Free First Term at Malory Towers by Enid Blyton Page A

tide was in.
    Darrell loved to have a game of tennis and then sprint down to the pool to bathe. Oh, the delicious coolness of the water then! She couldn't understand how Gwendoline or Mary-Lou could possibly shrink from getting in. But they insisted that the hotter the day, the colder the water felt, and they didn't like it.
    “But that's what's so lovely about the water,” said Darrell. “Feeling so cold on such a blazing hot day as this! If you could only make up your minds to plunge in instead of going in inch by inch, you'd love it. You're awful cowards, both of you.”
    Neither Mary-Lou nor Gwendoline liked being called cowards. Mary-Lou always felt very hurt when Darrell so carelessly lined her up with Gwendoline, and scorned her, too, for her timidity. She tried her hardest to make Darrell pleased with her by running after her more than ever, even to tidying her locker in the common room, which exasperated Darrell because Mary-Lou always altered her arrangement of things.
    “What's happened to my sweets? I know I put them in the front here. And where's my writing-pad? Blow, and I'm in such a hurry, too!”
    And out would come every single thing in the locker, higgledy-piggledy on the floor! Mary-Lou would look on mournfully.
    “Oh—I tidied them all so nicely for you,” she would say.
    “Well, don't !” Darrell would order. “Why don't you go and bother with somebody else's things? You always seem to make a beeline for mine. You seem to have got a craze for tidying things and putting them away. You go and do Alicia's—they're much untidier than mine! Just leave mine alone!”
    I only do it to help you,” Mary-Lou would murmur. It was awful to have such an admiration for somebody and for them to find it a nuisance. Perhaps Darrell would like her to tidy Alicia's things. She knew Darrell liked Alicia very much. Very well, then, she would help Alicia too.
    But Alicia could not bear it any more than Darrell, and when poor Mary-Lou succeeded in breaking the glass of her mother's photograph, Alicia forbade her ever to touch any of her things again.
    “Can't you see when you're a nuisance?” she said. “Can't you see we don't want a little ninny like you always flapping round us? Look at that photograph! Smashed to bits just because you started messing around.”
    Mary-Lou wept. She was always scared when anyone ticked her off. She went out of the room and bumped into Gwendoline in the passage.
    “Hallo! Crying again! Whatever's up now?” asked Gwendoline, who was always interested in other people's rows, though never sympathetic.
    “Nothing. It's only that Alicia and Darrell are always so hard on me when I want to help them,” wept poor Mary- Lou, feeling very sorry for herself.
    “Oh, what do you expect from people like Alicia and Darrell—yes and Betty too?” asked Gwendoline, delighted to get in a few hard words about her enemies. “Always so cocksure of themselves, and so ready with their tongues. I can't imagine why you want to make friends with them.”
    “I've just broken the photograph of Alicia's mother,” said Mary-Lou, wiping her eyes. “That's what the trouble was really about.”
    “Well, you may be sure Alicia won't forgive you for that ,” said Gwendoline. “She'll have her knife into you now. She just adores her mother, and nobody is ever allowed to handle that photograph. You've done it now, Mary-Lou!”
    As she spoke, a perfectly wonderful idea came into Gwendoline's head. She stopped and thought a moment, her eyes shining. In one moment she saw how she could get even with Alicia and Darrell, yes, and give that stupid little Mary-Lou a few bad moments too. Mary-Lou looked at her curiously.
    “What's the matter, Gwendoline?” she asked.
    “Nothing. Just an idea,” said Gwendoline. To Mary-Lou's intense surprise she suddenly slipped her arm through the younger girl's.
    “You be friends with me,” she said, in a honeyed voice. 7 shan't treat you like Darrell does, and Alicia.