"Ask me a harder!" she said briefly.
Flossie, who was standing near, looked rather conscious, but volunteered no explanation.
"It"s a most peculiar thing," said Ruth. "Somebody must have been the ghost, I suppose."
"Unless it were a real one!" suggested Flossie. "It might----"
"What nonsense! n.o.body believes in ghosts, except, perhaps, Evelyn,"
interrupted Ruth scornfully. "Of course, it was a girl playing a trick.
The only question is, who?"
"Could it be May or Trissie Turner?" suggested Flossie.
"Impossible! Evelyn"s own cousins--and in the Sixth Form, too!"
"It"s very extraordinary!"
"It ought to be properly cleared up," said Lettice Talbot.
"Suppose we ask every girl in the house if she knows anything,"
proposed Dorothy Arkwright.
"No; Meta begged us to let the matter drop," replied Ruth. "She says Evelyn is extremely sensitive about it, and can"t bear the subject alluded to."
"Evelyn looked very ill this morning," observed Dorothy.
"Yes; Meta says she has had a severe shock, and the least reference to it might upset her again."
"So it will have to remain unexplained?"
"I suppose so," said Flossie. "It seems a complete mystery."
"Why, Flossie!" exclaimed Maisie Talbot suddenly, "didn"t I hear you get up last night, after Vivian had gone downstairs and we had marched off to bed again? I remember I called out to you, but I was too sleepy to wake up properly. I verily believe it must have been you who frightened Evelyn. Honestly now, was it?"
Flossie turned very red. She would have continued to shield herself at Honor"s expense if it had been any longer possible, but she was not prepared to tell a direct falsehood. There was no way out of it but to confess.
"What a storm in a teacup!" she replied, shrugging her shoulders. "It"s absurd if one can"t play the least joke without a monitress interfering and making a ridiculous fuss. It was only meant for fun; I should have laughed if anybody had done it to me."
"It"s no laughing matter," said Maisie gravely. "In the first place, though Evelyn may be silly, you had no right to frighten her; and in the second place, you deliberately let the blame rest on Honor"s shoulders."
"Vivian ought to be told of this," declared Dorothy.
"Yes, she must know at once," added Ruth.
"Oh, please don"t go sneaking to the monitress on my account!"
interposed Honor. "If Meta wants the affair to drop, it shall. Both she and Vivian took it for granted last night that I had acted the ghost in No. 4; they never asked me, or gave me a chance of denying it, so I shan"t trouble to undeceive them. If Vivian has such a poor opinion of me already, she shan"t think me a tell-tale in addition. As for Flossie, she"s not worth noticing."
"But telling a monitress isn"t like telling a teacher," objected Ruth.
"It savours of sneaking, and I prefer to leave it alone. What does it matter? I don"t care about anybody"s opinion!"
Honor was on her high horse. She had been much hurt by Vivian"s injustice, and all the Fitzgerald pride was roused within her.
Notwithstanding the girls" remonstrances, she would not allow herself to be cleared of the false charge.
"The whole thing is altogether beneath me," she remarked, as she stalked haughtily away.
"It"s no good trying to persuade her," said Lettice. "When she puts that set look on her face, arguments are absolutely useless."
"On the whole, I think I rather admire her for saying nothing,"
commented Maisie. "It"s more dignified than making a fuss. I can"t tolerate tale-bearing myself. It would have got Flossie into a terrific sc.r.a.pe with Vivian, and probably with Miss Maitland as well."
"Flossie doesn"t deserve to go scot-free," said Ruth, with a glance at the flaxen head that was discreetly disappearing through the door.
"She won"t!" a.s.serted Lettice. "Honor is the most contrary, queer, impossible, perverse girl I"ve ever met. She"ll let Flossie off easily now, but she"ll make her pay for it in some other way. I could see it in her eye. She was as cool as a cuc.u.mber outside, but I"m sure that was only the crust over the crater, and that there was the usual volcano inside. It"s bound to find a safety-valve, so Flossie had better look out for squalls!"
Lettice was right. Honor was certainly in a most unenviable frame of mind. She considered that Vivian had treated her unfairly in a.s.suming her to be guilty without making any proper investigation.
"It"s the first time a Fitzgerald has ever been called a coward!" she said to Janie.
The word rankled in her memory even more than the monitress"s high-handed manner.
"Then you must use every opportunity of showing that you"re the reverse," replied Janie. "You"ll have to live the thing down. I expect the truth will come round to Vivian"s ears in course of time, and I"m sure that she"ll think far better of you than if we had gone at once to her with a long accusation against Flossie. If Flossie herself had offered to tell, that would have been different; but she didn"t rise to such a pitch of heroism."
"One wouldn"t expect it from Flossie Taylor!" said Honor contemptuously, as she hurried off to her music lesson.
I am afraid Honor"s scales that day were anything but a satisfaction to Fraulein Bernhardt, the piano teacher. Her mind was so abstracted that she kept continually playing wrong fingering, or even an occasional wrong note in the harmonic minors. Her study was little better, and her piece a dead failure. The mistress, with characteristic German patience, set her to work to try to conquer a couple of difficult phrases, through which Honor stumbled again and again, each time with the same old mistakes, until the end of the half-hour.
"I find you not yet fit to take share in ze evening pairformance!"
sighed poor Fraulein, whose musical ear had been much distressed by this mangling of her favourite tarantella. "Zere must be more of improvement before ve render ze piece to Mees Maitland. You say you not vish to play in publique? Ach, so! Zat is vat zey all say; but it is good to begin young to get over ze fear--vat you call ze "shyness"--is it not so?"
Fraulein Bernhardt was an excellent teacher--patient, conscientious, and enthusiastic. She tried to inspire all her pupils with her own love for music, and with some indeed she succeeded, though with others it proved a more difficult task.
"I"m almost impossible!" avowed Lettice Talbot. "I believe I"m nearly as bad as the old fellow who declared he only knew two tunes--one was "G.o.d Save the King", and the other wasn"t."
"You certainly have a particularly leaden touch," agreed Dorothy Arkwright. "The way you hammer out Mendelssohn is enough to try my nerves, so I"m sure it must be an offence to Fraulein."
"I think it"s stupid to be obliged to learn the piano when you"ve absolutely no taste for it," yawned Lettice. "I"m going to ask Father to let me give it up next term."
"Don"t!" interposed Vivian Holmes, who happened to overhear Lettice"s remark. "I went through that same phase myself, when I was fourteen. I implored my mother to allow me to stop music, and she had nearly consented when I met a lady who advised me most strongly to go on. She said she couldn"t play herself, and regretted it immensely now she was grown-up, and would be thankful if she could manage even a hymn tune.
So I did go on, and now I"m very glad. I"m certain you"ll like it better, Lettice, when you"ve got over more of the drudgery."
"Perhaps it will never be anything but drudgery for me!"
"Oh, yes, it will! We shall have you taking part in the "Friday firsts"
yet."
On the first Friday in every month Miss Maitland held a "Mutual Improvement Evening", at which all who were sufficiently advanced were expected to contribute by playing, singing, or reciting. These were quite informal gatherings, only Chaddites being present. Miss Cavendish considered it good for teachers and pupils to meet thus socially, and a similar arrangement obtained at each house. To many of the girls, however, it was more of an ordeal to be obliged to perform before their schoolfellows than it would have been to play to strangers.
"I"m always nervous, in any case," said Pauline Reynolds; "but strangers don"t criticize one openly afterwards, whatever they may think in private. I feel it"s perfectly dreadful to have Fraulein and Miss Maitland and Miss Parkinson sitting on one side, and all of you in a row on the other!"