First Term at Malory Towers Read Online Free PDF Page B

half-an-hour, apparently waiting for Miss Linnie to come. What she thought had happened to the rest of the class, no one knew.
    “But how could you sit there all that time and not even wonder why nobody came!” said Katherine, in amazement. “What were you thinking of, Irene?”
    “I was just thinking of a maths, problem that Potty set us, that's all,” said Irene, her eyes shining through her big glasses. “It was rather an interesting one, and there were two or three ways of getting it right. You see...”
    “Oh, spare us maths, out of school!” groaned Alicia. “Irene, I think you're bats!”
    But Irene wasn't. She was a most intelligent girl, who, because her mind was always so deeply at work at something, seemed to forget the smaller, everyday things of life. She had a sense of fun too, and when she was really tickled she came out with a tremendous explosive giggle that startled the class and made Miss Potts jump. It was Alicia's delight to provoke this explosion sometimes, and upset the class.
    The other three girls in the form were Jean, a jolly, shrewd girl from Scotland, very able at handling money for various school societies and charities; Emily, a quiet studious girl, clever with her needle, and one of Mam'zelle's favourites because of this; and Violet, a shy, colourless child, very much left out of things because she never seemed to take any interest in them. Half the form never even noticed whether Violet was with them or not.
    That made up the ten girls. Darrell felt that she had known them for years after she had lived with them only a few days. She knew the way Irene's stockings always fell down in wrinkles. She knew the way Jean spoke, clipped and sharp, in her Scots accent. She knew that Mam'zelle disliked Jean because Jean was scornful of Mam'zelle's enthusiasms and emotions. Jean herself never went into ecstasies about anything.
    Darrell knew Gwendoline's sighs and moans over everything, and Mary-Lou's scared exclamations of fear at any insect or reptile. She liked Katherine's low, firm voice, and air of being able to cope with anything. She knew a great deal about Alicia, but then, so did everyone, for Alicia poured out everything that came into her head, she chattered about her brothers, her mother and father, her dogs, her work, her play, her knitting, her opinion of everything and everybody under the sun.
    Alicia had no time at all for airs and graces, pretences, sighs, moans or affectations. She was as downright as Darrell, but not so kind. She was scornful and biting when it pleased her, so that girls like Gwendoline hated her, and those like scared Mary-Lou feared her. Darrell liked her immensely.
    “She's so lively,” she thought to herself. “Nobody could be dull with Alicia. I wish I was as interesting as she is. Everyone listens when Alicia speaks, even when she says something unkind. But nobody pays much attention when I want to say something. I do really like Alicia, and I wish she hadn't got Betty for a friend. She's just the one I would have chosen.”
    It took Darrell longer to know the first-formers who came from the other Towers. She saw them in class, but not in the common room or dormies, for the first-formers of the other lowers had their own rooms, of course, in their own Towers. Still it was enough to know her own Tower girls for a start. Darrell thought.
    She didn't know very much about the older girls in her Tower, for she didn't even meet them in the classroom. She saw them at Prayers in the morning, sometimes during the singing-lesson, when Mr. Young took more than one class at a time, and sometimes on the tennis-courts and in the swimming pool.
    She heard a few things about some of them, of course. Marilyn, sixth-former, was captain of the games, and most of the girls liked her immensely. “She's fair and really takes a lot of trouble to coach even the first-formers,” said Alicia. “She's as good as old Remmington, the games-mistress, any-day. She won't bother