Chapter THE THIRD: Unpopularity

Sally Brendan ended her first week in the Remove at the top of the form. What was more, she kept her place there easily during the ensuing three, to the disgust of her nearest rival, the fifteen-year-old Dorothy Baker.

"Never mind, I shall be out of your way in the Lower Fifth next term," said Sally kindly, when the class list was read. The effect of these words was naturally far from soothing.

"Oh, go and put your head in your desk; I didn't ask you to patronise me," was the furious response, but Sally only laughed.

What was the use of propitiating these silly rabbits, as she had christened her present form companions, any more than the kids of the Lower Fourth who had teased her in the railway carriage? With the Lower Fifth, whom she soon expected to be her future classmates, it was different, and Sally would dearly have liked to make friends with one of their number at least, a dark-haired girl, Trina Morrison, nicknamed "Peter" by her intimates for reasons long forgotten.

"Peter" was rather old for the Lower Fifth, a lazy but far from stupid girl of seventeen, who spent much time and ingenuity annoying those in authority while her other talents ran to seed.

"School is such a bore," she would drawl to the group of her admirers. "It's really too silly, all these old rules; let's pitch some of them overboard!" and Sally, hovering on the outskirts, would laugh with the rest as some new evasion was expounded, and try to catch her idol's eye. So far she had not succeeded, though Peter, she felt sure, was one of those who had noticed the incident of the railway carriage.

This incident created quite a sensation for the moment at Seascape House, though when Olive Parker's version of the affair was broadcast it had not tended to make the new girl popular.

"Cheeky little beast!" was the general opinion, chiming in with a prefect's comment, "Stupid little ass. She deserved to break her neck."

Thus the school as a whole decided to ignore the incident.

Only one girl mentioned it to Sally, and that more by way of introduction than in admiration or blame.

"I'm Violet Tremson," she said, coming up to Sally in the large playroom that evening. "I'm sorry you didn't have much of a time on the journey. I was keeping a place amongst our lot, but I didn't see you at Clinton."

"Thanks."

Sally, with remembrances of Mrs. Musgrave, spoke sulkily, though she could not help being attracted by the tall fair girl's friendly smile.

"I tried to wangle your sleeping in our dorm., but I don't seem to have succeeded."

"Oh, I shall be all right; I can sleep anywhere."

"That's good!" Violet Tremson was smiling broadly now and cast a hasty glance over her shoulder before she went on. "You see that fat girl over there, Pilladex we call her, because her name's Decima Pillditch?"

"The one with no eyebrows and pig's eyes?"

Violet Tremson stiffened slightly. "She's quite a good sort when she's awake, if she's not beautiful," she said a little resentfully, "and you'd better be careful, for she's Upper Fifth and in the running for a prefectship. Anyhow she is head of your dorm, and sleeps with her mouth open and snores; adenoids, I suppose."

"I shall put soap in her mouth," said Sally. "I did once to my brother Fred and he was frightfully sick."

"Well, I wouldn't try it on the Pilladex, if you want to lead a quiet life. You have never been at school before, I expect?"

"No, why on earth should I?"

Something in Violet Tremson's voice made Sally feel angry. It was almost like hinting, "You are barely out of long clothes"; and she added, "I know a good deal more than most schoolgirls I have met."

"Indeed? I hope you won't begin to lose intellectual ground here."

It was intolerable. This tall fair girl with her bland smile was actually laughing at her, and Sally hated laughter when she couldn't see the joke.

"Anyhow it's no business of yours," she said, and turning her back walked off.

Violet Tremson did not come near her again, and Sally told herself she was glad.

"A superior ass like any cousin of Mrs. Musgrave's was bound to be," she wrote to her mother, and scowled to think that the superior ass was in the Lower Fifth. "Of course, she's nearly fifteen," she added when she gave this information, but it did not make her feel much better.

These were bad days for Sally Brendan, almost a nightmare when she looked back on them afterwards, and only her half-muttered promise to her mother kept her from doing something outrageous that might lead to her being expelled.

"I'm unpopular just because I can do things, but I don't care," she wrote home, and secretly cared a great deal. Hitherto in her life she had mixed chiefly with grown-ups who spoiled her or tolerated her shortcomings because her daring amused them, and this latter had been the case with her schoolboy brothers.

"Sally is a regular sport," they would say, and forgive her vanity because she could bowl and swim and climb, was never afraid, nor complained when she was hurt. Younger children too had been willing to take a daring leader at her own valuation, and it was only now when she was brought into contact with numbers of girls of her own age that Sally realised she could be seen and not admired, also that her wit might fail to hit so many targets.

In school hours things were not so bad. Sally easily kept her first place, enjoyed her lessons, and liked Miss Castle, her form mistress, who was always ready to help her and praise her work.

"Well done, Sally," she would say, pausing by the new girl's desk, and sometimes, "Why don't the rest of you use your brains like Sally Brendan?" Occasionally she found fault. "Don't be so certain you are right, remember pride before the fall; you are too cocksure," and this led to Sally's nickname in the form, "Miss Cocksure," and a rhyme chalked on the board one morning before school:

"Miss Cocksure
Is a bore,
I'm quite sure
She won't score."

"Won't I just?" muttered Sally to herself and smiled calmly on the class, as calmly as Miss Castle told the girl nearest to the board to clean it, before the literature lesson began.

"They are jealous because she likes me," was Sally's inward conviction, and there was some truth in this. It was the fashion in the middle forms of Seascape House to "adore" Miss Castle because she was young, rather pretty, very friendly, and could read poetry aloud with just the right amount of expression.

"Not woodenly like old Cheeserings (Miss Cheeseman) or pouring out yards of sob-stuff like Smutts (Miss Black)," was the general verdict, and when Miss Castle stage-managed Shakespeare plays there was dramatic fervour throughout the school.

Certainly it was annoying for the Remove that Miss Castle should accept this conceited new girl as one of their bright stars, give her principal parts in Shakespeare scenes, and read large portions of her essays aloud. That she might really like Sally for her hard work and enthusiasm, and most of all perhaps because she did not bore her with languishing glances and sentimental attentions, did not occur to Dorothy Baker or her friends.

"Horrid little cad," they denounced Sally, adding, "Won't we take it out of her in games!"

They did. The new girl was not even asked if she knew how to pitch a straight ball, but was sent to join the junior game.

"You had better be a Shrimp," said Miss Rogers (Proggins), the games mistress, who had not admired Sally's exploit on the train and thought she needed keeping in her place. She added sharply, "Go at once; Olive Parker will tell you what to do."

Olive, who was captain of the Shrimps (junior cricketers at Seascape House were divided into Shrimps and Sardines), was only too ready to undertake the task, though after the new girl had bowled her three times over in practice at the nets she did not give her the opportunity of doing so again.

"You'd better go out boundary or long stop," she would say, and yell at Sally to "Get a move on" or "Throw the ball up, can't you?" whenever she had the chance.

"You think yourself so jolly superior, don't you?" she said indignantly when the younger girl sulked, only to grow red with anger herself at the quick retort:

"I am superior to this sort of play anyway."

It was true, and Olive Parker knew it. She was being horribly unfair, but at the same time she and the rest of the juniors disliked Sally so much that she could not do anything right in their eyes.

When she had been batting one day and was bowled second ball (she usually made a very creditable score) there were cheers from all the Shrimps and derisive laughter. Sally had learned to make her face very wooden, but there were tears smarting under her lids as she walked back to the row of seats, ostentatiously filled up as she approached. No one spoke to her, though Edith Carter, a girl in the Upper Fourth, said something about "What price ducks' eggs?" and laughed. Then there was silence, and looking up Sally saw Miss Rogers standing beside her, and a big girl, Doris Forbes, the school captain.

"You don't generally get out so quick, do you?" asked Miss Rogers abruptly.

Sally shook her head. She could not trust herself to speak because of the lump in her throat.

"I thought not. You hold your bat well. Did your brothers teach you?"

"I have played a lot with them." Sally was beginning to recover. After being ignored so much, even casual interest was pleasant, but at this minute the last wicket fell and her side went out to field.

Sally was put boundary as usual, and except that Olive was less hectoring and more business-like owing to the presence of her exalted audience, the game dragged on its usual slow course.

Suddenly there was an interruption.

"Let Sally Brendan bowl now," called out Miss Rogers, and she walked across the pitch and began to umpire.

Sally felt her heart beat very fast, but she looked quite calm as she took her place behind the wickets and picked up the ball. She had had no practice lately in bowling, but her eye was good, and every nerve alert with the consciousness that now or never was her opportunity.

Her first ball, a fast one, went wide, her second pitched too short, but the third rooted Edith Carter's middle stump almost out of the ground.

"Now I've got the right length," said Sally to herself exulting, and the wickets began to fall rapidly before her onslaught.

"What I want to know, Olive Parker," said Miss Rogers as the last of the batting team withdrew with a scowl and a duck's egg, "is why you never mentioned Sally Brendan as a bowler when I asked you last week about any promising Shrimps?"

"Don't know!" muttered Olive sullenly.

"Hardly keeping your eyes open, was it?" suggested Doris Forbes, the cricket captain, and then Miss Rogers said decidedly:

"We'll talk about that afterwards, and you, Doris, settle what you like about Sally."

"Yes, Miss Rogers."

As the mistress turned away Doris beckoned to Sally. "You can come and bowl to me at the nets," she said.

Sally enjoyed the next half-hour more than any she had spent at Seascape House; not that her bowling remained unpunished, but that it aroused all her energy and skill. Soon she had forgotten the crowd round the nets and was absorbed in her task, not even hearing the school bell ring out seven o'clock till her batter called to her to stop.

"H'm! You're keen enough," said Doris Forbes.

"It's the first real play I have had since I have been here."

"All right, you can come and try your luck with the Eagles to-morrow," she said. "Now trot away."

Sally Brendan went back across the playing fields all alone, but for once unconscious of her isolation. She was to play with the Eagles, the group of senior cricketers from whom the first and second elevens were chosen, and Olive Parker and her Shrimps would torment her no longer. While she changed for supper visions of herself captaining the first eleven and telling everyone what to do passed before her eyes.

"I said I'd score," she laughed to herself triumphantly, and when Violet Tremson separated herself from the crowd in front of the dining-room door and congratulated her on her play at the nets she answered coolly:

"Oh, that's nothing. I never got a chance before at this place."

Some of the girls round sniggered, and Sally rather wished she hadn't been so lofty. After all, it was decent of Violet, who wasn't in the Eagles at all, but the middle sort of game of the Bears and Wolves.

"I'll give you some practice if you like," she added, and heard someone say:

"What frightful cheek! Leave the little bounder alone, Violet. Her head's been turned so that it's simply reeling."

It was Doreen Priestly, another of the Lower Fifth, whom Sally had secretly admired but henceforth hated. She had not meant to be superior in her offer, merely friendly, and though Violet answered quite gratefully: "Thanks. I'd like to but I'm no use at all at batting," she suspected secret laughter at her expense.

"Anyway, I'll be too busy for a bit," she said in a rough voice and pushed her way into the dining-room.

"What beasts they all are at Seascape House," she decided, "except, of course, Doris Forbes and Miss Rogers--oh, and Miss Castle!"