Chapter Nine.
Having it out.
Thomasina led the way into her study, and shut the door behind her. It was a bare little room, singularly free from those photographs and nick-nacks with which most girls love to adorn a private sanctum. It looked what it was—a workroom pure and simple, with a pile of writing materials on the table, and the walls ornamented with maps and sheets of paper, containing jottings of the hours of classes and games. On the mantelpiece reposed a ball of string, a dogskin glove, a matchbox, and a photograph of an elderly gentleman, whose pike-like aspect sufficiently proclaimed his relationship. There were three straight-back chairs, supplied by the school, and two easier ones of Thomasina’s own providing, both in the last stages of invalidism.
The mistress of this luxurious domain turned towards her visitor with a hospitable smile.
“Sit down,” she cried, “make yourself comfortable. Not that chair—the spokes have given way, and it might land you on the floor. Try the blue, and keep your skirts to the front, so that it won’t catch on the nails. I can’t think how it is that my chairs go wrong. I’m always tinkering at them. Nice little study, isn’t it? So cosy!”
“Ye–es!” assented Rhoda, who privately thought it the most forlorn-looking apartment she had ever seen, but was in no mood to discuss either its merits or demerits. It was in no friendly spirit that she had paid this visit; then why waste time on foolish preliminaries? She looked expectantly at Thomasina, and Thomasina stood in front of the chimney-piece with both hands thrust into the side pockets of her bicycling skirt, jingling their contents in an easy, gentlemanly fashion. From her leathern band depended a steel chain which lost itself in the depths of the right-hand pocket. Rhoda felt an unaccountable curiosity to discover what hung at the end of that chain and rattled in so uncanny a fashion.
“Well!” began Thomasina, tilting herself slowly forward on the points of her flat, wide shoes, “Well, and now about this little matter. I asked you to step in here because I think differences of opinion are more easily settled without an audience, and as it were, man to man.” She buried her chin in her necktie, and gazed across the room with a calm, speculative glance. The likeness between her and the pike-like gentleman grew more startling every moment. “Now, we have known each other barely a week, and already I have offended you deeply, and you, without knowing it, have hit me on a tender spot. It is time that we came to an understanding. Before going any further, however, there are one or two questions I should like to ask. You have had time to notice a good many things since you arrived. You have seen me constantly with the girls. Do they dislike me? Do they speak of me hardly behind my back? Do they consider me a bully or a sneak? Should you say on the whole that I was popular or unpopular?”
“Popular!” said Rhoda firmly. Whatever happened she would speak the truth, and not quibble with obvious facts. “They like you very much.”
“And you wonder how they can, eh? Nevertheless it’s true. I’ll tell you something more. I’m the most popular Head Girl at Hurst. You ask the other colours to-morrow, and they’ll tell you to a man that you are lucky to have me. Very well then, Rhoda, who’s to blame if you think the opposite? Yourself, and nobody but yourself, as I’ll proceed to prove. You come to school with a flourish of trumpets, thinking you are doing us a mighty big favour by settling among us, and that you are to be allowed to amble along at your own sweet will, ignoring rules you don’t like, graciously agreeing to those you do, and prepared to turn into a wild cat the first moment any one tries to keep you in order. Then, when you are unhappy, as you jolly well deserve to be, you turn and rend me, and say it is my fault. If all the new girls behaved as you have done, I should have been in my little tomb long ago, and you would have some one else to deal with. It seems to me, my dear, that you don’t recognise my duties. I am placed in a position of authority, and am bound to enforce the rules. If the girls are obedient, well and good; if they kick, well and good also. I break ’em in! I’m going to break you in, Rhoda Chester, and the sooner you realise it the happier you’ll be.”
Rhoda looked at her fully, with a firmness of chin, a straightness of eye, which argued ill for the success of the project.