‘Nervous!’ echoed Jean, incredulously. ‘Who ever saw Margaret nervous? Do you think she’d be able to make every new kid who comes to the school quake in her shoes if she was nervous?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Babs, doubtfully. Margaret Hulme had certainly never made her quake in her shoes, even when she was a new girl; but she did not admit this to Jean. ‘Egbert can make people afraid of him too,’ she went on, ‘and he can thrash any chap you please, and he always washes his head in cold water every morning, even if there’s ice, and he has more ties and clothes and things than all the others put together, and he’s awfully grand and splendid, Egbert is,–but all the same, he was frightened of that strange clergyman. Can you see Egbert?’ she concluded proudly. ‘He’s at the end of them all, next to Jill. Wasn’t it jolly of Finny to put them right in the front row of the gallery?’
Her companions forgot Margaret for a minute or two in their efforts to stand on tiptoe and catch a glimpse through the open door of Barbara Berkeley’s five brothers. The various relatives who came to the break-up parties, and never seemed to exist at any other time except on letter-writing days, always caused a good deal of excitement among the girls, and added a temporary importance to the most insignificant of them, provided she was lucky enough to possess a parent or even a cousin among the visitors.
‘They’re all mine,’ said Babs, glowing with the joy of possession. ‘I’ll introduce them to you at supper, if you like.’
‘I’m rather glad I haven’t any one belonging to me here,’ said Jean, cheating herself into a brief forgetfulness of the little home in Edinburgh. ‘I’m so frightened of the introducing part; I never know what to say, and it makes me feel such a goat.’
‘Oh,’ said Mary Wells, placidly; ‘how funny of you, Jean. I always say, “Here’s my sister, and this is Charlotte Bigley.” That’s quite easy, surely.’
‘Yes, but it isn’t right,’ responded Jean, frankly. ‘You should hear Margaret Hulme do it–that’s something like! It reminds you of mothers, and callers, and At Home days when you wear your best frock and hand the scones.’
Their talk was interrupted by the retirement from the gymnasium of the senior division. Margaret marched into the anteroom, with her eyes staring straight in front of her, and an exaggerated air of confidence in her bearing. There was an obvious lack of enthusiasm among her followers, who were all whispering and looking significantly at their leader; but the noise produced by Scales, who seemed to think that a Beethoven sonata was an appropriate solo to play in the interval, made conversation impossible; and the section that was to do the horizontal bar, led by Ruth Oliver, returned to the gymnasium before the juniors were able to satisfy their curiosity. During the second event of the competition, Margaret and the vaulting-horse section exchanged very few remarks, and the feeling that there was something unusual in the air had considerably increased by the time Ruth, looking flushed and totally unlike herself, marched her section back again. The rumour ran down the junior file that Ruth Oliver had been distinguishing herself, and that as much of the clapping as Scales allowed to be heard was on her account. Certainly, the irresolute manner that marked everything Ruth did, as a rule, had quite deserted her as she filed past the triumvirate with her little band.
‘Why,’ exclaimed Angela, audibly, ‘I never knew Ruth Oliver was pretty before!’
‘She isn’t, is she?’ said Jean, just as loudly.