Just Gerry Part 2

CHAPTER III

THE WAYS OF WAKEHURST PRIORY

Meanwhile in the Lower Fifth sitting-room, Jack--Joanna Pym, Geraldine afterwards discovered her full name to be--was instructing the new girl in the ways of Wakehurst Priory.

"Ever been to school before?" she asked, regarding Geraldine with some interest, when Monica had left the room and most of the other girls had moved away, thus leaving the two alone together.

"No, never," said Geraldine, feeling that the admission implied some grave neglect upon somebody's part.

Jack appeared to take this view of the matter also.

"You're awfully old to come to school for the first time. Fifteen on your last birthday, didn't you say? You must be pretty good at lessons, though, to be in the Lower Fifth right away. Miss Oakley usually puts people into a form lower than they could go into, for their first term, because she says that entrance examinations are so deceptive, and if the girls are really good they can always be moved up. We don't often get new girls in the Lower Fifth--most of the new kids begin in the Lower School. I guess you'll be the only new girl in our form this term."

"Shall I?" said Geraldine. "I'm rather sorry for that. It would have been nicer if there had been somebody else new, too."

"Oh, I don't know. New girls are a rotten lot as a rule," replied Jack airily. "You seem rather decenter than most. But you will have an awful lot to learn if you've never been to school before."

"Why? Are the lessons so very difficult?" questioned Geraldine.

"Oh, it isn't the _lessons_," replied her informant. "Lessons don't really count very much at school, except with the mistresses. It's games and rules and--and--well, school etiquette in general, you know.

I expect it will take you quite a term to learn all our school ways."

"Will it?" said Geraldine, looking rather alarmed. Jack hastened to rea.s.sure her.

"You needn't look so scared about it! Of course there are heaps of unwritten rules and things which you'll have to pick up, besides all the rules which the mistresses make. But people make allowances for you your first term, and I'll help you a lot, if you'd like me to.

I've been here for years and years and years, and there isn't much about the old Priory I couldn't put you up to--though I'm not specially good at lessons," Jack added, with becoming modesty.

"Oh, I wish you would! Tell me about things, I mean. What happens next this evening? And what time do we start lessons, and when do we play games, and all that?"

"I'd better begin at the beginning," said Jack, nothing loath at the opportunity of exercising her tongue. Jack was an inveterate chatterbox. "Getting-up bell goes at seven, breakfast is at quarter to eight. Eight-fifteen to eight-thirty we tidy cubicles and make our beds. Then there's half an hour free, which we're supposed on fine days to spend in the quad or somewhere out in the grounds, before the bell goes at nine o'clock for prayers. We all a.s.semble then in the Great Hall and march into Chapel for prayers, in the order of forms.

You'd better stick to me to-morrow morning, and I'll show you where to stand and sit. After prayers, we go to our form rooms and work until eleven. At eleven there's half an hour's recess, when you can get cocoa and biscuits, if you want them, in the dining-hall. Then lessons again until one o'clock, tidy yourself, and dinner at quarter-past.

Then there's a free time until half-past two, when either you have to go for a walk or play games."

"May you choose which you do?" asked Geraldine.

"Rather not!" answered Jack emphatically. "You're marked down which you're to be. Usually you get about four games' afternoons a week, and the rest walks. In the summer we do prep in the afternoon, and have games after tea. But this term we do prep in the evening, and have our hockey in the afternoon. Do you play hockey?"

"No," confessed Geraldine, rather uneasily.

"That's a pity," said her new friend. "How was that? Wasn't there any sort of a club in the village where you lived?"

"Y--yes--there was," said Geraldine. "But my people wouldn't let me join. Mother and Dad didn't approve much of hockey for girls."

"What a shame!" sympathised Jack. "Weren't you jolly sick about it?"

Geraldine flushed suddenly hotly red. She wished that she could have honestly said "Yes." But she was a very truthful person, and even to make a favourable impression upon Jack--to whom she had taken an immense liking--she could not prevaricate.

"Well, no, not exactly," she said in a low tone. "You--you see, I didn't much think I should care about it, myself."

"Not care about it!" Jack opened wide surprised eyes. Hockey was the joy and delight of her harum-scarum existence, and it had never before occurred to her that there could be an individual of hockey age in the world misguided enough not to care. "Why, it's a perfectly scrumptious game! It's an awful pity you've never played before. I'm afraid Muriel will put you into a dreadfully low team. Never mind, though, you must work as hard at it as ever you can, and you'll soon get moved up."

"But--but shall I _have_ to play?" asked Geraldine in some dismay.

"Of course you will. Unless you've got a doctor's certificate to say you're not allowed. Everybody has to play here, unless the doctor says you mayn't. Never mind, you'll soon get to like it. n.o.body could help liking hockey when once they've begun--it's such a ripping game!"

"Doesn't the ball hurt frightfully when it hits you?" said Geraldine nervously. She had watched hockey matches, although she had never played in one, and she did not feel at all inclined to partic.i.p.ate in the game.

"Of course it does!" Jack laughed merrily. "But that's part of the fun. You feel my leg--all those little b.u.mps and lumpy things down the front. That's from the b.a.l.l.s I stopped last year"--with a proud inflection in her tone. "I'm third eleven now, B.1--they call the teams after the letters of the alphabet here--and with any luck I'll get into the second eleven this term. There are two vacancies--left outside and right half. I've no chance as outer, I'm not fast enough.

Besides, Vera Maynce from the Fifth Remove is almost sure to get chosen for that. But I've got quite a sporting chance for right half. Gertie Page from the Upper Fifth might get it, but if I only do well in the trial next Sat.u.r.day, I believe Muriel will give it to me. She told me at the end of last season that it would lie between Gertie and me, and I'd better not let myself get stale. And I haven't. My brother's been practising sending hard shots at me all through the hols. I'm getting no end of a dab at stopping them. You have to be good at stopping b.a.l.l.s, if you play half-back," she added, for the information of the new girl.

"What happens after hockey?" asked Geraldine. She had been listening rather uneasily to Jack's account of the glories of the hockey field.

To Geraldine's mind these would be more in the nature of tortures.

Even before the air-raid she had always been rather a delicate child, and had never played any of the rough and tomboyish games in which most girls join as readily as their brothers. Consequently, she had never learnt to take hard knocks with the average schoolgirl's ready equanimity. And the idea of stopping b.a.l.l.s on her s.h.i.+ns amidst the mud and scrimmage of the hockey field rather appalled her. But she saw that it would never do to let this new-found friend of hers guess just how she felt about it. Geraldine could imagine the contempt that would come into Jack's eyes if she were to betray the fact that she was really afraid of the unknown game. And she made haste to change the topic before her companion should perceive the horror with which she was regarding her coming ordeal on the hockey field.

"Oh, after hockey," said Jack, readily taking the bait. "Tea, of course, after you've washed and changed. There's usually about half an hour's interval after we come down from the field. The tea-bell goes at half-past four, and the prep bell at five, so there's not much time between them. We do prep until seven. Then change for supper, which is at half-past seven. From eight to nine's free. The juniors go to bed then, while the seniors--all the forms above the Lower Fourth--go to Chapel once more for prayers. Then bedtime comes for everybody at nine-thirty. So wags the weary round from day to day," she concluded, with a fine poetical flourish. "If it wasn't for hockey and half-holidays, and Sundays and hampers and dormitory feasts, and other occasional rags, school would be an awfully dead-and-alive affair. But as it is, it has its redeeming features. I say, what dorm are you in?"

"The Pink Dormitory," answered Geraldine.

"You lucky kid! That's Muriel Paget's dorm this term. Half the girls in the school would give their eyes to be in your shoes."

"Why?" asked Geraldine in astonishment.

"Why? Because Muriel's head girl, and everybody in this school is cracked on her. At least, as cracked as Muriel will let them be! She won't let girls make themselves idiots over her--she squashes them horribly if they overdo the flowers and sweets and f.a.gging business.

Still, it would be jolly nice to be in her dorm; I wouldn't mind being there myself, though I'm not one of the most love-sick of her satellites, by a long way. I bet there'll be a rare old scrum to-night to fetch her hot water, and do those sorts of things."

"One of the girls did ask if she might fetch her hot water, this afternoon," volunteered Geraldine. "But she squashed her then. She said she wasn't going to have any of that silly rot going on in her dorm so long as she was monitress there."

"Did she? How awfully like Muriel!" chuckled Jack, with keen appreciation. "Who was the girl, do you know? Oh, of course, though, you won't! You're new. I quite forgot."

"I do happen to know that girl's name, though," responded Geraldine, pleased to be able to satisfy her companion's curiosity. "It was Phyllis--Phyllis Tressider, or some such name as that."

"Who's that talking about me?" said a sharp voice behind her; and Geraldine, turning round with a start, found herself looking into a pair of angry blue eyes as the owner of the name came up to the table on which the two girls had been sitting. The new girl gave an uncontrollable recoil and looked apprehensively towards her new friend, who, however, appeared wholly unconcerned at Phyllis's truculent att.i.tude.

"All right, Phil. Keep your hair on, old girl," she said affably. "I was only asking Geraldine Wilmott a question which she answered."

"What was she saying, though? I won't have her going telling sneaky tales about me all over the place," said Phyllis, still regarding Geraldine fiercely.

"Oh, rot, Phil! Don't make such a how-d'ye-do about a silly little matter," said Jack, sliding down from the table on which she had hitherto been perched. "I say, Geraldine, has anybody shown you round the school yet? No? Then come along and let me do the honours. It will fill up time nicely until the supper bell goes. There's only an hour to get through before then."

And Geraldine, only too glad to escape from the vicinity of Phyllis Tressider, made haste to follow her out of the Lower Fifth sitting-room.

CHAPTER IV

AN INCIDENT IN THE DARK

"That's the dining-hall, as you know," said Jack, as she guided Geraldine past the big room in which tea had taken place. "This pa.s.sage leads out to the Chapel. Like to see it? Come along, then, and I'll take you to have a look."