CHAPTER II
AN INTRODUCTION
Tea was in full swing when Geraldine at last found her way to the dining-hall. She stood for a few moments in embarrassed hesitation just inside the doorway, until a girl who was sitting at the head of the nearest table spoke to her.
"You haven't got a place yet, have you? Won't you come and sit by me?"
It was Monica Deane, the girl who slept in Number Fourteen Cubicle in the Pink Dormitory. Geraldine recognised her with a feeling of relief, and moved across to her table with alacrity. Monica spoke to a small girl sitting on her left hand.
"Shove up one, Vera, will you? And ask the others to move up, too. This is a new girl in my dorm, and I want to talk to her," she said, with a friendly smile at Geraldine as the girl slipped thankfully into the seat thus provided for her. "Pass the bread and butter down, Mamie," she added to somebody farther up the table. "And, Gwennie, run and get another cup of tea." Then, having thus attended to the new girl's immediate wants, she turned round to her with the obvious intention of commencing a conversation.
"Do you mind if I ask you some questions?" she began.
"Not at all," said Geraldine, looking up with a shy little smile. "I expect you want to know what my name is, don't you?"
"Well, yes—that was one of them," laughed Monica. "You've been asked that question before, evidently, from the tone in which you said it."
Geraldine laughed too. Already Monica's friendliness was dispelling that feeling of nervous resentment and shyness occasioned by the encounter with Dorothy and Phyllis. Neither of these two girls were at Monica's table, Geraldine was glad to see. The occupants of Table Number Three were mostly smaller children, none of whom the new girl had come across before. She turned to her new friend with a look of gratitude.
"I should just think I have! But so far, you're the only person who's asked me if I minded."
"Well, won't you reward me for my politeness by giving me the information?" asked Monica. And Geraldine responded to the kindly interest by confiding, not merely her name and age, but also many details of her home life. By the time the meal was over, Monica was conversant with much of the new girl's past history (always excepting the events of that October night; Geraldine never willingly referred to that terrible time)—not an altogether unusual experience for Monica, who had been the recipient of many a new girl's confidences. The senior had vivid recollections of her own first days at school, and she always made a point of being especially friendly to newcomers during their first few weeks at Wakehurst Priory. It had, in fact, become quite a recognised thing in the school for Monica Deane to take any exceptionally forlorn-looking new girl under her wing.
"What do we have to do now?" asked Geraldine, as, tea being finished, she rose reluctantly from her chair. She recognised the fact that she would not be able to stay with the elder girl all the evening, and she dreaded being left once more to her own devices.
"Well, that just depends. Nobody does anything regular the first day of term. Usually, of course, it's prep after tea. You've finished your unpacking, haven't you? Then I should think you'd better go to your sitting-room and find a book to read. I wonder which sitting-room you'll be in? Have you any idea which form you're going to belong to?"
"Oh yes. Miss Oakley sent me some examination questions to answer; and when I'd sent them in, she wrote back saying I should be put in the Lower Fifth," replied Geraldine.
"The Lower Fifth? Oh, well, come along then, and I'll show you your sitting-room," said Monica briskly. "You've got an awfully nice room. The Lower Fifth is one of the biggest forms at Wakehurst, and in consequence it's been given the biggest sitting-room. You'll find plenty of people to be friends with you there. Dorothy Pemberton's in it, and Phyllis Tressider—you know, the girl who has the cubicle next to yours."
"Oh, is she?" said Geraldine blankly, a feeling of dismay creeping over her. Then a sudden impulse moved her to confide in Monica.
"I don't think I like either of them, much," she volunteered. "Especially not Phyllis Tressider."
"Oh, nonsense!" said Monica, stopping before a door and pausing with her hand on the knob to give some good advice to the new girl. "Look here, now, don't you go imagining things! Phyllis and Dorothy are both quite nice girls on the whole, and you'll get on all right with them, if you don't take too much notice of what they say just at first. They've always slept side by side in those two cubicles, ever since they came to the school, so naturally they're feeling a bit upset at being separated. Though, I must say, they've rather asked for it—the pranks those two used to get up to in the dormitory last term! But, of course, they know that it has nothing to do with you, really; and they'll soon come round and be nice to you—so long as you're nice to them. You'll find they'll make much better friends than they will enemies—and, if you take my advice, you'll try your best to keep them friends."
And with this, for Monica, unusually lengthy homily, the elder girl opened the door of the Lower Fifth sitting-room, and pushed Geraldine inside.
Judging from the number of people congregated in the sitting-room, the Lower Fifth was certainly a very big form. Geraldine shrank back a little as Monica ushered her in, bewildered and shy of the crowd of girls confronting her. But Monica laid her hand on her shoulder and led her across the room to a group of girls clustered round a vivacious individual with a crop of short curly hair, who was perched up on the edge of a table, swinging her legs to and fro and talking vigorously.
"Sorry to interrupt," began Monica, still with her hand on Geraldine's shoulder. "But this is a new girl, who tells me that she is going to be in your form. Her name's Geraldine Wilmott, and she's fifteen years old, and you needn't all start catechising her directly I'm out of the room. I fancy she's had about enough of that already. Jack," addressing the girl on the table, "will you have an eye to her for this evening? Put her up to things a bit, will you? and tell her what to do and where to go, there's a dear."
"Righto! Delighted, I'm sure!" replied Jack, stretching out a friendly hand to Geraldine. "How do you do? What dorm are you in? Have you unpacked your things yet? Is this the first time you've been to school, or did you go to a day-school before? What part of the country do you hail from, and how many brothers and sisters have you got?"
A shout of laughter from the group of girls around her greeted this string of questions, and Monica made a laughing protest.
"Oh, Jack—and I told you not to go asking her questions!"
"Well—but you said 'after you had gone out of the room,' so I thought I had better start straight away while there was still time," replied Jack, with an injured air, which was belied, however, by the twinkle in her laughing eyes. Then she turned to Geraldine in an impulsive friendly way that it was impossible to resist.
"You needn't answer them, though, if you don't want to. Come along and I'll get you a locker. We've bagged all the nicest ones already, I'm afraid. But I'll get you the decentest that is left, and next term maybe you'll get a better one." And Monica left the Lower Fifth sitting-room feeling that she had done her best for the new girl.
"I'm afraid she's in for a rough time of it, though," the senior thought to herself, as she made her way along the corridors to the small study which, as a member of the Sixth Form, she was entitled to have to herself. "She's just the type of sensitive girl who gets on worse at school than any other sort, although at heart they're usually quite nice kids. Still, if anybody can make her feel at home in the Lower Fifth, it's Jack. I wish she'd come across her before Phyllis and Dorothy appeared on the scene. Oh, well, it's none of my business, I suppose! I like the kid, but she'll have to fight her own battles. I dare say she'll shake down all right in the end—they mostly do."
And with this comforting reflection the Sixth Form girl entered her study, and banished the thought of Geraldine Wilmott from her mind.