Except by her example, however, she incited nobody else to break the Rules.
It was curious that she should know herself to be popular, and yet at the same time should also be secretly aware that she was a little out of things. All went well enough for the present, but only for the present. She knew quite well what would happen did she, a year or two hence, chance to meet any of her present fellow-pupils. She would not, then, be older than they in quite the same sense that she was now. They would meet; there would be eager recollections of the old days at Chesson's; oh, for that matter she could make it all up now!... "Come where we can have a really good talk! Where's Burnett Major now, and her sister? And have you heard from Elwell lately? And I wonder what's become of that red-haired girl—what was her name—Earle—yes, Earle? And of course you know Macfarlane's going to be married.... Now tell me all about what you're doing!"... Oh yes, Louie could make all this up—the bursts, the pauses, the dead stops, and then the falsely bright, perfunctory talk about Chesson's again. For she and her fellow-students would not be doing the same things. They would have taken recognised places, and Louie was not sure that she herself had a place to take. Her father and mother had seen to that. She remained a spectator. If she was liked now, it was not because she went one inch out of her way to be so. She was just as ready to go out of her way to be disliked if she must go out of it at all.
In the meantime, however, here she was at Chesson's, to all intents and purposes her own mistress, and made so much of that she had Mrs. Lovenant-Smith largely at her mercy—for, had she been requested to leave, the two Burnetts, Elwell and others would now have left with her. So, doing exactly as she liked, and adored on every hand, Louie even wondered sometimes whether she had not been wrong in supposing that restlessness and discontent were bred in the very bones of her.
She was at the very top of her popularity about the time Burnett Major gave the birthday "cocoa" in her cubicle. (That is to say, Burnett Major gave the nucleus of the "cocoa"; the rest of the party happened by a natural process of accretion.) This time the junketing was held by Mrs. Lovenant-Smith's permission; it had been acceded readily. "Lovey's not such a bad old sort when you get used to her," B. Major said. It was in mid-May, on a hot evening, and, though Burnett's window was flung wide open, showing the dark yew outside, not a breath stirred, and the flames of the candles were four inches long in the air. Besides cocoa, Burnett had provided cake and biscuits and candied fruits and an enormous box of "assorted" chocolates; and Burnett's bed was like to break down with the weight of girls upon it.
Louie had had Burnett Major especially in her mind when she had painted her fancy picture of a possible meeting with her fellow-students a year or two hence. The two sisters were the daughters of a Gloucestershire M.F.H., and Louie could forgive B. Major for being a little dazzled by her approaching presentation. There was nothing unfamiliar to Louie, either, in the rest of the things she felt herself, at one and the same time, both "in at" and "out of," for probably Mewley Hall, the Burnetts' home, was not very different from Trant or Mallard Bois. But Burnett Major's position a few years hence was a forgone conclusion; she filled it already in anticipation; and the noisy talk that was in progress as Louie joined the party threw bright lights on it.
They were discussing the coming vacations. These were Chesson's yearly dread. They interrupted his supply of free labour, and there were always fewest girls when he most wanted them. As the vacation arrangements rested after all chiefly with the parents, he could do little except express his preference that as many of the girls as possible should take their holidays in the empty month of June, and his hope that those who did not do so would defer them until as late as they could. Otherwise he was, to that extent, no better off than his trade competitors.
"Here she comes," Burnett Minor was crying as Louie entered the crowded cubicle. "I want to be here when Causton is. It's all right for Major—oh, you needn't think we don't know, Major—if you aren't actually engaged he's always about the place when you're at home—and I'm going to stalk you both with a camera and then what-d'you-call-it—blackmail him——"
"Shut up, Minor, or I shall send you out," B. Major ordered.
"Then I shall tell everybody who he is and shout his name through the keyhole. It's——" She moved her lips, threatening to pronounce the name there and then.
"Sneak!" said her sister.