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The Head finished speaking. Her three listeners sat on in frozen silence for the moment. They could scarcely believe their ears. Finally Margot, youngest of the Maynard triplets, broke it. She was usually the one first off the mark.

“Auntie Hilda, do you really mean that?” she asked incredulously.

Miss Annersley nodded, “I do.”

“But—but what’s to become of us—the school, I mean?”

“You will go on as usual,” Miss Annersley said briskly. “What else did you suppose, Margot?”

Margot subsided and Len, the eldest of the three, took up the tale. “Who will be Head while you are away? Is Auntie Nell coming here to take over?”

“She most certainly is not. She can’t be spared from St Mildred’s—they’re going to be short-handed as it is for the first half of the term. She’ll come for her usual science lessons with the two sixth forms, but apart from that she won’t be able to manage anything.”

“St Mildred’s short?” Margot exclaimed. “Why what’s happened? Who’s gone?”

“No one has actually gone in the sense of having left. Miss Norton has lost her mother during the holidays and until she can make arrangements for someone to take over the housekeeping and so forth, she must stay at home.”

“Oh, poor Miss Norton!” Len said. “That’s rather dreadful for her.”

The Head looked grave. “In one way, it isn’t. Mrs Norton has suffered very much during the past months, and for her death is merciful indeed. Miss Norton knows that. Unfortunately, a sister who was able to be with their mother during this year must now go back to her own job as soon as possible, so our Miss Norton has to settle things for the two brothers who are still living at home. She had leave for the coming half-term before ever this came up. I know she would return sooner if we really needed her, but we don’t.” She smiled at the three and they smiled back uncertainly.

“Then who will take over the headship?” Len asked after a minute’s pause. “Oh, Auntie Hilda, I can’t say I’m looking forward to this term with you away and not even Auntie Nell taking over for you! Who is there? I know Mdlle won’t do it. She once said to me that it wasn’t her cup of tea at all and she was thankful not to have all your responsibilities.”

“That I’m sure she never said,” the Head returned decidedly.

“Well, not in those words, I’ll admit.” Len laughed. “That was the gist of it, though.”

Con, the middle member of the triplets, spoke for the first time. “We have Miss Derwent,” she said dubiously. “Will she take over? Somehow I don’t quite see her doing it.”

“I sure she wouldn’t,” Len said decisively. “She’s a dear, but—well—”

The Head gave her a quizzical look as she stopped short. “But—what, Len?”

“I—it’s difficult to say what I mean without sounding horribly snooty. What I feel is that you have something more than she has. I can’t explain, Auntie Hilda, so it’s no use asking me, but I know what I mean. Miss Derwent is a poppet, but you need something more than that in a Head. As a matter of fact,” she went on thoughtfully, “the only person I can think of who could really take it on is Miss Wilmot.”

“Willy?” Margot cried. “Oh, but she couldn’t! Dash it all, Len, it isn’t so awfully long since she was at school herself. She must be years too young to take on a big job like Head of the school.”

Miss Annersley laughed. “Is that how it strikes you? Yet she is no younger than I was when I first took hold—after the doctors told us that Mdlle Lepâttre would never be able to do it again after that bad illness.”^[1] She finished in graver tones and the three big girls also looked grave.

“Mother told us all about that,” Margot said. “Mdlle died a month before we were born so we never knew her. She was some sort of cousin to Tante Simone, I know, but years and years older, of course.”

The Head nodded. “She was fifty-three when she died. I, coming immediately after her, was not much over thirty—barely a year older than Miss Wilmot is now. And so far as that goes, what about your Aunt Madge? She was a mere twenty-six when she started the school in Tirol. Age, my good girl, has very little to do with it, except that added years would give you added experience. Miss Wilmot has been teaching for ten years, eight of them here. She is an Old Girl, so knows our traditions and customs as no stranger could hope to know them. Len has guessed right; it is Miss Wilmot.”

The triplets were silent as they considered this. Then Con said reflectively, “I see. And there’s one thing: though she’s so jolly and matey out of school she lets you know your limits and I don’t think anyone would ever be likely to cross them. And again we do know that it’s a great honour to be asked to take on your new job—for the school as well as for you personally.” She raised deep brown eyes full of thought to her brevet-aunt’s face. “It isn’t everyone who would be asked to take on a chore of that kind by any means.”

“What, exactly, does it entail?” Margot asked. “Travelling around and inspecting all sorts of schools, I know. Frankly, it sounds to me too dull for words.”

The Head turned her eyes from Con’s serious face, framed in the black hair she wore in a long thick pigtail dangling down her back, to Margot’s sparkling countenance crowned with a mop of red-gold curls. Her lips relaxed. “Oh, I don’t think you would find it so in reality, Margot. Think it over. Don’t you think it will be interesting visiting schools of all kinds and nationalities, seeing the different ways in which various people tackle all the problems you get in any school and what they look on as the really important things in life?”

“Yes; it does sound O.K. when you put it that way,” Margot admitted. “And luckily for you you are trilingual, so language difficulties won’t frazzle you. I mean, if you can speak English, French and German fluently you can get by in most countries nowadays.”

“I can even,” said Miss Annersley with quiet emphasis, “speak slang on occasion. Honestly, Margot! I know it’s holidays, but there’s no need for quite so much of it, even so.”

Margot flushed, though she grinned as she murmured, “Sorry; but there aren’t any Juniors to hear me. And I do speak the most bee-yoo-tiful English before them,” she added with a wicked chuckle.

“Then why not all the time?” But the Head’s eyes were dancing with amusement.

“Because the others would think you most ghastly square if you did talk like a nineteenth-century novel,” Len said promptly, coming to her sister’s rescue. “Didn’t you use fashionable slang in your school days, Auntie Hilda?”

The Head laughed. “You’re quite right; I did. But this is side-tracking. Girls, I am looking forward to this new job of mine, first because it looks like being of supreme interest. I expect to learn a great many things and pick up any number of new ideas while I am away. Apart from that, Len is quite right. It is a great honour to be invited to take part in this educational tour of inspection. But you three can see that it is one I can accept only if I can feel sure that the school is behind me.”

“How do you mean?” Margot asked in puzzled tones. “How can we be behind you if we’re here and you’re in—say—Spain?”

“You aren’t thinking, my child. If I go I must be able to give my whole mind to my work. It won’t do for me to be wondering half the time how you folk are getting on without me.” She paused before she went on, “I must feel able to leave you people to run yourselves and knowing that you will back up Miss Wilmot in every possible way. That is why I called this conference, seeing I can’t get at any of our other prefects at the moment. Len, as Head Girl you have tremendous influence quite apart from your personal influence. However, you know all that. You and I have discussed it more than once. We can leave it alone now. Con and Margot, you two are prefects, and whether you realize it or not, you, too, have a good deal to say as to the way in which the school shall go, especially where the younger girls are concerned.”

Margot giggled. “Oh, Auntie Hilda! Personally, I’d have said that any influence I might have isn’t exactly elevating. You know,” she went on confidentially, “I overheard two of the Juniors talking last term and Hilary Wilton said quite clearly, ‘Of course, I’ve always heard that Margot was the bad one of the Maynards.’ Believe it or not, it gave me quite a shock!”

The Head gave her a shrewd glance. “Did it, indeed? Well, yes; I suppose it might. Kindly don’t talk nonsense to me, Margot. Whatever may have happened in the past is past. You’ve put all that behind you. Nowadays, there isn’t a girl in the school who has a better influence for decency and straight thinking. If you haven’t got that into your mind yet, you must be completely addle-pated. And that,” she added, “is something I won’t believe of your mother’s girl.”

Margot reddened and subsided. Auntie Hilda was a gentle creature on the whole but when she spoke like that she did make you feel as if you were a complete idiot. Len flashed her sister a sympathetic grin.

“Poor old Margot! All the same, you did ask for it, you ninnyhammer! I agree with Auntie Hilda. If I’ve got to be Head Girl with her away for the entire term, I’m thankful to feel that among the folk I know will back me up to the hilt I’ll have you and Con.” She changed the subject, turning to the Head and saying, “You say the idea is for you and some other people to inspect all sorts of schools. When you’ve done that, what happens next?”

“Next, we have a conference—or a series of conferences—and discuss our report. When that has been finally settled it will be printed and issued to all who want it. So you see it’s quite an important job.”

Margot, who had swiftly recovered from the Head’s snub, looked interested. “You mean you discuss all you’ve seen and heard?”

The Head nodded. “Yes, we set out the different methods of teaching employed by the diverse countries; also the subjects each seems to consider most important.” Then as the girls were all looking eager, she added, “I’ll give you an example from our own school. We teach history here by showing you people how to argue from cause to effect, and back, from effect to cause. You learn the why of great movements such as the Renaissance—the French Revolution—the tremendous growth of trade during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Now that is a course that I should mark in a school as one to be followed up, not because it’s our idea of how history should be taught but because it helps boys and girls to understand the reasons for the way their own and other countries have developed.”

“I see.” Con spoke reflectively. “But it’s that sort of thing that makes our history lessons so jolly interesting.”

“Of course! Well, now you understand partly, at least, what my new job entails. We’ll leave it and turn to other things. Len, I needn’t say much to you. You know what you have to do as Head Girl. Margot, this year games are to be your province. I want you to keep an eye on the Middles particularly. Remember that it is from them that our future teams must come and a great deal depends on the training and encouragement they get now.”

“Yes; but that’s the Games Pree’s job,” Margot objected. “Heather Clayton is Games Pree; not I.”

“Not this term.”

“Not? But isn’t she coming back for the term? I thought she was.”

“She is; but to St Mildred’s. Her people think that she may as well have one term there since she’s not eligible for her training hospital until January. She won’t be eighteen until the end of December, and St Mary’s, where she is going, doesn’t accept probationers under that age. You are to be Head of the Games.”

Margot’s blue eyes shone. “Not really? Oh, how—how miraculous!”

“Considering that you’ve been Second Games Prefect all this last year, I can’t imagine why you should have expected anything else,” her brevet-aunt told her with a smile.

“Well, of course I did know that when Heather left at Christmas I’d probably get it,” Margot owned, “but I didn’t expect it so soon.”

“No; I didn’t expect it myself. But Mr Clayton thinks Heather should have at least the one term’s experience there and I agree with him. He knows that here she would only be marking time. At St Mildred’s she will come up against something that is quite otherwise.”

“Then what about us?” Margot demanded. “Won’t we be marking time, too?”

“No; you three are needed here and you know it. You will go on with your advanced work, but you are all going on to the university. Your work will continue along the same lines there. Heather will be plunged into a great deal of new work.”

The Head turned to Con. “For you, Con, we have special work. You knew that Eloïse Dafflon left at the end of last term. That leaves the editorship of The Chaletian vacant. You have been appointed to that vacancy by unanimous vote.”

It was Con’s turn to glow. Normally, she was a very quiet girl though on the occasions when she did speak her mind she frequently startled her congeners by the acuteness of her observations. Even so, lookers-on were apt to pass her over for her sisters. Len with her unconscious air of authority, and Margot, vivid and brilliant, would never be overlooked. Con, dreamy and retiring, had been apt to stand back and hide behind her sisters. She had always been shy and up to the last year had been only too thankful that this was so. During the previous terms, however, she had been gaining in self-confidence faster than most folk had realized. Her mother was a writer and Con, inheriting a larger proportion of her gifts of imagination and self-expression than any of the rest of the family, had always determined to follow in her steps. Last year she had been Staff Prefect, but though she had never spoken of it, she had always envied Eloïse her post. Now it was to be hers and her cheeks were pink with delight. The deep brown eyes, frequently so dreamy, sparkled and looked alive as they had been rarely seen.

“Oh, Aunt Hilda, how fabulous!” she exclaimed.

Miss Annersley smiled sympathetically. “Yes; I knew you would be pleased. I’ve this to say to you, though. It’s a very responsible post and it will mean giving up some of your own private work, I’m afraid. Whatever you do, you must not let the most exciting of private imaginings interfere with what you owe to the magazine. You can’t afford to let yourself dream over such a job. By the way, it may interest you to be reminded that you’re following in your mother’s footsteps. She was our first editor.^[2] I know she’ll be thrilled to hear that you are the twenty-fifth.”

“Doesn’t she know? Haven’t you told her?”

“No; I left it for you. So please let Con tell it, Margot.” The Head turned to the youngest triplet. “I know you always like to be first to skim the cream but this is Con’s affair.”

Margot laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ve got to tell her that I’m Head of the Games and that’s cream enough, even for me. Auntie Hilda, I honestly think I’m not quite such a selfish pig as I used to be.”

“Of course you’re not. The only thing I feared was your excitement and delight over Con.” The Head laughed. “I’m only sorry, Len, that there’s no startling bit of news for you to take home. However, I don’t suppose you mind that.”

“Of course I don’t. I’m only too thrilled over Con and Margot,” Len said promptly. “So will Mamma be. Con, it’s a real step forward. Even if The Chaletian is just a school magazine, it does mean getting experience in your own work. Congrats, my poppet!”

“And from me, too,” Margot chimed in.

Con laughed. “Thanks a million! I’ll do my best not to let Mamma or The Chaletian down, I promise.”

The Head said no more, but marking the wideawake look on the girl’s face she congratulated herself inwardly on having bowed to the insistence of her entire staff that Con should be given the chance to show how she had grown in sense of responsiblity.

“One more thing I have to say to you three—and I want you to pass it on to the rest of the prefects. I start off on my travels the Friday before term begins, so that I won’t be able to tell them myself. We have several new girls this term as usual. There is one in particular, Len, that I want you to look after. Evelyn Ross is a Senior. She is much older than the majority of our new girls, but we have agreed to take her because her widowed mother has had to come to the Sanatorium and is very ill. Evelyn is her only child and Mrs Ross wants to have her close at hand. As you know we rarely take girls over fourteen and Evelyn is sixteen. Keep an eye on her and see that she is looked after by her form. And all of you, do not moan because you have to do without me altogether. No one is indispensable and you will have Miss Wilmot.” She stopped and laughed. “And that’s all. Ring the bell, please, Len. Miggi will bring us Kaffee und Kuchen and we’ll give school and school affairs a rest for what’s left of this holiday.”

While Miss Annersley was breaking the news to the Maynard triplets of her imminent departure, Evelyn Ross was sitting on the verandah outside her mother’s private ward, gazing thoughtfully at the scene. She was a tall, fair girl with light brown hair which she wore in a straight shoulder-length bob with a deep fringe which almost hid her eyebrows from sight. When Evelyn was laughing or animated she looked pleasant enough, but just now her mouth was drawn down at the corners in a sulky droop and her grey-green eyes were sullen. Her mother had just broken the news that although her only child was to be in Switzerland during the months Mrs Ross must stay at the Görnetz Sanatorium, it did not mean that she had left school as she had fondly supposed. Instead, she was to go to the Chalet School which was about three miles away at the other end of the Platz.

“You will be so near that we can see quite a lot of each other,” Mrs Ross said happily. “It would be very lonely for you, alone at the Pension, and you know they won’t let you pay me long visits just yet. At the school you will have friends of your own age. It’s a good school and a large one—about four hundred, I gather, with the Kindergarten.”

She had stopped there, breathless, and Nurse, arriving at that point, had taken one look at her patient and then banished Evelyn to the verandah with orders not to come to the ward again for the present.

Evelyn had gone with the wild protests she had meditated unspoken. Her mother’s complete collapse a fortnight ago had frightened her thoroughly, and she was sufficiently in awe of the Sanatorium authorities to obey them without much argument. All the same, she was far from being reconciled to the plan her mother had just unfolded to her.

“Why on earth need I go back to school?” she thought as she lounged in her hammock-chair, her forgotten book on the ground beside her. “I’m sixteen and that’s old enough to leave school, goodness knows! It isn’t as if I wanted to go to college or anything like that. I’ve got my G.C.E. even if it is just O level. I didn’t mind the idea of going to the commercial college and taking up shorthand and typewriting. I’d rather like to do secretarial work and I suppose I’ve got to do something. Everyone does nowadays. But there’s no violent hurry that I can see. Anyhow, I couldn’t have stayed on in England and let Mum come here alone. That would have been too ghastly and she would have hated it, too. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t have a holiday while she has to be here. After all, it won’t be for so awfully long—just three or four months. She’s better already since we came.”

Her mind went back to those first two or three days after they had arrived when her mother had been so ill that she had been allowed only a few minutes at a time with her. Evelyn had been terrified during those days. But since then Mrs Ross had begun to make headway. She was able to speak more than the few words which had been all she could manage at first. She was reading a little, and Evelyn had been allowed regular morning and afternoon visits to her which had gradually extended from twenty minutes at a time to an hour. In between whiles the girl had taken short walks about the Platz, read, knitted at the bed-jacket she was making for her mother, and chatted with the various inhabitants of the Pension Mallarmé. It was a small Pension with about a dozen guests, all friends or relatives of various patients at the Sanatorium. Most of them were middle-aged or elderly. Evelyn was quite the youngest there and, knowing something of her story, they had all petted her a good deal. Going to school would be a very different matter.

“If I’ve got to go back to school I don’t see why I couldn’t just have stayed at Morven House,” she said to herself. “I could have lived with Auntie Joan and if Mum wanted me I could easily have flown out. Anyway, it would be a very different thing from being stuck out here in a great boarding-school where I know nobody.”

What she did not say—though it was at the back of her mind—was that at Morven House she had been somebody. It was a comparatively small private school, very good in its way but with a roll-call of only eighty-odd pupils of whom she had been one of the oldest. Her first school had been a kindergarten, and when she reached the 11-plus standard she had sat that examination with the idea of passing into the big county school in the nearby town. Unfortunately, she had not reached the required standard and there were only a limited number of vacancies. Mrs Ross had done the next best thing and sent her girl to the best private school in the district. Evelyn hadn’t minded, mainly because her best friend had also gone there. Once she had found her feet, Evelyn had become a leader in each of her forms. Last year she had been moved up to the top form and speedily found herself one of the people most looked up to by the younger girls.

“And this term I’m positive I’d have been School Captain,” she thought resentfully. “But in a school of four hundred I’ll bet I’m looked on as just nobody. Oh, I do think it’s all horrible!”

At this point the french-window of her mother’s room opened and Nurse appeared, having settled her patient for the next hour or two and seen that she was likely to sleep. She touched her lips with her finger and then beckoned to Evelyn to follow her. The girl got up, picked up her book, and followed Nurse to the end of the verandah where she stopped at the head of the short flight of steps leading down to the garden.

“Your mother seems likely to have a good sleep now,” she said, speaking in fluent English, but with a strong German accent which made it difficult for Evelyn to follow her. “She is much better, I know, but we must be careful not to permit her to tire herself. You understand, mein Liebling, that we are still far from a cure so now you will go back to your Pension. Amuse yourself until tomorrow morning when we shall hope that rest and tempting food will make it possible for her to have you with her again. Perhaps it may be for even a long visit. But now you will go.”

“Is—is Mum not so well?” Evelyn asked. “Oh, then do let me stay in case she wants me. I’ll be quite quiet out here and not bother her.”

Nurse shook her head. “Nein, mein Mädchen. It may not be. If you are there she will talk. That is natural, but it cannot be permitted. Too much talk is bad for her. So you will go, and tomorrow you will come again. See, I will walk with you to the gate. Come, Liebchen!”

There was that about her that compelled obedience though Evelyn felt very reluctant to go. Still, if talking was likely to make her mother worse she supposed there was nothing for it but to go. She took the hat Nurse had brought her when they left the verandah and pulled it on. She went meekly with her cicerone round the corner of the long, low building where her mother’s room was and down to the gate where the kindly German bade her goodbye and left her.

“I suppose there’s no help for it,” she grumbled to herself as she went slowly along the road and round the wall which shut off the Sanatorium grounds from the rest of the Platz. “I do think life is horrible just now, though.”

The Pension Mallarmé lay not far away at the foot of the mountain slopes which swept round the Görnetz Platz at this point, but Evelyn had no mind to go to it. Some of her fellow-guests would almost certainly be seated on the verandah. They would ply her with questions about her mother and she was not eager to discuss the present state of affairs with comparative strangers, however kind they might be.

“I’ll go for a stroll,” she thought. “It’s ages yet before dinner. I know! I’ll go along and have a look at that ghastly school. I just know I’m going to hate it, but I might as well have some idea of what it looks like. Mum’s not too bad now. Probably she’d rather read when she wakes up. Anyhow, they won’t let me in—Nurse said so. Such rot! Just talking a little couldn’t hurt anyone and I know she’d more to tell me. And I wanted to have a shot at coaxing her to say I needn’t go to school after all. Oh, well, it’ll have to wait.”

The sound of a car sent her to the side of the road. She glanced curiously at it as it went past. It was driven by a dark woman whose hair was wound in great flat shells of plaits over her ears. She wore a pink frock and there was something about her that attracted the discontented girl’s notice. The woman glanced at Evelyn and then, much to that young lady’s amazement, a hand was waved to her and a vivid smile was flung to her, though the car did not stop. Evelyn stared after her in amazement. Who on earth was she? No one she knew. Of that she was very sure. It was a face one wasn’t likely to forget. But why should she wave and smile like that? The car vanished through the gateway of the Sanatorium and Evelyn was left to wonder. Clearly it was someone who was going to visit a patient, so whoever it was must be living up on the Platz.

“Probably along at the far end,” Evelyn said aloud to herself as she turned to resume her walk. “I know there are two other pensions there—I’ve heard the people at my table talk of them. Let’s see: there’s the Pension Caramie and not far from it the Schilröken. I expect she lives there. Oh well, what does it matter? I’m never likely to know her, especially if I’m stuck at that school.” This recalled her to her great grievance, and she went along the road grumbling to herself.

It was a winding kind of road, partly, as she learned later, because of the formation of the shelf. There were bushes, but few trees until you got further back on the shelf. The day was very hot and, for once, there was no breeze. Evelyn found walking under the blazing sun anything but pleasant, and by the time she had reached the little rack-and-pinion railway which divided the Platz nearly in half, she was feeling hot and sticky and tired. What was more, so far she had seen nothing of the school.

“I don’t believe it’s only three miles long!” she exclaimed aloud. “I must have walked that far already. Oh well, I’ll give it up for today and go back. Perhaps I could have a shower before dinner. I jolly well need it!”

She glanced down the long track shining black under the sun as it raced away up into the mountain and down to the valley. It was the first time she had seen it, for when they had first come she had been in the ambulance with her mother. The little station was no more than a boarded platform with a steeply-sloping roof. Standing beyond it was a runabout and in it a dark, pleasant-looking man whom she recognized as one of the Sanatorium doctors. He got out, looked round and saw the girl. He knew who she was and smiled at her and came for a word with her; she somehow looked so forlorn, standing gazing down the railway, up which a train was just beginning to creep, looking like a shining black beetle.

“You are watching the train?” he said pleasantly. “I am Doktor Courvoisier, and you, I know, are Mme Ross’s daughter, Evelyn. I came to meet my wife and family. They have been staying with friends in Montreux for the last week.”

“How do you do?” Evelyn said rather shyly. “That’s the train? But where is the engine?”

“It is there all right. See, wait with me and you will see. Come! Let us go to the platform. At least there is shade there.” And he led the way.

Evelyn followed, and when they were out of the immediate rays of the sun he smiled at her again and asked, “You were walking? Surely it is too hot. You must come back with us or we shall have you ill with a touch of heat and that would not do. It would make Madame your mother worry and just at present we want her to have no troubles of any kind,” he added.

Evelyn had been wondering just how she was to get back when she was so hot and her legs were aching. She smiled at him and thanked him gratefully.

“That is all right,” he said. “My wife is small and my family are very small. We can fit you in easily. And I am glad to tell you that Madame improves now, though I fear you must expect it to be very slow. Ah! Here comes the train! Stand back a little. It never waits long and there will be cases to collect as well as the babies.”

Evelyn did as she was told, and the next moment the train had glided up to the platform and he was helping out a small lady holding a sturdy baby and a tiny boy and girl of about three before he grabbed a couple of cases. The next moment the doors had closed and the train slid on upwards. The doctor had set down the cases and kissed the small lady before turning to the children and swinging them up in his arms together.

“Well, mes petits, and have you been good?” he asked, laughing.

“Si, si, Papa!” the small girl babbled quickly. “And Jean, he has also been good. Oh, Papa, it is nice to see you!” And she flung her arms round his neck in a hug.

“Vezzy nice!” her brother assented, following suit.

Their father laughed as he kissed them and set them down. Then he turned to his wife. “Biddy, this is Evelyn Ross of whom you have heard. She has taken too long a walk and is hot and weary and now we will take her back with us. She is staying at the Pension Mallarmé.”

The little lady came forward, tucking her baby under her left arm as she held out her right hand to Evelyn. “ ’Tis glad I am to see you, me dear,” she said in a deep, sweet voice, faintly tinged with a Kerry accent. “What’s the news of your mother?”

“She’s better—Dr Courvoisier has just told me so,” Evelyn replied.

“Ah, now, isn’t that the good news! Eugen, it’s time these small folk were safe at home in the nursery. Where’s the car? All, there she is! Come along, Evelyn. We’ll tuck you into the back with the twins—Marie and Pat, by the way. They’re tiny so you’ll all fit in. Come along, me child!”

Before she quite knew where she was, Evelyn found herself packed in with the tinies one on each side of her, while Dr Courvoisier put the cases into the boot and Mme Courvoisier settled herself in the front seat. Small Jean was beginning to whimper, but his mother hushed him and gave him a rusk to suck. Then the doctor took the driver’s seat and they moved off along the white, winding road. Just before they reached the Sanatorium they turned off along a narrow path and Evelyn found herself gazing at a very big chalet while a tall, jolly-looking lady came racing down the garden path followed by two small girls who were shouting gleefully, “Auntie Biddy—Auntie Bid-dee!”

The lady wrenched open the car door and plucked Baby Jean from his mother’s arms. “Out you all get!” she cried. “Oh, Biddy, it’s good to see you again! The house seemed half-gone without you and these three. Where’s Winkie? Fast asleep in his cot this past half-hour, thank you! So be quiet, you small fry! I don’t want him wakened. We’ve been having a time of it with him, Biddy. Heat-rash, my love! He howled half the night but it’s clearing up now, thank goodness! I packed him off to bed early when he suddenly turned drowsy and heaven send he sleeps right through. How have your trio been?” She laughed and looked across to where her own two girls were chattering hard with Marie and Pat. Evelyn noticed with a slight shock that all four seemed to be talking a polygot mixture of English, French and German. Then Dr Courvoisier was getting back into the car.

“Back again shortly, Hilary. I must take Evelyn back to her Pension. She walked too far under the hot sun. We do not wish her to be ill and trouble Mme Ross, so we will not wait for introductions now. She will come soon and meet all our household. Take Biddy and the children in and I will be with you in a few minutes. Now, Evelyn, we go. You must say au revoir.”

Stunned by it all, Evelyn said goodbye. Five minutes later she was leaving the car to be welcomed by a friendly chorus of inquiries from the people on the verandah while the doctor turned the little Peugeot and raced off home again. It had been a very surprising ending to an afternoon that had contained a bad patch. All the same, it had done her a world of good. For once she forgot to scowl as she replied to the questions about her mother and she went to bed feeling slightly happier.

“Come on, Flixy! What a little dawdle you are!” Margot spoke sharply to her small sister. Felicity and her twin, Felix, were seventh and eighth in the long Maynard family. The triplets, first of them all, were eight years older than the twins. Between them came the three boys, Stephen, Charles and Michael.

Nine-year-old Felicity made a face at her sister before she turned to give her mother a final hug. “You’ll let me come the Sunday after next, Mamma—promise!”

Joey Maynard laughed as she cuddled the little girl. “So far as I know now. You must be off now though, pet. Can’t keep prefects waiting, especially anyone as important as the Head of the Games. Have a good time at both lessons and play, my sweet. Now, goodbye!” She released her fourth daughter with a final kiss and gave her a gentle push down the path which crossed the garden at Freudesheim, to pass through a gate in the hedge dividing the Maynard place from the school grounds.

Felicity ran off, calling goodbye as she went. Joey turned to her youngest triplet. “Your turn now, my Margot. Have a good term and best of luck with the games. And Margot, don’t scold Felicity. She still isn’t as passionately devoted to school as you three are. She’s another pair of shoes altogether, remember.”

Margot laughed sheepishly. “ ‘Shoes’ is the operative word where she’s concerned. All the same, she is a dawdle and I don’t want to be late on the first day of term.”

“You’ve plenty of time. The coaches aren’t likely to be up for another ten minutes. I won’t keep you, precious, but say goodbye here and now and you can be off.”

Joey kissed her third daughter and Margot gave her a vehement hug. “I don’t understand Flixy in lots of ways. It’s a pity Len had to go over early. She’s lots better than me with the kids. So’s Con, for that matter. But I’ll do my best.”

“And saints couldn’t do more!” Joey said as she turned to go back to the big house. It would, she knew, feel rather empty, even though she still had with her the three babies, who looked like being the tail of her eleven.

Margot waved goodbye and then set off down the path in full cry after her small sister. She caught her up at the wicket gate and put an arm round the slim shoulders. “Sorry, Flixy! I didn’t mean to be cross.” Then as Felicity looked up at her with wide blue eyes, “You can guess that I’m dying to see if any of the new girls look like being useful at games.”

“I s’pose so,” Felicity agreed. Then she changed the subject. “Margot, would you mind awfully not calling me Flixy? I don’t like it. My name’s Felicity.”

Margot laughed. “I don’t suppose so. We started it when you and Felix were too little to say your names properly. You became Fee and Flixy^[3] and yours has stuck. I’ll try to remember, though. After all, Mother has never liked it.”

“Thanks a lot.” Felicity came back to the earlier subject. “Do you expect to find a lot of new people for the games?”

“Goodness knows! There’s going to be a new senior and I’m hoping she’s keen on hockey. Our first XI should be O.K. though we’re going to miss Heather a lot. She’s so all-round good and in her own place—centre-half—she’s outstanding. By the way, you’ve never said which game you’d like best when you’re older. Any ideas?”

Felicity shook her head. “I think I’d rather stick to netball.”

Margot, a keen hockey player and almost as keen on lacrosse, the other main winter game of the school, looked surprised. “Honestly? Oh, well, here we are at school so we can’t discuss it any longer just now. I’ll make time to talk it over with you later on. I hoped you’d go in for lacrosse as you look like being very fast. Hop along now though, and think it over when you have time.” She released Felicity with a gentle squeeze and turned to go in at the big front door while her junior skipped off round the great building to the side door used by all but the prefects, whose privilege it was to use the main entrance.

The elder girl hurried up the short drive and entered by the wide-open main door leading into the entrance hall where already a number of girls who had come earlier than the majority of the school were assembling. She glanced round for her triplet sisters, saw Con standing a little to one side, talking to a pleasant-faced German-looking girl, and went over to join them.

“Hello, Marie,” she said as she neared them. “Had good hols?”

Marie Hüber smiled. “But excellent. And you?”

Margot frowned. “Oh, all right. So-so, I should say. Phil has been a worry.”

“Ach, das arme Kind! But she is recovering, nicht wahr?”

“Everyone says so, but it’s slow work. She still can’t use her left leg, poor pet,” Con said. “They’re trying electrical treatment now, so we’re hoping it’ll grow strong in time.”

They were interrupted by a slight, black-haired girl whose blue eyes were dancing. “Hello, folk! Where’s Len?”

“She had to go to the study,” Con said with a warning glance at Margot. “Oh, here she comes!” as Len, accompanied by a tall girl, came out of the corridor leading to the various school offices.

Len came up to them. “Hello, Marie! Nice to see you again! How’s the music going?”

“I have done good work these holidays,” Marie replied, her face lighting up. She glanced at the stranger and Len quickly introduced them.

“This is Evelyn Ross who will be in Va. Evelyn, these are my sisters, Con and Margot; and this is Marie Hüber. I’m afraid none of your own form has turned up yet, though they’ll be there in a minute or two. Meantime, here’s Mélanie Lucas. You’ll look after Evelyn for the moment, will you, Mélanie? She’s Va.”

Mélanie nodded. “Rather!” She gave the Maynard girls a quick look and then went on: “We all meet the people who come by the coaches outside this term. Shall we stroll forth? When we’re all lined up I’ll find someone in your own form to look after you. I’m only Vb. Meanwhile, ask me anything you want to know.” She ushered Evelyn out into the garden where already sundry younger girls were standing about, all looking eagerly in the direction of the southern entrance of the Görnetz Platz.

Evelyn went with her, leaving the three prefects together. She wore her old sulky look for she was realizing fast that her earlier premonition had been right: she would certainly have no chance of being a prefect or anything like it among all these older girls, one or two of whom looked very grown-up. Marie Hüber wore her flaxen hair in plaits swung round her head and though the Maynards had not reached that stage they were very grown-up in manner.

One of the younger girls suddenly raised a shout. “Here are the coaches! I can hear them!” Jeanne Sarazin spoke in quick idiomatic French which remained French so far as Evelyn was concerned. She could read and write well enough, but French conversation at Morven House had been at a minimum and the rapid fricatives of Jeanne’s cry were beyond her.

Not beyond the others, though. Those still in the entrance hall came hurrying out to stand waiting eagerly in front of the house, and those already there made haste to join them. The sound of heavy motor vehicles was clear now and a few minutes later the first coach came rolling along in stately fashion to draw up in the short drive. Immediately the door opened and girls came jumping out in haste. The last descended and the coach drove off round the far side while another came to take its place. One after another followed and it seemed to Evelyn that there was a never-ending stream of girls who all sprang down the steps, each carrying a small case in one hand and a bundle of hockey-stick, lacrosse-stick, umbrella and alpenstock all neatly strapped together inside a travelling-rug in the other. They seemed to know exactly what do to and where to go, though if she had been able to notice she would have seen that, especially among the younger ones, some were pulled gently to take their places in the long lines forming across the wide double lawns. As soon as these were in place the girls who had been already at the school came running to take their places also.

When this happened, Mélanie touched her arm. “Come along, Evelyn. Len said Va, didn’t she? Then this is your line.”

She drew the new girl to a line containing between twenty and thirty girls and with a quick look along it, selected one to whom she took Evelyn. “Lesley, this is Evelyn Ross who will be in your form. Sheepdog her, will you?”

Lesley, a red-haired girl with laughing, grey-green eyes and a pug nose, nodded. “Of course! Come along, Evelyn. Stand here by me—oh, mind my case!” she added quickly as Evelyn, not noticing the said case had been set on the ground, obeyed her gesture. “Here you are. Shove up, Hélène!”

Hélène did as she was asked and Evelyn found herself safely between the pair. She saw that Mélanie had joined the line immediately behind them. The Maynards were coming quickly past the long files, together with Marie Hüber, but she felt too shy to turn and round look. There was a buzz of chatter in English, French and German all round her and she caught some of the English remarks.

“I wonder what’s up?”—“Something has happened, certainly.”—“We’ll know all about it in a sec. Here come the Staff!”

Looking towards the house, she saw that the mistresses were pouring out and taking up their positions, facing the school. There was a pause and then a tall, rather plump woman, very good-looking with her shining waves of golden-brown hair and fresh complexion, appeared and took her place in the centre. There was a gasp, hastily suppressed, from a number of the girls, but it was followed by immediate silence as the lady held up her hand and began to speak.

“Welcome back to school, girls—and a special welcome to all our newcomers. I won’t keep you long, but just tell you the main news. I know you’re tired and hungry after your journey. Abendessen is waiting and you’ll be pleased to know that Karen and her henchmen have made an extra effort for you. But first, I have a shock for you. For the whole of this term we must do without Miss Annersley.”

There was no mistake about the gasp this time. There were also a good many exclamations, only one of which conveyed much to Evelyn. Lesley looked across at Hélène and said, “So Willy’s to be Head instead. What on earth has been happening?”

“Willy” nodded at them and went on: “I know it’s a shock, but it was all done so quickly. Girls! The Chalet School has been honoured as well as the Head. She has been invited to join a commission of educationists drawn from various well-known schools of several countries to go and visit and report on types of school, methods of teaching and curricula in other European lands. This means that she won’t be in school until the very end of term. Therefore, for that time I am taking her place. Now, that is all for the present. After Prayers I will tell you more about it. In the meantime—Abendessen! Pick up your belongings! Turn! Forward—march!”

Evelyn had expected to see the excitement continue to swell, but on the word the girls picked up cases and bundles, turned and, beginning with the very little ones, marched off. They went, line after line, round the house to the side-door which Evelyn had been told was the one used by the school, along the corridors and into the cloakrooms which, as Len Maynard had informed her, were known here as “splasheries”.

Evelyn went with the others, willy-nilly. She had no idea where else to go. But Lesley was keeping an eye on her. Mélanie Lucas had asked her to sheepdog the new girl and she was doing it with all her might.

Once they were in Va splashery, there was a general hubbub, but again the mixture of languages defeated the new girl and she could make next to nothing of what was said. Nor was there time for much. A deep, mellow clangour came rolling through the ground floor and the girls, who had been hurriedly hanging up coats and hats and tidying themselves generally, formed into line and marched out to tail on to another one, issuing from the nextdoor splashery. They marched along one passage, down another, and through big double doors near the end. Evelyn found herself in a long, rather narrow room down which ran tables covered with gaily-checked cloths. One stood across the others at the head of the room and here the mistresses were already assembled. Lesley led the way to a table near the foot of the room and presently they were all standing behind their chairs with bent heads while Miss Wilmot spoke a brief Latin grace. Then they sat down and Evelyn was interested to note that every girl went to the right of her seat before pulling it out. They were peasant chairs with backs adorned with gay scrolls of flowers and she discovered later that the painting had been done by the girls themselves. Another thing she noticed was that the glasses were all coloured and so were the great glass pitchers of iced lemonade which were set at intervals down the centre of the tables.

The meal itself was delicious. There were slices of cold meat with a stuffing delicately seasoned with herbs. This was accompanied by salad and rolls that were crusty outside and holey within. The butter was firm and ivory in tint and the little jugs of salad dressing were full of a lemony cream. The first course was followed by a creamy concoction decorated with slices of preserved apricots.

“Lemonade?” Lesley asked her charge. “It’s the real stuff. Karen makes it to perfection.”

“Thank you,” Evelyn said. Then she added involuntarily, “Do we always have this sort of supper?”

“Not exactly,” Lesley laughed. “We always have a special first-night supper though. Oh, and by the way, we call it Abendessen here. German, you know. This is one of the German cantons.”

“And also,” said a typically French girl sitting opposite Evelyn, “we speak German on two days of every week. It is well to remember and to learn all one can or else it is difficult at first. Me, I know!”

“But everyone helps you out until you can manage,” observed Lesley.

Evelyn looked as she felt, appalled. “Oh, but surely not all the time?” she said.

“On those two days, but yes,” the girl said. “But have no fear. One soon learns—I told you; me, I know. I found it frightening at first, but now I can speak.”

“But with an accent, liebe Nénette,” laughed her neighbour.

Nénette made a gesture. “And for you, Anneli, your French is no better than my German.”

Anneli chuckled. “But I am much better than when I first came. I could speak no French—no English—and how hard it was!”

“Don’t frighten the girl,” put in a third with an unmistakably Welsh lilt. “It’s all right,” she went on, speaking to Evelyn. “What they say is true enough. You soon pick up enough to carry on with, yes, indeed!”

The chatter had been rising until there was quite a din. At this point a bell rang out sharply from the staff table and the Head, rising, said, “A little less noise, please, girls. Lower your voices and don’t scream so.”

Evelyn noticed that the Head herself had a pleasant voice and that every word was distinct. It was clear that she had the school in hand, for the talking dropped to a lower pitch at once. But Hélène on Evelyn’s other side heaved a sigh.

“What’s the why of that?” Lesley asked with a twinkling look.

“Oh, Miss Wilmot speaks delightfully,” Hélène replied, “but I miss the tones of Miss Annersley. Indeed, I shall miss her all this term.”

“And so say all of us,” Lesley returned. “I suppose it is an honour that she’s been chosen for a job like that, but it’s hard lines on us.”

This seemed to be the general consensus of opinion. The girls agreed that Miss Wilmot—Evelyn was glad to know her proper name—was a poppet; but she wasn’t Miss Annersley and never would be.

When supper ended, and after grace had been said, Evelyn discovered that three-tiered trolleys were wheeled up to each table in turn. Plates and cutlery were piled on and when the trolleys were full to a height that seemed to her positively dangerous, sides of wire mesh were pulled up and they were wheeled away. Table napkins were piled up in the middle of the tables and four girls from each table remained behind to put them away and remove and fold the cloths. The rest marched out and presently Evelyn found herself in what was known as “Hall”. To her amazement she saw that only about half the girls were there. The rest seemed to have vanished.

“Why don’t the others come?” she ventured to ask Lesley.

“Because they’re Catholics. Mademoiselle de Lachenais takes them for Prayers and we have the Head,” Lesley explained, producing a hymn-book. “Here’s a hymn-book. Keep it when you go out and tomorrow put it into your locker after morning prayers.”

There was no time for more, for at that point a bell rang and a big, jolly-looking Senior mounted the platform and said, “Silence, please! The beginning-of-term hymn, everybody. Juniors, stop talking now!”

There was instant silence. The door at the top of Hall opened and the mistresses came in and mounted the dais where chairs stood in two rows. One had gone to the grand piano and was playing softly. A second bell rang and Miss Wilmot entered, followed by a fair, slight woman whom Evelyn recognized as Miss Dene, the school secretary, whom she had met the previous day when she had come to the school to be properly registered. The doors were shut and as soon as Miss Wilmot was standing before the lectern, the music changed from the little voluntary to the cheerful tune of the beginning-of-term hymn. Everyone had risen on the Head’s appearance and now they sang lustily, led by the school choir which stood at one side of the dais.

After that came the parable of the Talents. They knelt then for prayers and when Miss Wilmot had spoken the blessing, they all sat up and waited. It was not for long. Almost at once came the sound of footsteps and the Catholic members of the school arrived to take their seats. Everyone was very quiet, but as Miss Wilmot rose from the big William-and-Mary armchair in which she had been sitting, there was a distinct flutter of excitement. At last the school was to hear all about it!

Miss Wilmot stood before the lectern. She looked very self-confident, very self-possessed, smiling down at the girls who were gazing eagerly up at her. Not one of them would have believed that inwardly she was as nervous as she could be and was devoutly wishing that she had never agreed to take on this job. Most of the staff guessed that she was not quite as full of confidence as she seemed. Her great friend, Miss Ferrars, knew exactly how she felt and, as the new Head stood for a moment, she willed her with all her might to be able to go on.

“Go it, Nancy!” she thought. “You must—you simply must!”

Perhaps Nancy Wilmot did feel the encouragement. At least she was able to begin.

“Well,” she said, “we’ve all had a shock this term, and if you want to know, I’ve had as big a one as any of you.” She paused and a ripple of smothered laughter ran round Hall. It broke the ice completely and she went on more easily. “I hope you aren’t expecting the beginning-of-term speech we always get from Miss Annersley. If you are, you’ll be disappointed. She is one kind of person and I’m another. I imagine that those of you who know us well have already realized that. But there is one thing in which we are exactly alike. We both try to put the school first. We want the very best for it—and for you. It is that which has made it possible for me to step into her shoes for the major part of the term. What’s more, I know that all of you want very much the same thing. You who have been here some time know that in the educational world the Chalet School stands for something. That something is a striving after the best. That is what I want us to do this term. We must be content with nothing less—and that applies not only to lessons but to games, handcrafts, our Hobbies Club”—Evelyn pricked up her ears at this—“our magazine and last but not least, our Nativity Play when it comes along. It applies to our friendships and our work for people not so fortunate as we are. In short, to everything.” She paused and a murmur rose from some of the younger ones but was quickly hushed by the others. Then she continued.

“When Miss Annersley said goodbye to me, she asked me to tell you that she felt able to take on this job because she knew that everyone would help us to carry on—pull together, in fact—and make this term a really good one. Please don’t run away with the idea that we want you to go all out for everything. That sort of thing can go on for a time, but sooner or later the impulse dies in us. Then what happens? We rest on our oars and before we know where we are we’re adrift. All we ask of you, therefore, is to work well and play well. Above all, don’t waste any time. We aren’t likely to see Miss Annersley much before December, but we—the staff, I mean—have promised to send her full reports of how things are going during her absence. What is more,” her face filled with laughter, “I know for a fact that Mrs Maynard has made a similar promise. That should keep us all on our toes! As you know, she has, indeed, the pen of a ready writer and she will certainly send graphic accounts of all that happens here. And she tells me that she will be dropping in on us frequently during the term.”

This time there was no mistake about the laughter. Hall rang with it. She let them have full swing for a minute before she hushed them. When they were silent, she turned to other things.

“Now for tonight. The usual arrangements. Bed for everyone under fifteen as soon as I dismiss you. It’s been a long day and a tiring day, and I expect most of you are ready for it. The others may have an hour for dancing if you like, or for gossip. After that, it’s bed for you too. Tomorrow, you will unpack and in the intervals of that you will have short lessons so that you can get down to a little prep. Games on Saturday morning and a ramble in the afternoon, weather permitting. Dancing and games in the evening. On Monday, work will start in earnest. One last thing. As you all know, we are trilingual—that is, Juniors, we learn to speak three languages. In order to help you, we have nothing but French on Mondays and Thursdays this term. Nothing but German on Tuesdays and Fridays. Nothing but English on Wednesdays and Saturday mornings. Saturday afternoons and Sundays you may use which language you please. New girls, especially those who haven’t done much conversation in other tongues, don’t feel afraid. Everyone will help you out and for the first three weeks of term you will be free of fines for using the wrong language. Of course, if we feel that you simply aren’t trying, I’m afraid that won’t altogether hold; but do your best and you’ll be surprised to find how quickly you can pick up enough to speak on most occasions. After all, if you hear nothing but French the whole of one day you must have learnt a few words and phrases by the end of that day unless you’re a complete moron. The same applies to every language. Now that is all for the present. I’m going to say goodnight and it’s upstairs for all under fifteen. Everyone else, clear the forms back against the walls and dance or chatter till the bell goes. Oh, by the way, if any Senior feels bed would be better than that she is quite at liberty to go now.”

More laughter replied to this sally. Then she said goodnight. The music mistress crashed into a gay onestep and the younger girls marched out and upstairs to bed while the others hurried to move the forms back against the walls and clear the floor for dancing. Evelyn, called on by Lesley to give a hand, came forward and joined in. She was rather surprised at the dancing but quite pleased about it. At home in England she had gone fairly frequently to dance at one of the local halls. Mrs Ross had given leave rather unwillingly, but she knew that Evelyn must be given a certain amount of freedom and the crowd with which the girl had gone were pleasant creatures on the whole. But to Evelyn dancing meant modern up-to-the-minute dances. It was rather a shock when Mdlle Lenoir, one of the junior mistresses, broke into a waltz and the girls, taking partners, skimmed round Hall in the quick Viennese waltz.

“Be my partner?” Lesley asked her. “Come along!”

She put an arm round Evelyn’s waist and started off with her. Evelyn could waltz but she had never known anything like this and the swift movement was so unexpected that she stumbled more than once. Lesley, doing sheepdog with all her might, just laughed it off, but she was glad when the music ended and she could release her partner to Len Maynard who came up smiling and invited the new girl for the old Butterfly.

Evelyn got on better here. During her early schooldays country dancing had formed part of her gym lessons. She wasn’t too sure of the movements, but Len kept her straight. Further, she found it easier to dance when not firmly clasped by her partner.

There was a brief pause for rest when the dance ended. Mdlle Lenoir had been warned not to let the girls overtire themselves. Len led Evelyn to a seat on one of the forms and began to chat.

“How do you like being out here?” she asked. “Do you know the Oberland at all?”

Evelyn shook her head. “No; I went with my form to Paris last Easter hols, and Mum and I had a fortnight on the Costa Brava in Spain last summer,” she said. “That was fun, for two of my pals came with us and we had a smashing time together—utterly fab!”

Len felt that she could hardly say anything about slang as early as this, but she wondered how this girl would get on. The Chalet School certainly permitted a certain amount of slang in all three languages, but there were words and phrases which were utterly taboo.

“Oh, well,” she thought, “her own crowd will see to that with her. I needn’t come the Head Girl over her as early as this.” Aloud, she said, “We’d have asked you to our place before this but we’ve been having rather a sticky time. My baby sister was very ill with polio last term. She’s improving now but it’s very slow and she needs a lot of care, poor lamb.”

“Your place? Do you live up here, then?” Evelyn asked, surprised.

Len laughed. “Next door, my dear! My father is Dr Maynard and we’ve been here for years. I’m Len Maynard,” she added.

“Dr Maynard? He’s one of Mum’s doctors,” Evelyn said. “I’ve heard of you from Mrs Courvoisier. I know her though I haven’t seen much of her. Isn’t she smashing?”

“Oh, she’s a poppet,” Len agreed readily. “Have you seen her twins—and Petit Jean? Marie is my goddaughter, if you’ll believe it. I was thrilled when Biddy asked me. It seemed such a very grown-up thing to do and I was only fourteen at the time.”^[4]

Evelyn stared. “Gosh! Wasn’t that frightfully young?”

“I suppose it was, but it’s so, all the same. I’m immensely proud of my god-child.” Len laughed again. Then she started up and caught a slight, eager-looking girl who was passing. “Jane! Come and be introduced! This is Evelyn Ross who is new this term. Evelyn, this is Jane Carew. Look after Evelyn, will you, Jane? I’m being madly waved at.” She gestured towards a small group at the further end of Hall. “I must fly. Goodness knows why I’m wanted so urgently! You’ll be O.K., Evelyn. Jane will see to you.” And she went off, leaving Jane looking at the new girl in the warm-hearted way which was so much a part of her. Evelyn looked back and felt a sudden liking for her.

Jane was small and slight with a mane of ash-blonde hair which hung down her back in a long thick pigtail. Her black-lashed eyes were very dark and there was an eagerness about her that the other girl felt at once.

“Evelyn?” she said. “Is that your name? Oh, darling, I do believe you’re the first we’ve ever had here. Do you dance? Then come on! The next is a galop.”

And a galop it was. Evelyn had never done it before, but Jane proved an expert guide and by the time they had danced from one end of Hall to the other the new girl more or less knew the step and was thoroughly enjoying the swift motion.

“I say! That was fab!” she exclaimed when it ended and they were sitting down again. Then she looked at Jane in a puzzled way. “I know I’ve never met you before and yet, d’you know, your face is awfully familiar to me.”

Jane’s usually pale cheeks flushed deep pink. All she said was, “How can that be? For I know I’ve never met you.” She went on quickly, “Dancing will soon be over. Some of us haven’t had far to come. I haven’t myself. I’ve been staying at Vevey with my mother and that’s not so far away. But crowds of the others have come from England, which means an all-night journey. That’s why bed is early tonight.”

“I’m living up here. My mum is at the Sanatorium,” Evelyn explained.

Jane’s eyes became soft. “Oh, poor you! I know what a horrible feeling that is. My mother was in a very bad car accident last year and she was terribly ill for ages.^[5] But she’s recovering now. In fact she’s almost as fit as ever, and she’s hoping to join my father when he goes to the States in November. Meantime, she’s staying in Vevey which is a miraculous place—all roses and sunshine. Stupendous! How is your mother? I hope she isn’t too bad?”

“She’s been pretty bad,” Evelyn acknowledged, “but she’s better now and everyone seems to think that it won’t be too long before she can get up.”

Jane gave her a quick look. Evelyn knew very little about the treacherous disease which can give rise to such hopes only to dash them down in a day. Jane, having lived up on the Platz and hearing talk when she had gone to visit her mother, was well aware of it, however. She kept that to herself and, seeing Mdlle turning again to the piano, looked round. A slim girl with long black plaits framing an oval face marked by a demurely sweet expression, caught her eye and crossed over at once.

“Hello, Jane,” she said. “Want me?”

“Oh, I do, my poppet,” Jane said in the sprightly way that made her seem different from other girls. “I promised Adrienne I’d have the next with her. Meantime, here’s Evelyn Ross, our only new Senior this term. This is Janice Chester, Evelyn. Will you see to Evelyn while I scram over to Adrienne, Jan?”

Janice not only had good manners. She was thoroughly imbued with the unwritten Chalet School law which said that all new girls must be made to feel welcome and among friends. A smile broke the gravity of her small face as she held out a hand to Evelyn.

“How jolly to have a new Senior for once! The next is Gathering Peascods. Do you know it? Good!” as Evelyn nodded. “Come along and join this ring over here.” And she led Evelyn into a ring which was forming close at hand.

This was the last dance. Just as it ended a bell boomed out from somewhere overhead and the girls at once hurried to form lines round Hall. Mdlle began to gather up her music and Evelyn, standing near the piano, was intrigued to see Len Maynard come over to thank her for playing before she gave the word of command and the long procession led off upstairs. It would never have occurred to her that Mdlle ought to be thanked. It was part of her job and that, in Evelyn’s estimation, was all there was to it.

As they went upstairs, she turned to Lesley who was immediately behind her to make a remark, but Lesley hushed her vigorously. It was not until they were standing in the long corridor at the head of the stairs that the other girl spoke.

“Sorry, Evelyn, but talking on the stairs is forbidden. Now which dormitory are you in? I can see you’re in St Hild’s House,” she added with a swift glance at the little green enamel shield which pinned Evelyn’s tie in place. “This is Ste Thérèse de Lisieux so we must go over the bridge. Luckily, St Hild’s comes next.”

Before Evelyn could reply, there came the sound of quick footsteps and she saw a tall girl, sufficiently like Len Maynard to proclaim her a sister. Len had chestnut hair and violet-grey eyes and this girl had red-gold hair with eyes of forget-me-not blue and the roses-and-lilies complexion of the traditional fairytale princess, but there was a strong resemblance, for all that.

“You’re Evelyn Ross, aren’t you?” she asked. Then, as Evelyn nodded, “Oh, good! You’re in my house, then. I’m Margot Maynard. I’ll show you the way. Buttercup, aren’t you? Right! Come along! Lesley, you’d better scram to your own dormy or Matey will ask questions.”

Lesley laughed. “She very well might, first night or no first night,” she admitted. “O.K., Margot; I’m going. Goodnight, Evelyn. Hope you sleep well. Goodnight, Margot.” And she turned and scuttered across the head of the stairs and down the opposite passage.

“Goodnight, and go quietly!” Margot called softly after her. “Remember the Juniors! Matey will skin you alive if you wake the little poppets now!”

Evelyn heard Lesley’s giggle as she waved her hand before vanishing through a door halfway along. Then she had to turn, for Margot was speaking again.

“Come along—this way! Oh, and by the way, what I said to Lesley applies to everyone. Nothing rouses fury in any Matron’s breast more than waking up the Juniors when they should be asleep. So never make a row in the corridors once the little pets have gone to bed. Buttercup,” she continued, “is on the next floor, but we’ll cross the bridge down here and go up at the other side.”

The bridge was merely a continuation of the corridor, but with windows on either side. It was about twenty feet long and, indeed, led to the foot of another flight of stairs up which Margot led the way, and into a similar passage to the one below. Margot paused before a door at the farther end.

“Here we are!” she said, “Buttercup!”

Evelyn had seen it the day before when Mme Courvoisier had brought her to the school to be registered, but now it looked quite different. Then it had been a long room divided by iron standards and rods with cretonne curtains flung up over the rods. Now the curtains were down, forming a series of cubicles. A list was pinned up by the door and, after consulting it, Margot led the new girl to the third from the end.

“Here you are; this is yours! Now who’s dormy prefect here?”

There had been a buzz of chatter as the door opened, but at the first sound of Margot’s voice it had ceased. It had begun again, though in lower tones. On her query, however, it was hushed. There came the sound of steps and a tall, lanky girl of about seventeen appeared. She wore a yellow dressing-gown which suited her brownness and she had a pleasant grin.

“I’m it this year, Margot,” she said.

“Right! This is Evelyn Ross who sleeps here. Give her a helping hand, will you, Audrey?”

“Rather! Hello, Evelyn! Hope you’ll like it here.”

Margot laughed. “She will. This is Audrey Everett, Evelyn, your dormy prefect. She’ll see to you. Ask her anything you want to know and she’ll tell you.”

“Oh, gosh! Not everything!” Audrey said with a chuckle. “I’m no walking encyclopedia!”

“Ass!” Margot said serenely. “You know what I mean. Can do?”

“Can do,” Audrey agreed cheerfully.

“Fair enough! Then I’m off to make sure no one raises the roof with excitement at being back in our beloved seminary again. Goodnight, Evelyn. Hope you’ll sleep well and have no nightmares! ’Night, Audrey! Mind you keep order here!” Margot hurried off and Evelyn found herself alone with yet another stranger. Audrey called goodnight after the prefect and then turned to her latest charge.

“I won’t bother you with too much tonight. I expect you’re done and will be thankful to get to bed. Now! Here’s your dressing-gown on this hook. When you’ve done with it, put it back. Put your clothes on this chair. Here’s your bureau”—she lifted the drop-lid at one end of it. “I see you’ve got your brushes etc. all safe. I’d better warn you they put every farthing of tuppence on neatness here, so mind you shove everything back when you’ve done with it. I’ll give you ten minutes to undress and then I’ll come and take you to the bathroom. Half a mo! First of all, better see where you come!”

She dashed out to return a minute later and announce, “O.K. You’re third on the list for Seven—after Yvette Olivier. I’ll show you when you come.” She turned to go when her eye fell on the bed with its bedspread beflowered with buttercup sprays to match the curtains and the bedside rug. “Oh, I’ll help you take that off and fold it. First job to be done when you come up to bed. Come on!”

Evelyn obeyed meekly and they stripped it off, folded it and it was laid over the back of the chair. Then Audrey did go and Evelyn was left to slip off her clothes and lay them neatly over the seat of the chair. When Audrey returned she found the new girl waiting, armed with sponge-bag and towel. She took Evelyn down the corridor where they passed sundry other girls, all dressing-gowned and armed with washing paraphernalia. A short passage ran off the longer aisle and here Audrey paused before one of the three doors in it and ushered her charge into a room divided by hardboard into three cubicles. From two of them came the sound of running water and splashing. The third was vacant and Audrey explained that Evelyn would wash here for the term. The little apartment contained a bath and toilet basin with radiator under the narrow window and a rail for towels. A bath stool filled one corner and Audrey warned the new girl that she must take only seven minutes to wash and do her teeth as there were two other girls after her. Then she departed after making sure that Evelyn could find her way back.

Evelyn made haste and was back in her cubicle in five minutes. She hung up her towel, brushed her hair and was about to get into bed when another bell sounded softly. At the same moment, Audrey appeared.

“That’s the bell for private prayers,” she said. “Bed after that. Now is there anything else you want to know before I leave you? No? Right! Goodnight.” She nodded with a pleasant smile and went off and Evelyn, after kneeling down to race through Our Father, finally scrambled into bed. It had been a full day and she was tired. Before the lights were switched off the new Senior was well away and sleeping dreamlessly.

“Here we are! This is Va formroom.” Lesley flung open the door and ushered Evelyn into a sunny room where rows of folding desks and chairs occupied the floor. The walls were colour-washed a warm yellow and a number of coloured prints of famous paintings hung on them. It had two long, low lattice windows; the broad sills bore vases of autumn flowers; a wire plantstand between them held half-a-dozen thriving plants. The wall facing the desks had a blackboard running along it and in front stood a small platform with a mistress’s table and chair. The door of a wide cupboard was in one corner and at the back of the room were low bookshelves filled with books, many of them novels, as Evelyn saw at a glance. Altogether, it looked most inviting.

“I say, what a smashing room!” Evelyn exclaimed as she looked round.

Lesley went pink. “I’m glad you like it. You’ll have time to study the pictures and our books later on,” she said while several of the girls already there looked at the pair standing in the doorway. “There’s one thing I’d better tell you now, Evelyn,” she added. “We are allowed a certain amount of slang, but some words are banned. ‘Smashing’ is one of them. The thing is that if you’re caught using them you’re fined—a centime a word. I don’t know about you, but I hate to be penniless at the end of the week.” She finished with a faint grin.

Evelyn looked at her, wide-eyed. “Gosh! How foul! Do you really mean it?” “She does!” came in a chorus from the rest.

“And ‘foul’ is another banned word,” added a very dark, Italianate girl seated at the back of the room. “It is true, Evelyn. There are words in all our languages we may never use.”

“But what are we to say, then?” Evelyn demanded, any idea of feeling shy vanishing as she digested this. “I mean, one does use slang. It’s only squares who don’t.”

“Oh, we have our own words,” a girl she had heard addressed as Mary said drily. “You may call things fabulous, or magnificent, or—”

“Taisez-vous! Charlie comes!” hissed an unmistakeably French girl. “I hear her!”

The room came to order at once and Lesley, seizing on a vacant desk, installed her charge at it before slipping into the one behind it. “Sit here,” she said quickly. “We’ll see about books later.” She raised her voice. “Quiet, everyone!”

Everyone sat up, looking as prim as possible just as the door opened again and Miss Charlesworth, the history mistress entered. She was a short, stocky woman, trim and trig in her M.A. gown, with shining waves of brown hair and an attractive smile.

“Guten Morgen,” she said as the girls rose to their feet.

A protest came from a lively-looking person seated in the front. “Oh, Miss Charlesworth, need we speak German? It is only the first full day.”

Miss Charlesworth went to the platform and took her seat before she replied. Then she smiled again. “I know that, Moira, but it’s just as well to start in at once. However, I don’t mean to be hard on you, so I’ll excuse you. No register as yet so I can’t take it. Have you got your hymn-books?”

They had. Even Evelyn, prompted by Lesley, had hers. Miss Charlesworth nodded. “Good! Hymn 27, so find it early. The lists for next week will be put up shortly. Had good holidays, everyone?”

A chorus answered her and Evelyn gathered that everyone had enjoyed her holidays to the full. One or two volunteered further information. Simonetta d’Angeli, the Italian girl, had stayed with relations in Sicily and visited Mt Etna. Moira Carroll had been to several horse shows. One or two had been to the seaside and enjoyed unlimited boating and swimming. Lesley, who came from Perth, had gone for a cruise round the Western Isles of Scotland in her uncle’s yacht.

“I loved it after the first two days,” she said laughing. “I’d got my sea-legs by then. I must admit those first two days were horrid!”

A bell broke in on their chatter and there was instant silence. Miss Charlesworth ordered them to line and they marched out, the Protestants to Hall, the others turning in the opposite direction. Evelyn followed with the rest to Hall where the forms were once more swung across to face the dais. Looking at the prefects seated to one side of it she saw that neither Len nor Margot Maynard was there, so clearly they must be Catholics. There were a number of others, among whom was a tall girl with a clever face who rose as they came in and checked the gabble of talk going on among the Juniors.

“Who’s that?” Evelyn asked Lesley in an undertone.

“Eve Hurrell—the senior librarian,” Lesley murmured back. “Quite a decent soul. That fair girl beside her is Louise Grünbaum who’s wizard at art. She does the most stupendous caricatures.”

There was no time for more. The mistress who had played for them the night before arrived and sat down at the piano. She began to play and an instant hush fell on the throng. Evelyn learned later that there was always a short voluntary before the actual Prayers to help the girls to feel in a devout mood. The mistresses came in in twos and threes and took their seats on the dais as before. Another bell rang and the Head and Miss Dene entered and Prayers began with the singing of a hymn that was new to Evelyn. She liked it—both words and music—and was thrilled to learn later that the words had been written by Con Maynard and set to music by an Old Girl of the school, one Nina Rutherford.

“We don’t use the usual hymn-books,” Nesta Parry explained. “You see, we Protestants are a mixed bag. Most are C. of E., but there are some Presbyterians and Methodists and quite a lot of the Swiss and German girls are Lutherans. And then we want hymns in French and German as well as in English. Anyhow, we started our own hymn-book—oh, years ago. Every now and then we add to it and that makes it fun.”

After the hymn came a short reading followed by prayers. Then they sat back and waited until the Catholic girls came marching in to fill the vacancies in the long forms and listen to anything Miss Wilmot might have to say. There was not much this morning. She reminded them to hurry over their dormitory duties as much as possible so as to have a good morning walk. The school library would be open immediately after morning school and anyone who wanted a book for the weekend should go for one then. Then she dismissed them and they streamed off upstairs to make their beds and dust their cubicles.

Evelyn had been instructed by Audrey in the art of stripping her bed in the one way approved by “Matey” as they all called Matron Lloyd, the Head Matron. Now she was shown the one way in which beds must be made. Privately, she thought it a great fuss over nothing. At home she had never touched her own bed during term-time, her mother seeing to it. During the holidays when she was expected to do it herself, she had mainly pulled up the bedclothes and as long as it looked tidy that was all she cared about. Here, she found that sheets and blankets must be tucked in with the corners at the foot neatly mitred. Pillows must be well shaken and the bedspread accurately drawn over all. However, by the time it was done she had decided to hold her tongue about it. Everyone else seemed to take it for granted and Evelyn was well aware that a new girl should sing small, for the first few weeks, at any rate.

When it was all done, they scurried downstairs to the splasheries where they changed into stout walking-shoes and pulled on blazers and berets before lining up along the path at the side of the school in their forms. Two of the mistresses came to each form and they set off for a brisk walk along the motor road.

There was a long string of them, for Vb joined Va for this. Furthermore, the two forms mixed freely, partners being chosen from either form. For instance, Jane Carew came to invite Evelyn to be her partner much, be it said, to the relief of Lesley who wanted to walk with her own great friend, Hélène Förster, but who had felt that she ought to ask Evelyn to partner her on this first walk.

They set off at a good pace, everyone talking but with due care for the fact that they were on the highroad. Jane chattered gaily as they went, first of all about the school. Presently, however, she directed Evelyn’s attention to the edge of the mountain shelf.

“Just look down,” she said; and watched the new girl’s face with eager eyes. Evelyn did as she was told and a cry of amazement broke from her. “But—what is it?” she exclaimed. “It looks like a white sea! Oh, and those peaks over there look as if they were islands! What has happened to the valley?”

“Clouds!” said Jane succinctly. “Haven’t they a weird effect? I couldn’t believe my eyes the first time I saw it. But you’ve been staying up here. Haven’t you seen it before?”

“Er—no; I was never out as early as this,” Evelyn replied. She had no mind to tell Jane that at this time she had usually been in bed. She had an idea that that lively young woman would have been shocked, and she was quite right. Jane was an early bird and had her own opinion of lie-abeds.

Satisfied by Evelyn’s reaction, she proceeded to point out sundry other striking features. She was not very sure if she liked this girl or not, but she had a fellow-feeling with her over her mother. Lady Carew’s serious accident had been more than a year before and though she was, as Jane had said, practically her old self again, the girl, deeply sensitive, could never forget those awful first days when no one could tell her that her mother would recover.

“And her mother has just come up and is very ill, I know,” Jane told herself. “It must be awful for her, especially when she’s been pitchforked among a herd of strangers like this. I must do what I can to help her feel that she has a friend—or a bit of a friend, anyhow.”

The result of this was something she had never anticipated. Finding the other girl so friendly, Evelyn began to plume herself on the fact that Jane must have been greatly struck with her from the first. She was by no means lacking in self-esteem, and natural gratitude for the other girl’s kindness was to grow rapidly into an assumption that Jane belonged to her—and that was to cause trouble. On this first morning, however, none of that came to light. When they returned to the school and had to part, since Jane was a member of Vb, all Evelyn felt was thankfulness that she seemed to have begun to make a friend.

In the formroom they found Miss Charlesworth already there, a pile of books on the table before her. As soon as they were settled she called on Moira Carroll and a German girl, Greta Harms, to come and give them out. Evelyn took hers with interest and found it to be a European history. Meantime, two of the others had been sent to the stockroom for other textbooks. By the time the bell rang for the end of the lesson, she was possessed of maths books, including a slim volume of logarithm tables, French and German grammars and readers, two geographies and a case of synthetic maps which greatly intrigued her, a copy of Much Ado About Nothing with notes, another entitled Eighteenth Century Essays, and an anthology of poetry. A good German atlas came specially for her, the others naturally having theirs, and everyone was given a supply of file paper and a file-case.

“And do see if you can keep your covers in good order,” Miss Charlesworth said. “That is all for the present and just as well, for there goes the bell! You may talk quietly until someone else comes to you—but I needn’t remind girls of your age and standing of that.” She flashed a smile at them and departed, leaving them to talk quietly.

Not for long, however. The next arrival was Margot Maynard who dashed in to say, “I’ve only a minute, but I just want to know what games Evelyn Ross plays. What is it, Evelyn—hockey or lacrosse? And do you play netball?”

“Hockey,” said Evelyn, “but I don’t care for it much. Must we play?”

Margot stared at her and the form gasped.

“Of course you must!” the Games Prefect said impatiently. “If you don’t like hockey have you ever played lacrosse? Hurry up, for I haven’t a minute to waste.”

There was something peremptory in Margot’s manner which set Evelyn’s hackles up at once. She looked sulky and said, “I don’t know that I want to play either, thank you. I’m not keen on games.”

“O.K. I’ll put you down for hockey since you know it,” Margot said, so intent on what she was doing that she never noticed Evelyn’s attitude. “We’ll see about the rest later. Thanks!” And she dashed out again.

“Don’t you really like games?” Moira asked when she had gone.

Evelyn shook her head. “No; I don’t. What’s more, I don’t see why we should have to play games if we don’t want to. We didn’t at my last school.”

“Gosh, how ghastly!” cried Moira who didn’t know the meaning of the word tact. “It must have been a jolly poor show.”

“Well, it wasn’t! It was a jolly good one!” flared Evelyn.

Lesley, as form prefect, decided that this must stop. “Pipe down, Moira; you know nothing about it,” she said sharply. “Evelyn, we all play games of one sort or another. You see, we must have some exercise and it isn’t always possible to go for walks or rambles; so we have games. Perhaps if you tried it you’d find you liked lacrosse. It’s a magnificent game—frightfully swift, but tremendous fun. If you don’t like hockey, I’d ask Margot if you could play that. You look as if you’d be a runner.” She gave Evelyn’s slender figure a meditative look.

“Well, I might try it, perhaps,” Evelyn said rather more pleasantly. “But if we have dancing in the evenings I don’t see what we need with games if we don’t want to play.”

There was no time for more, for Mdlle de Lachennais, head of the languages department, came to give them their preparation and they had to stop talking. Mdlle was, as Evelyn soon learned, a great favourite in the school. She was small and dainty, graceful in her movements, and her little dark face was full of vivacity. She taught French and senior Latin and was also responsible for overseeing the senior needlework. She was the doyenne of the staff, having been with the school since its very early days in Tirol. She greeted the girls with a smiling query as to holidays, spoken in rapid French. Once again Moira was moved to protest.

“Mdlle, it is the first day of term,” she said.

Mdlle laughed and her black eyes sparkled. “Ah, but you are lazy, Moira. Also, I fear you are selfish. You wish me to speak English for your sake, but what about my fellow-countrywomen? They doubtless would wish me to speak in French. And the others would prefer German.”

Moira was quite unsnubbable. Her eye fell on Evelyn and she said, “I was thinking of our new girl, Evelyn Ross.”

“But yes; I know we have a new member of the form.” Mdlle turned to Evelyn. “You speak French, n’est-ce pas?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t—or not much,” Evelyn said bluntly.

“But you can read and write it?”

“Oh, yes; but we never spoke much at my last school except in French lessons.”

“Ah, then, you will soon learn,” Mdlle assured her. “We will all help you and you will soon find it easy, for you are not stupid.”

“I doubt it,” Evelyn muttered.

Mdlle caught the muttering but not in words. She was wise enough to ignore it and turn to other matters. “Today I will set you translation for preparation. That will be easy. Take your Sous Les Toits. Has anyone read it before?”

“Yes, Mdlle, I have,” Yvette Olivier said. “It is most delightful.”

“Anyone else? You, Julie—Céline—Nénette? No? Ah, then, it will be fresh for you; and for Yvette it will be a pleasure to meet an old friend.”

Yvette agreed with a smile and Mdlle proceeded to set them the first three pages to prepare. “Look up as few words as possible and try to make a translation that will catch the real atmosphere. Learn the words you do not know. Now I must go. Latin, as you do not all take it, we will leave till next week. Adieu, mes chères!” She tripped out of the room and they were alone for a minute or two.

As soon as that happened, Lesley rounded on Moira. “Honestly, Moira, you’re a complete menace in the form! Must you be so lazy?”

Insouciant Moira grinned. “Not lazy, me child.” She spoke with an exaggerated brogue. “Wasn’t it Evelyn Oi was thinkin’ of? Sure it was.” She turned to that young person. “And don’t you really spake Frinch? Ochone! ’Tis the hard toime’s before you, Oi’m thinkin’.”

“If any of the staff or the prees hear you you’ll get it in the neck,” Lesley warned her. “Don’t be such an idiot! We’re Va now and supposed to be past fooling about like that.”

Moira smiled lazily. “Will ye listen to her!”

She got no further for Miss Moore, the geography mistress, arrived and proceeded to set them work in a brisk, businesslike manner that left no room for even Moira’s nonsense. Indeed, that gay young woman attended strictly to geography as long as Miss Moore was in the room. As Evelyn heard during Break, Miss Moore could be very pleasant, but when she was roused she had a nasty tongue which no one was anxious to set going.

The next person to appear was Len Maynard who said, “Hello, everyone! Lesley, all from A to O are to go to the trunkroom and unpack. The rest may start in on prep. When the first lot came back, everyone else goes.”

Evelyn looked at her. “What do I do, please? I was here yesterday and unpacked then.”

“Use the time for prep,” Len said promptly. “You’ll probably find that you need every spare moment for that during school hours. Out of them prep’s very strictly verboten. Off you go, folk. The bell for Break will ring before long and I know Matey’s anxious to finish with you before then.” She nodded to them with a cheerful smile and departed. Lesley lined up the girls mentioned and led them off. The others, much to Evelyn’s amazement, took out their books and set to work.

Seeing nothing else for it, she opened her Sous Les Toits and began laboriously to try to make sense of the first paragraph. She managed fairly well though she found that she had to look up a good many more words than most of the rest seemed to be doing. The truth was that at Morven House, though French was well taught, she had tended to skim over really hard work and now she discovered that her knowledge was apt to be sketchy. By the time she had gone down the first page a number of those unpacking had returned.

“And there are two more to do!” she groaned inwardly. “As for learning all those words, I’ll never have time. Oh, I do wish Mum hadn’t sent me back to school! It wouldn’t have hurt me to have a rest for a term and she’ll be O.K. long before then.”

She looked at the next sentence, but luckily for her, the bell rang for Break and she thankfully closed the book and prepared to follow the rest of the form to the Speisesaal (as she knew they called the diningroom) for her elevenses.

By the end of the first full week of term, Evelyn had found her feet to some extent. It could not be said that she liked the school much more than she had done at first. For one thing, though Lesley was still looking after her and seeing that she made no outrageous mistakes, that young woman had her own great friend in Hélène Förster and had given no sign of wanting to include Evelyn in their twosome. For another she found, as she had expected, that far from being one of the most important people there, she was counted in with the ruck. After being looked up to admiringly by quite a number of her juniors she hated to feel that she was reckoned to be of no great account. The one person who seemed inclined to be specially friendly was Jane Carew and Jane was one of a chummery which included José Helston, a young person of marked character, Dilys Edwards, a Welsh girl, and Adrienne Desmoines whose story was regarded by her chums as highly romantic. This meant that, sympathetic as Jane might feel towards the new girl, she was unable to be all in all to her.

The three themselves teased Jane a good deal about her new friendship.

“I can’t see what you see in her,” Dilys said on the Sunday when they were walking across the playing-fields towards the two little chapels with the building which the school had celebrated its coming-of-age.

“I’m sorry for her, darling,” Jane said earnestly. “Her mother’s in San and she’s been most ghastly ill. I believe she’s improving now, but even so it’ll be ages before she’s really well again. It must be horrid for Evelyn. And then she’s rather old to come to a new school.”

“There is that,” José agreed. “All the same, however sorry you feel, just remember that you belong to us—unless you’re fed up with us and want a change,” she added, twinkling.

Jane twinkled back. “But my poppet, how could that be? Don’t you three think you’re quite the nicest girls in the school?”

“If it were not Sunday,” observed Adrienne, “I should have a lesson to teach you, my Jane. As it is—”

“As it is, nerts to that!” Dilys put in. “Come on! You don’t want to be late for service, do you? Anyhow, Willy and Ferry are coming along so we’d better hurry.”

This stopped the discussion and the four hurried on together until they parted, Dilys going to the Protestant St Mary’s while the other three turned in at the Catholic Our Lady of the Snows. When they met again Evelyn was forgotten in other interesting matters.

But the thing that rankled most with Evelyn was the games question. At Morven House games had been optional. Here, she found that there was no choice. The Juniors and Junior Middles played netball, and those of the older girls who wished also played. Apart from that everyone above IVb, unless excused for health reasons, was expected to turn out at either hockey or lacrosse practices. Evelyn had played hockey at Morven House mainly because most of the others did so. As one of the oldest girls she had been in the school XI, but they had not had many fixtures and she was neither keen nor anxious to play well. Lesley had taken her to watch a lacrosse practice and the swiftness of the game had appalled Evelyn who was apt to be lazy over most physical exercise.

She had done her best to wriggle out of playing at all, and when she discovered that play she must, she had selected hockey which she knew. She soon learnt, however, that games here meant playing with all your might all the time. She might have become resigned to it, but unfortunately at her first practice Margot Maynard had come to watch and her strictures had roused all Evelyn’s worst feelings.

Margot had a sharp tongue and when she saw the new girl hogging the ball and not attempting to pass until she must, she loosed it with a stinging remark on selfish play. Evelyn saw no reason why she should put up with that sort of thing from a girl who was not much older than herself and she retorted with a statement that she didn’t want to play, anyhow, and if Margot wasn’t satisfied with her she would stop out. It didn’t matter to her!

Margot’s very blue eyes flashed at this piece of impudence and she flushed. She contrived to keep her temper, however, and after looking scathingly at her latest recruit she observed that unfortunately there could be no question of that and left it to turn her attention to another new girl who had striven with all her might but who was a complete novice. Evelyn nursed a grudge against the Games Prefect thereafter, and though she played when she found she must, she did so indifferently.

It was bad luck that that very night Margot, on duty during preparation, became mixed up in another affair. Va were expected to work alone during preparation and as a rule there was no need for anyone to come to them. On this night, however, Evelyn, who was finding the amount of work required from her more than ever before, was in a prickly mood. She had had words with Eve Hurrell, the Senior Librarian, over a book which she had literally snatched from Mélanie Lucas’s hands before that young woman could take it up to the desk to have it registered. Eve, whose red hair was a true sign of her temper, ordered Evelyn to return it and then refused her any other book.

“It seems to me that you don’t know how a library should be used,” she said curtly.

Evelyn had flushed hotly, but quite a dozen of the others were there and staring at her. She tossed her head and stalked out of the place feeling wildly indignant.

The immediate cause which brought Margot down on the form was a squabble between Evelyn and Moira Carroll. From some book of her own Miss Derwent, the English mistress, had given the form a lengthy paragraph for précis work. As it happened, both girls had been out of class while she was dictating it, Moira because Matron, doing dormitory inspection, had examined her dressing-table and emptied the top two drawers on her bed, and had sent for her out of English to come and tidy the resultant mess. She had been scathing in her remarks to Moira who had been guilty of the same sin all too frequently during her school career. No girl had yet been found who dared outface Matey, so Moira had taken her strictures with outward meekness, though inwardly she was seething. Miss Derwent had been equally scathing when the unrepentant Moira returned to class so the Irish girl was furious. Normally, it would have blown over by bedtime, for if Moira was quickly enraged she calmed down as quickly. Unfortunately Evelyn, who had been sent for remedial exercises—she showed a tendency to dropped instep—had also missed the dictation. When it came to preparation, Miss Derwent had arrived with her book which she had left on the table with the remark that the missing pair might borrow it to take down the paragraph. Then she left the room. She saw no reason why she should stay with girls of sixteen.

As soon as she had gone both girls made a dive for the book and Moira managed to be first to get it. Evelyn, who had heard the rest talking about Matey’s rampage, stopped short and sneered, “Yes; I suppose a girl who can’t keep her room tidy had better have it first. It will take her so long to copy the paragraph clearly!”

Moira’s Irish temper boiled up again. She tossed the book down on the table. “Sure, I wouldn’t be depriving you of it!” she retorted furiously.

This is where Lesley took a hand. “Ne soyez pas bêtes!” she snapped. “Vous vous portez comme les IVb-ites! Moira, tu l’avais la première. Prends le livre et continues ton devoir. Et toi, Evelyn, assieds-toi et fais un autre devoir. Moira va finir bientôt et tu peux le copier après celà. Et n’oubliez pas parler en français, toutes les deux!”

Slightly subdued by the remark about IVb-ite behaviour, Moira picked up the book and went back to her seat. Not so Evelyn.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” she cried, “But I’ve as much right as Moira to the book!” Then she added what set the entire form against her, “Oh, well, if I can’t do my work I can’t do it, and so I shall tell Miss Derwent.”

“Sneak!” cried Mary Charlton; and hurriedly changed it to “Cafarde!” as she caught Lesley’s eye.

“I’m not! But if I can’t do my work I can’t do my work!” Evelyn repeated furiously.

In her rage she was shouting and Margot, passing along the corridor, was to be excused for thinking that someone in authority was needed in Va. She opened the door and marched in to behold Evelyn and Moira facing each other, both red and furious; half the form speaking their minds with a sublime disregard for the fact that this was Monday and therefore a “French” day, and using their own languages; and Lesley thumping on her desk in a vain attempt to restore order.

It was an undignified scene for girls of Va, and this, when she had succeeded in silencing them, Margot did not hesitate to point out. She demanded to be told the meaning of it and never rested until she had a more or less adequate account from Lesley who was nearly weeping at the thought of the show they had made of themselves as a form. Having got to the bottom of it, the Games Prefect told them what she thought of them—and her thoughts were not nice ones. She stopped there where most of them were concerned, but she commandeered Miss Derwent’s book, ordered Moira and Evelyn to come with her and, having found an empty classroom, dictated the paragraph to them in grim tones that struck awe even into Evelyn. That done, she marched them back to get on with their work. And then they discovered that more than half their prep-time was gone and they must do the best they could with the comparatively brief space left.

Worse was to come where Evelyn was concerned. She was ignored, not even the friendly Lesley having anything to say to her. Moira was also left to herself, but that was nothing new when she was in a rage. She cooled down if they gave her time. Evelyn’s threat to tell Miss Derwent was another matter. One and all, Va were determined to let this new girl see what they thought of such things.

Evelyn was severely ostracized for the remainder of the evening and she went to bed in her worst mood. She lay awake for some time, hating everybody and especially Moira Carroll and Margot Maynard. She was determined to pay them back for all her troubles. She fell asleep evolving plans of vengeance.

Next morning Moira, who had come to her senses, came up to her in the formroom and apologized for her share in the quarrel. Evelyn, however, had a most unpraiseworthy habit of holding a grudge and she heard the other girl out in stony silence. Moira had asked permission to speak in English, so there was no question of Evelyn not understanding her. When the apology was over, the new girl merely turned on her heel without a word and went to her seat. Lesley looked from her to Moira anxiously, but though Moira merely smiled a little scornfully, Evelyn took no notice. That settled her with Va. If she couldn’t be decent enough to accept an apology which had been sufficiently thorough since Moira never did things by halves, then they had no use for her. They were coldly polite to her but any idea of friendliness was at an end for the present so far as they were concerned.

Long afterwards when she thought of that day, Evelyn decided that it was one of the most horrible she had ever known. None of the other forms knew anything about the affair. Lesley had firmly laid an embargo on any gossip about it and they kept it to themselves. She had pointed out that having made such a show of themselves it was up to them to keep it from the school.

“Apart from anything else,” she said in her fluent German, “it would be a bad thing if any of the Middles or the Juniors got hold of it. Besides, we don’t want it to get to the ears of the staff.

“Will Evelyn broadcast it?” Nesta asked. “If you ask me I should say that if she knew we should dislike it to be known it is exactly what she would do. She’s hating all of us badly just now.”

“Don’t worry,” Lesley said. “The only person she seems to be friendly with is Jane Carew and Jane won’t gossip.”

They knew this to be true, so they let it alone. If they had but known it, Evelyn was no more anxious than they for the school at large to know about it. Even the ten days or so she had been there had taught her something, and she felt she had made a mistake in threatening to carry tales to Miss Derwent. In actual fact she would not have done it or even said it except in a temper, but she could not bring herself to acknowledge it. She had never found it easy to apologize and in her present mood, it was impossible.

Tuesday went by with no improvement in the state of things, and Wednesday was no better. The staff knew that something was very wrong with the form, but it was the school policy to leave such matters to the girls themselves and not to interfere unless something drastic was needed. By Saturday, however, Matron, who generally knew most of what was going on decided that something must be done. Evelyn was looking miserable and refusing half her food. Her eyes were heavy as if she were sleeping badly, and out of schoolhours she mooned about by herself.

“I want a word with you, Nancy,” Matron told the temporary Head after Fruhstück on Saturday morning.

Nancy Wilmot looked alarmed. She might be Head for the time being, but she had also been a pupil of the school and Matey was an old friend. Nancy wondered what was coming and awaited her elder’s remarks with some trepidation.

“I want to know what’s wrong with Evelyn Ross,” Matey said, coming to the point with her usual bluntness.

“I don’t exactly know. It’s some sort of row between her and the form, but what it is I haven’t heard. Nor have I asked.” Nancy was recovering her self-possession. “You know we don’t go probing into their little souls, but leave them to get on with it unless it looks like being serious.”

“Well, this looks like being serious so far as Evelyn’s concerned. We don’t want her to be ill. I certainly don’t! I’ve enough on hand without taking on unnecessary nursing!” Matron snapped.

Nancy looked startled. “Oh, come, Matey! It’s not as bad as that!”

“Not if it’s taken in hand at once. What are you going to do about it?” Nancy sat back and thought. “I can’t start fussing over Evelyn. That young woman has quite a high enough opinion of herself without my encouraging her. H’m! On the whole I’d better tackle someone else—Lesley Anderson, for instance. After all, she’s form prefect. But you’re right. The atmosphere of that form is all wrong. O.K., Matey; I’ll see to it. Sorry I haven’t before, but life’s such a crowded affair these days I never seem to have a moment to myself. How Hilda contrives to be so tranquil with it all is something I’d be glad to know. Of course,” she added hopefully, “she’s had years of it and this is my first experience. And I don’t mind telling you that it’ll be the last if I’ve any say in the matter.”

Matey eyed her scornfully. “Don’t be so childish! You’re talking like a sub-prefect suddenly landed with full prefect’s duties! Well, I’ll leave it in your hands. I must go. I’ve a whole batch of new staff bed-linen to mark this morning and I can’t waste time listening to you moaning!” And having thoroughly crushed Miss Wilmot she departed, leaving that lady to wish she had never undertaken to substitute for Miss Annersley.

“I must have been out of my mind when I agreed to it,” she complained to Miss Ferrars, her bosom friend. “I never would have done, only Hilda looked so worried and I knew she wanted to take on that inspector job. Oh, Kathy, what I’d give to be well out of it!”

Kathy Ferrars grinned. “Poor old girl! You do look ruffled. Smooth down your feathers, my dear; you can manage all right. It’s a brilliant idea to send for Lesley. That girl has her feet well down to earth and if you get anything out of her you can be sure there won’t be any wild exaggerations. I’m sorry you have this on your plate so early in the term, but Matey’s right. You’d have had to step in sooner or later unless something drastic occurred. We can’t have a girl going round looking as if she’d lost everything she valued.”

“Someone else has her feet well down to earth,” said Nancy with a feeble grin. “O.K., I’ll send for Lesley and see what I can get out of her. Keep your fingers crossed for me, my love. I’m going to need it!”

“Rubbish!” said Kathy trenchantly. “You’ll manage all right!”

But when Lesley arrived in the study looking faintly apprehensive, Miss Wilmot was none too sure of that. She greeted the girl with a smile and waved her to a chair.

“Sit down, Lesley. And now,” when Lesley was seated, “I want to know why Evelyn Ross is at odds with the rest of you.”

Lesley sat bolt upright and her face was scarlet. “I—I—er—well, it’s a—a form matter, Miss Wilmot,” she stammered.

“It can’t remain a form matter unless you do something about it. Have you done anything?”

Lesley could go no redder as she faltered, “Well—well—not exactly.”

“Why not? What do you think you’re form prefect for?” Nancy was relentless. “No one wants you to run round asking the staff to hold your hand, but if something crops up that you honestly feel you can’t deal with by yourself then, my child, it’s your job to come to the Head—me, at the moment.”

Lesley fidgeted with her fingers. Then she said, “It began with a row between Evelyn and Moira.”

“And the rest of you are taking sides?”

“Well—er—no; not exactly.”

“Not? Then I presume all of you are against Evelyn. That it?”

Lesley would have given every penny of her term’s pocket-money to get out of answering, but Miss Wilmot was clearly waiting for an answer and meant to have one, even if it was merely a flat refusal to say any more. Lesley gave it up.

“Well, I think it was Evelyn’s fault in the beginning. Moira was to blame too, but she’s apologized, anyway.”

“Moira would.” Miss Wilmot grinned unexpectedly. “She’s that kind. Evelyn isn’t. Haven’t you found that out for yourself? She’s a very proud girl. I fancy she didn’t come here too willingly in any case, but come she did. At her last school she was in the top form and a prefect. I imagine she’s been accustomed to have the younger fry look up to her. Here, there’s no one to do that. It’s a big change for her in every way. Now I don’t want to butt in, but she’s beginning to look very wretched and she may end by making herself ill. Can’t you do something about it? What are you crowd doing to her?”

“Nothing—nothing at all!” Lesley assured her promptly. “Honestly, Miss Wilmot, we’re all being perfectly polite to her.”

“In short, you’re being little ladies! Well, it doesn’t seem to be working so I think you’d better look round for something else.” Miss Wilmot suddenly changed her tactics. “Please don’t think I want to interfere in your form affairs. I don’t. But when I see one girl in a form looking and behaving as Evelyn is doing just now, I can’t just pass it over. She isn’t homesick; I’m very sure of that. You say you’re being polite to her. But nothing can be more chilling than mere politeness, Lesley. I don’t know what the trouble is and I don’t want to unless I must, but you can see for yourself that this can’t go on. You have a good deal of influence in your form. Can’t you use it to get the others to forgive and forget?”

“I suppose I could—try, anyhow,” Lesley said, looking startled.

“Well, will you?” Miss Wilmot was leaning forward, her eyes eager. “Don’t you see? This is something that could affect the whole school. I don’t know about the lower school, but the other Seniors must be coming to realize that there is something badly wrong with the form and that’s not so good. Next year we shall be drawing most of our prefects from you people. How you manage prefectship will partly depend on the pictures you give of yourselves this year to the school. Understand?”

Lesley understood. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said honestly.

“Well think of it now. I’m leaving it to you and the rest of your crowd—for the present, at any rate. I don’t want to interfere, but unless there is a change in the state of Denmark and a pretty quick one, I must.”

Lesley nodded. “I see. I’ll do what I can, Miss Wilmot. It—it won’t be easy, but I’ll do my best.”

“Good! When you get down to it I expect you’ll find it isn’t quite so hard after all. Now you must go. Good luck to you!”

Lesley got up. “Thanks, Miss Wilmot. I really will do my best.”

“You’ll find it’ll come out,” Miss Wilmot said drily. “You girls haven’t time to waste over bearing grudges. I know. After all, I’ve been a schoolgirl myself.”

She sat back and Lesley, understanding that the interview was at an end, got herself out of the room. All the same, she was none too sure that she would succeed in swinging the form round to another way of thinking. She would do her best since she never knowingly broke a promise, but it looked to her like a very trying job.

Lesley had all her work cut out to persuade some of the members of Va to agree to giving up their campaign against Evelyn. Mary Charlton in particular refused to see why this idiot of a new girl should be allowed to get away with it, to quote herself.

“If she’s going to sneak to the staff about every little thing then we ought to show her that sort of thing isn’t done here,” she argued.

“Don’t worry. She knows all about that now, I should think,” Moira said shrewdly. “Sure, the creature must have had a—a revolting time!” The adjective was chosen because Miss Derwent had protested against their use of “ghastly” for everything unpleasant. As had happened more than once in the school’s history, they had turned to dictionaries and Roget’s Thesaurus for substitutes and were now trying hard to remember to use them.

“I doubt if she really minds,” Mary replied sceptically. “Oh, very well!” as Lesley urged the reform on her more impressively. “I’ll be as decent to her as I can; but you mark my words, it won’t make a penn’orth of difference.”

Thus, when they learned that they were to have a ramble that afternoon Lesley approached Evelyn, feeling that she must set the example.

“We’re rambling this afternoon,” she began as the other girl looked at her in amazement. “Will you be my partner?”

Evelyn stared. “What do you mean—a walk?”

“No—at least not as soon as we get away from the motor road. Then we break and walk pretty much as we like so long as there are at least three of us together. We’ve got to keep in sight and sound of the escort mistresses; otherwise it’s very much go as you please. We take a picnic meal with us and in the summer we often don’t get back to school until after 18.00 hours. Now, of course, it’ll be nearer 17.00 hours. In fact, it may very well be the last ramble this season. We’re practically into October.”

“I do wish,” said Evelyn unexpectedly, “that we could call the hours by their proper names. It’s so idiotic talking about 17.00 hours—18.00 hours! Why can’t we just say 5 or 6 in the afternoon?”

“Because here they use mid-European time names,” said Yvette, thankfully seizing on the opportunity to do her share towards bringing Evelyn back into the fold. “Me, I agree with you, but it is the custom.”

“In the meantime, will you partner me?” Lesley asked.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” Evelyn said. She still had no idea of apologizing for her share in the unpleasantness of the last few days, but inwardly she was glad to be treated to something warmer than the chilly politeness the girls had shown her lately.

“Good!” said Lesley. “We’ll make the most of it. It’s a pity that the last two Saturdays were so impossible. As I said, I doubt if we’ll have any more rambles this term; but today is a lovely day—just right!”

“Where are we going?” queried Hélène. “I hope it’s to the Auberge. It is one of our show places and indeed Evelyn ought to see it.”

“Why?” asked Evelyn with interest.

“We’ll wait and see if we’re going there,” Lesley interposed quickly. “Don’t tell her, anyone. Much more fun for her to discover it for herself.”

“Who are our escorts?” Simonetta demanded.

“Can’t tell you that, either. The lists weren’t up in Hall when we came out for I looked to see. Perhaps Deney’s done it while we have Break. Let’s go and take a dekko.”

They were not the only ones to think of this. When they reached Hall it was to find a crowd milling round the big notice-board on which such lists were always pinned up. A chorus of exclamations and comments was going on and it was just as well that Len Maynard’s arrival reduced the excited throng to a little more order.

“Quiet, there, Juniors!” she called as she pushed her way through the mob. “Stand back a little and I’ll read it out to you.”

There was considerably less noise at once and she reached the board and ran her eye over the lists. “O.K. Here we are!” she said briskly. “Juniors, you all go to play in the meadow behind the Élisehütte and your escorts are Miss Andrews, Miss Bertram and Miss Stone. Your prefects are Eve Hurrell, Carmela Walther and Priscilla Dawbarn. Now clear off, all of you, and go and get ready for netball. Carmela,” she turned to the Hobbies Prefect who had accompanied her into Hall, “you might go with them, will you? They’re so excited they’ll be breaking rules right and left and then goodbye to their share of the ramble!”

“Oh, Len, we wouldn’t! We truly wouldn’t,” cried her small sister before she grabbed her bosom friend Jean Morrison, and went off with her to change into plimsolls for netball.

Len laughed. “I wouldn’t be too sure!” she called after them. “Just you go quietly and no talking in the corridors.” Then she turned back to her self-appointed task. “Now, IIIb, you go with Miss Burnett and Miss Moore, and your prefects are Primrose Trevoase and Jeanne Daudet. Your ramble is up the toboggan path and down by the stream through the pinewoods.”

“And our escorts?” demanded a small voice.

“Miss Carey and Miss Lawrence, and Maria Zinkel and Con for prefects.”

Exit IIIb, highly delighted!

Len went on reading and presently came to Vb. Evelyn hoped that they would go with her own form. She had seen next to nothing of Jane Carew this week and though she would have admitted it reluctantly, she had missed the eager, friendly creature towards whom she felt so great an attraction. But Vb were off to somewhere called Lauterbach and would picnic on the little grassy shelf by the railway. She had no time to regret it, however, for Len was reading out Va’s destination.

“Va, you go to the Auberge with Miss Wilmot and Miss Ferrars. Ted Grantley, Margot and myself go with you, and so does Prudence Dawbarn. What’s left of the two Sixths take the train to Interlaken with Mdlle and Miss Yolland. Now that’s all. There goes the bell and it’s games, so we’d better scram and get ready!”

They streamed out of Hall along to the splasheries to change as fast as they could into plimsolls and thick pullovers before seizing their sticks and racing off to the pitches where Miss Burnett and some of the younger mistresses were awaiting them.

“It is the Auberge for us!” Lesley exulted. “You’ll like it, Evelyn!”

“Shall I?” Evelyn asked doubtfully. “Why? What’s so special about it?”

“You wait! You’ll see!” a gleeful acclamation told her. Then they reached the hockey pitches and Miss Burnett, the P.T. mistress, was coming to start them off.

Evelyn still disliked the game, but she was learning not to show it. Miss Burnett was a very pleasant person, but she had no use for slackers. One or two stinging remarks during earlier practices had taught the new girl to keep her opinion to herself and even to play up harder than she formerly had. She found herself allotted to a place in the third XI with Miss Dene, the school secretary, in charge.

Like several other members of the staff Miss Dene was an Old Girl of the school. She was a tall, good-looking woman with fair, wavy hair framing a clear-cut face. As a girl she had been keen on hockey and even now, with schooldays twenty years behind her, she was a good player and an excellent coach. From Evelyn’s point of view she was much to be preferred to Margot Maynard. No more than Miss Burnett had Margot any use for slackers. She had not spared to use a mordant tongue to its full extent when irritated by the new girl’s former lackadaisical play and, unlike the mistress, she never knew when to leave off. As a result there was no love lost between her and Evelyn.

Miss Dene had no liking for triflers, either, but she had early taken Evelyn’s measure and knew that sharp scolding would only set her back up and make her play worse in the long run. She tried encouragement and careful explanations of the why of her remarks and soon obtained much better results. The practice this morning went off better than usual. Evelyn really tried at left wing and even brought off one or two quite brilliant strokes, fully meriting Miss Dene’s unstinted praise.

Mittagessen came early to give them as much time as possible for their ramble. When it was ended, everyone scurried off to pull on shoes, big coat and beret. The sun was shining but there was a nip in the air and the authorities at the Chalet School took no chances with colds or chills.

Evelyn and Lesley joined up at the tail of Va. The prefects were standing together in a clump and presently the Head and Miss Ferrars arrived, all set for the fray. Everyone carried an alpenstock and all of them shouldered rücksacks in which were packed parcels of sandwiches, cakes, apples, flasks of hot coffee and, for those who wished, cameras. Miss Wilmot gave the word as the last laggard arrived panting.

“Ready? Right! Lead on, Mélanie and Henriette. Remember that you mayn’t break until we are clear of the Platz. Tail, please don’t lag. Leaders, don’t bolt. Above all, keep your voices down as long as we are on the motor road. Off you go!”

They set off in pairs. Margot and Ted keeping level with the third pair, and Len at the rear with Prudence Dawbarn who was joining this ramble as she had no partner among the Sixths. Prudence had been a firebrand from her earliest days and even now, when she was sixteen and in VIb, no one was prepared to say what she might do at any time. The two mistresses strolled along somewhere about the middle of the long line.

“It’s gorgeously clear today,” Lesley said to Evelyn as they marched along the road in the direction of the great Sanatorium. “Just look across there, Evelyn!”

Evelyn looked and exclaimed, “Oh, how utterly fab! It’s been on the misty side since I came here and I never saw all that before.”

She might well exclaim. Across the valley were the heights which enfolded the twin lakes of Thun and Brienz. Against the steadfast blue of the autumn sky there heaved great shoulders and peaks, many of them already mantled with snow that gleamed in the sunlight. Wave after wave they rose, majestically lovely, and it would have been a very dull girl who was not instantly impressed with the sight. Evelyn was far from dull and she had never seen the mountains in all their glory before. Her eyes shone, the pink in her cheeks deepened and her lips parted in a smile of sheer delight.

“Lesley! Why did nobody tell me they could look like this? Even Jane said nothing about it. I never saw anything so sma-er-marvellous in all my life! Oh, it’s beautiful—beautiful!”

Lesley beamed, well-pleased by her enthusiasm. She herself, coming from the Highlands, was accustomed to such views. It had been unfortunate that up to today it had been impossible to see the full magnificence of the scene. There had been sunny days in plenty, but accompanied by thin autumn mists which had veiled the distances.

“It is miraculous, isn’t it?” she said.

Before Evelyn could reply Miss Ferrars had glanced round to see them standing and she called to them not to loiter but keep up with the rest.

“Come on!” said Lesley, breaking into a run. “With luck you’ll see it over and over again before the term ends. Besides, we can’t keep the rest dangling about for us. Run, Evelyn!”

They raced along. Len looked round as they came up with the rest and was amazed at the change in Evelyn. She had lost her normally sulky air, she was flushed and her eyes were alight. As the pair reached the prefects, the Head Girl spoke.

“Has Lesley been pointing out our mountains to you, Evelyn? Ah, but wait till you get a proper view of our special pet—the Jungfrau! She really is something!”

“I call those mountains something,” Evelyn said, waving her hand at them.

“Well, the Jungfrau is somethinger,” Prudence Dawbarn said with a grin. “Yes, Len; I know that isn’t grammar, but it fits.”

Len laughed. “I only wish Derry could hear you!” she said.

Prudence chuckled. “Only she can’t!”

By this time they had come to the railway which the girls were crossing with due care for keeping on the raised plank footway. No one wished to frizzle on the live rails which stretched up and down the mountain slopes as far as they could see. They passed over in single file and then a curve in the road brought them within sight of the Görnetz Sanatorium. Evelyn eyed it wistfully.

“I suppose I couldn’t just dash over and ask how Mother is?” she said.

Len, still keeping an eye on this girl who seemed to be almost as much of a problem as Prudence if in another way, shook her head. “I’m afraid not. There wouldn’t be time. Didn’t you hear this morning? Anyway, I saw Dad just before Mittagessen and he told me she was making headway steadily. You’re going to visit her tomorrow afternoon, aren’t you?”

“Yes; but—oh, well, so long as I know she’s going on all right!” Evelyn said, relinquishing her wish.

“Did your Dad tell you how Philippa is?” Prudence queried.

A cloud swept across the Head Girl’s face. “Not too well. She doesn’t seem to be making any progress and her leg is still so weak she can’t walk at all, poor poppet.”

“Oh, gosh! I’m sorry to hear that!” Prudence exclaimed. “What a time she’s having of it, poor kid!”

“She is. Oh, well, let’s hope this new treatment will help her. But it’s not going to be a speedy thing.” Len changed the subject, speaking over her shoulder to Evelyn. “Have the others told you anything about the Auberge?”

Lesley chuckled. “Not very likely! We told her to wait and see; but she’s dying of curiosity, aren’t you, Evelyn? I can tell you this. You’ll be thrilled to bits when you do know the secret!”

Evelyn laughed. “I can wait. Oh, do we turn off here?”

“Yes; we go down to that path and turn along it. Come on!”

The others had turned down and the leaders had already disappeared round a big bush which stood at the entrance to the path. Presently Evelyn found herself strolling down a track bordered by alpenrose bushes, with Lesley, and Hélène who had left Anne Charlot and come to join them. The others had also regrouped themselves and were going along in threes and fours, all chattering.

At first the path had fairly broad grass verges, but soon it narrowed and they were going between rocky walls, one side being the mountain slope which rose high above their heads, while the other was comparatively low. This one ended abruptly and Evelyn discovered that she was once more gazing across the valley to the northern range.

She glanced down and saw, far below, the narrow plain with a silver thread of river running through it. Clusters of chalets dotted it here and there, looking like toy houses set out by a child. Len, who still kept Prudence with her, turned, saw her gazing, and smiled at her.

“Like it, Evelyn?”

“It—it’s fab!” Evelyn said in awestruck tones as she drew back from the edge with a little shudder.

Prudence saw her and grinned. “Bad head for heights?” she said suggestively.

Evelyn flushed. “I don’t like them—not for long. But I’m glad I’ve seen this. Where does the river flow, Lesley?”

“Down to Lake Thun. It doesn’t look it from this height, but it’s quite a wide one. Those chalets are little villages. Look! You can see the church over there—just!” She pointed to where an “onion” spire surmounted the little church.

“I suppose we are rather high up,” Evelyn remarked as they went on again.

“About 3,000 feet up,” observed Miss Wilmot who had dropped behind with Margot Maynard and Ted Grantley, leaving Miss Ferrars to go ahead with some five or six people who were all talking at a great rate. “Keep well away from the edge, Evelyn, if you’ve a bad head for heights. Girls, when we reach the Auberge we’ll have our picnic and then if there’s time we may go on to the waterfall. Not tired, anyone?”

She raised her voice as she spoke and a chorus of denials came back. “Good!” she said briskly. “Don’t loiter too much or we shan’t have time for it. I don’t want to be caught after dark with some distance to go before we reach the school. Come along! Best foot forward, everyone!”

They set off again at a rather swifter pace and presently came to a spot where the path widened, edged now by flat rocks with moss still green growing between them.

“This,” said Lesley, nodding towards it, “is where some of our girls had an appalling adventure. They were gathering moss and one of them, Emerence Hope, caught her foot and slipped and nearly went over.”^[6]

Evelyn shuddered as she looked. “How awful! What happened to save her?”

“Another girl—Jo Scott—grabbed her ankle just in time to check her fall. If she hadn’t hung on like grim death Emerence would have gone over as sure as check!”

“I remember it all too well,” Len said. “I was one of the moss-gathering party and I shall never know how Jo contrived to hold on as she did. She wrenched her shoulder-muscles badly and was in bed for days afterwards.”

“What’s that?” Miss Wilmot asked, overhearing half the speech. “Who was in bed for days when?”

“We were telling Evelyn about the time Emmy Hope nearly went over there.” Len said. “I remember Mary-Lou had her Guide cord with her and you lassoed Emmy with it and yanked her back to safety. What a nightmare it was until we saw her lying safely on those stones!”

“That wasn’t the worst part to me,” the Head said gravely. “That came when Emerence was lying on those stones and for a minute I thought she was dead from the horror of it.”

“How did you know how to lasso her, Miss Wilmot?” Prudence asked.

Nancy Wilmot laughed. “I grew up with five brothers who insisted that I musn’t grow up a sissy and saw to it that I didn’t. Slinging a lasso was only one of the many accomplishments they taught me. When I did have time to think I thanked God for a number of things—being able to use a lasso, Mary-Lou’s habit of always carrying her Guide cord with her, and above all for Jo Scott’s commonsense and pluck.”

By this time they had reached a tiny meadow and to one side a mighty rock flung a shadow across the cropped grass. Evelyn looked at this last with interest and demanded to know what is was.

“It’s the Tschuggen. We go round it and then we’re on the last of the path to the Auberge. Are you tired?”

“A little,” Evelyn owned. “It’s quite a walk.”

“Me, I am very tired,” Hélène chimed in. “I shall be glad to sit and repose myself at the Auberge.”

“I shan’t be sorry myself,” Lesley admitted.

It was not far now. The path curved sharply here and then the famous Auberge was in front of them. Evelyn scanned it eagerly, not without a sense of disappointment. It was quite an attractive place but she had seen others like it. Its plastered walls were painted with gay frescos. A wide courtyard lay before it with trestle tables and wooden benches ready for visitors who wished to sit and have a drink or a meal. At the valley side it was bounded by close, high fencing and Miss Ferrars told Evelyn that the innkeeper was very careful to see that the fencing was kept in good condition. She and Miss Wilmot insisted that the girls must have their picnic before anything else, but as soon as that was over and the empty flasks, and papers in which their sandwiches and cakes had been wrapped were collected and safely stowed away in their rücksacks, there was no holding them. As one girl they raced to the fencing and then Evelyn got a shock. Margot Maynard sang a few bars of one of their school songs. She ceased and back came her sweet, high soprano notes in echoes which transmuted them into something almost ethereal.

“Oh, it’s an echo!” Evelyn cried; and the echo caught her words and threw them back, “An echo—an echo—an echo!” until they died away.

The others all had a turn. Some sang, others whistled, one or two made weird noises. Even the most raucous of these was turned into elfin sounds. Finally, they insisted that Evelyn must take her turn.

“But I can’t whistle or sing,” she protested.

“Never mind! You must do something!” they insisted.

Evelyn went off in a peal of laughter and instantly found that she had “done something”. The flying echoes caught the notes and sent them back in peals of fairy laughter. Despite the protests of the girls, Miss Wilmot called a halt there. The light was beginning to fade and she insisted that they must return. Two or three hinted at the waterfall, but she was adamant.

“Sorry; but it can’t be done. It’s a good fifteen minutes further on and you know as well as I do that once sunset comes, darkness falls rapidly. Up you get and off we go! Plenty more days ahead to visit the fall. Partners, please, and keep a brisk pace. Thank you, Margot and Ted! Lead on!”

After that delightful ramble, Evelyn found things going better. Most of her own form had returned to their earlier casual friendliness, and Lesley went further and even booked her for morning walks on three or four occasions. As she had finally decided that since she must play hockey it would be wise to play properly, Margot moderated her strictures and even congratulated her once on a clever piece of passing. None the less she could get up no real enthusiasm for it. The only game for which she really cared was tennis and she must wait for the summer term for that.

“But then I shan’t be here,” she told herself. “Mum will be fit again and we can go back home and that will be that. She’s making real headway now, I can see.”

Since she was much happier in other ways, her work improved. She had only average ability, but during her first weeks at the school she hadn’t bothered to use even that. Now she began to take some interest in her work. Among other things she discovered that what she had been told at the very beginning was true. Whether she would or not, she was understanding both French and German better. German she still found difficult, never having done any before she came to the Chalet School. In French she was making real progress. Her accent left much to be desired, but her vocabulary had grown. During the passing weeks she became conscious that she was even enjoying the delightful Sous Les Toits which was their translation book.

On the Sunday before half-term she went, as usual, to visit her mother. Mrs Maynard was also going to spend the time with small Philippa, who was making very slow progress, and she called for Evelyn and her own Felicity who had been promised a visit to the precious baby sister.

“I’m thrilled!” Felicity informed the elder girl, her mother, and Cecil who was four years younger than herself. “Do you know, Mamma, it’s almost three months since I last saw Phil—three months! That’s a norful long time.”

“I know it.” Joey Maynard smiled down at the small, eager face with its frame of flaxen curls. “Still it couldn’t be helped. You be thankful, my child, that we still have Phil. We might have lost her.”

Felicity looked grave. “I know, but it didn’t happen. I’ve said lots of thank-you’s to God and the saints for leaving her with us.”

“Good! But go on asking for her to get better as well. Phil is safe now, humanly speaking, but she has a long way to go before she’s back to what she was. And that reminds me, poppet, you’ll see a big change in Phil, I’m afraid.”

“A change? How d’you mean, Mamma?”

“For one thing, she’s lost her pink cheeks. For another she is very thin, though not so scraggy as she was a month ago. She is beginning to fatten up a little now, thank goodness! I want you to try not to let her see that you notice it. Can you do that?”

Felicity nodded. “I won’t say a thing.” Suddenly she put an arm round little Cecil, sitting beside her, and gave her a hug. “Oh, Mamma, isn’t it good that Cecil and Geoff didn’t get it as well? That would have been horrible!”

“Never wasn’t ill at all,” said Cecil with a nod of her curly black head.

Evelyn, sitting in the back of the little car, felt impelled to say something. She had heard from the other girls all about Baby Phil’s dangerous illness and she felt that she couldn’t, in decency, ignore it after this.

“I’m glad, Mrs Maynard,” she said rather shyly. “You must have had a—a hideous time while Phil was so ill.”

“True; but it’s over now, thank God,” Joey said, “and Phil is still with us. It’s going to mean a long pull up the hill before she’s all right again, as I told Felicity just now, but the doctors all say it will come.”

They had reached the gates of the Sanatorium and she had to pull to one side to allow a big ambulance to drive out. She stopped the car and turned to smile at Evelyn. “You can guess something of what it’s been like because of your mother’s illness. But she, too, is better. My husband told me yesterday that they have real hope of her now, ill as she was when she first came up. So you, too, have something to thank God for.”

Evelyn said nothing, but inwardly she was feeling stunned by Joey’s words. Hitherto she had been too ignorant of her mother’s state to realize what danger she had been in. She had known she was very ill, but that the doctors at the Sanatorium had been doubtful if they could pull her round had been hidden from the girl. Joey, knowing nothing of this, added one more word.

“We’re an ungrateful set when it comes to small things. It’s up to us to see that at least we’re grateful for the big ones.” Then the ambulance was past and they went on up to the big swing doors where Joey pulled up and told the three to get out.

“I’m running the car round to the car-park. You run along, Evelyn. You want every moment possible with your mother, I know. Felicity and Cecil, wait here for me. I shan’t be more than a minute or two. Give your mother my love Evelyn, and say I’m coming to visit her tomorrow, doctors permitting.”

“Yes—and thank you!” Evelyn left the little girls and went through the doors into the wide entrance hall where one of the nurses took her in charge.

“We’ve a surprise for you,” she told the girl. “Come along!”

Evelyn hurried after her along the white-tiled corridors, not pausing as she usually did to screw up her nose at the smell of anaesthetics which, however faintly, always pervaded them. She reached the door of the small private ward and Nurse opened it for her and sent her in. Evelyn almost ran through the doorway. Then she stopped. The last time she had seen her mother she had been only slightly raised on her pillows. Now she was sitting almost upright and though she was very thin, there was no mistaking the look of improvement about her. She turned her head eagerly as the girl came up to the bedside.

“Here you are! No, darling; you still mustn’t kiss me, I’m afraid, but I’m really better today. Are you surprised to see me sitting up like this? It’s only for a little. I still get tired rather quickly. But it’s a big step forward.”

“It—it’s miraculous!” Evelyn said, holding the thin hand stretched out to her. “Oh, Mum! I’m so glad—so very glad!”

“Well, don’t cry about it, silly,” Mrs Ross said with a smile, for there were actual tears in the big grey-green eyes. “Sit down and tell me all your news. Have you had more rambles? How are you getting on at hockey?”

Evelyn swiftly recalled the orders she had received on her previous visits and pulled herself together.

“No; we didn’t have another ramble. It’s getting too late in the year for that, Lesley says. It’s dark so soon now and there wouldn’t be time to get anywhere. But we had a jolly walk right along to Ste Cecilie. You’ll love it when I take you to see it, which I will as soon as you’re fit enough. It’s a tiny village—just a few chalets and huts and the wee-est church with an onion-bulb spire. There isn’t even the smell of a shop. When the people want anything they have to come here unless they go down to Interlaken.” She talked on, describing all she had seen and the latest school gossip. Mrs Ross listened to her, smiling happily. Evelyn was settling down at her new school and seemed to be happy and that was what mainly mattered to the invalid. Evelyn mentioned various people her mother knew by name, including little Mme Courvoisier.

“I know her,” Mrs Ross said. “She is lovely with those beautiful blue eyes of hers and her silky black hair. Dr Courvoisier is one of my doctors, you know.”

“That reminds me, Mrs Maynard brought me in the car and she said I was to tell you she was coming to see you tomorrow. I do like her,” Evelyn went on, doing her best to keep the chatter in her own hands. “Did you know her youngest girl is here. Poor little Phil’s had polio very badly and at first they were afraid she was permanently paralysed, but Len told us yesterday that the bad leg is growing stronger. Only they’re afraid it’ll be a long job. Don’t you make a long job of it, Mum. You do everything they say and take everything they give you and get well soon! Oh, and do you know, I’m beginning to enjoy our French translation. That shows you how I’m getting on in French. German’s a different story,” she went on with a hideous grimace. “I do not love it. All the verbs come at the ends of the sentences—or nearly all, and you have to fish for them. It makes it obnoxiously hard. Still, I am beginning to talk better.”

“I’m glad. If you still stick to your idea of a secretarial post when you leave school you’ll be able to get a much better one if you can offer fluent French and German,” Mrs Ross said, smiling at her girl.

“Now, Mummy, you’re not to talk and tire yourself,” Evelyn told her reprovingly. “Lets see: what else have I to tell you? Oh, yes! We had a scream of a cookery lesson on Thursday. I’ll tell you, but you lie quiet and enjoy it.”

“Go ahead!” Mrs Ross was enjoying the visit.

“Well, Frau Meiders—that our dommy sci. mistress—was going to give us a lesson in frying in deep fat. We were to do the fish for Mittagessen and make doughnuts and fritters besides. We managed the doughnuts all right. But I’d no idea until then that you make quite small balls and they swell out to doughnut size in the boiling fat. It was thrilling to watch them! We made piles—enough for everyone to have one and they were a real success. I felt proud of my batch, I can tell you!” Evelyn laughed. “And then we began on the fritters and that’s where things went wrong.”

“Oh? How was that?”

“Well, you see, you have to use sour milk and if you haven’t any, you turn it with vinegar or rennet and then add bicarb. of soda to make them rise. Unfortunately, someone must have mixed the bottles, for what we used was rosewater. You mix the milk with flour and salt and, if you can get it, sour cream. Then you roll it out and cut it into strips and twist those to any shape you like. I followed Lesley’s example and tied mine in bows. Other folk made figures of eight; or twists or plaits. In fact,” Evelyn went on, laughing, “there was a variety!”

“It sounds like it.” Mrs Ross laughed, too. Unfortunately, the laugh ended in a cough and Evelyn forgot the cookery class in her sudden anxiety.

“Oh, Mum! Here’s a glass of water. Shall I ring for Nurse? Or go and find someone? Let me hold you up!”

In her anxiety Evelyn forgot that she had been warned not to stoop over her mother. Mrs Ross did not forget. Fighting with the cough, she pushed the girl back with all her feeble force, “No! Keep away! I’ll be—all right—in a—moment!”

Luckily, one of the probationers was passing the french window just then. She glanced in, saw what was happening, slipped on her mask and came swiftly to Evelyn’s aid. Lifting the patient, she told Evelyn to bring the ice-water from the table by the window and when the bout was over, got Mrs Ross to sip some.

“That’s better,” she said when she finally laid the invalid back on her pillows. “Lie still, Mrs Ross, and don’t speak at all.” She looked at Evelyn, “You stay with her while I fetch Sister. Don’t talk, either.”

Evelyn sat down thankfully. Her legs were shaking. After being so long away from her mother she had forgotten that harsh cough and it sounded dreadful to her. Mrs Ross was very white, but she managed a smile for her girl and Evelyn, fighting her fears, smiled back at her. There was a warmth and love in that smile that did the patient good. Latterly, Evelyn had been careless about any show of affection, but now her real terror showed itself mingled with a love she had not known she could feel for anyone.

Mercifully, Sister was at hand and was speedily there. A glance told her that the invalid had had all she could stand at one time. She set about easing her position without alarming the frightened girl at the other side of the bed.

“Ah! But I see you are weary,” she said, her accent and the lilt in her voice betraying her French origin. “Now we will let you rest, and Mdlle Evelyn must go. No, ma petite; there must be no embraces yet. Soon, we hope it will be possible. Bid Madame adieu and go out to the verandah. I will come soon.”

Evelyn obeyed without a murmur. She was too terrified to do anything else. She stood in the long verandah, staring out unseeingly over the garden and praying inarticulately that her mother might be no worse. So much had life at the Chalet School taught her. The talk with Joey Maynard and Felicity had given an added stimulus to it.

Sister arrived in less than ten minutes, though the time seemed never-ending to the girl. Sister took one look at her face and hastened to reassure her.

“Ah, ma pauvre! You have been frightened, but all is well now. Madame your mother is fatigued, but she is drowsy. Soon she will sleep and that is good. Then a little bowl of good soup and her medicine and she will sleep again and so waken stronger. Have no fear. There is no harm done. Madame is stronger now—much stronger—than when she first came.”

“Are you sure, Sister?” Evelyn’s voice shook. “I—I didn’t mean to hurt her, but I made her laugh—and then—she coughed.”

“And that frightened you. But all is well now. Only, for the present she must not laugh and should speak but a little. But I assure you, ma petite, that all is well. Now you will come with me to Matron’s room where you will await Mme Maynard. She will not be long now.”

She took Evelyn through an empty room, back into the corridor, and to a sunny little apartment where Matron, a tall, smiling woman, welcomed her cheerily.

“So you’ve had a fright? My dear girl, it was nothing and your mother is beginning to make real headway all round now. She is a little tired at the moment and we want to save her from that if we can. But I know how it is with patients. You may tell them not to talk till you’re black in the face and they still do it!”

“She—she looks so frail!” Evelyn faltered.

“That will soon improve. You’ll see it when you come next Sunday.” Matron touched a bell. “Now you’re going to have coffee with me, you look as if you needed it!”

Matron should have been off duty by this time, but she had a warm heart for any of the children of the patients. She knew that Evelyn was an only child and she could guess how the girl was feeling. While they waited for their coffee, she chatted about school affairs, trying to take Evelyn’s mind off her troubles.

“So you people have to do without Miss Annersley this term? It came as a real shock to know that she was going away, but luckily Miss Wilmot is fully capable of taking her place for the time being. And, now that little Phil is improving, I think you’ll be seeing a good deal more of Mrs Maynard,” she smiled delightfully. “You certainly won’t be dull if she’s popping in and out! I’ve known her a good many years now and I agree with my brother, who is one of the doctors here, that she’s like a spring wind. Here come our coffee and cakes. Drink this and try one of these little pastries and you’ll feel better.”

Evelyn did as she was told and under the influence of the delicious coffee did feel better. But she had had a bad shock. When Joey arrived with Cecil and Felicity she still did not look like herself. Mrs Maynard glanced at her and guessed what was wrong. She made no comment, but exclaimed at the sight of the coffee tray and demanded the same for herself and her daughters. Matron laughed and rang the bell again.

“Of course! Find seats and Mädel will bring it. Well, Felicity, my sweet, was Phil glad to see you?”

“Yes; she was. And to see Cecil, too. But oh, Auntie Helen, will she ever be like she used to be, all round and rosy? She does look so different!”

Helen Graves nodded with a smile. “Of course she will. You must remember how ill she’s been. You couldn’t expect her to get well all at once. But soon we hope, she’ll begin to walk again and when that happens, she’ll go ahead by leaps and bounds.”

“You’re positive sure?” Felicity fixed wide blue eyes on the kind face, and Matron nodded. “Absolutely sure! In fact, if it weren’t for these new treatments she’s having every day, she could come home now. But as long as those go on it’s easier for her to be here.”

Felicity beamed. “Oh, miraculous!” She looked at Evelyn. “How’s your mother, Evelyn? Wasn’t she glad to see you?”

“I think she was,” Evelyn said with a smile. “And I’m so glad about the good news about your little Phil!” She looked at Matron Graves and Matron smiled.

“Yes; it’s good news all round now. We all have great hopes of your mother now.” She spoke even more seriously than she had done to Felicity and Evelyn’s mind was relieved. All the same, she had had a shock which she could not forget and it was a much graver girl who finally drove back with Joey and the children.

“Erica Standish, where is your atlas? Why are you sharing with Gretchen?” Miss Ferrars spoke with some sharpness and with good reason for it. Lately, the Middles had been thoroughly tiresome about turning up at lessons with only half their belongings.

Erica looked aggrieved. “Please, Miss Ferrars, I couldn’t find it. I know I put it in my locker after my last j’ography prep,” she added.

“Nonsense! If you put it there it would still be there!” Miss Ferrars snapped. “No one is going to take your atlas. Lose an order mark and after you have finished prep this afternoon you will stay behind and look for it until you find it. Sit down and go on with your work now. But please remember, girls, that you are forbidden to share without permission. Erica isn’t the only one I’ve had to speak to about this sort of thing lately. Go on, please, Astrid. Where does the Congo rise?”

Erica sat down with a fling of the long flaxen mane she wore tied back from her face in two tails. She felt even more aggrieved than before for she was certain that she had put the atlas under all the other books in her locker. Yet when she had looked for it, it wasn’t there. Freda Kendal who sat on her far side gave her a warning look. Something was wrong with Ferry, as the school called the young mistress, strictly behind her back. She had come into school this morning looking anything but her usual bright self and, or so Upper IVa felt, she had been unnecessarily severe this morning during their arithmetic. However mad Erica might feel about losing her atlas it behoved her to be careful. Ferry was a poppet as a rule, but when you got on the wrong side of her—look out!

A tap at the door and the new Senior, Evelyn Ross, came in, carrying a familiar blue-backed atlas. She went up to the table and said, “Please, Miss Ferrars, Miss Moore sent me to ask if you would give this to Erica Standish. I found it in my locker when I went to get mine after Break. I don’t know how it got there,” she added, for Miss Ferrars was frowning.

The mistress took it from her and opened it to scan the label affixed to the inside cover. “ ‘Erica Standish. Upper IVa’,” she read out. “Erica, how did this get into Evelyn’s locker?”

Erica looked bewildered. “Please, I don’t know.”

“I suppose you left it lying about and Evelyn accidentally picked it up with her own books. Thank you, Evelyn.” Miss Ferrars waved Evelyn away and then turned again to the puzzled Erica. “Well, Erica?”

“But I don’t see how that could have happened!” Erica protested. “We never go near Va unless we’re sent. I don’t b’lieve I’ve been there at all this term.”

“Then how else can you explain it?”

“I—I can’t. I just know I did put it in my own locker last Wednesday. I didn’t need it on Friday because we used our synthetic maps.”

“That’s true; I saw her do it.” Victoria Woods from the back of the room spoke up. “Truly, Miss Ferrars, she did.”

Seeing that the mistress looked more approachable, Agneta Gabrielli, who held the proud post of form prefect, added her mite. “It’s happening all the time now, Miss Ferrars. We’re all missing books continually and then they turn up later in the oddest places. My French grammar was missing on Thursday and on Saturday someone found it in her bootlocker in our splashery.”

Upper IVa sat back and heaved a united sigh of relief. The murder was out. They had not liked to report the strange happenings of the past fortnight before this, but now, thanks to Ferry’s unwonted crossness and Evelyn’s arrival, they could tell her comfortably without feeling that they were sneaking. Miss Ferrars herself sat back and regarded them thoughtfully. She had been worried over the sudden apparent outbreak of carelessness among her form—she was form mistress to Upper IVa this term—for she had to admit that it was unlike them. There were untidy members, but she had never known anything so wholesale as this.

“I must inquire into this,” she said. “Meantime, no order mark, Erica, until I know more about it.” She stopped short, for a nasty pain which had been niggling at her ever since the previous night suddenly sharpened and it took all her self-control to prevent her from crying out.

Agneta noticed that she had turned white. It was only for a moment, though. The pain passed and the mistress, relieved from it, was herself again.

“How many of you have missed your belongings during the past fortnight?” she asked. “Put up your hands.”

A forest of hands shot up. Practically everyone in the form had a complaint to make on that score. She began to go into the matter in greater detail.

“What about you, Gretchen?”

“It was my arithmetic. It was missing this morning,” Gretchen von Ahlen responded, deep reproach in her voice. Miss Ferrars had had a good deal to say to her on the subject and Gretchen was still smarting over the scolding she had received.

“I remember.” Miss Ferrars sounded thoughtful. She was silent then and Upper IVa eyed her hopefully. Perhaps, if Ferry took the matter up it might be cleared up. They hadn’t been able to do much about it themselves.

“Well,” she said, rising from her chair, “I think the best thing will be to go back to the formroom and for you to go through your lockers. I’m sorry to miss your geography, but this sort of thing can’t be allowed to go on. Pack up, girls, and come along. Go quietly, please. We don’t want to disturb other classes.”

Thankful to avoid a lesson which had promised to be highly unpleasant with Ferry in her former mood, the form gathered up its belongings and followed her as quietly as it could from the geography room to the formroom where she sent them in fours to the lockers with orders to clear them out completely.

“Sort your books properly and see if you miss anything,” she said when they were all sitting again. Then she sat back for she was feeling unaccountably weak though the pain still remained in abeyance.

The first thing that happened was a cry from Erica. “Miss Ferrars, I’ve got all my books back now, but here’s Janice Chester’s ruler. It was right at the back of my locker.”

“What?” Miss Ferrars roused herself. “Bring it out here, Erica. Girls, have any of you got other people’s belongings among yours?”

“I have Renata van Buren’s history here,” said Sara Carlyon with a giggle.

“I’ve no one else’s things, but my Rémi en Angleterre has gone,” Freda said.

One after another the girls proclaimed either the loss of something or the discovery of someone else’s property among theirs. Miss Ferrars commanded them to bring the interlopers up to her table and leave them there. When the last girl had deposited Jane Carew’s case of geometrical instruments on top of a heap of books there was a very varied assortment. Leaning her head on her hand and wishing she didn’t feel so limp, Kathy Ferrars looked it over. The books could easily be returned to their owners, but the bundle of pens, pencils and other oddments might be more difficult.

“This must go to Nancy,” the mistress thought struggling to keep a grip on herself for the pain was returning. “This is planned mischief. Now who have my little pets offended so mortally to deserve it?”

She didn’t get the answer just then, for at that point Miss Ferrars’s fortitude could hold out no longer. She gave a sharp cry and doubled up.

There was instant pandemonium. Quite half the girls lost their heads completely and came milling round the mistress’s platform where Miss Ferrars was sitting, her head almost down on her knee. Agneta rushed to open a window and had to shut it almost as quickly. The rain was coming down in torrents and the wind blowing a half-gale. Papers flew in all directions and a pool collected on the windowsill in no time.

Jeanne Romande, a very nervous new girl, burst into tears, and at least a dozen others made wild suggestions at the top of their voices. Miss Wilmot, striding down the corridor at that moment, might be forgiven for thinking that the form was in revolt. She flung open the door and marched in at her most stately.

She got no further. Another sharp sword of pain rent Kathy and she cried out again. The Head was beside her at once. Waving the frightened girls back imperatively, she bent over her friend, asking, “Oh, my dear, what’s wrong?”

Miss Ferrars felt too ill to answer or even raise her head. By this time she was literally writhing and beyond words. Nancy Wilmot realized that this was a case for immediate action. Still stooping over her colleague, she looked round at the now silent girls. Her eye fell on Erica.

“Erica, run quickly for Matron! Astrid, you go and find Gaudenz and ask him to come here at once. Agneta, go to the office and ask Miss Dene to ’phone for Dr Jack. If he isn’t at home, ask her to ring the San. But a doctor we must have as soon as possible. The rest of you, go to your commonroom and wait there till someone comes to you. Be as quiet as you can. Be quick!”

The three she had singled out had gone on the word and it was left to Victoria to take command.

“Line up!” she said, helping them by pushing odd persons into line. “You stop howling, Jeanne. No one’s killed yet! Lead on, Gretchen, and all of you get books and read. Nita, take charge until someone else comes. March!”

“Are—aren’t you coming, too, Vic?” Jaquetta de Henezell asked shakily.

“No; Miss Wilmot may need another messenger.”

No more was said. Gretchen led off and the scared and subdued form followed her. Victoria turned to Miss Wilmot, beginning to feel shaky herself. There was no doubt about it. Miss Ferrars was in severe pain and once her defences had slipped they had gone altogether. She was moaning at intervals and the Head’s face when Victoria glanced at her was a revelation to that young woman.

“I—I’ll just wait outside the door, Miss Wilmot,” she said. “I can hear if you call.” She slipped away, leaving the door slightly ajar and Nancy Wilmot, along with her friend, thought no more about her.

“Kathy—Kathy darling!” she said. “It’s all right. Matey will be here in a sec, and the doctor, too.” She took one of Kathy Ferrars’s slim hands in hers and was quite as frightened as the girls, the hands felt so weak. The next moment she gave a smothered squawk, for a fresh pain shot through Kathy and her grip tightened until the signet ring Miss Wilmot always wore was cutting into the flesh.

“You poor old girl!” Miss Wilmot said. “It’s all right, Kathy. You’ll be easier soon. Matey will do something.”

Matey herself came hurrying into the room at that point and Miss Wilmot heaved a sigh of relief. “She’s here, Kathy. You’ll be all right now.” Then she stood back to let Matron have a clear field.

A very brief interval told Matron what was probably the cause of the trouble.

“Appendix, I think,” she said in an undertone to the Head. “Acute, to judge by the pain she’s having. We must get her out of this. Have you sent for Gaudenz?”

Miss Wilmot nodded. “I have: also for Jack Maynard if he’s at home, and to the San if he isn’t. And here’s Gaudenz, thank heaven!” as the door swung open and the school’s gigantic handyman appeared. He really was a giant of a man, and when Matron asked him to carry Miss Ferrars to the settee in the Head’s salon, he picked her up as if she had been a featherweight and marched off with her, followed by Matron. The Head, now the worst responsibility had been taken off her shoulders, had time to think of Upper IVa. She looked round and her eye fell on the very mixed bag of articles on the table.

“Well!” she exclaimed aloud. “What’s been going on here? I must look into this at once.”

The first thing was to do something about Vb where she was due for an algebra lesson. She picked up a clean sheet of paper, scribbled a note and then summoned Victoria to her.

“Victoria! Come here, please. Take this note to Vb and give it to Janice Chester. Tell her that I’m detained, but don’t say why yet. Say I expect to find at least five of these examples finished when I come to see them. Now be off with you—oh, and Victoria!”

Victoria halted to hear what was coming next. She was longing to ask the Head if she knew what was wrong with Ferry, but Miss Wilmot wore her most forbidding expression. She didn’t dare.

“As you come back,” Miss Wilmot said, “call in at the commonroom and bring the rest back. I’ve something to say to you all.”

“Yes, Miss Wilmot.”

“And please be as quick as you can.”

“Yes, Miss Wilmot.”

Victoria raced off, feeling it quite safe to break the rule about no running in the corridors for once, and Nancy Wilmot was left alone. She was longing to get off to the salon and find out how things were going there, but Upper IVa had had a nasty shock and they were not much more than children. She must see to them first. All the same, Nancy Wilmot felt this to be one of the hardest pieces of duty she had had to perform. She and Kathy Ferrars were close friends of many years standing. Appendicitis was rarely a really serious matter these days if it were taken in time. But she remembered, too well for her comfort, the account someone had given her of what had happened when Julie Lucy, one of the prefects at the time, had had a similar seizure.^[7] It had turned to peritonitis and Julie had nearly died. Then she shook herself. That had been nearly nine years ago. Julie had recovered and was now married and the proud mamma of an unruly small son and a very new baby daughter.

“I’m a complete ninny!” the Head told herself. “Didn’t Jeanne de Lachennais say that Julie had had a grumbling appendix and didn’t report it and that was why she was so ill? There’s been nothing wrong with Kathy until today. It’s almost certainly just a sudden acute attack. They’ll have her off to San and on to the operating table to have her appendix yanked out in short order.”

All the same she felt horribly apprehensive, and the face she showed the returning form was enough to make them scuttle to their seats as quickly as and quietly as they could manage.

“Settle down, girls,” she said, trying to smile. “Don’t look so terrified. Matron thinks it’s only an acute appendix—painful to the last degree, but a mere nothing nowadays. I’m sorry you’ve all had such a fright, but try to forget it. They’ll operate at once and I hope Miss Ferrars will be back with us in her usual form in a few weeks’ time.”

Her outwardly tranquil manner soothed the form amazingly. They all knew that Ferry and Willy were great pals. If Ferry had been in real danger, Willy would never have been as calm as this, they told themselves. Meantime, she was looking round the room and her smile had broadened.

“What on earth have you been doing?” she demanded. “Why is the floor littered with paper like this? Pick up those sheets and then you can sit down again and tell me what is the why of all this collection.” She waved her hand at the miscellaneous pile on the table. “Hurry up! We’ve no time to waste!”

The form went to work and in five minutes all the paper had been picked up and they were back at their desks again and looking at the Head anxiously.

“Why on earth did you scatter paper all over the floor?” she asked.

“It was the wind,” Erica said. “Agneta opened the window to give Miss Ferrars air, but she had to shut it again. Oh, and the sill got all wet.”

“So I see. Agneta, run and ask Karen for a cloth to wipe it up. While she is gone the rest of you can explain to me the meaning of all this hotchpotch on the table. Were you thinking of holding a jumble sale by any chance?”

This took their minds right off that awful little scene when they had watched their form mistress writhing in agonies of pain and not known what to do about it. As this had been Miss Wilmot’s plan, she noted thankfully that it was successful, for one and all began to babble excitedly. She held up her hand.

“One at a time, please! I can’t make head or tail of such a babel of noise. Gretchen, suppose you tell it.”

Shy Gretchen stood up, looking dumfounded. However, she made an effort. “It is just that for the past weeks we have lost things—books and rulers and pencils. We found them always, but only some days later. This morning, Erica her atlas could not find and she and I were sharing. Miss Ferrars was—was—”

“Raging!” came in a hissed whisper as she faltered and felt for the word. Miss Wilmot heard and shook her head.

“No, Astrid. Annoyed, no doubt, but not raging. Go on, Gretchen.”

Gretchen, brought up short, felt unable to go on. Agneta who had been wiping up the mess on the windowsill, turned round and helped her out.

“She was very annoyed.”

“I don’t blame her. What happened next?”

Erica herself piped up. “Evelyn Ross came to the j’ography room—”

“Ge-ography, please. The word has four syllables, not three. Why had Evelyn come to your lesson?”

“She found my atlas among her books and Miss Moore sent her to the geeography room with it,” Erica replied emphasizing the first syllable. “So then Miss Ferrars began to ask questions and Victoria backed me up that I had put it in my locker.”

“And—?” Miss Wilmot was longing to get this over and go to find out how Miss Ferrars was going on, but she kept steadily to her task.

“And then she said we’d better come back here and empty all our lockers and see what was in them that didn’t belong to us,” Victoria explained. “So we did—and we found all that.” She indicated the muddle on the table.

“Yes; and then?”

“Well, then she got ill.” Sara Carlyon added her word. “And—and that’s all. Oh, Miss Wilmot, are you sure she—she won’t—die?”

“Die? Certainly not!” The Head said sharply. “I’ve already told you that appendicitis isn’t dangerous if it’s taken in time as this has been. In any case, what I want now is to know the reason for all this.” She indicated the mess. “Do any of you know anything at all about it? If you do, own up now and we’ll say no more.”

The form shook their heads. Victoria voiced their feelings when she said, “We wouldn’t do anything that got us into rows like that, Miss Wilmot.”

“No; of course not. Very well, girls. Ah! There goes the bell! What is your last lesson—French? Then get out your books and sit quietly until Mdlle comes to you. One moment! Here’s a note for her, Agneta. Give it to her when she comes.”

Agneta took the scribbled note and Nancy Wilmot left the room with a sigh of thankfulness. She was free for this last period of the morning and, at long last, she could rush off to the salon and see what was happening to Kathy Ferrars.

Naturally, Upper IVa having a startling piece of news to give the rest did not keep the story of the morning’s doings to themselves. Miss Ferrars’s illness eclipsed the earlier part of it all and they passed over that lightly enough. By the time they sat down to Mittagessen, everyone knew about the mistress.

“What awful luck for Ferry!” Ted Grantley observed to Len Maynard as she passed the salt. “I’d no idea she was feeling rotten—had you?”

“Not a glimmer!” Len returned. “I shouldn’t have thought there was anything wrong with her yesterday and I’ve only seen her in the distance today. There’s one mercy. They got it in time and once she and her appendix are parted, she’ll recover quickly. I don’t remember her being out of school for so much as half a day before this. She’s little, but she’s sturdy.”

Con, sitting near, overheard this. “There’s that, of course; but has it struck you that this means that now we’re two staff short?”

“Glorianna! So we are!” Ted ejaculated. “What will they do?”

“Get a sub for the time being,” Len suggested. “It isn’t half-term till Friday and I don’t suppose Ferry will feel much like work for at least six weeks. Well, what’s biting you?” For Carmela Walther, the Hobbies prefect, had exclaimed in dismay.

“The Nativity Play!” Carmela cried. “Ferry always produces for us. If she does not return for six weeks who will do it this year?”

They looked blankly at each other. The annual Nativity Play was a very important item in their programme and they all looked forward to it. During her first term at the Chalet School Miss Ferrars had helped with it and had been so good that, by unanimous consent, she had been voted to the post of producer the following year. Since then she had done it every year. As in most things, the School set a high standard for its plays and to have their prize producer missing was a bad blow.

“One of the others, perhaps?” Ted said doubtfully. “Who used to do it before Ferry took over?”

“Well, Deney did it the first year we were here,” Len said. “I think she did it the next year, too. And I know Miss Derwent was responsible for the next one—the one Ferry helped with.”

“Perhaps Deney will do it this year,” Kirsten Johanssen, a Swedish girl, suggested. “Someone must and if she has done it before—”

“Not very likely,” Con interjected. “She’s generally up to the eyes in her proper work these days and I doubt if she could find time. Don’t forget that at least half the rehearsals take place during school hours. Deney’s always hard at it with all the correspondence and all the rest that she takes on at that time. As for Miss Derwent—”

At this point the bell on the high table where the staff sat rang and Miss Wilmot stood up and surveyed the girls in the hush that followed.

“I think you all know,” she said “that Miss Ferrars had to be taken to the Görnetz Sanatorium this morning for an emergency operation for appendicitis. Miss Dene has just been on the ’phone to Matron Graves and the news is good. Miss Ferrars has come through well, and though she’s no doubt feeling very sorry for herself at the moment, the doctors are all satisfied with her condition.”

There was a quick outburst of clapping at this—Miss Ferrars was a favourite with the girls—and the Head gave them their way for a full minute. She herself was feeling much more cheerful, for the report was as good as it could be. But she had not yet finished with the school. She smiled blandly at them and then proceeded to hurl what was more or less of a bombshell at them.

“After your rest and before any lessons begin, I want you to go to your own formrooms, empty your lockers or desks and put everything neatly in front of you on your desks. That is all for the moment.” Then she sat down, not without a searching look round the room, and there came a fresh buzz of excitement round the long tables.

“What on earth is that for?” Mary Charlton asked of her own set.

“Who knows?” Hélène giggled. “Evelyn, you had the atlas of Erica Standish, n’est-ce pas? Perhaps the Head wishes to see how many of us have books belonging to other folks also.” She ended with another giggle. It seemed an impossible idea.

As a matter of fact that was mainly what Miss Wilmot was after. While she was waiting for news from the Sanatorium she had found time to ponder on the extraordinary happenings in Upper IVa. She had already had more than one complaint from various mistresses about the sudden outbreak of carelessness they were suffering as a form. Other people lost or mislaid their belongings but, as far as she knew, it was only Upper IVa who were being wholesale about it. She had come to her own conclusions and decided that an investigation was due.

“Well, I know nothing about the kid’s atlas except that it was with my books and I haven’t a clue how it got there,” Evelyn said in reply to Hélène’s remark. “I certainly didn’t put it there myself.”

Nesta Parry suddenly chuckled. “How many of you remember the time when Ailie Russell and Co took it on themselves to stuff the Lost Property cupboard with everything they could lay their hands on?^[8] That was in Mary-Lou Trelawney’s time,” she went on reminiscently. “She and Hilary Bennet and Vi Lucy more or less handled that affair and those three and their fellow criminals went round for the rest of the term like crushed blackbeetles. Trust Mary-Lou to do things thoroughly!”

“Who is Mary-Lou?” Evelyn asked curiously. “What an odd name!”

“She was really Mary-Louise, I believe,” Greta Harms, a German girl, replied. “She was the Head Girl that year and one of the best Head Girls we have ever had. I have the older ones heard to say that only Mrs Maynard has even been better. I was in Upper IVa myself then, but I remember how we all looked up to her.”

“She was one of the best in every way,” said Margot suddenly. “Most of our crowd owe a lot one way and another to Mary-Lou—including myself.”

“What is she doing now?” Evelyn asked.

“She’s at Oxford, reading archaeology for her B.A.,” Prudence Dawbarn said. “Sooner her than me!”

“Oh, you!” Nesta retorted with affectionate scorn. She brought them back to the previous topic of conversation. “Pipe down about Mary-Lou at the moment. Anything else Evelyn wants to know about her can wait. This isn’t getting us anywhere with the play and that’s the important thing.”

“She’s right,” Moira agreed. “The play’s the thing, as Hamlet so aptly says.”

“Quite right,” Lesley agreed. “I don’t see what we can do about it, though. Willy and the rest of the staff will see to it, I suppose.” She added reflectively, “The bother of it is that Ferry is so good at that sort of thing. Even if you’re not much of an actress she manages to get something into you.”

“Does she?” Evelyn asked. “But do you think the Head will bother much about a thing like a play just now? Won’t she be too worried about Ferry to bother with it?”

Her thoughts went to her mother. The news was continuing to be good, but Evelyn felt that she couldn’t have worried about a school play if it hadn’t been.

Lesley shot a quick glance at her. Evelyn had confided in her about that Sunday visit and she knew that the new girl was far more anxious than she had seemed to be at first. Before she could say anything, however, Anne Charlot was before her.

“Willy is Head this term,” she said in her prettily-accented English. “She will put the school first. Our play is an important thing, not only to us, but to the poor parish in Innsbruck for which we give it.”

“Of course she will!” Mary Charlton said promptly. “Poor Willy! What a time she is having! I doubt if she’d have taken on the job if she could have seen into the future. I should hate to be in her shoes myself.”

“If any of the staff had been second-sighted the Abbess would never have agreed to go off at all,” Lesley said.

“How right you are!” This was Moira. “Is it likely, now? ’Tis my belief that when she hears she’ll come racing back, inspections or no inspections.”

“It’s not mine,” Lesley told her with decision. “You can’t take on a job of that kind and just chuck it up like that, whatever may be happening to your own job. Oh, I don’t say she mayn’t come for a day or two, but I doubt if it’s more than that.”

On thinking it over, they agreed with her. As it was they had to leave the problem unsolved for the time being. Miss Wilmot rang the bell for grace and after that they had to leave it alone until they had a free period, which did not occur until late in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Miss Wilmot, drinking her after-lunch coffee in the staffroom with the rest of her confrères, was discussing the Upper IVa business with them. She had given them all the details she had been able to discover about Kathy Ferrars’s illness and present condition; and since she had had a session on the telephone with Dr Jack Maynard before she joined them, she could give them a little more than she had given the girls.

“It was a sudden flare-up. Jack says it was exactly like that one his young Charles had three years ago when they were all in Tirol.^[9] Luckily, they got it in time with him and they’ve got it in good time with Kathy. And Kathy’s as sturdy as a pony. Chas, you know, was always delicate and they were anxious about how he would stand up to shock. But he came through all right and has been far stronger ever since. Jack says that Kathy will be even quicker than he. So now we can turn to other things.” Then she gave them the history of the missing possessions.

“Who’s responsible for it—or haven’t you any idea?” Miss Moore asked.

Nancy Wilmot smiled, a slow, Machiavellian smile. “Do you know, I shouldn’t be in the least surprised if it turned out to be some members of either Upper IVb or Lower IV,” she said. “When Mary-Lou and Co had much the same trouble with lost property it was Janice, Ailie and Judy—Lower IV, let me remind you. It’s the age for demon tricks. I admit that crowd thought they had something for which to revenge themselves on the prefects. They’d got into endless trouble all the previous term for lack of tidiness, and their want-of-order marks had been colossal. But what, I ask you, have Upper IVa been doing to their juniors to merit this sort of treatment?”

“For me,” said Mdlle de Lachennais pensively, “I should like to know how these children know about that affair. Many of them were not yet with us and the others were in the Junior House and did not have much to do with us.”

“Elder sisters or cousins telling the tale?” Miss Derwent suggested with a laugh.

“Could be,” Miss Wilmot agreed. “Well I’m dealing with this lot myself. We can’t have this sort of thing going on. By the way, I’ve shot the lot into the nearest cupboard and locked it up, so please excuse anyone coming to lessons without oddments this afternoon. For once it won’t be their faults.”

Miss Yolland, the art mistress and, like so many of the staff, an Old Girl, chuckled. “It won’t affect me. I have Va and b this afternoon and, so far as I know, their possessions haven’t been interfered with.”

“For goodness’ sake, Nancy, crack down hard on whichever of those young demons has been playing tricks,” Miss Moore urged. “Ailie and Co didn’t stop short of certain of our noble selves, I remember—your reading-glass, Matey, for instance.”

Matron smiled grimly. “I remember. I told those monkeys exactly what I thought of them.”

“They had all my sympathy,” Nancy said feelingly. “Especially as I’m sure they hadn’t the remotest idea whose the thing was. They took my penknife—”

“And my embroidery scissors,” Mdlle put in.

Miss Armitage, the junior science mistress, laughed. “And we never heard a word about it until the prefects had dealt with it. If those imps have been emulating the doings of their elders they probably never anticipated that the Head—even if it’s only the Head pro tem.—would come into this. What a nasty shock for them!”

The staff shouted with laughter. When they had sobered again, at least three people demanded to know what Miss Wilmot proposed to do about it.

“Something that will deter the little pets from ever indulging in such a prank again,” that lady returned promptly. “At the same time I mean to follow Hilda’s rule and temper justice with mercy.”

“Well, don’t be too soft with them,” implored Miss Burnett.

“Oh, if it’s merely a case of mischief, I’ll crack down on them good and hard. Oh dear! How I wish Hilda herself were here to deal with it! When I said I’d step into her shoes pro tem. I never thought of problems like this coming up! Have any of you considered that Kathy’s illness means that we’re short of two staff? There’s a nice problem for you! I was on the ’phone to Hilda this morning and she’s coming home on Sunday—flying from Copenhagen where they are at the moment. She’ll arrive somewhere around 7.00 but for the day only. She flies back by the early morning plane on Monday.”

“Will it mean having a substitute?” Miss Moore queried. “I’ll take over as many of Kathy’s geography classes as I can, but that won’t help with the maths. You can’t take them on, either, Nancy. Your plate is even fuller than mine.”

“I’d rather not have a sub, if it can be avoided,” Nancy assented. “What a pity it is that Joey Maynard was always rotten at maths. I remember her telling me how thankful the maths mistress of her time was to be rid of her when she became Sixth Form and could specialize.^[10] That was Miss Stevens—left before I ever graced the school with my presence, but I remember her when we were at St Scholastika’s.”^[11]

“St Who? What is all this?” Miss Moore demanded.

“It was my first school in Tirol—run by a Miss Browne. She carted her entire school from the south coast out to the Tiernsee and I was one of her pupils. The Chalet School was at one side of the lake and we were at the other. Later, when Brownie retired, she sold the entire thing, lock, stock, and barrel to the Chalet School and I ended up my distinguished school career there. Enough! We’re here to discuss the present, not past history. And a very sticky present it looks to me!”

“Is there anyone else up here we could get hold of?” Miss Smith asked.

“Yes; what about Biddy Courvoisier?” suggested Peggy Burnett.

“Biddy taught history—and if you think she could manage to come here at all with her rampaging twins and the baby, you’ve another think coming,” Miss Moore said firmly.

“And don’t suggest Hilary Graves, either,” put in little Miss Andrews, head of the junior department. “There’s another baby due there in March, so she’s out of the count.”

“And Grizel Sheppard is also tied down with that small son of hers,” Miss Bertram, another of the junior mistresses, added. “We can’t count on her, either.”

“Besides, she’s still busy with their new house at Ste Cecilie,” Nancy said. “Neil Sheppard has added two or three more rooms to the place and Grizel is up to the eyes in decorating and furnishing, even if she hadn’t young Nigel to keep her busy.”

“Is there not someone else of our Old Girls we could ask?” Mdlle questioned.

“What about Miss Slater?” Peggy proposed. “She was jolly good, I remember.”

“Slater, my love,” said Miss Derwent, “is now Head Mistress of a county high school and not only couldn’t but wouldn’t come. She and I are old friends and I remember that when our coming here was first mooted she said that nothing would induce her to stay on with us if we left England.”^[12]

Nancy Wilmot had been glancing at her watch. Now she brought the discussion to a close. “Sorry to disturb you all, but it’s nearly time for the bell and this session must end. Luckily, Nell Wilson will be on hand the day after tomorrow and I can consult her. She’s due back tomorrow night. She’ll be upset when she hears about Kathy, but if we need help, she’ll wire in. After all, she’s one of the Heads and she will be on the spot. Meanwhile, I must go and do a spot of work as you know.” She rose as she spoke and shook out her skirts.

“What about this afternoon?” Miss Derwent asked. “What forms did Kathy have? It’s my ‘free’ and I wasn’t doing anything but going over to Joey’s for tea and a chat. That can wait, so how can I help out?”

“Come down to the study and we’ll look at the timetable,” the Head said. “Thanks a lot, Ruth. That will be a very present help.”

They went out, followed by Mdlle who wanted to oversee the setting up of the sewing machines for her class with VIb, and Miss Burnett who had a gym class with Inter V and liked to be in the gym before the girls arrived. The others left the staff sittingroom for the staffroom out of which it opened. All of them had their own special duties which debarred them from offering help that afternoon. But all of them felt serious as they contemplated what might happen during the second half of the term.

Lower IV that year consisted of twenty-seven twelve-year-olds. Six of them, as it happened, were sisters or cousins of older girls, and before they came to school knew quite a number of the school’s legends. This included the prank played on the school at large by members of the Lower IVa of the time. Naturally they had not failed to retail this, among other yarns, to their little playmates. No worse might have come of it if certain members of Upper IVa had not adopted a very superior air towards their juniors. When you are twelve it is galling in the extreme to be treated by girls only two years older than yourself as if you were a kindergarten baby. Besides this, Lower IV this year had more than one bright spark, and to their number was added a young person who had been sent to the Chalet School because the aunt who was responsible for her during her parents’ absence abroad decided that she could put up with her no more. Jocelyn substituted pebbles for the lump sugar in her aunt’s sugar basin; nearly set the house on fire by flinging paraffin on a fire that looked as if it were going out; was discovered on the roof, having climbed up a ladder left by the jobbing gardener who was trimming the ivy; upset a jug of coffee over a piece of elaborate embroidery on which the lady was engaged; climbed a dangerous elm which was due to be felled the following day, in spite of being warned to leave it alone. The finishing touch came when the young monkey exchanged a jug of salad cream for one of custard sauce. Miss Marvell was short-sighted and she only discovered what had happened when she took the first mouthful.

Even then, the trick might have been forgiven if Jocelyn had been properly penitent, but she aggravated her crime by shrieking with laughter in the middle of the sharp scolding her aunt was administering. When rebuked, she could only say, “I couldn’t help it. You looked so funny and made such faces when you tasted it!”

That did it! Miss Marvell sat down and wrote off to her brother to inform him that she refused to be responsible for her niece any longer than the beginning of the Christmas term. Jocelyn must go to school.

Jocelyn had repented then in sackcloth and ashes. She hated the idea of boarding-school where she would not have so much freedom as she had with her aunt. She apologized most humbly for her rudeness, but all in vain. Miss Marvell was adamant. To school she must go; and if it was one where she could not come home for half-term, so much the better!

The Chalet School received her at the beginning of the term and already those mistresses who had anything to do with her form had marked her down as a firebrand of the worst type. She gave them no chance to do anything else. Having found that neither penitence and tears nor pleading brought her respite, she had made up her mind to be even more unbearable at school than she had been at home, and was as naughty as she could be. Unfortunately for her she discovered that, on the whole, she had very much less chance of repeating her ill-deeds. Not only the staff but the prefects were very much on the spot. Having to try to speak in another language than her own was another handicap. Of the twenty-seven girls who made up Lower IV sixteen were Swiss, French or German and there were Dutch twin sisters to top up.

Reproachful letters from her parents did nothing to soothe her. Her father, in particular, wrote severely and curtly. Her mother’s letter was highly disapproving. Jocelyn felt that all her world was against her, and she made up her mind to show them all! She would make this horrid school too hot to hold her!

She began her campaign by grinding up some ends of chalk and mixing the resultant mess with the ink in the inkwells. When Miss Bertram, her form mistress, inquired into the matter, Jocelyn owned up as a matter of course and was condemned to spending part of her evening playtime in washing out the inkwells and replacing them in the tray. Miss Bertram was much too wary to give her the task of refilling them.

Her next exploit was to get hold of a tin of Vaseline when Matron Henschell wasn’t looking and smear the form blackboard. Result: Miss Jocelyn had to clean the blackboard thoroughly, which once more took up part of her playtime. For she had one great virtue; she always took responsibility for her misdeeds and she was almost incapable of lying.

She had a knack of making irresistibly funny faces and she employed it to the full during lessons whenever she got a chance. Lower IV were kept in a state of suppressed giggles in consequence and mistresses became irritated to the last degree by girls who when asked why they were giggling invariably said, “I don’t know!” or words to that effect. Not one of them would have knowingly given her away. However, two days before the sudden outbreak of missing books, Miss Andrews caught her at it and condemned her to standing and pulling faces in front of a mirror for a whole hour. For the next two or three weeks the form tittered no more than was usual with people of their age. But Jocelyn was furious about it and more resolved than ever to do something outrageous.

One fatal evening when they were alone in their commonroom, Carlotta von Eschenau was moved to repeat some of the more startling happenings in the school as told to her by her elder sister, Wanda, who was now a member of Inter V. Among other yarns she told of the enterprising lost property episode and Carlotta related it to a delighted audience. Most of them would have let it go and never so much as dreamed of trying to emulate the worse freaks of their elders, but Jocelyn seized on it with avidity. She knew by this time which of her form-mates might be trusted to follow her lead and she selected a chosen few and sounded them out. Angélique Ste Barbe, Barbara Craven, Sandra Johnson, Carlotta, Ottillie Sneider and Maureen O’Toole were thrilled at her proposals though they demurred at first. The awful fate which had befallen the original jokers had made an impression on them not easy to remove.

“The prees would eat us!” Barbara said.

“Oh, we won’t try it on the prees,” Jocelyn informed her. “But what about doing something to bring down Upper IVa a peg or two? They jolly well need it!”

Barbara, having been addressed by Freda Kendall as “my good child” only that afternoon, fully agreed. Who was Freda to talk to her like that?

Jocelyn saw how she felt and hastened to deepen the impression. “After all, if it’s only that crowd, what can they do to us? Absolutely nothing! They won’t split, either. It isn’t done here. Besides, it would make them look such asses!”

“Mais oui!” Angélique put in. “It is what we desire, n’est-ce pas? Let us do it.”

Carlotta giggled. “They will get into awful rows,” she said feelingly. “No one is permitted to borrow or lend, as we all know.”

“Well, won’t that take them down a peg?” Jocelyn demanded.

All the same it wasn’t easy to persuade them and it might never have come off if someone hadn’t overheard Victoria Wood talking to Nita Tarengo of “those brats in Lower IV”. That did it! Decidedly it was time that Upper IVa were taken down several pegs. The seven hesitated no longer.

“We won’t do it all at once,” Jocelyn told her followers. “Just one or two at a time to begin with. Then they won’t suspect anything.”

“What do we do with the books when we have them?” Ottillie queried doubtfully.

Jocelyn’s face lit up with her wickedest grin. “Watch our chance and stick them into some other form’s lockers.”

They giggled at this; it appealed to them. Besides, during the few weeks she had been at the school Jocelyn had proved herself to be a leader of the first water. One or two of them were still a little doubtful as to the success of the plot, but she offered to be the first to act. By the time she had abstracted a couple of histories and tucked them safely away in lockers belonging to Celia Everett and Barbara Hewlett of Inter V they were all ready to follow her example with the result described earlier.

So far they had escaped nemesis, but that afternoon it was to fall heavily on them. Miss Wilmot had discovered that it was only Upper IVa who had suffered, and all their belongings had been returned to them in due course. She had made no comments on the various discoveries, but she was more than ever determined to put a stop to such monkey-tricks. It might have been expected that Jocelyn and Co would have been cautious about doing anything more that day, but Jocelyn, at least, was prepared to go the whole way. She soon overcame the protests of her gang and when it was found that, during their final half-hour’s preparation, there would be no mistress to sit with them as usual, it seemed good to the young hothead to make a wholesale raid on IVa lockers if they got the chance.

At first it seemed unlikely. Len Maynard, who happened to be free at that period and also knew that they might be alone, went to the Head and volunteered to sit with them.

“I’d be thankful if you would, Len,” Miss Wilmot said. “I know we trust our girls to the utmost limit, but no one is going to trust twenty-seven flibberty-gibbets like Lower IV to go on quietly with their prep without supervision.”

Len laughed. “I should rather think not! So far as I’m concerned that form contains some of the wickedest sinners in this establishment. I’ll go to them, Miss Wilmot. I’ll take something to keep me going and keep an eye on them. Do I help them with their prep?”

“They ought not to need it, but there’s no saying what that crowd might do. Tell them to start on rep. That ought to keep them occupied. If it doesn’t, turn them on to their arithmetic. Thank you, dear.”

Len took this for dismissal and departed to hunt up her own literature before going to Lower IV when the bell rang. She found them all in their places, took her seat at the mistress’s table and rapped on it for attention.

“Begin with your rep.,” she said. “Don’t waste time, for you haven’t too much as it is. The bell was late.”

Meekly they opened their anthologies and set to work on the twelve lines of The Armada which it had pleased Miss Andrews to set for their repetition. For about five minutes all went well and Len was able to set to work on her own Rasselas. Then a titter rose and she looked up sharply, saying, “No noise, please! Go on with your work!”

Three minutes later it came again, this time louder and more of it. Len knew that giggles are infectious. She laid down her book and stood up.

“One moment, everyone!” she said; and there was instant silence. They all liked the head girl. Apart from that, to get into trouble with her or any of the prefects was no part of their plan. “You are here to work,” she said quietly. “You have rep. to learn. Now, if I hear one more giggle out of you I’ll go back to old-fashioned methods and you will repeat the poetry together, five times each line until you know it. Understand, everyone?”

They understood. The giggles ceased, mainly because Jocelyn at this awful ultimatum also ceased to waggle her ears. Prep continued peacefully for the next ten minutes when Jack Lambert from Inter V came to say that Len was wanted by Matron Lloyd. Len bit back an exclamation and nodded.

“Thanks, Jack. I’m coming.” She looked at Lower IV. “Go on with your work till I return. I put you on honour not to talk.”

She left the room, Jack at her heels, and Lower IV were left alone. This was their chance and Jocelyn, at least, was not one to miss it. Laying down her anthology, she got up, beckoned to the rest of her gang and slipped out of the room as quietly as she could. Since they were on honour not to talk she had to manage with sign language. She contrived to make herself clear and they tip-toed along to Upper IVa formroom where the door stood open, showing an empty room. Upper IVa were at needlework with Mdlle.

They slid in and Barbara closed the door softly behind them. The next thing was a raid on the lockers. They abstracted various articles from six of them and then slid out again, clutching their booty. Now came the problem. Where could they hide it? But Jocelyn had her plans all laid. She had studied the big timetable in Hall only that morning and had noticed gleefully that Va and b were at art so their rooms would likewise be empty. She led the way along and, by dint of pushing at the appropriate door, got four of her followers into Va while she and the other three went into Vb. They were hard at work, tucking the spoil away when, to their horror, the door opened and no less a person than the Head walked in.

She halted and stood stockstill, looking at them in total silence. One or two of the less hardy drooped their heads. They all went scarlet and only Jocelyn dared meet the icy blue eyes fixed on them. It was an effort, for even her, but she managed it. Miss Wilmot remained looking at them and you could have heard a feather float down before at last she spoke.

“So it is you?” she said quietly. “And why are you out of your own room? Did Len give you permission?”

Silence!

“I am waiting,” she reminded them. Then, with sudden sharpness, “Answer me! Did Len Maynard give you four permission to leave your own room?”

“No—no—o, Miss Wilmot,” Carlotta said shakily, for she felt the Head’s eyes boring right through her. For that matter, the other three felt the same.

“Then why are you here?”

Again no reply. Miss Wilmot was looking her sternest and even Jocelyn could no longer meet her eyes.

Miss Wilmot nodded to herself. “I think you had better come back with me to your formroom.” At which point the door opened and the others marched in. They stopped short with four desperate gasps of horror when they saw the Head, but it was too late to retreat. She had glanced round and seen them. And at that very moment Len Maynard came up behind them and Len looked her bleakest. Matey had been having a cubicles raid and Len was not the tidiest of creatures!

“I’m sorry I had to leave the form, Miss Wilmot,” she said. “Matron sent for me.”

“I understand. I can well believe that you thought it would be safe enough to leave them for a few minutes. Our girls are usually to be trusted.”

The tones were cutting and Sandra gave a gulp. The Head ignored it and went on with her remarks to Len. “Did you put them on honour?”

“Only not to talk—and I’m sure they haven’t,” Len said quickly.

“I see. Thank you, Len. Will you go along to the office and tell Miss Dene that I am detained and she had better pack up now. Thank you!”

Len went off, revolving in her mind certain things she meant to say to the sinners when she could get them alone. Miss Wilmot turned to them and motioned them into line. One word fell from her lips like a drop of ice. “March!”

They marched.

Back in the formroom they were drawn up in a line at one side of the room. The Head took her seat at the mistress’s table and surveyed the form with her iciest look. “You may close your books and attend to me.”

They did—in a hurry. Only the eight were involved in the affair, but every girl had known what was going on and the sight of the culprits was enough to tell them that the game was up. Not a girl dared to meet the Head’s eye.

“Any girl who has spoken since Len Maynard left the room put up her hand,” Miss Wilmot said.

Not a hand went up. They had looked at each other and made signs and giggled but no one had spoken. The Head’s face did not relax and none of them had seen her look so grim before.

“How many of you have spoken by signs?” she asked; and a forest of hands went up. She nodded. “I see. You may put your hands down. You eight!” She turned and looked at them. “Go to your seats!”

They went liked whipped puppy-dogs. In fact the whole form was stunned by the change in “Willy”. Normally she was one of the jolliest of the staff and they had never seen her like this before. She never taught them, and out of school she was a great favourite with them. But she was speaking again and they dared not risk any inattention.

“Just now,” she said. “I found eight girls in one of the senior formrooms where they had no right to be. I need not ask what they were doing. I caught them red-handed. I wish to know how many more of you have been stealing books from other girls and hiding them. Put up your hands.”

Only the eight hands went up and one girl rose with hers. Summoning all her courage, Jocelyn faced the angry Head and said, “Please—it was—me!”

“ ‘It was I,’ ” Miss Wilmot corrected automatically.

Jocelyn was too agitated to realize what the Head meant. “No it wasn’t; it was me,” she squeaked. “I thought of it and told the rest.”

Not a muscle of Miss Wilmot’s face moved though she was dying to laugh. “Then you take the blame for it?” she said.

But the seven were loyal. They were thoroughly scared, but they weren’t leaving Jocelyn to face the storm alone.

“We all helped,” Barbara said rather faintly. “It wasn’t only Jocelyn.”

“I started it.” Carlotta was as frightened as the rest but she spoke up. “Wanda told me about Ailie Russell and Janice Chester and their friends when they were Lower IV and I told the others.”

“Quite so!” The Head turned to the others. “Did the rest of you know what was going on?”

An unwilling “Yes” came from them.

“And did nothing to stop it though you must have known you were getting Upper IVa girls into nasty trouble—on purpose?”

It sounded horrible put like that. The Head rubbed it in ruthlessly.

“A more disgusting trick I can’t imagine. Why did you do it?”

Silence! To say that Upper IVa had roused their enmity by their superior ways to themselves would never be accepted as an excuse and well they knew it!

Miss Wilmot looked at them scornfully. “I shall not press you to tell me why you did such a revolting thing. I am so disgusted with you I prefer not to be with you. There is the bell. Put your books away and go and make yourselves ready for Kaffee und Kuchen. You will come back here. I cannot allow such unpleasant and spiteful persons to be with the rest of the school. You will have Kaffee und Kuchen in here with a prefect in charge. Put your books away immediately.”

They obeyed in silence and when every book had been cleared off, the Head sent the form prefect, Gwen Thomas, to find Ted Grantley.

Ted arrived in short order, Gwen having met her at the end of the corridor.

“Take these children to their splashery to tidy up, please, Ted,” the Head said. “Bring them straight back when they are all ready. They may speak to no one.”

Beyond, “Yes, Miss Wilmot!” Ted made no comment, but her black eyes were nearly popping out of her head. She marched them off and brought them back, all scrupulously neat and clean. Miss Wilmot was still there and still wearing what Ted mentally called her “hanging judge look”. She nodded to the prefect.

“Thank you! Will you please report to Len that Lower IV will not be coming to the Speisesaal today. That is all.”

Ted left the room, literally aching with curiosity. What had been happening she could not understand, but clearly Lower IV had been playing up badly. She could hardly get over the ground fast enough to join the rest of the school’s grandees and ask questions.

The Head remained to make her final statement to the form.

“You will remain here until Prayers. Your meals will be brought to you and you will not be left alone for one moment since you have shown yourselves so untrustworthy. After Prayers you will go straight to bed. I hope this will impress on the form as a whole just how we regard conduct like yours. As for the girls who carried out their nasty plot, I will see them some time this evening. Now, here is Matron Henschell with your meal. I will leave you in her charge.” She rose from the table as Matron, looking quite as icy as the Head, arrived with a maid pushing a trolley laden with coffee and rolls already buttered. She saw that they were well supplied, but she never once smiled and she never spoke a single unnecessary word. Lower IV had to make the best meal they could in such repressive circumstances. They were thoroughly subdued and no one attempted to speak. It was a horrid evening all round.

No one would speak to them and they dared speak to nobody. What made matters worse, they knew that the rest of the Middles would be asking why they were so isolated. No one had any hope that the truth would not leak out sooner or later.

As for the eight worst culprits, Miss Wilmot sent for them midway through prep and made mincemeat of them. Sandra and Ottillie were weeping before she had finished with them and most of the others were not far from it. Even Jocelyn was none too steady. Finally, when Prayers were over they were all packed off with the knowledge that their pocket-money was docked for the week; all cakes, sweets and jam were forbidden for the same period; finally, and most awful of all, they must apologize to Upper IVa for their behaviour.

“And unless I see a great improvement in your conduct tomorrow and Friday morning, you will not share any of the half-term expeditions and fun,” Nancy Wilmot had wound up a lecture that even Miss Annersley had never bettered. “And when you say your prayers tonight, ask forgiveness of God for your unpleasant vengefulness.”—Sandra had given the whole thing away and the Head knew exactly why they had played such a nasty trick. She had been horrified at the feelings they had cherished and shown her horror with good effect.

Once she had dismissed them, she stretched herself with a deep sigh. “Oh, why did I ever agree to take on Hilda’s job? And now to look at the timetable and see what I can do about keeping them as untouchables until the end of Friday morning! Thank goodness, Hilda will be here on Saturday and can settle about the rest of the term!” Then she went off to the staffroom to discuss arrangements with her colleagues.

“Nancy, my poor girl, what a time you’ve been having!” Nancy Wilmot and her partner, Rosalie Dene, looked up from the big timetable on which they had been hard at work ever since 6.00 on the Saturday morning. By hook or by crook, Miss Wilmot was determined to have no deputy for Kathy Ferrars if it could possibly be avoided. Hence the scene of industry on which the true Head of the Chalet School appeared.

There was a positive yell of delight from the Head pro tem. as she bounded out of her chair to welcome her friend.

“Hilda! I was never more glad to see anyone in my life! Come to my arms, beloved! Here! Take a pew—this pew!” She indicated her own seat. “Ah! That’s better!” as Hilda Annersley sat down laughing, “I don’t mind telling you that I’m thankful to give it up to you for as long as you stay.”

Rosalie Dene chuckled. “She’s pulling your leg, Hilda. She’s managing all right, and most folk are backing her up. When did you last eat? Nancy, I’m off to the kitchen to see what Karen can scare up for us. I don’t know about you, but I’m ravenous. We’ve been mulling over the timetable for ages and it’s given me an appetite.”

The Head laughed again. “I can do with a meal. I didn’t stop for anything at the airport. The fact is I found that if I took the late-night ’plane from Copenhagen I could have two days with you instead of one and I want to make the most of the time. Hot chocolate and rolls by all means, Rosalie!”

Rosalie laughed and hurried off and the Head, tossing aside her hat and coat, settled herself comfortably.

“Now tell me all the news.”

“You first, my love! What’s it been like? Your letters haven’t been too informative. Mostly they’ve been full of queries about the school and school news. By the way, though I’m rejoiced to see you, I’m sorry for the cause.”

“You mean Kathy? How is she now?”

“Oh, making headway and furious because she’s out of everything. Her aunt arrived from England yesterday—couldn’t get off before—and she’s staying for a week or so and hopes to take Kathy back with her to recuperate. Unless they fly, I don’t see her doing it. I don’t think the doctors will agree to that long and tiresome train-journey for an appendicitis convalescent.”

“I’m positive they won’t. Still, it seems to have been a straightforward case with none of the complications Julie Lucy treated us to.”

“Oh, no complications, thank heaven! She’s pulling round at an amazing rate. Everybody’s very pleased with her. But you’ll be going to San to see for yourself later on. Jack will run you along. You certainly can’t walk in this downpour and our own car is in dock for the moment.” Nancy glanced towards the still-curtained window against which the rain was beating furiously. “What weather for half-term!”

Miss Annersley nodded. “So I thought as I came up. Still, I daresay you’ll be able to entertain the girls nicely. We’ve had bad half-terms before and generally managed to have plenty of fun.”

“Mrs Jarley, for instance.^[13] Oh, we’ve got quite a variety planned out for them. Mercifully, all the home-goers got off safely yesterday before the rain began. But it’s hard luck that the expeditions are all off.”

“What are you doing instead?”

“Hobbies Club this morning, followed by games in the gym for all the Middles and Juniors; country and morris dancing in Hall for the Seniors. For this afternoon we’ve dreamed up a lovely occupation. We’ve got piles of artificial moss and tiny flowers and twigs and so on, and Gaudenz is busy cutting up into 18″ squares a pile of cartons he had stowed away, and they’re all to make miniature gardens, with prizes for the best.”

“That should keep them busy! What a good idea! Whose was it?”

“Ruth Derwent’s. The little pets had progressive games in Hall last night with three of us to do sheepdog while the rest went scavenging for bits and pieces. What with the rain we were having then and the downpour prophesied over the radio I didn’t see much prospect of outdoor activities today. Tonight, we have a new scheme. Each form is to be at home to the staff—except the babies, of course, who are divided out among the older girls. They arrange their own entertainments and we are going visiting.”

“My dear girl! How are they managing about food?”

“Karen! She’s supplying all and, I understand, sending something different to each form. That woman’s a great gun! I believe she’s making a field day of it and revelling in making as many changes as she can. Anyhow, she’s all over the idea. Oh, Hilda! I’ve just had a brainwave! We’ll keep you in hiding and you shall come round with me, all unexpected, and give the girls a shock!”

“Nancy! How old are you?” Miss Annersley protested as well as she could for laughter. “And how do you propose to keep me hidden, may I ask?”

“Easily! We’ll have Frühstück together now and then we’ll go to your private salon until Jack fetches you to visit Kathy. After that you can go to Adlersnest and visit with Biddy and Hilary who’ll welcome you with open arms. It won’t be an exactly peaceful time with their troops of infants, but at least it’ll be a change from being all dignified and inspectory!”

“And what?”

“Inspectory, love. A new word; I’ve just coined it.”

The door opened and Rosalie arrived, bearing a big tray laden with rolls hot from the oven, ivory-tinted butter, black cherry jam and crockery. Behind her came one of the maids with a large jug of frothing chocolate.

“In here or the annexe salon?” she inquired.

“In here. The salon will be much too cold. The heating hasn’t been turned on there. I’ll go and do it while you two clear the desk and set our meal out. We’ll be safe enough for some time yet. The rising bell won’t go for another twenty minutes, this being half-term. Frühstück at 8.30, I told Karen, so they won’t hurry themselves. I’ll go and switch on the heating in the salon and when we’ve fed, we’ll remove there. Rosalie, we’re not breathing a word about Hilda’s arrival. She’s going to spend the day with Biddy and Hilary and, when we go calling tonight, she’ll come with us and give the girls a treat. No one expected her till late this evening, remember.” With which she departed.

Rosalie burst into a peal of laughter. “What a joke! Help me clear the desk, Hilda. Set the chocolate-pot down on the stove, Anna, and then you can go. The omelettes should be ready now.”

“Omelettes?” the Head queried as she helped to clear off the great desk.

“Karen’s idea. By the way, I must remember to warn her to say nothing about your early arrival if we’re to carry out Nancy’s scheme.”

Miss Annersley laughed. “Oh, let the girl have her way. Omelettes sound good. I’ve had nothing since supper at about 19.00 hours last night except a cup of coffee, and I’m famished.”

Nancy came back as Anna arrived with the omelettes and in five minutes more the three were seated comfortably, enjoying a good meal. For the next twenty minutes or so they were too busy to discuss serious matters. When they had finished, however, Nancy touched the bell for Anna to come and clear and then led the way into the Head’s annexe where the salon was warming rapidly. Miss Annersley sank into an armchair with a sigh of satisfaction as she looked round.

“Oh what a joy to be back in my own surroundings, even if it’s just for two days! And now to business! What have you to report, Nancy?”

“Apart from Kathy’s illness, nothing really serious. We’ve had a kerfuffle with Lower IV, but I think I’ve settled them good and proper.”

“Well, tell me! I’m waiting! What have those young monkeys been up to?”

“Revenge—but I doubt if they think that revenge is exactly sweet. Listen to this!” And Nancy launched forth into a detailed account of Lower IV’s exploit.

The Head listened thoughtfully. At the end of the story she nodded. “Good for you! You’ve certainly dealt faithfully with them. It has its funny side, though.” She laughed. “I should like to have been a fly on the wall when those young criminals turned round and saw you. And when that new child—Jocelyn, did you say?—insisted that it was not you. How did you keep a straight face?”

“Just as you’ve done, time and again. It was an effort, but I managed!”

“And have they behaved themselves since?”

Nancy considered. “Most of them have been thoroughly subdued. How Sandra howled while I was ticking them off for the good of their souls! And more than one of the others joined. But to be serious, I fancy we’ve got a handful in Jocelyn Marvell. She’s a demon, that child. What’s more, she has originality. We shall have to keep all our weather eyes lifting where she’s concerned.”

The Head made no further comment. She changed the subject by inquiring about Evelyn. “How is Evelyn Ross going on, now?”

“Seems to have settled down, more or less.”

“She’s very friendly with Lesley Anderson,” Rosalie said. “You know what a steady girl Lesley is.”

“Good! I’m glad to hear it. A steady friend is what Evelyn needs, I think.”

Miss Annersley turned the subject again. “What about the other new girls? Any surprises among them?”

“I don’t think so. They seem our usual average crowd,” Nancy said thoughtfully. “Annelise Richet is making very heavy weather of speaking German, but she’ll come to it in time. Mary Garth could be a pest, but fortunately she’s in Upper IVa and the rest see to it that she keeps within bounds. I don’t think there’s anything else outstanding. But Jocelyn Marvell looks like being a real problem. If her aunt’s letters are anything to go by she’s brimful of mischief. She has one good point: she’s truthful.” As she ended, the bell rang for Frühstück and she rose to go.

“Though how I’m to eat anything more at this point is something I don’t know,” she said with a giggle.

“Don’t worry!” Rosalie stood up, too. “I hear the ’phone so I’ll have to go. I’ll call in at the Speisesaal and tell Jeanne de Lachennais that we had early breakfast as we were up so early over the timetable. You stay and talk to Hilda.”

“O.K., but come back as soon as you can. I want to discuss our future plans and I’d like you to be present while we do it,” Nancy called after her.

“Future plans?” Hilda Annersley queried.

“Yes; are we to have a sub for Kathy for the rest of the term? Or are we to manage as best we can without her? And what, may I ask you, are we to do about the Nativity Play? She’s our producer par excellence, let me remind you.”

There was plenty to discuss here, especially when Rosalie had returned. They talked it over exhaustively until the first bell for Prayers sounded and Nancy and Rosalie had to go. Jack Maynard arrived shortly after, Rosalie having found time to ring up Freudesheim and inform them that the Head was at school. He picked up Miss Annersley, and Joey, who was in the car, greeted her with warm delight, and the pair were dropped at Adlersnest. This was a very big chalet divided into two roomy flats one of which belonged to the Courvoisiers and the other to the Graves, though Hilary was beginning to wonder how they would manage when March brought a fourth baby to her family.

Joey returned home later in the morning, but Hilda stayed at Adlersnest for the day and no one saw anything of her until the evening, when she went “calling” with the rest of the staff and surprised the girls. But before she left on the Sunday-night ’plane, everything had been settled. No strange mistress was to be brought in and—it was Miss Annersley’s own suggestion—the play was to be left in the hands of the prefects with Len Maynard as producer-in-chief.

“Appoint someone as adviser,” the Head said. “I mean from among yourselves, of course. Otherwise, let the girls get on with it themselves. What about Ruth Derwent? She produced the term Kathy came to us and she’s quite good. And as for a sub to take Kathy’s place in school, how do you two feel about it?”

“If we can manage I’d rather not have a stranger,” Nancy said. “In some ways it might add to our difficulties. We aren’t just like other schools, you know. We have a good many delicate people, for one thing. For another, it isn’t every school that puts so much trust in the girls. We’ve always tried to cut out as much supervision as we can, and a newcomer mightn’t understand the friendships that exist between ourselves and the girls out of school hours.” She laughed. “Kathy confided in me all about the shock Mary-Lou gave her when she first came. No; on the whole I think not a sub—unless we could get hold of an Old Girl who would understand. I only wish,” she went on, “that Mary-Lou could come for the time, but it’s out of the question, of course.”

“But,” said Miss Annersley, “there is an Old Girl almost literally on our doorstep if she would agree.”

“What? Who do you mean? Joey can’t do it. She’s well and truly tied with her little Phil, not to speak of young Cecil and Phil’s twin, Geoff. Hilary—Grizel Sheppard—they’re all tied with infants. Who else is there?”

“Stacie Benson, of course; had you forgotten her?”

“I never even thought of her,” Nancy admitted. “It’s certainly an idea; but do you think she will—or can? After being the important person she is with her books on the Greek classics and lectures and so on, won’t she think it a come-down to act as junior maths and geography mistress?”

Hilda Annersley shook her head. “Not if it’s in the Chalet School. Stacie knows how much she owes to the school and I’m certain she would do anything she could to help out in an emergency.”

“But isn’t she booked for a course of lectures on the Greek dramatists?”

“Not until after Christmas. They’ve been put off. Stacie is not a strong woman, Nancy. She had that bad accident to her back when she was fourteen or so.^[14] She recovered from it, but it left her back weak. She’s been living in Oxford, which has never suited her, and all the journeying and the strain of her lectures have been rather too much for her. Jack Maynard has put his foot down firmly on any more of it for the next three or four months. Coming over here from Freudesheim will be a different matter. Three days a week won’t be too much for her. She’ll only be here to teach, you know; she’ll have no out-of-school duties. The prefects must help out with those for the remainder of term. As for junior maths and geography, she should be able to handle those. She was quite good at maths when she was at school, and geography she loved.”

Nancy heaved a sigh of relief. “Then that should be all right if she’ll only do it. What about discipline, though? We have our share of demons.”

“When she was a prefect she proved herself thoroughly capable. There’s nothing wrong with her discipline, you’ll find.”

“Anyhow, I can keep an eye on things there,” Nancy said. “Then that’s an end to our problems, thank goodness! Will you ask her, or shall I?”

“I’ll ask her. I’m going over tomorrow afternoon to have an hour or two with Joey, and Stacie will be there. I’ll make arrangements with her then.”

“Oh, good! And now that’s all settled, let’s shove school worries behind us and give ourselves up to pleasure. It’s time we were titivating for those calls of ours. Come on! We can’t be late! Bad example to the little dears and all that!” And springing out of her chair, Nancy led the way to their bedrooms.

Half-term passed off quite well. The surprise of Miss Annersley’s early return for the weekend was a complete success. She herself was deeply touched by the welcome she received from everyone. She had had no idea that the girls thought so much of her, being an innately humble-minded woman. The almost rapturous greetings she received warmed the cockles of her heart. Joey had been no whit behind the rest of the school, nor had such of the others as saw her. As for Dr Benson, on hearing the Head’s request she gave tongue in no dubious way.

“Oh, I’ll be thankful for something to do!” she exclaimed. “Jack has made me do nothing for the past month and I’m sick of it. I don’t think my worst enemy could call me lazy and I hate lounging about, doing nothing. I’ll help out all I can with a heart and a half!”

“So long as you don’t try to overdo,” Joey said warningly. “You aren’t exactly a Sandow, you know, and Jack will keep a watchful eye on your activities, believe me. You’ll have him to reckon with if you try to do too much.”

Stacie laughed. “I’ll be careful; don’t be afraid. I’ve had enough of being idle, and I do know my limits. When do I begin—Wednesday? Good! I’ll pop over to discuss work with Miss Moore, and Nancy and I are going along to see Kathy Ferrars tomorrow so that I can talk over the maths with her—weather permitting,” she added with a grin.

“Jack will run you along if that’s all,” Joey said cheerfully. “Then that’s all settled. Hilda, I’ve news for you. Phil is on her feet at last! Oh, she can’t do much, poor little pet; not more than two steps at a time. But she’s really making progress. The doctors all say she’ll need care during the growing years, but she’s going to be all right in the end. You can’t think how thankful we all are!”

“I can guess. I’m deeply thankful, too,” the Head said.

The result of all this was that when the school began again on the Wednesday morning of the next week, it discovered that it had a new mistress—Dr Benson. The older girls all knew her of course. She had been occupying a wing of Freudesheim for the past year or so and attended school functions when she could. The rest knew her by sight. Like all Chalet girls, past and present, she spoke three languages fluently and she soon proved that she could teach. In lessons, she was firm, demanding good, steady work. Out of them she maintained the friendly reputation of most of the staff, and Nancy Wilmot sat back with a sigh of rejoicing over her Head’s brainwave.

The second half of the term began auspiciously. Lower IV still remained subdued after the previous week’s episode. Even Jocelyn had calmed down for the time being. She had not liked what Miss Wilmot had had to say on the subject of being revengeful and dishonourable. Nor had she liked having to apologize to Upper IVa. For the moment, therefore, all was well with Lower IV.

One reason for all this may have been that the weather took a turn for the better. Two days of high winds blew away the rain and dried out the playing-fields, and the girls were able to have their games again. The authorities took prompt advantage of the fine weather and the girls were out-of-doors as much as possible. Even some afternoon classes were cut to make opportunities for extra games and brisk walks. The school came back to Kaffee und Kuchen with big appetites and all the fidgets shaken out of them.

Evelyn commented on this one day to Lesley. “We never cut lessons at my last school except for the most frightfully important things,” she remarked. “Here we seem to get off quite a lot—in the afternoons, at any rate.”

Lesley grinned. “You wait until the really bad weather comes and then you’ll see,” she returned feelingly. “No slacking at work then, my dear! We make up for lost time then.”

It was the second Wednesday after the half-term weekend and they were hurrying over to the hockey and lacrosse pitches. The two Fifths had games together, with Miss Burnett in charge, any mistress who cared helping her with coaching. One or two of the prefects were usually there as well, especially Margot Maynard and Primrose Trevoase, since they were first and second prefects of Games. This afternoon Joan Dancey, sub-prefect for hockey, and Ruey Richardson, sub-prefect for lacrosse, were also present. The fifty-two girls who made up the two forms were divided up, thirty of them going with Ruey and Primrose to the lacrosse pitch and the remainder, Evelyn among them, taking possession of the hockey pitch. For once, Miss Burnett was not with them: IIIa had behaved very badly during their morning gym and instead of having their usual half-hour of prep at this time they had been condemned to giving it to gym that afternoon. She had seen Margot and Primrose about it and asked them to take over. Primrose was quite agreeable, but Margot, though she assented as a matter of course, was not so pleased. Indeed, she had intended to ask to be excused that afternoon so that she could make up on some work that she had overlooked. In consequence she was in none too good a mood when she arrived on the field.

As anyone in the school could have told you, Margot Maynard had a temper. In earlier days she had been famed for her wild rages and though nowadays she held herself more or less under control it took little to rouse her anger. The Fifth formers looked at her as she strode on to the pitch and then gave each other warning glances. It behoved them to be careful what they did.

Margot set Lesley and Janet Henderson of Lower V to pick sides and then proceeded to place the two teams herself. Primrose had already gone off with Ruey Richardson and the lacrosse enthusiasts and there was no one to intervene but Joan Dancey.

Normally Evelyn played left inner, but today Margot sent her to the right wing for no known reason. Warned by Lesley’s murmured, “Watch your step, for goodness’ sake!” Evelyn said nothing, though she disliked playing on the right at any time. Joan knew it and ventured to say a word to Margot.

“Evelyn’s much better on the left, Margot,” she said in an aside. “She usually plays there.”

“Then it’ll be good for her to try somewhere else!” Margot snapped. She raised her voice. “Get ready, all of you! Simonetta d’Angeli, stop fiddling with your hair! You ought to have come out with it in proper order!”

Simonetta, who had been ramming home one of the clips holding the heavy braid of hair she wore twisted round her head for games, dropped her hands as if they had been burned and the clip dropped out almost at once. One and all they were on their toes as Margot placed the ball for the bully-off. Joan walked down to her appointed end of the field; the whistle blew, and after a moment the ball was flying out to the right wing of Blue team towards Evelyn who made a valiant effort to take it, missed, and it went out.

“Offside!” Margot shouted. “Line up for the roll-in! And you, Evelyn, think what you’re doing! You’re there to take the ball and pass to someone else.”

Evelyn bit her lip as she went to her place. Margot’s tone had been nipping and she resented it.

“How can I play decently when I’m in the wrong place?” she muttered to Judy Willoughby who was playing right inner.

“Cavé! Margot’s got her eye on us!” Judy hissed back.

Evelyn said no more, but she felt ruffled. The roll-in was taken by Janet and she was instantly pulled up for tossing. Aware that she had not tossed but that the ball bounced off a knot of rough turf, Janet flushed angrily. She said nothing, however, but rolled in again and the practice went on. Again and again the players were pulled up for faults. Nothing seemed to go right and by the time the first twenty-five minutes were up, quite half the teams were in a state of seething revolt. Evelyn, in particular, was so. She seemed to come in for a good third of Margot’s biting comments and she, too, had a temper, though she contrived to keep control of it.

Red having shot a goal, the teams took their places on the centre line and just as Janet and Lesley began the bully-off, Simonetta’s plait slipped from its moorings and tumbled over her shoulder. Margot looked very black, but she confined herself to snapping out an order to Simonetta to fasten up her hair and the bully-off began again. They set to work and the ball flew out under a steady stroke from Lesley, to be taken by Judy Willoughby who was instantly marked by José Helston of Vb, playing left inner for Red, and Nesta Parry who was outside left for the same team. Evelyn tore up to save the ball and was instantly pulled up for hooking her stick. It was a pure accident, but Margot treated it as an intentional foul.

“Don’t you know even yet that hooking’s a foul?” she stormed at Evelyn. “Accidental? Tell that to the marines! It was quite deliberate on your part. I was watching you. Unless you manage better than this, Evelyn Ross, I’m going to put you down to the fourth XI. It’s about all you’re fit for!”

José spoke up. “No, honestly, Margot, it was an accident.”

“Will you kindly mind your own business?” Margot retorted. “I’m taking this practice, not you!” She blew her whistle. “Bully-off again, please, and try to play hockey all of you!” She blew again and Lesley and Janet bullied-off again.

All enjoyment had now gone out of the game. With Margot in this mood one or two became nervous and played badly. As for Evelyn, she watched her strokes carefully. Inwardly, she was furious at being accused of fouling, but she knew better than to show it. Her cautious play irritated Margot further and, after watching the other girl dribbling the ball, she shouted to her to stop spooning it and to strike it.

Evelyn obeyed. Raising her stick she struck it as hard as she could and it flew off, bounced on a tuft of grass and caught Lesley a nasty blow on the elbow. She gave an involuntary cry and dropped her stick.

The accident brought Margot to her senses. She rushed across the field to where Lesley was standing, holding her arm with her other hand, the tears pouring down her face from the pain though she uttered no further sound. The others thronged round her instantly, Evelyn among them in an agony of remorse at having hurt her friend. Margot ordered them all back and bent over Lesley who had gone very white.

“Are you badly hurt, Lesley? Let me see.”

“Oh, no; please don’t touch it!” Lesley gasped. “I—I’ll be all right. It’s still stinging—a bit, though. Please don’t touch me!”

Margot put an arm round her. She was really afraid that the younger girl was going to faint, she looked so white. “One of you run and fetch Matey,” she said. “Lesley, can you walk? I’ll help you back to the house and Matey will see to it.”

“It’s—it’s all—so swimmy!” Lesley got out.

“Poor old girl! Never mind; some of the others can give you a chair—you, Nesta. Yes; and you, Evelyn. You’re the biggest. Grip wrists! Now Lesley, sit down and I’ll hold you. Never mind an arm round their necks.”

But Lesley already had her good arm round Evelyn’s neck and as they set off she murmured, “Not—your—fault. Don’t—worry!”

It took them some minutes to reach the house, for Margot, almost morbidly anxious to save Lesley extra pain, kept them moving slowly. The rest would have followed, but Joan took hold in no uncertain way.

“Where do you crowd think you’re going? Come back immediately, all of you!” Her voice was firm and her manner firmer. Under the influence of both they came back, however reluctantly.

“Please, Joan, we can’t go on with three out of the teams missing,” Judy said apologetically. “And we want to know if Lesley is badly hurt.”

“I don’t suppose it’s much more than a very nasty bruise,” Joan said with unabated firmness. “Matey will be there and she won’t let you folk crowd round, as you ought to know by this time. Our hockey time’s not up for ten minutes and of course we can play on. Hand me Lesley’s stick someone, and I’ll play centre for the Blues. Back to your places, please! Hurry, now!”

They took up their places, but such hockey as was played during those ten minutes was not much good to anyone. Three minutes before time a concerted yell drifted over to them from the lacrosse pitch, but though they were dying to know what had caused it, they had to go on until the whistle blew. Then they scurried off the field as hard as they could go, Joan with them. They were met at the door by Primrose and Ruey, both looking, as Mary Charlton said later, like a couple of long wet weeks. Primrose grabbed at Joan and said something in an undertone. Joan looked so wildly startled that those of the two Fifths going past and seeing her at once jumped to the conclusion that something awful had happened at lacrosse and Lesley had a companion in distress. They had to wait, however, for any more definite information and that they did not get until Kaffee und Kuchen. Then the whole school heard that Lesley Anderson had a chipped elbow and Tessa de Bersac was the owner of a handsome black eye. The lacrosse ball slung at her by Ronnie Pertwee had been just too high. She had missed it with her crosse and it had caught her squarely on the cheekbone.

“Well,” commented Simonetta whose hair was now hanging down her back in its usual long, thick tail, “we seem to have had a most unlucky practice today.”

“So fair as hockey was concerned it seems to have been Margot Maynard’s fault,” pronounced Janice Chester weightily. “Ronnie’s share of the lacrosse business was nothing but an error of judgment that might happen to anyone.”

“What? How do you make that out?” Greta Harms demanded. “It was Evelyn who hit the ball. Margot never touched it.”

“No,” Janice said. “But Margot was in a fume for some reason and she nagged at Evelyn until I don’t wonder she hit the ball as hard as she did—or so José swears.”

“It’s true enough,” José herself agreed.

“Just what I said. Margot was in a fume about something and she nagged. You all know what she’s like when she loses her rag. She just let loose. If she’d sat on her rage it wouldn’t have happened.”

In their interest they had not noticed that Margot had come to the nearby coffee urn to refill her cup and she heard it all and returned to her seat with a stricken look. She had felt bad enough before about the whole thing. Matey had told her that it was unlikely that Lesley would be able to play again that term and the Games Prefect knew how keen Lesley was. Janice’s words had set the blame squarely on Margot’s shoulders and, on thinking it over, the girl had to admit in all honesty that it belonged there.

“My filthy temper again!” she thought miserably. “Oh, if only I could keep hold of it! I suppose I’d better go to Burnie again and explain. She’ll be mad all right, but I can’t do anything else. But I wish it had been almost anyone but Lesley. She’s such a decent kid and it looks as if I’d done her out of the hockey for the rest of the term.”

She went off after Kaffee und Kuchen to find the mistress and confess her sins. Miss Burnett said nothing much to her. As she reflected, it was an old story for Margot Maynard to lose her temper and then bitterly regret the consequences.

“Poor girl! She has a hard row to hoe!” the mistress thought pityingly. Aloud, she said, “It’s a pity, Margot. I’m sorry it happened, but it’s done and can’t be undone. Lesley must make the best of it and so must you. On the whole, I think it’s worse for you. But keep on trying. Nil desperandum, my dear!” she added, for Margot was looking very gloomy. “Remember that those who have the hardest work with their own characters usually turn out the finest men and women if they keep on trying. Now go and do that work and try to put the events of this afternoon out of your mind for the time being.”

“Thank you, Miss Burnett,” Margot said, her face lighting up a little.

She went off and did her best to follow the mistress’s advice, but it was hard going and her work was less well done than usual.

All the same, where Va were concerned, the episode had at least the merit of drawing Evelyn firmly into one with the rest of her form. Naturally she blamed herself bitterly for Lesley’s accident and though they all agreed that it was a pity she had struck the ball so hard, they united in setting the blame where Janice had set it.

“It’s a lot more Margot’s fault than yours,” Mary Charlton said. “Buck up, Evie! Lesley’s not killed and at least,” she added with a grin, “Margot knows now that you can literally bash the ball when you like!”

Evelyn also grinned, but that matey “Evie” helped to relieve her of some of her trouble. As for the rest, they were very wary of the prefect for the next week or two and Margot was too sensitive not to feel it keenly. But that, as she knew, was one of the indirect results of her lack of control.

“Finally, girls, I have an announcement for you that will delight you: Mrs Maynard has sent me the Nativity Play. Prep will be shortened tonight by half-an-hour and after Abendessen I will read it to you all in Hall. Juniors may sit up until the end. But remember this, all of you!” Miss Wilmot raised a hand to quell the growing excitement among the younger girls. “No one who behaves badly during the day will be allowed to listen. Is that clearly understood?”

As one girl the school replied, “Yes, Miss Wilmot.”

“Then that’s all right.” The Head glanced at the piano where Miss Lawrence was sitting, and nodded.

At once the mistress swung round on the music-stool and struck a chord which brought everyone to her feet. To the tune of a brisk march they marched out, form by form, beginning with the Kindergarten and ending with the school choir and the prefects. The girls were all excited, especially the Middles, but they contrived to contain themselves until they were safely in their formrooms. No one wanted to be awarded an order mark or a report. Miss Wilmot’s final statement had seen to that. Once they were in their formrooms, however, they took advantage of the brief space before the mistresses came to them.

Evelyn was as excited as any member of Va. She was keen on acting and if she had been at home she was to have joined the local drama club that autumn.

“What exactly is it?” she asked of Lesley who was back in school again, her arm still in a sling, but otherwise looking her usual self.

“It’s our Nativity Play,” Lesley explained. “You know what that is, don’t you? We give one at the end of most Christmas terms and Mrs Maynard usually writes them for us. Sometimes it’s a pageant of Christmas, but for the last two years it’s been a regular play. Remember the one about Sarah last year?” She appealed to the others.

“For me, I remember him very well,” Yvette Olivier said. “And this is Thursday, Lesley.”

“Oh, bother! So it is! Sorry, Evelyn. I’ll say that again in French.” And Lesley turned her remarks into impeccable French, regardless of Evelyn’s murmur of, “Oh, don’t mind me.”

More was impossible just then. Miss Wilmot’s springy tread was heard outside in the corridor and they hastened to settle themselves in their desks and look as ready as they could for her lesson in logarithms. However, when Break came, they continued with their explanations to the new girl, and before it ended Evelyn had heard all about it, including the cause for which it was given.

“But why a poor parish in Innsbruck?” she asked curiously.

“The first plays were all given for that parish,”^[15] Jennifer Yarnold explained. “That was ages ago, of course—before the war, in fact. During the war nothing could be sent to Tirol, but as soon as it ended Lady Russell got into touch again with the parish priest and what we’ve collected has always gone to them. We generally send toys and clothes, too. That’s why Mdlle has set us all to making children’s clothes this term. They have a party with a Christmas dinner and a tree and, of course, a service in the church as well.”

“Oh, I see. I rather like that,” said Evelyn who had made a good beginning on the little woollen frock which had fallen to her share. She enjoyed needlework and her stitching would not have disgraced any of the continental girls who were excellent needlewomen. “Tell me about last year’s play, please.” Before the bell rang again for lessons she knew all about it and also what a splendid Sarah Jane Carew had made.

“You would expect it,” Simonetta added. “Her parents are actors and she herself means to act when she leaves school.”

They had to leave it there, but though she did her best with history and précis which were the after-Break lessons that morning, Evelyn kept thinking about the play. She wondered what part she would be given, if any. Nothing much, she fancied. She was new that term and you couldn’t expect them to offer her a leading part.

“But I’d like something with speaking in it,” she thought as she listened with half an ear to Miss Derwent’s remarks on selecting the appropriate word to sum up a phrase or clause while doing précis.

“Will the play be in English, French, or German?” she asked Lesley at Mittagessen.

“English, my lamb. Not all the carols, though. We use carols from every land and quite a lot of the old Latin carols. Mrs Maynard often writes new ones for us and they’re set by Plato—I mean Mr Denny—or sometimes Nina Rutherford.”

Evelyn knew all about “Plato” as the school called its singing-master. She knew less of Nina Rutherford.

“Nina Rutherford? Do you mean that smash—er—miraculous pianist who’s making such a stir?” she queried. “Oh, was she here at school?”

“She was,” put in Moira. “Not for very long, though. She was fifteen when she came and she left when she was seventeen to go to Vienna to finish her musical training. She often sets the songs for our plays.”

“I wonder what it will be this year?” Mary Charlton said. “Play or pageant, I mean. Pageant, I hope. It gives more parts for everyone.”

“What kind of pageants are they?”

“Oh, Christmas in other lands, or Christmas in other centuries, mostly,” Hélène explained. “There was one called The Bells of Christmas which they did first in Tirol and repeated when the school was in England. I believe that was lovely.”^[16]

“Mrs Maynard didn’t write it, though,” Lesley chimed in. “That was Madame—Lady Russell, you know, Evie.”

Evelyn was aware that Lady Russell had founded the school. Also that she was Mrs Maynard’s elder sister and at the moment in Australia, but she felt less interest in her than in the play and she asked more questions, which kept her clan busy for the whole of Mittagessen.

At the other tables new girls were told much of this, too. Jocelyn listened with indifference. She had no ambitions at the moment to shine as an actress. In fact she took no interest in it and when Sandra Johnson said excitedly—and in execrable French—“Oh, I do hope I can have a part!” her leader gave her a startled look.

“Well, I hope not,” she said in equally bad French. “I hate dressing-up!”

“Oh, Jocelyn, you can’t!” Carlotta von Eschenau exclaimed in her own tongue.

Con Maynard, sitting at the head of the table, overheard and gave the sinner a warning look. “Be careful, Carlotta. This is a French day,” she said.

Carlotta went pink, but Con, being kind-hearted, said no more and she speedily recovered herself. Some prefects would have fined her, but Con was ready to excuse one slip from an excited Middle so long as the offence was not repeated.

It was a fine day so there were games for them as usual and they managed to work off the worst of their excitement before they came back to school for the afternoon prep which finished their work until evening prep. They even managed to settle down to arithmetic, dictation words and history without more than their normal restlessness, and Miss Andrews dismissed them with a word of praise when the bell rang.

“Good girls! You deserve your evening treat if you only go on like this!” she said, smiling.

Jocelyn sniffed but she said nothing. At any rate they would get extra time before bedtime if nothing else.

In the event, nobody had to be sent to bed. They all contrived to remember and school passed off as peacefully as usual. But when Abendessen and Prayers were over and they were all sitting in Hall, waiting for Miss Wilmot and the staff, the buzz of excited chatter rose to heights that brought a quick reminder from Len Maynard.

Speaking in English: “If you all go on yelling like this quite half of you will be sent to bed!” she warned them with a smile.

They calmed down soon enough for an indignant voice to be heard exclaiming, “Here! Len’s Head Girl and she’s not speaking in French!”

Len laughed. “It’s all right, whoever that was. You may use your own language for the rest of the evening,” she said before jumping lightly down from the dais and going to join her compeers at the side, while the school joined in her laughter.

Down among Lower IV, Jocelyn was being chaffed by the rest for her heedless remark.

“Lucky for you that Len understands!” Ottillie said reprovingly. “It is not your place to say things like that about the Head Girl.”

“Well, how was I to know we could use our own language?” Jocelyn muttered. “No one ever told me so.”

“I expect they thought we should see that every new girl knew,” Anne Cooke replied. “I thought you understood or I’d have told you. It’s O.K., Jocelyn. Len didn’t mind. Well, you could see that for yourself. She’s fabulous is Len—always seems to understand somehow.”

“Shush! The staff are coming!” Gwen Thomas hissed. “Now for it!”

The big double doors at the head of Hall opened and the staff came in, laughing and chatting among themselves. They mounted the dais and took their accustomed seats. They were followed by the Head and Miss Dene as the girls rose to their feet. All eyes were on the secretary who was carrying a sheaf of papers while the Head held a thick parcel which she set down on the small table drawn before her chair instead of the lectern which had been pushed to the back for once. Then she came forward.

“Now, girls, we shall begin without delay. Various mistresses have undertaken to read parts. I’ll tell you when carols and songs come, but we’re leaving those out tonight. Mr Denny will start you off on them when he comes tomorrow for singing. Settle yourselves as comfortably as you can. We don’t want more interruptions than we can help. That’s right!” as sundry folk wriggled themselves into more comfortable positions. “All settled? Then we’ll begin. No time to waste!” She went to her chair, sat down and opened the thick MS before her while Miss Moore, Miss Derwent, Miss Andrews and Miss Bertram stood up, ready to read. The school drew a united sigh and it began.

Joey had based her play on the beautiful old Black Forest legend that every Christmas Eve Christ comes to the world again in human form, wandering about and seeking to find if there is still no room for Him save in a stable among the kindly beasts. The peasants of the Schwarzwald region always used to lay an extra place at table for such a Guest and make a bed ready in case He should come to any of them. If a stranger should be benighted and knock at a door for food and shelter, the father of the family opened it with the traditional words, “Come, Lord Jesus; be our guest.” Such a visitor is given the warmest seat by the stove, the best food they can afford and the softest bed. When he goes in the morning all payment is refused, for the people believed that whoever might come, there is always the chance that it is Our Lord Himself to whom they offered their hospitality.

The play opened with the arrival of Our Lady and St Joseph at the door of the inn, seeking rest and shelter from the cold. Unlike most of the Chalet School Nativity plays, the Blessed Virgin was given a few lines to speak, pleading with the landlord for help in her dire need. Most of the speeches, however, fell to the landlord and St Joseph. The mistresses had all had their parts to look over during the day and they read thoughtfully and with real feeling. Even Jocelyn was impressed by the little prelude and heaved a sigh of relief when at last the weary travellers were offered the shelter of a stall in the stable with the cattle.

The scene ended and Miss Wilmot stood up. “This will be acted before a frontcloth. While it is being drawn up, a carol will be sung here—one that Madame wrote many years ago for one of the first Christmas plays.^[17] We will go on with the reading now.”

The next scene took place in the salon of a rich man’s house. Miss Dene read the description and the girls were thrilled at the detail. Then came the reading of the parts, depicting the wealthy folk who regarded Christmas as a time for gifts and feasting and merriment and gave little thought to its religious side. In the midst of all the gaiety came a tap at the window and when at last the rich folk condescended to heed it and the curtains were drawn back and a window opened, it was to show a poor man and his wife and child seeking help which was denied them. Only one of the little girls pressed a coin into the Child’s hand, telling him to buy bread with that. The window was shut and the curtains were drawn while the master of the house scolded his daughter for indiscriminate charity to beggars. She said that it was only one mark and you couldn’t be mean on Christmas Eve. After all, it just might be Christ Himself. Her father replied that that was just a foolish legend, and the scene ended.

Other scenes followed, showing the trio knocking on the door of a shopkeeper who drove them off with sharp words, bidding them apply to the city authorities who taxed hard-working people highly enough for just that purpose; an innkeeper who also refused them shelter, though he did hand out a stale loaf in the end; a door which never opened, though sounds of songs and jollity came and they could see people dancing, through the uncurtained window; finally a poor peasant’s hut where the door opened and they were bidden welcome to share the warmth of the stove and the thin soup with which the family were celebrating the eve of Our Lord’s birth. As the three entered, a sudden darkness fell and when a light shone again, it was to show a feast on the wooden table in place of the wooden bowls, while from behind the scenes the choir would sing the angelic song of Gloria in Excelsis Deo.

“After that,” Miss Wilmot said when the last mistress had sat down, “we show the first Christmas in the stable at Bethlehem and that is followed by the adoration of the angels and of the world. That is all. And now,” she added in a different tone, “it is getting late—very late for the Juniors, so you must pack off, Juniors, and hurry to bed. Tomorrow the list of people chosen for speaking parts will be put up on the notice-board. I want to say one more thing to you all. A number of you will, of course, be understudies for the main parts. But whether you have anything to say or not, or are a shepherd, one of the angelic choir, a member of a crowd or one of the important characters, remember that it’s up to you to do it as perfectly as you can. If you have no speaking part this time, we shall be producing other plays later on and it will be your turn then. There are so many of you we can’t give you all lines to say, so we have chosen those we think can play the parts best. For a Nativity play we must give our very best. Now that is all. I’m going to say goodnight and you must all be off to bed—even the Seniors. Goodnight, girls!”

With one voice the girls chorused goodnight and the session was over. The school marched out quietly and went up to bed.

“What did you think of it?” three or four of Va demanded of Evelyn when they were safely in their dormitory.

“I think it’s beautiful!” she said quietly. “What a lovely legend! I never heard it before, but I do like it.”

“Yes; it’s beautiful,” Lesley agreed as she turned to Hélène who had come to help her undress. “One of the best we’ve ever had. I’m dying to hear what the new carols are. Did you notice, folk, that there are no fewer than four new ones? Mrs Maynard has certainly done us proud!”

“Yes; but now you will stop talking and come to your cubicle and let me assist you to bed,” Hélène said practically. “If we delay too much, Matey will come and that will not be pleasant.”

“O.K., I’m coming.” Lesley went to her cubicle and the others separated for theirs so that when the prefect on duty arrived to switch off the lights everyone was safely in bed.

Meanwhile, in Tulip dormitory on the lower floor, Jocelyn had been oddly quiet for her. She would never have admitted it, but she had been quite as much impressed as Evelyn by the beauty of the play. She wasn’t saying so, of course, but she did hope that she might have the tiniest speaking part, even if it was just one short sentence. In fact, as she snuggled down under her sheets and the plumeau which had appeared on her bed a week or two earlier, she almost decided that she would behave herself properly in that hope.

“But I’ll never do it,” she told herself despondently. “I think of such mad things to do and then I’ve just got to do them and then there’s a row! Oh, dear! I wish it didn’t happen like that. But it does and I can’t do a thing about it. I’ll do my best—but—hai-yah!—it’ll never—co—ome—” But by this time, she was fast asleep.

The arrival of the famous Dr Benson at the school had caused quite a sensation among the girls. Everyone knew that her book on Aeschylus had been hailed as likely to become the standard work on that famous dramatist. The Seniors were thrilled by the thought of coming into contact with her. As for the Middles, those young women were comfortably assured that anyone so learned was unlikely to be as much on the spot as most of the rest of the staff were.

“You know what these great scholars are like,” Anne Cooke, knowing nothing about it, remarked to Lower IV. “They’re so keen on their learning that they don’t take much notice of anything else.”

What Anne and all her crowd forgot was that in her schooldays Dr Benson had been a prefect and a very efficient one at that, if all accounts were true. As they were to learn before many weeks were over, the learned doctor was very much on the spot.

Things went quietly enough during the first week or ten days of her installation. Even Lower IV had enough sense to wait and see what she was really like before they began to think up plots to test her. Besides, she was a very stately person, tall and grave-looking, though if they had been old enough to realize it, the gravity was offset by a humorous mouth and pair of dark grey eyes in which lurked a twinkle. But that mouth and the chin below it were firm enough for anything. Indeed, with her wavy brown hair drawn loosely back from her broad brow and her clear, pink-and-white complexion, Dr Benson was an attractive woman. The Seniors realized it and congratulated themselves on gaining another highly presentable mistress.

On mature consideration it had been decided that she deal with junior maths only, Miss Bertram being fully qualified to manage geography. Miss Derwent had offered her free time to take English with the three Fourths and Dr Benson had instantly proposed to relieve Mdlle de Lachennais of a good deal of work by seeing to Latin for Va and Vb. Things were thus pleasantly settled.

“It’s an excellent idea all round,” Joey, who was in on the conference, observed. “I want our older girls to know you, Stacie, my poppet. I think some of them are scared blue of your doctorate and your very distinguished appearance. They little know you!” She chuckled wickedly and the embarrassed Stacie went a delicate puce.

“Joey! What a pig you can be!” she exclaimed. “Really, you haven’t improved over the years! In fact,” she went on, carrying the war into the enemy’s country, “you neither act, talk, nor even look like the proud mother of eleven, and also a well-known novelist. Twenty-five—that’s the most I’d give you, seeing you for the first time. And fifteen from your ways and manners!”

Joey chuckled again. “If that’s meant for an insult, dearie, it’s a bad miss. I regard it as a compliment. How my family would loathe me if I turned all prim and proper! Thank you! I’m highly delighted.”

“Oh, you!” was all her friend could find to say.

Dr Benson’s first lessons with the Fourth forms went off quietly. She knew her subject well enough and she could certainly teach. Just at first some of her language was slightly over the heads of Lower IV, but she quickly realized this and modified it accordingly. Like every other member of the staff she spoke French and German fluently and idiomatically, so the imps got no change from her there.

With the Seniors she was soon a success. She treated them with friendliness out of class. In class she was able to hold their attention and do good work. Nancy Wilmot congratulated herself and Joey on having such a substitute and work continued almost without a break.

Kathy Ferrars, rapidly convalescing, was thankful to hear it. Once she was over the first two or three trying days she began to make a speedy recovery, and by the time Dr Benson was thoroughly settled in at school she was able to face the long and tiring journey back to England for a month or so of home coddling “to set her up properly”, as the aunt who had mothered her from her birth, remarked. By this time, too, Lower IV, at least, felt that they had taken measure of their new maths mistress and it was time they slackened off from their earlier efforts at impressing her with the idea that they were fairly good on the whole.

“I find this Dr Benson very pleasant,” Swanhild Alvarsen observed in their commonroom one evening when they had been released from prep and set free to amuse themselves quietly until the bell rang for the end of all work.

“Yes; she’s not bad,” Barbara Craven assented.

“French, please, Barbara,” said Gwen Thomas firmly. She was form prefect so had rather more sense of responsibility than the rest of the crew.

“Oh, bother!” But Barbara recast her sentence. “Elle est gentille. Ça te suffit, n’est-ce pas? C’est le mieux que je peux faire.”

As Gwen’s own French was not much better than Barbara’s, she passed it and the chatter went on—in an undertone, for Upper IVb were also there and those young women, by virtue of an average of fifteen months’ seniority, were inclined to do what they could to keep their juniors well under. Speaking in French that would, for the most part, have made Mdlle shriek with horror, they continued their discussion.

“Her worst thing is that she is so acute!” Ottillie sighed. “Anne, chérie, you were wrong when you said she would not be.”

“I expect it is a case of being new to it,” Anne said hopefully.

Jocelyn, who had been silent up to this, looked up. “Think so? Then let us test her.” Her eyes danced wickedly.

The rest sat up, all attention at once.

“What do you mean?” Anne said bluntly. “If you think I shall not do my prep you’re—oh, missing the bus! I can’t manage it in French! Anyway, I’ve been bracketed top with Carlotta and Gwen every fortnight since term began and I’m not losing marks and dropping down for anyone.”

“And,” put in Lilli Andries, one of the Dutch twins new that term, “we should be scolded and that I should not like.”

“I didn’t mean anything of that sort,” Jocelyn said scornfully. “What I mean is that things are dull and we ought to do something to liven them up.”

Some of the continental girls looked mildly shocked at this, but the rest brightened up. Jocelyn was becoming renowned for her gift of thinking up new pranks to play. They waited eagerly for the latest.

Now Jocelyn had spoken more or less at random. It was disconcerting, therefore, to have a demand like this put on her at once. She thought hard for a full minute, but no ideas came. Finally, she fell back in desperation on an episode she had read in one of her uncle’s old school stories.

“Let’s cobbler’s-wax her drawer,” she said.

“Cobbler’s-wax? But why?” Anne demanded.

“Because then it’ll stick and she won’t be able to open it.” Jocelyn gave a sudden chuckle. “What a yell watching her struggling with it!” In her interest she spoke in English again and Gwen, equally interested, forgot to rebuke her. Instead, she asked where the cobbler’s-wax was to come from.

“Hobbies, of course. They have a lump there. I saw it the other day when I went to get my raffia.”

They thought it over. Finally, Sandra spoke. “But it might be some other mistress. Dr Benson doesn’t always come to us first. In fact it’s always Miss Stone when she comes to take register.”

“We can’t do that to Rocky! She’d eat us alive!” Barbara said with horror.

“And anyhow, it’s Dr Benson we want to try it on,” Sandra pointed out.

By this time they were getting so worked up that they had completely forgotten about the rule of language. Upper IVb would have spoken if they had overheard but they were all busy with their own affairs and, excited or not, their juniors still had the sense to keep their voices lowered. Val Pertwee did glance round at them once and murmured to her chum, Elizabeth von Arnim, “What are those children over there talking about?” but Elizabeth disclaimed all knowledge of or interest in the subject and the wicked Lower IV went their way unchecked.

“How can we manage?” Aimée Diderot asked. “I should like to see it. It would be very funny,” she added wistfully.

They agreed that it would. The picture of the dignified Dr Benson wrestling with a recalcitrant drawer in vain appealed to their elementary sense of humour. From what Jocelyn said it looked as if getting the wax would not be hard; but how were they to ensure that the victim of the trick should be the Doctor?

“What can we do?” Angélique asked.

Jocelyn thought hard. Inspiration came. “Do it during Break on one of the days she has us straight afterwards. That’ll be O.K.”

“No, it won’t. You know we’re not allowed in our formrooms during Break,” Anne said instantly.

“Someone can slip along and do it,” Jocelyn returned stubbornly. “I’ll do it myself, come to that.”

Gwen recovered a little of her commonsense at this. “You can’t, Jocelyn. You’d get into the most awful row if you were caught. Anyhow, someone would be sure to ask who’d done it, and you’d have to own up. So what?”

“Own up, of course! I’m not afraid of a row!” Jocelyn retorted. “I’m going to do it, now I’ve thought of it. It’s a lot too good an idea to waste. The rest of you can stand out if you like.”

“Then I’ll sneak the wax,” Sandra said heroically enough. Unlike Jocelyn, she did mind a row. But by this time she was sufficiently under that young sinner’s thumb to be ready to follow bald-headed wherever she went.

Jocelyn gave her a friendly grin. “Good for you! O.K. We two’ll take it on and the rest of you can think up something on your own.”

The pealing of the bell for the end of prep finished their plotting. Upper IVa also shared the commonroom and even Jocelyn had enough sense to know that if those superior young ladies saw them with their heads together they would suspect something and might make inquiries.

It was an easy enough matter for Sandra to take the cobbler’s wax from the Hobbies cupboard, where it was always kept. It was quite another business for Jocelyn to find a chance to put her plan into action. For one thing, the weather turned fine, and as soon as they had disposed of their elevenses, they were herded out to the playing-fields to ensure that they got as much fresh air as possible. She could have contrived to slip back to the formroom if they had been in Hall or the Speisesaal, but there was no getting past the group of prefects who were apt to congregate about the side-door which the school used. Even she saw that, and she had to give up her idea for at least a week.

Meanwhile, Lower IV having given the mistress the impression that they were a well-conducted lot on the whole seemed unaccountably to have lapsed. Some of them were seized with fits of giggling during her lessons, and with nothing to account for them. Their work was less uniformly good, though the mark-hunters still did their best. Dr Benson kept them in order as far as she could without nagging, but it was not easy. Finally she consulted Joey.

“You say they keep getting the giggles for no apparent reason?” Joey queried when Stacie had unloaded the tale to her. “Well, unless someone is managing to make faces with the back of her head——”

Stacie shrieked. “Joey! Talk sense! How could they?”

“Easily! Waggle their ears, of course. I’ve seen it done during my own prefect days. That age would think it frightfully funny.”

Stacie suddenly laughed. “I imagine they would. I’ll keep a watch on their ears and make sure it isn’t that. But if not—what?”

“Then, my love, look out for squalls! Those demons are up to something.”

“Well—what sort of thing? Let’s hope,” she added with a giggle on her own account, “that they aren’t planning to wash the works of the clock!”^[18]

Joey’s golden laughter pealed out. “What a do that was! Oh, Stacie, shall I ever forget the way it went on striking as if it meant to burst its sides! How many times did it chime? Over two hundred, I know.”

Stacie laughed again. “Two hundred and seven, my dear. And then Thekla von Stift gave them away with both hands—though I must say I believe she did it quite innocently on that occasion.”

“How the form loathed her for it!” Jo said reminiscently.

“Thekla—I haven’t thought of her for years. What became of her?”

“No one knows. The von Stifts vanished during the war and even the von Eschenaus haven’t a clue—and they’re cousins. But never mind ancient history. Stacie, the only advice I can give you at the moment is to watch your step with those young monkeys. It’s clear they’re up to something, though what it is, I can’t tell you. By the way, you can forget the clock. Our school clocks are all electric these days. Even the worst Junior Middle would think fifty times before tampering with them.”

It was the best they could do. They parted company, Joey to run upstairs to attend to her nursery fry and Stacie departing to her own wing of the house to look over work for the morrow.

The whole week being fine, the criminals had to wait for the next week, which was ushered in on Sunday by a thin mist. During the day this changed into a nasty drizzle, and when the school rose on the Monday it was to the sound of heavy rain beating on the windows.

“Now’s our chance!” Jocelyn said exultantly to her fellow plotters while they were making their beds. “No one will let us go out in that and whole place will be mud’s own self, even if it clears up early.”

As she broke rules by speaking in English she deserved to be caught, and caught she was. Ted Grantley, coming with a message from Miss Burnett to Aimée to ask why that young woman had not come to the remedial room for her daily exercises for a tendency to curvature of the spine, overheard, pulled up the culprit smartly, and fined her, after making her turn her remarks into good French, which had to be repeated until the prefect was satisfied with accent and intonation. By that time, the whole dormitory knew the phrases by heart and Jocelyn was seething with rage. She dared not show it. Ted would have made mincemeat of her if she did. But it just turned the scales. Come what might, Jocelyn would cobbler’s-wax that drawer!

She found it easy enough to do. She finished her milky cocoa and had just set the beaker on the tray when Evelyn Ross, turning unexpectedly, caught Greta Harms with her elbow and Greta dropped her own half-full beaker. The pair of them were well dowsed, and in the flurry to wipe them down, clear up the mess, and get Greta a fresh drink, the Junior Middle found it easy enough to slip out unnoticed and scamper down the corridor to her formroom, where she proceeded to coat the edge of the drawer as thickly as she could with the wax before ramming it home. Then she raced for all she was worth back to the Speisesaal where she mingled with the crowd with such a grin on her face that her own allies had no need to ask what she had been doing.

The next act in this little drama came when Dr Benson tried to open the drawer in the mistress’s table in order to get the mark-book out. She gave it a pull but it refused to move. She gave it another and a harder one with no better success, by which time Lower IV had given up such interest as it felt in geometry and transferred its full attention to herself. She glanced up, feeling the atmosphere of subdued excitement at once.

“Yes,” she said in her excellent French. “The drawer will not open. No matter. Your duty is to go on with your work while I deal with it. I shall expect you to have finished that problem, when I am ready to attend to you.”

All eyes went to their rough books, but no one troubled with the problem. They peeped at her through their eyelashes as she wrestled with the drawer. Finding it would not pull out, she tried to ease it out from beneath. Nothing happened—naturally—at least, nothing happened to the drawer; but Sandra gave a sudden snort which brought the doctor’s head up as she looked round to see where it came from. No need to ask. Sandra’s face was crimson. What was more, one or two of the girls had their hands over their mouths and Bernhilda Hoffman, a giggler at the best of times, was stuffing her handkerchief into hers.

That settled it. Those monkeys had done something to the drawer to prevent its opening. Stacie Benson sat up, suddenly angry, and she looked at them with ice-cold eyes.

“Who has done this?” she asked.

There was silence. Jocelyn saw no need to give herself away too soon. Besides, the expression on Dr Benson’s face alarmed her. There was going to be a monumental row—she could see that.

“Well?” said Dr Benson at this point. “How long must I wait for an answer? Who has done this? Or is she too much of a coward to own up?”

This stung. Jocelyn leapt to her feet. “It was me!” she said smartly—too smartly. It sounded like outright impertinence, and Stacie Benson took it for that, and impertinence was something she was not prepared to put up with.

“Come out here!” was all she said, however.

Jocelyn came out, but was delayed by Sandra who also rose, looking frightened but resolute. “Please,” she said, forgetting all about speaking French in her agitation, “it was me too. I got the wax.”

The break gave Dr Benson time to control herself. “Then you come out, too, Sandra. And don’t forget to pay your fine into the box before Mittagessen. This is French day, I must remind you.”

The pair crawled up to the platform and stood there looking, as Barbara informed them later, all colours of the rainbow. The mistress let them stand in dead silence before she turned to the rest who were nearly petrified by this time. “How many more of you are in it?” she demanded.

Carlotta stood up. “Please, we backed them—” She stopped short. The doctor’s eye reminded her what day it was and she finished her speech in almost the lamest French that had ever been heard from any of them. “We all did.”

Dr Benson looked bewildered. “But why?” she asked.

A more awkward question she could not have put to them. You can’t very well tell a mistress you have played a silly practical joke on her just to see how she will take it.

Dr Benson waited. Then, finding that they had no reply for her, she nodded. “I see. Just an attack of babyish silliness. Very well; that is something I will deal with later. Meantime, please set to work on your geometry. We have already wasted fourteen minutes of this lesson, but no matter. You may come back directly after Kaffee und Kuchen and make that up. The other affair I will deal with later.”

Lower IV were stunned. What awful fate lay in the offing? But they turned to their geometry and did what they could—which was not very much. Dr Benson said no more about the drawer until the end of the lesson. Then she made a statement which made the mark-hunters look very blue.

“As I cannot get the mark-book,” she said blandly, “you will, of course, forfeit your marks for this lesson. In fact, until something can be done about the drawer I’m afraid you will lose all your marks. A pity! It will reduce the form average very badly. However, that is your affair. Also, I fear you must explain to every other mistress who comes to you just exactly what has happened. Open the door, please, Swanhild. Will you, Anne, bring your preparation to the staff room for me.”

She went out smiling, a smile that nobody liked. It seemed to hold such a hint of retribution to come. Nor could they discuss it, for Mdlle was waiting to come in for French grammar; and the very first thing she did after she had handed them their corrections was to try to open the drawer for the mark-book!

Drearily, Lower IV had to explain all over again and Mdlle told them exactly what she thought of them. None of her thoughts were nice and by the time she had finished they had no spirit left in them. It continued on those lines all day. Miss Andrews, taking them for dictation, and Miss Stone, hearing their repetition during the afternoon, were as scathing as the others. By the time they settled down to their prep they were wishing with all their might that not only had Jocelyn never had her wonderful idea, but that she had never entered the school. They could say little to her, however, for they knew well enough that if they had all held out against her in the beginning, nothing of all this would have happened. And still there was whatever awful sort of punishment Dr Benson might devise to be faced. Life looked very black that day to Lower IV.

“Well, that’s the story, Joey. Now tell me what I’m to do.” Stacie Benson set down her coffee-cup and looked hopefully at Jo Maynard. It was the evening of that eventful day, but it was only now that the doctor had been able to get her friend to herself for a consultation. Joey finished her coffee before she spoke. When she did, her first comment made Stacie sit up with a jerk.

“What a gaudy episode for my new school yarn! Thanks a million! It’s just what I wanted!”

“Joey!” the outraged Stacie cried. “I asked your advice and all you can do is to gloat—positively gloat—over the devilry of those imps!”

Joey chuckled. “My lamb, that book has been at a full stop these past five days. Now, thanks to you and Lower IV, I can go ahead. As for what you’re to do, tell me again just what you said to them—the exact words.”

Stacie repeated her speech to Lower IV and Joey nodded thoughtfully.

“Has Gaudenz done anything about the drawer yet?”

“He hadn’t when I came away. What I don’t understand is why they did such a thing.”

“Oh, what you said—sheer devilry. I expect they were finding life dull and set out to liven things up a little,” Joey said sweetly. “That age does dislike a lot of sameness. Also,” she added, a reminiscent look in her eyes, “Middles are usually demons, anyhow. I was one myself—oh, was I not! However, that’s no help to you at the moment. No, Stacie, I’m telling you nothing about that at this point.” She picked up her coffee-pot. “Another cup? No? On the whole that’s just as well. Judging by the weight, we’ve drained this pot already. Now about this problem of yours. In the first place, my dear, I wouldn’t punish them any further. I should say they’ve had enough. They’ve lost most of the day’s marks and that age is a mark-hunting age. At least four people counting yourself have given them their unvarnished opinion of their doings or I’m much mistaken. Finally, you’ve left them in a horrid state of uncertainty as to what’s going to happen. All very unpleasant!”

“It sounds quite a dishful as you put it,” Stacie agreed. “All the same, Joey, I can’t leave it like that. I’ve got to wind it up.”

“Well, of course. Do you have them for anything tomorrow?”

“Arithmetic, first lesson—why?”

“Good! Now listen to me!” And Joey proceeded to outline a scheme which made her friend laugh before she agreed to it with enthusiasm.

“It’s a winner! I’ll do just that. I’d have hated it myself at their age. Thanks a lot, Joey. And now I must go back to my own quarters and look over the algebra for Upper IVa. Thank goodness, they seem steady enough!”

Joey laughed. “I wouldn’t say that—still overwhelmed at being top form in Middle School, more likely. They are reaching a more responsible age, but don’t you cod yourself that they’re a set of little angels!”

“Joey! Your slang! Where do you pick it up?”

Joey looked wicked. “Don’t forget, my love, that I have sons as well as daughters. That’s nothing to what I could say. I hear plenty of slang in the holidays.”

“So I should imagine! Well, I must go. Thanks for your help.” She went off and Joey, with a final chuckle, picked up the jumper she was knitting for small Cecil and became absorbed in counting her stitches.

Next morning, Dr Benson called in to find her busy with her mail while she finished her breakfast. “I’m just off. Wish me luck with Lower IV. Phil all right this morning?”

Joey nodded with a beaming smile. “Very much so. For the first time since her illness she’s cleared her porridge bowl and then, if you please, she demanded an egg. That’s a real step forward, let me tell you. Her appetite’s been so capricious it’s been a case of coaxing her to eat at all. Jack’s thrilled to the marrow and so am I. Tell my girls if you see them. I know the Triplets have worried about her.” She sighed relievedly. “It’s been a hard pull and even now it won’t be over completely for some time to come, but I do feel we’re getting into the straight now, thank God! Now you scram—and good luck to you! I’ve all these letters to see to. Perhaps,” she added tantalizingly, “I may have some news for you when you return.”

“I can wait. I’m off now. I’ll hunt up your family during the morning and tell them about Phil. See you later.” And she hurried off.

Lower IV were not so happy that morning. Gaudenz had attended to the table after prep the night before but it meant a new drawer, for he had had to cut out the old one. Naturally, the authorities had had to be told about it, but Dr Benson had insisted that it was strictly off the record. She meant to deal with it herself.

“O.K., have it your own way,” Miss Wilmot agreed. “The only thing I ask is that you’ll deal adequately. That crowd are little pests unless someone cracks down hard on them at least twice in the term.”

“It’ll be adequate,” the doctor said with conviction. “I’ve consulted Joey.”

“Then it will be,” Nancy said with equal conviction. “Good for you, Stacie. Go ahead; I’ll back you to the limit!”

The staff had, therefore, said nothing more, but Lower IV had found themselves sent to Coventry by most of the Seniors as well as the mistresses, for the tale had leaked out and the prefects had left the sinners severely alone, the rest following their example. On top of all that they had to face the almost certain loss of their pocket-money for the next week or two, besides whatever ghastly punishment Dr Benson might have devised for them.

“How I wish you had never thought of it,” Aimée sighed as they sat in their formroom waiting for Miss Stone to come and take register.

Jocelyn wished the same herself. Not that she was admitting it to anyone. She hunched her shoulders and turned her back on Aimée.

There was time for no more. Miss Stone, very trim and crisp, was with them. She said, “Good morning, girls!” very coldly as she went up the room and mounted the platform. She sat down at the table and looked sourly at the little pile of mark-book, spare filing-paper and odd pencils lying there. She made no comment, but her look was enough. She opened the register and called it. When it was taken, she sent Gwen to the office with it and sat back to remain gazing at her form in a chilly manner. She said nothing and the form squirmed inwardly.

Prayers came next, with most of Lower IV in a most unprayerful mood. Then they were back in the formroom, with Dr Benson following them almost at once. Most of them dared not look at her. Jocelyn did, and dropped her eyes at once. The doctor still wore that horribly inward smile she had worn when she left them the day before. Goodness only knew what it betokened, but something extra nasty beyond a doubt.

“Look at me, please!” The mistress’s voice was quite calm but quite firm. They obeyed in a hurry. She smiled at them—and there was open amusement in her smile. “Before we begin work, we must settle up for yesterday. My dear girls, did you really think you would get away with your childish trick? I think you forget that though I’ve been a professor and therefore accustomed to people who behave in a grown-up way, I was also educated at the Chalet School. In case you didn’t know—or have forgotten?—I was a prefect. I’m quite accustomed to dealing with stupid little girls. It’s not so long ago as all that, and I haven’t forgotten and I don’t forget, you know.”

The open amusement in her voice hurt them more than any sharp scolding would have done, and her words offended their twelve-year-old dignity. She seemed to be regarding them as if they were Lower II instead of Lower IV.

Having given them time to feel this, she went on, “Your trick was really so silly I’m not going to punish you. It isn’t worth it. Of course, you must pay for the destruction of school furniture, so for the next three weeks your pocket-money will be twenty-five centimes short. That should cover it, I think. If it doesn’t then you will go short for another week which will certainly do it. But you expected that, of course. And now we will say no more. Only do try to be less babyish in future.”

By this time not a member of the form but was wishing she could slide through the floor. Her words were bad enough, but the utter derision in her voice left them in no doubt. She was laughing at them! It was enough and more than enough. It would be a long time before Lower IV tried to play any more such pranks on her or any other member of the staff.

Dr Benson turned them on to arithmetic then and proceeded to drill the rules governing mixed fractions into them in a way they never forgot. They were thankful when the bell rang and she left them to the tender mercies of Miss Stone, which were far from tender. That young lady was still annoyed with her form for making such a show of itself and she spared them no strictures that their work merited.

Meanwhile the doctor, having a free period, sought the library where she found the three Maynards and some other prefects working by themselves. She waved to Con to join Margot and Len in a quiet corner and gave them the good news about little Phil. The three beamed when they heard it.

“Oh, prodigious!” cried Con, her dark eyes alight with pleasure. “She ought to go ahead now if she’s found her appetite!”

Len took it more quietly. “It’s magnificent news if only she keeps it up,” she said. “It’s been such a worry that she wouldn’t eat. Mamma will be overjoyed. But it might be just a flash in the pan.”

“Len,” said the doctor firmly, “this is absurd on your part. Why should it be? More likely that this is the real thing. Have faith, my dear!”

Len blushed. “I have, but I do know that even now it doesn’t mean that we needn’t worry any longer. But it is good news!”

“I’ll say it is!” Margot tossed back her shock of red-gold curls. “Oh, I know it means she won’t be running about as she used to—not yet; but it’s joyful news, just the same. Only, Len’s such a worrier!”

The doctor knew that of all Joey’s family Len, the eldest, was the most thoughtful and responsible. She smiled at the girl as she said, “Try not to worry, Len. Phil is making real progress now. The rest you can only leave in God’s hands.”

“And she’s not only eating but beginning to walk,” Con exulted, shaken out of her normally quiet self. “Christmas will be very happy for us all if this goes on!”

The doctor stayed only to nod at them. Then she left them, to go up to the staffroom. On the way, she met with quite a different girl. Halfway along the corridor Evelyn Ross was standing staring out of a window, and something in the face the girl turned on her as she approached made the mistress halt.

“Is anything wrong, Evelyn?” she asked kindly.

Evelyn looked at her with stunned eyes. “Oh, Dr Benson,” she began. Then she stopped, unable to go on.

Stacie Benson looked round. A nearby formroom was vacant. She slipped a hand through Evelyn’s arm and drew her in, shutting the door behind them.

“Tell me what it is, Evelyn,” she said quietly. “Perhaps I can help.”

“You can’t,” Evelyn said tonelessly. “No one can. There—there’s no help anywhere.”

“There is always help if you need it. Tell me, child, what’s wrong?”

“The Head—sent for me. Mum’s had—had a fresh haemorrhage,” Evelyn burst out. “She’s terribly ill and—and—they won’t—let me go to her!” She broke down at that. Dr Benson looked round wildly. She could cope with naughty Middles, but this was something that needed an understanding she felt to be lacking in herself. She guided the sobbing girl to a seat and stood beside her, smoothing the fair hair with one hand while she sought for something to say.

“When did this happen?” she asked at last.

“Miss Wilmot said—early this morning.”

“Didn’t she say anything more?”

“She spoke of—Mrs Maynard—but she’s gone down—to—to Interlaken. So she—Miss Wilmot—said I’d better see if I could go into lessons and—and try to occupy my mind with them—but oh! I can’t!” Evelyn ended in another storm of sobs.

Stacie Benson felt painfully helpless. She knew that nothing she could say was likely to help the girl; and yet she must not be left to cry herself sick. If only Joey hadn’t gone off to Interlaken! But she had and that was that.

In the midst of her worry, Stacie heard light, springing footsteps approaching. They paused as they neared the formroom door and she glanced round, ready to warn off any intruder. The door opened and she gave a cry of thankfulness.

“Mary-Lou! The very person! Mary-Lou, this is Evelyn Ross. Her mother is in the San and she has just heard that she has had a relapse and is gravely ill. You can help her as no one else can!”

Evelyn raised her head as Mary-Lou came forward. She saw a tall, handsome girl some years older than herself. There was deep compassion in the very blue eyes looking down at her.

“I know. Joey had heard and she told me as we came up from Interlaken. I said I’d see if I could help. I know what it means, you see, Evelyn. Oh, you poor kid!” as the tears dripped down Evelyn’s cheeks. “Try not to worry too much. It may be only a temporary lapse. I know that can happen. You see, Evelyn, my own mother died about eighteen months ago from the same thing, but she was frail for years before, so I know about it.” She turned to Stacie. “Could we go to the Annexe, do you think? There isn’t anywhere else likely to be private at this hour of the day.”

“By all means,” Stacie said. “I’ll find Miss Wilmot and tell her I sent you two to the salon.”

Mary-Lou nodded. “Thanks a lot!” She stooped over Evelyn. “Try not to cry so, Evelyn. I’m taking you to the Annexe and I’ll do all I can to help you. Truly, I do know what you feel like. I’ve had to go through it myself.”

Evelyn gulped and choked and finally managed to control her sobs. Mary-Lou got her to her feet and led her off by a private passage to the other side of the building where the Annexe was. They met no one on the way and reached haven safely. Mary-Lou put the younger girl into a chair, made sure that the heating was right, for the day was very chilly, and then came to sit down by her. Evelyn had ceased to cry, but she looked very wan and white. Mary-Lou took one of the limp hands in hers.

“It’s awfully rough luck, Evelyn. Had she been making real headway before?”

Evelyn nodded and bit her lips. She would not cry again. Besides, she was beginning to feel a little comfort from Mary-Lou’s warm personality. Her clear, bell-like voice held a deep sympathy which the embarrassed Dr Benson’s had lacked. The girl listened to what Mary-Lou had to say.

“You know, Evelyn, this sort of thing can often happen with T.B. My mother had more than one bad relapse and pulled up again. Years ago we thought she was dying, but she pulled up again and came back and she lived until the spring of last year. Quite likely your mother will do the same.”

Evelyn was listening eagerly. Somehow she felt that Mary-Lou did, indeed, know what it meant. All the same she asked, “Are you sure it may be like that? Oh, Mary-Lou—I don’t mean to be cheeky, but I don’t know your other name—there is only her. Dad died years ago when I was just a small kid. I’ve aunts, but they wouldn’t really want me. They’ve families of their own. Oh, do you really think she may pull up again?”

“Every chance, I hope,” Mary-Lou said. “And never mind my surname. Most folk just call me Mary-Lou, even now.”

“If only I could go and help nurse her! But Miss Wilmot says it wouldn’t be allowed.”

“Not at this stage. I wasn’t allowed to be with my mother. But you can help her.”

“What? But how?”

Mary-Lou flushed. “You can pray for her,” she said quietly.

It was Evelyn’s turn to redden. “O—oh! I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Then think of it now. And Evelyn; try to remember this. If God should call her, remember that He understands far, far more than we can and He always does what’s best for us though we mayn’t see it at the time. Look! I’ll run along and ask Karen for some coffee for us both. You could do with a hot drink and I never refuse a good cup of coffee. Suppose you talk to Him while I’m gone. You’ll be quite private here.”

Evelyn nodded, though she looked at the elder girl wide-eyed. So far, religion had been a mere form to her. Mary-Lou’s almost shyly-spoken words helped her to understand that it would be a real prop at a time like this.

Later, when Nancy Wilmot, full of remorse at the way she had handled the situation—Stacie had told her of its result—came to talk again with the girl, she found an Evelyn who was still desperately anxious, but who had been strengthened and helped by Mary-Lou’s words and her own response to them.

Evelyn refused to have the others told. “I—I can’t! They—they’d be coming fussing and I couldn’t bear it, not even Lesley or Jane. Oh, they’d mean to be kind, but I’d hate it. Please, no, Miss Wilmot. I’d rather you said nothing—or nothing that can be helped.”

A chastened Nancy—she had had a session with Joey who had dealt severely with her—agreed. “Very well, if that’s the way you want it. They shall only know that your mother’s not so well and I’ll see to it they don’t fuss. And Evelyn, Dr Jack has promised to ring up last thing tonight when he pays his final visit to your mother. Whatever time it is, I promise to come and tell you the latest news.”

The latest news when it came was a shade more hopeful. Mrs Ross was holding her own. She was still very ill, but at this stage every hour was a gain. Evelyn went to sleep comforted, even if those who knew wondered what the morning would bring forth. However, it was still good news. There had been no return of the haemorrhage and the heart was steadying. There was hope in that, but it was three long days before the Head could send for Evelyn to tell her that her mother had turned the corner and was once more on the upgrade.

When it was known that Mary-Lou Trelawney was really at the Platz, staying at Freudesheim, there was general rejoicing in the school. Joey Maynard apart, no other girl had made such an impression on the girls. As a prefect she had been a general favourite. As Head Girl she had continued in the tradition Joey herself had largely helped to create. Like that lady, she possessed the gift of understanding to a high degree. Also like Joey, she had gone her own way in many things with complete insouciance. It had been a legend in the school that Mary-Lou could get away with things other people would never dare to touch. An early childhood spent among much older people had given her a curiously grown-up outlook on life in many ways, though in her early years at school she had won a reputation as a perfect imp. Her influence on other girls had always been good, taken altogether, and more than one of her schoolfellows would have freely agreed that Mary-Lou had helped her more than anyone to see straight.

“But why are you here?” Len Maynard asked.

Mary-Lou grinned. “Because I caught cold and it went on my chest and stayed there. When I was better everyone said I must have a change, so I came here. What better?”

“What a sickener for you!” Con observed. “I mean it’s an interruption in your college life.”

Mary-Lou laughed. “Oh, it’s not as bad as all that. Verity wanted me to go to her, but she lives down in a valley and Oxford’s relaxing enough as it is. I wanted to be braced.” She spoke of her stepfather’s daughter by his first marriage. Mary-Lou and Verity-Anne Carey had met at school and had been bosom friends from the word “Go!”^[19] As everyone knew, Mary-Lou had been Verity’s prop and stay until the latter’s marriage nearly a year before. At the same time it is only fair to say that Verity had contrived to keep her “sister-by-marriage” from most of her wilder flights.

Now, in the prefects’ room, the ex-Head Girl was busy hearing all the news from the present prefects and they were demanding to know about their predecessors in return.

“I see Vi Lucy quite a lot,” Mary-Lou said. “She’s living with her sister Julie in term-time and doing her course in design. Hilary’s at Bedford—in her last year. Verity? Oh, she’s going all out for a big adventure. Yes,” she nodded and laughed. “I’m going to be an aunt-by-marriage next May. Exciting, isn’t it. Clem? Oh, she’s off on a trip to Corsica and young Tony is up at Oxford and having the time of his life. I see him sometimes.”

“How long are you here for?” Ted Grantley asked.

“Are you staying for the Nativity Play?” Margot chimed in. “Oh, do! Mother would write in a part for you if you did, I’m certain.”

“Talk sense! I’m here for a fortnight and no more. Don’t forget I’ve a year’s course to make up and I don’t want to miss any more lectures than I must.”

“Oh, I see.” Margot said no more and the others clamoured to know what was to happen when Mary-Lou had her degree.

“Will you go off on some archaeological expedition?” Eve Hurrell queried.

“If I’m lucky. I hope so, anyhow. It’s what I’ve wanted for a good many years now. There’s nothing to keep me in England now Verity’s married and safe, so I can go with a free mind.”

“Yes; but what about us?” Margot demanded.

“Well, what about you? My good girl, you’ll be off yourselves in another year or so. You’ll be going for your medical training somewhere. Len and Con are booked for Oxford. Eve’s down for London—still after that librarian’s job, Eve?—and everyone else is slated for some sort of adventure. You don’t need me to hold your hands I should hope!”

Nothing more was to be got out of her. Indeed, she firmly turned the conversation on to the question of the Nativity Play in which she was deeply interested.

One evening the staff invited her to coffee and conversation and she asked eager questions about the school. She knew all about Kathy Ferrars’s illness and had even found time to visit the invalid in her own home before coming out to the Görnetz Platz.

“I knew you’d all be aching to know how she is,” she said blandly.

It was good news she brought. Kathy was practically well again and beginning to rebel at the edict that she must take the rest of the term off to make good her recovery.

“Don’t be surprised if she walks in unannounced one day,” Mary-Lou said darkly. “I’d never put it past her. She says she feels fighting fit and it’s only her aunt and uncle who are making all this fuss.”

“I wish she would!” Stacie Benson sighed. “Oh, I’m managing all right, but I’ll be just as glad to see the backs of some of the Middles.”

“I thought you squashed them thoroughly after the cobbler’s-wax affair,” Miss Wilmot said. “Not that I don’t sympathize with you. I’ll rejoice when Hilda comes back again to take over. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not really cut out to be a Head Mistress. Too much correspondence for my liking!”

The others laughed heartlessly and Mdlle added, “But then, ma chère Nancy, you have never liked to write letters, have you?”

“Not I! I’m the world’s worst private correspondent. But you can’t treat official correspondence like that,” Nancy said.

“Well, I like that! You turn over every single thing you can to me!” Rosalie Dene cried.

“What else? What are you school secretary for if not that?” Nancy changed the subject. “We could do with you among the prefects just now, Mary-Lou. We’ve got a lovely problem child among the Junior Middles.”

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“One Jocelyn Marvell—in Lower IV. Sent to us by an aunt who had had enough of her and her wicked ways. She, I may say, was responsible for the cobbler’s-wax business.”

Mary-Lou chuckled. “How enterprising of her! Not original, though. Didn’t Jack Lambert stick someone’s tunic to her chair by the same means?^[20] This kid sounds like another Jack. Does she ask as many questions?”

“No, thank goodness!” This was Rosalie. “One of that kind in the school is more than enough. Jack’s still here, you know.”

“So I suppose. She’s—how old? Fifteen, isn’t it?”

“Fifteen it is.” Nancy Wilmot answered this.

There came a tap on the door at that moment and Miss Moore, being nearest, opened it. Two of Lower IV stood there, looking considerably agitated.

Miss Wilmot go up. “What is it now?” she asked resignedly.

“Please, Miss Wilmot,” Carlotta piped up, “It is that Jocelyn Marvell has fallen and banged her head against the big table and we cannot find any matron.”

“I’ll come!” Miss Wilmot vanished on the word and arrived in the Junior Middles’ commonroom to find that one matron, at any rate, was on the spot—Matey was to the fore. She was examining Jocelyn’s head and that young person was lying on the big settee, winking hard to keep the tears back. Matey glanced up.

“All right, Miss Wilmot. She’s taken a knock, but nothing to worry about. Come with me, Jocelyn, and I’ll see to it.” With an arm round Jocelyn, she marched the patient off to be sponged, have lotion dabbed on the big lump rapidly rising on the side of her head, and Miss Wilmot was left to investigate.

“What were you doing?” she demanded in no uncertain tone.

They eyed each other uncertainly. Then Anne Cooke spoke up. “Jocelyn was seeing if she could go round the room without touching the floor.”

Miss Wilmot groaned. “That old dodge! How many more times? And how was she doing it, may I ask?” she inquired after a glance round the room at the arrangement of the furniture.

“She began on the big table,” Gwen explained. “Then she jumped to the settee and ran along the seat. Then she stretched to the top of the bookcase—”

“And what did she break?” The Head’s tone was bland.

“Oh, nothing!” Gwen said hastily. “She was awfully careful.”

“I see. Well, go on!”

But Gwen had dried up at this point. It was left to Sandra to take up the tale. “You see, after that she jumped on to that table,” she pointed with an inky forefinger, “and it rocked and then fell over and she—she crashed off and against the big table-leg and—and that is all.” She came to a full stop and Miss Wilmot bit her lips as she mentally visualized the scene. But laugh she must not. She fought her giggles down and turned a severe look on the girls before her.

“Really, girls! And did none of you try to stop her?”

“We could not. It was a—a—a bet, you see,” Ottillie said.

“A bet? What do you mean?”

Sandra piped up again. “Jocelyn said it would be fun to do it and I said she couldn’t—nobody could. And she said, ‘I bet you I do!’ and so it was a bet.”

“Or just another silly dare. You’ve been forbidden to dare each other to do mad things. Will you kindly tell me the difference between a dare and a bet of that kind?”

Since they knew well enough that there was no difference, they were all silent. Miss Wilmot looked at them grimly.

“Did you know that that particular game is strictly forbidden?” she inquired, as a sudden memory came to her of a long-ago episode when the school was in Tirol and another Junior Middle had attempted the same trick and knocked herself out. Mdlle Lepâttre, who had then been Head, had issued a ukase against such doings and it still held good, though no one had thought about it of late years.

“I—we—I—I didn’t know,” Gwen stammered.

“Even if you didn’t your own commonsense should have told you that anything so dangerous was strictly forbidden. Jocelyn should have been stopped at once. Oh, don’t tell me that if you had all told her to let it alone she would have persisted. That excuse won’t hold water for a moment. And even if she had insisted on it, your job was to find a prefect or a mistress at once to come and put a stop to it. Well, you have brought your own punishment on yourselves. For the rest of this term you will not be trusted to be alone. A prefect or a mistress will be with you in here at all times. Now pick up that table and those cushions and make this room tidy. Then get your library books and read until the bell rings.”

Very meekly the form obeyed. When the room had been restored to its usual order, the Head sent Gwen to find a prefect—the first prefect she met—and ask her to bring her work and sit with them for the rest of the time before Abendessen.

It was Carmela Walther who came, and as Carmela had been at work on a stiff essay, she was none too pleased. You cannot write an essay on the growth of democracy during the nineteenth century when you are surrounded by a batch of restless Middles. Carmela picked up her French translation and arrived among them looking disgusted.

As it happened, she had no trouble with them. Miss Wilmot’s remarks, and a few more she had added while awaiting Carmela, on the danger of such stupid pranks had made a deep impression. Neither did Jocelyn return to the fold. Matron had ordained bed and further forbidden her to get up next day until her head had been seen to. Since the said head was aching violently, the culprit was thankful to obey; so the remainder of the evening was peaceful.

Next day, the school learned that rehearsals for the Nativity Play would begin at once, and thereafter quite a good deal of free time was taken up by them. Not that many of Lower IV had speaking parts, but they were in the dances that added to the gaiety of the various scenes. Then Mr Denny demanded extra time for singing practice, for quite a number of the carols and songs would be new to the school, though some of the old favourites were also included. This kept them all busy and there was a little peace.

Some of the Middles had been inclined to decry the ability of Len and the other prefects to produce a play in a way that would be in keeping with the school’s record. They soon found, however, that the grandees of the school were quite capable of doing it and, moreover, that they had to work at their parts. Incidentally, the parts had been distributed by the Head so that there should be no trouble there.

“Leave it to the prees and you know what will happen,” Miss Derwent had said. “There’ll be howls of ‘favouritism’ from half a dozen disgruntled persons. That part we must do ourselves. After that, we’ll leave them to get on with it.”

“With you as the final court of decision,” Miss Wilmot reminded her. “Now don’t start arguing about it again, Ruth. You’ve done with it before and you can do it again, and anyhow, the main responsibility lies with the prefects, so you just pipe down!”

Ruth Derwent obeyed and the committee of prefects were left to deal with it in their own way. But before the actual performance, trouble was to come.

Matey proved to be right when she said that the knock Jocelyn had sustained with her acrobatics was nothing much. That young person had an outsize in headaches at first, but Matey produced a tablet which relieved the pain and soothed her into a quiet sleep. For the next two or three days she found attending to her hair a painful process, but the lump subsided and all was well. She was returned to her House Matron who gave her strict instructions to report if she had any more headaches and then sent her off to join her form. Jocelyn went joyfully and was instantly assailed with the news that she had a speaking part in the play.

Inwardly, she was thrilled when she heard it, but it would never do to let the rest know that, after all she had said on the subject earlier. She took the information as calmly as she could and there was some reason for Carlotta’s anxious, “Aber, meine liebe Jocelyn, you will do it, nicht wahr?”

“Of course she’ll do it!” cried Gwen. “It—it—why, it’s an honour for a new girl to be given a speaking part!”

“It’s because she speaks so clearly,” Sandra remarked. “And her voice is the carrying kind.”

This was true. Jocelyn’s voice was both clear and sweet, and her diction good. All the same she continued to present an indifferent manner to them.

“It means more learning by heart,” she grumbled. “We get enough of that in lessons.” Then she added with real curiosity, “What’s anyone else doing.”

“Aimée is a rich little girl who drives The Child away,” Swanhild informed her. “Ottillie is a page in the house who has to call Aimée back.”

“Who’s doing The Child?”

“Felicity Maynard. It has to be someone small so that Nina Konstam—she’s being The Father—can pick her up and carry her. Felicity can learn by heart like anything and she’ll look the part with her very fair hair.

“And she won’t go mad with stage fright at the last moment,” Carlotta chimed in.

Dr Benson arrived at this point to take register, so the chatter had to cease. Later in the day, Jocelyn was presented with the lines she had to speak and requested to learn them by heart as fast as she could.

On the Monday evening, Jocelyn knew her words though she was hazy about her cues. However, she speedily learned them and received a well-earned pat on the back from Len. An air-mail from India in reply to her own letter telling her parents about it made her glow.

It may have been the result of the blow, or it may have been the effect of the play, but it is a fact that for almost the whole of the next week Jocelyn contrived to keep out of trouble. Unfortunately, things changed on Saturday.

It began with Jocelyn being called out of mending to go to her House Matron and explain—if she could—why her stockings were tucked away in the drawer sacred to collars, cuffs and handkerchiefs instead of in their own place. She had no excuse that Matron Henschell would accept, having in fact shoved them into the first place handy. Both drawers had to be turned out and tidied. This occupied a good twenty minutes and that meant that she was unable to finish her mending by the time the bell rang for the half-hour’s prep they always had on Saturday mornings. The mending must be finished in her free time and Jocelyn scowled. To put the finishing touch to everything, Dr Benson had set them a teaser of a problem for arithmetic homework, and try as she would, Jocelyn was unable to get any answer that even she felt would pass muster.

If they could have had their usual outdoor exercise after elevenses, all might still have been well. Unfortunately, it was a grey day with a heavy sky promising rain almost any time. The best the school managed in the way of open-air stunts was brief swift runs along the paths—and even they had to be cut short. By noon, a thin mist began to rise and everyone knew that when that sort of thing happened at this time of year there was every prospect of a thick fog. And so it proved. By the time everyone was back in the formrooms, visibility was nil and lights had to be switched on everywhere.

Len decided to make the best of things and have a rehearsal. Her fellow prefects were in full agreement and they scattered to go through the various scenes. Len called for the actors in Jocelyn’s scene. That young woman was playing the part of a cheeky urchin. Usually she was good, but today she felt sulky, not cheeky. She growled out her words; refused to run off on her exit, but crawled off at a snail’s pace and looked black as thunder throughout.

Len eyed her thoughtfully but let it go for the time being. She fully intended to get hold of Jocelyn later on and find out what was wrong. Ted Grantley, who was helping, looked meaningly at her, but Len shook her head. She continued with the rehearsal, and for some reason this made Jocelyn angrier than ever. She stood among the crowd glooming over things. Finally, when Len told them to sit down and listen while she went over the scene, commenting on their work, Jocelyn flounced down on the nearest chair with such vim that her foot caught a leg of the one in front on which small Léoline Marmont was about to sit down. The chair was hooked away. Léoline came down on the floor with a thud and up rose a yell. Ted, who had been watching, spoke up sharply as Len sprang to pick up the Junior and soothe her.

“You did that on purpose, Jocelyn Marvell! I saw you! You may leave the room and go to the commonroom until we decide whether you deserve to take part in the play or not. Go at once!”

Sullen or not, Jocelyn had had no idea of doing such a thing deliberately. It had been a pure accident and if it had been an ordinary day, six or seven people would have seen the whole thing and spoken up for her. As it was, thanks to her own grumpy behaviour, the rest had been ignoring her and no one knew exactly what had happened. She got off her chair and stumped to the door.

“You can keep your beastly play and your foul part to yourselves!” she stormed. “I couldn’t care less!” Then she dashed out, slamming the door behind her with all her force.

Ted would have brought her back to apologize, but Len was quicker. She disregarded the steady howling of Léoline who was well away by this time, and said quickly, “Let it go, Ted. I’ll attend to Miss Jocelyn’s manners and morals myself later on. We cannot waste time now.” She turned to Léoline. “Now stop crying. You aren’t killed and in this school we don’t cry for nothing. Here’s my hanky. Mop up and then settle down and hear what I’ve got to say.”

Len’s voice and manner were bracing, but she was very gentle and Léoline gulped once or twice, mopped her eyes, and finally sat up, no worse for her fall. Meanwhile Jocelyn, raging with temper, was stamping down the corridor, hating everyone and everything connected with the Chalet School. At the end of the corridor she met Dr Benson who stopped to ask what she was doing there.

“I thought you were having a rehearsal?” the doctor said.

“Well I’m not in it. They’ve chucked me out!” fumed Jocelyn.

“Chucked you out? Why?” Dr Benson sounded startled.

“Nothing! And anyhow, I don’t care! I don’t want to be in the beastly play. I hate acting and dressing-up and such flummery—”

“That’s enough!” Dr Benson said sharply. “You know quite well that such language is forbidden.”

“I don’t care! Let me go! I hate you all!” Jocelyn twisted away and pushed past the doctor to such good purpose that Stacie Benson was nearly overturned by the force of her shoving. It was only by dint of a quick jerk that the mistress regained her balance, by which time Jocelyn had vanished.

Dr Benson would certainly have gone after the recalcitrant, but in maintaining her position, she had wrenched herself. Long years ago, in her own schooldays, she had injured her spine and though the old injury was healed it had left a weakness which any bad jerk or twist found out.^[21] By the time the gong sounded for Mittagessen her back was aching badly enough for her to agree when Matey suddenly brought her up short with a question.

“A wrench?” Matey asked brusquely. “Then it’s bed for you for the present. You can’t play about with a wrench. Come along to my room and lie down on my bed. I’ll send up your meal and you can stay there until I come again.”

Stacie gave way and Matron tucked her up, administered a nostrum of her own to relieve the pain, and departed. Jocelyn, hiding in an empty formroom, thus was overlooked, for Ted had just glimpsed the collision when she went to get her handkerchief after Jocelyn’s violent eruption from the formroom. Ted took it for granted that Dr Benson had sent the girl to punishment table for rudeness and thought no more about it. It was not until their rest period that the big prefect spoke to Len while they packed away deckchairs.

“I’m glad someone told that little ass where she got off,” Ted began.

“Well, it wasn’t I,” Len returned. “Sorry to disappoint you, my love, but I haven’t set eyes on her since she slammed out of the room. As a matter of fact I thought you’d told her to feed at punishment table.”

“Not I! I’ve seen nothing of her since I heard her having a few words with Dr Benson. Oh, well, I suppose she sent the demon to punishment table. Let’s hope it’s calmed her down. One moment, Len, before we go. What do we do about her part in the play?”

“Nothing! She only said that in a rage. No one need tell me young Jocelyn doesn’t love being in it. I’ve seen her face at rehearsals and she’s keen. What’s more she’s jolly good as a rule.”

Ted nodded. “O.K., if you say so. Come on! We ought to be in Hall.”

The two big girls turned and swung off together. In Hall, Len looked round. Jocelyn was there sitting sulkily apart while the rest of her form chattered until the prefect on duty rang the bell for silence. No one took any notice of her. Her own crowd were disgusted by her behaviour that morning. In any case, as Gwen remarked, there was no reason why they should risk having their noses bitten off by trying to be nice to her if she wouldn’t meet them halfway. The fog was still pressing thickly over everything and the music staff had decided to hold a carol rehearsal for the first half-hour or so of the afternoon. That was followed by team games for those who liked them. Otherwise they might amuse themselves quietly in the commonrooms.

Jocelyn elected to read in a corner of the room, though it is to be doubted if she took in much of what she read. She sulked perseveringly throughout the afternoon and evening and when bedtime came was in a state of seething anger which needed the merest touch to set it boiling over. It got it. Ottillie, well-meaning but never tactful, spoke to her in the dormitory while they were undressing at bedtime.

Ottillie didn’t mean to upset her friend. Her idea was to try to put things right. She appeared between the curtains of the cubicle where Jocelyn was tossing off her clothes with small regard for neatness, and went straight to the point.

“Oh, Jocelyn, what, then, is wrong with you today? Are you not well?”

“I’m O.K., ta!” Jocelyn scowled at her.

“But no; that cannot be. For I have seen, me, how you have enjoyed our play and I know well you did not mean what you said about it.”

“Then you’ve seen wrong. I loathe the whole thing. Silly, babyish nonsense! Anyhow, it couldn’t happen. It’s all rot. I’m out of it now and I’m staying out. Let me alone! Go away! I don’t want you! Go away!”

Well!

Ottillie withdrew and the rest of the dormitory talked among themselves and sent Jocelyn to Coventry. Anne Cooke sympathized aloud with Ottillie over Jocelyn’s rudeness, and Jocelyn, by this time huddled under her plumeau, heard every word and squirmed with sheer fury. Long after the others were fast asleep she lay awake making plans to show them all what she thought of the Chalet School and all its works. Unfortunately, she could hit on nothing at first. She lay tossing and turning, but no practical ideas would come. It was after midnight that the great notion struck her. She would run away! That would teach them all. Just where she would run to mattered nothing to her at the moment. She would disappear and they would have a nice time looking for her. So that was settled!

With a deep sigh Jocelyn wriggled down in the bed and dropped off into a deep, sweet sleep which was considerably more than she deserved. She neither dreamed nor moved until the rising bell next day.

“Thank goodness the fog’s gone!” Len Maynard, looking out of the window of the tiny bedroom which was hers alone by virtue of being Head Girl, spoke this heart-felt comment aloud. All the same, as she set to work to dress, she kept glancing out. It was not a nice day. The sky was leaden and everywhere had a sodden look. Len decided that by the afternoon the rain would be falling again in torrents.

“Oh, well, we couldn’t have gone for much of a walk,” she thought as she sped downstairs to pull on wellingtons, raincoat and sou’wester. “Everywhere is sopping and there isn’t even a breeze to dry it out.”

Her sisters and Ted appearing at that moment, she voiced her ideas to them and they agreed with her. Warmly wrapped up, they set off for the early morning services which were held in the school’s two little chapels every Sunday. There was no time for loitering, for the chapels were a good ten minutes’ walk away at the far side of the playing-fields. Quite a number of the others hurried with them. The early services were favourites with the school and, in later years, the girls were wont to say when the subject came up that that quiet hour of worship and blessing made a beginning to the week that was a genuine help through even the busiest days.

Other folk besides the members of the Chalet School took advantage of the services. The staff of the great sanatorium turned up frequently, and visitors to the Görnetz Platz were always made welcome if they cared to attend. On this occasion Mary-Lou Trelawney turned up at the Protestant St Mary’s and there was always a contingent from Freudesheim at Our Lady of the Snows. On this occasion, Joey Maynard appeared, accompanied by five-year-old Cecil and her faithful Anna. Len had hoped for a word with her mother afterwards, but Joey was in a hurry and merely waved to her schoolgirl daughters and called out that there would be “English” tea at home that afternoon if they could get leave to come. Then she scrambled into the waiting car of a visitor who had offered a lift and was whirled away.

“Oh, well, I must get her alone for a few minutes later on,” Len said, half-aloud.

“What’s that?” Margot the quick-eared demanded.

“I just want a word in private with Mamma.”

“That’s O.K. Con and I will take the kids out of the way after tea and give you a clear run.”

“Why do you want it?” Con asked.

She got no reply then. Felicity came running up to join her elder sisters. Len merely shook her head and the subject dropped. Meanwhile, those girls who had waited for the mid-morning service and therefore had Frühstück earlier were streaming off upstairs to see to dormitory duties. The rule was that if you went to the early service you might please yourself as to whether you attended the later one or not. Most of the girls did so. Since the chapels were both in the school grounds there was no marching across except for the Junior Middles and Juniors. The rest were trusted to go by themselves in little groups.

This, naughty Jocelyn had decided, was the ideal time for her to put her plan into action. She would slip away as soon as dormitory work was done. Anyone missing her would imagine that she had gone to the earlier service. Her sulks of the day before had made it unlikely that even her own clan would go hunting for her. She would have a good start and could get well away before any inquiries as to her whereabouts could be made.

As she planned, so it turned out. She scurried through bed-making and dusting. Then, having left her cubicle as neat as usual—and it was neat; Matron saw to that!—she put her dusters away and went off downstairs to the splashery where she changed into walking-shoes, wriggled her head into her beret and pulled on her big coat. That done, she watched her opportunity until the late breakfasters had finished and gone upstairs. Then she slid into the Speisesaal where the big trolleys, loaded and waiting for the maids to wheel them through into the kitchens, still stood.

Jocelyn had no mind to fast throughout the day. She collected three or four croissants, splitting and buttering them. She dared not risk jam, but she filled an empty bottle she had found from one of the big coffee urns. That done, she listened intently before sliding out of the top door and tiptoeing down the corridor sacred to staff and prefects. From there, it was easy enough to reach a side-door that was little used. She stepped out into the garden and shut the door behind her.

Now came the trickiest part of her escape. If anyone chanced to look out of a window and see her, someone would be on her track at once and she would speedily be brought back. Luckily, as she thought, no one did. The staff quarters were all on this side of the building and the staff were too busy to waste time gazing out of windows. Jocelyn reached the shrubbery which lay above the sunken garden, hurried along the path which ran between the two and finally gained the hedge which separated the Freudesheim grounds from those of the school. She fought her way down it to the fence which cut off both gardens from the motor road. It was easy enough for an agile twelve-year-old to scale it and she dropped down into the road with triumph in her heart.

She had made no real plans about where she should go. She had no idea of making for home; she knew her aunt too well for that. If she went there, she would only be bundled ignominiously back to school. In any case, she had nothing like enough money for it. Actually, her main object was to give the Chalet School authorities a fright and worry them off their heads. She guessed they would come up with her sooner or later and then there would be the row to end all rows. Well, she didn’t care. She would have given them something to row about!

Meanwhile, she stepped out briskly along the road in the direction of Ste Cecilie, the tiny village where the Sheppards lived. Not that she meant to go so far. No fear! Mrs Sheppard might be about and she would certainly want to know what a Chalet School girl was doing there at that time of the day. Jocelyn had no intention of allowing the minds of the staff and prefects to be relieved about her as quickly as all that. Halfway along to the village there was a stream which went headlong down to pour itself in a silvery streak over the edge of the path down to the valley below. A path ran along on either side of the water and led up to a narrow shelf called the Rundbrett. How far it was, what the Rundbrett was like, and what she would do when she got there were matters Jocelyn hadn’t bothered to work out. It was enough for her that if she got there it should take the Chalet School folk some time to find her and that would give them something to worry about. In fact she was behaving like a naughty, revengeful baby and not troubling to reason about anything.

There was a risk that someone on the road might see her, but she trusted to being able to hide behind a bush or a rock before they reached her. It was a very still day and sound carried far up here. She had sharp ears and should hear anyone approaching. In fact the only thing that passed was a car bringing tourists up to the Platz and they paid no heed to her.

By the time she reached the stream, her legs were beginning to ache and she was feeling hungry. She had decided that before she attacked her rations she must be well up the path and away from the road, so she set off after a brief rest. Up and up she climbed until at last even her self-will gave in and she sank down on a tree-trunk with a sigh of relief.

“I’ll just rest and have a bite to eat,” she said aloud. “Then I’ll go on.”

But that matter was not to remain entirely in her hands. She ate one croissant wishing she had risked the jam. After so long in her pocket it had lost its freshness. Then she looked round before tackling another and it was at that moment she got the first warning of what was coming—something she had never reckoned with. One or two tiny snowflakes came drifting down and though she was anything but weatherwise, Jocelyn knew enough to realize that the sky was heavy with snow. She was in for a storm.

“How ghastly!” she exclaimed. “I must find shelter till this is over. I don’t want to be buried alive!”

In the stillness around her, her voice seemed to ring out with unnatural clarity and for the first time she was frightened. She stared round her and then up the path. She gave a cry of relief, for near the head she saw a hut. Shelter was at hand. She jumped up and set off, tiredness forgotten. The snow was still coming down slowly and lazily, but Jocelyn had heard enough from the other girls to know that presently it would quicken. She reached the hut and tried to lift the big wooden latch. It resisted her stoutest efforts and then she remembered that Miss Bertram had told them that these huts were used by the cowherds during the summer but closed up during the winter when the cattle were all down in the stables.

“Stuffy won’t describe them, I imagine, when they’re first opened up,” the mistress had said with a laugh.

Jocelyn thought that stuffy or not if she could only get in, that was all she would ask. The snow was coming down more thickly and all the stories she had read or heard about people dying in a heavy snowfall seemed to rush to her mind.

“Oh, if only there was someone to help me!” she gasped as she turned to look round the little shelf. Then: “Oh, there’s a chalet! P’raps someone is there!” She set off for the small chalet which stood at the far end of the shelf. Normally, it would have taken her no longer than ten minutes to reach it, but she was tired out by this time and the thickening downfall of snow made her feel dizzy. She stumbled more than once and finally went headlong. It seemed too much trouble to get up again. She would stay where she was for a moment or two anyhow and rest.

It is quite likely that she would have done so, but someone else had come up the path—a big someone who moved with accustomed ease and who had seen her fall and now came racing over the snow to pull her to her feet and shake her severely.

Half-dazed, Jocelyn stared at her rescuer. Then she gave a cry. “It’s Len Maynard’s Mary-Lou! Oh, Mary-Lou, how decent of you to come!” With which she subsided quietly into Mary-Lou’s strong arms and the sleep which had already invaded her gained full sway.

Though Jocelyn never knew it till much later, Mary-Lou had been on her track since the end of the mid-morning church service. Dr Benson had strolled across for it, Mary-Lou joining her. During the service, Stacie Benson had looked round for the Lower IV pest and realized that she was not there. She had meant to invite Jocelyn to tea with her and Mary-Lou that afternoon, but no Jocelyn was to be seen. The grave doctor had already consulted Mary-Lou about this latest problem child at the school.

“I wish you could take hold and do something about it, Mary-Lou,” she said. “I don’t want to bother Joey just now. If you and Jocelyn come to tea with me this afternoon I can make some excuse to leave you together and perhaps you can do something to straighten her out.”

“But why me?” Mary-Lou demanded.

“From all I hear, Joey’s mantle has fallen on you.”

“What are you getting at?”

“That you seem to have much the same gift for getting into the skins of other people. I can’t do it. I like my fellow beings reasonably well, but I can’t feel them as Joey and you can. I’m positive there’s been some sort of mistake with Jocelyn and I’d like to set it right. The thing is I don’t know how to tackle people of her age. You do. Will you take it on?”

No one ever made such an appeal to Mary-Lou in vain. She nodded. “I’ll do what in me lies. But she may be like young Margot—got a devil.^[22] You’ve heard about that, haven’t you?”

Stacie laughed. “I have. Poor Margot! Joey says she’s had a hard row to hoe all her life so far.”

Mary-Lou nodded. “Joey is right. But she’s pulling through and my own bet is that she’s going to make a fine woman in the end. O.K.; I’ll come. Will 16.00 hours do you?”

“Couldn’t be better.”

Then they had reached St Mary’s and the talk had ended. But almost throughout the service Dr Benson felt uneasy. Jocelyn was not ill or she would have heard of it. She had encountered Matey on her way back from the early service and had been told that for once no one was on the sick list. Matey had then inquired about her back.

“Mind you rest it for the next day or two,” she had said. “You’ll regret it if you don’t. You can’t afford to play with twists and wrenches!”

As Mary-Lou and the doctor made their way back to Freudesheim by the road, the latter confided her worry to the girl.

Mary-Lou gave her a surprised look. “But why are you bothering? If you ask me the young monkey was not feeling like church and hid—and got away with it for once.”

Stacie shook her head. “I don’t think it’s that at all.” She faced the tall, handsome girl. “She was feeling more deeply than that.”

“Was she? What do you think she’s done, then?”

“Tried to run away.”

“What—because she’s been turfed out of the play?”

“I think so. I know she was thrilled to have a speaking part. I think the chair business was accidental. Ted seems to have assumed that it was deliberate. I admit Jocelyn’s behaviour is every excuse for such an assumption, but if that is wrong and it really was an accident, wouldn’t you feel resentful?”

“I’d be raging!” Mary-Lou said frankly. “But why run away?”

Stacie went deeply pink. “Because she’s trying to pay the school back by making it anxious about her. I don’t know if you know what happened during my first term, but I was misunderstood and did that very thing.^[23] Jocelyn has gone from one row to another. Yesterday she was deep in the sulks. I think Ted’s remarks put the finishing touch and—well, you see what I mean.”

Mary-Lou was staring at her with eyes like blue saucers. “You mean—but how could she run away? For one thing she won’t have enough cash.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean she would try to get to England. My idea is that she’s gone off to hide in the woods and give everyone as much trouble as she can.”

“What a nice-minded youngster! But I see what you mean. What about letting Willy know, in that case?”

Stacie shook her head. “If we can manage without that, I’d rather. That would be playing right into the monkey’s hands. If we can find her and bring her back before it comes to that, it’ll be much better. I thought if you would come with me we might hunt about. I don’t suppose she’s gone far. For one thing she hasn’t been here a term and doesn’t know the district. For another she wouldn’t stick to the road in case she was seen and brought back at once. I think the woods are the best bet. The thing is I don’t know them very well. You do; so if you came with me we might hunt round and when we find her we could talk to her and get her to see how silly it was.”

“Do you mean not let the staff know at all?”

“Not for the moment. I don’t want to add to Nancy’s worries.”

“I see.” Mary-Lou looked thoughtful. “Well, if we are going we’d better do it pronto. I rather think there’s weather coming. No point letting Jocelyn catch her death of cold through a good soaking. I’ll go and change into something more suitable to the woods than my Sunday rags and then I’ll join you.” She stopped and looked keenly at the doctor. “Are you sure you’re fit enough to do a spot of scrambling. You don’t look awfully fit.”

Stacie was feeling far from fit, though the previous day’s long rest had relieved the pain in her back considerably. She shook her head, however, “I can manage. Come to my wing as soon as you can. I’ll be ready.”

But by the time she was in her own quarters the old ache had begun again and she knew that she was more likely to be a hindrance than a help to Mary-Lou. Someone else must be brought into it for she would not agree to the girl going off alone. As it turned out, Mary-Lou had no idea of it. When she arrived in the doctor’s wing she was accompanied by Joey’s great St Bernard, Bruno. She had also got hold of Jocelyn’s blazer.

“Bruno will soon smell her out,” she said. “I told Joey I was going for a trot along the coach-road to Ste Cecilie and she jumped to the conclusion that I was going to the Sheppards. So that’s O.K. And I said Jocelyn was to be with me and I wanted her blazer, so one of her own crew brought it. By the way, she seems to have been giving that lot pepper, for the kid asked me earnestly to make her see sense.”

“She’s been sulking all over the place,” Stacie said.

“I see. Well, Bruno and I will be off. I don’t suppose the little nuisance has gone far. When I’ve got her, I’ll bring her here and we’ll do what we can to make her see sense.” She paused. “Oh, and if there’s any hooha about her just say you’re going to do your best to bring her to a better frame of mind. My guess, though, is that by the time I get her here Miss Jocelyn will be nearly dead to the world and a good nap will be more her style.”

“That’s all very well, but Nancy Wilmot will almost certainly want to know why I didn’t ask her first.”

“Not she! You tell her you want to talk seriously to the kid. I gather you did make that lot see sense earlier on. Nancy will be all for it. Now we’re off. Come on, Bruno! Walkies!” She stooped and hooked a light chain into his harness. Bruno was all for it. He bounded up and, with an order to Stacie not to worry more than she must, Mary-Lou marched him off to the road where she gave him Jocelyn’s blazer to smell.

“Find her, Bruno!” she said. “Seek, boy, seek!”

Bruno quartered the ground and picked up the scent almost at once. Mary-Lou stuffed the blazer into the capacious pocket of her big coat and took to her heels to keep up with him. As soon as she could she pulled on Bruno’s chain. She knew that his present pace would tire her out before they had gone very far. “Steady, old boy,” she said. “I’ve only two legs to your four. Walk, Bruno!”

Bruno dropped his half-gallop to a steady trot and they went ahead till they had crossed the wooden bridge which carried the footway over the stream. There he turned up the path and since, by this time, he was hot on the scent, Mary-Lou had to submit to being towed round rocks and bushes and over rough ground at a pace that it took her all her time to keep up.

“Zowie!” she gasped as they reached the final stretch which ran parallel to the water. “How much further has that young demon got?”

The flakes of snow beginning to drift down made her quicken her pace. After her years in the Alps she knew what could be expected and she must find Jocelyn before it became too bad. Then Bruno gave a sudden woof and at the same moment Mary-Lou saw Jocelyn, just ahead, stagger and fall. With a yell she was on the girl, pulling her to her feet and shaking her sharply.

“Wake up—wake up! You can’t go to sleep here! Do you hear me, Jocelyn? Wake up at once!”

Luckily, they were practically at the door of the chalet and she remembered that Frau Steinmann had complained of a broken catch on one of the shutters. Mary-Lou dragged Jocelyn into the deep porch and then went round to the side where she found the shutter and after a minute of frantic wrestling, succeeded in wrenching it open. The next thing was to open the window, which she did by smashing the glass with a broken tree-branch. It was an easy matter then to scramble in, make her way to the door and open it—it was bolted on the inside—and drag a drowsy Jocelyn into the shelter of the chalet. Luckily, everything was as the mourners at Frau Steinmann’s funeral had left it. A brother in Canada was her heir and he had sent instructions that the little house was to be locked up and left until he could come home and see to things. There was wood in the shed and charcoal in one of the cupboards. Mary-Lou whisked on a fire in the big stove and then lit the cooking stove which went on charcoal. In betweenwhiles, she kept shaking Jocelyn until she had succeeded in making a pot of chocolate with melted snow and chocolat-au-laît. She forced a mugful into the reluctant Jocelyn. Thereafter, she left her to sleep. Frau Steinmann had been well stocked up with tins of soup, milk and fruit, and Mary-Lou heated soup and then woke Jocelyn up and made her drink it. By the time the mug was empty, the girl was fully roused. What was more, the snow had stopped, for the time being anyhow.

“Come on!” Mary-Lou said briefly. “We’ve got to get back pronto. Luckily, we’ve got Bruno or I shouldn’t dare to risk it. There’s more snow to come before the day’s out. Here! Take this alpenstock and use it. Come on and get your chain on, Bruno. Now let me look. Yes, the stove’s practically out and it’s all O.K. Come on, Jocelyn and don’t talk. Save your wind for walking!”

Jocelyn gave her a quick, half-scared look. Mary-Lou’s face was grim, for she knew, as Jocelyn could not, what risks they were taking. She went out to fix the broken shutter as well as she could, and then got Jocelyn and Bruno outside and pulled the door shut. That done, she told Bruno to lead the way.

“Home, boy! Home!” she said.

Bruno set off promptly and they were headed down the mountain slope, making for the road. A long and weary journey it seemed. Jocelyn was tired and it was only by dint of dragging her along that Mary-Lou was able to force her into any progress. Bruno was only anxious to get home where his dinner awaited him. Mary-Lou herself was beginning to realize that she had taken a heavy responsibility on her shoulders and only hoping that they could reach Freudesheim safely. For once she lost her normal insouciance and snapped at Jocelyn when that young woman burst into tears and protested that she just couldn’t go another step farther.

“Well, I’m afraid you must, so stop behaving like a baby and come on!” Mary-Lou snapped. “I’ve no wish to die in the snow and as I can’t leave you I’m afraid you must keep up with me. Stop that whining and come along at once!”

But help was nearer than she realized. Just as they reached the stone bridge which carried the coach-road over the stream, a car came slowly up from behind them and stopped.

“Can I give you a lift?” asked a well-known voice.

Mary-Lou uttered a yell and the door was flung open and Dr Maynard sprang out.

“Mary-Lou!” he exclaimed. Then, “No time for explanations now! In you get! There’s more snow to come. Who’s that you’ve got with you?” as Mary-Lou pushed the sobbing Jocelyn into the back of the car.

“Jocelyn,” she said briefly. “Oh, thank goodness you’ve turned up, Uncle Jack. Get in, Bruno—in! I’ll come beside you, Uncle Jack, but don’t ask for explanations at the moment. I’m done! I’ll tell you all later. Only get us to Freudesheim so that I can decant Jocelyn on Stacie.”

He gave her a quick look but did as she asked. Nor did he hear any explanation until later in the evening, by which time the school authorities knew all there was to know and Jocelyn was established in the school San to recover from the strain she had brought on herself.

Thanks to Dr Benson and Mary-Lou no one had worried in the least about Jocelyn during her escapade. It was different when they got her safely back. Miss Wilmot had to be told then, for the culprit had upset herself thoroughly. She was inclined to weep for the least thing, behaviour so foreign to her that even if the responsible pair had not confessed to the whole thing it must soon have called for explanations to the authorities.

“We might be able to keep it from Nancy,” Stacie Benson said, “but I defy you to deceive Matey. In any case it strikes me that for the next term or two Jocelyn needs a stern eye kept on her.”

“I don’t suppose Willy will do anything very awful to her,” Mary-Lou said, “but you know what Matey is. She’ll take the skin off the kid.”

“Not until she’s fit for it,” Jack Maynard who was sitting in on the discussion put in. “Jocelyn needs a good steady pull-up, but not until she’s got over her present state of weeps. Joey isn’t to know, either. The poor girl has had enough worry this year and I won’t have her bothered with that young demon.”

Stacie nodded. “I know. She’s had all the worry with little Phil—but that is clearing up now, Jack, thank God. Then she’s played deputy mother to that poor girl Evelyn Ross. Thank goodness Mrs Ross looks like recovering now, but Eugen Courvoisier told me that she’ll be frail for the rest of her life.”

Jack Maynard nodded. “Evelyn knows, Stacie. I told her myself. Joey has been talking to her too, and has helped her to see that though her own career need not be set aside, she must try to be thoughtful for her mother.”

Stacie laughed. “I doubt if anyone but our prize butter-in could have done it. I wouldn’t have taken it on for all the tea in China!”

“Nor me,” Mary-Lou murmured. “But she’ll take from Joey what she’d never take from me. I’m too near her own age. Anyhow, I’m off tomorrow by the morning ’plane and I doubt if I’ll have time to write more than a postcard to anyone. However, you’ll see me at Christmas, D.V.”

She departed for Oxford next day, but Dr Benson wrote her a full account of the sequel to Jocelyn’s antic. Matey had held her hand until the young monkey was more like herself, but then she had let herself go and by the time she had finished with Jocelyn that young woman was fully determined never to do anything that got her into Matey’s bad books again.

Miss Wilmot had been horrified by the whole thing. She had sent for Len and Ted and got a full account of the chair business so far as they knew it. Ted was apologetic to the last degree.

“I never meant to make the little ass take off like that,” she said. “I’m awfully sorry it happened. If I’d kept my temper it wouldn’t. How can I make up, Miss Wilmot?”

“Well, Jocelyn declares it was an accident and she never meant to pull the chair from under Léoline. Suppose you tell her you’ve gone into it thoroughly and you find you’ve made a mistake?” suggested the Head thoughtfully. “Give her back her part, too. That should even things up.”

Ted made a face. She was very proud and hated eating humble-pie to anyone, let alone a Junior Middle, but she was a fair-minded girl and she saw the point.

“I’ll do it,” she said, “but it’s a lesson to me not to lose my goat in future. I’m sorry you’ve had all this worry, Miss Wilmot.”

“Oh, I didn’t have it—not until the worst was over,” Nancy said serenely. “That fell to Dr Benson and Mary-Lou. But if they hadn’t assumed the responsibility I should have been hairless. By the way, Léoline wasn’t really hurt was she?”

“Only slightly bruised,” Len said. Then she added, “I’m glad Jocelyn’s to have her part back. I rather think she’s punished herself, and pretty badly, too. Matey says she’s still on the weep for almost anything. When she’s all right again and thinks back to this she’s going to be furious with herself for it. It isn’t like her at all. She won’t forget for quite some time.”

“Quite!” Miss Wilmot said dryly. “Well, I think that will finish it for you two. How are rehearsals going, by the way?”

They assured her that they were going as well as could be expected, and she dismissed them.

The next event was the return of Miss Annersley at the end of the first week in December. She received a great welcome from the school. Miss Wilmot was quite good and had made a very decent substitute, but no one could take Miss Annersley’s place. As for Nancy herself, she handed over every thing with a joyful heart and retired with alacrity to take up her own proper position as head of maths.

“And Heaven defend me from having to do that again!” she said piously. “Oh, I’m so thankful to have you back, Hilda! You mayn’t believe it, but I found my first white hair when I did it this morning.”

Miss Annersley looked thoughtfully at the honey-coloured waves which crowned her deputy’s head and laughed. “Poor you! It doesn’t seem to have aged you otherwise, though. And I’ve good news for you. Kathy Ferrars is coming back tomorrow, so we can go back to all our usual arrangements and Stacie Benson can take a rest from teaching. Thank you for all you’ve done for me, Nancy. I’m deeply grateful to you and so, I know, is the school.”

Nancy blushed for once, but already Rosalie Dene was coming with the usual piles of correspondence so she fled and thankfully left her Head to it.

Miss Ferrars got almost as joyful a reception as Miss Annersley had done. She looked her old self again and took up the reins with delight. As she told her colleagues the next evening, when they were having coffee in their sittingroom, she had been bored to tears during the last fortnight of her enforced holiday and was thankful to be at work again.

“The fact is I’m a born teacher,” she said. “I love it and don’t want anything else. Oh, how I’ve missed you all! Even including the young pests among the Middles!”

Miss Derwent handed over the conduct of the play to her, though Kathy insisted that the prefects must continue to produce it and she would only oversee their doings. She was pleased with what they had done, but under her sure hand things were pulled together amazingly by the end of her first week and rehearsals went with a swing and vim they had previously lacked.

Finally it came to the day of the play. The dress rehearsal the previous day had been the usual affair with sundry folk forgetting their lines, properties going missing and even the choir singing flat in one of the loveliest carols. However, Miss Ferrars remained tranquil throughout.

“Better have muddles today than tomorrow,” she told the worried prefects when they gathered round her. “Now stop fussing about it, girls. You can’t do another thing about it. We stand or fall by what’s been done and my advice to you is to pack it up and enjoy yourselves this evening.”

Needless to state they felt this to be impossible, but Miss Ferrars had already laid her plans and when they came down for Abendessen that evening after changing they found they were in for dancing and a series of all the silliest games the school knew. They ended up with a riotous Old Family Aeroplane, the school’s version of the hoary Old Family Coach and even Len who, as Head Girl, had felt the most responsible of the lot, went up to bed flushed, laughing and with her long, shining ponytail an untidy mop for once.

The morning was spent in clearing up for the holidays and packing, for next day saw the end of term. There was little or no time for anyone to feel harassed about the afternoon. Mittagessen was early, for as many of the girls as possible dressed at school. All angels’ wings and haloes had to be carried and put on in the dressing-rooms at St Luke’s Hall.

It had been fine ever since that freak snowstorm, except for two rainy days during the past week. On this Tuesday there was a pale December sunlight gleaming down on the frost-bitten bushes and turf and the sky was a pale, steadfast blue. The girls piled into the motor-coaches and were shortly afterwards streaming out of them and into the hall where excited Juniors were speedily quenched by very responsible prefects and informed that if they made a noise behind the scenes they would be turned out of the play even at this last minute.

Evelyn, as the Rich Merchant’s Wife, was keenly interested. Her mother was making steady progress now. She must remain for some time yet at the Sanatorium, but the doctors were all agreed that the lesions in the lungs were healing. She would never be strong again; indeed it was most improbable that she could ever live in England where the damp climate was bad for her. But otherwise, humanly speaking, she should have some years of life before her. The girl had been told all this by Joey Maynard on the previous Sunday. Joey had impressed on her that she owed it to the Sanatorium to do her best with a quite important part, or Evelyn might have been too thrilled by the news to keep her head. Now, standing quietly in a corner, she vowed to do her best.

As for Jocelyn, having been apologized to by Ted and given back her part, she was prepared to play it for all she was worth. Miss Annersley had been told the whole story, of course, and she had sent for the young sinner and talked very seriously to her. It had been a brief talk, but what the Head said went deep down into Jocelyn’s spirit and certainly had a good deal to do with the better turn her activities took thereafter.

The audience soon began to arrive and when Margot Maynard took a peep through the curtains, she was able to announce with much satisfaction that people were pouring in.

“We’re going to have HOUSE FULL,” she told her crowd joyfully.

“Don’t we always!” Con laughed. “And you’d better put your halo straight. It’s all cock-eyed at the moment.”

Then the school orchestra struck up the overture, composed for the occasion by the school’s singing master, Mr Denny. It was a fantasia on certain of the carols used in the play and as it swept up to a final triumphant chord, the curtains parted to show a back-cloth—a narrow, eastern street. A khan stood at the prompt side and from the other appeared two people—St Joseph and the Blessed Virgin. He led the tiny donkey on which She was seated across the stage and up to the door of the khan where he rapped. It was thrown open by the Landlord who was played by Ted. St Joseph was another of the prefects, Maria Zinkel, and Len Maynard played the Blessed Virgin. The Landlord refused to take in the weary travellers, though St Joseph pleaded hard. Then his wife—Audrey Everett—joined him and after listening to their story, persuaded her husband to give them the last vacant stall in the stable. It was accepted with gratitude and the curtain fell as the group went off.

Instantly the orchestra struck up the old spring carol which is better known nowadays as Good King Wenceslas, and the choir sang to it a carol which belonged to one of the very first of the school’s Nativity plays.

Next came the scene in the Rich Merchant’s house when Evelyn gave full proof of her acting ability. The Man, Woman and Child were haughtily refused help, the lady bidding them go to the charity house of the city’s Guilds. The Man said they had already been there, but there was no room for even one more. He begged hard for a trifle to enable them to pay for a room in the poorest alehouse, but he was refused. The Merchant never gave to beggars. Then one of the little girls, played by Aimée Diderot, came running to press a small coin into the Child’s hand. The window was shut, the curtains closed and when the Lady demanded of her daughter why she had done such a thing, she got the reply, “It is Christmas Eve, Mamma. We might have been refusing the Lord Christ Himself.”

“That is only a foolish legend,” the Merchant said. “Our Lord is in Heaven. You have been very silly, Gertrud. What use will a penny be to them?”

“It was all I had, Papa,” Gertrud said meekly.

The curtain fell and the choir instantly broke into an old Latin carol. Scene followed scene, all showing indifference or scorn for the plight of the wanderers who begged in vain for food, lodgings or the means to obtain them. The last of these was at a village inn where the landlord gave them a stale loaf of bread but refused them shelter in his barn. There was always the risk that such vagrants might set the place on fire and he was not going to take it.

The carol that followed this was one that Joey Maynard herself had written and the setting was composed by Nina Rutherford, who was adding fresh laurels to her old school by her concert performances and her compositions. It was sung by Margot who had a lovely soprano voice. She sang it behind the closed curtains and it rose sweet and clear to fill the hall.

The last sweet note died away and the curtains swung back to show a room in a woodman’s hut. A bare table set with wooden bowls and spoons; some stools; a stove with the customary cooking-pot on it were all the furnishings to be seen. The woodman and his five children were seated at the table. The wife was at the stove to ladle out the thin soup which was to form their Christmas Feast. There was talk among them. The smallest child asked why there was an extra place laid, and the old legend was told. As it ended, there came a rap at the door and the man rose quickly to answer it. Throwing it open, he showed the Man, the Woman, and the Child asleep in the Man’s arms. They begged for shelter and food and the Woodcutter flung the door open as widely as it would go.

“Come, Lord Jesus! Be our Guest!” he said.

What followed had taken much rehearsal, but it came off smoothly and beautifully. The light in the hut vanished. There was a blaze of light at the doorway and when it died down in its turn, the three had gone, and in place of the bare table was another, loaded with a feast, while the light was concentrated on a miniature crib, facing the audience and glowing so that all eyes were drawn to it. The curtains fell and there came the chorus, “Gloria in Excelsis Deo!” The hut darkened and the bare wall at the back of the stage showed a tableau of the stable in Bethlehem, glowing with light. From there came another sweet voice, contralto in contrast with Margot’s high clear notes. Accompanied by only the strings of the orchestra, Len Maynard sang a cradle song.

There was instant black-out as the last word ended and then the curtain fell, to rise again on the stable scene with St Joseph and the Madonna bending over the manger where the Bambino, borrowed from their own chapel, lay on the hay. The little ass was kneeling beside St Joseph. A small, golden-skinned cow stood by the Madonna, and sitting at the foot of the manger was Bruno, looking out wisely at the audience. Around this group rose tier after tier of angels and archangels, their heads bowed, their many-coloured robes making a lovely setting for the central tableau. Then, from every side came the other actors—the rich people half-amused and then wholly awed, sinking to their knees, though the Virgin beckoned the little Gertrud to stand in one arm; the tradesman and his family; the landlord of the inn and that other from the eastern khan; the woodcutter and his family; many another, including Jocelyn as a cheeky urchin who had given the Child a half-eaten apple outside the village inn. Finally, the Man, the Woman and the Child came and knelt with the rest. The Madonna rose, tall and stately in her blue robes and long white veil. She bent over the manger and lifted the Bambino, holding it up for all the world to see and worship. At once the angel choir broke into the old, well-beloved Adeste Fideles and the audience came to its feet and joined in whole-heartedly. The curtain came whispering down on the last notes and it was over.

That night, two people spoke of it to Miss Annersley when they chanced on her alone after Abendessen. The first was Evelyn.

“Somehow,” she said seriously, “I never properly realized it all before. Now—well, now I know that it did truly happen. Oh, I know I was taught that from being a small kid, but I never felt it before. The play made it real.” She looked up into the Head’s fine face and added shyly, “I think you know what I mean, don’t you?”

“Yes,” the Head said. “But you know what it means, don’t you, Evelyn?”

“That I’ve got to live up to it. Yes; and I honestly will.”

The other was Jocelyn. Staring straight into the grey-blue eyes looking into hers, she blurted out, “Why did I have to howl? I never do as a rule, but I couldn’t help it—all teary, you know.”

“Because,” said Miss Annersley, “it made you know that it all happened. And you know, too, what followed—the flight into Egypt and the murder of those other baby boys—the first of all the martyrs. The years in the carpenter’s shop—the three years of going about doing good and trying to reconcile man to God—the judicial murder of God’s Son on the cross so that we might be saved. But after that, Jocelyn, came the Resurrection and the Ascension. Don’t forget that. And don’t forget that, even if we can’t see Him on earth as Man, He is still with us and still hoping that men will turn to Him and learn from Him.”

Jocelyn nodded. “I see. Thanks, Miss Annersley.”

She went off, for early bed was the order of the day, with the long journey of tomorrow to face. But she remembered.

“Some day,” she told herself as she snuggled down under her plumeau, “I’ll be a really decent Chalet girl. Might begin next term, in fact. It’ll be hard, but I s’pose I can do it if I try. Hai-yah! I’m sleepy!” She turned over once more, tucked her hand under her cheek and yet another Chalet School girl dropped off to sleep.

[End of Challenge for the Chalet School, by Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer]