There was certainly nothing in the atmosphere of the Grange to foster any tendency towards morbidness. The days were so fully occupied as to leave no time for dreaming. Though Aldred was clever, it took her whole energies to secure the place that she wished in the school. She was determined to be head of her Form, and, holding that object in view, toiled with a vigour such as nothing else would have wrung from her, and which would have caused unfeigned amazement to her former governess. It was not all plain sailing, for Ursula Bramley and Agnes Maxwell were also good workers; and even Mabel, though not specially bright, was very plodding and conscientious. Aldred soon found that she had to revise entirely her old method—that a careless German exercise could completely cancel a brilliant score in history, and that she must give equal attention to every subject if she wished to chronicle a record. The little tricks she had practised on Miss Perkins were not equally successful at Birkwood: she had tried reeling off her lessons very fast, so as to gloss over mistakes, but Miss Bardsley would allow her to finish, and then say: "Yes; now you may repeat it again, slowly. I did not quite catch the second person plural;" and Aldred, to her disgust, would be compelled to reveal her ignorance in a more deliberate fashion, and take the bad mark that ensued. She was at first a venturesome guesser, till her many bad shots drew scathing comments from her teachers and smiles from the rest of the Form.
"Even Lorna Hallam knows that Sir Philip Sidney didn't write the Faerie Queene, and she's supposed to be our champion bungler!" observed Ursula Bramley sarcastically, on one occasion. "As for history, you muddle up Thomas Cromwell with Oliver Cromwell! You'd better get an elementary book, and learn a few simple facts."
The girls would not tolerate Aldred's conceit. She quickly discovered that if she wished to be popular, it was unwise to claim too much credit for her achievements. The week after she arrived she had taken her place among the others at a singing lesson. Miss Wright, the mistress, began to teach the class the old English ballad, "Should he upbraid"; it was one with which Aldred happened to be familiar, so she at once took the lead and sang away lustily, beating time in a rather marked manner, and accomplishing the many little runs and trills with an air as if she considered herself indispensable. At the close of the lesson, as they were filing out of the room, she could not resist remarking to Ursula Bramley:
"It was a good thing I knew that song so well, wasn't it?"
"Why?" asked Ursula pointedly, looking her straight in the eyes.
Thus cornered, Aldred could hardly say that she thought the class would have managed badly without her aid; her tact told her that the remark would be unpalatable and indiscreet, so she quickly changed her ground.
"Oh! only that I find it difficult to learn new things," she replied, in some confusion.
"Indeed! Well, I suppose you'll improve when you've been here a little while," returned Ursula, with a meaning smile that was partly a sneer, and made Aldred decidedly red and uncomfortable.
During the earlier part of the term, try as she might, Aldred was not able to see her name in the coveted position of heading the list for the Fourth Form. One week she failed in geometry, another in French; if her German was correct, her arithmetic proved inaccurate, and some unexpected slip would pull her down. At the end of the sixth week, however, she at last dared to hope. She was aware that she had done unusually well, both in the ordinary class subjects and in the Friday morning examination; while Ursula, her chief opponent, had had an exercise returned, and received a bad mark for botany. The lists were always posted up on the notice-board in the corridor just before tea-time on Saturday afternoon, and there was generally a rush to read them. On this particular Saturday, Aldred determined to be the first to cull the news. She was too proud to allow herself to seem anxious, so she hung about the corridor, pretending that she was searching for a lost piece of india-rubber, and that she was thrillingly interested in the view of the dripping garden through the side window. At last Miss Drummond appeared, pinned the papers neatly on to the notice-board, and re-entered the library. Aldred strolled up as casually as she could; but Mabel, who had also been on the look-out, was before her.
"You're top! You're top!" shrieked the latter. "There it is: 'No. 1, Aldred Laurence.' Oh, how lovely! You've beaten Ursula by twenty marks. It's splendid! Come and see for yourself!"