Just Gerry

Excerpt

CUBICLE THIRTEEN

The new girl sat on the edge of her bed, and gazed round at the small domain which for the next three months would be the one spot in this strange new world of school that she could call her own.

It was really quite a nice cubicle, some eight feet wide by ten feet long—just large enough to contain a small white-counterpaned bed, a dressing-table and chest of drawers combined, a small washhand stand, a big wooden locker, and one chintz-covered arm-chair drawn up below the broad sill of the opened window. The cubicle walls were white, the furniture white-enamelled; while the curtain which cut the small compartment off from the rest of the dormitory, the toilet-cover on the dressing-table, and the covering of the arm-chair were all of a dainty cream-coloured chintz with a pretty pink rosebud pattern stencilled upon it. Everything was certainly very nice—much nicer than the new girl had expected—and she looked around with a certain amount of satisfaction. Perhaps after all school would not be the dreadful place she had imagined it would be. Here, at least, would be a place of refuge if the world outside should prove too hard and unfriendly.

Number Thirteen—the numbers were painted outside on the doorposts—was the only cubicle in the Pink Dormitory across which the shielding curtain was drawn. In all the other cubicles unpacking was taking place in full publicity. Rules were in abeyance on this the first day of term, and the dormitory hummed with the shrill chatter that was going on all around. The school was reassembling for the autumn term, and there were many accounts of holiday doings to be retailed, and much conjecturing going on respecting new girls, new mistresses, new prefects, and new rules. The school year at Wakehurst Priory began with the autumn term, and any changes in the staff or the school routine were usually made then.

Cubicle Number Twelve was as yet unoccupied, but when the bustle of unpacking was at its height, a newcomer burst into the dormitory and rushed helter-skelter down the long corridor, calling out cheerful greetings to various occupants of the cubicles as she passed. Reaching Number Twelve, she tumbled her coat and hat and handbag unceremoniously on to the bed, and flung back the curtain of the next-door cubicle with a gay call of greeting.

"What on earth do you want to go pulling your curtains for, you old curmudgeon?" she cried impetuously, then stopped short in sudden surprise at the sight of the strange girl who was sitting on the bed.

"Who the dickens are you?" she ejaculated. "And what in the world are you doing in Dorothy Pemberton's cubicle?"

The new girl gave a startled jump and rose to her feet. She was a tall, slight girl, some fifteen years old, taller by a couple of inches than her inquisitor, and apparently older. But in spite of her seniority she looked at the intruder in a frightened sort of way, and replied nervously to her questioning.

"I—I—don't know. They told me it was my cubicle," she answered, shrinking away from this alarming intruder....