St. Ethelberta's
The immediate result to Marjorie of her mock somnambulistic adventure
was that she got a very bad cold in her head, due no doubt to walking
about the passages with bare feet and only her nightdress on. It was
highly aggravating, because she was considered an invalid, and her
Wednesday exeat was cancelled. She had to watch from the infirmary
window when Dona, escorted by Miss Jones, started off for The Tamarisks.
Dona waved a sympathetic good-bye as she passed. She was a kind-hearted
little soul, and genuinely sorry for Marjorie, though it was rather a
treat for her to have Elaine quite to herself for the afternoon. Mrs.
Anderson had been justified in her satisfaction that the sisters had not
been placed in the same hostel. In Marjorie's presence Dona was nothing
but an echo or a shadow, with no personality of her own. At St.
Ethelberta's, however, she had begun in her quiet way to make a place
for herself. She was already quite a favourite among her house-mates.
They teased her a little, but in quite a good-tempered fashion, and
Dona, accustomed to the continual banter of a large family, took all
chaffing with the utmost calm. She was happier at school than she had
expected to be. Miss Jones, the hostel mistress, was genial and
warm-hearted, and kept well in touch with her girls. She talked to them
about their various hobbies, and was herself interested in so many
different things that she could give valuable hints on photography,
bookbinding, raffia-plaiting, poker-work, chip-carving, stencilling,
pen-painting, or any other of the handicrafts in which the Juniors
dabbled. She was artistic, and had done quite a nice pastel portrait of
Belle Miller, whose Burne-Jones profile and auburn hair made her an
excellent model. Miss Jones had no lack of sitters when she felt
disposed to paint, for every girl in the house would have been only too
flattered to be asked.
Dona was a greater success in her hostel than in the schoolroom. After
her easy lessons with a daily governess she found the standard of her
form extremely high. She was not fond of exerting her brains, and her
exercises were generally full of "howlers". Miss Clark, her form
mistress, was apt to wax eloquent over her mistakes, but she took the
teacher's sarcasms with the same stolidity as the girls' teasings. It
was a saying in the class that nothing could knock sparks out of Dona.
Yet she possessed a certain reserve of shrewd common sense which was
sometimes apt to astonish people. If she took the trouble to evolve a
plan she generally succeeded in carrying it out.
Now on this particular afternoon when she went alone to The Tamarisks
she had a very special scheme in her head. She had struck up an
immensely hot friendship with a Scottish girl named Ailsa Donald, whose
tastes resembled her own. Dona was in No. 2 Dormitory and Ailsa in No.
5, and it was the ambition of both to be placed together in adjoining
cubicles. Miss Jones sometimes allowed changes to be made, but, as it
happened, nobody in No. 2 was willing to give up her bed to Ailsa or in
No. 5 to yield place to Dona, so the chums must perforce remain apart.
They spent every available moment of the day together, but after the
9.15 bell they separated.
Dona had asked each of her room-mates to consider whether No. 5 was not
really a more sunny, airy, and comfortable bedroom than No. 2.
"The dressing-tables are bigger," she urged to Mona Kenworthy. "You'd
have far more room to spread out your bottles of scent and hairwash and
cremolia and things."
"Thanks, I've plenty of room where I am, and my things are all nicely
settled. I'm not going to move for anybody, and that's flat," returned
Mona.
Dona next tackled Nellie Mason, and suggested warily that No. 5, being
farther away from Miss Jones's bedroom, afforded greater opportunities
for laughter and jokes without so much danger of being pounced upon. Her
fish, however, refused to swallow the tempting bait, and Beatrice
Elliot, whom she also sounded on the subject, was equally inflexible.
Most girls would have accepted the inevitable, but Dona was not to be
vanquished. She had a dark plan at the bottom of her mind, and consulted
Elaine about it that afternoon. Elaine laughed, waxed enthusiastic, and
suggested a visit to a bird-fancier's shop down in the town. It was a
queer little place, with cages full of canaries in the window, and an
aquarium, and some delightful fox-terrier puppies and Persian kittens on
sale, also a squirrel which was running round and round in a kind of
revolving wheel.
Elaine and Dona entered, and asked for white mice.
"Mice?" said the old man in charge. "I've got a pair here that will just
suit you. They're real beauties, they are. Tame? They'll eat off your
hand. Look here!"
He fumbled under the counter, and brought out a cage, from which he
produced two fine and plump specimens of the mouse tribe. They justified
his eulogy, for they allowed Dona to handle them and stroke them without
exhibiting any signs of fear or displeasure.
"Suppose I were to let them run about the room," she enquired, "could I
get them back into their cage again?"
"Easy as anything, missie. All you've got to do is to put a bit of
cheese inside. They'll smell it directly, and come running home, and
then you shut the door on them. They'll do anything for cheese. Give
them plenty of sawdust to burrow in, and some cotton-wool to make a
nest, and they're perfectly happy. Shall I wrap the cage up in brown
paper for you?"
Dona issued from the shop carrying her parcel, and with a bland smile
upon her face.
"If these don't clear Mona out of No. 2 I don't know what will," she
chuckled.
"How are you going to smuggle them in to Brackenfield?" enquired Elaine.
"I think all parcels that you take in are examined. You can't put a cage
of mice in your pocket or under your skirt."
"I've thought of that," returned Dona. "You and Auntie are going to take
me back to-night. I shall pop the parcel under a laurel bush as we go up
the drive, then before supper I'll manage to dash out and get it, and
take it upstairs to my room. See?"
"I think you're a thoroughly naughty, schemeing girl," laughed Elaine,
"and that I oughtn't to be conniving at such shameful tricks."
Shakespeare tells us that
"Some cannot abide a gaping pig,
Nor some the harmless necessary cat".
Many people have their pet dislikes, and as to Mona Kenworthy, the very
mention of mice sent a series of cold shivers down her back.
"Suppose one were to run up my skirt, I'd have a fit. I really should
die!" she would declare dramatically. "The thought of them makes me
absolutely creep. I shouldn't mind them so much if they didn't scuttle
so hard. Black beetles? Oh, I'd rather have cockroaches any day than
mice!"
It was with the knowledge of this aversion on the part of Mona that Dona
laid her plans. She left the cage under the laurel bush in the drive,
and by great good luck succeeded in fetching it unobserved and conveying
it to her dormitory, where she unwrapped it and stowed it away in her
wardrobe. When she had undressed that evening, and just before the
lights were turned out, she placed the cage under her bed. She waited
until Miss Clark had made her usual tour of inspection, and the door of
the room was shut for the night, then, leaning over, she opened the cage
and allowed its occupants to escape. They made full use of their
liberty, and at once began to scamper about, investigate the premises,
and enjoy themselves.
"What's that?" said Mona, sitting up in bed.
Dona did not reply. She pretended to be asleep already.
"It sounds like a mouse," volunteered Nellie Mason.
"Oh, good gracious! I hope it's not in the room."
The old saying, "as quiet as a mouse", is not always justified in solid
fact. On this occasion the two small intruders made as much noise as
tigers. They began to gnaw the skirting board, and the sound of their
sharp little teeth echoed through the room. Mona waxed quite hysterical.
"If it runs over my bed I shall shriek," she declared.
"Perhaps it's not really in the room, it's probably in the wainscot,"
suggested Beatrice Elliot.
"I tell you I heard it run across the floor. Oh, I say, there it is
again!"
The frolicsome pair continued their revels for some time, and kept the
girls wide awake. When Mona fell asleep at last it was with her head
buried under the bed-clothes. Very early in the morning Dona got up,
tempted her pets back with some cheese which she had brought from The
Tamarisks, and put the cage into her wardrobe again.
Directly after breakfast Mona went to Miss Jones, and on the plea that
her bed was so near the window that she constantly took cold and
suffered from toothache, begged leave to exchange quarters with Ailsa
Donald, who had a liking for draughts, and was willing to move out of
No. 2 into No. 5. Miss Jones was accommodating enough to grant
permission, and the two girls transferred their belongings without
delay.
"I wouldn't sleep another night in that dormitory for anything you could
offer me," confided Mona to her particular chum Kathleen Drummond. "I
simply can't tell you what I suffered. I'm very sensitive about mice. I
get it from my mother--neither of us can bear them."
"You might have set a trap," suggested Kathleen.
"But think of hearing it go off and catch the mouse! No, I never could
feel happy in No. 5 again. Miss Jones is an absolute darling to let me
change."
Dona's share in the matter was not suspected by anybody. Her plot had
succeeded admirably. Her only anxiety was what to do with the mice, for
she could not keep them as permanent tenants of her wardrobe. The risk
of discovery was great. Fortunately she managed to secure the good
offices of a friendly housemaid, who carried away the cage, and promised
to present the mice to her young brother when she went for her night out
to Whitecliffe. To nobody but Ailsa did Dona confide the trick she had
played, and Ailsa, being of Scottish birth, could keep a secret.