‘No, I haven’t learnt any German, and I don’t want to, thank you,’ said Babs, decidedly. ‘Ever since the German band complained to father, because Peter tried to stop their noise by shying potatoes at them from the window, we’ve all made a vow never to learn their beastly language. And I don’t know any French either; no more does father. I know Latin up to the deponent verbs, though,–deponent verbs are catchy, aren’t they?–and I’ve begun Greek with father. I’m afraid that’s all the languages I––’
‘Well, you are a curiosity!’ declared Margaret, giving up the attempt to hide her amusement. ‘So you’ve never had a governess at all? Nor been to classes?’
‘I’ve been to a gymnastic class,’ said Barbara, eagerly. ‘It’s the only thing I can do properly. Have you got a gymnasium here?’
She clapped her hands when Margaret nodded, and bounded towards the door. ‘Mayn’t I go and try it now?’ she asked in a disappointed tone, when the head girl called her back.
‘There’s plenty of time for that,’ said Margaret, reminding her with a frown that she was only a new girl and was there to be examined; ‘I’ve got to settle first what class you had better go into. But I’m sure I don’t know what I am to say to Finny about you.’ She sighed, and looked at Barbara as if for inspiration. Barbara was quite equal to the occasion.
‘You’d better put me in the bottom class, I should think,’ she advised pleasantly; ‘you don’t know what my spelling is like yet.’
‘Thanks,’ said Margaret, drily; ‘I’ve no doubt you are quite competent to examine yourself, and to teach all your betters into the bargain, but that doesn’t help me just now.’ She drummed her fingers on the table again, and Barbara waited and went off into a kind of dream as she stood there. She was aroused by an exclamation from the head girl. ‘I know,’ she was saying in a relieved tone. ‘Can you write compositions, child? I mean, make up things in your head and write them down?’
Barbara smiled. Certainly, that had nothing to do with lessons. She had scribbled over every piece of paper she could find, ever since Nurse had first taught her to form her letters. ‘I can do that all right,’ she said. ‘All except the spelling,’ she added as an afterthought.
Margaret paid her no attention. She was occupied in carrying out her happy idea for concluding the examination of the new girl and leaving herself free at the same time to go to her history lecture. ‘Look here,’ she said, spreading some paper rapidly on the desk in front of her; ‘come and sit in this chair and write about anything you like. You’ll have a good hour and a half before the interval for lunch; and then Miss Finlayson will come and look at what you’ve written, and she will settle what class you can go into.’
‘But what shall I write about?’ asked Barbara, when the head girl had installed her at the table and was hurrying out of the room.