to avoid it by doing such stupid things for her. Why couldn't the head girl take off her own boots, like every one else? However, it did not matter much, one way or the other; and Babs would have taken off anybody's boots to secure a little friendliness in this most unfriendly of assemblages. So she threaded her way through the crowd of girls to where Margaret Hulme stood talking with the enthusiastic hockey players who formed the first eleven. She had not begun to take off her boots, Babs noticed, so perhaps it was true after all, and the head girl was really waiting for some one to come and do it for her.

'Ruth would make a splendid half-back if she'd only learn to strike better,' Margaret was saying earnestly; 'and if Winifred wasn't so frightened of tackling, we should have quite a--what is it, child?'

'Please, I've come to know if you want your boots unlaced,' said Barbara, rather faintly. She was fully prepared to be laughed at again for her pains; and, indeed, it did seem a most ridiculous suggestion to make to any one. But the head girl treated it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

'Of course I do. Do you want to do them to-day?' was her reply, and she immediately put her right foot a little forward and went on talking to her eleven.

'Oh, but I don't _want_ to take them off,' cried Babs, eagerly. 'I only thought----'

But Margaret was too deep in her conversation to pay any attention to the youngest girl in the school; and Barbara knelt down unwillingly and struggled with a stubborn knot in a muddy bootlace. She had hardly begun her unattractive task, when some one dropped suddenly beside her on the floor and laid a hot hand on hers.

'You leave the head girl's boots alone!' said Jean's voice in her ear. 'It's just like your interfering ways, to come sneaking up to her when I wasn't looking. Go away and mind your own business!'

Now, Babs had just been resenting deeply the absurdity of her position at the feet of the head girl. She did not want to take off anybody's boots, and she thought it an exceedingly stupid thing to do. But to give up her task because some one came and got cross about it, was quite another matter. A lurking spirit of mischief, helped by the exhilaration she still felt after her two hours in the open air, made her retain her hold on the knot in the head girl's bootlace.

'I am minding my own business,' she retorted stoutly. 'Ever since I've been here, you and Angela have dinned the head girl's boots into my ears till I'm sick of hearing about the stupid things. Now I'm here, I'm not going to stop till I've done them; so you'd better go away yourself.'

[Illustration: 'What in the name of wonder are you children doing down there?']

Jean glanced at her furiously, and Barbara tugged away at the bootlace and began whistling again, to show how little she cared whether Jean was angry or not. Above their heads, the gossip went on busily about the style of the first hockey eleven.

'How about our chances against the Wilford club next month?' some one was asking.

'As to that,' said Margaret, with confidence, 'if we only keep our heads we shall have no difficulty whatever in standing----'

She did not finish her sentence, for at that instant a violent onslaught on her right foot put a comical end to it by nearly upsetting her balance. She just saved herself by seizing the arm of the nearest girl, and the hockey gossip came to an abrupt finish.

'What in the name of wonder are you children doing down there?' demanded Margaret, wrathfully. The knot had come undone by this time, and Jean was tugging at one end of the bootlace, while Babs, with an elfish glee shining in her bright little eyes, was keeping a firm hold on the other end.

'You go away,' Jean was gasping in a choked voice. 'I've done this for two years, and I'm not going to give up doing it now.'

'You told me yourself I'd got to do it, and I'm not going away till it's done, so there!' laughed Barbara, in reply.

She made another dash at the foot between them, and the head girl again nearly lost her balance. 'Stop quarrelling, and leave my foot alone, you naughty little wretches!' cried Margaret, stamping her disengaged foot vigorously. Jean, with two years of discipline behind her, awoke suddenly to the voice of authority and started to her feet, covered with terror at the enormity of her offence. But Babs uttered a yell of delight at finding the victory so easily won.

'Why don't you unlace somebody else's boots?' she shouted defiantly to her adversary. 'There's lots of boots round here waiting to be unlaced.'

Margaret stooped down and lifted her up bodily, and set her on her feet beside Jean.

'Now,' she said sternly, 'what do you both mean by behaving in this disgraceful manner?'

Neither of them answered her. Jean hung her head and looked as if she were going to cry every minute, and Barbara waited to see what would happen next. It did not seem to her that she had done anything so very dreadful, and she wondered why no one saw how funny it all was. Ruth Oliver was looking the other way, so she could not see her face; but the rest of them seemed just as serious about it as the head girl herself.

'Haven't you anything to say for yourselves?' demanded Margaret.

Hot, angry tears began to well up into Jean's eyes. She never knew she could have hated any one so much as she hated this new girl for coming between her and Margaret Hulme. Barbara caught sight of her tears, and the desire to laugh suddenly left her.

'You see, we didn't know who had got to unlace your boots,' she explained hastily. 'It isn't that it's such an awfully jolly thing to unlace people's boots, but----'

'Oh, that's it, is it?' interrupted Margaret, crushingly. 'Then you needn't be in the same difficulty any more on my account, for in future I shall unlace my own boots. Now, go away and do your preparation at once, and don't let me see either of you again for the rest of the day.'

Babs went off obediently to find her books, and she puzzled greatly as she went over the displeasure of Margaret Hulme. 'Such a fuss to make about _boots_,' she remarked to Charlotte Bigley, whose bookshelf was next to hers. But even Charlotte was not proof against the furious account of the matter that Jean Murray had just been giving to a sympathetic circle of friends; and Barbara soon found that she had quite lost the little popularity she might have gained in the hockey field by her behaviour over the head girl's boots.

'I think she must be mad,' declared Angela, in the buzz of conversation that preceeded the call for 'Silence' from the presiding French teacher. 'She looked as though she wanted to kill Jean. I was looking at her all the time, and I was quite frightened. She ought to be watched, I'm certain she ought.'

'She ought not to be spoken to by any one,' wailed Jean, hiding behind an open atlas to avoid the scrutiny of Mademoiselle, who sat in the archway between the two playrooms. 'Perhaps, if every one leaves her alone she'll learn how to behave like other people.'

Left alone she accordingly was, since Jean Murray had so decreed it; and this time there were no half-measures about it. At tea-time, and again at the supper table, the girls on either side of her turned their backs upon her and talked busily to their other neighbours; and in the playroom afterwards she found herself just as scrupulously avoided. It was decidedly an uncomfortable state of things for the new girl, as it was meant to be by those who were responsible for making it; but somehow the new girl did not seem to mind it half so much as they would have expected. All the evening she sat in the corner of the juniors' room by herself, and any one would have said from the look on her face that she did not care whether the others spoke to her or not. Now and then she smiled, as she sat there with her elbows perched on her knees and her chin supported on her hands; and the whole time her look of supreme unconsciousness never left her.

'She's hardened, that's what she is,' declared Jean, glancing in her direction. This she said to keep up her own resentment against the new girl, which was unaccountably beginning to cool.

'She thinks it's grand to pretend not to care,' added the faithful Angela. This, indeed, was the prevailing opinion among the children of the junior playroom; and it was not comforting to their pride.

All the while, Barbara guessed nothing of the comments she was provoking by her manner. It was enough for her that she had got away once more into her fairy kingdom, and that Kit and the magician and the old fairy godmother had just turned out all the princesses who were called schoolgirls, and had shut the gates in their faces.

It was a very weary little new girl who went up to her bed that evening after prayers. She was almost too tired to think over the events that had been crowded into the last twenty-four hours, almost too sleepy to realise that this was the close of her first day at school, the day she had thought would be the happiest day in her life. Perhaps it was a good thing she was not able to think too much about anything, at the end of that first day at school. The moment Fräulein had turned out her light, she went off into a dreamless sleep that might have lasted unbroken till the morning, had not something occurred most strangely to break it.

She did not hear the small pebbles that were thrown up, one after another, at her window; it would have taken more than that to rouse her from her first sleep, though once a handful of mould and gravel that scattered itself all over the glass panes made her stir uneasily and murmur something sleepily. It was just after this that some one began calling 'Coo-ey' softly, on two particular notes; and after this had been repeated two or three times, it gradually worked itself into the waking dream of the little new girl. At the fourth time, she was wide awake and listening with all her might. Another repetition of it, followed by a gentle whistle that only Peter knew how to blow through his fingers, took her with a flying leap to the window. The moon outside was flooding the world with light and revealing every secret in the landscape for miles: it flooded the big nine-acre field beyond the orchard; it flooded the orchard itself, and the wall that ran along it, just under her window; and it showed her five boys sitting astride on the top of the wall, and five--no, _six_ bicycles leaning against the bottom of the wall.

Barbara pushed open the lattice window as wide as it would go, and leaned out breathlessly. Her finger was on her lips, and she shivered from head to foot with cold and the fear of being overheard. Supposing that any one were to find out they were there, and should send them away before she could get to them?

The five of them made frantic signs of welcome, as soon as they saw the familiar dark head appear at the window. In spite of the graphic description contained in her letter, they were beginning to be afraid of having besieged the wrong window. Then Kit waved a screw of paper and made more signs, and the dark head vanished from view again. It did not take a minute to turn out all the contents of her corner drawer, and to find the ball of string that Robin had given her for a parting present, and then to fling the end of it down to Kit, who tied on his screw of paper and nodded at her to haul it up.

The moonlight was bright enough to enable her to read the few short pencilled lines without much difficulty.

'We've come to the rescue,' she read. 'Auntie Anna has gone away till to-morrow, so we could not wait until then, knowing you were so jolly blue. Come down quickly; there's a window under yours that you could get through all right.'

Barbara struggled with desperate haste into her pink dressing-gown, thrust her bare feet into a pair of woolly slippers, and glided to the door. In her haste and her half-awakened condition a more elaborate costume than that, considering the urgency of the occasion, seemed quite unnecessary to her. Along the silent gallery she pattered, and down the wide staircase, then through the two empty playrooms into the front hall. She knew the window the boys had meant; she had noticed the red berries tapping against the glass, as she passed it on her way to Finny's study the morning before.

As she sped across the moonlit hall, she did not see that the study door was ajar and that a chink of light shone out from it. All her attention was absorbed in the one thought that the boys were going to take her away from this houseful of unfriendly strangers, and that she would never have to face them and their taunts again.

She clambered on to the window-seat, and unfastened the shutter. That was easy enough, but the bolt of the window baffled her for some seconds. When she did manage to shoot it back, the noise it made filled her with apprehension. In her terror lest she should have been overheard, she did not pause another instant, but threw up the sash and hastily put one slippered foot on the ledge. Once outside and on her bicycle, the boys would take care that no one overtook her; and she would be free at last!

Panting with excitement, she stooped through the open window and prepared to draw her other foot after her. But before she had time to do so, a light step had crossed the hall and an arm was flung round her from behind.

'Barbara!' exclaimed Miss Finlayson. '_Barbara!_'

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