"It's a work of supererogation," added Katherine.

Maudie wrinkled up her intellectual forehead anxiously.

"Works of supererogation are supposed to count," she interposed in her precise, measured voice.

"Yes, if they're done with intention for somebody else!" flared Raymonde. "But yours aren't! They're entirely for your own pride and vanity. Do you come and translate my Latin for me in those extra half-hours? Not a bit of it!"

"Oh, that wouldn't be fair!" Maudie's tone was of shocked virtue.

"It's more unfair to heap burdens on the rest of your Form."

"I'm bound to do my best."

"The fact is," burst out Aveline, "you're suffering from an over-developed conscience. You've got an abnormal appet.i.te for work, and it ought to be checked. It isn't good for you. Promise us you won't write or learn a word out of prep. time."

Maudie shook her head sadly. Her grey eyes gleamed with the enthusiasm of the martyr spirit.

"I can't promise anything," she sighed. "Something within me urges me to work."

"Then something without you will have to put a stop to it," snapped Raymonde. "We've given you full and fair warning; so now you may look out for squalls."

When preparation was over, the girls were allowed to amuse themselves as they liked until supper. Most of them adjourned to the garden, for the evenings were getting longer and lighter every day, and the tennis courts were in quite fair condition. It was Maudie's habit to take a pensive stroll among the box-edged flower beds in the courtyard, and then repair to the cla.s.s-room again to touch up her exercises. On this particular evening Raymonde, with a contingent of the Mystic Seven, lingered behind.

"We've just about ten minutes," she announced. "Old Maudie's as punctual as a clock. She'll walk five times round the sundial and twice to the gate."

"That girl's destined for the cloister," said Aveline pityingly.

"She's evidently thirsting to live her life by rule. Mark my words, she'll eventually take the veil."

"No, she'll pa.s.s triumphantly through College and come out equal to a double-first or Senior Wrangler, or something sw.a.n.ky of that kind, and get made head mistress of a high school," prognosticated Ardiune.

"In the meantime, she won't swat any more to-night!" grinned Raymonde.

"Wait for me here, girls; I've got to fetch something."

Raymonde performed her errand with lightning speed. She returned with a lump of soft substance in one hand, and a spirit-lamp and curling-tongs in the other. Her chums looked mystified.

"Cobblers' wax!" she explained airily. "Brought some with me, in case of emergency. It's useful stuff. And I just looted Linda Mottram's curling apparatus from her bedroom. Don't you twig? What blind bats you are! I'm going to stick up Maudie's desk!"

Raymonde lighted the spirit-lamp and heated the tongs, then spreading a thick coating of the wax along the inside edge of the desk, she applied the hot iron to melt it, and put down the lid.

"It will have hardened by the time Maudie has finished her const.i.tutional among the flower beds," she giggled. "I'll guarantee when she comes back she won't be able to open her desk."

"It's only right for her to feel the pressure of public opinion,"

decreed Ardiune. "We're working in a good cause."

"But we're modest about it, and don't want to push ourselves forward,"

urged Raymonde. "I vote we go for a stroll down to the very bottom of the orchard, near the moat."

A quarter of an hour later, Miss Beasley and Miss Gibbs were sitting together in the Princ.i.p.al's study enjoying a well-earned period of repose and a chat. Their conversation turned upon the varied dispositions of their pupils.

"Maudie Heywood strikes me as a very earnest character," observed Miss Beasley, toying with the violets in her belt. "Her work is really excellent."

"Almost too good," agreed Miss Gibbs, who was perhaps beginning to find out that Maudie's exercises took twice as long to correct as anybody else's, and thus sensibly curtailed her teacher's leisure.

"The child is so conscientious. In my opinion she needs to concentrate more on physical exercise. I should like to see her in the tennis courts instead of copying out reams of poetry."

"Yes," said Miss Beasley, looking thoughtful. "Her activities perhaps need a little adjustment. We mustn't allow her to neglect her health.

She looks over-anxious sometimes for a girl of fifteen."

"She is always such a calm, self-controlled, well-regulated child,"

remarked Miss Gibbs appreciatively.

At that moment there was a hurried rap-tap-tap; the door opened, and Maudie burst in unannounced. Her calm self-control had yielded to an agitated condition of excitement and indignation. Her earnest eyes were flashing angry sparks, and her cheeks were crimson.

"Oh, Miss Beasley!" she began, "those girls have actually gone and stuck up my desk, so that I can't get out my books. They say I work overtime, and it's not fair, for if I like to work, why shouldn't I? I just detest the whole lot of them! I hate this place!"

"I think you're forgetting yourself, Maudie," returned the Princ.i.p.al.

"It is hardly good manners to enter my study so abruptly and to speak in this way to me. If you wish to please me, I should much prefer you to spend your leisure time at games instead of lessons. To-morrow evening I hope to see you playing tennis. If you ask the cook for a screw-driver you'll probably be able to wedge open your desk easily.

But in future you'll be wiser to confine your work to the preparation hours. The bow must be unstrung sometimes, or your health will suffer.

If you join with the other girls at their games you'll soon get to know them, and feel more at home here. Try to be sociable and make yourself liked. Part of the training of school life is to learn to accommodate yourself to a community."

The crestfallen Maudie retired, murmuring apologies. Miss Beasley picked up her copy of _The Graphic_ and laughed.

"As a rule, we may trust the girls themselves to do any necessary pruning. They're the strictest Socialists that could be imagined. They instinctively have all the principles of a trade union about them. On the whole, it's good for Maudie to be restrained. A little innocent practical joke will do her no harm for once. She must be able to take her share of teasing. Humour is her one deficiency."

"I think I can guess who's at the bottom of the business," sniffed Miss Gibbs. "Raymonde Armitage is the naughtiest girl in the school."

"Pardon me!" corrected Miss Beasley. "The most mischievous, perhaps, and the most troublesome; full of bubbling spirits and misplaced energy, but straightforward and truthful. There is something very lovable about Raymonde."

CHAPTER III

The Limberlost

Everybody agreed that Marlowe Grange was an ideal spot for a school.

The picturesque old orchard and grounds provided an almost unlimited field of amus.e.m.e.nt. Those girls who were interested in horticulture might have their own little plots at the end of the potato patch, and a delightful series of experiments had been started down by the moat, where a real, genuine water-garden was in process of construction.

Here, duly shod in rubber waders, a few enthusiasts toiled almost daily, planting iris and arrow-head and flowering rush, and sinking water-lily roots in old wicker baskets weighted with stones. There was even a scheme on hand to subscribe to buy a punt, but Miss Beasley had frowned upon the idea as containing too great an element of danger, and of consequent anxiety for teachers.

"I don't want a set of Ophelias drowning themselves among the willows and the long purples!" she remarked firmly. "If we bought a punt, we should need a drag and a life-belt as well. You shall go for a row on the river sometimes during the summer, and that must content you.

There are plenty of occupations on dry land to amuse yourselves with."

The Grange certainly contained ample s.p.a.ce for interests of every description. The old farm buildings made sheds for carpentry and wood-carving, or any other work that was too messy for the schoolrooms. Under the direction of Miss Gibbs, some of the elder girls were turning the contents of a wood pile into a set of rustic garden seats, and other industrious spirits had begun to plait osierwithes into baskets that were destined for blackberry picking in the autumn. The house itself was roomy enough to allow hobbies to overflow. Miss Beasley, who dabbled rather successfully in photography, had a conveniently equipped dark-room, which she lent by special favour to seniors only, on the understanding that they left it as they found it. Miss Gibbs had taken possession of an empty attic, and had made it into a scientific sanctum. So far none of the girls had been allowed to peep inside, and the wildest rumours were afloat as to what the room contained. Batteries and other apparatus had been seen to be carried upstairs, and those scouts who had ventured along the forbidden upper landing reported that through the closed door they could hear weird noises as of turning wheels or bubbling crucibles. It was surmised in the school that Miss Gibbs, having found a congenial mediaeval atmosphere for her researches, was working on the lines of the ancient alchemists, and attempting to discover the elixir of life or the philosopher's stone. One fact was certain. Miss Gibbs had set up a telescope in her solitary attic. She had bought it second-hand, during the holidays, from the widow of a coastguardsman, and with its aid she studied the landscape by day and the stars by night. The girls considered she kept a wary eye on watch for escaped Germans or Zeppelins, and regarded the instrument in the light of a safeguard for the establishment.

"Besides which, anything's a blessing that takes Gibbie upstairs and keeps her from buzzing round us all the time," averred Raymonde.

"She's welcome to keep anything she likes in her room, from a stuffed crocodile to a snake in a bottle!" yawned Fauvette. "All I ask is that she doesn't take me up and improve my mind. I'm getting fed up with hobbies. I can't show an intelligent interest in all. My poor little brains won't hold them. What with repousse work and stencilling and chip carving, I hardly ever get half an hour to enjoy a book. My idea of a jinky time is to sit by the moat and read, and eat chocolates. By the by, has that copy of _The Harvester_ come yet? Hermie promised to get it for the library."