Barbara was stretched, face downwards, on the floor of the junior playroom. It was Wednesday evening, about ten days after the rescue party had invaded Wootton Beeches; and she was trying, with the aid of much ink and a footstool for a writing-desk, to answer Kit’s last two letters, and to send him all the news she had accumulated since that important occasion. Over her head buzzed the desultory conversation of her fifty-five companions, who still gloried in ignoring her; but she heeded them no more than they had come to heed the unconscious little person who lay stretched at their feet. It was really only a habit with them, by this time, to ignore the new girl; for most of them had quite forgotten the fancied grievance they had originally cherished against her for her defiance of their favourite, Jean Murray. Indeed, if it had not been for the fear of Jean’s scorn and Jean’s tongue, they would undoubtedly have made friends with her days ago. With the best intentions in the world, it was not easy to go on avoiding some one who never seemed to notice that she was being avoided; and most of them wished secretly that Jean Murray would ‘come round.’ But whatever Jean felt about it, she showed no intention outwardly of coming round. Whenever she found herself alone with a picked audience, she seized the opportunity to inflame them and herself afresh, by recalling the evil behaviour of Barbara over the head girl’s boots, pointing out how, by a tissue of deceit, the offender had wormed herself into Margaret’s favour, to the exclusion of other worthier members of the junior playroom–notably of Jean Murray herself. ‘You’ve only got to see how little she cares, and that will show you what a wicked mind she’s got,’ was the kind of sentence that usually wound up one of these inflammatory addresses; and after that, the junior playroom would redouble its coolness towards Barbara Berkeley. But Barbara Berkeley persisted in going her own way cheerfully, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to live with fifty-five companions who never spoke to her; and the situation in the junior playroom threatened to become too absurd to be maintained.
Babs dropped her pen, and picked up one of Kit’s letters for reference. She had so much to say to him and so little time to say it in, that she was afraid of leaving some of his questions unanswered. Kit’s neat and precisely written epistle was a great contrast to her own blotted and smudged production; and Barbara sighed as she realised how much he managed to say in a few words, while she expended far more time and ink and energy, without expressing half as much as she wanted to tell him.
‘Dear Babe,’ Kit had written–‘This is to tell you that we got home safely from the great Midnight Rescue Party, though of course I caught a chill and had to have that beast Hurst again. I’ll tell you presently how Jill ragged him, though; and that was well worth being ill for. But first of all I have to inform you what we all think is for your good in the present crisis of your fortunes. (That means, now you are at school.) Of course we are much afflicted to hear that you are not happy, and of course we are not surprised to hear you do not like girls. (Nobody could, except Egbert, and he doesn’t really, only he pretends he does because of that chap’s sister last holidays. That’s what has done for Egbert, and it’s a great pity, but what we must expect at his age, so it’s no use vociferating about it.) But to resume–we are all agreed that the best thing you can do is to stop where you are until the period of probation is over (that means till you’ve done being at school). You see, it is only for three months at a time, and we are here in the holidays. It would be indescribable and unprecedented (which means beastly, and awful, and things like that) if you had to live with girls in the vacation too. But you are spared this, and it is your duty to be thankful for every crumb of comfort that is to be substracted from the situation. (Besides, you are a girl yourself; you can’t get over that though you mayn’t like the idea, and you’ve got to go on being a girl till you’re a woman. It’s something to feel that it can’t last for ever, and that in the end you will be able to be a woman, like Nurse and Auntie Anna; and there’s nothing the matter with them, is there?) If your temporary indisposition only cures your spelling it will be money well spent, for your spelling, my dear Babe, as father once said, is both original and varied. So cheer up, and remember that Jill is but a girl too, and that she is quite passable for one of that slack and wayward sex. (Even when she is most like a girl I find I can bear with her. For instance, when I lammented the other day that the rescue party had been a frost, she said, “Why, you couldn’t have bicycled unless it had been, could you? Listen to the rain, now!”) The post is going, so I must infer the description of how Jill ragged the doctor till next time. Meanwhile, cultivate the endurance for which English women have ever been renowned; that is the result of the codgitations of the council we held before the others went back to school.–Your affectionate brother, Christopher Berkeley.
‘P.S.–I’m not quite sure about the m’s in lammenting; it looks rum somehow, but there isn’t a dictionary, so I must leave it. C.’
His other letter was much longer, and had evidently been written straight off without the elaborate care that he had given to the composition of the first one. As Babs read it, she pictured him sitting as he always did, perched on a high chair at the writing-table, with his legs curled under him and his nose very close to the paper; and suddenly, the deadly feeling of home-sickness she had been battling with for days came over her again.
‘This is the true account,’ she read, through a suspicious mist in her eyes, ‘of how Jill ragged the doctor, when he came to dine with us, the day after the boys went back. Of course, Auntie Anna didn’t know he was a beast, so she couldn’t be blamed for asking him; but Jill and I much regretted the circumstance. Robin grumbled and said he wished he was old enough to sit up to dinner and have courses and courses and courses, but that’s his beastly greediness, as I pointed out to him, and he doesn’t know what it is to get a white tie under a filthy clean collar and then an Eton coat under that and to wash your teeth extra instead of only in the morning. But Jill came in and tied it, which was something, and she even did it better than Nurse, who used to make you feel sick by grinding her knuckles into your throat all the time. Having prepared ourselves for the awful holocaust we then proceeded downstairs. (Perhaps you won’t be able to understand all the words in this letter, but it’s too good a joke to be spoilt by making it easy for you, so you must do your best.) Jill had an awfully decent pink sort of thing on, and it had rows of fringe that you could tie into knots without her rotting you for doing it. Well, to come to the real matter of my discourse, we found the doctor in the drawing-room, also the old Rector, who is called Barnaby and is too old to count much, and besides Auntie Anna likes him so we mean to extend to him the charm of our companionship. And the Rector took in Auntie Anna, and the Beast took in Jill, and I followed behind feeling rotten. You don’t know how rotten it is, when you are an odd one like that and nobody wants you in their conversation. You see there were two conversations all the time, Auntie’s conversation with the old boy about tithes and rent charges and things that are not suited to my intellect, and Jill’s conversation with the doctor which wasn’t a conversation at all because he wouldn’t talk. He sat and glowered at his plate like a cat would, and if he lifted his eyes by accident and caught one of us staring at him, he looked down again as if he’d been shot. His conduct was most unaccountable and reprehensible as I pointed out to Jill afterwards, and she said, “Yes,” and grinned. I was greatly incensed with him for giving her so much bother, because she worked hard at him and never got cross once, and she asked him about the village and about the poor people and about abroad, and all those grown-up things, and the Beast said “Yes” and “No” and “Certainly,” till I wanted to kick him. I tried to help Jill once or twice by tossing off one of my polite rejoinders, but he only behaved as if I wasn’t there and looked more like a poker than ever. That was what put Jill’s monkey up. She couldn’t stand his indifference and acidity to me, so she began to rag him and that shows that she is in reality a brick though forced to maskerade as a girl. (That’s another word you don’t know perhaps but it’s in the dictionary.) She smiled at him as perky as you please and she said in that soft-cotton-wolly voice of hers, “Is there anything that does interest you, Dr. Hurst?” And when the Beast was so bowled over that he nearly dropped his knife and fork, she just went on and explained how funny it was to sit all the evening with some one who didn’t want to talk, and didn’t he think so too? I wanted to break out into paeons of triumph in order to express my satisfaction at the turn matters were taking, but I restrained my impetuosity in time and waited for the Beast to speak. He stuttered rather and began chopping up the pear on his plate as if it was for Christmas puddings, and then he said he didn’t suppose any young people were interested in what he was interested in (which shows that all the while he lumped Jill and me together as kids and not fit to associate with him). Then Jill asked him what he was interested in, and he said “Bac–” (this is the longest word of all and I’m afraid you won’t find it in the dictionary, at any rate not in the way I’m going to spell it) “Bacterioi–” oh hang! here goes again–“Bacteriollodgy.” Then Auntie Anna winked at Jill, and we went upstairs and left the Beast with the Rector, which was a punishment he more than deserved, as I told Jill. She said she was afraid we boys were spoiling her manners, and Auntie said, “Of course they are!” as if it was a good thing, which of course we know it is. I had to go to bed then, and Jill said it was awful desolation and despair when I’d gone, because Auntie Anna began her conversation all over again with old Barnaby, and the Beast instead of having the sense to join in it went and sat with Jill all the evening. Which shows his puerrility and blightedness. She sang to him too, and he got up to go the moment she had finished which was beastly rude, I think. If he did think she sang badly he might have played up better. But he’s a beast, and you can’t get over that. He’s very ugly and sulky looking, and he’s about fifty I should think, but Jill says not so old. That’s her grown-up charitableness which she can’t get over. Anyhow––’
The mist in Barbara’s eyes threatened to become so serious at this point that she put down Kit’s letter hastily and returned to her own. Whatever happened, she was not going to cry before all these girls, who never understood anything she did. She was hard at work again by the time Ruth Oliver pushed aside the curtain and looked in from the next room.
‘Barbara Berkeley!’ she called. ‘Has any one seen Barbara Berkeley?’
One or two of the girls looked round casually at the slim figure on the floor, but nobody roused her. Ruth Oliver was too good-natured a person to inspire much authority in the junior playroom, and the children would sooner risk her displeasure any day than Jean Murray’s. If it had been any other girl in the First, half a dozen of them would have hastened to do her bidding at once.
‘Angela!’ called Ruth, impatiently, coming into the room as she spoke; ‘don’t you know where the Babe is? She has got to go and see the doctor at once.’