CHAPTER III

THE DUTIES OF A SCHOLARSHIP KID

"She'll be there, I suppose?"

"Why should she, you mugwump? A scholarship kid won't have an entrance exam like an ordinary new girl."

"I wish to goodness the Redlands trustees had never thought of the old scholarship idea," grumbled a third voice. "Mary Hertford was rather the limit, wasn't she? at least when she was in the Lower School--setting the pace so frightfully fast, specially in maths, but at least Mary was our own sort. I don't call it playing the game to shove village schoolgirls among us."

"Syb, you don't mean it?"

"I do. Miss Wakefield told mother. The Lamb had had a letter from her dear Miss Craigie, I fancy, and in her joy went bleating round to everyone.... Fact! This scholarship kid was the priceless gem from some village school."

"How putrid!"

"What on earth are we to do with her?"

"Put up with her, I suppose, Noreen, my good child. What else do you suppose we can do?"

"Wish to goodness I hadn't worked so beastly hard last term. Reward, Remove II. B, and the company of this village kid. It's sure to be in Remove II. with scholarship! Think she'll say 'sy' for say, and drop her 'h's'?"

"She's Scotch, not Cockney, you cuckoo, and probably quite harmless," someone else chimed in. "But I should have thought the Grammar School a bit more her line. However to Redlands she's coming, and at Redlands she'll presumably stay, and we shall have to make the best of it."

"And of her," groaned the girl called Syb.

There was a silence; for the little group of girls in the corridor had to make room for some indignant fellow-passengers to pass out from the compartment in the corner of which Joey was wedged, unable, without putting her fingers into her ears, and so drawing undesired attention to herself, to help overhearing the chief part of this conversation. These girls had joined the train at Lincoln, where Joey, in accordance with instructions, had changed for the local line; and the train had been so full that these girls had never bothered to find a seat at all, but stood in a tight bunch in the corridor, talking loudly to make themselves heard above the roar of the train. They were Redlands girls; Joey would have known that by their uniform if she hadn't by their talk.

It had taken her a minute or two to tell what they meant by village schoolgirls; when she did, her face grew hot, and she stared defiantly towards them.

They were outsiders themselves, thought Joey, to talk like that about a girl who was coming to Redlands, even if she had been to a different sort of school before. But though the thinking it was certainly a relief, it could not quite do away with the sore, hurt feeling. Evidently the Redlands girls were not inclined to start friends.

It was all the harder to bear because they were such jolly-looking girls. The one called Noreen was extremely pretty, with lovely Irish-blue eyes under black eyebrows, and a wealth of dark hair; and even Syb was nice-looking, with a bright colour and a straight, determined figure. The girl who had spoken last was short and insignificant, with bobbed hair, but her eyes were very bright and her smile infectious, Joey settled; while the other two were a round-faced couple, much too nice in appearance for the sentiments they had been expressing.

Joey was to have an opportunity for studying them more closely in a minute, for apparently they had had enough of standing in the corridor, and came pouring into her compartment so soon as the other passengers had poured out. They didn't trouble even to put their hockey sticks in the rack, by which Joey guessed that Mote Deep, the station for Redlands, was not far away.

The one called Syb caught sight of Joey as they came in. "Hullo!" she said.

"Hullo!" Joey answered, not being sure what to answer.

"New kid, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"What's your name?" asked Noreen.

"Jo--Jocelyn Graham."

Noreen shot a quick glance at Syb. "Where do you come from?"

"Scotland." Joey did not feel inclined to be communicative.

"You're not the scholarship kid, are you, by any chance?" demanded the girl with the bobbed hair.

"Yes."

"Oh, murder! I didn't think you were, somehow."

"Did you think I was going to look so awfully unlike everybody else?" Joey demanded in her turn. She could not quite keep the hurt tone out of her voice, though she tried.

"No; why should we?" the girl with the bobbed hair answered, a shade uncomfortably, and then they all looked at each other and there was an awkward little pause. Noreen broke it, speaking in a more friendly tone than any of them had done yet.

"I suppose you've had someone to put you up to what scholarship girls have to do at Redlands?"

"No." Joey was not expansive, suspecting some covert allusion to that village school, which appeared so upsetting to these very select Redlanders.

"Oh, didn't they?" Noreen's blue eyes met hers gravely, and, Joey fancied, sympathetically.

It was rather difficult to ask any favours of girls who despised her, but Miss Craigie was far away in Edinburgh, wrestling with the "influenza"--poor Miss Craigie!--and clearly she was on the edge of one of those pitfalls that lie in wait for new girls.

"If it wouldn't be a bother, perhaps you would tell me what I have to do?" she asked.

Noreen leaned forward confidentially. "Of course I will. There's not much to tell; just two or three little things that are always done by the scholarship winner."

The others all displayed a sudden and flattering interest in Joey. They leaned forward too, so as not to miss a word.

"Tidying the Lab is the most important thing," Noreen went on gravely. "We've got a jolly old French Stinks Professor, Monsieur Trouville; frightfully brainy over stinks, but untidy--oh! my Sunday hat and Dublin Castle!--untidy isn't the word for it!"

Joey tried to grasp the situation valiantly.

"Do I sweep or dust or wash up his messes or what?" she asked.

The girl with the bobbed hair coughed alarmingly. Syb thumped her back, and said, "Shut it, Barbara!"

Noreen seemed a little taken aback by this question. "No, you don't, I think--and, anyhow, you _never_ empty messes out of one saucer into another or you'd probably blow up the Coll," she stated candidly. "You just--put bottles into the cupboards--and don't take any notice if he tells you to get out and boil yourself. He does say these sort of things. He's a beast of a temper," Noreen added kindly.

"When do I begin?" Joey asked.

"Tidying the Lab? Well, I shouldn't waste any time," Syb chimed in. "As soon as you get to Redlands, I should say--anyone would show you where it is."

"Righto!" Joey told them, with outward cheerfulness, though inward tremors. "Anything else?"

Noreen's blue eyes had an odd gleam. "Not much. You lace up the Senior Prefect's boots; she is Ingrid Latimer--and ... and ... write out the supper menus for cook."

"_What?_" shrieked Joey.

"Oh, don't you remember, Noreen, they stopped that because Mary Hertford wrote like a diseased spider," Syb contributed. "The scholarship kid only ... only...."

She choked.

"You're not having me on?" demanded Joey.

"My dear Kid; go to the Lab when you get there, and see if we are."

The train stopped. "Mote Deep" flashed before their eyes. The station for Redlands was reached. Joey grasped her things and asked no further questions. She was there!

She stood forlornly by her suit-case on the platform, while the rest fell upon some other girls waiting for them there. Joey stood apart. Noreen seemed to be telling some story in an emphatic whisper, a funny story evidently, for everybody shrieked with laughter, except one freckled girl, who said lazily, "What a shame!" and looked towards Joey as though she had half a mind to come and speak to her. Joey hoped that she would, but she didn't. It was Syb who came at last, when all the luggage had been got out and piled in the rather ancient cabs which still did duty in Little Holland.

"We're going to walk, Jocelyn; of course you can come with us if you like, but considering all the extra things a scholarship kid has to start with, p'r'aps you'd better cab it."

Joey was proud, and the inference was rather plain. They didn't want her company.

"I should have cabbed it anyhow. I'd rather," she told Syb, with decision, and walked off in the direction of the cabs, her head held very high.

She got into the first, and sat on the edge of the rather mildewy cushions, trying to face things out. It was all rather different from what she had pictured; but Mums needn't know that. And she wouldn't have to worry about the girls and their unfriendly ways at present anyhow, for she had the Lab to put tidy, and afterwards that other unknown terror, the lacing up of the Head Girl's boots.

If only she could have travelled with Miss Craigie or someone friendly, she could have asked how and when all these things were done; but Father had always said, "Don't grouse over what might have been; get on to what is." What is, appeared to be tidying the Lab for the ill-tempered French Professor; Joey settled to get on to that at once.

The cab was jolting along a flat marsh road that lay between a rolling sea of green. The real sea was not visible, for a white mist lay on the horizon, but the taste and the tang on her lips was salt, and there was a wonderful sense of space and freshness around her. Nothing broke the flatness of the landscape but here and there a squat church tower in the midst of a cluster of cottages.

Presently another tower drew her attention, a tall, gaunt tower, seeming like a warning, uplifted finger raising itself in the peaceful sea of green as if to say, "Watch!" Joey wondered what its story might be. She craned her head out of the cab window to look back at it, long after it was receding into distance, and was so absorbed in it that she was taken by surprise when the cab stopped before high ornamented iron gates, and the cabman shouted something indistinguishable. A pleasant-looking woman ran out, and swung the great gates back. This was Redlands. Joey began to feel a little quaky, though she tried to pretend it was all rather fun. The pretence wasn't very successful at that moment; but at least she knew what was expected of her on arrival. That was a decided comfort.

She looked before her with quite as much interest as she looked behind, while the cab crawled down the long, straight drive towards the irregular mass of dim red brick veiled in ivy. Architecturally, Redlands College left something to be desired, as it had been altered and added to at different times by people of widely differing views; but the whole had been mellowed together in a district where even new red brick hardly stares above a month; and presented to its world a silent, solid dignity.

Joe looked from the original Redlands, an early seventeenth century Manor House, to the wing built on by Madame Hèrbert, who kept a flourishing school for young ladies of quality in the stormy days of the Second James, and on to the additions of two centuries later, and the Swimming Bath, Gymnasium, and Laboratories marking the further requirements of the twentieth century and the march of education.

Joey was no authority on architecture, however, and did not come to know all this till she had been some days at Redlands. Just then she merely thought that the place looked jolly, though about twice as big as she had expected.

The cab drew up before the flight of steps leading to the front door; Joey jumped out. A highly superior parlour-maid appeared before she had time to ring the bell. Probably she had heard the crunching of the many cab wheels on the gravel. Joey spoke at once. "Please could you direct me to the Chemical Lab? They told me to go there at once."

The maid looked a little surprised. "Miss Conyngham will be back soon, miss," she said hesitatingly. "Hadn't you better wait?"

"I was told to go there," Joe said firmly, and the maid pointed to a building on the right, rather behind the main block. "That's the Lab, miss; but unless the Professor is there you won't be able to go in. It's locked."

"I'll try anyhow," Joey told her, and walked off in the direction pointed out.

She went up two steps to the door of the Lab. Joey went up them cautiously, as when they played hide-and-seek at home and somebody was likely to spring out and catch you. But no furious professor sprang, and Joey tried the door, and found it was locked, but on the outside. So she turned the key and went in, with the words, "Please, I've come to tidy," ready on her lips.

But there was no one to whom to say them; the Lab was quite empty, though it certainly looked as though it had not been empty for long. Bottles stood upon a table, and two or three saucers containing various powders, and a large scented silk handkerchief of violet hue lay on the floor beside a dark closet with open door.

Joey began to tidy as well as she could. She used her handkerchief for a duster, and presently, finding it rather small, took up the violet one, which was already tolerably dirty and therefore might be dirtier without mattering, she thought.

She did not put the bottles away, in case the Professor should come back and want them, but she took them off the table and dusted it, and then put them back in orderly rows. The saucers she wisely did not touch, except to dust underneath them. Then she attacked the dark closet, which was surrounded by shelves, holding innumerable saucers, trays, bottles, and boxes. A good many of these things were on the floor. Joey rammed her dusters into the pockets of her coat, and set to work to find a safer resting-place for them. She was really interested by now in this duty which had been thrust upon her in right of her scholarship; so absorbed indeed that she never heard an exclamation at the door and a quick step across the room. She noticed nothing till the half-open door of the closet was wrenched violently wide. And she sprang round to find herself looking into the furious light eyes of the French Professor.