Dimsie Moves Up Again 03 Dimsie Moves … · Web viewJust start the council without me, and I’ll...

Dimsie Moves Up AgainDorita Fairlie Bruce

[See page 16]HUMPHREY MILFORD

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, LONDON

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Reprinted 1927 in Great Britain at the OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSBy John Johnson, Printer to the University

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To the Old Girls of Clarence House,Roehampton.

O Schoolmates of the long-ago!Though scattered now, and far away

From that white-pillared portico,And flower-fringed terrace, and the wideGreen playing-field, and all beside

That made our world-come back, I pray!

Forget, for just a little space,The broadened lives of later years-

Come back again and take your placeAt scribbled desk of easel-stool,In those old days which were so full

Of such tremendous hopes and fears.

I wove you rhymes and stories then,So here’s one more if you will deign

To turn your footsteps back again,And tread the class-rooms and the stairs,Join in the morning hymn at prayers,

Or tread the wood’s leaf-shaded lane.

And if from words of mine you catchOne breath of the old cedars’ scent-

Hear blithe young voices cheer the match,Across the sunny field, or seeForgotten faces flushed with glee-

I shall be well-content.

Dorita F. Bruce

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Contents

CHAPTER

PAGE

I. MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRLS 4II. ENTER FENELLA

POSTLETHWAITE7

III. A VEXED QUESTION 10IV. MISS YORKE INTERVENES 13V. TONY PROVES HERSELF A

SPORT16

VI. A POLITICAL MEETING 20VII. SIX IN COUNCIL 24VIII. THE LABOURS OF DIMSIE 28IX. AN IDEA FOR URSULA 31X. IN MISS YORKE’S STUDY 34XI. LESLEY TAKES UP A NEW

STUDY37

XII. THE PERPLEXITIES OF PAMELA 41XIII. DIMSIE MAKES AN

ARRANGEMENT45

XIV. THE END OF THE TERM 50XV. A DISCOVERY 53XVI. AN EXPERT OPINION 56XVII. FENELLA CONDESCENDS 59XVIII. AT THE AZALEA 62XIX. THE WESTOVER MATCH 66XX. STOP THIEF! 70XXI. QUEEN’S CAUSEWAY 74XXII. ADRIFT 77XXIII. ABOARD THE WRECK 80XXIV. MIDNIGHT VIGILS 84XXV. FATTED CALF (?) FOR THREE 88XXVI. URSULA ASSERTS HERSELF 91XXVII. THE EASTER CONCERT 99

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CHAPTER IMIDDLE SCHOOL GIRLS

IT was a tempestuous night for the close of September-more like a foretaste of March. Outside the Jane Willard Foundation a rough sou’wester soughed wildly through the trees, and in the intervals of it dropping, the sea could be heard roaring against the chalk cliffs below the old lighthouse. Inside there was al bustle and warmth and cheer, all the stir of an opening term, with half the school already returned, and the rest returning in periodical ‘bus loads.

In the big drawing-room the head mistress was holding a continuous reception of arrivals, new and old, with or without parents and guardians. The hall was filled with rows of trunks, where Miss Rankin, the matron, presided over the unpacking thereof, assisted by Nurse in her cap and apron of dazzling cleanliness; while the owners of the trunks ran upstairs with laden clothes baskets to be emptied in the dormitories, and returned as speedily as possible for their next load.

The rush appeared to be slackening a little. One or two empty boxes were removed by the boot-boy to the lower regions. Miss Rankin straightened her back with a sigh of relief, and glanced at the tall grandfather’s clock which stood at the foot of the stairs.

“Half-past five!” she exclaimed, galvanised at once into action again. “The third ‘bus will be here in twenty minutes, and every one of these trunks must be out of the way by then. Nora Blyth, what are you dawdling for? You really are the slowest girl I ever met!”

“I can’t help it, Miss Rankin-truly I can’t!” wailed the culprit. “I’m not accustomed to doing these things for myself. At home–”

The matron interrupted her with a derisive sniff.“Well you’ve been at school long enough to learn. I shall give

you ten more minutes – then the box goes downstairs, and if it isn’t empty you will have to finish your unpacking in the basement.”

“Oh, dear!” groaned Nora. “I never knew a trunk could hold such a lot before! I simply can’t – I say, Dimsie! Is that you? Come and help me.”

A slim, brown-eyed, brown-clad girl of fifteen detached herself from the little group of friends with whom she was crossing the hall, and threaded her way through the boxes to Nora’s side.

“What’s up?” she asked in brisk tones. “Are you getting left behind, eh?”

“Yes. Could you hand me out the things, if I put them in the basket?”

“Don’t you do it, Dimsie!” protested one of her friends indignantly from the background. “Let the lazy little slacker unpack for herself. We want you in the senior sitting-room.”

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But Dimsie nodded good-naturedly back at her, as she dropped on her knees before Nora’s trunk.

“All right, Eric – I shan’t be long. Just start the council without me, and I’ll nip in when I come.”

“All very fine!” grumbled Erica Innes, as she and all the others moved on, “but we know what happens when Dimsie is seized upon by people like Nora Blyth. She’ll have to go up and put goodness knows when we’ll see her again!”

“Oh, no, she won’t!” said one of the group quietly, a pretty fair-haired girl with wide blue eyes and dainty pink colouring. “Dimsie’s no fool, for all her kind-heartedness. She isn’t soft.”

Her friends laughed.“Well, you ought to know, Rosamund, if any one does, for you

can get more use out of Dimsie than any other girl at Jane’s.”Rosamund Garth shook her yellow curls placidly.“I can,” she admitted, “but I don’t. I wouldn’t put upon her

for worlds – nor let any one else do so, if I could help it. But she has too much sense herself to stand nonsense.”

“A trifle vague, like most of your remarks,” commented Erica, “but I know what you mean, and after all, Dimsie rather enjoys running people. Phew! This is something like a fire!”

“I saw to that,” said Mabs Hunter with pardonable pride. “I knew we could hope for little or nothing from William in the midst of this turmoil, so I took the basket out to the woodshed and filled it myself.”

“And the delightful part of it is,” observed Jean Gordon, settling herself with much satisfaction on the hearth-rug, “that there isn’t a senior who can possibly find time to come and interrupt us this side of supper. The only 1st Division girls who’ve arrived so far are prefects, and they’ll be busy in their own studies for hours to come.”

“I can’t help feeling it’s rather a mistake,” said Rosamund pensively, “that the authorities haven’t arranged a sitting-room for the Middle School – or at least, perhaps, for the Upper Second –”

“For us six, you mean,” broke in Pamela Hughes, laughing. “It’s certainly thoughtless of them, but on the whole, I like being in this room. Though we can’t have it altogether to ourselves, there’s generally a pleasant stir of young life about us, which appeals to me in my more frivolous moments.”

The senior sitting-room, now under discussion, was a long high-ceilinged room, with big windows dotted about with shabby comfortable chairs, which could be drawn together into sociable little groups, and a wide cushioned settee ran the length of one wall. This evening, with the blazing firelight from Mabs Hunter’s logs dancing on the walls, it looked particularly cosy and inviting.

“Yes, but,” objected Erica Innes, “we’re without a council chamber. It won’t always be possible to hold private meetings here, as we’re doing to-night. Even now we may be interrupted, though we hope we shan’t.”

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Pamela tossed her long gold-brown hair back from her face.“You can’t expect privacy at school,” she pointed out.“We’ve managed pretty well so far,” Mabs declared. “There

was the potting-shed in summer, till we grew to big to fit into it, and now we’ve got the old cedar-tree at the foot of the wood. But winter’s always the most difficult time.”

“I know,” assented Rosamund. “Even when we were kids it used to be so unpeaceful, having to turn the others out of the junior sitting-room and barricade the door. Yes, I know you liked it, Pam – you’re always game for a row – but we can’t do that sort of thing nowadays when we’re almost seniors.”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Jean Gordon slowly, her thoughtful eyes fixed on the gleaming flames, “that perhaps we’re too old for all that kind of rot now.”

Her companions stared at her uncomprehendingly, but before any of them could take up the argument, a voice broke in from the shadows behind, with decision in every tone.

“It isn’t rot, Jean – not when you go to the bottom of it. We must never grow too old to be Anti-Soppists.”

“Dimsie! How quietly you came in! Have you finished with that helpless little idiot at last?”

“Yes – I told you it wouldn’t take me long.” Dimsie stepped into the circle, and subsided gracefully on to the rug opposite Jean, with her head against Rosamund’s knee. “Who else thinks we’re too old for the Anti-Soppist League?”

Erica Innes glared coldly round.“No one, I should hope,” she replied emphatically. “Hasn’t

our life at Jane’s been spent, up till now, in the endeavour to put down swank of all sorts? I never thought I should live to hear one of ourselves suggest that we’d risen above it. I hope I never shall hear such sentiments again.”

Erica’s gift for speechifying was too well known among her set for any of them to be greatly impressed by it; but there was a force of character behind it which carried weight, and Pamela voiced the opinion of all five when she remarked tersely,

“Jean’s a silly ass!”“I’m not,” maintained Jean, holding her ground, while the

colour rose in her face, which was naturally somewhat pale. “You should listen first to what I’ve got to say. Of course we ought to go on as we’ve always done – standing out against ‘side,’ I mean, or any other kind of silliness – but can’t we do it in a more elderly way?”

“Humph!” said Erica.“There’s something in that, perhaps,” conceded Dimsie. “It

ought to be more real and less make-believe.”“It’s always been real enough, anyhow,” said Erica promptly.

With six of us quite determined about things, we’ve generally jolly well managed to set the fashion in our form.”

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Her friends chuckled, remembering Erica’s forcible way of “setting the fashion” on some past occasions; but there was a great deal of truth, nevertheless, in what she said. From their junior days these six had stood out against all manner of undesirable things which they classed under the one brief heading, “Rot!” They had gone up the school in a healthy, breezy way, abiding by the self-made regulations of their “Anti-Soppist League”, and had influenced the tone of the place more than they would ever guess.

“What I mean,” proceeded Jean, bent on explaining herself, “is that we’ve overgrown lots of our old juniorish rules, because we aren’t a bit tempted now to do the sort of silly things which might have appealed to us then. So why not drop them, and give up on playing at holding councils – and just go on Anti-Sopping for all we’re worth, without pretending or play about it.”

“It strikes me,” observed Erica huffily, “that you don’t mean to give up speechifying anyhow, if we’re not to hold councils in future.”

Jean laughed.“Well, I had to say my say, or you wouldn’t have understood.

And you won’t need our councils any longer, Eric, to practise being a politician. You’re sixteen, and eligible for the Upper School Debating Society.”

Erica’s face cleared surprisingly.“So I am,” she assented. “I hadn’t thought of that.”“Well,” said Pamela Hughes, “since this is to be our last

council meeting, what about letting old Eric make one more speech, just for old sake’s sake?”

“Of course,” the others agreed approvingly. “There’s never been a council without a speech from Eric. Get up and begin, old thing.”

But Erica’s speech was fated to remain unspoken. From the shadows round the door, which lay beyond the circle of firelight, came a strange voice, cool and precise.

“Excuse me,” it said, “but would you be kind enough to tell me if this happens to be the senior sitting-room?”

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CHAPTER IIENTER FENELLA POSTLETHWAITE

“GOOD gracious!” murmured Pamela. “What have we here?”Mabs, with a swift movement, sprang up and turned on the

light, revealing a girl whom none of them had seen before, and who stood in the doorway, without any of the hesitating diffidence if the newcomer, but looking at them with an air of calm inquiry, “just as though,” Jean muttered below her breath, “she’d as good a right to be here as ourselves.”

“Yes. This is the senior sitting-room,” replied Erica, rather curtly. “Are you a new girl?”

“I suppose so,” assented the stranger, moving nearer to the group round the fire. “My name is Fenella Postlethwaite.”

She looked at them with a touch of modest triumph, as though this, in itself, was sufficient introduction, but the faces of the other girls remained blank.

“Ought we to know who you are?” as Rosamund Garth doubtfully. “Have you ever been here before – as a visitor, I mean?”

“Never,” said the new girl, “but Postlethwaite is a name which is well known in the world of thought. My father is Professor Postlethwaite, the antiquarian, who wrote a brochure recently on ‘Discoveries Regarding the Stone Age in Britain’.”

“Oh!” responded Rosamund, still more vaguely, with a vacant look in her babyish blue eyes. The antiquarian’s daughter set her down, there and then, as an empty-headed doll, and saw no reason, till many weeks afterwards, to change her mind.

“I’m afraid we’re not very well up in the Stone Age,” said Erica, with laboured politeness. “Did Miss Rankin – the matron – send you in here?”

“She told me to inquire for the senior sitting-room when I had unpacked and arranged my cubicle. She told me that my room-mate had not yet returned, but I should probably find some one here.”

“Room-mate? Then you’re in No. 4 – the little dormitory with only two cubicles?” asked Dimsie. “How dull for you!”

“Not at all,” replied Fenella stiffly. “I specially asked Miss Yorke – or rather my father did – that I might not be put among a crowd of chattering girls. I have come to the Jane Willard to study, not to play, and I prefer to have as few distractions as possible.”

“Oh, help!” gasped Pamela, while the others shrugged their shoulders, and exchanged ironical glances. Only Dimsie continued to stare at the new girl with a puzzled expression in her wide brown eyes.

“But you know,” she said gently, “we’re not allowed to do prep. In the bedrooms; it’s strictly against the rules. And we don’t even chatter much, except during the week-ends, because we have

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to speak French upstairs the rest of the time, and none of us are exactly eloquent in French.”

“One may study without books,” replied Fenella loftily. “No rules can prevent an active mind from working along its own lines, as mine does at all times.”

Erica groaned, and made no attempt to stifle the sound.“Have you any idea,” she asked, looking at Mabs Hunter,

“who’s to get the other cubicle in No. 4? I sincerely hope it’s a 1st Div. girl.”

Mabs was never known to fail on a matter of general information. Her own form – and indeed, Jane’s altogether – used her as a species of school gazette, and declared that nothing, however trivial, could take place within the walls but Mabs knew all about it, inside of an hour. She rose to the occasion now, as promptly as ever.

“It’s Hester,” she responded, “Hester Harriman. You’ll get on all right with her,” she added kindly to the new girl. “She’s a very decent sort, and the soul of good nature.”

“I don’t suppose I shall have very much to do with her,” returned Fenella indifferently.

An explosive sound from Erica, which was not exactly mirthful, warned her five followers that she, at least, had had about as much as she could stand. It was part of the unwritten code at Jane’s – one of those fashions which had been set by the Anti-Soppists themselves – that new girls should be treated with consideration rather than contempt, “because after all,” as Dimsie had argued, “it isn’t their fault that they’re new, and the sooner we make them feel at home, the sooner they’ll get over their newness.” But it was quite another thing to be treated by a new girl as though she, and not they, was mistress of the situation. If there was any condescending to be done, clearly Fenella Postlethwaite was not the person to do it. Dimsie scrambled hurriedly to her feet.

“I expect”, she said, with a courtesy which was quite free from sarcasm, “you’ll be in the 1st Division, as you’re so clever; that’s the senior form, you know – Miss Yorke’s own. We’re only in the Middle School still, you see, and it would really be better – more interesting for you – if one of the seniors looked after you. I scarcely know which of them is back yet, but if you’ll come with me, we’ll go and find out.”

Fenella turned and surveyed the knot of girls around the fire, through the rimless spectacles which she wore perched on a supercilious little nose.

“I should have thought that girl would have been a senior,” she remarked, indicating Erica Innes with a wave of her hand. “She certainly looks old enough.”

Poor Erica! It was already a sore point with her that she had failed to get her remove that term, though her failure had only been by a very narrow margin. Her face grew scarlet, and she

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opened her lips to make a fiery retort, but Dimsie seizing the new girl firmly by the arm, dragged her to the door.

“Come along!” she said wildly. “If I can’t find you a senior, I’ll show you the school museum. That ought to interest you anyhow.”

Still keeping a tight grip on her captive, she hustled her across the hall and into the short curved passage which led from the house to the schoolroom wing.

“I say, you know,” she protested, “you mustn’t go about saying things like that, or you’ll get yourself awfully disliked! Erica nearly flew at you just now, and I don’t wonder! It’s only by the narrowest fluke that she wasn’t moved up before the holidays, and naturally she’s feeling rather sick about it.”

“I don’t suppose it was a fluke at all,” observed Fenella calmly. “Probably she didn’t work. I’ve no patience at all with people who don’t work.”

Dimsie came to a sudden standstill outside the door of the 1st Division room, her eyes blazing wrathfully, and clutching Fenella’s arm again, she shook her like a little fury.

“You shut up, and don’t dare talk to me like that about Erica or any of my friends!” she cried fiercely. “You’re only a new girl – though I don’t believe in rubbing in people’s newness as a rule – and you can’t possibly know anything about any of us. Erica’s a jolly good sort, and works like a nigger, so there! You ought to be ashamed of yourself to go judging any one whom you hadn’t set eyes on an hour ago!”

Fenella freed herself, and recovered her breath with difficulty.

“What a little spitfire you are!” she exclaimed in astonishment. “I don’t see that I said anything so very dreadful, and even if I had, it wouldn’t excuse your being so violent. You should really learn to control your temper.”

“I know I should,” said Dimsie, more peaceably, “but you ought to keep your tongue from evil speaking, malice and slander – especially when you haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about. This is the senior schoolroom, but it’s empty, as you can see for yourself. So come along upstairs to the prefects’ studies, and perhaps we’ll find somebody there who’ll take charge of you.”

“How many prefects are there?” asked Fenella, as she followed her guide.

“Six, counting the head-girl. Two to a study. We call this part up here the Flat. The junior sitting-room and 3rd Division room are opposite each other at the end of this passage. That door leads to the library, where the museum cases are, and the other –”

“I am interested in the museum,” Fenella broke in. “I shall go and look at it presently, but the junior schoolrooms are of no importance to me. Who is the head-girl?”

“That’s more than I can tell you,” Dimsie answered shortly. Phyllis Heathley was, but she left last term, and there will have to

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be an election next week. We’re short of two prefects for the same reason,” she added, knitting her brows. “I’m sure I don’t know whom Miss Yorke will appoint, but that’s got nothing to do with us luckily – we only elect the head-girl. Hullo! Here’s somebody at last!”

The door of a study to the right of the passage opened, and a thin dark girl came out with a bundle of books under her arm.

“Hullo, Dimsie!” was her greeting. “Had a nice holidays? How’s Daphne? And what have you got there?”

“A new girl,” replied Dimsie, turning her charge over with alacrity to some one who might be expected to take her in hand with greater success. “Her name’s Fenella Postlethwaite, and she’s rather annoyed because none of us know her father, but probably you will, seeing you’re librarian. This is Madge Anderson, Fenella, and she’s a poetess, so I couldn’t have brought you to a better person.”

“Don’t be more of a donkey thank you can help, Dimsie!” said Madge, laughing in a shamefaced way. “Come to the library with me, Fenella, and I’ll show you round a bit after I’ve put these books away.”

Freed from her self-imposed responsibilities Dimsie skimmed down the passage on her way back to the senior sitting-room, but at the head of the stairs she paused and turned. The door of the first study was standing ajar, and a light shone through, showing that one, at least, of its two inmates had arrived. Dimsie hesitated for a moment, then tapped gently.

“Come in,” called a low musical voice. “That is, if you can fight your way through all this confusion. I really don’t know where I can put half the stuff that must be stowed away.”

Dimsie entered and closed the door behind her.“I’ll help,” she said. “I want to talk to you, Ursula.”

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CHAPTER IIIA VEXED QUESTION

URSULA GREY was a small slight girl, with masses of cloudy brown hair disappearing at her neck into a long tight plait, a small pale face with irregular features, only redeemed from plainness by a pair of big greenish-hazel eyes that held something mysterious in their depths – a look which Dimsie had once described well, if not poetically, when she observed that Ursula’s eyes made her think of “a hungry kid outside a baker’s shop”. Ever since she had discovered this resemblance, Dimsie had set herself to find out the meaning of it, but so far she had been without success.

“When did you get back?” she inquired, perching on the only clear portion of the study table. “You weren’t in the last ‘bus. I saw it arrive.”

“My luggage was though,” said Ursula. “I walked across from Westover, because there was such a glorious gale on the downs. I wasn’t sure at first, if Mademoiselle would let me, but she didn’t object. After all, it was only half-past three, and if I’m to be senior prefect this term – and I suppose I shall be – I may as well have some of the privileges attached.”

“Senior prefect!” exclaimed Dimsie, swinging her crossed ankles, while she gripped the edge of the table with small determined hands. “You’re going to be head-girl, no less!”

“I’m not!” retorted Ursula emphatically. “That honour is reserved for Tony Semple. She was third prefect last term, and since Phyllis Heathley and Cecil Hepworth have left together, Tony becomes head-girl by right of seniority.”

Dimsie settled down to an argument.“That doesn’t follow at all,” she maintained. “I know the

senior prefect steps into the head-girl’s shoes, right enough, but if they both leave together, there’s always an election. Being third prefect doesn’t count.”

Ursula laid down an armful of photographs which she had begun to arrange on her shelves, and stared blankly at her visitor.

“I never thought of that,” she confessed. “No – I suppose it doesn’t. But anyhow they won’t elect me; I’m not popular enough in the school.”

She stated the fact simply, without any bitterness, but there was a sad tone in her voice, which roused warm-hearted Dimsie’s sympathies at once.

“Nonsense!” she cried. “You’re not as showy as Tony, but you’re a lot steadier. The girls don’t know you well, that’s al. I wonder why they don’t,” she added, staring reflectively at the senior. “You’ve been long enough at Jane’s and I know you all right.”

Ursula smiled across at her, a queer affectionate smile which lit up her dubious features.

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“Oh you’re you!” she answered. “You’d get to know any one if you gave your mind to it. I say! You promised to help, and Lesley Musgrave will be here directly with all her goods, long before my stuff is put away.”

“Sorry!” said Dimsie, slipping from her seat, and seizing on the photographs. “My mind was busy with weightier matters. You see, it’s a most important thing to get the right sort of head-girl.”

“I know,” assented Ursula. “We’ve always had such decent ones – Sylvia Drummond, and your cousin Daphne, and then Phyllis Heathley. But I expect Tony will be elected with ease, and she oughtn’t to do so badly.”

Dimsie shook her head.“I’ve got a feeling in my bones that Tony isn’t responsible

enough. I mean to canvass for you Ursie,” she announced.Ursula, who was sorting out a pile of books on the floor,

started up in a panic.“Dimsie! Promise me you won’t do any such thing!” she cried.

“I know what you are when you make up your mind to a course of action, however mad, and I tell you I don’t want to be head-girl!”

Dimsie adjusted a school group deftly in its place on the mantelpiece; then turning round she regarded the elder girl with serious disapproval.

“It isn’t what you want,” she said, “it’s what’s best for Jane’s. You know we always get that drummed into us before we vote about anything to do with school affairs. I’ve thought it out these holidays and I’ve asked Daphne’s advice and – I’m jolly well going to canvass for you!”

“But it won’t be best for Jane’s,” said Ursula, miserably. “I can’t think how you can be such an idiot, Dimsie! Usually you’ve got so much sense, but to-night you seem to be going clean off the rails! I’m absolutely unsuited for such a position.”

“Why?” demanded Dimsie calmly. “You’re good at work, fairly good at games, and you can keep order. You know you’ve been a success as a prefect.”

“That’s different,” returned Ursula. “There isn’t so much required of one. Oh, I know it’s not a scrap of use to argue with you, Dimsie, when your mind’s made up, but you’ll do me a jolly bad turn if you canvass for me.”

“It’s Jane’s I’m thinking about, not you,” Dimsie pointed out once more. “Is that all the photographs? You don’t bring many back with you. My cubicle’s stocked, but you run more to books.”

Ursula reddened.“I haven’t many relations,” she answered awkwardly. “My

own people died whn I was quite a kid, you know. I live with my aunt, Betty’s mother.”

Dimsie nodded gravely. Betty Grey was in her form, and was not popular with the Anti-Soppists, being a shrewish little person, and full of airs and graces. Dimsie had often wondered how Ursula

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got on with her cousin during the holidays, for they seemed to have very little in common while at school.

“Well,” she said at last, “the mess is pretty well cleared up now, so if there’s nothing more I can do for you, I think I’ll go. It must be nearly supper-time, and the others will be expecting me.”

“Thanks awfully for what you’ve done,” said Ursula gratefully, “you are a decent kid, Dimsie – always helping lame dogs over stiles.”

“That’s what I’d like to do,” said Dimsie with a touch of wistfulness, “but I’m afraid I’m rather apt to ‘barge in’ sometimes, and it’s awfully difficult to draw the line between helping and meddling.”

“Don’t meddle in my affairs at present, that’s all!” retorted Ursula, as her visitor withdrew.

Meanwhile the vexed question of the school headship was being discussed with great vigour in a study on the other side of the passage. Nell Anderson and Antoinette Semple, joint owners of the said study, were entertaining as many seniors as could (conveniently or otherwise) be crammed into the confined space, and the argument was waxing fast and furious.

“But what about Ursula?” queried a quiet-voiced girl, who was wedged in uncomfortably between the bookshelves and the door. “Isn’t she in the running at all?”

“Ursula Grey?” echoed several voices in varying tones of surprise and disapproval. “My dear Monica, she’d never do!”

“But why not?” persisted Monica Bagot. “She’s senior to most of us, she’s pretty high up in our form, and she’s a reliable sort of person. I wonder nobody thought of her before.”

“Nobody would,” said Vida Stiles in her brusque tones. “She carries no weight in the school. Just compare her in your mind with Sylvia Drummond or Daphne Maitland.”

Monica compared her, and was silent, while Tony Semple said slowly, “What’s wrong with Ursula anyhow? I quite agree she carries no weight, but why doesn’t she?”

“I suppose because she has no force of character,” rejoined Vida. “Because she’s so mediocre.”

“That’s it,” broke in Nell Anderson. “She lacks self-confidence, which you need in dealing with our juniors – I believe it’s because she doesn’t do anything well. If Ursula suddenly broke out in any one direction, stood first in the form instead of third, or won the medal for drill, or developed a swift service at tennis – oh, I don’t care what it is! But if she could only make her mark, she’d have a position in the school, and we’d soon discover that she’s got heaps of character behind all her diffidence.”

“Yes, I’m sure you’re right,” assented Lesley Musgrave thoughtfully. “She’d begin to believe in herself then. After sharing her study for a term, I’m sure there’s a lot more in Ursula than meets the eye.”

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“That may be,” said Vida dryly, “but all this doesn’t help us very much. Personally I think that Nell would make a very good head-girl.”

“That she would!” agreed the others heartily, for Nell was popular with her school-fellows, but she herself objected promptly.

“Even if I were elected – which I very much doubt – I shouldn’t take it on,” she said decidedly. “I’m games captain already, and that’s one person’s work. I couldn’t have any other job tacked on to it.”

“I suppose you’d have to resign from the captaincy,” suggested Tony doubtfully, “It would be an awful pity, but –”

“I shouldn’t do it,” returned Nell, “so you needn’t go into the question. I much prefer being games captain, and (though it sounds conceited to say so) it’s far better for Jane’s that I should remain such.”

The others laughed, but assented. There was no doubt that Jane’s had never been led to victory by a better captain than Nell had proved herself to be throughout the previous term. Undoubtedly, if she were made head-girl the games would suffer perforce, and the seniors felt that they were scarcely reduced to such straits yet. Nell was not the only possible head, but she was, beyond dispute, the only possible games captain.

“Well, then,” said Monica, “since Lesley’s too absent-minded, I don’t think there’s any doubt that it should be Tony. She’s got plenty of character, and position, and anything else that may be required. I vote for Tony Semple, and I propose that we should all canvass the school for her.”

“Hear! Hear!” echoed the rest with one voice, and Nell added briskly, “We’ll start canvassing straight away to-morrow, but I shouldn’t think there will be any difficulty. That’s one of the responsibilities which the 1st Division have at Jane’s – the rest of the school are inclined to follow like sheep, and it would be a bad look-out if we ever got a slack lot of seniors, for the place would go down at once.”

“You forget the Anti-Soppists,” Tony reminded her, laughing. “That cheeky youngster, Dimsie, is enough to keep the school up single-handed, and she’s got a tremendous amount of influence with the kids.”

“Not only the kids,” added Lesley. “I often think she can do what she likes with most of us, and if Miss Yorke can be said to have a favourite, it’s Dimsie Maitland.”

“Oh, she hasn’t!” protested Tony, loyally. “Miss Yorke never makes favourites.”

“Not outwardly,” conceded Lesley. “Miss Yorke is never unfair, but after all she’s human, and Dimsie is an attractive little beggar. I say! It’s about time I was seeing to my share of our study. Ursula ought to be settled in by now.”

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CHAPTER IVMISS YORKE INTERVENES

THE first week of the term was nearly over and Fenella Postlethwaite was left with a disconsolate suspicion that she was not making as much stir among her companions at the Jane Willard as she had expected to do. Having lost her mother when only three years old, Fenella had been brought up by an indulgent and absent-minded father, who had stuffed her little brain with all sorts of unsuitable and unnecessary information, while neglecting almost every useful branch of her education. As he taught her himself, he did not consider that she required a governess, and her only female companion was the housekeeper, who had taken charge of their domestic affairs from the time of Mrs. Postlethwaite’s death, and who regarded “Miss Fenella” with awe as being an infant prodigy of learning – an opinion which Fenella herself was inclined to share.

She had reached the age of sixteen in this very unhealthy atmosphere, before a younger sister of her father’s arrived home suddenly from India, where she was at the head of a large Zenana station, and took in the situation at a glance. From that day Fenella’s tranquillity was at an end, for the elder Miss Postlethwaite at once set about “putting ideas” into her brother’s head, with the result that Fenella found herself packed off to boarding-school before her opinion had been either asked or given.

At first she was disposed to resent such sweeping methods, and to regard them as interference, but it was difficult to resent any of Miss Postlethwaite’s proceedings for long, because that lady, for all her masterfulness, had “a way” with her, and besides, the prospect of going to school rather fascinated Fenella. She was inclined to consider the Jane Willard as a fresh world to conquer, and felt certain that everybody there would look up with surprise and reverence to her great gifts, and unbounded stock of information on all subjects. Miss Postlethwaite, who had chosen Jane’s because the head mistress was a former schoolfellow of her own, smiled and held her peace. She thought privately that it would do Fenella more good than anything else to find her own footing among her companions, unhelped by any advice beforehand from her elders – especially as Fenella disliked advice unless she herself were the giver of it.

So it came to pas that no one had prepared her for the exceeding insignificance of any new girl, however learned, and even her oddities, which might have drawn attention (of a sort) to her at any other time, were overlooked in the school’s concern about the selection of a head-girl. Fat placid Hester Harriman, who was her roommate and therefore saw more of her than the others, merely labelled her “a funny freak”, and left it at that; and Fenella soon ceased to waste the pearls of her conversation on Hester,

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believing – rightly – that the fat one failed to understand half she said.

The business of the election, which was to be held on the first Saturday of the term, was taking up a good deal of attention. There were also two new prefects to be chosen, that the full number might be might be made up, but that was entirely Miss Yorke’s affair, and everybody knew in advance that her choice would fall on Hester Harriman and Vida Stiles. Having agreed among themselves that Tony was the only possible head-girl, the seniors started out to impress their views on the Middle and Lower schools, but it was among the little ones in the 4th Division that Tony’s supporters met their first refusal.

“I’m awfully sorry, Vida,” declared a timid Junior apologetically, “but I can’t vote for Tony ‘cos I promised Dimsie Maitland I’d vote for Ursula Grey.”

“What?” exclaimed Vida in astonishment. “But Ursula isn’t even standing for it, you little cuckoo!”

“I don’t know anything about that,” returned the junior stubbornly, “but Dimsie says I’m to vote for Ursula, and I like Dimsie, so I’ve promised.”

Vida looked perturbed, and gnawed the end of her pencil with an air of perplexity.

“Will you vote for Tony if Dimsie lets you off your promise?” she asked.

“I might,” Alma admitted cautiously. “I don’t really care much which gets in, and Tony nearly made a century for Jane’s in the Earnswood match last term – but I’m doing it to please Dimsie.”

Vida returned to the 1st Division room with her tale and heard that other canvassers were meeting with similar cases.

“What did I tell you?” exclaimed Tony. “That extraordinary girl has got it into her head that Ursula is a better man than I. She’s probably right too. I’m not sure that I shan’t vote for Ursula myself.”

“Rubbish!” said Vida indignatly. “One of us must tackle her, that’s all! You go on, Nell. You’ve got a persuasive tongue.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” said Nell, closing her French grammar with a bang. “Anyhow it’s no good trying to do prep. until this wretched business is settled, it seems to me.”

She went in search of Dimsie, whom she found at her desk in the big schoolroom where the Middle School worked, and having obtained permission to speak to her from Mademoiselle, who was in charge of preparation there, she went straight to the point, as was the way with Nell.

“I say, Dimsie, why are you canvassing for Ursula instead of Tony? All the 1st Division are voting for Tony, and she’s far and away the best girl for the job. Can’t you tell those kids whom you’ve been tampering with, that you find you’ve made a mistake?”

Dimsie, her chin propped in her hand regarded the games captain with clear unwavering eyes.

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“But I haven’t,” she said, “so I can’t.”“You have,” persisted Nell. “Listen to me. You admit that

Tony’s a thoroughly straight, good-all-round sort of girl don’t you?”“Oh, yes!” responded Dimsie readily. “I like Tony awfully,

but I’m perfectly certain Ursula would make a better head, when she wakes up a bit. You don’t suppose I’d canvass for her, do you, if I didn’t think that?”

“But why not Tony?” asked Nell, a trifle disconcerted.“Oh, Tony’s all right,” Dimsie answered more vaguely, “but

she’s got such a lot of irons in the fire, I don’t believe she could give her mind properly to being head-girl. Ursula’s more dependable.”

“It’s awful cheek to think you know more than the whole 1st Division!” exclaimed Nell, feeling nettled.

“I know,” said Dimsie humbly, “and I’m frightfully sorry about it, but I can’t help what I think, can I? So you see, I must canvass for Ursula, and the worst of it is that she hates me for doing it!”

“I should think so! She knows more about the matter than you do. Can’t you listen to reason, Dimsie?”

“No,” replied Dimsie firmly, “I can’t. And, I say, Nell! I don’t mean to be rude, but as it isn’t a bit of use talking to me, would you mind going away? I’ve got yards of stuff to learn for Miss Edgar’s literature class to-morrow.”

Nell shrugged her shoulders and went.“Nothing can be done with Dimsie,” she reported, “so of

course she and all her set are working for Ursula. They might even succeed, only Ursula seems dead against the idea herself.”

“She is,” affirmed Lesley Musgrave. “In fact she means to say so at the school meeting on Friday evening. You’re safe either way, Tony – you needn’t worry.”

Tony chuckled.“My position,” she said humorously, “is rather peculiar.

However, I’d be obliged if you’d go on canvassing, all the same.”Her position was to become still more peculiar before the big

meeting which always preceded a school election. It had been decided at the last moment to take the votes directly it was over, instead of waiting for Saturday morning, which some of the keen hockey players were anxious to spend more profitably. The news of this alteration had hardly been posted on the hall notice-board, on Friday afternoon, when one of the maids appeared at the door of Tony’s study.

“I was looking for you, miss,” she said. “Will you please go to Miss Yorke in her study at five o’clock?”

“All right, Martha. What do you suppose that means?” she added to Nell, who was scribbling exercises on the other side of the table.

“Why, of course, she knows we’re going to elect you to-night, and she wants to give you a pi-jaw about your responsibilities, and all that sort of thing. It is always done, under these circumstances.

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I remember when Phyllis – Is there time to run through this Latin prose together before you have to go across? I’ll get the dictionary and look out the words, if you’ll do the verb chasing.”

Tony found it exceedingly difficult to concentrate on Latin prose for the next half-hour, though she did her best. Somehow or other she had an uneasy feeling that Nell was mistaken – that it was not about her future responsibilities that Miss Yorke wished to see her. Punctually to the moment she knocked at the head mistress’s door and entered.

“Come in, dear, and sit down,” said Miss Yorke, glancing at her with those kindly dark eyes which, the Jane Willard girls had reason to know, were also very penetrating. “I want to speak to you about this election,” she added, for she, like Nell Anderson, believed in going straight to the point. “You are standing for the headship, I believe?”

“Yes, Miss Yorke,” said Tony.“And you are very keen on getting it?”“I – I suppose so, Miss Yorke. Why, of course! I think most

people would be keen on being head of Jane’s if they had a chance,” she said honestly.

“Then I wonder”, said miss Yorke, “whether you will be very much upset by a request, which I am going to make to you. Mind, it’s only a request, Tony – not an order – for I don’t think it would be fair to issue a command in the circumstances; that would be interfering to a certain extent with your rights.”

Tony’s reply voiced the views of the majority at Jane’s.“I should know that any order you chose to give was all right,

Miss Yorke. I’d never dream of questioning it.”Miss Yorke looked across at her and smiled, a sudden

delightful smile that lit up a face, which was apt to be rather sad and stern in repose.

“Thank you, Tony! That’s very loyal of you, but it’s precisely why I don’t choose to give this as an order. I only ask you as a favour to give up your chance of the headship – not to stand for the election, in fact.”

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CHAPTER VTONY PROVES HERSELF A SPORT

TONY gasped. She had not quite known what she expected, but it certainly wasn’t this.

“But – but why, Miss Yorke?” she asked, when she had recovered her breath a little.

“Well,” said the head mistress, “I don’t know whether your parents are in the habit of showing you my reports when they receive them, but if so, do you remember what I put in last term’s, under General Remarks?”

Tony crimsoned, and nodded.“‘Industrious and full of good intentions, but too unstable to

be relied upon at all times,’” she quoted. “It struck in my mind because I – I knew I’d deserved it.”

“I am glad you felt like that about it,” said Miss Yorke quietly. “you are a hard worker, Tony, but your lack of concentration, and the result is that you allow your mind to be diverted into a dozen different channels, and expand your energy in commencing a variety of things, none of which are carried out to a finish. That being so, dear, how can I let the girls elect you to such a responsible position? You realise, don’t you, that I have to consult the interests of the whole school in a matter like this? I know the alternative is Ursula Grey, and that she is without many of the qualities which would make you a capital head-girl, but she is steady as a rock, and will give her whole mind to anything she undertakes as conscientiously as Daphne Maitland used to do. It is a great pity, Tony. I wish with all my heart I could let the election take its course, but it wouldn’t be safe, so –” she paused, and looked at the tall straight girl before her with a little sigh. “– so I must appeal to a principle which I know is strong in all you girls who have been long at the school. Will you think first of what is best for Jane’s, Tony?”

Tony stared straight in front of her, and blinked a little. Up till the present she had not realized how much she had counted on the headship, for it seemed such a foregone conclusion. The fact that she had regarded the idea so carelessly before, brought home to her the truth of Miss Yorke’s words, for there was nothing small or stubborn about Tony’s nature. Again she blinked rapidly; then answered bravely, though her voice shook a little:

“Of course I will, Miss Yorke. I’ll tell them to-night at the meeting that I’m not standing, so that Ursula can be elected right off, and – and I’ll do my best to help her in any way I can.”

Miss Yorke held out her hand, and drew the girl down for a kiss.

“That’s my plucky Tony! I knew you would do what was best for the school, but I know, too, that it isn’t easy. You forgive me for the disappointment, don’t you?”

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Tony hurriedly swallowed the lump in her throat, and wanted to say that if anything could take the sting out of the disappointment, it was Miss Yorke’s way of handling it, but being a self-conscious school-girl, she only answered:

“Rather! It doesn’t matter a bit,” went off in a hurry, without waiting politely for her dismissal, as was customary after an interview with the head mistress. Miss Yorke, however, understood.

“Well?” queried Nell, looking up from her writing, as her friend entered.

Tony sank into her chair with a whimsical grimace.“It’s very ill!” she returned. “I begin to wish I hadn’t fooled

about quite so much last term. Anyhow,” she added, resorting to proverbs, as was her way in moments of stress, “It’s no use crying over spilt milk, for the mill can never grind with the water that is passed, and there are no birds in last year’s nests, and all that sort of thing. In short, I’m not to be head-girl.”

“What?” exclaimed Nell. “Did Miss Yorke say so?”Tony cleared her throat, and drew her Ransome towards her

with a jerk.“Not exactly. She appealed to my better feelings in a moving

speech, which showed how injurious it would be for Jane’s to have me as a head-girl. In fact she drew such a lurid picture of the disasters which would attend my reign, that there was nothing for it but to resign all claims in favour of Ursula. Why are you g-glaring at me with such an entire absence of tact, Nell?”

But Nell was not to be deceived by her levity.“Poor old thing!” she cried in consternation. “It’s too bad of

Miss Yorke to let you down like that! Any one would think you slacked systematically, and broke all the rules! I do think it’s a shame!”

“You mustn’t! It isn’t!” gulped Tony. “I – I quite see her point, and so will you, if you think for a moment over my past career. I do begin lots of things at white heat, and then cool off afterwards. Oh, shut up, Nell! I managed not to howl when Miss Yorke was being decent to me about it, but I can’t stand any more from you!”

“What I can’t comprehend –” began Nell, when an interruption occurred, so totally unexpected that it at once cured Tony’s tendency to tears. There was an abrupt knock at the door, followed immediately by the entrance of Fenella Postlethwaite. The two prefects, who had scarcely seen her before except in class, stared in amazement, as she stood there, smiling blandly, with a bundle of books under her arm.

“I have come to ask a favour,” she announced, with the gracious air of a person who is conferring one, but does not wish to lay her protégées under too great an obligation. “I find that, downstairs in the senior schoolroom, I cannot get the perfect quiet

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which is necessary to my work, so I have come to ask if you will allow me to use your study during preparation?”

For the second time that evening, Tony’s breath was completely taken away, while Nell gaped at the intruder, as though unable to believe her ears. Such impudence would have been colossal from an old friend, and this was the rawest new girl who had ever set foot in Jane’s. They hardly knew how to cope with such a situation for the moment, and Fenella, in sublime self-confidence, dumped her books on the table.

“Don’t let me take your chair,” she said courteously to Nell.“I wasn’t thinking of it!” returned Nell dryly, recovering

herself with an effort. “You see, I’m afraid we can’t let you stay here, because there’s only room for two.”

“As it is now, certainly,” Fenella agreed, “but that can easily be managed. I shan’t complain of being a little cramped, so long as I can have quiet.”

“Do you mean to say you don’t get it in the 1st Division room?” asked Tony abruptly. “If the place is such a bear-garden – ”

“Oh, no!” interposed Fenella hurriedly. “It’s not that. I’ve no doubt the others, for example, would think it perfectly quiet, but I have been accustomed to study entirely by myself, and the constant little movements and rustlings, even when nobody is actually speaking, are most disturbing to my train of thought.”

The humour of the situation began suddenly to dawn on Tony, though Nell still looked angry.

“I’m afraid,” said Tony, “you’d find that we move, and rustle, and talk too, if you were to be here long enough, which you won’t be.”

“Two girls cannot rustle as much as twelve,” declared Fenella, unmoved. “I might be able to put up with that much.”

Tony was seized with a violent fit of coughing, and before Nell could find words in which to express her feelings, there came another knock at the door, though this visitor waited for permission to enter.

“We seem to be at home to most of the school this evening,” remarked Nell with resignation. “Oh, it’s you, Dimsie! And you’ve brought your books too, I notice! Please don’t hesitate to make yourself quite comfortable.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Dimsie, in her direct fashion. “I only brought back Tony’s Kipling, which she lent me to find quotations for my compo. Our subject for this week was ‘The Poetry of Kipling’, you know. Thanks awfully, Tony; it’s been jolly useful – why, whatever are you doing here, Fenella?”

Dimsie was almost the only girl who had taken any notice of the new senior, since her first evening, when Nell’s sister, Madge, had shown her round the library. From the beginning Dimsie had marked her down as a girl who needed to be looked after, being obviously quite unused to school life; and she had done what she

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could for her in odd moments, though Dimsie was a busy young person, and it is not easy, moreover, to befriend any one, however destitute, who is in a higher form than yourself.

“Fenella”, said Tony, with a twinkle in her eye, as she stretched out her hand for the book which Dimsie was returning, “proposes to do her prep. in our study instead of the 1st Division room, for the future, because she finds two girls less distracting than twelve.”

The younger girl looked quickly from one to the other, and smiled.

“Oh no, you wouldn’t, Fenella!” she declared, in the indulgent tone used by a kindly elder to a difficult child. “Two people in these little studies are always getting in each other’s way, and three would be simply impossible. You go downstairs again quietly to the 1st Division room, where you can at least get a desk to yourself.”

Fenella’s gaze rested waveringly on the table, which certainly looked rather over-spread, at the moment, with its cargo of exercise books and battered grammars.

“Besides,” added Dimsie conclusively, “if a person’s really working awfully hard, she doesn’t notice what the others are doing. I shouldn’t waste any more time up here, Fenella, if I were you.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Fenella thoughtfully, “but I must get my aunt to write to Miss Yorke and ask her if it would be possible to give me a small study for myself.”

“I shouldn’t, if I were you,” said Dimsie patiently, “because it wouldn’t be a bit of good; but of course it’s your own affair. Bye-bye, Tony!”

She turned to follow Fenella into the passage, but Nell called her back.

“Why did you waste all that palaver on the silly idiot?” she asked wrathfully. “Couldn’t you leave me to tell her to clear out, and not be more of an ass than she could help? After all, it wasn’t your affair anyhow.”

“Sorry!” said Dimsie serenely. “Erica says I’m always barging in, but you see, I’m trying to look after Fenella Postlethwaite a bit, because no one else seems to be bothering much about her, and she’s extremely helpless.”

“I should say she was a trifle wanting, myself,” observed Tony grinning. “Never mind – she’s served her purpose, this evening, for I was feeling rather blue till she walked in upon us. By-the-way, Dimsie, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, so you’ll be pleased to hear that your candidate will be head-girl, after all. I’m not going to stand.”

“But why?” inquired Dimsie, opening her brown eyes to their widest extent.

“Never you mind,” said Tony gruffly. “But don’t go telling everybody about it till the meeting comes on. Above all, keep it

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from Mabs Hunter. I don’t want the whole school buzzing with it before they need to hear.”

“Of course not,” said Dimsie. “All right, I shan’t.” She fixed Tony for a moment with an embarrassing stare; then, taking a step forward, she held out her hand solemnly. “I know you’re doing it for the sake of Jane’s,” she said, “and I can’t help feeling you’re greatly to be respected. Not every girl would be as sporting about a thing like that.”

“If you think you’re flattering me,” said Tony ruefully, “you’re not a bit! I’m not so sure as you that Ursula will make a better head, but we’ve all got to back her up, and do our bit. Clear out, and get on with your prep., Dimsie – there’s little enough time left before the bell rings.”

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CHAPTER VIA POLITICAL MEETING

THE Jane Willard girls crowded into the big schoolroom after supper that evening, with a pleasant feeling of excitements to come. Dimsie had kept her promise, and discreetly held her peace about Tony’s news, but she had been unable to resist the temptation of mystifying Mabs Hunter by hints (in her best imitation of Mabs’ own style) of something unusual which was going to take place at the meeting that night.

“You grumble over me beating about the bush,” complained Mabs, becoming nearly ill with curiosity, “but I wonder what you think you’re doing yourself.”

“Well, you can see now how you like it! Besides there’s a difference,” added Dimsie, shaking her brown head. “You always mean to tell, sooner or later, and I don’t mean to tell, at all – see?”

“Oh, you might!” entreated Mabs, in tones of agony, but Dimsie was inexorable.

“Wait till eight o’clock to-night. You’ll know all about it then,” she told her, “but not a second before.”

“Pig!” said Mabs politely; and having no official news, she spread it through the school that something very surprising would take place at the election, but what it was she did not intend to reveal till the time came. And Dimsie, overhearing snatches of this, buried her head in her open desk, and sniggered.

Eight o’clock found all seats full, and the prefects on the dais, the two who had been newly installed by Miss Yorke – Vida Stiles and Hester Harriman – taking their places with the rest. Then, since it was not the custom, for obvious reasons, that a prefect should nominate the future head of the school, Erica Innes rose to her feet.

“My friends,” she began in her best delivery, well known to the Anti-Soppists, “we are met together, to-night, to elect a head-girl. I need not go into the circumstances which had made this necessary – ”

(“Rather not! We know all that,” murmured an impatient voice in the audience.)

“Phyllis Heathley has left, and her place shall know her no more, and we’re all frightfully sorry about it. But since the old order changeth, yielding place to new – always has done, and always will do – it isn’t a bit of use grizzling, and I beg to propose Ursula Grey as our new head-girl.”

Without a moment’s pause Pamela Hughes shot up from her desk.

“I beg to second her,” she said briefly, and sat down again, for speech came less easily than action to Pamela.

“And I beg to dis-second her!” piped Nora Blyth’s excited voice from the back row. “She’d never do – she’s too quiet. Tony Semple’s the one we ought to have.”

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“Yes, yes! Tony Semple!” echoed two or three voices all over the room, while others, who had been influenced by Dimsie’s persuasive tongue shrieked, “Ursula! Ursula Grey!” and some one threw a ball of crumpled pink blotting-paper ay a political opponent.

The election had commenced.On the platform, Ursula sprang to her feet, with a flushed

face and unhappy-looking eyes.“Girls!” she began appealingly, but got no further, for Tony

seized her firmly round the waist from behind, and pulled her back to her seat.

“Shut up!” she commanded brusquely. “I’m going to speak, not you – at least, just for the present it looks as though too many people were speaking already! Let’s wait for a lull in the storm, and then I may be able to take occasion by the forelock.”

“But I must tell them,” persisted Ursula, struggling once more to her feet, “that I haven’t the slightest intention – ”

She found herself abruptly pulled down again, and Tony reiterated,

“It isn’t a scrap of use, I assure you! They can’t hear any one but themselves, and very little of that. Besides you’re not going to say anything of the sort! Girls!”

She leaped up on to her chair, and waved her arms with a gesture of authority at the seething mob below. There was a frenzied burst of cheering, interspersed with cat-calls from the pro-Ursulaites. It was not that any one at Jane’s really wished to hiss Tony, who was easily the most popular of the prefects, but every one knows that in a political crisis all personal sentiment goes by the wall.

At last the turmoil died down a little, and Tony’s clear ringing voice made itself heard above what was left of it.

“You needn’t go on working yourselves up like a lot of dancing dervishes, for the whole thing’s settled already, and there’s no need to have an election at all. For private reasons of my own, which I don’t choose to give out to the general public, I’ve made up my mind not to stand for the headship, and as the only other person is Ursula, she becomes head-girl straight away, and the only thing left to do is to cheer her. Now then! Three cheers for Ursula Grey, our new head! Hip – hip – ”

The school obeyed heartily enough. The majority really did not greatly care whether Tony or Ursula was to lead them. Tony was certainly the more popular of the two, but there was no harm in Ursula, and she had made a good prefect. The warmer partisans, who had strong feelings on the subject, were too much taken aback by their candidate’s speech to do anything else but join in, and only Ursula herself ventured any protest.

“But I’m not standing either,” she cried feebly. “I never meant to, from the first.”

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“Don’t be such an owl!” Nell Anderson commanded her in fierce tones. “You’ve got to stand – Miss Yorke wishes it. There now! They’ve finished cheering. Say thank you, and be done with it!”

Apparently there was no way out of it, though Ursula sincerely longed for one to open. She had no faith in herself, or her powers of leadership, and she was keenly conscious than Jane’s deserved the best head it could get. Rather unhappily she moved to the teacher’s desk – the place always kept vacant at such meetings for the head-girl – and faced her schoolfellows with burning cheeks and eyes that shone, but not with pleasure.

“Thank you very much for cheering me, everybody,” she said mechanically. “I didn’t mean to stand, and I quite thought Tony would be chosen. I’m certain she would have filled the place a great deal better than I, but I’ll do my best, and I hope you will all help me.”

It was a lame, pathetic little speech, but Jane’s applauded it warmly. Since Ursula was to be their head-girl, their traditions made loyalty a foregone conclusion. And Rosamund Garth whispered to Dimsie:

“Ursula would be quite pretty, just now, if she didn’t look so miserable. I never remember seeing her with a colour before, and her eyes are so bright.”

Dimsie had her own opinion about those bright eyes. She watched the newly-elected head-girl, as she stood in her place, receiving the congratulations of the girls who thronged around her; but presently, when Lesley Musgrave had gone to the piano, and the rest were swinging round the room to the strains of a cheerful two-step, Dimsie saw Ursula slip off in the direction of the door, and overtook her on the stairs which led up to the flat.

“It’s only me,” she said gently, tucking her arm through the elder girl’s. “Are you going up to your study for a bit? Can I come too?”

Ursula neither paused, nor replied, for a moment, but she did not shake off Dimsie’s hand, and as they turned into the deserted passage upstairs, she said,

“Yes, do come, if you don’t want to dance down there with the others. To tell you the truth, Dimsie, it will be a comfort to have you, for I’m feeling scared out of my wits, and I don’t believe the others would understand it.”

Dimsie looked rather sober, as she followed her into the study, and dropped down on a big shabby hassock before the fire.

“There’s nothing to be scared about, really,” she said in reassuring tones. “Just carry on doing the best you can, and it’ll be all right. I’m sorry you’re feeling so low about it, Ursie, but after all, it’s something to be proud of – that you’re head of Jane’s.”

Ursula seated herself before the table, and stretched out her arms on the ink-stained cloth.

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“I should feel proud,” she said haltingly, “I should feel – quite different about it, if I’d been properly elected by the school because the girls wanted me. They don’t, you know, Dimsie – they want Tony, and I’m only second-best – scarcely even that – ”

She broke off, and sat with down-bent eyes, picking jerkily at the cloth. Dimsie regarded her for a moment, with keen observant gaze; then rising, she came across to the table, and put her arm round Ursula’s shoulders.

“Dear old thing!” she said affectionately, “You mustn’t fret about it like that. It’s because they don’t know what a decent sort you are, that’s all. They’ll want you fast enough, when they find it out – oh, I say, Ursula! You’re getting as bad as Rosamund, and we’re just managing to cure her weepiness a little.”

“I know I’m a perfect fool!” exclaimed Ursula, dabbing vehemently at her eyes with a screwed-up handkerchief, “but it seems so ignominious, somehow, to be pushed in just because Tony can’t take it on. When you come to think of it, Dimsie, I’ve never had any position of my own at Jane’s, in spite of all the years I’ve been here. Nell is good at games, so she has grown into sports captain; Madge is librarian, because she’s keen on literature; Monica paints; Lesley is musical – ”

“So are you,” interrupted Dimsie suddenly.Ursula dried her eyes with a final dab, and stared at her in

amazement.“I’m not!” she said. “Whatever made you think so?”“I know you are,” persisted Dimsie positively. “I’ve watched

you at musical evenings, or the school concerts, especially when Lesley plays her fiddle. You forget all about everything else, and look quite different somehow I know it’s because you’re musical.”

“Have you ever heard me play?” asked Ursula.“N-no. Only when my name’s been down for your piano and

I’ve come in as you were finishing.”“All right, then; you don’t know what you’re talking about. I

love listening – I think I could listen for hours at a stretch – but when I try to play myself, it all goes.”

“It oughtn’t to,” said Dimsie thoughtfully. “There’s something wrong somewhere; we must see about that. Hullo! There’s a knock at the door.”

“Please, Ursula,” said a junior popping her head round the door, “Miss Yorke wants to see you in her study.”

There was a new accent of respect in the junior’s voice, which Dimsie noted with a grin.

“Did you hear that kid’s reverent tone?” she asked, as Ursula rose to obey the head mistress’s summons. “That’s the first tribute to your exalted office; you’ve got a position now, right enough.”

“Yes, but I didn’t make it,” pointed out Ursula.“And the second,” proceeded Dimsie, “is Miss Yorke’s pi-jaw.

But then pi-jaws from Miss Yorke, when you’ve got a clear conscience, are always pleasant.”

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Ursula laughed and sighed.“They generally take a lot of living up to,” she said from the

doorway.“Oh, well!” said Dimsie, “if you won’t be cheered up, of

course – ”

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CHAPTER VIISIX IN COUNCIL

THOUGH the Anti-Soppists had agreed, at the beginning of the term, to give up their old-established councils as being too childish for people of their advancing years, force of habit had proved too strong for them, and meetings (though more informal) were still held in a corner of the senior sitting-room when anything or anybody appeared to call for discussion. So it happened that one Saturday afternoon, when they were engaged in discussing the head-girl, who, they agreed, was curiously and unnecessarily reserved, with no special friend in her own form, and only Dimsie to fall back upon in the Middle School. And Dimsie – as Erica Innes justly observed – could scarcely be counted, seeing she was friends with half the school, which left her very little time for specializing.

“I don’t know that that’s a very nice thing to say,” objected Dimsie herself at this point, who was seated at the round table, scribbling away for deal life, and who (for some reason) did not appear to like this criticism of Ursula.

“Why not?” demanded Erica, always ready for an argument.“It sounds as though I cared a little for a lot of people and not

much for any one – rather shallow, don’t you think?” Dimsie replied, without pausing for a moment in her occupation.

“I didn’t mean that,” said Erica; “but if a girl has one great chum to whom she’s devoted, they generally become absorbed in each other, and aren’t much good to the rest of the community.”

“Dimsie has five,” rejoined Rosamund, lazily, looking up from the story-book which she was devouring with more or less disregard for the chatter which went on around her.

“Yes,” assented Erica, “and I’m far from complaining of Dimsie as a chum – but since she thinks I am, I may just mention that five friends are really as much as any girl has time for in a school where we work as hard as we do at Jane’s.”

“There’s something in that,” admitted Pamela Hughes, who was busy with some embroidery. “We never get as much of Dimsie as we require. For example, what are you doing at the present moment, when you might be talking to us?”

“I am talking to you,” returned Dimsie, calmly, “with one hand, while with the other I’m drawing up a set of rules for Fenella Postlethwaite.”

A stifled gurgle of amusement ran round the circle.“But look here,” protested Erica, who was something of a

stickler for etiquette, “you might remember that she’s in the 1st Division, even though she may be a fool, and it’s not your place to bring her up.”

Dimsie’s pencil went down at that.“My dear Eric!” she exclaimed earnestly, “somebody’s got to

do something for that girl. She may be in the senior form, and I haven’t a word to say against her work, but the babiest babe in the

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4th Division knows more about school ways than Fenella. She’s always putting her foot in it, and she’ll have a pretty thin time if some one doesn’t see about it.”

“Still it ought to be some one in her own form,” maintained Erica, and the others echoed her.

“Her own form don’t go the right way about it,” explained Dimsie, patiently. “Now that they’ve wakened up to her peculiarities, they’re all down on her, every one! And they’ll make nothing of her that way. She only sticks her nose in the air, and behaves like a persecuted martyr.”

“Well,” said Rosamund, doubtfully, “we always have set our faces against the persecution of new girls, even if they are senior to ourselves.”

“Humph!” said Jean Gordon, on her knees before the fire, which she was trying to coax into a more cheerful blaze. “I’ve come gradually to the conclusion that the persecution never occurs unless it’s deserved, and it usually does a lot of good in the end.”

“Oh, but Jean!” objected Dimsie, “it all depends on the reason. A girl shouldn’t be ragged or snubbed because she’s different from everybody else, and doesn’t know any better.”

“She’s come to school to learn,” returned Jean, conclusively.“Then it’s really her people who are to blame, not her,”

rejoined Dimsie, quickly. “New girls should never come as seniors. When they’ve been through the mill in the Lower and Middle Schools, they’ve generally had most of their corners rubbed off, and their people ought to think of that, and not send them to public schools in their old age.”

“But since they have done so,” reiterated Erica, coming back to the point, “it’s the seniors who must look out for her, not us.”

“Just as you like,” said Dimsie, nonchalantly, picking up her pencil again, “but I think myself it’s a case for the Anti-Soppists, so I shall have to attend to it.”

“Have you told her about those rules of yours?” asked Jean, curiously, and getting up, she leaned over Dimsie’s shoulder. “Good gracious! You don’t expect her to take this sort of thing lying down, do you?”

“Not exactly, perhaps,” conceded Dimsie, “though I shall try to be very tactful, and if I can persuade her to take it at all, it may save her from getting into trouble with the higher powers.”

“What is it?” demanded Pamela, scrambling up to join Jean. “Oh, I say, Erica, listen to this! – ‘Rule 6. – Do your hair tidily, and put your clothes on straight before coming down to drill in the morning, because if you don’t, you’ll get your bedroom monitress into trouble as well as yourself. Rule 7. – Don’t put on side about the lot you know, because there must be heaps of things you don’t know. You’ve never seen a hockey-stick before –’”

A shout of laughter interrupted her.“I should think not, indeed!” cried the audience. “Just

imagine Fenella Postlethwaite with a hockey-stick! She’d hold it by

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the crook. But, Dimsie, you don’t put all these – interpolations – into a list of rules.”

“Oh, I know! They’re only there to remind me, like notes for a sermon, you know. I shan’t show her the paper, but just read it off to her, and explain as I go along. Hullo, Mabs! Where have you been?”

Mabs Hunter strolled up the long room, and possessed herself of Pamela’s chair.

“In Nell’s study,” she said, airily, “talking to her about the fixtures. I went to see what I could find out about the vacant place in the team, and – well, I have my own opinion now.”

Nodding mysteriously, she assumed the baffling manner which never failed to draw her companions.

“Pooh!” said Erica, turning away with scorn. “Your opinion isn’t much help. We’d rather hear Nell’s, if you know it. Is she playing Betty Grey, or Jean?”

“I know,” said Dimsie, unexpectedly, dashing a line at the end of her list. “So speak up, Mabs, or I’ll tell, myself, and that will take the wind out of your sails.”

Mabs’s round countenance fell.“How did you hear it? I thought it had been strictly private

between Nell and Tony till they told me.”“But what about it?” cried Jean, impatiently. “Am I to get

that place in the team, or not?”“It’s not decided,” said Mabs, reluctantly. “Nell’s going to try

you against Earnswood next week, and Betty against St. Elstrith’s Ladies. Then she’ll judge by your play which to put in against the Westover lot; but whichever it is, if she gives a good account of herself, she’ll get her hockey colours.”

“Well, mind it’s you, Jean,” said Erica in threatening accents. “If Betty gets in, there will be no putting up with her. It’s a great pity Ursula hasn’t inherited more of her cousin’s bumptiousness. It might be more useful to her at present, though it’s almost more than one can bear in Betty.”

“Ursula’s all right,” said Dimsie, hastily, her eyes resting with a certain anxiety on Jean, who seemed less elated at her prospects than might have been expected. Dimsie knew what was wrong. Jean, who was reserved with the others, had confided in her at the beginning of the term, and the trouble was a real one, or rather, it might easily have become so. Accordingly, Dimsie abandoned the training of Fenella for the afternoon, and gave her mind to more serious matters, the result being that she pounced upon Pamela after supper, and drew her aside into their deserted schoolroom.

“Pam,” she said, “you’re playing for the Middle School against the Seniors on Wednesday, aren’t you?”

“Rather,” said Pam, “considering I’m in the second eleven.”“That’s just it,” said Dimsie. “You ought to be in the first, and

if you give a decent account of yourself on Wednesday, you may be.

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There’s not much really to choose between you and Jean, so if you play up for all you are worth, Nell may think of trying you instead.”

Pamela coloured hotly.“Whatever do you mean?” she exclaimed. “Anyone would

think you wanted me to cut out poor old Jean!”“And I do,” responded Dimsie. “But I don’t want it done by

that odious Betty – she’s quite conceited enough anyhow. Look here, Pam, I can’t explain, because it’s Jean’s affair, but it would be a great deal better if she didn’t get her colours this year. Can’t you play your hardest, and get Nell to think about your chances?”

“Naturally I’ll play up,” said Pamela in a slightly constrained voice, “but I can’t imagine any reason why Jean shouldn’t want to get into the school eleven; she was set on it last term, at all costs. It’s rather funny of you, Dimsie, to suggest any one playing a shabby trick on anybody at all – least of all, one of ourselves!”

Dimsie stepped back, and stared at her in grieved surprise.“You don’t surely suppose I’d do that!” she cried. “I’m trying

to do Jean a good turn, whether you believe it or not – but I think you ought to believe me, Pam.”

“Why don’t you explain more?” said Pamela rather sulkily. “You’re as bad as Mabs, and I hate mysteries.”

“So do I,” answered Dimsie, “but I tell you I can’t explain, because it’s Jean’s business. No! Don’t, whatever you do, go and ask her! She’d hate it. Please don’t, Pam!”

“Oh, very well!” said Pamela, shrugging her shoulders. “Though I don’t see why she shouldn’t tell me just as much as you. Yes, I’ll play up, of course, but –”

“May I inquire what you two children are doing,” interrupted a lofty voice from the doorway, “chattering here in the dark alone, when I believe you’re supposed to be at the Dickens reading in the senior sitting-room?”

“Fenella Postlethwaite!” exclaimed Pamela, sotto voce. “Children, indeed! What business is it of hers?”

“Well she’s a senior, and of course we oughtn’t to be here just now,” rejoined Dimsie, briskly. “All right, Fenella!” she added in louder tones, “we’re just coming. And, oh! In case I forget – will you walk to church with me to-morrow morning? I want to talk to you about some things. Are you engaged?”

“No,” said Fenella, doubtfully, wondering whether it might not be rather beneath her dignity to walk with anyone in the Middle School.

“That’s all right, then,” said Dimsie, cheerfully. “We’re both in Miss Edgar’s party, remember, which collects in the front hall at ten-thirty. Come on, Pam! It’s high time we weren’t here. If Miss Eversley misses us there will be trouble.”

Neither Dimsie nor Pamela referred to their stolen conversation again, but though, outwardly, they were as good friends as before, each was aware of a certain soreness, and neither sought the other’s company quite so frequently as before.

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Pamela felt herself entitled to some explanation of Dimsie’s queer request, and Dimsie resented Pamela’s evident lack of trust. The only person concerned, who knew nothing of all this, was Jean herself, though she seemed far from being depressed when, after ten days, Nell Anderson allotted Pam the vacant place in the school team.

“You’ve been playing quite well, Jean,” the games captain told her kindly. “You helped to beat those Earnswood people, and certainly you’re shaping up better than Betty Grey at present, but really Pam beats you both hollow. I’d no idea she could run like that, till I noticed her in your match against us the other day. I’m sorry for you, of course, but I’ve got to think of the school. Never mind! Better luck next time!”

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CHAPTER VIIITHE LABOURS OF DIMSIE

DIMSIE’S companions waited with some curiosity, to see how Fenella Postlethwaite would “take” the scheme of rules laid down for her, and Dimsie’s efforts in general to make her into the semblance of a public-school girl. Judging by the airs which the new senior gave herself towards any one below the 1st Division (and most of those in it) she might reasonably be expected to set Dimsie in her proper place at the very beginning, except that – as Erica remarked – no one at Jane’s, whether in the past or present, had ever accomplished this feat, or was in the least likely to do so.

Fenella, however, took it all in astonishingly good part.“I hope you don’t mind me telling you these things,” Dimsie

said very politely, having run through her budget of advice, with furtive glances at the list of rules in order to refresh her memory. “You see, they’re all rather important here, but perhaps you mightn’t notice them if they weren’t pointed out to you, not having been to school before.”

“It is most probable that they would never have occurred to me,” admitted Fenella, graciously. “I came here to give my mind to study and matters of real importance, so that such trifles might easily escape my attention. Of course I still consider that they are magnified out of all due proportion, but I shall try to observe them in future, because it is most distracting to be constantly reminded of them when I am busy.”

“Well, you will be,” said Dimsie, “if you forget.”“I owe you a certain amount of gratitude,” added Fenella,

unbending yet further, “for bringing these things to my notice. No one else has troubled to put them before me in your methodical fashion.”

Dimsie gasped a little. Certainly her latest protégée was taking things as they were meant.

“I was afraid you might think I was being horribly cheeky,” she confessed, “but I thought perhaps they weren’t taking any pains with you in your own form, though, as Erica says, it is really their business, not mine. If I can tell you anything you want to know, don’t mind asking me, will you?”

“Oh, no!” said Fenella. “I shall be very pleased to do so. And if you care to walk with me to-morrow, pray do.”

“Thanks awfully,” said Dimsie, looking a little blank, “but I’m engaged to Mabs Hunter. I generally am engaged to some one,” she added with some haste.

But Fenella was still anxious to pay off her obligations.“I believe,” she said vaguely, “that we in the 1st Division have

certain privileges – that, for example, we can take younger girls into Westover on Saturday mornings, or down to St. Elstrith’s Bay, at other times. I shall be glad to take you with me, any day when you care to go.”

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“Thanks awfully,” repeated Dimsie, as warmly as though she were not aware that Ursula, or Tony, or Lesley, would willingly invite her whenever she wished it.

So, much to the surprise of the Anti-Soppists, Fenella, instead of resenting Dimsie’s interference, actually tried to profit by it, though neither she nor anybody else could make the new senior into an ordinary humble-minded member of society, as became a schoolgirl of sixteen, who excelled in nothing wherein schoolgirls should excel. For Fenella remained a conceited prig, quite unshaken by the snubs she had received on all sides, or the fact that she had not yet distinguished herself in her form. Her lofty contempt was roused by the fact that there was no Greek class at Jane’s, and she did not fall in with Mademoiselle’s suggestion that it was more necessary to rub up her French. English history, too, she regarded as trifling, but could not convince Miss Yorke that it should be entirely given up, and the time devoted to studying the politics of ancient Persia.

“Read what you like, Fenella, in your spare moments,” said the head mistress, “but no English girl can grow up to be of real understanding use to the Empire, who hasn’t got a good working knowledge of how it came to be an Empire at all. What you know of the history of England – know accurately I mean – wouldn’t cover the back of a postage-stamp, written small.”

Nevertheless her schoolfellows, even the seniors, were inclined to take her at her own valuation, though disliking her cordially the while, and the Lower School regarded her as a shining light of learning. She dressed the part, according to her own view of it, dragging her straight drab hair back from her forehead and peering at the world through goggling spectacles which were needlessly large; and added to which she was naturally pale and lanky, with the unwholesome appearance of a girl who disliked outdoor exercise and only took it under compulsion. But at least, since Dimsie had taken her in hand, her clothes were put on straight and properly fastened, while her fingers had lost their former tinge of ink.

“So now,” observed Erica, “you can leave her to get on by herself, surely. You needn’t walk with her any more, I mean, nor sit beside her at tea.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Dimsie, evasively. “You see, she’s a bit lonely at present, and I can’t exactly leave her altogether in the lurch like that. If one of the seniors would only take her up a bit, I should feel more free.”

“Better see them about it,” suggested Erica with fine sarcasm, but Dimsie entered seriously:

“Not a bad idea. They might work her in shifts. I’ll try it.”“I should,” said Erica. “You’ll find them awfully enthusiastic.”“Oh, well!” said Dimsie. “How is she ever going to become

different if nobody bothers about her?”

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After which she pondered the matter at odd moments during preparation, and was surprisingly silent throughout supper, fixing her eyes thoughtfully on Tony Semple across the width of two tables.

“I wonder what scheme Dimsie’s hatching now,” remarked Tony to her next-door neighbour. “She’s looking at me in a meaning way which makes me fear I may be involved in it.”

It was not long before she knew, having gone over after supper to the study she shared with Nell Anderson, to work at an article for the school magazine. Here Dimsie followed her, and plunged straight into her suggestion at once.

“I say, Tony,” she began, “I’ve come about Fenella Postlethwaite. I want to know if you couldn’t look after her a bit? I’ve been doing what I can, but after all, it’s more your job than mine.”

Tony raised her head from her writing and glared across the room at the author of this daring proposal.

“Dimsie Maitland,” she said severely, “will you ever learn to live and let live? It’s neither your job nor mine. I’m quite certain that, if Fenella required any looking after, she’s had more than enough of it from you by this time, and should be able to fend for herself.”

“Oh, but, Tony,” Dimsie came forward and leaned eagerly across the table, “you can’t possibly expect her to enjoy herself here if no one takes any notice of her. Fenella’s the sort of person who takes notice.”

“I didn’t say I expected it,” snapped Tony. “I’m not at school to see that the Fenella Postlethwaites of this life enjoy themselves. On the contrary, if I’ve got any sort of responsibility in the matter, it will be to knock some of the conceit out of her. Go away, Dimsie, I’m busy.”

“But wouldn’t you just ask her to walk with you once a week?” pleaded Dimsie, in melting tones. “Just once?”

“Can’t. Full up till the end of the term.”“Well, to sit with you at tea, then? Only once a week – say

Thursdays?”“Oh, very well, then!” cried the exasperated senior prefect.

“I don’t see the slightest reason why I should, mind! Except that you’re so tiresome; you’ll give me no peace if I don’t. Now, clear off! And much good may this do Fenella Postlethwaite!”

“It all helps,” responded Dimsie, gratefully. “I must try Vida and Hester now.”

In their study, however, she drew a blank. Vida was a young woman who refused to put herself out for any one, and Hester declared that she got quite enough of Fenella, already as her room-mate. There was a justice about this excuse which kept Dimsie from urging Hester to further sacrifice, and since Vida was quite hopeless, she went mournfully away, to find the third study empty.

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“I’m not getting on very fast,” she mused, making a note in a small pocket-book, which she pressed up against the passage wall for that purpose. “One tea – Thursdays. Not a single walk, so far, unless I put myself down for Tuesdays. I must go over to the senior sitting-room, and do what I can there.”

This was rather a delicate matter to manage properly, since Fenella herself was poring over a solid-looking book at one end of the room; but Dimsie, speaking in undertones, flitted from one group of girls to another, making an occasional entry in her note-book, over which she began to smile with satisfaction.

“That’s not so bad,” she remarked, approvingly, at last. “Thanks awfully, Elsie. Sure you don’t mind taking her for Saturdays? It means rather a long walk sometimes, you know.”

“Oh yes,” assented Elsie Pratt, “but then you break rank, and often other couples join up with you. I’d rather have Saturdays, if I must do it at all.”

“All right,” said Dimsie. “Now I’d better find Ursula and Lesley. They weren’t in their study just now. Have you any idea where they’ve got to?”

“Lesley’s gone up to see Miss Yorke about something or other, and Ursula’s name was down for the lower music-room piano from eight to nine. You might look for her there.”

“Thanks, I shall,” said Dimsie, turning towards the door; but to reach it she had to pass her own circle, which had established itself at the end of the room, and Rosamund Garth, putting out her hand, caught a loose fold of her friend’s frock.

“I say, Dimsie, what are you doing?” she inquired, plaintively. “You’ve been dancing about, all evening, like a cat on hot bricks. Do settle down and talk to us.”

Dimsie beamed down upon her affectionately.“Not yet, old thing, but I shall soon be able to. The plan I’m

bust on now, will leave me lots more time to myself as soon as I get it going. “I’m sorry, Rosamund; I know I haven’t been much use lately.”

“You haven’t,” agreed Rosamund, still doleful. “We’re not lame dogs, unfortunately for us. All the same,” brightening, “I did have a toothache last night, Dimsie, and I feel very much as though it might come on again.”

“Well, keep it off for another half-hour,” advised Dimsie, laughing. “I shall be able to give my mind to it then.”

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CHAPTER IXAN IDEA FOR URSULA

THE lower music-room was down in the basement, a wide, dim place with windows set high in the walls, and broad ledges below them, on which the tallest might sit swinging her feet in comfort; that a very small person might almost lie down in them. It was a pleasant room, much in demand for comb-concerts and other impromptu entertainments, when its grand piano was not being used (as at the present moment) for more serious purposes.

Here Dimsie found the head-girl struggling, with a certain mechanical correctness, through an intricate piece of music which was no easy for a listener to understand, even when properly interpreted. Seeing that Ursula did not seem to notice her entrance, she slipped into one of the deep chairs, and wriggled comfortably down among its worn cushions to await her opportunity for pleading Fenella’s cause. As a matter of fact, Fenella’s affairs dropped out of her mind altogether during the next ten minutes, for something else took their place, and Dimsie’s attention wandered to another of her ‘lame dogs’, as Rosamund called them.

It was something about the forlorn droop of Ursula’s shoulders which arrested her first, for it seemed to express utter weariness and distaste for the thing she was playing so laboriously. Evidently this practising was plain drudgery, and remembering their talk on the night of the election, Dimsie drew her brows together in a puzzled frown, for she held to her opinion that Ursula was musical; nothing else could account for that spell-bound expression of hers when Lesley Musgrave played. Of course, everybody at Jane’s, who cared for music at all, enjoyed Lesley’s violin, but very few of them enjoyed it with just that look on their faces which lit Ursula’s from the first note to the last. If she felt like that about other people’s music, why was her own such a weariness to her? Dimsie pondered the question until Ursula struck the final chord, and then said:

“Thanks awfully, but I can’t say I care much for the piece. I expect it’s too learned for me.”

Ursula started, and turned round.“My dear kid! I never knew you were there. When did you

come in? No, I don’t like the thing myself, but Mr. Stanhope does, and I just have to learn what he chooses for me.”

“How boring!” said Dimsie, sympathetically. “Why don’t you have music from Miss Eversley, like the rest of us?”

Ursula turned back to the piano again, and began to gather up her music as the clock on the mantelpiece tinkled nine.

“My aunt wanted me to have a master,” she answered briefly. “She’s rather keen on masters.”

“But he doesn’t teach Betty.”

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“He will, when she gets into the Upper School. Oh, Dimsie! I wish I didn’t hate it so!”

“That’s just it,” responded Dimsie. “Why do you? Come and sit over here beside the stove, if you’ve finished, and let’s go into the question thoroughly.”

The invitation was given in a motherly tone which made Ursula smile; but she fastened the strap of her music-case, and came across to the hearthrug, where she seated herself near the younger girl’s chair.

“I shouldn’t do that,” advised Dimsie. “There are black-beetles down here, you know. Have half my chair. Oh, bother! I forgot you’re head-girl. I suppose I’d better get up and offer you the whole of it.”

Ursula laughed outright.“Oh, no!” she said. “Don’t try to be formal, Dimsie – it

doesn’t sit naturally on you, and besides, I’ve hardly got used to being head-girl yet. I’m afraid I don’t do it very well,” she added ruefully. “I don’t feel at all sure of myself.”

“That comes with practice,” Dimsie assured her wisely. “Which reminds me that we’re wandering from the point we meant to discuss. Why do you hate music?”

“Heavens! I don’t hate music!” cried Ursula, scandalized. “What I hate is the noise I make myself. It’s just that, Dimsie – noise! I can hear no tune nor meaning in a thing when I try to play it, even though I know I have got it technically correct. I can never get a soul into it.”

“I know,” assented Dimsie, gravely. “Pyg-thingumy must have felt just the same before Galatea came to life. We’re doing mythology with Miss Edgar, you know, in the 2nd Division, this term. But Ursula, what’s wrong with you? Do you think it’s the stuff Mr. Stanhope gives you? If it’s all like that, I must say, it’s enough to put any one off.”

Ursula shook her head hopelessly.“It’s just the same when I try to play things I like. Sometimes

I wonder if the piano’s a bit beyond me. I don’t seem capable of understanding it.”

“Nonsense!” said Dimsie, with fine contempt. “Any kid in the 4th Division can play the piano – after a fashion.”

“But that’s the point,” Ursula insisted. “I can play it too – after a fashion, but look at what Miss Eversley gets out of it – at least, I suppose she does, but I never can appreciate the piano as much as the fiddle, or – or almost anything else, except the bagpipes.”

“Being Scottish myself,” replied Dimsie with dignity, “I bar jokes about the bagpipes. But Ursula, if you can’t hear the piano properly, even when it’s played by some one really good, why do you go on learning it? It seems to me waste of time, when you might make something of another instrument.”

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Ursula had moved from her lowly position on the rug to a large shabby tuffet, where she sat, nursing her knees in a brooding attitude. At this suggestion of Dimsie’s, she glanced across with a sudden gleam of excitement in those curious ‘seeking’ eyes of hers.

“I say!” she exclaimed. “That’s an idea! It never entered my head that I could do anything with another instrument, when I’m such a duffer at the piano.”

“That’s just where you’ve probably made a mistake,” Dimsie assured her. “Can’t you see for yourself that a person might be jolly good with the cornet, and yet quite useless with a harp? If Tony were here at this moment, she’d trot out on of her pet proverbs, and tell you that one man’s meat is another’s poison. Ursula, do learn the flute! There’s something so pleasant and natural about a wind instrument.”

“Not if I played it!” laughed Ursula. “My dear kid, you need a tremendous amount of breath for anything of that sort. But I think – I believe – I could understand the ‘cello, if I were taught it. I think I could find the soul in that.”

She stared dreamily over Dimsie’s head at the dark square of the uncurtained window, beyond which the boughs of the tall fir-trees were tossing against a night sky gemmed with stars, and her eyes were hungrier than ever.

“Why don’t you try?” urged Dimsie, encouragingly. “Any one looking at you, just now, could see that you’re oozing musicalness at every pore – some people (Erica, for instance) might even think you were looking slightly soppy, but I don’t; I’ve seen Lesley practicing, and you’re nothing to her. Why don’t you go to Miss Yorke and tell her you want to chuck the piano for the ‘cello? Though I’d rather you chose the flute myself.”

Ursula came hurriedly back to earth.“It’s not so simple as that, unfortunately,” she answered.

“My people don’t care about unusual sort of instruments, and they’re keen on my learning the piano. Aunt thinks I’m getting on splendidly, but that’s only because she’s no very musical herself.”

“Perhaps, in that case it’s just as well you don’t fancy the flute,” conceded Dimsie, “but they couldn’t call the ‘cello unusual.”

“They could,” said Ursula, “and they would. Besides, it isn’t only that. You know Betty’s going to have rather a good voice – in fact she’s got it already. They want me to be able to play her accompaniments at concerts and things, when she leaves school.”

“Charity concerts?” queried Dimsie. “Of course she isn’t good enough to sing at real ones. But what rot! Any one can play Betty’s accompaniments when she requires them played, and it’s most important that you should be made happy and comfortable in your music. When I came in here just now your back looked perfectly miserable – and I don’t wonder, considering the thing you were practising. Go, and talk to Miss Yorke about it anyhow. There’s no harm in that, and she might be able to persuade your aunt. It’s wonderful what Miss Yorke can do sometimes.”

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Ursula began to look more hopeful, for she felt that this was sound doctrine. The girls at the Jane Willard had unbounded faith in their popular head mistress, and all of them – from the head-girl to the smallest junior – felt that a cause which Miss Yorke championed was practically won.

“I might try,” said Ursula, slowly. “Oh, I say! Look at the clock! We’ve been talking here for half an hour, and Pips will have dismissed them all to bed. Come on, Dimsie, and thanks awfully for the suggestion, even if nothing comes of it. I do love music so, and it’s awful to have lots of it inside you which you can’t get out.”

“I should think it might be,” assented Dimsie, as they went upstairs together, “though I haven’t had much experience of that sort of thing myself. Still I know what it is to be bursting with interesting conversation all through prep., and obliged to bottle it up; I expect it’s something like that. You’ll go to Miss Yorke to-morrow, won’t you? Don’t forget to tell me what she says.”

“Rather not,” returned Ursula. “I say, listen to those top-landing girls going upstairs! The kids really are getting quite out of hand. Less noise, children, do you hear? Go up to bed quietly.”

Her order had no visible effect. With half-suppressed squeals and giggles, the juniors continued to tumble upwards, and one impudent youngster, more daring than the rest, stuck her bobbed head through the banisters and wagged a small pink tongue at the head-girl standing in the hall below.

“You can take an order-mark for that, Dolly,” said Ursula, quietly – much too quietly, as Dimsie felt, looking on in impotent wrath. She knew what she would have done to Dolly Ansell, if there had been no senior there to take precedence. Dolly’s sole response was to thrust the offending member out a little further. Dimsie glanced anxiously at Ursula, waiting for a thunderbolt to fall, but greatly fearing that it might not.

“Take your head out of that, and come down to me,” was Ursula’s next command. “No one else need wait.”

But the interested juniors ignored this hint altogether, and crowded round for the heroine of the moment, while one of them tried sportively to pull her backwards by her sturdy black legs.

“Let go, Alma, you idjut!” cried Dolly in accents made shrill by sudden fright. “I can’t get back. I’m stuck!”

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CHAPTER XIN MISS YORKE’S STUDY

URSULA took three long strides which brought her level with the thoroughly-startled Dolly, whose companions instantly scattered to let her pass.

“Keep still,” she said sharply. “Don’t wriggle. Now try to think how you got yourself into this fix. Did you slip your head through sideways?”

“I don’t know,” whimpered Dolly. “I – I didn’t notice. Oh, what am I to do?”

“If you twisted and turned like a cork in a bottle – ” began Alma Sinclair, but her welli-meant suggestion was cut short by Dimsie, who felt that she might now take the juniors in hand, since Ursula had clearly as much as she could attend to with Dolly. Moreover, the middle landing girls, dismissed from the sitting-room, were already streaming across the hall below.

“Go up to bed!” she thundered with awful emphasis. “Quietly, and at once. You heard what Ursula said to you, and you see what’s come of Dolly’s cheek and disobedience. If any of you hang about here a moment longer you’ll be sorry for it! Go on!”

“You’re not a prefect,” remarked one of the imps saucily. “You’re not even a senior.”

“Perhaps not,” retorted Dimsie, “but I can jolly well make you do what you’re told, and you know it! Are you going, or aren’t you?”

The very vagueness of Dimsie’s threats, uttered in that awe-inspiring tone, struck a chill across their boisterous spirits.

“Oh, all right!” muttered Alma, uneasily. “Come along, you others,” and she led the retreat upwards to bed, while Dimsie turned back to Dolly and her difficulties. Ursula was still issuing vain, half-distracted suggestions, while Dolly, dissolved in tears by now, twisted and struggled uselessly, and the girls of the middle landing crowded round with queries and advice. Some one ran back to fetch Miss Phipps, but before she arrived a sudden silence fell on the chattering crowd, and the head mistress appeared on the steps above.

“What is the meaning of all this commotion?” she demanded. “Ursula – why, good gracious! How did that child get into such a scrape?”

“No one answered except Nora Blyth, who murmured, rather unnecessarily,

“She must have stuck her head through.”“So I imagine,” rejoined Miss Yorke dryly. “Keep quite still,

Dolly, and let me see – yes, that’s better. Why, of course,” she added, her quick eyes scanning the situation, “the banisters curve outwards again just above; that must be where you got through.”

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“Oh, what fools we are!” muttered Dimsie, as she grasped Miss Yorke’s meaning. “One of us might have kept her eyes and her wits about her!”

“Now, listen to me, Dolly,” said Miss Yorke, gently and distinctly. “Don’t try and pull your head back any more, but raise it carefully, just as it is between the rails. That’s right. Now turn it a little to the left, very carefully – that’s it – now, draw it slowly back. There, you’re free, poor child! Lesley, take her upstairs to her dormitory, and see her safely into bed. I’ll send her up a glass of warm milk, which will get her off to sleep, and make her forget all about it.”

Dolly was led away, still sobbing in a subdued undertone, and the other girls dispersed to bed, laughing a little over the ridiculous accident, now that it had reached a safe ending. Dimsie ran off to her own dormitory to tell the beginning of the catastrophe in somewhat battered French to her room-mates, who – as they slept on the first landing – had been dismissed last, and only arrived upon the scene for the finish.

“Donc, c’était the result of cheeking Ursula?” asked Erica, her solemnity quite unmarred by her patois. “Mais, pouvez-vous tableau aux vos-mêmes qu’est-ce que c’est would have été the consequences, si une de nous had cheeked Sylvia Drummond ou Daphne Maitland comme ça, dans notre jeunesse?”

“C’aurait été une row le plus terrible!” declared Pam with conviction, but Jean retorted,

“Certainly not, because none of us would have dared – oh, bother! Now I’ve spoken English. That’s another order-mark for me!”

Dimsie retreated into her cubicle with a troubled face, and drew her curtains. That was just where Ursula fell short of those great head-girls of the past. She could not inspire the school with sufficient respect of her authority, because she lacked both self-confidence and the gift of concealing that same lack. Looking back on the past from her mature age of fifteen, Dimsie realized that her cousin Daphne had also been entirely without self-confidence, but during her term of office Jane’s had never found this out; (as Jean had observed) no junior would have dared to treat Daphne as Dolly Ansell had behaved to Ursula that evening.

“And the worst of it is,” groaned Dimsie, turning restlessly on her pillow, “I know perfectly well – and so does Dolly for the matter of that – that Ursula won’t have her up to her study to-morrow, and give her the row she deserves. She’ll let bygones be bygones, because the little wretch got a fright over that banister business. Now, Daph would never have let it pass altogether like that – but what’s the use of comparing them? The others are always doing it, but it doesn’t mend matters.”

Meanwhile the subject was under discussion in the head mistress’s study, where Miss Phipps was established in a chair beside the cosy log-fire. Miss Phipps was very clever, very absent-

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minded, and (out of the largeness of an extremely kind heart) much given to befriending the downtrodden, among whom she, at present, classed Ursula Grey.

“I’m sorry for that girl,” she was saying now, with some emphasis. “She is such a good, conscientious creature, and the way in which those juniors bully her is abominable – simply abominable!”

Miss Yorke opened her dark eyes widely, as well she might.“If the head-girl allows herself to be bullied by a parcel of

impudent juniors,” she exclaimed, “then she is scarcely fit to be head-girl.”

“No, no!” said Miss Phipps hastily and vaguely, “I didn’t mean that, of course! But Ursula lacks something – I don’t quite know what – but our other head-girls possessed it, and it made a great difference with the Lower School.”

“Personality?” suggested Miss Yorke.The science-mistress looked doubtful.“Hardly that,” she said. “I’m sure Ursula has got

personality.”“So am I,” agreed Miss Yorke, smiling. “Or I should scarcely

have dared to ‘wangle’ her election as I did.”Miss Phipps bent her dreamy gaze on the head mistress.“Oh, you did, did you?” she queried. “I somehow thought you

were at the bottom of that. I couldn’t understand the school choosing Ursula – though it was a most excellent choice,” she added, catching herself up hastily again.

“The school,” said Miss Yorke, “don’t always know what’s good for them. However they’ll learn. Ursula has many excellent qualities, but above all, there is a quiet sterling goodness about her which must tell on the rank and file. But I see your point all the same, Miss Phipps.”

Miss Phipps, who had hardly been able to see it herself, looked interested.

“She is much too diffident,” pursued Miss Yorke, “too – too backward in coming forward, if you know what I mean. She needs something to rouse her, to bring out all the latent capabilities, which would make her as good a head-girl as Sylvia Drummond – ”

“Oh, no! Not Sylvia!” interrupted Miss Phipps, decided for once. “Sylvia was a most exceptional girl.”

Miss Yorke regarded her colleague with a whimsical smile.“She certainly was,” she admitted. “And what’s more, she

seems to be growing into a sort of legendary character at Jane’s – at least among the girls who only knew her slightly, or not at all. Even the seniors date their happenings from before or after ‘those two years when Sylvia was head’.”

“It isn’t often one girl keeps the position for so long,” mused Miss Phipps. “Perhaps that had something to do with it. Ursula may do better next term.”

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“The summer term will be Ursula’s last,” Miss Yorke reminded her. “She’s going to have a very short run, but it should be a good one for Jane’s if something would only happen to bring her out. I thought the very fact of getting the headship might do that, but apparently I was wrong.”

“Humph!” said Miss Phipps. “Then there’s another girl who is really being badly bullied this term – at least, she’s being left entirely to herself, and no one bothers to take any interest in her – that’s Fenella Postlethwaite.”

Miss Yorke gave something between a grunt and a groan.“I can’t think,” she said, “why people wait till a girl’s

practically grown up before they send her to school – not but Fenella is very unformed and young in some respects. Still something must be done for her, and we mistresses can’t do it. She will never find her level, unless the others allow her to mix with them.”

“Dimsie is doing her best,” remarked Miss Phipps, with a little chuckle; for her dreamy eyes saw many things which they might easily have been expected to overlook, and she had been in the senior sitting-room that evening.

Miss Yorke laughed.“That droll child!” she exclaimed. “Has she taken Fenella in

hand? Then we might almost leave it safely to her – or perhaps not altogether – I have an idea – ”

Next morning, on her way to conduct prayers in the big school-room, the head mistress overtook Lesley Musgrave and laid a hand on her arm.

“My dear,” she said, “apropros of our talk last night about your future career – you tell me you wish to go in for teaching, and to shape your studies with that end in view? I don’t know whether you have realized how necessary it is for a school mistress to study her girls’ characters, and try to understand the most obscure – or those who think they are.”

“Yes, Miss Yorke,” responded Lesley, deeply attentive.“Well you can begin something of that sort straight away, in

the material you’ve got to hand. See what you can make of Fenella Postlethwaite. Do what you can to turn her out a credit to Jane’s. And hurry up now, or you will be late for prayers.”

She swept on while Lesley followed, her face wreathed in an expression of the deepest disgust.

“Fenella Postlethwaite!” she muttered. “Fenella Postlethwaite! That’s what I get for confiding my young ambitions to Miss Yorke!”

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CHAPTER XILESLEY TAKES UP A NEW STUDY

“SURE you don’t mind this squawking noise, Ursula? Every possible practice-room is full or I shouldn’t inflict it on you.”

Lesley paused, her violin tucked under her chin and glanced apologetically at her study-companion.

“I like it,” Ursula assured her with sincerity, looking up from a map which she was laboriously drawing. “It’s neither a noise nor an infliction – merely a pleasure.”

“Very prettily put,” said Lesley, approvingly, “especially as I know it can’t possibly be true, for this trio is the very mischief to learn, and my part is full of mistakes.”

“Who and what are the other two instruments?” Ursula inquired, reaching out for her India-rubber.”

“Monica Bagot’s doing the piano, and Miss Phipps the ‘cello. It’s for our Easter concert.”

Ursula looked up in surprise.“But I never knew Pips played anything at all.”“Well, she does – and very nicely, too. Only it’s a dark secret,

and she practises at night in the boot-hole, when everybody except the mistresses has gone to bed. She’s awfully shy about it, funny old thing! But she had to join in for this trio because there isn’t another ‘cellist at the school this term.”

Her bow went up, and she curled her long supple fingers over the strings, while Ursula applied herself yet more earnestly to her map. She always enjoyed herself on these occasions, when the fiddler was driven from her usual lair.

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t always practise in here,” she observed, when at last Lesley laid her instrument down, with a glance at the little travelling clock on the mantelpiece.

“Neither do I! But the powers that be are against fiddling in the studies; they think it’s too distracting for the other party, and they are probably right. Every one isn’t so forbearing as you, old thing, but I did want to get my work done before supper to-night or I shouldn’t have imposed on your forbearance.”

“Why? Anything special on afterwards?”“Yes,” said Lesley solemnly, wiping her bow on a silk

handkerchief. “I’m going to make a study of Fenella Postlethwaite for professional purposes.”

“What?”“Miss Yorke advised it,” said Lesley, and explained further,

while Ursula listened with thoughtful eyes.“Miss Yorke has the most rippingly unconventional ways of

educating us,” she commented, when Lesley had finished.“It may be unconventional, but I can’t see that it’s

particularly ripping,” said Lesley ruefully, “when it means cultivating the learned Fenella. What are you going to be when you leave Jane’s next summer, Ursula?”

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“Nothing, I’m afraid,” said Ursula, drearily.“Do you mean you’re needed at home?”“Oh, no! Betty has two elder sisters, and Aunt looks after

everything herself. But – well, you see,” reddening, “I haven’t any funds of my own, and I can’t exactly ask them to spend a lot on training me for a profession, even if I had any special bent, which I haven’t.”

“But then,” began Lesley, impulsively, only to stop with some abruptness, for she realized that she was on the verge of seeming impertinent. “I say!” she hurried on, by way of covering her confusion, “there appears to be a cock-fight or something going on in the junior sitting-room, judging by the row. Hadn’t you better go and quell it?”

“I suppose so,” said Ursula, reluctantly, “though prep. is over for the kids, you know.”

“Yes, but not for such prefects as choose to go on with it,” rejoined Lesley. “It’s a nuisance having their sitting-room so near to our studies.”

Ursula disappeared into the passage, and presently returned to find Tony Semple in possession of the one armchair, from which she was going on with the subject of Lesley’s education.

“The proper study of mankind is man,” she declared, “but the question is, will Fenella let you? None of us others are on a high enough intellectual plane to associate with her, so I scarcely think you can be. After all, Monica and I did pass the Senior Cambridge last term, and you haven’t even done that.”

“I didn’t go up for it,” said Lesley, placidly, “or I should most certainly have got honours.”

“I shan’t waste time arguing that point,” retorted Tony, “though I have my own opinion! Certainly, nothing short of several framed certificates could qualify you for Fenella’s notice.”

The dressing-bell rang, and Lesley went off, arm-in-arm with Tony, laughing and talking along the passages, which was a prefect’s privilege. Left to herself, Ursula put away her mapping outfit, with a wistful regret that she, who was friendly with all her classmates, had not one special friend among them. Then she remembered Miss Yorke’s promise, given the day before, to write to her aunt on the subject of the ‘cello, and the interest which her head mistress had taken in the idea. Perhaps, in time, she might be able to practise duets with Lesley’s violin, and thereby form a stronger bond of union than the mere sharing of a study.

Directly after supper Lesley went in search of Dimsie Maitland, and said,

“Look here! Aren’t you a sort of agent for Fenella Postlethwaite? Somebody said you were going round advertising her, the night before last, as a desirable companion for walks, &c. I don’t know how you could do such violence to your sense of truth, but is your list full up?”

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“Rather not!” said Dimsie, brightening. “I haven’t been able to get hold of you till now, but I was hoping to put you down for tea, at least, on one of the days that are left over. As a matter of fact, I haven’t been doing quite as well as I did at first.”

“That’s a pity,” said Lesley, sympathetically. “Nell told me that your tongue was persuasive enough to bring tears to any one’s eyes. Well, I’ll make you a sporting offer. For reasons of my own I want to make a close study of Fenella, so I’ll take over all your vacancies.”

Dimsie gasped.“But – but are you sure?” she stammered. “I’m afraid there’s

rather a lot.”“I’ll take them on,” repeated Lesley briefly. “Where is she

now?”“In the senior sitting-room, by herself in the corner beside

the cupboard. I was just going to see if I could get her to be sociable, but the others want me for a comb-concert in the lower music-room, so if you really mean to see to her right off – oh, thanks awfully, Lesley!”

With the jumper which she was knitting tucked under her arm, Lesley made her way into the senior sitting-room, and dropping gracefully into the chair nearest Fenella’s she drew out her needles, and in silence applied herself to work, for she had not yet thought out her next move.

“Go away,” she said, ungraciously, to one or two girls who promptly sought her out. “I’m counting my stitches. That prize essay last week interfered too much with my jumper, and now I’ve got to make up for long time, or it won’t be finished before the holidays.”

The others melted away, laughing, and Lesley raised her eyes to find a reproving pair of goggles fixed on her. Apparently Fenella felt that essays and jumpers should not be mentioned in the same breath, and yet she had a sneaking respect for any one who knew enough to win a prize in a literary magazine competition, as Lesley had done, the week before.

“At least,” she said, solemnly, as though following out her own train of thought aloud, “you had enough sense not to let the jumper interfere with the essay. Plenty of those giddy-pates,” with a scornful gesture towards the group of girls chattering round the table at the far end of the big room, “would have set the question of clothes before anything else.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” replied Lesley, mildly. “Look at Madge Anderson, for instance. She’s always decently dressed, yet she’s a tremendously keen worker.”

“The standard of work at this school,” said Fenella, loftily, “is very inferior. But please don’t let us discuss clothes. I’ve watched you since I came to this place at the beginning of the term, and though I fear you give far too much thought to your appearance,

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I’ve come to the conclusion that you have more brains than the majority.”

“Oh, thank you!” murmured Lesley, faintly. “I only trust you’ll never awake to find you’re mistaken.”

Fenella ignored this, and staring at the other girl unblinkingly, she demanded,

“What was the subject of your essay?”“Nothing very original,” replied Lesley, “but it suited me,

because I’m keen on that sort of thing. We had to give an account of some woman who had unconsciously benefited her sex. I chose old Jane.”

“Jane?” repeated Fenella, doubtfully. “Do you mean Jane Austen or Jane Brontë?”

Lesley shot a glance of astonishment at her. Was this all her vaunted learning had taught her?

“Neither,” she answered. “And anyhow, there never was a Jane Brontë: you’re thinking of ‘Jane Eyre’. It was our noble foundress whom I took – Jane Willard.”

A gleam of comprehension crossed Fenella’s expressionless face.

“Ah, yes! But could you call the benefit unconscious? She saw the grave need for a better education among the girls of Britain, and her heart was moved in response to the call. She deliberately endowed this public school for girls on the most open and healthy site – ”

“Don’t hold forth like a prospectus!” broke in Lesley, impatiently. “She didn’t do anything of the kind.”

Fenella’s jaw dropped; it was her turn to stare in astonishment.

“But – but she – ”“No, she didn’t, begging your pardon! Jane was a typical

early Victorian damsel, with more nerves than spirit, only she happened to be an heiress as well. Her heart moved in response to the reigning curate at St. Elstrith’s – nothing more inspiring – and he didn’t want her, because he was so badly in love with another girl that even Jane’s money couldn’t tempt him. Nowadays she’d have taken up golf, or gone in for market-gardening, but being early Victorian, she did neither. She just pined for that curate till she went into a decline for lack of anything better to do, and then died, leaving him all her money, a she had no relations to inherit it.”

“But the school!” protested Fenella, who had listened, open-mouthed.

“I’m coming to that. You see, the curate was a bit morbid too, and I suppose it couldn’t have been pleasant for him to feel that, indirectly, he’d been the cause of Jane’s death; besides he was comfortably off, and didn’t need the money. So he added to Jane’s old house (in which we are sitting at the present moment) and

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endowed it. I suppose his own experience had taught him that girls ought to have something to occupy their minds.”

Fenella grunted. Clearly this new and authentic version of Jane Willard’s story did not please her, but Lesley was so obviously well informed that she could not dispute it, much as she wished to do so.

“Did you put all that into your essay?” she inquired, suspiciously.

Lesley shook her head.“Not in these words, of course. I handled the matter more

delicately. But there’s no doubt it was a jolly good example of the subject they’d set. Poor Jane never dreamed that her money was going to benefit thousands of school-girls until to the third and fourth generation.”

“I think,” said Fenella, severely, “it would have been very much nicer if she had. I would rather think she had founded the school intelligently, out of a knowledge that her sex needed education. It would have given me a higher opinion of her.”

“I don’t suppose she minds much,” said Lesley, dryly, and conversation languished.

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CHAPTER XIITHE PERPLEXITIES OF PAMELA

HAVING fairly launched Fenella, Dimsie was able to turn her attention to her own particular friends once more, and the first thing which struck her was that Jean Gordon was quieter and duller than her wont. She was working very hard, and Mabs, who shared her cubicle complained that she took her books to bed with her, and woke up early to do her lessons.

“Well, it’s a free country,” growled Jean, “and since you can’t possibly pretend that I disturb you, I don’t see that it matters to you.”

“Oh, it isn’t that!” returned Mabs, readily. “Thank goodness, no amount of noise in a quiet way can waken me! But I object to the manner in which you’re getting ahead of us all in class, simply by sneaking that extra time for prep.”

“Shut up!” Jean grunted crossly, but Erica Innes, who was bedroom monitress, had heard, and strolled across from her cubicle.

“Est-ce que vous two êtes parleying anglais?” she demanded severely. “Prenez une order-mark a-piece! And Jean, est-il true que vous faites choses comme ça? Parce que vous saves bien c’est entirely against les règles, and must be stopped. Comprenez-vous?”

“Oh, oui; je comprends all right,” replied Jean, sulkily, “mais c’est tout-à-fait fair, parce que je suis much slower to apprendre que le rest de vous.”

“Nonesense!” returned Erica. “Besides ce n’est pas le point. C’est prohibité d’avoir des livres dans notre chanbre-à-coucher.”

Dimsie, who had listened without joining in the conversation, finished making her bed, and then followed Jean downstairs to the schoolroom passage, where their garden cloaks hung on pegs. It was the custom at Jane’s to go for a run round the grounds before the big bell rang for morning school.

“I say, Jean,” she began anxiously, as they strolled arm-in-arm through the wood towards the playing-field, “this won’t make any difference to you, will it? You’ve been doing so awfully well in form lately.”

“I hope not,” said Jean, gloomily, “but there’s no doubt I take longer to get things into my head than most people, and that half-hour in the morning was a help. Oh, Dimsie! It’s hateful to look at the hockey-ground, and know I can only play on compulsory days. I don’t believe I could get into the eleven now if I tried – I’m so out of practice.”

“You’ll soon pull yourself together again next season,” said Dimsie, consolingly, “and it’s worth it, isn’t it, old girl? You were rather low down last term, you know.”

Jean nodded.

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“Oh, I quite admit it! Anyhow we don’t need to work so hard in the summer term – that’s one mercy! It won’t spoil my cricket season.”

“Do you know,” said Dimsie, with a laugh which was not absolutely mirthful, “I believe Pam thinks I’m far from true to you, because I let out, at the beginning of the term, that I wasn’t keen on your getting in to the eleven. You see, I was so absolutely keen on your not getting in that I went to her and begged her to play her hardest in the trial game.”

Jean laughed, seeing only the humour of the situation, and not guessing from Dimsie’s light tone that she was really troubled.

“What a joke!” she exclaimed. “But you didn’t tell her why, did you? There’s no special reason, of course, by I rather prefer keeping my affairs to myself somehow. I don’t even know why I told you, except that you never give anybody any peace, if you see they’re down on their luck, until you’ve found out why.”

“I know,” admitted Dimsie, composedly, “but it’s all for your own good. You do know that, don’t know? And that it isn’t curiosity which makes me pump you? You see, there’s always a chance that I might be able to help.”

“Yes, and you generally manage it somehow,” assented Jean, overcoming her Scottish reserve for a moment, if somewhat awkwardly. “It isn’t so much what you do, either, as just yourself.”

“Oh, rot!” said Dimsie, hastily. “What have I done for you now, except put Pam on her mettle – though very much against her will.”

The bell clanged from the top of the house, and they ran quickly up again through the trees, but Dimsie sighed a little as she went in to hang up her cloak. She had hoped that Jean would see how Pamela’s mistake was worrying her, and offer to explain, but Jean had merely thought it funny. Dimsie hated unnecessary misunderstandings, and in the case of other people, always hastened to put them right.

Later on that same day, something occurred on the hockey-field which did very much the reverse, since Pamela chanced to overhear it, as she knelt on the grass, fastening a troublesome shoe-lace. Dimsie and Jean were hurrying to take their places for the compulsory game when the captain stopped them.

“Here, Jean, you young slacker!” she said. “I want a word with you. Vida’s weak wrist is bothering her again, and I may be obliged to play you instead of her in the match with Westover High School. That means you’ve got to practise a lot more than you’ve been doing. You ought, by rights, to be in the eleven, you know, and it’s your own fault you aren’t.”

“I’ve still got three weeks, haven’t I?” asked Jean.“Yes, but you must buck up, so that I can be able to depend

on you. When Vida’s wrist once starts in, Nurse always knocks her off everything at all violent for about a month.”

“Right,” Jean responded, and walked on, but Dimsie lingered.

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“I say, Nell,” she said doubtfully, “you wouldn’t play me instead of Jean, would you? If I turned up faithfully at all the practices.”

Nell stared at her, and laughed.“Of all the impudence! No, my child, your passing wouldn’t

be up to first eleven form, even after three weeks’ attention to it. Sorry to be so crushing, but there’s no question of your playing for the school this season.”

“I was afraid not,” said Dimsie, sadly, and went her way, while Pamela, rising from her stooping position, gazed after her in disgusted perplexity.

“I can’t understand that,” she muttered, moving off to her place, in Nell’s wake.

“Understand what?” asked Nell, without really wishing for an answer. “That’s what I can’t understand, if you’d like to know,” and she pointed to Lesley Musgrave and Fenella (neither of whom was down to play), strolling round the edge of the field, apparently deep in conversation.

“Oh, that!” said Pamela, indifferently. “Lesley always was a freak, you know.”

That, on the whole, was the attitude in which Jane’s regarded the surprising intimacy which seemed to have sprung up between two people, who were so very unlike in all their tastes; though they had, as a matter of fact, one interest in common.

“We’re both keen on old tombstones and antique remains,” Lesley explained to Ursula, one evening, in their study. “In some ways she isn’t bad, you know, if she wasn’t so horribly conceited. But it’s a bit of a bore to have her always hanging round.”

“I don’t like it,” said Ursula, abruptly.Lesley opened her eyes widely.“How?” she inquired. “Why?”“Because I don’t think it’s fair. You let her ‘hang round’, as

you call it, so that you can study her for your own purposes, whereas she thinks you do it out of friendliness.”

Lesley laughed.“That’s all right,” she returned. “You needn’t go bothering

your scrupulous old head! Fenella doesn’t want my friendship. I happen to know one or two things she doesn’t – that’s all – and she wants to pick my brains. No, no, Ursula! The honour of Fenella Postlethwaite’s friendship is not the likes of us, and you may rest assured that the light of her countenance will be withdrawn from me directly she reaches the end of my information on local antiquities.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ursula.Lesley yawned and stretched herself.“She’s writing an article on the subject with which she means

to try her luck in some high brow magazine, so I’m stuffing her with all I know, and she’s graciously making use of the material.”

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“What rot!” exclaimed Ursula, impatiently. It irritated her that any one – much less such an unattractive new girl – should fail to appreciate Lesley’s society for its charm alone. Ursula’s admiration for Lesley was slowly growing, but she was too shy and inarticulate to make any advances towards the friendship she had come to desire so much, and would have been greatly surprised to learn that the other girl was beginning to return her interest. As Lesley expressed it in her own thoughts, Ursula was the sort of person who grew on one; her best qualities were not all on the surface.

“It is rather rot, if her style’s anything like her conversation, but she seems quite certain it will be accepted, and my essay is a great bond of union. What that young woman needs is a violent shock to her self-esteem; if something were to happen that would show her it’s just possible for her to be mistaken, it would do her a world of good. Anyhow you see it isn’t a case of trifling with Fenella’s youthful affections. The honours are easy.”

“I can’t think why you take so much trouble over her,” responded Ursula.

“A good journalist,” replied Lesley, in a very fair imitation of Fenella’s priggish tones, “spares no pains to obtain his material, so I suppose a good school-marm (which is what I hope to become some day) should spare none in getting up her subject; but I hope all my future pupils won’t be as boresome as Fenella. And it isn’t entirely that, Ursula,” she added, relapsing into her natural voice once more. “I’m hoping, at the same time, to make her less of an ass, and more of a credit to Jane’s. It isn’t an easy job, I can tell you.”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Ursula, turning back to a troublesome equation, from which Lesley’s chatter had tempted her; and the two girls worked in silence and without interruption for an hour; then came a knock at the door, and one of the maids appeared.

“If you please, Miss Ursula,” she said, “Miss Yorke would like to see you for a few minutes in her study.”

“All right, Martha,” said Ursula, and pushing back her scribbling paper, she rose to her feet, while Lesley looked up curiously.

“What have you been doing?” she asked. “It sounds ominous.”

Ursula shook her head.“My conscience is quite clear,” she returned, laughing. “I

expect it’s to do with my people at home. Miss Yorke wrote to ask their consent about something – some change in my work – and I’ve been expecting the answer for about a week.”

She looked unusually excited; some colour had crept into her ordinarily pale face, and her greenish eyes were shining.

“I say, Ursie!” exclaimed Lesley, with unflattering surprise, “do you know, I believe you’re quite pretty!”

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CHAPTER XIIIDIMSIE MAKES AN ARRANGEMENT

THE beautifying glow still lingered on Ursula’s face when she arrived, rather breathless, in the head mistress’s study two minutes later. Miss Yorke noticed it, and her own expression, which had been very stern when the girl entered, softened suddenly, as she held out her hand.

“Come and sit down,” she said, drawing Ursula to a chair beside her own, where she could watch her. “Your aunt’s letter came by the afternoon post, and – Ursula, I’m so sorry!”

“Does she say no?” asked Ursula, blankly. “Won’t she let me? Not even when you asked her, Miss Yorke?”

She had built so much on the head mistress’s influence; it seemed hard to believe that it was all in vain.

Miss Yorke shook her head compassionately.“My dear, I’m so sorry about it,” she repeated. “I know how

much your heart was set on it, but Mrs. Grey seems to think that it would be wasting all your years of piano-lessons if you took to the ‘cello now. She says she is fairly well satisfied with your progress, that she does not expect you to become a great musician, but just a useful accompanist. She will be quite content with that.”

All the light had died out of Ursula’s eyes; she looked crushed and dull.

“I suppose I shall have to be content too,” she answered, disconsolately. Then with a sudden spurt of resentment, she burst out, “But I’m not, Miss Yorke! I’m not! I want to make music on my own account – not just play other people’s accompaniments.”

With an impulsive movement Miss Yorke bent forward and kissed her.

“Poor little Ursula!” she exclaimed, kindly. “I shan’t be so tactless as to say, ‘Make the best of your accompaniments’ (though I believed I ought to, because I feel you are capable of more, if you could be given the chance, But cheer up, my child! Perhaps in the holidays you may manage to persuade – yes, come in! Who is it?”

Dimsie entered, carrying a pile of mottle-covered exercise books.

“The 2nd Division’s literature notes, Miss Yorke,” she began, in the prim little voice with which she and her companions considered it correct to approach the head mistress on formal business. But all ideas of etiquette, never very strong in Dimsie, vanished from her at the sight of Ursula’s dejected face, and she stopped dead between the door and the desk.

“Oh, Miss Yorke! Has the letter come? Has her aunt said no? What a beastly shame!”

“My dear Dimsie!”“I’m very sorry,” exclaimed Dimsie, correcting herself. “I

mean, how extremely unfortunate! Oh, I did think it would be all right if you asked Miss Yorke!”

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“So did I,” said Ursula, with a brave, but dismal attempt at a smile.

“It’s all that pig, Betty!” declared Dimsie, with conviction. “I just wish she croaked like a barn-door fowl, and then no one would bother about her old accompaniments – Miss Yorke, I really am sorry I said ‘pig’ right on top of ‘beastly’, but it’s so difficult to moderate one’s language under certain circumstances.”

“Nevertheless you must try,” returned Miss Yorke, quietly, concealing a smile with the complete success which she had learnt during her five years’ intercourse with Dimsie. She held out her hand for the exercise-books, which Dimsie meekly surrendered, and feeling herself dismissed, turned to go. With her hand on the door, however, she paused.

“I’ve just had an idea!” she announced, excitedly, and bolted out of the room, without further explanation.

Miss Yorke and Ursula looked at each other and laughed.“She doesn’t mean it for cheek,” observed Ursula,

deprecatingly.“You needn’t apologise to me for Dimsie,” replied Miss Yorke,

dryly. “She is never disrespectful at any time – only overwhelmingly natural, and downstairs she pays me every little deference which can possibly be due to a head mistress. Up here, as you know, I like you all to treat me with less formality. Funny child! I wonder what her idea is.”

“I’m afraid it won’t helm me, anyhow,” replied Ursula, mournfully. “Nothing can – unless something happens to convince Aunt that I’m really a ‘cello genius hitherto undiscovered, and that’s unlikely, since I’m not.”

Dimsie, however, was less pessimistic, and as no grass ever grew under her nimble feet, she was off already in pursuit of her idea. Fortune favoured her too, for Miss Phipps, of whom she had gone in search, was alone in the teachers’ room, correcting exercises.

“Well, my dear,” she said, regarding Dimsie absently. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, a very great favour, please!” answered Dimsie, fixing her with earnest brown eyes. “Say you’ll do it, Miss Phipps – please do!”

But Miss Phipps’s wits were not wool-gathering to that extent.

“Wait till I hear what it is first,” she replied, with surprising caution. “I’m not buying any pigs in pokes from you, Dimsie.”

“Well, I’d certainly prefer you to promise before I tell you,” said Dimsie, regretfully, “because it’s rather urgent, and I don’t like to risk your refusing. Miss Phipps, dear,” ingratiatingly, “will you give Ursula Grey ‘cello lessons?”

The science mistress stared, as though she seriously feared that Dimsie had taken leave of her senses.

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“’Cello lessons? I? Ursula Grey? My dear girl, I am not a ‘cello teacher! If Ursula is to learn – ”

“But that’s just the trouble,” broke in Dimsie, eagerly. “She’s not to. That’s why I came to you about it – and I heard you playing beautifully the other night.”

Miss Phipps looked still more bewildered.“I’m afraid I can’t follow you,” she said, helplessly. “But I

don’t play beautifully at all, in any case.”“You do,” contradicted Dimsie, with decision. “And Ursie is

awfully miserable, Miss Phipps, because she wants to learn the ‘cello, and her people won’t let her. But I feel sure, you know, that if they once heard her play something decently – at the Easter concert for example – they would be tremendously impressed, and give in at once. From what Ursula says, they’re evidently not at all musical, so it would be perfectly easy to impress them with something quite simple. That’s why I want you to teach her. Please say you will, Miss Phipps.”

“And you sure she is miserable about it?” inquired kind-hearted Miss Phipps, who had, as we have seen, a soft corner for the head-girl.

“Quite. You’ll know it when you see her. I expect she’ll cry her eyes out in bed to-night,” said the wily Dimsie, for it was well known at Jane’s that Miss Phipps could never resist tears.

“But what good would it do her? Does she want me to teach her?”

“Rather! At least, she hasn’t thought of it yet, because it’s my surprise for her, but when she knows you’re going to, it will cheer her up no end. Thanks awfully, Miss Phipps!”

“But I didn’t say I would,” protested Miss Phipps, feebly. “You sweep one along at such a rate! I am not competent to undertake such a thing.”

“But, Miss Phipps, you’ve promised!” exclaimed Dimsie, greatly shocked.

“I certainly don’t remember doing so.”“That’s because you’re a little forgetful, Miss Phipps – you

know you always admit you are. Anyhow, thanks very much. I’ll go and tell Ursula what you say, and I’m pretty sure she won’t cry herself to-night after all.”

Ursula had gone back to her own study by the time her guide-philosopher-and-friend found her again, and was making up for lost time with the help (or otherwise) if Hall & Knight’s algebra. Neither she nor Lesley looked greatly pleased to see their visitor.

“We’ve only got half an hour before the dressing-bell rings,” remarked the latter, pointedly.

“I shan’t keep you a moment,” Dimsie assured her, rather breathlessly. “I’ve still got some prep. to do, myself. I just came to tell you, Ursula, that I’ve arranged with Miss Phipps to give you ‘cello lessons, beginning as soon as you can hire or borrow an

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instrument. I believe Hester Harriman would lend you hers. She does no good with it, anyhow – too fat!”

“Dimsie!” cried Ursula, weakly. “I wish you’d explain yourself!”

“No!” interposed Lesley, firmly. “We’ve barely got half an hour, I tell you! And we know what Dimsie’s explanations are like. Get out of it, Dimsie! Any arrangements you may have made for Ursula’s education can be discussed here after supper. Till then – in the vulgar tongue – hop it!”

Dimsie obeyed, but had the satisfaction of seeing a look of interest on Ursula’s face, instead of the listless dejection with which she had been bending over Hall & Knight five minutes before. It was still there when she came into supper later on, and was greeted by her cousin Betty, whom she passed on her way to the prefects’ table.”

“I say, Ursula! What wild-cat scheme are you up to now? I’ve had a letter from Mother, and she says you want to chuck the piano for the ‘cello. I’m glad she’s put her foot down. You’re the only soul at home who can accompany me, and it will take all your time practising – Ow, Dimsie! Why on earth did you pinch me like that?”

“For being a selfish little idiot,” replied Dimsie, plainly. “Ursula wasn’t put into this world to play your accompaniments. Besides, any one would do well enough to play for a squawking goose like you.”

Which was rude and untrue to boot, for Betty did not squawk, but Dimsie felt that Ursula had been temporarily avenged on her kindred, and ate her supper with an excellent appetite in consequence.

“I may interfere a lot with what doesn’t concern me,” she observed to Erica Innes, as she passed her the jam, “but you must admit that it sometimes turns out well.”

Erica regarded her with anxiety.“I hope you’re not going to develop swelled head,” she

remarked, severely. “Just remember that it’s only ‘sometimes’. Generally you make a most unholy muddle of all you touch.”

“You know that’s not true!” retorted Dimsie, simply.As a matter of fact, Dimsie’s interference, in this instance,

turned out very well indeed, for Ursula (having borrowed Hester’s ‘cello) went to Miss Phipps for two lessons per week, and teacher and pupil took to the arrangement like ducks to water. The lessons were given rather surreptitiously, in the evenings, downstairs in a small basement room known as the boot-hole, where there was no danger of being overheard, for both Miss Phipps and Ursula were shy about it, and Ursula, moreover, was anxious that her cousin should know nothing.

“Betty would write home,” she said, “and Aunt would say I wasn’t to waste my time – she wouldn’t understand that I only give

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my spare moments to it. Don’t tell anyone, Dimsie – promise me you won’t.

“Of course I shan’t, and Pips is safe enough. As for Betty,” added Dimsie, darkly, “if she finds out and gives trouble, leave her to me!”

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CHAPTER XIVTHE END OF THE TERM

THE Christmas term was drawing near its close, and throughout the school a feeling prevailed that it had not, on the whole, been satisfactory. It was felt in the teachers’ room, in the prefects’ studies, and – more vaguely – in the schoolrooms. The Middle School, with a few exceptions among the Anti-Soppists, seemed indifferent to the verge of idleness, and the juniors were rapidly getting out of hand.

“What is the matter with everybody?” asked Monica Bagot, impatiently, one Friday evening, as she sat with her mending, a guest in the study shared by Nell and Tony. “Nothing appears to go right, and yet it’s difficult to say exactly where it’s wrong.”

“I know what you mean,” assented Tony. “There’s a je-ne-sais-quoi – nothing one can get hold of, but it’s there, and I don’t like it.”

“I believe I know what’s at the bottom of it,” said Nell, significantly, as she drew her darning-wool slowly through the stocking she held. “I foresaw this at the beginning of the term, and it’s turning out just as I feared. We need a head-girl with some grip on the school, and Ursula hasn’t got it.”

Monica knitted her brows seriously.“That may have something to do with it,” she admitted, “but

it isn’t the whole trouble. There’s a spirit of lawlessness abroad in the Middle School, I fancy. I’m sure they’re breaking rules, and breaking them pretty heavily, but they take jolly good care not to be caught by the powers that be.”

The other two looked at her in some astonishment.“Monica!” exclaimed Nell, respectfully. “You ought to be a

prefect instead of that fat, lazy Hester. How did you come to discover all this?”

“I don’t know,” said Monica, “and I don’t know that I have discovered anything – it’s all so indefinite somehow, because one can’t always get into touch with the 2nd Division. I’ll tell you who might know – Erica Innes.”

Tony nodded.“Even if she doesn’t, she’s a responsible person to set on the

track – that is, if there really is anything going on which shouldn’t be. I’m inclined to think you’re right, Monica. No smoke without fire, you know. Let’s have Erica up.”

“Look here,” interposed Nell, quickly, “this is Ursula’s business. Let’s move across en bloc to her study, and lay our views before her. Then she can send for Erica herself.”

Accordingly the work party filed across the passage to the opposite room, where Lesley, her mending done, was playing dreamy airs on the fiddle to her companion, who was wrestling with a torn flounce on her petticoat.

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“Come in,” said Lesley, hospitably. “There aren’t chairs enough for everybody, of course, but two of us can sit on the table. Now then, to what do we owe the honour of this invasion?”

“It’s Monica,” explained Tony. “She’s got a theory about the behaviour of the 2nd Division, and Nell and I are inclined to think there may be something in it.”

Ursula glanced up from her sewing, suddenly attentive, but it was Lesley, as usual, who replied.

“The 2nd Division’s behaviour certainly requires something to account for it of late. Apart from everything else, they’ve started a habit of nudging each other and giggling in corners, which is getting seriously on my nerves. Let’s hear Monica’s theory.”

“I only think,” said Monica, addressing the head-girl diffidently, “that there’s more going on among them than meets the eye, and I’m not sure the little ones aren’t mixed up in it too. It’s hard for us to find out just what it is, but we thought perhaps Erica Innes might, if she were put up to it.”

“And so,” said Nell, “we’re just going to send for her – ”“Wait a minute!” Ursula snipped off her thread and began to

fold up the petticoat with hands which trembled a little. “After all, this is more or less my job, and I don’t quite like the idea of managing it through Erica. I’d rather find out for myself, if I can, what the Middle School are up to.”

The other girls looked at her incredulously. Never since she had come into office had Ursula taken up the reins of government with any decision.

“You?” exclaimed Nell, in such frank surprise that Ursula flushed a little, though she knew there was no intentional rudeness in the other’s manner. “But – do you think you could, Ursula? I mean, if they’re up to no good they’ll be very suspicious of prefects, and especially of you.”

“I know,” assented Ursula, slowly. “It won’t be easy, of course, but I can’t help feeling that it devolves on me. You see, girls,” she added, candidly, her colour coming and going a little, as she faced them, “if there is anything unsatisfactory afoot, it must be rather my fault, because I haven’t been a successful head-girl. I – I’ve made heaps of mistakes, but I mean to pull up and try to manage better. Jane’s mustn’t suffer because I’ve been too feeble to grasp my nettles properly.”

“No, no!” protested the three prefects awkwardly in chorus. “You’ve tried jolly hard, Ursula, and of course it’s difficult to get back into things all at once. Perhaps we haven’t backed you up as much as we ought. Phyllis was so managing that we got into the habit of leaving everything to her.”

“And besides,” added Monica, “the 2nd Div. always takes queer turns, you know, and nobody’s responsible for it really, outside their own form. They keep themselves to themselves very much. That’s why I suggested Erica.”

But Ursula shook her head firmly.

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“No – it would be starting a kind of spy-system, and I’m sure Erica would feel that too. Of course, it would be easier for us, but I don’t believe it’s the best way. All the same I’m grateful for your hint, Monica, and I’ll do my best to discover what is going on. Why do you think the kids are concerned in it?”

“They may not be,” replied Monica, cautiously, “but I’ve seen Nora Blyth and Winnie Hatton slinking in and out of the junior sitting-room once or twice lately, and their set are making rather a pet of little Alma Sinclair.”

“Very bad for Alma!” said Tony, emphatically. “She’s just the sort of child whose head would be easily turned. Well, girls, it’s nearly bedtime, so we’d better go across and be dismissed. Teddy is taking super. to-night, and she’ll be sending to fetch us presently, which means an order-mark. I believe you may rely on us to back you up if you require it.”

“Thanks awfully,” responded Ursula, as she turned down the gas.

It only wanted ten days till the end of the term, and the ordinary business of the school left very little scope for amateur detective work. By arrangement with Miss Moffatt and Miss Yelland, the two junior mistresses, Ursula took supervision twice in the 2nd Division room at different hours, but it always passed off quite peacefully, though she noticed that very few of the form, except the Anti-Soppists, seemed to give much attention to their work. Indolence was evidently the fashion in the Middle School that term, but Ursula guessed that Monica had suspected something more positive than that.

Her mind turned hopefully to dormitory feasts; after all it might be that, and if so there was nothing very demoralizing about it. Ursula remembered a term in her own Middle School days, when there had been a weekly spread given by each bedroom in turn, and it had gone on for a long time before the prefects found them out. With this memory in mind the head-girl slipped out of her room on several evenings and patrolled the upper landing and staircase, but only succeeded in meeting Miss Edgar, who promptly sent her back to bed.

“You think there’s something going on?” repeated the ‘maths.’ Mistress incredulously. “Nonsense! They’re all as quiet as mice. You can’t afford to lose your sleep for silly fancies, my dear child. After all, what are the bedroom monitresses for?”

Ursula obediently went back to bed, but as she turned in at her own door, something made her glance down the long dimly-lit passage behind, leading to the main staircase, and she caught the flicker of an orange dressing-gown as it vanished round the corner. Her cousin Betty owned just such a dressing-gown.

Time drew on rapidly towards the holidays. The drill display, which always closed the Christmas term, was over, and only three days remained before break-up, yet Ursula had discovered nothing,

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and Nell Anderson once more suggested that Erica should be called in for consultation.

“What Monica said is true enough,” she urged. “It isn’t a job that any of us can manage. They take precious good care of that.”

Ursula, however, was resolute.“It’s too late to discover anything now,” she admitted, “but I

don’t think it’s too late to stop it. Anyhow I’ve got a scheme, and I mean to try it this afternoon. I’m taking super. for half an hour in the 2nd Div. room.”

“Well, I hope you succeed,” said Nell, doubtfully. “I’m sure even the teachers must wonder why on earth you always want to take super. there.”

“Miss Edgar did ask me,” said Ursula, “but she was very decent, and didn’t press the point when she saw I couldn’t answer.”

Nell gave her a quizzical look.“Oh, Teddy knows you’re to be trusted all right!” she

answered. “You’re as steady as old Time himself.”Ursula sighed a little as the games captain departed.“That’s all very well,” she observed, half to herself, half to

Lesley, who was getting out her books for preparation, “but there are occasions when I’d rather be brilliant.”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t!” declared Lesley, dipping her pen in the ink and regarding the nib critically. “You’re all right as you are. And if you are really going down to the 2nd Div. it’s time you went.”

The Middle School looked over their shoulders uneasily as the head-girl entered the big school-room with a book under her arm. It was not unusual for a prefect to take charge now and again, but this was Ursula’s third appearance within a week, and people whose consciences were not spotless asked each other in undertones why Tony didn’t come sometimes, or Lesley Musgrave. They were soon to be enlightened.

“Mademoiselle will be here by three o’clock,” remarked Ursula, quietly, as she seated herself at the tall desk on the dias, “but I want to speak to you about something first, girls. We go home on Thursday, as you know, but there is something I want to put straight before another term commences.”

Her audience was all attention now. Scanning their faces as she spoke, Ursula saw undisguised astonishment in the round eyes of Dimsie Maitland and her fellow Anti-Soppists; but the rest looked furtive and uneasy, and one or two wore an almost guilty expression.

“Things haven’t gone well in the Middle School this term,” the head-girl went on slowly, as though weighing her words with care. “I expect you know what I mean, most of you. The teachers have complained of your work – which, of course, isn’t my business – and Nell Anderson says you are slacking at hockey – which I’d noticed for myself.” She leaned over the desk and her face hardened into an expression which the girls had never seen her

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wear before. “Look here,” she said plainly, “it isn’t good enough. We can’t have Jane’s let down like this, and there must be no more of it next term. Some of you – I shan’t mention names – are expending your energies in a way which is bad for the school. You’re using your brains to devise mischief, and since they’re not very big, at the best of times, it doesn’t leave any over for either work or play. Now, I’ve given you fair warning, and it’s got to stop. If there’s any more of it when we come back after Christmas, I shan’t wait to warn you again. I shall report any further trouble to Miss Yorke, and you know best what that will mean. You can get on with your prep. now. I’ve finished, for the time being.”

Betty Grey and Winnie Hatton exchanged uneasy glances as they bent over to guess how much Ursula knew. Something evidently, but she had spoken very guardedly, and it was doubtful what she had discovered.

“Pooh! I don’t believe she has found out anything,” declared her young cousin hardily, when the tea-bell set her free for conversation with her boon companions. “We’ve been extremely careful, and it would take some one sharper than old Ursula to find us out. She’s only bluffing.”

(Wherein, if she had but known it, Miss Betty came very near the truth.)

“I’m not so sure about that,” rejoined Winnie, uncomfortably. “It strikes me Ursula’s beginning to wake up a bit, and if she knows nothing at all, why should she speak as she did this afternoon? If we go on with it next term, Betty, we shall have to be more careful still. I almost think we’d better not.”

“Why, of course we shall!” exclaimed Betty. “Surely you’re not going to funk, Win! None of the others are.”

“I’m certainly not going to funk, but there would be the most awful row if we ever were discovered. We’d probably be expelled.”

“That makes it all the more exciting,” argued Betty. “Shut up! Here comes Dimsie Maitland, and whoever knows about it, she mustn’t. I detest that girl more and more every day.”

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CHAPTER XVA DISCOVERY

“THERE’S one thing about the Jane Willard Foundation,” remarked Fenella Postlethwaite in her precise way, “which strikes me as being a great mistake.”

It was the first ‘painting-day’ of the new term, and some new still-life groups were being arranged in the studio; Lesley found Fenella’s easel planted next to her own, which caused her to sigh a little, for such constant intercourse was apt to become tiresome, and her protégée had attached herself very persistently since the reopening of school.

“A great mistake,” repeated Fenella, in tones which admitted of no dispute.

“Indeed?” retorted Lesley, bristling visibly, though she did not pause in her rapid drawing-in.

“Yes. I wonder it hasn’t occurred to the Trustees before now. There are scholarships to be had for almost everything except music.”

“I suppose the funds are limited,” said Lesley, absently, her eyes fixed on her work, “and it hasn’t struck anybody that it would be a good idea to give one.”

“When I leave school, and write books on scientific and antiquarian subjects,” announced Fenella, “I shall set aside a sum from the sale of each book, till I have a fund big enough to present to the Trustees for that purpose.”

“They’ll have a long time to wait,” said Lesley, unkindly.“Who arranged this group?” inquired Miss Fleming, suddenly

descending upon them. “You, Monica? Well, I don’t care for the shape of that vase – the outline is bad. Can’t you borrow something else from the drawing-room?”

Monica Bagot surveyed her arrangement with a disturbed air.“Everything else is either too big or too small. The nicest jar

was an old terra-cotta one which wouldn’t go with the rest of it.”“Well, that won’t do, anyhow,” said Miss Fleming, decidedly.

“We must find something better.”“There’s a lovely old blue jug up in the garrets, Miss

Fleming,” suggested Dimsie, diffidently, with one eye on Erica, who, she feared, would reprove her later for “barging in again”. “I saw it when I was exploring there last term, I could fetch it, if you like.”

“Yes, do,” said Miss Fleming, readily. “And when you are about it just see if you can find something for a background to Hester Harriman’s group. Never mind if it’s shabby or torn – we can turn it the other way up, or something. Take another girl to help you carry the things down.”

“I shouldn’t at all mind coming with you, Dimsie,” observed Fenella, condescendingly, as she laid down her brush. “I am rather anxious to see the garrets,” she explained, as she followed Dimsie

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down the covered way which led to the house. “I believe there are many old and interesting relics hidden away in them.”

“There’s a lot of broken rubbish,” said Dimsie rather crossly, for she had meant to ask one of her own friends to help her. In her estimation, Fenella was no longer a “lame dog”, and therefore off her list. She was Lesley Musgrave’s business now.

“One never knows,” said Fenella, prophetically, “what may be found among seeming rubbish.”

The garrets, which were used as lumber-rooms, were at the top of the old house near the servants’ quarters, and there was a tradition in Jane’s that some of the battered plenishings had remained there since the founding of the school. Dimsie led the way up the steep narrow staircase to the attic where she had last seen the blue jug for which they had come to search, but it had vanished from its former place.

“It must be in one of the other rooms,” she said. “Come on, Fenella! We can’t dawdle about when they’re waiting for us in the studio.”

They turned in next door, and began an equally fruitless search there among the broken tables and forms and legless chairs.

“I wonder all this rubbish is allowed to accumulate here, year after year,” remarked Fenella, disgustedly. “Why doesn’t Miss Yorke utilize it as firewood?”

“Can’t tell you,” said Dimsie, shortly, “but I do wish you’d say ‘use’ instead of ‘utilize’, Fenella. You’d get on a great deal better with the girls if you’d talk in an ordinary fashion, and not give yourself airs.”

Which speech showed that Dimsie was unusually ruffled for one who was ordinarily sweet tempered.

Fenella peered at her coldly through her goggles.“I think you are apt to forget sometimes,” she replied with

dignity, “that I am a senior, and you are merely a Middle School girl. But possibly it is my own fault; I may have encouraged you with too much notice, and I consider Ursula Grey spoils you in much the same fashion. As for the girls, I have no desire to get on with them, as you put it. Excepting, perhaps, Lesley Musgrave, I look upon them as beneath my level intellectually. I came to the Jane Willard to conclude my education, not to make friends with uncongenial people.”

“Oh!” groaned Dimsie, having heard her through to the end. “Senior, or no senior, there are times, Fenella Postlethwaite, when I could gladly shake you! A more complete ass never breathed, but no one will ever get you to believe it. That jug must have been put in the end garret. I have never been in there before.”

The end garret was the smallest and darkest of the three – a little pokey corner cut off from one of the larger rooms, and containing various oddments of cracked and broken crockery, among which Dimsie pounced gleefully on the missing jug.

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“And here’s a scrap of moth-eaten tapestry, which will just do for Hester’s background,” she exclaimed. “I suppose it must have covered the seat of a chair once. Oh, I say! I haven’t seen those pictures before. I wonder if that’s a Vandyck.”

Fenella’s offended dignity was routed by curiosity. She came over to Dimsie’s side, and stared at the small stack of cobwebby pictures which the younger girl was turning over with eager fingers.

“Nonsense!” she exclaimed, disdainfully. “You must be extremely ignorant if you imagine that’s a Vandyck. It’s nothing but a picture-dealer’s imitation.”

“It may be, for all I know,” admitted Dimsie. “It’s quite true that I’m ignorant of such matters, but I’ve seen rather a lot of Vandycks, and this is just like them. I’ll tell you who’d know – Lesley. Mr. Musgrave is awfully learned about things of that sort, and he has taught her a lot. We must bring her up here, and ask her.”

“Those amateurs are often deceived,” said Fenella, pompously; “their knowledge is merely a smattering. My uncle is an artist, so naturally I am better informed on these points.”

“I bet you don’t know more than Lesley,” retorted Dimsie, bluntly. “Look here, Fenella – this head might easily be a Holbein, and here’s another – I say! I wonder if Miss Yorke knows about these.”

Fenella pushed in further among the bric-à-brac, and examined the half dozen dirty-looking paintings with an air of condescension.

“All spurious,” she declared, positively. “Except that little landscape, which is undoubtedly a Corot of the most delicate workmanship, and is probably worth a small fortune. Certainly Miss Yorke’s attention should be drawn to the matter as soon as possible.”

“Which won’t be till after supper to-night,” remarked Dimsie. “We shan’t have a moment before – at least, I shan’t, with all the prep. I’ve got on hand, and I don’t mean you to go to her alone, seeing as I found the pictures. Come on, Fenella! Bring the tapestry and that cracked Doulton bowl – Miss Fleming is sure to admire it. We’ve spent far too long up here already.”

Miss Yorke was always more or less at home to her girls in the evenings after supper and they took full advantage of the fact; so Dimsie had to choose her moment with care, before piloting Fenella up to the head mistress’s study after supper. She had no wish that the whole school should know of her find, until she was certain that it was a find at all. Miss Yorke looked up in surprise when she saw her incongruous pair of visitors. Dimsie’s choice of companions was often puzzling, but she had never before selected one who seemed so utterly uncongenial.

“If you please, Miss Yorke,” she began, plunging headlong into the business which had brought her, “do you know there are

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some old pictures in the attics, which look as though they might be extremely valuable?”

“I certainly did not know,” replied Miss Yorke, looking rather unconvinced. “I’m aware the garrets are always left very much undisturbed, and I never have much time or inclination for exploring them, but I hardly think any pictures of value could have been left there all these years.”

“But don’t you think it’s just possible,” urged Dimsie, “seeing that no one who knows anything about pictures ever goes there? They were shoved away in the darkest, grubbiest corner, but they look like old masters, they truly do! And I feel sure one’s a Vandyck, though Fenella says it isn’t.”

Fenella smiled a supercilious smile, which made the head mistress yearn to shake her.

“Certainly not a Vandyck,” she said, emphatically, “but there is not a shadow of a doubt, Miss Yorke, that one of the pictures which comprise this child’s discovery is a genuine Corot.”

“As to that, Fenella,” returned Miss Yorke, dryly, “I fear neither you nor I are competent to judge. But I shall have the paintings dusted and brought down to-morrow. It’s just possible that they may be of some importance, and if so, I shall write to the Trustees. But I shall get an expert opinion first, of course. Sir James Chell, perhaps – he lives near Westover, and is a well-known authority.”

“Then he will know enough to appreciate the Corot,” said Fenella, obstinately. “I can assure you, Miss Yorke, that I am very seldom at fault on such questions.”

“I haven’t always found it so on other subjects,” declared Miss Yorke, suppressively. “Your trouble, Fenella, is your appalling inaccuracy, but it is one which can be cured if you take pains. Pull your skirt straight, my dear, and look out a fresh hair-ribbon before to-morrow; that one is disgracefully crushed.”

“It is Miss Yorke’s fussiness about such trifles as these,” Fenella confided to Dimsie, on the way downstairs, “which makes me doubt, at times, her vaunted cleverness.”

“I don’t suppose,” retorted Dimsie, wrathfully, “it’s of the least consequence whether you do or not. And Miss Yorke’s cleverness isn’t at all vaunted, so it doesn’t require your testimonials. I’ll stand a good deal from you, Fenella Postlethwaite, because I can’t help feeling that perhaps you’re not altogether responsible! But when it comes to patronizing Miss Yorke, then really you’re beyond all endurance!”

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CHAPTER XVIAN EXPERT OPINION

“I SAY, girls! I’ve heard the most extraordinary piece of news. You’ll never guess what it is!”

The Anti-Soppists had collected in a group on the edge of the hockey ground, to watch Jane’s juniors play a Westover day-school, when Mabs Hunter charged up to them, primed with exciting information.

“We don’t intend to try,” returned Erica, as usual taking a firm stand, “so you’d better tell us straight off; it’ll save time.”

“Well, strange things have happened here,” observed Mabs vaguely, “such as Dimsie and Pam finding the smugglers’ passages, and, of course, in an old house like this, one may expect anything, but – ”

Dimsie suddenly transferred her attention from the fierce tussle in front of them to matters nearer at hand.

“Now, look here, Mabs,” she broke in severely, “has Fenella Postlethwaite been talking to you?”

Mabs’s face fell.“She did tell me something. D’you mean to say you know

about it, Dimsie?”Dimsie grinned in spite of herself.“Sorry, my love, but if you’d heard the whole story, you’d

know I couldn’t very well help it! I was with her – in fact it was I who found them.”

The curiosity of the rest was thoroughly aroused by now.“Then Mabs really has got hold of something interesting?”

asked Erica condescendingly; and Mabs, in terror of being forestalled, plunged headlong into her story.

“Fenella found an Old Master in the attics – at least, Dimsie says now that she did – but at any rate one of them found him. And Fenella says great things will be heard of him. She isn’t quite certain of his actual value, but she believes that, properly invested, he may bring in a good sum for the school.”

She paused, out of breath, and Rosamund exclaimed in bewilderment,

“But who is he? Why was he hiding in the attics, and how can he be invested?”

Dimsie went off into a peal of laughter.“Oh, Rosamund! He’s a picture – in fact, he’s two or three,

only Fenella says the others are rubbish. Surely you didn’t think he was a live person? We found him among a lot of dirt when we went up to fetch those things for the studio yesterday.”

“And why didn’t you tell us at once?” demanded Rosamund, in an aggrieved tone.

“Because – oh, well! It may not be anything much at all, you know. But I might have guessed Fenella could have no doubts of her own opinion! Is she blabbing about it all round the school?”

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“Pretty well,” said Mabs. “I’ve told one or two myself, whom I met on the way down. Fenella seemed so cocksure about it, I didn’t think there could be any harm.”

“I don’t suppose there is,” said Dimsie, “but Miss Yorke is going to ask Sir James Chell to give his opinion on them, and if they’re all what Fenella calls ‘spewrious’ she’ll look rather a fool after bragging about our find all over the place.”

“She doesn’t give you much share in it,” remarked Mabs with a chuckle. “Indeed, she didn’t mention your name. And she says, as she made the discovery, she will probably be consulted as to what’s to be done with the money, so she’s going to suggest a scholarship for music, to be called ‘The Fenella Postlethwaite Bursary’.”

“What horrible cheek!” cried Erica disgustedly. “I almost hope they’ll turn out to be frauds! Hullo! Did Alma Sinclair get that goal?”

“Looked like it. Anyhow it appears to be Jane’s.”And the meeting postponed its business, for the moment, to

cheer the juniors long and loud.“I say, you know, we aren’t attending much to the match,”

protested Pamela, “and those kids are playing up jolly well too.”“Never mind – they don’t know we’re not talking about them,

all the time. Do you think they’re frauds, Dimsie?”“The kids? Oh, I see! Well, of course I don’t know anything

about it, but Lesley Musgrave does, and Fenella hauled her up to the garrets before prayers, this morning, to give an opinion.”

“And she thinks it really is a Corot?” queried Mabs, “whatever that may be.”

Dimsie grinned again.“No – but she thinks mine’s a Vandyck – I mean the one I’m

keenest on. It hasn’t shaken Fenella’s belief though, not by the decimal of a fraction. I say, that’s another goal for our side! Play-ay-ayed! Do let’s give our minds to the game now.”

Thanks to Fenella, ably seconded by Mabs, the story of the paintings in the garret spread through the school before bedtime, and was freely discussed from the teachers’ room to the 4th Division’s dormitory. Next day an air of suppressed excitement hung over Jane’s when it was known at tea-time that Miss Yorke had telephoned to Sir James Chell, and the great connoisseur was expected to tea that very afternoon.

“The barest suspicion of an Old Master will bring him a hundred miles by return,” declared Lesley, whose people knew him. “He is enormously wealthy, and has the most marvellous collection of pictures at his house in town. There are some at Westover too, but not many.”

“I hope it’s a genuine Vandyck,” said Tony Semple, “because it will be rather a feather in your cap, Lesley, and a distinct snub to the learned Fenella.”

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“That,” returned Lesley, “is quite impossible, my dear! She’d only think Sir James was wrong. The thing looks genuine to me, but, of course, I know very little about it, except that Daddy is always trying to train us, so that we may know the real thing from a trashy copy. Don’t build on it too much, girls, I’m probably all wrong.”

“But if you’re not, and the trustees sell it for a lot,” Madge Anderson meditated, helping herself absently to sugar, “what do you suppose they’ll do with the money?”

“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” said Tony swiftly. “And, look here, Madge, go slowly with that sugar! I haven’t had my second cup yet!”

“There’s lots in the other basin,” replied Madge, unmoved. “How do you think they’ll spend it?”

“Best ask Fenella,” said her sister, laughingly. “She’s got it all cut and dried.”

“Oh, Fenella! Who wants a musical scholarship?” exclaimed the unmusical Vida, with deep scorn.

“I do,” said Ursula wistfully. “Then I could pay for my ‘cello training, and go in for it, and nobody could stop me – provided I won the scholarship, which of course I shouldn’t do.”

Her voice was so low, as she spoke, scarcely more than a sigh – that no on heard her but Dimsie, who had come over to the prefects’ table with an offering of cake, having received a hamper from home the day before.

“I only wish you could!” she breathed back as softly. “But you’re getting on rippingly, Ursie. Do you know, I heard Pips tell Miss Eversley, the other day, that you’re a born ‘cellist.”

Ursula’s face grew pink with pleasure and her eyes lit up with that rare expression which made them almost beautiful.

“Thanks awfully, Dimsie dear!” she exclaimed, and her gratitude was not only for her share of the cake.

Sir James came, and stayed two hours, exclusive of tea. Towards the end of his visit Dimsie was sent for, and she returned to the 2nd Division room after her interview, with dancing eyes, and an air of triumph in every step she took.

“Don’t ask me!” she cried in answer to the eager inquiries showered upon her. “Miss Yorke is going to make an announcement at supper – oh, such a ripping announcement! You’ve only an hour to wait now, but unluckily there’s a Trustee’s meeting this evening, and she’s laying it all before them – I mean she’s laid it, and they’ve only got to make up their minds. They looked as though they might make them up in the right way, but you never know, and I daren’t speak in case they don’t.”

Erica stared at her in awful suspicion.“You don’t mean to tell me, Dimsie, that you’ve been in a

Trustees’ meeting? Oh, good gracious! I do hope you were careful not to cheek them by mistake. You’re the last girl who should ever

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be taken near a Trustee, for one never knows what you’ll say next – you don’t yourself.”

“It’s all right,” said Dimsie soothingly. “I only answered when they spoke to me, and they seemed quite pleased. You shouldn’t get so easily fussed, Eric.”

“One thing I will know!” exclaimed Mabs, nearly frantic with curiosity. “Is it, or is it not, a Vandyck?”

“It is! It is! It is!” cried Dimsie with an irrepressible squeal, and burying her head in her books, she refused to utter another word.

“And quite right too,” approved Miss Yelland, who was taking supervision. “There’s been enough talk, even about the Vandyck. Get on with your preparation, and leave Dimsie in peace.”

“I think it’s marvellous how she manages to keep it in,” declared Mabs with unfeigned admiration.

It seemed an interminable time till the supper-gong sounded, and the school trooped into the dining-room, half fearing to find that the Trustees had stayed on for the meal, in which case no announcement would be made till later. But to their relief the head mistress came in alone, in her soft silvery evening gown, and after grace had been said, and they had taken their seats, she remained standing, and looked round the room with a genial smile.

“Girls,” she said, “I believe you are all anxious to hear Sir James’s verdict on Dimsie Maitland’s discovery” (Fenella’s chair squeaked in surprised protest), “and I am sure you will be delighted to know that in his opinion there is no doubt whatever that the Vandyck, small though it is, is an authentic and original portrait – probably one of Jane Willard’s ancestors.” A loud burst of applause interrupted her, and when it had died away, she went on, “As the credit of the find was due to Dimsie, the Trustees felt that she ought to have a voice in the manner of its disposal, and they were al so pleased with her suggestion, that they have decided to adopt it straightaway. She wishes them to found a music scholarship with the money derived from the sale of the pictures, to be competed for by senior pupils at the Jane Willard.”

There was renewed applause, and Dimsie’s eyes met Ursula’s across two tables. The head-girls face was glowing with hope and resolution, and her lips formed the words.

“Thanks awfully, Dimsie dear!”

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CHAPTER XVIIFENELLA CONDESCENDS

THERE was a comb concert in the lower music-room that evening, given by the Anti-Soppists in honour of Dimsie, and many great compositions were performed with verve and charm by different ornaments of the Middle School on their simple instruments. So, at least, said Pamela Hughes in the account of it which she was detailed by Erica to send in to the school magazine. Madge Anderson, the editor, had a page entitled, “Middle School Musings”, which the Upper Second filled for her (under compulsion) every term. Erica wrote nothing for it herself, but she saw to it that others did, and examined their work before sending it in. When Pamela’s report reached her for inspection, she complained that there was a great deal about the concert, and very little about Dimsie, the heroine of the evening; to which Pamela replied ungraciously that if Erica didn’t like it she’d better write it herself, that she had supposed the paragraph was to be about the concert, not Dimsie, and that in her opinion Dimsie’s head was turned quite enough as it was, without having special articles written about her in the magazine.

Erica received this speech with a stare of wrath and astonishment.

“Dimsie has her faults,” she remarked at length, having recovered her breath a little. “No one knows it better than I do, and being (as you’re aware) the eldest of our set, I always try to point them out to her. Bit there’s one thing she is not, and never has been, and that’s conceited. I really can’t imagine, Pam, what’s been making you so peevish of late, but it’s probably the spring weather, and you’d better see Nurse about a tonic or something.”

“Don’t be an idiot!” snapped Pam. “Everybody has her faults, unless she’s absolutely inhuman. What’s the use of pretending that Dimsie’s perfect, and that people who don’t see it need a tonic?”

“I didn’t! Haven’t I just told you that I know she’s got her faults? You’re an idiot yourself!” replied Erica with heat, and flung off, leaving Pamela to wonder miserably whether she was fated to quarrel with all her best friends – not that she had quarrelled with Dimsie, but there was a sore feeling between them – a relic from last term – and they avoided being together as of old. Pamela’s was the kind of nature which erected pedestals for those whom she loved and admired. During the years in which they had come up the school together she had built Dimsie’s pedestal higher than any of the others; it appeared now that Dimsie was unworthy, and Pamela grieved in proportion to the height of the pedestal. It was such a disillusionment to find that Dimsie could stoop to be jealous of Jean’s ascendancy at games – so ridiculous, too, when Jean was known to be good, and Dimsie was not.

The fallen idol herself, unaware that she had ever been an idol, fretted in private over Pamela’s “queerness”, and devoted

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herself all the more to the friends who still wanted her, and these were many – for Erica had not been far wrong when she declared that Dimsie was friends with half the school, and had therefore no time for specializing.

As a matter of fact, if she specialized with any one this term it was with the head girl. She had developed the habit of slipping down in the evenings to the boot-hole, where she curled herself up on an empty packing-case, and listened while Ursula practised on Hester Harriman’s ‘cello. Dimsie took a kindly interest in Ursula’s progress, and frequently discussed it with her when walking together at the head of the crocodile, or wandering round the wood before morning school.

On the evening after the comb concert Dimsie crept in while Ursula’s practising was in full swing, and noticed approvingly the ease with which her friend was already beginning to wield her bow, and the certainty with which her long supple fingers found the right notes on the vibrating strings. Dimsie had watched her earlier fumblings, and even ignorant eyes could see the difference which a month or two had wrought.

“I say!” exclaimed the Middle School girl, when at last the scales and exercises had reached an end. “You are coming on! Has Pips given you a piece yet?”

Ursula looked up with shining eyes.“She’s going to. She says she doesn’t know whether she

should, not being a music teacher by profession, and able to judge the proper stage at which one arrives at pieces, but she’s going to try me with something simple. Do you know why, Dimsie? My people are coming to the Easter concert to hear Betty sing, and Miss Phipps is going to get Miss Eversley to let me play something, if I possibly can, just to show them that it’s worth while.”

“Well, of course,” agreed Dimsie, “it would be pleasanter to have them believing in you than otherwise, but it doesn’t matter so much now – at least it won’t if you get the Vandyck scholarship.”

Ursula laid down her bow, and a curious expression came over her small pale face.

“Dimsie! I couldn’t say this to any one else, in case they’d think I was frightfully conceited, but I believe you’ll understand – do you know, I feel perfectly certain I’m going to win it!”

“But so do I,” returned Dimsie heartily. “You know quite well that’s what I was hoping for when the Trustees asked me what I’d like them to do with the money, though Fenella thinks I cribbed her idea.”

Ursula laughed, as she carefully loosened her strings.“She’s very pleased with you about that. She says it shows

you are willing to be guided by an older and wiser mind. Oh, Dimsie! I am grateful to you! Miss Yorke says it is going to be given always to the girl who the judges think will be most likely to profit by it, even if she’s just at the very beginning of her instrument. That’s why I feel there may be a chance for me. I’m

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quite sure it’s in me to profit, somehow. You don’t think I’m a conceited fool, do you, Dimsie?” she asked wistfully. “I know how jolly little I’ve got to be conceited about – just nothing at all.”

“That’s not conceit,” declared Dimsie briskly. “It’s common sense caused by inward conviction. I shouldn’t worry, Ursula. It isn’t as though you’d ever had any opinion of yourself before.”

“But the funny thing,” Ursula went on dreamily, “is that I feel I can do other things too now. I feel suddenly as if I’d got some strength from somewhere. I quelled a riot in the junior sitting-room this afternoon with the greatest of ease. Why, I – I gave Dolly Ansell a dozen lines for impertinence.”

“And a very good thing too!” exclaimed Dimsie with enthusiasm. “Why didn’t you do it months ago? You never stood cheek from the kids in the days when you were just a prefect.”

“It seemed different then, somehow,” said Ursula thoughtfully. “Then I did it without thinking twice about it, if I felt they needed it, but being head girl’s so much more responsible, and I haven’t much confidence in myself – at least, I hadn’t, but it seems to be coming now. I hadn’t a doubt or a qualm as to whether Dolly deserved those lines or not to-day.”

“I believe it’s all that ‘cello,” announced Dimsie with conviction, but she was quite unable to give the explanation which Ursula instantly demanded.

The discovery of the Jane Willard pictures made some stir in the outside world, and to the great delight of the girls, notices of the affair appeared in the papers, with reproductions of the Vandyck and photographs of the school. There would also have been photographs of Dimsie, and an interview with her, if Miss Yorke had not met the various reporters who called on her with a very determined front, even refusing to divulge the very name of the girl who had made the lucky find.

“What a pity!” observed Rosamund Garth, with regret. “It would have been such fun to have seen a most atrocious snap of the wrong girl – probably Nora Blyth or Alma Sinclair – labelled ‘Miss Daphne Isabel Maitland, the Lucky School-Girl,’ and a column about how unspoiled the little dear was, and how the paper man found her playing with her dolls and munching toffee.”

“Nonsense!” said Fenella, overhearing the speech. “Personally, I should have had no objection whatever to giving the reporter a short account of our experiences, but my share in the matter seems to have been entirely overlooked.”

“It wasn’t you who found the pictures,” Jean pointed out bluntly.

“Merely an accident. If I had entered the end garret first, I should, of course, have been the first to discover them. Not that I grudge Dimsie her good fortune. I hope I am too large-minded for that. By the way, Dimsie, I have been thinking that I should like to do something for you to celebrate. Let me see – this is Thursday – would you care to come into Westover with me on Saturday

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morning? We might go over the Castle together, and afterwards have coffee at the Azalea Rooms.”

“Thanks very much,” said Dimsie cordially, but without any great show of excitement. “I’d better go,” she added to the others, as Fenella moved off. “She means it kindly, and I haven’t walked with her, or anything, for ages. Besides, Saturday is Elsie Pratt’s morning with her, and I owe Elsie a good turn for finding those gloves I lost down in the cloakroom last week.”

Jean groaned sympathetically.“You’ve been over Westover Castle on at least a dozen

occasions, and think of doing it with Fenella Postlethwaite to jaw you the whole time! Besides, you’ll miss the extra hockey practice.”

“Never mind,” returned Dimsie cheerfully, “It isn’t very important for me since Nell goes out of her way so rudely to insist that I haven’t a chance of my colours this season.”

Pamela looked up from her needlework with a peculiar frown.“She didn’t need to go far out of her way,” she remarked

pointedly, “seeing you asked her last term to play you instead of Jean.”

It was the tone more than the words which caused the sensitive colour to flame across Dimsie’s face, while Erica, glancing sharply from one to the other, exclaimed,

“There you go again, Pam! You’re getting positively spiteful, and you know that sort of thing is against every principle of the Anti-Soppists! Any one will tell you that there’s nothing so thoroughly soppy as spitefulness – unless it’s lack of humour. If Dimsie asked Nell to play her in the team instead of Jean, of course she was joking – even Fenella Postlethwaite could tell you that, considering how jolly badly Dimsie plays.”

Pamela said nothing, but fixed her eyes on her work again.“It wasn’t a joke,” confessed Dimsie honestly, her cheeks still

hot. “I – I really meant it, but Jean understands,” glancing appealingly at that young woman, who answered with casual cheerfulness:

“Oh, yes! It’s quite about right, thanks. Dimsie and I understand about it, and Pam needn’t be more of a perfect idiot than she can help! Eric, I’ve got into a mess with that stitch you were showing me the other night. You might let me see again how it goes.”

Dimsie sighed a little, as she turned back to her own sewing; she had hoped that now, at last, Jean would see the necessity for speaking out, putting an end of Pamela’s misconceptions, but apparently she believed she had said all that was needful. For a girl with brains Jean was sometimes very obtuse.

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CHAPTER XVIIIAT THE AZALEA

FENELLA felt pleased with herself and the world in general as she walked jauntily down Westover High Street with Dimsie at her side. They had just explored the Castle thoroughly from turret to cellar, and Fenella felt that, thanks to her careful instructions, Dimsie now knew a good deal more history than an hour ago. It is always gratifying to feel that one is being a benefactor to one’s kind, and the senior’s mood was positively expansive as they reached the door of the Azalea tea-rooms.

“We’ve got about forty minutes before we need catch the ‘bus back to St. Elstrith’s,” she remarked. “Ample time to enjoy our coffee, and take a stroll along the sea-front afterwards. I understand there is a house of some antiquarian interest – ”

“Yes, but you can’t go over it without a special permit,” interposed Dimsie hastily. “Miss Yorke got one, and took some of us last year, but I know she had a lot of trouble. Why,” coming to an abrupt pause in the doorway, “whatever is Alma Sinclair doing coming out of that queer little oil shop? Are the juniors supposed to be in Westover this morning?”

“I don’t know,” returned Fenella indifferently. “Oh, I believe I heard Miss Rankin say at breakfast that she was taking Alma and Dolly to have their hair bobbed again.”

“But what can she be doing in that shop? Oh, I see! She’s been buying a walking-stick – for scrambling on the downs, I suppose. Well, let’s go in. Will this table do, Fenella? It seems to be the only twosome which isn’t engaged.”

“It will answer our purposes very nicely,” returned Fenella, as she seated herself, and drew off her gloves. “I always consider this place is most artistically got up. The delicate shade of the hangings, and those pots of azaleas – all most soothing to people to people of taste and discernment. Coffee for two, waitress, and plenty of cakes. I suppose, little one,” addressing Dimsie with the air of an indulgent grandparent, “you would prefer indigestible cakes containing cream?”

“Éclairs, do you mean? Yes please,” replied Dimsie, adding in her direct fashion, as the waitress moved off, “Why on earth you should call me ‘little one’ because we’re out together, I can’t imagine! You wouldn’t dream of doing it at school.”

“One unbends a trifle when in holiday mood,” murmured Fenella, reddening uneasily, but Dimsie retorted with bluntness:

“That’s not unbending. If you weren’t my hostess I’d call it swank, but, of course, under the circumstances, I can’t. Oh look, Fenella! Here come those Americans who were doing the Castle – the man with the two women. I don’t like them very much. They stare so.”

Fenella bridled. She had no illusions about her personal charms, but she considered herself intellectual looking, and very

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possibly that was what had attracted the strangers; the Americans are a great race, and they value intellect. On the other hand, Dimsie certainly looked very nice in the dark green coat and skirt, which was the livery of Jane’s, and she wore her green felt hat with its blue and gold bands at a becoming angle, while Fenella’s was squashed dowdily on to her drab-coloured hair. Fenella considered herself above the trivialities of dress, but she was conscious of some pride in Dimsie’s appearance this morning; it reflected credit on herself to be seen about Westover with Dimsie Maitland, and perhaps the Americans had thought so in passing.

Dimsie, meanwhile, ate her éclair unconcernedly, and gazed out across the quay to the blue waters of the harbour, on which a few yachts were dipping and dancing at their anchors. There was a steam-yacht among them – an expensive-looking vessel, painted a peculiar plum colour, which was neither suitable nor becoming to any craft. Dimsie eyed her with distaste, and seeing the Stars and Stripes at her mast-head decided at once that she belonged to the party of Americans who had seated themselves at a table near by, and were now whispering as well as staring.

“I assure you, Lemu-el, those are the ribbons,” the stouter of the two women was insisting, in an accent which cannot be reproduced in print, “Dark-green with pale-blue stripes gilt-edged. The custodian at the Castle told me there was no mistake.”

“I say, Fenella, they’re talking about us,” muttered Dimsie uncomfortably. “Do let’s finish quickly and go. I believe the fat one means to speak to us before she’s done. They can’t take their eyes off our table.”

She was right. After a little more conversation, which failed to reach the girls, being spoken in lower tones, Mrs. Lemuel pushed her chair back with a strident squeak, and rustled across towards them to an accompaniment of jingling chains and bangles.

“Say, my dears,” she began, with cheery abruptness, “do tell if it’s the case that you come from the Jane Willard Foundation Seminary, where the famous Vandyck was found two weeks ago, buried in a cellar?”

“You are corrected in supposing that we are at the Jane Willard,” Fenella responded with a gracious readiness, at which the American dame stared a little, “but as to the Vandyck, your information is slightly inaccurate. It was not discovered in a cellar, nor was it buried at all; it came to light in an obscure attic, which is seldom entered except by the maids for cleaning purposes.”

“Indeed?” drawled Mrs. Lemuel. “You don’t say! Now, very likely you’ve seen the famous picture yourself, and can describe it to me at first hand?”

“Oh, yes!” said Fenella, adding with becoming modesty, “It was practically I myself who found it – that is to say, I was with my young friend here, when she chanced upon it, and of course I at once realized the importance of her discovery.”

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Her young friend made a mental note to protest against this glaring untruth later on, when she and Fenella were alone together once more. Meanwhile, their new acquaintance transferred her attentions form the elder girl to the younger.

“Ah!” she exclaimed, “so you were the fortunate one? Do you know that picture is valued at some thousands? Have you any idea how much it is actually worth?”

Dimsie shook her head.“No,” she said, “I haven’t.”Mrs. Lemuel looked slightly disappointed.“It’s likely,” she said, “that the money side of the question

wouldn’t appeal to schoolgirls. My! But it must be worth a good round sum – a genuine Vandyck! Is it a man or a woman?”

“It is the portrait of a cavalier,” replied Fenella, in her precise tones, “probably an ancestor of our foundress. The canvass is quite small!”

Mrs. Lemuel P. Higgins helped herself to a chair from an adjoining table and sat down beside Fenella, whereat Dimsie gave an uncomfortable wriggle, and pushed back her plate.

“Now, don’t let me disturb you, my dears,” said the American lady persuasively. “Help yourselves to as many cakes as you can cram away, and I’ll take the pleasure of footing the bill. I want to hear all about this wonderful picture, and the moment the man at the Castle told me where you came from, I felt it was a great opportunity. Of course your head mistress means to sell?”

“What? The Vandyck? Oh, no,” said Fenella. “Miss Yorke has nothing to do with that.”

“The Trustees see to all our business affairs,” Dimsie broke in. “Anybody who wants to buy the Jane Willard pictures will have to see them about it,” and she glared at their questioner with a touch of defiance, which Mrs. Higgins failed to notice, though she looked a little disappointed, for some reason.

“Ah! You have a governing body? Just so. And I suppose the pictures have been sent up to town for safe keeping till a purchaser is found?”

She addressed her question to Fenella, who seemed, on the whole, to be the more sociable of the two girls, but before the senior could answer, Dimsie sprang to her feet with an abruptness which was almost rude.

“We shall miss that ‘bus if we’re not quick, Fenella,” she said. “And you may not know it, but if any of the 1st Division get back late from a Saturday exeat, they have to stay in the grounds for the next week-end.”

Fenella looked offended, as she rose with great deliberation, and turned her back rather pointedly on her schoolfellow. She felt that Dimsie was not treating her with sufficient respect before the friendly America – in fact, she considered the Middle School girl’s manner was altogether too off-hand to both of them.

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“The pictures are still at the Jane Willard Foundation,” she replied very graciously to Mrs. Lemuel P. Higgins. “The Vandyck is hanging in the drawing-room at present, and we have reason to believe it may be purchased by the nation. As you are kind enough to take such an interest in it, I feel sure Miss Yorke would be delighted to show it to you at any time, should you care to come over to St. Elstrith’s. I presume you are staying in the neighbourhood?”

“More or less,” said Mrs. Lemuel. “More or less. That dandy little steamer out there is ours – the ‘Corinda’ – named after me. Lem, come right here, and be introduced to this young lady. She has very kindly invited us across to their seminary to see the famous Vandyck before it’s removed!”

“Fenella!” exclaimed Dimsie, tugging at her companion’s coat, “We’ll miss that ‘bus.”

Catching sight of a clock on the opposite wall, Fenella realised that there was some ground for Dimsie’s fear. Hastily excusing herself to their new friends, she paid the bill, and hurried out into the street, at the end of which the big char-à-banc was already waiting for its passengers. They ran up to it, and scrambled in just before the conductor’s horn blew, and to Fenella’s surprise Dimsie insisted on paying for her own ticket.

“My dear child,” she protested, “are you forgetting that this outing was to be my little treat for you?”

Dimsie turned upon her with a red face.“No,” she said, “I haven’t – and I’m not your dear child! I

wanted to pay my own fare back so that you wouldn’t be my hostess any longer, because I simply had to be free to tell you what an unspeakable cuckoo you are! I’d like to pay for the Castle and the coffee too, only that might annoy you, because you meant to be awfully kind, and you were, and thank you very much. But couldn’t you see that those horrid Americans were trying to draw us? You absolutely played into that woman’s hands, and now you’ve asked them over to Jane’s, and they’ll come and bother Miss Yorke to sell them the Vandyck for about two-pence, and waste her time, and give her no end of trouble.”

“Nonsense!” said Fenella loftily. “You really don’t know what you’re talking about, my dear. That was a most charming and cultured woman, with a real interest in art, such as should always be encouraged. And besides, you know perfectly well – you yourself said so – the Trustees are the only people who have any power to sell those pictures, therefore there can be no question of bothering Miss Yorke.”

“They’ll bother her, all the same,” maintained Dimsie obstinately. “You’ve only to look at their steam-yacht to see that they know nothing whatever about art. They want to buy our Vandyck cheap for speculation, and I’m absolutely certain they’re not to be trusted. That woman’s the better man of the two, but Lemuel sat with his eyes fixed on us, all the time, and I’m sure he’s

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up to no good. I can’t think what possessed you to ask them to Jane’s.”

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CHAPTER XIXTHE WESTOVER MATCH

JANE’S had a reputation for tennis and cricket. During the summer term more time was given up to games, and work was allowed to slacken a little. In the hockey season things were differently arranged, and the school, in consequence, did not shine so brightly in the world of sport, though on the whole they won more than they lost. Their chief opponents were the girls from Westover High School, which generally sent over a strong side to give battle on the Jane Willard ground towards the middle of the Easter term. It was a return match to the one played on the Westover ground during the Christmas term, but it was the more hotly contested of the two, and therefore the more important. The first had come to be regarded somewhat in the first had come to be regarded somewhat in the light of a trial trip, when neither team knew much about the other’s play; but when the return came off both sides were prepared, and had laid their plans accordingly.

“Look out for that tall forward of theirs with the red hair,” was a specimen of Nell Anderson’s advice to her followers. “She never missed a chance last time, so she mustn’t be given any more.”

And the Westover captain adjured her girls to “shoot hard and quickly every time. It’s the only way to get past their goalkeeper; she’s got a reach that’s positively wicked.”

In fact, both schools went through the season with their eyes on each other, constantly training their teams for the coming encounter. When Westover came across to play the Ladies’ Club at St. Elstrith’s, Nell and her trusty lieutenant, Tony Semple, asked and obtained a special exeat to watch the fray, and promptly called a practice game for the following afternoon while the features of the Westover performance were still clear in their minds.

“I shouldn’t care so much,” decalred Nell, seriously – “not so very much, that is – if we lost every other event, so long as we beat Westover High School. And they’re strong this term mind – jolly strong!”

“It’s the only match in which I absolutely dither,” sighed Monica Bagot. “My stick shakes in my hand till I can hardly hold it, and the field swims before me.”

“It had better not then,” said Nell, darkly, “If that, or any other little vagary, is likely to interfere with your play. I tell you, girls, I’m absolutely desperate to win this year, and if any of you dare to let me down on Saturday I shall be quite capable of taking her colours away.”

“She means it, too,” Tony asserted, confidentially. “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip, my friends. Those blue-and-green ties of ours are hanging about our necks by a mere thread. One false stroke – one failure to pass at the critical moment – and we lose them for at least a year!”

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“If you ever retrieve them again,” added Nell. “You’re right, Tony – it’s no idle threat. We haven’t done brilliantly this term so far, but if we beat Westover a good deal will be wiped off the slate.”

Two of the Anti-Soppists were in the first eleven – Erica Innes and Pamela Hughes; the remainder of that select society played for the second, and therefore had no responsibilities except to stand round the field and cheer, or keep silent, according to the circumstances. Vida’s ailing wrist having taken a turn for the better since the holidays, Jean’s services had not been required, and she was strolling rather moodily down through the wood towards the field, when someone ran after her from behind, and slipped an arm through hers.

“I say, old thing!” burst forth Pamela, with impulsive sympathy. “I honestly wish you could change places with me this afternoon.”

“Whatever for?” inquired Jean, in amazement. “Are you feeling seedy?”

“Goodness, no! I should be perfectly happy if it weren’t for Vida’s wrist being so well. But I did hope you were going to get a chance of playing for Jane’s after all this term. You see, we all thought the vacancy at the beginning of the season would be yours, and I can’t help feeling as though I’d defrauded you by getting it.”

“What rot!” exclaimed Jean, laughing outright. “Nell put you in because you were the better player, and showed her sense by doing it. Why on earth should you think that you’d defrauded me?”

“Well, I didn’t do so, of course,” said Pam, slowly. “Naturally I should have played up in any case, but you see, I’ve had a nasty feeling about it from the first because of Dimsie. She came and begged me to do my best because – because she was keen on my cutting you out. Jean, I’ve never talked about it before, but it’s made me awfully miserable ever since. If it had been any one else but Dimsie – ”

“No one but Dimsie would have done it,” exclaimed Jean, grasping the state of affairs at last. “Anybody else would have been afraid of – well, just what’s happened – of putting herself in a false position. But I must say, Pam, I’m surprised at you. If it had been Betty Grey or Winnie Hatton – but for one of ourselves to misjudge Dimsie is among the things which ought never to have occurred.”

Pamela looked bewildered.“But – but – ” she stammered.“Oh, I’m not blaming you! I don’t suppose you did it on

purpose, and we’re all a trifle dense at times. Still, Dimsie – why, my good kid, she did it on my account, because of something I told her on the day after we came back, last September.”

“She said something like that,” admitted Pamela, looking troubled, “but I thought it was all rubbish, and that she was making a stupid mystery about nothing at all. What possible reason could you have for not wishing to be in the eleven? You were wild to get your colours last Easter term.”

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They had reached the foot of the path and were almost among the crowd which was beginning to collect at the edge of the hockey-field. Jean came to a standstill, and glanced cautiously about her.

“There was a jolly good reason, which I suppose I shall have to tell you,” she answered, disgustedly; “though I hate holding forth about things; and I only told Dimsie because I was so wretched, and she always thinks of cheering ideas if you’re feeling down. My reports have not been as good as they might be lately, and my father suddenly took it into his head last summer holidays that Jane’s was becoming too much of a sporting school, where you could neglect your work if you were keen on games, and nobody bothered about it. You know as well as I do what nonsense that is, but I couldn’t convince him, and he said unless he saw better results during the next two terms he’d take me away, and send me to some hateful school where games were scarcely ever played at all.”

Pamela stared at her in horror.“But he wouldn’t, would he?” she queried, breathlessly.“Oh, yes, he would! Just fancy having to leave Jane’s an hour

before one needs to! So I consulted Dimsie, and she said that it would be fatal to get my colours this year, unless I took about three prizes, and stood high in the exams. That meant work, of course, for I’m not quick though I can generally plod to some purpose; so we stelled that I’d better give up all extra games, and only play in the compulsory practices. If I’d got the first eleven vacancy I couldn’t have slacked like that, naturally, but providentially I didn’t, and I believe I may come out quite high in the form by Easter.”

“You will,” said Pamela with conviction. “You’ve been doing awfully well lately.”

“Dimsie helped. Do you remember how she toiled to get Rosamund moved up into the 3rd Div. four years ago? She hasn’t exactly heard my prep. as she used to hear Rosamund’s, but she’s worked with me often, when she might have finished quickly and gone on to something else. That’s the girl you’ve been misjudging, Pam Hughes!”

Pam’s face was a curious mixture of joy and shame.“I’ve been a pig!” she cried, vehemently, “but I’m more glad

than I can say that I’m the pig, and not Dimsie! I’ll tell her I – ”“Pamela Hughes!” The captain’s voice came clear and

ringing from the pavilion steps. “Where on earth have you been? The team are all here except you, and we’re starting in two minutes. You’re very nearly late.”

“Awfully sorry, Nell!” cried Pamela, arriving with a radiant face. “I had some good news on the way down, and it delayed me.”

“You’ve no business to have good news on your way to the Westover match!” retorted Nell, wrathfully. “Mind you play up, or

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it will be the worse for you, that’s all! The idea of letting any sort of news distract you at such a time!”

Jane’s team took the field that afternoon filled with an iron determination to win at all costs. There was quite a small crowd of onlookers standing along the line in addition to teachers and girls, for various friends and relations of both teams had come by ‘bus, cycle, or motor-car, to see the match.

From the bully the home team forced the ball into the Westover circle, but railed to take it into the net, though after a short tussle they got a corner which Hester Harriman hit hard towards Monica, who scored with a good shot. It was just the little dash of encouragement early in the game which Jane’s badly needed to stimulate them. Again they pressed from the bully, Pamela taking the ball down the right wing, but this time the enemy was prepared, and presently the Westover forwards got possession and charged successfully up the field to where Tony stood ready to defend the goal. For a moment Jane’s held their breath, then there was an audible sigh of relief through their ranks – the rising shot had risen a trifle too high, and, instead of going into the net, had cleared the crossbar altogether.

The fight pressed and eddied this way and that. Westover scored twice in rapid succession before they were forced back by a fierce and sudden onslaught. Somehow the ball reached Pamela again, and she was off down the right wing and through their backs with the dexterity of an eel and the speed of an antelope. One moment of suspense, and the yell of triumph went up again from Jane’s as the whistle blew for half-time. Pamela had shot their second goal!

“Two all!” commented Tony Semple, as she sucked her share of the lemons which Jean was handing round. “I say, Nell! Pamela Hughes is playing like a little demon. That last shot was a very tidy bit of work indeed.”

“It wasn’t bad,” assented Nell. “Not hard enough, though. Their goalkeeper should have saved it. Look here, Tony, and the rest of you, we’re only level, so far, remember! And they’re sure to play up for all they’re worth after this. Keep your wits about you, every one, and do be careful of your passing, insides! Hullo! Is that the whistle getting ready to blow? Where’s Pam?”

Where indeed? The whistle sounded, and the teams trooped back. Nell looked wildly about her in all directions, but nowhere was there a sign of the missing one. She ran up to the umpire and spoke to her rapidly; the other umpire joined them at a sign, and every one looked on in surprise.

“What has happened?” asked one astonished visitor of another. “Somebody hurt and not able to play? The Jane Willard team is short of a girl – why, it’s that quick child with a long brown plait who scored their last goal! What’s happened to her?”

“Can’t say,” replied her friend. “Perhaps she has injured herself in some way. I always think hockey is such a rough game

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for girls. There! Their captain is calling some one else to take her place. Ah! I know that girl – saw her at their drill-display last term. She’s Jean Gordon, daughter of the Cabinet Minister – distinguished-looking child, don’t you think?”

The momentary hitch was over, and the teams were falling into position before the bully. Nell, on the spur of the moment, had sought and obtained permission from the Westover captain to play a substitute in place of the missing Pamela.

“Jean!” said Nell, in a fierce undertone, “what has happened to that wretch Pamela, goodness only knows! But play up like the very mischief now, and you shall have your colours at the end of the match. We’ve got to win!”

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CHAPTER XXSTOP THIEF!

HOCKEY was one of the many things which Fenella Postlethwaite despised as being far beneath the level of her superior intellect. She accordingly took no interest in the great Westover match, and when every one else – even those of the maids who could be spared – hurried down to the field to look on, she remained behind twisted into an uncouth knot on one of the settees in the hall, poring over a stout volume of dull appearance which she had found on the shelves of the reference library.

At first there was a good deal of coming and going behind her. Cars and bicycles drew up on the gravel sweep outside and were left to wait there by their owners, who were claimed and conducted through the wood by the girls to whom they belonged. Then came a lull, and Fenella pursued her studies for a short time without interruption before a sharper peal than usual brought the parlourmaid flying to the door.

A loud nasal voice inquired if it could see the head mistress, and hearing that she was down in the playing-field with her other guests, hurriedly protested against any idea of disturbing her.

“No, no! Not on any account! No, we have not come to see the match – hadn’t a notion that anything of the sort was taking place. We merely wondered if it would be possible to get a glimpse of the famous Vandyck, which, we understand, is hanging in the drawing-room here? No need to trouble any one – ”

Fenella uncoiled herself, and rose. Yes – there in the doorway stood Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Higgins in fearful and wonderful motoring attire, while behind them gleamed an opulent-looking car, plum-coloured, with brass fittings to correspond with the yacht which she and Dimsie had seen lying in Westover Harbour. With a gracious smile and extended hand Fenella moved forward.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Higgins. You have found your way over to the Jane Willard? How do you do, Mr. Higgins? Really, it is extremely fortunate that I happened to be in the hall just now. Thank you, Martha, there is no need for you to wait. This lady and gentleman are friends of mind, and I can attend to them.”

Martha, nothing loath, disappeared at once. To her mind these strange people were just the sort of visitors a strange young lady of Miss Fenella’s description would be likely to have. Besides, all the other young ladies had friends this afternoon, therefore it was not surprising that some one should have come for Miss Fenella. If they wanted to stay to tea, or see Miss Yorke, then Miss Fenella would look after them. Martha ceased to have any responsibility in the matter, and straightaway forgot all about them.

Meanwhile Fenella escorted the cultured and artistic Higginses to the long many-windowed drawing-room, where hung

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the Vandyck and the two best of the other pictures. They had been given house-room there until the Trustees could arrange with one of the many would-be purchasers who had crowded on each other’s heels after reading the story in the newspapers. Mrs. Lemuel put up her lorgnette and loudly admired, agreeing with every point upon which Fenella discoursed concerning brushwork, pigments, and general effect. Lemuel himself said very little, but Fenella gathered that he knew less than his wife, and therefore left the ‘enthusing’ to her. Altogether they were a charming pair, and Mrs. Lemuel’s taste and judgement on matters of art appeared to be unerring, since it fitted in with Fenella’s in every respect.

“You will stay to tea, of course, and meet Miss Yorke?” the senior said, hospitably, but her guests looked a little big dubious over this suggestion.

“You see, it’s just like this,” explained Mrs. Lemuel, with a touch of modesty which, though becoming, seemed a trifle unnatural somehow. “We haven’t been invited. We came on our own. Now we don’t want to introod. If your teacher has other company she might not be very pleased to have us tacking on.”

“I am quite sure she would be delighted,” protested Fenella, slightly puzzled by this sudden coyness on the part of her Yankee friends.

“Nevertheless, I should feel more comfortable,” declared Mrs Lemuel Higgins, “if you were to ask her first. Down at the hockey-ground, didn’t you say she was? Well, it wouldn’t take you a moment to go down and ask her.”

“Certainly,” assented Fenella; “if you will excuse me. I shall be bac at once, for it is a mere matter of form, I assure you.”

“Now, don’t you go hurrying yourself,” Mr. Higgins broke in with a fatherly manner. “Take your time! Take your time! We shall be quite pleasantly employed in studying the pictures again till you come back.”

“Very well,” said Fenella, disappearing through one of the long windows which opened on to the verandah, where a heavy curtain of wistaria was just breaking into leaf. Beyond the verandah and across the terrace the tennis-courts stretched to the verge of the wood, and Fenella ran across them, in order to take a short cut down to the field.

At the edge of the trees she met Dimsie, who had been sent up to the house by Miss Phipps to fetch a wrap for some chilly visitor, and Fenella could not resist a moment’s pause that she might point out to this cocksure Middle School girl how mistaken she had been in her prediction.

“Those interesting Americans are here,” she said, “and I have been showing them the pictures, but they have not uttered a single syllable about buying any of them, and are most anxious not to bother Miss Yorke.”

She hastened on again, leaving Dimsie to stand for a moment in thought under the larches, and during that moments Dimsie’s

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suspicions of the Lemuel Higginses took a sudden and instinctive turn. To think, with her, was to act at once. Like a flash she darted across the courts and skimmed lightly up the verandah steps, in time to see Mr. Higgins lifting the Vandyck hurriedly off its hook, while his wife armed with a penknife stood ready to hack it from its frame.

What startled them Dimsie never knew, for she herself made no sound, but suddenly Mrs. Lemuel said something in an undertone, and turned towards the door without waiting to carry out her operation with the penknife, and her spouse, tucking the small picture under her arm, followed her stealthily. They were making off with the precious Vandyck in broad daylight when the place was so deserted that there was scarcely a maid left in it to stop them! No one, in fact, but Dimsie Maitland.

Dimsie had not the vaguest idea what she intended to do, except that somehow she must intercept them and rescue Jane’s treasure – the famous painting upon which depended the scholarship which Ursula Grey was to be the first to win. She doubled round the corner of the house and into the drive in time to see the marauders climb into their plum-coloured car and start her off. At the same instant some one touched her arm deprecatingly, and Pamela Hughes said in a timid shamefaced tone:

“I say, Dimsie! Miss Phipps sent me to tell you that it isn’t on the back of her door, as she said – it’s in her cupboard. Will you please get it? I can’t wait a minute in case the whistle goes, but I’d like to speak to you afterwards – ”

To her astonishment Dimsie turned and seized her in a fierce grip.

“Pam!” she cried. “You are the very girl I want! You can drive a car, can’t you, if it’s a self-starter? Then hop into this one here and follow that purple atrocity which has just gone through the gates. Quick! We mustn’t lose sight of it.”

“But, Dimsie,” stammered Pam in bewilderment, wondering if her friend had taken leave of her senses, “the match – Westover – they’re waiting!”

“They’ll have to wait, then!” retorted Dimsie, dragging her relentlessly into the small two-seater. “Don’t argue, Pam! This is more serious than twenty matches all with Westover. I tell you those Americans have stolen our picture – the Vandyck! They’re making off with it this minute in the car. Oh, get on! Start her quickly! We’ll lose them if you don’t hurry.”

Not at all sure whether she was on her head or heels, Pamela sprang into the driver’s seat. Dimsie was following her when somebody clutched her skirts from behind, and tumbled into the car. It was Fenella Postlethwaite, breathless, scared, dishevelled.

“I’m coming, too,” she panted. “I turned back and saw – it’s all my fault! I must come, too, Dimsie!”

Dimsie groaned.

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“It’s a frightfully tight fit, and you’ll only be an awful nuisance, but I’ve wasted enough time already arguing with Pamela. Get on, Pam! They will be at St Elstrith’s by this time. You must let her rip!”

Pamela gave in, and obeyed despairingly. Along the drive they raced and out into the road which led to St. Elstrith’s-on-the-Downs, where ahead of them they could see the plum-coloured motor through its smoke-screen of March dust. From somewhere to the right below them sounded the umpire’s whistle, and Pam realized that her die was cast. She pictured Nell Anderson’s rage, and knew that her colours were lost for a certainty. Not even for far greater achievements than hers had been during the first half could Nell be expected to forgive such an astounding desertion in the middle of a match – and that, the match with Westover. She only partly believed Dimsie’s tale of the stolen Vandyck – it seemed such a cock-and-bull story somehow – but the habit of yielding to Dimsie’s will in moments of emergency had become second nature with the Anti-Soppists. During times of peace Erica ruled them with a rod of iron by virtue of her advanced age (being six months older than the eldest of them), but when things happened suddenly and had to be met with equal suddenness, it was Dimsie who took command.

A curve in the road hid the corner from sight – the corner where three roads met; one going straight inland through the village of St. Elstrith’s and the others (right and left of it) to Westover and Queen’s Causeway.

“Which way have they turned?” asked Pamela, briefly.Dimsie rose in her place, her bright brown hair streaming in

the wind, and tried to see across the broken hedge.“I’ve lost them,” she said, subsiding again, “but it’s Westover,

of course; their yacht’s there. Round to the left, Pam. Must you slow for the corner?”

“It won’t help anybody if I break all our necks?” retorted Pamela with spirit. “Besides, there’s often a policeman at the bench where the buses stop, and we haven’t time to be taken up for furious driving and asked for licences which we haven’t got.”

Since the die was undoubtedly cast with regard to the hockey colours, she was beginning to throw herself into the present adventure with considerable zest. As Tony Semple would have said, quoting one of her inevitable proverbs, “There was no use in crying over spilt milk,” and the fact that they were at present engaged in spilling more milk that could be conveniently mopped up for many a day to come, rather added to the excitement. Long as she had been at Jane’s, Pam failed to imagine what the penalty would be for chasing thieves through the countryside, hatless, and in a stolen motor. Nothing of that sort had ever been foreseen in the annals of the school, but then this was Dimsie’s ‘stunt’, and the unforeseen generally happened with Dimsie. What was more, Pamela reminded herself, Dimsie had a way of coming through the

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most appalling scrapes with drums beating and flags flying, so it would probably be all right, even in this instance. Above and beyond all, she was in this scrape with Dimsie at her invitation, and the hateful barrier between them was down. By and by she knew she would have to own up and apologize for judging her friend hastily – for Pamela was not the sort of girl to shirk her fences – but for the meantime she was enjoying herself to the top of her bent, and the stolen car was going like the wind.

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CHAPTER XXIQUEEN’S CAUSEWAY

“PERHAPS it’s just as well,” said Dimsie, suddenly, “there wasn’t a policeman at that corner. He might have thought we looked rather funny, even if he didn’t happen to know us by sight.”

“I expect he would have stopped us,” agreed Pam. “I say, we’ve gone wrong, somehow! They couldn’t have got out of sight by this time.”

The pursuit had swung round into the long straight road which led through level fields on top of the downs, to Westover. The end of the road was shrouded in a faint mist, but the space which stretched between was innocent of any traffic, except a solitary cyclist pedalling towards them out of the distance.

For a moment Dimsie looked nonplussed, and Fenella, who had seemed till then too crushed to speak, exclaimed:

“They can’t be going to Westover after all. I thought I saw a car topping the crest of that long hill which leads to the village. They’ve gone inland!”

“Not they!” returned Dimsie, briefly. “It’s their yacht they’re making for, and if it isn’t at Westover, it must have gone round the coast to Queen’s Causeway. Turn her about, Pamela, and run through Eastcliff as fast as you can. They’re bound to get that picture off to their yacht and nip across to America with it before they’re discovered, so they won’t leave the sea.”

“But they are discovered,” objected Fenella, as the two-seater swung round again on its tracks.

“They don’t know that though, and they certainly don’t know they’re being chased.”

“But they might – ”“Now, look here, Fenella! We only brought you on condition

you didn’t argue or bother us – in fact it would be much better if you didn’t talk at all, for you can’t possibly say anything that will be in the least useful. Round by the nursing-home, Pam, and past the lookout on the cliff. What a blessing it is your brother taught you to drive!”

“Yes, but I haven’t a licence,” Pamela reminded her again, “as any one can tell by looking at me, so it’s absolutely necessary to avoid the police.”

“Then I’m glad we didn’t have to run through Westover,” returned the leader of the expedition. “There can’t be more than one policeman at Queen’s Causeway, if that, so it shouldn’t be hard to dodge him.”

“I can’t think,” ventured Fenella, with unwonted humility, “what you mean to do if we ever catch them.”

“Circumstances will be sure to arise,” declared Dimsie, and though her words sounded vague she spoke with the conviction born of experience. “I suppose we’ll then cease to dodge the

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police, and give Lemuel in charge to the first one we meet for stealing our picture.”

“What about our own position with this car?” asked Pamela, doubtfully.

“Oh, that’s all right – we’ve only borrowed it. With luck, we may be back before it’s missed. The visitors are sure to stay to tea, you know.”

Pamela broke into a sudden chuckle.“It’s sure to be missed. Losing one thing will make them look

for another. I expect it was me they missed first, on account of the hockey, and then you, when you didn’t turn up with Pip’s cloak for that old lady. When they find the picture gone, and Fenella, and the car, they’ll be hard put to it to guess what’s happened.”

Dimsie’s brows puckered in a little frown.“I’m afraid Miss Yorke may be a little worried. I see more

and more what a mistake it was to bring Fenella. She should have been left behind to explain.”

“Well, it’s too late now,” said Pam, consolingly. “Even if we dropped her out, she’d take hours to walk back. (All right, Fenella! We’re not going to.) You might tell me how it all came about, and who Lemuel is?”

While Dimsie told her, the car left the few scattered bungalows of Eastcliff behind and dropped over the brow of the down beyond the lonely signalling station. On the left the open country rolled itself away in fields and woods interspersed with foaming orchards and dotted with farms and cottages, among which rose, now and again, the square Norman tower of some little grey church. On the right, spreading out from under the hidden cliffs, lay the Channel, dull blue and sheenless, its colour dimmed by that faint mist which seemed to be gathering from the south-west. Straight ahead rose another down topped by a long straggling wood, and beyond that, the girls knew, nestled the tiny village of Queen’s Causeway, ending in a line of cottages running straight out to sea on a narrow spit of land which formed a small harbour for fishing vessels on the western side.

“We ought to see their car now,” observed Pamela, uneasily. “There’s a clear view of the road running up to the crest of Causeway Down, and I can see nothing on it but a turnip cart.”

“At this time of year,” began Fenella, with a touch of her usual pomposity, “they do not cart turnips.”

“Never mind,” said Pam, repressively. “It’s the same cart all the year round, whatever’s in it. Dimsie, you don’t think they can have gone inland after all?”

“No,” returned Dimsie, though she looked a little anxious. “There’s the yacht, you see. The only thing which disturbs me a bit – I didn’t think of it before – is that they may have had it waiting for them in St. Elstrith’s Bay, and run right down there by the twisty-tiny road through the larch plantations.”

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“I never thought of that,” confessed Pamela, slackening speed a little, as though doubtful what to do next.

“I warned you,” Fenella reminded them, regaining some of her superiority, “that you were making a mistake in coming this way.”

But her companions were in no mood to suffer Fenella gladly.“Oh, shut up!” exclaimed Pam, rudely. “You never said

anything about the bay – and besides you seem to forget that it’s thanks to you, from beginning to end, this has happened at all! Shall we go on, Dimsie?”

“Yes. If they went by the bay, it’s far too late to do anything now. Make for the top of Causeway Down. From there we’ll be able to see if their Corinda thing is at the anchorage below, and if not, whether or not it’s coming out of St. Elstrith’s Bay.”

“That’s true,” assented Pamela, letting her engine out again. “If it picked them up in the bay it would be coming out just about now.”

On they flew again, swooping down a short slope and up the long one opposite which carried them to the brow of Causeway Down. Here Pamela came to a full stop, and both she and Dimsie stood up and looked about them. The next moment they uttered a simultaneous cry, for just outside the little anchorage beneath them a plum-coloured steam-yacht swung with the out-going tide, and at the same moment Fenella pointed frantically at a plum-coloured motor running along the low road which led round the foot of the down to the village.

“There’s they go!” she cried. “You see I was right after all, Dimsie – they did turn inland towards St. Elstrith’s.”

“You were,” conceded Dimsie. “Evidently they took the long easy way to save the car. That shows they’ve no suspicion they’re being pursued. Run down to the village now, Pam, but go carefully, and don’t overtake them. I’ll think of a plan as we go, and probably you’ll have to carry it out, for you’re the only one of us they don’t know. And Fenella, you devote your mind to watching for the police. A policeman, at this moment, would solve all our difficulties; I begin to wish they weren’t so scarce, after all.”

But her wishes were in vain; nothing of the sort was to be seen as they followed their enemies at a leisurely pace along the shore and down the single long street which formed the village of Queen’s Causeway. There were houses on the east side of the street only; in front of them was a strip of shingle with a few boats drawn up on it, and few more rocking idly at the brink of the tide, their painters thrown over a group of tarry posts. Half-way down the Causeway, to the astonishment of the school-girls, their enemies’ car pulled up in front of a small in, and both the Higginses got out. Dimsie, watching narrowly, saw that neither of them had the picture, so evidently it was to be left in the car.

“And very wisely too,” the thought darted through her brain. “They don’t want to be seen lugging their burglaries with them,

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and they don’t imagine there’s any danger in leaving it where it is for a few minutes.”

“Dimsie!” gasped Pamela’s voice at her ear. “They’re going into the inn! Can we get it now, if we’re quick?”

Dimsie’s plan rose before her ready-made, as the two-seater slipped down the street and stopped beside the big car.

“Run, Pam – Fenella, too – get out into one of those tethered boats and be ready to cast off when I reach you. There’s not a moment to lose. They can probably see us from the inn.”

She herself sprang out and sped round to the door of the plum-coloured car, where she dived under the seat of the tonneau, her hands closing triumphantly on the frame of the precious Vandyck. She heard the crunch of the shingle under Pam’s flying feet, and turned to follow her, clasping her prize. There was a splash and a rattle of oars, as somebody – Fenella – gained the nearest boat and sprang in, and at the same time came a cry from behind – they had been discovered! For a second Dimsie had that terrible nightmare feeling of inability to move, but as a matter of fact she never paused for an instant. As Pamela ran the rowlocks into their holes the Vandyck was thrust into Fenella’s eager hands, and Dimsie scrambled in, seizing a pair of oars from the bottom of the boat.

“Cast off, Pam! Quick, quick! They’ll be after us!” she cried, and the next moment the small skiff (Pamela had instinctively chosen the lightest) shot out across the water propelled by strong young arms. All the girls at Jane’s were good rowers, but Pamela and Dimsie had rowed for the school in a regatta of the previous summer term, and never before they had put such vigour into their swing.

Back on the shore stood Lemuel and his wife, the centre of an excited gesticulating group of village folk. Evidently they were urging some fishermen to give chase at once, but the fishermen were slow to grasp what had happened, and slower still to act. Already the girls had a few yards’ start.

“Pull for your life, Pam!” cried Dimsie, between set teeth. “They’ll be after us in a minute, but there’s just a chance, and we can parley with the village people if they overtake us. Have you got the rudder on, Fenella? Then steer straight ahead for St. Elstrith’s Bay. We’ll do them yet!”

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CHAPTER XXIIADRIFT

TWO of the villagers were climbing into another boat and starting in pursuit, but the time they had lost by their slowness was so much gain to the fugitives, who were pulling westwards with long steady strokes, which promised soon to carry them round the headland that marked the seaward end of Causeway Down.

“Once we’re out of sight behind those rocks,” Dimsie panted, “we can land and hide somewhere.”

“I can’t think,” said Fenella (but she said it as one seeking for information), “why you didn’t put the picture into the two-seater, and let us go back the way we came?”

“Wouldn’t have been any good,” replied Dimsie briefly. “Their car was heaps faster than ours; they’d have caught us up in no time.”

“That boat looks as though it might catch us up yet,” Pamela pointed out.

Dimsie watched the hostile craft with critical eyes, as she bent her back to the stroke.

“It’s a heavier boat than ours, and those two lumpish men must weigh more than we do. Even Fenella is thin, though she’s tall. Put some more mustard into it, Pam! That’s better – oh, I say! Look there!”

She had turned her head towards the yacht, and the others, following her gaze, saw with dismay that a dinghy was putting off in their direction at a speed which far eclipsed that of the fishing boat. It was manned by yachtsmen, smart and alert, who had evidently seen all that had taken place, and were acting accordingly. Despairingly the girls realized that all hope of escape was gone. Even if they succeeded in rounding the headland before they were caught it would be impossible to land unseen, nor would they have time to seek cover among the rocks.

Instinctively, since there was now no hope, their efforts slackened, and a shout of triumph went up from the pursuers, echoed more faintly from the shore. And at that very moment, deliverance came from a quarter whence it was totally unexpected. Every one had been far too much engrossed in what was going on to notice the weather signs, and probably, in any case, only the fishermen would have foreseen what happened next. When a suddenness which almost took their breath away a sea fog rolled up on them from behind, folding its great damp wings over them, and shutting out the rest of the world till there might have been no other boat in the whole of the English Channel but the one which held the three Jane Willard girls and their recaptured Vandyck.

“That’s done it!” cried Pamela, with elation. “Steer straight out to sea, Fenella; it’s our best chance. They’ll go on chasing us, of course, but they’d never dream we’d no anything but hug the coast.”

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“Wouldn’t it be safer?” ventured Fenella nervously.“Good gracious, no! The sea’s like stagnant oil. What harm

could come to us?”“True enough,” assented Dimsie, applying herself to her oars

with renewed vigour. “And we may stove in our sides on the rocks if we don’t stand out. That port rowlock of yours is awfully noisy, Pam. Couldn’t you muffle it a bit with your hankie, while I pull?”

In silence Pam dealt with the rowlock, and resumed work once more. Somewhere near at hand, but confused and deadened by the fog, they could hear the splash and rattle of the dinghy’s oars, but they themselves rowed silently now, feathering with greatest care, and none of them spoke again, even in a whisper, until all sounds had died away, and they felt that, for this time at any rate, they had shaken off their pursuers. Then Dimsie ceased rowing, and sat back with a sigh of relief.

“We must be pretty far out now,” she observed. “Remember the tide has been with us, and we don’t want to overdo it. You’d better steer west again, Fenella.”

“I am a little uncertain,” said Fenella unwillingly, “in which direction the west lies.”

“Starboard, of course. I say, Dimsie, don’t you feel horribly guilty somehow? When we were chasing them in the car across the downs I felt awfully righteous – like a sort of avenging angel, you know. But with that dinghy after us, it seemed more as though we had been stealing the Vandyck.

“I feel guilty, all right,” agreed Dimsie soberly, “but it’s got nothing to do with Lemuel and his dinghy. I’m wondering what on earth Miss Yorke is thinking about it all. It must be well past tea-time now, and with this fog, it may well be hours before we get back again.”

“I shouldn’t go picking holes in the fog, if I were you,” said Pam reprovingly, “seeing that was what saved us. Of course it’s a nuisance about Miss Yorke, but I’m sure she’ll put the most charitable construction on our disappearance; and when we come back with the Vandyck, she’ll be so relieved to see it, that she’ll think no construction could be charitable enough.”

“I expect she’ll be even more relieved to see us,” declared Dimsie. “I hate making Miss Yorke anxious, for I know she’s got a great capacity for it. Do you remember when we were kids, and got lost down the underground passages? I’ve never forgotten the look of relief on her face when she found us, and it’s always made me more careful about worrying her since.”

“Well, it can’t be helped this time,” said Pamela sensibly. “We’re going back as fast as ever we can – at least, I hope so. Which way did you pull just now, Fenella, when I told you to go to Starboard?”

“To the left,” replied Fenella uncertainly.“To the left? Goodness! Don’t you know starboard from

port? Then why didn’t you say so, instead of pretending to know

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everything there is to be known? We’ll be back at Queen’s Causeway in about two minutes – probably bump the yacht! Turn her round – no, stop! You’d better let us steer with our oars. I suppose you’re quite certain you did steer port – left, I mean?”

“I – I’m not certain of anything,” cried Fenella desperately, for the first time in her self-confident life. “This fog’s so wet and confusing, and I don’t know what I’m doing – ”

Her voice broke in a miserable little sob, and Dimsie, drawing in her oars, leaned forward to lay a consoling hand on her knee.

“Don’t fret, old thing,” she said kindly. “You’ve done wonderfully, so far, and it’s quite easy, if you’re not used to the sea, to mistake port for starboard. It’s a little awkward, of course, in the present instance, and I can’t help wishing you’d asked Pam what she meant, but you must just buck up now, and you’ll see we’ll get on all right. Can you row? Well, how would it be if you took my oars for a bit, and I’ll steer? I’d like a rest, anyhow.”

“Thank you very much,” said Fenella humbly. “But is it quite safe to change places?”

“Yes – when the sea’s as calm as this, and you do it properly. Wriggle round this side, and I’ll come the other way. There now! That better? I’m afraid Pam and I have been a trifle snappy with you this afternoon, but you mustn’t mind us. It was the excitement, you see, and the strain of having to carry this through on our own.”

Gathering up the tiller ropes, she nodded at the dejected senior in a warm motherly fashion, which Fenella was too crushed to resent. Privately, she was forced to own to herself that this younger girl, whom she had fancied she was patronizing with her notice, had taken complete charge of this afternoon’s adventure in a manner to which she (Fenella) could never have risen. But for Dimsie and her prompt daring, the precious Vandyck might now be setting sail for America, and Fenella knew very well who would have been to blame.

She was beginning slowly, but surely, to realize that it was possible for Fenella Postlethwaite to be mistaken, and though the process was unpleasant in the meantime, it came to her dimly, as the boat slunk on through the damp sea fog, that it might be nicer in the end to find herself on a level with her fellow-creatures after all. Pinnacles, even when self-erected, are sharp, dangerous things to sit upon, and – worse still – they are lonely. Fenella felt vaguely that it would be rather nice to be friends with half the school, as Dimsie was, though one had to sacrifice some of one’s dignity to attain it. It would be pleasant to be friends with – say – half the Upper School, and one need not unbend quite so far for that.

“It might be rather a relief,” broke in Pamela suddenly, “if we had the mistiest idea of our whereabouts.”

“Don’t talk about mists!” groaned Dimsie. “This one was very welcome at first, but it’s distinctly beginning to outstay its welcome. I wish one of us had a compass.”

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“I’ve got a watch anyhow,” returned Pamela sadly, “and it says a quarter past seven. Even when the fog lifts, it will be pitch dark, and I don’t like to think that we’re probably making straight for France.”

“More likely to fetch up on the Goodwins,” rejoined Dimsie. “We were heading in that direction when we last knew where we were going – at least, if Fenella really did steer port.”

“I wish,” said Pam plaintively, “you hadn’t made that remark about tea-time, an hour or so back. I’ve been thinking of nothing else ever since – and the atmosphere is neither dry nor warm. Wouldn’t it be as well to stop rowing for a little, seeing every stroke is probably taking us further in the wrong direction?”

“Certainly not,” retorted Dimsie decidedly. “In the first place, it helps to keep us warm, and in the second, if we stop rowing now with the tide the way it is, we’ll assuredly arrive in France.”

“I don’t know that I mind, after all,” said Pamela. “There might at least be a chance of getting home by the cross-Channel steamer.”

“Change places with me and steer for a little,” suggested Dimsie. “I’ve had a nice rest, and you’re looking a bit fagged out. After all, we’ve nothing much to grumble at, except the cold and damp. It would be much worse if there was a raging gale blowing. And besides, some one’s sure to pick us up soon.”

“More likely run us down,” rejoined Pam, whose mercurial spirits were, at present, at their lowest. “And the raging gale’s no argument, because if there had been one we’d have gone under long ago. Oh, Dimsie, look out! Pull your other oar – there now! What did I tell you?”

Out of the white gloom which shrouded them, a darker shape had arisen with startling suddenness right ahead, and before they could alter course their bows were scraping along the side of a large vessel which lay, without lights, apparently deserted and derelict, the glassy water washing listlessly along its weed-draped planks.

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CHAPTER XXIIIABOARD THE WRECK

AS usual, Dimsie was the first to recover herself.“Jolly good thing we shipped our oars in time,” she remarked,

“or they would have snapped for a certainty. We’re on the Goodwins, right enough, but it’s really rather providential, for none of us could have gone on rowing much longer, and it wouldn’t do to drift. That rope looks almost too good to belong to a wreck.”

While speaking, she seized upon a broken stay, which hung over the tilted side of the small sailing vessel, and thereby arrested their own rasping progress along the barnacled wood.

“What are you doing?” asked Pamela wearily, leaning back in the stern, and watching her as she fumbled with the rope.

“Making our boat fast to this old semi-submarine, after which, I suggest that we should get out and sit on it. If we’ve got to spend the night at sea, we may as well do so in comfort, and the after part of the wreck must be quite high and dry.”

“I don’t know what you call comfort,” objected Pam, eyeing the stranded derelict with languid distaste.

“Oh, well! You can’t have everything,” Dimsie reminded her cheerfully. “Come along, Fenella, up you go! We’re all rather stiff and cramped, but we’ll be able to lie down on that patch of deck with something to lean our backs against, so we’ll be better off than we are at present.”

Fenella scrambled out in silent obedience, being, truth to tell, far too much exhausted to dispute any orders which Dimsie chose to issue. She was thoroughly out of training, so hardship of any sort told far more quickly on her than on either of the two younger girls, who were in excellent trim. Pamela followed, stretching herself gingerly, and Dimsie, having handed up the precious picture, for which they were undergoing so much, joined them on the slanting deck.

“There!” she said, “that’s better, isn’t it? Here’s a corner for you, Fenella, beside this broken spar. You’ll be as cosy as possible there, so lie down and try to get a nap. You and I can curl up on the other side, Pam, and if you snuggle up close to me you’ll feel warmer. After all, it’s wonderfully mild for the time of year – you must admit that.”

“There’s one thing to be said for you, Dimsie,” observed Fenella drowsily, with her head on the spar by way of a pillow, “you do make the best of a bad business.”

“Oh, nonsense!” returned Dimsie. “This isn’t such a bad business – I mean it wouldn’t be, if it weren’t for Miss Yorke’s feelings. We’ve saved the Vandyck, and we’re in no particular danger, and none of our oars are smashed, as generally happens in these cases. The fog will be gone by daylight, and then we’ll be fresh enough to row ourselves safely to land. Things might be a great deal worse than they are.”

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Fenella’s response to this bracing piece of optimism was a gentle snore, and Pamela chuckled softly as she heard her.

“I shouldn’t wonder if she improves a lot, after what’s happened to-day,” she remarked. “For the last hour or so she’s been almost human. Let’s speak softly so as not to wake her, Dimsie, for I’ve a good deal to say to you.”

Dimsie turned her head expectantly, and waited to hear what was coming next, but apparently, now that Pamela’s opportunity had come, she found some difficulty in making use of it.

“After all, I needn’t talk about Fenella,” she blurted out at last, “for I’ve been a far greater ass myself. I was speaking to Jean about the hockey colours this afternoon, and she – oh! I don’t know how to say all I want to!”

A small slim hand shot out and gripped hers with surprising strength.

“Don’t bother!” said Dimsie soothingly. “I expect I understand right enough. Anyhow, I know you don’t think I’m quite such a villain as I led you to suppose, and that’s all that matters, really.”

“I’ve been a most unutterable idiot,” repeated Pam, in a choked voice, as she returned her friend’s grasp.

“Oh, rot! I don’t altogether blame you,” declared Dimsie, “because I know my behaviour must have looked very suspicious to say the least of it. But you see, it was all Jean’s fault for I tried to get her to explain, and she didn’t seem to think it mattered.”

“I know,” said Pamela contritely. “She simply couldn’t imagine that one of us would suppose you’d do anything mean. She was furious with me, and made me feel I oughtn’t to belong to the Anti-Soppists any more.”

“What? You? Why, my dear Pam,” exclaimed Dimsie warmly, “not one of us is more of an Anti than you. Don’t take any notice of the rubbish Jean talks when she’s irritated, and don’t talk any more of it yourself. Only I’m very dear you do know it’s all right now, Pam – dear.”

Under the friendly cloak of the darkness they leaned together and kissed – a proceeding which they would probably have avoided widely in the light of day. Kissing had always been regarded askance by the League of Anti-Soppists from the earliest date of its formation, but both girls felt that present circumstances made a difference. Among Dimsie’s many friends the two whom she valued most were Rosamund Garth and Pamela. Never before had she been estranged from either, and this reconciliation lifted a load which had pressed upon her more heavily than she had cared to admit.

Perhaps it was the excitement of “making it up” which drove sleep from them, added to the fact that the night was unquestionably chilly; at any rate they lay for some time talking in undertones, so as not to disturb Fenella, and laughing softly, as they recalled various past escapades.

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“It isn’t the first time you’ve dealt with thieves, Dimsie,” Pamela reminded her. “Do you remember how you caught Meg Flynn in mistake for a burglar, the very first term you were at Jane’s, and locked her up in the party-frock cupboard?”

Dimsie chuckled.“I was too much scared then to realize how funny it was. Do

you know what Meg did the other day, Pam? Rosamund had a letter form Primrose telling her about it. Meg saddled her horse and rode eight miles across country in the dark – Irish country, mind – to fetch a doctor for a man who had been shot in the rioting.”

“Then she’ll marry that man,” declared Pam, with conviction. “I don’t see what else she can do. It was splendid of her though. Meg was always a sport.”

“Jane’s is a jolly fine school,” remarked Dimsie, with seeming irrelevance, and then explained: “you can tell it by the old girls, if no other way. They’re all doing something to be proud of. Joyce Lamond got her degree at Girton last term, and I heard Miss Yorke telling a visitor this afternoon that Sylvia Drummond will make her mark as a writer very soon.”

“And Hilda Heathley had a miniature in last year’s Academy; but you know, Dimsie,” said Pam soberly, “all that sort of thing takes a lot of living up to, and when we leave, Jane’s will expect us to do things too. We’ll have to keep up the record.”

“Thank goodness we’ve got at least two years ahead of us yet!” exclaimed Dimsie, with great content. “I can’t bear to think of leaving. Besides, we can’t all be famous, Pam; it isn’t to be expected.”

“No, I suppose not,” said Pamela dubiously. “I don’t feel myself as if I’ve got the germs of fame in me.”

“Ursula Grey has,” asserted Dimsie drowsily. “Probably with us it will have to be a case of, ‘Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever’ – and meanwhile let’s go to sleep.”

Pamela yawned, and snuggled closer to her friend.“I don’t mind if we do,” she confessed. “At least – if you’re

sure we’re not in any danger, Dimsie? You weren’t just saying all that to cheer Fenella up?”

“Not a bit,” said Dimsie in accents which were becoming muffled with sleepiness. “This is a good solid wreck, and the Goodwins are all right, so long as you don’t try to walk on them. And of course we’ll say our prayers first.”

“Do you remember four years ago in the cave, when we prayed for a miracle?” asked Pam, with the shyness of most school-girls when speaking of such subjects.

“Yes,” replied Dimsie, without any of that same shyness, “and it came true. Let’s do it again just now. Good-night Pam.”

Worn out with all the unwonted strain and excitement of the past day the girls slept too soundly to be disturbed by the hardness of their couch, or even the chill damp of the sea-fog, which still

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hung about the sea. With the philosophy of youth they accepted their hardships and made the best of them, where many older people would have considered themselves amply justified in getting into a useless panic. But it was the slumber of exhaustion, and when Nature had somewhat repaired herself, the cold began to make itself felt. The girls stirred uncomfortably in their dreams, half roused, and dropped off to sleep again.

The mist rolled away at last, and the first rays of a bright young moon streamed out over a clear silver sea. Far inland an owl hooted loudly, and another answered it from near the cliffs. There was a faint tremble – the half-sign of a breeze – over silent land and water, as though Nature were turning in her sleep before drowsing off again for another hour or so. Dimsie turned too, gingerly, so as not to wake Pamela, yawned heavily, and rubbed her knuckles to her eyes in a babyish gesture. Then she raised herself slowly, and moving away from her bed-fellow, relieved some of her stiffness with a good long stretch; afterwards she surveyed the star-studded velvet of the sky overhead with a gaze of distinct approval. No more fog, no more groping in doubt and confusion; besides, they were rested now and well able to pull into shore, even if no friendly fishing boat turned up to give them a tow. It wasn’t so far, Dimsie considered, from any part of the Goodwins to some part of the coast, but it might be just as well to discover at once how far out they had come. Then she would rouse the others, and they would push off as speedily as possible for the shore and Jane’s. Eager as she was to allay Miss Yorke’s anxiety, Dimsie was now even more eager to allay her own consuming hunger.

“Good business I had two helps of everything at dinner yesterday,” she reflected, “or it would have been even worse by this time. I hope Pam and Fenella had two helps. Now then, let’s see – ”

She raised herself cautiously above the tilted bulwarks, and stared at the view which confronted her, as though unable to believe the evidence of her own senses. Only a few yards of moonlit water separated their ark of refuge from a wide curving strip of shingly beach, beyond which a handful of thatched or red-tiled cottages slumbered peacefully under the shelter of the wooded cliffs behind. To right and left rose bare undulating downs, where a few black moving blurs showed that some wakeful sheep were cropping.

“Pam!” cried Dimsie excitedly, and stooping, she shook the sleeper with more energy than consideration. “Fenella! Wake up! Do you know where we are, you lazy sluggards? Why, we’re in St. Elstrith’s Bay, and this is our own old wreck that we bathe off every summer! I do think you might have recognized it last night, Pam. Fenella couldn’t, of course, because she’s never seen it before. Anyhow, I always have believed in miracles, and I always shall, more than ever.”

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CHAPTER XXIVMIDNIGHT VIGILS

THE night had passed much less peacefully for Miss Yorke than for the three missing ones. She did not attempt to go to bed at all, but kept vigil in her study beside the telephone, with Miss Phipps for company.

“Please don’t sit up on my account,” the head mistress urged, but ‘Pips’ shook her head.

“It’s quite as much on my own account. I simply can’t rest till I know what’s happened, and there are plenty of other people in the house tonight, less favoured than I, who have had to go to bed, but won’t sleep a wink.”

Miss Yorke nodded gravely.“Ursula Grey for one, and Rosamund Garth for a second –

others, besides, I expect. And no one seems to have the ghost of a theory as to what can have occurred.”

“Part of the mystery, of course,” said Miss Phipps, “isn’t so hard to solve. While we were all down at the playing-field some thieves got in, took the Vandyck, and made off in the Jeffson’s car, but how those three girls came to be mixed up in it – no one could possibly have kidnapped them, even if they’d wanted to.”

An involuntary smile rose to Miss Yorke’s lips, little as she felt like smiling.

“Of course not! Can you see any one kidnapping Dimsie – or wanting to kidnap Fenella?”

“I said they couldn’t possibly have wanted to do it,” retorted Miss Phipps, “but, really – well, it’s no use talking nonsense, and you’re looking quite white and drawn. Let me make you some cocoa.”

They were sitting over the fire, sipping their cocoa miserably, and listening to the grandfather clock chiming twelve in the hall below, when the telephone at Miss Yorke’s elbow tinkled faintly and then rang with no uncertain sound. She snatched up the receiver, and asked;

“Who’s there? Is it the police?”“No, it isn’t,” replied the voice of a Westover friend. “It’s

only I – Mrs. Jeffson – but we’ve just had news of our car, and I thought you’d like to hear about it.”

“Yes, yes! Anything about my girls?”“No – unluckily. The village constable at Queen’s Causeway

found the car deserted there, half-way down the street – nearly fell over it in the fog. My husband went off on his bicycle to fetch it in, and has just got back. He questioned the natives, who say it was driven into Causeway about four o’clock this afternoon, at a reckless pace, by some desperate-looking ruffians, who sprang out, seized a jewel-case out of another motor which was waiting outside the inn, and made off in a boat with their spoil. They were nearly caught, but the fog came down in the middle of the chase, and they

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got away. I thought you’d like to know, though I’m afraid it doesn’t help you much about the missing girls. Evidently this is some gang of thieves, and your picture went away in the boat with the jewel-case.”

“Thank you very much,” said Miss Yorke sadly. “I fear I can’t realize the loss of the picture yet – it’s the girls I’m thinking about. But I’m glad, at least, you’ve got your car back.”

She rang off, and turned round to Miss Phipps, who had heard most of the conversation.

“Nothing fresh there,” she commented, the car being of even less importance to her mind than to Miss Yorke’s, “except that it seems to show more clearly than ever that there’s no connexion between the two occurrences. I suppose the underground passages were thoroughly searched?”

“Of course,” replied Miss Yorke, with a touch of impatience. “Besides, how could they be lost there? Since that former escapade of Dimsie’s and Pamela’s, the passages have all been opened up, as you know, and there are about six exits altogether, in different parts of the grounds. All the girls, too, know them inside out. They are perpetually playing hide-and-seek through them in the summer.”

“I begin to think,” announced Miss Phipps solemnly, “that Fenella Postlethwaite has got herself into a scrape somehow, and the other two have fallen into difficulties in trying to assist her.”

Miss Yorke glanced up quickly.“It’s a new idea, certainly, and a very probable one. Fenella

Postlethwaite would get into a scrape if she possibly could, and we all know Dimsie’s propensity for lame dogs; in fact, I believe she has been taking Fenella a good deal under her wing.”

“Your metaphors,” said Miss Phipps, with genuine sympathy, “are a trifle mixed; it shows me how over-wrought you’re feeling. Oh, dear! I wish it was possible for you to have a little rest. And after all, my idea doesn’t help us much.”

“It may,” said Miss Yorke, “if we work it out. What we’ve got to consider, now, is the sort of mess Fenella would be likely to get herself into.”

But Miss Phipps shook her head mournfully.“That,” she declared, “is quite beyond my powers of

conception. Fenella is not the usual sort of schoolgirl.”“You’re perfectly right!” exploded Miss Yorke, “but it’s high

time she was, and when we get her safely back, I shall make it my particular business to see she becomes so! Meanwhile, let’s follow out this suggestion of yours. Apparently Martha was the last person to see Fenella this afternoon. Fenella claimed some visitors, who were being shown in, as friends of hers, and Martha left them with her. Now, what’s become of the visitors? No one else seems to have seen them, and they didn’t stay to tea.”

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“It’s unthinkable that Fenella can have gone off with them for the week-end without asking anybody’s permission!” exclaimed Miss Phipps.

The harassed head mistress brightened a little.“Nothing is unthinkable where Fenella is concerned – she’s

capable of any eccentricity. That might account for her – though if it does so I shall have to tell Professor Postlethwaite that I can take no more responsibility for her. But what about Dimsie and Pamela? They can’t all have gone off for the week-end!”

“No,” said Miss Phipps decidedly. “Those two are mixed up in the robbery, if they’re not looking after Fenella – that’s the only thing one can suppose. Possibly they tried to interfere with the thieves – they would, you know – and get locked up somewhere for their pains.”

“But we’ve searched every place that locks, and every place that doesn’t,” cried Miss Yorke, with the exasperation of despair. “No, Miss Phipps! This is beyond us. If there is no news by morning, I shall ‘phone to Scotland Yard for a detective.”

In a dormitory at the other end of the passage, two of the inmates were sharing their teachers’ watch. Nell and Tony lay fast asleep, exhausted by all the happenings of the previous day (including the Westover match, which Jane’s had won, though nobody seemed to concern themselves about the fact); but Ursula tossed wearily on her pillows, too troubled to rest, and presently a whisper came from the cubicle next to hers.

“I say, Ursula! You are awake, aren’t you? I can’t help worrying about those kids. May I come into your bed, so that we can talk without disturbing the others?”

“Yes, do,” said Ursula quickly, “though I don’t know that talking will help much,” she added, as Lesley wriggled in under the bedclothes.

“No, of course not. We’ve gone over all the things which might have happened, again and again, and we’re no near it than before. But anything is better than to lie wondering whether they walked over the edge of the cliff in that hateful fog,” and she gave a little shudder of horror at her own imagination.

“Don’t!” said Ursula. “There’s no use fancying things like that. Besides, Dimsie has too much sense.”

“That’s just it,” assented Lesley quaveringly. “I don’t wish Fenella any ill, and Pamela is one of the nicest girls at Jane’s, but Dimsie – somehow, once can’t help loving that kid.”

“I know,” said Ursula. “I do, myself. I should have been awfully lonely, sometimes, without her.”

“Lonely?” Lesley twisted herself about in the narrow space she occupied, as though trying to see the other girl’s face despite the darkness. “What do you mean, Ursula? How could you possibly be lonely here at Jane’s, with all of us? Why, Fenella’s trouble was that she didn’t get a chance to be lonely enough.”

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“Oh, what Fenella wanted was splendid isolation! But as for me – ” Ursula gave a sad little laugh, too low to disturb the sound sleepers on the other side of the room. Ever heard of being alone in a crowd, Lesley? Because that expresses it more or less.”

Lesley lay in silence for a few minutes. She was thinking back over Ursula’s school-life, as she remembered it (for the two girls had come up the school together), and slowly the truth of the statement sank into her mind. Ursula had been alone in the crowd. She had never possessed any special chum – not even any special interest, until lately, when her ‘cello had absorbed her. Compared with Nell or Tony – even with Lesley herself – she had led a somewhat colourless existence, unmarked by any achievements great or small, in schoolroom, studio, or playing-fields, until her schoolfellows had come to regard her as being rather colourless herself. With a start, Lesley realized that she too had almost drifted into that point of view, and yet, having shared Ursula’s study for the best part of two terms, she knew perfectly well that it was a mistaken one. The head-girl was reserved, a little repressed perhaps, but she had plenty of character beneath her quietness. Lesley suddenly awoke to the fact that here was a much more congenial study than Fenella Postlethwaite, but she had no desire to adopt Ursula in any such role; it was something more she wanted from her.

“Ursie,” she said deprecatingly, “I never guessed that you were lonely, and I don’t believe any one else did, except that witch Dimsie, with her extraordinary insight into stone walls! I fancy we’ve all thought you rather preferred mooning about by yourself. I hate to feel that, all the time, you would rather have been among us, and we didn’t bother about you.”

“No, no!” cried Ursula. “It was my own fault. I should have been more sociable – ‘barged in’, as Dimsie calls it – but somehow or other that doesn’t come easily to me. I know I’m a self-conscious idiot, but I’m always afraid of not being wanted.”

Suddenly Lesley’s strong impulsive arms were wound tightly round her, and Lesley’s voice, with a break in it, exclaimed:

“Don’t be such a dear idiot! Of course you’re wanted – especially by me. If I’d had any idea that you felt like that, Ursie, I should have undeceived you long ago. As it is, I feel I’ve been a pig for years – but a purely involuntary pig – you do believe that, don’t you? Anyhow, let’s be pals after this.”

“For professional purposes?” queried Ursula, with a mischievous tremble in her voice.

Lesley gave her a little shake.“Certainly not! It’s you who are being the pig now, and a

voluntary pig at that! Ursula, I simply can’t go to sleep with the thought of Dimsie and Pam – yes, and even the Fenella lunatic – hanging over us. Tell me about your music. Dimsie was assuring the senior sitting-room, in your absence the other night, that you

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are going to be the ‘cellist of your generation, or some such stuff. Are you?”

Ursula laughed softly.“Dimsie’s boundless faith is worthy of a better cause. Some

night, Lesley, will you come down to the boot-hole, and hear me play? Your opinion should be worth something.”

“On art,” agreed Lesley modestly. “Though I didn’t know it myself, till Sir James Chell and I happened to agree about those pictures! But with regard to music – well, I can tell you if you’re playing wrong notes, anyhow.”

They talked on, with long pauses in between, which gradually lengthened and grew in drowsiness, till suddenly Ursula shot up in bed, and grasped Lesley by the arm.

“What’s that?” she exclaimed. “We’ve been sleeping – look! The moonlight coming through the blind! Something woke me, Lesley – it was like the clang of the door-bell!”

Whatever it was that roused her had wakened Nell and Tony too. The four girls listened eagerly, and heard the door of Miss Yorke’s study at the end of the passage burst open, followed by the sound of her flying steps on the front stairway. In a moment they too were out of bed and following; for, although it was between three and four in the morning, the whole school seemed instantly astir. Dormitory doors were flung wide, girls in dressing-gowns and bare feet crowded into the passages, or hung over the banisters. Ursula was close behind Miss Yorke, when she reached the front door, undid the bolts, and revealed the dirty and dishevelled trio who awaited them on the steps.

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CHAPTER XXVFATTED CALF (?) FOR THREE

PAMELA had spoken confidently of the welcome they would receive when they produced the stolen Vandyck, such a pardonable motive for their crimes; but she shook in her shoes, and even Dimsie’s fearless spirit quailed before the stern look on their head mistress’s face, pale and worn as it was with suspense and weariness. Not one of the guilty three summoned up the courage to speak as they filed past her into the big shadowy hall, where one gas-burner served only to make darkness visible. Mutely, Dimsie held out the picture which she had been carrying, but Miss Yorke actually did not seem to see it.

“Go upstairs to your rooms,” she said, in a curiously quiet voice, devoid of all expression. “I will see you in the morning.”

Fenella and Pamela obeyed her without a word either of apology or explanation. Cowed by her look they went upstairs, where already the interested crowd was melting rapidly in every direction. As Tony Semple muttered below her breath, “When Miss Yorke looked and spoke like that, discretion was the better part of valour.” Even Ursula drew backwards up the stairs, and only Dimsie, her eyes suspiciously bright and a sob in her throat, stood her ground.

“Oh, Miss Yorke!” she cried, beseechingly. “Say something – anything – only don’t look at us like that! I never realized till just now how awfully bad we’ve been – but it’s all my fault!”

“I am sorry to hear it, Dimsie,” Miss Yorke’s voice was as still and toneless as before, “but I cannot discuss it with you to-night. Go straight upstairs and get into bed.”

For one moment the girl hesitated, and her lips parted as though she were going to speak again. Miss Yorke had moved to the gas, and stood with one hand on the chain ready to pill it down; she turned and regarded Dimsie steadily for an instant.

“Are you going to obey me, Dimsie?” she asked.“Then Dimsie did a strange thing. Dropping the Vandyck on

the oak settle, she sprang impetuously forward, and catching Miss Yorke’s hand, she pressed it to her lips.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, the sob breaking loose, “you’ve got a perfectly splitting headache – and it’s our doing, and we’re beasts! – But I’m the biggest!”

Whereupon she darted off upstairs, and disappeared in the darkness above.

“Dimsie!” said Erica’s shocked voice, as she followed her into their dormitory from a coign of vantage on the upper landing where she had witnessed the whole scene. “There’s really no limit to your cheek! How did you dare speak to Miss Yorke like that, when the veriest babe could see she was simply furious? And where have you all been?”

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“Never mind!” returned Dimsie, miserably, “or Pam can tell you if she likes. We’ve brought the Vandyck back, and that’s all that can be said for us,” and she drew her cubicle curtains with a rattle. Up till the present she had regarded their adventure as novel and exciting even at its worst, and had (truth to tell) enjoyed every minute of it; but Miss Yorke’s accusing eyes and the repressed voice, which the girl recognized as a sign, not of wrath, but of severe physical pain – had put a very different complexion on the matter.

Pamela, who was certainly the least guilty of the three culprits, awoke the next morning with a heavy cold, and was instantly swept off by Nurse to the hospital.

“You’ve only got what you richly deserve,” was her unsympathetic comment, “but that’s no reason why the rest of your room-mates should suffer as well. I know those Easter term colds, and here you’ll stay till I have cause to believe you’re no longer infectious.”

Which was punishment enough for sociable Pam.Fenella and Dimsie, however, were none the worse, and

appeared at breakfast, very subdued and downcast, secretly dreading, each in her own way, the summons to Miss Yorke’s study which lay ahead of them. For once no question of precedence troubled Fenella’s dignity, when she heard that Dimsie had been sent for first, immediately after prayers.

“She keeps on saying that it’s mostly her fault,” observed Monica Bagot, “so I suppose that’s why.”

“All the same the first and worst part of it was nobody’s fault but mine,” confessed Fenella, unhappily. “If I hadn’t been – the sort of fool I am – none of this would have happened at all.” Whereat the 1st Division opened wide eyes of astonishment upon her. That Fenella Postlethwaite should stoop – or rise – to such a confession!

Meanwhile, Dimsie had gone slowly upstairs to meet her fate, and stood with downcast eyes before the head mistress in the bright, sunny study, whose windows opened on to the downs, with a distant glimpse of the Channel sparkling out from St. Elstrith’s Bay. Miss Yorke, looking a little wan but otherwise much as usual, sat on the window-seat with her arm on the sill.

“I sent for you, Dimsie,” she said, gravely, “because I understand you were the ringleader in what happened yesterday, and drew the other two into it after you. Is that the case?”

“I think Fenella came because she felt responsible for the picture,” said Dimsie, “but I made Pam come to drive the car. She wouldn’t have thought of it otherwise – in fact she didn’t want to. Pam isn’t at all to blame, Miss Yorke.”

“I am glad to hear it,” returned Miss Yorke, dryly, “though I think it is a pity that you should abuse your power over Pamela to the extent of escapades like this. People who have such influence

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over their companions as you possess, Dimsie, should be very careful how they use it.”

“I didn’t wait to think about it,” confessed Dimsie. “I didn’t think about anything but the Vandyck and Ursula’s scholarship.”

“Whose scholarship?” inquired Miss Yorke, opening her eyes. “But never mind that just now. Begin at the beginning, and tell me exactly what happened yesterday.”

So Dimsie obeyed, faltering a little now and then as she realized in the telling the enormity of her actions, and how black they must appear to the eyes of authority. Miss Yorke sat very still, with her head leaning on her hand, and made no remark till the story was ended. Then she looked up and delivered her verdict quietly.

“I am glad you have told me the whole tale so frankly, Dimsie, and I now understand that this mad jaunt of yours was carried out from a good motive, however mistaken; therefore I shall not be so severe on you as would otherwise have been needful. But can you not see for yourself, my child, how utterly foolish and unnecessary the whole business was? Suppose, instead of careering wildly off in a car which didn’t belong to you, you had fetched me at once from the hockey-field – I should have telephoned to the police at St. Elstrith’s and Westover, and the thieves would have been held up directly they reached the village. You risked your own life and your companions’, caused an infinite amount of anxiety to me and inconvenience to others, and all from giving way to mad impulse. After all, it was more by good luck than good guidance that you even saved the picture. You might easily have broken down on the road, or been baulked at Queen’s Causeway, and then it would have been too late to get the Vandyck back by any saner means.”

She paused for a moment, and Dimsie stood with drooping head, twisting her fingers dejectedly together.

“I know, Miss Yorke,” she admitted humbly. “I see it now, but I – didn’t think of it at the time.”

“Exactly,” said Miss Yorke, but her tone relented a little. “It’s high time you learned to think, Dimsie. Daft pranks, which may be forgiven to a junior, are inexcusable when you are nearly sixteen. Next year I hope to promote you to the 1st Division – my own form – but before that you must show me that I can rely upon you, not only in the ordinary jog-trot, but also in sudden emergencies, when much may depend on your keeping your head and acting sensibly. Now, that is all I have to say to you about this affair, except – no more exeats for you, this term!”

“Yes, Miss Yorke,” said Dimsie, meekly, and paused before turning towards the door. “Is your headache quite gone now?” she asked, with a wistful backward glance.

Miss Yorke smiled suddenly.“Yes, thank you, dear – at least, very nearly. Now run down

to your class, and ask Mademoiselle from me to excuse you for being late. And please tell Fenella I wish to speak to her.”

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CHAPTER XXVIURSULA ASSERTS HERSELF

THE first half of the Easter term had furnished enough distractions even for the restless Middle School, and it seemed as though the mysterious and unsatisfactory doings of the previous term had completely died out. Ursula, who had been on the alert for the first week or two after their return, began to think that her warning had taken effect, and gradually relaxed her vigilance. Every moment that she could spare from her lessons and other duties was devoted to the ‘cello, and the progress she made was surprising to those who were in the secret. She was making progress also in other directions, which Jane’s found equally surprising; her personality and influence were becoming felt at last among her schoolfellows, and the prefects had ceased to speak of her dubiously as one who could hardly be trusted with the headship. There was no doubt that Lesley’s openly avowed friendship was helping her in her school-life even more than did her ‘cello.

Then one evening came the discovery that things were not going so smoothly as she believed. By special permission, she had been practising late in the lower music-room after the others had gone to bed, and found, to her alarm, that she had exceeded her leave by ten minutes. Knowing that Miss Yorke would not allow her to say up again if she transgressed in that fashion, Ursula hurriedly put away the instrument, and slipping her music into its case made her way upstairs into the hall. Here she paused in the shadows by the lower stairway, undecided whether she should take her music-case across to the rack in the school-room passage where it belonged, or go straight up to bed. As she hesitated, a furtive footfall below caused her to draw farther back into the darkness; instinctively she grasped in a flash that there was something irregular going on, and she determined to find out finally what it was.

Some one was coming up slowly and stealthily, as though unwilling to venture with rashness into the dangers of the open hall. Ursula held her breath and waited, flattening herself in the deep recess made by the door of the teachers’ room, and in a moment the furtive one appeared, clutching her orange dressing gown close about her. It was her cousin Betty! Ursula made an involuntary movement, and in an instant the younger girl had taken fright. Turning, she bolted downwards again, like a scared rabbit to its burrow, and by the time the other had recovered sufficiently to give chase, Betty was nowhere to be found.

“Fool!” Ursula told herself, impatiently, as she relinquished the pursuit. “Why didn’t I dash up the front stairs and cut her off? But, after all, perhaps it’s just as well. I might have caught her, but I doubt it if I should have discovered what she’d been doing.”

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It chanced that they Greys were not the only people who were out of their dormitories that night after lights-out. Dimsie had been in bed and asleep for half an hour, when she awoke with a start to the recollection that she had left a valuable box of chocolates in her desk in the big schoolroom. A good many sweets had been lost in that fashion of late by the 2nd Division, and their suspicions (though they kept them to themselves) had fallen on the boot-boy, whose business it was to sweep out the class-rooms before early drill. Dimsie crept quiety out of bed so as not to waken her room-mates, and made the best of her way downstairs. She did not intend to risk the passage perilous of the hall, where there was always the danger of meeting a teacher who had not yet gone up for the night; instead she made her way to the back-door, and finding it still unlocked, scuttled across the drive to the door of the schoolroom passage. This she knew to be open having heard Miss Phipps complaining at supper that the key had been mislaid.

So far no one had molested her, which was a good deal more than she deserved. She found the chocolates, and stuffing a large one into her mouth by way of stimulating her courage, she started on her return journey. Having gained the back-door in safety, she was stealing noiselessly up the narrow staircase, when, to her horror, she ran right into the head-girl, who seemed to be awaiting her at the top.

“Ah!” said Ursula, grimly. “So you’re mixed up in this affair, too, are you? Well, one lives and learns, but I should have thought you, at least, could have been trusted to keep the rules now and again. I’ll see you in my study, tomorrow, directly after dinner, and if you’ve got any explanation to offer, perhaps you’ll give it to me then.”

She turned on her heel and went off to her own bedroom, leaving Dimsie in a mood of devilment. As well, she argued, be hung for a sheep as a lamb; since Ursula was certain to award her lines to-morrow, she might as well earn them thoroughly while she was about it. Why not get a cake out of her tuck-box, and some biscuits? With those and the chocolates she might give her room-mates quite a nice little feast when she got back – and serve Ursula right for being so scathing about nothing at all!

To reach the cellar-room where the tuck-boxes were kept she had to pass the cloak-room, and to her surprise a faint light showed under its door. She paused and sniffed the air suspiciously, for there seemed to be a curious and unwonted smell of burning coming from that direction – William, the boot-boy, probably indulging in a secret ‘fag’, though it did not smell like tobacco. Dimsie grinned and went her way. She felt somehow in sympathy with law-breakers that evening.

She arrived safely back in her room with her spoils, and the impromptu feast was such a success that she accepted Ursula’s lines the following afternoon in quite an ungrudging spirit, having first firmly refused to divulge what she had been about. To do so

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would have led to a confession of the feast, and thereby implicated the other Anti-Soppists, though it was she alone who could be blamed for providing the food.

“I can’t understand you,” said Ursula, uneasily, “but I expect I can trust you, Dimsie. You wouldn’t join in any pranks which might let the school down, and I don’t believe you’d drag the little ones into a scrape.”

Dimsie opened her brown eyes wide.“Of course not!” she exclaimed. “I can give you my word for

that.”When she was gone Ursula settled down to her work with an

easy mind. Something was going on, but it could only natural healthy mischief since Dimsie was concerned in it. No need to prowl about and play the spy as she had been compelled to do at the end of last term. It would be time enough to come down with a heavy hand if she caught them at it, whatever ‘it’ might be. She got out her geometry books and compass, and gave her mind to the problems which Miss Edgar had set that morning, feeling rather glad that she was to have the study to herself for an hour or two. Jane’s was playing another school on the further side of Westover, and Lesley was in the eleven.

The problems had not advanced very far, however, when somebody knocked at the door, and Ursula sprang up to receive a most unexpected visitor – none other than Miss Rankin, the matron. Miss Rankin was a stout good-natured lady, very popular with the girls, big and little, whom she tried her best to spoil whenever a chance arose. Her kind rosy face was clouded now, and she took the chair which Ursula pulled forward, with a preoccupied air.

“My dear,” she said, “I came to you because – I’m sure I don’t know if I’m doing right, but Miss Yorke would think so seriously of such a thing, and you are the head-girl. I daren’t shield them in a grave matter like this, and yet I hate to get them into such trouble – why, they might be expelled! I never knew a case before in all the years I’ve been a matron of the Jane Willard.”

Ursula had not sat down again. She leaned back against the table, gripping the edge with both hands, and the colour ebbed from her face.

“What is it, Miss Rankin?” she asked quickly. “Not – not the 2nd Div.?”

“That’s just it. I can’t say for certain who it is, but I happened to go into the dressing-room before breakfast this morning, and the place was absolutely reeking with a queer smell of burning. Yes, I know – I thought of William myself, at once, and that he might have been smoking, and dropped a match on his coat, till I remembered he had got leave to go home for two nights on account of that bad abscess in his tooth. Besides, there was no smell of cigarettes.”

She paused, and looked inquiringly at Ursula, but the girl did not reply. She recalled her encounters with Betty and Dimsie the

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previous night; such a thing might have been expected of Betty, who was given to setting her own amusement before anything so trivial as principle, but Dimsie – Dimsie, who had assured her only an hour ago that she would do nothing to lower the tone of Jane’s, that precious heritage which bygone generations of girls had handed down to them untarnished! To Ursula’s mind there was something peculiarly sordid about this form of law-breaking, whatever it might be, since (if Monica’s suspicions were correct) it involved the little ones. She could have forgiven Betty & Co. – or so she felt – anything but that.

“I came to you,” explained Miss Rankin, “because I thought if you could deal with the matter it might be stamped out before it reached Miss Yorke’s ears. I am very anxious to spare both Miss Yorke and the girls. But I haven’t told you everything, Ursula. I found a large hole burnt in Alma’s dressing-gown when I went round the junior dormitory this morning.”

Ursula looked straight at her with troubled but candid eyes.“Yes, I know that’s why you think so seriously of it,” she said.

“The little ones are mixed up in it. I was almost certain of that before, and of course this proves it. A hole burnt in her dressing-gown! That accounts for the smell of burning, certainly, though I can’t imagine what they’re doing.”

“Nor I,” rejoined the poor worried matron. “I questioned all the servants closely, but they deny having supplied them with either matches or candles – seemed quite astonished, in fact. Of course there’s not a word to be got out of the children themselves, but I suppose that’s to be expected, since any confession they made would probably implicate others. This business, whatever it may be, Ursula, is not confined to the Lower School.”

“Oh, no!” assented Ursula, emphatically. “I’ve been trying to get on the track of it for some time, and I think – I’m afraid – I know who’s at the bottom of it. Thanks for telling me, Miss Rankin,” she added with an effort. “I’d like to keep it from Miss Yorke if we can. I’ll call a prefects’ meeting to-night after supper, and we’ll do whatever’s possible.”

“I sincerely hope you will,” said Miss Rankin, as she took her departure. “Apart from everything else, there seems some risk of their burning the house down, if they are allowed to go on unmolested.”

Left to herself, Ursula reconsidered her idea of a prefects’ meeting. The fewer people who knew about the thing in the meantime the better, and the vote of the majority might be for reporting it to Miss Yorke. If that happened the head mistress would have very little choice but to expel the ringleaders, and the ringleaders (so far as Ursula knew) were her own cousin, and the girl who had been for so long her best friend at Jane’s. No – if possible let her deal with the matter alone and unaided, but how? Should she summon the Lower School, and question them en masse? Hardly; their code of honour would forbid them to give

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their elders away, and there was little to be gained by attacking the juniors and letting the more responsible Middle School girls go free. There remained the two whom she had actually seen out of their rooms last night. Of those, she had already upbraided Dimsie, and had been assured by her that nothing serious was going on. If Dimsie could say that, what use to send for Betty? She would certainly be equally ambiguous, and her standard was certainly no higher.

“There’s just one thing I know for certain,” thought Ursula, desperately, “and on that I must act. Since they hold their orgies in the dressing-room, I must patrol the basement till I catch them at it.”

It was not a pleasant programme, and many times in the week which followed did Ursula regret her decision to carry the affair through without the help of her fellow-prefects; but she was a dogged young person, and having once taken her resolution she stuck to it. The idea came to her of taxing Dimsie openly with her perfidy, but no opportunity arose for doing so, and she shrank from making one. The Easter exams. were near, and every one was working with redoubled vigour, so that Saturday morning came round before she had a chance to speak to Dimsie at all.

Then they met in the junior sitting-room, where the head-girl had gone to take the names of those who wished to join the weekly shopping-party for Westover. What Dimsie was doing there did not transpire.

“Mademoiselle is in charge,” Ursula announced, “and she is only taking two from each form, so settle it among yourselves, and be quick. Molly and Grace from the 3rd Div.? Very well; make up your list of what your form wants, and get ready as quickly as possible. Mademoiselle is collecting you in the hall at eleven. Now then, 4th Div.? Oh – Ruth and Alma? Why, surely it isn’t your turn again, Alma? It isn’t so long since you went before.”

Something uneasy in Alma’s manner made her look closely at the child, but the reply came readily enough.

“I want to take my new stick back to the shop where I bought it, and get them to shorten it. I’d rather explain about it myself, and the others don’t mind. Ruth’s the only one who’s keen about going, to-day.”

“Blasé kids!” exclaimed Ursula, with a laugh, as she left the room. “Well, don’t keep Mademoiselle waiting.”

Dimsie, wearing a troubled face, followed her out and down the passage to her study.

“I say, Ursula!” she observed. “I believe Alma Sinclair’s up to something. Weeks ago, when I went into Westover with Fenella, we saw her coming out of a funny little oil shop, where they sell walking-sticks and all sorts of odds and ends; she’s been in with a shopping-party since. Why didn’t she get her stick shortened before now?”

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“I don’t know,” said Ursula, regarding her sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you can get candles and methylated spirit at that shop,” replied Dimsie, significantly. “Do you remember that night last week when you caught me wandering out of my dormitory? Somebody was using methylated in the dressing-room then, and it couldn’t have been William, as I thought at first, because he was away. I didn’t recognize the smell till afterwards, but then it dawned on me what it was.”

“Do you mean to say,” demanded Ursula, eagerly, “you weren’t mixed up in that yourself, Dimsie?”

Dimsie stared at her for a moment in undisguised astonishment.

“Silly idiot!” she ejaculated. “I say, I’m awfully sorry – I’m afraid that my cheek – but really! - Do I go burning methylated in the basement after lights-out? I may tell you I’m not a bit keen on making toffee, and that’s what they were doing, to a certainty. But you’d better look out. Somebody must have brought a spirit-stove back with them, somehow, and you know how strict Miss Yorke has been about meth. since that time when Nancy Harriman set her cubicle curtains alight trying to curl her hair.”

She went off down the passage, leaving Ursula greatly relieved. Not only was Dimsie guiltless of any underhand proceeding, but she appeared to regard the very suggestion of such a thing as a peculiarly foolish joke.

“I wish I could think it was the same with Betty,” said Ursula to herself. “Anyhow, if they’re sending Alma to fetch methylated for them, they’ll probably meet again to-night, and I may get a chance to put it down at last. I wonder how long this has been going on.”

It seemed that night as though the stars in their courses were fighting against her. First she was summoned after supper by Miss Phipps to an extra ‘cello practice in her room, and when it was over her teacher kept her chatting over the fire till Miss Yorke joined them, and insisted on hearing Ursula play again, that she might judge of her progress. When at last they bade her go to bed, it was long past the time at which she had startled Betty into flight a week before. She took her way down the back staircase as quickly as possible, and along the stone-flagged passage to the dressing-room, and here, outside the door, she paused. There was no light visible beneath the door to-night, and all inside seemed still. Had she drawn a blank once more? No – for as she hesitated, a faint but unmistakable odour reached her, and across Ursula’s mind, with humorous aptness, flashed Tony Semple’s words, spoken last term, “No smoke without fire, you know.” Tony had come nearer the root of the vague trouble than they had guessed. It was not, perhaps, smoke, but it smelt uncommonly like burnt toffee.

She flung the door open and entered. Instantly came squeaks and scuffling form the darkness, and a row of candles at the end of

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the room were hastily blown out. She took a step forward, and some one slipped past her into the passage behind. At once she realized her folly in coming unprovided with matches the gas was turned out and there was nothing to prevent the culprits from escaping while she fumbled round in the dark. Springing back, she clutched another fugitive, and at the same time kicked the door to with a slam, and leaned against it.

“I don’t know whom I’ve got,” she said in tones which were dangerously calm, “but I haven’t come down here to play blind-man’s buff, so give me your matches, whoever you are, or I shall take you straight to Miss Yorke, and leave the others to confess when she asks them to do so, which will probably be to-morrow.”

There was a moment of horrified silence, before her captive said in quavering tones, “I – I haven’t got any matches, Ursula.”

“Well, it’s obvious that somebody has,” returned Ursula, steadily. “If the gas is not lit before I count ten, upstairs you go! One – two – ”

It was plain that she held the situation in her hand. With her back to the door, no one could pass her, and the girls knew very well that she had no intention of moving until they had obeyed. Sullenly a match was struck, and the gas whistled up, to reveal half a dozen ornaments of the Middle School clad in dressing-gowns, with their hair loose about their shoulders, their faces weirdly decorated with burnt cork and rouge. The girl whom Ursula had seized was Joan Hardy, a particular friend of her cousin Betty, while Betty herself stood defiantly before her (holding a saucepan which contained a black odoriferous mass), with Winne Hatton, Edith Milne, and Nora Blyth close behind. Several juniors were huddled together in the background.

“Well?” asked the head-girl, scornfully. “What have you got to say for yourselves?”

Apparently nothing. Winnie shifted from one foot to the other, and Nora whimpered; otherwise a discreet silence was preserved till Betty stepped suddenly to the front with a sort of flippant dare-devilry, tossing her hair out of her eyes.

“This is the Candlelight Dramatic Club, if you want to know,” she said pertly. “Perhaps you’d like to join? We meet once a week on the most convenient night, and the sub. is four candles, payable in advance. You see, we use up rather a lot for footlights.

Ursula turned from her to the shrinking group of children behind.

“You juniors,” she said sternly, “go straight upstairs and get into bed at once. I shall come up to your dormitory presently, to see that you have done so – and to-morrow I shall speak to you again about this.”

When the last of the little ones had crept quaking from the room, dumb with astonishment at this new manifestation of their head-girl, Ursula turned to the elder ones who remained.

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“I suppose,” she inquired, icily, “this has been going on ever since last term?”

“Our club? Oh, yes!” returned Betty, in the same jaunty tone as before. “It’s quite an old established entertainment now. We couldn’t have attempted it, of course, in Phyllis Heathley’s time, but it has flourished famously under your rule. I assure you, Ursula, we greatly appreciate your being head-girl.”

Her cousin made no reply, and only the colour rising in her face showed how the taunt had gone home. She looked round at the other girls in their odd costumes, at the improvised stage behind the half-burnt candles, at the remains of the refreshments where the juniors had been sitting.

“Where,” she demanded, abruptly, “did you get all this? And to whom does that spirit-stove belong?”

Silence again for a moment, but it was evident that Ursula meant to be answered, so Edith said reluctantly:

“To me. We each brought some extra grub back with us after Christmas – besides what Miss Rankin knew about, in our tuck boxes – and candles too, and Betty brought the meth.”

“Yes – but since you finished that supply? And before Christmas?”

“We got things from Westover” – more reluctantly still.“How?”But to that no one dared reply. They knew very well that this

would be judged their greatest crime.“I believe I can tell you,” said Ursula, sternly. “You sent little

Alma Sinclair, because suspicion was less likely to fall on her if she were seen going into that third-rate shop which you seem to patronize. You knew the rule about not bringing methylated into the school, since that accident which happened when one of the seniors was curling her hair, ages ago. Probably you’ve had other juniors besides Alma in it – bribed them by letting them come to these orgies of yours? Yes, I thought so!”

“Well,” rejoined Betty, still spokeswoman, “I don’t see that we’ve done anything so very bad. Except that we’ve broken dormitory, there’s no difference between this and an ordinary bedroom feast or pillow-fight. Why on earth do you stand there, looking as though we’d committed some fearful sin?”

Ursula stared them up and down with a scorn which withered the others, though Betty herself remained unshrivelled.

“Can’t you even imagine why?” she asked, scathingly. “Then, perhaps, I’d better tell you. It isn’t your ‘Dramatic Club,’ nor you breaking dormitory, nor making toffee on a spirit stove – of course you deserve to be run in for all of that, but after all, there’s nothing specially wicked in those pranks. The hateful part of the whole thing is the way you’ve used the kids as your catspaws, sending them into Westover to buy your methylated and candles for you, when you dare not go yourselves, at a shop where they wouldn’t be recognized, knowing all the time that if they were caught they’d

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never give you away. Faugh! It’s despicable! And then to encourage them to come down here and break rules with you – do you ever realize that in a year’s time you’ll probably be all in the 1st

Division, responsible for the good behaviour of the Lower School? How much do you think they’ll respect you? Now, you remember what I said to you last term – ”

Here Nora broke down completely, while Joan shook from head to foot.

“Ursula!” exclaimed Betty, scared out of her sullen defiance. “If you report us we’ll be expelled – you know we shall! Miss Yorke would never forgive us. Surely you wouldn’t be so frightfully mean – ”

Ursula’s eyes flashed suddenly.“I think,” she retorted, with the contempt which made them

squirm, “the less you say about meanness the better! Girls in the Upper Second, who can make use of the juniors as you have done, teaching them to deceive and act falsehoods, must have a pretty low standard of honour. If I did as you deserve, I’d march you straight up to Miss Yorke and let you take the consequences of what you’ve been doing.”

“But you won’t, Ursula, you won’t?” cried Joan, with white lips, quick to seize on the hope which that ‘if’ contained. “I know it was a low-down thing to do – we all know it – but if you’ll only let us off this once, we – we – ”

“Oh, Ursula! Do – do be merciful!” whined Nora Blyth, appealingly. “It would be so awful to face Miss Yorke. I simply daren’t!”

“No,” said Ursula, scathingly. “I should think not! You know how she’d look at you, don’t you? I shan’t report you, but it’s only out of mercy to Miss Yorke, not to any of you, so you needn’t be under delusions of that sort. I can imagine how Miss Yorke would feel if she knew she had girls like you in the school, and I mean to spare her as long as I can. But you mustn’t imagine you’ll get off scot-free on that account. Your names will be posted on the hall notice-board to-morrow, directly after breakfast, and will remain there for the rest of this term. It’s a fearful disgrace, but you’ve got to choose between that and being reported.”

Betty and her companions went dejectly to bed. To be posted by the head-girl (no one else had the power of doing so) meant that they were debarred from all sports, exeats, or treats whatsoever, as long as their names remained on the board; and when they read above the list the following morning the legend, ‘For disgraceful and dishonourable conduct,’ their cups were very full.

“Still even that,” sighed Joan Hardy, “is better than being reported, and fortunately the teachers never ask the reason if any one’s posted – that’s understood.”

“I can’t look any one in the face,” Winnie moaned. “No one has been posted since that term, years ago, when Daphne Maitland put up some names because of that strike of Nita Tomlinson’s.”

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Perhaps it was some recollection of this same incident which inspired Ursula in her dealings that morning with the guilty juniors. They were all assembled in their own sitting-room at twelve o’clock staring disconsolately at the rain streaming over the sodden downs outside in a fashion which made either games or a walk impossible. When the door opened to admit the head-girl her unwelcome appearance did not add to the gaiety of their gathering, though the furtive glances which they stole at her were on the whole reassuring. She did not look very cross, only troubled and perplexed.

“You know what I’ve come to speak to you about, don’t you?” she asked, gravely, taking a seat beside the fire, which Ruth Semple had just replenished with a log. “I’ve been thinking about it myself, and I believe the best thing I can do is to tell you about something that happened here a long time ago, before any of you ever came to Jane’s. I was only in the Lower Second myself, but I remember it all quite plainly.”

Interested in spite of themselves, the little girls gathered round her chair. Apparently Ursula had not come to scold them after all.

“There was a big girl in the 1st Div. then,” went on Ursula, slowly. “Perhaps you have heard her name – it was Nita Tomlinson, and she was not the best sort of girl to have in a school. She always went hard for her own way, and she didn’t much care what happened so long as she got it. One term she tried to get the whole school to strike because Miss Yorke had shortened the time for hockey-practice – oh! You’ve heard that story, have you? Then you know why Nita’s strike was a failure?”

“Because of Daphne Maitland,” replied Alma, readily enough. “She broke it, and then Nita was horrid to her, and got the rest to send her to Coventry. I know, ‘cos a cousin of mine was in the 1st Div. then, and she has often told me about it.”

“I wonder,” said Ursula, quietly, “if she told you who it was that backed Daphne up – refused to come out on strike at Nita’s bidding, and defied the whole school when they sent Daphne to Coventry? No? Well, I’ll tell you know. It was the 4th Division – juniors like you.”

There was a moment’s pause while her audience digested the moral which they were quite sharp enough to perceive. Ursula let it sink in, then said, as she rose to her feet:

“I hate preaching, kiddies, but I think that’s almost all I need say to you. Just remember that what you do matters very much to the school, even though you are the youngest in it. Don’t be led into doing what you know is wrong, just because bigger girls encourage you in it. Think for yourselves – you’ll be the big girls some day, you know.”

“I say, Ursula,” asked Dolly, awkwardly, “who were the 4th Div. then? Do we know them?”

Ursula turned at the door and smiled back at them.

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“Yes, you do; for they’re still at Jane’s, and if you were asked I think you’d say they’re the girls you respect most of all. They’re Dimsie, and Jean, and Erica – all the Anti-Soppists, in fact.”

“Look here, you others,” said Alma Sinclair tentatively that evening to her form-mates, “don’t you think it would be rather a good plan if we had an Anti-Soppist League of our own? Let’s ask Dimsie and her lot if they’d mind. I believe we’d like it better than that old Candlelight Club, ‘cos we certainly like Dimsie better that Betty Grey.”

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CHAPTER XXVIITHE EASTER CONCERT

JANE’S was astir from garret to cellar. The desks had been cleared out of the big schoolroom, the platform made beautiful with plants and a grand piano; dozens of chairs in rows filled up the body of the room, and dozens of girls, waiting to take charge of their own particular visitors, flitted about the hall and passages like gaily-tinted butterflies. Among them, more sedately, moved the performers in white, with the chastened expressions of those on whom rests a great and solemn responsibility.

Lesley Musgrave, carrying her violin-case down from her study, met Dimsie on the stairs, carefree and joyous, in soft primrose silk, with primrose stockings, and bronze slippers, her heavy brown hair carefully brushed and her brown eyes shining like the sunlit pools in a peat stream.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed the prefect, pausing to survey her. “I thought you were one of the trebles in ‘Skylark.’ You don’t propose to go on the platform in all that, do you?”

“Oh, no!” replied Dimsie, gleefully. “I had a merciful deliverance yesterday evening – didn’t you hear about it? I sang out of tune twice, last night, when we were rehearsing in the lower music-room, and Miss Eversley fired me out. Poor dear! I can quite understand it,” she added, tolerantly. “The strain of this concert is enough to make any one irritable, and of course I was only too delighted.”

“Where are you going to now? The 2nd Div. aren’t supposed to be prancing about the Flat this afternoon. It has been made tidy for any visitors who want to see our studies.”

“I shan’t untidy it,” retorted Dimsie, with an injured air. “I’m looking for Ursula. My people have just come – Mother, and Daddy, and Daph – and they brought me these; I thought some of them would look nice in that broad silk belt of Ursie’s.”

She held out her hands, filled with flaming scarlet anemones.“Of course I can’t wear them,” she said, “but Ursula needs a

touch of colour, and I’m going to put the rest in Miss Yorke’s sitting-room.”

Lesley gasped.“They’re glorious!” she exclaimed. “Sorry I kept you, Dimsie,

when you’re longing to get back to your people. Did you say Daphne was here? I must fly down and see her – good old Daph!”

But Dimsie flushed and caught at her sleeve.“I say, Lesley! Do you mind just for a minute or two? You

see, none of Fenella’s friends are here, so I thought, as it would be rather slow for her, I’d go shares in mine. She’s just beginning to talk to Daphne, and if you go and interrupt just now, she’ll feel she isn’t wanted. You know how humble she’s becoming, nowadays. When I get back from Ursula I shall be able to take her on – ”

Lesley pursed up her lips into a whistle.

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“And how much, may I ask, are you going to see of your parents? No, no, my dear! You leave Fenella to me. I’ve no visitors either, to-day, owing to measles in the old homestead, so I’ll be responsible for Fenella. Anyhow, she’s not such a dead weight as she was before you and Pam took her out to sea and half drowned her.”

“We didn’t,” said Dimsie, “but I’ve no time to argue the matter. If you can look after her, I shall naturally be very grateful. She really isn’t as bad as she might be now.”

She sped upstairs and along the passage to the head-girl’s study, where Ursula was tending Hester Harriman’s ‘cello with loving finger. She wore a soft white georgette frock with full skirts, petal shaped, and a quaint coral clasp fastened her thick plait in place of the usual bow. Her big green eyes were shining, as they had learned to do of late, and in her small peaked face was the faintest touch of colour.

“Oh, come in, Dimsie!” she said. “What lovely flowers! Are these for me? Oh, my dear!”

“Yes,” Dimsie answered, trying the effect of a loose bunch in the folds on the white silk belt. “I thought they’d suit you, and besides, they’re a most encouraging colour. You can’t feel nervous, wearing these.”

Ursula pinned the blazing flours securely into place, and Dimsie noticed that her fingers were quite steady.

“I’m not a scrap nervous,” she declared, calmly, “not even though I know the judges for your scholarship are taking notes on all the performers. But, Dimsie, that’s a secret! Pips let it out to me by mistake, yesterday, and nearly bit her own head off afterwards. She said Miss Yorke wished no one to know, because it would add to every one’s nervousness and make it harder for them to do themselves justice. Pips was awfully worried because she thought she’d handicapped me, but the funny thing is that I’ve never felt more serene in my life. You know I’m not naturally conceited – I believe there’s magic in that ‘cello of Hester’s.”

“It’s bewitched you altogether,” declared Dimsie, less in jest than in earnest. “I heard Dolly Ansell telling her boon companions lately that she couldn’t think why she never dared cheek you nowadays, and Monica Bagot was saying the other evening that she hadn’t expected you’d make such a ripping head. What did I tell you, Ursie, at the beginning of last term? I’m not sure you oughtn’t to apologize to me.”

“Clear out!” laughed Ursula. “Visitors are probably pouring in by this time, and we ought to be downstairs helping with them. Thanks, awfully, for the flowers, Dimsie dear. I shall play all the better, because you gave them to me.”

“I’m not sure,” said Dimsie, doubtfully, as she followed her down, “whether that’s a speech that should be listened to by a conscientious Anti-Soppist – but never mind!”

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The big schoolroom was filling rapidly with a laughing, talkative audience, among whom was a sprinkling of old girls, obviously glad to be back. Dimsie noticed Joyce Lamond, with her keen, clever face; Primrose Garth, pretty in her pale, ethereal way, rather like the flower from which she was named; Phyllis Heathley, looking as though it were much longer than two terms since she had left school behind her; Nancy Harriman, so slim and elegant that it was hard to believe that she had once been as stout as Hester.

“It must be very cheering for Hester,” commented Erica Innes, staring at Nancy with fascinated eyes.

Mabs Hunter was in her element, flitting from one old girl to another in search of news which she hoped to retail to her companions later on with much gusto. Madge Anderson, catching her in one of her flights, ordered a résumé to be prepared and written down that evening for the next number of the school magazine, whereat Mabs looked rather blank.

“Waste not, want not, Madge,” remarked Tony Semple, approvingly. “I’m glad you thought of it. I’ve often felt that Mabs’s undoubted gifts were not being properly utilized.”

“It will save me a lot of trouble, anyhow,” rejoined Madge, placidly.

Dimsie’s mother sat near the front of the audience, looking like a piece of dainty porcelain in her grey furs, with the wonderfully youthful wild rose of her colouring enhanced by the soft waves of her snow-white hair. Both her husband and Dimsie treated her with an air of loving protection, as though she were too young and too fragile to fend for herself in the smallest particular, and she accepted it all as perfectly natural. Near her sat her niece, Daphne, and with Daphne was a fair slim girl beautifully gowned, who carried herself with a certain unconscious dignity. It was Sylvia Drummond, that legendary head-girl, from whose reign the school dated its calendar. New girls and juniors eyed her with awe when she was pointed out by those who remembered her, and wondered how Lesley and Tony and others dared to joke so familiarly with any one so great and remote.

“Sylvia and Daphne were the best heads we’ve ever had at Jane’s,” observed Mabs Hunter in reverential tones, and looked considerably taken aback when Winnie Hatton said tartly:

“Well, I don’t remember them very well, of course, but I can’t see anything wrong with Ursula Grey.”

“I never said there was!” retorted Mabs in astonishment, and refrained only with a great effort of tack from reminding Winnie that it was this model head-girl of hers who had ‘posted’ her and her companions, and had just removed their names from the notice-board that morning, in view of the concert.

“I suppose that’s what they understand and appreciate,” she remarked later to Jean Gordon. “They were always abusing poor old Ursula before she did it.”

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Jean’s father, the Cabinet Minister, was sitting in the same row with the Maitlands, and when Jean left him to join the other trebles in the part-song which was to open the concert, he entered into conversation with Colonel Maitland. Dimsie, seated between her parents, caught snatches of their talk, and one snatch filled her with even greater content than did the sight of the singing-class filing on to the platform without her.

“A fine school, Colonel – I venture to say it’s the best you’ll find anywhere, taking it all round. I’m very pleased with the way in which they’ve brought my girl on this term, though at one time I was afraid – games – more essential features – ”

The rest was lost in a crash of chords from the piano, as Miss Eversley played the opening bars of the accompaniment to ‘The Skylark’, and every one settled down to a programme which past experience promised they would enjoy.

“Just half-way through,” Dimsie whispered to her mother between Lesley’s violin solo and Tony’s song. “I must slip back and sit among the other girls for a few minutes. Erica’s going to recite, and I want to make sure that the juniors clap her properly. You see, she would choose a highbrow sort of poem that the kids will be certain to detest, and their clapping will have to be seen to. We warned Erica how it would be, but we can’t let her suffer for her obstinacy.”

“Of course not,” agreed Mrs. Maitland. “But come back afterwards, Dimsie dear, because I want you to tell me which is Ursula Grey, when she comes on. I’m so interested in all I’ve heard from you about her ‘cello.”

“It isn’t hers, it’s Hester’s.” returned Dimsie, “but I’ll be back two items before then. She plays after the second part-song. Those are her people at the end of the second row. They’ve come to hear Betty sing,” and Dimsie chuckled happily at the surprise in store for Ursula’s relations.

The head-girl was talking to her uncle and aunt with a grave expression on her face, very different from the bright look she had worn half an hour before.

“My dear,” Mrs. Grey was saying, repressively, “I can’t say I admire those loud flaunting flowers you have got in your belt. In my opinion they vulgarize your whole appearance, and you cannot afford to be careless, Ursula. I always think it is a mistake for a girl who is not particularly good looking to wear anything which may attract attention to herself, but of course all young people consider their taste superior to that of their elders. When is Betty to sing? What? After the next pianoforte solo? Ah, yes – I see! Dear child! She is sure to get an encore. I thought her voice very much improved last Christmas. Are you to accompany her?”

“No, aunt. Miss Eversley is to play all accompaniments this afternoon.”

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“But,” peering at her programme, “I see your name down here. What is that? A ‘cello solo? But, my dear Ursula, you cannot play the ‘cello.”

“I’m only just beginning,” replied Ursula, nervously. “I’ve been learning in my spare time, for my own pleasure, and Miss Phipps has – er – helped me.”

“But surely, under these circumstances, it is rather presumptuous to attempt playing in public? Besides, I cannot help feeling this is rather deceitful of you, Ursula. You know your uncle’s and my wishes with regard to your music; at least we made them quite plain to Miss Yorke. All your attention must be given to the piano, and your training as an accompanist. I am not pleased with you, Ursula – not at all pleased – and neither, I am sure, is your uncle.”

“Not at all pleased,” echoed Mr. Grey, obediently.Ursula said nothing, but Lesley (who was sitting behind with

Fenella and had heard the whole conversation) saw that she drooped a little, and with a burst of indignant pity, Lesley found herself praying that Ursula’s performance might be the success of the afternoon. There and then she had a sudden glimpse into the head-girl’s home life – a glimpse which was accentuated by her knowledge of selfish, shrewish Betty. It was the one thing needed to strengthen and cement her new friendship with Ursula – this demand on her generous sympathies – and when her friend went up on to the platform, carrying her borrowed instrument, Lesley wrung her hands together so tightly that the knuckles stood out like polished ivory.

“You needn’t look so agitated,” murmured Dimsie’s cool little voice as she slipped past on her way back to her seat, having attended successfully to Erica’s meed of applause. “Ursula’s going to bring the house down, right enough. You ask Pips.”

She was not mistaken. Rapid as Ursula’s progress had been, she was still only able to attempt simple little airs which made no great demand upon either knowledge or execution; but the spirit and fire with which she played, the feeling and sympathy which she imparted to them, went straight home to her listeners’ hearts. Perhaps Dimsie’s extravagant faith had not been so far astray, after all, when she had proclaimed Ursula a genius.

She was encored vehemently and with determination, but (small though her repertoire was at this stage) Miss Phipps had wisely prepared her for this emergency, and she gave them a gay little tripping tune which caused one of the Trustees to remark to another of his brethren:

“Why, bless my soul! I always thought the ‘cello was a solemn instrument. Sounds almost disrespectful towards it to play a giggling thing like that!”

Mr. and Mrs. Grey sat dumbfounded and listened, not only to their niece’s music, but to the remarks which were freely made all round them. That Ursula should be the object of all this outspoken

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admiration, while Betty with her wonderful soprano had only received a very ordinary measure of applause, seemed to them quite incomprehensible.

But there was more to follow. At the close of the concert the Arch-Trustee, prompted by Miss Yorke, rose and addressed the audience. He told them the story of the Vandyck from start to finish, including the account of its rescue and restoration, and gave it, indeed, with a wealth of detail which Miss Yorke considered unnecessary and a little injudicious, with Dimsie, the heroine of the tale, seated among them.

(“Thank goodness, anyhow,” the head mistress breathed her neighbour, “that child’s head is too well screwed on to be easily turned!”)

He then spoke of the satisfactory sale of the pictures, and the use to which the money was being put.

“I do not think many people are aware,” he concluded, – “I believe the girls themselves are quite unaware – that there has been ‘a chiel amang us takin’ notes’, and that the musical pupils of the Jane Willard have been judged this very adternoon for this new scholarship.” A thrill ran through the hearers, and the white-clad girls fluttered. “The eminent member of the Royal Academy of Music, who kindly gave his services for that purpose, wishes me now to announce the result. In his opinion, the pupil who will be most likely to profit by the advantage, and thereby shed fresh lustre on her school, is Miss Ursula Grey. I therefore beg to inform you that Miss Ursula Grey, present head-girl of the Vandyck scholarship.”

After all, only Ursula herself was astonished at the burst of cheering which greeted her as she rose, obedient to Miss Phipps’s whispered injunctions, to bow her thanks. Somehow or other, she seemed to have attained popularity and a position in the school, and at the bottom of her heart she felt convinced that it was all Dimsie Maitland’s doing. Directly or indirectly, she owed position, ‘cello, and scholarship to Dimsie, and – perhaps greater than any of these, when time should have tested it – her newfound friendship Lesley. She tried to say as much to her benefactress later on, but Dimsie declined even to argue the point.

“What rubbish! I’ve only barged in a great deal more than I had any business to do. I say, Ursula! I always used to think your eyes were like a hungry kid’s outside a baker’s shop, but now – ”

“Well?” asked Ursula, laughing.“Now,” said Dimsie, solemnly, “they’re like the same kid’s

when it’s got inside and helped itself.”

Sylvia Drummond and Daphne were rather silent as Colonel Maitland’s car whirled them along the straight Westover road en route for town. They were sitting alone behind, for Mrs. Maitland

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preferred to be in front with her husband, but despite the opportunity, conversation languished.

It was Daphne who spoke first.“Well?” she asked, softly, “what did you think of the old

place, Sylvia? Not much changed, is it?”“No,” said Sylvia, “and yet – is it really only three years since

we left? It gave me quite a turn to see the kids – our kids – grown nearly into seniors, and quiet little Ursula Grey filling the place that was ours – and filling it jolly well, too. The school hasn’t changed, Daph, but everybody in it – ”

“No, not quite everybody,” Daphne reminded her with a contented sigh. “There’s always Miss Yorke, and when she comes forward to welcome us, one feels at home again, and not a day older than sixteen. I wasn’t quite sure if I’d like going back, Sylvia, and I believe you were afraid, yourself, of feeling strange, but Miss Yorke makes all the difference.”

“Yes,” assented Sylvia, “she does. And isn’t it wonderful to see how well the world wags on without us!”

Daphne chuckled softly.“I never thought it couldn’t,” she returned, “and neither did

you, my dear! After all, we only did the best we could, and Jane’s will never lack girls to do that for her. It’s the tradition of the school.”

THE END

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