Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/23

Rh "I've nobody in the world but Dad," she answered, and there was just a suspicion of huskiness in her voice. "He's never gone far away from me before, but he's starting to-morrow for South Africa, and I'm to stop here till he comes back. He says it won't seem long. I hope I'm going to like it. I've only been three days in England, and you're the first English girls I've spoken to. Dad said England ought to feel like home, but it's a queer kind of home when one's all alone. Tell me what this school is like. Is Miss Poppleton nice? She gushed over me before Dad in the drawing-room, but she looks as if she could be a Tartar, all the same. I've had a little experience with schoolmistresses. I can generally take their measure in five minutes. She's got a sister, hasn't she—a Miss Edith, who showed me my bedroom? I expect I shall like her. Have I hit the mark?"

The girls looked at one another and laughed.

"Just about," said Fiona Campbell. "Poppie's temper varies like the barometer. One day she's at 'set fair', and calls everybody 'dear', or 'my child'; and the next she's at 'stormy', and woe betide you if you so much as drop your serviette at dinner, or happen to sneeze in the elocution class! Miss Edie's ripping! She doesn't teach much—only one or two classes. She does the housekeeping, and sees we keep our clothes tidy, and change our wet stockings, and all that sort of thing."

"And how many are there of you? Remember, I've been dumped down here at a day's notice, and I know