03 The Princess of the Chalet School (3 page)

‘It isn’t quite the same thing,’ acknowledged Madge.

‘Her letters are awfully jolly, though.’

‘Very. Jo, I hate to scold, but I do wish you wouldn’t use the word “awfully” quite so much. You use it every other sentence you speak, and it’s
not
good English.’

Jo heaved a sigh. ‘It’s awfully – I mean –
fearfully
hard to remember. I do try, Madge; and I don’t really talk much slang now, do I?’

‘No; on the whole, you’re very good,’ said her sister. ‘All the same, I want you to remember to vary your adverbs a little. Everything is “awfully” with you, and it is so monotonous.’

‘All right,’ agreed Jo light-heartedly. ‘What’s wrong with Herr Sneider?’

‘He got wet in the storm two days ago, and he’s gone down with an attack of pleurisy. Everyone will have to fetch letters just now, I’m afraid, until he’s better.’

‘Hard lines on the people who live right up the valley! It means a walk then!’

‘There aren’t very many letters that way during this part of the year,’ said Madge. ‘Here we are. Run along in and ask if there are any for us.’

Jo vanished up the steps of the hotel to the room that was dignified by the name of post-office, and presently returned with a handful of letters and post-cards, which she gave to her sister. ‘See if there’s one from India,’ she coaxed.

Madge shook her head. ‘Look at that sky! It’s going to be another downpour. We must fly if we don’t want to get wet. Come along!’

She tucked the letters into the pocket of her ulster, and the two went racing home at top-speed, for neither of them had hats, and Joey was only in her blazer. They reached the door just as the first drops began to fall, and turned into the study, where Madge sent her sister to change her shoes. Joey had been exceptionally delicate up to two years ago, when they had come from England to the Tyrol to start the school which had prospered amazingly, and even no, when she was far stronger than they had ever thought possible, colds were things to be avoided in her case, thought they were no longer the bugbears they had once been. She had heaps of spirit, but she would never be robust, and Madge still suffered agonies of anxiety about her from time to time.

She hurried back, to find her sister sorting out the letters at express speed.

‘Here you are,’ she said, giving one bundle to the child. ‘Put those on the table, and then you can come back – there’s a letter from India.’

Jo vanished with the letters, which she hastily spread out on the table in the
Speiseaal
, and then returned to the study. ‘The others will get wet,’ she said, as she glanced out of the window. ‘It’s literally emptying down. What’s Dick say? Is there one from Mollie?’

‘Give me time,’ laughed Madge. ‘I haven’t opened it yet!’ She slit open the envelope as she spoke and drew out the letter.

‘There isn’t,’ said Jo, as she watched her sister unfold it. ‘Well, what’s Dick got to say?’

Madge glanced down the page of straggling writing which had never lost its school-boyish characteristics.

Then she gave vent to an exclamation.

‘Oh, what
is
it?’ demanded Jo, who was nearly dancing with impatience. ‘
Madge!
They aren’t coming home, are they?’

‘He doesn’t say so,’ replied Madge, who was pink with excitement. ‘It’s – Joey, what do you think you are?’

‘A genius,’ replied Joey promptly.

‘Idiot! I didn’t mean that,’ laughed her sister. ‘No! Listen – and don’t burst with excitement – you are an –

aunt
!’

‘
What?
‘ Jo clutched her head.

‘Listen!’ And Madge read out, ‘ “Dear Kids, – The biggest joke in creation! You’ll never believe it, Mollie and I are still hooting over it. What do you think has happened? We’ve got twins! It’s true! Boy and girl, and they beat the howling monkeys into fits. Imagine us with twins! We can’t believe it ourselves, and it’s the joke of the season. One’s dark like Moll, and the other’s fair like me. Mollie is awfully happy, and I don’t know whether I’m standing on my head or my heels. We are going to call them Margaret Josephine and Richard Geoffrey – to be known as Peggy and Rix.” ‘

‘Well!’ gasped Jo, when her sister had got so far. ‘Isn’t it just exactly like Dick and Mollie? Twins!’

‘It’s extraordinary!’ agreed Madge. ‘They’re calling the girl after us both. How nice of them!’

‘She’ll be another pupil for the Chalet School,’ said Jo, spinning round on her toes like a dancing dervish.

‘Hurrah! We are growing aren’t we?’

Madge broke into a peal of laughter. ‘Oh, Joey Bettany; you will be the death of me! Fancy talking of school for a baby not two months old. Why, it will be years and years before she is old enough for that.’

‘The Robin was only six,’ said Joey.

‘There were special reasons for that,’ replied Madge quickly, and Joey said no more. The Robin, the school baby, had come to them a year ago, when her mother had died in decline, and her father, an English officer, had been obliged to leaver her to go on business to Leningrad, once Petrograd. She had settled down very happily among them, and had soon adopted her headmistress as an aunt; but neither of the Bettany girls could forget the tragedy which had touched her baby life, so Joey’s remark had scarcely been a happy one.

Madge turned the subject by pickup her other letters and examining them. A sudden sound of merry voices and a rush of feet aroused her from the brown study into which she had fallen. ‘There are the girls!’ she exclaimed. ‘Joey, run and tell Miss Carthew that I want them all to change at once – we don’t want any more colds this term.’

Joey grimaced expressively as she fled to the side door where the jolly crew were entering the house. The last part of her sister’s speech had referred to herself and a bad cold she had caught on the previous Sunday.

If it hadn’t been for the cold, she would have gone with the others and have been arriving with them.

She gave the message to the mistress, who promptly sent the girls upstairs to change, and then turned into the study to report before she went across to her own quarters in the junior house, known as Le Petit Chalet, for the same purpose. As she left the room she met Jo, who was wandering back to her sister. The Bettanys were devoted to each other, and one of Jo’s greatest grievances was that she could not see much of her sister during term time. ‘Miss Bettany was just going to send for you, Joey,’ she said with a smile. ‘She seems to want you rather specially.’

‘Thank you, Miss Carthew,’ said Joey. She waited for the mistress to pass, and then went in, to find her sister sitting with a letter before her, a startled look on her delicate face.

‘What on earth is the matter?’ demanded Jo, wildely curious at once.

Miss Bettany turned to her. ‘ Joey, I want you! Oh dear!’ she went on, rather incoherently; ‘how everything does seem to happen at once!’

‘What’s happened now?’ queried Jo.

The answer was sufficiently startling. ‘I am asked to take a princess as a pupil for next term.’

‘What!’ Jo was too much surprised for politeness. ‘A
princess
? What princess? An English princess? But there isn’t one!’

‘No; she’s not English. Her father is the Crown Prince of Belsornia.’

‘Belsornia?’ Jo frowned fiercely as she tried to remember where Belsornia was.

‘Yes; it is one of the smaller Balkan States, not far from the Italian border,’ replied her sister. ‘This child –

Princess Elisaveta – is the only child of the Crown Prince. She has been ill, it seems, and the doctor recommends school for her. This man – his secretary, I suppose, and an Englishman evidently – has written asking for a prospectus, as the doctor advises sending her to us, Joey.’ She swung round to her young sister.

‘What do you think? Can we manage with a princess in the school?’

‘Rather! Why ever not?’ demanded Joey, wide-eyed. ‘I should think it would be a jolly good thing for the school. Think how swish it will look in the pros. after this! You could get the Prince to let you use his name for that list of thingamajig people at the back.’

‘Do be sensible, Joey,’ said Madge irritably, ‘I want your advice, not silly remarks. How will the others take it?’

‘Depends on what country they belong to, doesn’t it? Oh, take her, Madge. I’ll see that she isn’t sat on too much. But, I say! Why do you want
my
opinion? You aren’t in the habit of asking my advice.’

‘I know.’ Miss Bettany looked serious. ‘The fact of the matter, Joey, is that though I shouldn’t dream of asking you about the other girls as a general rule, yet in this case I must. I can’t even consider the idea if it is going to upset the others, and some of them have a most exaggerated idea of royalty.’

‘Ask them to let her come as an ordinary girl, then,’ suggested Joey. ‘If she just seems to be what Wanda calls
Hochgeboren
, they won’t think half so much of it. We’ve got two or three like that now, so they’re getting more used to it.’

There was a good deal of sense in what she said. If some of the girls knew that the newcomer was a princess, there was no doubt that it would cause a good deal of trouble, for many of the girls came from Austrian families which were strong Imperialists; and these girls had, as the young headmistress had said, an almost exaggerated idea of rank. On the other hand, there were several children at the Chalet School who came from the lesser nobility, and another such girl would make no difference to them.

‘I’ll think over what you say,’ said Miss Bettany slowly. ‘In the meantime, say nothing about it. You will have heaps to tell the others, anyway, if you tell them about the twins. Remember, Joey. You must say
nothing
to anyone.’

‘Guide honour,’ replied Jo readily. ‘What did you say her name was?’

‘Elisaveta. It is a Rumanian form of Elizabeth. I can’t decide anything about it yet, Joey. She may never come. All the same -‘

‘All the same, it’s an honour for the Chalet School,’ added Jo, as she turned to go and wash her hands and tidy her hair before
Mittagessen
.

Madge concurred with this opinion. ‘Yes; it
is
an honour for us. Run along, now, Joey Baba.’

Joey trotted off, leaving her elder sister divided between pride and indecision. She wasn’t sure just what to do. But it was an honour.

Matron!

‘Nineteen – twenty – twenty-one – twenty-two! All the face-towels are correct, Matron. What shall I do next?’

Matron, a little thin woman, with a face that Joey Bettany had declared to be exactly like a weasel’s, finished what she was doing, and then looked round at the speaker. ‘Have you finished those, Jo? Then take yourself off. I want no idle school-girls bothering round me when I am busy. And take that child with you!

She’s nothing but a pest and a torment!’ She turned and picked up the towels, marching off, leaving behind her a Joey literally speechless with indignation.

At the end of last term, the matron Miss Bettany had engaged a year before had left to go home and keep house for a brother who had lost his wife, and was left with three boys and a tiny girl. Miss Bettany had had too much to do to go to England, and had engaged her new matron through an agency. Miss Webb had arrived two days before, and already the young Head was ruefully telling herself that she had mad a mistake
this
time. The new-comer was alittle, bustling woman, with a loud and unpleasant voice, a domineering manner, and an irritable temper. To the family four – Madge, Joey, the Robin, and Juliet Carrick, the headmistress’s ward – Miss Webb was everything she ought not to be.

Matron ‘could not do’ with girls helping with the various duties. The three girls had always given a hand in the somewhat strenuous period of getting ready for the new term, and they were simply flabbergasted when one offer of assistance after another was refused, or else accepted so curtly as to take all the joy of helping out of everything they did. However, Joey and Juliet were Guides, and the Robin was a Brownie, so they did their level best to smile. The Robin was rather pathetic about it, however. ‘Zoë, I aren’t a nuisance?’ she said piteously, when she had had some tablets of soap taken out of her hands with the remark, ‘Oh, go away and play outside, you little nuisance, you!’

Jo’s reply was not quite judicious. ‘Of course you’re not, darling! She’s a cross old cat, and you’re ever so much of a help!’

Unfortunately for her, her sister heard hear, and read her a lecture on backing up authority to the juniors.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve let you down, Madge,’ said the culprit; ‘but she
is
cross, and it was horrid of her to call the Robin a nuisance when she isn’t. She was only helping, just as we always do.’

‘I cannot help that, Joey,’ said her sister gravely. ‘You had no right to call her names to the baby. You know how the Robin looks up to you and copies you in every way, and it was exceedingly naughty of you. If she tells the others, they will instantly take to all sorts of unpleasant names for Matron, and it will only make things more difficult.’

‘You
do
think she will give us an unpleasant term, then,’ said Jo shrewdly. ‘I am a beast, Madge! I didn’t think of that. I won’t call her names to the Robin anymore. But it was awfully mean of her to say such things to our baby.’

Madge Bettany looked at her younger sister thoughtfully. In many ways Jo had been treated like a grown-up, and she was wondering whether it would be judicious to tell her that there was little likelihood of Matron’s staying after the one term. She decided that it would be better to say nothing; so, merely telling the little girl that she must learn to control her tongue, sent her out to the little shop at the Post Hotel to get some picture post-cards that were wanted, and let the subject drop. All the same, she contrived to impress on Matron that the girls were accustomed to helping in the house out of term-time, and requested her not to interfere with them if she or Mademoiselle, or Miss Carthew, who had spent the holidays with them, should use the children in any way.

Matron heard her through to the end. Then she shrugged her shoulders. ‘Very well, Miss Bettany. Of course, you are mistress here, and it must be as you wish. All the same, I am not accustomed to having girls messing about when I am busy, and I don’t like it. Also, I should prefer that they should not come into my province to carry tales about me.’