Chapter 17

A Hard Term

Late autumn brought the anniversary of Lesbia's upheaval from Denham Terrace. She was now nearly "sweet seventeen", and in some respects at any rate felt rather grown-up. It seemed immeasurably more than a year since she had settled down at 28 Park Road. She was beginning to look back upon her life with the Hiltons as a remote period of childhood. Some episodes in it were very sweet, and were changing their aspect now they were viewed from a distance. Paul's hand on her shoulder when he called her "little sister", the children's arms round her neck as they hugged her good night, the kiss that Minnie always came to give her in bed, these were memories that increased in value as she grew more capable of appreciating their true worth. Lesbia was very slowly learning a great many things, some pleasant and some unpleasant, and among those that hurt was the realization of her conduct in deserting Minnie at such an awkward pinch, and leaving her to struggle with the children on that Atlantic voyage. Well! She had made a sudden choice, and had thrown in her lot with Kingfield High School. She would at least do her best in the line which she had elected for herself. To Lesbia this "best" meant working hard at her prep, which she still detested, and taking an active part as leader in all the various games and societies, a rôle which she enjoyed very much. A wider opportunity was opening for her, however, and one in which she had a far more difficult task to fulfil.

The Christmas term-end festivities tired Miss Tatham out. For a long time she had not been strong, and had been struggling to keep up with the hundred and one duties expected from the principal of a big school. During the holidays she collapsed, and her doctor insisted upon several months' entire rest. The governors of the school, called in committee to face the sudden emergency, appointed a locum tenens to rule in her stead for a term.

Miss Ormerod, who thus came in a hurry to fill up the gap, was a B.A., and had had high school experience--too much so, the girls decided after a few days of her acquaintance. She was one of those people who are clever, but tactless. She had passed any number of examinations with flying colours, but had no knowledge of human souls. From the very first she set everybody's bristles rising. The teachers, accustomed to Miss Tatham's personal magnetism, were put out by abrupt criticisms and lack of consideration, while the girls declared that a gorgon had been sent to reign over them. Miss Ormerod, to do her strict justice, was hardworking and conscientious. She never spared herself. It was a difficult post, and she filled it according to her own lights. If she found what she judged slackness she was doing her duty to correct it. But between a "wise administrator" and a "jack-in-office" there is all the difference in the world. Some women love power, and exercise it unmercifully. Woe betide the lesser planets that are forced to circle in their orbits.

The school, accustomed to discipline, obeyed, but grumbled under its breath.

"Miss Tatham never made any silly rules about not talking in the hall," declared Kathleen indignantly, coming into the Sixth Form room smarting from a sharp rebuke and confiding her woes to a sympathetic circle.

"No! It's perfectly ridiculous. We must talk somewhere, I suppose."

"We shall be having 'Silence' in the cloakroom next."

"Or in the playground."

"I wish darling Tatie was back."

"You didn't call her 'darling' when she was here."

"Well, I do now."

"Miss Ormerod's as hard as nails."

"I want to call her 'ramrod' myself."

"Oh, don't be clever, please."

"She blinks and winks through those spectacles."

"Don't you _hate_ spectacles?"

"And there's a little sort of grate in her voice, and then she clears her throat, and you know she's going to say something unpleasant."

"I meant to like her," declared Ernie thoughtfully. "I came to school on her first day prepared to adore her. I think it was because I once knew a Miss Ormerod who was very pretty. Well, I tell you, directly I saw her I got a shock. I thought I had never seen anyone so horrid in my life. I felt we were opposite poles. I don't know when I took such an intense dislike to anybody. It's what you call an 'antipathy'."

"Not 'love at first sight' exactly!"

"Hardly!"

"'I do not love you, Dr. Fell, The reason why I cannot tell!'" quoted Calla.

"But I _can_ tell the reason. She's cross, and a martinet, and she never makes any jolly jokes like Tatie used to do--bless her heart!"

"You're altogether gone on Tatie nowadays."

"Of course I am. I wrote her a letter last Saturday, and she sent me a picture post card of the place she's staying at."

"O-o-h! _Do_ give me the address. I'll write to her too. I never thought of it."

"Let's write her a round-robin and say we wish she was back and we detest Miss Ormerod," suggested Marion impulsively.

"No! No! That would spoil her holiday. The doctor said she wasn't to have any worry."

If the Sixth Form resented the attitude of the new principal the juniors were even more prejudiced. They discussed her among themselves and set her down as "a brute". Edie Browne, who, out of sheer opposition, ventured a word in her favour, was promptly squashed.

"It's not _fashionable_ to like her," declared Maisie Martin, and Maisie led the opinions of the lower school.

Lesbia had at first reserved her judgment, but soon she had very good cause to rue the advent of Miss Ormerod. As junior assistant governess she still taught in Forms I and II. Teaching was not Lesbia's natural walk in life, and though she struggled on with it she really did not do it very well. Miss Tatham, having made the arrangement so as to cancel her fees and allow her to remain at the High School, had been rather lenient with her, and had overlooked many palpable deficiencies. Not so Miss Ormerod. She had an immensely high ideal of a teacher's standard, and she was carefully testing the capacities of her staff. One Wednesday proved a black day for Lesbia. Directly she walked into IIB she became aware of a spirit of general unrest. The girls were "out of hand". She had been through similar crises before and knew the symptoms. Fanny Holden was lolling on her desk instead of sitting upright, Rose Davis and Marjory Birkshaw had their heads bent together. Ella Wilkinson was fidgeting with her pencil box, Gladys Dorman kept casting meaning glances at Chrissie Taylor, and Mary Avens, in defiance of all schoolroom tradition, had pulled off her ribbon and was re-plaiting her wisp of a pigtail. The blackboard, which ought to have been cleaned, still bore sums in vulgar fractions. The map had not yet been put out. Lesbia rapped on the desk and called the form to order.

"What's the monitress been doing?" she demanded sharply. "Marjory, come here at once and clean the board. Can you make a little _more_ noise about it?" (as Marjory clumped her way to the front). "Where's the duster? Now be careful. You'll have the whole thing over. There! I told you."

For Marjory's vigorous and ungentle scrubbing had overbalanced the easel, and away crashed the blackboard on to the floor, breaking the pegs, and only just missing the window by a merciful inch. The form giggled, and Lesbia scolded as she helped to pick up the wreckage. The pegs were smashed and she had to sharpen them with a penknife before they would fit into their holes in the easel, and once more support the board. All this took considerable time and delayed the lesson. The girls watched as if it had been a specially provided entertainment. Marjory's face was not at all contrite; she unrolled the map so roughly that Lesbia took it from her and hung it up herself.

"Go to your seat," she commanded, catching a smile exchanged between Marjory and Ella, "and if I've any more trouble I shall report you."

The monitress shuffled back noisily between the rows of desks, giving a pinch to Gladys as she passed, an episode which Lesbia, anxious to get on with the lesson, judged it expedient to overlook. She had opened her book, ready to begin, when suddenly an unexpected thing happened. Through the open window sailed a queen wasp, and headed straight for the desks. It was, of course, very early in the year for wasps, but the queens fly abroad as soon as the spring stirs, and this one no doubt was intent on nest-building.

Instantly the form was in panic. The girls squealed, and dodged about, and ducked their heads.

"O-o-h! Look at it!"

"It's coming at me!"

"It's a hornet!"

"Mind, Ella!"

"I don't want to get stung!"

"It's going for Chrissie!"

"Don't let it get into your hair, Rose!"

Some of the more timorous crouched under their desks, Gladys bolted in the direction of the door. Lesbia did not like wasps herself, but she made a supreme exertion of courage, seized the blackboard duster, pursued the enemy, knocked it down on to the floor, and slew it with a ruler. She picked up the corpse gingerly and placed it upon a piece of blotting-paper.

"Perhaps it will do for the museum; it's not very much squashed," she commented. "I'll give it to Miss Chatham. Now, girls, be quiet and sit still. How silly you are! It might have been a lion instead of only a wasp."

But to settle down after such an excitement was impossible to the form. They had started badly, and they went on in disorder. They talked and giggled and generally "ragged" until Lesbia in desperation called out:

"Silence! I shall report you all! If you can't behave yourselves I shall have to fetch Miss Ormerod."

There is an old fable of a mother who threatened to throw her baby to the wolves if it cried again, and of an intelligent wolf who, hearing further squalls and running up eager for the feast, was much disgusted at being beaten away with a broom. It is seldom we like to be taken quite at our word. As a matter of fact, Lesbia looked as blank as her pupils when, at that exact moment, the door opened to admit the principal.

"There's a great deal of noise in here," remarked Miss Ormerod, which was hardly a correct statement, for her entrance had produced an instant and ghastly silence.

Lesbia, blushing and confused, explained the cause of the disturbance, showing the remains of the queen wasp as proof.

"I'm astonished at your making such an absurd fuss," frowned Miss Ormerod at the form. "Now, let me see how quietly you can get along with your work. Please go on," nodding to Lesbia.

To see Miss Ormerod sitting down on the teacher's chair, evidently intending to stop and listen, gave poor Lesbia what she afterwards described as "umpteen spasms". To deliver a lesson under the eye of the Principal was an ordeal for any junior assistant mistress even if she were well prepared. And, alas! Lesbia was not prepared at all. She had been busy with her own Latin and botany the night before, and had trusted to luck to get through the geography class with IIB. She was supposed to be teaching them the natural features of France, so she hurriedly drew an outline of that country upon the blackboard, and commenced to mark in the principal mountains and rivers, aided by stealthy glances at the map. She knew their general direction, but in her embarrassment she could not remember their names, and the book--on which she had pinned her trust--was in Miss Ormerod's hand.

Now it was a canon of the school that mistresses should have their own subjects at their finger-ends, and teach their lessons in the form of lectures, without constant reference to notes. By all good rights Lesbia ought to have been able to reel off the physical features of France as easily as she could repeat the multiplication table, but her wretched memory was an absolute blank. The sight of Miss Ormerod sitting there and directing what seemed the full telescopic power of her spectacles upon the blackboard, wiped away any fragments of knowledge which lingered in her agitated brain. She flushed and faltered, and tried to look at the map, and was in such a palpable quandary that, to save the situation, the Principal interfered.

"If you don't feel well," she remarked sternly, "you had better sit down, and _I_'ll take the lesson."

With trembling knees and racing pulse Lesbia sank on to the chair, and listened in deep humiliation while Miss Ormerod, without any assistance from the book, gave an excellent geography lesson. The girls were models of attention and intelligence, and everything which they ought to have been, but never were, under their junior teacher. Lesbia hardly knew them for the same form.

"I shall hear about this from Miss Ormerod," she ruminated. "I don't suppose for a moment this is the end of it."

It certainly was not. She had a most unpleasant interview in the Principal's study that afternoon, and received scathing criticism on her incapacity and lack of discipline. Miss Ormerod instituted a thorough supervision over her teaching, proposing to be present herself during the geography lessons, and warning her of surprise visits any time during her other classes.

"If you undertake to teach in this school you will do it properly or not at all," finished the head mistress grimly. "I consider so far you've utterly failed and you're worse than useless as a help to the staff."

Lesbia went home overwhelmed with shame. Miss Ormerod was very hard, but there had been justice in her remarks. A girl who was giving tuition in return for her fees ought to have seen to it that her services were of real value to the school. It was a wrong balance of duty to concentrate on her own homework and neglect to prepare for her classes. She could appreciate that point now, though it had not struck her before. It would be a horrible ordeal to teach in Miss Ormerod's presence, but there would be one compensation at any rate; the children would behave themselves, and she would be treated to no more of the "ragging" which had often made the lessons unendurable.

"If they know she may pop in any moment I believe they'll keep quiet even during dictation. Young wretches! I shall have a sword to dangle over their heads now," she thought, cheering up a little.

There is no doubt that Miss Ormerod, like many new brooms, "swept clean", but the girls considered that she made too clean a sweep altogether of the past traditions of the school. She had many theories of her own regarding girls, and she was anxious to put them into practice.

She particularly waged war against what she termed "sentiment". She objected to seeing girls walking about the playground with their arms round each other's waists, or to the display of any affection. She called such behaviour "early Victorian", and spoke of it with contempt. During the war she had taken the place of a junior master at a boys' grammar school, and her ideal was that girls should exhibit their feelings as little as their brothers. She made a new rule that recreation time must be spent in definite games, and that nobody was to be allowed to lounge about the playground or gymnasium and chat. This met with fierce opposition among the seniors and juniors alike. They talked about it fifty to the dozen in their cloakrooms.

"I never heard such nonsense in all my life."

"Mayn't take each other's arms, indeed."

"What would happen if I kissed anybody?"

"Oh, you'd get reported!"

"Kissing's called 'unhealthy', if you please."

"Oh, indeed, is it? I thought 'Any time was kissing time'."

"Don't tell Miss Ormerod so, that's all."

"_Why_ shouldn't we walk round the gym and talk?"

"We're supposed to be learning to gossip."

"What _is_ gossip?"

"Ask me a harder."

"Miss Tatham never said we weren't to have chums."

"Oh, but _she_ was sensible!"

"Miss Ormerod's just a crank."

"It's too bad her coming and upsetting all our ways."

"I vote we don't play any wretched old games."

"We can't be _made_ to play when we don't want to."

The prefects in particular thought it a great undermining of their dignity to be expected to tear about during recreation-time like any juniors. They were determined to resist the new rule. When a mistress, under orders from the principal, came into the playground, broke up groups of girls, and insisted upon all joining in a common game of rounders, the seniors hit the ball feebly, walked instead of running, and plainly showed that they did not mean to be coerced against their will. Their example spread downwards. It was at once fashionable to be a "slacker" or "shirker", and the unfortunate mistress who was told off to superintend the playground during eleven o'clock "break" had a bad time of it. With the knowledge that Miss Ormerod was peeping from her study window she made valiant efforts to set games going, but forced play is very different from the real article, and her attempts generally ended in dismal failure. Whether Miss Tatham, resting in the sunshine of Torquay, received a hint of the situation is uncertain. Lesbia, however, who had sent her a picture post card, one day received a letter in return. It gave a pleasant description of her holiday, but it ended with the following passage:

"I hope to come back after Easter, but meantime I trust you prefects to do all you can to make matters run smoothly. You in particular, Lesbia, as the oldest pupil, I ask to be 'loyal to the school', and to use your influence with the others. If I can feel that things are going on all right in my absence I shall get well twice as fast. Please tell that to the rest. I have not time to write to them all."

Lesbia, who had been one of the principal shirkers at the hated game of rounders, pulled wry faces over the letter, but patted it in her pocket nevertheless.

"I'd do anything to please Miss Tatham," she decided. "Yes, I guess I've got to be 'loyal to the school'. I know what she means. Those juniors have been leading everybody a dance since they saw us prefects giving them the cue. Even Marion called them little pigs yesterday. It can't go on. I'll ask Carrie to call a prefects' meeting, and we'll talk it over."

The confabulation in the little room over the archway, being in the nature of a committee, was not banned by Miss Ormerod, and the six girls who met there used their tongues freely. They thoroughly aired their grievances, but came to the sage conclusion that for the sake of school discipline they must uphold any mandate, however unpopular, from the temporary "Head".

"A little extra exercise won't do you any harm, Aldora, you're getting far too fat, you old Jumbo!" urged Carrie, putting down the last objector and proposing the resolution from the "chair".

"It's only till Easter anyway," seconded Lesbia "and then I hope to goodness Miss Tatham will be back again."

"And may Miss Ormerod transfer her talents to a boys' preparatory," minced Calla.

Having decided grimly to stand by law and order, the prefects next day surprised the school at eleven o'clock break by leading the games with the greatest unction. They tore about the playground in a state of such enthusiasm that the astounded juniors followed their lead, and found themselves whirled into action by a kind of magnetic influence. Fickle fashion veered round, and it was at once popular to enjoy the games, indeed for a few weeks they had quite a vogue.

Miss Ormerod, peeping through her study window, looked on with approval, and congratulated herself on the wisdom of her new rule, and the great improvement which she was making during her reign. She knew nothing of Miss Tatham's letter to Lesbia, nor suspected it was the latter's influence which had worked the miracle. Loyalty might indeed be very helpful to the school, but on this occasion virtue had to be its own reward, and did not meet with any acknowledgment from head-quarters.