Dumps – A Plain Girl

She took my hand and stroked it very gently. After a silence of two or three minutes, during which I hoped to get a full explanation from her, she raised her eyes and said very gently:

“What about the great prizes on the great day of the break-up, and the beautiful Easter lilies that we are each presented with before the Easter services? Think you not that will be a very beautiful occasion for us all?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I may not be here for Easter.”

She looked at me with a startled expression. After a minute’s pause she began again in a very inconsequent way to rattle off some news with regard to the school. It was not until her visit was very nearly over that she said:

“Once is good, twice is better, but the third is best. If your friend, the kind and gracious Hermione, goes out, will she not drop this letter into the post-box?”

“She will not,” I replied.

“And why? It is only to poor Heinrich. May he not receive this letter, this note of so true feeling from one he regards? May it not be put into the box?”

“There is no reason why Heinrich, whoever he is, should not hear from you twice every day as far as I am concerned,” I said; “but I will not post it, nor will Hermione.”

“I know; but you cannot tell the mind of your friend.”

“I know she will not do it, Riki.”

Riki considered for a minute; then she put the note again into her pocket.

“Very well,” she said. “I little guessed that you would have a heart so hard, instead of soft and overflowing with the love for the German Fatherland.”

Part 2, Chapter XI

Consequences

The next day I did not see Comtesse Riki at all. My cold was rather worse; but the day after I was able to sit up in my room, and she came to me with two or three other girls in the evening. She was shy, however, and had none of her old warm manner. Baroness Elfreda made herself more agreeable on that occasion, and a plump little German girl of the name of Fräulein Schott took my fancy by her blunt, good-humoured, pleasant manner. There were also some Dutch girls and a French girl, who all crowded into our sitting-room to congratulate me, to chatter to one another, to flock to the window and gaze longingly at the balcony.

“You are what is called of the lucky,” said Elfreda presently.

“But why?” I asked. “I don’t think I am specially lucky; I have been two whole days in my room with this horrid cold.”

“I make no thought for the cold,” said Elfreda. “I do consider that you are of the lucky type because your room looks upon this so gay street.”

On further questioning, I found that both she and the Comtesse had rooms at the back of the house. After a time Hermione came in and chased my visitors away. When they were gone she sat down near me. She looked very grave.

“Did you,” she said, “notice anything special about Riki?”

“No,” I answered; “except, perhaps, that she was more silent than usual.”

“I do not like what is going on,” said Hermione after a pause. “I did not want to worry you when you were ill, but Riki came to me on that evening and asked me if I was going out; and then she begged me to post a letter for her.”

“Oh yes,” I said. I trembled slightly. “And you – what did you do?”

“Do?” said Hermione – “do? I asked her to read the rules in her bedroom.”

“The rules in her bedroom?” I said.

“My dear Dumps, wherever are your eyes? There are rules written in four languages in every bedroom in the house. Have you never read those in your room?”

“I have glanced at them.”

“Well, in the German and French and Italian sections the very strictest rule of all is that no letters of any sort whatsoever are to be posted by girls of those nationalities except in the post-box in the hall, and any girl helping another to get letters in any other fashion into the post will be most severely punished.”

“I did not notice it.”

“Well, notice it the next time you go into your bedroom. But don’t look so white; it doesn’t matter to us, surely!”

“Of course not,” I said in a faint voice. After a pause I said, “But why are you anxious about her now?”

“She is underhand; she is not quite open. Now, Elfreda is a dull girl; I never could get anything amusing out of her; but she is quite different from Riki. Riki is supposed to be pretty, and will probably be much admired when she leaves school; but it is her want of openness that I cannot stand.”

“The whole system is wrong,” I said with some vigour. “I cannot imagine how any German girl grows up really nice.”

“But heaps of them do, and you won’t be long at the school before you find that there are as nice German girls as English. You must not take Riki von Kronenfel as a specimen.”

I said nothing more, and after a time Hermione continued, “Now let us turn to something else. I had a letter from my father to-day; I am not to go home for Easter.”

“Oh dear! Easter will be here in a fortnight now,” I said. “I do not suppose for a single moment that I shall have a chance of getting back.”

“But have you heard definitely?”

“No.”

At this moment there was a tap at our door, and Justine entered with some letters. Of course, we both fell upon them as girls will all over the world, and the next minute we were eagerly sorting our different letters from a pile which Justine, with her most gracious French manner, had laid on the table – two for Hermione, one for me, and one for Augusta.

“From my step-mother,” I said, and I sank into a chair and opened it.

Far away from home Mrs Grant seemed like a very beneficent and kind presence; her letters were charming, as they told me every single thing I wanted to know; nothing was forgotten, nothing left out. I opened the letter now. To my surprise, I saw that it was quite short.

“My dear Dumps, – I cannot write as much as I would to-day, for I am sorry to say your father is not quite himself.”

I started. There seemed to come a little prick at my heart – not a very big prick, just a momentary sense of uneasiness.

“He has a severe chill – not an ordinary cold – and he is in bed.”

The Professor in bed! I laid down my letter and looked up at Hermione with startled eyes.

“What is it?” she said.

“Father is in bed,” I replied.

“Good gracious, how you made me jump! And why shouldn’t he be in bed?”

“You don’t understand. Why, I never remember his staying in bed. He is never ill, except with those fearful headaches.”

“He hadn’t a good, careful woman like Grace Donnithorne to look after him in the past,” replied Hermione in an indifferent tone. “For goodness’ sake don’t be anxious!”