Read Online First Term at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton - Free Book Online Page A

it made Mary-Lou follow Darrell about like a dog that has found its master and doesn't mean to leave it! She was always there to fetch and carry for Darrell. She tidied her desk for her. She even tidied the drawers in her dressing table, and offered to make her bed each day.
    But Darrell didn't like that sort of thing. “Don't,” she said to Mary-Lou. “I can do things for myself. Why should you make my bed? You know we're all supposed to make our own, Mary-Lou. Don't be daft.”
    “I'm not,” said Mary-Lou gazing at Darrell out of her big, wide eyes. “I'm only just trying to make a—a little return to you, Darrell—for—for saving me from drowning.”
    “Don't be silly,” said Darrell. “You wouldn't have drowned, really. I know that now. And anyway I only slapped Gwendoline hard! That was nothing.”
    But it didn't in the least matter what Darrell said, Mary- Lou persisted in adoring her, and being on the watch for anything she could do. Darrell found chocolates put inside her desk. She found a little vase of flowers always on her dressing table. But it irritated her and made her cross. She could not see Mary-Lou's mind reaching-out for a friendship that might help her. Mary-Lou was so weak. She needed someone strong, and to her Darrell was the finest girl she had ever met.
    The others teased Darrell about Mary-Lou's attentions. “Has the little dog wagged its tail for you today?” asked Alicia.
    “I wish I had some one to put bee-yoo-tiful flowers on my dressing-table!” said Irene.
    “Just like Darrell to encourage silly nonsense like that!” said Gwendoline, who was jealous of all Mary-Lou's friendly little attentions to Darrell.
    “She doesn't encourage it,” said Katherine. “You can see she doesn't.”
    Another result of the Pool affair was that Gwendoline really did feel bitter towards Darrell now. She had never in her life been slapped by anyone, and she couldn't forget it. Not even her mother had slapped her! It would have been very much better for spoilt, selfish Gwendoline if a few smacks had come her way when she was small. But they hadn't and now the four or five slaps she had received from Darrell seemed to her, not a sudden flash of temper, soon to be forgotten, but a great insult somehow to be avenged.
    “And one day I'll pay her back, see if I don't!” thought Gwendoline to herself. “I don't care how long I wait.”
    The third result of the Pool affair was that Alicia really did go deaf through swimming under water so long. It was not a deafness that would last very long, Alicia knew. Suddenly her ears would go “pop” inside, and she would be able to hear as well as ever. But in the meantime it was really very annoying to think that just after she had pretended to be deaf, she really had become deaf. Whatever would Mam'zelle say this time?
    It was unfortunate for Alicia that she sat at the back of the room, in the last row but one. Anyone with normal hearing could hear perfectly well, even in the back row, but Alicia with both ears “blocked,” as she called it, found it extremely difficult to catch every word that was said.
    To make matters worse, it was not Mam'zelle Dupont who took French that day, but Mam'zelle Rougier, thin, tall and bony. She was rarely in a good humour, as her thin lips, always tightly pressed together, showed. It was funny, Alicia thought, how bad-tempered people nearly always had thin lips.
    Mam'zelle Rougier had a soft voice, which, however could become extremely loud when she was angry. Then it became raucous, like a rook's, and the girls hated it.
    Today she was taking the beginnings of a French play with the girls. They nearly always had to learn one each term, taking different parts. Sometimes they performed it at school concerts, but often they didn't perform it at all, merely taking it in class,
    “Now.” said Mam'zelle Rougier, 'today we will discuss the play, and perhaps give out the parts. Maybe one or two of the new girls are good at