“I didn’t know I was under the clock,” she said, glancing up at the station clock above her head. “But a girl—Sybil was her name—told me to stand here, and then she went. Is Miss Drury one of the teachers?”
“A mistress. Yes, rather,” the friendly girl nodded. “If you know Sybil, of course you’re all right. I only thought you might be shy and that I’d speak to you before Miss Drury came. Here she is.” Betty’s new acquaintance turned. “I always walk up with Phyllis,” she remarked; “we’ve booked the walk every term from the station. But I’m sure to see you later. I’m Gerry. Hope you’re a Daisy!” she added, calling over her shoulder in a jolly voice as she was lost in the crowd.
Quite lost; one of a medley from which Betty would have found it almost as difficult to find her as to discover a needle in hay. “And she’s a Daisy too!” she found herself thinking. “How jolly they seem. I should so much like to be one too—whatever they are!”
There wasn’t much time, though, for conjecture upon this point; the sudden arrival of the mistress in charge made that plain. “Only one new girl this term. Her boxes are here, but she—” she was beginning in rather a puzzled voice. “Hesther, Louise, Gladys, have any of you—? Oh, here she is!” Her eyes fell with evident approval upon the figure of Betty, standing stiff as any grenadier, under the clock.
“How very sensible of you to follow the others,” remarked she in a downright voice, “and to come straight here. So few of the new girls do, and the train is such a long one. Now fall in, please.” Miss Drury’s tone was breezy and her look travelled quickly from Betty to the whirlpool which, almost like magic, seemed to sort itself into instantaneous couples at the sound of her command.
“Yes, we’re all here now, I think. Phyllis and Gerry will lead off. But wait outside the station, please, for a moment as usual, until I give the word to start up the hill. There should be twenty-six of you here, and I must make sure.” Then, as she brought up the rear herself, Miss Drury—ignoring fervent requests from three evident admirers—turned again in Betty’s direction and threw her a friendly glance.
“Betty Carlyle? Yes, come along. No, Marie and Brenda, will you make the last couple, please; I have only two sides, as you know, and Betty has no partner. Clare—yes, you may walk with me too.”
Betty found herself, therefore, making a threesome, stepping out with as steady a stride as she could manage, and feeling a distinct twinge of awe in her heart. For Miss Drury, on whose right side she walked, seemed to the new girl as much unlike a “teacher” as any one could possibly be. The books at home were rather old-fashioned certainly, and they had generally depicted the mistresses of schools as being gaunt ladies in specs and mittens. Miss Drury, however, was as unlike the “specs-and-mittens” type as any one could possibly be.
She reminded Betty of the golf-playing ladies on the links at the seaside last year from whose furious hitting she had protected the ubiquitous twins, who had been consumed with a mania to stray on the greens hunting for “lost balls.” For Miss Drury wore brogues and a sports coat; she looked, Betty found herself thinking, “like the jolly older sister of one of the girls, instead of anybody teachery.” The very words of her conversation with Clare, who walked on the mistress’s left hand, sounded altogether unschooly, Betty thought.
“Well, Clare, it certainly was rather a risk, perhaps, to go camping in the Easter holidays; but the weather forecast was so good that I decided to take advantage of it. If we are to have a camp this term——”