A Fourth Form Friendship (15 page)

Aldred did not say that she considered her family would not be quite so utterly inconsolable at her absence. She only kissed the sweet, pink cheek that was pressed against hers, and thought how blissful it was to occupy so large a place in Mabel's heart, and to find such a warm welcome awaiting her at Birkwood.

"There's nobody like you!" went on her adorer. "I stayed for a few days at Archdeacon Vernon's, at the New Year. His daughter is just my age, and Mother wanted me so much to meet her, for she said she was such an extremely nice girl. But she was absolutely nothing to you, dearest! I didn't feel I could ever be very fond of her; she's not so original, nor so jolly. No! I told Mother at once you were the only girl I had ever really cared for, and I couldn't do with another bosom friend."

Though Mabel was the chief attraction for her at Birkwood, Aldred was nevertheless glad to meet the rest of the Form, and to be in the midst of the lively school life again.

When the unpacking had been successfully accomplished, and supper was over, all the girls collected in a close group round the classroom fire, to compare notes about the holidays.

"I've been to Switzerland," said Ursula. "We went to Les Avants for the winter sports. It was simply glorious! I learnt to skate and to ski. I felt most fearfully wobbly at first, but it was lovely when one got into it; so was the tobogganing--one went skimming down slopes at a tremendous pace. The ice was all illuminated at night, and we had fancy dress carnivals; it was such fun!"

"Lucky you," said Phoebe, "to be in a place where there was real frost and snow! We've been grumbling at the wet weather continually. I wonder how long it is since we had an old-fashioned Christmas--the kind of thing one reads about in Dickens, I mean, when Mr. Pickwick went skating."

"People say 'a green Christmas makes a fat churchyard'."

"Well, I'm sure one gets more bad colds with pottering about in the rain than one would with skating."

"I believe it's freezing now. I shouldn't be at all astonished if we had quite a spell of hard weather."

"'As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens'," quoted Myfanwy, who was fond of proverbs.

"I wish it would! We've never had any deep snow, or really severe frost, since I came to the Grange."

Phoebe's prophecy concerning hard weather was literally fulfilled that very night. The thermometer descended with a run, and by next morning great, feathery flakes were falling silently, and turning the landscape into a white world. The girls were very excited, and watched anxiously, hoping that the snow would continue; and they rejoiced as each bush and shrub in the garden became more and more smothered.

"The outlines of the walks are quite lost," said Mabel exultingly, "and the tennis lawn looks like a huge iced plum cake."

"It's not much use for Brown to try to sweep a path, because it gets covered up directly."

"Yes, but he has to go and feed the hens, you see. I wonder if Miss Drummond will venture out to look at her Partridge Wyandottes? She's never missed going to them at four o'clock yet."

"I wish she'd let us go with her; I should love to tramp over the snow!"

"So should I; but she says we must none of us go farther than the shed. Brown has swept the courtyard at the back. If it's fine to-morrow, we'll have some fun."

After falling steadily for twenty-four hours, the snow stopped, and gave place to bright sunshine. Miss Drummond ordered dinner to be earlier than usual, and by half-past one the whole school was out upon the downs.

It was an ideal winter's day. The sky was clear, with the cold, pale blue of January, so different from the deep, warm azure of July. The sun, low down on the horizon, though it was still near its meridian, sent long, slanting rays over the white waste, catching the tops of the hills and making them shine and sparkle like diamonds. Each bush and tree was coated with rime, and edged with a tracery of delicate lacework. The snow, crisp and hard, crunched under the girls' feet as they walked, and here and there they could mark the track of a rabbit or a bird that had hurried through the cold, to shelter under the protection of some gorse-bush.

"It's just like fairyland! It might be part of the Frost King's Palace!" said Aldred. "I'm sure the Snow Queen has been here. I feel as if we ought to find Gerda hunting for little Kay--I expect she's just behind that bush, riding the Robber Maiden's reindeer, with her hands in the big muff. The Lapland woman and the Finland woman can't be far off."

"What do you mean?" asked Lorna Hallam.

"You benighted girl! have you never read Hans Andersen?"

"I believe I did, ages ago, but I've forgotten it all."

"So much the worse for you, then!"

"Why, one can't bother to remember silly fairy tales!"

"Hans Andersen is not silly; he's a classic."

"Quite right!" said Miss Drummond, who happened to overhear. "I consider the dear old Dane was one of the truest poets that ever lived. His writing has a purity of style that sets it on a very high pinnacle in literature, and his thoughts are most exquisite. No one who has really appreciated his lovely, tender stories can ever be quite vulgar and commonplace. He seems to take all the simple, everyday things, and wave his magic wand over them and turn them into enchantment."

"But the tales aren't true, Miss Drummond!" objected Lorna. "One can't see fairies."

"There is a meaning under it all, and the gist of the whole is, that if we persistently look at the beautiful side of everything, we are making our own fairyland, and seeing what is denied to those who dwell only on the prosaic and ordinary. It's a great quality to have, and one that brings a supreme enjoyment in life. If you're wise you'll cultivate it while you are young, and then you need never really grow old, because, although your hair may turn grey, you'll still keep the very principle of youth in your heart. Very few people can realize their ideals, so it is something to be able to idealize our real."

The place that Miss Drummond had chosen as the destination of their walk was a steep slope about a mile from the school. Here it was quite possible to make a good toboggan track, for there was a flat space in front and an easy way to climb up at the back. Half a dozen tea-trays had been requisitioned from the kitchen, to act as sleds.

"I wish we had a bob-sleigh!" said Ursula Bramley, who, after her experience in Switzerland, felt herself an authority on winter sports. "It's the hugest fun you can imagine, only you need two very good people to steer and act brake. Ours at Les Avants held a crew of six. My eldest brother used to take us down, and he only upset us once."

"I think little sleighs are better; they're not nearly so dangerous," said Agnes Maxwell. "A cousin of mine was fearfully hurt last winter at Samaden, in a bob-sleigh race; he fell on his head, and had concussion of the brain."

"Well, of course, you have to chance that. It needs pluck and skill if you're going in for racing; you mustn't be afraid for yourself--you could fall off a tea-tray, as far as that goes," said Phoebe.

"You couldn't do yourself much damage if you did," laughed Ursula; "the snow's not hard enough. Now, we shall have to go down the slope a good many times before we make a decent track of it."

"I wish we had more tea-trays! We shan't get very many turns each, I'm afraid," said Myfanwy.

Six girls from the Sixth Form had been chosen to start, and made a trial trip amid much cheering and excitement.

"It's perfectly lovely--just like flying!" they declared, as the improvised sleds drew up on the level ground at the bottom.

"Miss Drummond, won't you try?"

"Perhaps I may, when the thing is well started, but for the present I would rather stand and watch. It certainly looks very tempting, and worth an effort. Mademoiselle, shall you venture?"

"Nevaire!" shuddered poor Mademoiselle, who considered a walk in the snow quite a sufficient adventure. "I should have fear to place myself on a thing so insecure, and to let myself glide thus! Oh, no, it would be an act of folly! We have no snows in Provence, and I have been brought up to love other pleasures."

"You shall have the next turn if you like, Mademoiselle," said Esther Vaudrey, one of the pioneers. "It's really not difficult at all, if you know how to tuck up your feet."

"It makes one warm, at any rate," said Freda. "Who's going next? We'd better take it in Forms."

The sport proved extremely popular, and for the next hour relays of girls were constantly going down the slope; the track was soon as smooth as a slide, and really made a very good course, quite enough to satisfy everyone except Ursula.

"It's nothing to Les Avants! You should have seen that!" she kept assuring the others.

"Then I wish you would go back to Les Avants!" exclaimed Phoebe. "What's the good of belittling this all the time, and trying to make out it's so tame? I call it bad taste! If you can't enjoy it, we can, at any rate."

"I'd enjoy it if I had my own little sled, instead of a tea-tray."

"Nobody wants you to go on a tea-tray," said Agnes. "You can miss your turn if you like--I'll take it instead."

That, however, Ursula was not ready to allow. She appreciated the tobogganing as much as anyone, though she liked the triumph of referring to her Swiss achievements.

The fun waxed fast and furious. The girls were keen on racing, and would start six together from the top, at a given signal; then there would be a lightning descent down the slippery slide, generally ending in a roll in the snow at the bottom, from which they would spring up, powdered from head to foot, but laughing and quite unhurt.

Miss Drummond and most of the teachers took an occasional turn, but Mademoiselle remained firm in her refusal to venture into what she considered such imminent danger to life and limb.

"It is the sport of men!" she declared. "In my country, such things are not for
les jeunes filles
. They do not go out to slide in the snow."

"But don't you think our girls look much brighter and healthier, with this brisk exercise, than if we had kept them cooped up in the schoolrooms all this beautiful afternoon?" asked Miss Drummond.

"Perhaps--yes, that I will allow. But custom is strong upon us, and to me, I find it still strange to see what is permitted to your English
Mees
."

"I'm glad we are English," whispered Aldred to Mabel. "French girls must have a stupid time, if they're never allowed to toboggan, or to go in the snow. If I were sent to a French school I'd run away, and come back to Birkwood!"

"There's no place like the Grange," agreed Mabel, brushing the snow vigorously from her dress. "If there's any jolly thing that it's possible to do Miss Drummond thinks of it."

Miss Drummond certainly justified the character that Mabel gave her, for when the girls, very warm and rosy after their exertions, returned to the school at four o'clock, they found a surprise waiting for them. Brown, the gardener, with the aid of two or three labourers who had been called in to help him, had shovelled away the whole of the snow on the asphalt tennis court, and piled it as a wall all round. He had then brought the hose, and was now busy flooding the court to a depth of three or four inches.

"It ought to freeze hard to-night," said Miss Drummond, "and by to-morrow morning there should be a splendid surface. Those girls who have brought skates to school will be in luck, and I shall be able to arrange for those who have not. I have written to Wilson's, the ironmonger at Chetbourne, to send us out a parcel of several dozen to choose from."

The prospect of a skating rink in the garden was hailed with joy, and the anxiety of the school was great lest the frost should give way, and frustrate their very delightful plans. The amusements of the cold spell so outweighed the discomforts that nobody (except poor Mademoiselle) grumbled at nipped fingers or chilly toes. Even Agnes Maxwell, who was a martyr to chilblains, suffered heroically, and did not wish for a thaw.

"It's quite the most severe winter I can remember," said Mabel, breaking the ice in her bedroom jug next morning. "I believe even my bottle of hair wash is frozen, and the glycerine cream is perfectly stiff; I shall have to melt it on the radiator before I can put any on my hands. Look at the window! It's covered with beautiful frost patterns."

"All the better for skating," said Aldred, who was trying to thaw her toothbrush. "I'm glad there has been no more snow to spoil our ice. I wish Miss Drummond would let us go out at once, after breakfast, instead of doing lessons."

Miss Drummond's good nature, however, did not extend to such a pitch of leniency as that, and the morning classes went on just as usual. About dinner-time, a young man arrived from Chetbourne with a large parcel of skates, and Aldred, who did not possess any of her own, was able to expend some of her pocket-money on a neat little pair.

"You've made a lovely choice!" said Mabel. "Mine are an old pair of my brother's that just fit me now; they're rather shabby, but they happen to be particularly good steel, and always 'bite' very well. There's the greatest difference in skates, in that respect."

"You'll have to help me," said Aldred, "for I've never even tried before, and I'm sure I shall be extremely stupid and clumsy."

"It will be the lame supporting the halt, then," laughed Mabel, "for I'm certainly not a crack skater myself."

By two o'clock the whole school was disporting itself on the ice. Some girls (Ursula Bramley, in especial) seemed quite at home there, and cut figures of eight with aggravating ease while their less fortunate comrades strove to balance themselves with outstretched arms, or sat down suddenly on the slippery surface.

"I'd no idea one could feel so absolutely weak in the knees!" declared Aldred, subsiding on to the snowy bank after a first struggle round the rink. "I'm like a baby learning to walk. I wonder if I shall ever manage to strike out properly? Look at Ursula--she's doing the 'Dutch roll'. I'm green with envy!"

"There's nothing like practice," said Mabel, getting up and making a gallant effort to accomplish the "outside edge", but speedily coming to grief over it. "Give me a winter in Norway, and I'd undertake to waltz on the ice; but what can one expect on the first day?"