“Oh, the monitresses will do that part of the business!” decided Raymonde easily. “We’ll stand in the background, and just look ladylike and well-mannered, and all the rest of it.”
“Will you, my child? Not if the Bumble knows 205 it! She’s nuts on this afternoon-tea dodge! (I don’t care—I shan’t put a penny in the slang box—Hermie isn’t here to listen and make me!) Gibbie told me that we’re all to act hostesses in turn. We’re to be divided into four sets, and each take a time.”
“Help! How are you going to divide twenty-six by four? It works out at six and a half. Who’s to be the half girl?”
“Oh! They’ll make it seven on one afternoon and six the next, I expect.”
“That’s not fair! It’s throwing too much work on those six and not enough on the seven. It’s opposed to all the instincts of co-operation and justice which Gibbie has laboured so hard to instil into me.”
“Don’t see how the Bumble can manage otherwise, unless she chops a girl in half. No, I predict you’ll be chosen among a select six, and have to pour out tea and hand cakes with one-sixth extra power laid on, and your conversation carefully modulated to your hearers.”
“Oh, Jemima!”
“Please to remember that this is a finishing school!” mocked Ardiune. “Don’t on any account shock the neighbourhood by an unseemly exhibition of vulgar slang!”
“It’ll slip out, I know, when I’m not thinking,” groaned Raymonde.
On the first afternoon of the geological course, an audience of about twenty visitors augmented the usual gathering in the lecture hall. They were accommodated with the best seats, and the school occupied the third and fourth rows. Directly in 206 front of Raymonde sat an elderly lady in a large black hat trimmed with cherries, which bobbed temptingly over the brim. She appeared to take an interest in her surroundings, glanced about the room, and turned a reproving eye on Raymonde, who ventured to whisper to Aveline. With Miss Gibbs hovering in the background with a now-mind-you-keep-up-the-credit-of-the-school expression, the girls hardly dared even to blink, but Aveline managed to write: “What a Tartar in front!” on a slip of paper, and hand it to her chum.