All at once, a diversion was made by two children from the other room, who came tumbling through the curtain and nearly upset a tall fair girl who was the centre of the group round the fire.
"Look where you are going, Angela Wilkins!" said the fair girl, sternly.
"What are you children doing in here, I should like to know?"
"Please, Margaret, don"t be cross, and _do_ let me explain," begged Angela Wilkins, suppressing an inclination to giggle, and pouring out her words hastily. "Jean has had millions of letters from Jill Urquhart, and she says----"
"It wasn"t millions, Angela, it was only one," corrected her fellow-culprit from behind.
"And what business has Jean Murray to hear from Jill Urquhart?" demanded the fair girl.
"I"m sure I don"t want to hear from her," grumbled the other girl, whom Angela pushed forward to answer for herself. "She only writes to me when she wants something. I don"t call that _writing_ to a person."
"She"s got a sister coming here this term, and she says everybody has got to look after her, or something like that," chimed in the irrepressible Angela.
"It isn"t a sister, it"s a cousin. And she hasn"t asked everybody; I wish she had. She"s asked _me_ to look after her, and that"s a very different thing," complained Jean Murray, looking distinctly aggrieved.
"Yes," added Angela, breathlessly; "why should Jean be bothered with all the new girls who happen to be people"s cousins?"
"She isn"t," said Margaret, curtly. "It"s only one new girl; and if she is a cousin of Jill"s, Jean ought to be very proud of being asked to look after her. Do stop exaggerating, Angela; and go away, both of you!" Then just as the children slunk off subdued, she recalled them and made a gesture towards the door. "There"s a new girl over there now, I believe,"
she continued indifferently. "You"d better see whether she"s the right one; and if she is, bring her to me."
She turned again to the fireplace, and the two girls made their way towards the other end of the room, where Barbara still stood unnoticed.
She saw them coming, and heaved a sigh of relief. Things were a long while happening in this school; but it was something if they happened in the end. She glanced at their two faces as they came nearer, and felt disappointed when the one with the cross expression addressed her first.
"I say, what"s your name?" began Jean, ungraciously.
"Barbara," answered the child, faintly. Her dream seemed more improbable than ever, in the presence of this small stranger with the aggressive manner.
"Barbara what?" asked Jean, impatiently.
Babs stared, and added her surname unwillingly. At home, when people spoke like that, they had to do without an answer.
"That"s the one," grumbled Jean to her companion. Then she addressed Barbara again. "How old are you?" she asked, in the same abrupt way.
"Eleven," answered Babs, obediently. "How old are you?"
It was Jean"s turn to stare. "What business is it of yours?" she exclaimed. After a moment"s consideration, however, she found a satisfactory reason for replying. "I"m a year older than you, anyhow,"
she added triumphantly, "so you"ll be the youngest in the school now, and you can take off the head girl"s boots."
Before Barbara had time to realise this penalty, or privilege, belonging to her youth, Angela Wilkins, who had been silent for quite a surprising length of time, suddenly attacked her afresh. "Are you really Jill"s cousin?" she asked, with a giggle.
Babs nodded; but Angela did not seem convinced. "You"re not a bit like her, are you? Jill Urquhart is so pretty and graceful and all that," she observed with engaging frankness, and then giggled again.
Barbara said nothing; it was certainly unnecessary to agree with such a very obvious statement. Jean Murray, who had also been examining her closely in her turn, evidently seemed to think a further snubbing was required of her.
"You"re frightfully tall for your age," she remarked disapprovingly, as though Barbara were somehow to be held responsible for her height. "If I had straight spiky legs like yours, I should have my dresses made longer."
"No, you wouldn"t, if you had five brothers always wanting you to do things," retorted Barbara, promptly. It was saddening to find that, even here, people were prepared to make remarks about the slimness of her legs.
Angela was so surprised at her sudden show of resistance that she forgot to giggle.
"I say, you"d better not speak like that to Jean Murray," she said in a warning tone, glancing as she spoke at Jean, as though she expected her to take immediate measures for the suppression of the new girl. "She"s been the youngest for so long that naturally she"s inclined to be jealous, now you"ve come to take her place. Of course she has to pretend she"s glad, but you can"t expect her to like the idea of somebody else taking off the head girl"s----"
"Oh, if that"s all," said Barbara, indifferently, "I don"t want to take off anybody"s boots, thank you."
"You"ll have to, whether you like it or not," interposed Jean, who had been listening quite complacently to Angela"s description of her feelings.
"Come along now, and see Margaret Hulme; and don"t be such a month about it, or else we shall catch it for stopping in here so long."
"Who is Margaret Hulme, and why have I got to go and see her?" asked Babs, hanging back a little. It was so perplexing to have to do things without being given any reason for it.
Both the girls opened their eyes wide. "Why, she is the head girl!" they explained, as if that were reason enough for anything; and without waiting for any more objections, they pulled her across the room to where the fair girl still made the centre of the group round the fire. She kept them waiting for some seconds before she condescended to notice that they were there.
"Didn"t I tell you to go back to your own playroom?" she demanded presently. Then her eyes fell on Barbara, and she scanned her critically up and down.
"This is Jill Urquhart"s cousin," explained Jean, hurriedly, and she gave Barbara an unexpected push that sent her stumbling, with her usual lack of good fortune, right against the head girl.
"Take care, child!" said Margaret, frowning. And while Babs stammered out some apology, she turned to the other girls behind her and said something that made them all laugh.
"She"s only eleven, though she"s so awfully tall; and her name is Barbara Berkeley," volunteered Angela, peering over the shoulder of the new girl.
"Who spoke to you?" inquired the head girl, sarcastically, looking back again. She once more scanned Barbara all over, and smiled in an annoying manner to herself. "However did Jill manage to have a cousin like you?"
she asked; and the other girls laughed more than before.
"I don"t know," said Barbara, with a touch of scorn in her voice. The mysterious way in which the head girl and her admirers were laughing at her was very different from the frank teasing she was accustomed to; and it gave her a sudden wish to a.s.sert herself. "I never pretended to be like Jill, or like any of you! I--I don"t think I want to be like you, either. In my home, we don"t laugh behind people"s backs."
She caused quite a small sensation in the group round the fire. One or two began to t.i.tter afresh, and then stopped, waiting for the head girl to take the lead. The head girl was equal to the occasion.
"It is very certain, then, that you have stayed in your own home quite long enough," she remarked coldly, and resumed her conversation with her friends.
The two children dragged Barbara through the curtain into the next room.
"Well, you _have_ got some cheek!" gasped Jean Murray, staring at her.
"Lucky for you that you"re a new girl! If it had been _me_, Margaret Hulme wouldn"t have spoken to me for a whole day."
The enormity of such a punishment did not for the moment impress Barbara much. What she did notice was that her pa.s.sage of words with the head girl had broken the ice of her introduction to the junior playroom, especially with the aid of Angela"s highly coloured account of it.
"You never saw such a thing!" she was exclaiming rapidly to the circle that formed round her. "There was Margaret, looking like a dozen thunder-clouds rolled into one, and there was the new girl, grinning from ear to ear, not caring a bit what anybody thought of her and just standing up to the head girl as if she was in the First herself."
The new girl barely recognised this description of herself; but as it made her an object of curiosity, if not of sympathy, in the junior playroom, she did not feel inclined to correct the picture that the red-haired, freckled little chatterbox was painting of her. Anything was better than being left out in the cold again. It struck her too that the girls in the junior room were far less inclined to laugh at her than the elder ones had seemed; and it raised her fallen spirits a little to find that the children who were now strolling up to her, with inquisitive glances at her hair, her clothes, and everything else about her, seemed disposed, in spite of their calm curiosity, to show her a kind of rough friendliness. They were more like boys, these smaller people in the junior playroom; and Barbara, though still failing to realise her child"s ideal of girls, felt a faint kinship with their straightforward method of addressing her.
"No nickname?" they asked, when she had again admitted her name and her age.
"Oh, yes," answered Barbara, unsuspiciously, "the boys always call me the Babe, or----"
The peals of laughter that interrupted her puzzled her a good deal. It was very queer that, wherever she went, people always laughed at her.
It was some moments before their glee over the nickname, that so exactly suited the childish impression she produced, began to subside.
"Have you got a nurse?" asked Angela, who had laughed louder than any one.