"You darling!" she said, kissing his portrait. "I think you're a thousand times nicer-looking than any of the other girls' fathers! I do wonder when you'll get leave and come home. If it's not in the holidays I declare I'll run away and see you!"

In her form Marjorie was making fair progress. She liked Miss Duckworth, her teacher, and on the whole did not find the work too hard; her brains were bright when she chose to use them, and at present the thought of the Christmas report, which would be sent out for Daddy to look at, spurred on her efforts. So far Marjorie had not made any very great chums at school. She inclined to Mollie Simpson, but Mollie, like herself, was of a rather masterful disposition, and squabbles almost invariably ensued before the two had been long together. With the three girls who shared her dormitory she was on quite friendly, though not warm, terms. They had at first considered Marjorie inclined to "boss", and had made her thoroughly understand that, as a new girl, such an attitude could not be tolerated in her. So long as she was content to manage her own cubicle and not theirs they were pleasant enough, but they united in a firm triumvirate of resistance whenever symptoms of swelled head began to arise in their room-mate.

One evening about the end of November the four girls were dressing for supper in their dormitory.

"It's a grizzly nuisance having to change one's frock!" groused Betty Moore. "It seems so silly to array oneself in white just to eat supper and do a little sewing afterwards. I hate the bother."

"Do you?" exclaimed Irene Andrews. "Now I like it. I think it would be perfectly piggy to wear the same serge dress from breakfast to bedtime. Brackenfield scores over some schools in that. They certainly make things nice for us in the evenings."

"Um—yes, tolerably," put in Sylvia Page. "We don't get enough music, in my opinion."

"We have a concert every Saturday night, and charades on Wednesdays for those who care to act."

"I'd like gym practice every evening," said Betty. "Then I needn't change my frock. When I leave school I mean to go on a farm, and wear corduroy knickers and leggings and thick boots all the time. It'll be gorgeous. I love anything to do with horses, so perhaps they'll let me plough. What shall you do, Marjorie?"

"Something to help the war, if it isn't over. I'll nurse, or drive a wagon, or ride a motor-bike with dispatches."

"I'd rather ride a horse than a bike any day," said Betty. "I used to hunt before the war. You needn't smile. I was twelve when the war began, and I'd been hunting since I was seven, and got my first pony. It was a darling little brown Shetland named Sheila. I cried oceans when it died. My next was a grey one named Charlie, and Tom, our coachman, taught me to take fences. He put up some little hurdles in a field, and kept making them higher and higher till I could get Charlie over quite well. Oh, it was sport! I wish I'd a pony here."

"There used to be riding lessons before the war," sighed Irene. "Mother had promised me I should learn. But now, of course, there are no horses to be had, and the riding-master, Mr. Hall, has gone to the front. I wonder if things will ever be the same again? If I don't learn to ride properly while I'm young I'll never have a decent seat afterwards, I suppose."

"You certainly won't," Betty assured her. "You ought to have begun when you were seven."

"Oh dear! And I shall be sixteen on Wednesday!"

"Is it your birthday next Wednesday?"

"Yes, but it won't be much fun. We're not allowed to do anything particular, worse luck."

It was one of the Brackenfield rules that no notice must be taken of birthdays. Girls might receive presents from home, but they were not to claim any special privileges or exemptions, to ask for exeats, or to bring cakes into the dining-hall. In a school of more than two hundred pupils it would have been difficult continually to make allowances first to one girl and then to another, and though in a sense all recognized the necessity of the rule, those whose birthdays fell during term-time bemoaned their hard fate.

It struck Marjorie as a very cheerless proceeding. She found an opportunity, when Irene was out of the way, to talk to her room-mates on the subject.

"Look here," she began. "It's Renie's birthday on Wednesday. I do think it's the limit that we're not supposed to take any notice of it. I vote we get up a little blow-out on our own for her. Let's have a beano after we're in bed."

"What a blossomy idea! Good for you, Marjorie! I'm your man if there's any fun on foot," agreed Betty enthusiastically.

"It'll be lovely; but how are we going to manage the catering department?" enquired Sylvia.

"Some of the Juniors will be going on parade to Whitecliffe on Wednesday. I'll ask Dona to ask them to get a few things for us. We must have a cake, and some candles, and some cocoa, and some condensed milk, and anything else they can smuggle. Are you game?"

"Rather! If you'll undertake to be general of the commissariat department."

"All serene! Don't say a word about it to anyone else at St. Elgiva's. I'll swear Dona to secrecy, and the St. Ethelberta kids aren't likely to tell. They do the same themselves sometimes. And don't on any account let Renie have wind of it. It's to be a surprise."

On Wednesday evening, before supper, Marjorie met Dona by special appointment in the gymnasium, and the latter hastily thrust a parcel into her arms.

"You wouldn't believe what difficulty I had to get it," she whispered. "Mona and Peachy weren't at all willing. They said they didn't see why they should take risks for St. Elgiva's, and you might run your own beano. I had to bribe them with ever so many of my best crests before I could make them promise. They say Miss Jones has got suspicious now about bulgy coats, and actually feels them. They have to sling bags under their skirts and it's so uncomfy walking home. However, they did their best for you. There's a cake, and three boxes of Christmas-tree candles, and a tin of condensed milk. They couldn't get the cocoa, because just as they were going to buy it Miss Jones came up. Everything's dearer, and you didn't give them enough. Mona paid, and you owe her fivepence halfpenny extra."

"I'll give it you to-morrow at lunch-time. Thank them both most awfully. I think they're regular trumps. I'll give them some of my crests if they like—I'm not really collecting and don't want them. Think of us about midnight if you happen to wake. I wish you could join us."

"So do I. But that's quite out of the question. Never mind; we have bits of fun ourselves sometimes."

Marjorie managed to convey her parcel unnoticed to No. 9 Dormitory. According to arrangement, Betty and Sylvia were waiting there for her. Irene, still oblivious of the treat in store for her, had not yet come upstairs. The three confederates undid their package, and gloated over its contents. The cake was quite a respectable one for war-time, to judge from appearances it had cherries in it, and there was a piece of candied peel on the top. The little boxes of Christmas-tree candles held half a dozen apiece, assorted colours. They took sixteen of them, sharpened the ends, and stuck them down into the cake.

"When it's lighted it will look A 1," purred Betty.

"How are we going to open the tin of condensed milk?" asked Sylvia.

"It's one of those tins you prise up," said Marjorie jauntily. "Give it to me. A penny's the best weapon. Here you are! Quite easy."

"Yes, but there's another lid underneath. You're not at the milk yet."

Marjorie's feathers began to fall. She was not quite as clever as she had thought.

"Here, I'll do it," said Betty, snatching the tin. "Take down a picture and pull the nail out of the wall, and give me a boot to hammer with. You've to go through this arrow point and then the thing prises up. Steady! Here we are!"

"Cave! Renie's coming. Stick the things away!"

Marjorie hastily seized the feast, and bestowed it inside her wardrobe. Thanks to the drawn curtains of her cubicle Irene had not obtained even a glimpse.

"What are you three doing inside there?" she asked curiously, but no one would tell. The secret was not to be given away too soon.

The conspirators had decided that it would be wiser not to ask any other girls to join the party, but to keep the affair entirely to their own dormitory.

"They'll make such a noise if we have them in, and it will wake the Acid Drop and bring her down upon us," said Sylvia.

"Besides which, it's only a small cake and wouldn't go round," stated Betty practically.

Irene went to bed in a fit of the blues. Only half her presents had turned up, and two of her aunts had not written to her.

"It's been a rotten birthday," she groaned. "I knew it would be hateful having it at school. Why wasn't I born in the holidays? There ought to be a law regulating births to certain times of the year. If I were head of a school I'd let every girl go home for her birthday. Don't speak to me! I feel scratchy!"

Her room-mates chuckled, and for the present left her alone. Sylvia began to sing a song about tears turning to smiles and sorrow to joy, until Irene begged her to stop.

"It's the limit to-night! When I'm blue the one thing I can't stand is anybody trying to cheer me up. It gets on my nerves!"

"Sleep it off, old sport!" laughed Marjorie. "I don't mind betting that when you wake up you'll feel in a very different frame of mind."

At which remark the others spluttered.

"You'll find illumination, in fact," hinnied Betty.

"I think you're all most unkind!" quavered Irene.

The confederates had decided to wait until the magic hour of midnight before they began their beano. They felt it was wiser to give Miss Norton plenty of time to go to bed and fall asleep. She often sat up late in the study reading, and they did not care to risk a visit from her. A bracket clock on the stairs sounded the quarters, and Marjorie, as the lightest sleeper, undertook to keep awake and listen to its chimes. It was rather difficult not to doze when the room was dark and her companions were breathing quietly and regularly in the other beds. The time between the quarters seemed interminable. At eleven o'clock she heard Miss Norton walk along the corridor and go into her bedroom. After that no other sound disturbed the establishment, and Marjorie repeated poetry and even dates and French verbs to keep herself awake.

At last the clock chimed its full range and struck twelve times. She sat up and felt for the matches.

Betty and Sylvia, who had gone to sleep prepared, woke with the light, but it was a more difficult matter to rouse Irene. She turned over in bed and grunted, and they were obliged to haul her into a sitting position before she would open her eyes.

"What's the matter? Zepps?" she asked drowsily.

"No, no; it's your birthday party. Look!" beamed the others.

On a chair by her bedside stood the cake, resplendent with its sixteen little lighted candles, and also the tin of condensed milk. Irene blinked at them in amazement.

"Jubilate! What a frolicsome joke!" she exclaimed. "I say, this is awfully decent of you!"

"We told you you'd wake up in better spirits, old sport!" purred Marjorie. "I flatter myself those candles look rather pretty. You can tell your fortune by blowing them out."

"It's a shame to touch them," objected Irene.

"But we want some cake," announced Betty and Sylvia.

"Go on, give a good puff!" prompted Marjorie. "Then we can count how many you've blown out. Five! This year, next year, some time, never! This year! Goody! You'll have to be quick about it. It's almost time to be putting up the banns. Now again. Tinker, tailor, soldier! Lucky you! My plum stones generally give me beggar-man or thief. Silk, satin, muslin, rags; silk, satin! You've got all the luck to-night. Coach, carriage! You're not blowing fair, Renie! You did that on purpose so that it shouldn't come wheelbarrow! Only one candle left—let's leave it lighted while we cut the rest."

Everybody agreed that the cake was delicious. They felt they had never tasted a better in their lives, although it was a specimen of war-time cookery.

"I wish we could have got some cocoa," sighed Betty. "I tried to borrow a little and a spirit lamp from Meg Hutchinson, but she says they can't get any methylated spirit now."

"Condensed milk is delicious by itself," suggested Sylvia.

"Sorry we haven't a spoon," apologized Marjorie.

For lack of other means of getting at their sweet delicacy the girls dipped lead-pencils into the condensed milk and took what they could.

"It's rather like white honey," decided Betty after a critical taste. "Yes—I certainly think it's quite topping. It makes me think of Russian toffee."

"Don't speak of toffee. We haven't made any since sugar went short. Jemima! I shall eat heaps when the war's over!"

"You greedy pig! You ought to leave it for the soldiers."

"But there won't be any soldiers then."

"Yes, there'll be some for years and years afterwards. They'll take some time, you know, to get well in the hospitals."

"Then there's a chance for me to nurse," exclaimed Marjorie. "I'm always so afraid the war will all be over before I've left school, and——"

"I say, what's that noise?" interrupted Irene anxiously. "If the Acid Drop drops on us she'll be very acid indeed."

For reply, Marjorie popped the condensed milk tin into her wardrobe, blew out the candle, and hopped into bed post-haste, an example which was followed by the others with equal dispatch. They were only just in time, for a moment later the door opened, and Miss Norton, clad in a blue dressing-gown, flashed her torchlight into the room. Seeing the girls all in bed, and apparently fast asleep, she did not enter, but closed the door softly, and they heard her footsteps walking away down the corridor.

"A near shave!" murmured Marjorie.

"Sh! sh! Don't let's talk. She may come back and listen outside," whispered Sylvia, with a keen distrust for Miss Norton's notions of vigilance.

Next morning the girls in No. 8 Dormitory mentioned that they had heard a noise during the night.

"Somebody walked down the passage," proclaimed Lennie Jackson. "Enid thought it was a ghost."

"I thought it was somebody walking in her sleep," maintained Daisy Shaw.

"Oh, how horrid!" shivered Barbara Wright. "I'd be scared to death of anyone sleep-walking. I'd rather meet a ghost any day."

"Did you see somebody?" enquired Betty casually.

"No, it was only what we heard—stealthy footsteps, you know, that moved softly along, just as they're described in a horrible book I read in the holidays—The Somnambulist it was called—about a man who was always going about in the night with fixed, stony eyes, and appearing on the tops of roofs and all sorts of spooky places. It gives me the creeps to think of it. Ugh!"

"When people walk in their sleep it's fearfully dangerous to awaken them," commented Daisy.

"Is it? Why?"

"Oh, it gives them such a terrible shock, they often don't get over it for ages! You ought to take them gently by the hand and lead them back to bed."

"And suppose they won't go?"

"Ask me a harder! I say, there's the second bell. Scootons nous vite! Do you want to get an order mark?"



CHAPTER VIII

A Sensation

"Look here," said Betty to her room-mates that evening, "those poor girls in No. 8 are just yearning for a sensation. Don't you think we ought to be philanthropic and supply it for them?"

"Yearning for a what?" asked Marjorie, pausing with a sponge in her hand and reaching for the towel.

"Yearning for a sensation," repeated Betty. "Life at an ordinary boarding-school is extremely dull. 'The daily round, the common task', is apt to pall. What we all crave for is change, and especially change of a spicy, unexpected sort that makes you jump."

"I don't want to jump, thanks."

"Perhaps you don't, but those girls in No. 8 do. They're longing for absolute creeps—only a ghost, or a burglar, or an air raid, or something really stirring, would content them."

"I'm afraid they'll have to go discontented then."

"Certainly not. As I remarked before, we ought to be philanthropic and provide a little entertainment to cheer them up. I have a plan."

"Proceed, O Queen, and disclose it then."

"Barbara Wright suggested it to me—not intentionally, of course. We'll play a rag on them. One of us must pretend to sleep-walk and go into their room. It ought to give them spasms. Do you catch on?"

"Rather!" replied the others.

"But who's going to do the sleep-walking business?" asked Irene.

"Marjorie's the best actress. We'll leave it to her. Give us a specimen now, old sport, and show us how you'll do it. Oh, that's ripping! It'll take them in no end. I should like to see Barbara's face."

Marjorie was always perfectly ready for anything in the way of a practical joke, especially if it were a new variety. The girls had grown rather tired of apple-pie beds or sewn-up nightdress sleeves, but nobody had yet thought of somnambulism.

"I'm not going to stop awake again, though, until twelve," she objected. "I had enough of it last night. It's somebody else's turn."

"Whoever happens to wake must call the others," suggested Irene.

"We'll leave it at that," they agreed.

For two successive nights, however, all four girls slept soundly until the seven-o'clock bell rang. They were generally tired, and none of them suffered from insomnia. On the third night Betty heard the clock strike two, and, going into Marjorie's cubicle, tickled her awake.

"Get up! You've got to act Lady Macbeth!" she urged. "Best opportunity for a star performance you've ever had in your life. You'll take the house."

"I'm so sleepy," yawned Marjorie. "And," putting one foot out of bed, "it's so beastly cold!"

"Never mind, the fun will be worth it. We're going to wait about to hear them squeal. It'll be precious. No, you musn't put on your dressing-gown and bedroom slippers—sleep-walkers never do—you must go as you are."

"Play up, Marjorie!" decreed the others, who were also awake.

Thus encouraged, Marjorie rose to the occasion and began to act her part. There was one difficulty to be overcome. At night a lamp was left burning in the corridor, but the bedrooms were in darkness. How were the occupants of No. 8 going to see her? They must be decoyed somehow from their beds. She decided to open the door of their room so as to let in a little light, then enter, walk round their cubicles, and go out again on to the landing, where she hoped they would follow her. Softly she entered the door of No. 8, and advanced in a dramatic attitude with outstretched hands, in imitation of a picture she had once seen of Lady Macbeth. The light from the corridor, though dim, was quite sufficient to render objects distinct. At the first stealthy steps Daisy Shaw awoke promptly. Her shuddering little squeal aroused the others, and they gazed spellbound at the white-robed figure parading in ghostly fashion round their room. Avoiding the furniture, Marjorie, with arms still outstretched, tacked back into the corridor. Exactly as she had anticipated, the girls rose and followed her. They were huddled together at the door of their dormitory, watching her with awestruck faces, when an awful thing happened. Another door opened, and Miss Norton, blue dressing-gown and bedroom slippers and all, appeared on the scene.

"What's the matter?" she asked sharply.

"Marjorie Anderson's walking in her sleep!" whispered the girls.

Now in this horrible emergency Marjorie had to act promptly or not at all. She decided that her best course was to go on shamming somnambulism. She walked down the corridor, therefore, with a rapid, stealthy step.

Miss Norton turned on the frightened girls, and, whispering: "Don't disturb her on any account!" followed in the wake of her pupil.

Then began a most exciting promenade. Marjorie, with eyes set in a stony glare, marched downstairs into the hall. She stood for a moment by the front door, as if speculating whether to unlock it or not. She could hear Miss Norton breathing just behind her, and was almost tempted to try the experiment of shooting back at least one bolt, but decided it was wiser not to run the risk. Instead she walked into the house mistress's study, turned over a few papers in an abstracted fashion, threw them back on to the table, and went towards the window. Here again Miss Norton shadowed her closely, evidently suspecting that she had designs of opening it and climbing out. She turned round, however, and, with apparently unseeing eyes, stared in the teacher's face, and stole stealthily back up the stairs. At her own bedroom door she paused, in seeming uncertainty as to whether to enter or not. Miss Norton laid a gentle hand on her arm, and guided her quietly into her room and towards her bed. Marjorie decided to take the hint. Wandering about in a nightdress, with bare feet, was a very cold performance, and it was all she could do to prevent herself from palpably shivering. Keeping up her part, she gave a gentle little sigh, got into bed, laid her head on her pillow, and closed her eyes. She could feel Miss Norton pulling the clothes over her, and, with another quivering sigh, she sank apparently into deepest slumber. The teacher stayed a few minutes watching her, then, as she never moved, went very quietly away and closed the door after her.

Nothing was said at head-quarters next morning about the night's adventures, but Miss Norton looked rather carefully at Marjorie, asked her if she felt well, and told her she was to go to Nurse Hall every day at eleven in the Ambulance Room for a dose of tonic. Marjorie, who had not intended her practical joke to run to such lengths, felt rather ashamed of herself, but dared not confess.

"There'd be a terrific scene if Norty knew," she said to Betty, and Betty agreed with her.

In the afternoon, when Marjorie ran up to her cubicle for a pocket-handkerchief, to her surprise she found Mrs. Morrison there superintending a man who was measuring the window. She wondered why, for nothing, apparently, was wrong with it; but nobody dared ask questions of the Empress, so she took her clean handkerchief and fled. Later on that day she learned the reason.

"We're to have brass bars across our window," Sylvia informed her. "I heard the Empress and the Acid Drop talking about it. They're fearfully expensive in war-time, but the Empress said: 'Well, the expense cannot be helped; I daren't risk letting the poor child jump through the window. Her door must certainly be locked every night.' And Norty said: 'Yes, it's a very dangerous thing.'"

"Are they putting the bars up for me?" exclaimed Marjorie.

"Of course. Don't you see, they think you walk in your sleep and might kill yourself unless you're protected. Nice thing it'll be to have bars across our window and our door locked at night. It will feel like prison. I wish to goodness you'd never played such a trick!"

"Well, I'm sure you all wanted me to. It wasn't my idea to begin with," retorted Marjorie.

Great was the indignation in No. 9 at the prospect of this defacement of their pretty window. The girls talked the matter over.

"Something's got to be done!" said Betty decidedly.



"Yes," groaned Marjorie, "I shall have to own up. There's nothing else for it. But I'm not going to tell the Acid Drop. I'm going straight to the Empress herself. She'll be the more decent of the two."

"I believe you're right," agreed Betty. "Look here, it was my idea, so I'm going with you."

"And I was in it too," said Irene.

"And so was I," said Sylvia.

"Then we'll all four go in a body," decided Betty. "Come along, let's beard the lioness in her den and get it over."

Mrs. Morrison was extremely surprised at the tale the girls had to tell. She frowned, but looked considerably relieved.

"As you have told me yourselves I will let it pass," she commented, "but you must each give me your word of honour that there shall be no more of these silly practical jokes. I don't consider it at all clever to try to frighten your companions. Jokes such as these sometimes have very serious results. Will you each promise?"

"Yes, Mrs. Morrison, on my honour," replied four meek voices in chorus.



CHAPTER IX

St. Ethelberta's

The immediate result to Marjorie of her mock somnambulistic adventure was that she got a very bad cold in her head, due no doubt to walking about the passages with bare feet and only her nightdress on. It was highly aggravating, because she was considered an invalid, and her Wednesday exeat was cancelled. She had to watch from the infirmary window when Dona, escorted by Miss Jones, started off for The Tamarisks. Dona waved a sympathetic good-bye as she passed. She was a kind-hearted little soul, and genuinely sorry for Marjorie, though it was rather a treat for her to have Elaine quite to herself for the afternoon. Mrs. Anderson had been justified in her satisfaction that the sisters had not been placed in the same hostel. In Marjorie's presence Dona was nothing but an echo or a shadow, with no personality of her own. At St. Ethelberta's, however, she had begun in her quiet way to make a place for herself. She was already quite a favourite among her house-mates. They teased her a little, but in quite a good-tempered fashion, and Dona, accustomed to the continual banter of a large family, took all chaffing with the utmost calm. She was happier at school than she had expected to be. Miss Jones, the hostel mistress, was genial and warm-hearted, and kept well in touch with her girls. She talked to them about their various hobbies, and was herself interested in so many different things that she could give valuable hints on photography, bookbinding, raffia-plaiting, poker-work, chip-carving, stencilling, pen-painting, or any other of the handicrafts in which the Juniors dabbled. She was artistic, and had done quite a nice pastel portrait of Belle Miller, whose Burne-Jones profile and auburn hair made her an excellent model. Miss Jones had no lack of sitters when she felt disposed to paint, for every girl in the house would have been only too flattered to be asked.

Dona was a greater success in her hostel than in the schoolroom. After her easy lessons with a daily governess she found the standard of her form extremely high. She was not fond of exerting her brains, and her exercises were generally full of "howlers". Miss Clark, her form mistress, was apt to wax eloquent over her mistakes, but she took the teacher's sarcasms with the same stolidity as the girls' teasings. It was a saying in the class that nothing could knock sparks out of Dona. Yet she possessed a certain reserve of shrewd common sense which was sometimes apt to astonish people. If she took the trouble to evolve a plan she generally succeeded in carrying it out.

Now on this particular afternoon when she went alone to The Tamarisks she had a very special scheme in her head. She had struck up an immensely hot friendship with a Scottish girl named Ailsa Donald, whose tastes resembled her own. Dona was in No. 2 Dormitory and Ailsa in No. 5, and it was the ambition of both to be placed together in adjoining cubicles. Miss Jones sometimes allowed changes to be made, but, as it happened, nobody in No. 2 was willing to give up her bed to Ailsa or in No. 5 to yield place to Dona, so the chums must perforce remain apart. They spent every available moment of the day together, but after the 9.15 bell they separated.

Dona had asked each of her room-mates to consider whether No. 5 was not really a more sunny, airy, and comfortable bedroom than No. 2.

"The dressing-tables are bigger," she urged to Mona Kenworthy. "You'd have far more room to spread out your bottles of scent and hairwash and cremolia and things."

"Thanks, I've plenty of room where I am, and my things are all nicely settled. I'm not going to move for anybody, and that's flat," returned Mona.

Dona next tackled Nellie Mason, and suggested warily that No. 5, being farther away from Miss Jones's bedroom, afforded greater opportunities for laughter and jokes without so much danger of being pounced upon. Her fish, however, refused to swallow the tempting bait, and Beatrice Elliot, whom she also sounded on the subject, was equally inflexible.

Most girls would have accepted the inevitable, but Dona was not to be vanquished. She had a dark plan at the bottom of her mind, and consulted Elaine about it that afternoon. Elaine laughed, waxed enthusiastic, and suggested a visit to a bird-fancier's shop down in the town. It was a queer little place, with cages full of canaries in the window, and an aquarium, and some delightful fox-terrier puppies and Persian kittens on sale, also a squirrel which was running round and round in a kind of revolving wheel.

Elaine and Dona entered, and asked for white mice.

"Mice?" said the old man in charge. "I've got a pair here that will just suit you. They're real beauties, they are. Tame? They'll eat off your hand. Look here!"

He fumbled under the counter, and brought out a cage, from which he produced two fine and plump specimens of the mouse tribe. They justified his eulogy, for they allowed Dona to handle them and stroke them without exhibiting any signs of fear or displeasure.

"Suppose I were to let them run about the room," she enquired, "could I get them back into their cage again?"

"Easy as anything, missie. All you've got to do is to put a bit of cheese inside. They'll smell it directly, and come running home, and then you shut the door on them. They'll do anything for cheese. Give them plenty of sawdust to burrow in, and some cotton-wool to make a nest, and they're perfectly happy. Shall I wrap the cage up in brown paper for you?"

Dona issued from the shop carrying her parcel, and with a bland smile upon her face.

"If these don't clear Mona out of No. 2 I don't know what will," she chuckled.

"How are you going to smuggle them in to Brackenfield?" enquired Elaine. "I think all parcels that you take in are examined. You can't put a cage of mice in your pocket or under your skirt."

"I've thought of that," returned Dona. "You and Auntie are going to take me back to-night. I shall pop the parcel under a laurel bush as we go up the drive, then before supper I'll manage to dash out and get it, and take it upstairs to my room. See?"

"I think you're a thoroughly naughty, schemeing girl," laughed Elaine, "and that I oughtn't to be conniving at such shameful tricks."

Shakespeare tells us that

"Some cannot abide a gaping pig, Nor some the harmless necessary cat".

Many people have their pet dislikes, and as to Mona Kenworthy, the very mention of mice sent a series of cold shivers down her back.

"Suppose one were to run up my skirt, I'd have a fit. I really should die!" she would declare dramatically. "The thought of them makes me absolutely creep. I shouldn't mind them so much if they didn't scuttle so hard. Black beetles? Oh, I'd rather have cockroaches any day than mice!"

It was with the knowledge of this aversion on the part of Mona that Dona laid her plans. She left the cage under the laurel bush in the drive, and by great good luck succeeded in fetching it unobserved and conveying it to her dormitory, where she unwrapped it and stowed it away in her wardrobe. When she had undressed that evening, and just before the lights were turned out, she placed the cage under her bed. She waited until Miss Clark had made her usual tour of inspection, and the door of the room was shut for the night, then, leaning over, she opened the cage and allowed its occupants to escape. They made full use of their liberty, and at once began to scamper about, investigate the premises, and enjoy themselves.

"What's that?" said Mona, sitting up in bed.

Dona did not reply. She pretended to be asleep already.

"It sounds like a mouse," volunteered Nellie Mason.

"Oh, good gracious! I hope it's not in the room."

The old saying, "as quiet as a mouse", is not always justified in solid fact. On this occasion the two small intruders made as much noise as tigers. They began to gnaw the skirting board, and the sound of their sharp little teeth echoed through the room. Mona waxed quite hysterical.

"If it runs over my bed I shall shriek," she declared.

"Perhaps it's not really in the room, it's probably in the wainscot," suggested Beatrice Elliot.

"I tell you I heard it run across the floor. Oh, I say, there it is again!"

The frolicsome pair continued their revels for some time, and kept the girls wide awake. When Mona fell asleep at last it was with her head buried under the bed-clothes. Very early in the morning Dona got up, tempted her pets back with some cheese which she had brought from The Tamarisks, and put the cage into her wardrobe again.

Directly after breakfast Mona went to Miss Jones, and on the plea that her bed was so near the window that she constantly took cold and suffered from toothache, begged leave to exchange quarters with Ailsa Donald, who had a liking for draughts, and was willing to move out of No. 2 into No. 5. Miss Jones was accommodating enough to grant permission, and the two girls transferred their belongings without delay.

"I wouldn't sleep another night in that dormitory for anything you could offer me," confided Mona to her particular chum Kathleen Drummond. "I simply can't tell you what I suffered. I'm very sensitive about mice. I get it from my mother—neither of us can bear them."

"You might have set a trap," suggested Kathleen.

"But think of hearing it go off and catch the mouse! No, I never could feel happy in No. 5 again. Miss Jones is an absolute darling to let me change."

Dona's share in the matter was not suspected by anybody. Her plot had succeeded admirably. Her only anxiety was what to do with the mice, for she could not keep them as permanent tenants of her wardrobe. The risk of discovery was great. Fortunately she managed to secure the good offices of a friendly housemaid, who carried away the cage, and promised to present the mice to her young brother when she went for her night out to Whitecliffe. To nobody but Ailsa did Dona confide the trick she had played, and Ailsa, being of Scottish birth, could keep a secret.



CHAPTER X

The Red Cross Hospital

There was just one more exeat for Marjorie and Dona before the holidays. Christmas was near now, and they were looking forward immensely to returning home. They had, on the whole, enjoyed the term, but the time had seemed long, and to Dona especially the last weeks dragged interminably.

"I'm counting every day, and crossing it off in my calendar," she said to Marjorie, as the two stepped along towards The Tamarisks. "I'm getting so fearfully excited. Just think of seeing Mother and Peter and Cyril and Joan again! And there's always the hope that Daddy might get leave and come home. Oh, it would be splendiferous if he did! I suppose there's no chance for any of the boys?"

"They didn't seem to think it likely," returned Marjorie. "Bevis certainly said he'd have no leave till the spring, and Leonard doesn't expect his either. Larry may have a few days, but you know he said we mustn't count upon it."

"Oh dear, I suppose not! I should have liked Larry to be home for Christmas. I wish they'd send him to the camp near Whitecliffe. He promised he'd come and take me out, and give me tea at a cafe. It would be such fun. I want to go to that new cafe that's just been opened in King Street, it looks so nice."

"Perhaps we can coax Elaine to take us there this afternoon," suggested Marjorie.

But when the girls reached The Tamarisks, their cousin had quite a different plan for their entertainment.

"We're going to the Red Cross Hospital," she announced. "I've always promised to show you over, only it was never convenient before. To-day's a great day. The men are to have their Christmas tree."

"Before Christmas!" exclaimed Dona.

"Why, yes, it doesn't much matter. The reason is that some very grand people can come over to-day to be present, so of course our commandant seized the opportunity. It's Lord and Lady Greystones, and Admiral Webster. There'll be speeches, you know, and all that kind of thing. It'll please the Tommies. Oh, here's Grace! she's going with me. She's one of our V.A.D.'s. Grace, may I introduce my two cousins, Marjorie and Dona Anderson? This is Miss Chalmers."

Both Elaine and her friend were dressed in their neat V.A.D. uniforms. Marjorie scanned them with admiring and envious eyes as the four girls set off together for the hospital.

"I'd just love to be a V.A.D.," she sighed. "Oh, I wish I were old enough to leave school! It must be a ripping life."

Grace Chalmers laughed.

"One doesn't always think so early in the morning. Sometimes I'd give everything in the world not to have to get up and turn out."

"So would I," agreed Elaine.

"What exactly has a V.A.D. to do?" asked Marjorie. "Do tell me."

"Well, it depends entirely on the hospital, and what she has undertaken. If she has signed under Government, then she's a full-time nurse, and is sent to one of the big hospitals. Elaine and I are only half-timers. We go in the mornings, from eight till one, and do odd jobs. I took night duty during the summer while some of the staff had their holidays."

"Wasn't it hard to keep awake?"

"Not in the least. Don't imagine for a moment that night duty consists in sitting in a ward and trying not to go to sleep. I was busy all the time. I had to get the trays ready for breakfast, and cut the bread and butter. Have you ever cut bread and butter for fifty hungry people?"

"I've helped to get ready for a Sunday-school tea-party," said Marjorie.

"Well, this is like a tea-party every day. One night I had to clean fifty herrings. They were sent as a present in a little barrel, and the Commandant said the men should have them for breakfast. They hadn't been cleaned, so Violet Linwood and I set to work upon them. It was a most horrible job. My hands smelt of fish for days afterwards. I didn't mind, though, as it was for the Tommies. They enjoyed their fried herrings immensely. What else did I have to do in the night? When the breakfast trays were ready, I used to disinfect my hands and sterilize the scissors, and then make swabs for next day's dressings. Some of the men don't sleep well, and I often had to look after them, and do things for them. Then early in the morning we woke our patients and washed them, and gave them their breakfasts, and made their beds and tidied their lockers, and by that time the day-shift had arrived, and we went off duty."

"Tell her how you paddled," chuckled Elaine.

"Shall I? Isn't it rather naughty?"

"Oh, please!" implored Marjorie and Dona, who were both deeply interested.

"Well, you see, there's generally rather a slack time between four and half-past, and one morning it was quite light and most deliciously warm, and Sister was on duty in the ward, and Violet and I were only waiting about downstairs, so we stole out and rushed down to the beach and paddled. It was gorgeous; the sea looked so lovely in that early morning light, and it was so cool and refreshing to go in the water; and of course there wasn't a soul about—we had the beach all to ourselves. We were back again long before Sister wanted us."

"What do you do in the day-shifts?" asked Marjorie.

"I'm in the kitchen mostly, helping to prepare dinner. I peel potatoes and cut up carrots and stir the milk puddings. Elaine is on ward duty now. She'll tell you what she does."

"Help to take temperatures and chart them," said Elaine. "Then there are instruments to sterilize and lotions to mix. And somebody has to get the day's orders from the dispensary and operating-theatre and sterilizing-ward. If you forget anything there's a row! Dressings are going on practically all the morning. Sometimes there are operations, and we have to clean up afterwards. I like being on ward duty better than kitchen. It's far more interesting."

"It's a business when there's a new convoy in," remarked Grace.

"Rather!" agreed Elaine. "The ambulances arrive, and life's unbearable till all the men are settled. They have to be entered in the books, with every detail, down to their diets. They're so glad when they get to their quarters, poor fellows! The journey's an awful trial to some of them. Here we are! Now you'll be able to see everything for yourselves."

The Red Cross Hospital was a large fine house in a breezy situation on the cliffs. It had been lent for the purpose by its owner since the beginning of the war, and had been adapted with very little alteration. Dining-room, drawing-room, and billiard-rooms had been turned into wards, the library was an office, and the best bedroom an operating-theatre. A wooden hut had been erected in the garden as a recreation-room for convalescents. In summer-time the grounds were full of deck-chairs, where the men could sit and enjoy the beautiful view over the sea.

To-day everybody was collected in Queen Mary Ward. About sixteen patients were in bed, others had been brought in wheeled chairs, and a large number, who were fairly convalescent, sat on benches. The room looked very bright and cheerful. There were pots of ferns and flowers on the tables, and the walls had been decorated for the occasion with flags and evergreens and patriotic mottoes. In a large tub in the centre stood the Christmas tree, ornamented with coloured glass balls and tiny flags. Some of the parcels, tied up with scarlet ribbons, were hanging from the branches, but the greater number were piled underneath.

Marjorie looked round with tremendous interest. She had never before been inside a hospital of any kind, and a military one particularly appealed to her. Each of the patients had fought at the front, and had been wounded for his King and his Country. England owed them a debt of gratitude, and nothing that could be done seemed too much to repay it. Her thoughts flew to Bevis, Leonard, and Larry. Would they ever be brought to a place like this and nursed by strangers?

"You'd like to go round and see some of the Tommies, wouldn't you?" asked Elaine.

Marjorie agreed with enthusiasm, and Dona less cordially. The latter—silly little goose!—was always scared at the idea of wounds and hospitals, and she was feeling somewhat sick and faint at the sight of so many invalids, though she did not dare to confess such foolishness for fear of being laughed at. She allowed Marjorie to go first, and followed with rather white cheeks. She was so accustomed to play second fiddle that nobody noticed.

The patients were looking very cheerful, and smiled broadly on their visitors. They were evidently accustomed to being shown off by their nurses. Some were shy and would say nothing but "Yes", "No", or "Thank you"; and others were conversational. Elaine introduced them like a proud little mother.

"This is Peters; he keeps us all alive in this ward. He's lost his right leg, but he's going on very well, and takes it sporting, don't you, Peters?"

"Rather, Nurse," replied Peters, a freckled, sandy-haired young fellow of about twenty-five. "Only I wish it had been the other leg. You see," he explained to the visitors, "my right leg was fractured at the beginning of the war, and I was eighteen months in hospital with it at Harpenden, and they were very proud of making me walk again. Then, soon after I got back to the front, it was blown off, and I felt they'd wasted their time over it at Harpenden!"

"It was too bad," sympathized Marjorie.

"Jackson has lost his right leg too," said Elaine, passing on to the next bed. "He was wounded on sentry duty. He'd been out since the beginning of the war, and had not had a scratch till then. And he'd been promised his leave the very next day. Hard luck, wasn't it?"

"The only thing that troubles me," remarked Jackson, "is that I'd paid a quid out in Egypt to have my leg tattooed by one of those black fellows. He'd put a camel on it, and a bird and a monkey, and my initials and a heart. It was something to look at was that leg. And I've left it over in France. Wish I could get my money back!"

The next patient, Rawlins, was very shy and would not speak, though he smiled a little at the visitors.

"He's going on nicely," explained Elaine, "but I'm afraid he still suffers a good deal. He's awfully plucky about it. He doesn't care to talk. He likes just to lie and watch what's going on in the ward. This boy in the next bed is most amusing. He sends everyone into fits. He's only eighteen, poor lad! Webster, here are two young ladies come to see you. Do you know, he can imitate animals absolutely perfectly. Give us a specimen, Webster, before Lord and Lady Greystones arrive."

"I'm a bashful sort of a chap——" began the boy humorously.

"No, no, you're not," put in Elaine. "I want my cousins to hear the pig squeak. Please do."

"Well, to oblige you, Nurse."

He raised himself a little on his elbow, then, to the girls' surprise, a whole farm-yard seemed to have entered the ward. They could hear a sheep bleating, a duck quacking, a dog barking, hens clucking, a cock crowing, and a pig uttering a series of agonized squeals. It was a most comical imitation, and really very clever.

Even Dona laughed heartily, and the colour crept back to her cheeks. She was beginning to get over her terror of wounded soldiers.

"They seem to be able to enjoy themselves," she remarked.

"Oh yes, they've all sorts of amusement!" replied Elaine, drawing her cousins aside. "It's wonderful how cheery they keep, not to say noisy sometimes. In 'Kitchener' Ward the men have mouth organs and tin whistles and combs, and play till you're nearly deafened. We don't like to check them if it keeps up their spirits, poor fellows! You see, there's always such a pathetic side to it. Some of them will be cripples to the end of their days, and they're still so young. It seems dreadful. Think of Peters and Jackson. A man with one leg can't do very much for a living unless he's a clerk, and neither of them is educated enough for that. Their pensions won't be very much. I suppose they'll be taught some kind of handicraft. I hope so, at any rate."

"Are they all ordinary Tommies here?" asked Marjorie.

"We've no officers. They, of course, are always in a separate hospital. But some of the Tommies are gentlemen, and have been to public schools. There are two over there. We'll go down the other side of the ward and you'll see them. There's just time before our grand visitors arrive. We must stop and say a word at each bed, or the men will feel left out. We try not to show any favouritism to the gentlemen Tommies. This is Wilkinson—he reads the newspaper through every day and tells us all about it. It's very convenient when we haven't time to read it for ourselves. This is Davis; he comes from Bangor, and can speak Welsh, which is more than I can. This is Harper; he's to get up next week if he goes on all right."

"Who is this in the next bed?" asked Marjorie suddenly.

"Seventeen? That's one of the gentlemen Tommies," whispered Elaine. "An old Rugby boy—he knew Wilfred there. Yes, Sister, I'm coming!"

In response to a word from the ward sister, Elaine hurried away immediately, leaving her cousins to take care of themselves.

Marjorie looked again at the patient in No. 17. The twinkling brown eyes seemed most familiar. She glanced at the board on the bed-head and saw: "Hilton Tamworthy Preston". The humorous mouth was smiling at her in evident recognition. She smiled too.

"Didn't we travel together from Silverwood?" she stammered.

"Of course we did. I knew you at once when you were going down the other side of the ward," he replied. "Did you get to Brackenfield all right that day?"

"Yes, thanks. But how did you know that we were going to Brackenfield?"

"Why, you were wearing your badges. My sisters used to be there, so I twigged at once that you were Brackenfielders. Your teacher wore a badge too. I hope she found a taxi all right?"

"No, she didn't. It was a wretched four-wheeler, but we were glad to get anything in the way of a cab."

"How do you like school?"

"Oh, pretty well! I like it better than Dona does. We're going home next Tuesday for the holidays."

"My sisters were very happy there, and Kathleen was a prefect. I used to hear all about it. Do you still call Mrs. Morrison 'The Empress'? I expect there are plenty of new girls now that Joyce and Kathleen wouldn't remember."

"Have you been wounded?" asked Dona shyly.

"Yes, but I'm getting on splendidly. I hope to be up quite soon. The Doctor promised to have me back at the front before long."

"We have a brother at the front, and one on the Relentless, and another in training," volunteered Marjorie, "besides Father, who's at Havre."

"And I'm one of five brothers, who are all fighting."

"Didn't you get the V.C.?"

"Oh yes, but I don't think I did anything very particular! Any of our men would have done the same."

"Have you got it here in your locker?"

"No, my mother has it at home."

"I'd have loved to see it."

"I wish I could have shown it to you. I thought it would be safer at home. Hallo! Here come the bigwigs! The show is going to begin."

All eyes turned towards the door, where the Commandant was ushering in the guests of the afternoon. Lord Greystones was elderly, with a white moustache and a bald head; Lady Greystones, twenty years younger, was pretty, and handsomely dressed in velvet and furs. Admiral Webster, like Nelson, had lost an arm, and his empty sleeve was tucked into the coat front of his uniform. The patients saluted as the visitors entered, and those who were able stood up, but the majority had perforce to remain seated. Escorted by the Commandant, the august visitors first made a tour of inspection round the ward, nodding or saying a few words to the patients in bed. Speeches followed from Lord Greystones and the Admiral, and from one of the Governors of the hospital. They were stirring, patriotic speeches, and Marjorie listened with a little thrill, and wished more than ever that she were old enough to take some real part in the war, and bear a share of the nation's burden. It was wonderful, as the Admiral said, to think that we are living in history, and that the deeds done at this present time will go down through all the years while the British Empire lasts.

Then came the important business of stripping the tree. Lord Greystones and the Admiral cut off the parcels, and Lady Greystones distributed them to the men, with a pleasant word and a smile for each. The presents consisted mostly of tobacco, or little writing-cases with notepaper and envelopes.

"It's so fearfully hard to know what to choose for them," said Elaine, who had found her way back to her cousins. "It's no use giving them things they can't take away with them. A few of them like books, but very few. Oh, here come the tea-trays! You can help me to take them round, if you like. The convalescents are to have tea in the dining-room. They've a simply enormous cake; you must go and look at it. It'll disappear to the last crumb. Here's Mother! She'll take you with her and see you back to Brackenfield. I must say ta-ta now, as I've to be on duty."

Marjorie lingered a moment, and turned again to Bed 17.

"Good-bye!" she said hurriedly. "I hope you'll be better soon."

"Thanks very much," returned Private Preston. "I'm 'marked out' for a convalescent home, and shall be leaving here as soon as I can get up. I hope you'll enjoy the holidays. Don't miss your train this time. Good-bye!"



CHAPTER XI

A Stolen Meeting

At the very first available moment Marjorie went to the library and consulted the latest number of the Brackenfield School Magazine. She turned to the directory of past girls at the end and sought the letter P. Here she found:

1912-1915. PRESTON, Kathleen Hilary } The Manor, 1913-1916. PRESTON, Joyce Benson } Wildeswood, Yorks.

"Each here for three years," she soliloquized. "I wonder what they're doing now? I'll look them up in the 'News of Friends'. This is it:—'Kathleen Preston has been doing canteen work in France under the Croix Rouge Francaise at a military station. This canteen is run by English women for French soldiers, and is a specially busy one, the hours being from 6 a.m. to 12, and again from 2 to 7 p.m. A recreation hut is in connection with it. Owing to her health, Kathleen returned to England on leave, but is now in the north of France driving an ambulance wagon.'

"'Joyce Preston is at Chadley College learning gardening and bee-keeping. She says: 'If any Brackenfield girls want to go in for gardening, do send them here. I am sure they would love it.' Joyce was able to get up a very excellent concert for the soldiers in the Red Cross Hospital at Chadley, the evening being an immense success.'

"Enterprising girls," thought Marjorie. "Those are just the sort of things I want to do when I leave school. I'd like Kathleen best, because she drives an ambulance wagon. I wish I knew them! I'd write to them and tell them I've seen their brother in hospital, only they'd think it cheek. They must feel proud of him getting the V.C. I know how I should cock-a-doodle if one of our brothers won it! Oh dear, we haven't seen Leonard or Bevis for nine months! It's hard to have one's brothers out at the war. I wonder what convalescent home Private Preston will be sent to? I must ask Elaine."

Next morning, when Marjorie met Dona at the eleven o'clock "break", she found the latter in a state of much excitement.

"I had a line from Mother, enclosing a letter from Larry," she announced. "This is what he says:

"'DEAR OLD BUNTING,

"'I hope you're getting on all serene at school, and haven't spoilt the carpets with salt tears. I'm ordered to the Camp at Denley, and shall be going there to-morrow. I promised if I went I'd look you up and take you out to tea somewhere. If I can get leave I'll call on Saturday afternoon at Brackenfield for you and Squibs, so be on the look-out for me. The Mater will square your Head. Love to Squibs and your little self.

"'Your affectionate "'LARRY.'"

"Oh, I say, what gorgeous fun!" exclaimed Marjorie. "So he's sent to the Denley Camp after all. It's just on the other side of Whitecliffe. How absolutely topping to go out to tea with Larry! I hope he'll get leave."

The girls confided their exciting news to their room-mates and their most intimate friends, with the result that on Saturday afternoon at least sixteen heads were peeping out of windows on the qui vive to see the interesting visitor arrive.

When a figure in khaki strode up the drive and rang the front-door bell the event was signalled from one hostel to another. Now Mrs. Morrison was very faithful to her duties as Principal, and during term-time rarely allowed herself a holiday; but it happened on this particular Saturday that she went for the day to visit friends, and appointed Miss Norton deputy in her absence.

Larry Anderson was shown by the parlour-maid into the drawing-room where parents were generally received, and left there to wait while his presence was announced. After an interval of about ten minutes, during which he studied the photographs of the school teams that ornamented the mantelpiece, the door opened, and a tall fair lady with light-grey eyes and pince-nez entered.

"Mrs. Morrison, I presume?" he enquired courteously.

"I am Miss Norton," was the reply. "Mrs. Morrison is away to-day, and has left me in charge. Can I do anything for you?"

"I've come to see my sisters, Marjorie and Dona Anderson, and to ask if I may take them in to Whitecliffe for an hour or so."

"I'm sorry," freezingly, "but that is quite impossible. It is against the rules of the school."

"Yes, of course I know they're not usually allowed out, but the Mater—I mean my mother—wrote to Mrs. Morrison to ask her to let the girls go."

"Mrs. Morrison left me no instructions on the subject."

"But didn't she give you my mother's letter?"

"She did not."

"Or leave it on her desk or something? Can't you find out?"

"I certainly cannot search my Principal's correspondence," returned Miss Norton very stiffly. "It is one of the rules of Brackenfield that no pupil is allowed out without a special exeat, and in the circumstances I have no power to grant this."

"But—oh, I say! The girls will be so awfully disappointed!"

"I am sorry, but it cannot be helped."

"Well, I suppose I may see them here for half an hour?"

"That also is out of the question. Our rule is: 'No visitors except parents, unless by special permission'."

"But the permission is in my mother's letter."

"Neither letter nor permission was handed to me by Mrs. Morrison."

"Excuse me, when I've come all this way, surely I may see my sisters?"

"I have said already that it is impossible," replied Miss Norton, rising. "I am in charge of the school to-day, and must do my duty. Your sisters will be returning home next Tuesday, after which you can make your own arrangements for meeting them. While they are under my care I do not allow visitors."

Miss Norton was a martinet where school rules were concerned, and the Brackenfield code was strict. She knew that Mrs. Morrison would at least have allowed Marjorie and Dona to see their brother in the drawing-room, but in the absence of instructions to that effect she chose to keep to the letter of the law and refuse all male visitors.

Larry, with an effort, kept his temper. He was extremely annoyed and disappointed, but he did not forget that he was a gentleman.

"Then I will not trouble you further, and must apologize for interrupting you," he said stiffly but courteously. "I am afraid I have trespassed upon your time."

"Please do not mention it," answered Miss Norton with equal politeness.

They parted on terms of icy civility. Larry, however, was not to be entirely defeated. He had only left Haileybury six months before, and there was still much of the schoolboy in him. He was determined to find a way to see his sisters. He paused a moment on the steps after the maid had shown him out, and, taking a notebook from his pocket, hastily scribbled a few lines, then, noticing some girls with hockey sticks crossing the quadrangle, he went up to them, and, handing the note to the one whose looks he considered the most encouraging, said:

"May I ask you to be so kind as to give this to my sister, Dona Anderson? It's very important."

Then he walked away down the drive.

Meantime Marjorie and Dona had been waiting in momentary expectation of a call to the drawing-room. They could hardly believe the bad news when scouts informed them that their brother had left without seeing them.

"Gone away!" echoed Dona, almost in tears.

"But why? Who sent him away?" demanded Marjorie indignantly.

At this crisis Mena Matthews hurried in with the note. Dona read it, with Marjorie looking over her shoulder. It ran:

"DEAR OLD BUNTING,

"Your schoolmistress guards you like nuns, but I must see you and Squibs somehow. Can you manage to peep over the wall, right-hand side of gate? I'll walk up and down the road for half an hour, on the chance. Yours,

"LARRY."

There was a hockey match that afternoon between the second and third teams, and all the school was making its way in the direction of the playing-fields. Within the next minute, however, Marjorie and Dona, with a select escort of friends to act as scouts, had reached the garden wall, and were climbing up with an agility that would have delighted their gymnasium mistress, could she have witnessed the performance. Larry, in the road below, grinned as the two familiar heads appeared above the coping.

"It isn't safe to talk here," called Marjorie. "Go down that side lane till you come to some wooden palings. We'll cut across the plantation, and meet you there."

"All serene!" laughed Larry, hugely enjoying the joke.

The school grounds were large, covering many acres, and a private road led down the side towards the kitchen garden. Larry found his sisters already ensconced on the palings, looking out for him.

"I say, this is rather the limit, isn't it?" he greeted them. "The Mater wrote and said I might take you to Whitecliffe, and that icicle in the drawing-room wouldn't even so much as let me have a glimpse of you. Is this place you've got to a convent? Are you both required to take the veil, please?"

"Not just yet. But what happened?" asked Marjorie. "Mena says the Empress is out this afternoon. Whom did you see?"

"A grim, fair-haired Gorgon in glasses, who withered me with a look."

"The Acid Drop, surely."

"Probably. She certainly wasn't sweet."

"And she wouldn't let us go?" wailed Dona.

"No, poor old Baby Bunting. It's a rotten business, isn't it? No dragon in a fairy tale could have guarded the princess more closely. If I'd stayed any longer she'd have thrust talons into me."

"Oh, it's too bad! And you'd promised to take me to have tea at a cafe."

"So I did. I meant to give you a regular blow-out, so far as the rationing order would allow us. Look here, old sport, I'm ever so sorry. If I'd only foreseen this I'd have brought some cakes and sweets for you. I'm afraid I've nothing in my pockets except cigarettes and a cough lozenge. Cheer oh! It's Christmas holidays next week, and you'll be tucking into turkey before long."

"How do you like the camp, Larry?" asked Marjorie.

"First-rate. We have a wooden hut to sleep in. There are thirty of us; we each have three planks on trestles for a bed, and a palliasse to put on it at night, and a straw pillow. We get four blankets apiece. I make my own bed every night—double one blanket underneath, and roll the others round me, and have my greatcoat on top if I'm cold. Aunt Ellinor has lent me an air-cushion, and it's a great boon, because the straw pillow is as hard as a brick. We do route marches and trench-digging, and yesterday I was on scout duty, and three of us captured a sentry. If we'd been at the front, instead of only training, he'd have shot me certain."

"Do you have to learn to be a soldier?" asked Dona.

"Why, of course, you little innocent. That's what the training-camp is for—to teach us how to scout, and dig trenches, and all the rest of it."

"Oh! I thought you just went to the front and fought."

"It would be a queer war if we did."

"Are you coming home for Christmas?"

"No, I can't get leave; I only wish I could."

"Cave!" called Ailsa Donald, the nearest in the line of girls who had undertaken to keep guard. "Miss Robinson is coming across the field this way."

"We must go, or we shall be caught," said Marjorie. "It's too bad to have to see you like this."

"But it's better than nothing," added Dona. "You can send me those sweets you talked about for Christmas, if you like."

"All right, old Bunting! I won't back out of my promise."

The girls dropped from the palings, and dived into the plantation just before Miss Robinson, on her way to the kitchen garden, passed the spot. If she had looked through a crack in the boards she would have seen Larry walking away, but happily her suspicions were not aroused. Marjorie and Dona strolled leisurely towards the hockey field. The latter was aggrieved, the former highly indignant.

"It's absurd," groused Marjorie, "if one can't see one's own brother, especially when Mother had written to say we might. We had to see him somehow, and I think it's a great deal worse to be obliged to go like this and talk over palings than to meet him in the drawing-room. It's just like Norty's nonsense. She's full of red-tape notions, and a Jack-in-office to-day because the Empress has left her in charge. I feel raggy."

"So do I, especially to miss the cafe. I hope Larry won't forget to send those sweets."



CHAPTER XII

The School Union

The last few days of the term were passing quickly. The examinations were over, though the lists were not yet out. To both Marjorie and Dona they had been somewhat of an ordeal, for the Brackenfield standard was high. When confronted with sets of questions the girls felt previous slackness in work become painfully evident. It was horrible to have to sit and look at a problem without the least idea of how to solve it; or to find that the dates and facts which ought to have been at their finger-ends had departed to distant and un-get-at-able realms of their memory.

"I can think of the wretched things afterwards," mourned Dona, "but at the time I'm so flustered, everything I want to remember goes utterly out of my head. I really knew the boundaries of Germany, only I drew them wrong on the map; and in the Literature paper I mixed up Pope and Dryden, and I put that Sheridan wrote She Stoops to Conquer, instead of Goldsmith."

"I'm sure I failed in Chemistry," groused Marjorie. "And the Latin was the most awful paper I've ever seen in my life. It would take a B.A. to do that piece of unseen translation. As for the General Knowledge paper, I got utterly stumped. How should I know what are the duties of a High Sheriff and an Archdeacon, or how many men must be on a jury? Even Mollie Simpson said it was stiff, and she's good at all that kind of information. I wonder they didn't ask us how many currants there are in a Christmas pudding!"

"There won't be many this year," laughed Dona. "Auntie was saying currants and raisins are very scarce. Probably we shan't get any mince pies. But I don't care. It'll be lovely to be at home again, even if the Germans sink every food ship and only leave us porridge for Christmas."

The last day of the term was somewhat in the nature of a ceremony at Brackenfield. Lessons proceeded as usual until twelve, when the whole school assembled for the reading of the examination lists. Marjorie quaked when it came to the turn of IVa. As she expected, she had failed in Chemistry, though she had just scraped through in Latin, Mathematics, and General Knowledge. Her record could only be considered fair, and to an ambitious girl like Marjorie it was humiliating to find herself lower on the lists than others who were younger than herself.

"I'll brace up next term and do better," she thought, as Mrs. Morrison congratulated Mollie Simpson, Laura Norris, and Enid Young on their excellent work, and deplored the low standard of at least half of the form.

Dona, greatly to her surprise, had done less badly than she expected, and instead of finding herself the very last, was sixth from the bottom, and actually above Mona Kenworthy—a circumstance which made her literally gasp with surprise.

The afternoon was devoted to packing. Each girl found her box in her own cubicle, and started to the joyful task of turning out her drawers. It was a jolly, merry proceeding, even though Miss Norton and several other teachers were hovering about to keep order and ensure that the girls were really filling their trunks, instead of racing in and out of the dormitories and talking, as would certainly have been the case if they had been left to their own devices. By dint of good generalship on the part of the House Mistress and her staff, St. Elgiva's completed its arrangements twenty minutes before the other hostels, and had therefore the credit of being visited first by the janitor and the gardener, whose duty it was to carry down the luggage. The large boxes were taken away that evening in carts to the station, and duly dispatched, each girl keeping her necessaries for the night, which she would take home with her in a hand-bag.

"No prep. after tea to-day, thank goodness!" said Betty Moore, collecting her books and stowing them away in her locker. "I don't want to see this wretched old history again for a month. I'm sick of improving my mind. I'm not going to read a single line during the holidays, not even stories. I'll go out riding every day, even if it's wet. Mother says my pony's quite well again, and wants exercising. He'll get it, bless him, while I'm at home."

"What do we do this evening instead of prep.?" asked Marjorie. "Games, I suppose, or dancing?"

"Why, no, child, it's the School Union," returned Betty, slamming the door of her locker.

"What's that?"

"Great Minerva! don't you know? You're painfully new even yet, Marjorie Anderson. There, don't get raggy; I'll tell you. On the last evening of every term the whole school meets in the big hall—just the girls, without any of the teachers. The prefects sit on the platform, and the head girl reads a kind of report about all that's happened during the term—the games and that sort of thing, and what she and the prefects have noticed, and what the Societies have done, and news of old girls, and all the rest of it. Then anybody who likes can make comments, or suggestions for next term, or air grievances. It's a kind of School Council meeting, and things are often put to the vote. It gets quite exciting. We don't have supper till 8.30, so as to give us plenty of time. We all eat an extra big tea, so as to carry us on."

"I'm glad you warned me," laughed Marjorie. "Do they bring in more bread-and-butter?"

"Yes, loads more, and potted meat, and honey and jam. We have a good tuck-out, and then only cocoa and buns later on. It's not formal supper. You see, we've packed our white dresses, and can't change this evening. We've only our serges left here. The meeting's rather a stunt. We have a jinky time as a rule."

By five o'clock every girl in the school had assembled in the big hall. Though no mistresses were present, the proceedings were nevertheless perfectly orderly, and good discipline prevailed. On the platform sat the prefects, the chair being taken by Winifrede Mason, the head girl. Winifrede was a striking personality at Brackenfield, and filled her post with dignity. She was eighteen and a half, tall, and finely built, with brown eyes and smooth, dark hair. She had a firm, clever face, and a quiet, authoritative manner that carried weight in the school, and crushed any symptoms of incipient turbulence amongst Juniors. Many of the girls would almost rather have got into trouble with Mrs. Morrison than incur the displeasure of Winifrede, and a word of praise from her lips was esteemed a high favour. She did not believe in what she termed "making herself too cheap", and did not encourage the prefects to mix at all freely with Intermediates or Juniors, so that to most of the girls she seemed on a kind of pedestal—a member of the school, indeed, and yet raised above the others. She was just, however, and on the whole a great favourite, for, though she kept her dignity, she never lost touch with the school, and always voiced the general sentiments. She stood up now on the platform and began what might be termed a presidential speech.

"Girls, we've come to the end of the first term in another school year. Some of you, like myself, are old Brackenfielders, and others have joined us lately, and are only just beginning to shake down into our ways. It's for the sake of these that I want just briefly to recapitulate some of the standards of this school. We've always held very lofty ideals here, and we who are prefects want to make sure that during our time they are kept, and that we hand them on unsullied to those who come after us. What is the great object that we set ourselves to aim at? Perhaps some of you will say, 'To do well at our lessons', or 'To win at games'. Well, that's all a part of it. The main thing that we're really striving for is the formation of character. There's nothing finer in all the world. And character can only be formed by overcoming difficulties. Every hard lesson you master, or every game you win, helps you to win it. There are plenty of difficulties at school. Nobody finds it plain sailing. When you're cooped up with so many other girls you soon find you can't have all your own way, and it must be a give-and-take system if you're to live peaceably with your fellows. When this great war broke out, people had begun to say that our young men of Britain had grown soft and ease-loving, and thought of nothing except pleasure. Yet at the nation's call they flung up all they had and flocked to enlist, and proved by their magnificent courage the grit that was in them after all. Our women, too—Society women who had been, perhaps justly, branded as 'mere butterflies'—put their shoulders to the wheel, and have shown how they, too, could face dangers and difficulties and privations. As nurses, ambulance drivers, canteen workers, telephone operators, some have played their part in the field of war; and their sisters at home have worked with equal courage to make munitions, and supply the places left vacant by the men. Now, I don't suppose there is a girl in this room who does not call herself patriotic. Let her stop for a moment to consider what she means. It isn't only waving the Union Jack, and singing 'God Save the King', and knitting socks for soldiers. That's the mere outside of it. There's a far deeper part than that. We're only schoolgirls now, but in a few years we shall become a part of the women of the nation. In the future Britain will have to depend largely on her women. Let them see that they fit themselves for the burden! We used to be told that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of our great public schools. Well, I believe that many future struggles are being decided by the life in our girls' schools of to-day. Though we mayn't realize it, we're all playing our part in history, and though our names may never go down to posterity, our influence will. The watchwords of all patriotic women at present are 'Service and Sacrifice'. In the few years that we are here at school let us try to prepare ourselves to be an asset to the nation afterwards. Aim for the highest—in work, games, and character. As the old American said: 'Hitch your wagon to a star', because it's better to attempt big things, even if you fail, than to be satisfied with a low ideal.

"It is encouraging for us Brackenfielders to know what good work some of our old girls are doing to help their country. I'm going to read you the latest news about them.

"Mary Walker has been nursing for fifteen months at a hospital in Cairo, and is now at the Halton Military Hospital, hoping to be sent out to France after six months' further training. She enjoyed her work in Egypt, and found many opportunities for interesting expeditions in her off-duty time. She went for camel rides to visit the tombs in the desert, had moonlight journeys to the Pyramids, and sailed up the Nile.

"Emily Roberts is assistant cook at the Brendon Hospital, which has two hundred beds. She says they make daily about twelve gallons of milk pudding, soup, porridge, &c., and about five gallons of sauce. The hours are 6.30 to 1.30, then either 1.30 to 5, or 5 till 9 p.m. She has lost her brother at the front. He obtained very urgent and important information, and conveyed it safely back. While telephoning it he was hit by a sniper's bullet, but before he passed away he managed to give the most important part of the message.

"Gladys Mellor has just had a well-earned holiday after very strenuous work at the Admiralty. She not only does difficult translation work, but has learnt typewriting for important special work.

"Alison Heatley (nee Robson) is in Oxford with her two tiny boys. She lost her husband in the summer. At the time he was hit he was commanding a company; they had advanced six miles, and were fighting in a German trench, when he was shot through the lungs and in the back. He was taken to hospital and at first improved, but then had a relapse. Alison was with him when he died. He is buried in a lovely spot overlooking the sea, with a pine wood at the back. He had been mentioned in dispatches twice and had won the Military Cross.

"Evelyn Scott has been transferred from Leabury Red Cross Hospital to King's Hospital, London. She says she spends the whole of her time in the ward kitchen, except for bed-making and washing patients. Everything is of white enamel, and she has to scrub an endless supply of this and help to cook countless meals. Evelyn has just lost her fiance. He was killed by a German shell while on sentry duty. He warned the rest of his comrades of the danger, and they were unhurt, but he was killed instantly.

"Hester Strong and Doris Hartley were sent to a kindergarten summer school in Herefordshire, each in charge of three children, to whose physical comfort and education they had to attend. They lived in little cottages, and Hester taught geography and botany, and Doris farm study, and they took the children for botanical expeditions.

"Lilian Roy has finished her motoring course at a training-school for the R.A.C. driving certificate, and is gaining her six months' general practice by driving for a Hendy's Stores. She had her van in the City during the last raid, and took refuge in a cellar. She hopes soon to be ready for ambulance work.

"Annie Barclay is acting quartermaster for their Red Cross Hospital. She is always on duty, and has charge of the kit, linen, and stores.

"You see," continued Winifrede, "what splendid work our old Brackenfielders are doing in the world. Now I want to turn to some of our own activities, and I will call upon our games captain and the secretaries of the various societies to read their reports."

Stella Pearson, the games captain, at once rose.

"I think we're getting on fairly well at hockey," she announced. "All three teams are satisfactory. The match with Silverton was played in glorious weather. The game was hard and very fast, but there was a great deal of fouling on both sides. We scored three goals during the first half, and though our forwards pressed hard, our fourth and last goal was not gained till just before the end. We should probably have scored more had not the forwards been 'offside' so often. At the beginning of the second half Silverton pressed our defence hard, and, getting away with the ball, shot two goals, one after another. Both sides played hard, and the game was well contested. It was only spoilt by the fouling. When the whistle went for 'time', the score was 4-2 in our favour, and we found that the unexpected had happened and that we had actually beaten Silverton.

"The match with Penley Club, as you know, we lost, and the match with Siddercombe was a draw, so we may consider ourselves to be just about even this term. Next term we must brace up and show we can do better. We mustn't be satisfied till Brackenfield has beaten her record."

Reports followed next from the various societies, showing what work had been done in "The General Reading Competition", "The Photographic Society", "The Natural History Association", "The Art Union" and "The Handicrafts Club". Specimens of the work of these various activities had been laid out on tables, and as soon as the reports had been read the girls were asked to walk round and look at them. Marjorie, in company with Mollie Simpson, made a tour of inspection. The show was really very good. The enlarging apparatus, lately acquired by the Photographic Society, had proved a great success, and several girls exhibited beautiful views of the school. Moths, butterflies, fossils, shells, and seaweeds formed an interesting group for the Natural History Association, and the Handicrafts Club had turned out a wonderful selection of toys that were to be sent to the Soldiers' and Sailors' Orphanage. "The Golden Rule Society" had quite a respectable pile of socks ready to be forwarded to the front.

Marjorie said very little as she went the round of the tables, but she thought much. She had not realized until that evening all that Brackenfield stood for. She began to feel that it was worth while to be a member of such a community. She meant to try really hard next term, and some day—who knew?—perhaps her name might be read out as that of one who, in doing useful service to her country, was carrying out the traditions of the school.



CHAPTER XIII

The Spring Term

Both Marjorie and Dona described their holidays as "absolutely topping". To begin with, Father had nearly a week's leave. He could not arrive for Christmas, but he was with them for New Year's Day, and by the greatest good luck met Bevis, who was home on a thirty-six-hours leave. To have two of their dear fighting heroes back at once was quite an unexpected treat, and though there were still two vacant places in the circle, the family party was a very merry one. They were joined by a new member, for Nora and her husband came over, bringing their ten-weeks-old baby boy, and Marjorie, Dona, and Joan felt suddenly quite grown-up in their new capacity of "Auntie". Dona in especial was delighted with her wee nephew.

"I've found out what I'm going to do when I leave school," she told Marjorie rather shyly. "I shall go to help at a creche. When Winifrede was reading out that 'News of Old Girls' I felt utterly miserable, because I knew I could never do any of those things; a hospital makes me sick, and I'd be scared to death to drive a motor ambulance. I thought Winifrede would call me an utter slacker. But I could look after babies in a creche while their mothers work at munitions. I should simply love it. And it would be doing something for the war in a way, especially if they were soldiers' children. I'm ever so much happier now I've thought of it. I'm going to ask to take 'Hygiene' next term, because Gertie Temple told me they learnt how to mix a baby's bottle."

"And I'm going to ask to take 'First Aid'," replied Marjorie, with equal enthusiasm. "You have to pass your St. John's Ambulance before you can be a V.A.D. I'll just love practising bandaging."

The girls went back to school with less reluctance than their mother had expected. It was, of course, a wrench to leave home, and for Dona, at any rate, the atmosphere was at first a little damp, but once installed in their old quarters at Brackenfield they were caught in the train of bustling young life, and cheered up. It is not easy to sit on your bed and weep when your room-mates are telling you their holiday adventures, singing comic songs, and passing round jokes. Also, tears were unfashionable at Brackenfield, and any girl found shedding them was liable to be branded as "Early Victorian", or, worse still, as a "sentimental silly".

Marjorie happened to be the first arrival in Dormitory No. 9. She drew the curtains of her cubicle and began to unpack, feeling rather glad to have the place to herself for a while. When the next convoy of girls arrived from the station, Miss Norton entered the room, escorting a stranger.

"This is your cubicle," she explained hurriedly. "Your box will be brought up presently, and then you can unpack, and put your clothes in this wardrobe and these drawers. The bath-rooms are at the end of the passage. Come downstairs when you hear the gong."

The house mistress, whose duties on the first day of term were onerous, departed like a whirlwind, leaving the stranger standing by her bed. Marjorie drew aside her curtains and introduced herself.

"Hallo! I suppose you're a new girl? You've got Irene's cubicle. I wonder where she's to go. I'm Marjorie Anderson. What's your name?"

"Chrissie Lang. I don't know who Irene is, but I hope we shan't fight for the cubicle. The bed doesn't look big enough for two, unless she's as thin as a lath. There's a good deal of me!"

Marjorie laughed, for the new-comer sounded humorous. She was a tall, stoutly-built girl with a fair complexion, flaxen hair, and blue eyes, the pupils of which were unusually large. Though not absolutely pretty, she was decidedly attractive-looking. She put her hand-bag on the bed, and began to take out a few possessions, opened her drawers, and inspected the capacities of her wardrobe.

"Not too much room here!" she commented. "It reminds me of a cabin on board ship. I wonder they don't rig up berths. I hope they won't be long bringing up my box. Oh, here it is!"

Not only did the trunk arrive, but Betty and Sylvia also put in an appearance, both very lively and talkative, and full of news.

"Hallo, Marjorie! Do you know Renie's been moved to No. 5? She wants to be with Mavie Chapman. They asked Norty before the holidays, and never told us a word. Wasn't it mean?"

"And Lucy's in the same dormitory!"

"Molly's brought a younger sister—Nancy, her name is. We travelled together from Euston. She's in St. Ethelberta's, of course—rather a jolly kid."

"Annie Grey has twisted her ankle, and won't be able to come back for a week. Luck for her!"

"Valerie Hall's brother has been wounded, and Magsie Picton's brother has been mentioned in dispatches, and Miss Duckworth has lost her nephew."

"Miss Pollard's wearing an engagement ring, but she won't tell anybody anything about it; and Miss Gordon was married in the holidays—a war wedding. Oh yes! she has come back to school, but we've got to call her Mrs. Greenbank now. Won't it be funny? The Empress has two little nieces staying with her—they're five and seven, such sweet little kiddies, with curly hair. Their father's at the front."

The new girl listened with apparent interest as Betty and Sylvia rattled on, but she did not interrupt, and waited until she was questioned before she gave an account of herself.

"I live up north, in Cumberland. Yes, I've been to school before. I've one brother. No, he's not at the front. I haven't unpacked his photo. I can't tell whether I like Brackenfield yet; I've only been here half an hour."

As she still seemed at the shy stage, Betty and Sylvia stopped catechizing her and concerned themselves with their own affairs. The new-comer went on quietly with her unpacking, taking no notice of her room-mates, but when the gong sounded for tea she allowed Betty and Sylvia to pass, then looked half-appealingly, half-whimsically at Marjorie.

"May I go down with you?" she asked. "I don't know my way about yet. Sorry to be a nuisance. You can drop me if you like when you've landed me in the dining-room. I don't want to tag on."

At the end of a week opinions in Dormitory No. 9 were divided on the subject of Chrissie Lang. Betty and Sylvia frankly regretted Irene, and were not disposed to extend too hearty a welcome to her substitute. It was really in the first instance because Betty and Sylvia were disagreeable to Chrissie that Marjorie took her up. It was more in a spirit of opposition to her room-mates than of philanthropy towards the new-comer. Betty and Sylvia were inclined to have fun together and leave Marjorie out of their calculations, a state of affairs which she hotly resented. During the whole of last term she had not found a chum. She was rather friendly with Mollie Simpson, but Mollie was in another dormitory, and this term had been moved into IV Upper A, so that they were no longer working together in form. It was perhaps only natural that she adopted Chrissie; she certainly found her an amusing companion, if nothing more. Chrissie was humorous, and always inclined for fun. She kept up a constant fire of little jokes. She would draw absurd pictures of girls or mistresses on the edge of her blotting-paper, or write parodies on popular poems. She was evidently much attracted to Marjorie, yet she was one of those people with whom one never grows really intimate. One may know them for years without ever getting beyond the outside crust, and the heart of them always remains a sealed book. There is a certain magnetism in friendship. It is perhaps only once or twice in a lifetime that we meet the one with whom our spirit can really fuse, the kindred soul who seems always able to understand and sympathize. In the hurry and bustle of school life, however, it is something to have a congenial comrade, if it is only a girl who will sit next you at meals, walk to church with you in crocodile, and take your side in arguments with your room-mates.