Chapter III: At the Window Table

“I just half-guessed you’d be in our room,” said Gerry. “That was why I couldn’t help speaking to you in the station.”

She had dimpled herself into Betty’s cubicle, and had perched herself, still dimpling, on the side of Betty’s bed. Her hat had been left downstairs, and a mass of red-to-golden hair seemed almost to glitter as she sat there. To Betty’s admiring eyes she seemed a glittery sort of person altogether.

“When I saw you standing under the clock,” continued Gerry, as the dimple came and went, “I said, ‘That’s _her_!’” She broke off suddenly--not to correct her grammatical lapse, but to start in surprise at the sound of a louder voice than her own.

“_Geraldine!_” said the outraged voice.

“Oh!” cried Gerry with an apologetic squeak.

She rose from the white coverlet as she squeaked, and was attempting to remove certain creases as Nurse drew back the curtain.

“In another girl’s cubicle, and before half an hour of the term has passed, Geraldine!” remarked the starched and stately dignitary. “I had two thoughts about putting a new girl in here at all; for with you so forgetful and all, how’s she to learn the rules? Rumpling the covers--!” Nurse bent down and smoothed the coverlet herself; “and she younger than you, and needing teaching!”

Nurse’s tone was majestic in its intonation, and a subdued voice came in reply from the other end of the room where Gerry had fled to her own domain.

“Nurse, I honestly forgot. I’ll really remember. In three weeks, you know, one can forget such lots of things!”

But Nurse replied not at all, and apparently making no allowance for this extenuating circumstance, turned to Betty instead. “You’re ready now? Well, Geraldine may take you downstairs when the tea-gong rings. You will see Miss Carey afterwards; but first of all she wishes you to have your tea.”

Nurse withdrew, and the closing of the door behind her seemed to serve to loosen the tongue of Gerry, who burst into a flood of conversation without delay.

“I _did_ forget. Honest Injun, I did. We’re not allowed in each other’s cubicles without permission, though we may have the curtains drawn back. Nurse is most awfully strict; but she’s not really so strict as she seems. For one thing,” Gerry sighed, “she might have lost me a dormitory mark, but she didn’t. I’d like to have seen Mona’s and Irene’s faces if I’d lost one. We’re all Daisies, you see, and----”

The speaker broke off as the sound of a loud but very melodiously-toned gong boomed somewhere from the regions below. Tea-time; there was no doubt of that; and the new girl was thankful of Geraldine’s presence at her side as the pair made their way down the wide and shallow stair.

She was still more thankful that she was not alone when they had reached the bottom, for their progress was held up there on the lowest step as the school filed its way dining-room wards. Along the corridor, in a single line, without hurry and without words, came--first of all--the older girls, then the junior girls behind. Gerry waited till they had filed past, and then took her own place at the end with Betty beside her. It felt wonderful to Betty to take her place, too, by right in the procession; there were thirty-three of them altogether, counting Gerry and herself, for she had numbered every one while they were passing. There would have been only thirty-two girls at St. Benedick’s if _she_ were not there, she told herself; but she was here, and so there were thirty-_three_! The delicious thought made her gulp with pride.

She forgot the pride, though, for shyness again, just for a little while, when the dining-room door was reached. At home meals were generally eaten in a basement room, to save trouble for the general servant whose duties were so never-ending. Here the very idea of a meal in such a lovely room made Betty gasp with shyness at first, and then realize suddenly how hungry she was!

The dining-room ceiling overhead was oak-beamed; the walls were panelled in dark oak too; the mullioned windows which lined one side of the wall were all thrown widely open, and the scent of stocks and pinks seemed to fill the room.

A big bowl of pinks, too, stood in the middle of each of the three tables, one of which--of circular shape--was smaller than the others. This round table was placed in the very centre of the room, and was flanked on either side by a longer and narrower one. Betty, standing in the doorway, saw six senior girls take their places at the round table, while a line of junior girls, each evidently taking her own seat by right, advanced to each of the narrow tables in quiet file.

“Geraldine, please take Betty Carlyle to the window table with you,” came the voice of a mistress standing at the door.

It was all so quiet and orderly, and yet it didn’t feel “ruley.” Every girl, as Betty took her place at the corner of her table, seemed cheerily smiling at her neighbour as though thoroughly contented with her lot. The new girl felt contented too, but her feeling of contentment changed suddenly to one of surprise when, after listening to the words of the Grace pronounced by the mistress in charge, every tongue seemed suddenly unloosed all round her, and the room began to buzz and hum with animated conversation.

“Well, as I was just beginning to tell you when the gong sounded, we--” burst out somebody sitting close by and speaking to her table neighbour.

“The day Paul broke his ankle, I can tell _you_, First Aid came in useful,” pronounced somebody else with enthusiasm.

“I started at nine, and I hardly had _any_ lunch,” came a ravenous voice.

Everybody seemed to have something to say except Betty, and she didn’t need to talk to Gerry at her side; for Gerry, evidently keen to make her companion feel at home, burst into a glib and speedy description of their immediate surroundings.

“That’s Mona opposite to you. She sleeps in our room. She’s talking to Molly now, but I’ll make her look presently. We don’t talk across tables, you know.

“Isn’t it nice that you’re a ‘window-table’ girl! It’s much the nicest table, _we_ say, though the ‘wallflower-table’ girls (that’s what we call the girls at the wall table) say they can see far farther over the garden than we can. All the same we sometimes get bees flying right in, and once a butterfly too.” Gerry stopped for breath.

“I love this table,” said Betty shyly.

“So do I. That’s Joan Struthers taking the head to-night. She’s a prefect. You can tell them--if they _need_ telling--because their hair’s turned up. Even if it’s been bobbed, it has to grow _then_! There’s seven prefects, but only six places are ever laid at the prefects’ table, you see, because one of them always heads a table. Miss Stewart’s at the wallflower table this week; but she will be at this table next week--in fair turns, you see--and the wallflower girls will get a prefect.” Gerry took a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

Betty took a mouthful, too, and gazed across at the middle table. Then suddenly she flushed with pride and pleasure as a friendly smile met her inquiring look. For Sybil was seated there--Sybil of the train journey. In all the excitements Betty had almost forgotten her, but it seemed that the older girl had not forgotten Betty. How quiet and dignified she looked, Betty thought, as she sat there with a golden braid of hair wound in a coronet round her head. “There--there’s the girl who told me to stand under the clock,” she whispered, touching Geraldine’s arm.

Gerry nodded. “That’s Sybil. She’s the head of our patrol. She’s head girl too this term of the school. Our patrol is the Daisies. I’m in it; and Mona and Irene as well. We’ve got four patrols at school, you know; there are the Buttercups and the Cowslips and the Foxgloves as well as us. I don’t see how you can possibly be in our bedroom without being a Daisy; but, you see--” Gerry’s tone broke off in rather a worried note.

“Oh, I do hope--” began Betty feverishly, just as silence fell suddenly upon the room as Miss Stewart tapped on the table.

“Girls, go straight to the Oak Room, as you always do on the first day. Miss Carey is ready for you now.”

Perhaps the Oak Room had been used in the early days as a banqueting hall, for a musicians’ gallery ran round the four walls overhead. Perhaps stately family festivals, banquets, and ceremonial feasts had taken place here in years gone by. But for all that, the old pictures still hanging on the walls seemed to look down tolerantly on the girls of to-day as they entered.

But perhaps, too, it was the sight of them all--young, gay, simple-hearted, and with life stretching so invitingly before them--standing in the room that held so many echoes of the past, which made the headmistress when she entered pause for a moment and look down at them quietly before she spoke.

Scarcely an opening speech could her words be called, for her words were, as usual, few. But even before Miss Carey had opened her lips some of the waiting girls had felt themselves under the influence of what she had come to say.

Slight and straight she stood there; somehow, in her quiet and gentle but forceful dignity, she seemed, as always, with her understanding appreciation of the beauty of things past, and with her power to see beauty in things present, to be a link between the house which had belonged to yesterday and the girls of to-day. “_Festina lente._” (It was the school motto that she took as her text--“Hasten slowly.”) She spoke of the old house which sheltered them. “We could not have a happier setting for a school with our motto,” said Miss Carey. “Every day that we spend here should teach us more of what our motto means. Years and years have passed as it has stood here, and its beauty has grown. ‘_Festina lente_’ seems to me to have been its motto too. No fuss; no undue haste; until now, in the full beauty of its age, it has given us shelter, and we can learn here the lesson which is so difficult to learn in the busy world of to-day.

“Outside, in life, there is so much hurry-scurry nowadays. You, who are one with the outside life, and must take your share in it later, are spending certain years here to fit you for your life outside. And these years should be for you later on, I like to think, a treasure which, in the storm and stress that life must bring to each of us, no one can take from you. Quiet memories will be yours of a time when--helped perhaps more than you realize now by the atmosphere and influence of this house itself--you, each one, laid up a store of strength for later days.

“And because, here at St. Benedick’s, we ‘study to be quiet,’ you will not be the less fitted, I think, when you leave for the world outside, if you go out remembering that in quietness and in confidence is your greatest strength. No, all I have to say to you at the opening of this term can be summed up again, I think, in our motto: _Festina lente_ (Hasten slowly); for nothing in life is worth having that can be gained by snatching. Our motto means much, and it may grow to mean more and more through life to each one of you if you will remember it. Hasten slowly; and ‘Patience, then, will have her perfect work.’”