Jill was in the conservatory, arranging the flowers for the dinner-table; and Barbara's shyness returned, as the trim, neat figure came walking towards her, along the rows of chrysanthemums. She glanced down at her crumpled pinafore and sighed desperately. Being dragged up a dusty ladder into a cobwebby lumber-room by Wilfred had not proved the best of treatments for a pinafore that really had been clean a couple of hours ago. But Jill suddenly came out in a new light. With no teasing schoolboys to overhear her, she felt that here, at last, was a chance of making friends with her odd little tomboy of a cousin.
'Have you come to help me with the flowers?' she asked, with such a friendly smile, that Babs cheered up at once. She forgot all about her crumpled pinafore, and went straight to the point.
'No, I didn't come for that,' she answered simply. 'I came to ask you about--about school.'
'Ah!' said Jill, suddenly picking chrysanthemums at a great rate. 'Supposing you tell me what you think about it yourself?'
Her mother's words were running in her head: 'Do your best to understand the poor little soul!' and Jill wondered what she could tell her that would not upset her notions of school too cruelly.
'Oh, well,' replied Babs, 'of course, _I_ think it's going to be beautiful; but the boys--the boys are so funny about it, and it's made me all in a muddle inside. Do you think the boys _know_?'
'Perhaps not,' said Jill, and she strolled away along the rows of chrysanthemums. It seemed a shame to spoil the child's illusion; and yet, when she thought of this quaint little untrained object being dropped in the middle of the girls at Wootton Beeches----
Barbara had followed her up closely, and she suddenly interrupted her reflections. 'You know what a girls' school is like, don't you, Jill?' she continued appealingly. 'I wish--I _do_ wish you would tell the boys they are all wrong about it. They _are_ wrong, aren't they?'
There was a suspicion of a doubt in the last words that struck Jill as being rather pathetic. She put her bunch of chrysanthemums down, and drew Barbara towards her. 'You see, Babs, it is like this,' she said slowly; 'school is very nice, if you do not mind things being strange at first, and if you can bear being laughed at, and----'