Turquoise and Ruby. Meade L. T.

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      Up jumped Penelope out of bed. A minute later she had plunged her head and face into a cold bath, and in an incredibly short space of time she had run downstairs and joined her companions just as they were trooping into the centre hall for prayers.

      This hall was a great feature of Hazlitt Chase. It was quite one of the oldest parts of the house. The girls’ dormitories were quite neat and fresh with every modern convenience, but the hall must have stood in its present position for long centuries, and was the pride and delight of Mrs Hazlitt herself, and of all those girls who had any aesthetic tastes.

      Prayers were read as usual that morning, and immediately afterwards the routine of the school began. The girls drifted away into their several classes. The special teachers who lived in the house performed their duties. The music masters and drawing masters, who came from some little distance, arrived in due course. Morning school passed like a flash. Then came early dinner, and then that delightful time known as “recess.” It was during that period that Cara and Mary had resolved to ask Penelope Carlton to give her decision. Penelope knew perfectly well that they would approach her then. She had been, as she said, present in the arbour on the previous night, and knew that Mrs Hazlitt had made up her mind to give up the idea of Tennyson’s “Dream of Fair Women,” if a suitable Helen was not to be found within twenty-four hours. It was essential, therefore, for Penelope to declare her purpose during the recess.

      She had by no means faltered in that purpose. During morning school she had worked rather better than usual, had pleased her teacher – as indeed she always did – by the correctness of her replies and the sort of quaint originality of her utterances.

      She was a girl who by no means as yet had come to her full powers, but these powers were stirring within her, dimly perhaps, perhaps unworthily. But, nevertheless, they were most assuredly there, and in themselves they were of no mean order.

      Penelope now walked slowly in the direction of the old Queen Anne parterre. This had not been touched since the days when that monarch held possession of the throne. It was a three-cornered, lozenge-like piece of ground, with the most lovely turf on it – that soft, very soft green turf which can only come after the lapse of ages. Mrs Hazlitt was very proud of the Queen Anne parterre, and never allowed the girls to walk on the turf, insisting on their keeping to the narrow gravel walk which ran round it. There were high, red brick walls to the parterre on three sides, but the fourth was open and led away into a dim forest of trees of all sorts and descriptions, and these trees made the place shady and comparatively cool, even on the hottest days.

      Penelope, wearing a very shabby brown holland skirt and a white muslin blouse of at least three years of age, looked neither picturesque nor interesting as she strolled towards the parterre. She had not troubled herself to put on a hat. Her complexion was of the dull, fair sort which does not sunburn. She was destitute of any particle of colour; even her lips were pale; her eyes were of the lightest shade of blue; her eyelashes and eyebrows were also nearly white. As she walked along now, slightly hitching her shoulders, there came a whoop of delight from the younger children, and, amongst several others, Juliet L’Estrange leaped towards her.

      “Here you are! I am so glad! Why did you not come to us last night? We’d got such a glorious place to hide in – you couldn’t possibly have found us. What is the matter, Penelope? Does your head ache?”

      “Penelope’s head aches, I know it does,” said Agnes, turning to her small companion as she spoke. “What is the matter, Penelope dear?”

      “I am quite all right,” replied Penelope; “but I can’t talk to you just now, Juliet, for I’ve something important to say to your sister Mary, and also to say to Cara Burt.”

      “But I thought you hated the older girls,” said Juliet, puckering her pretty brows in distress. “You have always belonged to us, and that was one reason why we loved you so much. You were always gay and bright and jolly with us. Why can’t you play with us now?”

      “Yes – why can’t you?” asked Agnes. “It won’t be a bit too hot to play hide-and-seek in the wood, and we have an hour and a half before we need go back to horrid lessons.”

      “Yes – aren’t the lessons detestable?” said Penelope. One of her greatest powers amongst the younger girls was the manner in which she could force them to dislike their lessons, judging that there would be no surer way of making them her friends than by pretending to dislike the work they had got to do. She thus bred a spirit of mischief in the school, which no one in the least suspected, not even the girls over whom she reigned supreme.

      She said a few words now to Juliet L’Estrange, and then walked on to the entrance of the wood, where she felt certain she would find Mary and Cara waiting for her. She was right: they were there, and so also, to her surprise, were the other girls who were to take part in “A Dream of Fair Women.”

      It was arranged, after all, that only Helen of Troy, Iphigenia, Jephtha’s daughter, Cleopatra, and Fair Rosamond were to act. Queen Eleanor was not essential, she might come in or not, as the mistress decided later on. But five principal actors there must be, and there stood four of them looking anxiously, full into Penelope Carlton’s face. Annie Leicester was to take the part of Fair Rosamond. She was a thoroughly unremarkable looking girl, but had a certain willowy grace about her, and could put herself into graceful poses. The girl who was to take the part of Cleopatra was dark – almost swarthy. Her name was Susanna Salmi; and it needed but a glance to detect her Jewish origin. Her brow was very low; she had masses of thick, black hair, a large mouth, and a somewhat prominent chin. Her face, on the whole, was strong, and there were possibilities about her of future beauty, but that would greatly depend on whether she grew tall enough, and whether her buxom figure toned down to lines of beauty.

      The four girls, such as they were, looked indeed in no way remarkable or suited to their parts. But what will not judicious make-up and limelight and due attention to artistic effect achieve? Mrs Hazlitt would not have despaired of the four, if only she had secured the coveted fifth. If the girl she wished to be Helen of Troy could only stand forth in her exquisite beauty in the midst of this group, the tableaux would be a marked success.

      The girls now surrounded Penelope, each of them looking at her with fresh eyes. Hitherto, she had been quite unnoticed in the school. She was a nobody – a very plain, uninteresting, badly dressed creature. But now she was to be – in a measure – their deliverer; for they felt certain that under Mrs Hazlitt’s clever manipulations she could be transformed into a Helen of Troy. They all surrounded her eagerly.

      “So glad you’ve come!” said Annie Leicester. “Thought you would; of course, you’re going to help us. Oh dear – how much fairer you look than any of the rest of us – you will make a great contrast to the rest of Tennyson’s ‘Fair Women’; won’t she, Mary?”

      Mary smiled.

      “Penelope will do quite well,” she said. “As Honora has been such a fool as to refuse to play, we must take the second-best. You have thought it all over, haven’t you, Penelope, and you are going to yield?”

      “Well,” – said Penelope – “I have thought it over, and I am – ”

      “Oh, yes – dear creature!” said Cara. “You will yield, won’t you? Say yes, at once – say that you will do what we wish. We can then find Mrs Hazlitt and tell her that her heroines will be forthcoming, and she can go forward with her arrangements. The date is not so very far off now, and of course there will be a great many rehearsals.”

      “Five pounds apiece,” murmured Penelope to herself. She looked eagerly from one face to another. She had not been six months at the school without finding out that most of her companions were rich. They could each afford СКАЧАТЬ