The Youngest Girl in the Fifth | Page 4

know us!"
"It's not fair to the rest of the Form!"
"Oh dear! I'm between two fires," thought Gwen, as she hastily cleared
her possessions from her old desk. "The Fifth don't want me, and the
Fourth are horribly jealous. You're going to have a bad time, Gwen
Gascoyne, I'm afraid! I see breakers ahead! Never mind. It's a great
honour to be moved up, and Father'll be glad and sympathize, if nobody
else does. The work will be pretty stiff: I expect it'll be all I can do to

manage it. But I mean to have a jolly good try. I'll show those girls I
can do something, though I am the youngest! Oh, I say! I've only just
remembered that Winnie'll be the under-mistress. I'll have to call her
'Miss 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.