The Luckiest Girl in the School by Angela Brazil (top fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

minutes, so choose quickly—strawberry or vanilla?"

The three days of the examination seemed to Winona like a dream. She grew quite accustomed to the big hall full of candidates, and to her particular desk. Garnet sat at the other side of the aisle, and Winona would sometimes pause a moment to watch her. To judge from her friend's absorbed appearance and fast moving pen, the papers appeared to suit her. To Winona's immense astonishment she herself was doing quite moderately well. The six weeks' coaching of Garnet had been of inestimable benefit to her own work. She had not then thought of this aspect of the matter, but she was certainly now reaping the reward of her labor of love. For the first time the possibility of gaining a pass occurred to her.

"If I do, it'll be the limit!" she reflected. "Miss Bishop will have about the surprise of her life!"

On the whole the girls quite enjoyed their three days at Dunningham. There were intervals between their various papers, which they spent partly in the University museum and partly in the City Art Gallery, where a fine collection of Old Masters was on loan. It was the first time Winona had seen paint[Pg 250]ings by world-famous artists, though she had often pored over reproductions of their works in The Studio or The Connoisseur. She felt that the experience added another window to her outlook on life.

"I wish I'd the talent to be an artist!" she thought. "There are so many things I'd like to do! Oh, dear! Painting and music (both beyond me utterly) and physical culture and poultry farming, and Red Cross nursing, and I probably shan't do any of them, after all! I want to be of solid use to the world in a nice interesting way to myself, and I expect I'll just have to do a lot of stupid things that I hate. Why wasn't I born a Raphael?"

"How do you think you've got on altogether?" Garnet asked Winona, as, thoroughly tired out, the two girls traveled homeward to Seaton at the end of the third day's examination.

"Um—tolerably. Better, perhaps, than I expected, but that's not saying much. And you?"

"I never prophesy till I know!"

But Garnet's dark eyes shone as she leaned back in her corner.[Pg 251]

CHAPTER XIX The Swimming Contest

Once the examinations were over, Winona's spirits, which had been decidedly at Il Penseroso, went up to L'Allegro. The strain of coaching Garnet had been very great, but the relief was in corresponding proportion. She felt as if a burden had rolled from her shoulders. There was just a month of the term left. The Sixth would of course be expected to do its ordinary form work, but the amount of home study required would be reasonable, quite a different matter from the intolerable grind of preparation for a University examination. The extra afternoon classes with Miss Goodson were no longer necessary, leaving a delightful period of leisure half-hours at school. Winona intended to employ these blissful intervals in cricket practice, at the tennis courts, in helping to arrange the museum, and in carrying out several other pet schemes that she had been forced hitherto to set aside. Bessie Kirk had made a good deputy, but it was nice to take the reins into her own hands once more, and feel that she was head of the Games department. She coached her champions assiduously. At tennis Emily Cooper and Bertha March stood out like planets among the stars. They had already beaten Westwood High School and Hill Top Sec[Pg 252]ondary School, and hoped to have a chance against Binworth College, of hitherto invincible reputation. The match would not take place for a fortnight, which gave extra time for practice. In cricket, Betty Carlisle had come to the front at bowling, while Maggie Allesley and Irene Swinburne were heroines of the bat. It is inevitable that some girls should overtop the rest, but Winona would not on that account allow the others to slack. She knew the importance of a high general average of play, and urged on several laggers. She thoroughly realized the importance of fielding, and made her eleven concentrate their minds upon it.

"We lost Tamley on fielding," she affirmed, "and if we've any intention of beating Binworth, we've just got to practice catching and throwing in."

Of the two matches in which the school had so far taken part, the first, with Baddeley High School, had been a draw, and in the second, with Tamley, they had been beaten. It was not an encouraging record, and Winona felt that for the credit of the school it was absolutely necessary to vanquish Binworth. Its team had a fairly good reputation, so it would be no easy task, but after the hockey successes of last winter she did not despair. Apart from school she had a very pleasant time. Nearly every evening after supper Aunt Harriet would suggest a short run in the car before sunset. She generally allowed her niece to take the wheel as soon as they were clear of the town traffic, and Winona soon became quite expert at driving. She liked to feel the little car answering to her guidance; there[Pg 253] was a thrill in rounding corners and steering past carts, and every time she went out she gained fresh confidence. She was not at all nervous, and kept her head admirably in several small emergencies, managing so well that Aunt Harriet finally allowed her to bring the car back down the High Street, which, as it was the most crowded portion of the town, was considered the motorist's ordeal in Seaton. She acquitted herself with great credit, passed a tramcar successfully, and understood the signals of the policeman who waved his hand at the corner. Aunt Harriet had taken out a driver's license for her, so having proved her skill in the High Street, she now felt quite a full-fledged lady chauffeur.

Winona immensely enjoyed these evening runs when the sky was aflame with sunset, and the trees were quiet dark masses of color, and the long road stretched out before her, pink from the glow above, and the lacey hemlocks and meadowsweets made a soft blurred border below the hedgerows. With an open road in front of her she was tempted sometimes to put on speed, and felt as if she were flying onwards into a dream country where all was vague and mysterious and shadowy and unknown. She was always loth to return, but Aunt Harriet was extremely particular that they must be home before lighting-up time, and would point remorselessly to the small clock that hung facing the seat. Perhaps Winona's greatest triumph was when, one evening, she managed without any assistance to run the car into its own shed in the garage, a delicate little piece of steering which required fine calculation, a quick[Pg 254] hand, and a rapid turn. She was learning something of the mechanism, too, could refill the petrol tank, and was almost anxious for a tire to burst, so that she might have the opportunity of putting on the Stepney wheel, though this latter ambition was not shared by her aunt.

"When all the men have gone to the war, I'll be able to drive a taxi or a war van, and make myself useful to the Government! I believe I could clean the car perfectly well if Sam should be called up, and has to leave the garage. I'd just enjoy turning the hose on it. What would they give me a week to take Sam's place here?"

"They'd give you a snubbing if you asked them!" laughed Aunt Harriet. "Cleaning a car is uncommonly hard work. You might manage our small one, but by the time you'd done the whole round of the garage, you'd be ready to declare it wasn't a woman's job."

"I'd chance it!" retorted Winona.

She had her opportunity after all, for the garage attendant was taken ill, and remained off duty for several days. On the Saturday morning Winona set to work and cleaned, polished and oiled the car thoroughly. It was very dirty after a muddy day's use, so she had her full experience. It was certainly far harder than she had anticipated, and she felt devoutly thankful that she was not bound to attack the cars in the other sheds, and perform similar services for each.

"Sam earns his money," she assured Aunt Harriet, when she returned at lunch-time. "On the[Pg 255] whole, I've decided I won't be a lady chauffeur. It's bad enough to have to clean one's bicycle, but if I had to go through this car performance every day, I don't think there'd be very much left of me."

"Ah! I told you so!" returned, Aunt Harriet triumphantly.

Motoring was not the only fresh form of activity which Winona had taken up this summer. The school had organized swimming classes, and on certain clean-water days detachments of girls were conducted to the public baths. Owing to her college entrance examinations, Winona had not been able to attend the full course, but she had learnt to swim last summer at the baths, and was as enthusiastic as anybody. Miss Medland, the teacher, was an expert from Dunningham; she was skillful herself, and clever at training her pupils. The girls soon gained confidence in the water, and began to be able to perform what they called "mermaid high jinks."

The Public Baths at Seaton were most remarkably good, so good indeed that many of the citizens had raised a protest against the Corporation for spending so much money upon them. The High School girls, who had not to pay the rates, did not sympathize with the grumbles of ratepayers, and rejoiced exceedingly in the sumptuous accommodation. They specially appreciated the comfort of the dressing-rooms, and the convenience of the hot-air apparatus for drying their hair. The restaurant, where tea or bovril could be had, was also a luxury for those who were apt to turn shivery after coming from the water.[Pg 256]

"I can understand why the Romans were so enthusiastic about their public baths," said Audrey Redfern. "Just think of having little trays of eatables floating about on the water, so that you could have a snack whenever you wanted, and slaves to bring you delicious scent afterwards, and garlands of flowers. I wish I'd lived some time b.c. instead of in the twentieth century!"

"Be thankful you didn't live in the twelfth, for then you mightn't have had a bath at all!" returned Winona; "certainly not a public one, and probably not the private one either. An occasional canful of water would have been thought quite sufficient for you, with perhaps a dip in a stream if you could get it. The people who bathed were mostly pilgrims at Holy Wells, and they all used the same water, no matter what their diseases were."

"How disgusting! Well, on the whole I'm tolerably satisfied to belong to the poor old twentieth century. It might be better, but it might be worse."

"How kind of you! I'm sure posterity will be grateful for your approval."

"D'you want me to push you into the water, Winona Woodward? I will, in half a second!"

At the end of the course it was arranged that a swimming contest should take place among the girls, and that various prizes should be offered for championships. It was the first event of the kind in the annals of the school, so naturally it aroused much enthusiasm. About thirty candidates were selected by Miss Medland as eligible for competitions, the rest of her pupils having to content themselves with[Pg 257] looking on. A special afternoon was given up to the display, and invitations were sent out to parents to come and help to swell the audience.

"Are you in for the mermaidens' fête?" Winona asked Marjorie Kemp.

"Mermaidens' fête, indeed! How romantic we are all of a sudden! The frog fight, I should call it."

"There speaks the voice of envy! You're evidently out of it."

"Don't want to be in it, thanks! It'll be wretched work shivering round the edge of the bath for a solid hour!"

"Sour grapes, my child!" teased Winona.

"Go on, my good girl—if you want to make me raggy, you just shan't succeed, that's all!"

"Now I should like to have been chosen!" mourned Evelyn Richards. "I don't mind confessing that I've had a disappointment. I thought I could swim quite as well as Freda, and it's grizzly hard luck that she was picked out and I wasn't. Rank favoritism, I call it!"

"Poor old Eve! Look here, I'll tell you a secret. You head the reserve list. I know because I saw it. If anybody has a cold on the day of the event, you'll take her place."

"You mascot! Shall I? Oh! I do hope