Part 13 (1/2)

Deeply humiliated and disgusted, the Fifth retired to its own cla.s.sroom to discuss the untoward event.

”It's too sickening--when I'd borrowed the wig on purpose!” wailed Hilda. ”You can't think how I had to pester Dad to lend it.”

”And my Ba.s.sanio doublet and tights were made at a dressmaker's!”

lamented Louise Mawson.

”Who'd have thought of the Sixth choosing that very scene?”

”Well, I tried to persuade you to take something else instead,”

declared Gwen, offering Job's comfort to the disappointed ones.

”Gwen Gascoyne, I verily believe you knew all the time what the Sixth were going to have.”

”You must have known when your sister was in it.”

”I wasn't sure, but I had an inkling,” confessed Gwen.

”Then why didn't you tell?” howled the girls in chorus.

”Why? Because it didn't seem fair. Winnie hadn't said a word--I only guessed. You know we're all supposed to keep our own secrets.”

”In this case you ought to have warned us properly. It was too bad to let us rehea.r.s.e all that time, and get all the costumes together--for this!”

”We've made ourselves ridiculous, and it's your fault entirely.”

”Couldn't you act it here, just among ourselves?” suggested Gwen humbly; but her proposal was squashed by an indignant and scornful majority.

”Act it here indeed! Who'd care to do that, I wonder? Don't be so idiotic. You've spoilt our performance, Gwen Gascoyne, when you might have saved it. Why couldn't you stay in the Lower School? You haven't sense enough to be a Senior.”

It was not a very satisfactory ending to a first term, even though Gwen had done better in the exams than she expected, so that her place in her new Form was well a.s.sured. She still felt an outcast, and as she shut her desk for the last time on breaking-up day, she gave a sigh of intense relief to think that she was going to enjoy a whole month's freedom from the society of her cla.s.smates.

Home at present was the _summum bonum_ of her wishes. She almost danced along the road from school, and behaved so jubilantly in the bus that Winnie had to interfere, and give her a hint to restrain her hilarity before the other pa.s.sengers. She rushed into the Parsonage like a cyclone, and flung her satchel under the bookcase.

”There! That's done with! Hurrah! No more horrid, hateful, scrambly, early breakfasts, and tramping off through the mud. Every day's a Sat.u.r.day, and I'm just going to have a glorious time.”

”There's plenty for you to do,” said Beatrice, fis.h.i.+ng out the satchel and putting it tidily away on Gwen's special shelf. ”I haven't finished those texts I was making for the church yet, and--”

”Oh, wow! Don't set me to work too soon! I've a heap of things of my own that want doing first. Winnie is far cleverer at cutting texts than I am.”

”She's more to be depended upon, certainly,” said Beatrice dryly.

Each member of the family was mysteriously occupied with special secrets. There were still five days before Christmas, time for an energetic person to get through a great deal, and Gwen hoped to accomplish wonders. She was in a sad quandary about her Christmas gifts. Her savings box, which ought to have contained over fifteen s.h.i.+llings, only held a threepennybit and two halfpennies; and she shook her head dismally as she reviewed her pauper condition.

”I must make presents, that's the long and short of it,” she told herself. ”They can't be handsome ones. And, oh dear! they'll all think me so horribly stingy and mean. Well, they'll have to, for I can't explain! It's absolutely sickening, but it's inevitable.”

So Gwen shut herself up in her bedroom, locked out the injured Lesbia, who had plans of her own which she wished to pursue in privacy, put on a thick jacket and a pair of mittens to keep herself warm, and set to work bravely. It is rather hard to make bricks without straw, and her supply of materials, mostly purloined from Beatrice's piece-box, was decidedly scanty. She held a review of the articles when she had finished, and screwed up her face over them in expressive dissatisfaction.

”They're a shabby little lot, that's flat!” she decided.