The youngest of Charlie Hardinge's daughters was the child in the school whom Lily liked best, although she knew that she had been expected to make friends with her contemporaries, Dorothy and Janet. But Dorothy who, as her father had said, stood five-feet five in her stockings at thirteen years old, and had a back like a ramrod—Dorothy, at fifteen, had attained to a degree of athletic prowess that admitted her to the comradeship of the most highly placed girls in the school.
She naturally took not the slightest notice of Lily, who was universally recognized at "a perfect duffer at games."
Of Janet Hardinge, Lily was frightened, although Janet was her junior. Janet was clever, according to the Bridgecrap standards, and she was amongst the few girls in the school who expressed a contempt that was not, in the main, wholly good-natured, for Lily's physical inefficiency. She had a spiteful tongue, that turned itself readily to personalities of a coarse and wounding nature, and Lily's sensitiveness was sufficiently obvious to render her a favourite target. Janet was not popular, and Lily was perhaps the only one of her school-fellows who realized that hers was simply the obtuse cruelty of the absolutely unimaginative. Her sister Sylvia was four years younger than Lily, and so entirely absorbed by hockey that only the chance of school theatricals revealed to either that they had anything in common.
A play was acted every year at Midsummer. At first, Lily had been convinced that she could act. She knew that the girls to whom the important parts were given frequently spoke their lines with perfectly meaningless intonation, and with emphasis very often laid in the wrong place.
She felt certain of distinguishing herself, although the first part given to her was a tiny one, and she noted with relief that her voice, when she spoke her brief sentences, sounded very clear and distinct, amongst those other voices that were almost all charged with self-consciousness.
Her satisfaction reached a brief climax and then was dashed to earth.
"Very good, Lily Stellenthorpe!" said an unnecessarily surprised junior mistress. "I wish you principals would put as much intelligence into some of your speeches. You, for instance, Dorothy Hardinge."
Dorothy Hardinge giggled. She was too good-natured to take offence, and it was clear that the whole question of the play seemed to her to be a very unimportant one.
Perhaps something of this attitude of mind was rather too obvious in her demeanour.
"Lily!" commanded the mistress sharply. "You can read that long speech of Dorothy's, and see what you make of it."