Linda and Sylvia had a great many experiences to relate to the other girls when they returned to Heathercliffe House, and as they were the only ones in the class who had been away for the few days, they were able to enjoy a position of much importance until their adventures were all told. Nothing particular seemed to have happened during their absence. Brenda had broken her bedroom jug, Connie had fallen against the mowing machine and her forehead was ornamented with large strips of sticking plaster which did not improve her personal appearance, and Dolly had locked the door of the book cupboard in the Kindergarten room and lost the key, much to Miss Coleman's wrath. Otherwise there were no events worth chronicling.
"Unless you'd like to hear that I've made a fresh copy of my Greek history notes," said Marian. "They're most beautifully neat, and underlined with red ink. I'm sure Miss Kaye'll say they're better than anybody else's."
But as both Linda and Sylvia declared that did not interest them in the least, Marian's piece of information fell rather flat.
All the girls seemed to find it a little difficult to settle into harness again after the short holiday. The weather was warm, and in spite of open windows the schoolrooms were apt to feel close and stuffy. Miss Arkwright tried the plan of holding her class under the big hawthorn in the garden, but she found that a bird singing in the tree, a bumble bee settling on a flower, or a butterfly flitting across the lawn was enough to put dates and rivers completely out of her pupils' minds, and to wipe even their best-known facts from their memories, so she did not repeat her experiment.
"In our grandmothers' days schools always had their holidays in June,"
said Sylvia, yawning, as she idly picked the heads off the daisies on the lawn one afternoon. "They broke up just when the hot weather begins, and then they had all the lovely time when the evenings are so long and you can be out-of-doors until bedtime, and the strawberries are ripe, and they're cutting the hay. I think it was far nicer. We don't break up till the 31st of July."
"Yes, but remember they'd have the whole of August at school," said Marian. "Think of having to come back just at the time when everyone's going away now to the seaside. And what an enormous term it would make till Christmas!"
"They had quarters then," said Sylvia, "and a little holiday at Michaelmas, like the Easter one."
"I don't believe children went home from boarding-schools for it though. If you read old-fashioned books you will notice that the boys always talk of 'a half' as if they stayed from Midsummer to Christmas, and from Christmas to Midsummer again. It must have seemed such a long while."
"I think it must have been perfectly horrible to go to school then,"
said Nina Forster. "My grandmother tells me stories about when she was a little girl, and I should have hated it. They had to learn their lessons off by heart, and stand with their hands behind their backs and say them just like parrots, and if they forgot or made a mistake the governess rapped them on the head with her thimble. She called it 'thimble pie'. It used to make them too nervous to remember things."
"How nasty of her! What else did they do?" asked the girls, who liked to be told tales while they lounged.
"They had to use backboards every day, and chest expanders. Then they had much plainer food than we have, and they were obliged to finish up every morsel upon their plates; they mightn't leave anything. They always had brown bread except on Sundays, and rice puddings nearly every day. They hardly ever went picnics or excursions; they only used to go for stupid walks along the roads, two and two, with a mistress at each end. The music teacher had a silver pencil with a heavy knob at the end, and if a girl played a wrong note she used to bring it down with a thump upon her hand. Granny says it made her hate music.
Then they mightn't send letters home without the headmistress seeing them, and she used to make them write the most absurd rubbish, so that they weren't their own letters at all. Granny had her twelfth birthday at school, and when she wrote to thank her father for his present the governess insisted on her putting: 'Now that I have attained to my twelfth year I feel I am no longer a child, and must put away childish things'. Wasn't it stupid? They used to write the most beautiful hand, though, far, far neater than ours, but they took a fearfully long time over it. They'd spend a week at an exercise that we do in a day. The teachers were very strict and very cross, and there seemed to be so many punishments--being sent to bed, and being kept in, and learning long columns of spelling. Granny says girls are spoilt now, but I know I'd rather go to Miss Kaye's than to the school she was at."
"I should think so," said the others; "I don't believe any other could be really nicer than this."
"I sometimes wish I'd gone to a different one, though," said Jessie Ellis.
"Why?"
"Because my three cousins were here, and they're so tremendously clever. It's rather hard when you're not very bright yourself, and the teachers keep saying: 'You mean to tell me you can't learn this, and you an Ellis!' I think they must have taken my share of the brains in the family. At any rate it's not quite fair to blame me because I can't do everything they did. Ethel won a scholarship for Newnham, and I never even scrape through the easiest class exam as a rule. I don't care much. Mother says I must be a home girl and like sewing. I'm glad I don't get my pocket money by my marks."
"Oh, but does anybody?"
"Yes, I knew a girl who did. Her father gave her sixpence every week she was top, and nothing at all if she was lower than halfway in the class. He said it was to make her work."
"Before I came to school I used to get my pocket money for doing things," said Brenda. "I had a penny for every hour I practised, so if I wanted to save up I used to do a little extra at the piano; then there was a penny a week for wearing my gloves, and another penny for using the back stairs, and a halfpenny for eating salt, and another halfpenny if I remembered to wipe my boots. I rather liked it."
"I don't think it was nice at all," declared Marian. "It was bribing you to do what you ought to have done in any case."
"Yes, so it was," echoed Gwennie. "We always wipe our boots."
"Oh, you two are perfect, of course!" said Brenda. "You never do anything wrong! What about that French book which was lost last week?"
"It wasn't my fault or Gwennie's either," said Marian, rising and putting an end to a conversation which threatened to become too personal. "Somebody must have borrowed it without asking us. I'm going in now to learn my verbs." And she departed, leaving the others laughing, for poor Marian did not always succeed in living entirely according to her excellent precepts and "Practice what you preach" is a motto held in high estimation by schoolgirls.
Though ordinary lessons in the garden had proved a failure, Miss Kaye made a new departure by arranging that Mr. Dawson, the drawing master, should organize a sketching class, to include those of his pupils whom he considered sufficiently advanced to benefit by outdoor instruction.
It was mostly composed of girls from the first and second classes, but Marian, Linda, and Sylvia had done such good work in the studio that Mr. Dawson decided he would allow them to commence drawing from nature, and to their great delight they were permitted to join the party. They felt almost like artists as they set off with camp stools, sketching blocks, pencils, indiarubbers, paintboxes and water tins, and were installed under their master's direction beneath the shade of a hedge to make a valiant attempt at reproducing a picturesque gate and a gnarled oak tree which overhung it. It was a great deal more difficult than they had at first imagined. The bars of the gate were puzzling, and the oak tree somehow refused to turn out a tree at all, and was inclined to bear more resemblance to a lamp-post or a telegraph pole.
"It may be better when we get some colour on," said Sylvia hopefully.
"Everyone will know the brown part is meant for the trunk and the green part for leaves."
"My gate looks as if I'd been playing naughts and crosses on my paper," sighed Linda. "I've rubbed it out seven times, and I'm afraid it's not straight now. The paper's quite spoilt. It'll be horrid when I begin to paint."
"We can't expect to do very much the first time, I suppose," said Marian. "My tree looks like a cabbage on a broomstick. I can lend you my indiarubber if you want it to clean up with. It's a softer one than yours. I want to get to the painting part and yet I'm afraid to begin."
"So am I," said Linda. "I don't know what Mr. Dawson will say when he sees the muddle I've made of this gate. Here he comes now."
The master must certainly have found the little girl's work far from talented, but, taking her seat, he made a patient effort to correct the mistakes in her drawing, adding a clever line or two of his own to show her how it ought to be done, then with a word of encouragement to Marian and Sylvia he passed on to some of his elder pupils.
The painting did not prove such a redeeming feature as Sylvia had anticipated. Her sky refused to go on smoothly, and, as she was in too great a hurry to let it dry properly before she commenced her tree, the edges ran into each other hopelessly, producing an effect that was perhaps too impressionistic for most tastes. The trunk of the tree would not appear round, and the branches had an uncomfortable suggestion of signposts, and she could not get the right colour for the grass, and found the shadows absolutely baffling.
"It's a perfect daub," she cried, flinging down her brush as Mercy came round presently to see how they were getting on.
"So's mine, I'm afraid," said Mercy. "You may see it if you like, but it's hardly worth looking at. I'm letting it dry before I touch it any more. It was getting into such a dreadful mess. Sketching from nature isn't at all easy. I think Mr. Dawson's extremely clever to paint such lovely things. You should see the sweet little bit he put in for Trissie Knowles. It seems no trouble to him."
"I wish you'd do a piece for me, Mercy," said Linda.
"Oh, I daren't! Mr. Dawson would find it out directly, and perhaps he mightn't like it. May Spencer's sketch is far the best of anybody's.
She just dashed it off, and it looks so nice. Helen Ward let her sky dry in patches, and Mr. Dawson had to take her board to the stream and dip it in the water to wash it off again. We're doing the cottage, you know, round the corner, and when Sybil Lake had painted all the front of hers she discovered she'd left out one of the windows."
"Who's this coming along the road?" interrupted Marian. "He's smiling at one of us, I'm sure. I don't know him. Do you?"
"Dr. Severn!" cried Linda and Sylvia, and, springing up, they put their sketching materials on the grass and hurried to meet him.
"Good afternoon! This is quite a surprise to me," said the doctor. "I didn't expect to find my two little friends suddenly blossoming into full-blown artists. I hope I'm not interrupting a lesson."
"Oh, no! We're all waiting for Mr. Dawson to come round and tell us what to do next," said Linda. "Where are you going, Doctor? Won't you sit down and talk for a minute? Please have my camp stool."
"It's a big surprise to us," added Sylvia. "We didn't know you ever came to Aberglyn."
"I find myself here to-day," said Dr. Severn. "Thank you, Linda, but I'm afraid I should break down your little seat if I were to put my weight on it. There's a convenient stump here which will do very well.
Now you can imagine I'm an art critic, and show me some of the masterpieces. I see both your friends are painting, also," he continued, smiling at Mercy and Marian. "Will they let me look at their pictures too?"
Dr. Severn was always at his ease with young people; his pleasant blue eyes and genial manner seemed to attract them at once; and he had soon added Mercy and Marian to the list of his admirers.
"I used to do a little sketching myself once," he said when he had duly inspected the four studies and sympathized with their owners'
difficulties, "so I know how much harder it is than it looks, particularly when one's a beginner. I found many quaint corners to paint when I was abroad, especially in China and Japan."
"China! Were you ever in China?" asked Mercy with some eagerness.
"I was stationed in Szu-chwan for more than twenty years," replied Dr.
Severn.
"Do you know the Ingledew Hospital at Tsien-Lou?"
"I have heard of it, but I've never been there. I was in a different district, and the distances were great and travelling often dangerous."