First Term at Malory Towers (4 page)

Alicia told her which the other mistresses were. “That's the history mistress, Miss Carton over there—see her—the one with the high collar and pince-nez glasses on her nose. She's frightfully clever, and awfully sarcastic if you don't like history. And that's the art mistress, Miss Linnie—she's awfully nice. Very easy-going.”

Darrell hoped she would have a lot to do with Miss Linnie, if she was easy-going. She looked nice. She was young and had red hair done in little curls.

“That's the music-master—Mr. Young—see him? He's always either in a very good temper or a very bad one. We always try and find out which, when he takes us for music or singing.”

The matrons of the four houses were at Prayers too. Darrell saw her own Matron, looking a little stern, as she always did when she was thinking hard of what she was doing. Alicia began whispering again.

“And that's...”

Miss Potts's eye swung round to her, and Alicia immediately stopped whispering and studied her hymnbook. Miss Potts did not look kindly on people who whispered at any time, least of all in Prayers.

Prayers over, the girls filed off to their various classrooms. These ran all along the west side of Malory Towers, and soon that building was filled with the sound of hurrying feet, laughter and chattering. There was no rule about silence in the corridors in the part of the building where the classrooms were.

The first-formers filed into their own classroom, a room with a lovely view over the sea. It was a big room, with the mistress's desk at one end, and cupboards at the other. Desks and chairs were arranged in orderly rows.

“Bags I one by the window!” said a fat girl and plumped herself down there.

“Bags I one too,” said Gwendoline. But the fat girl stared in surprise.

“You're new aren't you? Well, you can't choose your own seat, then. New girls have to take the desks left over when the old girls have chosen the ones they want.”

Gwendoline went red. She tossed her golden hair back over her shoulders and looked sulky.

She stood close by the desk she had chosen, not quite daring to take it, but too obstinate to leave it. A small wiry girl pushed her away.

“Bags I this desk! Hallo, Rita! Did you have nice hols? Awful to be back with old Potty, isn't it?”

Darrell stood and waited till she saw that all the girls except herself, Sally and Gwendoline and one or two others, had desks. Then she slipped into one beside Alicia, glad of her good luck. Alicia was exchanging news with a girl on the other side of her. She seemed to be very friendly indeed with her.

She turned to Darrell. “Darrell, this is my friend, Betty Hill. We always sit next to each other. But Betty is in West House, worse luck.”

Darrell smiled at Betty, who was a lively-looking girl, with wicked brown eyes and hair that fell over her forehead. She liked Betty but she was sorry to hear that Alicia had a friend already. She had rather hoped that Alicia would be her friend. She didn't particularly want either Sally or Gwendoline.

“Sh!” said the girl at the door. “Here comes Potty!”

There was silence at once. The girls stood up, and looked straight before them as they heard the quick, light steps of their form-mistress coming down the corridor outside. She swept into the room, nodded to the girls and said, “You can sit!”

They sat down and waited in silence. Miss Potts took out her list of names and checked them all, tracking down a few more new girls in the other houses. Then she turned to the expectant faces before her.

“Well!” she said,” the summer term is always the best of the lot, with swimming and tennis, picnics and rambles. But please don't make the mistake of thinking that the summer term is nothing
but
a picnic. It isn't. It's good hard work too. Some of you are taking exams, next term. Well, work hard this term, and you'll find the exams, easy next term. But slack this term, and I promise you I shall hear some groans and grumbles
next
term!”

She paused. Then she looked hard at two or three girls. “Last term there were one or two girls who seemed to like to be bottom every week,” she said. “Leave that place to the new girls, please, and go up a few places! I never expect much of new girls their first term - but I
shall
expect quite a lot of you.”

A few girls went red. Miss Potts went on talking. “I don't really think I've any brainless girls this term,” she said, “though I don't know much about the new girls, of course. If you are brainless and near the bottom, we shan't blame you, of course—but if you've got good brains and are down at the bottom, I shall have a lot to say. And you know what
that
means, don't you?”

“Yes,” answered most of the girls, fervently. Miss Potts smiled, and her keen face lit up for a moment. “Well, now, after all those threats, let's get on. Here's a list of things each girl must have. If anyone lacks any of them, she must go to Katherine, head-girl of the form, and get them from her at the end of the lesson. I will give ten minutes for that.”

Soon a lesson was in full swing. It was maths, and Miss Potts was giving a quick test paper to see what standard the new girls were up to, and whether the whole form could work together or not. Darrell found the paper quite easy, but Gwendoline groaned and grunted terribly, her golden hair all over the desk.

“What's the matter, Gwendoline?” enquired Miss Potts, unsympathetically.

“Well, my governess, Miss Winter, never showed me how to do sums like this,” wailed Gwendoline. “She put them down quite differently.”

“You'll have to learn
my
way now,” said Miss Potts. “And Gwendoline—why haven't you done your hair this morning?”

“I
did
,” said Gwendoline, raising her big pale blue eyes. “I brushed it well. I gave it forty...”

“All right, I don't want details,” said Miss Potts. “You can't come to class with it like that. Plait it after Break.”

“
Plait
it!” mourned poor Gwendoline, whilst the rest of the class began to giggle. “But I've never...”

“That's enough,” said Miss Potts. “If you can't plait it and keep it tidy, perhaps your mother could have it cut short next holidays.”

Gwendoline looked so horrified that it was all Darrell could do to keep from laughing out loud.

“I told you so!” whispered Alicia, as soon as Miss Potts turned to write something on the blackboard. Gwendoline glared angrily at her and made a face. As if Mother would
dream
of cutting off her beautiful fine sheet of hair. And now to think she'd got to plait it. Why, she didn't even know
how
to plait! Gwendoline was so lost in sulky thought that she hardly answered any of the maths, questions.

The morning went on. Break came and the girls rushed out to play where they liked. Some went for a quick game on one of the many tennis-courts. Some went for a ramble in the grounds. Others lay about in the Court, talking. Darrell would have liked to go with Alicia, but she was with Betty, and Darrell felt sure they wouldn't want a third person. She looked at the other new girls. Two of them, whom she didn't know, had made friends already. Another girl, who had a cousin in the same form, went off with her. Gwendoline was not to be seen. Perhaps she had gone to plait her hair!

Sally Hope was sitting on the grass alone, no expression at all on her closed-up face. Darrell went over to her. “What do you think of Malory Towers?” she said. “I think it's fine.”

Sally looked up primly. “It's not bad,” she said.

“Were you sorry to leave your other school?” asked Darrell. “I wanted to come to Malory, of course, but I hated leaving all my friends. Didn't you hate leaving all your friends too?”

“I don't think I had any, really,” said Sally, considering. Darrell thought that was queer. It was hard to get anything out of Sally. She was polite and answered questions, but she didn't ask any in return.

“ Well, I hope I don't have to make
her
my friend!” thought Darrell, at last. “Gracious, here's Gwendoline!
Does
she think she's plaited her hair? It's all undone already!”

“Is my hair all right?” said Gwendoline, in a plaintive voice. “I've tried and tried to plait it. It was beastly of Miss Potts not to let me wear it as I've always worn it. I don't like her.”

“Let
me
plait it for you,” said Darrell, jumping up. “It doesn't look to me as if you know
how
to plait, Gwendoline!”

She plaited the golden hair deftly and quickly into long braids and tied ends with bits of narrow ribbon.

“There!” she said, swinging Gwendoline round to look at her. “You look
much
nicer!”

Gwendoline scowled, and forgot to thank Darrell for her help. Actually, she did look much nicer now. “How spoilt she is!” thought Darrell. “Well, little as I want Sally for a friend, I want Gwendoline even less. I should want to slap her for all her silly airs and graces!”

The bell went, and scores of girls raced in to their classrooms. Darrell raced too. She knew where her classroom was. She knew the names of a lot of her form. She would soon be quite at home at Malory Towers!

DARRELL soon began to settle down. She learnt the names not only of the girls in her form at North Tower, but of every girl there, from the head-girl Pamela, down to Mary-Lou, the youngest but one in the first form. Darrell herself was the youngest girl in North Tower, she found, but she felt that Mary-Lou was very much younger

Mary-Lou was a scared mouse of a girl. She was frightened of mice, beetles, thunderstorms, noises at night, the dark, and a hundred other things. Poor Mary-Lou. No wonder she had big scared eyes. Darrell, not easily scared of anything, laughed when she saw poor Mary-Lou rush to the other side of the dormy because she saw an earwig on the floor.

There were ten girls in the first-form dormy at North Tower. Katherine, the quiet head-girl. Alicia, the talkative unruly-tongued monkey. The three new girls, Darrell, Gwendoline, and Sally. Mary-Lou, with her big scared eyes, always ready to shy back like a nervous horse, at anything unexpected.

Then there was clever Irene, a marvel at maths, and music, usually top of the form—but oh, how stupid in the ordinary things of life. If anyone lost her book it was Irene. If anyone went to the wrong classroom at the wrong time it was Irene. It was said that once she had gone to the art- room, thinking that a painting lesson was to be taken there, and had actually sat there for half-an-hour, apparently waiting for Miss Linnie to come. What she thought had happened to the rest of the class, no one knew.

“But
how
could you sit there all that time and not even
wonder
why nobody came!” said Katherine, in amazement. “What were you thinking of, Irene?”

“I was just thinking of a maths, problem that Potty set us, that's all,” said Irene, her eyes shining through her big glasses. “It was rather an interesting one, and there were two or three ways of getting it right. You see...”

“Oh, spare us maths, out of school!” groaned Alicia. “Irene, I think you're bats!”

But Irene wasn't. She was a most intelligent girl, who, because her mind was always so deeply at work at something, seemed to forget the smaller, everyday things of life. She had a sense of fun too, and when she was really tickled she came out with a tremendous explosive giggle that startled the class and made Miss Potts jump. It was Alicia's delight to provoke this explosion sometimes, and upset the class.

The other three girls in the form were Jean, a jolly, shrewd girl from Scotland, very able at handling money for various school societies and charities; Emily, a quiet studious girl, clever with her needle, and one of Mam'zelle's favourites because of this; and Violet, a shy, colourless child, very much left out of things because she never seemed to take any interest in them. Half the form never even noticed whether Violet was with them or not.

That made up the ten girls. Darrell felt that she had known them for years after she had lived with them only a few days. She knew the way Irene's stockings always fell down in wrinkles. She knew the way Jean spoke, clipped and sharp, in her Scots accent. She knew that Mam'zelle disliked Jean because Jean was scornful of Mam'zelle's enthusiasms and emotions. Jean herself never went into ecstasies about anything.

Darrell knew Gwendoline's sighs and moans over everything, and Mary-Lou's scared exclamations of fear at any insect or reptile. She liked Katherine's low, firm voice, and air of being able to cope with anything. She knew a great deal about Alicia, but then, so did everyone, for Alicia poured out everything that came into her head, she chattered about her brothers, her mother and father, her dogs, her work, her play, her knitting, her opinion of everything and everybody under the sun.

Alicia had no time at all for airs and graces, pretences, sighs, moans or affectations. She was as downright as Darrell, but not so kind. She was scornful and biting when it pleased her, so that girls like Gwendoline hated her, and those like scared Mary-Lou feared her. Darrell liked her immensely.

“She's so lively,” she thought to herself. “Nobody could be dull with Alicia. I wish I was as interesting as she is. Everyone listens when Alicia speaks, even when she says something unkind. But nobody pays much attention when I want to say something. I do really like Alicia, and I wish she hadn't got Betty for a friend. She's just the one I would have chosen.”

It took Darrell longer to know the first-formers who came from the other Towers. She saw them in class, but not in the common room or dormies, for the first-formers of the other lowers had their own rooms, of course, in their own Towers. Still it was enough to know her own Tower girls for a start. Darrell thought.

She didn't know very much about the older girls in her Tower, for she didn't even meet them in the classroom. She saw them at Prayers in the morning, sometimes during the singing-lesson, when Mr. Young took more than one class at a time, and sometimes on the tennis-courts and in the swimming pool.

She heard a few things about some of them, of course. Marilyn, sixth-former, was captain of the games, and most of the girls liked her immensely. “She's fair and really takes a lot of trouble to coach even the first-formers,” said Alicia. “She's as good as old Remmington, the games-mistress, any-day.
She
won't bother with the duds, but Marilyn
does
.”