Etheldreda the Ready Part 7

"Because you were so pretty," Susan said. "Your sister is pretty too, very pretty, but she does not look so gay. And your brothers--they are such big, handsome boys. You are all handsome, and big, and strong, and have such romantic names. You seemed far more like a family in a book than real, live people. The `Story-Book Saxons'--that was always our name for you when we spoke of you between ourselves. Do you think it is nice?"

"Very nice, indeed. `Story-Book Saxons!' I must tell Rowena that."

Dreda preened her head complacently. This simple admiration was most refres.h.i.+ng after the humiliations of the morning. "Perhaps we _are_ rather unusual," she allowed. "Rowena is beautiful when she is in a good temper, and the boys are always bringing home prizes, and being captains in their sports. Maud is stupid, but she has lovely hair, and I, I'm not advanced in lessons--_your_ sort of lessons--but Miss Bruce says I have a very original mind. When I'm grown up I don't intend to stodge along in the dull, humdrum fas.h.i.+on most women do. I mean to Do something. To Be something. To live for an Aim!"

Susan regarded her with serious eyes.

"What sort of aim?"

"Oh-h"--Dreda waved her arms with a sweeping movement--"I've not decided. There's plenty of time. But I mean to have a Career, and make my name known in the world."

"Don't you think," Susan asked tentatively, "that it is best to have a definite aim and to prepare for it beforehand?"

"You talk as if you had an ambition yourself!"

"I have!" said Susan quietly.

"You mean to be celebrated like me?"

"I am going to be an author. I hope I shall be celebrated. I shall try my best, but only time can show how I shall succeed."

"An author!" Dreda repeated disapprovingly. "_You_! How very odd! I have thought of being an author myself, and we are so different. I believe I could make up a very good story if I'd time. The only difficult part would be writing it out. Fancy perhaps fifty chapters!

You'd get sick of them before you were half through, and have writers'

cramp, and all sorts of horriblenesses. We might collaborate, Susan!"

Susan smiled, but showed no sign of weakening.

"I don't think that would do. We should never agree about what we wanted to say, but it would be delightful to read our stories aloud to each other, and discuss them together. The first heroine I make shall be exactly like you!"

"That's sweet of you. Begin at once--do! and read each chapter as it's done."

Susan's smile was somewhat wistful. She looked in Dreda's face with anxious eyes, as though waiting for a promise which must surely come, but Dreda remained blankly unresponsive. It never occurred to her for a moment that it could be possible to make a heroine out of Susan Webster!

CHAPTER TEN.

West End School was conducted on lines differing somewhat both from those of the modern public school and the old polite finis.h.i.+ng seminary for young ladies. It accommodated in all about fifty pupils, and although games and examinations formed important parts of the curriculum, they were not regarded as being of such absorbing importance as in many modern schools. Miss Bretherton was a woman of lofty aims, who was continually looking beyond her pupils' schooldays to the time when they should be the women of Britain; the wives and mothers, and sisters and friends of the men who were to carry on the work of our great Empire, and who, humanly speaking, would do that work well or ill according to the manner in which their womankind influenced their lives.

Miss Bretherton realised that the chief result of school study was not the mere storing of information, but the training of the brain to grapple with the great problems of life. Lessons were only means to an end. Half of that which was learnt with such pains would be forgotten before a dozen years had pa.s.sed by; but the deeper lessons of industry, patience, self-restraint, would remain as habits of daily life.

Formation of character--that was the one absorbing object which the Head held in view, and which underlay every scheme and arrangement. Miss Bretherton's manner was so staid, her nature so reserved, that her pupils were apt to credit her with being dull and easily deceived, little guessing that those quiet eyes were as searchlights turned upon their little foibles and vanities. During Dreda's first week at school her mood was pretty equally divided between enjoyment and misery. She loved the big, full, bustling house, the constant companions.h.i.+p of her kind, the chats over the study fire, the games in the playground; in a lesser degree she enjoyed the lessons also--those, at least, in which she was fairly proficient--and found Miss Drake a most interesting and inspiring teacher. She loved the interest which she excited, the flattering remarks of other girls, the quiet devotion of Susan; but she hated the rules of "early to bed and early to rise"; found it a penance to be obliged to practise scales, with icy fingers, for forty minutes before breakfast; was fretted and humiliated by her ignorance on many important subjects, and at the end of the long day often found herself tired, disappointed, and--hungry!

There is no doubt that a school menu is a distinct trial to the girl fresh from home. The girl accustomed to mix cream in a cup of freshly roasted, freshly ground coffee takes badly to the weak, groundy liquid so often supplied in its place. She grows tired to death of beef, mutton, and resurrection pie, and is inclined to declare that if the only way to become strong is to consume everlasting suet puddings, why, then, as a choice of evils, she prefers to be weak!

"Is it always as bad as this?" Dreda demanded plaintively of her room- mates as they brushed their locks in company before retiring to bed on the evening of her fifth day at West House. "Do you _never_ have anything nice and light, that doesn't taste of suet and oven? Does it get better as summer comes on?"

"Worse!" p.r.o.nounced Nancy shortly.

Dreda had devoted five whole days to the study of Nancy's character, and to this hour could not make up her mind whether she most liked or detested her. She was the oddest of girls: nothing seemed to excite her, nothing to trouble, nothing to please. Occasionally she would show swift, kindly impulses, as when she had offered to become Dreda's coach; but not a flicker of disappointment did she portray if such impulses were repulsed, not a gleam of pleasure if they were accepted. At other times she seemed to take a perverse pleasure in making the worst of a situation and playing the part of Job's comforter.

"Worse!" she sighed. "Much worse! Because it's warm weather, and your fancy lightly turns to nicer things. It's a bit of a cross to see strawberries in the shop windows, and them come home to `Brother, where art thou?'"

"What brother?"

"Raisins!" said Nancy, and sighed again. "They lose each other in such steppes of suet."

Conscientious Susan exclaimed in protest.

"Nancy! Too bad. There is always stewed rhubarb!"

But this was poor comfort, for Dreda disliked stewed rhubarb almost as much as suet itself. She pouted disconsolately for several moments, then smiled with sudden inspiration.

"I'll get a doctor's order!"

"What for?"

"Plenty of fresh ripe fruit. Vegetarian diet. Fruit, and cream, and eggs during the summer heat!"

"How will you manage to get it?"

"I'll have something... I'll ask Rowena what's the best complaint: headaches or dizziness, or feeling tired. I'll tell mother it's the heavy food, and mother'll tell him, and he'll write to Miss Bretherton.

I shall eat strawberries, and watch you search for `brothers.'"

Nancy stared solemnly with her long, dark eyes.

"There was a girl here who tried that before--Netta Bryce. That very same dodge."

"Well?"

"She wished she hadn't."

"Why?"

"Try, and you'll find out."

"Nancy, you _are_ horrid. What happened to her? Where is she now?"

"Dead!" croaked Nancy, and drew the screen around her bed. After that Dreda might question as much as she liked, but she knew well that never a reply would Nancy vouchsafe. It was really most tiresome!

She lay awake for a good ten minutes pondering over what _could_ have happened to Netta Bryce, and if she had died soon, and under what conditions. Nancy was really the most aggravating of creatures!

Besides Miss Drake, commonly called "The Duck," there were two other resident teachers at West Hill. Mademoiselle--a tiny, pathetic-looking little creature, warranted to fly into a temper in a shorter time, and upon less provocation, than any other woman in the United Kingdom; and Fraulein, a lumpish but amiable creature who gave lessons in German and music. Miss Bretherton herself took the whole school for the morning Bible lesson, and had a disagreeable habit of descending upon the different forms at unexpected moments, and taking the place of the regular teacher. Of course, the surprise visit invariably happened just at the moment when the girls had "slacked," whereupon fright being added to ignorance, they would make such a poor display that they themselves were covered with confusion and their instructor with mortification.

Almost every day at dinner time two or three girls could be observed with crimson cheeks and watery eyes gazing miserably at their plates, when the beholders would nudge each other significantly, and exchange glances of commiserating understanding. "Our turn next!"

Two masters also visited the school. Mr Broun, the professor of music, was a small, s.h.a.ggy-looking personage, with a b.u.mpy brow and eyes set extraordinarily far apart. He was a born musician, and, as a consequence, found it infinitely irritating to the nerves to be obliged to teach young ladies who had not one note of music in their composition, but whose parents considered an acquaintance with the pianoforte to be a necessity of education. When one of these unfortunates went up for her lesson, shouts and groans of despair could be heard outside the door of the music-room, accompanied by the sound of heavy footsteps pacing helplessly to and fro, and at the end of the half-hour the victim would emerge, red and tearful, or red and defiant, as her nature was, to recount gruesome stories of brutality to her companions. "He rapped my ringers with his pencil. I won't stand it.

I'm sixteen. I'll write home and complain." Sandwiched in among the poor pupils were one or two who possessed real musical ability--Nancy, for instance, whose supple fingers seemed to draw mysterious sweetness and depths from the keys of the well-worn piano--and in these cases the lesson would extend far beyond its legitimate length and would take upon itself something of the nature of a recital, as Mr Broun himself took possession of the piano stool, to ill.u.s.trate the effect which he wished produced. Then the girls in adjoining rooms would find their attention wandering from their books, and little groups "changing form" would linger outside the door listening with bated breath. Ah! if one could only play like _that_!

Mr Minns, the mathematical master, was built on wires, and expected one rapid explanation of the most complex rule to make it clear as crystal.

After twenty years spent in teaching, he _still_ professed to be prostrated with horror at each fresh exhibition of feminine obtuseness, and would groan, and writhe, and push his fingers through his hair, until it stood up round his head like a halo. He was Dreda's special _bete noire_, for, like many girls who excel in literature and composition, she detested the sight of a sum and had never grown beyond the stage of counting on her fingers beneath the table. If it had not been for Susan's laboriously patient explanations, nothing could have saved her from the most hopeless humiliation; but Susan had a gift of apt and fitting words, and of inventing ill.u.s.trations which showed daylight through the thickest mist.

She rose early and worked late in order to have time to spare for her duties as coach, and Dreda was lavish in grat.i.tude.