AT THE WINDOW TABLE
“I just half-guessed you’d be in our room,” said Gerry. “That was
why I couldn’t help speaking to you in the station.”
She had dimpled herself into Betty’s cubicle, and had perched
herself, still dimpling, on the side of Betty’s bed. Her hat had
been left downstairs, and a mass of red-to-golden hair seemed almost
to glitter as she sat there. To Betty’s admiring eyes she seemed a
glittery sort of person altogether.
“When I saw you standing under the clock,” continued Gerry, as the
dimple came and went, “I said, ‘That’s _her_!’” She broke off
suddenly--not to correct her grammatical lapse, but to start in
surprise at the sound of a louder voice than her own.
“_Geraldine!_” said the outraged voice.
“Oh!” cried Gerry with an apologetic squeak.
She rose from the white coverlet as she squeaked, and was attempting
to remove certain creases as Nurse drew back the curtain.
“In another girl’s cubicle, and before half an hour of the term has
passed, Geraldine!” remarked the starched and stately dignitary. “I
had two thoughts about putting a new girl in here at all; for with
you so forgetful and all, how’s she to learn the rules? Rumpling the
covers--!” Nurse bent down and smoothed the coverlet herself; “and
she younger than you, and needing teaching!”
[Illustration: “I just half-guessed you’d be in our room.”]
Nurse’s tone was majestic in its intonation, and a subdued voice came
in reply from the other end of the room where Gerry had fled to her
own domain.
“Nurse, I honestly forgot. I’ll really remember. In three weeks,
you know, one can forget such lots of things!”
But Nurse replied not at all, and apparently making no allowance for
this extenuating circumstance, turned to Betty instead. “You’re
ready now? Well, Geraldine may take you downstairs when the tea-gong
rings. You will see Miss Carey afterwards; but first of all she
wishes you to have your tea.”
Nurse withdrew, and the closing of the door behind her seemed to
serve to loosen the tongue of Gerry, who burst into a flood of
conversation without delay.
“I _did_ forget. Honest Injun, I did. We’re not allowed in each
other’s cubicles without permission, though we may have the curtains
drawn back. Nurse is most awfully strict; but she’s not really so
strict as she seems. For one thing,” Gerry sighed, “she might have
lost me a dormitory mark, but she didn’t. I’d like to have seen
Mona’s and Irene’s faces if I’d lost one. We’re all Daisies, you
see, and----”
The speaker broke off as the sound of a loud but very
melodiously-toned gong boomed somewhere from the regions below.
Tea-time; there was no doubt of that; and the new girl was thankful
of Geraldine’s presence at her side as the pair made their way down
the wide and shallow stair.
She was still more thankful that she was not alone when they had
reached the bottom, for their progress was held up there on the
lowest step as the school filed its way dining-room wards. Along the
corridor, in a single line, without hurry and without words,
came--first of all--the older girls, then the junior girls behind.
Gerry waited till they had filed past, and then took her own place at
the end with Betty beside her. It felt wonderful to Betty to take
her place, too, by right in the procession; there were thirty-three
of them altogether, counting Gerry and herself, for she had numbered
every one while they were passing. There would have been only
thirty-two girls at St. Benedick’s if _she_ were not there, she told
herself; but she was here, and so there were thirty-_three_! The
delicious thought made her gulp with pride.
She forgot the pride, though, for shyness again, just for a little
while, when the dining-room door was reached. At home meals were
generally eaten in a basement room, to save trouble for the general
servant whose duties were so never-ending. Here the very idea of a
meal in such a lovely room made Betty gasp with shyness at first, and
then realize suddenly how hungry she was!
The dining-room ceiling overhead was oak-beamed; the walls were
panelled in dark oak too; the mullioned windows which lined one side
of the wall were all thrown widely open, and the scent of stocks and
pinks seemed to fill the room.
A big bowl of pinks, too, stood in the middle of each of the three
tables, one of which--of circular shape--was smaller than the others.
This round table was placed in the very centre of the room, and was
flanked on either side by a longer and narrower one. Betty, standing
in the doorway, saw six senior girls take their places at the round
table, while a line of junior girls, each evidently taking her own
seat by right, advanced to each of the narrow tables in quiet file.
“Geraldine, please take Betty Carlyle to the window table with you,”
came the voice of a mistress standing at the door.
It was all so quiet and orderly, and yet it didn’t feel “ruley.”
Every girl, as Betty took her place at the corner of her table,
seemed cheerily smiling at her neighbour as though thoroughly
contented with her lot. The new girl felt contented too, but her
feeling of contentment changed suddenly to one of surprise when,
after listening to the words of the Grace pronounced by the mistress
in charge, every tongue seemed suddenly unloosed all round her, and
the room began to buzz and hum with animated conversation.
“Well, as I was just beginning to tell you when the gong sounded,
we--” burst out somebody sitting close by and speaking to her table
neighbour.
“The day Paul broke his ankle, I can tell _you_, First Aid came in
useful,” pronounced somebody else with enthusiasm.
“I started at nine, and I hardly had _any_ lunch,” came a ravenous
voice.
Everybody seemed to have something to say except Betty, and she
didn’t need to talk to Gerry at her side; for Gerry, evidently keen
to make her companion feel at home, burst into a glib and speedy
description of their immediate surroundings.
“That’s Mona opposite to you. She sleeps in our room. She’s talking
to Molly now, but I’ll make her look presently. We don’t talk across
tables, you know.
“Isn’t it nice that you’re a ‘window-table’ girl! It’s much the
nicest table, _we_ say, though the ‘wallflower-table’ girls (that’s
what we call the girls at the wall table) say they can see far
farther over the garden than we can. All the same we sometimes get
bees flying right in, and once a butterfly too.” Gerry stopped for
breath.
“I love this table,” said Betty shyly.
“So do I. That’s Joan Struthers taking the head to-night. She’s a
prefect. You can tell them--if they _need_ telling--because their
hair’s turned up. Even if it’s been bobbed, it has to grow _then_!
There’s seven prefects, but only six places are ever laid at the
prefects’ table, you see, because one of them always heads a table.
Miss Stewart’s at the wallflower table this week; but she will be at
this table next week--in fair turns, you see--and the wallflower
girls will get a prefect.” Gerry took a mouthful of scrambled eggs.
Betty took a mouthful, too, and gazed across at the middle table.
Then suddenly she flushed with pride and pleasure as a friendly smile
met her inquiring look. For Sybil was seated there--Sybil of the
train journey. In all the excitements Betty had almost forgotten
her, but it seemed that the older girl had not forgotten Betty. How
quiet and dignified she looked, Betty thought, as she sat there with
a golden braid of hair wound in a coronet round her head.
“There--there’s the girl who told me to stand under the clock,” she
whispered, touching Geraldine’s arm.
Gerry nodded. “That’s Sybil. She’s the head of our patrol. She’s
head girl too this term of the school. Our patrol is the Daisies.
I’m in it; and Mona and Irene as well. We’ve got four patrols at
school, you know; there are the Buttercups and the Cowslips and the
Foxgloves as well as us. I don’t see how you can possibly be in our
bedroom without being a Daisy; but, you see--” Gerry’s tone broke
off in rather a worried note.
“Oh, I do hope--” began Betty feverishly, just as silence fell
suddenly upon the room as Miss Stewart tapped on the table.
“Girls, go straight to the Oak Room, as you always do on the first
day. Miss Carey is ready for you now.”
Perhaps the Oak Room had been used in the early days as a banqueting
hall, for a musicians’ gallery ran round the four walls overhead.
Perhaps stately family festivals, banquets, and ceremonial feasts had
taken place here in years gone by. But for all that, the old
pictures still hanging on the walls seemed to look down tolerantly on
the girls of to-day as they entered.
But perhaps, too, it was the sight of them all--young, gay,
simple-hearted, and with life stretching so invitingly before
them--standing in the room that held so many echoes of the past,
which made the headmistress when she entered pause for a moment and
look down at them quietly before she spoke.
Scarcely an opening speech could her words be called, for her words
were, as usual, few. But even before Miss Carey had opened her lips
some of the waiting girls had felt themselves under the influence of
what she had come to say.
Slight and straight she stood there; somehow, in her quiet and gentle
but forceful dignity, she seemed, as always, with her understanding
appreciation of the beauty of things past, and with her power to see
beauty in things present, to be a link between the house which had
belonged to yesterday and the girls of to-day. “_Festina lente._”
(It was the school motto that she took as her text--“Hasten slowly.”)
She spoke of the old house which sheltered them. “We could not have
a happier setting for a school with our motto,” said Miss Carey.
“Every day that we spend here should teach us more of what our motto
means. Years and years have passed as it has stood here, and its
beauty has grown. ‘_Festina lente_’ seems to me to have been its
motto too. No fuss; no undue haste; until now, in the full beauty of
its age, it has given us shelter, and we can learn here the lesson
which is so difficult to learn in the busy world of to-day.
“Outside, in life, there is so much hurry-scurry nowadays. You, who
are one with the outside life, and must take your share in it later,
are spending certain years here to fit you for your life outside.
And these years should be for you later on, I like to think, a
treasure which, in the storm and stress that life must bring to each
of us, no one can take from you. Quiet memories will be yours of a
time when--helped perhaps more than you realize now by the atmosphere
and influence of this house itself--you, each one, laid up a store of
strength for later days.
“And because, here at St. Benedick’s, we ‘study to be quiet,’ you
will not be the less fitted, I think, when you leave for the world
outside, if you go out remembering that in quietness and in
confidence is your greatest strength. No, all I have to say to you
at the opening of this term can be summed up again, I think, in our
motto: _Festina lente_ (Hasten slowly); for nothing in life is worth
having that can be gained by snatching. Our motto means much, and it
may grow to mean more and more through life to each one of you if you
will remember it. Hasten slowly; and ‘Patience, then, will have her
perfect work.’”