For the Sake of the School (3 page)

Rona whistled.

"Guess she'll drop on me pretty often then! No one's ever called neatness my strong point. Are those photos on the mantelpiece your home folks? I'm going to look at them. What a lot of things you've got: books, and albums, and goodness knows what! I'll enjoy turning them over when I've time."

At half-past eight that night a few members of the Lower Fifth, putting away books in their classroom, stopped to compare notes.

"Well, what do you think of your adorable one, Ulyth?" asked Stephanie Radford, a little spitefully. "You're welcome to her company so far as I'm concerned."

"Rose of the Wilderness, indeed!" mocked Merle Denham.

"Your prairie rose is nothing but a dandelion!" remarked Christine Crosswood.

"I never heard anyone with such an awful laugh," said Lizzie Lonsdale.

"Don't!" implored Ulyth tragically. "I've had the shock of my life. She's--oh, she's too terrible for words! Her voice makes me cringe. And she pawed all my things. She snatched up my photos, and turned over my books with sticky fingers; she even opened my drawers and peeped inside."

"What cheek!"

"Oh, she hasn't the slightest idea of how to behave herself! She asked me a whole string of the most impertinent questions: what I'd paid for my clothes, and how long they'd have to last me. She's unbearable. Yes, absolutely impossible. Ugh! and I've got to sleep in the same room with her to-night."

"Poor martyr, it's hard luck," sympathized Lizzie. "Why did you write and ask the Rainbow to put you together? It was rather buying a pig in a poke, wasn't it?"

"I never dreamt she'd be like this. It sounded so romantic, you see, living on a huge farm, and having two horses to ride. I shall go to Miss Bowes, first thing to-morrow morning, and ask to have her moved out of my room. I only wish there was time to do it this evening. Oh, why did I ever write to her and make her want to come to this school?"

"Poor old Ulyth! You've certainly let yourself in for more than you bargained for," laughed the girls, half sorry for her and half amused.

Next morning, after breakfast, the very instant that Miss Bowes was installed in her study, a "rap-tap-tap" sounded on her door.

"Come in!" she called, and sighed as Ulyth entered, for she had a shrewd suspicion of what she was about to hear.

"Please, Miss Bowes, I'm sorry to have to ask a favour, but may Rona be changed into another dormitory?"

"Why, Ulyth, you wrote to me specially and asked if you might have her for a room-mate!"

"Yes, I did; but I hadn't seen her then. I thought she'd be so different."

"Isn't it a little too soon to judge? You haven't known her twenty-four hours yet."

"I know as much of her as I ever want to. Oh, Miss Bowes, she's dreadful! I'll never like her. I can't have her in my room--I simply can't!"

There was a shake, suggestive of tears, in Ulyth's voice. Her eyes looked heavy, as if she had not slept. Miss Bowes sighed again.

"Rona mayn't be exactly what you imagined, but you must remember in what different circumstances she has been brought up. I think she has many good qualities, and that she'll soon improve. Now let us look at the matter from her point of view. You have been writing to her constantly for two years. She has come here specially to be near you. You are her only friend in a new and strange country where she is many thousand miles away from her own home. You gave her a cordial invitation to England, and now, because she does not happen to realize your quite unfounded expectations, you want to back out of all your obligations to her. I thought you were a girl, Ulyth, who kept her promises."

Ulyth fingered the corner of the tablecloth nervously for a moment, then she burst out:

"I can't, Miss Bowes, I simply can't. If you knew how she grates upon me! Oh, it's too much! I'd rather have a bear cub or a monkey for a room-mate! Please, please don't make us stop together! If you won't move her, move me! I'd sleep in an attic if I could have it to myself."

"You must stay where you are until the end of the week. You owe that to Rona, at any rate. Afterwards I shall not force you, but leave it to your own good feeling. I want you to think over what I have been saying. You can come on Sunday morning and tell me your decision."

"I know what the answer will be," murmured Ulyth, as she went from the room.

She was very angry with Miss Bowes, with Rona, and with herself for her own folly.

"It's ridiculous to expect me to take up this savage," she argued. "And too bad of Miss Bowes to make out that I'm breaking my word. Oh dear! what am I to write home to Mother? How can I tell her? I believe I'll just send her a picture post card, and only say Rona has come, and no more. Miss Bowes has no right to coerce me. I'll make my own friends. No, I've quite made up my mind she shan't cram Rona down my throat. To have that awful girl eternally in my bedroom--I should die!"

After all her heroics it was a terrible come-down for poor Ulyth now the actual had taken the place of the sentimental. Her class-mates could not forbear teasing her a little. It was too bad of them; but then they had resented her entire pre-appropriation of the new-comer, and, moreover, had one or two old scores from last term to pay off. Ulyth began to detest the very name of "the Prairie Flower". She wondered how she could ever have been so silly.

"I ought to have been warned," she thought, trying to throw the blame on to somebody else. "No one ever suggested she'd be like this. The editor of the magazine really shouldn't have persuaded us to write. It's all his fault in the beginning."

Though the rest of the girls were scarcely impressed with Rona's personality, they were not utterly repelled.

"She's rather pretty," ventured Lizzie Lonsdale. "Her eyes are the bluest I've ever seen."

"And her teeth are so white and even," added Beth Broadway. "She looks jolly when she smiles."

"Perhaps she'll smarten up soon," suggested Addie Knighton. "That blue dress suits her; it just matches her eyes."

To Ulyth's fastidious taste Rona's clothes looked hopelessly ill-cut and colonial, especially as her room-mate put them on anyhow, and seemed to have no regard at all for appearances. A girl who did not mind whether she looked really trim, spruce and smart, must indeed have spent her life in the backwoods.

"Didn't you even have a governess in New Zealand?" she ventured one day. She did not encourage Rona to talk, but for once her curiosity overcame her dislike of the high-pitched voice.

"Couldn't get one to stop up-country, where we were. Mrs. Barker, our cowman's wife, looked after me ever since Mother died. She was the only woman about the place. One of our farm helps taught me lessons. He was a B.A. of Oxford, but down on his luck. Dad said I'd seem queer to English girls. I don't know that I care."

Though Rona might not be possessed of the most delicate perceptions, she nevertheless had common sense enough to realize that Ulyth did not receive her with enthusiasm.

"I suppose you're disappointed in me?" she queried. "Dad said you would be, but I laughed at him. Pity if our ready-made friendship turned out a misfit! I think you're no end! Dad said I'd got to copy you; it'll take me all my time, I expect. Things are so different here from home."

Was there a suspicion of a choke in the words?

Ulyth had a sudden pang of compunction. Unwelcome as her companion was to her, she did not wish to be brutal.

"You mustn't get home-sick," she said hastily. "You'll shake down here in time. Everyone finds things strange at school just at first. I did myself."

"I guess you were never as much a fish out of water as me, though," returned Rona, and went whistling down the passage.

Ulyth tried to dismiss her from her thoughts. She did not intend to worry over Rona more than she could possibly help. Fortunately they were not together in class, for Rona's entrance-examination papers had not reached the standard of the Lower Fifth, and she had been placed in IV B.

Ulyth was interested in her school-work. She stood well with her teachers, and was an acknowledged force in her form. She came from a very refined and cultured home, where intellectual interests were cultivated both by father and mother. Her temperament was naturally artistic; she was an omnivorous reader, and could devour anything in the shape of literature that came her way. The bookcase in her dormitory was filled with beautiful volumes, mostly Christmas and birthday gifts. She rejoiced in their soft leather bindings or fine illustrations with a true book-lover's enthusiasm. It was her pride to keep them in daintiest condition. Dog-ears or thumb-marks were in her opinion the depths of degradation. Ulyth had ambitions also, ambitions which she would not reveal to anybody. Some day she planned to write a book of her own. She had not yet fixed on a subject, but she had decided just what the cover was to be like, with her name on it in gilt letters. Perhaps she might even illustrate it herself, for her love of art almost equalled her love of literature; but that was still in the clouds, and must wait till she had chosen her plot. In the interim she wrote verses and short stories for the school magazine, and her essays for Miss Teddington were generally returned marked "highly creditable".

This term Ulyth intended to study hard. It was a promotion to be in the Upper School; she was beginning several new subjects, and her interest in many things was aroused. It would be a delightful autumn as soon as she had got rid of this dreadful problem, at present the one serious obstacle to her comfort. But in the meantime it was only Friday, and till at least the following Monday she would be obliged to endure her uncongenial presence in her bedroom.

Round the Camp-fire

It was the first Saturday of the term. So far the girls had been kept busily occupied settling down to work in their fresh forms, and trying to grow accustomed to Miss Teddington's new time-tables. Now, however, they were free to relax and enjoy themselves in any way they chose. Some were playing tennis, some had gone for a walk with Miss Moseley, a few were squatting frog-like on boulders in the midst of the stream, and others strolled under the trees in the grove.

"Thank goodness the weather's behaving itself!" said Mary Acton, who, with a few other members of the Lower Fifth, was sitting on the trunk of a fallen oak. "Do you remember last council? It simply poured. The thing's no fun if one can't have a real fire."

"It'll burn first-rate to-night," returned Lizzie Lonsdale. "There's a little wind, and the wood'll be dry."

"That reminds me I haven't found my faggot yet," said Beth Broadway easily.

"Girl alive! Then you'd better go and look for one, or you'll be all in a scramble at the last!"

"Bother! I'm too comfy to move."

"Nice Wood-gatherer you'll look if you come empty-handed!"

"I'd appropriate half your lot first, Lizzikins!"

"Would you, indeed? I'd denounce you, and you'd lose your rank and be degraded to a candidate again."

"Oh, you mean, stingy miser!"

"Not at all. It's the wise and foolish virgins over again. I shan't have enough for myself and you. I've a lovely little stack--just enough for one--reposing--no, I'd better not tell you where. Don't look so hopeful. You're not to be trusted."

"What are you talking about?" asked Rona Mitchell, who had wandered up to the group. "Why are some of you picking up sticks? I saw a girl over there with quite a bundle just now. You might tell me."

So far Rona had not been well received in her own form, IV B. She was older than her class-mates, and they, instead of attempting to initiate her into the ways of the Woodlands girls on this holiday afternoon, had scuttled off and left her to fend for herself. She looked such an odd, wistful, lonely figure that Lizzie Lonsdale's kind heart smote her. She pushed the other girls farther along the tree-trunk till they made a grudging space for the new-comer.

"I'm a good hand at camp-fires, if you want any help," continued Rona, seating herself with alacrity. "I've made 'em by the dozen at home, and cooked by them too. Just let me know where you want it, and I'll set to work."

"You wouldn't be allowed," said Beth bluntly. "This fire is a very special thing. Only Wood-gatherers may bring the fuel. No one else is eligible."

"Why on earth not?"

"Oh, I can't bother to explain now! It would take too long. You'll find out to-night. Girls, I'm going in!"

"Turn up here at dusk if you want to know, and bring a cup with you," suggested Lizzie, with a half-ashamed effort at friendliness, as she followed her chums.

"You bet I'll turn up! Rather!"

That evening, just after sunset, little groups of girls began to collect round an open green space in the glade. They came quietly and with a certain sense of discipline. A stranger would have noticed that if any loud tone or undue hilarity made itself heard, it was instantly and firmly repressed by one or two who seemed in authority. That the meeting was more in the nature of a convention than a mere pleasure-gathering was evident both from the demeanour of the assemblage and from the various badges pinned on the girls' coats. No teacher was present, but there was an air of general expectancy, as if the coming of somebody were awaited. To the pupils at The Woodlands this night's ceremony was a very special occasion, for it was the autumn reunion of the Camp-fire League, an organization which, originally of American birth, had been introduced at the instigation of Miss Teddington, and had taken great root in the school. Any girl was eligible as a candidate, but before she could gain admission to even the initial rank she had to prove herself worthy of the honour of membership, and pass successfully through her novitiate.

The organizer and leader of the branch which to-night was to celebrate its third anniversary was a certain Mrs. Arnold, a charming young American lady who lived in the neighbourhood. She had been an enthusiastic supporter of the League in Pennsylvania before her marriage, and was delighted to pass on its traditions to British schoolgirls. Her winsome personality made her a prime favourite at The Woodlands, where her influence was stronger even than she imagined. Miss Teddington, though it was she who had asked Mrs. Arnold to institute and take charge of the meetings, had the discretion to keep out of the League herself, realizing that the presence of teachers might be a restraint, and that the management was better left in the hands of a trustworthy outsider.