A Popular Schoolgirl - Angela Brazil (best novels to read in english txt) 📗

like he does with Janie. He scared me quite enough sitting by my side and saying: ‘Shall we take this again now?’ with a sort of grim politeness, as if he were making an effort to restrain his temper. I know I’m not what he calls musical, but I can’t help it. I’d rather hear comic opera any day than his wretched cantatas, and when I’m not practising I shall play what I like. There!”

And Fil, who was sitting at the piano, twirled round on the stool and strummed “Beautiful K⁠—K⁠—Katie” with a lack of technique that probably would have brought her teacher’s temper up to bubbling-over point had he been there to listen to her.

It was exactly ten days after the term had begun that Bess Haselford came to the College. She walked into the Upper Fifth Form room one Monday morning, looking very shy and lost and strange, and stood forlornly, not knowing where to sit, till somebody took pity on her, and pointed to a vacant desk. It happened to be on a line with Ingred’s, and the latter watched her settle herself. She looked her over with the critical air that is generally bestowed on new girls, and decided that she was particularly pretty. Bess was the image of one of the Sir Joshua Reynolds’ child angels in the National Gallery. The likeness was so great that her mother had always cut and curled her golden-brown hair in exact copy of the picture. She was a slim, rosy, bright-eyed, smiling specimen of girlhood, and, though on this first morning she was manifestly afflicted with shyness, she had the appearance of one whose acquaintance might be worth making. Ingred decided to cultivate it at the earliest opportunity, and spoke to the new arrival at lunchtime. Bess replied readily to the usual questions.

“We’ve only come lately to Grovebury. We used to live at Birkshaw. Yes, I’m fairly keen on hockey, though I like tennis better. Have you asphalt courts here, and do you play in the winter? I adore dancing, but I hate gym. I’m learning the violin, and I’m to start oil-painting this term.”

She seemed such a pleasant, winsome kind of girl that Ingred, who was apt to take sudden fancies, constituted herself her cicerone, and showed her round the school. By the time they had made the entire tour of the buildings, Ingred began to wonder whether, without offense, it would be possible to leave her desk, next to Verity, and sit beside Bess. There was a great charm of voice and manner about the newcomer, and Ingred’s musical ear was sensitive to gentle voices. She discussed Bess with the others next morning before school.

“Yes, she’s pretty, and that blue dress is simply adorable,” conceded Nora. “I’m going to have an embroidered one myself next time.”

“Her hair is so sweet,” commented Francie.

“I call her ripping!” said Ingred with enthusiasm.

“Well, you ought to take an interest in her, Ingred, considering that she lives at Rotherwood,” put in Beatrice.

“At Rotherwood!”

“Yes, didn’t you know that?”

Ingred, under pretence of distributing exercise-books, turned hastily away. Her heart was in a sudden turmoil. This was indeed a bolt from the blue. She, of course, knew that Rotherwood was let, but she had not heard the name of the tenants, and, as the subject was a sore one, had forborne to ask any questions at home. It was surely the irony of fate that the house should be taken by people who had a daughter of her own age, and that this daughter should come to the College, and actually be placed in the same form as herself. She seemed a rival ready-made. Biased by jealous prejudice, Ingred’s hastily-formed judgment reversed itself.

“I’m thankful I didn’t move away from Verity to sit next to her,” she thought. “I expect she’ll be ever so conceited and give herself airs, and the other girls will truckle to her no end. I know them! I wish to goodness she hadn’t come to the College. Why didn’t they send her away to a boarding school? I’m not going to make a fuss over her, so she needn’t think it.”

Poor Bess, quite unaware of being any cause of offence, and grateful for the kindness shown her the day before, greeted Ingred in most friendly fashion, and looked amazement itself at the cool reception of her advances. She stared for a moment as if hardly believing the evidence of her eyes and ears, then turned away with a hurt look on her pretty, sensitive face.

Ingred shut her desk with a slam. She was feeling very uncomfortable. She had liked Bess with a kind of love-at-first-sight, and if the latter had come to live at any other house in the town than Rotherwood, would have been prepared to go on liking her. Generosity whispered that her conduct was unjust, but at this particular stage of Ingred’s evolution she did not always listen to those inner voices that act as our highest guides. Like most of us, she had a mixed character, capable of many good things but with certain failings. Rotherwood was what the girls called “the bee in her bonnet,” and the knowledge that Bess was in possession of the beautiful home she had lost was sufficient to check the incipient friendship.

It was otherwise with the rest of the form. They frankly welcomed the newcomer, and if they did not, as Ingred had bitterly prognosticated, exactly “truckle” to her, they certainly began to treat her as a favorite. She was asked at once to join the Photographic Society and the Drawing Club, and her very superior camera, beautiful color-box, and other up-to-date equipments were immensely admired. Ingred, on the outside of the enthusiastic circle, preserved a stony silence. Her own camera was three years old, and she did not possess materials for oil-painting. She thought it quite unnecessary for Verity to want to look at Bess’s paraphernalia. Verity, who was a kindhearted little soul, perhaps divined the cause of her