And Both Were Young: Chapters 3–4

On Thursday Flip received one of the proprietary letters from Eunice that always upset her.

Luckily she was assigned to Madame Perceval’s table that day, and this special stroke of luck cheered her a little, for Madame Perceval’s tact and humor seemed to act like a magnet drawing everyone into a warm circle of friendliness and sympathy.

You are tall, yes, but you can turn that into an advantage later on. And perhaps right now you’re a little awkward, but you’ll outgrow that. Incidentally, have you forgotten that Maggie Campbell’s sister, Liz, has a brace on her leg? And she’s one of the most popular girls in her class.

Ariel laboriously climbed up three steps, then sat down to wait, a patient expression on his ferocious bulldog’s countenance.

Flip was awed by both of them at the best of times—Martha, the beautiful and popular head girl of the school, and Kaatje, the equally popular and formidable games captain and head monitor; and Flip knew that this was anything but the best of times.

“That’s all right,” Kaatje interposed kindly. “We all like to be by ourselves once in a while. She wasn’t breaking any rules.”

And she went back into the common room and sat at the big billiard table, a legacy from the days when the school had been a hotel, and tried to write a letter to her father.

“Oh, please!” Flip begged, dismay flooding her face. “Please don’t make me go to bed, please! I feel wonderful, just wonderful, really!”

“I have,” Flip answered in the strange raucous voice that issued in so unwelcome a manner from her throat.

When she got in sight of the château she was winded, her knee ached, and her hair was flecked with the first falling flakes of snow.

“Paul!” Flip cried, her throat dry, her voice coming out in an ineffectual squeak.

Mlle. Dragonet held herself aloof from the girls, delegating many duties that would ordinarily have been hers to Madame Perceval, and the bravest of them regarded her with timidity.

Two beautiful brocades were hung on the walls and there were what seemed like hundreds of books in improvised bookshelves made of packing cases.

Luck had been her friendly companion in the venture and now that the visits to Paul were about to be approved by authority, surely fortune would not forsake her.

Flip’s spindly legs seemed to collapse under her like a puppy's as she sat on the stool in front of the fire.

I don’t like having to give penalties, and if you’ll tell me about it, I promise you I’ll be as lenient as I can.

She held the cheese knife in her hand and suddenly she slapped it against her palm with a decisive motion.

Had she unwittingly done something to make him angry?

He had forged ahead, but he slowed down and looked back at her.

Fräulein Hauser was not unkind, but after a while she said, “You don’t seem to have much aptitude for this, do you, Philippa?”

“I hope so.” Fräulein Hauser sounded dubious.

Flip raised her leg and the long ski no longer tumbled her ignominiously onto the snow.

“Come on, Aunt Colette,” Paul cajoled.

She wondered what Madame’s daughter would look like and, almost without volition, her hand holding the charcoal moved across the paper and she began to draw a girl, a girl about her own age sitting on a rock and looking out across the valley to the mountains.

The likeness was stronger than she could possibly have guessed. She was trying, more or less, to draw a girl who looked like Madame and who had short hair like hers.

“I think you have a flair for caricature, Flip,” Madame said.

So they besieged Flip in the common room with requests for caricatures to send home, and Flip went to her locker, her face bright with happiness, to get her sketch book and pencils.

“Flip” and “Pill” came indiscriminately, and somehow quite suddenly and surprisingly Flip knew that she no longer minded the “Pill” because it sounded friendly; it was being said to her, not at her.

“Oh, jacks! Let me play too!” Gloria cried, clambering up and sitting cross-legged on the green felt of the billiard table; and Flip realized that one reason Gloria never lacked for partners, or a place in the common room games, was that she never hesitated to ask.

“Well, if she thinks I’m too impossible to teach, I guess that’s that.”
“The mangy old minge,” Gloria muttered.

“Foursies.”
“Fivesies.”
“It’s fivesies,” Flip corroborated.

And Flip went to bed that night to dream of soaring through the air on her skis, watched by admiring throngs of girls; of executing the delicate loops of telemarks; and when she woke up in the morning her mind was still a happy jumble of snow conditions and stems.

Eunice’s letters, on gray stationery with green ink, usually came on Thursday.

From the point of view of the other girls, at least Flip was getting regular mail, but Eunice always said something that galled her.

Here I am in a hospital in Shanghai, as yellow as any banana. Don’t be worried—it’s not the bad kind of jaundice, I’m promised, but it’s a great nuisance because I have to stay here in bed and rest.

Flip had been skiing conscientiously for about an hour under Paul’s tutelage when Madame Perceval came out and called them.

Flip had been skiing conscientiously for about an hour under Paul’s tutelage when Madame Perceval came out and called them.

Then, completely forgetting her admonition, she ran on down the corridor and into the common room.

A sudden hush came over the common room because the senior girls had studies and a special living room of their own on the second floor, and seldom came downstairs unless it was to lecture one of the girls for some misdeed that affected the two school teams, the Odds and the Evens, or that came under the jurisdiction of the student government.

It wasn’t quite as easy to draw Martha as it had been the girls she saw constantly in the common room and the classroom, or as easy as the faculty, whose caricatures, sketched hurriedly at the end of study halls, had thrown the girls into fits of laughter, but she managed to get a passable exaggeration of Martha's almost Hollywood beauty onto the paper, and the head girl was very pleased.