ON her honourable promotion the following Christmas — she mounted two forms this time — Laura was a thin, middle-sized girl of thirteen, who still did not look her age. The curls had vanished. In their place hung a long, dark plait, which she bound by choice with a red ribbon.
Tilly was the only one of her intimates who skipped a class with her; hence she was thrown more exclusively than before on Tilly’s companionship; for it was a melancholy fact: if you were not in the same class as the girl who was your friend, your interests and hers were soon fatally sundered. On their former companions, Tilly and Laura, from their new perch, could not but look down: the two had masters now for all subjects; Euclid loomed large; Latin was no longer bounded by the First Principia; and they fussed considerably, in the others’ hearing, over the difficulties of the little blue books that began: GALLIA EST OMNIS DIVISA IN PARTES TRES.
In the beginning, they held very close together; for their new fellows were inclined to stand on their dignity with the pair of interlopers from Class Two. They were all older than Tilly and Laura, and thought themselves wiser: here were girls of sixteen and seventeen years of age, some of whom would progress no farther along the high-road of education. As for the boarders who sat in this form, they made up a jealous little clique, and it was some time before the younger couple could discover the secret bond.
Then, one morning, the two were sitting with a few others on the verandah bench, looking over their lessons for the day. Mrs. Gurley had snatched a moment’s rest there, on her way to the secretary’s office, and as long as she allowed her withering eye to play upon things and people, the girls conned their pages with a great show of industry. But no sooner had she sailed away than Kate Horner leant forward and called to Maria Morell, who was at the other end of the seat: “I say, Maria, Genesis LI, 32.”— She held an open Bible in her hand.
Maria Morell frowned caution. “Dash it, Kate, mind those kids!”
“Oh, they won’t savvy.”
But Laura’s eyes were saucers of curiosity, for Tilly, who kept her long lashes lowered, had given her a furious nudge. With a wink and a beck to each other, the bigger girls got up and went away.
“I say, what did you poke me so hard for?” inquired Laura as she and Tilly followed in their wake, at the clanging of the public prayer-bell.
“You soft, didn’t you hear what she said?”
“Of course I did”— and Laura repeated the reference.
“Let’s look it up then.” Under cover of the prayer Tilly sought it out, and together they bent their heads over it.
On this occasion, Tilly was more knowing than Laura; but on this alone; for when Laura once grasped what they were driving at, she was as nimble-witted as any.
Only a day or two later it was she who, in face of Kate and Maria, invited Tilly to turn up chapter and verse.
Both the elder girls burst out laughing.
“By dad!” cried Kate Horner, and smacked her thigh. “This kid knows a thing or two.”
“You bet! I told you she wasn’t born yesterday.”— And Maria laid her arm round Laura’s shoulders.
Thus was Laura encouraged, put on her mettle; and soon there was no more audacious Bible-reader in the class than she.
The girls were thrown thus upon the Book of Books for their contraband knowledge, since it was the only frankly outspoken piece of literature allowed within the College walls: the classics studied were rigidly expurgated; the school library was kept so dull that no one over the age of ten much cared to borrow a volume from it. And, by fair means or unfair, it was necessary to obtain information on matters of sex; for girls most of whom were well across the threshold of womanhood the subject had an invincible fascination.
Such knowledge as they possessed was a strange jumble, picked up at random: in one direction they were well primed; in another, supremely ignorant. Thus, though they received lectures on wha............