A Fortunate Term

by Angela Brazil

So it ended in the three of them laughing after all.

There was no large college or high school for girls in Durracombe, only a very small private establishment kept by Miss Mary Pollard and her sister Fanny, daughters of the late Rev. Horatio Pollard, formerly vicar of the parish. They educated about twenty-four children, half of them from the immediate neighbourhood: Opal Earnshaw, the bank-manager's daughter; Edith and Maude Carey, from the Vicarage; Christabel Oakley, who rode over on her bicycle from St. Gilda's Rectory; the three little Andrews, from Fir Tree House; Major Leach's small grand-children; Betty and Stella Marshall, who lived with their aunt, Miss Johnson, while their parents were in Buenos Ayres; and twelve resident boarders, most of whose parents were stationed in India, and who, born under burning skies, had been sent to Durracombe for the sake of its soft air and mild winter record, until they should be sufficiently acclimatized to stand their chance as hardy specimens in bigger schools.

"The Moorings" was a large, pleasant, white house with green shutters and a veranda, and it stood at the bottom of a short road that led from the High Street. It was what is commonly known as "a dear little school", that is to say it was rather old-fashioned and out-of-date but very comfortable and "homey", and the classes were more like lessons with a private governess than working with a form. Miss Pollard, whose hair was as silver as spun moonlight, had dropped behind the more modern methods of education, and, feeling rather diffident in the schoolroom, concentrated her attention on the housekeeping, cossetted up the delicate children, aired the linen, superintended the dormitories, and acted nurse to anybody who was lucky enough to be kept in bed. The bulk of the teaching rested in the hands of Miss Fanny, who was thorough, if old-fashioned, and whose original methods, by a curious coincidence, actually anticipated those of some of our most advanced educationists, and so placed her ahead of as well as behind the times.

It was into this small community, more like a big family than a school, that Mavis and Merle were introduced one January morning, causing visible thrills to the occupants of other desks as they took their seats. To plunge suddenly from the work of one school into that of another is a rather bewildering experience, and by the time the half-past twelve bell sounded, the Ramsay girls felt as if their standards had been turned upside down. Mavis, shaky in general over history, had reeled off the dates of the principal battles in the Civil War, the only period of which she happened to have any special knowledge, and Merle, by an equal fluke, worked correctly all her problems in mathematics, a lesson which she usually abhorred. They were so astonished at scoring on these subjects that they naturally hoped to do better still in the French class, for languages had been their one strong point at Whinburn High School. But alack for their self esteem! The girls at The Moorings had concentrated on French, and not only translated easily from a book which was much too stiff for the Ramsays, but chattered quite fluently with Mademoiselle Chavasse, whose encouraging remarks and questions were palpably not understood by her new pupils. It is humiliating not to be able to express yourself in a foreign tongue when others are talking it all round you. Merle, who never liked anybody to "go one better" than herself, was particularly aggravated by a fair-haired girl who sat near her, and who, as she conversed with the teacher, kept the corner of her eye on the new-comers as if judging the impression she was making on them.

"I don't like her! I shan't ever like her!" thought Merle irately. "She's conceited, and those eyes are sneaky. It's nothing so much to talk French. I suppose they're used to it. She needn't think I'm admiring her cleverness, for I'm not. I'll pluck up courage myself to say something next time Mademoiselle looks at me."

But Merle's powers were not equal to her courage, and when Mademoiselle gave her another chance she turned scarlet and stuttered, and generally made rather a goose of herself, to her own infinite indignation and evidently to the amusement of the rest of the class, especially of the fair-haired girl, who tittered openly till she met the teacher's outraged gaze, when she suddenly straightened her face and tried to appear quite unconscious. Mavis, profiting by her sister's example, did not commit herself to speech. Mademoiselle Chavasse's accent was unfamiliar and difficult to understand, and most of her remarks might as easily have been in Greek as French, to judge by the standards of Whinburn High School. Both the Ramsays were particularly relieved when the lesson came to an end.

At 12.30 Mavis, who had been sent to the school with a special recommendation that her health should be looked after, was carried off by Miss Pollard to be weighed and measured and otherwise inspected, while Merle, with boots and hat and coat on, and all impatience to be off, waited for her in the cloak-room. The other day-girls had scurried away with hardly more than a glance in her direction, and she sat alone, kicking her heels and not in the sweetest of tempers, till one of the boarders, passing the door, peeped in, saw her, and entered. The new-comer was a nice-looking girl, with grey eyes and a plait of very dark hair. She smiled in quite friendly fashion.

"Hello!" she began. "Sitting here all by your lonesome? Why don't you go home?"

"Can't. I'm waiting for Mavis."

"Is Mavis the other? She's rather sweet! I like her fluffy hair and that blue velvet band. Somebody said she was older than you, but she doesn't look it."