Part 11 (1/2)
Land Girls
With the bond of such a secret between them, Diana and Loveday cemented a firm friends.h.i.+p. To be sure, Loveday's conscience, which was of a very exacting and inquisitorial description, sometimes gave her unpleasant twinges like a species of moral toothache; but then the other self which also talked inside her would plead that it was only sporting to screen a schoolfellow, and that no one but a sneak could have done otherwise. She sincerely hoped that Diana had escaped notice both going and returning, and that no busybody from the village would bring a report to Miss Todd.
If the matter were to leak out, both girls would get into serious trouble--Diana for running away, and her room-mate for aiding and abetting her escapade. That she was really in some danger on her account gave Loveday an added interest in Diana. She began to be very fond of her. The little American had a most lovable side for certain people, on whom she bestowed the warmth of her affection, though she could be a pixie to those who did not happen to please her. With the seniors in general she was no favourite. She had more than one skirmish with the prefects, and was commonly regarded as a firebrand, ready at any moment to set alight the flame of insurrection among turbulent intermediates and juniors.
”Diana's at the bottom of any mischief that's going!” proclaimed Geraldine one day, after a battle royal over an absurd dispute about the tennis-court.
”And the worst of it is, she makes Wendy just as bad!” agreed Hilary warmly.
”Wendy wasn't exactly a saint before Diana came,” put in Loveday.
”Oh, you always stand up for Diana! I can't think what you see in her--a cheeky little monkey, I call her!” Geraldine was still ruffled.
”She has her points, though.”
”She'll get jolly well sat upon, if she doesn't take care,” muttered Geraldine, who held exalted notions as to the dignity of prefects.
It was at the beginning of the second week in October that Miss Todd, in whose brain ambitious projects of education for the production of the ”super-girl” had been fermenting, announced the first of her radical changes. She had not undertaken it without much consultation with parents, and many letters had pa.s.sed backwards and forwards on the subject. Most, however, had agreed with her views, and it had been decided that at any rate the experiment was to be tried. Pendlemere, which so far had concentrated entirely on the Senior Oxford Curriculum and accomplishments, was to add an agricultural side to its course.
There was to be a lady teacher, fresh from the Birchgate Horticultural College, who would start poultry-keeping and bee-keeping on the latest scientific principles, and would plant the garden with crops of vegetables. She could have a few land workers to a.s.sist her, and the girls, in relays, could study her methods. Miss Todd, who in choosing a career had hesitated between teaching and horticulture, s.n.a.t.c.hed at the opportunity of combining the two. She was bubbling over with enthusiasm.
In imagination she saw Pendlemere a flouris.h.i.+ng Garden Colony, setting an educational example to the rest of the scholastic world. Her girls, trained in both the scientific and practical side of agriculture in addition to their ordinary curriculum, would be turned out equipped for all contingencies, either of emigration, or a better Britain. She considered their health would profit largely. She explained her views to them in detail, painting rose-coloured pictures of the delights in store for them in the spring and summer. The girls, very much thrilled at the prospect, dispersed to talk it over.
”Is Pendlemere to be a sort of farm, then?” asked Wendy.
”Looks like it, if we're to keep hens and bees, and grow all our own vegetables! Bags me help with the chickens. I love them when they're all yellow, like canaries. Toddlekins hinted something about launching out into a horse if things prospered.”
”A horse! Goody, what fun!” exulted Diana. ”I just _adore_ horses! Bags me help with stable-work, then. I'd groom it instead of learning my geography or practising scales. I say, I call this a ripping idea!”
”Don't congratulate yourself too soon,” qualified Magsie. ”You'll probably find the geography and the scales are tucked in somehow. All the same, I think it sounds rather sporty.”
”It will be a change, at any rate, and we'll feel we're marching with the times.”
”When does the 'back-to-the-land' teacher come?”
”On Friday, I believe.”
Miss Chadwick, the graduate of Birchgate Horticultural College, who was to run the new experiment, arrived at the end of the week, and brought two students as her a.s.sistants. They were a fresh, jolly-looking trio, with faces rosy from open-air work, and serviceable hands which caused a considerable flutter among those of the school who went in for manicure.
At tea-time they talked gaily of onion-beds, intensive culture, irrigation, proteids, white Wyandottes, trap-nests, insecticides, sugar-beets, and bacteria. Miss Todd, keenly interested, joined in the conversation with the zeal of a neophyte; Miss Beverley, the nature-study side of whose education had been neglected, and who scarcely knew a caterpillar from an earthworm, followed with the uneasy air of one who is out of her depth; the school, eating their bread-and-b.u.t.ter and blackberry jam, sat and listened to the talk at the top end of the table.
”It sounds rather brainy,” commented Diana in a whisper.
”Yes,” replied Wendy, also in a subdued tone. ”Poor old Bunty's floundering hopelessly. Did you hear her ask if they were going to cultivate cuc.u.mbers in the open? I nearly exploded! I believe she thinks pineapples grow on pine-trees. She's trying _so_ hard to look as if she knows all about it. I'll be sorry for the infant cabbages if she has the care of them.”
”It wouldn't be her job, surely.”
”I'd agitate for a 'Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Vegetables'
if it were. I believe I'm going to adore Miss Chadwick! She looks so sporty. She wrinkles up her nose when she laughs, just like a baby does.”
”The little dark student with the freckles is my fancy.”
”Oh! I like the other, with the bobbed hair.”