"Come, my dark-eyed honey,And help to spend my money,"
"Come, my dark-eyed honey,And help to spend my money,"
chanted the minstrels lustily, and the audience smiled at the appropriateness of the words.
It was felt that the Symposium had been an enormous success. The girls were quite loath to leave, and dispersed slowly from the gymnasium. Many eyes were turned on Winona and Garnet as they carried their instruments down from the platform. "Who are they?" every one was asking, for so far their names were not known outside their own form. "The two County Scholarship holders,"somebody replied, and the information was passed on.
Next morning, Margaret proudly posted up the result of the collection, which amounted to £2 13s.7d.—a very substantial sum in the estimation of the school.
"It ought to be sufficient to buy a cup!" she triumphed. "Miss Bishop has promised to send for some catalogues, so that we can look up the prices. We shall start the season well, at any rate. Kirsty's almost ready to stand on her head! I never saw any one so elated!"
"Except yourself!" smiled Patricia.
"Cela va sans dire, camarade!"
Garnet and Winona, walking down the High Street together after the performance, also compared notes.
"It was fine! I do admire Margaret. Mustn't it be splendid to be head of the school?" sighed Garnet enviously.
"Do you think so? Yes, I suppose it is, but if I had my choice, I'd a dozen times over rather be Games Captain," answered Winona.
It is high time now that we paused to consider a very important person indeed in this story, namely Miss Harriet Beach, but for whose invitation Winona would never have attended Seaton High School at all. Aunt Harriet was what is generally known as "a character," that is to say, she was possessed of a strong personality, and was decidedly eccentric. Though her age verged on sixty she preserved the energy of her thirties, and prided herself upon her physical fitness. She was tall, with a high color, keen brown eyes, a large nose, a determined mouth, and iron gray hair. In her youth she must have been handsome, and even now her erect figure and dark, well-marked eyebrows gave her a certain air of distinction. She was a most thoroughly capable woman, reliable, and strongly philanthropic: not in a sentimental way, however; she disapproved of indiscriminate almsgiving, and would have considered it a crime to bestow a penny on a beggar without making a proper investigation of his case. She was a tower of strength to most of the charitable institutions in the city, a terror to the professional pauper, but a real friend to the deserving. Her time was much occupied with committees, secretarial duties, district visiting, workhouse inspection andother public interests. She was apt indeed to have more than her share of civic business; her reputation for absolute reliability caused people to get into the habit of saying "Oh, go to Miss Beach!" on every occasion, and as she invariably proved the willing horse, she justified the proverb and received the work in increased proportions.
Like most people, Aunt Harriet had her faults. She was apt to be a trifle overbearing and domineering, she lacked patience with others' weaknesses, and was too doctrinaire in her views. She tried very hard to push the world along, but she forgot sometimes that "the mills of God grind slowly," and that it is only after much waiting and many days that the bread cast upon the waters returns to us. She prided herself on her candor and lack of "humbug." Unfortunately, people who "speak their minds" generally treat their hearers to a sample of their worst instead of their best, and their excessive truthfulness scarcely meets with the gratitude they consider it deserves. Miss Beach's many estimable qualities, however, overbalanced her crudities, her friends shrugged their shoulders and told each other it was "her way," "her heart was all right." Though she might give offense, people forgot it, and came to her again next time they wanted anything done, and the universal verdict was that she was "trying at times," but on the whole one of the most useful citizens which Seaton possessed.
If there was one person more than another who wore out Miss Beach's patience it was her niece and goddaughter, Mrs. Woodward. She had a sincere affection for her, but their two personalities were at absolutely opposite poles. She admitted that Florita was amiable, well-meaning, and thoroughly affectionate, but for the rest she considered her weak, foolishly helpless, liable to extravagance, a poor housekeeper, and a perfect jelly-fish in her methods of bringing up her family. In vain did Aunt Harriet, on successive visits, preach firmness, order, consistency and other maternal virtues; her niece would brace herself up to a temporary effort, but would relax again directly her guest had departed, and the children—little rogues!—discovered at a remarkably early age that they could do pretty much as they liked. The Woodwards always dreaded the advent of Aunt Harriet, her disapproval of their general conduct was so manifest. By dint of urging from their mother they made extra attempts at good behavior before the august visitor, but they were subject to awful relapses. Mrs. Woodward, on her side, considered she had her trials, for her aunt had a habit of arriving suddenly, giving only a few hours' notice by telegram, and she could not forbear the suspicion that her revered godparent wished to surprise her housekeeping and catch her unprepared. On one occasion, indeed, when the family came down—rather late—for breakfast, Aunt Harriet was discovered sitting on the rustic seat outside the dining-room window. She explained that she had taken the 5 a.m. workmen's train and had come to spend a long day with them, but not wishing to disturb the house at too early an hour she had remained in the garden enjoying the view until somebody arrived downstairs. In spite of her rather angular attitude, Miss Beach was a very kind and generous friend to her widowed niece, and she was the one person in the world to whom Mrs. Woodward naturally thought of turning in time of trouble. Aunt Harriet's advice might not always be palatable, but it was combined with such practical help that there seemed no alternative but to follow it.
Miss Beach, though not a rich woman, was possessed of very comfortable private means. She lived in an old-fashioned house just opposite the Abbey, and her windows looked out on a view of towers and cloisters and tall lime trees, with a foreground of monuments. To some people the array of tombstones would have proved a dismal prospect, but she declared it never distressed her in the least. She prided herself greatly on the fact that she had been born in the house where her father, grandfather and great-grandfather had also come into the world and spent their lives. Except for an occasional expedition to Highfield, she rarely left home. All her interests were in Seaton, and she became miserable directly if she were away from her native city.
The little Woodwards had never regarded it as much of a treat to go and stay at 10, Abbey Close. The restraint which the visit necessitated quite neutralized the afternoon at the cinema with which their aunt invariably entertained them. The fine old Chippendale furniture had to be treated with a respect not meted out to the chairs and tables at home,boots must be scrupulously wiped on the door-mat, bedrooms left tidy, and books and ornaments were to be held altogether sacred from the ravages of prying young fingers.
Winona had taken up her residence there with somewhat the feeling of a novice entering a nunnery. She was not quite sure how she and Aunt Harriet were going to get on. To her great relief, however, things turned out better than she expected. Miss Beach received her with unusual complacency, and the two settled down quite harmoniously together. The fact was that Winona, a visitor with nothing to do, and Winona a busy High School girl, were utterly different persons. It is one thing to wander round somebody else's house and feel bored, and quite another to hang up your hat, realize you are part and parcel of the establishment, and occupy yourself with your own business. Once she had fallen into the swing of work at school Winona began to appreciate the orderliness of her aunt's arrangements. It had never seemed to matter at home if the breakfast were late and she arrived at Miss Harmon's when the clock had struck nine, but at "The High" it was an affair of vital importance to be in her seat before call-over, and she daily blessed the punctuality of Aunt Harriet's cook. It was also a great boon to be able to prepare her lessons in quiet. Her family had never realized the necessity of silence during study hours, and she had been used to learn French vocabularies or translate her Latin exercises to a distracting accompaniment of Ernie's trumpet, Dorrie's and Mamie's quarrels,Godfrey's mouth organ, and Letty's strumming upon the piano.
"It would have been utterly impossible to do my prep. at home!" she thought sometimes. "I'd no idea what work was like before I came to Seaton 'High'! It would do those youngsters good to have a drilling! I wish they could have been in the Preparatory. No, I don't! Because then I should have had them here, and it would have been good-by to all peace. On the whole things are much better as they are."
Miss Beach was so extremely busy with her own multifarious occupations that she had not time to see very much of her great-niece. She made every arrangement for her comfort, however, and caused the piano to be moved into the dining-room for the convenience of her practicing. She had always had a tender spot for Winona, whom she regarded as the one hopeful character in a family of noodles. She talked to her at meal times about a variety of subjects, some of them within her intelligence, but others completely—so far—above her head. She even tried to draw her out upon school matters. This, however, was a dead failure. Winona, most unfortunately, could not overcome her awe for her aunt, and refused to expand. To all the questions about her Form, her companions, teachers, lessons or new experiences, she replied in monosyllables. It was a sad pity, for Miss Beach had really hoped to win the girl's confidence and prove a temporary mother to her, but finding her advances repulsed she also shrank back into her shell, and the intimacywhich might have existed between them was postponed to future years. Young folks often fail to realize what an interest their doings may have to grown-up people, and how their bright fresh outlook on life may come as a tonic to older and wearier minds. It never struck Winona to try to amuse or entertain her aunt. At her present crude stage of development she was incapable of appreciating the subtle pathos that clings round elderly lives, and their wistful longing to be included in the experiences of the rising generation. Shyness and lack of perception held her silent, and the empty corner in Aunt Harriet's heart went unfilled.
Saturday and Sunday were the only days upon which Winona had time to feel homesick. Her mother had at first suggested her returning to Highfield for the week ends, but Miss Beach had strongly vetoed the project on the justifiable ground that even the earliest train from Ashbourne on Monday mornings did not reach Seaton till 9.30, so that Winona would lose the first hour's lesson of her school week. She might have added that she considered such frequent home visits would prove highly unsettling and interfere greatly with her work, but for once she refrained from stating her frank opinion, probably deeming the other argument sufficient, and willing to spare Mrs. Woodward's feelings.
Letters from Highfield showed little change in the usual conduct of family affairs. The children were still attending Miss Harmon's school, though they were to leave at Christmas.
"We are late nearly every day now you arenot here to make Ernie start," wrote Mamie, almost as if it were an achievement to be proud of. "He locked the piano and threw the key in the garden, and we could none of us practice for three days. Wasn't it lovely? Letty pours out tea if mother isn't in, and yesterday she broke the teapot."
The chief items of news, however, concerned Percy. That young gentleman, with what Aunt Harriet considered his usual perversity, had sprained his ankle on the very day before he ought to have returned to school. He had been ordered to lie up on the sofa, but Winona gathered that the doctor's directions had not been very strictly carried out. She strongly suspected that the patient did not wish to recover too quickly. Whether or not that had been the case, Percy was now convalescent, and was to set off for school on the following Friday. Longworth College was not a great distance, and as Percy would have to pass through Seaton on his way, Aunt Harriet invited him to break his journey there and spend the night at her house. She had a poor opinion of the boy's capacity, but having undertaken a half share in his education she felt an increased sense of responsibility towards him, and wished to find an opportunity of a word with him in private.
Winona hailed her brother's advent with immense joy. Even so flying a visit was better than nothing. Letters were an inadequate means of expression, and she was longing to pour out all her new experiences. She wanted to tell Percy about the Symposium, and her friendship for Garnet, and thechemistry class, and the gymnasium practice, and to show him her hockey jersey which had just arrived. She had so long been the recipient of all his school news that it would be delightful to turn the tables and give him a chronicle of her own doings at the Seaton "High," which in her opinion quite rivaled Longworth College.
To the young people's scarcely suppressed satisfaction, Miss Beach went out after tea to attend an important meeting, leaving her nephew and niece to spend the evening alone together. They had never expected such luck. As it was Friday Winona had no lessons to prepare for the next day, and could feel free for a delightful chat. She flung herself into Aunt Harriet's special big easy chair by the fireside, and lounged luxuriously, while Percy, boy-like, prowled about the room.
"Well, I'm glad you're jogging along all right," he remarked when his sister's long account came to a pause. "Though please don't for a moment compare your blessed old High School to Longworth, for they're not in the same running! Aunt Harriet hasn't quite eaten you up yet, I see?"
"She's not such a Gorgon as I expected. In fact she's been rather decent."
"The dragon's sheathed her talons? Well, that's good biz. You went off as tragic as Iphigenia, heroically declaring yourself the family sacrifice."
"Did I?" Winona had almost forgotten her original attitude of martyr. Three weeks had made a vast difference to her feelings.
"If you can peg it out in comfort with the dragonso much to the good. Shouldn't care to live here myself though. It's a dull hole. Number 10, Abbey Close wouldn't be my choice of a residence."
"Well, it's not likely you'll ever have the chance of living here!" retorted Winona, taking up the cudgels for her adopted home.
"I don't know about that," returned Percy. "The house belongs to Aunt Harriet. She'll have to leave her property to somebody, I suppose, when she shuffles off this mortal coil. I'm the eldest son, and my name's Percy Beach Woodward. That ought to count for something."
"Aunt Harriet's not going to die yet," said Winona gravely. "I think it's horrid of you to talk like this!"
"Oh, I don't wish the old girl any harm, but one may have an eye to the future all the same," was the airy response. "D'you remember Jack Cassidy who was a pupil at the Vicarage? His aunt left him five thousand pounds."
"Yes, and I heard he's muddling it away as fast as he can. Mary James told me. Her father's guardian of part of his property until he's twenty-five, you know."
"He's a topper, is Jack! He's promised to take me for a day sometime to Hartleburn, when the races are on. Now don't you go blabbing, or I'll never tell you anything again!"
"Mr. Joynson said—"
"Oh, for goodness sake shut up! A boy of sixteen isn't going to be bear-led by an old fogey like Joynson. He has the mater far too much underhis finger and thumb for my taste. If you want to be chums with me, don't preach!"
Winona was silent. Her brother's infatuation for the Vicar's scapegrace ward was the affair of a year ago. She had hoped he had forgotten it. His escapades at the time, in company with his hero, had caused his mother to seek the advice and guidance of her trustee.
"Some one was telling me the other day that old oak furniture is worth a tremendous lot of money now," continued Percy, his eye roving round the room with an air almost of future proprietorship. "If that's so these things of Aunt Harriet's are a little gold mine. There was an account of a sale in the newspaper, with a picture of a cupboard that fetched two hundred pounds. It was first cousin to that!" nodding at a splendidly carved old piece which faced him.
Miss Beach's household goods were inherited from her great-grandfather, and included some fine specimens of oak, as well as rare Chippendale. Winona was too young to be a connoisseur of antiquities, but she had the curiosity to rise from her chair and join Percy in his inspection of the article in question.
"I tell you they're as alike as two peas!" he declared. "Same shape, same sort of carving, same knobs at the end! The reason why I remember the thing is that the buyer found a secret drawer in it after he'd got it home, with some old rubbish inside, and there was a lawsuit as to who owned these. He claimed he'd bought the lot with the cupboard, butthe judge made him turn them up to the family of the original owner. That was why there was a picture of the cupboard in the newspaper. It put an arrow showing the place of the secret drawer. I wonder if there's one here, too? I'm going to have a try! By Jove, there is!"
A vigorous pull had dislodged a drawer in a very unexpected situation. Winona would certainly never have thought of its existence, nor would Percy, if the newspaper had not given away the secret. He looked eagerly inside.
"No treasures hidden in here! Absolutely nothing at all, except this piece of paper."
"Perhaps Aunt Harriet has never found it out," ventured Winona.
Percy did not answer immediately. He was reading the writing on the paper.
"You bet she has!" he cried at last, flushing angrily. "I never thought she'd much opinion of me, but I call this the limit! It's going where it deserves!" and acting on a sudden impulse he flung the cause of offense into the fire.
For a moment Winona did not realize what he had done. By the time she reached the hearth the paper was already half consumed. She made a snatch at it with the tongs, but a flame sprang up and forestalled her. She had just time to read the words "last Will and Testament of me Har—" before the whole sank into ashes. She turned to her brother with a white, scared face.
"Percy! You've never burnt Aunt Harriet's will?"
Ashamed already of his impetuous act the boy nevertheless tried to bluff the matter off.
"It was an abominable shame! When I'm named Beach after her too! I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it myself!" he blustered.
"Read what?"
"I shan't tell you! Look here, Win, you must promise on your honor that you'll never breathe a word about this."
"Perhaps Aunt Harriet ought to know."
"She mustn't know:mustn't, I tell you! I say, Win, I'm not at all sure that what I've just done isn't a chargeable offense—I believe they call it a felony. You wouldn't like to see me put into prison, would you? Then hold your tongue about it! Give me your word! Can you keep a secret?"
"I promise!" gasped Winona (Percy was squeezing her little finger nail in orthodox fashion and the agony was acute). "I promise faithfully."
She was in a terrible quandary. Her natural straightforwardness urged her to make a clean breast of the whole affair. Had she been the actual transgressor she would certainly have done so and faced the consequences. But this was Percy's secret, not her own. He was no favorite with his aunt, and so outrageous an act would prejudice him fatally in her eyes. The hint about prison frightened Winona. She knew nothing of law, but she thought it highly probable that burning a will was a punishable crime. Suppose Aunt Harriet's rigid conscience obliged her to communicate with the police and deliver Percy into the hands of justice. Such a horrible possibility must be avoided at all costs. The sound of a latch-key in the door made her start. In a panic she rushed to the old cupboard and pushed back the secret drawer into its place. When Miss Beach entered the dining-room her nephew and niece were sitting reading by the fireside. Their choice of literature might perhaps have astonished her, for Percy was poring over Sir Oliver Lodge's "Man and the Universe," while Winona's nose was buried in Herbert Spencer's "Sociology," but if indeed she noticed it, she perhaps set it down to a laudable desire to improve their minds, and placed the matter to their credit. Percy took his departure next morning, and Winona saw him off at the railway station.
"Remember, you've to keep that business dark," he reminded her. "Aunt Harriet must never find out. She's been jawing me no end about responsibility, and looking after the kids and supporting the mater and all that. Rubbed it in hard, I can tell you! Great Juggins! Do I look like the mainstay of a family?"
As Winona watched his boyish face laughing at her from the window of the moving train she decided that he certainly did not. She sighed as she turned to leave the station. Life seemed suddenly to have assumed new perplexities. Percy's act weighed heavily on her mind. It seemed such a base return for all Aunt Harriet was doing on their behalf. She longed to thank her for her kindness and say how much she appreciated going to the High School, but she could not find the words. Theknowledge of the secret raised an extra barrier between herself and her aunt. So she sat at lunch time even shyer and more speechless than usual, and let the ball of conversation persistently drop.
"Fretting for her brother, I suppose," thought Miss Beach. "She can talk fast enough with friends of her own age. Well, I suppose an old body like myself mustn't expect to be company for a girl of fifteen!"
She was too proud to let the hurt feeling show itself on her face, however, and propping up the newspaper beside her plate, she plunged into the latest accounts from the Front.
Winona had been more than a month, nearly five weeks indeed, at the Seaton High School. In the first few days of her introduction toV.a.she had told herself that the difficulty of the work consisted largely in its newness, and that as soon as she grew accustomed to it she would sail along as swimmingly as Garnet Emerson, or Olave Parry, or Hilda Langley, or Agatha James. Most unfortunately she found her theory acted in the opposite direction. Closer acquaintance with her Form subjects proved their extreme toughness. She was not nearly up to the standard of the rest of the girls. Her Latin grammar was shaky, her French only a trifle better, she had merely a nodding acquaintance with geometry, and had not before studied chemistry. Her teacher seemed to expect her to understand many things of which she had hitherto never heard, and was apparently astounded at her ignorance. Winona puzzled over her text-books during many hours of preparation, but she made little headway. The royal road to learning, which she had fondly hoped to tread, was proving itself a stony and twisting path.
"Youseem to get on all right?" she said wistfully to Garnet one day.
"Why, yes. Of course one has to work," admitted her friend. "Miss Huntley keeps one up to the mark. But one must expect that inV.a.They don't put scholarship holders in the Preparatory."
"I was all at sea in math. this morning."
"You were rather a duffer, certainly. The problems weren't as difficult as the ones they gave us in the entrance exam. If those didn't floor you, why couldn't you work these?"
"But they did floor me. I barely managed half the paper. I reckoned I'd failed in it."
Garnet looked surprised.
"Then your other subjects must have been extremely good to make up for it. I was told that we should probably stand or fall by maths. You were ripping in everything else, I suppose? Scored no end?"
Winona did not answer the question. She was conscious that none of her papers could have merited such an eulogium. She envied Garnet's grasp of the form work. Try as she would, her own exercises and translations were poor affairs, and her ill-trained memory found it difficult to marshal the enormous number of facts that were daily forced upon it. Miss Huntley at first was patient, but as the weeks wore on, and Winona still wallowed in a quagmire of amazing mistakes, she grew sarcastic. The girl winced under some of her cutting remarks. Apparently the mistress imagined her failure to be due to laziness and inattention, and sooner than confess that she could not understandthe work, Winona was silent. She never mentioned the long hours she spent poring over her books in Aunt Harriet's dining-room. After all, it was better to be thought idle than stupid. But it was humiliating to feel that she was counted among the slackers of the Form, while Garnet was already winning laurels. The contrast between the two scholarship holders could not fail to be noticed.
Miss Huntley (privately known to the Form as "Bunty") was a clever, but rather remorseless teacher. She had been on the staff since the opening of the school two years before, and she was determined at all costs to maintain the high standard inaugurated at its foundation. She was herself the product of High School education, and knew to the last scruple how much to require from girls inV.a.To those who appeared to be really trying their best she was ready to give intelligent help, but she had no mercy for slackers. She was possessed of a certain amount of dry humor, greatly appreciated by the formen bloc, though each quaked privately lest, through some unlucky slip, she might find herself the object of the smart but withering satires. Despite her strictness, "Bunty" was popular. She was an admirable tennis player, and a formidable champion in a match "Mistressesv.Girls." Her strong personality fascinated Winona, who would have done much to gain her approval. So far, however, she was entirely on Miss Huntley's black list.
Matters came to a crisis over a difficult bit ofVergil. Latin was, next to mathematics, the most painfully wobbling of Winona's shaky subjects. She had puzzled in vain over this particular piece of translation. The words, indeed, she had found in the dictionary, but she could not twist them into sense.
"Old Vergil's utterly stumped me to-day!" she mourned to Garnet, as they met in the dressing-room before nine o'clock. "If Bunty puts me to construe anywhere on page 21, I'm a gone coon. I'm feeling in a blue funk, I can tell you."
"Poor old bluebottle! Don't wrinkle up your forehead like that—you're making permanent lines! It's a bad trick, and just spoils you."
"I can't help it when I'm worried!"
"Then don't worry."
"Oh, it's easy enough for you; you don't have to receive the vials of Bunty's scorn."
Winona hoped against hope that the difficult page might fall to somebody else's turn. Miss Huntley took no particular order, but selected girls at random to construe the lesson. In a Form of twenty it was possible not to be chosen at all. Winona kept very quiet, so as not to attract the mistress' attention. Marjorie Kemp and Olave Parry had already translated half of the fatal page, with tolerable credit. Miss Huntley's eye was wandering in the direction of Irene Mills. Winona dared to breathe. Then, alas! alas! Some unlucky star caused the mistress to look back towards the middle of the room. In a spasm of nervousness, Winona jerked her elbow, and away went her pencil-box,clattering on to the floor, and dispersing its collection of pens, pencils, nibs and other treasures beneath the neighboring desks. There was a dead silence, and the culprit was instantly the center of attention.
"A clumsy thing to do! Leave those things where they are! You can pick them up after the lesson," observed Miss Huntley grimly. "Go on now with the translation."
Winona's hot face had been hidden under Audrey Redfern's desk. She rose reluctantly. Her confusion made the hard passage seem twice as difficult. Even the words which she had carefully looked up in the dictionary and learned by heart escaped her fickle memory. She stumbled and floundered hopelessly, getting redder and redder with shame. Miss Huntley preserved an ominous silence, and did not attempt to help her out.
"That will do!" she said, at the end of about eight lines. "After such a complete exhibition of incompetence we won't inflict any more of your bungling upon the form. We must see if we can find a way of sharpening your wits. Your brain seems to have been lying fallow since you came to school! You will report yourself to Miss Bishop at four o'clock this afternoon."
The rest of the morning passed like a bad dream to Winona. It was a rare event for a teacher to send a girl to the head mistress. The prospect of the coming interview made her cold with apprehension. She avoided Garnet at one o'clock, and hurried out of the dressing-room without speakingto any one. She had a wild project of pleading a headache, and begging Aunt Harriet to let her stop at home for the rest of the day. But then to-morrow's explanations would be infinitely worse. No, it was better to face the horrible ordeal and get it over. As it happened, Miss Beach had gone out to lunch, so that leave of absence was an impossibility. Winona ate her early dinner alone.
"Aren't you well, miss? Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?" asked Alice the housemaid, noticing that the pudding was unappreciated, and divining that something must be amiss.
"No, thanks! I'm in a hurry, and must fly off to school as quickly as I can. It's my early afternoon."
Winona had a music lesson at a quarter past two on Thursdays. It was always rather a rush to get back in time for it. She crammed her "Bach's Preludes" and "Schubert's Impromptus" automatically into her portfolio, and started. It was only when she was half-way down Church Street that she remembered she had left her book of studies on the top of the piano. Needless to say, her lesson that day was hardly a success. In the disturbed state of her mind she was quite incapable of concentrating her attention on music. Miss Catteral looked surprised at her wrong notes and imperfect phrasing.
"I shall expect to find some improvement in this 'Impromptu' next week," she remarked. "Have you practiced your hour daily? You must take these bars, which I have marked, separately, and playeach twenty times in succession, slowly at first and then faster, and remember here that it is the left hand which gives the melody, and the right is only the accompaniment. I thought you had sufficient music in you to appreciate that! The way you thumped out those chords was painful. I am not pleased at all."
Miss Catteral so rarely scolded that Winona felt doubly humiliated. It was all a part and parcel of the general ill-luck of the day. She fetched her drawing-board, and went to the art class. Here at least she would have peace for an hour, though every one of the sixty minutes was bringing her nearer to her dreaded interview. At four o'clock, with a horrible sinking feeling in her heart, and a trembling sensation in her knees, she knocked at the door of the head-mistress's study, and entered in response to the "Come in!" which followed. Miss Bishop looked up from some papers, motioned her to a chair, and went on writing for several minutes. To Winona it seemed worse than waiting at the dentist's. The suspense was ghastly.
At last the Principal paused, laid down her pen, and blotted her pages.
"Come here, Winona Woodward," she said quietly. "I wish to have a straight talk with you."
Miss Bishop's eyes were her most striking feature. They were large and clear, but the pupils were unusually small, appearing mere black specks in the midst of a wide circle of blue. This peculiarity gave her a particularly intense and penetrating expression. Winona, standing at attention beside the desk, dropped her own eyes before the steady, searching gaze.
"Miss Huntley's report of your work is not at all satisfactory," began Miss Bishop. "I have been watching your progress since you joined the school, and I cannot think you are trying your best. At first, when you were totally new to your Form, I suspended judgment, but you have been here nearly half a term now—quite long enough to accustom yourself to our methods. I confess I am greatly disappointed. I had hoped for better things from the holder of a County Scholarship."
Winona remained silent. She could think of nothing to say in self-defense.
"It must be sheer lack of grit and effort," continued Miss Bishop. "I cannot understand how a girl who did so remarkably well in the entrance examination can rest content with such a low record. How long do you take over your preparation?"
"Until my aunt sends me to bed," replied Winona, in a very subdued voice. "I spend the whole evening at my lessons."
Miss Bishop looked puzzled.
"Then the work must be too difficult for you. If that is the case, I must remove you toV.b."
V.b.was notorious in the school as a refuge for incompetence. It was mainly composed of girls of sixteen and seventeen who could not reach the standard of the Sixth, and who went by the nickname of "owls" or "stupids." The prospect of being relegated to such an intellectual backwater spread palpable dismay over Winona's face. Miss Bishop smiled rather grimly.
"We can't win honors without paying the price! You must know that already by experience. I conclude that you studied hard for the Scholarship examination? Well, your Form work requires equally close application. Here is Miss Huntley's report: 'French, weak; Latin, beneath criticism; mathematics, extremely bad.' Yet in all these three subjects you gained a high percentage in the entrance examination. I have your papers here—yes, Latin 85, French 87, mathematics 92" (rapidly turning over the pages), "it is simply incredible how you have fallen off."
Winona was gazing at the sheets of foolscap in the Principal's hand.
"Those aren't my papers," she faltered.
"Certainly they are. They're marked with your number, 11."
"But I wasn't number 11, I was number 10."
Miss Bishop stooped, opened a drawer in her bureau, and took out a book.
"Here it is in black and white," she replied. "No. 11, Winona Woodward."
Winona's shaking hands clutched the edge of the bureau. In a flash the whole horrible truth was suddenly revealed to her. Until that moment she had almost forgotten how she and the ruddy-haired girl had collided at the door of the examination-room, and dropped their cards. In picking them up, they must have effected an exchange. She remembered that she had been too agitated to notice her number until after the accident had happened. She now related the circumstance as best she could. Miss Bishop listened aghast.
"What number did you say you took in the examination-room? Ten? That is entered in my book as Marjorie Kaye. I have the rest of the candidates' papers in this bundle. Let me see—yes, here is No. 10. Is this your handwriting? Then I'm afraid there has been a terrible blunder, and the scholarship has been awarded to the wrong girl."
The Principal's consternation was equalled by Winona's. To the latter the ground seemed slipping from under her feet. She tried to speak, but failed. A great lump rose in her throat. For a moment the room whirled round.
"This set of papers, No. 10, was marked so low as to be out of the running," continued Miss Bishop. "It is a most unfortunate mistake, and places the school in an extremely awkward position. I must consult with the Governors at once. Pending their decision, it will be better not to mention the matter to anybody. You may go now."
Winona managed somehow to get herself out of the study, to put on her hat and coat, and to walk home to Abbey Close. Her aunt was still absent, for which she was intensely thankful, and ignoring the tea that was waiting on the dining-room table, she rushed upstairs to her bedroom. Her one imperative need was to be alone. She must face the situation squarely. Her world had suddenly turnedtopsy-turvy; instead of being the winner of the County Scholarship, she was among the rejected candidates. In her heart of hearts she had always marveled how her indifferent papers could have scored such a success. She wondered this explanation had never occurred to her before. All this time she had been wearing another girl's laurels. What was going to happen next? She supposed the scholarship would be taken from her, and given to its rightful owner. And herself? She would probably be packed home, as Percy had prophesied, "like a whipped puppy." Possibly Aunt Harriet might offer to pay her fee as an ordinary pupil at the High School, but in either case the humiliation would be supreme.
Winona dreaded returning home. In spite of the difficulty of the work, the High School had opened a fresh world to her. She could never again be content with the old rut. Miss Harmon's dull lessons would be intolerable, and life without Garnet's friendship would seem a blank. The companionship of her three little sisters was totally inadequate for a girl who was fast growing up. She shrank from speculating how her mother would receive the bad news. Mrs. Woodward was one of those parents who expect their children to gain the prizes which they were incapable of winning for themselves. She had claimed a kind of second-hand credit in her daughter's triumph. Winona knew from past experience that so keen a disappointment would involve a string of reproaches, regrets and fretting. She would probably never hearthe last of it. The family hopes had been pinned upon her success, and to frustrate them was to court utter disgrace. For the present she must live with this sword of Damocles hanging over her head, but she hoped the Governors would decide the matter speedily, and put her out of her misery.
There is one virtue in a supreme trouble—it dwarfs all minor griefs. Percy's secret, which had been felt as a continual burden, seemed to sink into comparative obscurity, and the worry of school work and the dread of Miss Huntley's sarcasm were mere flies in the ointment. Winona never quite knew how she got through the week that followed. It stayed afterwards in her memory as a period of black darkness, a valley of humiliation, in which her old childish self slipped away, and a new, stronger and more capable personality was born to face the future. She had resigned herself so utterly to the inevitable, that when at last Miss Bishop's summons came, she was able to walk quite calmly into the study. The Principal was seated as usual at her bureau; Winona's entrance examination papers lay before her. Her manner was non-committal; her blue eyes looked even more penetrating than usual.
"You will have been wondering what was going to happen about the matter of the scholarship," she began.
"Yes, Miss Bishop," answered Winona meekly. She did not add that she had spent eight days in a mental purgatory.
"I of course placed the facts before the Governors, and we at once communicated with the parents of Marjorie Kaye. We find, however, that in the meantime she has been elected a scholar of the Maria Harvey Foundation, and will therefore be unable to accept this scholarship. Her papers and those of Garnet Emerson were the only ones of outstanding merit. In re-examining the remaining eighteen we find a uniform level of mediocrity. As regards your set of papers, the general standard is low, with one exception. We consider that your essay on Lady Jane Grey shows an originality and a capacity for thought which may be worthy of training. On the strength of this—and this alone—the Governors have decided to allow you to retain your scholarship. In so doing they are perfectly within their rights. They did not undertake to grant free tuition to the candidate who scored the highest number of marks, but to the one who, in their opinion, was most likely to benefit by the school course. It was a matter to be settled entirely at their discretion. I have carefully re-read your papers, and compared them with your form record, and I come to the conclusion that you are backward and ill-instructed in many subjects, but that you are not idle or stupid. I shall make arrangements for you to have special coaching in mathematics, Latin and chemistry until you can keep up with the rest of the Form. I find your reports for history and English literature are good, which confirms my opinion that you do not lack ability. You will need to work very hard, especially at those subjects in which you are so deficient, but I trust you will soon showa marked improvement, and thus justify the decision of the Governors. Are you prepared to try?"
"I don't know how to thank you—I'll do my very best!" stammered Winona, quite overcome by this unexpecteddénouement.
"Then that is all that need be said. Miss Lever will take you every day from 3.30 to 4.15 for private tuition. Mark that on your time-table, and go to her this afternoon in the Preparatory Room. You may tell Miss Garside that I am disengaged now, and at liberty to speak to her."
Winona left the study with very different feelings from those with which she had entered. Her spirits were so high that she wanted to dance along the corridor. She could hardly believe her good fortune. Those great and important gentlemen, the Governors, had actually approved of her essay to the extent of allowing it to stand as her qualification for the Scholarship! She blessed Lady Jane Grey, and Edgar Allan Poe, and Browning, and André de Chénier, and the happy chance that had made her combine them all. She was glad she had paid that visit to Hampton Court, and that she had seen Lady Jane Grey's portrait, and had been able to describe both. Life was going to be a very exhilarating business, now her position in the school was once more secure.
"I'll show them how I can work," she thought. "They shan't be sorry that they let me stay after all! Oh, I am in luck! Yes, I'm the luckiest girl in the school!"
Winona felt that she now started life at the High School on an entirely new basis. Miss Bishop and Miss Huntley understood her limitations and judged her accordingly. It was not by any means that they lowered their standard, but that they appreciated her difficulty in keeping up with the Form and gave her credit for her hard work. And hard work it undoubtedly was. She would get up early in the morning to revise her lessons before breakfast, and would sit toiling over books and exercises in the evenings till even Aunt Harriet—indefatigable worker herself—would tell her to stop, and wax moral on the folly of burning the candle at both ends. The coaching from Miss Lever was of inestimable value. It supplied just the gaps in which she was deficient, and gave her an adequate grasp of her three toughest subjects. Slowly she began to make headway, she saw light in mathematical problems that had before been meaningless formulæ, chemistry was less of a hopeless tangle, and Vergil's lines construed into understandable sentences instead of utter nonsense. It was only gradual progress, however. She had much ground to cover before she caught up the Form. She was plodding, but not a brilliant all-round scholar like Garnet. The factwas that Winona was only clever in one direction: in the realm of imagination her mind ran like a racehorse, but harnessed to heavy intellectual burdens it proved but a sorry steed.
It was fortunate for both her health and her spirits that head work did not represent the only side of school activities. Miss Bishop was wise enough to lay much stress on physical development. A ten minutes' drill was part of the daily routine, a gymnasium practice was held twice a week, and Wednesday afternoons were devoted to hockey. In addition to this the girls played tennis on the asphalt courts during the winter and spring terms, whenever the weather was suitable, and basket ball was constantly going on in the playground. Athletics was decidedly the fashionable cult of the school. Kirsty Paterson, as Games Captain, made it her business to see that nobody slacked without justifiable cause. She would break up knots of chatting idlers, and cajole them forth to "cultivate muscle" as she expressed it, while her keen eye was quick to note anybody's "points" and employ them for the general benefit. Kirsty's jolly, breezy manner and strict sense of justice made her an admirable captain. She was highly popular with juniors as well as seniors, for she took the trouble to organize the games of the little girls as carefully as those of their elders.
"It's insane short-sighted policy to neglect the kids," was her creed. "Now's the time to be training them. Get them thoroughly well in hand and make them understand what's expected from them,and in four or five years' time they'll be crack players. Yes, I know it's looking far ahead, and we prefects won't be here to see the result, but the school will reap the benefit some day and that's the main thing to aim at. I'm proud of my cadets and, in the future, when they're winning laurels for the Seaton High, perhaps they'll remember I started them on the right track. 'Keep up the standard all round' is going to be the motto while I'm Captain."
To Winona athletics and organized games came as a revelation. She had a slim wiry little figure and was a good runner, with a capacity for keeping her breath, and had also a considerable power of spring, all of which stood her in good stead both in the hockey field and in the gymnasium. Though Kirsty said little, she could feel her efforts were being watched and approved, and the knowledge gave her a tingling sense of satisfaction. It was delightful to feel that she was a factor in this big school, and that she was doing her bit—however insignificant—to help up the athletic standard. In physical agility Winona was superior to Garnet. She could beat her easily at tennis, and there was already a wide gap between their gymnastic achievements. It was a fortunate circumstance, for it just balanced their friendship, and put them on a footing of equality which would have been otherwise absent. Garnet, so manifestly first in Form work, possessed of greater confidence andsavoir fairein school life and older in experience for her years than Winona, might have monopolized the lead tooentirely, had she not been obliged to yield the palm of outdoor sports to her friend.
Garnet was, in truth, just a trifle inclined to "boss." She liked Winona, and wanted her for a chum, but she loved to lay down the law and to constitute herself an authority upon every possible subject. There was no doubt it was owing to her initiative that the two scholarship-holders were gaining a position for themselves in the school. As Garnet had foreseen, the part they had taken in the Symposium won them favorable recognition. To be singled out as soloists and to have the honor of playing an accompaniment for the prefects had raised them above the common herd, and though a few were jealous, more were ready to extend the hand of good fellowship. In their own Form they were living down the prejudice which had at first existed against them. Hilda Langley and Estelle Harrison were not very friendly and influenced Olave Parry and Mollie Hill against them, but these formed a minority, and the bulk of the girls seemed to have decided in their favor.
With the enormous demands made on her time by her home preparation, Winona did not venture to join many of the school guilds. She would have liked immensely to put her name down for election to the Dramatic Society, the Debating Club and the Literary Association, but these all required rather strenuous brain work from their members, and in the circumstances she knew it would be folly to take them up. At some future date, when her ordinary subjects proved less of a burden, she promised herself the pleasure of being numbered among that select clique known as "The Intellectuals," but for the present her motto must be "grim grind." The Patriotic Knitting Guild seemed more feasible. She paid her subscription, received her skeins of khaki wool, and started mittens to fill up odd moments. She found the knitting a soothing occupation, it could be taken up and laid down so easily; it often went to school with her, and would come out during the interval, or while she was waiting for a class. The Photographic Union was beyond her, for as yet she had no camera, but she thought she was justified in joining the Natural History League. This society did not for the present demand papers from its members, but contented itself with encouraging the collection of objects for the school museum. Its main activities would be during the summer term, though a weather record was kept throughout the year, and any nature notes that were worthy of being written down were duly chronicled in the Field Book. Linda Fletcher and Annie Hardy, two of the prefects, were the leading spirits in the League. Linda was great on entomology, and, having a brother who was interested in the subject, had been out "sugaring" in his company in August and September, and had secured some fine specimens of moths. She had boxes full of chrysalides which she fondly hoped would emerge in the spring into perfect insects, and she had made quite a good little collection of beetles. Annie was more interested in botany, she pressed flowers and leaves, dried fruits and seed vessels, and made praiseworthy efforts at preserving funguses in bottles, though these latter attempts were not always attended with the success they deserved, as they were apt to acquire a gamey odor, to which her mother very naturally objected, and she would be obliged disconsolately to turn them out into the dust-bin.
November happened to be a particularly fine month at Seaton. There had been little rain, and no high winds to blow the leaves away. Though the trees in the city were bare, those in the country round about remained almost in their October glory, and in sheltered woods some were still green. The persistent sunshine encouraged the Natural History League to plan an excursion for its members, and after a consultation with Miss Lever, the Botany mistress, Linda pinned up the following announcement on the school notice board:—
Natural History League.An Autumn Foray will be held on Saturday next, visiting Monkend Woods and Copplestone Quarry. Members will meet at station for the 12.45 train to Powerscroft, returning by the 5.30 from Chartwell. Tea at farm-house. Walking distance five miles. Leaders: Miss Lever, Linda Fletcher and Annie Hardy. Those intending to join kindly give their names to the Secretary on Wednesday at latest.
L. Fletcher,
Hon. Sec.
The prospect of a ramble was alluring. Winona was a country lover, so she forthwith secured AuntHarriet's permission for the outing and placed her name upon the list.
"I don't think there'll be more than a dozen of us altogether," said Linda, "but really a small party's more manageable than a big one, and I'll undertake we enjoy ourselves. Miss Lever can get permission for us to walk through the private part of the woods—there's no shooting this autumn, you know—so that will be simply glorious, and she says we ought to find some fossils in the quarry, if we've luck. I hope the weather will keep up. Don't forget to take a vasculum or a basket, and a hammer for fossils, and be sure you put on strong boots. The tea will probably be eightpence a head. Miss Lever is writing beforehand to the farm to make arrangements."
Garnet also was to join the excursion and she promised to call for Winona, so that they might walk to the station together. The latter had an early lunch, and was ready dressed and waiting for her friend by twenty minutes past twelve. Garnet's tram was late, and by the time she reached Abbey Close the clock pointed to the half-hour.
"I'm frightfully sorry! You must think me a Juggins, but it wasn't my fault!" she apologized. "We shall have to sprint, but we'll just do it."
The girls set off at a tremendous pace along the Close and down the Abbey avenue, but it was difficult to keep the same speed through the town, where the streets were thronged with country people who had come in for the Saturday market. They got along as best they could, walking first on the pavement and then on the road, dodging round stout females bearing baskets, avoiding hooting motors, and finally making a dash down a back street that led to the railway bridge. They clattered down the steps to the booking office, secured their tickets and rushed on to the platform. The hands of the big clock were at 12.45 exactly, the guard was about to wave his green flag. They were too late to look for their party; they simply pelted towards the nearest carriage, a porter opened the door and they scrambled in just in the very nick of time.
"Oh, thank goodness! Thank goodness!" gasped Garnet. "I thought we'd miss it! I never had such a run in my life before! Oh! It's given me a stitch in my side!"
"They've put us in a first!" exulted Winona, breathlessly. "We have it all to ourselves! What luck! Hope they won't make a fuss about our tickets when we get out!"
"It was the porter's fault. He opened the door. We'll ask Miss Lever to explain. I suppose the others are further along somewhere in the train. I wonder if they saw us get in?"
"If they didn't, it will be a surprise packet for them when we turn up."
"Yes, they'll have made up their minds we're left behind."
The two girls leaned back, enjoying the luxury of traveling in a first-class compartment. They felt the excursion had begun well as far as they were concerned. Their satisfaction was short-lived, however. When they neared Barnhill, the train, instead of stopping, rushed through the station at thirty-five miles an hour. Garnet turned to Winona in utter consternation.
"Oh, good-night!" she ejaculated. "I verily believe we've gone and got into the express!"
They saw at once how it had happened. The 12.40 fast train to Rockfield must have been five minutes late. In their hurry they had mistaken it for the stopping train, which probably had been drawn up behind it in the station.
"Well, this is a pretty go!" agreed Winona. "We shall be carried on to Rockfield and have to come back."
"We shall miss the ramble! Oh, it's the limit of hard luck—to see ourselves whizzing through Powerscroft!"
"I say, I believe we're stopping after all!"
They let down the window and looked out. They were still about a mile from Powerscroft, but the train drew up, probably in obedience to an adverse signal. Then the girls did a terrible and awful thing. They never remembered afterwards which suggested it, probably the idea occurred to both simultaneously, but in defiance of the law of the realm and the rules of the railway company, they opened the door of the carriage and climbed down on to the line. There were some railings near, and they scrambled over these and dodged down an embankment into a coppice before anybody in the train had time to give an alarm. They hoped their flight had not beennoticed, but of that they could not be sure. They hid behind some bushes until they heard the train rumble away.
"That was the smartest thing we've ever done in our lives!" chuckled Garnet. "I believe we could be fined about ten pounds each if they caught us!"
"Let us hurry on and try to find the road," said Winona, who was rather frightened at her own temerity, and had a nervous apprehension lest a guard or a signalman or some other railway official might even now be in pursuit and arrest them on a charge of breaking the law.
After crossing a field they struck a path which led them eventually into a by-lane.
"I know where we are," affirmed Garnet. "I bicycled this way once. Monkend Woods are in that direction, and if we turn to the left and through this village we shall get there sooner than the others, I believe, and be waiting for them when they arrive. Their train won't have reached Powerscroft yet."
"We'd better step out all the same," urged Winona.
Fortunately Garnet possessed the bump of locality. Her recollection of the district was correct, and after a brisk walk of about a mile they found themselves in the high road close to the wood, and sat down on a wall to wait. Their fast train and short cut had given them an advantage: it was nearly half an hour before they spied the rest of the party strolling leisurely up the hill with baskets and vasculums. The surprise of the League at seeing them was immense, and naturally there were many inquiries as to how they had thus stolen a march upon their friends.
"Oh, we came in an aëroplane!" said Garnet jauntily. "It just dropped us in the field over there. Very pleasant run, though a little chilly in the clouds!"
She was obliged to own up, however, in answer to Miss Lever's inquiries, give a precise account of their adventure, and cry "peccavi."
"Of course Dollikins had to be orthodox and preach a short sermon," she confided afterwards to Winona, "but I'm sure she'd have done the same thing herself in the circumstances. I could see admiration in her eye, although she talked about running risks and the possibility of broken necks."
Miss Lever, otherwise Dollikins, from the fact that her Christian name was Dorothy, held high favor among the girls. She was brisk and jolly, decidedly athletic, and a first-rate leader of outdoor expeditions. She had called at the gamekeeper's cottageen routeand shown the letter of permission from the owner of the property, so that the party was able to explore the wood with a clear conscience, despite the trespass notice nailed on to the gate. And what a delightful wood it was! To enter it was like stepping into one of Grimm's fairy tales. An avenue of splendid pines reared their dark boughs against a russet background of beeches; everywhere the leaves seemed to have donned their brightest and gayest tints, as if bidding a last good-by before they fell from the trees. The undergrowth was gorgeous: bramble, elder, honeysuckle, briony,rowan, and alder vied with one another in the vividness of their crimson and orange, while the bracken was a sea of pale gold. There were all sorts of delightful things to be found—acorns lay so plentifully in the pathway that the girls could not help scrunching them underfoot. A few were already sending out tiny shoots in anticipation of spring, and these were carefully saved to take home and grow in bottles. A stream ran through the wood, its banks almost completely covered with vivid green mosses, in sheets so thick and compact that a slight pull would raise a yard at a time. Some resembled tufted tassels, some the most delicate ferns, and others showed the split cups of their seed-vessels like pixie goblets. Annie Hardy, whose experienced eyes were on the look-out for certain botanical treasures reported to grow at Monkend, was searching among the dead twigs under the hazel bushes, and was rewarded by finding a clump of the curious little birds-nest fungus with its seeds packed like tiny eggs inside. Some orange elf-cups, a bright red toadstool or two, and a few of the larger purple varieties that had lingered on from October made quite a creditable fungus record for the League, and specimens of wild flowers were also secured, a belated foxglove or two, a clump of ragwort, some blue harebells, campion, herb-robert, buttercup, yarrow, thistle, and actually a strawberry blossom. The leaders had brought note-books and wrote down each find as reported by the members, taking the specimens for Miss Lever to verify if there were any doubt as to identification. Animaland bird life was not absent. Shy bunnies whisked away, showing a dab of white tail as they dived under the bracken; a splendid squirrel ran across the path and darted up an oak tree, a wood-pigeon whirred from a pine top, a great woodpecker, scared by their approach, started from the bushes and flew past them so near that they could see the green flash of its wings and the red markings on its head, while a whole fluttering flight of long-tailed tits were flitting like a troop of fairies round the hole of a lichen-covered beech.
Miss Lever was as enthusiastic as the girls; she climbed over fallen tree trunks, grubbed among dead leaves, jumped the brook and scaled fences with delightful energy. It was she who pointed out the heron sailing overhead, and noticed the gold-crested wren's nest hanging under the branch of a fir, a little battered with autumn rain, and too high, alas! to be taken, but a most interesting item to go down in the note-books. The girls could hardly be persuaded to tear themselves away from the glory of the woods, and would have spent the whole time there, but Miss Lever had other plans.
"Come along! We've scared the pheasants quite enough," she declared. "My mind is set on fossils, and if we don't go on to Copplestones at once we shall be caught in the dark, or miss our tea or our train or something equally disagreeable."
The quarry was only half a mile away, and it proved as interesting as the wood. Being Saturday afternoon the men were not working, so they had the place to themselves, and wandered about examining heaps of shale, and tapping likely-looking stones with their hammers. Garnet and Winona knew nothing of geology, so they listened with due meekness while the instructed few discoursed learnedly on palæozoic rocks, stratified conglomerates and quartzites. They rejoiced with Miss Lever, however, when she secured a fairly intact belemnite. It was the only good find they had, though some of the girls got broken bits of fossil shells.
"The fact is one needs a whole day to hunt about in this quarry, and my watch tells me we ought to be going," said Miss Lever. "Who feels inclined for tea?"
Everybody felt very much disposed, so the procession started off cheerfully for the farm close by, and the nature-lovers were soon hard at work consuming platefuls of bread and butter, jars of jam, and piles of plum cake.
"Sixteen varieties of wild flowers, seven various specimens of fungi, nine different sorts of berries, twelve species of birds noticed, also rabbits and squirrel, one bird's nest and one perfect fossil—not a bad record for an autumn foray!" said Linda, proudly consulting her note-book.
"Especially when you remember we're well on in November!" added Annie. "It will be something to enter in the League minutes book."
"I'm afraid it's the last ramble we shall get this year," said Miss Lever, "but I've one or two nice little schemes on hand for the spring, so the League must look forward to next April. Will any onehave any more tea? Then please make a move, for it's time we were starting."
"Good old Dollikins!" murmured Linda as the girls put on their coats. "She's A1 at a foray. Got something ripping for next season in her head. I can tell by the twinkle in her eye. She'll ruminate over it all winter, and drop it on us as a surprise some day. Oh, thunder! Yes, we ought to be starting! Come along, you slackers, do you want to be left standing on the platform with a couple of hours to wait for the next train? Then sprint as hard as you can!"