‘She’s hardened, that’s what she is,’ declared Jean, glancing in her direction. This she said to keep up her own resentment against the new girl, which was unaccountably beginning to cool.
‘She thinks it’s grand to pretend not to care,’ added the faithful Angela. This, indeed, was the prevailing opinion among the children of the junior playroom; and it was not comforting to their pride.
All the while, Barbara guessed nothing of the comments she was provoking by her manner. It was enough for her that she had got away once more into her fairy kingdom, and that Kit and the magician and the old fairy godmother had just turned out all the princesses who were called schoolgirls, and had shut the gates in their faces.
It was a very weary little new girl who went up to her bed that evening after prayers. She was almost too tired to think over the events that had been crowded into the last twenty-four hours, almost too sleepy to realise that this was the close of her first day at school, the day she had thought would be the happiest day in her life. Perhaps it was a good thing she was not able to think too much about anything, at the end of that first day at school. The moment Fräulein had turned out her light, she went off into a dreamless sleep that might have lasted unbroken till the morning, had not something occurred most strangely to break it.
She did not hear the small pebbles that were thrown up, one after another, at her window; it would have taken more than that to rouse her from her first sleep, though once a handful of mould and gravel that scattered itself all over the glass panes made her stir uneasily and murmur something sleepily. It was just after this that some one began calling ‘Coo-ey’ softly, on two particular notes; and after this had been repeated two or three times, it gradually worked itself into the waking dream of the little new girl. At the fourth time, she was wide awake and listening with all her might. Another repetition of it, followed by a gentle whistle that only Peter knew how to blow through his fingers, took her with a flying leap to the window. The moon outside was flooding the world with light and revealing every secret in the landscape for miles: it flooded the big nine-acre field beyond the orchard; it flooded the orchard itself, and the wall that ran along it, just under her window; and it showed her five boys sitting astride on the top of the wall, and five–no, six bicycles leaning against the bottom of the wall.
Barbara pushed open the lattice window as wide as it would go, and leaned out breathlessly. Her finger was on her lips, and she shivered from head to foot with cold and the fear of being overheard. Supposing that any one were to find out they were there, and should send them away before she could get to them?
The five of them made frantic signs of welcome, as soon as they saw the familiar dark head appear at the window. In spite of the graphic description contained in her letter, they were beginning to be afraid of having besieged the wrong window. Then Kit waved a screw of paper and made more signs, and the dark head vanished from view again. It did not take a minute to turn out all the contents of her corner drawer, and to find the ball of string that Robin had given her for a parting present, and then to fling the end of it down to Kit, who tied on his screw of paper and nodded at her to haul it up.
The moonlight was bright enough to enable her to read the few short pencilled lines without much difficulty.
‘We’ve come to the rescue,’ she read. ‘Auntie Anna has gone away till to-morrow, so we could not wait until then, knowing you were so jolly blue. Come down quickly; there’s a window under yours that you could get through all right.’
Barbara struggled with desperate haste into her pink dressing-gown, thrust her bare feet into a pair of woolly slippers, and glided to the door. In her haste and her half-awakened condition a more elaborate costume than that, considering the urgency of the occasion, seemed quite unnecessary to her. Along the silent gallery she pattered, and down the wide staircase, then through the two empty playrooms into the front hall. She knew the window the boys had meant; she had noticed the red berries tapping against the glass, as she passed it on her way to Finny’s study the morning before.