CHAPTER XIV
JANE AT MISS COURTNEY'S SCHOOL
Jane hated going to school. She had begged to be allowed to go on doing lessons with Mr Rannigan, though he had said five children were too many for him at his age. Then she had begged to be allowed to go to a boys' school with Mick. But all her pleadings were in vain. Lull had arranged that she was to go to the select young ladies' school that Aunt Mary had attended when she was a girl. Lull secretly hoped that contact with the select young ladies would make Jane a little bit more genteel. Every morning, driving into town on the car with Andy, Jane mourned to Mick for the good days that were gone. Mick annoyed her by liking the change. His school was quite pleasant.
"How'd ye like to be me," she asked him, "goin' to a school where whativer ye do it's always wrong?"
She hid her unhappiness from Lull, partly because Lull had taken such pride in sending her to Miss Courtney's, partly because she could not have told Lull the offences for which she was reproved—offences no one would have noticed at home.
In spite of an eager desire to be good and polite Jane was constantly accused of being wicked and rude. Mr Rannigan had never found fault with her manners, but Miss Courtney sent her back three times one day to re-enter the room because she bobbed her head and said: "Mornin'," when she came in. Jane, in bewilderment, repeated the offence, and was punished. "I wisht I'd 'a' knowed what it was she wanted," she complained to Mick. "If I had I'd 'a' done it at wanst."
She gathered that, in school, it was considered a sin to speak like the poor. Miss Courtney said a lady should have an English accent, and a voice like a silvery wave. Jane trembled every time she had to speak to her. In other things besides pronunciation she never knew when she was doing right or wrong.
She was reproved for shaking hands with a housemaid, and sent into the corner for putting a spelling-book on the top of a Bible. School was a strange world to her. To speak with an English accent, to have a mother who wore real lace and a father who did no work, these things made you a lady, and if you were not a lady you were despised. Jane could tell the girls nothing about her father. Her pronunciation was shocking, and the girls made fun of her magenta stockings and home-made clothes. If only Mick had been with her Jane felt she could have borne anything. She was terribly home-sick every day. From the time Andy left her in the morning she counted the minutes till he would come to take her back again to Rowallan and people who were kind. But it was only to Mick she told her trouble. He said Miss Courtney was a fool, and Jane trembled lest Miss Courtney might overhear it six miles away. She was almost as frightened of the big girls as of Miss Courtney. They wore such elegant clothes, and had such power to sting with their tongues. One day when Jane, in joyful haste, was putting on her hat to go home three of the big girls came into the cloakroom. They were talking eagerly. One of them mentioned Jane's name, then asked Jane how much she was going to give towards Miss Courtney's birthday present. She explained that they always gave her a beautiful present each year. "What is the good of asking her?" said another, "she's hasn't a penny, I'm sure." The scorn in her voice seemed to scorch Jane.
"I'll give five shillin's," she said calmly. She had not as many pennies in the world, but she could not bear to be despised. The big girls were delighted. They were quite kind to her. Jane promised to bring the money next day. All the way home she prayed that God would send her five shillings. She would not ask Lull for it—Lull was too poor; Jane would rather have confessed to the big girls that she had no money than take it from Lull. She prayed earnestly before going to bed, she woke in the night to pray, but morning came, and she was on her way to school without the money. When she got off the car at the end off the street she was still praying, hoping that at the last moment she would find the money on the pavement at her feet. Suddenly Mick's voice startled her. "Ten shillin's reward! Lost, a red settler dog." He was reading a poster on the wall. Jane laughed with glee. She thanked God for His goodness before she read the poster. Here was the money, and five shillings over. She expected to see the lost dog at the end of the street. She read the poster carefully. The red setter answered to the name of Toby. Nothing could be more easy to find. Mick dropped their schoolbags over a wall among some laurel bushes, and they started on the search. They began with the street they were in, calling Toby up one side and down the other. But they got no answer. Then they went on to the next, and so on from street to street. They saw brown dogs, black dogs, white dogs, yellow dogs, but no sign of a red setter. When they had searched the principal streets they tried the back streets. Jane called the dog's name till she was hoarse, and then Mick called in his turn. They asked a policeman if he had seen Toby. "A settler dog! I niver heerd tell a' that breed," he said. "Where did you loss it?"
"We niver lost it, we're only lukin' for it," said Jane.