Chapter THE FOURTH: A Cold Shoulder

By half term Sally had played with the Eagles for some weeks and won herself a place in the Second Eleven.

"I should be in the First, but that there is so much jealousy amongst the Seniors, who are a rotten lot," she wrote home to her mother; and Mrs. Brendan sighed as she read out this characteristic message to Cecilia, who said:

"Still as offensive as ever, it seems! I suppose her impudence is chronic now."

This was exactly the verdict of Seascape House, from Olive Parker, who was henceforth driven to satisfy her dislike of the new girl by muttered jeers in the passage, to Doris Forbes, the Sixth Form Cricket Captain.

"Look here, kid! If there is any more cheek on your part you will have to go back to the Shrimp pool. I am sick of complaints of the way you give unasked advice to your elders, and put your oar in on every occasion. You are not a cricket coach."

Sally looked sulky, but for once did not answer back. She loved the Eagles game, while the thought of a return to shrimping, as it was called, made her feel sick at heart.

"Why do you do it? ... 'bound' so much, I mean?" went on Doris gruffly. She was a good-natured girl with a secret liking for her recruit's pluck, and yet she could not but admit that the child, apart from her play, was a prize beast of the worst order.

Sally flushed resentfully.

"I ... I don't bound," she said. "It's just that I know about cricket, style, I mean. My uncle who taught me played for Yorkshire for years, and when some of them are holding their bat all wrong they get mad because I'm a lot younger than they are, and..."

"I suppose if you weren't such a kid you would know it was wise to hold your tongue and be less objectionable," broke in the elder girl. "I hear they call you Miss Cocksure, and if I were you I would live that name down as quickly as you can."

"I didn't give it to myself."

Doris Forbes laughed and laid her hand on the other's shoulder.

"Don't gobble with rage or I shall christen you Miss Turkey Cocksure," she said; and then, with a sudden return to the dignity of her office, "Anyhow I sent for you not to argue with you but to give you some wholesome advice and a warning. Control your tongue and manners or you may find yourself scrapped. See?"

She turned on her heel and walked away without waiting for an answer; and Sally clenched her hands to prevent herself running after her with the usual, "I don't care."

For once she did care, and when Olive Parker, who had been trying to listen to the conversation from a distance, called out in jeering tones, "Scrapped, are you, Cocky?" she turned on her savagely, instead of passing her by as usual with her nose in the air.

"No! You half-baked shrimp. If you are able to read, look on the board and you will see that I am down to play against Borley Club next Saturday."

This was quite true, and Sally Brendan, like the rest of the Second Eleven, had been counting the days to the match; for it was to be played, not on the home ground, but at Borley, and this meant a char-a-banc ride with lunch and tea at the other end.

"Such a scrumptious feed too," said Cathy Manners of the Upper Fifth, who had played in the match last year. "Why, we had chickens and salad for lunch; I don't mean beastly oil and vinegar stuff, but fruit and cream with ices after tea."

Those of her audience who would not be going groaned; and one of them, Mabel Cosson, put an end to further descriptions by saying:

"Bet you anything you like the match is off! Patty Dolbey is in the San. with a temperature and headache; and Frisky, who is in her room, told me she was spotty all down her neck, only Matron said she wasn't to spread it about."

"That is why you are both keeping so quiet about it, I suppose?" suggested someone, while another voice chimed in:

"Spread what? Small-pox? I am jolly glad I have just been vaccinated. It makes absolute pits in one's skin, I hear."

After this, conversation degenerated into a medical discussion ranging over complaints varying from the Black Death to epileptic fits. Sally Brendan, standing on the outskirts of the group, took no part, for though, having had both measles and chicken-pox, she felt in a position to contradict each of the speakers in turn, she had learned that it was waste of breath to attempt this. Either her remarks were ignored, or someone took her by the shoulders and pushed her away out of earshot.

She would not indeed have remained so close but that she wanted to hear more about the match. This match, she had decided, would give her a chance to distinguish herself before an unprejudiced audience.

As she lay awake that night, with only Decima Pillditch's snores to distract her thoughts, she pictured the captain of the Borley eleven congratulating her on her bowling, and saying:

"We all think that you must be really First Eleven, aren't you?"

That would be a heavy score against Doris Forbes and other snobs of the Upper Fifth and Sixth. Sally turned over on her side with a satisfied smile on her lips, and hopes soon became merged in dreams, not merely of pulling off a hat-trick, but of bowling the entire Borley eleven in as many balls.

"The only runs they made were in the overs that I wasn't bowling," she wrote home in an imaginary letter; and woke with a start to find the sun shining, and a bell ringing violently at the end of the passage.

The first information that greeted her was vouchsafed by Milly Grubb, the captain of the Second Eleven.

"Match off!" she said, and made no answer to Sally's twice-repeated "Why?"

"Beast!" muttered the girl; but during breakfast learned from general conversation that Mabel Gosson had been right in her prophecy. Patty Dolbey had developed measles, and Frisky Harrison, her chum, was also in the sanatorium under suspicion.

"Little cads!" said one of the Second Eleven of these unfortunates. "Why couldn't they have smothered their faces in flour or something until after the match was over?"

"Just imagine if Old Cocaine had caught them powdering their noses!"

"I suppose we shall all be shut up like maniacs for the rest of the term? Sort of thing one expects during Lent, but in the summer it is awful."

There was a general groan, and then Sally heard Peter's drawl:

"I had the afternoon off to go and see my cousins at Springley Manor, this side of Parchester, you know. I suppose they will have all had measles, so I can turn up there all right as arranged. They are none of them children."

However, it was not all right. Miss Cockran made it quite clear that the entire school was in quarantine until further notice; and its inmates must content themselves in consequence with the school boundaries, unless taken for crocodile walks by a mistress. On Saturday afternoon, as there was no match, there was to be a picnic tea on that part of the shore reserved for Seascape House.

"A regular school-treat!" said Peter scornfully, her temper ruffled by a private interview with Miss Cockran, in which she had obtained no more than leave to write a note to her cousins explaining that she would be unable to go and see them.

"Why it's just a bribe to get us to be good little girls, and yet when we sit down to tea there will only be bread and butter mixed with sand and seaweed instead of eating it at tables like ordinary Christians."

The rest of the school was more resigned. After all, the shore was quite an interesting place, with rocks and pools and shells to occupy the attention, and a meal out of doors, even mixed with sand and seaweed, had its exciting side. Saturday, too, proved a perfect day, so calm and sunshiny that bathing prefects did not feel bound to send everyone out of the water after a three minutes' dip.

Sally swam well, just as she excelled in other sports; but she found it dull enough bathing alone, for, as usual, she was sent to Coventry, except for blustering threats of putting her under the water and keeping her there. These latter, of course, came from her enemies of the Fourth, led by Olive Parker.

"Let us drown the little beast," she shouted. "Here, you others, get in a ring and don't let it escape while Susy and I wash its face for it."

Without waiting for the attack, Sally plunged under water, and gripping Susy, who was the biggest of her tormentors, by the ankle pulled her after her. The next minute she was the centre of a struggling group of excited girls, who shot water over her in handfuls as she came gasping to the surface, and tried to push her down again.

"Stop it! Do you hear, kids, stop it! or I shall call Edith Seymour."

Even with this threat, it was not until she had ducked Olive Parker and shaken her that Violet Tremson succeeded in restoring some measure of order.

"You are to leave Sally alone, you little beasts, see!"

"Well, you ducked me," said Olive Parker sulkily.

"I didn't make a plan of it as if I were plotting a dirty assassination. Five to one, aren't you, and all bigger than your victim?"

Olive glared, but the rest of her friends had scattered, evidently somewhat conscience-stricken; and she herself, looking back on it, did not feel so proud of her idea as when she had first suggested it.

"I was only fooling," she said, and her furtive glance at Sally might have been construed into an apology. She was obviously ashamed.

"I have never seen you not being a fool," flew to her victim's lips, and as the words were uttered all hopes of reconciliation vanished.

"Next time I get the chance of doing you in, there will be no fooling about it, I promise you," shouted the other angrily, as she splashed off to join her fellows, leaving Sally and Violet Tremson alone, the former up to her shoulders in water.

"Why do you say those things?" asked the elder girl; "they may be smart and to the point, but they are so ... so hopeless for getting on, I mean, and making friends ... having a good time here, you know. Olive isn't at all a bad sort if you wouldn't always tread on her toes so heavily. She is older than you, remember."

"Yes, but she is junior to me in school, and at any rate she went for me first. I didn't attack her ... fact is I didn't want to have anything to say to that lot."

"She meant just now that she was sorry, Sally, and then you went and spoilt it all by saying what you did."

"I shall say what I like. I didn't ask you to rescue me, did I?"

This time Sally really despised herself for her rudeness. It had been decent of Violet to save her, but she was feeling sore over the cancelled cricket-match and all her vanished dreams of notoriety. That was why the words slipped out, and before she could mutter "Sorry!" Violet had answered with an aggravating sound of laughter in her voice:

"No! You didn't ask. You were mostly under water. Hardly in a position to do so, were you?"

"Then get out and go where someone does want you!"

In sudden flaming fury the younger girl scooped up a handful of water and flung it in her companion's face. Then she dived through a smoothly-rolling wave and came up a few yards off. Let Violet Tremson chase her and duck her if she liked; it would be no disgrace from someone so much taller. Violet, however, did nothing of the sort, but merely swam away leisurely towards a group of seniors gathered round a projecting rock.