DOROTHY GETS THE MUTTON BONE
In consequence of the trouble at the bathing place, and the tired and chilled condition of the Sixth, the examination for finals was put off until next morning at eight o’clock.
Dr. Sedgewick had said that Dorothy would certainly not be fit to sit for it; but when the Sixth went into early breakfast at seven o’clock Dorothy joined them. She was a bit shaky still, and she looked rather white, but there was such radiant happiness in her eyes that she seemed fairly transfigured by it.
The examination was over by ten o’clock, and the girls dispersed to amuse themselves in any way they liked best. Cissie Wray fell upon Dorothy as she came out of the examination room—literally fell upon her—hugging her with ecstasy.
“Dorothy, Dorothy, are you better? Oh, I want to say ‘Thank you!’—I want to shout it at you; and yet it does not seem worth saying, because it is so little to all I feel inside—for your goodness in saving me yesterday.”
“Poor Cissie, you were badly scared,” said Dorothy, and she shivered a little even in the warm sunshine as she thought of the frenzied clutch of Cissie’s thin arms and the agony in her big black eyes.
“Oh, it was dreadful, dreadful! I don’t ever want to go into the sea again, though I am not afraid in the swimming bath.”
“How is Miss Ball?” asked Dorothy, wanting to get Cissie’s attention away from the previous day’s terror.
“She is better, but she is not up yet. And the girls say I nearly drowned her as well as myself, and that we should both have been dead if it had not been for you! Oh dear, how awful it was! I can’t bear to think about it!”
“Then don’t think about it,” said Dorothy, looking down at Cissie with kindness in her eyes. “I can see my father coming by the shrubbery path—shall we go and meet him?”
“Oh, rather!” cried Cissie, skipping along by the side of Dorothy. “Dr. Sedgewick is a dear; he took such lovely care of me yesterday, and teased me about wanting to be a mermaid. I think he is the most wonderful doctor I have ever seen. But I have never had a doctor before that I can remember—so, of course, I have not had much experience.”
Cissie seized upon one of the doctor’s arms, while Dorothy held the other, and they took him all round the grounds. They showed him the gymnasium, the archery and tennis courts, the bowling green, and all the other things which made school so pleasant. Then Cissie had to go off to a botany examination, which was the last of the term’s work for the Fourth, and Dorothy strolled with her father to the seat under the beech tree that overlooked the boys’ playing-fields.
“I have sent a wire to your mother to say that I shall not be home until the night train,” said Dr. Sedgewick, slipping his arm round Dorothy as she sat with her head resting against his shoulder. “Your Head says that I must stay for the prize-giving this afternoon. If I skip tea, I think I can manage the five o’clock train, which will put me in town with time to catch the last train to Farley.”
“Then Tom and I shall get home to-morrow. Oh! how lovely it will be.” Dorothy nestled a little closer in her father’s arm, and thought joyfully that now there was no shadow on her joy of home-coming.
“Yet you have been very happy here?” The doctor looked round upon the grounds and the playing-fields as he spoke, and thought he had never seen a pleasanter place.
“Indeed I have—it has been lovely!” said Dorothy with satisfying emphasis. “It has been good to be near Tom. Only the worst of it has been that he did not seem to need me very much.”
“Tom will be happier when he has cut his wisdom teeth,” said Dr. Sedgewick. “By the way, Dorothy, what other fairy stories did Mrs. Wilson tell you of my past? I should think the poor lady’s brain must have been weakening, though, in truth, it was never very strong.”
“I don’t think she told me any others,” answered Dorothy. “I thought she seemed very fond of your cousin, Arthur Sedgewick, by the way she spoke of him. Daddy, why did you never tell us anything about him, and why did mother refuse to talk about him when I mentioned the matter to her?”
“He turned out such a detrimental, poor fellow, that your mother hated the very mention of him, especially as it laid such a burden on my shoulders for years. When he died he left debts, and he left an invalid wife. For the sake of the family honour the debts had to be paid, and the poor wife had to be supported until she died. There was good reason for your mother’s unwillingness to talk about him. It was getting into bad habits as a boy that was his undoing.” The doctor sat for a while in silence, and then he said, “It is because of Arthur having made such a mess of life that I am so glad to leave Tom here for another couple of years—he will have learned many things by that time.”
The lecture hall was crammed to its utmost capacity. Many visitors occupied the chairs in the centre of the hall, while round the outskirts, in the corners, along the front of the dais, and everywhere that it was possible to find a place to sit, or stand, girls in white frocks were to be seen. Prize-giving for the boys had been the previous afternoon—a function shorn of much of its glory, for the double reason that the disaster on the beach in the morning had taken away much of the joyfulness of the girls, and the fact that twenty-five of the boys would not receive even the prizes they had earned, because of the trouble in regard to the night-club.
The boys who had come over to the prize-giving at the girls’ school were accommodated in the gallery. There were not so many of them present as was usual on such occasions, but those who had come did their loudest when it came to the cheering. The wife of the M.P. for the division gave away the prizes; and as she was gracious and kindly in her manner, she received a great ovation.
Dorothy had the conduct medal—she had also the first prize for English Literature; but that was all. The fact of having to be an all-round worker was very much against the chances of winning prizes.
It seemed a fearfully long time to wait until all the prizes had been given. Then the wife of the M.P. sat down, and the legal-looking gentleman who managed the Lamb Bursary stepped on to the dais. He had a paper in his hand; but he had to stand and wait so long for the cheering to subside that the Head rose in her place and came forward to the edge of the dais, holding up her hand for silence.
At once a hush dropped on the place—a hush so profound and so sudden that it gave one the sensation of having had a door shut suddenly on the great noise of the past few minutes.
Then, in his quiet but penetrating voice the governor of the Bursary read the names of the candidates in the order in which they had enrolled, with the total of marks to each name.
Dorothy sat white and rigid. As the names were read out she tried to remember them, to determine, which girl had the most, but she was so confused that she could not hold the figures in her head. When the seven names had been read there was a pause, and again the hush was so profound that the humming of a bee in one of the windows sounded quite loud by contrast.
“I have therefore great pleasure,” went on the cool, rather didactic tones of the governor, “in stating that the Lamb Bursary for this year goes to Dorothy Ida Sedgewick, who has won it, not by a mere squeeze, but with a hundred marks above the candidate nearest to her in point of number.”
Now indeed there was a riot of cheering, of clapping, and of jubilation generally, until, standing up, the whole crowd of white-frocked girls burst into singing,—
“For she’s a jolly good fellow,
Who well has earned the prize.”
Then they linked hands, joining in “Auld Lang Syne,” in compliment to their visitors, this merging at the end into the National Anthem, after which the visitors were to be entertained to tea on the lawn. But Dr. Sedgewick had to hurry away to catch his train.
Dorothy went with him as far as the little gate at the end of the grounds through which she had been carried the previous day.
She had not much to say for herself, but the radiant content of her face was just the reflection of the happiness in her heart. She was thinking how differently she would have felt but for that talk with her father last night.
“It will be good news for your mother, Dorothy. You have made us very happy,” said Dr. Sedgewick in a moved tone as he bade her good-bye at the gate.
“Daddy, it is just lovely, and I am so happy about it all,” she said. “Of course it is hard for Margaret that she did not win; but she is going to stay at Compton another year, so she will have her chance again.”
“It was not Margaret who was next to you, but that rather bold-looking girl, Rhoda Fleming,” her father said, thinking she had made a mistake as to who was next to her.
Dorothy smiled. “Oh, I am not sorry for Rhoda—I did not want her to win,” she said quietly. “Perhaps I should not have worked so hard myself if it had not been because I knew I had to beat her somehow, for the honour of the school.”
“Well, she was your friend if she inspired you to greater effort,” he answered, and dropping another kiss on her forehead hurried down the road to catch his train.
Dorothy went back to the others. She did her part in waiting on the visitors. She was here, she was there—and everywhere it was kindly congratulation she had for her hard work.
Later on, when the visitors were taking leave of the Head, Dorothy, alone for a moment, was pounced upon by Rhoda, who said sharply, “So you did beat me after all—I was afraid you would.”
“I was bound in honour to beat you if I could,” Dorothy answered, looking her straight in the face. “My father says I ought to be grateful to you for making me work so hard. And I am. I am very grateful to you.”
Rhoda went very red in the face. A look of something like shame came into her eyes as she turned away in silence.
THE END