Half an hour later, Barbara was being led across the hall by Miss Finlayson, to be introduced to her school-fellows in the playroom. It puzzled her a little to see how calm and unconcerned the head-mistress was looking. Did she not know what a thrilling moment this was to her little new pupil, who tripped along by her side? As Babs was puzzling over it, they reached the baize door on the opposite side of the hall, and Miss Finlayson stooped and fastened it back, disclosing a long passage beyond. At the end of the passage was another door; and through this other door the murmur and hum of many voices drifted to the ears of the excited child. She could hardly contain her impatience; and she wondered why Miss Finlayson did not go on, instead of being so particular about the fastening of the baize door. She even took a step forward in her eagerness; but a hand was suddenly placed on her shoulder, and Barbara glanced up and met the half-amused gaze of the lady who had just seemed so indifferent to her.Miss Finlayson had a way of looking at a girl that generally made a friend of her at once. Her eyes were a peculiar shade of blue-grey that gave them, as a rule, a cold expression; but they were also capable of a glimpse of humour that completely altered and softened them, and it was the discovery of this quality in them that changed Barbara’s impatience all at once to curiosity.

‘One moment, little girl, before you go through that door over there,’ began Miss Finlayson, and her face was still grave in spite of the betraying twinkle in her eyes. ‘Tell me, have you ever known any girls before?’

‘Only Jill,’ answered Barbara, wondering why she was being asked such an odd question.

‘Ah!’ said Miss Finlayson. The child caught the change in her tone, and went on quickly.

‘I know Jill didn’t approve of me at first,’ she said, in her small, anxious voice; ‘but she does now, I think. Besides, Jill is grown-up, you see; and I don’t think it counts if you are grown-up, does it? I’ve never met any real, nice, friendly girls before, who don’t tease you, or bully you, or anything like that. That’s why I wanted to come to school.’

‘Ah!’ said Miss Finlayson again. Then she put out her hand and patted the cheek of her little new pupil. ‘Do not be unhappy if you find you are not like the other girls,’ she said, just as Auntie Anna had done; ‘and come to me, if everything else fails and you cannot stand by yourself. Only, remember–you are not in the nursery any longer: you have come here to learn how to grow up straight and strong and healthy, just as a plant learns; and I am only the gardener to give you a prop, when you have been in too great a hurry and are trying to grow too fast. Do you think you understand?’ Her voice changed again, and a laugh came into it as she added brightly: ‘Come along now, and be a happy little girl. You will find that most of us are happy in this house.’

She took Babs by the hand, and raced her along the passage to the door at the end, then turned the handle and pushed the child gently into the room.

‘Girls,’ said the head-mistress, in the sudden lull that followed her entrance, ‘here is a new schoolfellow for you.’

Then all the voices broke out again, and Miss Finlayson nodded to Barbara, and went away. It was one of Miss Finlayson’s theories, that a new girl should be left to fight her way by herself; but as she retreated slowly along the passage this evening, she could not help feeling a little anxious about the child with the small, eager face, whom she had just launched into a strange and unfriendly world.

Barbara took two quick steps forward, as the door closed behind her, and stood there waiting. She had acted this scene over and over again in her mind, and she had always made her entrance like this; after which a girl, whose face was plump and ordinary, and whose legs were of the right proportions, and whose hair was smooth and under proper control, had always come towards her with a welcoming smile and had led her up to the other girls, who all had welcoming smiles too. And everybody had listened to her while she talked about her home and her father and the boys; and nobody had laughed and nobody had teased, and nobody had told her to ‘shut up.’ It had been a very favourite scene in her dream of school, and she waited eagerly for the other actors in it to come forward and do their part. But no one moved.

The room in which she found herself was certainly not like the one she had imagined. It was long and low and prettily shaped, with two wide bow-windows thrown out on one side of it, and a great square fireplace taking up most of the wall that faced the doorway. Next to the fireplace was a curtained archway, which evidently formed the entrance into another room, judging by the buzz of laughter and conversation from beyond that the thick red curtain failed to stifle. The bookshelves on the two remaining walls were made of plain oak; so were the desks and chairs that stood neatly arranged round the room in rows. There were also plain oak benches in the warm chimney-corners, and plain oak window-seats in the bowed recesses, while the floor was made of the same wood and was left quite bare, except for a rug in front of the hearth. A pot or two of chrysanthemums, some blue china on the over-mantel, and one or two hammered metal lamps that hung from the beams in the ceiling, were the only ornaments in the room; and the whole effect was so simple and so clean that Barbara, fresh from the dingy old schoolroom in which she had passed her life until now, was obliged to forget everything else for the moment and just stare round her. Then her eyes rested again on the girls who were scattered in groups about the room, and the expectant look on her face became a little wistful.

There seemed to be thirty or forty of them all together; and from the noise on the other side of the curtain Babs concluded that there were as many, or more, in the room beyond. They all talked without ceasing,–all at once, it seemed to Barbara,–about their Christmas holidays and their Christmas presents, about the parties they had been to and the pantomimes they had seen, about the girls who were not back and the girls who were, about everything, in fact, except the child by the door, who had been waiting all her life for this moment. What did it matter to them that she should go through a few seconds of embarrassment? They had all been through the same, in their time; and it was not to be supposed that they should make things any easier for future generations of new girls. So they went on babbling about their own affairs, and Barbara went on expecting some one to come and put an end to her discomfort. But nobody came.

Slowly, she began to feel conscious, just as she had done when she first met Jill, that there was something odd about her appearance. In spite of the extra inch or two on the bottom hem of her frock, and the temporary smoothness that a vigorous application of a wet brush had produced on her hair, Babs saw with a kind of dismay that she was not made in the same pattern as the crowd of neatly dressed girls before her. None of them wore her hair loose and curly like her own, and none of them looked as though she did not know what to do with her hands. If only she could have held on to something, Barbara felt sure she would not have felt so shy or so helpless. There was a chair only two yards off; but something kept her standing where she was, and she did not even reach out her hand to it.

The girls continued their conversation, and forgot all about the new-comer that Miss Finlayson had brought in. Most of them stood facing the fire and had not even looked at her; and the others, who glanced now and then towards the door, only shrugged their shoulders and wondered why the stupid child did not sit down, instead of standing still in that purposeless manner. They did not mean to be unkind, but how were they to know that she was fighting through her first disillusionment?

All at once, a diversion was made by two children from the other room, who came tumbling through the curtain and nearly upset a tall fair girl who was the centre of the group round the fire.‘Look where you are going, Angela Wilkins!’ said the fair girl, sternly. ‘What are you children doing in here, I should like to know?’

‘Please, Margaret, don’t be cross, and do let me explain,’ begged Angela Wilkins, suppressing an inclination to giggle, and pouring out her words hastily. ‘Jean has had millions of letters from Jill Urquhart, and she says––’

‘It wasn’t millions, Angela, it was only one,’ corrected her fellow-culprit from behind.

‘And what business has Jean Murray to hear from Jill Urquhart?’ demanded the fair girl.

‘I’m sure I don’t want to hear from her,’ grumbled the other girl, whom Angela pushed forward to answer for herself. ‘She only writes to me when she wants something. I don’t call that writing to a person.’

‘She’s got a sister coming here this term, and she says everybody has got to look after her, or something like that,’ chimed in the irrepressible Angela.

‘It isn’t a sister, it’s a cousin. And she hasn’t asked everybody; I wish she had. She’s asked me to look after her, and that’s a very different thing,’ complained Jean Murray, looking distinctly aggrieved.

‘Yes,’ added Angela, breathlessly; ‘why should Jean be bothered with all the new girls who happen to be people’s cousins?’

‘She isn’t,’ said Margaret, curtly. ‘It’s only one new girl; and if she is a cousin of Jill’s, Jean ought to be very proud of being asked to look after her. Do stop exaggerating, Angela; and go away, both of you!’ Then just as the children slunk off subdued, she recalled them and made a gesture towards the door. ‘There’s a new girl over there now, I believe,’ she continued indifferently. ‘You’d better see whether she’s the right one; and if she is, bring her to me.’

She turned again to the fireplace, and the two girls made their way towards the other end of the room, where Barbara still stood unnoticed. She saw them coming, and heaved a sigh of relief. Things were a long while happening in this school; but it was something if they happened in the end. She glanced at their two faces as they came nearer, and felt disappointed when the one with the cross expression addressed her first.

‘I say, what’s your name?’ began Jean, ungraciously.

‘Barbara,’ answered the child, faintly. Her dream seemed more improbable than ever, in the presence of this small stranger with the aggressive manner.

‘Barbara what?’ asked Jean, impatiently.

Babs stared, and added her surname unwillingly. At home, when people spoke like that, they had to do without an answer.

‘That’s the one,’ grumbled Jean to her companion. Then she addressed Barbara again. ‘How old are you?’ she asked, in the same abrupt way.‘Eleven,’ answered Babs, obediently. ‘How old are you?’

It was Jean’s turn to stare. ‘What business is it of yours?’ she exclaimed. After a moment’s consideration, however, she found a satisfactory reason for replying. ‘I’m a year older than you, anyhow,’ she added triumphantly, ‘so you’ll be the youngest in the school now, and you can take off the head girl’s boots.’

Before Barbara had time to realise this penalty, or privilege, belonging to her youth, Angela Wilkins, who had been silent for quite a surprising length of time, suddenly attacked her afresh. ‘Are you really Jill’s cousin?’ she asked, with a giggle.

Babs nodded; but Angela did not seem convinced. ‘You’re not a bit like her, are you? Jill Urquhart is so pretty and graceful and all that,’ she observed with engaging frankness, and then giggled again.

Barbara said nothing; it was certainly unnecessary to agree with such a very obvious statement. Jean Murray, who had also been examining her closely in her turn, evidently seemed to think a further snubbing was required of her.

‘You’re frightfully tall for your age,’ she remarked disapprovingly, as though Barbara were somehow to be held responsible for her height. ‘If I had straight spiky legs like yours, I should have my dresses made longer.’

‘No, you wouldn’t, if you had five brothers always wanting you to do things,’ retorted Barbara, promptly. It was saddening to find that, even here, people were prepared to make remarks about the slimness of her legs.

Angela was so surprised at her sudden show of resistance that she forgot to giggle.

‘I say, you’d better not speak like that to Jean Murray,’ she said in a warning tone, glancing as she spoke at Jean, as though she expected her to take immediate measures for the suppression of the new girl. ‘She’s been the youngest for so long that naturally she’s inclined to be jealous, now you’ve come to take her place. Of course she has to pretend she’s glad, but you can’t expect her to like the idea of somebody else taking off the head girl’s––’

‘Oh, if that’s all,’ said Barbara, indifferently, ‘I don’t want to take off anybody’s boots, thank you.’

‘You’ll have to, whether you like it or not,’ interposed Jean, who had been listening quite complacently to Angela’s description of her feelings. ‘Come along now, and see Margaret Hulme; and don’t be such a month about it, or else we shall catch it for stopping in here so long.’

‘Who is Margaret Hulme, and why have I got to go and see her?’ asked Babs, hanging back a little. It was so perplexing to have to do things without being given any reason for it.

Both the girls opened their eyes wide. ‘Why, she is the head girl!’ they explained, as if that were reason enough for anything; and without waiting for any more objections, they pulled her across the room to where the fair girl still made the centre of the group round the fire. She kept them waiting for some seconds before she condescended to notice that they were there.

‘Didn’t I tell you to go back to your own playroom?’ she demanded presently. Then her eyes fell on Barbara, and she scanned her critically up and down.

‘This is Jill Urquhart’s cousin,’ explained Jean, hurriedly, and she gave Barbara an unexpected push that sent her stumbling, with her usual lack of good fortune, right against the head girl.

‘Take care, child!’ said Margaret, frowning. And while Babs stammered out some apology, she turned to the other girls behind her and said something that made them all laugh.

‘She’s only eleven, though she’s so awfully tall; and her name is Barbara Berkeley,’ volunteered Angela, peering over the shoulder of the new girl.

‘Who spoke to you?’ inquired the head girl, sarcastically, looking back again. She once more scanned Barbara all over, and smiled in an annoying manner to herself. ‘However did Jill manage to have a cousin like you?’ she asked; and the other girls laughed more than before.

‘I don’t know,’ said Barbara, with a touch of scorn in her voice. The mysterious way in which the head girl and her admirers were laughing at her was very different from the frank teasing she was accustomed to; and it gave her a sudden wish to assert herself. ‘I never pretended to be like Jill, or like any of you! I–I don’t think I want to be like you, either. In my home, we don’t laugh behind people’s backs.’

She caused quite a small sensation in the group round the fire. One or two began to titter afresh, and then stopped, waiting for the head girl to take the lead. The head girl was equal to the occasion.

‘It is very certain, then, that you have stayed in your own home quite long enough,’ she remarked coldly, and resumed her conversation with her friends.

The two children dragged Barbara through the curtain into the next room.

‘Well, you have got some cheek!’ gasped Jean Murray, staring at her. ‘Lucky for you that you’re a new girl! If it had been me, Margaret Hulme wouldn’t have spoken to me for a whole day.’

The enormity of such a punishment did not for the moment impress Barbara much. What she did notice was that her passage of words with the head girl had broken the ice of her introduction to the junior playroom, especially with the aid of Angela’s highly coloured account of it.

‘You never saw such a thing!’ she was exclaiming rapidly to the circle that formed round her. ‘There was Margaret, looking like a dozen thunder-clouds rolled into one, and there was the new girl, grinning from ear to ear, not caring a bit what anybody thought of her and just standing up to the head girl as if she was in the First herself.’

The new girl barely recognised this description of herself; but as it made her an object of curiosity, if not of sympathy, in the junior playroom, she did not feel inclined to correct the picture that the red-haired, freckled little chatterbox was painting of her. Anything was better than being left out in the cold again. It struck her too that the girls in the junior room were far less inclined to laugh at her than the elder ones had seemed; and it raised her fallen spirits a little to find that the children who were now strolling up to her, with inquisitive glances at her hair, her clothes, and everything else about her, seemed disposed, in spite of their calm curiosity, to show her a kind of rough friendliness. They were more like boys, these smaller people in the junior playroom; and Barbara, though still failing to realise her child’s ideal of girls, felt a faint kinship with their straightforward method of addressing her.

‘No nickname?’ they asked, when she had again admitted her name and her age.

‘Oh, yes,’ answered Barbara, unsuspiciously, ‘the boys always call me the Babe, or––’

The peals of laughter that interrupted her puzzled her a good deal. It was very queer that, wherever she went, people always laughed at her. It was some moments before their glee over the nickname, that so exactly suited the childish impression she produced, began to subside.

‘Have you got a nurse?’ asked Angela, who had laughed louder than any one.

‘No,’ said Barbara, simply, not seeing that this too was meant to be a joke. ‘She left, two years ago.’

‘Well, you ought to have one,’ retorted Jean, brusquely. ‘She might teach you how to comb your hair.’

‘And let down your frock,’ added two or three voices together.

‘What’s the matter with my frock?’ asked Babs, opening her eyes. ‘It’s nearly two inches longer than any frock I ever had before.’

The laughter began afresh, and Barbara gave up trying to explain things. She was a little hurt, in reality, and was afraid of showing it; for it would never do, after being teased by five brothers all her life, to be ruffled by the laughter of a few schoolgirls. All the same, there was something in their way of laughing at her that hurt, and she did not care to provoke them into doing it any more.

The loud ringing of a bell brought her a sudden respite, by clearing the room of her tormentors. They poured hastily out of two large doors, that slid back in the wall and revealed another square hall beyond, similar to the one at the front of the house. The wide staircase up which the girls were trooping evidently led to their bedrooms, for Barbara, left deserted and forgotten in the playroom, could hear them, directly afterwards, moving about overhead. As she waited there alone, wondering what she was supposed to do next, Jean Murray came hurrying back into the room and looked round for her.

‘Oh, bother!’ she said, in her ungracious manner; ‘what a nuisance you are! I wish you’d do things without waiting to be told.’

Babs explained submissively that she was quite ready to do things if she only knew what to do; but Jean still grumbled.

‘Any one with any sense would know,’ she declared, hastening out of the door again as she spoke. When she was half-way across the hall, she shouted, without looking back, ‘Can’t you come along? There’s only a quarter of an hour to dress for supper.’

Babs hurried after her, and managed to keep her in sight up the wide staircase and along the gallery at the top. There were doors all round the gallery, and at one of these, marked number twelve, Jean stopped and waited impatiently.

‘What a time you are,’ she complained, when Barbara caught her up.

‘I’m very quick, when anybody doesn’t take such an enormous start,’ answered Barbara, panting. ‘I can beat Peter twice round the Square and up to the gate, easily! And you’re not in it with Peter.’

Jean looked at her, and her expression was not a pretty one. However, she only jerked her head at the door in front of them, and told Babs it was her bedroom. ‘Finny said I was to show you,’ she added. ‘Don’t know, I’m sure, why everybody thinks I’ve got to show you things. And you’d better look sharp and dress, because when you’re ready you’ve got to cut along to number two and do the head girl’s hair. It’s always the business of the youngest in the school to do the head girl’s hair. See?’

‘But I don’t know how to do anybody’s hair,’ began Barbara, in a fever of dismay. But Jean had already scampered out of hearing; and with her responsibilities weighing heavily upon her, the new girl turned the handle of her bedroom door and went forlornly in. It was a simple little room, very clean and fresh-looking, with everything there that she wanted and nothing that she could do without. The pretty coverlets on the bed and the dressing-table and the muslin curtains that draped the oaken window-sash gave it a look of homely comfort, while harmonising with the plain green colour of the walls and the blue frieze and carpet. As Barbara walked across her small domain and pushed aside the blind to peep out into the clear starlit night, a moment’s rest came to her perturbed little mind. The tiny bare room was all hers, and the feeling of privacy and possession was very comforting.

A door in the wall told her there was a room leading out of hers, and the sound made by some one moving rapidly about in it reminded her again of her present woes and of the necessity for dressing as quickly as possible. Her relief at not being obliged to sleep with the other girls was forgotten in her returning consciousness of having to live with them, and to do their hair and to button their boots. With desperate haste she struggled out of her serge frock and into a muslin one, that had a strange new method of fastening that was extremely baffling; and five minutes later, trembling, uneasy, and flushed with the hurry of her speedy toilet, she stood knocking at the door of number two.

‘It’s me,’ she said feebly, in response to the curt inquiry from within. Her inadequate explanation was followed by a few quick steps on the other side of the door, which was then flung open with an impatient movement; and the head girl, putting hairpins rapidly into her hair as she stood, was looking down at her sternly.

‘You should go to one of the younger ones, if you want to know anything,’ she said crossly. ‘Where’s Jean Murray?’

‘It was Jean Murray who told me to come,’ answered the child, looking a pathetic little object in her half-fastened muslin frock, with her hair standing out wildly round her head. ‘I’m sure I didn’t want to come; I don’t know how to do anybody’s hair; I told her so. But she said it was because I was the youngest, and––’

‘What are you talking about, child?’ interrupted Margaret. Her mystified look was lost on Babs, however, as the child stared down in much misery and confusion at the little steel buckles on her new evening shoes. She went on unhappily with her stammering confession.

‘She said I’d got to do the head girl’s hair because I was the youngest, and I was to make haste, or I shouldn’t be in time. I did make as much haste as I could, truthfully,’ she added, looking up timidly at her frowning questioner; ‘but there were such a lot of hooks on my new frock, and I’m not used to hooks. I’ve always had buttons before, you see.’

One or two of the neighbouring doors had opened by this time, and quite a small audience was assembling to hear Barbara’s attempt at explanation. A giggle that swelled into a laugh brought dismay once more into her heart; and a suspicion that she had been hoaxed slowly dawned upon her.

‘Isn’t it true?’ she cried, turning upon them desperately. ‘Haven’t I got to do the head girl’s hair?’

‘You’d better do your own first, I should say,’ observed one of the onlookers, carelessly; and the others laughed again.

The head girl silenced them peremptorily. ‘Don’t, Ruth!’ she said. ‘It’s only a babe, after all. You others had better go downstairs; the supper-bell will ring directly.’

The gallery slowly emptied itself, except for the little group of three that still stood outside the head girl’s door. The offending Ruth turned to Barbara; she had a good-natured face, and was looking penitent.

‘Come here, child, and let me fasten your frock properly,’ she said; ‘you’ve done it up all wrong.’

Barbara turned her back to her willingly. ‘It’s awfully bricky of you,’ she said warmly; ‘I’ve never done up my own frock before, and this one was so complicated, somehow.’

‘You must come to me when you want your frocks fastened,’ answered her new friend. ‘I sleep next door to you, and I always help Angela, whose room is on the farther side of mine. You’ve only got to tap at the door between, when you are ready. But you mustn’t speak in the morning before breakfast, or in the evening after prayers, because that is against the rules.’

She fetched a brush and tried to reduce the tangled hair under her hands to a certain degree of order. Margaret Hulme had disposed of all her hairpins by this time, and was closely watching a door on the other side of the gallery. When it at last opened she straightened herself and prepared for action.

It was Jean Murray who came out of it, rather cautiously at first, then with a pretence of great unconcern. But her jaunty air completely deserted her when she saw the little group outside the head girl’s door, and she tried to slink away towards the stairs unnoticed. Margaret called her back authoritatively, and Jean came slowly and unwillingly round the gallery.‘Now,’ said the head girl, when she was within easy hearing, ‘just you apologise to Barbara Berkeley for hoaxing her just now. If you think there is anything funny in telling an untruth, I’m sorry for your sense of humour, and you’d better not do it again in this house. Now then, make haste about it.’

Barbara tried impetuously to interfere, but Ruth Oliver held her back. ‘Hush!’ she whispered. ‘Leave it to Margaret.’

Jean was shifting from one foot to another, and her mouth began to quiver. ‘I didn’t know she’d be such a stupid as to believe it,’ she muttered.

‘My dear child,’ said the head girl, blandly, ‘nobody supposed you were any judge of character. So it would clearly be wiser not to play that kind of joke on any one in future, wouldn’t it? Are you going to apologise or not?’

Jean reddened, and a lump rose in her throat. Her worship of the head girl was the most genuine thing about her, and she was suffering keenly under her disapproval. But an apology to a new girl, especially to one who had come to rob her of all her privileges, was next to an impossibility. Barbara saved the situation.

‘I don’t want anybody’s apologies,’ she cried. ‘I’m not cross, and I don’t know what you’re all talking about.’ She wriggled away from the friendly grasp of Ruth Oliver, and sped round the gallery till she came to the head of the stairs. Arrived there, the temptation of a long, broad, shining baluster-rail was too much for her; and in another moment the little elf-like figure in the fresh muslin frock was astride of it and flying down to the hall, with her hair once more in rebellion round her face. The exhilaration of the brief rush downwards sent all her troubles out of her head, and she uttered a war-whoop of delight as she landed with a thump on the mat at the bottom. The elder girls, who were just streaming across the hall in response to the supper-bell, stopped and stared aghast. Certainly the new girl was the most impudent of her species, and meant to make her entry into the establishment of Wootton Beeches with a flourish! But Margaret Hulme, it was rumoured, had taken her up; and that meant that the elder girls were no longer in a position to criticise her.