THE BABE'S 'FURY'
In the junior playroom Jean Murray had been taking the opportunity to
revive the animosity against the new girl.
'Can't you see that she's laughing at us all?' she exclaimed to a circle
of humble listeners. 'It's all very well to pretend to be such a baby;
that kind of thing may go down with the elder ones, but it won't do here.
Anybody can see that she's only putting it all on, to be aggravating.'
'She told a story the very day she arrived,' chimed in Angela from behind.
'A girl who could do that would do anything.'
'Can't you leave the child alone?' suggested Charlotte Bigley, who
happened to be listening. 'She seems such a harmless infant to me. I
don't believe she even knows she is supposed to be in disgrace.'
It required a good deal of courage to stand up alone against all the girls
in the junior playroom, and Charlotte flushed a little when they all
laughed at her.
'That's where her artfulness comes in,' declared Jean. She thought she
heard her rival's voice on the other side of the curtain, and jealousy
made her more bitter than before. 'If you ask me, I believe she only
pretends not to notice any of us, so as to pick up everything she can; and
then she goes and sneaks it all to the elder ones.'
'Oh, Jean!' remonstrated Charlotte.
Jean looked a tiny bit ashamed of herself. It was not nearly so easy to
say unkind things about the new girl as it had been a week ago. All the
same, her unhappiness at the continued coldness of Margaret Hulme was
quite genuine, and it hurt her sorely to think that the head girl was
now smiling on the interloper as she used to smile upon her.
'Well, it's true!' she vowed. 'I vote we don't leave her alone, or give
her the chance of mocking at us, any more. She wants to be taught that
she's the youngest girl in the school, and that it isn't anything to be
cocky about. Anybody who likes can make up to her, as the big girls do;
but _I_ am going to see that she keeps in her place.'
'What a fuss to make about an innocent brat like that,' remarked
Charlotte, smiling scornfully. 'It's jealousy, because Margaret is
kind to her: that's all it is!'
That was decidedly what it was, but it did not soothe Jean's temper to
be told so in this blunt manner; and by the time her rival came in from
the seniors' room, the enemy had been worked up into a fine state of
resentment against her. Unconscious as ever that there was anything
unusual in the atmosphere of the junior playroom, Barbara slipped through
the girls who were standing about, and reached her footstool and her
letter almost before they noticed that she had returned. There seemed
to be some wrangling going on between Jean Murray and Charlotte; but Jean
Murray was always wrangling with some one about something, and Babs
paid no more attention to it than to the sudden hush that followed as
she dropped down in her old position on the floor. It was a good thing,
she thought, that nobody talked just then, because there was so little
time left in which to finish her letter. She took up the pages she had
written and glanced over them.
'Thank you awfuly much for your advice,' she had scrawled in her large
childish hand. 'I am cheering up lots and now that I don't take any
notice of the girls and their awfull siliness it is quite nice being here
but not nearly so nice as being at home with you and father all of
which is now burried for ever alass in my past. I don't hate girls
like I did at first. At first they were always bothering and asking
quesstions and being inquissitive but now they leave me alone and never
talk except when they want the salt or the butter or haven't heard the
number of the psarm at prayers or can't do their algibra I have lots
of algibra to do because girls aren't good at algibra I don't think so I
always do their algibra for them. Girls are no fun like boys but as long
as they don't say horible things to me like they did at first I think I
shall be able to bear them all right but its rather dull excep when we
play hockey I'm getting on at hockey Hurly-Burly says and she says I
shall play in matches some day and she's a brick and I like her. We
haven't had any gym yet because the gymnasiam is being painted but
we're going to begin to-morrow and I'm longing to begin they can't laugh
at my short skirts at gym because everybody's skirt is short at gym
and its red and very becomming Ruth says Ruth is Ruth Oliver and she's a
big girl and she hooks up my frocks and kisses me she kisses me rather
a lot but it's Ruth Oliver so I can put up with it. School is very nice
when it's games or algibra or latin but it's horrid when its dictation or
geography or coppies Finny says I must try so I am trying but I wish I
wasn't such an ignorrant girl I heard Jean Murray say yesterday I was the
most ignorrant girl that ever came inside this house but praps that was
because I had seventeen speling faults.'
She sighed as she dipped her pen in the ink again. That was all she had
said, after writing nearly all the afternoon and evening. And she had so
much more to say, and there was so little time left before prayers!
'I have just seen the doctor who is a Beast and he isn't a Beast,' she
had written laboriously on a fresh page, when Jean Murray stooped over
her and shook her vigorously by the arm.
'Oh, dear!' sighed Babs, feeling in her pocket for the handkerchief that
so rarely seemed to be in it. 'There's another blot, and I'm in such a
hurry!'
'It's no use losing your temper about it,' said Jean. 'You've got to get
up from the floor and fetch a desk, if you want to write letters.'
Barbara looked up in mild surprise. 'But I'm not losing my temper! Are
you sure you don't mean _you_ when you say me?' she asked with a spice
of mischief in her tone.
'There!' said Jean, turning triumphantly to the attendant Angela. 'Didn't
I say she was only laughing at us? Now, look here,' she continued,
turning again to Babs, 'you've got to remember that you're the youngest in
the school----'
'Oh, don't!' interrupted Babs, putting up her hands to her ears. 'You'll
begin about the head girl's boots next.'
It was the most luckless thing she could have said, for it convinced
Jean more than ever that the new girl was bent on making game of her
most serious feelings.
'I shall say anything I choose,' she retorted hotly. 'Get off the floor
at once, will you? We don't want ink spilt all over the place; this isn't
a nursery.'
'Who's spilling ink all over the place?' asked Barbara, without moving.
All the mischief that was in her rose uppermost when any one spoke to her
like that.
'You are, of course,' returned Jean, shaking her again. 'You're so badly
brought up that you don't know how to behave in a civilised house. You're
nothing but a young savage; I heard Margaret Hulme say so, directly you
arrived--there! It's easy to see you've never had any one to look after
you.'
The mischievous look died out of the child's face, and she gathered up
her papers and scrambled slowly to her feet. The boys would have known
that such lamblike behaviour was only the prelude to one of the Babe's
'furies'; but Jean thought she had succeeded at last in subduing her, and
she became exultant.
'It's time that some one civilised you,' she remarked scornfully. 'I'm
glad I've been brought up properly, and not neglected like you.'
Barbara flashed round upon her suddenly. 'What's the matter with my
bringing-up?' she demanded in a breathless voice. 'My father brought
me up, and no one in the whole world could have brought me up better
than he has.'
'That accounts for it,' scoffed Jean. 'Fathers can't bring anybody up,
especially girls. I've heard mother say so, lots of times.'
Barbara's eyes were glittering brightly. 'My father can,' she answered
swiftly. 'My father isn't like other people's fathers. You shouldn't judge
my father by your father. I don't expect your father to be clever because
mine is, do I?'
The implied insult was quite accidental on her part, in spite of the anger
that was growing in her; but Jean could not be expected to know that.
'How dare you say that my father isn't clever?' she cried indignantly.
'My father is a professor at Edinburgh, so there!'
'My father writes books,' answered Babs, proudly. 'It's much more
wonderful to write books than to be a professor, because everybody all
over the world hears of you if you write books.'
'That depends on whether they're good books,' argued Jean, warmly. 'You
_have_ to be clever if you want to be a professor, but any stupid person
can write a stupid book, and nobody ever hears of that kind of book at
all.'
'Everybody has heard of my father's book, though, so that shows how little
you know about it,' replied Barbara. 'The people in America liked his book
so much that they asked him to go all the way to America to lecture about
it. The people in America never asked _your_ father----'
'Is your father called Everard Berkeley?' asked Jean, suddenly. She
had not listened to grown-up conversations in the Christmas holidays
for nothing, and she thought she saw her way at last to crushing the
irrepressible new girl, once and for all.
Babs nodded. She was too proud to say anything. What other girl in the
room had a father who was so celebrated that people knew him by his
Christian name, instead of calling him just _Mr._ Somebody? She had only
a short time in which to enjoy her triumph, however, for Jean Murray
turned quickly on her heel, and walked off with a swaggering step.
'Then my father says that your father is a failure over here,' she
answered, tossing her head contemptuously. 'Nobody will read his old
book in England; so he was _obliged_ to go to America.'
The other girls were beginning to notice the dispute, and they came
crowding round to hear what it was all about. Most of them were in
time to see Jean Murray walk off with her head in the air, just as the
little new girl clenched her fists and crouched down as if to make a
spring. Then the storm broke, and the Babe's fury was let loose among the
fifty-five occupants of the junior playroom.
It was an easy matter, in that spring forward, to send some half dozen or
so spinning out of her way, but Barbara did not stop to see what happened
to them. All she wanted to do was to reach the arch offender of them all,
the one who had dared to slight her father, and to hold him up to the
ridicule of fifty-five girls.
Nobody quite knew what did happen on this unexampled occasion in the
annals of Wootton Beeches; and certainly nobody stirred a finger to put
a stop to it. All that the girls in the senior playroom could tell about
it afterwards was that a sudden scuffle and several screams broke the
hush and hum of voices on the other side of the curtain; and then Angela
Wilkins dashed through the archway with a terrified look on her face, and
seized Margaret by the arm.
'Oh, come! do come!' she sobbed out in her fright. 'Barbara Berkeley has
got Jean Murray down on the floor, and she's _killing_ her!'