A Popular Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil

Author:Angela Brazil
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Schools -- Fiction
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2019-11-28T18:33:29+00:00

After these ring­leaders marched a de­ter­mined crowd wav­ing flags made of hand­ker­chiefs fas­tened to the end of rulers. A band, equipped with combs cov­ered with tis­sue-pa­per torn from their draw­ing-books, played the strains of the “Mar­seil­laise.” They ad­vanced to­wards the se­niors in a very tru­cu­lent fash­ion.

“Well, re­ally!” ex­claimed Lis­peth, re­cov­er­ing from her mo­men­tary amaze­ment. “What’s the mean­ing of all this, I’d like to know?”

“It’s a strike!” said Dor­rie proudly, as she and Phyl­lis paused so as to dis­play the black­board be­fore the eyes of the Sixth. “We don’t see why you big girls should lord it over us any longer. We’ll obey the mis­tresses, but we’ll not obey pre­fects.”

“You’ll just jolly well do as you’re told, you im­pu­dent young mon­keys!” de­clared Lis­peth, los­ing her tem­per. “Here, clear out of this gym­na­sium at once!”

“We shan’t! We’ve as good a right here as you!”

“We ought to send war­dens to the School Par­lia­ment.”

“We haven’t any voice in school af­fairs!”

“It’s not fair!”

“We shan’t stand it any longer!”

The shrill voices of the in­sur­gents reached crescendo as they hurled forth their de­fi­ance. They were ev­i­dently bent on red-hot rev­o­lu­tion. Lis­peth rose to read the Riot Act.

“If you don’t take your­selves off I shall go for Miss Burd, and a nice row you’d get into then. I give you while I count ten. One—two—three—four—”

Whether the strik­ers would have stood their ground or not is still an un­solved prob­lem, but at that op­por­tune mo­ment the big school bell be­gan to clang, and Miss Wil­lough, the drill mis­tress, in her blue tu­nic, en­tered the gym­na­sium ready to take her next class. At sight of her, Dor­rie hastily wiped the black­board, and the ju­niors fled to their own form-rooms, sup­press­ing flags and mu­si­cal in­stru­ments on the way. Miss Wil­lough gazed at them med­i­ta­tively, but made no com­ment, and the Sixth, hur­ry­ing to a lit­er­a­ture les­son, had no time to of­fer ex­pla­na­tions.

Lis­peth, more up­set than she cared to own, talked the mat­ter over with her mother when she went to din­ner at one o’clock. She was a very con­sci­en­tious girl and anx­ious to do her duty as “Head.” As a re­sult of the home con­fer­ence she went to Miss Burd, ex­plained the sit­u­a­tion, and asked to be al­lowed to have the whole school to­gether for ten min­utes be­fore four o’clock.

“It’s only lately there’s been this trou­ble,” she said. “I be­lieve if I talk nicely to the girls I can get back my in­flu­ence. That’s what Mother ad­vised. She said ‘try per­sua­sion first.’ ”

“She’s right, too,” agreed Miss Burd. “If you can get them to obey you will­ingly it’s far bet­ter than if I have to step in and put my foot down. What we want is to change the gen­eral cur­rent of thought.”

Spec­u­la­tion was rife in the var­i­ous forms as the clos­ing bell rang at 3:45 in­stead of at 4 o’clock, and the girls were told to as­sem­ble in the Lec­ture Hall, and were put on their honor to be­have them­selves. To their sur­prise, the mis­tresses, af­ter see­ing them seated, left the room.

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