On Sufferance
"Scratch, scratch, scratch,
Scratch went the old black hen!
Every fowl that scrapes in the barn
Can scratch as well as your pen!"
So sang Rona, bounding noisily one afternoon into No. 3, Room 5, and
popping her hands from behind over Ulyth's eyes as the latter sat
writing at a table near the window.
"What are you always scratching away for? Can't you finish your work at
prep.? Why don't you come downstairs and play basket-ball? You're mighty
studious all of a sudden. What have you got here?"
Ulyth flushed crimson with annoyance, and turned her sheets of foolscap
hastily over to hide them from her room-mate's prying eyes.
"You're not to touch my papers, Rona! I've told you that before."
"Well, I wasn't touching them. Looking's not touching, anyway. What are
you doing? It's queer taste to sit scribbling here half your spare
time."
"What I was doing is my own concern, and no business of yours."
"Now you're riled," said the Cuckoo, sitting down easily on her bed. "I
didn't mean any harm. I always seem sticking my foot into it somehow."
Ulyth sighed. Nobody in the school realized how much she had to put up
with from her irrepressible room-mate, whose hearty voice, extraordinary
expressions, and broad notions of fun grated upon her sensitive nature.
Rona did not appreciate in the least the heroic sacrifice that Ulyth was
making. It had never occurred to her that she might be placed in another
dormitory, and that she only remained on sufferance in No. 3. She
admired Ulyth immensely, and was quite prepared to take her as a model,
but at present the copy was very far indeed from the original. The
mistresses had instituted a vigorous crusade against Rona's loud voice
and unconventional English, and she was really making an effort to
improve; but the habits of years are not effaced in a few weeks, and she
still scandalized the authorities considerably. Ulyth could tolerate her
when she kept to her own side of the bedroom, but to have meddlesome
fingers interfering with her private possessions was the last straw to
her burden of endurance.
"Do you understand?" she repeated emphatically. "You're not to touch my
papers at all!"
"All serene! I won't lay a finger on them--honest--sure!" returned the
Cuckoo, chanting her words to the air of "Swanee River", and drumming an
accompaniment on the bedpost. "What d'you think Stephanie called me just
now? She said I was an unlicked cub."
"Oh, surely she didn't! Are you certain?"
"Heard her myself. She said it to my face and tittered. You bet I'll pay
her out somehow. Miss Stephanie Radford needs taking down a peg. Oh,
don't alarm yourself, I'll do it neatly! There'll be no clumsy bungling
about it. Well, if you won't go down and play basket-ball I shall. It's
more fun than sitting up here."
As the door banged behind Rona, Ulyth heaved an ecstatic "Thank
goodness!" She sat for a few moments trying to regain her composure
before she recommenced the writing at which she had been interrupted.
The manuscript on which she was engaged was very precious. She had set
herself no less a task than to write a book. The subject had come to her
suddenly one morning as she lay awake in bed, and she regarded it as an
inspiration. She would make a story about The Woodlands, and bring in
all the girls she knew. It was no use struggling with a historical plot
or a romance of the war--she had tried these, and stuck fast in the
first chapters; it was better to employ the material close at hand, and
weave her tale from the every-day incidents which happened in the
school. So she had begun, and though she floundered a little at the
difficulty of transferring her impressions to paper, she was making
distinct progress.
"I'd never dare to have it published, of course," she ruminated. "Still,
it's a beginning, and I shall like to read it over to myself. I think
there are some rather neat bits in it, especially that shot at Addie
and Stephie. How wild they'd be if they knew! But there's no fear of
that. I'll take good care nobody finds out."
When to make time to go on with her literary composition was the
difficulty. It was hard to snatch even an occasional half-hour during
the day. Where there is a will, however, there is generally also a way,
and Ulyth hit upon the plan of getting up very early in the morning and
writing while Rona was still asleep. The Cuckoo never stirred until the
seven o'clock bell rang, when she would awake noisily, with many yawns
and stretchings of arms, so Ulyth flattered herself that her secret was
absolutely safe.
Where to hide the precious papers was another problem. She did not dare
to put them in any of her drawers, her desk would not lock, and her
little jewel-box was too small to contain them.
The fireplace in the bedroom had an old-fashioned chimney-piece that was
fitted with a loose wooden mantel-board, from which hung a border of
needlework. It was quite easy to lift up this board and slip the papers
between it and the chimney-piece; the border completely screened the
hiding-place, and, except at a spring-cleaning, the arrangement was not
likely to be disturbed. Ulyth congratulated herself greatly upon her
ingenuity. It was interesting to have a secret which nobody even
guessed. She often looked at the chimney-piece, and chuckled as she
thought of what lay concealed there.
The days were rapidly closing in now, and the time between tea and
preparation, which only a few weeks ago was devoted to a last game of
tennis or a run by the stream, was perforce spent by the schoolroom
fire. It was only a short interval, not long enough to make any
elaborate occupation worth while, so the girls sat knitting in the
twilight and chatting until the bell rang for evening work.
One afternoon, when tea was finished, Ulyth, instead of joining the
others as usual, walked upstairs to put away some specimens in the
Museum. She passed V B classroom as she did so, and heard smothered
peals of mirth issuing from behind the half-closed door.
"What are they doing?" she thought. "I believe I'll go and see." But
catching Rona's laugh above the rest, she changed her mind, walked on,
and bestowed her fossils carefully in a spare corner of one of the
cases. Meanwhile, the group assembled round the fire in V B were
enjoying themselves. The room was growing dusk, but, seated on the
hearthrug, Addie Knighton could see quite sufficiently to read aloud
extracts from a document she was perusing, extracts to which the others
listened with thrilling interest, interspersed with comments.
"'The girls of the Oaklands'," so she read, "'were a rather peculiar and
miscellaneous set, especially those in the Lower Fifth. Scarcely any of
them could be called pretty--'" ("Oh! oh!" howled the attentive circle.)
"'One of them, Valerie Chadford, imagined herself so, and gave herself
fearful airs in consequence; she was very set up at knowing smart
people, and often bragged about it.'" ("I'll never forgive her, never!"
screamed Stephanie.) "'The twins, Pearl and Doris, were fat, stodgy
girls, who wore five-and-a-halfs in shoes and had twenty-seven-inch
waists.'" ("Oh! Won't Merle and Alice be just frantic when they hear?")
"'But even they were more interesting than Nellie Clacton, who usually
sat with her mouth open, as if she was trying to catch flies.'" ("Does
she mean me?" gasped Mary Acton indignantly.) "'Florence Tulliver was
inclined to be snarly, and often said mean things about other people
behind their backs.'" ("I'll say something now!" declared Gertrude
Oliver.) "'And Annie Ryton was----'" but here Addie broke off abruptly
and exploded.
"Go on! Go on!" commanded the girls.
"It's too lovely!" spluttered Addie. "O--ho--ho! So that's what she
thinks of me, is it?"
"Read it, can't you?"
"Here, give the paper to me!"
"No, no! I'll go on--but--I didn't know my eyes were like faded
gooseberries, and my hair like dried seaweed!"
"Has she described herself!" asked Stephanie.
"I haven't come to it yet. Oh yes! here we are, farther on: 'Our
heroine, Morvyth Langton, was an unusually----'"
But here Addie stopped abruptly, for a blazing little fury stood in the
doorway.
"Addie Knighton, how dare you? How dare you? Give me that paper this
instant!"
"No, no! It's much too interesting. Let go! Don't be silly! How can you?
Oh, what a shame!" as Ulyth in her anger tore the manuscript across and
flung it into the fire.
"Whew! Now you've gone and done it!" whistled Rona.
Ulyth was holding down the last flaming fragment with the poker. When it
had expired she turned to the guilty circle. "Who took my papers from my
bedroom?"
Her voice was sharp, and her eyes fixed full on Rona.
"I didn't touch them. I never laid so much as a finger on them,"
protested the Cuckoo.
"But you told someone where they were?"
Rona winked in reply. Yes, alas! winked consciously and deliberately.
(It was well for her that Miss Moseley was not in the room.)
"I knew you'd got something there," she admitted. "Were you such an
innocent as to think I never saw you scribbling away hard in the early
mornings? Why, I was foxing! I used to watch you while I was snoring,
and nearly died with laughing because you never found me out."
If eyes could slay, Ulyth's would have finished Rona at that moment. But
Addie Knighton, whose suspension of mirth had been merely a species of
temporary paralysis, now relapsed into a choking series of guffaws, in
which the others joined boisterously.
"I can't--get--over--seaweed--and faded gooseberries!" crowed Addie
hysterically.
"I don't catch flies with my open mouth!" shouted Mary Acton, suspending
her knitting in her indignation.
"Will somebody please measure the twins' waists?" bleated Christine.
"I didn't say it was meant for any of you. If the cap fits, put it on.
Listeners hear no good of themselves, and no more do people who read
what isn't intended for them. It serves you all right, so there!" and
Ulyth flounced out of the room.
She ran straight up to her bedroom, and burst into tears. It was such a
tragi-comedy ending to her literary ambition. She would rather the girls
had been more indignant than that they had laughed so much.
"I'll never write another line again," she resolved; and then she
thought of the binding she had always intended to have on her first
published book, and wept harder.
"Ulyth," said the Cuckoo, stealing in rather shamefacedly, "I'm really
frightfully sorry if you're riled. I didn't know you cared all that much
about those old papers. I told Addie, as a joke, and she went and poked
them out. I think they were fine. It was a shame to burn them. Can't you
write them over again?"
"Never!" Ulyth replied, wiping her eyes. "Rona, you don't realize what
damage you've done. There! oh yes, I'll forgive you, but if you want to
keep friends with me, don't go and do anything of the sort again, that's
all!"
Ulyth felt a little shy of meeting her class-mates after their discovery
of the very unflattering description she had written of them, but the
girls were good-natured and did not bear malice. They treated the whole
affair as an intense joke, and even took to calling one another by the
assumed names of the story. They composed extra portions, including a
lurid description of Ulyth herself, illustrated by rapid sketches on the
black-board. The disappointed authoress took it with what calm she could
muster. She knew they meant to tease, and the fewer sparks they could
raise from her the sooner they would desist and let the matter drop. It
would probably serve as a target for Addie's wit till the end of the
term, unless the excitement of the newly formed ambulance class chased
it from her memory. The Woodlanders were trying to do their duty by
their country, and all the girls were enthusiastically practising
bandaging.
"I wish we'd some real patients to bind up," sighed Merle one day, as V
B took its turn under Nurse Griffith's instructions.
"I'd be sorry for them if they were left to your tender mercies,"
retorted Mavis, who had been posing as patient. "My arm's sore yet with
your vigorous measures."
"What nonsense! I was as gentle as a lamb."
"A curious variety of lamb then, with a wolf inside."
"I believe The Woodlands would make a gorgeous hospital," suggested
Addie hopefully. "When we're through our course we might have some real
patients down and nurse them."
"Don't you think it! The Rainbow won't carry ambulance lessons as far as
that!"