Chapter XIII: A Rebellious Plan

To say that Sybil was angry would be using too mild a word to express the state of feelings that filled her troubled breast. She was just as furious as any little girl could be, and truly to outward appearance her lot at present was a hard one.

To be denied any participation in the dormitory feast (and to such a sweet-toothed little damsel the magnitude of the treat was tremendous), and to be expected to take comfort--forsooth!--from the fact that she would be allowed to watch the hockey-match was, according to Sybil’s present state of ideas, to add insult to injury.

A week ago, before the feast had been mooted, no one had been more excited and delighted at the prospective match than the child herself, but now the complexion of the case was altered. The feast which she was not to enjoy loomed largely and lusciously before her, while the hitherto alluring match had fallen in her opinion to the position of an irritating event without interest or excitement. And now here was Margot--Margot, only six months her senior, and yet included in the band of fortunate older ones!--suggesting that this match was the “best part” of the day’s entertainment. Sybil flounced angrily out of the sitting-room and, leaving a group of amused and half-sympathetic bigger girls, betook herself in tears to the playground, to be found there presently by her chum and slave, Adela, in a very great temper indeed.

“I’ll just pay them all out!” she exclaimed for the twentieth time, feeling very glad of a sympathetic listener and waxing proportionately eloquent.

“But how?” inquired Adela, who was not very original-minded, and who considered her friend to be a monument of wisdom.

“I’ll not go _near_ their old hockey match,” bragged Sybil; “and I’ll have--yes, I _will_ have a dormitory feast!”

“Oh, _how_?” Adela’s eyes opened wide, and her mouth wider. “In _our_ dormitory, do you mean? Oh, could we really have one?”

“It’s easy enough,” said Sybil, drying her tears, and wondering how on earth it was to be done; “only--I’m not going to tell anyone--not even you!”

Repeated entreaties from her excited friend only served to render Sybil’s silence more profound. Truth to tell, she was feeling quite concerned as to how she was to carry the affair through and thus maintain a reputation for daring with Adela. She, therefore, with the courage born of despair, made up her mind recklessly that it would be “all right in the end,” and implicated herself still further by acquainting her remaining dormitory companion with the fact of her intentions.

“_We’re_ going to have a feast on Saturday, _too_!” she announced that night from behind her cubicle curtains; “and if either of you say one single word about it you shan’t have one tiny crumb of anything!”

“Does nurse know?” inquired Joan Curtis, aged eleven-and-three-quarters, and previously mentioned in these pages as being the youngest of the Cliff School girls.

“No, she doesn’t,” snapped Sybil; “but if we don’t ask her about it she can’t say we’re not to, and so it’ll be all right.”

This logical remark seemed to appear unanswerable to the other two, probably because the prospect of a feast of their own was such an alluring one, and there the matter rested--for _them_; while for Sybil began a time of wild and exciting imaginings and brain-rackings as she wondered however she could procure enough materials for the longed-for festivity!

It was small wonder, then, that during the following days she went about her duties and played her games with a somewhat pensive expression of face; and sympathetic Margot, guessing--wrongly--what was the matter with her little cousin, cast about in her mind for some way to mitigate the dreadful disappointment. Her ideas voiced themselves in a letter written with Miss Slater’s express permission and received by Mrs. Fleming during the middle of the week.

“DARLING MOTHER,” wrote Margot. “You haven’t answered about whether you’re coming to the match, and _do_ come if you can, because Josy and Stella want to see you, and Stella’s coming on purpose. Gretta and I didn’t tell Sybil we’d asked you so that she should have a ripping surprise, and please bring some of those chocolates she liked so much at York, because her dormer isn’t going to have a feast and ours is, and she minds much more than we should, because she’s not so keen on hockey yet. Your loving MARGOT.”

The letter received in answer proved that Mrs. Fleming had understood the somewhat rambling contents of her daughter’s note; it arrived on Friday morning, the day before that settled upon for the eventful match, and both Margot and Gretta, walking arm-in-arm round the hockey-field after breakfast, read and re-read the missive, at each time of reading commenting wonderingly on one particular sentence:

“I shall love to come on Saturday, and shall drive over in the car,” wrote Mrs. Fleming, in the large, generous-looking handwriting that her daughter declared “looked just like mother,” “but I expect you will be surprised to hear that it is the last time I shall be able to use it. Tell Gretta that I have something very important to talk to her about, and I hope she and I will be able to get a little quiet time together.”

“Why, whatever can it be?” asked Margot for the twentieth time.

Gretta’s mind flew, as it almost always did, musicwards. “Could it be about my fiddle?” she asked. “I mean, could Monsieur Villon have complained or anything?”

“Now, Gretta, you _know_ he couldn’t,” laughed her cousin; “Miss Slater’s just as pleased about your music as she can be, and you know that day Miss Read said to nurse, when you cut your finger at supper, that sometime you’d be insuring your right hand for thousands of pounds, like--what’s his name?--Kreisler, isn’t it? Well, that’s the very thing it _couldn’t_ be!”

Gretta gave a sigh of relief. “Oh, I _did_ hope not, of course. It couldn’t be dad, could it?”

“Oh, no, I’m sure it couldn’t be that, either. He wrote to you himself, yesterday, you know--that letter where he said that everything was going on well, and that Ann had learned to cook bacon properly. Depend upon it, Gretta, _that’s_ nothing to be frightened about! But why, oh, _why_, is it the last time that they’re using the car? I can’t believe that dad wants a new one already! It’s one of those new Daimlers, you know, and he said that its running was perfect--‘mounts a hill like a bird!’--that’s what he said in his very last letter, and it wasn’t so long ago.”

“Well, let’s wait, anyhow; it’s only till to-morrow,” said Gretta, “and won’t it be too simply lovely to see auntie again!”

It was difficult to “keep” the surprise from Sybil for even one day; particularly as she was looking so grave just now, Margot thought, and after consultation with Gretta, she decided on dealing out a tiny piece of excitement to her younger cousin as a kind of tonic.

“Hallo, Sybil!” she said, meeting the damsel alone in the cloak-room that afternoon; “I’ve hardly spoken to you for days.”

“I don’t _want_ to talk to you,” said Sybil, head-in-air, and very distant and grown-up in manner; “you’re not half as nice as I used to think you were, Margot, before you came back from Australia. First you won’t keep your promise and go to the ‘Little House’ with me; and, now, you just put on airs and eat feasts in your old dormitory, although you’re only six months older than me!”

“It isn’t _my_ fault that I’m in that dormer,” began Margot, still good-humouredly. “Nurse put me in it; and I _didn’t_ promise to go to the ‘Little House’ with you, Sybil. I only said I’d think about it. You’d much better be glad you didn’t go, instead of being so cross about it, because you might have been most awfully frightened, I know.”

“Who says I’m _not_ going?” inquired Sybil, flouncing round angrily. “And who says we’re not going to have a feast? You and Gretta can walk about talking secrets, but I’ve got a secret, too.”

“Well, I’d meant to tell you part of ours,” Margot flared up at her irritating small cousin; “and now I’ve a good mind not to! Gretta!” she called, as her elder cousin opened the cloak-room door. “Here’s Sybil being a perfect baby! I can’t _help_ being cross with her!”

“What! With auntie coming to-morrow!” The joyous sound in Gretta’s voice showed that her words were true.

“Oh, if _that’s_ your secret!” Even the head-in-air Sybil unbent at the news. She pranced round the cloak-room in joy, hockey-stick in hand. Such, indeed, was the magic of Mrs. Fleming’s name that in five minutes, everything forgotten except that to-morrow would bring Auntie Tib, the three were off to the hockey-ground as gaily as though moods and mysteries had never been!