8 the term goes on

the affair of the invisible chalk was talked about for days afterwards. some of the upper school got to hear about it, and secretly wished they too could have seen mam’zelle’s “oy!” those in the know grinned at darrell when they met her, and whispered “oy!” into her ear!

it seemed as if everyone thought that the whole idea was darrell’s, and alicia and betty were annoyed about it. why should darrell get all the credit, when all she had done was to make that word appear on mam’zelle’s skirt, and risk getting the whole of the form into very serious trouble?

the two of them cold-shouldered darrell, and darrell retaliated by ignoring them as much as she could. she knew that alicia was still sore about not being head-girl, and was not being nice to sally. darrell was loyal, and she was not going to have that if she could help it!

alicia’s tongue grew wild and sharp again. darrell, knowing that alicia was trying to make her lose her temper, grew red with suppressed rage, but said nothing. she mustn’t lose her temper, she mustn’t! if she did she would begin to shout, she might even throw something at alicia—and then she would put herself in the wrong immediately. so she looked as if she was going to burst, but didn’t.

and it was very bad for her. sally tried to calm her down, but that made darrell worse.

“don’t you see that it’s because you’re my friend that i get so wild with alicia?” darrell would say. “she could say all she liked about me, i wouldn’t care—but it’s hard to sit and listen to things about you, sally. all because she’s jealous. she just says them because she knows i’ve got a temper and want to stick up for you.”

“well, for goodness’ sake don’t go and fall into her trap,” said the sensible sally. “that would be idiotic. she and betty would have the laugh over you easily.”

so poor darrell had to grit her teeth and say nothing when alicia and betty had one of their cross-talk conversations to bait her.

“dear sally!” alicia would say. “always so good—and yet so dull. the perfect head-girl. don’t you think so, betty?”

“oh, i do so agree with you,” betty would say, with a smile that infuriated darrell. “think what a good example she is to us all—dear, conscientious sally. really, i feel overcome with shame at my faults when i see sally sitting so prim and good in class. not a joke, not a smile. such a model for all of us!”

“what should we do without her?” alicia would go on, glancing slyly at darrell to see if she was at bursting-point yet. if darrell got up and went away, the two counted it as a victory for them—but poor darrell knew quite well that if she stayed much longer, her mouth would open and she would say things she would regret bitterly afterwards.

so darrell’s temper was not too good those days. and there was someone else whose temper was not good either. and that was ellen’s.

she had been quite even-tempered, though rather worried-looking for the first few weeks. and then suddenly she became really irritable. she snapped at the girls, and the little cleft in her forehead deepened until it seemed as if she was always frowning.

jean tried to find out if anything was the matter. sally had tried, but ellen seemed to think that sally was just being a good head-girl, trying to set her right and stop her being so irritable. so she snapped at sally, and the head-girl, surprised and hurt, said no more.

“funny girl!” she said to darrell. “i don’t understand her. she’s won a scholarship to malory towers which must mean she’s terribly clever—and she works as hard or harder than any of us do—and yet she’s never top, or even in the first three or four! i suppose she’s cross about that and gets bad-tempered. i don’t like her.”

“neither do i,” said darrell. “she’s not worth bothering about, sally. leave her alone.”

“oh, i think she’s worth bothering about,” said sally. “everybody is. i’ll ask jean to have a word with her. she sits next to her in class.”

jean was a very forthright girl, with little imagination, and usually went at things in the way a tank might, crushing all resistance, insisting on knowing what she wanted to know. but for some reason she did not tackle ellen quite in this way. she sat next to her in class and she slept next to her in the dormy—so she had had plenty of opportunity of hearing ellen’s unconscious sighs and little groans when she was hard at work—or when she was trying to go to sleep!

she knew that ellen often lay awake at night, and she guessed that ellen was worrying about something. it couldn’t be her work, surely—no scholarship girl needed to worry about work! as far as she had seen, all scholarship girls found work very easy indeed.

jean was a kindly girl, though sometimes much too blunt in her speech and ways. she tried to think how to get at ellen. there didn’t seem any way except by asking her straight out what was the matter, and couldn’t it be put right?

but that just wouldn’t do. ellen would snap at once, as she did to sally. so, for once, jean gave the matter some thought, and did not act as clumsily as she usually did.

ellen had no friend. she did not encourage anyone at all, not even the quiet emily. jean set herself out to be friendly in unobtrusive ways. she would never be able to force out of ellen what was the matter—but perhaps she could persuade the girl to trust her enough to want to tell her! this was really a very praiseworthy idea on jean’s part, for it was seldom that the blunt scots girl bothered herself to go to a lot of trouble in her dealings with people.

but she was rather proud that sally had asked her to try her hand at ellen, as she herself had failed. so, although ellen did not realize it at the time, jean set herself out to be kind and helpful in all kinds of little ways.

she helped ellen to hunt for ages for her gym shoes which were lost. she sympathized when the photograph of ellen’s parents got broken, and offered to get some glass cut for the frame, when next she went to the shops. she helped her to dry her hair when she washed it. just little things that nobody, not even ellen at first, noticed very much.

but gradually ellen grew to trust this shrewd scots girl. she told her when she had a very bad headache, although she refused to go to matron and tell her too. she stopped snapping at jean, though she still snapped at everyone else—except mary-lou. it would need a very hard-hearted, bad-tempered person to snap at little mary-lou!

there were some evenings when ellen was quite unbearable. “really, anyone would think she suffered from what my mother calls ‘nerves’,” said alicia, one evening. “jumps at any little thing, takes things the wrong way, snaps like a bad dog—look at her now, scowling at her work-basket as if it had bitten her!”

if anyone passed too close to ellen and knocked her elbow, she would jump and snap “look out! can’t you see where you’re going?”

if anyone interrupted her reading, she would slam her book down on the table and glare at the offender. “can’t you see i’m reading? there isn’t a quiet place in the whole of this beastly house!”

“you’re not reading,” darrell would say. “you haven’t turned a page since you took up your book!”

“oh—so you’ve been watching me, have you?” ellen would say, and her eyes would suddenly fill with tears. then she would go out of the room and slam the door.

“isn’t she awful! scratches like a cat.”

“i wish she’d won a scholarship to somewhere else!”

“always pretending to read and study and yet she slides down lower every week! hypocrite, i call her!”

“och, she’s not a happy girl! maybe she hasn’t settled down here yet!” that was jean, of course, and sally would flash her a glance of approval. jean certainly had an uphill task with ellen, but she was persevering with it!

the weather was bad just then, and there was no lacrosse, and not even a walk, for the country round about was deep in mud. the girls grew restless, penned up indoors, and the teachers decided that, bad weather or not, there had better be a school walk the next day.

everyone groaned. the rain poured down. the sky was black and lowering. the lacrosse fields were half under water. whatever would the country lanes be like? the sea was an angry grey-green, and the wind was so high on the cliff that no girl was allowed up there in case she was blown over.

gwendoline and daphne grumbled the loudest of all. gwendoline developed a persistent sniff in class, hoping that miss parker would think she had a cold and let her off the walk. but miss parker had been warned by potty of gwendoline’s sniffs, and was not sympathetic.

“if you sniff any more, you can go and do it outside the door,” she said. “if there’s one thing i cannot bear, it’s somebody sniffing. it’s disgusting, it’s unnecessary, and in your case, it is probably put on, gwendoline.”

gwendoline glared. why were there no school teachers like her old governess at home, miss winter? she always rushed for a thermometer at once, if gwendoline so much as cleared her throat, and would never, never dream of making her go out for a walk in such terrible weather!

she did not dare to sniff again, and was annoyed at darrell’s grins. daphne looked at her sympathetically. not that she cared whether gwendoline had a cold or not, but it was the thing to do—gwendoline simply lapped up sympathy.

daphne herself tried other tactics to get out of the walk. she had no intention at all of wading through miles of mud. she went to mam’zelle dupont with her exercise book that evening. she put on her sweetest smile and knocked at the door of the little room which miss potts shared with mam’zelle. she hoped fervently that potts wasn’t there. potty always seemed to be irritated by daphne’s presence.

fortunately potty wasn’t there. “ah, it is you, ma petite daphne!” cried mam’zelle, welcoming her favourite with a smile almost as charming as daphne’s. “you have something to say to me? you do not understand something, is it not?”

“oh, mam’zelle, i’m in such a muddle over these tenses,” said daphne. “i really do feel that i ought to have a little coaching in them, if you could possibly spare the time. i do so badly want to get my french better.”

“but it has been much better lately, my dear child!” cried mam’zelle, beaming, not knowing that little mary-lou had been doing most of daphne’s french for her. “i am pleased with you.”

daphne turned on her smile again and mam’zelle’s heart melted still further. ah, this pretty daphne! she put her arm around her. “yes, yes, of course i will give you a little extra coaching,” she said. “we shall soon put these tenses right. you can stay now, ma petite?”

“no, not now, mam’zelle,” said daphne. “but i could give up that lovely country walk tomorrow, if you would be good enough to take me then. it’s the only spare time i have.”

“the good child—to give up the walk that you english girls so dearly love!” cried mam’zelle, who thought that all walks were an extremely silly invention. “yes, i can take you then. i will tell miss parker. you are a good girl, daphne. i am pleased with you!”

“thank you, mam’zelle,” said daphne, delighted, and gave mam’zelle a ravishing smile as she went triumphantly out of the room.