RHODA’S JUMPER
The first social evening of term was always something of an event. The Lower Fifth, the Upper Fifth, and the Sixth of both schools joined forces for a real merry-making. The juniors had their own functions, and made merry on a different evening, and they had nothing to do with the gathering of the seniors.
The lecture hall was cleared for dancing; there were games and music in the drawing-room for those who preferred them, and supper for all was spread in the dining-room.
It had been a soaking wet day; the girls, in mackintoshes, high boots, and rubber hats, had struggled for a mile along the storm-swept sea front. They had been blown back again, arriving in tousled, rosy-cheeked, and breathless, but thoroughly refreshed by the blow.
The dressing-bell went five minutes after they reached the house, and there was a rush upstairs to get changed, and ready for the frolic.
Dorothy was very much excited. She was going to wear the new little frock which she had bought at Sharman and Song’s place. She danced up the stairs and along the corridor to the dorm, feeling that life was very well worth living indeed.
Hazel and Margaret were just ahead of her, and the other girls were crowding up behind. They had been rather late getting in from their walk, and so there was not very much time before the boys might be expected to arrive.
With fingers that actually trembled Dorothy opened the wrapping paper, and taking out her frock, slipped it on. The looking-glass in her cubicle was not very big; she would have to wait until she went downstairs to have a really good look at herself. But oh! the lovely feeling of it all!
Admiring herself—or, rather, her frock—had taken time. Most of the girls were downstairs before she was ready. They were standing about the drawing-room in little groups as she came in through the big double doors, feeling stupidly shy and self-conscious, just because she happened to be wearing a new frock that was the last word in effective simplicity.
No one took any notice of her. The little group just inside the door had gathered about Rhoda Fleming, who was spreading out her arms to show the beauty of the jumper she was wearing over a cream silk skirt.
“Isn’t it a dream?” Rhoda’s voice was loud and clear; it was vibrant, too, with satisfaction. “I bought it at Sharman and Song’s; they are not to be beaten for things of this sort.”
Dorothy stood as if transfixed, and at that moment the crowd of girls about Rhoda shifted and opened out, showing plainly Dorothy standing on the outskirts of the group.
Rhoda paused suddenly, and there was a look of actual fear in her eyes as she stood confronting Dorothy. Then she rallied her forces, and said with a slow, insolent drawl, “Well, what do you want?”
“I—I don’t want anything,” faltered Dorothy, whose breath was fairly taken away by the calm manner in which Rhoda was exhibiting the jumper, which was a lovely thing made of white silky stuff, and embroidered with silver tissue.
“Then don’t stand staring like that.” There was a positive snarl in Rhoda’s tone, and Dorothy turned away without a word. She heard one of the girls cry out that it was a shame of Rhoda to be so rude, but there was more fear than resentment in her heart at the treatment she had received. It was awful to see the malice in Rhoda’s gaze, and to know that it was directed against herself, just because she had been the unwilling witness of Rhoda’s shoplifting.
She would have known the jumper anywhere, even if Rhoda had not declared so loudly that it had come from Sharman and Song’s, and she shivered a little, wondering how she would have felt if she had been in Rhoda’s place just then.
“Oh, Dorothy, what a pretty frock! How perfectly sweet you look!” cried the voice of Hazel at her side, and then Margaret burst in with admiring comments, and Dorothy found herself surrounded by a cluster of girls who were admiring her frock and congratulating her on having an aunt with such liberal tendencies. But the keen edge of her pleasure was taken off by the brooding sense of disaster that would come to her every time she recalled the look in Rhoda’s eyes.
Being healthy minded, and being also blessed with common sense, she set to work to forget all about the uncomfortable incident, and to get all the pleasure possible out of the evening.
The boys arrived in a batch. After the manner of their kind, they formed into groups about the big doors of the drawing-room and at the end of the lecture hall. But the masters who were with them routed them out with remorseless energy, and started the dancing. Bobby Felmore, very red in the face, and still adorned with sticking-plaster, led out the Head. He was most fearfully self-conscious for about a minute and a half. By that time he forgot all about being shy, for, as he said afterwards, the Head was a dream to dance with, and she was a downright jolly sort also.
Dorothy had danced with big boys, she had danced with cheeky youngsters of the Lower Fifth who aired their opinions on various subjects as if wisdom dwelt with them and with no one else, and then she found herself dancing with Bobby Felmore.
Bobby, by reason of having danced with the Head, was disposed to be critical regarding his partners that evening, and he began telling Dorothy how he had plunged through a foxtrot with Daisy Goatby, who was about as nimble as an elephant, and as graceful as a hippopotamus.
“She is quite a good sort, though, even if she is a trifle heavy on her feet,” said Dorothy, who was hotly championing Daisy just because Bobby saw fit to run her down.
“I say, do you always stick up for people?” he asked.
“When they are nice to me I do, of course,” she answered with a laugh.
“Well, you won’t have to stick up for Rhoda Fleming, at that rate,” said Bobby with a chuckle. “She seems to have a proper grouch against you. Tom was complaining as we came along to-night because you and Rhoda don’t hit it off together.”
“We do not have much to do with each other,” murmured Dorothy, resentful because Tom should have discussed her with this big lump of a boy who, however well he might dance, had certainly no tact worth speaking of.
“Just what Tom complained of; said he couldn’t think why his womenfolk didn’t hit it off better: seemed to think that you ought to be pally with any and every one whom he saw fit to honour with his regard. I like his cheek; the Grand Sultan isn’t in it with that young whipper-snapper.” Bobby tossed his head and let out one of his big laughs then, and Dorothy thought it might be for his good to take him down a peg.
“Tom is rather small,” she said, smiling at him with mischief dancing in her eyes; “but he is a force to be reckoned with, all the same.”
“Now you are giving me a dig because of that mauling I had from him last week,” chuckled Bobby. “It isn’t kind to kick a fellow that is down.”
“I have not kicked you,” she answered; and her tone was so friendly that Bobby, rather red, and rather stammering, jerked out,—
“I say, I’m really awfully crushed on you, though I have only seen you about twice. Say, will you be pals, real pals, you know?”
Dorothy turned scarlet, for just at that moment she caught sight of Rhoda regarding her fixedly from a little distance. It was horribly embarrassing and uncomfortable, and because of it her tone was quite sharp as she replied, “I have got as many chums already as I can do with, thank you; but I am really grateful to you for not being nasty to Tom over that licking he gave you last week.”
“Oh, that!” Bobby’s voice reflected disappointment, mingled with scorn. “The licking was a man’s business entirely, and it need not come into discussion at all. I should like to be pals with you, and I’m not going to believe what Rhoda says about you.”
“What can Rhoda say about me?” cried Dorothy, aghast. “Why, I have not known her a week.”
“Bless you, what she doesn’t know she will make up,” said Bobby, who was by this time quite breathless with his exertions. “Don’t you trust her. If she tries to be friendly, keep her at arm’s length. I have warned Tom about her until I’m out of breath; but he will find her out some day, I dare say. Meanwhile he is not in as much danger of being scratched by her as you are.”
Dorothy did not dance with Bobby again that evening. Indeed, she did not dance much after that, for Margaret had a bad headache, and wandered off to a quiet corner of the drawing-room, where Dorothy found her, and stayed to keep her company.
“Just think, to-morrow by this time we shall be enrolled for the Lamb Bursary, and work will begin in earnest,” said Margaret, as she leant back in a deep chair and fanned herself with a picture paper.
“I think work has begun in earnest, anyway,” Dorothy said with a laugh. “I know that I just swotted for all I’m worth at maths this morning. I could not have worked harder if I had been sitting for an exam. I am horribly stupid at maths, and I can never find any short cuts.”
“I don’t put much reliance on short cuts myself in maths or anything else,” replied Margaret. “When a thing has to be done, it is the quickest process in the end to do it thoroughly, because the next time you have to travel that way you know the road. By the way—I hate to speak of it, but you are a new girl, and you are not so well up in school traditions as some of the rest of us—did you use a help this morning?”
“A help?” queried Dorothy with a blank face. “What do you mean?”
“Sometimes when a new girl comes she thinks to catch up in classwork by using cribs—helps they call them here, because it sounds rather better. Did you use anything of the sort this morning?” Margaret looked a little doubtful and apologetic as she put her question, but she meant to get at the bottom of the matter if she could.
“Why, no, of course I did not.” Dorothy’s tone was more bewildered than indignant; she could not imagine what had made Margaret ask such a question. “Do you think if I had been using a help, as you call it, that I should have to work as I do? Besides, do you not remember how Miss Groome coached me, and the pains she took, because I was such a duffer?”
Margaret laughed. “You are anything but a duffer, and you are a perfect whale at work. Oh! I wish they would not say things about you. It is so unfair on a new girl. You have enough to work against in having been put straight into the Sixth.”
“Who have been talking about me, and what has been said?” asked Dorothy quietly, but she went rather white. It was horrid to feel that her good name was being taken away behind her back.
“I do not know who started the talk,” said Margaret with a troubled air. “Kathleen Goatby was sitting here before you came. She said you had been dancing a lot with Bobby Felmore, but she expected he would have danced by himself rather than have been seen going round with you if he had known what was being said.”
“I shall know better whether to be angry or merely amused if you tell me what it is that is being said.” Dorothy’s voice was low, and her manner was outwardly calm, but there was a fire in her eyes which let Margaret know that she was very angry indeed.
“Kathleen said she heard Rhoda Fleming telling Joan Fletcher that you always used cribs, that you owed your position in your old school to this, and that you said it was the only way in which you could possibly get your work done. I told Kathleen she could contradict that as much as she liked, for I was quite positive it was not true. Cribs may help up to a certain point, but they are sure to fail one in the long run.”
“I have never used cribs,” said Dorothy with emphasis. “What I cannot understand is why Rhoda should try so hard to do me harm.”
“I think she is afraid of you.” Margaret spoke slowly, and she turned her head a little so that her gaze was fixed on the ceiling, instead of on her companion’s face. “It is possible she thinks you know something about her that is not to her credit, and she is fearing you will talk about it, so she thinks it is wise to be first at the character-wrecking business. You had better have as little to do with her as you decently can.”
“Trust me for that; but even avoiding her does not seem very effectual in stopping her from spreading slanders,” Dorothy said with a wry smile.
“Fires die out that are not tended,” replied Margaret with a great air of wisdom. “There goes the bell. Well, I am not sorry the evening is over because of my beastly headache. I hope you have had a nice time?”
“Yes—no,” said Dorothy, and then would say no more.