Part 14 (1/2)

'Yes,' said Dr. Hurst, grimly. 'I was the beast.'

Then he stooped and kissed her cheek very stiffly, as if he were not used to kissing people; and then he went away. Like Ruth Oliver, he had found it difficult to feel nervous of the youngest girl in the school.

Barbara climbed on the window-seat, and flattened her nose against the window-pane, and watched the lamps of the doctor's trap receding down the drive. 'I like doctors; don't you, Miss Finlayson?' she inquired, when that lady came back into the study.

Miss Finlayson agreed that she liked doctors very much indeed, and she began to write something in a big book, while Babs knelt on the window-seat and stared out into the rain and the darkness. Suddenly she jumped down from her perch with a cry of dismay.

'What's the matter now?' asked the head-mistress, absently.

'I must have called him a beast!' gasped Barbara.

'I think I heard something like it,' observed Miss Finlayson, still writing.

'But--but I didn't mean that _he_ was a beast,' proceeded Barbara, looking distressed. 'I meant that somebody else was a beast. It wasn't my fault that somebody else was _him_, was it, Miss Finlayson?'

'It would be safer, I think, and perhaps a little more considerate, not to call anybody a beast,' remarked the head-mistress, gravely. 'Then these little mistakes would be avoided.'

'I never will again,' sighed Babs. 'It's such a particular pity, because he isn't a bit like a real beast, is he?'

Miss Finlayson looked up while she dried the page she had just written.

'Have you finished your letters home?' she inquired pleasantly. 'The prayer-bell will ring in about a quarter of an hour.'

The reminder sent Barbara straight out of the room, and she sped swiftly back across the hall, thinking busily. Clearly, the only reparation she could make to the doctor was to transform him from a beast into a fairy prince, and to offer him a place in her fairy kingdom; but he would be rather lonely there without a princess, she feared, and she herself already belonged to Kit. It was always easier to find princes than princesses, and she did wish that Finny would not wear a cap and sc.r.a.pe her hair back so tidily--two things which disqualified her, in spite of her niceness, from being a princess in anybody's kingdom.

However, perhaps he would not mind doing without a princess just at first; and in time she might be able to find some one who was neither silly nor unkind, and would be worthy of a crown and the companions.h.i.+p of a disenchanted beast.

At this point in her reflections Barbara reached the door of the senior playroom, and the sight of the elder girls, as they busied themselves with their weekly correspondence, reminded her again of her letter to Kit. For the moment, as far as she was concerned, her new prince would have to whistle for a princess.

CHAPTER IX

THE BABE'S 'FURY'

In the junior playroom Jean Murray had been taking the opportunity to revive the animosity against the new girl.

'Can't you see that she's laughing at us all?' she exclaimed to a circle of humble listeners. 'It's all very well to pretend to be such a baby; that kind of thing may go down with the elder ones, but it won't do here.

Anybody can see that she's only putting it all on, to be aggravating.'

'She told a story the very day she arrived,' chimed in Angela from behind.

'A girl who could do that would do anything.'

'Can't you leave the child alone?' suggested Charlotte Bigley, who happened to be listening. 'She seems such a harmless infant to me. I don't believe she even knows she is supposed to be in disgrace.'

It required a good deal of courage to stand up alone against all the girls in the junior playroom, and Charlotte flushed a little when they all laughed at her.

'That's where her artfulness comes in,' declared Jean. She thought she heard her rival's voice on the other side of the curtain, and jealousy made her more bitter than before. 'If you ask me, I believe she only pretends not to notice any of us, so as to pick up everything she can; and then she goes and sneaks it all to the elder ones.'

'Oh, Jean!' remonstrated Charlotte.