Francie (15 page)

“Have you seen Glenn lately? He still says he's coming over with his car, and it can't be long now. Oh, boy.

“Yours, still going strong,

Francie.”

Penelope came back to school in a downcast frame of mind. In spite of Aunt Lolly's advice there had been more quarrels with Uncle Jim. “I did try,” she said in woebegone tones, “but he started it himself, all about this being my last term. It makes me feel like a condemned criminal. I suppose I talked too much about the play—the
Dream
. It's been on my mind, naturally, and I spoke about it sometimes to Mummy and that must have irritated him.”

“We can talk about it here as often as we like,” said Francie comfortingly. She herself was becoming excited about the production, and with very good reason, for the girls in the art class, with one voice, had selected her as chief scene painter and designer. The responsibility of such a task thrilled and half-frightened her. She found herself chattering about it even to Miss Maitland herself, the first day she sat next to the awesome headmistress in Hall.

“To think I've been so worried all year about what I'd talk about to Miss Maitland,” she said wonderingly to Penny later, as they went toward the tennis court. “It was as easy as anything, once we got started. I almost forgot it was
her
. I wouldn't have thought it possible!”

Marcie interrupted them with an eager inquiry: “Did you ask Miss Maitland about—you know, about giving the show out of doors?”

“Yes, I did,” said Francie. This had been a much-discussed question among the young artists. The
Dream
when it was first produced, argued some of the literary students, was an out-of-doors play, or masque, acted among genuine trees under the genuine sky. This being so, it would be wrong to present it between the confining four walls of Hall, they claimed.

Francie naturally opposed this notion, for two good reasons. It was sure to rain, she said, if they counted on fine weather, and many of the other girls backed her up in that.

“It always rains on breaking-up days,” they maintained when the fresh-air fiends waved almanacs at them, or cited the statistics of weather experts.

The other reason was obvious: if the play were to be presented in the oak wood, there would be no scene painting, or at best very little. Thus the work of the art class would be minimized. Opponents of the indoor school of thought were not slow to point this out, and to accuse the eager artists of prejudice.

“Yes, I did ask Miss Maitland,” said Francie now, flushed with triumph. “She said it was far too much of a risk to count on an out-of-doors performance of any kind, ever! That is, a performance like this. On breaking-up day they always do P.T. shows outside, she said, and that sort of thing, because that can be called off without too much heartache, or moved indoors whenever you like.”

“I knew all that, of course,” said Jennifer loftily when Marcie scampered across to report to the other court. “We all know that, except newcomers like Francie. I should have thought even your precious play could be risked, myself. It didn't rain last year, if you remember.”

“But we had the play indoors, anyhow,” said Marcie. “We always do.” Jennifer shrugged and turned her attention to the game.

“If she cared in the least for painting or stage work,” said Wendy during one of the drama-class discussions, “Jennifer would be the keenest of the whole school on this play. As it is, she's not helpful. In fact, she's positively obstructive.”

“I know,” said Penny regretfully. “I'd find it much easier to round up the little girls, the fairies and all that, for rehearsal, if only Jennifer would set the example. As it is, she stirs them up to cut.”

Francie listened as long as she could without contributing to the conversation. She knew that any criticism she might make of Jennifer would be attributed to the well-known enmity between them. At last, however, she could not resist; she broke in with a surprised exclamation.

“But if she keeps the little girls away,” she said, “isn't that
sabotage?”

“Of course it is, Francie,” said Marcie. “That's just what we're saying.”

“But can't we do something about it?”

Wendy Hardcastle said, “What do you suggest we do? We can hardly run and wail about it to Miss Maitland. The thing is, Jennifer has a tremendous following with the younger kids. And she's super with them, I must say; guiding and all that is Jennifer's
thing.”

“What's guiding?” asked Francie.

“My dear Nelson, what an ignorant barbarian you are!” said Wendy. “Guiding is working with the Girl Guides, of course, as group leader. Jennifer has a group of Guides in her village at home, and takes no end of trouble organizing them and looking after the Brownies—that's the baby ones—at their summer camp, and taking on all sorts of dreary jobs such as that. Do you mean to tell me there are no Girl Guides in America?”

“We call them Girl Scouts,” said Francie. “I was a Brownie myself once, years ago.”

“To give Jennifer her due,” Wendy went on, “she's a really good influence on these horrid children, usually. Of course she oughtn't head them off our play, but … Being a prefect isn't my cup of tea, admittedly. I am one, but I don't enjoy it. Since we
have
to have prefects, it's just as well we've got a few Jennifers among us to do the job properly! Heaven help us, Francie, if the world's work had to be done by people like you and me!”

Everyone laughed, and Francie was left with something new to think about. She was impressed with the general fair-mindedness of her friends, which Wendy's opinion summed up. They didn't like a lot of things about Jennifer, but they gave her credit for the qualities they knew she possessed.

“Now if it were just me,” Francie reflected, “I would decide to hate Jennifer through and through, forever. In fact, that's what I've already done. They don't go to extremes the way I do. That's a good thing.” Besides, they took very seriously the quality of leadership. She could see that. Jennifer had a following among the younger fry, Jennifer was a good leader, and they cheerfully admitted it and respected her accordingly.

Francie could not quite scoff at the prefect system as she would have done when she first arrived. It had one advantage; it made the girls independent in many ways of their mistresses. They were not watched all the time, as she had expected they would be. They were free to set up their own world, within larger limits … After all, Fair-fields was not a kindergarten, and it wasn't run like one. Mrs. Tennison, she recalled, had been far worse in her strictures than Miss Maitland was.

Aunt Lolly went off to Ireland, and Pop, too, suddenly departed, not for Ireland but the Near East. He wrote Francie a hastily dictated letter before he left, explaining that an emergency called him away but that if all was well he'd be back within the month. She ought to have felt forlorn and deserted under these circumstances, but life at school absorbed most of her thoughts and the world outside didn't seem to matter as much as it had before.

“After all, we're practically isolated for the whole term, until the end of July,” as she said to Penelope, “so what's the difference where my people are?”

The fine weather deserted them for a fortnight and then came back. Trees put out buds and the early primroses and daffodils died off, giving way to a riot of flowers sweeter and more varied than Francie had ever seen in Jefferson. Then lilacs bloomed. The whole countryside was enchanting. If Glenn didn't arrive soon, Francie thought, he'd miss the best of it, but Penny laughed at her fears and said there would be flowers well on into August.

“You needn't be afraid everything will be burnt up by midsummer,” she said. “This is chilly England. It almost never gets very hot here, you know.”

“I've had to rearrange all my ideas of the seasons,” confessed Francie. “You know, I used to think the poets were simply sappy when they talked so much about spring. Spring in Jefferson isn't so much, to tell you the truth—here today and gone tomorrow. My favorite season's always been the fall. Now, after seeing what spring can be like in England, I'm beginning to understand the poets. The lambs and the rabbits and the fruit blossoms—oh, it's marvelous! And some new delicious smell practically every day. Except, of course, when they put bone fertilizer on the field,” she added as an afterthought.

“You had better get over any ultra-dainty ideas like that,” said Penny warningly, “before our cycling picnic. No one can guarantee that we won't go near bone fertilizer somewhere on the way. This is farming country, after all.”

One of the weekend outings that the girls most looked forward to, as Francie had discovered, was the cycling picnic that the school took every summer when weather permitted. Now that the vexatious affair of her bicycle had been settled she felt inclined to share in the common excitement, but a few months before she would have hesitated to go out with the others.

The trouble had been typical of all her troubles at Fairfields. It began when Pop discovered that his daughter needed a bicycle at school. He had overlooked this requirement during the busy, hurried shopping days before she left London, and when he was reminded, a fortnight after Francie went to Fairfields, he hurried out remorsefully and bought one, and shipped it down to her immediately. Pop was an impulsive shopper. The task of buying most things bored him, as it does many another busy man; he would not look around before choosing; he was apt to order the most expensive article he could find, and assume that he was thus sure of getting the best.

There was no argument at school about the superiority of Francie's bicycle, as a matter of fact. One could see it at a glance. The difficulty lay in the fact that it was not the thing in Francie's circles to own a new bicycle. Girls at Fairfields School prided themselves rather on their shabby, beat-up machines; the worse-looking they were, the better. Wendy Hardcastle was admired and envied because hers had belonged to two elder sisters in turn before her advent at Fairfields. Thus poor Francie's magnificent chromium-glittering bicycle made her the butt of many merciless taunts, especially, of course, from Jennifer Tennison.

It was no use rebuking Pop for having been kind. There had been only one thing for Francie to do, in order to escape the annoyance of jeers whenever she went out on her bike. She set earnestly to work to rub off the pristine shine. Whenever she had a moment's privacy near the bicycle shed she sandpapered the enamel, hammered at the handle bars, scratched the leather saddle and even managed one whole weekend to leave the bike out in the bushes behind the school, where it was rained on for several hours. After that she did not feel conspicuous any more, and the girls let her alone on that topic. Even Jennifer forgot the original offense.

“Do you think the rain will hold off?” Francie asked now.

Penny said, “According to the BBC weather report it's going to be fine. In spite of that, though, it may not rain. In fact I'm sure it
will
be fine.”

Together they solemnly inspected the sky. It looked hopeful; there were only a few harmless-looking cottony clouds in it. Satisfied, they started down to collect their machines and join the others.

“Only I do wish it wasn't Cressy in charge of our group,” said Francie as they went.

“Why? Old Cressy's not a bad sort. I didn't know you didn't like her.”

“I do like her all right, but some of the kids who have a pash always try to ride next to her when we're out on our wheels, and with so many of us today, we're apt to bunch a bit at the curves in the road.”

“Ah yes,” said Penny equably, “but they're not really silly with their pashes. Anyway it's not our affair to keep the crowd in order. It's up to the prefects to make us string out in proper formation on the high road.”

“Thank goodness! I don't envy Tennison and Hardcastle that job today,” said Francie.

The fourteen who made up their group set out at about eleven o'clock, all in order, with a picnic lunch divided into parcels which they carried in their handle-bar baskets. Each group was permitted to take its own way to the meeting ground where they were to lunch. Miss Cressall had already planned their route, which she knew from former years, with a careful eye on the necessity of avoiding much-frequented roads, and yet with the idea of taking a pretty, roundabout journey. Cycling in England, Francie had learned, was a common but dangerous form of exercise. No matter how careful their riders might be, bicycles were bound to wobble sometimes, and make little unexpected dashes toward the middle of the road. This wouldn't matter if all English roads were straight, but that was just what they were not; they curved and wandered between high banks or thick hedges. Constant watchfulness was necessary when the girls rode out for their picnic. Jennifer and Wendy did a sort of patrol duty along the fringes of the procession, except when the way led along a safe meadow path or through a wood.

They had been out for half an hour and were just coming out of such a comparative sanctuary onto a wide road which seemed deserted. Miss Cressall at the head held out her arm to indicate that they were supposed to turn sharp left. Then she blew her whistle sharply, and Francie, halfway back in the line, saw the reason. A big delivery truck—what the British call a van—came bowling around the corner which would have been ahead of them if they had all been riding on the road. Fortunately they were still in the pathway. It was just at the moment when most of the girls stopped pedaling and were stepping down to wait for further orders.

The van's driver had underestimated his speed. Like many people going around a corner he went wide, and drove over to the wrong side of the road before recovering. On a quiet highway such as this, he probably reasoned, it couldn't make much difference. Nor would it have mattered, except that Jane Mackay wasn't paying attention.