06 (12 page)
Authors: Last Term at Malory Towers
'I'm finished,' she announced to Amanda. 'It's impossible to work with you. I shan't turn up for this sort of thing any more. It's not worth my while. So long!'
And under the admiring eyes of the watching girls, June strolled off the court, whistling softly.
Amanda called to her. 'Don't be a fool, June. Come back at once.'
June took no notice. She whistled a little more loudly, and began throwing her racket up into the air and catching it deftly as it came down. She did a few imaginary strokes with it, and then began to fool. The watching girls laughed.
Amanda strode after June. 'June! I told you to come back. If you don't, I'll see you're not chosen for even the third team.'
'Don't want to be!' said June, throwing her racket up into the air again and catching it. 'You go and find some other second-former to bawl at and chivy round. Don't waste that nice kind nature of yours, Amanda.'
And this time she really did go off, having given Amanda a look of such scorn and dislike that Amanda was shocked. The little group of spectators were scared now. They dispersed, whispering. What a bit of news to spread round the school. What a row. And wasn't June MARVELLOUS! Honestly!' whispered the first- and second-formers. 'Honestly, she doesn't care lor anyone, not even Amanda!'
Amanda told Sally, Darrell and Moira the news
herself. 'June Hew into a temper and the coaching is off/ she announced. 'I'm not giving up any more of my time io that ungrateful little beast. I'm sorry I gave her any now. But she would have been well worth it.'
'Oh, what a pity!' said Sally. 'We had arranged to watch June swimming tomorrow, and playing tennis the next day, to see il she could go into the second team, as sou suggested. She's already good enough for the third, ·^he could have been in all the matches!'
'Well, she can't be/ said Amanda, and then she spoke spitefully. 'She's gone off her game this week. She doesn't deserve to be in the third team either.'
Alicia spoke to June about it. 'What happened?' she said. 'Couldn't you have stuck it for a bit longer? We >vere going to come and watch you swimming and ■playing tennis this week - meaning to put you into the second teams, so that vou could play in the matches.'
'I'm not going to be chivied about by anyone/ said lune. 'Least of all by Amanda. Not even for the sake of shining in the second teams with the fourth- and fifth - !ormers!'
'But, June - aren't you rather cutting off your nose to spite your face?' asked Alicia. 'Don't you want to play in ;he matches? They're important, you know. We do want id win them this year. We lost the tennis shield last year, and were only second in the swimming matches.'
June hesitated. She did want to play in the matches. ^.Ite would have liked to bring honour and glory to the teams - and yes, to Malory Towers too. June was really beginning at times to see that one should play for one's Mde and not always for oneself.
'Well,' she said at last. 'I'll be honest with you, Alicia. H's, I was looking forward to playing in the matches, and : was pretty certain I'd be chosen. But Amanda is a slave- driver and nothing else - she made me slave and she got w>d results - but she's so absolutely inhuman. I couldn't
slick her one moment more, even it it meant giving up the matches.'
'Although you knew you might help the school to get hack the tennis shield and win the swimming?' said Alicia.
There was a pause. 'I'm sorry about that,' said June, with an effort. 'I didn't think enough about that side of the question, f'm afraid. But look, Alicia - it's done now, and I'm not going back on my word. I'm fed up to the teeth with tennis and swimming. I don't want to touch a racket again this term, and if f go into the pool, I shall just fool about.'
'You'll fool about all your life, I expect,' said Alicia, getting up. 'All you think about is yourself and your own feelings. I'm sorry about it, June. You're my cousin, and I'd like to have cheered myself hoarse for once, watching you do something fine - like Darrell cheers Felicity.'
She walked off and left June feeling rather small and uncomfortable. But nothing, nothing, nothing would make June go to Amanda again. Nothing in this world. June gritted her white even teeth and swung an imaginary racket into the air and caught it. Finish! No more coaching!
Nora came running up. 'Was that Alicia? You didn't tell her we were going to play the magnet trick on Mam'zelle Dupont today, did you?'
'Don't be an ass,' said June, scornfully. 'Do you suppose I'd split after we said we wouldn't say a word?'
'Oh. Well, you seemed to be having such a confab,' said Nora, 't came to ask if I could have the magnet. I've been waiting ages to ask you. Was Alicia rowing you?'
'No,' said June, shortly. 'Don't be so jolly inquisitive, and mind your own business. Here's the magnet.'
Nora took it, beaming. She felt proud of being chosen by the second-formers to play the trick up in the grand sixth form. She had planned everything very carefully, with Felicity's help.
'! popped into the sixth lonn and took one ol the
too
exercise books off the desk/ Felicity had told Nora. 'All vou've got to do is to walk into the room, apologize, and ask Mam'zelle if the book belongs to a sixth-former. You can do the trick whilst she's examining it.'
It sounded easy. Nora was thrilled when the time i.ame that afternoon. The second-formers were free, but the upper forms were busy with work. Nora sped up to the sixth form with the book.
She heard the drone of someone reading aloud in French as she got there. She knocked at the door. Mam'zelle's voice came at once. 'EntrezV
Nora went in with the book. 'Excuse me, Mam'zelle,' she said, holding out the book. 'But does this belong to one of the sixth-formers?'
Mam'zelle took the book and looked at it. 'Ah - it is Mary-Lou's missing book,' she said. Behind her Nora was holding the powerful little magnet two inches away from Mam'zelle's neat little bun of hair.
Alicia's sharp eyes caught her action and she stared, hardly believing her eyes. All Mam'zelle's hair-pins at once attached themselves to the magnet. Nora withdrew it hastily, said 'Thank you, Mam'zelle' and shot out of the room before she burst into laughter. Alicia felt sure she could hear the little monkey snorting in the (.orridor as she fled back lo the second-lormers.
Mam'zelle seemed to have felt something. She usually wore more pins in her hair than Mam'zelle Rougier, and probably she had felt them all easing their way out! She put up her hand - and immediately her bun uncoiled itself and flapped down her hack!
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aBpfc*:^
'TiensV said Mam'zelle, surprised. The girls all looked up. Alicia felt like a first-former again, longing to gulp with laughter. Mam'zelle patted her hand over her head to find her hair-pins. She could find none.
'Que c'est drole, gal' said Mam'zelle. 'How strange it is!'
She stood up and looked on the floor, wondering if, for some extraordinary reason, her pins had all fallen down
tot
there. No, they hadn't. Mam'zelle grovelled on hands and knees and looked under her desk to make certain.
The girls began to laugh. Alicia had quickly enlightened them as to what had happened. The sight of poor Mam'zelle groping about on the lloor for hair-pins that were not there, her hair hanging over one shoulder, was too much even for the staid sixth-formers.
Mam'zelle stood up, looking disturbed. She continued her frenzied hunt for the missing pins. She thought possibly they might have fallen down her neck. She stood and wriggled, hoping that some would fall out. She groped round her collar, her face wearing a most bewildered expression.
She saw the girls laughing. 'You are bad wicked girls!' she said. 'Who has taken my hair-pins? They are gone. Ah, this is a strange and puzzling thing.'
'Most piggv-hoo-leeearrrr,' said Suzanne's voice.
'But nobody could have taken your pins, Mam'zelle,' said Darrell. 'Why, not one of us has come up to your desk this afternoon.'
'Qa, c'cst vrai,' said Mam'zelle, and she looked alarmed. 'That is true. This is not a treek, then. My pins have vanished themselves from my hair. Girls, girls, can you see them anywhere?'
This was the signal for a frantic hunt in every ridiculous nook and cranny. Darrell was laughing help¬lessly, unable to keep order. For three or four minutes the sixth-formers really might have been back in the second form. Irene produced several explosions, and even the dour Amanda went off into fits of laughter.
'Girls, girls! Please!' Mam'zelle besought them. 'Miss Williams is next door. What will she think?'
Miss Williams thought quite a lot. She wondered what in the world was happening in the usually quiet sixth form. Mam'zelle got up. '1 go to make my bun again,' she said, and disappeared in a dignified but very hurried manner.
awl Deirdre
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The girls laughed and laughed. 'It was that little monkey ol a Nora,' said Alicia, again. T saw the magnet in her hand. The cheek of ii - a second-former coming right up into our room.'
'Terribly funny, though,' said Clarissa, wiping her :ears away. 'I haven't laughed so much for terms. I wish \ora would do it again, with me lookingV
'Poor Mam'zelle - she was absolutely bewildered,' ·aid Mary-Lou.
'Ah t^a - e'est tres trcs piggy-hoo-leeeearr,' said Suzanne, enjoying the joke thoroughly. 'Vairy, vairy, piggy-hoo- leeearrrrrr. Most scrumpleeeeecious!'
Mam'zelle had shot into the little workroom she shared with Miss Potts, the first-form mistress. Miss Potts was mildly surprised to see Mam'zelle appear so suddenly with her hair down her back - not more than mildly though, because in her years with Mam'zelle Miss Potts had become used to various 'piggy-hoo-leeeearrr' behaviour at times from Mam'zelle.
'Miss Potts! All my pins have went!' said Mam'zelle, her grammar going too.
'Pins? What pins?' said Miss Potts. 'You don't mean \our hair-pins, do you? How could they go?'
'That f do not know,' said Mam'zelle, staring at Miss Potts with such tragic eyes that Miss Potts wanted to laugh. 'One moment my bun, he is there on top - the next lie is all undone. And when I look for his pins, they ■ 're gone.'
This sounded like a trick to Miss Potts, and she- said so.
'No, no, Miss Potts,' asserted Mam'zelle. 'Not one girl left her place to come to me this afternoon, not one.'
'Oh well,' said Miss Potts, dismissing the matter as one of the many unaccountable things that so often seemed to happen to Mam'zelle, '1 expect you didn't put enough pins in, so your bun just came down.'
Mam'zelle found some pins and pinned her bun up so firmly that it really looked very peculiar. But she wasn't taking any risks this time! She went back to the class¬room, with her dignity restored.
Nora recounted what she had done, when she got back to the second-formers. They laughed, 'f bet the sixth got a laugh when Mam'zelle's bun descended!' said June. 'It's a pity you couldn't stay and see.'
The first sixth-former they saw was the French girl, Suzanne. She came hurrying up to them, smiling.
'Ah, you bad Nora!' she cried, and went off into a stream of excited French. Susan, who was good at French, translated swiftly, and the second-formers laughed in delight at the vivid description of Mam'zelle's astonish¬ment and dismay.
'Clarissa said she wished you would do it again, when she was looking,' said Suzanne, in French. 'We would like to see it done. Me also, 1 would like it very much. We are too big and old and prudent to do tricks - but we do not mind watching youV
This was very naughty of Suzanne. No sixth-former would be silly enough to encourage the younger ones to come and play tricks in their room as much as they liked - which was what Suzanne was telling them to do! But Suzanne was French. She hadn't quite the same ideas of responsibility that the British girls had.
She was often bored with lessons, and longed for 'peefle' of some kind. If the second-formers would
provide some, that would be 'Maguifiijucl SuperbeV
'Right,' said June at once. 'If that's what you want, it shall be done. I'll think up a little something for the entertainment of the sixth.'
June was bored now that she had practically given up playing games or swimming properly. She was in the mood for wickedness and mischief of some kind - and what better than this? She set her sharp brains to work at once.
Jo was aggrieved at not having been told that the hair-pin trick was to be played by Nora in the sixth form. You might have told me,' she said. 'You always leave me out.'
'You tell everything to that first-form baby - what's her name? - Deirdre,' said June. 'That's why we don't let vou into our secrets.'
i've a good mind to share my parcel that came today with the first form, instead of with you,' said Jo.
'Do,' said June. 'Probably you can buy their liking and their friendship with food. Unfortunately you can't buy ours. A pity - but there it is!'
Jo was miserable. She was beginning to understand that heaps of money and sweets and food didn't in the least impress the girls. But perhaps if she gave a most wonderful midnight feast on her birthday, and asked them all to it and was very modest and friendly herself, they might think she was not too bad after all?
But how could she buy a grand feast without money? She brooded over the money that Matron had of hers. She still hadn't claimed it.
'And if I do, she won't give il to me,' Jo wailed to Deirdre for the twentieth time. 'I must screw up my courage, snoop into her room, and see if I can spot where she's put my money.'
A most unexpected opportunity suddenly came. Matron sent a message by Susan to say she wanted Jo.
.Jo went pale. 'What for?' she asked.
'Don't know,' said Susan. 'Probably you've mended your red gloves wiih blue wool again. You must think Matron's colour blind when you keep doing things like that!'
Jo went oil dolefully. She left absolutely certain that Matron was going to ask her il the twenty-five pounds was hers. She felt it in her bones!
She lound the door of Matron's room open, and went in. There was nobody there. From far down the corridor she could hear yells. Somebody must have fallen down and hurt themselves and Matron had rushed off to give first aid. Jo took a quick look round the familiar room. Ugh, the bottles of medicine!