"Laura, you're a cipher!"
"I'm nothing of the sort!" threw back Laura indignantly. "You're one
yourself.--What does she mean, Evvy?" she asked getting out of earshot
of the speaker.
"Goodness knows. Don't mind her, Poppet."
It was an oppressive evening: all day long a hot north wind had scoured
the streets, veiling things and people in clouds of gritty dust; the
sky was still like the prolonged reflection of a great fire. The
hoped-for change had not come, and the girls who strolled the paths of
the garden were white and listless. They walked in couples, with
interlaced arms; and members of the Matriculation Class carried books
with them, the present year being one of much struggling and
heartburning, and few leisured moments. Mary Pidwall and Cupid were
together under an acacia tree at the gate of the tennis-court; and it
was M. P. who had cast the above gibe at Laura. At least Laura took it
as a gibe, and scowled darkly; for she could never grow hardened to
ridicule.
As she and Evelyn re-passed this spot in their perambulation, a merry
little lump of a girl called Lolo, who darted her head from side to
side when she spoke, with the movements of a watchful bird--this
[P.241] Lolo called: "Evelyn, come here, I want to tell you something."
"Yes, what is it?" asked Evelyn, but without obeying the summons; for
she felt Laura's grip of her arm tighten.
"It's a secret. You must come over here."
"Hold on a minute, Poppet," said Evelyn persuasively, and crossed the
lawn with her characteristically lazy saunter. Minutes went by; she did
not return.
"Look at her Laura-ship!" said a saucebox to her partner. The latter
made "Hee-haw, hee-haw!" and both laughed derisively.
The object of their scorn stood at the farther end of the wire-net
fence: all five fingers of her right hand were thrust through the holes
of the netting, and held oddly and unconsciously outspread; she stood
on one leg, and with her other foot rubbed up and down behind her
ankle; mouth and brow were sullen, her black eyes bent wrathfully on
her faithless friend.
"A regular moon-calf!" said Cupid, looking up from THE TEMPEST, which
was balanced breast-high on the narrow wooden top of the fence.
"Mark my words, that child'll be plucked in her 'tests'," observed M. P.
"Serve her right, say I, for playing the billy-ass," returned Cupid,
and killed a giant mosquito with such a whack that her wrist was
stained with its blood. "Ugh, you brute! ... gorging yourself on me.
But I'm dashed if I know how Evelyn can be bothered to have her always
dangling round."
"She's a cipher," repeated Mary, in so judicial a tone that it closed
the conversation.
Laura, not altogether blind to externals, saw that her companions made
fun of her. But at the present pass, the strength of her feelings quite
out-ran her capacity for self-control; she was unable to disguise what
she felt, and though it made her the laughing-stock of the school. What
scheme was the birdlike Lolo hatching against her? Why did Evelyn not
come back?--these were the thoughts that buzzed round inside her head,
as the mosquitoes buzzed outside.--And meanwhile the familiar, foolish
noises of the garden at evening knocked at her ear. On the other side
of the hedge a batch of third-form girls were whispering, with choked
laughter, a doggerel rhyme which was hard to say, and which meant
something quite different did the tongue trip over a certain letter. Of
two girls who were playing tennis in half-hearted fashion, the one next
Laura said 'Oh, damn!' every time she missed a ball. And over the
parched, dusty grass the hot wind blew, carrying with it, from the
kitchens, a smell of cabbage, of fried onions, of greasy dish-water.
Then Evelyn returned, and a part, a part only of the cloud lifted from
Laura's brow.
"What did she want?"
"Oh, nothing much."
"Then you're not going to tell me?"