A CARICATURE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Geraldine was awakened next morning by the loud ringing of the
getting-up bell, and she tumbled out of bed in a hurry, having been
informed by Jack the previous evening that a bad mark was the result of
a late appearance at breakfast. However, on this first morning, she
was dressed in plenty of time, and even had to wait a few minutes
before the second bell, which was the signal for the girls to leave
their dormitories, rang through the school.
When she reached the dining-hall she found that the place she had
occupied for her first two meals in the school was no longer vacant, it
having been claimed by Vera Davies, the small girl who had been
displaced by Monica the day before to make room for Geraldine. Vera
was an ardent admirer of Monica Deane, Geraldine discovered later.
"I _always_ sit here," the little girl said in a vigorous whisper as
Geraldine came up. "You must find a place somewhere else--there's
loads of room."
Geraldine looked about her in rather a helpless way. Then she caught
sight of Jack Pym making grimaces at her from the other side of the
room, indicating by various gestures and contortions that Geraldine was
to come to her table. Not sorry to escape from the small Vera's
hostile glances, Geraldine quickly made her way thither and was
deposited at an empty place next to Jack at the end of the long table.
Jack's immediate neighbour on her other side was Nita Fleming, another
member of the Lower Fifth, who leant forward to smile amiably at
Geraldine and was introduced at once by Jack.
"Nita's been longing to see you ever since I told her we'd got a new
girl in the Lower Fifth," she remarked. "She's hoping that perhaps she
won't be bottom of the form any longer, now you're here--aren't you,
old thing?" with an affectionate tug at Nita's long, fair pigtail, a
proceeding which led to instant retaliation by Nita upon Jack's short
locks, and brought down upon the two the wrath of the prefect in charge
of the table.
"Jack Pym and Nita Fleming--what are you doing? You're not to sit
together, you two, if you're going to behave like this. Change places
with that new girl next to you, Jack. Here, you," addressing
Geraldine, "sit next to Nita Fleming, will you, and try and keep her
and Jack in order if you can."
A mistress came in at this moment to say grace, and then the girls sat
down to the meal. Geraldine took her place between Jack and Nita with
the rueful reflection that she seemed fated to be the separator of
friends at Wakehurst Priory. However, Jack and Nita appeared to bear
her no malice, and bandied words with each other across her in the
liveliest way, taking her into the conversation with the utmost
affability. There was no such friendship between Jack and Nita as
there was between Phyllis and Dorothy, Jack being very cosmopolitan in
her friendships, and possessing as many different "partners" as there
were walks in the week.
After breakfast the girls retired to their dormitories to make their
beds and tidy their cubicles. Then came some half-hour or so of free
time before the bell went for prayers. After prayers, the girls were
marched to the Great Hall, where Miss Oakley, the headmistress, read
out the form lists for the term, and made a few remarks appropriate for
the occasion. And then the various forms departed to their respective
classrooms, where the real business of the day began in earnest.
Although she had never been to school before, Geraldine found that she
was not at all behind the rest of the class. She had been very
well-grounded by her governesses, and although, of course, she was
handicapped a little by not knowing the class methods, her general
knowledge compared very favourably with the attainments of the rest of
the form. Indeed, she won a word of approval from the Sixth Form's
form-mistress, Miss Latham, at the conclusion of the lesson on English
history.
"You have evidently had a very good grounding, Geraldine," the mistress
said. "You appear to possess intelligence, too. If all your work is
as good as your history, you ought to get on well in your form.
Margaret, since you are her neighbour, will you show Geraldine some of
those historical analyses you did for me last term, so that she may see
how I want your preparation done?"
"Yes, Miss Latham," replied Margaret, a rather nondescript individual
who occupied the desk next to the one that had been allotted to
Geraldine; and the mistress, gathering together her papers, prepared to
leave the room.
"It is a little early yet for your next class," she observed, as she
rose from her seat. "But I have to see Miss Oakley before going on to
the Middle Fifth, so I cannot give you quite your full time this
morning. Who is head of this form? You, Hilda? Very well, then, see
that nobody talks until Miss Parrot comes to you. You can be looking
up some of those dates I want you to learn while you are waiting." And
the mistress departed from the Lower Fifth classroom, leaving an
apparently studious and orderly form behind her.
For a few minutes strict silence prevailed in the classroom. But after
a while the silence was broken by subdued titterings from the back row,
and Hilda Burns, the head of the form, turned sharply round to discover
that Phyllis Tressider and Dorothy Pemberton were leaning over Jack
Pym's desk. Jack was drawing busily.
"I say, do be quiet. Didn't you hear what Miss Latham said?"
remonstrated Hilda, rather half-heartedly it must be confessed. The
three girls in question did not take much notice of her appeal, and
after a moment or two she made it again.
Dorothy turned to her with a delighted grin.
"We're not talking--we're only laughing. Hilda, do come and look!
Jack's doing caricatures of the mistresses. Aren't they ripping?"
Several of the girls gathered round Jack's desk, Hilda herself amongst
them.
"Oh, I say, how topping! Do do one of Pretty Polly and give it to me!"
"All right, I will presently. Wait till she comes in and then I'll try
and do her. I have to see the person I'm caricaturing or else I can't
get them properly. I did that one of Miss Latham during the history
lesson just now. She never twigged."
"I don't wonder," declared Phyllis admiringly. "I didn't either. I
thought you were just making notes. But when did you learn to do it,
Jack? Of course I know you always were good at drawing, but I hadn't
the slightest idea that you could do such ripping caricatures."
"I didn't know it myself," replied Jack, still busily working with her
pencil. "But when we were at the seaside this year we came across a
man who did them for the papers. At least I came across him. He saved
my shoes and stockings from being washed away by the tide while I was
paddling one morning. And then we all chummed up with him and he
showed us some of his sketches, and we all started trying to do the
people we saw on the beach, and he said mine were quite decent for a
kid. There you are, Dorothy, there's your beloved Miss Latham. Who is
it you want, Hilda? Pretty Polly? All right, I'll do her if I get the
chance."
"Do one for me, Jack, there's a darling," cried a girl sitting close to
Geraldine, and then the whole form began clamouring for drawings of
their most beloved, or most hated, mistresses. Hilda felt it incumbent
upon her to raise her voice again in protest at last.
"I say, _do_ be quiet! Miss Parrot will be along directly. There'll
be an awful bust-up if she catches us talking like this."
But her remonstrance did not have much effect, except that it rather
served to increase the confusion. For Phyllis Tressider, crumpling up
a sheet of paper into a ball, flung it at her with an injunction to
"Shut up, dear old thing!" and the rest of the form promptly followed
her example. In a few seconds the head of the Lower Fifth was almost
snowed under with missiles of various sorts.
"I say--stop it!" she gasped, dodging an exercise book, only to receive
a piece of india-rubber full in the eye. Then, as a quick step sounded
in the passage outside, she sat up straight in her desk in an attitude
of sudden attention.
"Cave--Miss Parrot!" she whispered hoarsely. In a moment the Lower
Fifth was sitting rigidly at attention again, every sign of the late
battle cleared out of sight as though by a miracle. Only Geraldine,
new to scenes like this, not realising what this sudden transformation
might mean, was still sitting twisted round in her desk in the position
from which she had been watching the uproar in interested amusement.
She soon realised what the sudden change meant though, when Miss
Parrot, the form-mistress of the Lower Fifth, known throughout the
school as "Pretty Polly" from her name and her supposed resemblance to
the bird in question, came briskly into the room. The mistress's quick
ears had caught the sound of the conflict from afar, and she at once
pounced upon Geraldine's unconventional attitude as being the only sign
of disorder her sharp eyes could perceive.
"Geraldine Wilmott, what are you doing, sitting like that in class?
Turn round properly at once. I heard a great deal of noise as I came
along--has anything been happening?"
There was no answer to her question; and after surveying the virtuously
innocent faces before her the mistress was about to let the matter
drop--reflecting that after all it was the first day of term, when a
little leniency might be advisable--when her attention was attracted by
the sight of a screwed-up paper ball lying on the floor just in front
of Geraldine's desk. All the other missiles had been dexterously
cleared away; but Geraldine, not realising any necessity for doing so,
had failed to remove the one sign of the battle that had fallen near
her desk. Indeed, she had hardly noticed that any had fallen there.
Miss Parrot was of a very orderly nature. In her classroom nothing was
ever permitted to be out of place, and the sight of the ball of paper
was too much for her to pass over.
"What is that untidy piece of paper doing there?" she demanded sharply.
"Is it yours, Geraldine? Bring it here to me."
Thus directed, Geraldine rose from her desk, and picking up the ball of
paper took it to the mistress. Having delivered it, she was about to
return to her seat, but the mistress stayed her with uplifted hand.
"Wait," she said authoritatively. "I want to see what this is. Some
of you have been up to mischief in my absence." And she slowly
unrolled the ball of paper, finally disclosing a rough copy of the
caricature of Miss Latham, which Jack had discarded for some reason,
and which Phyllis, all unaware of what it was, had used as a missile.
Although it was unfinished, the sketch bore a sufficient likeness to
the mistress for Miss Parrot to recognise the original. Her face grew
stern as she held the paper out to the girl who was standing beside her
desk.
"Is this your work?" she asked in a cold tone.
Geraldine glanced at the paper. Then she flushed suddenly crimson with
nervous shyness, and stammered out in confusion:
"N--n--no, Miss Parrot."
The mistress looked at her suspiciously.
"Are you _sure_?" she said.
Geraldine's confusion grew still greater, and the mistress felt that
her suspicions were justified. The girl's stammered denial did nothing
to allay them, and her voice when she spoke again was very stern indeed.
"Geraldine, you are not telling me the truth. You do know something
about this paper. I command you to tell me at once what it is you
know."
"I--I can't tell you anything about it," said poor Geraldine, not
knowing what to do or say. But this answer only served to anger Miss
Parrot yet more.
"You will please oblige me by thinking about it until you _can_ tell me
something," she remarked icily. "Go and stand over there," pointing to
a place facing the rest of the class, "until you can remember whether
or not this paper belongs to you. If that does not assist your memory
I shall be obliged to take you to Miss Oakley after class."
Geraldine made a movement towards the appointed spot, but before she
could reach it, Jack Pym rose abruptly in her desk.
"Please, Miss Parrot, I can't see that paper but I don't think it's got
anything to do with Geraldine. If it's a drawing, I expect it belongs
to me."
Miss Parrot's eyebrows went up.
"Indeed! Wait a moment, Geraldine. Suppose you come here, Jack, and
see if you can identify it."
Jack made her way rather sulkily to Miss Parrot's desk.
"Yes, it's mine," she said. "I did it for a joke."
"A joke in very questionable taste, _I_ think," said the mistress
severely. "I am afraid I shall have to discourage your sense of
humour, Jack, since it hardly accords with my own. You will take a
conduct mark, please, and forfeit next Saturday's half-holiday. And I
hope this may be a lesson to you to refrain for the future from using
your undoubted talent for drawing in making vulgar representations of
those who are put in authority over you. You may go back to your seat.
And, Geraldine, you may return to yours. I am very sorry that I
misjudged you; but really, you looked so guilty that I could not help
thinking that you had something to do with the matter. Now, please, we
will begin the lesson. We have wasted far too much time already."
The Lower Fifth dutifully turned to its books and plunged at the
mistress's bidding into the intricacies of decimal fractions. But
although Geraldine acquitted herself fairly well over the lesson that
followed, she was not happy. She was miserable at the part she had
played in getting Jack into trouble, and she had been, also, acutely
conscious of hostile glances from her companions as she made her way
back to her seat. Although it was not altogether her fault, she was
uncomfortably aware that the caricature episode had not by any means
enhanced her popularity with the rest of her form.
School life promised to be rather a difficult affair altogether,
Geraldine reflected with a sigh.