02 Jo of the Chalet School (4 page)

The room which Miss Maynard had occupied during the previous term was to be made into a bedroom for two, and Mademoiselle’s old room would hold three. Over at Le Petit Chalet there would be nine small girls, with Mademoiselle in charge.

‘And,’ said Miss Bettany as she finished draping the last pretty curtain, ‘if we get any more older girls as boarders, I must send Simone Lecoutier and Margia Stevens over as well. That will mean arranging another dormitory.’

‘Who will be in the lower one?’ queried Miss Maynard.

‘Oh, Juliet, Joey, Gertrud, and the four new girls, Paul von Rothenfels, Rosalie Dene, Vanna di Ricci, and Evadne Lannis. The Hamels have taken that little chalet near the Post; and Anita and Giovanna Rincini may come, or they may not! I do wish people would make up their minds, and not
dither
like this.’

‘Are the Merciers going to Le Petit Chalet?’

Miss Bettany stopped short, and expression of horror on her face. ‘My dear! I had absolutely forgotten about the Merciers!’

‘And you haven’t given Simone and Margia a place yet. Are you going to put them in Mademoiselle’s old room?’

‘Yes. They’re about the same age; and for Joey’s sake I think it better to separate her and Simone. Well, Suzanne can go with them, and Yvette will, of course, go over to Le Petit Chalet!’ She sat down on the nearest bed. ‘Well, I never for one moment imagined we should grow like this. Of course, people like the Maranis and the Steinbruckes and the Mensches are only boarders for the winter. Still, it’s extraordinary; isn’t it?’

Miss Maynard nodded. ‘In a way, I suppose it is. You struck a lucky pitch, you see. Then, they all like you enormously; and, after all, you are doing a lot for their girls, you know.’ She looked at her young Head with a smile.

‘It’s easy,’ replied Miss Bettany, as she pencilled her dormitory list. ‘They’re all such dears, and the girls are so keen on the school! Then, they’ve recommended us to their friends as well. The Maranis spoke to the von Eschenaus, and, of course, Paula is coming because her cousins are. The Eriksens are coming through the Stevens; and so it goes.’

‘And there goes the bell for
Mittagessen
!’ laughed Miss Maynard.

‘Good gracious!’ Miss Bettany leapt to her feet. ‘I meant to get through heaps this morning, and this room is all we’ve done. How awful!’

They went downstairs, and presently the six were sitting round the table eating
Nudelsuppe
, followed by chicken, cooked in some delicious way which was Marie’s own secret, and
Apfeltorte
, a kind of cake with baked apples on the top. When it was over, the two mistresses accompanied their charges to the boat-landing, and saw them on to the boat. It was a lovely day. Once more the September sun was shining, and the Tiern See was blue with the blueness which adds so much to its beauty. The Robin was delightfully happy over everything, and she shrieked with joy at ‘
Le lac si bleu
!’ as she danced along the path. The bright day had tempted out the few visitors that still remained, and among them they saw once more the two Italian children and their father.

Joey nudged her sister. ‘Look! Those are the girls we saw yesterday,’ she said.

Madge looked at them with interest. She approved of the pair. They had a fresh, well-groomed appearance, and they seemed nice children. They, on their part, gazed at the group, which had reached the landing and stood waiting for the little steamer, with more than ordinary gazing.

Miss Maynard noticed it too. ‘I believe the children are right,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if you received a visit from their father, or whoever he is, before very long.’

‘Here’s the boat!’ said Grizel ecstatically. ‘Oh, isn’t it a topping day!’

Miss Bettany raised her eyebrows at the forbidden slang, but she felt that she couldn’t be continually nagging at them, although she wished that Grizel would try to remember. Juliet saw, though the culprit didn’t, and determined to say something if she got the chance later on. Meanwhile, she turned her attention to the passengers coming off the boat.

The next minute, Joey uttered a shriek: ‘Gisela! Gisela Marani!’

A tall dark girl, who was walking sedately down the gangway, turned her head. ‘Joey!’ she cried. -‘Papa!

Here is Joey!’

‘Oh, Gisela!’ exclaimed Grizel. ‘How lovely! I thought you weren’t coming till next week. We are going over to Seehof for tea. Can’t you come too?’

Gisela glanced at her father for permission. ‘Certainly,’ he said smiling, as he raised his hat. ‘I make no doubt Fraulein Bettany will be pleased to have you go; so go, my child.’

‘Thank you, papa,’ said Gisela. ‘That will be so nice. -All right, Joey; I’m coming.’

She ran round to join the others, while Herr Marani moved over to where Miss Bettany stood waving to them.

‘
Grüss Gott, Fraulein Bettany!’
he said, greeting her with the pretty Tyrolean greeting. ‘How goes it with you?’

‘It goes well, Herr Marani,’ she replied, giving him her hand. ‘How good of you to let Gisela go! Now I shall feel quite happy, as our head girl is with them. You see we have a very small new pupil?’

‘Yes; she is indeed a baby one,’ returned Herr Marani with a smile.

‘And how goes it with you? Is Frau Marani well? And where is Maria?’

‘My wife is very well,’ he said. ‘She and Maria are still in Wien, where they will stay until Wednesday of next week. Then they will come home to Innsbruck. I am sorry,’ he went on, ‘ that we cannot use our summer home up here for the winter months as I had arranged; but my mother has been very ill, and wishes us to be with her this winter. I am glad you can make room for my girls as boarders. They are very happy with you.’

‘I am glad,’ said Miss Bettany simply. ‘I am very pleased to have them – especially Gisela. She makes a splendid head girl.’

There was a little more conversation, and then Herr Marani took his departure, making for a little chalet at the upper end of the Briesau valley, where some old friends of his lived, and where he intended staying for the few days he would be here.

The two English girls went back to the Chalet School, and there set to work on the other dormitories. They were still very busy when Marie appeared with a card in her hand.

‘Signor di Ferrara,’ repeated Miss Bettany. ‘Who on earth can he be?’

‘Better go down and see,’ suggested Miss Maynard. ‘I can finish this quite well by myself. Perhaps it is the father of those two girls come to arrange with you for them to be boarders.’

‘And perhaps it isn’t! -Very well, Marie; I will come at once.’

The Head vanished, and Miss Maynard went on with the task of hanging up the pretty mauve curtains that divided the cubicles of the three-bed dormitory. Half-an-hour later, just as she was sitting down to her
Tee
mit Citron
and cream and honey-cakes from Innsbruck, Miss Bettany came into the
Speisesaal
.

‘Well?’ said Miss Maynard?

Madge Bettany nodded. ‘Yes; Luigia and Bianca di Ferrara are coming here; and, my dear, we shall start this term with thirty-three pupils!’

‘Grizel! I’m going to meet the boat! Are you coming? Thus Joey, outside the Chalet School, at the full pitch of her lungs.

Grizel poked her curly head out of the east window in her new dormitory, and looked across the lake to Buchau, where the little lake steamer was lying. ‘All right! Wait a tick, and I’ll come!’

She hunted madly for her blazer, which seemed to have completely disappeared. She found it at last under one of the beds, struggled into it, and fled downstairs and out to the path where Joey was waiting for her, dancing with impatience over her delay.

‘At last! Thought you were never coming! Come on; we must buck up!’

They tore along the path to the landing, where the nine o’clock steamer was just tying up.

‘There’s Mademoiselle!’ shrieked Joey. ‘Simone’s beside her. I s’pose the other kid’s her sister Renee!’

‘I can see Bernhilda!’ proclaimed Grizel. ‘The von Eschenaus are over there! See them? Cooo-eeee!’

The excitement of the pair sent a smile round the people standing near, but they cared nothing for that.

From the boat the other girls were waving and calling, and when at last they all met on the path the noise they made was simply terrific. Most folk would have refused to believe that there were only eight girls to make it. Mademoiselle was quite as bad as anybody; and there were so many questions to be asked and answered, that they boat was well on its way to Seehof before any of them moved on.

‘How many are we this term?’ inquired Bernhilda Mensch of Joey as they set off for the Chalet.

‘Heaps more than last term, anyway,’ replied Joey. ‘Thirty-three.’

‘Thirty-three? But how delightful! Who are there?’

‘Well – Wanda and Marie von Eschenau and their cousin,’ began Joey.

‘Yes – yes! I know that!’ replied Bernhilda with an impatient movement of her hands. ‘Also that Gertrud bring her little sister. But who else?’

Joey thought. ‘There’s the Robin. You won’t know her, of course. Her father was a friend of my father’s years ago. She’s six, and a darling, and her mother is dead. Her father is in Vienna just now, but he is going to Russia. You’ll love her, Bernhilda.

‘I am sorry for her.’ Bernhilda’s blue eyes were very soft. She was a tall, pretty girl of the fair German type, with long fair plaits and an apple-blossom skin. Her younger sister, Frieda, was very like her, but there was much less character in her face, and she was a quiet little mouse, while Bernhilda was quite a leader in the school.

Simone Lecoutier, the little French girl who clung closely to Joey’s other side, was as typical of France as Bernhilda was of the North Tyrol, with big dark eyes set in a little sallow face, black hair, and very neat hands and feet. She was intensely sentimental, and cherished a tremendous admiration for unsentimental Jo, who was thoroughly bored by it, but was too kind to say so. The von Eschenau girls, Wanda and Marie, who followed with Grizel, and their own cousin, Paula von Rothenfels, were a lovely pair, with thick golden hair, violet eyes, and skins of roses and cream. Grizel was pretty, and so were the two Mensches, but Wanda and Marie von Eschenau made them quite commonplace. As for Paula, she was dark and very ordinary; and Renee Lecoutier, Simone’s little sister, who was a second edition of Simone.

Meanwhile, Grizel was pouring forth the same information as Joey had given, with the added news that Gisela and Maria Marani had already arrived, and that the new mistress, Miss Durrant, was also at school.

‘She’s sleeping over at Le Petit Chalet,’ chattered Grizel. ‘
We
sha’n't have much to do with her – only drawing. She seems quite jolly, and she’s keen on hockey. Miss Maynard told me she had played for her county.’

‘No! Has she really?’ interrupted Jo, who had not been present when this piece of information had been given. ‘
I say!
How topp – er –
splendid!’

‘If you don’t look out, you’ll go backwards over into the lake,’ observed Grizel with some truth. ‘It’s idiotic to try walking hindways on the lake-path.’

‘But yes, my child. Turn round, and walk properly.’ Mademoiselle added her voice. ‘It would not be well if you were to fall into the lake.’

Thus adjured. Joey turned round and walked in a more usual fashion.

‘Where is Juliet?’ asked Bernhilda, as they reached the Kron Prinz Karl.

‘My sister wouldn’t let us all come,’ explained Joey. ‘She said we’d deafen the whole lake if we did. So we drew lots to see who should come first, and it came to Grizel and me. Juliet and Gisela are going to meet the eleven o’clock boat; crowds of people are coming by that – the Stevens, and the Merciers, and the Rincinis, and some others.’

‘Have the English and American girls of whom we heard last term arrived yet?’ asked Bernhilda.

‘Gracious! What a sentence! Oh it’s correct English all right, but it’s so – so
correct
!’ complained Jo, who often found the English of her foreign friends very boring. ‘You mean Rosalie Dene and Evadne Lannis, don’t you? No; they aren’t here yet. I don’t think they’re coming till the sixteen o’clock boat, as a matter of fact.’

‘Then, are Gisela and Maria the only early ones?’

‘M’m,’ was Jo’s somewhat unusual reply. ‘Unless the new Italian girls have turned up, of course.’

‘
What
Italian girls, Joey?’ asked Simone, speaking for almost the first time.

‘Oh, two quite new ones. They came up last week, and their father landed the next day to make arrangements. He’s Italian consul somewhere, and he heard of this school through someone – I forget who –and came up to see it. He’s quite mad on English things ‘cos he went to an English public school himself, and he liked the Chalet awfully, so they’re coming. One’s fifteen, and the other’s twelve, and their names are Bianca and Luigia.’

‘That’s what I like about Joey,’ put in Grizel from behind. ‘She always gives you all the facts in one burst. Aren’t you overwhelmed, you two?’

She got no answer to her question, for at that moment Miss Bettany appeared with Miss Maynard, and everyone promptly surrounded the two mistresses.

‘Madame, it is so nice to see you again! You are well, I hope?’

‘Yes, thank you, Bernhilda; I am very well. No need to ask how
you
are! You look splendid, all of you.

Have you had pleasant holidays? Where is Mademoiselle by the way? I thought she was coming by this boat.’

‘She went round to Le Petit Chalet, Madame,’ explained Grizel. ‘she said she would see you afterwards.’

‘Oh, I see! Wanda, I am so glad to see you and Marie. Is this your cousin? Welcome to the Chalet, all of you! Now come along and see our new arrangements. Grizel will take you up to your dormitory, Bernhilda; and, Frieda and Paula, go with Joey. Wanda, I’ve put you and Marie together for the present, as you asked for it until Marie gets accustomed to school. And, Simone, we’ve moved you to a new dormitory with Margia and Suzanne. Renee is over at Le Petit Chalet with the other small folk, and you shall take her over when you’ve seen your new quarters. Ah, here come Juliet and Gisela! Come along, you two! I want you to take these people to their dormitories, and then you can all go over to Le Petit Chalet and inspect it thoroughly. Now hurry up, for there’s still heaps to be done before the next batch of you arrives.’