Angela Brazil

A Pair of Schoolgirls Angela Brazil

IT was precisely five minutes past eleven on the first day of the autumn term, and Avondale College, which for seven whole weeks had been lonely and deserted, and given over to the tender mercies ofpaperhangers, painters, and charwomen, once more presented its wonted aspect of life and bustle. The reopening was a very important event in the opinion of everybody concerned, partly because itmarked the beginning of a fresh school year, and partly because the building had been altered andenlarged, many changes made in the curriculum, and many new names added to the already long listin the register. Three hundred and eighty-seven pupils had assembled that morning in the greatlecture hall, the largest number on record at the College; five additional classes had been formed, and there were six extra mistresses. At the eleven o'clock interval the place seemed swarming withgirls; they thronged the staircase and passages, filled the pantry, blocked the dressing-rooms, andoverflowed into the playground and the gymnasium-girls of all sorts and descriptions, from theten-year-olds who had just come up (rather solemn and overawed) from the Preparatory to thoseelect and superior damsels of seventeen who were studying for their Matriculation. By the empty stove in the Juniors' Common Room stood half a dozen "betwixt-and-betweens", whose average age probably worked out at fourteen and a quarter, though Mavie Morris was agiantess compared with little Ruth Harmon. The six heads were bent together in closest proximity, and the six tongues were particularly active, for after the long summer holidays there was such a vastamount to talk about that it seemed almost impossible to discuss all the interesting items of newswith sufficient rapidity."The old Coll. looks no end," said Grace Russell. "It's so smart and spanky now-one hardlyknows it! Pictures in the classrooms, flowers on the chimneypieces, a stained glass window in thelecture hall, busts on brackets all along the corridor wall, and the studio floor polished! Every singleplace has been done up from top to bottom.""I'd like it better if it didn't smell so abominably of new paint," objected Noëlle Kennedy. "WhenI opened the studio door, the varnish stuck to my fingers. However, the school certainly looks muchnicer. Why, even the book cupboard has been repapered.""That's because you splashed ink on the wall last term. Don't you remember how fearfully crossMiss Hardy was about it?""Rather! She insisted that I'd done it on purpose, and couldn't and wouldn't believe it was anaccident. Well, thank goodness we've done with her! I'm glad teachers don't move up with theirforms.