‘It’s rather a difficult exercise, and you might put her out,’ explained Jean, seeing that he looked puzzled at such a peculiar request. Her explanation did not help him much, for Jean did not trouble to translate it into his own language; and, never having witnessed the exercise that was coming, he failed to see the point of Hurly-Burly’s message. However, he was glad of the opportunity to descend from the platform and get a better view of the little Fräulein’s performance; and he placed himself, rather inconveniently, just in front of the games-mistress, and prepared to miss nothing of what followed.

Everybody in the room was smiling genially at the youngest girl in the school. She had already prepossessed them in her favour by her frank admiration for Jean Murray; and now, as she stood there waiting for the sign from Hurly-Burly to begin, there was something about her happy unconsciousness that appealed irresistibly to her audience. Suddenly, the five boys in the gallery began to stamp their feet encouragingly, and Peter shouted ‘Go it, Babe!’ at the top of his voice. In a moment, the cry was taken up in the anteroom. ‘Go it, Babe!’ said twenty voices or more in a breath. The enthusiasm was infectious, and the words were repeated with many a laugh all over the room. ‘Go it, Babe!’ cried the people on the platform, and the people in the gallery, and the people who sat near her by the wall, until every one in the gymnasium was stamping and clapping and saying ‘Go it, Babe!’ to the little person in the short scarlet frock.

Barbara held the rings tightly, and her breath came rather quickly and unevenly. She was bewildered by the noise, and waited for it to subside before she began the exercise. It was so difficult to know what it all meant. Of course, the boys wanted her to win; and perhaps the other people did too, because they were grown up, and grown-up people always were jolly and kind to her. She could understand why the Doctor, stern as he was, smiled away at her and clapped her as heartily as any one, from his place on the platform; and she thought she knew dimly what was making Jean stamp on the floor till the dust flew. But the enthusiasm of her other school-fellows, who were pressing forward from the anteroom door, amazed her greatly. Could it be that they had suddenly forgotten how young and unimportant she was, and how much she needed correction, and how often she required to be told that she was the youngest in the school? Were these the girls she had hated so heartily only three months ago, the disgraced princesses she had turned out of her kingdom so passionately?

The applause died down at last, and Miss Burleigh made her the signal to begin. Babs walked back as far as she could, stood stretched for a second on the tips of her toes, then shook the hair out of her eyes with the old familiar movement, and took a sharp run forward. The next minute, the slim scarlet form was flying backwards and forwards, with graceful, regular movements. The onlookers gazed and admired, wondering with some curiosity what her exercise was going to be; and their interest increased when she uttered a sharp ‘Now!’ just as she was sweeping backwards from her highest swing. Only one person in the room failed to notice that it was Miss Burleigh who let the trapeze drop forward instantly, so that it hung ready for the small performer to grasp on her return swing.

The music-master had been wholly absorbed in watching the little Fräulein, from the first moment she had begun to swing. He thought he had never seen anything so graceful as the way she swept to and fro, nor anything so hübsch as the expression and the rose-red complexion of the youngest girl in the school. It was truly grossartig! His eyes followed her closely all the time, from end to end of her swing; and that was how he contrived to be looking away at the precise moment when Hurly-Burly let down the trapeze. The murmur that rose from the people who surrounded him, as they realised what Barbara was going to do, made him look round; and he saw the thing hanging there, as though it had dropped from the roof by accident, and in another second would get in the way of the child who was swinging so deliciously. Viewed afterwards in the light of ordinary common-sense, it seemed to him wunderbar that he could so have deceived himself. At the time, not a doubt was in his mind as to what he thought had happened. The trapeze had fallen down by accident and was going to embarrass the little Fräulein, if not to hurt her; and the people around him were all exclaiming aloud, because they too had realised her danger. Nevertheless, nobody seemed to know what to do, and the little Fräulein was already sweeping straight towards it on her downward swing. All these reflections rushed through his brain in the flash of a moment. There was no time to hesitate. He must be the one to rush out and come to her aid. With a loud German exclamation, the music-master hurled himself forward and snatched back the trapeze just as the child let go of the rings.

He had a dim recollection afterwards of being gripped by Hurly-Burly just an instant too late, and of seeing the little scarlet figure twist in the air above him and drop with a nasty thud at the edge of the last mattress, of finding himself in the midst of a huge concourse of people, who suddenly rose up with a great roar and bore down upon him, uttering shriek after shriek,–and then, of coming miserably to himself again, with his heart thumping and his head throbbing painfully, just as a deathlike silence succeeded the uproar, and a voice like Miss Finlayson’s said something that sounded like ‘Doctor!’

Some one had sprung from the platform with a flying jump the moment the accident happened, and was forcing a passage through the throng of people. There was not a sound to be heard in the great gymnasium as the Doctor knelt down on the floor and put out his hand to the little still spot of scarlet that lay on the edge of the last mattress.

CHAPTER XVI
THE LAST DAY OF THE TERM

In the annals of Wootton Beeches there had never been so dismal a packing-day as the one that dawned on the morrow of the gymnastic competition. Generally, packing-day was the most delightful day in the term: it came just after the break-up party, and just before going home, and everything that happened on it seemed filled with a peculiar interest of its own. First of all, there was the joy of rushing up to the bedrooms directly after breakfast, to put out all the clothes in tidy little heaps, ready for packing later on; then, the less delightful business of clearing the bookshelves and tearing up the old exercise-books–an occupation which contrived, in spite of itself, to present a certain amount of charm, simply because it belonged to the last day of the term. And the nicest part of all was the indescribable feeling that it was the last day of the term, that there were no more lessons to prepare and no more penalties to avoid, no more scales to practise and no more stockings to mend, and, best of all, no more rules to bother about, so that Fräulein and Mademoiselle could both be addressed, much to their own distraction, in the British tongue, and anybody who pleased could run up and down stairs to her heart’s content without asking leave first. All these privileges made packing-day, as a rule, something to look forward to. But to-day nothing was happening as it usually did.