Land Girls

With the bond of such a secret between them, Diana and Loveday cemented a firm friendship. To be sure, Loveday's conscience, which was of a very exacting and inquisitorial description, sometimes gave her unpleasant twinges like a species of moral toothache; but then the other self which also talked inside her would plead that it was only sporting to screen a schoolfellow, and that no one but a sneak could have done otherwise. She sincerely hoped that Diana had escaped notice both going and returning, and that no busybody from the village would bring a report to Miss Todd.

If the matter were to leak out, both girls would get into serious trouble--Diana for running away, and her room-mate for aiding and abetting her escapade. That she was really in some danger on her account gave Loveday an added interest in Diana. She began to be very fond of her. The little American had a most lovable side for certain people, on whom she bestowed the warmth of her affection, though she could be a pixie to those who did not happen to please her. With the seniors in general she was no favourite. She had more than one skirmish with the prefects, and was commonly regarded as a firebrand, ready at any moment to set alight the flame of insurrection among turbulent intermediates and juniors.

"Diana's at the bottom of any mischief that's going!" proclaimed Geraldine one day, after a battle royal over an absurd dispute about the tennis-court.

"And the worst of it is, she makes Wendy just as bad!" agreed Hilary warmly.

"Wendy wasn't exactly a saint before Diana came," put in Loveday.

"Oh, you always stand up for Diana! I can't think what you see in her--a cheeky little monkey, I call her!" Geraldine was still ruffled.

"She has her points, though."

"She'll get jolly well sat upon, if she doesn't take care," muttered Geraldine, who held exalted notions as to the dignity of prefects.

It was at the beginning of the second week in October that Miss Todd, in whose brain ambitious projects of education for the production of the "super-girl" had been fermenting, announced the first of her radical changes. She had not undertaken it without much consultation with parents, and many letters had pa.s.sed backwards and forwards on the subject. Most, however, had agreed with her views, and it had been decided that at any rate the experiment was to be tried. Pendlemere, which so far had concentrated entirely on the Senior Oxford Curriculum and accomplishments, was to add an agricultural side to its course.

There was to be a lady teacher, fresh from the Birchgate Horticultural College, who would start poultry-keeping and bee-keeping on the latest scientific principles, and would plant the garden with crops of vegetables. She could have a few land workers to a.s.sist her, and the girls, in relays, could study her methods. Miss Todd, who in choosing a career had hesitated between teaching and horticulture, s.n.a.t.c.hed at the opportunity of combining the two. She was bubbling over with enthusiasm.

In imagination she saw Pendlemere a flourishing Garden Colony, setting an educational example to the rest of the scholastic world. Her girls, trained in both the scientific and practical side of agriculture in addition to their ordinary curriculum, would be turned out equipped for all contingencies, either of emigration, or a better Britain. She considered their health would profit largely. She explained her views to them in detail, painting rose-coloured pictures of the delights in store for them in the spring and summer. The girls, very much thrilled at the prospect, dispersed to talk it over.

"Is Pendlemere to be a sort of farm, then?" asked Wendy.

"Looks like it, if we're to keep hens and bees, and grow all our own vegetables! Bags me help with the chickens. I love them when they're all yellow, like canaries. Toddlekins hinted something about launching out into a horse if things prospered."

"A horse! Goody, what fun!" exulted Diana. "I just _adore_ horses! Bags me help with stable-work, then. I'd groom it instead of learning my geography or practising scales. I say, I call this a ripping idea!"

"Don't congratulate yourself too soon," qualified Magsie. "You'll probably find the geography and the scales are tucked in somehow. All the same, I think it sounds rather sporty."

"It will be a change, at any rate, and we'll feel we're marching with the times."

"When does the 'back-to-the-land' teacher come?"

"On Friday, I believe."

Miss Chadwick, the graduate of Birchgate Horticultural College, who was to run the new experiment, arrived at the end of the week, and brought two students as her a.s.sistants. They were a fresh, jolly-looking trio, with faces rosy from open-air work, and serviceable hands which caused a considerable flutter among those of the school who went in for manicure.

At tea-time they talked gaily of onion-beds, intensive culture, irrigation, proteids, white Wyandottes, trap-nests, insecticides, sugar-beets, and bacteria. Miss Todd, keenly interested, joined in the conversation with the zeal of a neophyte; Miss Beverley, the nature-study side of whose education had been neglected, and who scarcely knew a caterpillar from an earthworm, followed with the uneasy air of one who is out of her depth; the school, eating their bread-and-b.u.t.ter and blackberry jam, sat and listened to the talk at the top end of the table.

"It sounds rather brainy," commented Diana in a whisper.

"Yes," replied Wendy, also in a subdued tone. "Poor old Bunty's floundering hopelessly. Did you hear her ask if they were going to cultivate cuc.u.mbers in the open? I nearly exploded! I believe she thinks pineapples grow on pine-trees. She's trying _so_ hard to look as if she knows all about it. I'll be sorry for the infant cabbages if she has the care of them."

"It wouldn't be her job, surely."

"I'd agitate for a 'Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Vegetables'

if it were. I believe I'm going to adore Miss Chadwick! She looks so sporty. She wrinkles up her nose when she laughs, just like a baby does."

"The little dark student with the freckles is my fancy."

"Oh! I like the other, with the bobbed hair."

Miss Chadwick, with her a.s.sistants Miss Carr and Miss Ormrod, brought a new and decidedly breezy element into the school. They spent Sat.u.r.day in reviewing the premises, and on Monday they set to work. The girls, who as yet were only in the position of onlookers, watched the operations, much thrilled. All sorts of interesting things began to arrive: portable hen-houses packed in sections, chicken-coops, rolls of galvanized wire netting, iron stakes, the framework of a greenhouse, and a whole cargo of tools. The three enterprising ladies seemed to have some knowledge of carpentry, and at once began to fit parts together and erect sheds.

Their sensible land costumes excited admiration and envy.

"It's what I mean to do when I grow up," resolved Magsie. "Did you see the way Miss Carr ran up that ladder? And she's begun to thatch the roof so neatly. She does it far better than that old man from the village who potters about. I'm just yearning to try my hand at thatching. I wish Miss Carr would let me!"

While they were busy getting the place in order, Miss Chadwick and her a.s.sistants declined all offers of inexperienced help, a.s.suring the girls that they would have their "jobs" given them later on, when there was time to teach them. This did not at all content the enthusiastic spirits who were burning to throw lessons to the winds and spend their days in mixing putty, lime-washing hen-houses, and fixing up wire netting. They hung about disconsolately, s.n.a.t.c.hing at such opportunities of a.s.sistance as holding ladders or handing nails.

"You _might_ let me tar the roof of the chicken-coop," begged Wendy.

"I'd just love to let it all squelch on, and I adore the smell!"

But Miss Carr, who the day before had rashly allowed Diana the use of the lime-wash pail, was firm in her refusal.

"I haven't time to show you how, and I don't want things spoilt. Put down that tar-brush, Wendy! If you get smears on your skirt, you'll never get them off again."

"I don't see where _we_ come in!" groused Wendy. "I thought we were to learn agriculture."

"You won't learn it by dabbing tar on the end of your nose," laughed Miss Carr.

In the course of a few weeks, however, the preliminary stages were over.

Some fowl-houses and runs were finished, and their feathered occupants arrived and took possession. A consignment of spades, rakes, and hoes was delivered by the carrier, and arranged by the students in the new tool-shed. Miss Carr announced herself ready to begin her course of instruction. To the girls the crowning-point of the preparations was the opening of several large boxes posted from a London shop. They contained twenty land costumes in a.s.sorted sizes. The excitement of trying them on was immense. Twenty little figures in smocks and gaiters went capering about the school, wild with the fun of the new experiment, and feeling themselves enthusiastic "daughters of the soil".

"It was A1 of Toddlekins to let us have a 'land uniform'."

"Couldn't do any decent work without, I should say."

"I believe Miss Carr insisted on it."

"Sensible woman!"

"It feels so delightfully business-like."

"Shall we win green armlets?"

"I'm just dying to start and dig!"

"And I want to climb a tree!"

Miss Chadwick and her students set to work methodically. They gave cla.s.sroom lectures on the principles of agriculture, and practical demonstrations in the garden. The girls learnt the const.i.tuents of soils, and also how to trench; the theory of scientific poultry-raising, and the actual mixing of the food. They prepared plots that would be sown in the spring, cleared and rolled paths, planted bulbs, and divided roots of perennials; they sawed wood, lifted rhubarb, and helped to prepare a mushroom bed. It was all new and exciting, and there was a spice of patriotism mixed up with it. They felt that they were training to be of some service to the community.

"It's fearfully weird," said Wendy, writing her essay on _Insect Pests_, "to have to find out whether your insect has a biting or a sucking mouth, so as to know whether you must spray the beastie direct, or apply poison to the plant. I'd feel rather like a dentist examining their jaws."

"I heard of an editor in America," laughed Magsie, "who got his 'answers to correspondents' mixed up, and in reply to 'how to kill a plague of crickets' put 'rub their gums gently with a thimble, and if feverish, administer Perry's Teething Powders'; while to 'Anxious Mother of Twins', he gave the advice: 'Burn tobacco on a hot shovel, and the little pests will hop about and die as dead as door-nails'."

"You always fix these yarns on America," pouted Diana. "It sounds a great deal more like one of your British editors."

To some of the girls the greatest event of all was the arrival of the horse and trap which Miss Todd had decided to add to her establishment.

Pendlemere was some distance from the station and from Glenbury, the nearest town, and she thought it would be a great convenience to be independent of carriers and able to fetch supplies for themselves.

Diana, keenly interested, was allowed by Miss Ormrod to make the acquaintance of "Baron", the pretty chestnut cob, and even to help in his toilet. Diana loved horses, and used the curry-comb with enthusiasm, talking to Baron in what she called "horse language"--a string of endearing terms that on the whole he seemed to appreciate.