The Youngest Girl in the Fifth | Page 4

Gascoyne' whenever I speak to her. How perfectly idiotic! I'm sure I shall laugh. I wonder if Miss Roscoe's told her yet? What a surprise it would be for her to come into the room and find me there!"
"I wish you'd be quick, Gwen Gascoyne," said Eve Dawkins; "I'm to have your desk as soon as you've moved out. It's a nicer seat than mine."
"Right-o!" answered Gwen, piling her books on top of her big atlas. "You're welcome to it, I'm sure. I think you might all have seemed a trifle more sorry to lose me! I don't see any display of pocket handkerchiefs. No, I can't say I'm shedding tears myself unless they're crocodile ones. Please to recollect in future, my dears, when you speak to me, that you're addressing a member of the Upper School! You're only little Junior girls! Ta-ta!" and with a mock curtsy, in process of which she nearly dropped her pile of books, Gwen retired laughing from the Fourth Form to take her place and try her luck among the Seniors.
CHAPTER II
The Gascoyne Girls
At fourteen and a quarter Gwen Gascoyne was at a particularly difficult and hobbledehoy stage of her development. She was tall for her age, and rather awkward in her manners, apt at present to be slapdash and independent, and decidedly lacking in "that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere". Gwen could never keep still for five seconds, her restless hands were always fidgeting or her feet shuffling, or she was twisting in her chair, or shaking back a loose untidy lock that had escaped from her ribbon. Gwen often did her hair without the aid of a looking-glass, but when she happened to use one the reflection of her own face gave her little cause for satisfaction.
"I'm plain, and there's no blinking the fact," she confessed to herself. "Winnie says I'm variable, and I can look nice when I smile, but I'm afraid no one would trouble to look at me twice. If only I were Lesbia now, or even Beatrice! People talk about the flower of a family--well, I expect I'm the weed, as far as appearances go! I haven't had my fair share in the way of good looks."
It certainly seemed hard that Nature, which had been kind to the Gascoynes in that respect, should have dowered her brothers and sisters so liberally, and have left poor Gwen out in the cold. Her bright little face had an attraction all of its own, of which she was quite unconscious, but she was entirely accustomed to stand aside while strangers noticed and admired her younger sister Lesbia. To do Gwen justice, though she might lament her own plainness, it never struck her to be jealous of the others. She was intensely proud of the family reputation for beauty, and even if she could not include herself among "the handsome Gascoynes", it certainly gave her a reflected satisfaction to be aware of the epithet.
"I'm like Daddy," she said sometimes; "nobody ever calls him handsome, but he's a dear all the same--the dearest dear in the world!"
The Reverend Maurice Gascoyne was curate-in-charge of the church of St. John the Baptist in the little fishing village of Skelwick Bay, on the coast of the North Sea. He was rich in the possession of seven children, but there his luck ended, for his income, as is often the case, was in exactly inverse ratio to the size of his family.
"The fact is, we're as poor as church mice," said Beatrice one day. "Indeed, I think we're poorer, because the mouse we saw in church last Sunday, that scared Winnie so, was very fat and sleek and prosperous looking, and didn't bear out the old saying at all."
For the last four years, ever since pretty Mrs. Maurice Gascoyne had gently laid down the burden that had grown too heavy for her, Beatrice had been the clever, energetic "mother" of the establishment. She managed the house, and the children, and the one maid, and the parish, and her father, all included, with a business-like capacity far in advance of her twenty years. She was a fine-looking girl, tall and straight-limbed and ample, with blue eyes and dark brows, and a clear creamy skin, and that air of noble strength about her which the Greek sculptors gave to their statues of Artemis. Though she did her best both for home and hamlet, Beatrice often chafed against the narrowness of her limits. It was a sore point that she had been obliged to leave school at sixteen, and devote herself to domestic pursuits, and while not regretting the sacrifice, she often lamented the two years lopped off her education.
"I'm so behind, I never could go in even for the matric. now," she sighed sometimes. "If