‘I don’t know. Some of the games-playing young are surely capable of a smack like that on a tin.’
‘Do you think Miss Giggs is our man?’
‘No, child. But it would be interesting to know, all the same, why Miss Giggs, instead of complaining bitterly about the damage done to her shoes, should have gone off and hidden them in her hat-box.’
‘I think one of us ought to interview her. After all, several of the students know about the shoes. We ought to accuse her and let her make an explanation.’
‘Very well, child. Suppose you interview her tomorrow morning immediately after breakfast?’
‘I thought perhaps you’d be the better person.’
‘Yes, I should be. But you are more sympathetic,’ said Mrs Bradley grinning. ‘Well, Oates will have a very pleasant task cleaning up all this mess tomorrow. Come along, child. Time you went to bed.’
Deborah interviewed Miss Giggs in the morning, as Mrs Bradley had suggested. Although in a sense she felt sorry for the friendless girl, she could not shake off a feeling of acute dislike, an unpleasant impression of repulsion, when the student came into her room. She appeared armed with the Book of Common Prayer, Hymns Ancient and Modern, and was wearing gloves and a hat.
‘Oh, I’m going to make you late for Church,’ said Dehorah, apologetically, afflicted immediately by a sensation familiar to her at her last post, that of being, somehow, put in the wrong by a culprit before she could begin an unpleasant interview. It was one of the reasons why she had given up a teaching post.
‘It’s quite all right,’ replied Miss Giggs, ‘It’s about my shoes, of course. Well, I do think the Warden ought to have a rule about people going to other people’s hat-boxes, especially Juniors. I mean to say…’
‘Yes,’ said Deborah, ‘that’s what we’re going to talk about. Now, first…’ The student tried to interrupt, but Deborah held on firmly. ‘Now, first,’ she repeated, ‘let me assure you, Miss Giggs, that the Warden has your grievance in hand, and it and the offender will be dealt with. Please don’t let us refer to that again for a while. What I want to know is what made you put those shoes into your hat-box?’
‘There’s no rule against putting shoes into a hat-box. I kept mine there all last year.’
‘Miss Giggs,’ said Deborah, beginning to feel desperate, ‘more lies behind this than you seem to realize. Your shoes were dirty, weren’t they? You had been in the basement, hadn’t you? Don’t you think it would be best, if you have nothing to hide, to tell me, just straightforwardly, what your idea was?’
‘Nobody likes me here,’ began Miss Giggs.
‘I don’t think that can be true. But go on.’
‘I got my shoes all messed up, and I thought it was one of their senseless practical jokes. It’s nothing but silly ragging, and I don’t see we’re here to rag. I want to work, and I don’t see why a lot of jealousy should upset it’
‘Neither do I,’ said Deborah uncomfortably. ‘But it wasn’t — it couldn’t have been — directed at you, don’t you see? It was all over that part of the floor. Anybody might have trodden in it. It couldn’t have been — have been specially meant.’
‘I don’t see that. They know I always stay in and work on a Saturday afternoon. And they know I keep — well — biscuits in my trunk. And because I don’t hand them round, I suppose they don’t like it. But my father can’t afford biscuits for everybody. He sends them to me — he can’t afford that, really — but he wants me to keep up my strength. You see, when I leave College and get a job, he’ll be able to give up his job. We’ve got it all planned out. I’m going to have a little country school — you can get those when you first leave College — and he’ll do a bit in the garden, and I shall help him, and…’
She broke off, looked vaguely at Deborah, and then added:
‘Does the Warden think I spilt the paint?’
‘No, she doesn’t. She knows you didn’t, and she wanted to give you a chance to make your explanation about the shoes before she speaks to the rest of the students. I feel that you have made your explanation, Miss Giggs, and, if I were you, I shouldn’t think about the ragging and the jealousy. I should just be as nice to the others as I could, and go on working, and — and thinking about the future.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Giggs, as she blew her nose, ‘that’s all very well, Miss Cloud, but if it wasn’t intended for me, why should somebody have run up the back stairs just in front of me? If I hadn’t stopped to take my shoes off, I should have seen who it was.’
‘Oh, dear! Have you
‘No. I sort of felt it was someone I’d seen before, but whoever it was had on quite a long dress, I saw it swish round the bend of the stairs as she ran.’
‘A lie,’ thought Deborah, grimacing as the door closed behind the student’s back.
‘She didn’t do it,’ she said to Mrs Bradley, after she had detailed the conversation. Mrs Bradley grinned, but offered no other comment. She touched the bell, and Lulu appeared.
‘Ask Miss Trevelyan to come and see me,’ said Mrs Bradley; adding, when Lulu had gone, ‘You’d better sit in on this. We must look horribly official.’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Deborah, who was very much attached to Kitty. ‘You’re going to chew her up.’
‘Duty must be our watchword,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a fiendish, anticipatory grin. Kitty entered nervously.
‘Warden?’ she said.
‘And Sub-Warden,’ said Mrs Bradley, indicating Deborah, who was sitting on the very edge of a chair and was looking thoroughly scared.
‘How do?’ said Kitty, clearing her throat. At this Deborah had a sudden desire to giggle, and, to conquer it, she reverted to the formula of her youth, that of thinking about her dead grandmother whom, incidentally, she could not remember at all clearly.
