‘But–but I didn’t mean that he was a beast,’ proceeded Barbara, looking distressed. ‘I meant that somebody else was a beast. It wasn’t my fault that somebody else was him, was it, Miss Finlayson?’
‘It would be safer, I think, and perhaps a little more considerate, not to call anybody a beast,’ remarked the head-mistress, gravely. ‘Then these little mistakes would be avoided.’
‘I never will again,’ sighed Babs. ‘It’s such a particular pity, because he isn’t a bit like a real beast, is he?’
Miss Finlayson looked up while she dried the page she had just written. ‘Have you finished your letters home?’ she inquired pleasantly. ‘The prayer-bell will ring in about a quarter of an hour.’
The reminder sent Barbara straight out of the room, and she sped swiftly back across the hall, thinking busily. Clearly, the only reparation she could make to the doctor was to transform him from a beast into a fairy prince, and to offer him a place in her fairy kingdom; but he would be rather lonely there without a princess, she feared, and she herself already belonged to Kit. It was always easier to find princes than princesses, and she did wish that Finny would not wear a cap and scrape her hair back so tidily–two things which disqualified her, in spite of her niceness, from being a princess in anybody’s kingdom. However, perhaps he would not mind doing without a princess just at first; and in time she might be able to find some one who was neither silly nor unkind, and would be worthy of a crown and the companionship of a disenchanted beast.
At this point in her reflections Barbara reached the door of the senior playroom, and the sight of the elder girls, as they busied themselves with their weekly correspondence, reminded her again of her letter to Kit. For the moment, as far as she was concerned, her new prince would have to whistle for a princess.
CHAPTER IX
THE BABE’S ‘FURY’
In the junior playroom Jean Murray had been taking the opportunity to revive the animosity against the new girl.
‘Can’t you see that she’s laughing at us all?’ she exclaimed to a circle of humble listeners. ‘It’s all very well to pretend to be such a baby; that kind of thing may go down with the elder ones, but it won’t do here. Anybody can see that she’s only putting it all on, to be aggravating.’