"He"s a clever beast, anyway," protested Wilfred, feeling bound to support the profession. "He"s done you an awful lot of good already, Kit, and he lets you go out as much as you like. It"s the modern treatment, or something."
"Why is he a beast, Kit?" asked Barbara, sympathetically. The world had convinced her so strongly, since yesterday afternoon, of its possibilities in the way of beasts, that she felt sure Kit was right about it.
"He grunts at you as though you weren"t fit to speak to; and he isn"t a bit sorry for you, as old Browne used to be, but he seems to think you are making it all up," said Christopher, in an injured tone.
"He doesn"t like boys; that"s at the bottom of it," added Peter. "He looked black as thunder because we were rotting in the library with Kit, and he cleared us all out before he"d even look at his tongue."
"And he never sent for a silver spoon, nor nothing," cried Robin, in much excitement. "How did he "xamine your throat, Kit, if he hadn"t got a silver spoon?"
"Shoved a thing like a skewer down, that he took out of his pocket," said Kit, contemptuously. "His pocket was full of rotten skewers and things."
"That"s the modern treatment," said Wilfred again.
"Modern treatment be hanged!" remarked Peter, with a laugh. "Jill hates him too; he treated her as if she was about ten years old."
"Jill"s furious because Auntie Anna has asked him to dinner next week; and we shall have gone back by then, so she"ll have him to herself all the evening," chuckled Wilfred.
"How is Jill?" asked Barbara, as soon as she could get in a word.
There was a little pause. "She"s all right," said Christopher, indifferently, after a moment or two.
"Kit likes her _awfully_," proclaimed Robin, with his head on one side.
"So does Peter," added Christopher, hastily. "He was awfully gone on her this morning, because she mended his cap when no one was looking."
"I don"t think she means to be young-ladyish, really," remarked Wilfred, patronisingly. "Last night, when you kids had gone to bed, she sang to Egbert and me. She can sing!"
"Now, why didn"t she sing to us before?" demanded Peter. "That"s where she"s so awfully rum."
"She hasn"t been properly trained, that"s all," said Christopher.
"Why, she"s studied under the best master in Paris!" interrupted Wilfred.
"You goat! I meant _her_, not her singing," snapped Christopher.
"Oh, well, we all know why _you_ like her," retorted Wilfred. "It"s because she came and sucked up to you by offering to read aloud to you, before Dr. Hurst said you might go----"
"I never said I did like her," disputed Kit.
The door opened before they settled the matter; and the foraging party returned, laden with spoil.
"I brought everything I could find that looked interesting," announced the head-mistress. "You must be ravenous after riding all that way; and I"m sure I am, though I"ve done nothing but sit by the fire all the evening and make time-tables. You might clear them out of the way for me, will you, Robin? And you, Wilfred, can move the other things on to the floor, or anywhere else you like. Will you hold this tray, Peter, while I lay the cloth? No, I don"t want you, Christopher, thank you. Can"t you see that Babs is bubbling over with news for you? Go and keep her company by the fire till supper is ready."
It was very queer that she should know all their names like that, and Egbert declared afterwards that he did not think he had told her anything about them, though somehow she had kept him talking all the time they were foraging in the larder. She had found out as much as she wanted to know, however, and she found out a good deal more before supper was over. There was something about her that made them all talk to her as if she were an old friend of theirs instead of the stern jailer whom they had come to defy. Not that she allowed them for all that to have the conversation to themselves, for she chatted away herself as busily as possible; and she made jokes about her impromptu supper until even Egbert felt at his ease.
"Can any one cut up his chicken without a knife?" she asked. "There"s a knife short, but it doesn"t do to be too particular on an occasion of this sort, does it? Ah, of course, you have one in your pocket, Peter; I am used to girls, you see, and a girl never has anything in her pocket except a handkerchief, and that is generally half out of it.
Now, who is going to carve the beef? Not I, indeed! I have carved the beef in this household for twelve years, and you needn"t suppose I"m going to miss such an opportunity as this of being idle. Do you know, there have never been five gentlemen together at my table since I became a schoolmistress? Think of that, Barbara, and do not wonder that I know more about girls than tomboys. I"m sorry there isn"t a salad, but there"s real chutnee from Bombay and not the other place--wherever that may be. An old pupil sends me my chutnee; and I always keep it for grand occasions, like this and the break-up party. Will you come to our next break-up party? That depends, I suppose, on whether Babs stops here or not. Ah, well, she will have made up her mind by that time, won"t she? I"m afraid I must forbid you cold pie, Kit, it"s poison to asthma; besides, here are real, stiff, stewed pears. Don"t you like stewed pears that are stewed _stiff_?"
Barbara sat on the hearthrug with Kit, and she tried hard to determine whether she should run away or not. With Finny revealing herself in this wonderful new light, and Kit sitting beside her in the comfortable firelight and sharing her plateful of stewed pears, the problem was more than she could solve for herself. If this was school, she should like to stay here always; and if it wasn"t, well, she felt too lazy in the present delicious state of things to worry herself any more about it.
Supper came to an end at last, and Miss Finlayson glanced at the clock.
Egbert took the hint, and pulled Christopher away from the bookshelves, which he had begun greedily to examine.
"I think we must be going," said the eldest of the five, politely; and then he stopped short. The absurdity of the situation upset his dignity again, and he stood there fingering his cap nervously.
"What about Babs?" asked Miss Finlayson; and her eyes twinkled and shone till one might almost have supposed them to be filled with tears.
The boys looked towards the fireplace; but Miss Finlayson was standing in front of it, and the little figure in the pink dressing-gown was hidden from view. The head-mistress, at all events, had come to the conclusion that the problem was too difficult for Barbara to solve.
"Yes, what about the Babe?" said Egbert, glancing round at the others.
"We did come to rescue her," maintained Peter, "and I do think----"
"Isn"t Babs coming?" interrupted Robin, in tones of amazement. It seemed a great waste of time to come all this way, and not to rescue anybody in the end. Of course, there was the supper to be taken into consideration; but it would be contrary to all precedent in the Berkeley family, if the boys were to let themselves be influenced by _supper_.
"She"d be an idiot if she did come," muttered Wilfred, under his breath.
He, undoubtedly, had been influenced by the supper.
Christopher pushed a chair on one side with a quick, impatient movement.
"She won"t come," he said once more. Then he caught a look from his hostess, and reddened slightly. "Perhaps she had better stay," he added, with an effort.
"Thank you, Kit," said Miss Finlayson, with a nod and a smile at him. Then she turned to the others again. The look of amus.e.m.e.nt never left her face once. "Will some one ask the Babe what she feels about the matter?" she suggested.
She moved on one side to give them the opportunity. But the question was never put. Babs had stopped trying to make up her mind; and the little girl in the pink dressing-gown was lying curled up on the hearthrug, fast asleep.
CHAPTER VIII
THE DISENCHANTMENT OF A BEAST
Barbara was stretched, face downwards, on the floor of the junior playroom. It was Wednesday evening, about ten days after the rescue party had invaded Wootton Beeches; and she was trying, with the aid of much ink and a footstool for a writing-desk, to answer Kit"s last two letters, and to send him all the news she had acc.u.mulated since that important occasion. Over her head buzzed the desultory conversation of her fifty-five companions, who still gloried in ignoring her; but she heeded them no more than they had come to heed the unconscious little person who lay stretched at their feet. It was really only a habit with them, by this time, to ignore the new girl; for most of them had quite forgotten the fancied grievance they had originally cherished against her for her defiance of their favourite, Jean Murray. Indeed, if it had not been for the fear of Jean"s scorn and Jean"s tongue, they would undoubtedly have made friends with her days ago. With the best intentions in the world, it was not easy to go on avoiding some one who never seemed to notice that she was being avoided; and most of them wished secretly that Jean Murray would "come round." But whatever Jean felt about it, she showed no intention outwardly of coming round. Whenever she found herself alone with a picked audience, she seized the opportunity to inflame them and herself afresh, by recalling the evil behaviour of Barbara over the head girl"s boots, pointing out how, by a tissue of deceit, the offender had wormed herself into Margaret"s favour, to the exclusion of other worthier members of the junior playroom--notably of Jean Murray herself. "You"ve only got to see how little she cares, and _that_ will show you what a wicked mind she"s got," was the kind of sentence that usually wound up one of these inflammatory addresses; and after that, the junior playroom would redouble its coolness towards Barbara Berkeley. But Barbara Berkeley persisted in going her own way cheerfully, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to live with fifty-five companions who never spoke to her; and the situation in the junior playroom threatened to become too absurd to be maintained.
Babs dropped her pen, and picked up one of Kit"s letters for reference.
She had so much to say to him and so little time to say it in, that she was afraid of leaving some of his questions unanswered. Kit"s neat and precisely written epistle was a great contrast to her own blotted and smudged production; and Barbara sighed as she realised how much he managed to say in a few words, while she expended far more time and ink and energy, without expressing half as much as she wanted to tell him.
"Dear Babe," Kit had written--"This is to tell you that we got home safely from the great Midnight Rescue Party, though of course I caught a chill and had to have that beast Hurst again. I"ll tell you presently how Jill ragged him, though; and that was well worth being ill for. But first of all I have to inform you what we all think is for your good in the present crisis of your fortunes. (That means, now you are at school.) Of course we are much afflicted to hear that you are not happy, and of course we are not surprised to hear you do not like girls. (n.o.body could, except Egbert, and he doesn"t really, only he pretends he does because of that chap"s sister last holidays. That"s what has done for Egbert, and it"s a great pity, but what we must expect at his age, so it"s no use vociferating about it.) But to resume--we are all agreed that the best thing you can do is to stop where you are until the period of probation is over (that means till you"ve done being at school). You see, it is only for three months at a time, and _we_ are here in the holidays. It would be indescribable and unprecedented (which means beastly, and awful, and things like that) if you had to live with girls in the vacation too. But you are spared this, and it is your duty to be thankful for every crumb of comfort that is to be substracted from the situation. (Besides, you are a girl yourself; you can"t get over that though you mayn"t like the idea, and you"ve got to go on being a girl till you"re a woman. It"s something to feel that it can"t last for ever, and that in the end you will be able to be a woman, like Nurse and Auntie Anna; and there"s nothing the matter with them, is there?) If your temporary indisposition only cures your spelling it will be money well spent, for your spelling, my dear Babe, as father once said, is both original and varied. So cheer up, and remember that Jill is but a girl too, and that she is quite pa.s.sable for one of that slack and wayward s.e.x. (Even when she is most like a girl I find I can bear with her. For instance, when I lammented the other day that the rescue party had been a frost, she said, "Why, you couldn"t have bicycled unless it had been, could you? Listen to the rain, now!") The post is going, so I must infer the description of how Jill ragged the doctor till next time.
Meanwhile, cultivate the endurance for which English women have ever been renowned; that is the result of the codgitations of the council we held before the others went back to school.--Your affectionate brother, Christopher Berkeley.
"P.S.--I"m not quite sure about the m"s in lammenting; it looks rum somehow, but there isn"t a dictionary, so I must leave it. C."
His other letter was much longer, and had evidently been written straight off without the elaborate care that he had given to the composition of the first one. As Babs read it, she pictured him sitting as he always did, perched on a high chair at the writing-table, with his legs curled under him and his nose very close to the paper; and suddenly, the deadly feeling of home-sickness she had been battling with for days came over her again.
"This is the true account," she read, through a suspicious mist in her eyes, "of how Jill ragged the doctor, when he came to dine with us, the day after the boys went back. Of course, Auntie Anna didn"t know he was a beast, so she couldn"t be blamed for asking him; but Jill and I much regretted the circ.u.mstance. Robin grumbled and said he wished he was old enough to sit up to dinner and have courses and courses and courses, but that"s his beastly greediness, as I pointed out to him, and he doesn"t know what it is to get a white tie under a filthy clean collar and then an Eton coat under that and to wash your teeth extra instead of only in the morning. But Jill came in and tied it, which was something, and she even did it better than Nurse, who used to make you feel sick by grinding her knuckles into your throat all the time. Having prepared ourselves for the awful holocaust we then proceeded downstairs.
(Perhaps you won"t be able to understand all the words in this letter, but it"s too good a joke to be spoilt by making it easy for you, so you must do your best.) Jill had an awfully decent pink sort of thing on, and it had rows of fringe that you could tie into knots without her rotting you for doing it. Well, to come to the real matter of my discourse, we found the doctor in the drawing-room, also the old Rector, who is called Barnaby and is too old to count much, and besides Auntie Anna likes him so we mean to extend to him the charm of our companionship. And the Rector took in Auntie Anna, and the Beast took in Jill, and I followed behind feeling rotten. You don"t know how rotten it is, when you are an odd one like that and n.o.body wants you in their conversation. You see there were two conversations all the time, Auntie"s conversation with the old boy about t.i.thes and rent charges and things that are not suited to my intellect, and Jill"s conversation with the doctor which wasn"t a conversation at all because he wouldn"t talk. He sat and glowered at his plate like a cat would, and if he lifted his eyes by accident and caught one of us staring at him, he looked down again as if he"d been shot. His conduct was most unaccountable and reprehensible as I pointed out to Jill afterwards, and she said, "Yes," and grinned. I was greatly incensed with him for giving her so much bother, because she worked hard at him and never got cross once, and she asked him about the village and about the poor people and about abroad, and all those grown-up things, and the Beast said "Yes" and "No" and "Certainly,"
till I wanted to kick him. I tried to help Jill once or twice by tossing off one of my polite rejoinders, but he only behaved as if I wasn"t there and looked more like a poker than ever. That was what put Jill"s monkey up. She couldn"t stand his indifference and acidity to me, so she began to rag him and that shows that she is in reality a brick though forced to maskerade as a girl. (That"s another word you don"t know perhaps but it"s in the dictionary.) She smiled at him as perky as you please and she said in that soft-cotton-wolly voice of hers, "Is there anything that _does_ interest you, Dr. Hurst?" And when the Beast was so bowled over that he nearly dropped his knife and fork, she just went on and explained how funny it was to sit all the evening with some one who didn"t want to talk, and didn"t he think so too? I wanted to break out into paeons of triumph in order to express my satisfaction at the turn matters were taking, but I restrained my impetuosity in time and waited for the Beast to speak. He stuttered rather and began chopping up the pear on his plate as if it was for Christmas puddings, and then he said he didn"t suppose any young people were interested in what he was interested in (which shows that all the while he lumped Jill and me together as _kids_ and not fit to a.s.sociate with him). Then Jill asked him what he _was_ interested in, and he said "Bac--" (this is the longest word of all and I"m afraid you won"t find it in the dictionary, at any rate not in the way I"m going to spell it) "Bacterioi--" oh hang!