Chapter 12

Playing with Fire

The Fourth Class, including the members of both upper and lower divisions, was by far the largest at The Priory, and, in the opinion of Miss Lincoln, the most unruly and difficult to manage. During her many years of teaching, she had always found that girls between fourteen and sixteen gave more than the usual amount of trouble. They were too old to be treated as children, and had already begun to set up standards of their own; indeed, they thought they knew most things a little better than their elders. They were impatient of discipline, yet their ideas were still crude and unformed, and they had not the judgment nor self-restraint which might be counted upon in the higher forms. It was a phase of character which she knew would soon pass, but it required judicious treatment, and she felt that a mistress needed to be both kind and firm to exercise the right influence at such a crisis in the young lives under her charge. Miss Harper, who was popular with her class, could always tame the most rebellious spirits, and maintain perfect order; but with Miss Rowe it was a totally different affair. She was not generally liked, and, taking advantage of her youth and lack of experience, many of the girls were as naughty as they dared, and defied her authority on every occasion. Amongst the ring-leaders in what may be called "the opposition", I regret to say Enid Walker held a foremost place. She was a very high-spirited, headstrong girl, who resented any restraint; she either took a violent fancy to people, or disliked them equally heartily: anyone who could gain her affection could lead her most easily, otherwise she was apt to prove so wayward as to cause a teacher to despair. Unfortunately Miss Rowe had not discovered the right way to manage Enid; for some time matters had been rather strained, and by the summer term it was a case of undeclared war between pupil and teacher.

"It doesn't matter what I say or do, Miss Rowe's always down on me!" declared Enid.

"Well, you really go rather too far sometimes," said Avis. "Miss Rowe knew perfectly well this morning that you dropped your atlas on purpose, and that it was you who tied Cissie's hair ribbon to her desk."

"Miss Rowe can be quite nice sometimes," said Patty. "When we were on the common yesterday, she found two new orchises, and gave them to me to press."

"Oh, you always manage to say something for everybody!" said Enid. "You're too good-natured, Patty. I can't bear Miss Rowe."

"But why?"

"'I do not love thee, Doctor Fell, The reason why I cannot tell; But this I know, and know full well, I do not love thee, Doctor Fell,'"

quoted Enid. "That's how I feel, exactly."

"Perhaps she feels the same about you," suggested Winnie.

"Perhaps she does, but I don't care in the least. I don't like her voice, nor the cold way she looks at me and says, 'Now, Enid!' She's only an assistant teacher, and I'm not going to obey her as if she were Miss Lincoln or Miss Harper. She needn't expect it."

Certainly poor Miss Rowe found Enid a very trying pupil. Her attention was ever wandering, and she was invariably engaged in some mischief calculated to distract the rest of the class. She would sometimes give a wrong answer on purpose to raise a laugh; she could never lift the lid of her desk without letting it fall with a bang; and the contents of her pencil-box seemed always ready to disperse themselves over the floor. One morning the girls were having a lesson in grammar, and were diligently repeating Latin derivations and Anglo-Saxon suffixes, when some chance called Patty's attention to Enid. She noticed the latter open her desk stealthily, and draw out a tiny paper box, which she placed on her knee, and covered with her pocket handkerchief. Patty wondered what she was doing. It was evidently something which required great secrecy, for Enid glanced carefully round to see whether anyone was watching her; then, as nobody except Patty appeared to be looking, she drew away a fold of her handkerchief, cautiously opened the little box, and out hopped a huge grasshopper, which bounded straight on to Cissie Gardiner's blouse. Patty was so fascinated by gazing at it, and wondering where its next leap would take it, that she started when Miss Rowe asked her a question, and for once failed with her answer.

"Ad, ante," she began, but could get no further. Her eyes were glued to Cissie's blouse, and Cissie, noticing she was the cause of Patty's hesitation, looked down at her sleeve, and sprang up with a scream.

"Take it off! Somebody take it off!" she entreated. At this point the grasshopper promptly hopped away, no one could see where. Each girl naturally thought it might be on herself, and, jumping up, shook her skirts frantically. The class was instantly in the greatest disorder. Ella Johnson and May Firth stood on their seats, loudly protesting their horror of all creeping or crawling insects.

"Don't let it come on me! Oh, don't!" wailed Kitty Harrison.

"It's there!" exclaimed Maud Greening.

"Where?"

"It's hopped on to Doris."

"Oh! It will go down my neck!" shrieked Doris.

"No, it's hopped off again."

"It's on Maggie Woodhall's desk."

"Catch it, Maggie!"

"I daren't! I daren't!"

"Squash it with your ruler."

"I couldn't! I hate squashing things!"

"It's gone again."

"It will be on me next!"

"There it is on Maggie's desk again."

"Girls! Girls! Calm yourselves and keep still!" cried Miss Rowe's measured voice. "Maggie, sit down at once!"

The teacher strode across the room, and, catching the grasshopper in her hand, put it safely out of the window, then turned again to her agitated class.

"Order!" she said sternly; and after waiting a few moments until her pupils had regained their self-control, she continued: "Who let loose that grasshopper?"

"I did, Miss Rowe," replied Enid, promptly.

"Then you will leave the room at once, Enid. You will take a bad mark for conduct, and you will learn two pages of Greek chronology, and repeat them to me to-morrow morning before nine o'clock. Go immediately!"

Enid obeyed with as much noise as she could; she was in a naughty frame of mind, and enjoyed banging the door after her. She did not greatly care about either the bad mark for conduct or the Greek chronology, though she had an uncomfortable qualm when it occurred to her that the episode might possibly come to Miss Lincoln's ears. For this once, however, she was safe. Miss Rowe was anxious to manage her troublesome class without constant reference to the headmistress, and thought it better not to report the affair. She determined, nevertheless, that Enid, being the centre of so much mischief, should move from her desk, and, instead of sitting in the second row from the back, should be in front, directly under her teacher's eye. She mentioned her wish to Miss Harper, who ordered Enid to change places with Beatrice Wynne, and to transfer her books to her new desk before the next morning. Enid was furious.

"I won't go!" she declared to her companions. "Not unless Miss Rowe drags me there."

"You'll have to!" said Avis.

"I don't know about that. No one can force me to do a thing I don't want, not even Miss Lincoln."

"Miss Lincoln would expel you if you didn't do what you were told."

"I shouldn't care!"

"Oh, Enid, don't be silly! It can't make such a difference where you sit. I'll help you to move all your books, and put your new desk tidy," said Patty, hoping to pour oil on the troubled waters, and adding: "You'll have one advantage. You'll be close to Miss Harper in the botany class, and she'll hand you the specimens first. I wish I might change instead of you. I always envied Beatrice when she was pulling off petals, and we were craning our necks to try and look."

"It's easy enough to see the bright side for somebody else," grumbled Enid.

"Let us have our removal now," continued Patty, wisely taking no notice. "Beatrice is quite ready; aren't you, Beatrice? We'll lay all the things on the seat, and dust the desk inside before we put them in."

"I wouldn't do it for anybody but you," said Enid, allowing herself to be persuaded.

Beatrice soon emptied her desk, and it did not take very long to arrange the books in their new quarters. The alteration was effected almost before Enid realized it, and the storm which Patty had dreaded for her friend's sake was avoided. Nevertheless, Patty was not easy about Enid.

"She'll be getting into serious trouble some day," she thought. "I wish she would behave better in Miss Rowe's classes. Things can't always go on like this, and if Miss Rowe were to tell her to report herself in the library, I don't believe even Enid would like to face Miss Lincoln and find her really angry. I know I shouldn't."

It seemed no use for Patty to try remonstrances. Enid only laughed, and would not listen to her.

"Patty, you're a dear!" she declared. "I love you the best of any girl I know, but even you can't persuade me to like Miss Rowe. It's no use. We're flint and steel, or frost and fire; or oil and water, or anything else you can name that oughtn't to go together, and won't mix. The very tone of her voice annoys me."

"Why should it?"

"It's so prim. The way she pokes out her chin and says 'Enid!' is most disagreeable. It always makes me want to be naughty. Yes, it does; don't shake your head. I've told you a hundred times I'm not good like you, and I simply can't be. I'm like a bottle of soda-water with the cork popped, and I have to fizz over sometimes."

It was unfortunate that Enid should have taken such a dislike to her teacher, for she kept up a state of ill-feeling among the girls which otherwise would probably have died away. Absurd trifles were magnified and made much of, and ridiculous grievances were nursed and cherished. One day Miss Rowe set the upper division a grammar exercise consisting of two questions. The first was long and very difficult; it was on the origin of the English language, and required a certain knowledge of various Anglo-Saxon roots, a list of words derived from ancient British, and some account of the Norman-French period. The second and shorter question was simply a sentence to be parsed. No one in the class had a good memory for derivations. Fourteen out of the fifteen members spent the half-hour racking their brains and biting the ends of their pens in vain endeavours to complete their answers to Question 1, so that when it was time to hand in their exercise books, they had written very little, and that little was mostly wrong. The exercises were corrected and returned the next day, and each girl, with the solitary exception of Ella Johnson, found she had received a bad mark.

"It's too disgusting!" said Beatrice Wynne. "I don't believe even Miss Rowe herself could have answered that question without looking at the book."

"How did you manage it, Ella? You're the only one who's scraped through," asked Avis.

"I didn't attempt it," said Ella. "I did the parsing instead."

"You mean to say you didn't do Question 1 at all?" exclaimed Kitty Harrison.

"No, not I."

"How abominably unfair!" cried Enid. "I thought everybody had to begin with the first question. All the rest of us took so long over it, that we hadn't time for the parsing, and yet we got bad marks, and you, who hadn't even tried, got a good mark. It's just like Miss Rowe's meanness."

"It's really too bad," said Winnie. "Someone ought to go to Miss Rowe and ask her about it."

"Yes, so they ought."

"Who will, then?"

Nobody volunteered for the disagreeable task, and Avis suggested that Winnie herself might be suitable.

"I daren't, after the snubbing I got yesterday," said Winnie. "She wouldn't listen to me."

"I think it would be best if we were to draw lots," said Enid.

"No, don't draw lots, it seems like gambling," said Avis. "Suppose we count as we do for games? Stand in a circle, and I'll begin. Are you ready?"

"The first one who gets 'out' will have to go and tell Miss Rowe what we think, then," agreed Enid.

"'One, two, three, four, Jenny at the cottage door," began Avis. "'Eating cherries off a plate, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, out goes _she_.' Why, it's you, Winnie, after all."

"I wish it wasn't," groaned Winnie. "However, I suppose I shall have to go. Miss Rowe's in the studio, so I'll ask her now and get it over."

"Tell her we don't think it's fair," said Enid.

"And that Ella ought to have a bad mark too," said Kitty Harrison.

"Oh, you mean thing! It's not my fault," protested the indignant Ella.

"You can say we might all have done the parsing if we'd begun it first," said Beatrice.

"And don't forget to say there wouldn't have been time to answer two such long questions," said Maggie Woodhall.

"I'll do the best I can, but don't expect too much," replied Winnie. "Stay here, all of you, till I come back."

Winnie returned in about five minutes with a doleful face. "It's no use," she assured the girls, "I can't make Miss Rowe understand the point at all. She would only say: 'You wrote a very ill-prepared exercise, which did not deserve a good mark, and if you think I am going to excuse bad work you are quite mistaken'."

"It's just what I expected," declared Enid. "Miss Rowe carries everything with such a high hand, she won't take the trouble to listen properly when one tries to explain."

"It's a shame!" said all the girls, indignantly.

"I wish we could find some way of paying her out," said Enid.

"What could we do?"

"Let me think. I know! Suppose we none of us say 'Good morning' to her when she comes into the schoolroom to-morrow to take the register."

"Oh, yes! That would be splendid, and then she would see our opinion of her."

"Every girl must vow she won't say it, even you, Patty!"

"I think you're very silly," said Patty, "but I shan't be there myself. I always have my music lesson at nine o'clock on Friday mornings."

"So much the better," said Enid. "You were the only one I thought might spoil it. Will everybody else promise?"

All gave the required assent. The girls were anxious to air their grievance, and this seemed the most feasible way of showing their teacher their displeasure. At five minutes to nine on the following morning, they were seated in their places waiting for the second bell to ring. Miss Rowe entered punctually, and turning to the class as usual said: "Good morning".

There was no reply. She waited a moment in much astonishment.

"Good morning, girls," she said again.

Still there was dead silence in the room.

"I will give you one more chance. I cannot believe that you can be so deliberately and intentionally discourteous. Good morning, girls."

What would have happened at this juncture, whether the girls would have still persisted in defying their teacher, and so have obliged her to report their conduct to Miss Lincoln, or whether they would have given way with an ill grace, it is impossible to say. Fortunately for all concerned, Miss Harper was rather earlier than usual that day, and arriving in the schoolroom exactly at the critical moment, she saved the situation. Her greeting was answered by a chorus of "Good morning", which might be intended for both mistresses. Miss Rowe had the good sense to take no further notice, and to proceed at once to mark the register; and as she did not refer to the subject afterwards, the girls felt doubtful whether their little mutiny had been quite so effective as they had meant it to be.

"I wish Miss Rowe wasn't so horribly particular," said Avis, tidying her possessions ruefully a few days afterwards. "She says she's going to look at all our desks this afternoon, and give forfeits for any that are in a muddle. I haven't rummaged to the back of mine for ever so long. I scarcely know what's in it. Why, what's this? It's actually a box of fusees. I remember now, I brought them from home. I'd quite forgotten I had them."

"Oh, do give them to me!" cried Enid. "They make such a lovely hissing noise, I like to hear them go off."

"You'd better not strike them in class, then," replied Avis.

"Do you dare me to?"

"Why, even you wouldn't do such a risky thing!"

"Oh! What would Miss Rowe say if you did it in the very middle of Euclid?" said Cissie Gardiner, with round eyes of delighted horror.

"Then I will, just to show you I dare. I'm not afraid of Miss Rowe!" declared Enid, appropriating the box and putting it in her pocket.

The girls laughed, not believing for a moment that she really intended to carry out her threat. The bell rang, Miss Rowe entered, and lessons began before they had time to say anything more about it. Euclid was not a favourite subject with the Upper Fourth. It was considered dry, and the half-hour devoted to it was regarded as more or less of a penance. In the very middle of the fifth proposition, when Miss Rowe had changed the letters on the blackboard, and was endeavouring to make Vera Clifford grasp the principle of the reasoning, instead of merely repeating the problem by rote, Enid's head was bent low over her desk, and her fingers appeared to be busy with something.

"Y G K = D F O," droned Vera in a melancholy voice.

Suddenly there was a striking sound, and a loud, long hiss.

"Oh! oh! oh!" came in a subdued chorus from all sides.

"Enid, what are you doing?" cried Miss Rowe, sharply.

For answer naughty Enid held up the hissing fusee in a kind of daring triumph, but as she raised her head her long curly hair, which was floating loose, brushed against the burning spark, and in an instant blazed up, setting fire also to the sleeve of her thin lawn blouse. With a wild shriek she dropped the fusee, and, springing from her seat, would have tried in her terror to rush from the room had she not been prevented by Miss Rowe, who, with admirable presence of mind, seized the duster from the blackboard, and with only that and her bare hands succeeded in stifling the flames. The whole class was in a panic. Jean Bannerman ran at once for Miss Hall, the teacher in the next room, and in a very short space of time Miss Lincoln herself arrived on the scene. Finding that Enid and Miss Rowe were the only two hurt, she carried them off at once to apply first aid until a doctor could be summoned, leaving Miss Hall to try and calm the agitated girls. Cissie Gardiner was sobbing hysterically, and all were offering versions of the accident in such a state of excitement, that it was difficult to understand their accounts.

"Enid Walker lighted a fusee?" repeated Miss Hall, almost incredulously. "Then she alone is responsible for this unhappy occurrence. I can only trust that neither she nor Miss Rowe is seriously injured. Girls, go back to your desks. I must return now to my own class, but I will send a prefect to you as soon as possible. I trust to your good feeling to work in silence at your preparation for to-morrow."

Miss Rowe and Enid were taken to the sanatorium, which was always kept in readiness to receive urgent cases. Both were suffering greatly from the shock: Miss Rowe's hands were badly scorched, and Enid had a severe burn on her arm and also on her neck. The doctor, having completed his dressings, ordered them both to be kept very quiet, and not to receive visitors until he gave his permission. It was several days, therefore, before Enid was allowed to see any of her school-fellows, and when the nurse at last declared that she might have a friend to spend half an hour with her, she fixed her choice at once upon Patty. The latter had been two or three times a day to the sanatorium to enquire how the invalids were progressing, so it was with great eagerness that she now knocked at the door. She was admitted by the nurse, and after a warning not to excite her companion, was shown to Enid's room. Enid was lying on the sofa, her arm swathed in bandages; some of her pretty hair had been cut away, and her face looked white, with dark circles round her eyes, as if she had not slept. Patty, after a rapturous greeting, sat down on a chair by her side, and began to tell her the school news.

"Everybody sent all kinds of messages," she said. "It seems so funny in class without either you or Miss Rowe. Have you seen Miss Rowe? Are her hands very bad?"

"They're both bandaged up," replied Enid. "She won't be able to use them for some time. Wasn't it brave of her to rush at me with the duster? Do you know, she's been so nice. We had a long talk last night, and she told me ever so many things. She meant to go to Girton when she left school, but her father lost all his money, and she had to begin to teach at once, so that she could help a younger brother. She's paying for his education herself, and he's doing splendidly at his school, and she's so proud of him, and hopes he may win a scholarship. If I'd only known all this, I wouldn't have made it so hard for her. I'm as sorry for that now as I am about her hands being burnt."

"I always thought Miss Rowe was nicer than you imagined. I'm so glad you've found it out," said Patty.

"I expect she's one of those people who improve on acquaintance," continued Enid. "I couldn't bear her at one time, and now I believe I'm going to like her immensely. You can't think how jolly she can make herself. I'll never be naughty in her class again, or let anybody else be, if I can help it. On my honour I won't!"

Enid was as good as her word. When she and Miss Rowe were well enough to again take their places in school, the young teacher found, to her surprise, that all her trouble with the Upper Fourth was at an end. The girls regarded her in the light of a heroine, and her new popularity gave her an influence over them which her efforts at strict discipline had not been able to gain.

"She seems quite different," said Winnie, voicing the feelings of the class. "She's far pleasanter than she used to be, and now she doesn't order us about so much, we don't seem to want to do so many things we oughtn't. She's really very pretty, you know; her nose is just perfect, and her hair is so thick and fair. Of course she can't compare with Miss Harper, but still I like her ever so much better than I did before, and I vote we give her a tremendous clapping on Speech Day."