Chapter II: Are You a Daisy?

Betty was upstairs in the dormitory, battling with a choky feeling that came and went just because of the strangeness of it all. But not altogether an uncomfortable feeling, perhaps, because it was something the same as feelings she had experienced once or twice before when on her way to parties, which, of course, she would be sure, when once she got there, to enjoy! Generally at such times--which had happened very seldom--she had had the twins with her; and there had been always something to do for them on arrival which had made her forget her own shyness. For the choky feeling was shyness, she decided.

She hadn’t felt shy with the older girls in the train, not after Sybil had smiled at her. She had imagined then that everything would be plain-sailing. When the train had slowed down, too, at Woodhurst Station, the two girls had helped Betty out with her luggage, and she--who had been Dad’s right-hand man during the journey to the sea with the twins and baby last summer--had wondered if they remembered that she had told them she was aged thirteen! But after that--well, Sybil with her companion had seemed to melt suddenly into space after telling the new girl kindly to “wait there for Miss Drury,” and Betty had unexpectedly found herself alone again, feeling rather less than thirteen in courage as she seemed suddenly to become encircled by a perfect whirlpool of white panama hats, long brown legs, and dark blue suits.

They were Benedick girls, of course, for they all carried suit-cases with labels. They wore the Benedick hat-band, too, on their hats, and at first each one of them, to Betty’s uninitiated eye, looked identically the same as every other. She noticed presently, however, that although they all seemed garbed exactly alike, some of them wore pigtails and some of them had bobbed heads; that a few of them seemed to glance at her in a friendly fashion too, while others were too busy to notice her at all. And she was beginning, rather despairingly, to try to notice any other distinguishing features there might be, when suddenly, from among the chattering multitude, there emerged “one of the bobbed heads,” as Betty called the individual to herself, and came across.

“How awfully clever of you,” said the newcomer, who seemed about Betty’s own age, with a smile that showed a dimple, “to stand here under the clock straight away. Miss Drury’s down the train looking for new girls. They never guess, of course, where to go. But perhaps you’ve had a sister, or an aunt, or a mother?”

The whole sentence was rather of a mystifying order, but Betty didn’t care for that. She pinned all her hopes on the smile that showed the dimple, and smiled back.

“I didn’t know I _was_ under the clock,” she said, glancing up at the station clock above her head. “But a girl--Sybil was her name--told me to stand here, and then she went. Is Miss Drury one of the teachers?”

“A _mistress_. Yes, rather,” the friendly girl nodded. “If you know Sybil, of course you’re all right. I only thought you might be shy and that I’d speak to you before Miss Drury came. Here she is.” Betty’s new acquaintance turned. “I always walk up with Phyllis,” she remarked; “we’ve booked the walk every term from the station. But I’m sure to see you later. I’m Gerry. Hope you’re a Daisy!” she added, calling over her shoulder in a jolly voice as she was lost in the crowd.

Quite lost; one of a medley from which Betty would have found it almost as difficult to find her as to discover a needle in hay. “And she’s a Daisy too!” she found herself thinking. “How jolly they seem. I should so much like to be one too--whatever they are!”

There wasn’t much time, though, for conjecture upon this point; the sudden arrival of the mistress in charge made that plain. “Only one new girl this term. Her boxes are here, but she--” she was beginning in rather a puzzled voice. “Hesther, Louise, Gladys, have any of you--? Oh, here she is!” Her eyes fell with evident approval upon the figure of Betty, standing stiff as any grenadier, under the clock.

“How very sensible of you to follow the others,” remarked she in a downright voice, “and to come straight here. So few of the new girls do, and the train is such a long one. Now fall in, please.” Miss Drury’s tone was breezy and her look travelled quickly from Betty to the whirlpool which, almost like magic, seemed to sort itself into instantaneous couples at the sound of her command.

“Yes, we’re all here now, I think. Phyllis and Gerry will lead off. But wait outside the station, please, for a moment as usual, until I give the word to start up the hill. There should be twenty-six of you here, and I must make sure.” Then, as she brought up the rear herself, Miss Drury--ignoring fervent requests from three evident admirers--turned again in Betty’s direction and threw her a friendly glance.

“Betty Carlyle? Yes, come along. No, Marie and Brenda, will you make the last couple, please; I have only two sides, as you know, and Betty has no partner. Clare--yes, you may walk with me too.”

Betty found herself, therefore, making a threesome, stepping out with as steady a stride as she could manage, and feeling a distinct twinge of awe in her heart. For Miss Drury, on whose right side she walked, seemed to the new girl as much unlike a “teacher” as any one could possibly be. The books at home were rather old-fashioned certainly, and they had generally depicted the mistresses of schools as being gaunt ladies in specs and mittens. Miss Drury, however, was as unlike the “specs-and-mittens” type as any one could possibly be.

She reminded Betty of the golf-playing ladies on the links at the seaside last year from whose furious hitting she had protected the ubiquitous twins, who had been consumed with a mania to stray on the greens hunting for “lost balls.” For Miss Drury wore brogues and a sports coat; she looked, Betty found herself thinking, “like the jolly older sister of one of the girls, instead of anybody teachery.” The very words of her conversation with Clare, who walked on the mistress’s left hand, sounded altogether unschooly, Betty thought.

“Well, Clare, it certainly was rather a risk, perhaps, to go camping in the Easter holidays; but the weather forecast was so good that I decided to take advantage of it. If we are to have a camp this term----”

“Oh, Miss _Drury_!”

Clare was evidently listening feverishly while the mistress expatiated fervently on the interests and excitements of an Easter camp when the winds had been so strong that their tent was blown sky-high during the process of being pitched by an inexperienced camper; when the tent canvas had apparently shrunk dreadfully after an April deluge; and when a tent pole had cracked at midnight with direful consequences to all concerned. “But all I can say is,” finished up the mistress, “that I never gained such good experience at first hand in my life. The more you pay for experience the more good you get from it.” Then, in the quick direct and very kindly way which Betty had already realized as characteristic, Miss Drury turned to speak to the new girl at her side.

“Are you a Guide?” she asked kindly. “No? Well, I am very glad, for your sake then, that you have come to St. Benedick’s just when you have. Thirteen, are you not? Quite a junior. You have plenty of time to work up for your badges, you know.”

“I hope you’ll be a Cowslip,” put in Clare, smiling across from Miss Drury’s other side. “Oh, Miss Drury, I do hope--” The talk began again.

But Betty had already decided that, if she had anything to do with the matter, she would be a Daisy rather than any other flower of the field! She was still firmly of the same opinion when the lodge gate was reached and the school came in sight.

Not a large house, but an old one. Standing, as it did, in well-wooded grounds, it looked still almost as it must have looked long ago--an unpretentious old family mansion, which had not been built for school purposes, but whose quiet atmosphere of age and dignity had yet changed wonderfully little since the coming of the Benedick girls some ten years back.

From the lodge gate through which the crocodile of girls entered the old house could be seen at once, with its mullioned windows and twisted chimneys, with its creepers which would be red-golden in the autumn but which were now glad-green. It was lit up with the late afternoon sun, and seemed, against its background of dark whispering trees, as though smiling kindly at the returning girls. The house was faced with green lawns, as well and trimly kept as they had ever been before the school had taken possession there. Its gardens, through which the big drive wound up to the great main door, were old-world gardens still. Beds of old-fashioned roses, tiled paths, clipped yew trees, an ancient sundial--the impression of the whole was a quiet one. Rooks cawed from the tall old elms behind the house; the trees in the grounds through which the girls walked seemed old and full of years.

“Is _that_ St. Benedick’s?” asked Betty, wondering.

For somehow, though she couldn’t exactly have explained her feelings on the matter, though she didn’t perhaps realize that she had had as yet any ideas as to what the school buildings would be like, now she knew that she had expected something far more modern and ordinary--nothing exactly beautiful like this. And yet there was a “something” in the bearing of all the girls--a “something” she had noticed more in the two seniors of the train, perhaps, than in the juniors, and most of all in Sybil--a “something” which was akin to the feeling that this old building gave.

“No fuss,” it seemed to say as it stood there beautiful as though from unhurried age. “Easy does it.” Almost the first words she had heard Sybil utter had been just those. So many years it had taken for the beauty of the old house to grow. The age of hurry-scurry had never had a part in the making of this old mansion. It seemed to stand with gentle, kindly dignity, holding its memories, cherishing them as some treasure among the trees, which perhaps held older memories still.

Betty felt a throb at her heart. It was _wonderful_ to come to school in a house like this. Her eyes were still fixed on the old building, lit up with the afternoon sun, as Miss Drury spoke.

“Yes,” her voice was quiet and seemed to match with the scene, as though she, too, saw what Betty saw, and understood, for all her talk of camping and for all the modern breeziness of her manner. “This is St. Benedick’s. Miss Carey likes to keep the grounds just as they were. The playing-fields are right away from the house, though we use the grounds, of course, for Guide practices.”

The procession of girls had wound by this time in orderly fashion along the drive, between the old-world garden lawns and beds, and through the great doors which seemed--so Betty thought--glad to open to them. Then, as she followed on herself, the very last of the line, she forgot the first impressions that the old house had given her. For Miss Drury was addressing an individual in a starched cap and apron who stood at the foot of the wide stairway.

“The only new girl; Betty Carlyle, Nurse. I will hand her over to you while the others go straight to the cloakrooms.”

Betty found herself, therefore, ascending the stairway step by step with a sudden longing for a twin on either side. The sense of dignity and mystery that the first sight of the old house had given her was gone now. There were echoing sounds of voices and laughter, greetings and meetings down below, in which she had no share.

“Your room is number three, and you’ll share it with Mona and Geraldine and Irene,” Nurse was remarking in a tone which seemed as starchy as her uniform. “And so I trust you are not an untidy girl.”

Three minutes afterwards Betty, having tiptoed along passages which seemed scented both with the old-fashioned flowers whose perfumes were wafted through the widely-opened windows and also with nowadays beeswax and turpentine, found herself seated inside a cubicle that was to be “all her own.”

It was then that the shyness came back.

If only she’d had Jan’s frock to change, or Jack’s bootlace to unknot! Of course she knew that school was really going to be lovely--her first acquaintance with Sybil, and Gerry, Miss Drury, and, yes, even with the old house itself, had assured her of that; but if only there had been somebody there who needed her as they all had needed her at home!