6 Bill and Thunder
After a few days it seemed to Darrell as if she had been back at school for weeks. The world of home seemed very far away. She thought pityingly of her sister Felicity at her day school. Why, Felicity didn’t even guess what it was like to be at a proper boarding-school, where you got up all together, had meals together, planned fun for every evening, and then all rushed off to bed together.
Wilhelmina, or Bill, had been rather silent those first two or three days. Darrell wondered if she was homesick. As a rule the happy, normal girls did not mope and pine—life was so full and so jolly at Malory Towers that there simply wasn’t time for anything of that sort.
All the same, she thought Bill looked a bit serious. “Not homesick, are you?” she asked, one morning when she was walking down one of the corridors with Bill.
“Oh no. I’m horse-sick!” said Bill, surprisingly. “I keep on and on thinking of all our horses at home that I love so much—Beauty and Star and Blackie and Velvet¹ and Midnight and Miss Muffet and Ladybird and . . .”
“Good gracious! However do you remember all those names?” said Darrell, in surprise.
“I couldn’t possibly forget them,” said Bill solemnly. “I’m going to like Malory Towers, I know that, but I simply can’t help missing all our horses, and the thunder of their hooves and the way they neigh and nuzzle—oh, you can’t understand, Darrell. You’ll think me silly, I know. You see, I and three of my brothers used to ride each morning to their tutor—four miles away—and we used to go out and saddle and bridle² our horses—and then off we’d go, galloping³ over the hills.”
“Well, you couldn’t do that all your life long,” said Darrell, sensibly. “And anyway, you’ll do it in the hols. again. You’re lucky to have been able to bring Thunder with you here.”
“That’s why I said I’d come to Malory Towers,” said Bill. “Because I could bring Thunder. Oh dear, Darrell—it’s been the week-end so far, when there weren’t lessons—I’m just dreading⁴ to think what will happen when I have to go to classes and perhaps shan’t see Thunder all day long. It’s a pity Miss Peters wouldn’t let him stand at the back of the classroom. He’d be as good as gold.”

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