A Genius at the Chalet School (19 page)

   "Mind? When she can do a perfectly smashing thing like that for the House? Of course she doesn't!" Lesley cried.

   "And for the school, too," added Hilary. "For it's one up to the school as well as to the House. We all feel that, Nina."

   And if Nina
had
 felt that Mary-Lou had taken rather much on herself, in the face of all that, she would have had to forget it. As a matter of fact, in the thrill of seeing her own music in print for the first time, she didn't even think that she had anything to forgive, as she assured Mary-Lou vehemently. Indeed, her first feeling was one of deepest gratitude, for she knew that the other girl was right and she herself would never have dreamed of sending it in. It had been done for her, however, and she was a very joyful girl as she cried, "Forgive you? Oh, indeed, I can only thank you! You've proved yourself a true friend, Mary-Lou, and I'm as grateful to you as I can be!"

CHAPTER 18

   "Hello - hello! - Oh, is that you, Rosalie? Can I speak to Miss Annersley, please? - Yes; I'll hold on!" Miss Wilson - "Bill", to most folk at the Chalet School - chuckled to herself as she waited. Then she heard the receiver lifted and the next moment, her great friend and co-Head spoke agitatedly.

   "Nell Wilson! What on earth do you want with me at this ungodly hour? Do you know that it's only ten past seven? What have you got to say that can't wait till nine? Don't tell me that any of your lambs have developed measles or chicken pox at the last moment! That would be too awful!"

   Bill chuckled long and loud before she replied. "Nothing of the kind - or if they have, Gertrude Rider's said nothing to me about it which would be most reprehensible in any decent school matron. No; it's nothing like that. All I want is to ask you to have one of the smaller trestle tables set up somewhere or other. Never mind why! That can wait until we meet. You do as I ask and possess your soul in patience."

   "You tantalizing creature! Am I to know nothing?"

   "Not a thing till the proper time!" Bill giggled like one of her own charges.

   "Aggravating object! Oh, very well. Rosalie is fully dressed and she can see to it. I'm still in my dressing-gown. Is that
all
 you want?"

   "Absolutely all - Yes, Gill? What is it? Oh! All right! I'll tell her! - Hilda, Gill Culver says you'd better use the strongest you have left, so be careful. We don't want any collapses and subsequent smashes."

   "What is all this in aid of? You're being unpleasantly mysterious, my dear!"

   "You wait till you see! You'll be ready to yell with delight!"

   "I hope I have more sense of propriety than that!" Miss Annersley retorted. But she was talking to the empty air, for Bill had hung up and she was left to lament to Rosalie Dene, "I do wish people wouldn't spring surprises on me first thing in the morning!"

   "Why not?" Rosalie demanded as well as she could for laughing.

   "Because I don't feel able to cope until I'm decently dressed. You heard what she said, didn't you, Rosalie? Run along and pick out the sturdiest of the small trestles and get someone to help you to set it up, will you? You have the keys to Hall, I know. Mind you lock the door behind you when you come out. I will
not
 have the girls wandering in until after Prayers!"

   "You forbade it last night," her secretary reminded her.

   "I know I did, but some of those young monkeys of Junior Middles will certainly forget unless they find the whole place locked against them. I must fly! I don't want anyone to catch me like this. Thank goodness I have my own private staircase at this end!"

   She gathered up the folds of her dressing-gown and went off to finish dressing. Miss Dene sorted out one of the keys to Hall from the bunch in a drawer of her desk and departed to the storeroom where spare trestle-tables were kept to make selection of the stoutest she could find and then to the remedials room to beg the help of Miss Burnett, the P.T. mistress, in carrying it to Hall and setting it up.

   "What's it for?" that young woman inquired as they made sure that the legs were safe.

   "Not the foggiest! Bill rang up to demand it and apparently Gill Culver insisted on having the strongest we could produce. That's all I can tell you. Oh, well, it isn't long till nine o'clock now. Should we find some sort of covering for it, do you think?"

   "Did Bill ask for anything?" Peggy Burnett asked doubtfully.

   "Not that I heard."

   "Then I should think we'd better leave it alone. Probably she's bringing everything they want for it with her."

   "Then that's all. Come along! The girls will be down presently and if they see us in here, we shall have them tumbling in on us and the Head said no one was to come in till after Prayers." Rosalie marched her friend out of Hall and locked the door securely behind them. "There! That'll hold them! I must go! See you later!" And she hurried back to the office to deal with the mailbag which had come just before the telephone rang.

   Meanwhile, the girls were beginning to come downstairs. Rules were more or less in abeyance to-day and no one waited for the first bell before she left her dormitory. As soon as anyone was ready, with bed stripped and cubicle in the correct order, she shot off downstairs. By the time Früstück came, the school was seething with excitement and Miss Annersley had to sound her bell on the staff table five separate times to ask for a
little
 less noise!

   After Früstück, they rushed upstairs to get through the dormitory work in short order and then they had to get ready for their early morning walk. The Head had insisted on this, for it would be the only chance any of them would have of outdoor exercise that day. The official opening of the Sale was to be at eleven and from then onwards they would all be hard at it. Granted that it would probably close at seventeen o'clock; they then had to have Kaffee und Kuchen and after that would come the excitement of reckoning up the takings. By the time
that
 was over, it would be nearly nineteen o'clock and that meant Abendessen. After Abendessen would come Prayers and then bed which was always early for everyone the last night of term. Most of them had the long journey to England next day and even when they had landed, quite a number of them had several more hours of train travel. Therefore, early bed, even for the prefects!

   It was a glorious spring day with bright sunshine, fresh breezes and a blue sky, lightly flocked with little white clouds. It was true that Blossom Willoughby's foreboding had come true and the lawns were veritable seas of mud so that "Tilting at the Ring" must be carried on in the gym; but they had all expected this to happen, so no one was unduly upset.

   "It's easy enough to manage," Blossom said cheerfully to Sybil Russell when they talked it over. "We can clip those sticks to the ribstalls and the boom and so on, and the roller-skates will be just as much fun if not more so than the bikes."

   For the Head had declined to let them use bicycles in the gym and they had been afraid they must give up the idea until some genius suggested that if they could borrow some pairs of roller-skates, that would do just as well.

   The walk lasted the usual half-hour and when they came in they had to rush to change into their dresses for the Fair. However, they were ready by nine o'clock, by which time the St. Mildred girls had arrived and there were joyful reunions between sisters and cousins and friends before the bell rang and they had to go to Prayers. What none of them knew was that as soon as the last girl was safely in either the Speisesaal or the gym, Miss Wilson who had begged off for once, Dr. Maynard and Dr. Graves from the Sanatorium who had been hovering about outside, and Beth Chester, sent by Joey, carefully unloaded a bulky article from Dr. Graves' convertible and carried it between them into Hall where a green baize cloth was flung over the trestle-table after it had been moved out into the middle of the floor. Then the article was heaved up by the four and the dust-sheet which had enveloped it was removed. When it was finally set out, they all stood back and chuckled in unison.

   "It's a wonderful thing," Jack Maynard said. "Tom's outdone herself this time. I should think you'd need a new size in hats, Nell, for she really has done you all proud this time."

   "And the beauty of it is," remarked Miss Wilson, "that no one but our noble selves knows anything about it. My girls were all bemoaning the fact that Tom left last summer so there could be no competition this year. I didn't know she meant to do anything about it myself until the huge packing-case arrived last night and Gill Culver and I opened it between us. Gill danced a jig of delight!"

   "What's the competition?" Dr. Graves asked curiously.

   "Guessing the sum it makes," she replied.

   "A really new idea," Beth said. "I wonder we never thought of it before."

   "Thank goodness we didn't!" Miss Wilson said thankfully. "We've rung most of the changes already, I think."

   "Joey will be biting her finger-ends because she can't come when I tel her about it," that lady's husband observed. "But Frank Peters is keeping her in bed all next week, so she's had it this time. I'll tell you what, though!" as a sudden idea struck him. "You hold the fort and I'll dash home and get my kodak and take some snaps for her. Better lock the doors after me, though. Prayers can't go on forever and those kids will be swarming in here as soon as they're over."

   "That's a good idea! I'd like some snaps myself. Give five taps when you come back so that I know it's you - and hurry up!" Miss Wilson ordered.

   He fled and she locked the door after him, sending Dr. Graves to guard the bottom one. He arrived back just as a hum of voices told them that Prayers were over and the school would be on them in full force in a minute or two. She let him in and locked the door again. Then he set to work and made five exposures, by which time various people were demanding to know why Hall was still locked up! The exasperated chorus outside warned them that the school's patience was wearing thin. Finally he said he had enough.

   "That's O.K. now. Some of those ought to be all right. Let 'em in before they begin to tear the doors down!" Then he retired to the dais to see the fun.

   Bill opened the doors and fled after him, pursued by the other two and they stood watching eagerly. They had moved the table below the swingboats where Ste. Thérèse's had their produce. Mary-Lou was well in the van as might be expected. She raced to the spot and then stopped short with a shriek of surprise that drew everyone's attention.

   "
Look
!" she cried. "Look at that! We've got our doll's house after all! Where did it come from? How did it get here?
When
 did it come?"

   "It's more gorgeous than ever!" Betsy exclaimed as she rushed to inspect it. "Just look at that wizard balcony outside the first-floor windows!"

   "Oh, and see the little tiles!" added her sister Julie. "Nancy - Bride! Had you any idea Tom meant to weigh in as usual?"

   "None whatsoever!" Bride Bettany replied as she bent over it. "Hi! Stop pushing! You nearly had me on top of it then!"

   "But Tom's not here," Nancy Chester cried. "Or is she?" She looked round eagerly.

   The staff, as Miss Wilson did not fail to tell them later, were every bit as bad as the girls. They stood on tiptoe, trying to peer over the bobbing heads of their pupils and exclaimed as loudly as anyone. She decided to put an end to it. She rapped on the lectern with the chisel she had been carrying and the sudden sharp sound brought them all round in a hurry.

   "Tom is not here," she said with a twinkling look at Nancy, whose clear tones had carried above the rest of the noise. "She sent the house, though, and with it a letter which I'll read to you now if you can all manage to stop this wild screaming and listen."

   There was instant silence and she produced a big sheet covered with Tom Gay's dashing hand.

   "Hello, School!" it began. "Sorry I can't be with you this minute but it just can't be done. However, here's the house as usual - and I'll bet you're all yelling your heads off about it. Only wish I could be a fly on the wall to hear you!

   "I always meant to do it, and Mother and Dad and some pals rallied round to help with the furnishings, etc. The comp is to guess exactly how much it makes. I'm leaving it to the Heads to fix the price for entering and I should say it had better include some odd centimes to make things more difficult. It's not exactly interesting. I know, but I couldn't think of anything else. Hope it makes a packet, anyhow!

   "Tell young Con from me that she'd better give it a miss this time. She won that one just before they all went to Canada and she got last year's. I know she handed that one over to Leila Elstob, poor kid; but the principle's the same. Tell her she'll give everyone else an inferiority complex if she has a shot!

   "How
is
 young Leila, by the way? You're a rotten lot of correspondents! Some of you buck up and write and give me all the hanes. It'll be hols after this, so you haven't any excuse if you don't.

   "Haven't time for more now. Good luck to the Sale and good luck to you all! Tom."

   Nancy Chester, sister of Barbara Chester and a cousin of the Lucys, jumped on to a chair. "Everyone! Three cheers for Tom!" she shouted. "She's done us proud this time!"

   The cheers were given with a will. Then Miss Annersley, who had made her way to the dais to join her co-Head, clapped her hands for silence - and got it at once.

   "I know you all want a chance to see the house properly," she said. "Get into line and you shall all march past for an inspection. Quickly, please! Time's flying and our first visitors will be here before long now. Juniors first; then the rest in proper order. St. Mildred's last. Make haste!"

   Hustled by the rest of the staff, they lined up quickly and the Juniors led the way.

   "Who's Tom?" Nina asked Mary-Lou in an undertone as they waited for their turn.

   "Tom Gay. She left last summer to go to Oxford. She always made us a house every year from the first term she was here for the Sale. The first two, we had to guess the name  - they were "Tomadit" and "Sacarlet" - the next we had to guess the different materials used and Con Maynard got most. The next year, she made a model village. Then we came out here and last year it was a chalet and you had to guess the number of things that really worked - like the doors opening and the windows, and things like that. Con got it again. The kid's a perfect wonder!"