"MURIEL! I CAN'T GET RIGHT WAY UP"

JUST GERRY

BY

CHRISTINE CHAUNDLER

LONDON
NISBET & CO. LTD.
22 BERNERS STREET, W.1
1920

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Fourth Form Detectives
A Fourth Form Rebel
The Reputation of the Upper Fourth
The Reformation of Dormitory Five
Jan of the Fourth
The Thirteenth Orphan
Snuffles for Short

CONTENTS

JUST GERRY

CHAPTER I

CUBICLE THIRTEEN

The new girl sat on the edge of her bed, and gazed round at the small domain which for the next three months would be the one spot in this strange new world of school that she could call her own.

It was really quite a nice cubicle, some eight feet wide by ten feet long—just large enough to contain a small white-counterpaned bed, a dressing-table and chest of drawers combined, a small washhand stand, a big wooden locker, and one chintz-covered arm-chair drawn up below the broad sill of the opened window. The cubicle walls were white, the furniture white-enamelled; while the curtain which cut the small compartment off from the rest of the dormitory, the toilet-cover on the dressing-table, and the covering of the arm-chair were all of a dainty cream-coloured chintz with a pretty pink rosebud pattern stencilled upon it. Everything was certainly very nice—much nicer than the new girl had expected—and she looked around with a certain amount of satisfaction. Perhaps after all school would not be the dreadful place she had imagined it would be. Here, at least, would be a place of refuge if the world outside should prove too hard and unfriendly.

Number Thirteen—the numbers were painted outside on the doorposts—was the only cubicle in the Pink Dormitory across which the shielding curtain was drawn. In all the other cubicles unpacking was taking place in full publicity. Rules were in abeyance on this the first day of term, and the dormitory hummed with the shrill chatter that was going on all around. The school was reassembling for the autumn term, and there were many accounts of holiday doings to be retailed, and much conjecturing going on respecting new girls, new mistresses, new prefects, and new rules. The school year at Wakehurst Priory began with the autumn term, and any changes in the staff or the school routine were usually made then.

Cubicle Number Twelve was as yet unoccupied, but when the bustle of unpacking was at its height, a newcomer burst into the dormitory and rushed helter-skelter down the long corridor, calling out cheerful greetings to various occupants of the cubicles as she passed. Reaching Number Twelve, she tumbled her coat and hat and handbag unceremoniously on to the bed, and flung back the curtain of the next-door cubicle with a gay call of greeting.

"What on earth do you want to go pulling your curtains for, you old curmudgeon?" she cried impetuously, then stopped short in sudden surprise at the sight of the strange girl who was sitting on the bed.

"Who the dickens are you?" she ejaculated. "And what in the world are you doing in Dorothy Pemberton's cubicle?"

The new girl gave a startled jump and rose to her feet. She was a tall, slight girl, some fifteen years old, taller by a couple of inches than her inquisitor, and apparently older. But in spite of her seniority she looked at the intruder in a frightened sort of way, and replied nervously to her questioning.

"I—I—don't know. They told me it was my cubicle," she answered, shrinking away from this alarming intruder.

"Who told you?" demanded Phyllis Tressider, in such a truculent tone that the new girl retreated yet farther into her cubicle.

"The—the person who showed me here. She looked like a hospital nurse. I—I suppose it was one of the mistresses."

"You suppose just wrong, then," replied Phyllis, more briefly than politely. "That was Sister. I suppose if she showed you here she meant you to stay. But it's a beastly nuisance, all the same! Dorothy Pemberton always has slept in this cubicle, and it's a sickening shame if she's got to be turned out by a rotten new kid."

The "new kid's" face flushed scarlet. She was beginning some murmured apology when the situation was relieved by the entrance of a girl of about seventeen or eighteen years of age, who was hailed rapturously by all the other occupants of the Pink Dormitory. This was Muriel Paget, head girl of Wakehurst Priory, prefect and monitress as well, and Phyllis left for the moment her inquisition of the occupant of Cubicle Thirteen, to join in the chorus of welcome.

"Muriel! How perfectly ripping! You don't mean to say you are going to be our monitress this term? Oh, how quite too splendidly glorious! I say, do let me fetch you your hot water in the mornings. Do—do—there's a dear!"

"No—me—me!" interposed half a dozen voices. But Muriel held up her hand in laughing dismay.

"For goodness' sake, chuck it, you kids! Nobody is going to fetch my hot water for me. The maids can do it as they do everybody else's. I'm not going to have any of that silly rot going on in the Pink Dorm, if I'm to be monitress here. So I give you fair warning!"

"You are going to be monitress, then? Oh, how perfectly scrumptious!" And Phyllis Tressider executed a dance of delight. Muriel laughed again, pleased at her reception. She enjoyed popularity as well as most people, although she would allow no unhealthy sentiment to be lavished upon her. If people "adored" Muriel Paget, they had to do it from a distance, and not let the object of their worship know too much about it, either. Otherwise they ran a grave risk of "ructions" with the head girl. And to be "told off" by Muriel was no joke, as many of the girls at Wakehurst Priory could testify.

The head girl walked along the corridor towards the monitress's cubicle, which was at the far end of the dormitory—a bigger and somewhat more elaborately furnished affair than any of the other cubicles. As she passed by Number Thirteen, the curtains of which were still thrown back, the sight of the new girl and her rather frightened attitude caught Muriel's eye, and she stopped good-naturedly to speak to her.

"Hullo! Somebody new in here? What's your name, kiddie?" she asked, ignoring the fact that she was only a couple of years or so older than the individual she was addressing.

"Geraldine Wilmott," replied the new girl shyly. Phyllis's unprovoked attack had unnerved her considerably, and she shrank away from the head girl's well-meant advances.

"She's got Dorothy Pemberton's cubicle—isn't it a shame?" said Phyllis, scowling darkly at Geraldine. "Dorothy's had that cubicle next to mine for years and years. It's too bad that we should be separated now, all because of a new kid."

"Jolly good thing you are to be separated, I think, if I'm to be your dormitory monitress," replied the head girl, with a smile that took the sting out of her words. "One of you alone is bad enough—but you two together are the limit! If Sister has really put you into different dormitories at last, she has my heartfelt gratitude!"

"They're not so far removed after all, worse luck," remarked the occupant of Number Fourteen, who was just finishing putting away her belongings in a neatly arranged drawer. "Dorothy's got Number Twenty-Nine, the next cubicle to yours, Muriel. She's in the same dormitory still."

"Why, Monica, old thing—how are you? I never saw you hidden away in there. Finished your unpacking? Then come along and talk to me while I do mine." And the head girl slipped her arm round Monica Deane and led her away. These two were great friends, out-of-school companions as well as form-mates, although pretty, vivacious Muriel Paget, brilliant at games and gymnastics as well as at lessons, was a great contrast to Monica, who, although studious enough, was painstaking and plodding rather than brilliant; and although keen and reliable at all sorts of games, would never make much of a mark at them.

Phyllis Tressider remained staring rather sulkily at the new owner of Number Thirteen, who, deprived of the comforting protection of the head girl, was growing momentarily more and more nervous under the hostile scrutiny. However, there came another interruption almost immediately, this time in the person of an astonishingly pretty person who flung herself effusively into Phyllis's arms, to be greeted with a delighted:

"Hullo, Dorothy, old dear! I am glad to see you again!"

For a few moments Phyllis's attention was diverted from the new girl. But she was soon recalled to a remembrance of her grievance by Dorothy's exclamation of surprise at seeing the occupant of her one-time domain.

"Hullo! What's up? Aren't I to be in Number Thirteen this term?"

"No. Isn't it a shame?" responded Phyllis, her disgust returning. "You're ever so far away—in Number Twenty-Nine, Monica says. This wretched new kid has got your cubicle. I do think it's mean of Sister to go turning you out!"

Dorothy's face fell considerably.

"Oh, I say, that's too bad! Why, I've been in Number Thirteen for ages and ages. Can't we get the new kid to change? Sister would never remember. Here, I say, you, what's your name?" addressing the shy and miserable occupant of Number Thirteen.

The new girl flushed hotly with embarrassment at this brusque mode of address. But she answered the question politely enough. Indeed, she was far too scared to do anything else—to her, discretion, in this case at least, appeared to be decidedly the better part of valour.

"Geraldine Wilmott," she said, under her breath.

"Well, look here, Geraldine Wilmott, this is my cubie. You won't mind changing into Number Twenty-Nine instead, will you? Phyllis Tressider and I have always slept in next-door cubicles ever since we first came to school."

"And that's the very reason you are to be separated now," said a voice behind them, and turning round in dismay the two friends saw the redoubtable Sister herself regarding them with a grimly humorous smile. "It's just because you and Phyllis always have been together that you're being moved. There were complaints enough of you last term, and if I'd had my way you'd have been in different dormitories altogether. But Miss Oakley said to give you one more chance, so I'm trying what the effect of putting you at opposite ends of the dormitory may be. You just leave Geraldine Wilmott alone, and get to work and unpack your boxes. And mind you put the things away tidily—I shall be coming round to inspect the drawers after tea." And Sister moved on down the dormitory, leaving two very disconsolate damsels behind her.

"Bother!" said Dorothy crossly. "I suppose there's no help for it, now. I shall have to go to Number Twenty-Nine." And with a scowl at the innocently offending new girl, she marched off to inspect her new cubicle with an aggrieved air.

Left to herself, Geraldine pulled her curtain again, and curled herself up rather forlornly upon the bed. In spite of the brave resolutions she had made when she left home that morning not to cry or show her home-sickness, no matter how lonely or miserable she might be, the tears were very near her eyes at that moment. And a devastating feeling of shyness and fearfulness, which was the bugbear of her existence, descended upon her mind.

For of all the shy, nervous, frightened girls of fifteen that ever were, Geraldine Wilmott was surely the most shy and nervous and frightened! It was not her own fault. She had always been a delicate, highly-strung child, while a severe illness when she was seven years old had not improved matters. And then, three years ago, during the War, she had been in an air-raid, and the sights and sounds she had seen and heard that night had left an indelible impression upon her nervous system. She was fully aware of her own failings—almost morbidly so—and she did her best to struggle against the fears that so constantly beset her. But it was uphill work, and even the three years of peace and quiet in the country house her parents had taken, after the doctor had said that a country life was imperative for the little girl, if her nerves were to be saved, had not altogether accomplished a cure.

And now at last the doctor had prescribed boarding-school as a remedy for the nervousness.

"I really think it is worth giving it a trial, Mrs. Wilmott," he had said. "There is nothing wrong with the child's health. It is purely mental, and I believe that the society of other girls will do more for her now than all the care and anxiety you lavish upon her at home. Send her to a first-class school, a really big one. Don't make arrangements for any special privileges—just let her mingle with the other girls as though she were a perfectly normal child. She will never get the better of this nervousness while you spoil and pamper her at home."

"Really, I don't think I've spoilt her," began Mrs. Wilmott in some distress, but the specialist interrupted her.

"No, I dare say you haven't, in the accepted sense of the word," he said, with a smile. "And, of course, cosseting and pampering were what she needed when you first brought her to me. Her nerves were all to pieces, and school was the last thing I should have recommended then. But now it is different. She is—how old did you say? Nearly fifteen? More than old enough to go to school! And really there is no earthly reason why you should keep her at home any longer. She is perfectly healthy and well so far as her physical health is concerned, and I have no fear of a nervous breakdown now, so long as she isn't overworked. After a term or two at school I think you will find that she quite overcomes this shyness and nervous fear of things. Try it, at any rate, Mrs. Wilmott. It can do no harm, and it may do all the good in the world."

And so Geraldine's lessons with her resident governess came to an end, together with her quiet country life; and she found herself in Cubicle Thirteen in the Pink Dormitory at Wakehurst Priory, with all the unknown horrors of a first term at school waiting her.

But in spite of her nerves and her shyness, and her lack of physical courage, Geraldine had a queer kind of moral pluck that was really rather splendid in such a frightened individual. She knew nothing of the nerve-specialist's advice, or that she was being sent to school as a sort of last resource. She did not even consciously know that she possessed nerves at all, or that her shyness and fearfulness were largely due to that terrible October night three years ago. But she did know that for some reason or other her mother was always terribly anxious and worried about her. And she had made up her mind that, however bad school might be, she would never breathe one word of her unhappiness at home.

"I won't even tell her about my having been put into that other girl's cubicle," she thought to herself, as she sat huddled up upon her bed. "But, oh, I do so wish I hadn't been! I know—I'll begin my letter to Mother now. I can tell her about my cubicle, how nice and pretty it is, at any rate. And it will be something to do while I am waiting."

She fetched her writing materials and began a letter home, but she was not to be left long in peace. About ten minutes after Dorothy's reproachful exit, a bell rang violently through the school buildings, and hearing a general rush of footsteps down the dormitory, the new girl peeped shyly out into the corridor to see what was happening. There was nobody near except Phyllis Tressider, who was hurriedly scrambling the last of her clothes into an already overfull drawer.

"Could you—would you tell me what that bell is for?" asked Geraldine very timidly. If there had been anyone else to ask, she would not have approached her late antagonist. But there was nobody in sight at the moment, and the new girl at last plucked up sufficient courage to make her request.

Phyllis eyed her grumpily.

"Tea, of course, duffer," she snapped rudely. "Whatever else do you expect at this hour of the day?"

Then she caught sight of Dorothy Pemberton emerging from her cubicle, and went flying down the corridor to meet her.

"Come along, old thing," she cried. "Let's buck up and bag places at Muriel's table." And the two chums vanished, arm in arm, leaving Geraldine Wilmott to find her way as best she might.

The new girl was the only person left in the dormitory, and her face grew wistful, and a choking sensation came into her throat as she realised the fact.

"They might have just shown me the way," she murmured to herself, looking forlornly around her. "I don't think I'm going to like Phyllis whatever-her-name-is, and that Dorothy Pemberton. They needn't have been so beastly to me just because I'm in one of their cubicles. It wasn't my fault. Oh, well, I suppose I'd better go and try and find out where tea is." And the new girl made her way towards the door through which Dorothy and Phyllis had disappeared.

CHAPTER II

AN INTRODUCTION

Tea was in full swing when Geraldine at last found her way to the dining-hall. She stood for a few moments in embarrassed hesitation just inside the doorway, until a girl who was sitting at the head of the nearest table spoke to her.

"You haven't got a place yet, have you? Won't you come and sit by me?"

It was Monica Deane, the girl who slept in Number Fourteen Cubicle in the Pink Dormitory. Geraldine recognised her with a feeling of relief, and moved across to her table with alacrity. Monica spoke to a small girl sitting on her left hand.

"Shove up one, Vera, will you? And ask the others to move up, too. This is a new girl in my dorm, and I want to talk to her," she said, with a friendly smile at Geraldine as the girl slipped thankfully into the seat thus provided for her. "Pass the bread and butter down, Mamie," she added to somebody farther up the table. "And, Gwennie, run and get another cup of tea." Then, having thus attended to the new girl's immediate wants, she turned round to her with the obvious intention of commencing a conversation.

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions?" she began.

"Not at all," said Geraldine, looking up with a shy little smile. "I expect you want to know what my name is, don't you?"

"Well, yes—that was one of them," laughed Monica. "You've been asked that question before, evidently, from the tone in which you said it."

Geraldine laughed too. Already Monica's friendliness was dispelling that feeling of nervous resentment and shyness occasioned by the encounter with Dorothy and Phyllis. Neither of these two girls were at Monica's table, Geraldine was glad to see. The occupants of Table Number Three were mostly smaller children, none of whom the new girl had come across before. She turned to her new friend with a look of gratitude.

"I should just think I have! But so far, you're the only person who's asked me if I minded."

"Well, won't you reward me for my politeness by giving me the information?" asked Monica. And Geraldine responded to the kindly interest by confiding, not merely her name and age, but also many details of her home life. By the time the meal was over, Monica was conversant with much of the new girl's past history (always excepting the events of that October night; Geraldine never willingly referred to that terrible time)—not an altogether unusual experience for Monica, who had been the recipient of many a new girl's confidences. The senior had vivid recollections of her own first days at school, and she always made a point of being especially friendly to newcomers during their first few weeks at Wakehurst Priory. It had, in fact, become quite a recognised thing in the school for Monica Deane to take any exceptionally forlorn-looking new girl under her wing.

"What do we have to do now?" asked Geraldine, as, tea being finished, she rose reluctantly from her chair. She recognised the fact that she would not be able to stay with the elder girl all the evening, and she dreaded being left once more to her own devices.

"Well, that just depends. Nobody does anything regular the first day of term. Usually, of course, it's prep after tea. You've finished your unpacking, haven't you? Then I should think you'd better go to your sitting-room and find a book to read. I wonder which sitting-room you'll be in? Have you any idea which form you're going to belong to?"

"Oh yes. Miss Oakley sent me some examination questions to answer; and when I'd sent them in, she wrote back saying I should be put in the Lower Fifth," replied Geraldine.

"The Lower Fifth? Oh, well, come along then, and I'll show you your sitting-room," said Monica briskly. "You've got an awfully nice room. The Lower Fifth is one of the biggest forms at Wakehurst, and in consequence it's been given the biggest sitting-room. You'll find plenty of people to be friends with you there. Dorothy Pemberton's in it, and Phyllis Tressider—you know, the girl who has the cubicle next to yours."

"Oh, is she?" said Geraldine blankly, a feeling of dismay creeping over her. Then a sudden impulse moved her to confide in Monica.

"I don't think I like either of them, much," she volunteered. "Especially not Phyllis Tressider."

"Oh, nonsense!" said Monica, stopping before a door and pausing with her hand on the knob to give some good advice to the new girl. "Look here, now, don't you go imagining things! Phyllis and Dorothy are both quite nice girls on the whole, and you'll get on all right with them, if you don't take too much notice of what they say just at first. They've always slept side by side in those two cubicles, ever since they came to the school, so naturally they're feeling a bit upset at being separated. Though, I must say, they've rather asked for it—the pranks those two used to get up to in the dormitory last term! But, of course, they know that it has nothing to do with you, really; and they'll soon come round and be nice to you—so long as you're nice to them. You'll find they'll make much better friends than they will enemies—and, if you take my advice, you'll try your best to keep them friends."

And with this, for Monica, unusually lengthy homily, the elder girl opened the door of the Lower Fifth sitting-room, and pushed Geraldine inside.

Judging from the number of people congregated in the sitting-room, the Lower Fifth was certainly a very big form. Geraldine shrank back a little as Monica ushered her in, bewildered and shy of the crowd of girls confronting her. But Monica laid her hand on her shoulder and led her across the room to a group of girls clustered round a vivacious individual with a crop of short curly hair, who was perched up on the edge of a table, swinging her legs to and fro and talking vigorously.

"Sorry to interrupt," began Monica, still with her hand on Geraldine's shoulder. "But this is a new girl, who tells me that she is going to be in your form. Her name's Geraldine Wilmott, and she's fifteen years old, and you needn't all start catechising her directly I'm out of the room. I fancy she's had about enough of that already. Jack," addressing the girl on the table, "will you have an eye to her for this evening? Put her up to things a bit, will you? and tell her what to do and where to go, there's a dear."

"Righto! Delighted, I'm sure!" replied Jack, stretching out a friendly hand to Geraldine. "How do you do? What dorm are you in? Have you unpacked your things yet? Is this the first time you've been to school, or did you go to a day-school before? What part of the country do you hail from, and how many brothers and sisters have you got?"

A shout of laughter from the group of girls around her greeted this string of questions, and Monica made a laughing protest.

"Oh, Jack—and I told you not to go asking her questions!"

"Well—but you said 'after you had gone out of the room,' so I thought I had better start straight away while there was still time," replied Jack, with an injured air, which was belied, however, by the twinkle in her laughing eyes. Then she turned to Geraldine in an impulsive friendly way that it was impossible to resist.

"You needn't answer them, though, if you don't want to. Come along and I'll get you a locker. We've bagged all the nicest ones already, I'm afraid. But I'll get you the decentest that is left, and next term maybe you'll get a better one." And Monica left the Lower Fifth sitting-room feeling that she had done her best for the new girl.

"I'm afraid she's in for a rough time of it, though," the senior thought to herself, as she made her way along the corridors to the small study which, as a member of the Sixth Form, she was entitled to have to herself. "She's just the type of sensitive girl who gets on worse at school than any other sort, although at heart they're usually quite nice kids. Still, if anybody can make her feel at home in the Lower Fifth, it's Jack. I wish she'd come across her before Phyllis and Dorothy appeared on the scene. Oh, well, it's none of my business, I suppose! I like the kid, but she'll have to fight her own battles. I dare say she'll shake down all right in the end—they mostly do."

And with this comforting reflection the Sixth Form girl entered her study, and banished the thought of Geraldine Wilmott from her mind.

CHAPTER III

THE WAYS OF WAKEHURST PRIORY

Meanwhile in the Lower Fifth sitting-room, Jack—Joanna Pym, Geraldine afterwards discovered her full name to be—was instructing the new girl in the ways of Wakehurst Priory.

"Ever been to school before?" she asked, regarding Geraldine with some interest, when Monica had left the room and most of the other girls had moved away, thus leaving the two alone together.

"No, never," said Geraldine, feeling that the admission implied some grave neglect upon somebody's part.

Jack appeared to take this view of the matter also.

"You're awfully old to come to school for the first time. Fifteen on your last birthday, didn't you say? You must be pretty good at lessons, though, to be in the Lower Fifth right away. Miss Oakley usually puts people into a form lower than they could go into, for their first term, because she says that entrance examinations are so deceptive, and if the girls are really good they can always be moved up. We don't often get new girls in the Lower Fifth—most of the new kids begin in the Lower School. I guess you'll be the only new girl in our form this term."

"Shall I?" said Geraldine. "I'm rather sorry for that. It would have been nicer if there had been somebody else new, too."

"Oh, I don't know. New girls are a rotten lot as a rule," replied Jack airily. "You seem rather decenter than most. But you will have an awful lot to learn if you've never been to school before."

"Why? Are the lessons so very difficult?" questioned Geraldine.

"Oh, it isn't the lessons," replied her informant. "Lessons don't really count very much at school, except with the mistresses. It's games and rules and—and—well, school etiquette in general, you know. I expect it will take you quite a term to learn all our school ways."

"Will it?" said Geraldine, looking rather alarmed. Jack hastened to reassure her.

"You needn't look so scared about it! Of course there are heaps of unwritten rules and things which you'll have to pick up, besides all the rules which the mistresses make. But people make allowances for you your first term, and I'll help you a lot, if you'd like me to. I've been here for years and years and years, and there isn't much about the old Priory I couldn't put you up to—though I'm not specially good at lessons," Jack added, with becoming modesty.

"Oh, I wish you would! Tell me about things, I mean. What happens next this evening? And what time do we start lessons, and when do we play games, and all that?"

"I'd better begin at the beginning," said Jack, nothing loath at the opportunity of exercising her tongue. Jack was an inveterate chatterbox. "Getting-up bell goes at seven, breakfast is at quarter to eight. Eight-fifteen to eight-thirty we tidy cubicles and make our beds. Then there's half an hour free, which we're supposed on fine days to spend in the quad or somewhere out in the grounds, before the bell goes at nine o'clock for prayers. We all assemble then in the Great Hall and march into Chapel for prayers, in the order of forms. You'd better stick to me to-morrow morning, and I'll show you where to stand and sit. After prayers, we go to our form rooms and work until eleven. At eleven there's half an hour's recess, when you can get cocoa and biscuits, if you want them, in the dining-hall. Then lessons again until one o'clock, tidy yourself, and dinner at quarter-past. Then there's a free time until half-past two, when either you have to go for a walk or play games."

"May you choose which you do?" asked Geraldine.

"Rather not!" answered Jack emphatically. "You're marked down which you're to be. Usually you get about four games' afternoons a week, and the rest walks. In the summer we do prep in the afternoon, and have games after tea. But this term we do prep in the evening, and have our hockey in the afternoon. Do you play hockey?"

"No," confessed Geraldine, rather uneasily.

"That's a pity," said her new friend. "How was that? Wasn't there any sort of a club in the village where you lived?"

"Y—yes—there was," said Geraldine. "But my people wouldn't let me join. Mother and Dad didn't approve much of hockey for girls."

"What a shame!" sympathised Jack. "Weren't you jolly sick about it?"

Geraldine flushed suddenly hotly red. She wished that she could have honestly said "Yes." But she was a very truthful person, and even to make a favourable impression upon Jack—to whom she had taken an immense liking—she could not prevaricate.

"Well, no, not exactly," she said in a low tone. "You—you see, I didn't much think I should care about it, myself."

"Not care about it!" Jack opened wide surprised eyes. Hockey was the joy and delight of her harum-scarum existence, and it had never before occurred to her that there could be an individual of hockey age in the world misguided enough not to care. "Why, it's a perfectly scrumptious game! It's an awful pity you've never played before. I'm afraid Muriel will put you into a dreadfully low team. Never mind, though, you must work as hard at it as ever you can, and you'll soon get moved up."

"But—but shall I have to play?" asked Geraldine in some dismay.

"Of course you will. Unless you've got a doctor's certificate to say you're not allowed. Everybody has to play here, unless the doctor says you mayn't. Never mind, you'll soon get to like it. Nobody could help liking hockey when once they've begun—it's such a ripping game!"

"Doesn't the ball hurt frightfully when it hits you?" said Geraldine nervously. She had watched hockey matches, although she had never played in one, and she did not feel at all inclined to participate in the game.

"Of course it does!" Jack laughed merrily. "But that's part of the fun. You feel my leg—all those little bumps and lumpy things down the front. That's from the balls I stopped last year"—with a proud inflection in her tone. "I'm third eleven now, B.1—they call the teams after the letters of the alphabet here—and with any luck I'll get into the second eleven this term. There are two vacancies—left outside and right half. I've no chance as outer, I'm not fast enough. Besides, Vera Maynce from the Fifth Remove is almost sure to get chosen for that. But I've got quite a sporting chance for right half. Gertie Page from the Upper Fifth might get it, but if I only do well in the trial next Saturday, I believe Muriel will give it to me. She told me at the end of last season that it would lie between Gertie and me, and I'd better not let myself get stale. And I haven't. My brother's been practising sending hard shots at me all through the hols. I'm getting no end of a dab at stopping them. You have to be good at stopping balls, if you play half-back," she added, for the information of the new girl.

"What happens after hockey?" asked Geraldine. She had been listening rather uneasily to Jack's account of the glories of the hockey field. To Geraldine's mind these would be more in the nature of tortures. Even before the air-raid she had always been rather a delicate child, and had never played any of the rough and tomboyish games in which most girls join as readily as their brothers. Consequently, she had never learnt to take hard knocks with the average schoolgirl's ready equanimity. And the idea of stopping balls on her shins amidst the mud and scrimmage of the hockey field rather appalled her. But she saw that it would never do to let this new-found friend of hers guess just how she felt about it. Geraldine could imagine the contempt that would come into Jack's eyes if she were to betray the fact that she was really afraid of the unknown game. And she made haste to change the topic before her companion should perceive the horror with which she was regarding her coming ordeal on the hockey field.

"Oh, after hockey," said Jack, readily taking the bait. "Tea, of course, after you've washed and changed. There's usually about half an hour's interval after we come down from the field. The tea-bell goes at half-past four, and the prep bell at five, so there's not much time between them. We do prep until seven. Then change for supper, which is at half-past seven. From eight to nine's free. The juniors go to bed then, while the seniors—all the forms above the Lower Fourth—go to Chapel once more for prayers. Then bedtime comes for everybody at nine-thirty. So wags the weary round from day to day," she concluded, with a fine poetical flourish. "If it wasn't for hockey and half-holidays, and Sundays and hampers and dormitory feasts, and other occasional rags, school would be an awfully dead-and-alive affair. But as it is, it has its redeeming features. I say, what dorm are you in?"

"The Pink Dormitory," answered Geraldine.

"You lucky kid! That's Muriel Paget's dorm this term. Half the girls in the school would give their eyes to be in your shoes."

"Why?" asked Geraldine in astonishment.

"Why? Because Muriel's head girl, and everybody in this school is cracked on her. At least, as cracked as Muriel will let them be! She won't let girls make themselves idiots over her—she squashes them horribly if they overdo the flowers and sweets and fagging business. Still, it would be jolly nice to be in her dorm; I wouldn't mind being there myself, though I'm not one of the most love-sick of her satellites, by a long way. I bet there'll be a rare old scrum to-night to fetch her hot water, and do those sorts of things."

"One of the girls did ask if she might fetch her hot water, this afternoon," volunteered Geraldine. "But she squashed her then. She said she wasn't going to have any of that silly rot going on in her dorm so long as she was monitress there."

"Did she? How awfully like Muriel!" chuckled Jack, with keen appreciation. "Who was the girl, do you know? Oh, of course, though, you won't! You're new. I quite forgot."

"I do happen to know that girl's name, though," responded Geraldine, pleased to be able to satisfy her companion's curiosity. "It was Phyllis—Phyllis Tressider, or some such name as that."

"Who's that talking about me?" said a sharp voice behind her; and Geraldine, turning round with a start, found herself looking into a pair of angry blue eyes as the owner of the name came up to the table on which the two girls had been sitting. The new girl gave an uncontrollable recoil and looked apprehensively towards her new friend, who, however, appeared wholly unconcerned at Phyllis's truculent attitude.

"All right, Phil. Keep your hair on, old girl," she said affably. "I was only asking Geraldine Wilmott a question which she answered."

"What was she saying, though? I won't have her going telling sneaky tales about me all over the place," said Phyllis, still regarding Geraldine fiercely.

"Oh, rot, Phil! Don't make such a how-d'ye-do about a silly little matter," said Jack, sliding down from the table on which she had hitherto been perched. "I say, Geraldine, has anybody shown you round the school yet? No? Then come along and let me do the honours. It will fill up time nicely until the supper bell goes. There's only an hour to get through before then."

And Geraldine, only too glad to escape from the vicinity of Phyllis Tressider, made haste to follow her out of the Lower Fifth sitting-room.

CHAPTER IV

AN INCIDENT IN THE DARK

"That's the dining-hall, as you know," said Jack, as she guided Geraldine past the big room in which tea had taken place. "This passage leads out to the Chapel. Like to see it? Come along, then, and I'll take you to have a look."

The Chapel at Wakehurst was part of the original Priory buildings, and such restoration as was necessary had been done with due regard to the beauty of the old architecture. Geraldine gazed round with admiration as Jack held the door open for her to look in.

"We always have prayers in here," said Jack, closing the door quietly. Then as the two girls walked away, she added: "We have prayers twice a day, you know—to say nothing of Sundays! On Sundays one of the curates from St. Peter's comes up to the school to take the Early Service and Matins, and those who want to, go down to St. Peter's on Sunday evenings. Sunday evenings aren't compulsory though, so long as you've attended both morning services, and there's not a huge rush for them as a rule. Goodness knows we get enough church all through the week, without having it three times on Sundays as well!" wound up the graceless Jack.

"Once we always used to have to put our hats on every time we went into Chapel," she went on. "But Miss Oakley isn't so frightfully keen on old St. Paul's ideas about women as the last Head used to be, and she's abolished it for weekdays. Sundays, of course, you have to wear your hat, but not for everyday. It used to waste no end of time, putting them on and taking them off twice a day; and Miss Oakley said she thought it would be much more reverent really if we didn't always have to scramble and rush about with them just before and after service."

"Is Miss Oakley nice?" asked Geraldine.

"Nice? Rather! She's absolutely tiptop! The best Head we've ever had or are likely to have. You can't take liberties with her, though, and she doesn't half know how to jaw you if you're sent up to her. We are all frightfully keen on her here, but we're all half-scared of her too. At least, I know I am! This is the Great Hall, where we have mark-readings and assemblies and special meetings and things. Come on—you don't want to go in there now. You'll see quite enough of it later on. I want to show you the gym."

The gymnasium was a recent addition to the school, and quite a modern building. It was fitted up with all kinds of marvellous and intricate apparatus, and Jack proceeded to expand upon these with great gusto. But, much to her disappointment, she found that Geraldine was not nearly so interested as she might have been.

"Aren't you keen on gym, either?" she asked in surprise; and Geraldine shook her head.

"I've never done any at all," she answered. "I—I don't much think I shall like it. Swinging and climbing always make me feel so giddy."

"Well, you are a rum bird!" commented Jack. "No hockey, no gym—is there anything you can do, I wonder?" And she looked so concerned at the new girl's lack of accomplishments that Geraldine felt very humbled and apologetic.

"I'll have to try and learn," she said meekly, and Jack's face cleared.

"Oh yes, I expect you'll soon pick it up. Well, I think I've shown you pretty nearly everything. Let's go back to the sitting-room, shall we? It must be nearly supper-time now. I'm jolly hungry, aren't you? We'll cut across the mistresses' quarters to get there. We're not supposed to go that way as a rule, but it's ever so much shorter, and as to-day's the first day of term, I don't expect anyone will say very much, even if we are caught."

She opened a green baize door which led into a short passage, closed at the other end by another door—"to keep out the row," Jack explained, as she held it open to let Geraldine through. The second door opened into a square hall, carpeted with rich Oriental rugs, and lighted dimly by a shaded lamp at the far end. A number of other doors opened into the hall.

"The mistresses' sitting-rooms," said Jack, with a wave of her hand towards them.

As she spoke she stumbled over a big black curly-haired retriever dog, who lay stretched out on a rug, almost hidden in the dim light. She pitched forward on her hands and knees over his slumbering form, and Geraldine stopped short with a startled exclamation, as the dog rose lazily to his feet.

Jack laughed merrily as she picked herself up from the floor.

"Bruno! You old wretch, tripping me up like that!" she said, stooping to caress the big fellow. "Why, Geraldine, what on earth's the matter? He won't hurt you," as, looking up, she caught sight of her companion's frightened face.

"Are you—are you sure he won't?" Geraldine asked fearfully.

"Of course he won't! Why, Bruno's the best-tempered dog that ever was; aren't you, Bruno, boy? Look, he wants to make friends with you—he's putting up his paw to shake hands. Don't you like dogs?"

"N—not very much," said the new girl. "Not dogs I don't know. I like some dogs, though. I've got a darling little fox-terrier of my very own at home."

"Bruno belongs to Miss Oakley, but he's often about in the school, and he's a perfect pet," said Jack. "Do shake hands with him! He wants you to so much."

With an effort Geraldine conquered her nervousness sufficiently to take the friendly paw the dog was still holding out to her. And when once the introduction had been effected she lost her fear of him. Bruno, certainly, appeared good-tempered enough, and he seemed to take a fancy to the new girl. He followed the two girls back to the Lower Fifth sitting-room, and once there he sat down as close to Geraldine as he could get. It was quite difficult to persuade him to go back to his proper quarters when at length the supper bell rang.

"Very forgiving of him, considering how rude you were to him to begin with," laughed Jack, when at last they had succeeded in making the big fellow go back to the mistresses' part of the buildings.

Jack stuck to the new girl for the rest of that evening, much to Geraldine's gratitude. She even went so far as to accompany her to the door of the Pink Dormitory when the time came to go to bed, although her own dormitory, the Green Dormitory, was in quite a different part of the house.

"I couldn't do it another night because Alice Metcalfe, my dormitory monitress, is frightfully strict. But she isn't back yet—not coming till to-morrow, so I may as well make hay while the sun shines. Besides, it's first night, and nobody takes very much account of rules the first night," Jack remarked, still chattering gaily in the new girl's ear. In all her school career, Jack Pym had never before come across such a splendid listener as Geraldine Wilmott, and she was forming all sorts of plans in her own mind as to her future relationship with the new girl.

Just before the Pink Dormitory was reached, the lights in the corridor went out with a suddenness that was rather alarming because it was so very unexpected. As a matter of fact, two mischievous juniors had stayed behind and switched them off at the bottom of the stairs for a joke; but the majority of the girls did not guess this, and much laughing and confusion and screaming took place. Geraldine did not actually scream, but she was very near to losing her self-control, and her hand shot out and grasped the arm of the girl next to her with a tense grip which showed how very nearly her command of herself was gone.

The darkness only lasted for a moment. An irate senior hurried back to the switch-board and turned the lights on again, and the culprits decamped with all possible speed. Geraldine came to her senses again, and found to her horror that the girl whose arm she was clasping was not, as she had imagined, Jack Pym, but Phyllis Tressider, who was staring at her with undisguised amazement in her blue eyes. With a hasty apology the new girl loosened her grip of the other's arm, but that one moment of revelation had been enough for Phyllis.

"I say, did you see?" she said in a low voice to Dorothy Pemberton. "That new girl's face—it was as white as white! If she'd seen a ghost she couldn't have looked more scared. What on earth was the matter with her, do you think?"

Dorothy nodded in a satisfied way.

"I saw," she said. "And she was scared too! Downright funky at finding herself in the dark for just those few minutes. Oh, well, if that's the sort of girl she is, we shall soon know how to get even with her if she interferes with us. I say, old girl, we shall have to say good-night to each other here. Now we're so far away from one another it won't be safe for me to go to your cubicle or for you to come to mine—at any rate, not until we see what sort of a monitress Muriel is going to be. Oh, dear! It is sickening to think that we're separated, and that that wretched new kid is going to sleep in my cubie to-night!"

Meanwhile, the wretched new kid was saying good-night to her new-found friend, feeling far happier than she had dared to hope to feel on her first night at school, and quite unconscious of the fact that she had made such a revelation of her inner self to the two girls who were well on the way towards becoming her greatest enemies. With all her new thoughts and experiences filling her head, that little incident in the dark had almost vanished from her mind.

"See you in the morning, then," said Jack gaily, as she disappeared in the direction of her own dormitory. And Geraldine hastened to make her way to Cubicle Thirteen.

CHAPTER V

A CARICATURE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Geraldine was awakened next morning by the loud ringing of the getting-up bell, and she tumbled out of bed in a hurry, having been informed by Jack the previous evening that a bad mark was the result of a late appearance at breakfast. However, on this first morning, she was dressed in plenty of time, and even had to wait a few minutes before the second bell, which was the signal for the girls to leave their dormitories, rang through the school.

When she reached the dining-hall she found that the place she had occupied for her first two meals in the school was no longer vacant, it having been claimed by Vera Davies, the small girl who had been displaced by Monica the day before to make room for Geraldine. Vera was an ardent admirer of Monica Deane, Geraldine discovered later.

"I always sit here," the little girl said in a vigorous whisper as Geraldine came up. "You must find a place somewhere else—there's loads of room."

Geraldine looked about her in rather a helpless way. Then she caught sight of Jack Pym making grimaces at her from the other side of the room, indicating by various gestures and contortions that Geraldine was to come to her table. Not sorry to escape from the small Vera's hostile glances, Geraldine quickly made her way thither and was deposited at an empty place next to Jack at the end of the long table. Jack's immediate neighbour on her other side was Nita Fleming, another member of the Lower Fifth, who leant forward to smile amiably at Geraldine and was introduced at once by Jack.

"Nita's been longing to see you ever since I told her we'd got a new girl in the Lower Fifth," she remarked. "She's hoping that perhaps she won't be bottom of the form any longer, now you're here—aren't you, old thing?" with an affectionate tug at Nita's long, fair pigtail, a proceeding which led to instant retaliation by Nita upon Jack's short locks, and brought down upon the two the wrath of the prefect in charge of the table.

"Jack Pym and Nita Fleming—what are you doing? You're not to sit together, you two, if you're going to behave like this. Change places with that new girl next to you, Jack. Here, you," addressing Geraldine, "sit next to Nita Fleming, will you, and try and keep her and Jack in order if you can."

A mistress came in at this moment to say grace, and then the girls sat down to the meal. Geraldine took her place between Jack and Nita with the rueful reflection that she seemed fated to be the separator of friends at Wakehurst Priory. However, Jack and Nita appeared to bear her no malice, and bandied words with each other across her in the liveliest way, taking her into the conversation with the utmost affability. There was no such friendship between Jack and Nita as there was between Phyllis and Dorothy, Jack being very cosmopolitan in her friendships, and possessing as many different "partners" as there were walks in the week.

After breakfast the girls retired to their dormitories to make their beds and tidy their cubicles. Then came some half-hour or so of free time before the bell went for prayers. After prayers, the girls were marched to the Great Hall, where Miss Oakley, the headmistress, read out the form lists for the term, and made a few remarks appropriate for the occasion. And then the various forms departed to their respective classrooms, where the real business of the day began in earnest.

Although she had never been to school before, Geraldine found that she was not at all behind the rest of the class. She had been very well-grounded by her governesses, and although, of course, she was handicapped a little by not knowing the class methods, her general knowledge compared very favourably with the attainments of the rest of the form. Indeed, she won a word of approval from the Sixth Form's form-mistress, Miss Latham, at the conclusion of the lesson on English history.

"You have evidently had a very good grounding, Geraldine," the mistress said. "You appear to possess intelligence, too. If all your work is as good as your history, you ought to get on well in your form. Margaret, since you are her neighbour, will you show Geraldine some of those historical analyses you did for me last term, so that she may see how I want your preparation done?"

"Yes, Miss Latham," replied Margaret, a rather nondescript individual who occupied the desk next to the one that had been allotted to Geraldine; and the mistress, gathering together her papers, prepared to leave the room.

"It is a little early yet for your next class," she observed, as she rose from her seat. "But I have to see Miss Oakley before going on to the Middle Fifth, so I cannot give you quite your full time this morning. Who is head of this form? You, Hilda? Very well, then, see that nobody talks until Miss Parrot comes to you. You can be looking up some of those dates I want you to learn while you are waiting." And the mistress departed from the Lower Fifth classroom, leaving an apparently studious and orderly form behind her.

For a few minutes strict silence prevailed in the classroom. But after a while the silence was broken by subdued titterings from the back row, and Hilda Burns, the head of the form, turned sharply round to discover that Phyllis Tressider and Dorothy Pemberton were leaning over Jack Pym's desk. Jack was drawing busily.

"I say, do be quiet. Didn't you hear what Miss Latham said?" remonstrated Hilda, rather half-heartedly it must be confessed. The three girls in question did not take much notice of her appeal, and after a moment or two she made it again.

Dorothy turned to her with a delighted grin.

"We're not talking—we're only laughing. Hilda, do come and look! Jack's doing caricatures of the mistresses. Aren't they ripping?"

Several of the girls gathered round Jack's desk, Hilda herself amongst them.

"Oh, I say, how topping! Do do one of Pretty Polly and give it to me!"

"All right, I will presently. Wait till she comes in and then I'll try and do her. I have to see the person I'm caricaturing or else I can't get them properly. I did that one of Miss Latham during the history lesson just now. She never twigged."

"I don't wonder," declared Phyllis admiringly. "I didn't either. I thought you were just making notes. But when did you learn to do it, Jack? Of course I know you always were good at drawing, but I hadn't the slightest idea that you could do such ripping caricatures."

"I didn't know it myself," replied Jack, still busily working with her pencil. "But when we were at the seaside this year we came across a man who did them for the papers. At least I came across him. He saved my shoes and stockings from being washed away by the tide while I was paddling one morning. And then we all chummed up with him and he showed us some of his sketches, and we all started trying to do the people we saw on the beach, and he said mine were quite decent for a kid. There you are, Dorothy, there's your beloved Miss Latham. Who is it you want, Hilda? Pretty Polly? All right, I'll do her if I get the chance."

"Do one for me, Jack, there's a darling," cried a girl sitting close to Geraldine, and then the whole form began clamouring for drawings of their most beloved, or most hated, mistresses. Hilda felt it incumbent upon her to raise her voice again in protest at last.

"I say, do be quiet! Miss Parrot will be along directly. There'll be an awful bust-up if she catches us talking like this."

But her remonstrance did not have much effect, except that it rather served to increase the confusion. For Phyllis Tressider, crumpling up a sheet of paper into a ball, flung it at her with an injunction to "Shut up, dear old thing!" and the rest of the form promptly followed her example. In a few seconds the head of the Lower Fifth was almost snowed under with missiles of various sorts.

"I say—stop it!" she gasped, dodging an exercise book, only to receive a piece of india-rubber full in the eye. Then, as a quick step sounded in the passage outside, she sat up straight in her desk in an attitude of sudden attention.

"Cave—Miss Parrot!" she whispered hoarsely. In a moment the Lower Fifth was sitting rigidly at attention again, every sign of the late battle cleared out of sight as though by a miracle. Only Geraldine, new to scenes like this, not realising what this sudden transformation might mean, was still sitting twisted round in her desk in the position from which she had been watching the uproar in interested amusement.

She soon realised what the sudden change meant though, when Miss Parrot, the form-mistress of the Lower Fifth, known throughout the school as "Pretty Polly" from her name and her supposed resemblance to the bird in question, came briskly into the room. The mistress's quick ears had caught the sound of the conflict from afar, and she at once pounced upon Geraldine's unconventional attitude as being the only sign of disorder her sharp eyes could perceive.

"Geraldine Wilmott, what are you doing, sitting like that in class? Turn round properly at once. I heard a great deal of noise as I came along—has anything been happening?"

There was no answer to her question; and after surveying the virtuously innocent faces before her the mistress was about to let the matter drop—reflecting that after all it was the first day of term, when a little leniency might be advisable—when her attention was attracted by the sight of a screwed-up paper ball lying on the floor just in front of Geraldine's desk. All the other missiles had been dexterously cleared away; but Geraldine, not realising any necessity for doing so, had failed to remove the one sign of the battle that had fallen near her desk. Indeed, she had hardly noticed that any had fallen there. Miss Parrot was of a very orderly nature. In her classroom nothing was ever permitted to be out of place, and the sight of the ball of paper was too much for her to pass over.

"What is that untidy piece of paper doing there?" she demanded sharply. "Is it yours, Geraldine? Bring it here to me."

Thus directed, Geraldine rose from her desk, and picking up the ball of paper took it to the mistress. Having delivered it, she was about to return to her seat, but the mistress stayed her with uplifted hand.

"Wait," she said authoritatively. "I want to see what this is. Some of you have been up to mischief in my absence." And she slowly unrolled the ball of paper, finally disclosing a rough copy of the caricature of Miss Latham, which Jack had discarded for some reason, and which Phyllis, all unaware of what it was, had used as a missile.

Although it was unfinished, the sketch bore a sufficient likeness to the mistress for Miss Parrot to recognise the original. Her face grew stern as she held the paper out to the girl who was standing beside her desk.

"Is this your work?" she asked in a cold tone.

Geraldine glanced at the paper. Then she flushed suddenly crimson with nervous shyness, and stammered out in confusion:

"N—n—no, Miss Parrot."

The mistress looked at her suspiciously.

"Are you sure?" she said.

Geraldine's confusion grew still greater, and the mistress felt that her suspicions were justified. The girl's stammered denial did nothing to allay them, and her voice when she spoke again was very stern indeed.

"Geraldine, you are not telling me the truth. You do know something about this paper. I command you to tell me at once what it is you know."

"I—I can't tell you anything about it," said poor Geraldine, not knowing what to do or say. But this answer only served to anger Miss Parrot yet more.

"You will please oblige me by thinking about it until you can tell me something," she remarked icily. "Go and stand over there," pointing to a place facing the rest of the class, "until you can remember whether or not this paper belongs to you. If that does not assist your memory I shall be obliged to take you to Miss Oakley after class."

Geraldine made a movement towards the appointed spot, but before she could reach it, Jack Pym rose abruptly in her desk.

"Please, Miss Parrot, I can't see that paper but I don't think it's got anything to do with Geraldine. If it's a drawing, I expect it belongs to me."

Miss Parrot's eyebrows went up.

"Indeed! Wait a moment, Geraldine. Suppose you come here, Jack, and see if you can identify it."

Jack made her way rather sulkily to Miss Parrot's desk.

"Yes, it's mine," she said. "I did it for a joke."

"A joke in very questionable taste, I think," said the mistress severely. "I am afraid I shall have to discourage your sense of humour, Jack, since it hardly accords with my own. You will take a conduct mark, please, and forfeit next Saturday's half-holiday. And I hope this may be a lesson to you to refrain for the future from using your undoubted talent for drawing in making vulgar representations of those who are put in authority over you. You may go back to your seat. And, Geraldine, you may return to yours. I am very sorry that I misjudged you; but really, you looked so guilty that I could not help thinking that you had something to do with the matter. Now, please, we will begin the lesson. We have wasted far too much time already."

The Lower Fifth dutifully turned to its books and plunged at the mistress's bidding into the intricacies of decimal fractions. But although Geraldine acquitted herself fairly well over the lesson that followed, she was not happy. She was miserable at the part she had played in getting Jack into trouble, and she had been, also, acutely conscious of hostile glances from her companions as she made her way back to her seat. Although it was not altogether her fault, she was uncomfortably aware that the caricature episode had not by any means enhanced her popularity with the rest of her form.

School life promised to be rather a difficult affair altogether, Geraldine reflected with a sigh.

CHAPTER VI

THE GERMAN LESSON

Geraldine was not long in discovering that her gloomy forebodings were amply justified. No sooner had morning school ended and the mistress departed from the classroom, than Phyllis Tressider stalked up to her desk and confronted her.

"You little sneak!" she said angrily. "Going and getting Jack into a row like that! Don't you know that the first half-holiday in the term is always given up to selecting the hockey team? Now Jack won't be able to play, and it's ten chances to one she'll get left down in the third eleven when she might have been chosen for second with any luck!"

Geraldine remembered then Jack's confidences respecting her prospects for the second eleven, and her heart sank still lower.

"I—I'm most awfully sorry," she faltered miserably. Then she looked round appealingly at Jack, who was putting her books away in stony silence, disregarding the condolences of her form-mates on her hard lot.

"Jack, I'm awfully sorry—truly most awfully sorry," she said pleadingly.

But Jack was feeling very sore about her lost hockey chances, and not by any means in a mood for being sympathised with. The tearful note in the new girl's voice only irritated her, and she said brusquely:

"Oh, all right—there's no need to be sorry. I suppose you couldn't help it." But she said it in a tone that did not make Geraldine feel much happier.

Phyllis gave an audible sniff of contempt.

"Couldn't help it, indeed!" she said ironically.

"Well, but truly, I don't see what else I could have done," said Geraldine unhappily.

"Then you must be an idiot," said Dorothy Pemberton, joining in the fray. "Nobody with any gumption would have let Miss Parrot catch them sitting like that. And you might have cleared away that piece of paper."

"I—I'm awfully sorry," faltered Geraldine again.

"What's the use of being sorry?" cried Dorothy testily. "Being sorry won't take away Jack's conduct mark or make Polly let her off detention on Saturday. You're just a silly, clumsy idiot—if you didn't do it on purpose—and I wish to goodness you'd never come into the Lower Fifth."

"Or to the Pink Dorm," put in Phyllis.

Geraldine cowered visibly under this attack.

"I keep telling you I'm sorry," she protested pathetically. "I never, never meant to give Jack away. I wouldn't have breathed a word about it if only she hadn't owned up like that."

"Just as though she could have done anything else!" cried Phyllis hotly. "We're not that sort in the Lower Fifth, Geraldine Wilmott, whatever you may be! Of course Jack couldn't go letting Pretty Polly think that it was you who'd done that sketch—whatever a sneak like you might have done!"

As Geraldine had not sneaked, this remark was unjust, to say the least of it. But the new girl was too unhappy to protest any further. She returned to the task of putting away her lesson books, and Dorothy and Phyllis left the room arm in arm. Geraldine looked round forlornly at Jack, after the two chums had departed, but Jack was absorbed in conversation with Nita Fleming, and the two presently departed from the classroom, leaving the new girl to her own devices. Geraldine shed a few miserable tears when she was finally left alone in the empty classroom, but she was not allowed much time to indulge her grief. A bell rang loudly through the school buildings, and she had to mop up the tears hastily and hurry out to discover what the next proceeding might be.

Dinner was the next item on the programme, she found, and she joined in the stream of girls who were hurrying into the dining-hall. Jack and Nita were already in their places, and Geraldine made her way rather shyly to the vacant place on Jack's left side.

"May I—am I to sit here again?" she asked timidly.

"If you want to," replied Jack briefly. And Geraldine, not knowing where else to go, took up her position behind the vacant chair. As she did so, Jack murmured a few words in Nita's ear, and the next instant the two girls had exchanged places, so that Geraldine now found herself standing next to Nita instead of next to Jack. The action cut the new girl to the heart. Jack was so offended with her that she couldn't even bear to sit next to her at meals apparently! If there had been anywhere else to move to, Geraldine would certainly have moved, but there seemed to be no vacant places anywhere near, and she was far too shy to bring herself into prominence by going and hunting for one. So she stayed where she was, and when grace had been said, sat down next to Nita.

The meal was a very uncomfortable one for her. Jack and Nita evidently considered that she had been very much to blame over the classroom incident, and beyond seeing that she was supplied with table necessaries, bread, and salt and water, they left her severely alone, making no attempt to draw her into the conversation as they had done at breakfast. And poor Geraldine ate her meal in silence, wishing that Jack's unfortunate caricature had been at the bottom of the sea before she had had anything to do with it.

It was really rather hard upon Geraldine to be blamed like this, for she had never intended to get Jack into trouble, and, in their heart of hearts, the whole of the Lower Fifth knew this. The whole episode would probably have blown over in a day or so, if it had not been for Dorothy and Phyllis. These two, although almost the youngest girls in the Lower Fifth, possessed a great deal of influence in their form, and unfortunately they seemed to have taken a violent dislike to the new girl upon the first day of term. Anything that they could do to hurt and annoy her, they did, and the rest of the form were either too weak or too indifferent to interfere. Not that all the girls were actively unkind to Geraldine—but the majority of them left her severely alone, and the new girl, instead of making friends with her companions, grew more and more lonely and isolated as the days passed by.

Her own manner helped very largely towards this isolation. She was so shy and reserved herself that it was difficult for anyone to make friends with her, and besides she was so absorbed with the longing to make peace with Jack—who still remained coldly aloof—that she really did not give anybody else a chance. She simply played into Dorothy's and Phyllis's hands by her misery and shyness.

"She's so stuck up and superior—she doesn't want to make friends," was Phyllis's frequent assertion. And the rest of the form, not being possessed of any very great discernment, were quite content to accept this version of the case and to leave Geraldine severely to herself.

But if she did not get on well in the social life of the school, Geraldine was quite at home where lessons were concerned. She really possessed abilities considerably above the average, and although she was still new to the ways of the school, she acquitted herself so creditably during her first week as to call forth the special commendation of the form-mistress. It was after the German lesson one morning that Miss Parrot gave expression to her pleasure at her new pupil's accomplishments. Geraldine had distinguished herself during the class, and when Miss Parrot, anxious to see how far her pupil's knowledge of the language really went, had addressed some question to her in German, Geraldine had answered it so fluently, and at such length, in the German tongue, that the class gasped in astonishment.

"Very good, indeed, Geraldine!" said the mistress, and the lesson ended, but not—so far as Geraldine was concerned—the episode. When the new girl entered the Lower Fifth sitting-room after school that morning for the few minutes' interval before the dinner-bell rang, she was immediately accosted by several members of the form, Dorothy and Phyllis amongst them, who demanded to know how and where she had acquired such an intimate knowledge of German.

"I used to live in Germany when I was quite little," answered Geraldine, becoming nervous and confused at once, as she always did when she was questioned abruptly. "Didn't you hear me tell Miss Parrot so, when she asked me how I knew so much?"

"She didn't ask you—you story!" cried Phyllis indignantly.

"Yes, she did—in German," said Geraldine, goaded for once into making a mild retaliation upon her chief foe. "Do you mean to say you didn't know enough German to understand that?"

"Well, perhaps we're not all quite as clever as you," retorted Phyllis cuttingly—"riled," as she afterwards expressed it, by the "swanky air" Geraldine put on. "But I think it's rather suspicious your knowing so much German, added to all your other sneaky ways."

"What do you mean?"

Geraldine swung round angrily upon the speaker, aroused for once from her usual meekness. Phyllis was quick to see that she had succeeded in annoying her opponent, but she was far too astute to give her any advantage by making any definite accusation.

"Mean? Oh, nothing!" she replied airily. "Only, of course, if you did happen to be German, or partly German, it would account for a good deal, you see." And she slipped her hand inside Dorothy's arm and drew her chum away.

Geraldine sprang forward to intercept her as she made towards the doorway.

"If you're implying that I'm German—" she began. But Phyllis interrupted her.

"I'm not implying anything!" she said. "If your guilty conscience makes you imagine things—well, that's not my fault, is it? Come on, Dorothy, there's the dinner bell." And she made haste to escape from the sitting-room before Geraldine could pin her down to anything more than a vague aspersion.

"But, of course, she is German," she argued that afternoon to a select gathering of the Lower Fifth. "Everything points to it. She said she lived in Germany when she was little. I expect her mother was a German, if the truth were only known. And then her sneakiness—that's German, if you like!"

"I don't see that she is so very sneaky," protested Jack, who was still, in spite of her disappointment over the hockey team and her general acquiescence in the form's treatment of Geraldine, somewhat prepossessed in favour of the new girl, to whom she had taken an immense liking on the first evening of the term. "It really wasn't her fault that I made that caricature. And though, of course, she might have hidden the paper out of the way when she heard Miss Parrot coming, yet she was only a new girl—and perhaps she really didn't know."

"Oh, of course—if you're going to take her part——" said Phyllis in such a deprecating tone that Jack made haste to capitulate.

"I wasn't taking her part exactly. I was only pointing out that it seemed a little hard on her to be blamed for that caricature affair."

"And what about you?" demanded Phyllis. "Wasn't it hard on you to have to miss the hockey trial and still be down in B.1 when you might have been in the second eleven? You can sympathise with the new girl if you like. For my part, I think she got off very lightly. Why, most schools would have sent her to Coventry for doing a thing like that—especially when they found out that she was a German!"

"But even if she is a German—and I must say she doesn't look a bit like one; Germans are usually so big and fair and fat, and Geraldine's dark and thin—but even if she is, the war's over now, so I don't see that there's any actual harm in that," remarked Hilda Burns.

"I don't agree with you," said Phyllis darkly. "There mayn't be any harm in it, of course—I don't say that there is. But all the same it isn't nice to think that one is actually at the same school with a German girl—even though the war is over!"

"But why? They're not our enemies any longer," said Jack.

Phyllis regarded her scornfully.

"No, of course not! They're our dearest friends now, I suppose! I suppose you've forgotten all about the Patriotic League we made when the war was on, when we were Upper Third, Jack Pym?"

Jack wriggled a little uneasily.

"Well, yes, I had forgotten a bit," she admitted. "But now that the war's over we don't need that any longer."

"Have you forgotten Rule Six?" Phyllis went on steadily. "'That this League vows and declares that it will for the future have no dealings with any person or persons of German nationality, either in peace or war.' Do you remember that?"

"Y—yes—I remember that," agreed Jack reluctantly.

"And how we all took a solemn oath that we would keep the rules, or else count ourselves traitors to our King and Country?" pursued Phyllis inexorably.

"Yes, I remember," said Jack.

"Well, there you are, then!" declared Phyllis triumphantly. "You can't go and make friends with Geraldine Wilmott, because you're a member of the Patriotic League. We won't send her to Coventry or do anything of that sort, because, of course, we haven't got any real proof that she's a German. But I vote we all steer as clear of her as possible for the future, and take jolly good care she doesn't get to know any of our private plans or secrets. She's just as likely as not to go telling them all to the mistresses if she gets to know them. You can't trust a person who's got German blood!"

And in this decision the Lower Fifth acquiesced, although it was really hardly possible for them to steer more clear of the new girl than they had done during the past week.

CHAPTER VII

GERALDINE MAKES A FRIEND

There was one individual in the school who took no part in the ostracism of Geraldine Wilmott. This was Bruno, the headmistress's big black dog. Bruno had taken a tremendous fancy to the new girl. Perhaps in his big-hearted way he had divined how shy and miserable she was, and wished to comfort her. And poor Geraldine, lonely and home-sick, found an unexpected solace in the dog's companionship. In the nature of things she could not see a great deal of him. Bruno was sternly forbidden the classrooms during school hours, and his presence in the dining-hall during meal-times was equally tabooed. The dog seemed to understand these restrictions, and kept to them faithfully. But at other times he made a special point of seeking out Geraldine and attaching himself to her. And the lonely girl was glad enough of his company during some of her solitary play hours.

Bruno was the cause of her making another queer friend in the person of Bennett, the school porter. One wet Saturday morning—there were no lessons at Wakehurst on Saturdays—the new girl was roaming rather forlornly through the corridors, accompanied by her canine friend, when Miss Oakley came upon her.

"Oh, here's that dog at last! I've been looking everywhere for him," said the headmistress. "He seems to have taken a great fancy to you, Geraldine. But he's got to go and be washed now. It's his bath morning, as he knows perfectly well. Take him along to Bennett, dear, will you? He's waiting for him round by the lobby door."

Geraldine laid her hand obediently upon the dog's collar and led him off in the direction of the lobby. Bennett, a grim-faced, middle-aged individual, who appeared to disapprove of schoolgirls on principle, was awaiting him, with a towel over his arm and a cake of soap in his hand.

"Miss Oakley told me to bring Bruno to you," said Geraldine shyly, as she handed her charge over. It was the first time she had come across Bennett, and she was duly impressed by the grimness of his appearance. Bennett's manner did not relax at her shy approach.

"Thank you, miss," he said dourly. He made a grab at Bruno, who, however, evidently did not relish the coming ordeal at all. In fact, his weekly baths were the bane of his otherwise peaceful existence. He deftly eluded the man's grasp, and, slipping by him, bolted back along the corridor towards the boot-lobby, the door of which happened to be ajar.

With a muttered imprecation Bennett stumbled after him, to find himself, when he was through the door, in the midst of a group of Lower School children changing into their gym shoes for an impromptu drill in the gymnasium. The boot-lobby consisted of three large rooms opening into each other and lined with boot-lockers. It afforded Bruno plenty of space for dodging his pursuer, and an exciting hunt ensued, in which Bruno's part was taken openly by the little girls, most of whom had excellent reasons for disliking the surly porter. Bennett looked upon the Wakehurst girls in general, more especially the smaller ones, as the plague of his life, and was not by any means averse to reporting their misdoings to authority. Many an order mark and conduct mark had been gained through his instrumentality, and his victims were only too glad to assist Bruno in eluding him. Some dozen or so of the little girls joined in the chase with great zest, getting in Bennett's way at crucial moments, and shrieking with laughter at his abortive efforts to lay hands upon Bruno, who barked and dodged and frolicked about, thoroughly enjoying the fun.