Chapter 10

Pilgrims' Inn Chambers

Rather overwhelmed by the honour thrust on her unaccustomed shoulders, but buoyed up by the importance of it, Lesbia set to work to consider the question of a book-back worthy of the form scrap album. She received no inspiration or even particular encouragement from the Pattersons. As a family they were intellectual but not in the least artistic. Mrs. Patterson frowned slightly when her young cousin, bubbling over with elation, mentioned the matter at the dinner-table.

"Well now, Lesbia," she began, in her deep common-sense tone of voice, "it's all very well to take up these fads, but what about your lessons? I think Miss Tatham's making a mistake to let so much time be wasted over these outside things. Girls have to stick close to their books if they want to pass exams. Now when Kitty was reading for her matric, she never went out anywhere, even to a concert or a lecture. Did you, Kitty?"

Kitty, sprinkling sugar over her roasted apples, shook her head emphatically.

"It was just jolly well grind, grind from breakfast till bedtime," she admitted, "I think they're slacking off at Kingfield High nowadays."

"Oh, but it's much more interesting than ever it used to be," urged Lesbia, anxious for the credit of her school, "and of course even Miss Pratt knows we're trying for the scrap-book prize. Oh, well, yes--of course she's a little sniffy over it, but she can't say we mustn't."

"As long as Lesbia does her prep all right I don't see why anybody need scream," put in Joan, taking up the cudgels for her cousin.

"Scream indeed! Really, Joan!" said her mother indignantly. "The slang you girls talk is simply outrageous. We shall hardly know the English language soon. As I said before, Lesbia must do her home work properly, and I don't expect to see any drawing brought out before her preparation and her practising are both finished, every day. You quite understand, Lesbia?"

Lesbia, to avoid replying, passed the butter dish and the biscuits with unnecessary officiousness, and turned the subject neatly on to Joan's headache. She meant to produce the scrap-book cover at all costs, though she could not fling down the challenge and proclaim her rebellious intentions in the midst of the assembled Patterson family.

"I'd better go and ask Miss Joyce about it," she decided.

Miss Joyce still took the Arts and Crafts classes at the High School, but she was always so busy that she had no time for private conversations with individual pupils. For several months her remarks to Lesbia had been confined to professional criticisms. The invitation to come and see her at her rooms still held open, however, and Lesbia determined to avail herself of it. She knew Miss Joyce worked in her studio on Thursdays, and would therefore be at home to a chance visitor.

So on Thursday afternoon, when school was over, she deliberately missed the Morton Common tram-car, banished the Pattersons temporarily from her mind, and walked down the town to Pilgrims' Inn Chambers. She was in a bubble of excitement. The unorthodox little outing seemed a stupendous treat, and an immense relief from the ordinary routine of her well-regulated life. The orderly and methodical régime of her cousins' household was immensely good for her, but often a keen trial to her Celtic temperament. When she was bursting to impart some piece of information, and had run home, and begun eagerly to pour it out, Mrs. Patterson would utterly ignore her news, and interrupt her by reminding her that she had not changed her boots. Her moments of excited elation were discouraged, Joan and Kitty, indeed, thought them bad form, and the family laughed at the violent enthusiasm which she could put into the merest trifles.

"You're such a child over everything, Lesbia," Joan would remark patronizingly.

Miss Joyce at any rate did not call her "a child" for any display of enthusiasm. She "enthused" herself upon art matters, and her mental atmosphere was sympathetic. Lesbia's footsteps quickened as she turned down Mill Street and went into the cobbled courtyard of the old Pilgrims' Inn. With a delighted thrill of anticipation she skipped up the black oak staircase to the door of Miss Joyce's studio. Here her enthusiasm was checked, for the little tin board nailed below the knocker bore the unwelcome notice "Out".

Out--when she had come all that way on purpose. It was too aggravating.

"Yet it's my own silly fault for not asking her on Tuesday whether she'd be in to-day. I might have known I'd have no luck," groused Lesbia. "Well, I suppose there's nothing for it but to trot back again. It really _is_ the limit. Hello! I believe somebody's in there after all. Unless it's ghosts."

Faint explosions of mirth proceeding from the other side of the thick door sounded more human than ghostly, despite the haunted character of the house. Lesbia seized the knocker and gave a loud rap-tap. There was a grating of chairs, and presently appeared the grinning face of one of the art-metalwork pupils.

"Miss Joyce has only gone to the post. She won't be more than a few minutes. Would you like to wait?"

Lesbia accepted the offered chair with alacrity. She sat watching the two students as they returned to their work. They were quite young girls, hardly older than herself. How glorious it must be for them, she thought, to spend their time in this delightful studio, at a little table under a window, melting their materials in a gas jet and turning out such pretty things. The creative instinct, always very strongly developed in Lesbia, rose rebelliously. Life would be far more worth while spent in making beautiful artistic objects than in learning certain school lessons that were apparently not much good to herself or anyone else. She sighed as she watched the twisting of the ornament for the edge of a brooch, and contrasted it with her morning's struggle over certain geometrical problems and a piece of stiff Latin translation.

"People may say what they like about brain culture, but let me use my hands!" she burst out impulsively.

The elder pupil looked at her in astonishment.

"It takes brains too for this kind of work, I can tell you," she remarked. "You have to have all your wits about you, or you make silly mistakes and spoil things."

"I only wish I'd the chance to try," said Lesbia.

But at that moment Miss Joyce returned. She came bustling in, with a little paper bag in her hand, surprised to see Lesbia, but very kind about it.

"You must stay and have tea," she declared hospitably. "I've just been out for some buns. Sybil, is the kettle boiling? We always make ourselves tea about this time."

The kettle on the gas-ring was almost boiling over. The pupils put down their tools and helped to set out the pale-yellow tea-service. There was a pot of striped purple crocuses on the tea-table, and a big jar of sallow "palm" and hazel catkins standing upon the floor. The March sunshine, flooding through a diamond-paned window, lighted up a blue vase full of Lent lilies. Lesbia, sinking into a basket-chair--the room had so many comfortable chairs--enjoyed her tasteful surroundings with the art-hunger of one whose æsthetic cravings have been systematically starved.

Miss Joyce was very sympathetic about the scrap album. She rocked gently to and fro, balancing her tea-cup in her hand.

"I can see your cover," she said, staring so fixedly at the ceiling that Lesbia instinctively looked there too. "It doesn't want realistic roses painted on it, but a decorative pattern. Don't put too much of it either. A design should never be overdone. My advice is, adapt your lotus pattern to it. It's far and away the best thing you've produced yet, and you may just as well use it. Put a piece at the top and a piece at the bottom, then in the middle paint a misty and rather impressionistic sketch of those old houses at the bottom of Mill Street--you can copy them from a photo--then bring your lettering right across your sketch. It ought to be very effective."

"Why, so it would. I can almost see it," agreed Lesbia, with her eye on the carved boss that ornamented one of the beams of the studio roof. "I'll make a rough drawing of it to-night, on a piece of paper. May I bring it to school to show you before I begin to do it on the proper cardboard?"

"Of course. I'll criticize it with pleasure. Now about this scrap album, is it entirely confined to antiquarian things? Why don't you put in a list of wild flowers found in the neighbourhood? And any nature notes you can?"

"I hadn't thought of that."

"They're always included in local guide-books, so I should imagine they might very well go in. Mr. Broughten would help you there."

"Who's Mr. Broughten?"

"A very clever botanist who lives in the set of chambers opposite. I'll take you to see him if you've finished your tea. Have you? Then come along. I know he's in, because we both came up the stairs together. Oh, don't look so scared, he won't gobble you up. He's an absolute old dear."

It was getting late, but Lesbia put the thought of time resolutely away, for Miss Joyce would not listen to her faint expostulations, and hurried her, protesting indeed but a very willing victim, along the passage which led to Mr. Broughten's set of chambers. He was at home, and they were ushered into his study. Like the rest of the Pilgrims' Inn it was a quaint old room, with black oak beams and diamond-paned windows. The whole of the walls were lined with shelves, upon which were stored a vast collection of pressed flowers and ferns, a work which had occupied Mr. Broughten for most of his life. He was an old man now, and the hand that held his pen shook as he wrote. He rose with difficulty to receive his visitors, peering at them through his spectacles. Lesbia was afraid he did not seem very pleased at being interrupted, but, their errand once explained, he suddenly became extremely kind and interested. He hunted out several reports of the proceedings of a local Natural History Society, in which were given lists of the flora and fauna of the neighbourhood, and, after a moment's palpable hesitation, even offered to lend the pamphlets.

"If you will promise _faithfully_ to bring them back. I lose so many books because people forget to _return_ them," he said emphatically.

Lesbia gave the required pledge, and Miss Joyce also promised for her with the earnestness of a godmother registering a baptismal vow.

"You shall have my pot of crocuses as a hostage," she assured him, laughing. "I'll bring them across and leave them with you until Lesbia returns the books."

"I never refuse flowers," answered Mr. Broughten brightly. "Crocuses are special pets of mine too. I hope they're purple ones? Good! Then we're making a very profitable exchange on both sides. If there's any more help I can give you another time, come and ask me."

Horribly late, but with her mind an absolute storehouse of new and artistic ideas, Lesbia hurried home to 28 Park Road. It was nearly seven when she arrived, and she had not touched her practising or her preparation. For once Mrs. Patterson was really angry. She took Lesbia into the drawing-room alone, and began to talk in the strained voice of one who is putting a curb on her strong indignation.

"You don't seem to realize things," she said, during the course of what was, after all, a scolding which Lesbia had brought on her own head. "Here you are nearly sixteen and a half, and as childish as if you were six. If you won't work and don't pass your exams what's going to happen to you? I suppose you know you'll have to earn your own living? You can't be anything of a teacher unless you get some proper qualifications."

"_Must_ I be a teacher?" asked Lesbia desperately. "Couldn't I take up Art instead?"

"Art!" (Mrs. Patterson's voice expressed a volume of scorn.) "Art! That's the last thing in the world to depend upon. It's a most precarious livelihood nowadays. Why it would probably be years before you could sell a picture. Now don't be silly, Lesbia. Miss Tatham has been very kind in helping you, and you owe it to her and to the school to work your hardest. What's the use of beginning to cry? Do wipe your eyes and be sensible."

But being sensible was just the last thing possible to Lesbia. She rushed upstairs to her bedroom and went on crying. She did not go down when the gong sounded, and Kitty, coming in search of her presently, found her with one shoe on and one off, and her dress still unchanged. She answered all her cousin's arguments by torrents of tears, till Kitty lost patience and went away.

"Leave her to herself," decided Mrs. Patterson, sending up Lesbia's supper, and her home lesson books, upon a tray; "it's half temper, and she's better alone."

Joan looked rather sympathetically in the direction of the stairs--she had a warm corner for Lesbia--but the two sisters were starting for a concert and could not wait to comfort anybody. They did not take the matter seriously. To Lesbia it was desperate trouble. From the flutter of joy of the inspiring afternoon she had dropped into a chaos of despair. For the first time she began to look ahead, and she seemed to see her life stretching an endless bleak vista of perpetual teaching.

"I _hate_ teaching," she sobbed, clenching her fists.

She had not known before that she disliked the prospect so much. The grind of it appalled her. She almost began to wish she had gone to Canada with Paul and Minnie--Minnie who had been so sweet and forgiving, and had written her such a nice letter from Belleville to say that bygones must be bygones, and that at all costs they must keep friends and correspond with one another. An extra lump rose in Lesbia's throat when she thought of Minnie and the children. Well, she had cut herself adrift from them at any rate. She had anchored herself fast to the Kingfield High School, and, according to Mrs. Patterson, she might consider herself extremely lucky to have the chance of continuing there at all. She must make the best of it. That was the only thing to be done. She washed her face, ate her supper, and, seeing her pile of books on the tray, made a really creditable effort to prepare some of her lessons, but her head ached, and the letters danced about on the pages.

Kitty, coming upstairs at 10.45 after the concert, peeped into the bedroom, and found Lesbia lying asleep, fully dressed, and clasping a Latin dictionary.

"This won't do at all," muttered Kitty, shaking her head.

She was not a demonstrative girl, and despised what she called "sentimentality" in Lesbia, but she could be kind in her sensible way. She woke her cousin, made her undress, and promising to call her early next morning, turned out the gas, then went to her own room and set her alarm clock for six o'clock. It was a sacrifice on Kitty's part, for she detested early rising; she did it, however, without any fuss, just as part of the day's work. She hauled Lesbia out of bed by gas-light, and went over the whole of her home lessons with her before breakfast, sending her off to school better prepared than she had been for many weeks. After that a family understanding was arranged. Mrs. Patterson had at first been inclined to veto entirely any work at the Scrap Album Competition, but Kitty compromised by stipulating it should only be done in absolutely spare time. Lesbia borrowed the alarm clock and often got up early and did her preparation in her bedroom, so that she might have leisure for her drawing after school hours. The cover began to make substantial progress. Miss Joyce approved the design, and lent her a book on "illuminating" to help her with the lettering of the title.

When the album was at last complete, VA regarded their joint effort with satisfaction. It was quite a fat substantial book, written in their best and clearest script, and illustrated with photographs, sketches, and prints. They had recorded the city's history, and its various ancient customs and old legends; there was a chapter of nature notes, mentioning how an otter had been seen in the lake of the public park, and a hare had actually been caught running in the High Street. The list of flowers, taken from Mr. Broughten's reports, was carefully copied.

"We've done our best over it," said Aldora, "and we can't do more. If the judges don't give it a prize I'll never forgive them. No, not though one of them is your own uncle, Lizzie Logan. I'll--I'll lie in wait for him on his way home and _shoot_ him. There!"

"Pull yourself together, Aldora, my child," murmured Calla. "It mayn't turn out as bad as that."

"Well I do _not_ want the Sixth to score this time."

"I saw their book and they won't," chuckled Kathleen.

"There are other schools going in for the competition though," added Carrie dolefully.

"But three prizes are offered."

The scrap album was packed up at last in a big parcel, and left at the house of one of the judges. Three weeks passed by, and VA languished for news. They began to be afraid that they should not know the result before the holidays. One day, however, Lizzie Logan came to school with a look of most unwonted excitement on her usually stolid face. Her voice, which was generally a scared whisper, was actually audible over half the cloakroom as she announced:

"My uncle told me last night that we've won the first prize."

Such a chorus of jubilee instantly arose that Lizzie's utterances were drowned. Those in her immediate vicinity dragged forth details of information and proclaimed them for the benefit of the others.

"A committee of six, including the Lady Mayoress, sat on the books."

"_Sat_ on them! Oh, horrors!"

"And the Lady Mayoress is so fat!"

"Don't be utter idiots. Committees always sit on things. No! No! _Can't_ you get it into your stupid heads? Not really _sit_. It's just an expression."

"Hold me up. I thought our champion book was squashed as flat as a pancake."

"Well, it isn't. It's first-prize winner, and the second and third prizes have been won by 'Redlands' and 'The College'."

"And where do the Sixth come in?"

"They're out altogether."

"Oh! What a spiffing score for VA."

The prize awarded for the successful scrap album was a pretty little clock, with an inscription recording the event and the date. It was placed upon the mantel-piece in the form room, and regarded with great pride and satisfaction by its owners.

"So nice to have a clock in the room," rejoiced Carrie. "It helps you on if you can keep looking at it during lessons."

"We might even set it to go a little fast," suggested Ermie hopefully.

"No use, old sport! Miss Pratt wouldn't stop prating till the bell rang, however fast the clock was."

"I suppose not. However, perhaps she'll see it, and notice the time, and not think it worth while beginning anything fresh at about five minutes to."

"Ermie Hall, you're a bright enough girl, but if you think Miss Pratt will _ever_ remit one jot or tittle of our work you've read her character wrong, and that's the fact. Nails aren't in it for hardness. Crow as loud as you like about the clock, but don't congratulate yourself it's going to help lame dogs over stiles, because it won't. Do you take that in?"

"Bow-wow! All right, Grannie! I'm drinking at the fount of your wisdom."

"As for Lesbia," put in Calla, "I think she was a regular mascot about that cover. No one knows how she swatted over it. I'm sure it turned the scale."

"Oh, don't mench! I enjoyed it."

"Look here!" asked Marion, suddenly and anxiously. "Does the clock belong to _us_ or to our form? If we go up into the Sixth next year can we take it with us?"

"Oh, I never thought of that!"

"We'll want a Solomon to settle such a question," said Calla. "Meanwhile the clock's ours for the whole of next term, and that's quite far enough ahead to look forward in my opinion. It may have broken its mainspring before we're in the Sixth, and then we shouldn't want it. Sufficient unto the day is the tick thereof."

"Right you are, O Queen of Wisdom!"