The Jolliest Term on Record

Contents

Illustrations

THE JOLLIEST TERM ON RECORD

"Except the table," returned Katrine, hastily moving a box of pastels and a pile of loose drawings to make room. "Please don't disturb my things. I've been sorting them out, and I don't want to get them mixed up again. Squat here, if you're tired, and leave the bottles alone."

"I am tired. I'm nearly dead. I bicycled all the way to Lindley Park and back with Mona Taylor on the step. She would make me take her! And she's no light weight, the young Jumbo!"

"Poor martyr! would you like a drink of turpentine to revive you? Sorry the chocs are finished."

"Don't mock me! Mona's a decent kid, but she really was the limit to-day. I'll see myself at Jericho before I let her climb on my step again. But Kattie, to go back to what I was saying before you interrupted me—haven't you noticed there's a something, a most decided something in the wind?"

"Your imagination, my dear child, is one of your brightest talents. You're particularly clever at noticing what isn't there."

"And you're as blind as a bat! Can't you see for yourself that Father and Mother have got some secret they're keeping from us? Why are we having our summer dresses made in April? Why are all our underclothes being overhauled and counted? Why did two new trunks arrive yesterday, with K. H. M. and G. C. M. painted on them in red letters? Why did Father just begin to say something last night, and Mother shut him up in a hurry, and he look conscience-stricken, and murmur: 'I'd forgotten they don't know yet'? Girl alive! if you're blind I'm not. There's something exciting on foot. I'm wild to find out what. Why doesn't Mother tell us? It's too bad."

"She's just going to now," said a voice from the door, and a small, bright-eyed little lady walked in, laughing. "You shan't be kept in the dark any longer, poor injured creatures! I'll make a clean breast of it at last."

"Mumsie!" cried both girls, jumping up, and sweeping away the books and painting materials that encumbered the one arm-chair. "Sit here, you darling! It isn't turpentiny, really! Here's the cushion. Are you comfy now? Well, do please begin and tell. We're all in a dither to know."

"Brace your nerves then, chicks! First and foremost, Father has been asked in a hurry to go out to the Scientific Conference at Sydney, and give the lectures on Geology in place of Professor Baillie, who has been taken ill, and can't keep his engagement. He has accepted, and must start by the 28th. He wants me to go with him. We shall probably be away for three months."

"And leave us!" Gwethyn's voice was reproachful. "Are we to be two sort of half orphans for three whole months? Oh, Mumsie!"

"It can't be helped," replied Mrs. Marsden, stroking the brown head apologetically. "What a Mummie's baby you are still! Remember, it's a great honour for Father to be asked to take the Geology chair at the Conference. He's ever so pleased about it. And of course I must go too, because——"

The girls smiled simultaneously, and with complete understanding.

"If you weren't there to remind him, Mumsie, Daddie'd forget which days his lectures were on!" twinkled Katrine. "Yes, and I verily believe he'd put his coat on inside out, or wear two hats, or do something horrible, if he were thinking very hard of the Pleistocene period. He'd be utterly lost without you. No, you couldn't let him go alone!"

"It's not to be thought of," agreed Mrs. Marsden hastily.

"Pack Kattie and me inside your trunk," urged Gwethyn's beseeching voice. "I'd like to see Australia."

"Too expensive a business for four. No, we've made other plans for you. Get up, Baby! You're too heavy to nurse. Go and sit somewhere else—yes, on the table, if you like. Well, Father and I have talked the matter thoroughly over, and we've decided to send you both for a term to a boarding-school we know of in Redlandshire."

"To school!" shrieked Katrine. "But, Mumsie, I left school last Christmas! Why, I've almost turned my hair up! I can't go back and be a kid again—it's quite impossible!"

"No one wants you to do that. I have made special arrangements for you with Mrs. Franklin. You are to join some of the classes, and spend the rest of your time studying painting. Mrs. Franklin's sister, Miss Aubrey, is a very good artist, and will take you out sketching. Isn't that a cheering prospect? You've wanted so much to have lessons in landscape."

"Not so bad—but I'm suffering still from shock!" returned Katrine. "School's school, anyhow you like to put it. And when I thought I'd left for good!"

"And where do I come in?" wailed a melancholy voice from the table. "You're Katrine, and I'm only Gwethyn. I'm too mi-ser-able for words, Mumsie, you've betrayed us shamefully. I didn't think it of you. Or Daddie either. Do please change your minds!"

"No; for once we're hard-hearted parents," laughed Mrs. Marsden. "I wrote last night and arranged definitely and finally for you to go to Aireyholme on the 21st."

"I suppose I can take Tony with me?" asked Gwethyn anxiously, quitting her seat on the table to catch up a small Pekinese spaniel and press a kiss on his snub nose. "He'd break his little heart with fretting, bless him, if I left him behind. Wouldn't you, Tootitums?"

"I'm afraid that's impossible. We must board Tony out while we're away. I dare say Mrs. Wilson at the market gardens would look after him, or Mary might take him home with her. Now, Gwethyn, don't make a fuss, for I can't help it. I'm doing the best I can for everybody. You don't realize what a business it is to start for Australia at such a short notice, and have to shut up one's house, and dispose of one's family, all in three weeks' time. I'm nearly distracted with making so many arrangements."

"Poor darling little Mumsie!" said Katrine, squatting down by the arm-chair, and cuddling her mother's hand. "You'll be glad when it's over and you're safe on board ship. Which way do people sail for Australia? I don't know any geography."

"We go through the Suez Canal——"

"Oh, Mumsie! Hereward!" interrupted both the girls eagerly.

Mrs. Marsden's eyes were shining.

"I'm not counting on seeing him," she protested. "It's wildly improbable he'd get leave, and we only have a few hours, I believe, at Port Said. Still, of course, there's always just the possibility."

"Now I understand why you're so keen to go to Australia," said Gwethyn. "You darling humbug! You'd have made Daddie accept a lectureship on the top of Chimborazo, or at the North Pole, if there were a chance of seeing Hereward for ten seconds on the way. Confess you would!"

"I suppose I'm as weak-minded as most mothers who have an only son in the army," said Mrs. Marsden, rising from her basket-chair. "One can't keep one's bairns babies for ever. They grow up only too fast, and fly from the nest. Well, I've told you the great secret, so I'll leave you to digest it at your leisure, chicks. Aireyholme is a delightful school. I'm sure you'll enjoy being there. Perhaps you're going to have the time of your lives!"

Left alone, the two girls were not slow in discussing the wonderful news. The room where they were sitting was a large attic, which had been converted into a studio. The drab walls were covered with sketches in oils, water-colours, pencil or chalk; a couple of easels, paint-boxes, palettes, drawing-paper, and canvases, and a litter of small articles—india-rubbers, mediums, pastels, and stumps—gave a very artistic general effect, and suggested plenty of work on the part of the owners. Both the sisters were fond of painting, and Katrine, at any rate, spent much of her spare time here. With her blue eyes, regular features, clear pale complexion, and plentiful red-gold hair, Katrine looked artistic to her finger-tips. She was just seventeen, and, owing to her extreme predilection for painting, had persuaded her parents to take her from the High School, and let her attend the School of Art, where she could devote all her energies to her pet subject. On the strength of this promotion she regarded herself as almost, if not quite, grown up—a view that was certainly not shared by her mother, and was perhaps a determining influence in Mrs. Marsden's decision to send her to a boarding-school.

Gwethyn, two years younger, was a bright, merry, jolly, independent damsel, with twinkling hazel eyes and ripply brown hair, a pair of beguiling dimples at the corners of her mouth, and a nose which, as Tennyson kindly expresses it, was inclined to be tip-tilted. Unromantic Gwethyn did not care a toss about "High Art", though in her way she was rather clever at painting, and inclined to follow Katrine's lead. She liked drawing animals, or niggers, or copying funny pictures from comic papers; and sometimes, I fear, she was guilty of caricaturing the mistresses at school, to the immense edification of the rest of the form. While Katrine painted fairies, Gwethyn would be drawing grinning gargoyles or goblins, with a spirited dash about the lines, and much humour in the expression of the faces. Sometimes these artistic efforts, produced at inopportune moments in school, got her into trouble, but wrath from head-quarters had little permanent effect upon Gwethyn. Her irrepressible spirits bobbed cheerily up again when the scoldings were over, and her eyes, instead of being filled with penitential tears, would be twinkling with suppressed fun.

Just now she was sitting on the table in the studio, hugging Tony, and trying to adjust her mental vision to the new prospect which opened before her.

"It's hard luck to have to leave the 'High' when I'd really a chance for the tennis championship," she mourned. "I suppose they'll play tennis at this new school? I hope to goodness they won't be very prim. I guess I'll wake them up a little if they are. Katrine, do you hear? I'm going to have high jinks somehow."

"Jink if you like!" returned Katrine dolefully. "It's all very well for you—you're only changing schools. But I'd left! And I'd quite made up my mind to turn up my hair this term. Of course I'll like the landscape-painting. I can do lots of things for the sketching club while I'm away, but—it's certainly a venture! Perhaps an adventure!"

"It'll be a surprise packet, at any rate," laughed Gwethyn. "We don't know the place, or the people we're going to meet, or anything at all about it. Kattie, I felt serious a minute ago, but the sight of your lugubrious face makes me cackle. I want to sketch you for a gargoyle—a melancholy one this time. That's better! Now you're laughing! Look here, we'll have some fun out of this business, somehow. I'm going to enjoy myself, and if you don't play up and follow suit, you're no sister of mine."

A fortnight later, the two girls were waving goodbye from the window of a train that steamed slowly out of Hartfield station. Even Gwethyn looked a trifle serious as a railway arch hid the last glimpse of Mumsie standing on the platform, and Katrine conveniently got something in her eye, which required the vigorous application of her pocket-handkerchief. They cheered up, however, when the city was passed, and suburban villas began to give place to fields and hawthorn hedges. After all, novelty was delightful, and for town-bred girls three months of country life, even at school, held out attractions. It was a four hours' journey to Carford, where they changed. The express was late, and, somewhat to their dismay, they found they had missed the local train, and would have to wait three hours for the next. As it was only eight miles to Heathwell, the village where the school was situated, they decided to ride there on their bicycles, leaving their luggage to follow by rail. The prospect of a cycling jaunt seemed far pleasanter than waiting at an uninteresting junction; it would be fun to explore the country, and they would probably arrive at school earlier by carrying out this plan.

Through the sweet, fresh-scented lanes, therefore, they started, where the young leaves were lovely with the tender green of late April, and the banks gay with celandine stars and white stitchwort, and the thrushes and blackbirds were chanting rival choruses in the hedgerow, and the larks were rising up from the fields with their little brown throats bubbling over with the message of spring. On and on, mile after mile of softly undulating country, where red-roofed farms lay among orchards full of blossom, and a river wandered between banks of osiers and pollard willows, and the sleek white-faced cattle grazed in meadows flowery as gardens. It seemed a fitting way to Eden; but the girls had not quite anticipated the little Paradise that burst upon their view when a bend of the road brought them suddenly into the heart of Heathwell. Surely they must have left the present century, and by some strange jugglery of fate have turned back the clock, and found themselves transported to mediæval times. The broad village street ran from the old market hall at one end to the ancient church at the other, flanked on either side by black-and-white houses so quaint in design, and so picturesque in effect, that they might have stepped from a painting of the seventeenth century. The cobble-stoned cause-way, the irregular flights of steps, the creepers climbing to the very chimneys, the latticed windows, the swinging inn-sign with its heraldic dragon, all combined to make up a scene which was typically representative of Merrie England.

"Are we awake, or are we in an Elizabethan dream?" asked Katrine, dismounting from her bicycle to stand and survey the prospect.

"I don't know. I feel as if I were on the stage of a Shakespearian play. A crowd of peasants with May garlands ought to come running out of that archway and perform a morris dance, then the principal characters should walk on by the side wings."

"It's too fascinating for words. I wonder where Aireyholme is?"

"We shall have to ask our way. Ought one to say: 'Prithee, good knave, canst inform me?' or 'Hold, gentle swain, I have need of thy counsel'?"

"We shall start with a reputation for lunacy, if you do!"

The school proved to be not very far away from the village. Aireyholme, as it was aptly called, was a large, comfortable, rather old-fashioned house that stood on a small hill overlooking the river. Orchards, in the glory of their spring bloom, made a pink background for the white chimneys and the grey-slated roof; a smooth tennis lawn with four courts faced the front, and in a field adjoining the river were some hockey goals.

"Not so utterly benighted!" commented Gwethyn, as she and Katrine wheeled their bicycles up the drive. "There's more room for games here than we had at the 'High'. I'm glad I bought that new racket. Wonder what their play's like? I say, these are ripping courts!"

To judge by the soft thud of balls behind the bushes, and the cries that registered the scoring, several sets of tennis were in progress, and as the girls turned the corner of the shrubbery, and came out on to the carriage sweep before the front door, they had an excellent view of the lawn. Their sudden appearance, however, stopped the games. The players had evidently been expecting them, and, running up, greeted them in characteristic schoolgirl fashion.

"Hello! Are you Katrine and Gwethyn Marsden?"

"So you've turned up at last!"

"Did you miss your train?"

"Miss Spencer was in an awful state of mind when you weren't at the station. She went to meet you."

"Have you biked all the way from Carford?"

"Yes, and we're tired, and as hungry as hunters," returned Katrine. "Our luggage is coming by the 5.30. We missed the 2.15, so we thought we'd rather ride on than wait. Where can we put our bikes?"

"I'll show you," said a tall girl, who seemed to assume the lead. "At least, Jess and Novie can put them away for you now, and I'll take you straight to Mrs. Franklin. She'll be most fearfully relieved to see you; she gets herself into such stews over anybody who doesn't arrive on the nail. I'm Viola Webster. I'll introduce the others afterwards. You'll soon get to know us all, I expect. There are thirty-six here this term, counting yourselves. Did you bring rackets? Oh, good! We're awfully keen on tennis. So are you? Dorrie Vernon will be glad to hear that. She's our games secretary. I wonder if Mrs. Franklin is in the study, or in the drawing-room? Perhaps you'd better wait here while I find her. Oh, there she is after all, coming down the stairs!"

The new world into which Katrine and Gwethyn were speedily introduced, was a very different affair from the High School which they had previously attended. The smaller number of pupils, and the fact that it was a boarding-school, made the girls on far more intimate terms with one another than is possible in a large day-school. Mrs. Franklin, the Principal, was a woman of strong character. She had been a lecturer at college before her marriage, and after her husband's death had begun her work at Aireyholme in order to find some outlet for her energies. Her two sons were both at the front, one in the Territorials, and the other as a naval chaplain. Her only daughter, Ermengarde, had lately been married to a clergyman. Tall, massive, perhaps even a trifle masculine in appearance, Mrs. Franklin hid a really kind heart under a rather uncompromising and masterful manner. She was a clever manager, an admirable housekeeper, and ruled her little kingdom well and wisely. Both in features and personality she resembled an ancient Roman matron, and among the girls she was often known as "the mother of the Gracchi".

Mrs. Franklin's sister, Miss Aubrey, who lived at the school, was an artist of considerable talent. She superintended the art teaching, and gave the rest of her time to landscape-painting, in both oil and water colours. It was largely the fact that Katrine might have sketching lessons from Miss Aubrey which had influenced Mr. and Mrs. Marsden in their choice of Aireyholme. The art department was a very important feature of that school. Any talent shown among the pupils was carefully fostered. The general atmosphere of the place was artistic; the girls were familiar with reproductions of pictures from famous galleries, they took in The Art Magazine and The Studio, they revelled in illustrated catalogues of the Salon or the Royal Academy, and dabbled in many mediums—oil, water colour, pastel, crayon, and tempera. The big studio was perhaps the pet room of the house; it was Liberty Hall, where anybody might pursue her favourite project, and though some of the attempts were certainly rather crude, they were all helpful in training eye and hand to work together.

Of the other mistresses, Miss Spencer was bookish, and Miss Andrews athletic. The former was rather cold and dignified, an excellent and painstaking, though not very inspiring teacher. She spoke slowly and precisely, and there was a smack of college about her, a scholastic officialism of manner that raised a barrier of reserve between herself and her pupils, difficult to cross. Very different was Miss Andrews, whose hearty, breezy ways were more those of a monitress than of a mistress. She laughed and joked with the girls almost like one of themselves, though she could assert her authority emphatically when she wished. Needless to say she was highly popular, and although she had only been a year at Aireyholme, she was already regarded as an indispensable feature of the establishment. Into this busy and highly organized little community Katrine and Gwethyn, as new-comers, must shake themselves down.

CHAPTER II

A Scrape

"I was only just going to try it sometimes, for fun. When a girl is as tall as I am, it's ridiculous to see her with a plait flapping down her back. I'm sure I look older than either Viola or Dorrie. Most people would take me for eighteen." Katrine was staring anxiously at herself in the glass. "I'm not going to be treated here like a junior. They needn't begin it."

"Oh, you'll settle them all right, I dare say!" answered Gwethyn abstractedly. She was calculating the capacities of the top drawer, and, moreover, she was accustomed to these outbursts on the part of her sister.

Katrine put the hairpins, not on the dressing-table, but in a handy spot of her right-hand drawer, where she could easily get at them. It was absurd of Gwethyn to make such a fuss, so she reflected. A girl of only fifteen cannot possibly enter into the feelings of one who is nearly grown up.

She preserved a rather distant manner at supper. It would not be dignified to unbend all at once to strangers. Gwethyn, always too hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, was talking to her next neighbour, and evidently eliciting much information; an unrestrained chuckle on her part caused Mrs. Franklin to cast a glance of surprise at that particular portion of the table. By bedtime both the new-comers were feeling serious; they would not for the world have confessed to home-sickness, but Katrine observed that she hoped vessels bound for Australia never blundered into German mines, and Gwethyn said she had seen in one of the papers that there was an outbreak of enteric among the troops in Egypt, and she wondered if it were in Hereward's regiment; neither of which remarks was calculated to raise their spirits.

The beds had spring mattresses, and were quite as comfortable as those at home. By all ordinary natural laws the girls, tired with their journey, ought to have slept the slumbers of the just immediately their heads touched their pillows. Instead of doing anything so sensible, they lay talking until they were both so excited and so thoroughly wideawake that sleep refused to be wooed. Hour after hour they tossed and turned, counting imaginary sheep jumping over gates, repeating pieces of poetry, and trying the hundred-and-one expedients that are supposed to be infallible brain lullers, but all with no effect. Outside, owls were hooting a continual dismal concert of "twoo-hoo-hoo!"

"I like owls from a natural history point of view," groaned Katrine, "and I've no doubt they're only telling one another about fat mice and sparrows; but I wish they'd be quiet and not talk! They're far more disturbing than trams and taxis."

"Talk of the peace of the country! I should like to know where it is!" agreed Gwethyn, turning her pillow for the fourteenth time. "There's a cock crowing now, and a dog barking!"

"It's impossible to sleep a wink," declared Katrine, jumping out of bed in desperation, and drawing aside the window curtain. "I believe it's getting light."

There was a stirring of dawn in the air. All the world seemed wrapped in a transparent grey veil, just thin enough for objects to loom dimly through the dusk. She could see the heavy outlines of the trees at the farther side of the lawn. A thrush was already giving a preliminary note, and sparrows were beginning to twitter under the eaves.

"What's the use of stopping in bed when one can't sleep?" exclaimed Katrine. "Let us dress, find our machines, and go for a spin."

"What! Go out now?"

"Why not? People are supposed to get up early in the country."

"All right! If you're game, I am."

The two girls had not been accustomed to much discipline at home, and their notions of school rules were rudimentary. The idea of getting up so early and going out to explore struck them both as delightfully enterprising and adventurous. They made a hurried toilet, crept cautiously downstairs, and found the passage at the back of the house, where their bicycles had been temporarily placed the night before. It was an easy matter to unbolt a side door, and make their way through the garden and down the drive. Before the day was much older, they were riding along the quiet dim road in that calm silence that precedes the dawn. The air was most fresh and exhilarating. As their machines sped through the grey morning mist, they felt almost as if they were on aeroplanes, rushing among the clouds. At first all was dark and vague and mysterious, but every minute the light was growing stronger, and presently they could distinguish the gossamer, hung like a tangled magic web upon the hedges, in dainty shimmering masses, as if the pixies had been spinning and weaving in the night, and had not yet had time to carry off the result of their labours.

"It's just like a fairy tale," said Gwethyn. "Do you remember the boy who sat on the fox's tail, and they went on and on till his hair whistled in the wind? Those rabbits ought to stop and talk, and tell us about Brer Terrapin and the Tar Baby. I'm sure Uncle Remus is squatting at the foot of that tree. We shall meet the goose-girl presently, I expect."

"What a baby you are! But it is lovely, I agree with you. Oh, Gwethyn, look at the sky over there! That's a fairy tale, if you like. Let's stop and watch it."

It was indeed a glorious sight. The colour, which at first had been pearly-grey, had changed to transparent opal; then, blushing with a warmer hue, grew slowly to pink, amber, and violet. Great streamers of rosy orange began to stretch like ethereal fingers upwards from the horizon. The fields were in shadow, and a quiet stillness reigned, as if the world paused, waiting in hope and expectancy for that fresh and ever wonderful vision, the miracle of the returning dawn. Then the great shimmering, glowing sun lifted himself up from among the mists in the meadows, gaining in brilliance with every foot he ascended till the light burst out, a flood of brightness, and all the landscape was radiant. At that, Mother Earth seemed to bestir herself. With the new day came the fresh pulse of life, and the reawakening of myriads of nature's children. The first lark went soaring into the purply-blue overhead; the chaffinches began to tweet in the elms; a white butterfly fluttered over the hedge; and a marvellous busy throng of insect life seemed suddenly astir and ahum. It was a different world from that of an hour before—a living, breathing, working, rejoicing world; the shadows and the mystery had fled, and left it as fair as if just created.

"It was worth getting up for this!" said Katrine. "I've never seen such a transformation scene in my life. I wish I could paint it. But what colours could one use? Nothing but stained glass could give that glowing, glorious, pinky violet!"

"I haven't the least idea where we are, or how far away from the school," said Gwethyn. "We rode along quite 'on spec.', and we may have come two miles or five, for anything I know. Yes, it has been lovely, and I see you're still wrapt in a sort of rapturous dream, and up among rosy clouds, but I've come down to earth, and I'm most unromantically hungry. It seems years since we had supper last night. I wonder if we couldn't find a farm, and buy some milk."

"Rose madder mixed with violet lake, and a touch of aureolin and Italian pink might do it!" murmured Katrine.

"No, it wouldn't! They'd want current coin of the realm. Have you any pennies left in your coat pocket?"

"You mundane creature! I was talking of the sunrise, and not of mere milk. Yes, I have five pennies and a halfpenny, which ought to buy enough to take a bath in."

"I don't want a bath, only a glassful. But it's a case of 'first catch your farm'. I don't see the very ghost of a chimney anywhere, nothing but fields and trees."

"Better go on till we find one, then," said Katrine, mounting her machine again.

They rode at least half a mile without passing any human habitation; then at last the welcome sight of a gate and barns greeted them.

"It looks like the back of a farm," decided Gwethyn. "Let us leave our bikes here, and explore."

Up a short lane, and across a stack-yard, they penetrated into an orchard. Here, under a maze of pink blossom, a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen, with a carriage whip in one hand and a bowl in the other, was throwing grain to a large flock of poultry—ducks, geese, and hens—that were collected round her.

"The goose-girl, by all that's wonderful! I told you it was a fairy-tale morning!" whispered Gwethyn. "Now for it! I'll go and demand milk. How ought one to greet a goose-girl?"

She stepped forward, but at that moment a large collie dog that had been lying unnoticed at the foot of an apple tree, sprang up suddenly, and faced her snarling.

"Good dog! Poor old fellow! Come here, then!" said Gwethyn in a wheedling voice, hoping to propitiate it, for she was fond of dogs.

Instead of being pacified by her blandishments, however, it showed its teeth savagely, and darting behind her, seized her by the skirt. Gwethyn was not strong-minded. She shrieked as if she were being murdered.

"Help! Help!" yelled Katrine distractedly.

The goose-girl was already calling off the dog, and with a well-directed lash of her long whip sent him howling away. She walked leisurely up to the visitors.

"You're more frightened than hurt," she remarked, with a half-contemptuous glance at Gwethyn. "What do you want here?"

"We came to ask if we could buy some milk," stammered Katrine. "I suppose this is a farm?"

"No, it isn't a farm, and we don't sell milk."

The girl's tone was ungracious; her appearance also was the reverse of attractive. Her sharp features and sallow complexion had an unwholesome look, her hair was lank and lustreless, and the bright, dark eyes did not hold a pleasant expression. She wore a blue gingham overall pinafore that hid her dress.

"Where are you from? And what are you doing here so early?" she continued, gazing curiously at Katrine and Gwethyn.

"We've bicycled from Aireyholme——" began Gwethyn.

"You're never the new girls? Oh, I say! Who gave you leave to go out? Nobody? Well, I shouldn't care to be you when you get back, that's all! Mrs. Franklin will have something to say!"

"Do you know her, then?" gasped Gwethyn.

"Know her? I should think I do—just a little! If you'll take my advice, you'll ride back as quick as you can. Ta-ta! I must go and feed my chickens now. Oh, you will catch it!"

She walked away, chuckling to herself as if she rather enjoyed the prospect of their discomfiture; as she turned into the garden she looked round, and laughed outright.

"What an odious girl! Who is she?" exclaimed Katrine indignantly. "She never apologized for her hateful dog catching hold of you. What does she mean by laughing at us? I should like to teach her manners."

"Perhaps we'd better be riding back," said Gwethyn uneasily. "They said breakfast was at eight o'clock. I haven't an idea what the time is. I wish we'd brought our watches."

They had cycled farther than they imagined, and in retracing their road they took a wrong turning, consequently going several miles out of their way. They were beginning to be rather tired by the time they reached Aireyholme. The excitement and romance of the spring dawn had faded. Life seemed quite ordinary and prosaic with the sun high in the heavens. Perhaps they both felt a little doubtful of their reception, though neither was prepared to admit it. As they wheeled their machines past the lower schoolroom window, where the girls were at early morning preparation, a dozen excited heads bobbed up to look at them. They took the bicycles through the side door, and left them in the passage. In the hall they met Coralie Nelson, going to practice, with a pile of music in her hand.

"Hello! Is it you?" she exclaimed. "So you've turned up again, after all! There's been a pretty hullabaloo, I can tell you! Were you trying to run away?"

"Of course not," declared Katrine airily. "We were only taking a little run on our bikes before breakfast. It was delicious riding so early."

"Was it, indeed! Well, you are the limit for coolness, I must say! You'd better go and explain to Mrs. Franklin. She's in the study, and particularly anxious to have the pleasure of seeing you. Hope you'll have a pleasant interview!"

"Hope we shall, thanks!" returned Katrine, bluffing the matter off as well as she could. "I can't see what there is to make such a fuss about! We're not late for breakfast, I suppose?"

"Oh dear me, no! You're in excellent time!" Coralie's tone was sarcastic. "Punctuality is considered a great virtue at Aireyholme. Perhaps you may be congratulated upon it! I won't prophesy! On the whole I wouldn't change into your shoes, though!"

"We don't want you to," retorted Gwethyn.

The two girls tapped at the study door, and entered with well-assumed nonchalance. Katrine, in particular, was determined to show her superiority to the conventions which might hedge in ordinary pupils. A girl of seventeen, who had left school last Christmas, must not allow herself to be treated as the rest of the rank and file. At the sight of the Principal's calm, determined face, however, her courage began to slip away. Somehow she did not feel quite so grown-up as she had expected. Mrs. Franklin had not kept school for fifteen years for nothing. Her keen, grey eyes could quell the most unruly spirit.

"Katrine and Gwethyn Marsden, what is the meaning of this?" she began peremptorily. "Who gave you leave of absence before breakfast?"

"We saw no reason to ask," replied Katrine. "We couldn't sleep, so we thought we'd get up early, and take a spin on our machines."

"Please to understand for the future that such escapades are strictly forbidden. There are certain free hours during the day, and there are definite school bounds, which one of the monitresses will explain to you later on. No girl is allowed to exceed these limits without special permission."