'And Ruth has never done more than four feet six before,' added Angela, forced by the seriousness of the moment into a strict statement of facts.

'Margaret was nervous; I'm certain she was,' said Barbara, positively. 'It was the same with Egbert, when he forgot his G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers; he said there was a silly idiot at the bottom of his form, who didn't mind the strange clergyman blinking at him a bit, and he even got through the duty to his neighbour. And Ruth wasn't nervous, you see.'

'What nonsense you are talking,' remarked Mary Wells, who loved to be literal. 'Why, Ruth is more shy than any one in the whole school!'

That was certainly true, and Babs went on puzzling over it, long after Margaret and Ruth had retired hand in hand to the other end of the anteroom. For whatever the head girl felt about her failure, she did not mean to let any one guess that she cared. Her easy self-possession was all her own again, as she kept tight hold of Ruth's hand and chatted lightly to the girls about her; and one or two of the others, who tried to patronise her with their consolation, received such sarcastic replies that they were very soon put back in their place again. Margaret Hulme was not going to forget she was head girl, even if that roomful of strangers had robbed her of the power she had wielded for two and a half years.

Scales struck up a march of his own composition; and at a vigorous sign from Miss Burleigh, Charlotte Bigley hastily marshalled her scattered troop and led them into the gymnasium for the Indian club performance.

They were all very much subdued by the time they had separated to their various places, for the peep they had stolen through the anteroom door had given them no idea of what it really felt like to stand in the middle of this staring crowd of people, who filled the gallery above and the platform at the end, and even spread thinly round the room close up to the wall. Jean clenched her teeth and frowned fiercely, and would have endured twice the shyness that tortured her sooner than forget one of the exercises she had to go through; and as for Barbara, she took no notice of the people at all, but began to work mechanically, as soon as the first bars of the familiar valse fell on her ears.

Angela, however, lost her head and one of her clubs at the same instant; and a harmless aunt, who sat near, only escaped a severe blow from the latter by the dexterity of another visitor, who put out his hand just in time and caught it as it flew past him. It was neatly done, and the audience applauded vigorously, while Hurly-Burly gave the command to stop practice, and the stranger restored her property to the confused and unhappy Angela. Then Babs recognised him. It was the Doctor who had come out in this surprisingly new light; and even Kit, with whom she immediately exchanged glances, was looking down at him approvingly.

'Did you see Dr. Hurst?' whispered Babs to Jean afterwards, as they filed out of the gymnasium again.

'Of course I did, directly I got in,' answered Jean. 'Couldn't think who it was looking so glum and thundery! Wonder why he came to a show like this? He doesn't look as though he went in for gymnastics, does he?'

'I don't know,' said Babs, trying to be fair even to the beast who had not shown himself worthy to be a prince. 'It was very smart the way he caught that club. Perhaps he is good at gym, though he can't take a joke.'

Angela required so much consolation from them both on account of her blunder, that they forgot all about the doctor, and spent most of their time, while Charlotte's section was displaying on the horizontal ladder, in a.s.suring her, with more or less confidence in their tones, that when it came to the rings no one could hope to compete with her. Then Charlotte Bigley returned at the head of her section, trying unsuccessfully to look as if nothing had happened; and Mary Wells proudly informed all those who cared to hear, that if anybody thought she was going to do the rings as well as Charlotte had just done the ladder, she was much mistaken!

'Oh, you shut up!' rejoined Babs. 'You haven't seen Angela yet.'

'Or Jean!' echoed Angela, faithfully.

The third voice for once was wanting. Jean Murray stood waiting for the signal to advance; and her determined, almost dogged look was blotting out every other expression on her thin, clever face.

Babs understood, and sprang forward to her place at Jean's side.

'It's all right, Jean,' she said earnestly. 'I must try my very hardest, because Finny made us all promise; but--but I do want you to win, all the same.'

'Oh, stop it, Babe,' Jean threw back at her, in a tone that startled and hurt her; and the child shrank into herself again, and had a hard fight to keep back the tears that rushed into her eyes for the first time in many weeks.

Their persistent encouragement of Angela made her go through the first exercise on the rings successfully. It was a swing and a pull up in front, and she managed it more neatly than either of her supporters. Then came the swing and turn, and here Angela's temporary courage deserted her.

Perhaps she was flurried by the little attempt made by the gallery to applaud her the second time she came forward; in any case, the glimpse she had of Kit, who caught her eye and nodded cheerfully just as she was beginning, did not help to compose her. She turned too soon and too vigorously, and spun round helplessly in the air, until Hurly-Burly came to her aid and helped her to drop ignominiously to the ground.

After that, it was evident that the issue of the compet.i.tion rested with Jean and Barbara, for they soon showed that they were much more finished and thorough in their work than any one else in their section; and everybody was prepared for the statement made by Miss Finlayson in the next interval. She announced that Charlotte Bigley, Jean Murray, and Barbara Berkeley were exactly even up to that point, and that the result would have to be determined by the rope-climbing.

The rope-climbing, however, left the result still undetermined. Both Jean and Babs reached the top in six seconds, blew the trumpet they found there with a vigour that sent the spectators into a peal of merriment, and slid down again, much pleased with themselves and the interest they were exciting. Charlotte Bigley on the third rope excelled them in speed and reached the top in five seconds, but forgot to blow the trumpet, and so made things even once more. The junior division filed out again, while Miss Finlayson and the expert and Hurly-Burly put their heads together on the platform, and Herr Scales thought the moment an appropriate one for a performance in his best manner of his favourite composition, which was called _Sonnenschein_ and had been thumped out in the holidays to half the parents in the room.

Miss Finlayson rose to her feet again. As the three compet.i.tors she had already mentioned were still equal, she must call upon each of them to do one of the advanced exercises, Charlotte on the ladder and the other two on the rings; they were to choose their own exercises, and if they again proved themselves equally good, the prize would be divided.

The spectators were in a pleasant state of interest by this time, and the three little rivals were greeted with enthusiasm when they stepped out of the anteroom for the last time and took up their positions in front of the platform. They looked very small and slight as they stood there in their short red frocks against a solid background of people; but they had quite lost every suspicion of bashfulness, and Babs even began to look upon the whole thing as an immense joke. She nodded gaily to the boys in the gallery, and smiled happily at Auntie Anna, who had the place of honour on the platform next to the Canon; and in the silence that followed, while Charlotte Bigley was jumping from rung to rung of the horizontal ladder, she occupied herself in trying to decide on her own exercise. If Jean chose leaving go with one hand, she should swing and let go and catch on to the trapeze beyond--at least, if Hurly-Burly would only be decent and give her leave. She half hoped that Jean _would_ choose the other; for she had practised the trapeze one, only last week, and----

A sudden murmur, followed by a faint attempt at applause, roused her; and she saw Charlotte Bigley walking slowly back to the anteroom with her eyes fixed on the ground.

'What happened? I didn't see,' she whispered, nudging Jean.

'Hand slipped, fell off,' answered Jean, briefly, as she went forward and grasped the rings.

She did choose swinging and letting go with one hand, and she went through it very successfully, and earned every bit of the applause that greeted her when she finished. Barbara was so delighted that she went on clapping her loudly after everybody else had stopped, and did not notice what she was doing till the audience began to laugh and Hurly-Burly came up and spoke to her.

'May I have the trapeze let down?' whispered Babs, eagerly. 'I want to let go of the rings and catch on to it at the end of my swing--like I did the other day.'

Hurly-Burly looked doubtful. 'Are you sure you can manage it?' she asked.

Barbara pleaded, and the games-mistress gave in. It was always difficult for any one so practical as Miss Burleigh to understand the odd little pupil, who at one moment could throw herself into a game as heartily as a boy, and at another was liable to exasperate her companions by going off into a dream and completely forgetting what she was doing. But it was impossible to help liking the child, and Hurly-Burly, who had a sneaking conviction that the trapeze exercise would decide the prize in her favour, could not resist the temptation to let her have her own way and secure to herself at the same time a little reflected glory. For it was she who had taught Barbara the exercise, and she had every reason to be proud of her pupil. So she let down the trapeze from the roof and held it back with her hands, ready to drop it forward when the child had worked up her swing.

The eyes of the German music-master were filled with sentimental interest, as the youngest girl in the school stepped up to the rings. He knew very little about gymnastics, though a German; for his life had been pa.s.sed almost entirely in other lands, and during the brief period he had spent in his own country he had been so absorbed in his art that he had completely neglected the physical culture that is of so much importance to most Germans. As for girls' gymnastics, his experience in them had been entirely confined to a few occasions like the present, when he was asked to play instead of the junior music-mistress. But he never a.s.sisted at the usual lessons, when the junior music-mistress was considered good enough to perform; so Miss Finlayson's remarks on the merits of the three compet.i.tors conveyed very little to him. Still, he managed to gather that Barbara stood a good chance of winning the prize, and his fat, benevolent face beamed with satisfaction in consequence.

It was true that the little Fraulein with the black, black eyes and the wonder-clumsy fingers had no more talent for music than his tabby cat, while the performances of Fraulein Vilkins were the joy of his heart; but it was the little one who asked him so many questions about his beloved Germany, which she seemed to regard as being about the size of Kensington Gardens, and he forgave her all her excruciating false notes for the sake of her warm heart, which was _colossal_. When he saw her standing there all alone, he quite gave up trying to be brilliant and dropped into a little simple melody of his own, which he had never thought important enough to name, but which Barbara had always told him in her funny English was 'awfully fine.' Unfortunately, just as she recognised the notes and nodded at him with a little smile, Jean brought him a message from the games-mistress, asking him not to play at all until the exercise was over.

'It's rather a difficult exercise, and you might put her out,' explained Jean, seeing that he looked puzzled at such a peculiar request. Her explanation did not help him much, for Jean did not trouble to translate it into his own language; and, never having witnessed the exercise that was coming, he failed to see the point of Hurly-Burly's message.

However, he was glad of the opportunity to descend from the platform and get a better view of the little Fraulein's performance; and he placed himself, rather inconveniently, just in front of the games-mistress, and prepared to miss nothing of what followed.

Everybody in the room was smiling genially at the youngest girl in the school. She had already prepossessed them in her favour by her frank admiration for Jean Murray; and now, as she stood there waiting for the sign from Hurly-Burly to begin, there was something about her happy unconsciousness that appealed irresistibly to her audience. Suddenly, the five boys in the gallery began to stamp their feet encouragingly, and Peter shouted 'Go it, Babe!' at the top of his voice. In a moment, the cry was taken up in the anteroom. 'Go it, Babe!' said twenty voices or more in a breath. The enthusiasm was infectious, and the words were repeated with many a laugh all over the room. 'Go it, Babe!' cried the people on the platform, and the people in the gallery, and the people who sat near her by the wall, until every one in the gymnasium was stamping and clapping and saying 'Go it, Babe!' to the little person in the short scarlet frock.

Barbara held the rings tightly, and her breath came rather quickly and unevenly. She was bewildered by the noise, and waited for it to subside before she began the exercise. It was so difficult to know what it all meant. Of course, the boys wanted her to win; and perhaps the other people did too, because they were grown up, and grown-up people always were jolly and kind to her. She could understand why the Doctor, stern as he was, smiled away at her and clapped her as heartily as any one, from his place on the platform; and she thought she knew dimly what was making Jean stamp on the floor till the dust flew. But the enthusiasm of her other school-fellows, who were pressing forward from the anteroom door, amazed her greatly. Could it be that they had suddenly forgotten how young and unimportant she was, and how much she needed correction, and how often she required to be told that she was the youngest in the school?

Were these the girls she had hated so heartily only three months ago, the disgraced princesses she had turned out of her kingdom so pa.s.sionately?

The applause died down at last, and Miss Burleigh made her the signal to begin. Babs walked back as far as she could, stood stretched for a second on the tips of her toes, then shook the hair out of her eyes with the old familiar movement, and took a sharp run forward. The next minute, the slim scarlet form was flying backwards and forwards, with graceful, regular movements. The onlookers gazed and admired, wondering with some curiosity what her exercise was going to be; and their interest increased when she uttered a sharp 'Now!' just as she was sweeping backwards from her highest swing. Only one person in the room failed to notice that it was Miss Burleigh who let the trapeze drop forward instantly, so that it hung ready for the small performer to grasp on her return swing.

The music-master had been wholly absorbed in watching the little Fraulein, from the first moment she had begun to swing. He thought he had never seen anything so graceful as the way she swept to and fro, nor anything so _hubsch_ as the expression and the rose-red complexion of the youngest girl in the school. It was truly _grossartig_! His eyes followed her closely all the time, from end to end of her swing; and that was how he contrived to be looking away at the precise moment when Hurly-Burly let down the trapeze. The murmur that rose from the people who surrounded him, as they realised what Barbara was going to do, made him look round; and he saw the thing hanging there, as though it had dropped from the roof by accident, and in another second would get in the way of the child who was swinging so deliciously. Viewed afterwards in the light of ordinary common-sense, it seemed to him _wunderbar_ that he could so have deceived himself. At the time, not a doubt was in his mind as to what he thought had happened. The trapeze had fallen down by accident and was going to embarra.s.s the little Fraulein, if not to hurt her; and the people around him were all exclaiming aloud, because they too had realised her danger. Nevertheless, n.o.body seemed to know what to do, and the little Fraulein was already sweeping straight towards it on her downward swing. All these reflections rushed through his brain in the flash of a moment. There was no time to hesitate. He must be the one to rush out and come to her aid. With a loud German exclamation, the music-master hurled himself forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed back the trapeze just as the child let go of the rings.

He had a dim recollection afterwards of being gripped by Hurly-Burly just an instant too late, and of seeing the little scarlet figure twist in the air above him and drop with a nasty thud at the edge of the last mattress, of finding himself in the midst of a huge concourse of people, who suddenly rose up with a great roar and bore down upon him, uttering shriek after shriek,--and then, of coming miserably to himself again, with his heart thumping and his head throbbing painfully, just as a deathlike silence succeeded the uproar, and a voice like Miss Finlayson's said something that sounded like 'Doctor!'

Some one had sprung from the platform with a flying jump the moment the accident happened, and was forcing a pa.s.sage through the throng of people.

There was not a sound to be heard in the great gymnasium as the Doctor knelt down on the floor and put out his hand to the little still spot of scarlet that lay on the edge of the last mattress.

CHAPTER XVI

THE LAST DAY OF THE TERM

In the annals of Wootton Beeches there had never been so dismal a packing-day as the one that dawned on the morrow of the gymnastic compet.i.tion. Generally, packing-day was the most delightful day in the term: it came just after the break-up party, and just before going home, and everything that happened on it seemed filled with a peculiar interest of its own. First of all, there was the joy of rushing up to the bedrooms directly after breakfast, to put out all the clothes in tidy little heaps, ready for packing later on; then, the less delightful business of clearing the bookshelves and tearing up the old exercise-books--an occupation which contrived, in spite of itself, to present a certain amount of charm, simply because it belonged to the last day of the term.

And the nicest part of all was the indescribable feeling that it was the last day of the term, that there were no more lessons to prepare and no more penalties to avoid, no more scales to practise and no more stockings to mend, and, best of all, no more rules to bother about, so that Fraulein and Mademoiselle could both be addressed, much to their own distraction, in the British tongue, and anybody who pleased could run up and down stairs to her heart's content without asking leave first. All these privileges made packing-day, as a rule, something to look forward to. But to-day nothing was happening as it usually did.

Breakfast had been gone through almost in silence, and the accustomed rush to the bedrooms afterwards had taken place quite quietly and tamely. The tidying of the bookshelves, which could generally be made to linger so pleasantly over the whole morning, was accomplished for once in an hour or so; and the girls found themselves, at eleven o'clock, with nothing further to do until Miss Tomlinson should send for them to pack their things. On any other packing-day the playroom would have been cleared of chairs and tables in a few minutes, and somebody would have been dragged to the piano to play a valse, and there would have been plenty of amus.e.m.e.nt for every one until dinner-time. But to-day n.o.body wanted to dance, and hardly any one talked.

Jean Murray sat motionless on one of the window-seats in the senior playroom. On packing-day all ordinary restrictions were suspended, and the younger children wandered in and out of the two rooms as they pleased.

Jean had taken advantage of this privilege to escape from her usual play-fellows, who were remaining behind from force of habit in their own domain. The way Angela persisted in crying was enough to drive any one away; she had cried all through prayers, and had begun again directly after breakfast. Mary Wells, forgetting how much she had endured on former occasions from the triumvirate, sat with her arm round Angela's neck, calling her 'Poor darling!' at intervals, with an occasional sob of her own to keep her company. Some of the others cried a little too,--at least, they did when they came near Angela,--and Charlotte Bigley was in such a temper that no one dared speak to her. All together, the juniors' room was more than Jean could bear just then. Jean was not crying herself: she had not cried a drop since she saw the streak of scarlet twist round in the air and drop with a thud that still sounded in her ears.

It was not a bit like the last day of the term. 'Tommy' did not once come to the door and call out the name of the next girl who was to go upstairs and pack. n.o.body in the room was exchanging addresses with any one else, or promising to write weekly letters during the holidays.

Margaret was as cross as Charlotte Bigley, it seemed, for she allowed no one but Ruth Oliver to come near her; and the other big girls were scattered about the room in idle, listless groups, conversing a little, now and then, in hushed tones. None of them noticed Jean; and Jean never saw them. She just sat rigidly on the window-seat, and looked straight in front of her, with the odd, hard expression on her face that had been there since the night before.

Margaret was sitting at the table tracing interminable circles on the back of an old envelope with a pair of compa.s.ses. The presence of Ruth at her elbow, as she absorbed herself in this pursuit, was very comforting.

Ruth was a slow old thing, as every one knew, but in time of need she was invaluable.

After a while, the head girl dug the point of the compa.s.s into the table, and cleared her throat nervously.

'She's such an awfully nice little kid,' she said. She spoke hurriedly, and her face had turned rather red.