The end of the term seemed to arrive very rapidly—too quickly for the amount of work that had to be done, yet too slowly in the estimation of the three hundred and eleven girls who were looking forward to the holidays. Exam week came and went, leaving inkstained fingers and a crop of headaches; mistresses were busy correcting papers; "swatters" were daring to congratulate themselves, and "slackers" were bewailing the difficulty of the questions. Gwen, who had done pretty well on the whole, considering her handicaps, ventured to think she must be through in most subjects, and not such a disgrace to the Fifth as to necessitate her dismissal to the Lower School again, a consummation at which one or two of her detractors had occasionally hinted in times of irritation.
The few days left were chiefly occupied with what the girls called "scratch lessons", just something to keep them employed until the lists were out. A good deal of latitude was allowed to those rehearsing for the various performances, and though Gwen could not claim that excuse for exemption, she managed to make a little work spin out a long way without incurring reproof.
She was tired with the strain of the term; it had needed much effort to keep up with the rest of the Form, and the daily bus journey and walk to and from home were all extra exertion. She had grown enormously in the last few months—"grown out of all conscience", said Beatrice, who sighed ruefully over boots too small and skirts too short—and she had become so pale and lanky and angular in the process that Winnie unfeelingly compared her to a plant raised in a cellar. Her unlucky hands and feet seemed bigger than ever, and more inclined to fidget and shuffle, and to her bad habit of wrinkling up her forehead she had added a nervous blink of her eyes.
"Winnie Gascoyne is charming," confided Miss Douglas to a fellow mistress, "and Lesbia is about the loveliest child I've ever seen. I can't imagine why Gwen should vary from pretty to plain continually. But she does."
Unfortunately, Gwen's temper suffered in exact proportion to her increased inches. She was snappy at school and snarly at home, difficult to please, and ready to take offence at everything. Probably a week's rest in bed, on a feeding diet and a good tonic, was what her tired body and irritable nerves required, but nobody had the hardihood to make such a suggestion. Except in cases of dire necessity, the Gascoynes did not indulge in the luxury of medical advice or chemist's bills, so Gwen perforce did without a doctor, and the medicine he would most undoubtedly have prescribed for her. So far from thinking of rest, she was making plans sufficient to fill five holidays instead of one; even she herself laughed sometimes at the largeness of her projects compared with the brief month in which she was to carry them out.
Meantime the two days of the dramatic performances had arrived. The Seniors always had the first afternoon and the Juniors the second, the audience being composed of the rest of the school together with the mistresses. The outside public was not invited, as the little plays were only intended to be acted among the girls themselves. The Sixth naturally led off, and Gwen quaked as she sat with her Form in front of the heavy red curtains. She was afraid an unpleasant surprise awaited her comrades, and she wondered how they would take it. Exactly what she expected happened. The bell rang, the curtains were drawn aside to reveal—alas, alas, for the Fifth!—a very excellently got up trial scene from the Merchant of Venice. Bessie Manners, the head of the school, was a majestic Portia in a handsome scarlet robe; Winnie made an attractive Nerissa; while all the other characters were arrayed in slightly more sumptuous costumes than Elspeth and Hilda had been able to collect.
A shudder of cold horror ran through the unfortunate Fifth, the dramatic representatives of which listened with a kind of fascination to their own speeches, tripped off lightly and easily by their Seniors. It was more particularly galling as all realized that the whole thing was on a rather higher scale than theirs; it was better staged, much prompter, the actions were more appropriate, and the players less stiff and self-conscious, to say nothing of the superior dresses. In gloomy resignation they sat the scene out, and had the magnanimity to applaud heartily at the end. Then came the crisis.
"We can't possibly give the very same thing all over again," whispered Hilda to Elspeth. "We shall just have to announce that ours is 'off'."
Deeply humiliated and disgusted, the Fifth retired to its own classroom to discuss the untoward event.
"It's too sickening—when I'd borrowed the wig on purpose!" wailed Hilda. "You can't think how I had to pester Dad to lend it."