Dorita Fairlie Bruce

DIMSIE

INTERVENES

By

Dorita Fairlie Bruce

Illustrated by

M.D. Johnston

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD

REPRINTED 1941 IN GREAT BRITAIN

BY J. AND J. GRAY, EDINBURGH

THIS book is for those readers who have

so kindly written to me from various parts

of the world asking for more about Dimsie

and her schooldays. I have tried to do as

they asked me, and hope they will not be

disappointed in this meeting with an old

friend after the lapse of several years.

DORITA FAIRLIE BRUCE

Contents

Chapter / Page
I. / A Parting Charge / 4
II. / A Matter of Conscience / 8
III. / First Division Affairs / 13
IV. / Hilary Seeks New Interests / 17
V. / A Piano For Eight Pounds / 21
VI. / Ways And Means / 25
VII. / The Syndicate Starts Work / 29
VIII. / Customers / 33
IX. / A Pleasure In Prospect / 37
X. / A Roaring Trade / 41
XI. / A Problem For Dimsie / 45
XII. / A Matter of Dress / 49
XIII. / Two Sides to a Question / 54
XIV. / The Unreasonableness of Miss Carver / 58
XV. / Saturday Afternoon / 63
XVI. / A Pretty Kettle of Fish / 68
XVII. / Dimsie’s Sunday Afternoon / 73
XVIII. / The Party Frock / 77
XIX. / The Event of the Term / 81
XX. / The Close of the Contest / 85
XXI. / Suspicion Aroused / 89
XXII. / Avoirdupois and Hair-Wash / 93
XXIII. / Results of the Hair-Wash / 98
XXIV. / A Ghost and a Pair of Goloshes / 102
XXV. / A Letter from Erica / 107
XXVI. / Slimming Corsets / 111
XXVII. / The Syndicate is dissolved / 115

CHAPTER I

A PARTING CHARGE

Erica Innes stopper her car by the grassy verge of the Westover road, just where a footpath left it to wander rather aimlessly across the sheep-cropped downs toward the old lighthouse on the cliffs.

‘This,’ she said in her usual brusque way, ‘is where you get down, I’m afraid – at least, if you’re to be back at school in time for prep., this afternoon. Sorry Pam and Jean couldn’t come with us, but I am glad to have had you two.’

‘Yes – the little blow has just freshened us up nicely after a hard morning’s work,’ rejoined Dimsie Maitland cheerfully. ‘It was rough on Pam, but she felt she could hardly – being captain – miss the first hockey-practice of the season; and Jean – ’

‘Jean was down for super., in the drive with the kids,’ observed Rosamund Garth, ‘but I believe Ida Russell would have taken it for her if she’d been asked.’

‘Jean wouldn’t ask her,’ returned Dimsie quickly. ‘She’s out to do her own jobs, this term, and to do them jolly well, too.’

‘That’s an improvement on last term, by all accounts,’ said Erica cynically. ‘Let’s hope it will last.’

‘It will – till she starts writing her next poem,’ declared Rosamund. ‘Poetry is like the drink with Jean – always has been.’

‘But this term she has signed the pledge, so it will last,’ said Dimsie firmly. ‘Old Jean’s all right when she takes herself the proper way. Things were a bit difficult for her, last summer, but now she’ll get on famously. It’s been awfully jolly having you back at Jane’s for a whole fortnight, Eric – even if only as a visitor.’

‘Jolly for us, but I should think it must have been rather slow for Erica,’ commented Rosamund. ‘When we were working, I mean.’

‘Oh, I managed to employ myself very well,’ responded Erica. ‘I can always find plenty to do. And that reminds me, girls, you might take a kindly interest, from time to time, in that company of the Girls’ Guildry I’ve started in the village. It ought to run along quite nicely now, with Dorothy Hart as Guardian when she has taken her correspondence course; but she hasn’t much help, and if you were to drop in on her, now and again, I should be grateful as well as Dorothy.’

Dimsie nodded.

‘We don’t have much time, as you know, for outside interests, but we shan’t let you down, Eric, seeing you’re so keen on the stunt. We’ll keep a semi-eye on it.’

‘I am keen,’ said Erica, rather defensively. ‘If I’m to be a politician some day, as I hope and intend, I’ve got to learn something about social work, and naturally I’m interested in girls. They learn order and discipline and self-control in the Guildry, and to go to church on Sundays, besides – ’

‘Yes, I’m sure they do,’ interposed Dimsie hurriedly. ‘I remember you explained it all beautifully to us, the other evening, and we shan’t forget, shall we, Ros? But I’m afraid, as you said, we ought to be getting back now. It will take us all our time.’

Erica regarded them more in sorrow than in anger.

‘It’s always the way when I try to interest people in Guildry,’ she said with resignation. ‘I’m sure I don’t know why! I first heard of it from a girl at college – Phyllis Bainbridge, up from a place called Maudsley in Surrey – and I caught on at once; but she told me most people seemed merely bored at first – once you can get them into it, it grips them. Good-bye, then! and a happy term to you both. See you soon again.’

‘Yes, rather!’ assented the other two in chorus, and stood back to wave to her as she prepared to drive away.

And at that moment, off the luggage-grid behind hopped a small slender person with an impish face set in a mop of red curls.

Erica was already on the move, in complete ignorance that she had carried an extra passenger; gathering speed, she topped a small slope in the road and disappeared into the dip beyond, while the other two confronted the stowaway.

‘Hilary Garth!’ exclaimed Dimsie. ‘I have long ceased to be astonished at any of your deeds or misdeeds, but – well, there are limits!’

‘Hilary!’ gasped Rosamund, regarding her niece with horror. ‘You might have dropped off and been killed with the greatest of ease!’

‘Pooh!’ said Hilary unperturbed. ‘I sat back and took a good grip. I knew I’d be al right.’

‘But how on earth did you get on to it at all without our knowing?’

‘When you stopped at the gates to let that big van pass, before you turned into the road. I was standing at the edge of the wood, and when I saw the case on the grid I – well, it just occurred to me what a jolly fine seat it would make, and I sat on it!’

‘You would!’ exclaimed her Aunt Rosamund in a voice which expressed unutterable things.

Dimsie, after her first exclamation, had said nothing, but stood staring steadily at the younger girl, who wriggled uneasily and avoided her gaze.

‘I suppose I’d better stroll back with you now,’ suggested Hilary, breaking the silence with an attempt at jauntiness.

‘No, thank you,’ answered Dimsie curtly. ‘We don’t want a pleasant walk back to be spoiled by your company. Having chosen to get yourself here, you can get yourself back.’

‘But, Dimsie,’ the dawnings of dismay took some of the pertness out of Hilary’s voice, ‘you know we mayn’t go over the downs unless a Senior takes us.’

‘Yes,’ agreed the head girl coolly. ‘I shouldn’t advise you to add that to your crime-sheet. It’s back enough already.’

‘But if you won’t let me go with you and Rosamund, how can I get back to Jane’s?’

‘By walking along the high road, I suppose, since you can’t do another car-hop back again.’

‘Dimsie! it’ll take ages! It’s miles round by the road!’

‘So it is. But your legs are young and strong and it’s a fine afternoon. You should get in about tea-time.’

‘But I’ll get into the most frightful row!’ wailed Hilary. ‘You know I shall if I’m not in till then. Whoever’s in charge of the 2nd Div. prep. this afternoon is bound to miss me and ask where I’ve been – and what can I say?’

‘Make a clean breast of it, I should thing,’ advised Dimsie. ‘I don’t see what else you can do. It’s too late to go into difficulties of that sort; you should have foreseen them before you started.’

‘I did. I meant to come back across the downs with you. I knew I should get in before the prep. bell if we walked fast.’

‘Which reminds me,’ observed Dimsie, ‘that you and I, Rosamund, will have to walk very fast indeed to make up for all this delay. Good-bye, Hilary! I shouldn’t hang about either, if I were you.’

Then, as her two elders turned away into the field-path, Hilary’s red-haired temper burst its bounds. Standing in the middle of the highway she stamped her foot in fury.

‘You’re a beast, Dimsie Maitland! You’re doing this on purpose to get me into a row! You know you are! It’s a hateful low-down trick!’

The head-girl of ‘Jane’s’ stopped abruptly and looked back at the vision of rage dancing in the dust behind her; and as her calm brown eyes met Hilary’s stormy green ones the younger girl’s dropped, and she stood still. Then Dimsie spoke.

‘Quite right. I am doing it on purpose to get you into a row, and for a very good reason. Ordinary rule-breaking is one thing – we’ve all done plenty of it in our time – but this last prank of yours was both mad and dangerous, and I decline to shield you by taking you back with us. You’d simply yield to your next wild impulse, and heaven only knows what the consequences might be! Now, do you understand?’

‘I-I suppose so,’ Hilary admitted half sulkily.

‘Then you’ll take back what you said about “a hateful low-down trick”, and apologize for calling me a beast. A beast I may be, and you can say what you like about me in the holidays, but during term-time you can’t abuse a prefect to her face. It isn’t done – as you shouldn’t need me to tell you.’

Hilary grew scarlet with something better than passion this time.

‘I’m awfully sorry, Dimsie! I-I didn’t really mean it.’

‘All right then – that’s that – and no more need be said. Start off at once, and get back as soon as you possibly can,’ and with a wave of her hand Dimsie turned again to join Rosamund, and they set off at a good round pace across the grasslands.

‘The brat!’ exclaimed Hilary’s relative, indignantly. ‘It was all I could do not to chip in with a few well-chosen words of my own, but I know from experience it’s always best to leaver her to you.’

Dimsie chuckled.

‘Yes, I can generally manage her, thank goodness! and her tantrums never last long. We understand each other, even if I am a beast, and I know quite well she wouldn’t respect me if I wasn’t.’

‘All the same,’ said Rosamund darkly, ‘I foresee some trouble with that young woman this term. She’s been a bit more exuberant than usual during the holidays, and that’s saying a good deal!’

‘Then she has probably worked it off all right,’ answered Dimsie comfortably. ‘She’s been long enough at school by now to know what she can do and what she can’t. These aren’t the wild and woolly days of her first term.’

But Rosamund considered she had grounds of her own for a gloomy outlook.

‘The trouble with Hilary is that she thinks of things to do which have never before occurred to any human brain, and have therefore never been forbidden. And Hilary’s cod is that if a thing has not actually been forbidden you’re perfectly justified in trying it on.’

Dimsie grinned.

‘I know! It’s a liberal education for anybody to be a prefect in the school which contains your delightful niece. I’m sorry you’re having an attack of nerves about her, but I’ll keep a look-out. After all, there’s this about the naughtiness of Hilary and her gang – it’s never really underhand or bad for the school, like the sins of some other people during our long career at Jane’s.’

‘I know the kind of thing you mean,’ assented Rosamund thoughtfully. ‘No, I don’t think we need look for anything of that sort from Hilary. She’s a little fiend, but it’s a wholesome kind of fiendishness.’

‘Anyway, I hope,’ observed Dimsie, ‘we’re going to have a peaceful time, this term, for we shall have heaps to do without having to tackle insurrections in the 2nd Div. There’s all that Matric. work – and now this new gym instructress from Westover – ’

Rosamund’s blue eyes widened.

‘But surely gym’s nothing to worry about! We’ve got to put our backs into it for an hour or so on Wednesday afternoons, but we’ve always had to do that; and except for our ten minutes’ practice, each morning before breakfast, there’s nothing more in it.’

‘Oh, isn’t there? Didn’t you hear what Miss Yelland said in the Senior sitting-room, last night? Oh, no! I forgot – you were practising somewhere. Anyhow, this Westover woman seems to think we might easily become hot stuff at drill, and she’d been talking it over with Miss Yelland, last Wednesday, when they were having tea in the staff room, and told her we ought to be entered for the County Shield. And Miss Yelland got all worked up about it and went to Miss Yorke – and the long and the short of it is that we’re to have a shot at the Shield. All of which will mean extra drills in addition to the rest of our work.’

‘Well, of course,’ said Rosamund, as they came down into the valley path which would lead them at length to their own school grounds, ‘if we enter we’ve got to win it, so we’ll have to work. It would never do for Jane’s to compete in any county event and get beaten.’

‘Certainly not!’ agreed Dimsie, ‘but it will all take time. So let’s hope there won’t be too many distractions otherwise – no more outbreaks of the Candlelight Club or kindred institutions!’

For the Candlelight Club had been a nefarious society which had been started twice before in the Middle School by certain lawless spirits, and no neither occasion had it been for the benefit or uplift of its members. Dimsie and her fellow prefects had had a trying time, the previous term, in running it to earth and disbanding it; and it was hardly to be wondered at that she was not anxious for any revival of its disturbing activities.

‘You needn’t worry,’ said Rosamund reassuringly. ‘Nobody will start that again in a hurry. You’ve managed to reform Alma Sinclair and her lot, and with them eating out of your hand we’ve nothing more to fear. I venture to prophesy that we’re going to have a perfectly happy and humdrum term from now till Christmas.’

CHAPTER II

A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE

The two Seniors walked into their schoolroom just as the bell ceased ringing for afternoon prep., and at the same moment Rosamund caught sight of a familiar red head vanishing down the passage in the direction of the 2nd Division room.

‘There’s Hilary back in time after all!’ she exclaimed to Dimsie. ‘How on earth did she manage it – short of being picked up by an aeroplane?’

‘Not altogether improbable – since it’s Hilary,’ responded Dimsie, unmoved, as she lifted the lid of her desk, and prepared to sort out the books required of her afternoon’s work. ‘I must remember to inquire into the matter afterwards, Who’s got that diagram we have to copy for our Science notes to-morrow? Oh, all right, Pam! After you, then. I’ll come along to your study for it about four.’

Hilary, meanwhile, in the big schoolroom, was also sorting out books behind a desk-lid, while she told the story of her adventures in a hurried undertone to Nan Musgrave, her next-door neighbour.

‘Of course I quite counted on coming back the short way over the downs with Dimsie and Rosamund,’ she concluded, ‘and when they wouldn’t let me I thought it was all up – and so it would have been if the Westover bus hadn’t come along behind in the nick of time. It was simply providence, of course, but frightfully expensive! Fancy twopence half-fare for a short run like that! Those country buses just charge the first thing that comes into their heads.’

‘I bet it was worth twopence to you, though!’ rejoined placid Nan in her sleepy voice. ‘If you hadn’t had it on you, you wouldn’t be here now – and not for another half-hour either!’

‘That’s true enough,’ admitted Hilary, and added with a chuckle, ‘I scored off Dimsie Maitland anyhow!’

Nan regarded her with a ruminating eye.

‘And that’s a thing which doesn’t often happen at the Jane Willard Foundation,’ she observed. ‘It isn’t every one who can get the better of Dimsie.’

Something about this statement gave Hilary an odd feeling of uneasiness.

‘She meant me to get into a row,’ she muttered; ‘she said so. It would have been different if she had let me go back with her and given me lines or something when we got in. I didn’t expect to escape scot-free, of course.’

‘Ever since Dimsie became a prefect she’s had peculiar ways of punishing people,’ remarked Nan, ‘and she hardly ever gives lines or order-marks, like an ordinary person. Anyhow, you scored off her, this time.’

‘Well, she told me to get back as fast as I could,’ said Hilary, with a defiance which seemed to be aimed more at herself than Nan, ‘so it was all right to go by – ’

But here the mistress who was taking supervision suddenly awoke to the fact that the confidential whispering which came from Hilary’s part of the room could not be entirely about lessons.