By four o'clock the whole of the business was concluded, the societies were established, and a very hopeful start had been made. Among the many activities of that important afternoon one point seemed to stand out firmly and clearly--Merle above all the other monitresses had shown herself capable of taking the lead. Where Iva, Nesta, and Muriel had failed to control the school she had restored order, conducted the meeting admirably, and exhibited considerable powers of organisation. She had undoubtedly justified her position, and had won the respect of most of her comrades.

"Did I do all right?" she asked Mavis anxiously, as they walked home.

"Splendiferously! I was bursting with pride! I couldn't have done it myself, Merle! When I saw all that rackety crew talking and ragging, I thought it was hopeless and that we should have to fetch Miss Mitch.e.l.l.

Some of those juniors had just made up their minds to give trouble. You tackled them marvellously."

"I wasn't going to give in to them!" declared Merle. "I meant to stop their ragging if I had to go round and box all their ears. Well! They know now they have to behave themselves or I'll know the reason why! But oh, Mavis! I don't think Muriel will ever forgive me for being chairwoman."

"Why not?"

"She never wanted me to be a monitress!"

"Nonsense!"

"It's the truth."

"Well, she missed her own opportunity, so she can't blame you for taking it this afternoon."

"She's against me all the same. Iva and Nesta are quite nice, but there are going to be squalls with Muriel. You'll take my part?"

"Of course I shall, through thick and thin. You can always count on your own sister."

"That's something to go upon at any rate. I shall need support. I don't believe it's going to be an easy business."

"'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,'" quoted Mavis laughingly.

"Exactly. I wanted tremendously to be monitress, but I didn't realise all I was in for. I see many breezes in front."

"You'll weather them all, don't fear! After such a splendid start I've every confidence in you. It's only a question now of keeping it up and going ahead."

Merle was not mistaken in her estimation of the difficulties that lay before her. A certain section of the juniors, led by Winnie Osborne and Joyce Colman, the firebrands of the Third form, offered great resistance to the authority of the monitresses, and put every possible obstacle in their way. To keep these unruly youngsters in order meant a constant clashing of wills, and needed much courage and determination. Some of the new girls also were inclined to rebel and to air their own views. Sybil Vernon, in particular, was a thorn in the flesh. She had been at boarding-school before, and on the strength of her previous experience she offered advice upon any and every occasion. She was very aggrieved that she had not been eligible for election to office herself.

"I know so much more about it than most of you!" she would explain airily. "If Miss Pollard had only chosen _me_ as a monitress I could have organised everything exactly like it used to be done at The Limes."

Sybil was a curious girl, fair, with a fat babyish face, and a vast idea of her own importance. She was very proud of her family, and never for a moment forgot, or allowed anybody else to forget, that she belonged to the Vernons of Renshaw Court, and that Sir Richard Vernon was her second cousin. She expected a great deal more attention than the school was willing to accord to her, and was invariably offended or aggrieved or annoyed about something. The girls did not take her very seriously, and laughed at what they called her 'jim-jams,' which had the effect of making her first very indignant and finally reducing her to floods of tears.

Though Sybil might be annoying there was really not much harm in her, and her criticisms were very easily combated. A different girl altogether, however, was Kitty Trefyre. She also had been at another school, and set forth standards of conduct which were dissimilar from those at 'The Moorings.' She was cautious in airing these, and wisely so, for most of them caused the monitresses to lift their eyebrows in amazement, whereupon she would instantly retract her remarks and declare she was only 'ragging.' How much she really meant Merle never knew, but the latter did not trust her.

"There's a sneaky look about her eyes," she commented to Mavis. "Sybil lunges out and finds open fault, but Kitty hits in the dark. I hope she's not going to spoil Iva!"

"Oh, don't say that!"

"They're chums already, and Iva is rather a chameleon! She takes the colour of her character from her friends."

CHAPTER IV

Chagmouth Folk

As this book partly concerns the doings of the group of girls who came daily from Chagmouth to Durracombe, we will follow them as they motored back on their ten miles' journey from school. Squashed together in 'the sardine-tin,' as they irreverently nicknamed the highly respectable car driven by Mr. Vicary, who owned the garage close to the mill, they held high jinks and talked at least thirteen to the dozen. There was so much to discuss. The school was new to all of them, and naturally they wished to criticise its methods, its teachers, its girls, and its prospects of fun during the ensuing term.

"I like Miss Mitch.e.l.l!"

"Yes, she's jolly, though I fancy she could be stern."

"Oh, I shouldn't like to face her in the study, of course."

"Miss f.a.n.n.y is a dear!"

"And so is Miss Pollard."

"What d'you think of the monitresses?"

"Merle is A1!"

"Yes, I'm taken with Mavis and Merle! Partly because they seem to belong to Chagmouth. They come over nearly every Sat.u.r.day with Dr. Tremayne."

"Good! Then we shall see something of them. h.e.l.lo! What's this car trying to pa.s.s us? Babbie Williams! I'd forgotten for the moment she lives at Chagmouth too."

It was Babbie, driving in solitary state, who flew by in the big motor, which turned up the side road that led to The Warren. She gave a friendly nod as she pa.s.sed, and the six 'sardines' smiled in return.

"It's a case of 'we are seven' from Chagmouth," commented Fay. "If we include Mavis and Merle that would make nine. I guess we'll get up a set of nature study rambles on Sat.u.r.day afternoons and all go out together.

We'd have some real frolics!"

"Rather! I'm your girl! Romola and I are ready for any fun that's going.

That's to say if there's going to be time for any fun. But with all the pile of lessons Miss Mitch.e.l.l has given us we shall be busy, with our noses at the grindstone. It always takes both of us hours to do our prep!"

The car meanwhile, with Mr. Vicary at the driving-wheel, had run across the moor and down the steep hill, and was jolting over the cobble-stones of the narrow main street of Chagmouth. It stopped outside the Post Office, for the princ.i.p.al reason that if it went any farther it would be impossible for it to turn round, and the girls, dismounting, took their satchels or piles of books, said good-bye to one another, and scattered to their respective homes. Beata and Romola crossed the bridge that spanned the brook, skirted the harbour, climbed a flight of steps cut in the solid rock, and reached a house which stood on the top of a high crag overlooking the sea. It was an ideal spot for an artist to live, and it was chiefly for its glorious view that Mr. Castleton had chosen it. He was intensely sensitive to his surroundings, and preferred a picturesque cottage, however inconvenient, to the comforts of an unaesthetic, bow- windowed, modern, red-brick, suburban residence.

"Romance before everything!" he declared. "It's impossible to paint unless you're in the right atmosphere. English scenery is getting spoilt and vulgarised to such a degree that there'll soon be none of it left to sketch. Where are the beautiful villages of thirty years ago? Gone--most of them! The thatched roofs replaced by corrugated iron, and the hedges clipped close to please the motorists. I defy anybody to make a successful picture out of a clipped hedge! Even the gnarled apple trees are being cut down and replaced by market gardeners' 'choice saplings.'

Picturesque England will soon be a thing of the past! I consider Chagmouth one of the last strongholds for an artist, and I'm going to live here as long as it remains unspoilt. There's enough work to keep me busy for several years at any rate."

It is part of an artist's business to move about from place to place in quest of fresh subjects. Mr. Castleton had spent some years at Porthkeverne, and having, from a professional point of view, exhausted that neighbourhood, he had transferred himself and his family to a new horizon. He had a genius for discovering his right niche, and he had been fortunate enough to light upon exactly the place that appealed to him. It would not have suited everybody. It was a long low house, made of three fishermen's cottages thrown into one, built so close to the edge of the cliff that it seemed like a sea-bird's nest, with windows overlooking the channel and the harbour, and a strip of stony garden behind. Inside, the accommodation was somewhat cramped, but the rooms, if small, were quaint, with an old-fashioned air about the panelled parlour and raftered dining- room that suggested bygone days of smugglers and privateers. Below, in a nook of the cliff, stood an old sail-shed, which Mr. Castleton had turned into his studio. The big new skylight had only just been fitted into the roof, and the stove which was to heat it during the winter was still at Durracombe station waiting for the carrier to fetch it, but canvases were already hung round the walls, the throne was erected and the big easel placed in position, and an old fisherman, with weather-beaten countenance and picturesque stained jersey, sat every morning for his portrait.

Those of our readers who have met the Castletons before in _The Head Girl at the Gables_, will remember that they were a very large family.

Morland, the eldest, had been at the war, had won the D.C.M., and was now learning engineering; Claudia was studying singing in London; Madox had been sent for his first term at boarding-school; and the four little ones, Constable, Lilith, Perugia, and Gabriel, were still in the nursery.

There was only one gap. Landry, poor Landry, who had never been like other boys, had pa.s.sed over the divide and joined the beautiful mother whom in features he had so strongly resembled. A painting of him, as a little child in her arms, hung on the studio wall. In some respects it was the most brilliant portrait which Mr. Castleton had ever achieved. He always showed it to visitors as a specimen of his best work.

At the time this story begins, Beata and Romola were fourteen and thirteen years of age. They thoroughly maintained the family reputation for good looks. There was a certain resemblance between them, and yet a difference. Beata's eyes were clear grey, with dark lines round the iris, and her hair was the exact shade of one of her father's best English gold picture frames. She was a clever, capable girl, with a great love for music, and was beginning to play the violin rather well. She got on quite tolerably with her stepmother, and was fond of the little half-brothers and sisters, though the warmest corner of her heart was reserved for Madox, who was the baby of the elder portion of the family.

Romola, blue-eyed and ethereal, with long amber hair like a Saxon princess, was her father's favourite model whenever he wished to depict scenes of olden times. She figured as 'Guinevere' in a series of ill.u.s.trations to the _Morte d'Arthur_, as 'Elaine' her portrait had been exhibited in the Academy, as 'The Lady of Shalott' she had appeared in a coloured frontispiece of _The Art Review_, she inspired a most successful poster of 'Cinderella,' and was the original of a series of fairy drawings in a children's annual. She was not so clever or go-ahead as Beata, and was rather dreamy and romantic in temperament, with a gift towards painting and poetry, and a disinclination to do anything very definite. She left most of the problems of life to Beata, and seldom troubled to make decisions for herself. She was rather a pet with Violet, her young stepmother, who, while preferring her to her sister, found her the less useful of the two.

"You go, Beata, you're so quick!" Violet would say, when she wanted an errand done, and for the same reason gave the charge of the children to the one who was the more capable of a.s.suming the responsibility.

It was not that Romola consciously shirked home duties, but she would any time rather pose for an hour on the throne in the studio than take temporary command of the nursery. Beata, on the contrary, hated sitting still, and considered there was no greater penance than to be commandeered by her father as a model. Her energetic temperament liked to find its expression in outdoor activities. She had set to work upon the neglected garden, and was busy trying to make flower-beds, and she looked forward keenly to the forthcoming hockey season at school. The daily drive to Durracombe and back was pure delight, and formed her greatest compensation for leaving Porthkeverne and The Gables.