Chapter 4 I WISH YOU'D BE FRIENDS WITH ME.

Mrs. Drury and Amethyst walked along silently for a few minutes, each apparently busy with her own thoughts. The former was thinking how best she could aid the poor old cripple she had just left, while her little daughter was pondering over the history of her name. They had reached a more open thoroughfare when Amethyst broke the silence.

"Amethyst is rather a funny name for a girl, don't you think, mumsie?"

Suddenly recalled from a mental calculation in which blankets and beef-tea played a prominent part, Mrs. Drury smiled down at her little daughter. "Do you think so, girlie?" was all she said.

"Well, yes, I do," confessed Amethyst, slowly. "Although the girls at the High School have nicknamed me 'Thistle,' they tease me about my proper name sometimes, and say I might as well have been called Sapphire or Topaz, or one of those long names which begin with a 'C.' I can't pronounce them properly, but you know the ones I mean, mumsie."

"Yes, dear, I know. You mean chrysolite and chalcedony and chrysoprasus," said her mother, with a smile; "but they are very different. Your father and I chose your name because of its meaning, for a special reason, as we have often told you, Amethyst. When we used to live in the East-end of London, where you were born, there was so much sin and sorrow all round us everywhere, caused by strong drink, that we resolved to call you Amethyst, so that you might always be a reminder to us of our promise not to have anything to do with it. And there was another reason, girlie," Mrs. Drury dropped her voice, and spoke softly. "Your father and I have always hoped and prayed, from your very babyhood, that when you were grown up you might become a worker in the noble army of men and women who are fighting, in God's strength, against this dreadful enemy of our beloved England."

"How could I, mother?" Amethyst asked wonderingly; she had never been told so much as this before.

"There are many ways, dear," replied her mother, "in which people can influence those around them in the cause of total abstinence. Some are wanted who can write books and articles; others who can speak in favour of it. But it is early days for us to plan your future, girlie; when you have left school far behind and are quite grown up, it will be easier to see how you can best live up to your name."

"I think I should like to be a speaker," said Amethyst meditatively.

"You are one now, I think, girlie," said Mrs. Drury, with a little laugh. "You know father says you are a regular chatterbox. Now, let us go into Wilson's and get some of those nice scones for tea, and then we must hurry home."

They had just emerged from the confectioner's, and were crossing the road, when Amethyst espied the two Franklyn girls coming towards them.

"There are Olive and Elsa," she said, delightedly; and then she added, persuasively, "Oh! mumsie, do you think they might come to tea with us to-day?"

"Not to-day, darling, I think, because you have all your lessons to do, and there is scarcely time for them to go home and get permission, now. But they might come on Saturday," she added, as Amethyst looked very doleful. "Let us speak to them."

"How do you do, dears?" was Mrs. Drury's bright greeting, as she shook hands with the twins. "How is your mother to-day?"

"Father thinks she is a little better, thank you, Mrs. Drury." It was Elsa who spoke; Olive always deputed her sister to give the latest bulletins of her mother's health.

"I am glad to hear that," said Mrs. Drury warmly; "will you give her my love, and tell her I hope to come and see her very soon? Meanwhile, Amethyst and I are wondering whether she would allow you both to come to tea next Saturday."

"Oh! thank you very much, Mrs. Drury, we shall be delighted to come," said Olive, a ring of pleasure in her tones; they always enjoyed themselves at St. Paul's Vicarage.

"I think we had better just ask first," ventured Elsa, "although I feel sure mother will be very pleased."

"Quite right, dear," said Mrs. Drury, looking approvingly at Elsa, so that she did not see Olive shrug her shoulders disdainfully. "Come early in the afternoon, if you may, so that you and Amethyst can have some fun together in the garden. I hear you have all been moved up," she added, as they began to separate.

"Yes, an awful nuisance, I call it," said Olive; "we shall have no end of home-work to do now. That algebra we did this morning is stupid stuff, isn't it, Thistle? All silly little letters and numbers that don't seem to mean anything. I couldn't make head or tail of it."

"I rather liked it," said Amethyst.

"So did I," admitted Elsa.

"Well, you all ought to grow up very clever women," said Mrs. Drury, with a smile. "I hope you will all do something great some day."

"No fear of that for me," was Olive's nonchalant reply, as Amethyst and her mother hurried on.

"I hope mother will let us go on Saturday," said Elsa, as the twins walked in the direction of home.

"Why, of course she will, you stupid; how often does she refuse us?" cried her sister, snappishly. She had an uncomfortable sense of having lowered herself somehow in Mrs. Drury's estimation, and was not best pleased with Elsa for appearing to correct her before that lady.

"No, she is always so pleased for us to go to the vicarage," said Elsa, wisely refraining from adding fuel to the fire by saying what she might have said; namely, that she had seen Mrs. Drury's look of astonishment when Olive calmly accepted the invitation without any reference to their mother. "We must be quick, now, Olive, or we shall be late for tea; it is just upon five by the post-office clock."

The three girls met again next morning in the Fourth Form cloakroom, where the pupils took off their outdoor garments, and changed their shoes. They had the narrow, partitioned-off room, with its rows of clothes-hooks and pigeon-holes for boots, to themselves, for a moment. But as they were rather late, Elsa, whose division was nearest to Amethyst's, could only just whisper, "We may come on Saturday," before the bell, which summoned them all to their places in the large hall, warned them to lose no time.

Scrambling into their slippers, and hanging hats and coats on their respective pegs, the trio hastened into the hall, and were each in their own particular place by the time the bell ceased clanging: much to Elsa's and Amethyst's delight, as they had no wish to begin so early in the term with a late mark. Olive was one of the happy-go-lucky sort who did not mind a few marks one way or the other.

Indeed, she ran the risk of losing a conduct mark by nudging Elsa, and whispering: "Monica Beauchamp is----" just as Miss Buckingham, the head-mistress, who conducted prayers from a raised platform at one end of the hall, announced the number of the hymn.

But Elsa only smiled, and resolutely turned her head away from Olive, so that the sentence remained unfinished.

Prayers over, and the various notices relative to the new term having been given out, the classes filed into their classrooms, which all opened off the spacious hall, with the exception of the First and Sixth Forms, whose rooms were on the first floor, where were also the studio, music-rooms and others used for various purposes.

There was a friendly rivalry among the girls with respect to the appearance of their own particular classrooms, and they had inaugurated a fund among themselves for decorative purposes, by means of which plants and pictures, etc., were purchased for the adornment of the rooms.

The Fourth Form, by reason of its position, had the best view of all the classrooms, for it overlooked the prettily laid out garden of Miss Buckingham's private house, so that the girls of that form always tried to outdo the others in their decoration of the room itself. And indeed, as the twenty or more girls filed into it that bright May morning, and took their places, each at her own desk, it looked a charming room. Half a dozen pretty engravings, well-framed, and a couple of coloured maps, on rollers, adorned the walls which were painted a pale green; on the dark oak mantelpiece, which matched the door and wainscoting, stood some "Liberty" vases, which the "Decoration Committee" undertook to keep supplied with flowers. Miss Churchill (the Fourth Form governess) had a large desk on a raised platform, from which she could command a good view of all her pupils at once; behind her hung the baize-covered notice board, and at her right hand stood the black-board on its easel. The windows, of which there were three, were, much to the girls' disgust, guiltless of curtains, as such commodities as carpets and window-hangings were not allowed in the classrooms, a large Oriental rug before the tiled hearth being the only covering on the inlaid floor. But the upper parts of the casement windows were filled in with coloured glass, and on each of the deep window ledges stood a palm, or some hardy fern, in artistic pots, so that the appearance was all that could be desired.

There is just one more thing to be mentioned, and that is, that each class had its own motto, framed, and hung over the mantelpiece, where it could not fail to be seen; that of the Fourth Form being Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re (Gentle in manner, resolute in deed).

The mottoes had been Miss Buckingham's gift some few months before, when the girls, for the time being, in each class had chosen their own, by vote, and the idea was still sufficiently fresh to cause a good deal of interest.

"Now, girls," said Miss Churchill brightly, as she seated herself at her desk, "let us get to work at once. We did really nothing yesterday, what with giving out stationery, and drawing up the timetable, etc.; so this morning we must begin in earnest. Divinity is our first lesson."

She was a plain little person, dressed in a blue serge skirt, and blouse of blue and white striped flannel. Her age might have been anything under forty, but as a matter of fact, Mary Churchill had not yet passed her twenty-eighth birthday. Her soft brown hair, guiltless of fringe or wave, was simply arranged, and her broad forehead was suggestive of talent, while her lips spoke of a resolute will. But beneath the commonplace exterior, there beat a warm loving heart, which took a real vital interest in the character of each of her pupils; and it was because of her love for them that, for the most part, the girls of the Fourth Form were devoted to their teacher.

There was an opening of desks, a rustling of Bibles and notebooks, and then the work of the morning began. The period in Scripture that had been chosen for that term's study was the book of Exodus, and the girls grew quite interested as Miss Churchill graphically described the position of the Israelites in bondage.

Elsa and Amethyst, who shared a double desk between them, listened intently, for they thoroughly enjoyed the Divinity lesson always; but Olive paid scant attention. It was far too dry, she thought, to trouble about listening properly, and so her thoughts wandered, first to one thing, and then to another, until she had quite lost the thread of the lesson, and gave up trying to follow it. So she looked about her, to see what the others were thinking, and found Monica Beauchamp's eyes were fixed on her. She was too far away from her to whisper, as she would undoubtedly have done if she could, so she contented herself with smiling and making various grimaces, to show her feelings, when Miss Churchill was engaged with the blackboard.

Monica, who had felt terribly "out of it" the day before, was only too ready to make advances towards this girl who seemed to have plenty of fun in her, and was not a goody-goody like her sister; so she returned the gesticulations with interest.

For a few minutes Miss Churchill noticed nothing wrong, but presently as she looked round from the blackboard she heard a decided titter, and turning in the direction from which the sound came, she saw that one of the girls, Hetty Warner, a quiet, inoffensive child, was endeavouring to conceal her merriment by means of her handkerchief.

"What are you laughing at, Hetty?" she said, somewhat sternly.

"Nothing, Miss Churchill," muttered the girl, as best she could.

"There must have been some reason, and I insist upon knowing it," and Miss Churchill came a few steps nearer to the culprit's desk. A hasty movement between two of the girls did not escape her, and quick as thought she intercepted a small piece of paper which Olive Franklyn was frantically trying to put out of sight.

The girls held their breath as their teacher opened and smoothed out the paper, which Olive had screwed up into a ball rather than hand it up as it was. Those who had been in the form before remembered a similar occasion when Miss Churchill had confiscated a little scribbled note which was being passed along, and the punishment that had been inflicted for such an underhand trick. But that was as nothing to the present scene, for Miss Churchill held aloft, so that all could see it, the paper on which was an unmistakable caricature of herself, in the attitude she assumed when delivering a lesson.

"What a shame!" cried several of the girls simultaneously, but she stopped them with a motion of her hand.

"Who drew this?" she enquired, in a well-controlled voice; but her eyes flashed, and it was evident that she was very, very angry.

For a moment no one answered, and she put the question again, while the girls waited breathlessly; those who were innocent were eager to know who the culprit was. Only two of them looked at all guilty, and those were the Franklyns. Miss Churchill, looking round at all the faces before her, noticed the frightened look of one, and the off-hand, nonchalant air of the other. As yet she scarcely knew them apart, so she enquired of the one nearest to her, who happened to be Elsa: "Did you draw this ... thing?"

A scarcely audible "No" came from Elsa's trembling lips, and Miss Churchill was about to tell her to speak louder, when Olive stood up, and said, in a bold, defiant tone: "Elsa knows nothing about it, I did it," and then she sat down again calmly, to await her punishment.

"You will apologise to me for your rudeness before you go home, and you will copy out a hundred lines of French translation and bring it to me, to-morrow, without a fault, or else I shall show this drawing to Miss Buckingham," was all the teacher said, in very quiet tones; but for once Olive was subdued, and behaved tolerably well for the rest of the morning.

She was greeted with various remarks during the ten minutes' recreation the girls had in the playground. Some of them looked askance at her, and she felt she had made a bad beginning in the new form. But two or three of the troublesome, fun-loving ones complimented her upon the cleverness of her drawing.

"You hither expression to a T!" said Lily Howell, a somewhat vulgar-looking girl, whose slangy expression jarred upon her superiors, but whose well-filled purse made her a desirable acquaintance.

"'YOU HIT HER EXPRESSION TO A T!'"

"It wasn't bad," admitted Olive, "but I could have done it a great deal better if I had had time."

"I'm afraid you've done for yourself," said Gipsy Monroe, a dark-eyed girl, with short, curly black hair, as she and Amethyst Drury sauntered by arm in arm.

But, beyond a shrug of her shoulders, Olive took no notice, for all her interest was centred in Monica, who was just coming towards her.

"I say, wasn't it a lark?" was Monica's greeting, as she came near; "but it's hard lines that you should have all the punishment, because I was nearly as bad."

"Oh! I don't care a fig about the copying," said Olive carelessly. "It goes against the grain rather to beg her pardon, but, of course, I shall have to, or there'll be no end of a row, and I only did it for fun."

"Well, you are a jolly girl!" was Monica's admiring reply. "I wish you'd be friends with me."

"So I will," agreed Olive, with alacrity. "I haven't got a real chum, and I should think you and I would get on A1."

"I've never had a girl-friend in all my life," said Monica; "to tell the truth I always thought them rather dull and stupid. I am awfully keen on dogs; do you like them?"

And Olive assenting, a lively conversation ensued, which was abruptly terminated by the sound of the bell recalling them to lessons.

Olive's equanimity appeared to be quite restored as she entered the school door with her new-made friend, but a pitiful little look from Elsa, and a whispered, "How could you, Ollie?" made her feel most uncomfortable, and she seized an early opportunity of going up to Miss Churchill and expressing the contrition that, at the moment, she really felt, for Olive Franklyn was a good-hearted girl, although she was full of fun, and she began to realise that perhaps Miss Churchill had "feelings" the same as herself, and she knew she wouldn't have liked such a trick played upon her.

Something in the honest brown eyes which looked unflinchingly into her own touched Miss Churchill, who had somewhat recovered from the indignation which Olive's treatment of her had roused, and she spoke gently to the pupil who would doubtless prove a "handful" as time went on.

"Very well, dear, I quite forgive you; let us say no more about it. I don't think you will do such a thing again. You have evidently some talent for sketching quickly and boldly; see that you do not misuse your gift."

And Olive, glad to be at peace with her teacher again, made a mental vow that she would be an exemplary scholar from that day forward. But alas! Olive Franklyn's promises were, like the proverbial pie-crust, made to be broken!