The Leader of the Lower School Part 3

"So some of them told me last night, but I didn't believe them. I thought they were ragging me because I'm new, and I'd best ask at headquarters," returned Gipsy. "I wouldn't lose my way, and I'm accustomed to taking care of myself. I'd engage you'd find you could trust me."

"That's not the question at all, Gipsy. I cannot allow you to break school rules."

"Not just this once?"

"Certainly not. If I made an exception in your case, the others would expect the same privilege."

"Is that so?" said Gipsy slowly. "It seems a funny rule to me, because in Dorcas City we might always go to the store if we reported first."

"You're not in America now: you'll have to learn English ways here, and English speech too. You must make an effort to drop Americanisms, and talk as we do on this side of the Atlantic."

Miss Poppleton's tone was rather tart, and her mouth twitched ominously.

Gipsy's eyes twinkled.

"I'll do my best," she answered brightly. "I picked up a few words from the other girls last night that I didn't know before. There was 'ripping' for one, and--what was the other, now, that caught on to me?

Oh, I know!--'rotten'. I won't forget it again."

Miss Poppleton's face was a study.

"Of course I don't mean slang words like those. The girls had no business to be using them. You must copy the best, and not the worst."

"I guess it will take me a while to learn the difference."

"You'll have to expunge 'guess' and 'reckon' from your vocabulary."

Gipsy heaved an eloquent sigh.

"I'll make a mental note of what I've got to avoid, but I expect they'll slip out sometimes. But about that pan, please! Might the janitor go out and buy it for me? I can't make any Fudge till I get it, and I reck--that is to say, I mean to teach those girls to make Fudge. They've not tasted it."

Miss Poppleton glared at her irrepressible pupil with a glance that would have quelled Hetty Hanc.o.c.k or Lennie Chapman, but Gipsy did not flinch.

"They've actually never tasted Fudge!" she repeated, with a smile of pity for their ignorance.

But Miss Poppleton's patience was at an end.

"Gipsy Latimer, understand once for all that these things are not allowed at Briarcroft. While you are here you will be expected to keep the rules of the school, or, if you break them, you will be punished.

Leave my study at once, and don't report yourself here again until you are sent for."

Gipsy left the room as requested, but she stood for a moment or two on the doormat outside, shaking her head solemnly.

"It's a bad lookout!" she said to herself. "I'm afraid there are breakers ahead. That's not a very difficult matter to foresee. She's got a temper! I've not had any previous experience of English schools, but it rather appears as if this one's run on the lines of a reformatory. If I don't want to get myself into trouble, I shall have to lie low, and mind what I'm doing. Well, I've sampled the teachers, and I've sampled the boarders. Now for the day girls and my new Form!"

Gipsy had already made the acquaintance of the elect twenty who were to be her house companions, but that was a comparatively slight affair compared with the ordeal of her introduction to the school as a whole.

In spite of her outward appearance of sangfroid, she felt her heart thumping a little as she marched into the large lecture hall for "call over". It needs a certain courage to face seventy-two critical strangers, and her past experience had taught her that a new girl on her first day is like "goods on approval", and has to run the gauntlet of public opinion. She tried to look airy and unembarra.s.sed, and talked desperately to Lennie Chapman, who had been told off to "personally conduct" her to her Form; but all the same she was conscious that she was the observed of all observers. It was only natural that the little, erect, dark figure, with its bright eyes and big scarlet hair ribbons, should attract attention. Gipsy was about as different from the ordinary run of British schoolgirls as a parakeet is from a flock of pigeons; and the others were quick to note the difference.

"I say, who's that foreign kid?" enquired Madeleine Newsome, a member of the Fifth, pausing in a friendly quarrel with a Form mate to take a quick, comprehensive survey of the stranger's personal appearance.

"Can't say, I'm sure," responded Emily Atkinson, "but we'll soon find out. h.e.l.lo, you kid, what's your name? And what part of the globe do you spring from?"

"She's Spanish and American and New Zealand and South African and several other things, and she's been s.h.i.+pwrecked dozens of times," began Lennie Chapman, who was p.r.o.ne to exaggerate, and liked to act showman.

"Let her speak for herself," interrupted Madeleine bluntly. "I suppose she understands English, doesn't she? What's your name, kid? Don't stand staring at me with those big black eyes!"

But here Gipsy's momentary bashfulness took flight. Seven schools had taught her to hold her own, and she was soon imparting information about herself with a volubility that left no doubt of her acquaintance with the English tongue. Other girls hurried up to listen, and in less than a minute she was the centre of a crowd, answering a perfect fire of questions with a beaming good humour and a quickness of repartee that rather took the fancy of her hearers.

"She's sharp enough, at any rate," commented Mary Parsons. "Not very easy to take a rise out of her, I should think."

"Awfully pretty, I call her," responded Joyce Adamson. "Those big red bows are immense in more ways than one."

"She's not the sort to play second fiddle evidently," grumbled Maude Helm a trifle enviously. "New girls oughtn't to have such cheek, in my opinion. When I was new----"

"Oh, yes! We all remember how you stood looking black thunders, and no one could drag a single word out of you, not even your name! Can't see where the sense came in! I like a girl with plenty to say for herself."

"This one's got enough, at any rate!" snapped Maude. "She talks away like a Cheap-Jack. Now if I were----"

"Hold your tongue, can't you? I want to hear what she's saying."

"What Form's she in?"

"I believe Poppie's put her in the Upper Fourth."

"Hus.h.!.+ Here's Poppie herself!"

As the Princ.i.p.al stepped upon the platform and rang the bell, the girls hastily scurried to their seats, deferring further catechism of their new schoolfellow till eleven o'clock. Gipsy's name had been placed on the roll call of the Upper Fourth, so as a member of the Lower School she marched in the long line that filed from the lecture hall to the right-hand wing of the house. The preliminary part of her ordeal might be considered successfully over. Schoolgirls are quick to take likes and dislikes; with them, first impressions are everything, and a few minutes are often sufficient to decide the fate of a newcomer. By the end of the day Gipsy had won golden opinions; her whimsical humour and free Colonial manners, however unfavourably they might impress Miss Poppleton, pleased the popular taste, and except by an envious few she was p.r.o.nounced "ripping". Even Helen Roper, the head of the school, condescended to notice her.

"h.e.l.lo, you new girl!" she said patronizingly, "you may join our Needlework Guild if you like. You've got to subscribe a s.h.i.+lling, and promise to make a garment every year. They're sent to the hospitals, you know."

"Thanks," replied Gipsy, not too utterly overwhelmed by the honour. "I'm a bad sewer, but I dare say I'd manage to cobble up something."

"Then I'll put your name down, and you can bring me the s.h.i.+lling to-morrow. Have you got a camera? Then I expect you'll like to belong to the Photographic Guild--the subscription's a s.h.i.+lling for that too.

Remind me to give you a card of the rules if I forget."

"You'll do!" whispered Lennie Chapman, who had watched over Gipsy's introduction with anxious interest. "If Helen Roper's spoken to you, you're sure to get on. You'll join the Guilds, of course? There's the Dramatic as well, and the Musical, and the Athletic."

"If they want a s.h.i.+lling for each, it will soon run away with one's pocket-money," laughed Gipsy.

"Why, yes, so it does, but then one has to join. It is the thing to do."

"I don't mind the subscriptions if the Guilds are fun."

"Well--um! I can't say they're very much fun for us. We're only Lower School, you see, and we don't get a look-in."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, of course it's all in the hands of the Sixth. They arrange everything. We mayn't so much as express an opinion."

"No, it's really rather too bad," said Hetty Hanc.o.c.k, joining in the conversation. "We Lower School aren't fairly treated. The Photographic Guild spent all the society's money on a gorgeous developing machine last term, and no one's allowed to use it except the Committee."