White Boots by Noel Streatfeild

Author:Noel Streatfeild
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780394908816
Publisher: HarperCollins (UK)
Published: 1951-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

SILVER TEST

LESSONS FOR BOTH Lalla and Harriet became fun, and Miss Goldthorpe enjoyed them enormously. The two girls were not only almost exactly the same age, but much of a muchness at lessons. Lalla was good at things like grammar, and remembering dates, and geography, and Harriet, which was a great pleasure to Miss Goldthorpe, loved reading. Both girls were bad at, and detested, sums. But it was fun being bad at the same thing. Lalla found even adding money, which she thought the nastiest kind of sums, could be pleasant if it meant she beat Harriet when she got them right. She did not like Harriet’s and Miss Goldthorpe’s taste for literature, especially not their fondness for Shakespeare’s plays.

“I wouldn’t have thought it of you, Harriet. You don’t look the mimsy-pimsy sort of person who could like hearing about that silly Viola and that awful Malvolio.”

At eleven the door would open and Nana would come in with glasses of milk for the girls and a cup of tea for Miss Goldthorpe and biscuits for everybody. Sometimes she would bring her own cup as well, and while she drank her tea would give a running commentary on how things were going in the house.

“Your aunt’s out for a fitting for her clothes for that Ascot. Cook has a chip on her shoulder this morning. She meant to go out with her sister this evening to the pictures, but now Wilson’s brought a message from your aunt to say there’ll be two extra for dinner. The sun’s coming out beautifully, the gardener says you ought to come down and see his crocuses, proper sight they are on the lawn.”

When Nana mentioned the gardener Lalla and Harriet would exchange looks with Miss Goldthorpe. It was time the boys came over and dug up that bed, and put in their lettuce seed. According to Alec it should have been planted some time before, and the little plants growing under cloches.

Usually Nana would finish with a bit of news for Harriet. She would say she had been going through Lalla’s drawers and cupboards and had found this thing or that thing which would be useful to her. The things she found were always worn in the house, they never went back to Harriet’s house. Nana had not talked to Miss Goldthorpe about Harriet’s clothes; it was no good talking to Miss Goldthorpe about clothes, she never knew what anyone had on, or cared what she looked like herself, but now and again she had confided in her about the Johnsons.

“They haven’t any money, poor things, and Mrs Johnson so nice and all. I don’t want her knowing, but never knowing when Mrs King will pop in and out of the schoolroom, and knowing how she expects the children to look, I find the easiest thing is to use Lalla’s clothes for both. As soon as Harriet comes I say,‘Take that off, dear, we don’t want it spoilt,’ and I’ve popped her into something of Lalla’s before you can say Jack Robinson.

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