THE LAST DAYS OF TERM
‟YOU didn’t truly mean it, Helen—last night? About being prefects?”
The twins had sought Helen Forester in her study, finding her in the
throes of packing up. In itself this was a distressing sight, and
induced seriousness. Every one had been proud of the Captain’s pretty
room, with its dainty furniture. The big, comfortable couch looked bare,
stripped of its Indian rug and the dark-blue cushions embroidered with
the School badge. Gone were the photographs—hockey and tennis teams,
girls, past and present, Cingalese pictures, and views of Helen’s own
people, and of her home in the Western District. Gone, too, were the
trophies of her five years at school: silver cups, won in many a
hard-fought fight with other schools and other Merriwa champions. Their
places looked bare and dismal. In the middle of the room a packing-case
yawned widely to receive everything.
Helen, mounted on a table, was detaching a racquet from the wall. She
balanced herself on one foot, and the table creaked ominously.
“Sit on the other edge, will you?” she asked with some anxiety. The
twins sprang to her aid, and she brought down the racquet in safety.
Then she sat on the table and looked at them.
“Mean it? Why, yes, of course I meant it. You can see for yourself,
kiddies. There were twelve of us at supper last night, and you were the
youngest. Seven of us are leaving. That’s a big loss out of the seniors,
isn’t it?”
“But there are other seniors,” said Jean, hopefully. “Ethel Tarrant
wasn’t there, nor Janie Frith, nor Doris Harvey.”
“Yes, but look at them. Ethel thinks of nothing in the world but music.
She lives with her head in a cloud composed of Chopin and Debussy and
Bach. Janie Frith is far too delicate to be counted on, and will never
be a prefect. And Doris is queer and prickly, and won’t take part in
anything. Not one of them plays games. No, as far as I can see, you two
will have to make up your minds to it—not at once, but in six months’
time. You’ll do it, too, all right, because you love the School.”
“Oh—if loving the School were all——” The twins hesitated.
“Why, it’s ninety per cent. You two care awfully for the School, and
you’ll never let it down. The honour of the School means a heap to you,
and it will mean more. You know how high we stand, and what is expected
of us. Merriwa isn’t a new thing: lots of our mothers were here before
us, and we’ve got traditions as well as present honour.”
“But that makes it all the worse!” Jean said. “Of course, Mother was
here, and she told us about the School from the time we could walk.
She’s terribly proud of it. She regards us as about six, and she’ll be
horrified if she thinks there is a chance of slumping to people like us
for prefects!”
“Well, you have got to see that it isn’t a slump.” The Captain swung the
dusty racquet slowly to and fro, looking at them thoughtfully. “You’ll
be sixteen; I was only that when I got my prefect’s badge——”
“Oh, but you——!” broke in the twins.
“Oh, of course, I know I was a marvel!” The tall girl laughed at their
eager faces. “Just between you and me, I wasn’t a marvel in the least. I
was fairly harum-scarum, and the idea of responsibility appalled me. I
thought the girls would just yell with laughter at the idea of my being
a prefect.”
“They certainly will at us!” said Jo, ruefully.
“Well, they didn’t—much. And they stop laughing after a while, as
you’ll find. You don’t want to get fussed or worried—only go straight
ahead. If you get it into everybody’s mind that certain things are done,
just as certain things aren’t done, simply because it’s the
School—well, you won’t have much trouble. You two have a tremendous
start, because your mother was here before you, and because you grew up
with the School in your bones. Just remember that.”
“Why, I thought it was the other way round!” Jean said.
“Oh, you owls, how can it be? Who’s likely to do best for the
School—you, brought up on its traditions, or young Pearlie Alexander,
who’s not quite happy that her people didn’t send her to Kooringal,
’cause she thinks it’s a shade smarter than Merriwa? And smartness, to
her type, simply means richer fathers and bigger motors. If she went to
Kooringal and thought Eversleigh College had a few more Rolls-Royces
pulling up before it, she’d want to go there. What does the school
itself matter to the Pearlie type? They make me tired!” She laughed. “I
can say what I like about her because she’s leaving!”
The twins laughed in sympathy.
“Well, it’s comforting to think you don’t believe we’d make a hopeless
mess of it,” Jo said. “We’ll try to believe it too, but it’s difficult.
And the most difficult of all will be to make the School believe it!”
Helen slipped off the table and inserted the racquet into a crevice in
the packing-case.
“Oh, the School won’t worry you much,” she said. “Don’t start off with
thinking about all your problems at once; take each day’s work as it
comes, and leave to-morrow’s to look after itself. Remember, you’re not
going to be prefects all at once, either, so you’ve time to hatch out a
good manner!”
“If ever I see Jo with a prefectorial manner I’ll cease to believe that
she’s my twin!” uttered Jean.
“What about yourself?” demanded Jo.
“If I could roll the ridiculous pair of you out into one large prefect I
believe I’d have an excellent one!” said Helen, laughing. “Stop worrying
over six months hence, and help me pack my books; there’s an empty box
in the corner by the fire-place. Oh, and remember, too, Ellen Webster
will be Captain, and a jolly good captain she’ll be. Keep your eye on
her, and pick up points.”
“Right-oh!” said the twins, falling upon the empty box and transporting
it to the book-case. “What goes in first, Helen?”
“The fat ones—line the box with paper, though.”
“Rather. If we’d known about this prefect idea we’d have spent all this
term watching you. I’d have followed you about with a note-book.”
“Then thank goodness you didn’t know! At least I’ve had my last term in
peace,” laughed Helen. “And when poor old Ellen finds you trailing her
with lifted pencil, don’t tell her it was I who put you on to watch her,
or my memory will be blackened for ever. By the way, twinses, you’ll
find it quite helpful to talk to Miss Dampier if you’re in
difficulties.”
The twins looked more round-eyed than ever.
“Does one really talk to her—ever?” queried Jean. “I merely quake in my
shoes when I meet her.”
“Oh, one doesn’t take her actual problems, unless it’s absolutely
necessary. But a talk about things in general helps one on a lot. She’s
awfully human when you get to know her, really, and you’ve no idea how
much she understands. Of course I began by thinking she was just one’s
natural enemy, but I grew out of it. You will, too. She remembers your
mother, too—she was a junior mistress in her time—and so she expects
things of you.”
“It seems to be a big responsibility to be born with the School in one’s
family, so to speak,” said Jo.
“Well it is, in a way. But responsibility’s a jolly good thing for every
one,” the Captain remarked. “Now, that’s enough sermonizing, and I’m
sick of packing. Thanks ever so for doing the books. I’ve got leave to
take five girls down to St. Kilda to bathe—will you two come?”
The twins gave an ecstatic yelp of acquiescence.
“Then go and collect Gladys and Nita: I’ve collected Ellen already.
Hurry them up—we’ll all meet here in ten minutes.”
Bathing was always a joy, but it generally took place in large parties,
under the supervision of two house-mistresses, so anxious for the safety
of the non-swimmers that discipline was very strict. Even Nita, who was
like a fish in the water, was wont to say that it made her nervous to
feel that Miss Morrison was ranging to and fro on the gallery like a
panther, holding her breath when a girl dived, and emitting a bursting
sigh of relief when her head at length popped into sight. But at the end
of the term, when rules and regulations were relaxing, parties of senior
girls known to swim well were sometimes allowed to go down without a
mistress in charge, if at least two prefects were among their number.
Invitations to these swims were much prized, and the twins felt that
even if the cares and responsibilities of age were descending upon them,
so also were some of its delights, as they fled about the business of
“collecting” Gladys and Nita.
Ten minutes later the cheerful band hurried down the wide garden path,
followed by the envious glances of girls who lay here and there under
the pepper-trees enduring the hot afternoon as best they might. Someone
begged Jo lazily to bring her back a strawberry ice, a dismal pleasantry
which evoked groans from its hearers. Outside, the pavement felt sticky
underfoot with the heat. Little eddies of winds swirled here and there,
scattering dead leaves and scraps of dusty paper. On the shady side of
the street a few tired children toiled home from school, swinging straps
of books; but there were not many people to be seen. Even the tram which
the girls boarded presently was nearly empty, and the conductor seemed
almost too tired to collect their fares. He perched on his tiny seat at
the back of the car, glanced with a covetous eye at their rubber
bathing-bags, and remarked audibly to himself that it was better to be
born lucky than rich!
The esplanade at St. Kilda lay grilling under the heat, the yellow sand
of the beach contrasting sharply with the wilted green of the strip of
garden and lawn that lies between the roadway and the shore. Beyond
gleamed a grey expanse of sea, its surface not marked by the tiniest
wave until it broke in lazy ripples on the beach, where hundreds of
children were bathing and paddling. The sands were churned into hills
and hollows by innumerable feet: greasy lunch-papers littered them, with
crumpled bags that had once held cakes and fruit. Rows of deck-chairs
bore the forms of slumbering grown-ups; here and there a mother roused
herself to shout to Tommy and Winnie that they were going too far into
the water and had better come out, now, and behave. Babies crawled
everywhere, fighting, falling over, and eating sand and strange
treasure-trove of the littered beach. As the girls watched, one crawled
straight into the sea, laughing gleefully at the warm touch of the
shallow water. A half-naked little brother pursued it, shouting threats
and dragged it up the sand, fulfilling his promise of a smack. The baby
howled distressfully, and the mother stirred to say, “Now, Willie,
whatcher doin’? Couldn’t yer let ’er alone for ’arf a minute?” She gave
the annoyed baby a cake, and the baby ceased howling, and fell upon it
wolfishly, its joy in it not at all disturbed by the fact that between
bites it generally fell into the sand. Willie also seized a cake, and
departed, with the puzzled air of one who, having done his duty,
receives no commendation. The mother slumbered again.
“Don’t you hate city beaches?” Jo asked; and Jean nodded.
“Think of Anderson’s Inlet beside this,” said Nita, “up at the Eagle’s
Rest, with the tide coming in and filling all those jolly rock-pools.
Clean, hard sand that you can gallop a horse along; and such bathing.
It’s like soda-water to bathe in at night, all sparkle and foam, and you
just tingle all over after it!”
“I know,” Gladys said. “I was nearly washed out by a wave on those rocks
one day: it came unexpectedly when I’d just been taking photographs, a
sort of lone wave that rushed in ever so much farther than any of its
mates. I had to hang on like grim death, and it washed the rock clear of
everything but me. Camera, book, lunch-basket—they all went off to the
Antarctic: and I had five miles to walk home, soaked to the skin. It
_was_ jolly!”
“It sounds jolly,” said Helen, laughing. “It’s almost hard to believe
there are waves like that when you’re looking at that tame sea in front
of us—it looks as if it were made of grey oil.”
“Grey oil or not, it’s all we’ve got to-day, and I won’t have it
abused,” Ellen Webster said. “Come on, girls; we’re wasting precious
time.” She led the way along the pier that led out to the baths.
There were scores of bobbing heads in the water within. At the shallow
end the sea seemed full of small girls, splashing about within their
depths; and every inch of the rope that stretched across from side to
side, where the water was three feet deep, was occupied by clinging
hands, whose owners swung themselves up and down in the waves with
shrieks of delight. The shallower the water, the more incessant were the
screams of the bathers. Farther out they became quieter, though wild
yells rose from one place where a band of mermaids played a kind of
water-polo with a huge ball. In the deep water at the extreme end, peace
reigned: only a few strong swimmers were to be seen there, moving
quietly along, or floating lazily. A big, black-backed gull perched on a
water-worn post, crusted with barnacles, and gazed at the scene,
probably reflecting that nothing so queer was likely to meet his vision
again between there and the South Pole.
A railed gallery ran round the baths, overlooking the water.
Dressing-boxes opened from it, trails of wet foot-marks leading from
them to the flights of steps that gave access to the sea. The gallery
was crowded with onlookers, among whom forms in bathing-suits, wet and
dry, edged swiftly, with due regard for bare feet among the many shod.
Occasionally a soaked bather, hurrying to dress, cannoned into an
immaculate damsel in a crisp frock, greatly to the destruction of her
crispness. The crowd of spectators was thickest near a spring-board
jutting out over the deep water, where a girl capered gaily, making the
board leap up and down until it fairly bucked her off. She turned a
double somersault in mid-air before she struck the water.
“That’s Alice Pearce,” said Nita. “I heard she’d broken six
spring-boards this season. It must be an expensive amusement.”
“Wouldn’t you just _love_ to be able to dive like that, Jo?” Jean
murmured; and her twin breathed, “Rather!”
They had some difficulty in finding vacant dressing-boxes; every one
seemed occupied, and sometimes by the wet and dry together. Finally they
were lucky in finding three, in which a party of Kooringal girls were
dressing after their bathe; and having inherited these damp and darksome
abodes, were quickly ready for the water. Making for the nearest steps,
they dived in, swam out to a raised platform in the middle of the deep
part of the baths, and sat on it for a moment to rest.
“Glorious, isn’t it!” ejaculated Helen. “Look at those girls!”—as two
swimmers flashed by, using a powerful trudgeon stroke. “They’re
practising for the swimming carnival. Now, I wonder did she mean to do
that?” she added, as Jo tumbled off the platform in a casual manner, and
disappeared.
“Don’t know,” Jean answered, laughing. “I’ll go and see!” She tumbled
in, in the same fashion, and fell squarely upon her twin, who was just
rising to the surface. They vanished together, to reappear, presently,
having apparently had a heated altercation under water.
“With all the sea to jump into, she had to choose the exact spot I was
using!” grumbled Jo, laughing.
“That’s because you’re twinses, and have everything alike,” said Nita.
“Come on—let’s go out to the deep end. I’ll race you!” She went off,
with swift overarm strokes. Nita was the champion swimmer of the private
schools, and Merriwa was justly proud of her. Therefore they reviled her
as they panted after her, finally reaching the deep end to find her
placidly floating on her back.
“Old leviathan!” grumbled Helen affectionately, turning on her back near
her.
“I splash horribly, but I get there—some time or other,” panted Gladys.
“Nita, how do you manage to swim as fast as a porpoise, which you
resemble, and never make a bubble of splash?”
“All done by kindness!” said Nita, lazily.
“Let’s lean on you, Nita, darling!” The twins arrived on either side of
her, and leant, heavily and suddenly. Nita went under for an instant,
and reappearing, with a roll which in truth was like that of a porpoise,
ducked them both, in a thorough and scientific manner. Every one seemed
to become involved in the process, and the sea was churned by the throes
of the Merriwiggians. Ellen Webster was the first to emerge from the
turmoil. She swam to the nearest steps, and sat upon the lowest, drawing
her knees up to her chin.
“You look like a witch brooding over the deep!” Gladys told her. Ellen
was small, with rather sharp features and twinkling eyes, and the insult
held a certain amount of truth.
“If I were to say what _you_ all look like it would need a vocabulary
unbefitting a vice-captain!” retorted Ellen. “Remember, young ladies,
you are not allowed out without a keeper so that you may indulge in
unseemly horse-play! Your conduct is sadly lacking in either deportment
or——”
“She’s drowning in her own eloquence!” remarked Nita. “Come, and we’ll
save her, girls!” They made a rush at the orator, who tried to escape up
the steps, but being caught by what Jo termed “the hind leg,” was
ignominiously hauled back into the water, where she became the victim of
all known methods of rescuing the apparently drowned. Then, not because
the sea had lost any of its charm, but because time was slipping away,
they swam back to the dressing-boxes, making as quick a toilet as their
soaked hair would permit.
“Rubber caps are a delusion and a snare if you once happen to go under
water,” remarked Helen disgustedly as they walked along the pier to the
shore. “Ugh! another drop has slid down my back!”
“Can’t be helped.” Gladys shook her own lank and dripping locks.
“Anyhow, we’re all alike—except the twinses. They have an altogether
unfair advantage!”
The twins grinned. They had worn their hair close-cropped until they
came to school, following an attack of fever in which, like good twins,
they had indulged together, and their hair had been compulsorily shorn.
It was growing again now, but the growth was slow, and their dark locks
clustered about their necks in curls that refused to reach their
shoulders. It made them look younger than they were, and had the effect
of enhancing a resemblance to each other that the School declared little
short of criminal. Even Miss Dampier often had distressing doubts as to
whether she were dealing at the moment with Jean or Jo. The twins were
quick to recognize any signs of doubt as to their identity, and had
never been known to relieve such doubts unless compelled by authority.
“Never mind,” said Ellen Webster. “We’ll soon be hot enough to welcome
anything dripping down our backs. Who says ices?”
Every one said ices, with one voice. They sauntered to the café perched
half-way down the big pier, and voiced their demands, following the ices
with tea and many cakes, regardless of consequences. Then Helen, with
the recklessness of one about to leave, ordered raspberries and cream
all round; and at length, sustained and refreshed, the Merriwiggians
turned their steps homeward. The crowd on the pier was beginning to
thin: people were going home to tea, and only the fishing enthusiasts,
who sit on the edge of the pier and angle perpetually for fish that
never bite, showed no signs of moving. On the beach mothers were
collecting children, wet, sandy, and tired. The trams were crowded, and
the girls obtained places with difficulty, “strap-hanging” until they
changed from the beach tram into the one that took them close to the
School.
“It’s been lovely,” Jo said, as the iron gate of Merriwa closed behind
them. “And I don’t want tea one bit!”
Nobody did. There was, indeed, a general shudder at the bare idea of a
meal.
“We’ve got to face it, anyhow,” said Helen. “And you’d better all take
notice that we’ve only about five minutes to change!”
The urgency of this discovery mastered any more personal feelings. They
scattered to their rooms, in a wild endeavour to achieve the
well-groomed appearance that Miss Dampier was unfeeling enough to
demand, in all circumstances. A junior, still in the flush of
hero-worship that surrounds tennis championships, hailed the twins as
they reached their door.
“Letter for you in the rack. Shall I get it for you?”
“Oh, do, there’s a good kid!” Jo gasped, struggling with buttons as she
ran. “Give it to us at tea—we haven’t time to sneeze!”
The letter lay between them throughout tea, while they gallantly tried
to obey Ellen Webster’s whispered injunction at the door—“Assume an
appetite, though you have it not!” Luckily, the night was hot enough to
cause a general disinclination for food, and no one in authority paid
any special attention to the lack of interest in the meal manifested by
the bathing party. Jean and Jo cast longing glances at their letter,
wishing that the time of release would come, and set them free to read
it.
It was a rather thick letter, addressed in their father’s firm writing
in the style in which he always addressed them—“Miss J. Weston.” Mother
might give them the individual Jean or Josephine, or lump them together
as “The Misses Weston,” but Father held that these distinctions, with
twins, were merely waste of time, since anything he had to say was sure
to be said to both. A letter from him was rather a rarity, and the twins
puzzled a little over it as tea dragged slowly on.
“Queer that Father should write, when we’ll be home in three days,” Jo
said. “I wonder what he’s writing about.”
“Thank goodness, there’s Miss Dampier standing up for grace, so we can
cut off and read it,” Jean answered, getting to her feet. The School
rose, and after grace was said, filed out of the long room. As the twins
passed Miss Dampier, she beckoned to them.
“You have had your father’s letter?” she asked. They fancied her face
was rather grave.
“We got it just before tea,” Jean answered. “We haven’t had time to read
it yet.”
“I heard from him, also,” the Head remarked. “Come and see me in the
study when you have read yours.”
Something in her tone sent swift alarm into the twins’ faces.
“Oh, they’re quite well—don’t worry,” Miss Dampier said hastily. “Run
along to your room and read your letter quietly.”