Gwen couldn't decide what to wear for her first day at the Glen St. Mary High School. She didn't want to get too dressed up; that would look like she was trying too hard. But if she didn't take any pains with her appearance, it would look like she just didn't care. Lynde finally took pity on her and helped her choose, as Lee had grown bored with the whole process and fallen asleep in Aunt Nan's bed.
"Here," Lynde said five minutes after entering the room, laying out her final choice on Gwen's bed: a simple grey wool skirt and navy blue blouse. "It's neat, tidy, easy to keep clean, and it's a good colour for you."
Gwen chewed her lower lip. "It's not too … boring?"
Lynde rolled her eyes. "You wouldn't want to look like the Drew girls, would you?"
"I don't know," Gwen countered. "I don't know the Drew girls."
"Gladys and Mildred Drew," Lynde said. "They come to school every day wearing clothes they saw in the cinema, or the fashion catalogues. They haven't got the sense the Good Lord gave rabbits … and they look something like rabbits, too, even in their fancy shoes and slinky frocks. Trust me, Gwen, you'll do much better dressed like everyone else."
"All right, then," Gwen surrendered with a sigh. She had already learned that it was just as well to do what Lynde suggested. Somehow, she made it very difficult to disagree with her.
"Now," Lynde said, "You hang up the rest of these clothes, and I'll press these so they will be ready for tomorrow morning. And mind you hang the rest of those neatly, or they'll be such a mass of wrinkles even I won't be able to get them flat!"
Gwen sighed as Lynde exited the room. She had emptied her entire wardrobe onto her bed, chair, desk, and even the floor. She didn't even have that many clothes … just a few skirts and blouses for school, a couple pairs of trousers for working around the house, and two Sunday dresses. How they had managed to cover the entire room (her trousers, she saw, had somehow gotten draped across Lee's snoring form) was beyond her.
She started to pick them up. If she didn't, Lynde would find out, and then she would be in hot water!
Everything was finally hung back in its place, and Gwen tossed her short robe carelessly toward her desk chair (it missed, and fell to the floor, but she didn't notice), and then climbed between the covers of her nice warm bed with a contented sigh. She knew she ought to wake Lee up and send her back to her own room … but she was so tired, and Lee was already asleep, and her bed was so very comfortable …
Before she knew it, Gwen was asleep.
Although Jack lived closer to the school than Grandmother and Grandfather Blythe did, he came out to Ingleside the next morning, "to walk with you all for your first day," he announced.
"Besides," grinning at Lynde as she added another place setting to the table with the air of a martyr, "Lynde's cooking is better than Mum's."
She didn't say anything, but her expression softened, and Gwen noticed that she exchanged the knife with the cracked handle which she had originally placed in front of Jack, for an unbroken one. Apparently even Lynde was not completely immune to Jack's charm.
Owen and Leigh were there as well, though their coming had been planned earlier. The House of Dreams was a long walk from the school, especially in winter, so Aunt Persis often ran the youngsters up to Ingleside first thing, where they would eat breakfast and then walk into town from there.
"Mother keeps saying we need to get a place closer to town," Owen informed Gwen that morning, sliding in to the chair next to her. Owen had taken quite a shine to his older cousin. "She says it's too hard for people to bring their animals all the way out to her, but Father always counters with saying that as long as he keeps fishing for a living, he needs to stay near the harbour."
"So what's the solution?" Grandfather asked with twinkling eyes. Grandfather loved keeping informed through his grandchildren on all the daily events. He said they were better than the newspaper.
"Father thinks Mother ought to open a clinic in town," Owen offered. "Mother doesn't like the idea of being away from home, but Father says that with all the house calls she makes, she's hardly ever there anyway, and at least maybe this will keep people from coming in at all hours, interrupting her in the middle of meals and sleeping and other home things, if she keeps her business and her home separate."
"But nothing is definite yet," Leigh interjected. "Remember Owen, Mother told you not to say anything about it? She doesn't want people taking it as settled, when they're still just talking it over."
Owen looked exasperated. "It's Grandfather, Leigh. Of course we can tell him."
"And Lynde, and Jack, and Grandmother, and Gwen and Phil and Lee and Jo?"
For the first time, Owen seemed to remember that others were listening as well. "Oh. Oops."
"Don't worry, Owen," Jack assured him. "We won't breathe a word."
"I might," Jo said. "I won't on purpose, but sometimes I forget things are supposed to be a secret."
"Well, remember," Phil said severely. "You don't want to disappoint Aunt Persis, do you?"
Despite the fact that she spent most of her days knee-deep in manure, tending farm animals, or else with her hands down dogs' and cats' throats, Aunt Persis was decidedly still the most glamourous out of all the aunts. She held a considerable fascination for all her nieces and nephews.
Jo considered this. "I'll try, really hard," he promised. "Besides, I don't know anyone here yet, so there aren't that many people I could tell."
"Breakfast is done," Lynde announced. "Everyone needs to get ready for school."
There was a mad scramble for books, boots, and hats, and within ten minutes Ingleside was emptied except for Grandmother and Grandfather, who sighed in unison.
Life was so boring when the grandchildren were at school. Even Lynde left them during the day, and while they never tired of each other's company … well, when one had such delightful grandchildren as they did, one wanted to spend as much time as possible with them.
Jack had promised Gwen on the walk to school that he would introduce her to a couple of kids he knew before heading off to his class. Accordingly, after seeing the younger ones settled in their classes, Jack led the way to the High School. The very first girl they met in the halls he hailed.
"Fanny! Just the girl I was looking for."
She blushed. "Really?"
Jack seemed oblivious to the effect his words had on her. "I want you to meet my cousin, Gwen Blake. Gwen, this is Fanny—Frances—Elliot. Gwen and her siblings are here for a year while their parents are overseas, Fanny, and I told her I'd introduce her to some people so she wouldn't feel like a stranger."
Gwen saw Fanny's face fall, and felt guilty, though it wasn't her fault Jack had gotten the other girl's hopes up. "Hi," she said shyly, offering a tentative smile.
Fanny smiled back reluctantly. "Welcome to the Glen High School, Gwen. Good morning, Lynde," she added to the girl standing just a few paces behind Jack and Gwen.
"Morning," Lynde said distractedly. She moved past them to hurry to the Assembly Room. She had, as she explained to Gwen on the way, a horror of being late, and made it a point to always be five to ten minutes early to every class, so she could secure a seat in the back where the teachers wouldn't ever call on her.
"Fanny is the top student in your year," Jack told Gwen, and suddenly Fanny was beaming again.
"There's the second bell for Assembly!" Fanny exclaimed suddenly, looking up as a shrill buzz filled the air. "We'd better hurry if we don't want to be late."
Jack squeezed Gwen's shoulder, nodded to Fanny, and ran off to join his mates, leaving the two girls hurrying behind.
"Your mother is one of the Ingleside twins, isn't she?" Fanny asked Gwen, leading the way to the Assembly Room.
Gwen nodded. "She was Diana Blythe before marrying Dad; now she's Di Blake."
"And she writes that column, the one about how to look for beauty and goodness in all the everyday things of life, right?"
Gwen nodded again. "She didn't even know she could write until after the War, and then something my Uncle Walter wrote to her before he was killed made her think about how much the world needs beauty-seekers, and then she started noticing more and more, and she started writing it down so she wouldn't forget, and then Dad told her to submit it to Uncle Kenneth's newspaper, and then it just grew from there." She blushed. Goodness, Owen's style of running ideas together in one sentence was rubbing off on her.
"I don't read the papers much, but I always read your mother's column," Fanny confessed as they found seats next to each other near the front of the room—but not too near. Gwen would have liked to sit with Lynde, but when she sat in the back she couldn't read the words on the board properly. She suspected that she needed spectacles, but she had vowed never to mention such a thing to Mother or Dad—she was plain enough as it was, she didn't need spectacles to make her even uglier.
"That's Mr. Grant the principal," Fanny whispered, motioning to the tall, well-built man sitting on the platform. "He opens classes every day with a prayer and a hymn. That's his wife, Mrs. Grant," pointing to the dark-haired woman sitting at the piano. "She teaches English. Their son Oliver is sitting over there," she pointed to a tall boy with his mother's dark colouring sitting near the window, gazing out across the snow-covered fields toward the distant sea, "and he's one of the smartest boys in school."
Mr. Grant looked up from his papers as a bell shrilled throughout the school. "Good morning, students," he said in a pleasant, deep voice. "Please rise for the Lord's Prayer."
"Well, Gwen, and what do you think of the Glen school?" Grandmother asked that afternoon. Lee and Jo had gone down to the House of Dreams with Leigh and Owen, and Phil was up in his bedroom working on homework—already! Only Gwen and Grandmother were in the parlour, enjoying the fire and some tea and toast Lynde had brought them.
"I think I'll like it," Gwen said slowly. "It's all so new right now!" She had come back to Ingleside feeling just slightly overwhelmed. Sitting here cosily with Grandmother, with Lynde's hot, strong tea warming her inside and the fire warming her outside, Gog and Magog winking companionably at her from the mantel, the panicked feeling was starting to recede.
"Mrs. Grant teaches English composition, and she's fearfully clever," she said. "I am certain I will never be able to live up to her expectations! I think her class is going to be fascinating, though."
"Gertrude has always been able to make English come alive for her students," Grandmother said. "She does have high expectations, but she always works with her students to help them reach their fullest potential, so long as they are willing to work hard themselves."
"I don't mind working hard, I just wish I were cleverer to begin with," Gwen said ruefully. "No matter how hard I work, I'll never be as smart as Phil."
Grandmother patted her hand. "Comparisons, my dear, are odious. Phil is Phil, and you are you, and we all love you both just for who you are. Go on about school. What other classes are you taking?"
"Latin," Gwen said with a glowing face. "I love languages, Grandmother. I started Latin at my school, back in Kingsport, and I think I'm going to like this class even better. Our teacher is Miss Crawford, and oh, her voice just sounds like music when she reads to us! Fanny hates Latin, she says she would rather learn a language that people still speak, but Dad always told Phil and me that Latin is a good base for almost any other language we wanted to speak. And isn't it amazing to think about the fact that people used to speak it, every day, just as we do English, and used it to talk about the simplest things, like laundry and babies and dresses? It's not just epics and history, it was once a living, breathing language that real people used."
"Baby—bébé—kind—infantia—in any language, the idea behind the word is precious," Grandmother said dreamily.
"I'm also taking algebra," Gwen said, crossing her eyes and sticking out her tongue comically. "I think I'm a perfect dunce at mathematics, Grandmother."
"Geometry was always my bane," Grandmother sighed. "Even now, I can never see one of Jack's geometry books without a chill going down my spine."
"Then there's ancient history, which is fun, and goes well with Latin, and of course physical education. Fanny plays ice hockey now, and field hockey during the spring. I agreed to try to do it with her, but oh Grandmother, I am so very, very clumsy. I'm so afraid I'm going to break my own or somebody else's leg with my stick!"
Grandmother laughed. "Isn't there something else you'd rather try instead?"
Gwen looked mournful. "I'm not very good at anything sports-related, I'm afraid. Lynde said I should just take the gymnastics class, like she does, but I can't climb the ropes to save my life, and I can't balance at all. Some of the girls take dance lessons—but even though I love music I can't translate rhythm from my head to my feet—and I love playing basketball and baseball and soccer and such with Jeremy and Phil and my friends back home, but whenever I think about playing it for an actual competition, where people are counting on me, I freeze up. Besides, Glen High doesn't offer soccer or baseball for girls, only for boys."
"Well, perhaps this will be good for you," Grandmother said optimistically. "Maybe being forced to play some sort of sport will help you develop a skill for it."
"Maybe," Gwen said, but privately she doubted it.
"Still," she said with hope in her voice, "I think I will like school overall. And I love Fanny already—she doesn't mind being friends with me, even though I'm new and a bit of a dunce—and Phil is happy with his classes, and Lee and Jo are making friends already, so I think everything will be just fine."
She missed having Jeremy around—she and her cousin took all their classes together back home, and he helped her through all the difficult spots—but it was a new experience having a girl friend, and she thought she was going to like it. And Jack, even though he was a sophomore and only saw her briefly throughout the day, was almost as good of a cousin and friend as Jeremy.
And as long as her siblings were happy and content, Gwen could endure anything. Even algebra and hockey!