A CARICATURE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Geraldine was awakened next morning by the loud ringing of the getting-up bell, and she tumbled out of bed in a hurry, having been informed by Jack the previous evening that a bad mark was the result of a late appearance at breakfast. However, on this first morning, she was dressed in plenty of time, and even had to wait a few minutes before the second bell, which was the signal for the girls to leave their dormitories, rang through the school.
When she reached the dining-hall she found that the place she had occupied for her first two meals in the school was no longer vacant, it having been claimed by Vera Davies, the small girl who had been displaced by Monica the day before to make room for Geraldine. Vera was an ardent admirer of Monica Deane, Geraldine discovered later.
"I always sit here," the little girl said in a vigorous whisper as Geraldine came up. "You must find a place somewhere else—there's loads of room."
Geraldine looked about her in rather a helpless way. Then she caught sight of Jack Pym making grimaces at her from the other side of the room, indicating by various gestures and contortions that Geraldine was to come to her table. Not sorry to escape from the small Vera's hostile glances, Geraldine quickly made her way thither and was deposited at an empty place next to Jack at the end of the long table. Jack's immediate neighbour on her other side was Nita Fleming, another member of the Lower Fifth, who leant forward to smile amiably at Geraldine and was introduced at once by Jack.
"Nita's been longing to see you ever since I told her we'd got a new girl in the Lower Fifth," she remarked. "She's hoping that perhaps she won't be bottom of the form any longer, now you're here—aren't you, old thing?" with an affectionate tug at Nita's long, fair pigtail, a proceeding which led to instant retaliation by Nita upon Jack's short locks, and brought down upon the two the wrath of the prefect in charge of the table.
"Jack Pym and Nita Fleming—what are you doing? You're not to sit together, you two, if you're going to behave like this. Change places with that new girl next to you, Jack. Here, you," addressing Geraldine, "sit next to Nita Fleming, will you, and try and keep her and Jack in order if you can."
A mistress came in at this moment to say grace, and then the girls sat down to the meal. Geraldine took her place between Jack and Nita with the rueful reflection that she seemed fated to be the separator of friends at Wakehurst Priory. However, Jack and Nita appeared to bear her no malice, and bandied words with each other across her in the liveliest way, taking her into the conversation with the utmost affability. There was no such friendship between Jack and Nita as there was between Phyllis and Dorothy, Jack being very cosmopolitan in her friendships, and possessing as many different "partners" as there were walks in the week.
After breakfast the girls retired to their dormitories to make their beds and tidy their cubicles. Then came some half-hour or so of free time before the bell went for prayers. After prayers, the girls were marched to the Great Hall, where Miss Oakley, the headmistress, read out the form lists for the term, and made a few remarks appropriate for the occasion. And then the various forms departed to their respective classrooms, where the real business of the day began in earnest.
Although she had never been to school before, Geraldine found that she was not at all behind the rest of the class. She had been very well-grounded by her governesses, and although, of course, she was handicapped a little by not knowing the class methods, her general knowledge compared very favourably with the attainments of the rest of the form. Indeed, she won a word of approval from the Sixth Form's form-mistress, Miss Latham, at the conclusion of the lesson on English history.