Part 10 (2/2)

At last Margaret could stand her position no longer, but crying out in a high, choking voice, that was plainly heard even above the din that prevailed: ”Oh I hate you all! I hate you all!” she dashed from the room, and ran, still with the sound of their laughter behind her, down the pa.s.sage which led to the billiard-room into the hall. Even at that distance she could hear the shouts and yells of laughter, which seemed to be increasing rather than diminis.h.i.+ng, for if there was an unusual lull in the noise, some one would ask Maud if her run had broken her or her stick, and that would be sufficient to start them all off again.

The noise they all made even at that distance was tremendous, but The Cedars was evidently a house to which uproarious mirth was no novelty, for Martin, by whom Margaret had brushed in her hasty flight from the billiard-room, exhibited no signs of surprise at the sound of it.

In the hall, simply because she did not know where to go next, Margaret came to a pause in her headlong flight, and, sinking on to a chair, covered her face with her hands. Even though the length of the whole house separated her now from the billiard-room, she had not escaped from the sound of the shouts and squeals to which her remarks had given rise, for fresh peals were still ringing out with unabated force.

”Oh, will they ever stop laughing at me!” Margaret said half-aloud, in a tone that was fraught with extreme misery. ”Oh, how I wish I had never come here! And I had been so looking forward to being friends with girls and boys of my own age. Oh, how shall I bear it if they go on laughing at me for days and days!”

”Oh, but they won't go on for as long as that, no matter how good the joke. They'll have a dozen fresh jokes by this time to-morrow, and this one will be forgotten. Unless, of course, it was an extra good one. By the way, what was the joke? You are Miss Carson, aren't you? I am Nancy Green. Take a chocolate and tell me all about it.”

Margaret, who had believed herself to be alone, turned in surprise as this unexpected voice fell on her ears, and glanced about her in a startled fas.h.i.+on until, in a cosy nook close to her and half hidden by a tall palm and a screen, she saw a big Chesterfield couch on which a girl was stretched full length, with a book in one hand and a box of chocolates in the other.

”I do not exactly know what is making them laugh,” Margaret said, declining the chocolates with an unhappy shake of her head. ”They were playing billiards, and Miss Danvers said she had run away and broken something, and I hoped she was not hurt, and then they all began to laugh, and have not stopped yet,” she added resentfully, as a fresh peal of laughter reached her ears. ”And you are laughing, too,” she said, glancing at Nancy's twitching lips.

”Only a very little,” Nancy said hastily, ”and it was rather a funny mistake you made, you know. I will try and explain. You see, a break in billiards does not mean a fall; it means that you go on scoring.”

”Oh!” said Margaret, in the same dejected accents, and not feeling at all enlightened, ”and what does going on scoring mean?”

”Why, that it is still your turn to play, of course,” said Nancy, and her tone was so surprised that Margaret thought it wiser to ask no more questions in case she displayed an ignorance so great as to rouse suspicion as to where she could have been brought up.

”I wish they would stop laughing at me,” she said miserably.

”Why! Do you mind being laughed at so much as all that,” Nancy said. ”I should have thought that as a governess in a school you would have got used to it. For schoolgirls are awful quizzes. Perhaps, though, as you were a governess they did it behind your back.”

”They certainly did not do it to my face,” Margaret said.

”Oh, well, they will here,” said Nancy. ”Everybody chaffs everybody else in this house pretty freely. What you must do is to chaff back; but if you don't feel equal to that just at first, just grin, and let them think you don't care a rap.”

At that moment heavy footsteps were heard in the pa.s.sage and Mrs. Danvers came into the hall.

”Ah, here you are, Miss Carson. I could not think where you had got to.

I just stopped to tell my shameless young folk what I thought of them for laughing like that at a stranger. Nancy, you lazy girl, you ought to have been watching the match instead of lying here. It was a close thing. Maud won. Really she has a wonderful eye. There is simply no game she cannot excel in if she chose. She----” But then Mrs. Danvers catching sight of Margaret's miserable expression pulled herself up short just as she had been about to launch forth into a glowing account of her daughter's skill. ”But all the same, it was shameful of them to laugh at you like that, Miss Carson. Your first night too, when you are not used to them.”

”Just what I said, Aunt Mary,” chimed in Nancy, who had seen that Mrs.

Danvers casual treatment of the incident which had brought such mortification to the new governess was making the latter feel still more lost and ill at ease. ”She'll soon get used to it though, and will care just as little as anybody when her turn comes to be rotted.”

”And above all things keep your temper, my dear,” said Mrs. Danvers.

”But that remark,” she added hastily, seeing that Margaret looked more miserable even than before, ”is not intended as a reproof, for the way they went on was enough to make any one lose their temper, but as a friendly warning. They'll tease you unmercifully if they find you lose your temper, and I shan't be able to stop it. And now, my dear, unless you like to come back to the billiard-room and show them that you don't care a rap for their laughter, I'll take you to your room. Which would you like to do?”

”Oh, go to my room, please,” said Margaret hastily, who felt that on no account would she face any one of the Danvers' family again that night.

”Did you lose your temper?” inquired Nancy. ”Then I'm jolly glad to hear it. Listen to the wretches laughing still. So many to one wasn't fair.

I hope you gave it to them hot. They deserved it.”

”So they did,” said Mrs. Danvers heartily, and Margaret, who had yet to learn Mrs. Danvers always sided with the last speaker, took courage from that remark. It showed at all events, she thought, that her sudden pa.s.sionate outburst had not caused Mrs. Danvers to take a dislike to her.

”I have put you in the big spare room,” Mrs. Danvers said, as with Margaret following in her wake she led the way slowly upstairs. ”Nancy and Joan have the other spare rooms, and I was really keeping this for an old aunt of mine, who may come later. If she does come while you are here, you won't mind turning out for her, will you, and going into the dressing-room opening out of this? There is a bed in it, and really it is quite a fair-sized little room; but I thought as this was empty I should like you to have it for the time being anyway. A nice room, isn't it?”

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