Just then I hears a musical something from out in the hall and the girls, led by the perfect Miss Howe, follow the sound out of the room.
So that's the way of it, is it? Now I've got a real threatenin' glower on my face and my hands balled up in fists, but I know that ain't gonna be the way of it here in this place where Clarissa Worthington Howe rules. Goin' at her with fists a-flailin' ain't gonna do it, no. I've got to learn to fight like a lady, and so I take a deep breath and put the imagined book on my head, and with my lips together and my teeth apart, I follow them.
In the hall I discover the musical sound comes from a box what's got chimes in it that's bein' hit with a mallet by another serving girl—one who looks like the one I saw in the foyer, but not the same. Skinnier, but with the same saddle of freckles across her nose. Prolly her sister. She seems to be whackin' away at the thing with no sense or pattern but it sounds pleasant all the same, and as we all file down the stairs and into a dining room with tables set with dishes and glasses and cloths and such, it seems that it is the way the girls are called to eat.
Clarissa Howe goes over to the center of one of the tables and sits down. Others begin to do the same, so I go over to that table and pull out a chair. Maybe this will go better, I thinks, as eatin' together tends to make mates of people.
"I'm sorry," says a girl coming up to my side, "but this place is taken." She takes the chair and pulls it from my hand. I flush red in the face and go to another chair and pull that one out.
"I'm sorry," says another girl, doing the same thing, "but this place is taken."
I go to the other end of the table and try again there. The same thing happens. I try again. The same. Then I notice that there are more place settings here than girls and they are merely rotating around to deny me a seat at this table. I want to cry out at the cruelty and meanness of it all. I feel my eyes burning and I want to lash out and get one of 'em on the floor and pound her good, but I don't do it. Instead, I put my hands to my sides and I stand at attention and say to no one in particular, "Very well. Tell me where to sit and I will sit there."
A girl near me smirks and hooks her thumb over her shoulder. She uses her other hand to cover her mouth to stifle her giggles. I can see her eyes glance over to that Clarissa Howe to get her approval, and I see that she gets it. I follow the point and see another table, one with a single girl sitting at it. There are many empty places. I turn on my heel and march over and pull out the chair opposite the girl and plunk myself down. The girl has her head down and does not look up as I join her. She has very dark hair that is put up in a bun with side curls that hang lankly by her face. She has a pug nose and is plump—not fat plump but like she ain't lost her baby fat yet. Her hands are folded in her lap.
I put my elbows on the table and lean over and say to her all conspiratorial like, as if we're two prisoners in a jail, "They got me for bein' English, common, and a Tory, two of which things I am guilty of. What are you in for, Mate?"
She looks up, confused. "Why, whatever do you mean?"
"Why are you sittin' here alone, away from that pack of pampered princesses, is what I means," says I. She don't reply right off.
I look at the things in front of me to see if I'll be able to handle 'em with any kind of confidence: plate, napkin, two spoons, knife, fork, an empty cup with a little dish under it, another little dish with a roll and butter on it, a glass full of water. A far cry from a mess kit and a tin cup.
"They do not like me and I do not like them," says the girl with a sniff. She looks back down at her lap.
"Well, maybe you'll like me. My name's Jacky Faber and I've just come from"—and then I remember that I promised Mistress that I wouldn't say nothin' about my past life to any of these girls so's they don't faint dead away at the unseemliness of it all or something—"from far away to study at this school and so become a fine lady. Tell me your name and why we have two spoons here."
I'm lookin' real hungrily at the bread roll sittin' there next to the butter but I notices that nobody else is diggin' in yet, so I waits.
"My name is Amy and there is to be a soup course," she says. She brings up a book and puts it on the table. So that's why she had her head down. She was reading.
"Ah," says I, deciding to watch her and just do what she does and that way avoid trouble.
I notice some older people have come into the mess hall and have seated themselves at the table by the door. Must be the teachers, I thinks. Then there's a rustle as Mistress strides in and everyone stands up and stops talking. She goes to her chair, which is in the center of the teacher table, and looks out across the room. When all is silent, she speaks.
"We welcome into our company our new student, Miss Jacky Faber," says Mistress, and I redden at the notice. "She will now give us the grace."
I feel like I've been hit in the belly with a cannonball. Grace? I don't know nothin about no bleedin grace!
I look at Amy in my desperation. She sees my confusion and leans forward and whispers, "A prayer in thanks for the food."
Oh.
I scours me head for some graces and I comes up with a few and thinks to myself that I can handle this and maybe get a counterpunch in. Hey, is this not Jacky Faber, the saucy sailor girl who has played to lots tougher crowds than this? I tell myself this, but I don't quite believe it.
I place my hands together in a prayerful attitude and cast my eyes to the heavens and belt out: "Oh, Lord, bless this food to our use and us to thy service." The Regular Navy one—short and sweet and gets you to your food quick, and now, "Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive through Christ our Lord." That's the Catholic one, which I learned by listening to the Irish sailors on the ship and which now causes two of the serving girls standing by the door to quickly look at each other and make that hand cross thing they do, and now for my own special one I just made up. "I thank you, Lord, for this wonderful school, which has taken in a poor lost orphaned lamb and so warmly welcomed her into its company. Amen."
"Amen," says the congregation, and sits down, and the clatter of silverware and a gentle buzz of conversation is heard. From the corner of my eye I see Mistress looking at me, but I don't meet her eye as I sit back down.
"Well done, Miss," says Amy, an almost smile playing about her lips. She takes her cloth and puts it on her lap.
I take my piece of cloth and do the same. I want to grab that roll real bad, 'cause cryin' and bein' treated miserable always sets up a fierce appetite in me, but since Amy ain't doin' nothin' yet in the way of eatin', I holds back and waits. Soon one of the serving girls comes up and puts a bowl of yellowish soup in front of me and then one in front of Amy. She picks up a spoon and so do I.
"The other one," she says.
"The 'other one' what?" I says.
"The other spoon. You use the one in your hand for your tea."
"Oh." I switches spoons and dips the right one in and starts to shovel in the soup.
"Ohhh," I breathes, "that's prime, that is."
It is so good I want to just pick up the bowl and drink it all down that way, the way I would have done with my mess kit, but I don't. I think I'm doin' pretty good using the spoon, so I'm workin' away when I notice that this girl Amy's holding her spoon like she would a pen and she ain't makin' any noise in the eatin' of the soup, either, while I've got my spoon gripped full in my fist and am slurpin' away lustily, and so I change my grip and tries to be more daintylike in my takin' the soup on board.
That biscuit has been tauntin' me too long, I'm thinkin'. I pick it up and give it a couple of raps on the table but no weevils fall out of it, so I rip it open and look inside and nothin' comes out but a little steam and so I rub it in the butter on the little plate and take a bite. It is wondrously soft and warm and my eyes roll back with the goodness of it.