Chapter 7

Those Juniors

Lesbia spent Christmas at the house of her great-aunt Newton. Mrs. Patterson was expecting her sons home, and had invited several visitors, so decided that she could not possibly find room to keep her young cousin during the holidays. Lesbia, therefore, was packed off to Westhampton, and arrived in a thick fog, to be met by Miss Parry, her aunt's companion, and conducted to Sycamore Villa, on the London Road. Lesbia's cup was at present full of new experiences, and this could hardly be called an exhilarating one. Aunt Newton meant to be kind, but she was a fussy and fidgetty old lady, and quite unaccustomed to young people. Everything about the house represented a bygone generation, and seemed out of touch with modern times. Lesbia liked really old places, such as the Pilgrims' Inn Chambers where Miss Joyce had her studio, but Sycamore Villa was mid-Victorian, and its furniture was of the same period, neither antique nor beautiful. Miss Parry, a little, faded, pathetic-faced elderly lady, whose duties seemed overwhelming, was not very lively company for a girl of sixteen. She was generally busy about the house, and when she came to sit down would concentrate her attention on her crochet work, and hardly ever opened her lips. It was certainly unnecessary for her to do so, as Aunt Newton did enough talking for a dozen people. From the depths of her elbow-chair by the fireside she would pour forth a continuous stream of reminiscences to which Lesbia (longing to get on with a book which she was reading) was obliged to lend an attentive ear, and to respond with "yes" or "no" at the right points. The stories, though long-winded, were interesting enough at first telling, but the old lady's memory was failing, and she repeated them so often that they waxed wearisome to a degree. Lesbia, alas, hated domestic duties, but at Sycamore Villa she preferred to dust rooms, wash tea-things, or perform any odd jobs rather than sit and listen to Aunt Newton's interminable tales of fifty years ago. She acted "errand girl" for the establishment, and made many journeys backwards and forwards to the shops to purchase commodities. She welcomed the little expeditions, for it was at least interesting to walk down the streets and gaze in the shop windows.

Lesbia thought she would never have got through that weary month at Westhampton had it not been for a basket of books which she found in the attic. It was a large wicker laundry hamper, and it was filled with unbound volumes of _Temple Bar_, and the _Cornhill Magazine_. They dated from about 1887 to 1892, but their serial stories had been written by authors of repute, and were so excellent as to eclipse more modern work. Lesbia read tale after tale with unflagging interest, and had not exhausted the mine before her visit was over. She was very thankful when the time came for her to return to Kingfield. It happened to be her sixteenth birthday. Mrs. Newton, really striving to be kind, had remembered the present which she had promised for so many years, and astonished her great-niece with quite a nice copy of Longfellow's poems. Miss Parry gave her a thimble in a red plush case. Both old ladies were quite affected at bidding her good-bye.

"It's been nice to see somebody young about the house, my dear. I wish we could have kept you," said Aunt Newton, wiping her spectacles.

"You've been such a help, Lesbia! I don't know how I should have got through Christmas without you," murmured Miss Parry.

Lesbia, whose newly awakened mind was beginning to register and weigh impressions, went off in the train winking back something suspiciously moist. She was fearfully and furiously glad to get away, but the Celtic side of her nature responded to the pathos of all she had left behind. The remembrance of Aunt Newton's feeble trembling hands clinging to her strong young ones, and of Miss Parry's faded wistful face breaking into a smile as she waved a good-bye, haunted her like a strain of sad music. The episode seemed a chapter of late autumn, with withered whirling leaves and frost-stricken flowers. She stored it away in her memory along with many other vivid mental notes, still only half understood, but adding nevertheless to her increasing stock of human experience.

Lesbia half anticipated and half dreaded the coming term. She wondered how she would get on as a governess-pupil. She had never leaned towards teaching, but then she had never seriously thought of any career, or of anything except a rather butterfly existence. She walked with a very grave face into the study, to be instructed by Miss Tatham in her new duties.

"You'll take the First Form for arithmetic, French, and reading," said the Principal, consulting her time-table, "and IIB for dictation, French, and English History. You'll sit in IIA and keep order while the girls write their exercises, and you'll give IIA French dictation. You'll help both Miss Edwards and Miss Harrison to correct exercises, and you'll check the registers on Friday afternoons. Do you think you can manage this? I've crossed various items from your own time-table to allow for it."

"I'll try, Miss Tatham."

Secretly she was appalled at the amount expected from her. All her own easiest and most favourite classes had been knocked off to make time for her teaching, but the difficult lessons which needed most preparation were retained. She was to act as a kind of general assistant in three forms, which were managed by two mistresses, Miss Edwards and Miss Harrison. Her first experience was to be with IIB. She encountered some of its short-skirted members skirmishing round the playground. They rushed up to her hilariously.

"Hello! Lesbia!" they greeted her. "Is it true you're going to be a sort of teacher this term?"

"I believe so," said Lesbia, trying to keep her dignity.

"Oh, what sport!"

"A real stunt!"

"We shan't be a bit frightened of _you_!"

"You're so jolly, you _couldn't_ be cross!"

"Couldn't I? Just you wait and see. You'll have to behave yourselves, I can tell you, when _I'm_ teaching, or I'll jolly well want to know the reason why!"

The juniors exploded.

"Don't pile it on too thick!" urged Gwennie Rogers. "We know you, Lesbia! You're not very tall and you aren't a scrap grown-up yet. You don't look much like a teacher, I must say!"

"You'll find I _am_ one though," retorted Lesbia, dispersing the crowd and stalking into the gymnasium, outwardly serene, but inwardly with a sinking heart.

If this was going to be the attitude of the juniors it boded badly for the future. She groaned at the vista of trouble in front of her. Why, oh why, had capricious fate pitchforked her into a position for which she had no real capability or appreciation? For one wild moment she wished herself out in Canada. Then some secret voice within her seemed to whisper.

"No! Be loyal to the school. You've stuck to it all these years, and if anybody can teach those juniors its best traditions surely _you_ can! It's a downright good opportunity."

"Why, so it is!" thought Lesbia. "I hadn't looked at it in that light before. They're a set of imps, but I'll tussle with them for the sake of the old High. I shall have authority at my back, and can call in Miss Harrison if they get past bearing. All the same, I'm not exactly looking forward to my first lesson. I wish it hadn't been dictation."

A very stately and grown-up little Lesbia walked into IIB next morning, with dignity in her eye and iced authority in her voice. Sixteen faces regarded her with decorous gaze, for Miss Edwards was still in the room, and her pupils were quiet as mice in the presence of their Form Mistress. Miss Edwards gave Lesbia a few necessary directions, told the monitress to get out the dictation books, took her copy of _Cæsar's Gallic Wars_ from her desk, and departed to give a Latin lesson to IVB. As soon as the door closed upon her a smile of intelligence passed round the form. It was as if a string which had held together a chain of beads had been suddenly cut. Girls who had sat before in erect attitudes began to loll. Fidgety fingers played with pencils or raised their desk lids. Two or three venturesome spirits were already whispering. There was a subdued giggle from the back seats.

"Silence!" called Lesbia, rapping on Miss Edwards's desk; "Maisie Martin, give out the dictation books!"

Maisie Martin, monitress for the month, was in no mood to hurry herself. She took up the pile of books so carelessly that the middle ones instantly dropped and distributed themselves over the floor. Pieces of blotting-paper fluttered out in the fall and floated under the desks. There was a general grabbing, accompanied by audible titters. Maisie went down on her hands and knees, collecting the ruin with much unnecessary fuss, and managing in her excursions after stray books to give a surreptitious pinch or two at any pair of ankles that were within range, provoking sharp "O-o-h's" from their owners.

"Come, Maisie! Don't be all day about it!" commanded Lesbia, wondering whether her dignity as a teacher permitted her to help to pick up the pile, and deciding regretfully that it did not. It is always so much easier to do things quickly yourself than to force unwilling people to make haste. The dictation books, when they left Miss Edwards's desk, had been in exact order of the girls' places. Now, however, they were all mixed up anyhow. Maisie had to look leisurely at the label on each, and walk about the room handing them to their owners. She made a great number of journeys in the process, and read the name on each label out aloud in a halting kind of voice as if she were just learning to spell. Lesbia curbed her impatience. She knew Maisie was trying how far she could go. She judged it better, however, not to take too much notice. Maisie was evidently showing off for the benefit of the form, and reproof would probably check her movements still further instead of hastening her.

Each girl as she received her book said "thank you" with quite superfluous unction, all in different tones of voice, some gruff, some squeaky, some mincing, and some affected. At last, however, each was settled with a blank page of exercise paper before her, and there was no further excuse for delay. Lesbia opened the reading-book at a venture and began to dictate:

"'GREAT AFRICAN EXPLORERS

"'Sir Samuel White Baker, the distinguished African traveller, was born in Worcestershire in 1821. He early showed his love of sport and adventure, and in 1861 projected an expedition to Africa, with the view of meeting Captains Speke and Grant at the sources of the Nile.'"

Sixteen heads were bent over desks and sixteen hands began laboriously to write.

"Do I put a capital to African?" asked Allie Pearson, pausing at the second word.

"Of course. It's a proper name," vouchsafed Lesbia; "you ought to know that."

"You put capitals for every word of the title, don't you?" inquired Jess Morrison officiously.

"Please is it explor-_ers_ or explor-_ors_?" piped Sadie Lorrimer, from the back.

"I can't tell you _that_!"

"Oh, but you might say it over again so that I can hear."

Lesbia fixed a glaring eye on Sadie, and, disregarding her appeal, continued to dictate:

"'Sir Samuel White Baker, the distinguished African traveller, was born in Worcestershire in 1821. He early showed his love----'"

"Please, I'm only as far as Baker," interrupted an agitated voice. "What comes next to Baker?"

"You must really write more quickly," chided Lesbia.

"But you go on _so_ fast!"

"_I've_ written 'he early showed his love'," chirped a smug voice from a front desk. "I'm always quickest of anybody."

"Be quiet, Esmée! Where have most of you got to?" asked Lesbia incautiously, realizing her mistake when an answering chorus shouted:

"African!"

"Worcestershire!"

"Distinguished!"

"Early showed!"

"Traveller!"

She held up her hand to stop the babel, and began to dictate the passage again. With considerable spluttering of pens the girls followed, Lu-Lu Branton and Nan Ward repeating the words after her in loud whispers.

"'After preliminary explorations he reached Khartoum and organized his expedition to the Great White Nile,'" continued Lesbia, in slow and measured tones.

"Please, what does 'pre-pre-limary' mean?" asked Allie Pearson tragically, "I never heard such a word before."

"They're all new words," grumbled Gwennie Rogers.

"We've never had such difficult dictation," whined Jean Hawley.

"Nonsense! Go on," commanded Lesbia.

"You're using the wrong part of the reading-book," squeaked an indignant voice from Row 2. "Miss Edwards always gives us our dictation from the beginning part."

"It doesn't matter!"

"Oh, but it _does_ matter!" protested several urgent voices. "The book's graded, and we've not got to such long words yet. We don't know how to spell them!"

"Well, you'll have to try to-day," insisted Lesbia, who did not intend to be corrected by her form. "You must just get along as best you can."

"'After pre-lim-in-ary ex-plor-ations he reached Khar-toum and organized his ex-pe-dition to the Great White Nile.'"

Sixteen sulky girls, feeling they had a real grievance, wrote down the unaccustomed words, with an ostentatious accompaniment of shrugging of shoulders, tapping of foreheads, nibbling of pen-holders, and other signals of mental distress.

"If we all get bad marks for dictation it won't be _our_ faults," remarked Edie Browne in injured tones.

"You'll get a mark for bad conduct if you speak again!" snapped Lesbia.

For a moment or two there was silence, only broken by the sound of scratching pens. Then again came a piping voice.

"Do blots count? My ink's so thick it's made three smudges."

"Be as careful as you can," temporized Lesbia.

Dorothy sighed gustily, took her ink-pot out of its well, inspected it, stirred it up with her pen, and placed it on the top of her desk. At the very next dip she upset it, and its contents spread in a black stream over her exercise-book.

"_Dor_-othy!"

Lesbia's voice rose to crescendo at the spectacle of the delinquent, her sleeves soaked in ink, trying to dab up the mess with a morsel of blotting-paper and a pink-edged pocket handkerchief. She hastily came to the rescue with the duster from the blackboard, which dispersed a shower of chalk over the already injured costume of her maladroit pupil.

"Go and wash your hands at once!" she ordered, replacing the now empty ink-pot in its well, and putting the exercise-book to dry by the fire. "I'm astonished at such carelessness!"

Dorothy obeyed with something very like a surreptitious wink at her comrades. The form regarded her with an expression almost approaching admiration. One would judge the unspoken thought of each to be: "Why did not _I_ think of such a lovely thing as to upset the ink and get sent to wash my hands instead of doing horrid dictation?"

After disposing of this interruption, Lesbia continued with the adventures of Sir Samuel Baker, despite the long words, refusing even to give the spelling of proper names, such as Nyanza and Gondokoro, declaring that all had an equal chance of getting them right.

"Or wrong!" growled Gwennie, under her breath.

"It's a quarter to eleven; and we always begin to correct them," volunteered the officious Jess Morrison.

Lesbia glared in her direction, but accepted the hint. It would need due time to correct the crop of mistakes which might certainly be expected.

"Change books!" she commanded, and, when the transfer had been effected, proceeded to go through the paragraphs, spelling the words, in the midst of which process arrived Dorothy (still with ink-stained sleeves though with cleaner fingers), who promptly asked her to begin again at the beginning as she had lost half.

There are limits to patience, and Lesbia's was at an end.

"You'll sit down and take 'missed' for your dictation, Dorothy Holding! Do you think I'm going to delay the form on your account? If I've any more trouble with you you'll go to Miss Tatham. Do you understand?"

Dorothy evidently did, for she subsided quietly into her desk, and the other girls took warning and behaved themselves. For five minutes a blessed peace reigned in IIB. Nobody was more absolutely thankful when the eleven o'clock bell rang than Lesbia. The ordeal of her first lesson was over, and, though things had not gone altogether smoothly, she had managed the form by herself, and had not been obliged to call in the assistance of any other teacher to read the riot act.

"They're imps! Sixteen cheeky, mischievous imps!" she decided, as she walked round the gymnasium eating her biscuit lunch. "But I believe I can tackle them. I dare say I shall have a row or two now and then, and I don't mean to stand any nonsense from either Madam Dorothy Holding or Jess Morrison. All the same, Lesbia Ferrars, you didn't think you could do it, and you _have_ done it. That's something to sing 'O, Jubilate' about at any rate. You'll lick those kids into shape before you've done with them. Help! What a life! It's going to be a facer of a term."