Francie (6 page)

“That's a coincidence,” Pop agreed.

“So Mrs. Tennison thinks I ought to try to get in, too. I told her I hadn't quite made up my mind about school, and that made her laugh. She says I'm lucky if you let me make up my mind about things like that. She was that way about lots of things I said—amused and surprised, but more surprised than amused,” ended Francie with mild resentment.

“Just the same, I think school's the only answer. We ought not to put it off any longer, I guess,” said her father. “How about our making up our minds right now?”

“Oh gosh. All right.” Francie sighed deeply.

“You've got to do something with your time, you know,” continued Pop.

“I guess so, but—well, okay. I know I can't go on fooling around by myself here in London. I might get into bad habits and the wrong crowd, going to the Zoo.” Francie looked slyly at her father.

“You shouldn't mind the Zoo so much. A lot of sensible people drop in there, the same way we go for a walk in the Park; it isn't strictly for kids, honey. If I only knew more young people,” he said uncertainly. “It seems to me there must be some young people around, for you to meet, somewhere.”

“I haven't heard Mrs. Tennison say anything about boys, all day,” said Francie in glum tones. The wilting waitress had mournfully removed their plates of fish and potatoes, and brought them small single caramel eclairs. Francie eyed hers with distrust. “The food in this place is terrible, isn't it?”

“Don't be too hard on the food,” Pop said. “The English probably don't like it any better than you do. But they've got the spunk to put up with it.”

Hastily Francie veered away from the subject of food. “I don't think there
are
any boys in a girl's life, here in England, Pop. I don't know how the girls get around to dances or movies, but I didn't like to ask. It might look as if I wanted to know, and Mrs. Tennison might not like that.”

“Probably the boys are all away at boarding school too,” suggested Pop.

“It does sound awful, having to go to boarding school. Oh, Mrs. Tennison says to tell you she's asked the Fairfields people to send you a prospectus, you know, like a pamphlet, all about the school. And she says we're supposed to go to this town where it is and look at it first, and talk to the woman who runs it, before we sign up. And she says I've got to get special clothes for it; she called the outfit a uniform. I thought only orphan asylums and armies had uniforms, didn't you?” She giggled. “I hope I have to wear a lot of gold braid with it. I'll have my picture taken and send it to Ruth to show around at the Chocolate Shoppe.”

“It's for less than a year, remember,” said Pop. He lifted the little coffee cup the waitress had put down in front of him when she removed the eclair plate; he took a sip and made a face, in spite of his defense of the English.

“Isn't it terrible?” said Francie, who had been watching him, waiting for his reaction. “I tried it already,” she added.

Pop said ruefully, “I've had it several times now, but it's always a shock.”

“It's for less than a year, remember,” said Francie, wagging her finger at him. She huddled her coat around her and shivered. Outside the dining-room windows, in the feeble gleam of the street light, she saw that it had begun to rain again.

One morning a few days later a letter arrived from Penelope. Francie read it aloud at the breakfast table.

“‘Dear Francie:

“‘How are you settling in? Do you absolutely hate England, or haven't you made up your mind? I've thought of you so often and wondered what's happening to you.

“‘As for me, I'm on top of the world. I needn't have been so worried. My stepfather is very nice, though quite strong-minded about things. I do believe he was more afraid of me than I was of him, and it's quite all right now. Mummy's much happier than she used to be before she met him, so even if I didn't like him I would try to, but I do, if that isn't too involved. We have spent most of our spare time getting used to each other again, Mummy and I. I'm afraid she is scandalized by my manners and ideas, but she comforts herself with the thought that school will put me straight, and transform me into a real English girl again. I may have my own ideas about this, but I'm not talking. Between you and me, I do get most awfully homesick for New Hampshire. But courage! It will be nice to see you again, and hear you talk a familiar language. By the way, Mummy's putting in a word for you at Fairfields—'

“That's two words,” said Francie. “It must be awfully hard to get into the schools around here.”

“I have the catalog here,” said Pop.

“Not catalog, Pop, prospectus. Let's see it.”

Raptly she studied the booklet, while the fried bread and tomatoes grew cold on her plate. There were handsome photographs of a large building, of tennis courts, and gardens. There were lists of subjects—she noticed that “Art” was included—and mysterious references to “Houses,” and names of equally mysterious “Governors.”

“A lot of teachers and not many students,” she said finally. “It says here there are only fifty girls. That will seem queer after Jefferson High; we had over two hundred there.”

“You'll soon get used to it,” said Mr. Nelson. “I asked Bob Tennison what we do first about this school proposition, and he says we ought to go down a time or two before you make the final move, just to talk to the headmistress and look around. That's the way they do it over here. So I'd better call these people up and see if it's all right. If it is, we might as well get you moved in right away.”

As things turned out, it wasn't as simple as that. When the Nelsons went lightheartedly to inspect the school, their normal American tempo was slowed down so abruptly that they felt as if they had been brought to a complete standstill. At first sight of the school, which looked at a distance more like a gray stone farmhouse than an institute of learning, Francie felt a throb of interest. It seemed wiser, however, to conceal it; she didn't want to raise Pop's hopes too high about her future happiness.

“It's awfully different from anything I've been used to,” she said, “isn't it? Prettier in a way. Jefferson High was a red brick barrack-house compared to this.” She kept her tone noncommittal, but she felt excited now.

“I guess those barn-like things must be extra rooms,” said Pop wisely. “Wonder how they heat the place.”

“It's all terribly green outside for this time of year; maybe it's been a funny season, not cold. Are those tennis courts?”

The car they had hired at the railway station curved around the driveway and deposited them at the front door. After a long wait for the maid to answer the bell, they were ushered through a bare, high-ceilinged room with an odor familiar to Francie. “School smell,” she said to herself. “The same anywhere in the world, I shouldn't wonder.” A moment later they were in the imposing presence of Miss Maitland, the headmistress.

There had been nobody to warn Francie that a headmistress in England is usually an awe-inspiring person; she had come to school as unsuspectingly as a lamb to the slaughter. Now, faced with this gray-haired lady with the high coiffure, she was suddenly overwhelmed with confusion. She forgot to listen to her father. He didn't seem to be at all awed; in the midst of her unaccustomed embarrassment Francie found time to wonder at him and admire him as he chatted on and asked intelligent questions.

“Yes, of course,” Pop was saying to something Miss Maitland had pronounced in her full voice about English school requirements. “Probably her Latin's way behind. But as my little girl won't attempt to pass any of your examinations.…”

In a normal mood, Francie would have protested being called a little girl. Even now she opened her mouth. But at the same moment she looked at Miss Maitland's face and decided to keep quiet. It was not that the headmistress looked terrifying, or even particularly severe, but she was dignified to a degree Francie had never before seen.

“I'd think twice before I sassed anybody around
her,”
she told herself. “Oh dear, how can I ever live up to this place?”

At that moment Miss Maitland smiled at her with a warmth which made her seem for a moment a different person, much less forbidding. “Go and look out the windows if you'd like to, Frances, my dear,” she said. “Wander about, if you're curious to see the buildings, only don't go into any room where the door is closed, because that means lessons are going on.”

Gratefully Francie escaped from the drawing room, though she merely stood uncertainly in the driveway afterwards, not daring to walk about, until Pop reappeared.

“That's all right as far as I know,” he said cheerfully as they drove back to the station. “A few formalities about sponsors and inquiries at the bank, and you're launched at Fairfields, chicken. How do you feel?”

“Frozen.”

“It wasn't too warm indoors,” he admitted, “but I liked the looks of that Miss Maitland.”

“She's not bad as prison wardresses go, I suppose,” said Francie in gloomy tones.

Pop came back to the hotel one evening in cheerful mood, to find his daughter waiting in his room in a state of perturbation.

“Hello,” he said. “What's the matter with you? Have you been crying, or laughing too hard, or what?”

“Both. You sit down, Pop, and don't move until I come back. I've got something to show you.”

“But what—”

Francie pushed him backwards, violently, to an armchair. “You just wait and be good,” she said, hurrying to her own bedchamber.

When she came back, mincing like a mannequin, one hand held out with the wrist elegantly bent, he was appalled. He was really speechless for a moment.

Francie was attired in a loose gray flannel garment, bulky though sleeveless, of a pattern he had seen in charity hospitals when the patients who wore them were convalescent. Her arms were covered with blue and white striped cloth, and he realized slowly that beneath the gray flannel she was wearing an entire shirt of this material, for her neck was constricted in a collar of it, not unlike his own, held together by a blue necktie. The skirt was very short; in fact it scarcely covered her knees. She wore short socks and heavy walking shoes. On her head was a hard gray hat with a blue-striped ribbon. He could scarcely recognize his pretty daughter.

“How do I look?” she asked, pirouetting before him.

“What
is
this, anyway?” demanded Pop.

“School uniform. Fairfields uniform. We should have waited to see some of the girls before we signed up. I realize that now.” Francie seemed to be in earnest, but Pop said, “I don't believe it. There must be some mistake. They'd never make you kids—”

“There's no mistake, Pop, I'm positive. I called up the store to make sure, and they told me they've provided Fairfields uniforms for years and years and years, since—oh, I don't know, since before the Battle of Hastings at least.”

“Now Francie.”

“Well, maybe not quite that far back, though this outfit looks like it. Honestly, Pop, isn't it terrible?”

Pop rubbed his head. “Well.…” He sucked at his underlip thoughtfully. “It's for less than a year,” he said at last. It was a feeble remark, but the only one he could think of.

As the day approached when the gates of Fair-fields would close permanently upon her, Francie found herself clinging more and more to the thought of two girls. There was Penny, of course, since she was already a friend and would be the one person in the place Francie would know. But she found herself thinking of Jennifer Tennison as well, wondering about her, hoping that she would be a friend too, even feeling that, in a way, she knew Jennifer, having heard so much about her from her mother. True, Mrs. Tennison had referred to her daughter sickeningly as “my little girl,” but, even allowing for a doting mother's prejudice, Jennifer sounded rather a good sort. Besides, Pop had been feeding her Jennifer at every other breath for days now. He was always quoting Bob Tennison on the subject of his daughter and predicting that Francie and Jennifer would be buddies of the heart-to-heart sort.

At any other time Francie might have resisted such heavy-handed enthusiasm. But now she was lonely for the company of those her own age, and she began to build up Jennifer in her imagination as another Penelope, but even more so. Francie, who was used to more friends than she knew how to count, was ready to reach in the dark for almost anyone who was young and lively and interested in something besides ancient tombs and modern zoos.

Thus she was fully prepared to like Jennifer when she met her. She was anything but ready for the way Jennifer was so well prepared
not
to like her.

Their first encounter came in the dormitory on Francie's first night at Fairfields. Pop had brought her out in the evening after dinner, so that she could settle in for the night with the other girls and be ready to step right into school routine in the morning.

Miss Maitland had assigned Penelope the task of helping Francie get settled and Penny had been wonderful. She'd made everything seem quite simple and pleasant, what with introducing her around, showing her her bed in the dormitory, helping her unpack. Apparently Penny herself had fitted in as comfortably as though she'd never left England. Already, Francie noted, some of her Americanisms were being replaced by English terms, and the other girls had accepted her readily enough. But they were holding back a bit, as far as Francie was concerned, stiffly polite, not quite ready to make the American girl one of themselves.

Their attitude surprised Francie. There'd been an English exchange student at Jefferson once and every girl in school had fallen over herself trying to extend the well-known “hand across the sea.” That these English girls should not welcome her as quickly puzzled Francie and made her a little self-conscious.