The Lower Third
The Lower Third Form at Chessington College numbered seventeen pupils,
eight of whom were members of St. Chad's. In addition to Honor, these
included Maisie and Lettice Talbot, Ruth Latimer, Pauline Reynolds,
Janie Henderson, Effie Lawson, and Flossie Taylor. The teacher, Miss
Farrar, was rather a favourite with her class. Though she could well
uphold her authority, and maintain the good discipline that was
universal in the school, she was not so strict as some of the other
mistresses. She had a very pleasant, genial manner; she was a capital
tennis player, and no mean figure at hockey and cricket; she was a
prominent supporter of the Debating Society and the Natural History
Union; and was altogether so cheerful and brisk that "jolly" was the
word generally applied to her. Honor liked Miss Farrar, and, according
to her lights, really made a heroic effort in the direction of good
behaviour. Her conduct was certainly immeasurably superior to what it
had been with her governesses at home, and yet, judged by Chessington
standards, it was frequently irregular and unorthodox. With her best
endeavours, she could not grasp the fact that education is a very
solemn affair, and a school-room about the last place in the world
where one should try to be funny. She never seemed able to be
absolutely serious, and at the least opportunity her Celtic humour
would flash out, and not only upset the gravity of the class, but
sometimes even cause Miss Farrar to have a difficulty in keeping her
countenance.
She was a slightly disturbing element in the Form. When it was her turn
to answer there would be an air of general expectancy in the room; the
didactic language of the textbooks was often paraphrased by her lips
into something of a more racy description, and even her mistakes were
as delicious as her quaint methods of stating facts. Miss Farrar
occasionally suspected her of intentionally giving wrong replies, for
the sheer satisfaction of causing amusement; but it was difficult to
prove the charge, since, however ludicrous her statements might be, she
never under any circumstances laughed at them herself, and all the
while her large, grey Irish eyes would be fixed upon her teacher with
the innocence of a baby.
Thanks to Janie Henderson's assiduity, Honor conformed tolerably well
to the ordinary rules. Mindful of Miss Maitland's charge, Janie
considered herself responsible for Honor, and was continually ready to
jog her memory about what exercises must be written, what lessons
learnt, and what books brought to class, all of which were details that
her friend would not have troubled about on her own account; but in
spite of her exertions the poor girl often saw her protegee in trouble.
"The worst of it is," she admitted to herself, "that one never knows
what to expect. Honor is a darling, but she does such peculiar and
extraordinary things, she almost takes one's breath away. If I could be
prepared for them beforehand, and warn her, it might be of some use;
but I can't, so she's bound to get into scrapes."
Undoubtedly, very unprecedented happenings took place in the Lower
Third--happenings such as had never occurred before Honor's advent. Who
but she would have thought of tilting two books together and emptying
the inkpot on the top of them, when asked to describe a watershed? Yet
she looked genuinely astonished when the vials of Miss Farrar's wrath
descended upon her, and said almost reproachfully that she was only
trying to give a practical illustration.
One day she smuggled Pete, the kitten from St. Chad's, into class, and
shut him inside her desk, where he settled down quite comfortably, and
slept peacefully through the French lesson. But in the middle of
algebra, Honor, who hated mathematics, managed to give him a
surreptitious pinch, with the result that a long-drawn, impatient,
objecting "miau" suddenly resounded through the room. Miss Farrar gave
quite a jump, and looked round, but could see nothing. Honor sat bolt
upright, with arms folded and eyes fixed attentively on the blackboard,
as if she were sublimely unconscious of any noise in her vicinity.
"What can it be? It sounds like a cat," said Miss Farrar, peering about
on the floor, and even peeping into the cupboard where the chalk and
the new books were kept.
The girls jumped up, and pretended to look under their desks. Most of
them had an inkling of the situation, but they were human enough to
enjoy an interruption in the midst of difficult equations.
"Perhaps it's a mouse in the wainscot that's not feeling quite well
this morning," suggested Honor, though it would have needed an absolute
giant of a mouse to give vent to the unearthly yowl in which Pete had
indulged. She said it, however, rather too innocently on this occasion.
Miss Farrar was not dull, and had suspected from the beginning who was
at the bottom of the mischief; indeed, it was easy enough by this time
to trace the noise to the right spot, for the kitten had begun to
scratch, and lifted up its voice in a series of emphatic wails,
evidently protesting vigorously against solitary confinement.
Miss Farrar walked straight to Honor's desk and opened it, when out
jumped Pete, purring with satisfaction, and arching his back as if in
expectation of petting. The teacher seized him by the scruff of the
neck and gave him to Janie Henderson, at the same time quelling the
unseemly mirth of her class with a withering glance.
[Illustration: THE LIBERATION OF PETE]
"Carry this kitten back at once to St. Chad's," she commanded. "Honor
Fitzgerald, you will learn two pages of Greek chronology, and repeat
them to me before school to-morrow morning. Lettice Talbot, take a
forfeit! Girls, I am astonished at you! Open your books instantly,
every one of you! Gwen Roby, read out your answer to Example 37."
Though Honor was popular with most of the members of her Form, she was
never on very good terms with Flossie Taylor. Flossie had a sharp
tongue, and liked to make sarcastic remarks; and though Honor would
promptly return the compliment, and often "squash" the other
completely, continual bickering did not promote harmony between the
pair. Flossie was occasionally capable of certain dishonourable acts,
which always drew upon her Honor's utmost indignation and scorn. The
latter could not tolerate cheating or copying, and spoke her mind
freely on the subject.
"Well, I'm sure I'm not nearly as bad as you!" Flossie retorted once.
"You do the most outrageous things. I never mixed the French and
history exercises, nor dipped the chalk into the red ink!"
"It's worse to crib someone else's work," protested Honor, "because
that's sneaky and underhand. What would Miss Farrar say if she knew you
wrote dates on a slip of paper and put it inside your dictionary, and
then copied them when you pretended you were only looking how to spell
a word?"
"Miss Farrar won't find out, and what the eye doesn't see the heart
doesn't grieve for!"
"But it's so mean!"
"You turning Mentor!" sneered Flossie. "Really! I wonder what we may
expect next? Come, girls, and hear our most righteous and
well-conducted Paddy preach a homily on 'How to be the pattern pupil'!"
"Paddy is quite right," declared Maisie Talbot, taking up the cudgels
for once on Honor's behalf. "There's a difference between her way of
breaking rules and yours. She mayn't be exactly a shining example to
the class, but, at any rate, she's always square and above-board, and
that's more than I can say for you!"
"We're none of us saints," added Lettice, "but we've never gone in for
cribbing at Chessington. No other girl in the Form ever does it."
It was not only as regards the question of fairness in her work that
Flossie failed to reach the standard of honour current in the Lower
Third. She had many little meannesses, so small in themselves as to be
hardly worthy of notice, yet enough in the aggregate to exhibit her
character unfavourably.
One morning, just as the girls were going to their desks, Maisie Talbot
suddenly remembered that it was Miss Farrar's birthday.
"We ought to say something about it," she whispered to Lettice. "I wish
we had thought of it before, and bought her some flowers. How stupid we
were to forget!"
"Are you sure it's her birthday? How do you know?" asked Flossie, who
was standing near, and overheard.
"I'm absolutely certain. I have her name in my birthday book," replied
Maisie.
Flossie said no more just then, but the moment Miss Farrar came into
the room she stood up and wished her "Many happy returns", in the name
of the whole Form, before either Maisie or Lettice had the opportunity
to say a word.
They were most annoyed to be thus forestalled.
"It was our idea," protested Lettice afterwards. "You didn't even know
it was Miss Farrar's birthday before we mentioned it."
"And yet you calmly took all the credit, and made yourself the
mouthpiece of the class!" exclaimed the equally indignant Maisie.
"I suppose I had as good a right as anybody else to offer
congratulations," laughed Flossie. "You should have brought yours out a
little quicker."
Flossie might be appreciated by her cousins, the Hammond-Smiths, and
their particular friends, the Lawsons and the Palmers, but she was
certainly not a favourite in her own Form. Nearly everybody had a
squabble with her upon some pretext. Even Janie Henderson, whose
retiring disposition involved her in few disputes with her
schoolfellows, found a cause for complaint. It was one of the ordinary
regulations that the girls should each take the office of warden for a
week in turn, the duties being to give out any necessary books, clean
the blackboard, distribute fresh pens and blotting-paper, and collect
any articles that might be left in the room after lesson hours. By
general custom all pencils, india-rubbers, or other stray possessions
were put into what was known as the forfeit tray, whence their owners
might reclaim them by paying the penalty of the loss of an order mark.
Each girl had her pencil-box, in which she was expected to keep her own
property; but many things were usually left lying about, and the warden
always made a careful search at one o'clock.
The most cherished object in Janie's desk was a little, pearl-handled
penknife, which she greatly valued. She guarded it zealously, lending
it as seldom as she could, and taking good care that it was always
returned to her immediately. One unfortunate day, however, she had been
sharpening her pencil at the close of the arithmetic lesson, and in the
preoccupation of correcting her answers she laid her treasure down, and
forgot all about it. She remembered it after dinner, and ran back to
the schoolroom to rescue it, but it was nowhere to be found.
"It must have been put in the forfeit tray," she said to herself. "I
shall get it to-morrow, though it will cost me an order mark, worse
luck!"
She looked eagerly next morning when Miss Farrar produced the tray, but
her penknife was not among the lost property. She made a few enquiries
in the class, but nobody professed to have seen it, and she was obliged
to abandon it as hopelessly gone.
It must have been quite a week after this that one evening, when the
St. Chad's girls were sitting in the recreation room, Flossie pulled
her handkerchief from her pocket, and in so doing whisked out a
pearl-handled penknife. She stooped in a hurry to recover it, but it
had fallen under a little table, close to where Pauline Reynolds was
sitting, and the latter picked it up instead.
"Hello! This is Janie Henderson's knife," exclaimed Pauline. "Look
here, Janie! Isn't this the one you lost?"
"Of course it is," affirmed Janie. "I can tell it by the small blade.
There's a tiny piece broken off at the end."
"Where did you get it, Flossie?" enquired
"I found it when I was warden," replied Flossie. "How should I know it
was Janie's?"
"You might have asked whose it was," said Maisie. "You've no right to
pocket things when you're warden!"
"I wrote a 'Found' notice about it," declared Flossie.
"I never saw any notice," put in Janie.
"Where did you pin this wonderful paper?" asked Pauline.
"On the dressing-room door."
"Where nobody would ever dream of looking!" returned Maisie. "Why
couldn't you put the knife on the forfeit tray?"
"I really don't know! What's the use of making such an absurd fuss
about trifles?" said Flossie, linking her arm in Norah Palmer's, and
turning away.
"I call them principles, not trifles," murmured Maisie; "it's just on
the same lines as the cribbing, not quite open and square. I wish
Flossie had stayed at St. Bride's; I certainly don't consider her a
credit to St. Chad's."
The quarrels between Honor and Flossie occasionally rose to the level
of a miniature war. The latter never lost any opportunity of flinging
ridicule and contempt on all things Irish, and Honor, who resented a
slur on her native land more than a personal injury, could not keep her
hot temper within bounds. It was, of course, very foolish to take any
notice of Flossie's taunts, and so her friends reminded her.
"The more you blaze up, the more she'll tease, of course," said Maisie.
"Why can't you keep calm, and pretend you don't hear her?" said
Pauline. "She doesn't try it on with us."
"You're such a set of stolid Anglo-Saxons!" declared Honor. "You never
get roused about anything."
"It's bad form, my dear girl! Hysterics are out of fashion. We don't go
in for them at Chessington."
"But you really are entertaining when you're aggressively Celtic,
Paddy!" said Lettice. "I own I can't resist taking a rise out of you
myself sometimes, just for the fun of seeing you explode."
"You ought to have been born Red Indians!" retorted Honor. "I like
people with a little fire. What's the good of having feelings, if one's
not to show them?"
"You show them so hard," laughed Lettice, "you make yourself quite
ridiculous! I'm sure I shouldn't think one of Flossie's silly jokes was
worth making any fuss about."
This was very excellent and practical schoolgirl wisdom, but
unfortunately Lettice preached a philosophy of stoicism to which Honor
had not yet attained. At the least provocation her fiery Irish blood
always asserted itself, and she would flare up, albeit she was
conscious that, by so doing, she was affording her enemy the keenest
satisfaction, and was providing amusement for the other girls, who
enjoyed "hearing Paddy break out".
One morning the feud came to a crisis. When Honor opened her desk she
found inside a neat little collection of new potatoes, and on the top,
pinned to the biggest, a paper in Flossie's handwriting, bearing these
lines:
HONOR'S WISH
Oh, Erin, moist Erin, how damp are thy showers!
I would I were back 'mid thy pigs and thy rills!
The "tater" to me is more dear than thy flowers,
And I relish the rain on thy ever-wet hills.
Honor could not help laughing at this, in spite of the aspersion on the
climate of her country. Such a quip, however, could not go unrequited,
and she sought for means of retaliation. She decided that Flossie
deserved a "booby trap", and fled back early to the classroom after
lunch, to set it for her. It was a rather difficult and delicate
operation, for she did not wish to catch anybody else by mistake. She
balanced a big dictionary so that it rested on the top of the door and
the lintel of the doorway; then, stationing herself inside the room,
she held the handle firmly, lest someone should disturb her arrangement
by flinging back the door, which was just sufficiently wide open to
allow a single person to enter. She peeped every now and then into the
passage, on the look-out for Flossie, and admitted each returning girl
with caution and due warning.
"Here she is at last!" whispered Lettice, who was naughty enough to
enjoy practical jokes, and, after admiring the preparations, had
offered to act scout.
"Is she really coming in next?"
"Yes; she's walking in front of May Thurston and Dorothea Chambers."
"Are you certain?"
"Absolutely."
"Then tell me when!"
"Now!"
Honor pulled open the door, and down crashed the dictionary, tumbling
full on the head, not of Flossie Taylor, but (oh! horrible miscarriage
of justice!) of Miss Farrar herself. At exactly the wrong moment the
teacher had popped out of the next classroom, and, as Flossie had stood
politely aside to give her precedence, she had walked straight into the
trap destined for her pupil.
The dictionary was heavy, and in its fall its sharp corner caught Miss
Farrar on the cheek. She stopped, almost dazed by the sudden blow, and,
pressing her handkerchief to her face, drew it back marked with a red
stain. At the sight of the blood Honor uttered a shriek, and, rushing
from the room, fled down the passage, as if to escape from the horror
of what she had done. In almost a state of panic she ran across the
quadrangle, and, turning into the garden, sought refuge inside the
tool-shed. Here she was found some time afterwards by Janie, who had
been sent to look for her, and had vainly searched St. Chad's and every
other likely spot of which she could think.
Honor never did things by halves; if she wept, she wept, and at present
she was a perfect Niobe, almost drowned in tears. When she saw Janie
she gave her streaming eyes a hasty mop with a very wet
pocket-handkerchief.
"Have I killed her?" she asked, in a tragic whisper.
"Of course not!" replied Janie. "It was only a small cut on the cheek.
It's all right now it has been bathed with cold water."
"I was afraid they'd bring it in murder," groaned Honor. "Oh, the ill
luck of it, that it should have been Miss Farrar! And the dictionary
came down with such a frightful bang! I can never look her in the face
again."
"You'll have to!" said Janie. "I was sent to fetch you back at once.
You needn't be afraid, Miss Farrar has taken it so nicely."
Poor Honor's apologies and the depths of her genuine remorse would have
melted the hardest of hearts, much more that of her teacher.
"We'll say no more about it," declared Miss Farrar. "All the same,
remember that I cannot allow such things to happen in the classroom.
You might have hurt Flossie very seriously. No, my scratch is nothing!
It will be healed directly. But if you are really sorry, Honor, you
must give me your most solemn promise that you will never play such a
dangerous practical joke again."