III
Wynch-on-the-Wold
Though the College only opened on Tuesday afternoon, the short remainder of the week seemed enormously long to Ingred. Her form mates were the same, but everything else was absolutely changed; she might have been at a new school. She appreciated the convenient arrangements of the handsome building: the lecture-hall, with its stained-glass window and polished floor, the airy classrooms, the studio with its facilities for every kind of art work, the three music-rooms, the laboratory, the gymnasium, and, last but not least, the hostel. Ingred had never before been a boarder, and she had not expected to like the experience, but there is a subtle charm in community life that infects everybody with “the spirit of the hive,” and in spite of herself she began to be interested in the particular set of faces that met round the table for meals. The greater part of the girls were in the middle and lower school, but there were a few members of the Sixth, who sat next to Mrs. Best, the matron, and Nurse Warner, and looked with superior eyes on the crowd of intermediates and juniors. To have secured such congenial roommates was an asset for which she could not be sufficiently thankful. Whatever troubles might await her downstairs, it was a comfort to know that she had three allies ready to flock to her support. She had not known any of them well in the past, but as they seemed prepared to offer their friendship, she also was ready to act the part of chum. By exchanging desks with Linda Slater, she managed to secure a seat next to Verity in school, and entered into an arrangement with her that they should supply the missing gaps in each other’s notes, for Miss Strong often lectured so rapidly that it was impossible to keep up with her.
“I wish I knew shorthand,” grumbled Ingred, comparing scribbles with Verity as the girls tidied their hair for tea. “How anybody’s expected to get down all Miss Strong tells us, I can’t imagine! It’s impossible.”
“I don’t try,” admitted Fil. “At least I do try—I put a bit here and there, but I write so slowly, I’m only halfway through before she’s bounced on to something else, and I’ve missed the beginning of it. I have to stop, too, sometimes, to think how to spell the words.”
The others laughed, for Fil’s spelling was proverbial in the form, and was often of a purely phonetic character. Miss Strong had periodical crusades to improve it, but generally gave them up as a bad job, and recommended constant use of a dictionary instead.
“Though you can’t go about the world with a dictionary perpetually under your arm,” she had remarked on the last occasion. “If you have to write a letter in a hurry, and you begin ‘Dear Maddam’ and end ‘Yours trueley’—well! Please don’t let anybody know you’ve been educated here, that’s all, or it will be a poor advertisement for the College!”
Ingred was not at all delighted to be still in Miss Strong’s form. She only moderately liked this mistress. Undoubtedly Miss Strong was a clever teacher, but sarcasm was one of her favorite weapons of discipline. Some of the girls did not mind it, indeed thought it rather amusing, even when directed against themselves, and enjoyed it hugely when someone else was the victim of the sally. Ingred, however, proud and sensitive, writhed under the attacks of Miss Strong’s sharp tongue, and would often have preferred a punishment to a witticism. As a matter of fact, the mistress rarely gave punishments, and was proud of her ability to control her form without resorting to them. She was short in stature, but made up in spirit for her lack of inches, and would fix her dark eyes on offenders against discipline with the personal magnetism of a circus trainer or a leopard-tamer. Schoolgirls are irreverent beings, and though to her face her pupils showed her all respect, behind her back they spoke of her familiarly as “The Bantam,” in allusion to her small size but plucky disposition, or sometimes, in reference to her sarcastic powers, as “The Sark,” which by general custom became “The Snark.” On the whole Miss Strong’s pithy, racy, humorous style of teaching made her a far greater favorite than mistresses of duller caliber. She had a remarkable faculty for getting work out of the most unwilling brains. Her form always made excellent progress, and she had a reputation for obtaining record successes in examinations. To judge from the first few days of term, she meant to keep up her standard of efficiency. Miss Burd had mapped out a heavy timetable for Va, and it was Miss Strong’s business to see that the girls got through it. Of course they grumbled. After the long weeks of the summer holidays it was doubly difficult to apply their minds to lessons, and set to work in the evenings to perform the enormous amount of preparation demanded from them. To some the task was well-nigh impossible, and poor Fil would send in very imperfect exercises, but others, Ingred and Verity among the number, had ambitions, and boosted up the record of the form.
It was after a most strenuous few days that Ingred came to the close of the first week of the new term, and, taking her books and handbag, started off to spend the weekend at home. She left the College with a feeling of intense relief. She had dreaded the return there, and the confession of her altered circumstances. It had not proved quite so disagreeable an ordeal as she had anticipated, for, after the first expressions of surprise, nobody had referred again to Rotherwood; yet Ingred,
