PLAYING THE GAME
It was a wonderful relief to Dorothy to have her burden of responsibility lifted. She could give her whole mind to her work now, without having to suffer from that miserable see-saw of doubt and fear about her right to work for the Lamb Bursary.
So good was it, too, that she had no longer to pretend to be cheerful. She could be as happy as the other girls now, and the week that followed was one of the happiest she had ever spent at the Compton School. As was natural, her work gained a tremendous advantage from her care-free condition, and when the marks for the week were posted up on the board she found that she was top again, a long way ahead of Rhoda this time, while Hazel and Margaret were lower still.
“It looks—it really does—as if Dorothy Sedgewick was going to cart off the Mutton Bone,” said Daisy Goatby with a tremendous yawn, as she came sauntering up to the board to have a look at the week’s marks. Dorothy had already gone upstairs, and for the moment there was no one in the lecture hall except Daisy and Joan Fletcher.
“There is one thing to be said for her—she will have earned it,” answered Joan. “Dorothy must work like a horse to get in front of Rhoda—and she hasn’t had Rhoda’s chances, either, seeing that she only came here last autumn. I think she is the eighth wonder of the world. It makes me tired to look at her.”
“Won’t Rhoda just be in a wax when she sees how much she is down?” Daisy gurgled into delighted laughter, her plump cheeks fairly shaking with glee.
“I don’t mind what sort of a wax she is in, if it does not occur to her to coach us into getting ahead of Dorothy,” said Joan with a yawn. She was tired, for she had been playing tennis every available half-hour right through the day, and felt much more inclined for bed than for study. But she was in the Sixth—she was, moreover, a candidate for the Lamb Bursary—so it was up to her to make a pretence of study at night, even if the amount done was not worth talking about.
“I don’t think Rhoda will try that old game on again—at least I hope she won’t,” said Daisy, as the two turned away to mount the stairs to the study. “I never had to work harder in my life than at that time. I expected to have nervous breakdown every day, for the pace was so tremendous. If she had kept it up, I believe I should have stood a chance of winning the Mutton Bone—that is to say, if Dorothy had not been in the running. Rhoda is a downright good coach; she has a way of making you work whether you feel like it or not. The trouble is that she gets tired of it so soon. She dropped us all in a hurry, just as I was beginning to feel I had got it in me to be really great at getting on.”
“I know why she dropped us.” Joan shrugged her shoulders and glanced round in a suddenly furtive fashion, as the two went side by side up the broad stairs, and the June sunshine streamed in through the open windows.
“Why?” sharply demanded Daisy, scenting a mystery, and keen to hear what it was.
“I can’t tell you now,” said Joan hastily. “I am afraid some one might catch a word, and it is serious. I’ll tell you to-morrow when we are resting after a bout of tennis.”
“To-morrow? Do you think I am going to wait until then? Come along into the prep room—the Upper Fifth are not at work to-night. See, there is no one here. We will sit over by the window, then only the sparrows can hear what you have to say. Now, then, out with it; I hate to wait for anything.”
“Rhoda had to leave off using cribs—that is why she left off coaching us,” said Joan, jerking her shoulders up in a way peculiar to her in moments of triumphant emotion.
“Cribs wouldn’t be of much use in a good bit of our work,” said Daisy scornfully. “For instance, what sort of a crib could you use to remember one of old Plimsoll’s lectures?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” snapped Joan. “There are plenty of things we have to do where cribs would be useful—Latin, French, mathematics—oh! heaps of things. It was Rhoda who had that old book of Amelia Herschstein’s that was found in the No. 1 study among Dorothy’s things.”
“I was quite sure of that.” Daisy nodded and chuckled in delight. “I was not quite so fast asleep as I was supposed to be that night, and I knew that Rhoda had been out of the room, although she did go and come like a cat. But what I want to know is what made her have Amelia Herschstein’s book in her possession. Did she find it anywhere about the premises, do you think?”
“Now, in the name of common sense is it likely that a book of that sort would be left lying round for any girl to pick up and use if she felt so inclined?” Joan fairly snorted with disgust at Daisy’s want of understanding. “That book was in the school because Rhoda brought it here. I never could imagine why she chose to stuff it among Dorothy’s things, except from blind spite, because, of course, she has had to work much harder since she has had to do without its help.”
Daisy looked the picture of bewilderment. “How did it come about that she had the book at all?” she gasped, staring open-mouthed at Joan.
“Ah! do you know what I found out last vac?” Joan pursed up her mouth in a secretive fashion. She nodded her head, and looked wise, and so smug with it all, that Daisy forgot the dignity due in one of the Sixth, and actually fell upon her, cuffing her smartly, while she cried, “Out with it, then, or I will bang your head against the window-frame until you see stars and all that sort of thing.”
“Don’t behave like a Third Form kid if you can help it, and, for pity’s sake, don’t make such a noise, or some one will spot us, and then we shall get beans for not being at work,” protested Joan, wresting herself free from the rough grip of Daisy, and patting her hair into place. Joan was beginning to revel in being nearly grown-up, and she was very particular about her hair being just right.
“Tell me, tell me quickly!” said Daisy, with a stamp of her foot. “If you don’t, I will ruff your hair all up until it is in a most fearful tangle, and I will throw your ribbon, your combs, and those lovely tortoise-shell pins all out of the window. A nice sight you will look then, old thing.”
“And nice beans, a regular boiling of them, you would get for doing it,” laughed Joan, who loved to tease Daisy into an exhibition of this sort.
“Tell me, tell me!” cried Daisy, with another stamp of her foot.
“My father told me,” said Joan, nodding her head. “He said that Grimes Fleming—Rhoda’s father, you know—was closely related to the Herschsteins. It has been kept very dark, because, of course, no one in any way connected with that family would have been received at the Compton Schools if it had been known. Dad would not have told me about it if I had not insisted that this floor was haunted by Amelia’s ghost, and that the spirit actually left books in the studies. I thought my dad would have had a fit then, he was so choked with laughing. That is when he told me, and he said I was to keep it dark, for it did not seem fair that Rhoda should have the sins of those who went before fastened on her shoulders to weigh her down.”
“It isn’t playing the game, though, to let a girl like that win the Lamb Bursary,” said Daisy in a tone that was fairly shocked.
“Just what I said to my dad. But he told me it was up to me to stop her doing it by jolly well beating her myself. I think I would have a real vigorous try to do it, too, if it were not for Dorothy. I might beat Rhoda if I tried hard enough, and kept on trying. Dorothy is a different matter; she is forcing the pace so terribly that I can’t face the fag of it all. Rhoda would not put out her strength as she does if it were not for her spite against Dorothy.”
“Why does she hate Dorothy so badly?” asked Daisy, whose excitement had subsided, leaving her more serious than usual.
“Ask me another,” said Joan, flinging up her hands with a gesture that was meant to be dramatic. “I think it would need a Sherlock Holmes to find that out. I have pumped her—I have watched her—but I am no nearer getting to the bottom of it. It is my belief that Dorothy knows something about Rhoda, and Rhoda knows she knows it. Oh dear, what a mix up of words, but you know what I mean.”
“I don’t think she ought to be allowed to win the Lamb Bursary—it was not meant for a girl of that sort.” Daisy sounded reproachful now, for it did seem a shame that the chief prize of the school should go to one who was unworthy.
Joan wagged her head with a knowing air. “I know how you feel, for it is just my opinion. I am keeping quiet now, as I promised my dad I would. If Dorothy or Hazel or any one else wins the Bursary, then there will be no need to say anything at all; but if Miss Rhoda comes out top, then I am going to say things, and do things, and stir up no end of a dust.”
It was at this moment that two of the Upper Fifth came scurrying up to their prep room, and the two who had been talking there had to get out in a hurry.
Rhoda was carrying things before her in the Sixth. She had contrived to chum up a great deal with Dora Selwyn, who by reason of being head girl was a power in the place. Dora was rarely top of the school in the matter of marks; the fact that she was specializing naturally tended to keep these down. But in every other sense she was top, and she was leader—in short, she was it, and every one realized this.
Dora had fallen foul of Rhoda a good many times during the years they had both been at the Compton School, but they had seemed to get on better of late. Right down at the bottom Dora was fearfully conservative. To her way of thinking it was quite wrong that a new girl like Dorothy Sedgewick should have been put straight into the Sixth. It was, in fact, a tacit admission that education in another school might be as good as it was at the Compton Schools—a rank heresy, indeed! Dora would have got over that in time, perhaps, if Dorothy had been something of a slacker; but it did not please her that the new girl—that is to say, the comparatively new girl—should be mounting to the top of the school in the matter of marks week by week, so she veered round to the side of Rhoda and championed her cause.
The days simply flew now. The summer term was always delightful at Sowergate. There was sea-bathing; there was tennis and golf; frequent picnics livened things up for all who cared for that sort of thing; there were bicycle trips; some of the girls were learning to ride; two were having motor lessons—so that, taken all round, every one was so full of affairs that each night as it came was something of a surprise, because it had arrived so speedily.
Dorothy seemed to live only for the end of the week, when the Head was to give her decision. In some ways it was the longest week she had ever lived through; in many other ways it was so short that Dorothy felt fairly frightened by the speed with which it went.
It was evening again when she was summoned to the private room of the Head, and she rose up in her place to obey the call, feeling as if she were going to the place of execution.
“Dorothy dear, I am so sorry for you!” murmured Margaret, jumping up to give her a hug as she went out of the room, while Hazel nodded in sympathy, and Jessie Wayne from the far corner blew her a kiss.
It was good to feel that she had the sympathy of them all, but a wry little smile curved Dorothy’s lips as she went downstairs. She was thinking how they would all have stared if she could have told them what was the matter—and then, indeed, they would have been sorry.
She was sorry for herself, except when she thought of her father; and then, in her pain for him, she forgot to suffer on her own account.