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THE YOUNGEST GIRL IN THE SCHOOL
by
EVELYN SHARP
Author of 'The Making of a Schoolgirl,' 'Wymps,' Etc.
With Illustrations by C. E. Brock
New York
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1906
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1901,
By the Macmillan Company.
Set up and electrotyped September, 1901. Reprinted January, 1902.
New edition September, 1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
TO
THE PROFESSOR
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
'May I--may I have all that?' 27
'Look here, Babs,' she began, smoothing the mop
of tangled hair 45
'What in the name of wonder are you children
doing down there?' 99
Five heads suddenly appeared at the open window 108
'Dear me!' he said, slightly taken aback 175
'Hullo!' said Jean. 'What's the matter?' 184
'Tell me, Herr Doktor' 261
'So he got Jill' 310
CHAPTER I
IN A LONDON SCHOOLROOM
'It's no good,' sighed Barbara, looking disconsolately round the room;
'we shall never get straight in time. Don't you think we had better
leave it, and let Auntie Anna see us as we really are? She will only be
disappointed afterwards, if we begin by being tidy; and I don't like
disappointing people, do you?'
There was a shout of laughter when she finished speaking, and Barbara
frowned. She never knew why the boys laughed at her when she tried to
explain her reasons for doing things, but they always did.
'Is that why you have put on your very shortest frock?' asked Wilfred, who
was brewing something in a saucepan over the fire. 'I believe you think
that if Auntie Anna saw you for the first time in your Sunday frock, she
might suppose you were a nice, proper little girl, instead of----'
Barbara seized the sofa cushion and aimed it at him threateningly.
'Instead of what?' she demanded.
Wilfred was at a disadvantage, owing to his position as well as to the
precious quality of the liquid in the saucepan; and he felt it wiser to
make terms. 'Well,' he observed, 'you might at least have put on a longer
frock for the credit of the family; now, mightn't you?'
Barbara looked down at her blue serge skirt, edged with certain rows of
white braid that only made it look shorter; and she gave it a pull to make
it fall a little lower over the slim black legs that appeared beneath
it. 'It's not my fault that I have just come from a gymnastic class,'
she protested. 'Besides, my Sunday frock is only two inches longer! What
difference does two inches make, even if we _have_ got an aunt coming?
You're so particular, Wilfred.'
'Stick to your chemicals, Will, and leave the Babe alone,' growled Egbert,
who was trying to read a novel on the sofa and found the conversation
disturbing.
It was not often that the eldest of the family troubled himself about the
disputes of the others, and Barbara was encouraged to go on. 'Besides,'
she added, 'there isn't time to change now. Auntie Anna will arrive
directly; and who is going to tidy up the schoolroom if I don't?'
Certainly, no one responded to her appeal. Egbert and Wilfred became
suddenly and suspiciously interested in what they were doing, while the
two other boys, who were seated on the edge of the table, continued to
swing their legs lazily backwards and forwards without making an effort to
help her. Barbara turned upon them reproachfully.
'It is perfectly horrible of you to sit there laughing, when a strange
aunt and a strange daughter may be here at any minute!' she declared. 'I
think _you_ might do something, Peter.'
'Not much!' laughed Peter, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow of fifteen or
so. 'It's good for little girls to do things, and keeps them from growing
out of all their clothes.'
'Chuck it, Babs!' advised the younger of the two. 'What does it matter
whether she thinks we live in a pig-sty or not?'
Barbara looked at them doubtfully, then picked up a pile of ragged music
and staggered across to the cupboard, shot the music into it, and closed
the door just in time to prevent her load from recoiling upon her. A
derisive chuckle from the boys on the table greeted her first attempt at
tidying up; but she went on resolutely.
'Visitors have no business to come and see people at a day's notice
like this,' she complained, as she swept a handful of rusty nails, empty
gum bottles, and other evidences of past occupations into a crowded
waste-paper basket.
Christopher stopped laughing as she said this, and a change crept over
his pale, rather delicate features. 'When the visitor is an _aunt_,' he
said with energy, 'a day's notice is more than enough.'
He associated the aunt in question with certain reforms that had taken
place from time to time in the household; and he had never forgiven her
for inducing their father, just two years ago, to dismiss the nurse they
had all adored and to send Robin and himself to a hated day-school. There
was no knowing what innovations they might not be forced to accept, now
that she was going to descend upon them in person.
Peter chuckled again. Most things to Peter were an occasion for a chuckle.
'That depends on the spirit in which she comes,' he remarked, and he
turned his pockets graphically inside out. 'An aunt who has a big place
in the country, and can afford to travel about in beastly holes like
Munich and the Italian lakes----'
'And can pick up other people's daughters and adopt them,' chimed in
Christopher, 'just because their fathers died fighting in the Soudan
and their mothers died--how did their mothers die, Egbert?'
'Penniless,' grunted Egbert, in response to the kick his book had just
received. 'That's why the kid got adopted, of course.'
'Well,' proceeded Peter, putting his pockets back and nodding wisely, 'if
an aunt like that doesn't behave decently to her deserving nephews----'
'And niece,' added Babs from the back of the sofa, where she had just
deposited a bundle of old schoolbooks.
Peter went on unabashed. 'To her deserving nephews and undeserving niece,'
he said, smiling, 'then she'll be an awful old dragon!'
'There's something in that,' observed Wilfred, taking the saucepan over to
the window for inspection. 'Perhaps she'll give me those new retorts and
things I want for my laboratory--if I ever get a laboratory,' he added
with a sigh.
'Perhaps she'll send me straight to college without expecting me to grind
for a musty old scholarship,' said Egbert, condescending to take a share
in the conversation.
'If she asks me down to Crofts for the shooting, that will be good enough
for me,' observed Peter, drawing a long breath of anticipation.
Barbara came slowly into the middle of the room and stood there, quite
unconscious of her rumpled hair and of the streak of dust that was
smeared across her face. 'I wonder what Auntie Anna will do for me?' she
murmured, more to herself than to the others. 'I hope, I do hope it
will be something new and interesting and beautiful!'
Christopher overheard her, and roused himself. He slipped off the
table and walked to his favourite position on the hearthrug, giving an
unnecessary pull to the child's hair as he passed her, which was an
attention, however, that she showed no signs of resenting. Babs never
resented anything that Kit chose to do to her; besides, she wanted to
hear what he was going to say. Whenever Kit stood like that, with his
back to the fire and his legs rather wide apart, he was always going to
say something. The odd thing was, that there was something so convincing
in his way of saying it that the family generally listened.
'Don't you fret yourselves, any of you,' he said decidedly. 'Auntie Anna
isn't going to make things pleasant for anybody in this house--not she!
Hasn't she persuaded father to do whatever she likes, all our lives?'
'What is she going to make him do now, then?' asked Wilfred, who did not
mean to give up his dream of a laboratory without a protest.
'First of all,' said Christopher, with an air of confidence, 'she'll see
that Egbert has a crammer next summer holidays; and he'll either have to
get that scholarship, or he doesn't go to Oxford at all! She'll talk about
discipline, and things like that. Aunts always do talk about discipline,
when it's for other people's children.'
'I wish you'd shut up,' grumbled Egbert, returning to his book. 'How is a
fellow to read when you're making such a clatter?'
'Then there's Peter,' continued Christopher, calmly. 'Of course she'll
say he's much too young to be trusted with a gun, though he is such an
overgrown, hulking chap; and why isn't he in the fifth instead of the
upper fourth, at _his_ age?'
'What do you know about it, you youngest-but-two?' shouted Peter,
wrathfully.
Kit peered at him through his spectacles, and went on as impudently as
ever. He was never afraid to speak his mind, for none of the others would
have dreamed of laying a finger, except in fun, on the one brother who was
not strong enough to defend himself; and Kit knew this, as well as he
knew his superiority over them in the matter of brains. The only wonder
was that the knowledge had not made him a prig. Perhaps it would have
been difficult, though, in the hurly-burly of the Berkeley family, for any
one to have been a prig.
'As for Wilfred,' he resumed, 'she'll upset all his ambitions before
he can turn round. Do you suppose she'll encourage his messing about
with things in saucepans, just because he wants to be a doctor? Not she!
She'll talk about some rotten business in the City instead. Aunts always
know millions of places in the City where they can shove their unwilling
nephews.'
'Oh, I say, dry up!' objected Wilfred, who was already sufficiently
depressed by the discovery that the brew in the saucepan was not a success.
'Then she'll pack Robin off to a preparatory at Brighton--never knew an
aunt yet who didn't want to send you to a preparatory at Brighton!--and
she'll do the same to me, only she'll choose a beastly inferior place,
where I shall be looked after by some _woman_,' concluded Christopher, in
a tone of scorn. Then he caught sight of Barbara, who was still standing
thoughtfully in the middle of the room; and he shook his head at her
pityingly. 'After that, having cleared the house of boys, she'll turn
her attention to the Babe,' he said, and paused rather abruptly.
Barbara woke up from her reflections with a start. 'Yes, Kit?' she said
questioningly. 'What will Auntie Anna do to me?'
Kit's expression of pity became exaggerated. 'To begin with,' he said,
with a deep sigh, 'she'll let down your frocks, and tie back your hair,
and never let you go anywhere alone, not even to the pillar-box at the
corner!'
The other boys began to laugh afresh.
'Think of the Babe with her hair bunched up on the top, and fastened with
a bit of ribbon! She'll look exactly like a French poodle, won't she?'
scoffed Peter.
'She'll have to hold up her skirt in the street, and step in and out of
the puddles like this!' added Wilfred, taking the end of his coat between
his thumb and finger, and prancing round Barbara on tiptoe.
Egbert shut up his book, and joined lazily in the general derision. 'Poor
little Babe! will it have to turn into a young lady, and stop talking
slang, and learn about box-pleats and false hems and _tucks_?' he jeered
softly.
Barbara turned her back on the others, and once more appealed to
Christopher. Teasing was not the kind of thing that roused her; she
had grown accustomed to it, long ago. 'What else, Kit?' she demanded
impatiently. 'There's something else, isn't there?'
Christopher nodded. 'Yes,' he said ominously, 'there's something else.
But I'm not going to tell you what it is.'
'Yes,' said Egbert, stretching himself, 'of course there's something else,
Babe. We all know what it is, but we're not going to tell you either.'
Babs looked swiftly from one to the other. 'I know!' she said, shaking
the hair out of her eyes. 'It's--school!'
Kit nodded again. 'That swagger place near Crofts, where the adopted kid
has been,' he continued in a solemn tone.
The others copied his manner, and looked at her with a ridiculous pretence
of concern. 'Poor Babe!' they said in a chorus.
Barbara again shook the hair out of her eyes with a defiant gesture. Then
she spun round lightly on her toes, and surprised everybody by laughing
scornfully. 'What a fuss you're all making!' she cried. 'Don't you know
I am simply _longing_ to go to school?'
Judging from their expressions, the Berkeley boys certainly did not know
anything of the kind. Even Christopher was puzzled at her curious way of
taking his prediction. 'You're putting it on, Babs!' he said doubtfully.
Barbara stopped spinning round, and faced them all breathlessly. 'I'm
not, honour bright!' she declared. 'I have always wanted to go to school;
I have always longed to have some real friends of my own, and to be
with people who are not trying all the time to be funny. You don't know
how tiring it is to be scored off from morning till night. I want a
change; I want to do regular, proper lessons, and to get to the top of
the school, and to have every one looking up to me! Then, they play
games at school, _real_ games, instead of the stupid ones we play in
the square, that only graze your knees. Girls are nice and jolly and
quiet, and they understand you, and they don't bother you to do things
when you'd sooner read. Of course I want to go to school, _dreadfully_!'
She paused for breath, and Egbert whistled. 'Well, I'm bothered!' he
remarked. He had never pretended to understand his little sister, but he
could not help being astonished at this totally new side to her character.
Peter took refuge as usual in a laugh; and Wilfred stared silently. But
Kit looked more solemn than ever.
'I'm disappointed in you, Babs,' he said. 'I should never have thought
that you wanted to be a young lady, never!'
'But I don't, Kit!' answered the child in a troubled tone. 'I want to do
something new, that's all. I--I'm sure father will understand what I mean,
if he sends me to school,' she added, with something that sounded like a
shake in her voice.
'Ah--father!' replied Christopher, gruffly. 'Father will not be here, you
see.'
A sudden silence came over them; and Barbara turned to the window and
flattened her nose against the glass pane, and blinked her eyes with
all her might. There was nothing to be seen outside but the blank wall
that usually limits the view from the back of a London house; but the
child with the untidy brown hair, and the small impish face, and the
slender long legs, was able, for all that, to see pictures out there.
She always saw pictures when she was excited about anything; and just
now she was thrilled with a new dream--a dream of the place that her
imagination named 'school.' She had always hidden from the boys how much
she wanted to go to school; and it was only this afternoon, when their
derision provoked her into it, that she had let them have a guess at her
real feelings. They had not understood her a bit, as she knew they would
not; but that did not matter. Her father would understand, though she
never told him much, either, and he had to guess for himself what
went on in the quaint little mind of his only daughter; but then,
Barbara had a shrewd idea that he always guessed right, and that came to
the same thing, really. Just as she was comforting herself with this
assurance, the miserable consciousness returned that he was going
away, and she would be left at the mercy of a strange aunt; and she
found herself staring at nothing but a dismal brick wall, with eyes
that were blinking to keep back the tears.
Peter was the first to break the pause that had settled with a kind of
gloom on the old London schoolroom. He was always on the alert to resent
anything that cast a shadow over the light gaiety of existence.
'I say, look here,' he began, giving himself a shake as if to get rid of
an unpleasant impression; 'don't be so jolly blue, all of you! Father
will only be away six months; he said so himself. And as for Auntie Anna,
how do we know she isn't quite a decent old lady? Some old ladies are
awfully sporting. Do you remember Merton major's aunt, Will? She used to
give him whopping tips, whenever she came to see him; and he said he quite
liked her!'
Christopher persisted in his gloomy view of the situation. 'Our aunt is
not the same as anybody else's aunt,' he said. 'And then, there's the
adopted kid.'
'Yes,' admitted Peter, 'no doubt she'll be a trial. Five years at a girls'
school and a year abroad doesn't give anybody a chance, does it?'
'Oh!' said Barbara, in a disappointed tone, 'I did hope _she_ would be
nice!'
'Wonder if she'll mind the smell of chemicals,' observed Wilfred, sniffing
cautiously at the saucepan he still held in his hand.
'Of course she will,' answered Christopher. 'She'll hate the whole jolly
lot of us, because we're boys; and she'll disapprove of the Babe.'
The boys broke into a laugh. There was something irresistibly funny to
them in Christopher's serious way of looking at things. But Barbara was
much too worried over his last remark to join in the laugh against him.
'Kit,' she begged anxiously, 'why is the adopted kid going to disapprove
of me?'
The air was full of startling discoveries this afternoon, and the idea
that the 'adopted kid,' for whom she had already formed an imaginary
attachment, was not going to like her, was a great shock to her. But
before Kit had time to speak, a loud ring at the door-bell drove the words
out of his mind and startled the rest of them into an agitated expectancy.
'That's her!' groaned Kit, and he dropped on the sofa and plunged his
head into the cushion, as if he wanted to stifle even the thought of the
dragon who was coming to work such havoc in the family. His words were
proved by the sudden arrival of Robin, who had been posted as scout on
the back staircase, and who now flung himself into their midst. He was
in far too great a hurry to look where he was going; and he tripped over
the saucepan, which had been set down casually near the door, and fell
full length into the room.
'Heigh-ho, Bobbin!' said Peter, cheerily, as he picked him up again; for,
in spite of his nine years, there was always the chance that Robin might
be going to cry. But, on this occasion, Robin was too full of news to
trouble himself about possible bruises.
'She's come; I've seen her!' he gasped. 'There's a carriage an' pair, big
spanking chestnuts with red rosettes; and a man--a man with pink tops to
his boots and a brush at the side of his hat----'
'Get on, Bobbin!' urged Egbert, impatiently. 'We've all seen a carriage
and pair before. What about the dragon?'
'Saw her too!' said Robin, panting for breath. 'Got a long black silk
thing on, and a bonnet that's rather like a hat, with pink feathers in it,
and a walking-stick with a blue knob to it, an' white kid gloves,--no, I
mean grey kid----'
'Oh, get on, do!' interrupted Egbert again. 'Never mind about her clothes,
stupid! What is she _like_?'
'Don't know what she's like,' said Robin, a little sulkily. 'Couldn't see
everything from the back staircase, could I? There was a girl with her,'
he added, as a concession to the general curiosity.
'The adopted kid!' exclaimed the others in a chorus.
Babs pressed forward eagerly. 'Does she look nice, Bobbin? Is she tall or
short? Are her dresses _quite_ long, and is her hair done up?' she cried,
pouring out her questions in a jumble.
'Oh, yes; her skirts trail all along the ground for miles,' answered
Robin. 'And she sort of rustled like tissue paper. Didn't see her face,
'cause it was all tied up in a veil,--but she's awfully tall,' he added,
looking round the circle with his head poised on one side. 'She's taller'n
any of us--even Egbert,' he concluded viciously, remembering his recent
snubbing.
Egbert put out a long arm, laid the boy dexterously on the flat of his
back in the middle of the floor, and pinned him there with his foot. 'Say
that's a cram!' he commanded in a stern voice. 'Say I'm a head taller than
the adopted kid, or else I'll----'
What he would have done to him remained unheard, for Robin set up a
wail that completely drowned the end of his sentence. The other boys
only shrugged their shoulders; the thing seemed to them a necessary
incident in the education of a younger member, and they were not going
to interfere. But Barbara sprang forward passionately. That was the kind
of thing that did rouse her.
'Leave him alone, Egbert!' she cried, but she did not wait to see whether
he would. She scarcely supposed that he would stop teasing any one for
her; besides, she never stayed to think, when once anything had roused
her. So she put her head down and made a charge straight at the offender;
and Egbert, being unprepared for the attack, fell backwards over the
footstool, with his small sister on the top of him, while Robin wriggled
free of them both and set up a louder howl than before in his surprise
and dismay.
In the middle of the hubbub the door opened; and a voice, that attracted
their attention at once because it was strange to them, made itself heard
through the tumult.
'Is there anybody here who is called Babs?' asked the new-comer.