"I say, what's going on here?" said a fresh voice, as Marcia Richards entered the room, and, after pausing a moment to take in the situation, strode indignantly to the rescue of poor Gerda, who, still shy and half-bewildered with so many questions, stood almost weeping in the midst of the circle.
"Is this the way you treat a new girl? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! No, she shan't learn to dance if she doesn't want to! Not to-night, at any rate. Come along with me, Gerda, and have some cocoa upstairs. Don't trouble your head about this noisy set. If they've no better manners, I'm sorry for them!"
With which parting shot, she seized her protégée by the arm and bore her out of the room.
Most of the girls laughed. They did not take the affair seriously. A fit of bashfulness and blushing might be very agonizing to the new-comer, but it was distinctly diverting to outsiders. New girls must expect a little wholesome catechizing before they were admitted into the bosom of their Form. It was merely a species of initiation, nothing more. No doubt Gerda would find her tongue to-morrow, and give a better account of herself. So Betty sat down again to the piano, and the others, finding their partners, began once more to tread the fascinating steps of the latest popular dance.
"We did rag her, rather," said Deirdre half-apologetically.
"Serve her jolly well right for talking German!" snapped Dulcie.
CHAPTER II
A Kingdom by the Sea
Please do not think because Miss Birks's pupils, on the first night of a new term, ran helter-skelter up and down the passages, and insisted on compulsory dancing or solo singing, that this was their normal course of procedure. It was but their one evening of liberty before they settled down to ordinary school routine, and for the rest of the eighty-eight days before Easter their behaviour would be quite exemplary.
They were a very happy little community at the Dower House. They admired and respected their headmistress, and her well-framed rules were rarely transgressed. Certainly the girls would have been hard to please if they had not been satisfied with Miss Birks, for allied to her undoubted brain power she had those far rarer gifts of perfect tact and absolute sympathy. She thoroughly understood that oft-time riddle, the mind of a schoolgirl, and, while still keeping her authority and maintaining the dignity of her position, could win her pupils' entire confidence almost as if she had been one of themselves.