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The School by the Sea




    BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
    50 Old Bailey, LONDON
    17 Stanhope Street, GLASGOW

    BLACKIE & SON (INDIA) LIMITED
    Warwick House, Fort Street, BOMBAY

    BLACKIE & SON (CANADA) LIMITED
    TORONTO




[Illustration: "THERE IS SOMEBODY OR SOMETHING INSIDE THE BARRED ROOM!"
SHE GASPED _Page 149_ _Frontispiece_]




    The School by the Sea

    BY
    ANGELA BRAZIL

    Author of "Joan's Best Chum" "The School in the South"
    "The Youngest Girl in the Fifth"
    &c. &c.

    _Illustrated_

    BLACKIE & SON LIMITED
    LONDON AND GLASGOW




By Angela Brazil

    At School with Rachel.
    Ruth of St. Ronan's.
    Joan's Best Chum.
    Captain Peggie.
    Schoolgirl Kitty.
    The School in the South.
    Monitress Merle.
    Loyal to the School.
    A Fortunate Term.
    A Popular Schoolgirl.
    The Princess of the School.
    A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl.
    The Head Girl at the Gables.
    A Patriotic Schoolgirl.
    For the School Colours.
    The Madcap of the School.
    The Luckiest Girl in the School.
    The Jolliest Term on Record.
    The Girls of St. Cyprian's.
    The Youngest Girl in the Fifth.
    The New Girl at St. Chad's.
    For the Sake of the School.
    The School by the Sea.
    The Leader of the Lower School.
    A Pair of Schoolgirls.
    A Fourth Form Friendship.
    The Manor House School.
    The Nicest Girl in the School.
    The Third Form at Miss Kaye's.
    The Fortunes of Philippa.




_Printed in Great Britain by Blackie & Son Ltd. Glasgow_




Contents


    CHAP.                                                 Page

        I. THE INTERLOPER                                    9

       II. A KINGDOM BY THE SEA                             20

      III. A MYSTERIOUS SCHOOLFELLOW                        30

       IV. "THE KING OF THE CASTLE"                         42

        V. PRACTICAL GEOGRAPHY                              51

       VI. RAGTIME                                          65

      VII. AN INVITATION                                    76

     VIII. A MEETING ON THE SHORE                           89

       IX. A MESSAGE                                        99

        X. MAROONED                                        114

       XI. "CORIOLANUS"                                    127

      XII. IN QUARANTINE                                   140

     XIII. THE LIFE-BOAT ANNIVERSARY                       153

      XIV. THE BEACON FIRE                                 166

       XV. THE OLD WINDLASS                                179

      XVI. HARE AND HOUNDS                                 192

     XVII. A DISCOVERY                                     205

    XVIII. AN ALARM                                        224

      XIX. A TORN LETTER                                   235




Illustrations


                                                        Facing
                                                         Page

    "THERE IS SOMEBODY OR SOMETHING INSIDE THE
    BARRED ROOM!" SHE GASPED                    _Frontispiece_

    A SMALL BOY WAS WAVING HIS CAP IN FRANTIC WELCOME       48

    THE MAN APPEARED TO HAVE MANY DIRECTIONS TO GIVE        96

    GERDA DARTED UPON THE BATHFUL OF OLD LETTERS           200




THE SCHOOL BY THE SEA




CHAPTER I

The Interloper


Girls! Girls everywhere! Girls in the passages, girls in the hall,
racing upstairs and scurrying downstairs, diving into dormitories and
running into classrooms, overflowing on to the landing and hustling
along the corridor--everywhere, girls! There were tall and short, and
fat and thin, and all degrees from pretty to plain; girls with fair hair
and girls with dark hair, blue-eyed, brown-eyed, and grey-eyed girls;
demure girls, romping girls, clever girls, stupid girls--but never a
silent girl. No! Buzz-hum-buzz! The talk and chatter surged in a full,
steady flow round the house till the noise invaded even that sanctuary
of sanctuaries, the private study, where Miss Birks, the Principal, sat
addressing post cards to inform respective parents of the safe arrival
of the various individual members of the frolicsome crew which had just
reassembled after the Christmas vacation. In ordinary circumstances
such an indiscretion as squealing on the stairs or dancing in the
passages would have brought Miss Birks from her den, dealing out stern
rebukes, if not visiting dire justice on the offenders; but for this one
brief evening--the first night of the term--the old house was Liberty
Hall. Each damsel did what seemed good in her own eyes, and talked,
laughed, and joked to her heart's content.

"Let them fizz, poor dears!" said Miss Birks, smiling to herself as a
special outburst of mirth was wafted up from below. "It does them good
to work off steam when they arrive. They'll have to be quiet enough
to-morrow. Really, the twenty make noise enough for a hundred! They're
all on double-voice power to-night! Shades of the Franciscans, what a
noise! It seems almost sacrilege in an old convent."

If indeed the gentle, grey-robed nuns who long, long ago had stolen
silently along those very same stairs could have come back to survey the
scene of their former activities, I fear on this particular occasion
they would have wrung their slim, transparent hands in horror over the
stalwart modern maidens who had succeeded them in possession of the
ancient, rambling house. No pale-faced novices these, with downcast eyes
and cheeks sunken with fasting; no timid glances, no soft ethereal
footfalls or gliding garments--the old order had changed indeed, and
yielded place to a rosy, racy, healthy, hearty, well-grown set of
twentieth-century schoolgirls, overflowing with vigorous young life and
abounding spirits, mentally and physically fit, and about as different
from their mediaeval forerunners as a hockey stick is from a spindle.

Among the jolly, careless company that on this January evening held
carnival in the vaulted passages, and woke the echoes of the
time-hallowed walls, no two had abandoned themselves to the fun of the
moment more thoroughly than Deirdre Sullivan and Dulcie Wilcox. They had
attempted to dance five varieties of fancy steps on an upper landing,
had performed a species of Highland fling down the stairs, and had
finished with an irregular jog-trot along the lower corridor, subsiding
finally, scarlet with their exertions, and wellnigh voiceless, on to the
bottom step of the back staircase.

"Oh!--let's--sit here--and talk," heaved Deirdre, her power of speech
returning in jerks. "I'm--tired--of ragging round--and--I've not seen
you--for ages!--and oh!--there's such heaps and heaps--to tell.
Look!--she's over there!"

"Who?" queried Dulcie laconically. She was stouter than Deirdre, and,
like Hamlet, "scant of breath".

"Why, she, of course!"

"Don't be a lunatic! Which she? And what she? And why she of all shes?"
gasped Dulcie, still rather convulsively and painfully.

"What'she' could I possibly mean except the new girl?"

"You don't mean to tell me there's a new girl?"

"You don't surely mean to tell me you've never noticed her! You blind
bat! Why, there she is as large as life! Can't you see her, stupid? The
atrocious part of it is, she's been stuck into our bedroom!"

Dulcie sprang up, with hands outstretched in utter tragedy.

"No!" she wailed, "oh, no! no! Surely Miss Birks hasn't been heartless
enough to fill up that spare bed! Oh, I'll never forgive her, never! Our
ducky, chummy little room to be invaded by a third--and a stranger! It's
sheer barbarous cruelty! Oh, I thought better of her! What have we done
to be treated like this? It's pure and simple brutality!"

"Who's the lunatic now? Stop ranting, you goose! That bed was bound to
be filled some day, though it's hard luck on us. We did pretty well to
keep the place to ourselves the whole of last term. 'All good things
come to an end.' I'm trying to be philosophical, and quote proverbs; all
the same, 'Two's company and three's trumpery'. That's a proverb too!
You haven't told me yet what you think of our number three. She's
talking to Mademoiselle over there."

"So she is! Why, if she isn't talking German, too, as pat as a native!
What a tremendous rate their tongues are going at it! I can't catch a
single word. Is she a foreigner? She doesn't somehow quite suggest
English by the look of her, does she?"

The new girl in question, the interloper who was to form the unwelcome
third, and spoil the delightful _scene a deux_ hitherto so keenly
enjoyed by the chums, certainly had a rather un-British aspect when
viewed even by impartial eyes. Her pink-and-white colouring, blue eyes,
and her very fair flaxen hair were distinctly Teutonic; the cut of her
dress, the shape of her shoes, the tiny satchel slung by a strap round
her shoulder and under one arm--so unmistakably German in type--the
enamelled locket bearing the Prussian Eagle on a blue ground, all showed
a slightly appreciable difference from her companions, and stamped her
emphatically with the seal and signet of the "Vaterland". On the whole
she might be considered a decidedly pretty girl; her features were small
and clear cut, her complexion beyond reproach, her teeth even, her fair
hair glossy, and she was moderately tall for her fifteen years.

Dulcie took in all these points with a long, long comprehensive stare,
then subsided on to the top of the boot rack, shaking her head gloomily.

"You may call it British prejudice, but I can't stand foreigners," she
remarked with a gusty sigh. "As for having one in one's bedroom--why,
it's wicked! Miss Birks oughtn't to expect it!"

"Foreigners? Who's talking about foreigners?" asked Marcia Richards, one
of the Sixth Form, who happened to be passing at the moment, and
overheard Dulcie's complaints. "If you mean Gerda Thorwaldson, she is as
English as you or I."

"English! Listen to her! Pattering German thirteen to the dozen!"
snorted Dulcie.

"You young John Bull! Don't be insular and ridiculous! Gerda has lived
in Germany, so of course she can speak German. It will be very good
practice for you to talk it with her in your bedroom."

"If you think we're going to break our jaws with those abominable
gutturals!"--broke out Deirdre.

"Miss Germany'll have to compass English, or hold her tongue," added
Dulcie.

"Don't be nasty! You're wasting your opportunities. If I had your
chance, I'd soon improve my German."

"Why didn't Miss Birks put her with you instead