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The Luckiest Girl in the School

by Angela Brazil · English · Gutenberg #18019 · 442,176 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Luckiest Girl in the School

Author: Angela Brazil


        
Release date: March 19, 2006 [eBook #18019]
                Most recently updated: December 13, 2020

Language: English

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THE LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE SCHOOL

by

ANGELA BRAZIL

Author of
"A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl,"
"The Princess of the School,"
"A Popular Schoolgirl,"
"The Head Girl at the Gables."

Illustrated by Balliol Salmon







[Illustration: "'THOSE AREN'T MY PAPERS,' WINONA FALTERED"]




A. L. Burt Company
Publishers New York
Published by arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Company Printed in
U.S.A.
Copyright, 1916, by
Frederick A. Stokes Company
All Rights Reserved
First Published in the United States of America, 1922.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I.     A GREAT CHANGE

II.    AN ENTRANCE EXAMINATION

III.   SEATON HIGH SCHOOL

IV.    THE SYMPOSIUM

V.     AUNT HARRIET

VI.    A CRISIS

VII.   AN AUTUMN FORAY

VIII.  CONCERNS A CAMERA

IX.    THE SCHOOL SERVICE BADGE

X.     A SCARE

XI.    THE OPEN-AIR CAMP

XII.   CAPTAIN WINONA

XIII.  THE HOSTEL

XIV.   THE HOCKEY SEASON

XV.    WINONA TURNS CHAUFFEUR

XVI.   THE ATHLETIC DISPLAY

XVII.  BACK TO THE LAND

XVIII. A FRIEND IN NEED

XIX.   THE SWIMMING CONTEST

XX.    THE RED CROSS HOSPITAL

XXI.   THE END OF THE TERM




THE LUCKIEST GIRL IN THE SCHOOL




CHAPTER I

A Great Change


"There's no doubt about it, we really must economize somehow!" sighed
Mrs. Woodward helplessly, with her housekeeping book in one hand, and
her bank pass-book in the other, and an array of bills spread out on the
table in front of her. "Children, do you hear what I say? The war will
make a great difference to our income, and we can't--simply _can't_--go
on living in exactly the old way. The sooner we all realize it the
better. I wish I knew where to begin."

"Might knock off going to church, and save the money we give in
collections!" suggested Percy flippantly. "It must tot up to quite a
decent sum in the course of a year, not to mention pew rent!"

His mother cast a reproachful glance at him.

"Now, Percy, _do_ be serious for once! You and Winona are quite old
enough to understand business matters. I must discuss them with
somebody. As I said before, we shall really have to economize somehow,
and the question is where to begin."

"I saw some hints in a magazine the other day," volunteered Winona,
hunting among a pile of papers, and fishing up a copy of _The
Housewife's Journal_. "Here you are! There's a whole article on War
Economies. It says you can halve your expenses if you only try. It gives
ten different recipes. Number One, Dispense with Servants. Oh, goody! I
don't know how the house would get along without Maggie and Mary! Isn't
that rather stiff?"

"It's impossible to be thought of for a moment! I should never dream of
dismissing maids who have lived with me for years. I've read that
article, and it may be practicable for other people, but certainly not
for us. Oh, dear! Some of my friends recommend me to remove to the town,
and others say 'Stay where you are, and keep poultry!'"

"We can't leave Highfield! We were all born here!" objected Winona
decisively.

"And we tried keeping hens some time ago," said Percy. "They laid on an
average three-quarters of an egg a year each, as far as I remember."

"I'm afraid we didn't know how to manage them," replied Mrs. Woodward
fretfully. "Percy, leave those papers alone! I didn't tell you to turn
them over. You're mixing them all up, tiresome boy! Don't touch them
again! It's no use trying to discuss business with you children! I shall
write and consult Aunt Harriet. Go away, both of you, now! I want to
have a quiet half-hour."

Aunt Harriet stood to the Woodward family somewhat in the light of a
Delphic oracle. To apply to her was always the very last resource.
Matters must have reached a crisis, Winona thought, if they were
obliged to appeal to Aunt Harriet's judgment. She followed Percy into
the garden with a sober look on her face.

"You don't think mother would really leave Highfield?" she asked her
brother anxiously.

"Bunkum!" replied that light-hearted youth. "We always have more or less
of a fuss when my school bills come in. It'll soon fizzle out again!
Don't you fret yourself. Things will jog on as they always have jogged
on. There'll be nothing done, you'll see. Come on and bowl for me,
that's a chubby one!"

"But this time mother really seemed to be in earnest," said Winona
meditatively, as she helped to put up the stumps.

Mrs. Woodward had been left a widow three years before this story opens.
She was a fair, fragile little woman, still pretty, and pathetically
helpless. She had been accustomed to lean upon her husband, and now, for
lack of firmer support, she leaned upon Winona. Winona was young to act
as prop, and though it flattered her sense of importance, it had put a
row of wrinkles on her girlish forehead. At fifteen she seemed much
older than Percy at sixteen. No one ever dreamt of taking Percy
seriously; he was one of those jolly, easy-going, happy-go-lucky,
unreliable people who saunter through life with no other aim than to
amuse themselves at all costs. To depend upon him was like trusting to a
boat without a bottom. Though nominally the eldest, he had little more
sense of responsibility than Ernie, the youngest. It was Winona who
shouldered the family burdens.

The Woodwards had always lived at Highfield, and in their opinion it was
the most desirable residence in the whole of Rytonshire. The house was
old enough to be picturesque, but modern enough for comfort. Its quaint
gables, mullioned windows and Cromwellian porch were the joy of
photographers, while the old-fashioned hall, when the big log fire was
lighted, would be hard to beat for coziness. The schoolroom, on the
ground floor, had a separate side entrance on to the lawn, leading
through a small ante-room where boots and coats and cricket bats and
tennis rackets could be kept; the drawing-room had a luxurious ingle
nook with cushioned seats, and all the bedrooms but two had a southern
aspect. As for the big rambling garden, it was full of delightful
old-world flowers that came up year after year: daffodils and violets
and snow-flakes, and clumps of pinks, and orange lilies and Canterbury
bells, and tall Michaelmas daisies, and ribbon grass and royal Osmunda
fern, the sort of flowers that people used to pick in days gone by, put
a paper frill round, and call a nosegay or a posy. There was a lawn for
tennis and cricket, a pond planted with irises and bulrushes, and a wild
corner where crocuses and coltsfoot and golden aconite came up as they
liked in the spring time.

Winona loved this garden with somewhat the same attachment that a French
peasant bears for the soil upon which he has been reared. She rejoiced
in every yard of it. To go away and resign it to others would be
tragedy unspeakable. The fear that Aunt Harriet might recommend the
family to leave Highfield was sufficient to darken her horizon
indefinitely. That her mother had written to consult the oracle she was
well aware, for she had been sent to post the letter. She had an
instinctive apprehension that the answer would prove a turning-point in
her career.

For a day or two everything went on as usual. Mrs. Woodward did not
again allude to her difficulties, Percy had conveniently forgotten them,
and the younger children were not aware of their existence. Winona lived
with a black spot dancing before her mental eyes. It was continually
rising up and blotting out the sunshine. On the fourth morning appeared
a letter addressed in an old-fashioned slanting handwriting, and bearing
the Seaton post mark. Mrs. Woodward read it in silence, and left her
toast unfinished. Aunt Harriet's communications generally upset her for
the day.

"Come here, Winona," she said agitatedly, after breakfast. "Oh, dear, I
wish I knew what to do! It's so very unexpected, but of course it would
be a splendid thing for you. If only I could consult somebody! I suppose
girls nowadays will have to learn to support themselves, and the war
will alter everything, but I'd always meant you to stop at home and look
after the little ones for me, and it's very--"

"What does Aunt Harriet say, mother?" interrupted Winona, with a catch
in her throat.

"She says a great deal, and I dare say she's right. Oh, this terrible
war! Things were so different when I was a girl! You might as well read
the letter for yourself, as it concerns you. I always think she's hard
on Percy, poor lad! I was afraid the children were too noisy the last
time she was here, but they wouldn't keep quiet. I'm sure I try to do my
best all round, and you know, Winona, how I said Aunt Harriet--"

But Winona was already devouring the letter.


                                        "10 Abbey Close,

                                                  "Seaton,

                                                    "August 26th.

        "MY DEAR FLORITA,--You are quite right to consult me
        in your difficulties, and are welcome to any advice which I am
        able to offer you. I am sorry to hear of your financial
        embarrassments, but I am not surprised. The present increase in
        the cost of living, and extra taxation, will make retrenchments
        necessary to everybody. In the circumstances I should not advise
        you to leave Highfield. ("Oh, thank goodness!" ejaculated
        Winona.) The expense of a removal would probably cancel what you
        would otherwise save. Neither should I recommend you to take
        Percy from Longworth College and send him daily to be coached by
        your parish curate. From my knowledge of his character I
        consider the discipline of a public school to be indispensable
        if he is to grow into worthy manhood, and sooner than allow the
        wholesome restraint of his house master to be removed at this
        critical portion of his life, I will myself defray half the cost
        of his maintenance for the next two years.

        "Now as regards Winona. I believe she has ability, and it is
        high time to begin to think seriously what you mean to do with
        her. In the future women will have to depend upon themselves,
        and I consider that all girls should be trained to gain their
        own living. The foundation of every career is a good
        education--without this it is impossible to build at all, and
        Winona certainly cannot obtain it if she remains at home. The
        new High School at Seaton is offering two open Scholarships to
        girls resident in the County, the examination for which is on
        September 8th. I propose that Winona enters for this
        examination, and that if she should be a successful candidate,
        she should come to live with me during the period of her
        attendance at the High School. The education is the best
        possible, there is a prospect of a University Scholarship to be
        competed for, and every help and encouragement is given to the
        girls in their choice of a career. With Winona off your hands, I
        should suggest that you should engage a competent nursery
        governess to teach the younger children the elements of order
        and discipline. I would gladly pay her salary on the
        understanding that I should myself select her.

        "Trusting that these proposals may be of some service, and
        hoping to hear a better account of your health,

                                                "I remain,

                                        "Your affectionate Aunt

                                                  "and Godmother,

                                                        "Harriet Beach."



Winona laid down the letter with an agitated gasp. The proposition
almost took her breath away.

"What an idea!" she exclaimed indignantly. "Mother, of course you won't
even dream of it for an instant! I'd _hate_ to go and live with Aunt
Harriet. It's not to be thought of!"

"Well, I don't know, Winona!" wavered Mrs. Woodward. "We must look at it
from all sides, and perhaps Aunt Harriet's right, and it really would be
for the best. Miss Harmon's a poor teacher, and I'm sure your music, at
any rate, is not a credit to her. You played that last piece shockingly
out of time. You know you said yourself that you were getting beyond
Miss Harmon!"

Whatever impeachments Winona may have brought against her teacher, she
was certainly not prepared to admit them now. She rejected the project
of the Seaton High School with the utmost energy and determination,
bringing into the fray all that force of character which her mother
lacked. Poor Mrs. Woodward vacillated feebly--she was generally swayed
by whoever was nearest at the moment--and I verily believe Winona's
arguments would have prevailed, and the whole scheme would have been
abandoned, had not Mr. Joynson opportunely happened to turn up.

Mr. Joynson was a solicitor, and the trustee of Mrs. Woodward's
property. He managed most of her business affairs, and some of her
private ones as well. She had confidence in his judgment, and she at
once thankfully submitted the question of Winona's future to his
decision.

"The very thing for her!" he declared. "Do her a world of good to go to
a proper school. She's frittering her time away here. Send her to Seaton
by all means. What are you to do without her? Nonsense! Nobody's
indispensable--especially a girl of fifteen! Pack her off as soon as you
can. Doesn't want to go? Oh, she'll sing a different song when once she
gets there, you'll see!"

Thus supported by masculine authority, Mrs. Woodward settled the
question in the affirmative, and replied to her aunt by return of post.

Naturally such a stupendous event as the exodus of Winona made a
sensation in the household.

"Well, of all the rum shows!" exclaimed Percy. "You and Aunt Harriet in
double harness! It beats me altogether!"

"It's atrocious!" groaned Winona. "I'm a victim sacrificed for the good
of the family. Oh! why couldn't mother have thought of some other way of
economizing? I don't want to win scholarships and go in for a career!"

"Buck up! Perhaps you won't win! There'll be others in for the exam.,
you bet! You'll probably fail, and come whining home like a whipped
puppy with its tail between its legs!"

"Indeed I shan't!" flared Winona indignantly. "I've a little more spirit
than that, thank you! And why should you imagine I'm going to fail? I
suppose I've as much brains as most people!"

"That's right! Upset the pepper-pot! I was only trying to comfort you!"
teased Percy. "In my opinion you'll be returned like a bad halfpenny,
or one of those articles 'of no use to anybody except the owner.' Aunt
Harriet will be cheated of her prey after all!"

"If Win goes away, I shall be the eldest daughter at home," said Letty
airily, shaking out her short skirts. "I'll sit at the end of the table,
and pour out tea if mother has a headache, and unlock the apple room,
and use the best inkpot if I like, and have first innings at the piano."

"You forget about the nursery governess," retorted Winona. "If I go, she
comes, and you'll find you've exchanged King Log for King Stork. Oh,
very well, just wait and see! It won't be as idyllic as you imagine. I
shall be saved the trouble of looking after you, at any rate."

"What I'm trying to ascertain, madam," said Percy blandly, "is whether
your ladyship wishes to take up your residence in Seaton or not. With
the usual perversity of your sex you pursue a pig policy. When I venture
to picture you seated at the board of your venerable aunt, you protest
you are a sacrifice; when, on the other hand, I suggest your return to
the bosom of your family, you revile me equally."

"You're the most unsympathetic _beast_ I've ever met!" declared Winona
aggrievedly.

When she analyzed her feelings, however, she was obliged to allow that
they were mixed. Though the prospect of settling down at Seaton filled
her with dismay, Percy's gibe at her probable failure touched her pride.
Winona had always been counted as the clever member of the family. It
would be too ignominious to be sent home labeled unfit. She set her
teeth and clenched her fists at the bare notion.

"I'll show them all what I can do if I take a thing up!" she resolved.

In the meantime Mrs. Woodward was immersed in the subject of clothing.
Every post brought her boxes of patterns, amongst which she hesitated,
lost in choice.

"If I knew whether you're really going to stay at Seaton or not, it
would make all the difference, Winona," she fluttered. "It's no use
buying you these new things if you're only to wear them at home, but I'd
make an effort to send you nice to Aunt Harriet's. I know she'll
criticize everything you have on. Dear me, I think I'd better risk it!
It would be such a nuisance to have to write for the patterns all over
again, and how could I get your dresses fitted when you weren't here to
be tried on? Miss Jones is at liberty now, and can come for a week's
sewing, but she'll probably be busy if I want her later. Now tell me,
which do you really think is the prettier of these two shades? I like
the fawn, but I believe the material will spot. What have you done with
the lace collar Aunt Harriet gave you last Christmas? She's sure to ask
about it if you don't wear it!"

Having decided that on the whole she intended to win a scholarship,
Winona bluffed off the matter of her departure.

"I've changed my mind, that's all," she announced to her home circle.
"It will be a great comfort to me not to hear Mamie scraping away at her
violin in the evenings, or Letty strumming at scales. Think what a
relief not to be obliged to rout up Dorrie and Godfrey, and haul them
off to school every day! I'm tired of setting an example. You needn't
snigger!"

The family grinned appreciatively. They understood Winona.

"Don't you worry! I'll set the example when you're gone," Letty assured
her. "I'll be as improving as a copy-book. I wish I'd your chance; I'd
stand Aunt Harriet for the sake of going to a big High School. Younger
sisters never have any luck! Eldests just sweep the board. I don't know
where we come in!"

"Don't you fret, young 'un, you'll score later on!" cooed an indulgent
voice from the sofa, where Percy sprawled with a book and a bag of
walnuts. "Remember that when you're still in all the bliss and sparkle
of your teens, Winona'll be a mature and _passée_ person of twenty-two.
'That eldest Miss Woodward's getting on, you know!' people will say, and
somebody'll reply: 'Yes, poor thing!'"

"They won't when I've got a career," retorted Winona, pelting Percy with
his own walnut-shells.

"You assured us the other day that you despised such vanities."

"Well, it depends. Perhaps I'll be a lady tram conductor, and punch
tickets, or a post-woman, or drive a Government van!"

"If those are careers for girls, bag me for a steeple jack," chirped
Dorrie.

It was perhaps a good thing for Winona that such a short interval
elapsed between the acceptance of Aunt Harriet's proposal and the date
of the scholarship examination. The ten days were very busy ones, for
there seemed much to be done in the way of preparation. Miss Jones, the
dressmaker, was installed in the nursery with the sewing-machine, and
demanded frequent tryings-on, a process Winona hated.

"I shall buy all my clothes ready made when I'm grown up!" she declared.

"They very seldom fit, and have to be altered," returned her mother. "Do
stand still, Winona! And I hope you're learning up a few dates and facts
for this examination. You ought to be studying every morning. If only
Miss Harmon were home, I'd have asked her to coach you. I'm afraid
she'll be disappointed at your leaving, but of course she can't expect
to keep you for ever. I heard a rumor that she means to give up her
school altogether, and go and live with her uncle. I hope it's true, and
then I can take the little ones away with an easy conscience. I don't
want to treat her badly, poor thing, but I'm sure teaching's not her
vocation."

Winona really made a heroic effort to prepare herself for the coming
ordeal. She retired to a secluded part of the garden and read over her
latest school books. The process landed her in the depths of
despondency.

"I'll never remember anything--never!" she mourned to her family. "To
try and get all this into my head at once is like bolting a week's meals
at a single go! I know a date here and there, and I've a hazy notion of
French and Latin verbs, and a general impression of other subjects, but
if they ask me for anything definite, such as the battles of the Wars of
the Roses, or a list of the products of India, I'm done for!"

"Go in for Post-Impressionism, then," suggested Percy. "Write from a
romantic standpoint, and don't condescend to mere facts. Stick in a
quotation or two, and a drawing if possible, and make your paper sound
eloquent and dramatic and poetical, and all the rest of it. They'll mark
you low for accuracy, but put you on ten per cent. for style, you bet! I
know a chap who tries it on at the Coll., and it always pays."

"It's worth thinking about, certainly," said Winona, shutting her books
with a weary yawn.




CHAPTER II

An Entrance Examination


The Seaton High School was a large, handsome brick building exactly
opposite the public park. It had only been erected two years ago, so
everything about it was absolutely new and up-to-date. It supplied a
great need in the rapidly growing city, and indeed offered the best and
most go-ahead education to be obtained in the district.

It was the aim of the school to fit girls for various professions and
careers; there was a classical and a modern side, a department for
domestic economy, and a commercial class for instruction in business
details. Art, music, and nature study were well catered for, and manual
training was not forgotten. As the school was intended to become in time
a center for the county, the Governors had offered two open free
scholarships to be competed for by girls resident in other parts of
Rytonshire, hoping by this means to attract pupils from the country
places round about.

On the morning of September 8th, precisely at 8.35, Winona presented
herself at the school for the scholarship examination. There were twenty
other candidates awaiting the ordeal, in various stages of nervousness
or sangfroid. Some looked dejected, some confident, and others hid their
feelings under a mask of stolidity. Winona joined them shyly. They were
all unknown to one another, and so far nobody had plucked up courage to
venture a remark. It is horribly depressing to sit on a form staring at
twenty taciturn strangers. Winona bore for awhile with the stony
silence, then--rather frightened at the sound of her own voice--she
announced:

"I suppose we're all going in for this same exam.!" It was a trite
commonplace, but it broke the ice. Everybody looked relieved. The
atmosphere seemed to clear.

"Yes, we're all going in--that's right enough," replied a ruddy-haired
girl in spectacles, "but there are only two scholarships, so nineteen of
us are bound to fail--that's logic and mathematics and all the rest of
it."

"Whew! A nice cheering prospect. Wish they'd put us out of our misery at
once!" groaned a stout girl with a long fair pigtail.

"I'm all upset!" shivered another.

"It's like a game of musical chairs," suggested a fourth. "We're all
scrambling for the same thing, and some are bound to be out of it."

The ruddy-haired girl laughed nervously.

"Suppose we've got to take our sporting luck!" she murmured.

"If nineteen are sure to lose, two are sure to win at any rate," said
Winona. "That's logic and mathematics and all the rest of it, too!"

"Right you are! That's a more cheering creed! It doesn't do to cry
'Miserere me' too soon!" chirped a jolly-looking dark-eyed girl with a
red hair-ribbon. "'Never say die till you're dead,' is my motto!"

"I'm wearing a swastika for a mascot," said a short, pale girl,
exhibiting her charm, which hung from a chain round her neck. "I never
am lucky, so I thought I'd try what this would do for me for once. I
know English history beautifully down to the end of Queen Anne, and no
further, and if they set any questions on the Georges I'll be stumped."

"I've learnt Africa, but Asia would floor me!" observed another, looking
up from a geography book, in which she was making a last desperate
clutch at likely items of knowledge. "I never can remember which side of
India Madras is on; I get it hopelessly mixed with Bombay."

"I wish to goodness they'd go ahead and begin," mourned the owner of the
red hair-ribbon. "It's this waiting that knocks the spirit out of me.
Patience isn't my pet virtue. I call it cruelty to animals to leave us
on tenter-hooks."

Almost as if in answer to her pathetic appeal the door opened, and a
teacher appeared. In a brisk, business-like manner she marshaled the
candidates into line, and conducted them to the door of the
head-mistress' study, where one by one they were admitted for a brief
private interview. Winona's turn came about the middle of the row.

"Pass in: as quickly as you can, please!" commanded the teacher,
motioning her onward.

As Winona entered, she gave one hasty comprehensive glance round the
room, taking in a general impression of books, busts and pictures, then
focussed her attention on the figure that sat at the desk. It was only
at a later date that she grasped any details of Miss Bishop's
personality; at that first meeting she realized nothing but the pair of
compelling blue eyes that drew her forward like a magnet.

"Your name?"

"Winona Woodward."

"Age?"

"Fifteen."

"Residence?"

"Highfield, Ashbourne, near Great Marston."

"How long have you lived in the county of Rytonshire?"

"Ever since I was born."

Miss Bishop hastily ticked off these replies on a page of her ledger,
and handed Winona a card.

"This will admit you to the examination room. Remember that instead of
putting your name at the head of your papers, you are to write the
number given you on your card. Any candidate writing her own name will
be disqualified. Next girl!"

It was all over in two minutes. Winona seemed hardly to have entered the
room before she was out again.

"Move on, please!" said the teacher, marshaling the little crowd round
the door. "Will those who have seen Miss Bishop kindly go along the
corridor."

Several girls who had been standing in a knot made a sudden bolt, and
pushed their fellows forward. Somebody jogged Winona's elbow. Her card
slid from her grasp and fell on to the ground. As she bent in the crush
to pick it up, the ruddy-haired girl stooped on a like errand.

"Dropped mine too! Clumsy, isn't it?" she laughed. "Hope we've got our
own! What was your number?"

"I hadn't time to look."

"Well, I'm sure mine was eleven, so that's all right. I wish you luck!
Won't we just be glad when it's over, rather!"

At the further end of the corridor was a door with a notice pinned on to
it. "Examination for County Scholarships." A mistress stood there, and
scrutinized each girl's card as she entered, directing her to a seat in
the room marked with the corresponding number. Winona walked rather
solemnly to the desk labeled 10. The great ordeal was at last about to
begin. She wondered what would be the end of it. Little thrills of
nervousness seemed running down her back like drops from a shower-bath.
Her hands were trembling. With a great effort she pulled herself
together.

"It's no use funking!" she thought. "I'll make as good a shot as I can
at things, and if I fail--well, I shall have plenty of companions in
misfortune, at any rate!"

A pile of foolscap paper with red-ruled margins, a clean sheet of white
blotting paper, and a penholder with a new nib lay ready. Each of the
other twenty victims was surveying a supply of similar material. On the
blackboard was chalked the word "Silence."

In a dead hush the candidates sat and waited. Exactly on the stroke of
nine Miss Bishop entered and handed a sheaf of printed questions to the
teacher in charge, who distributed them round the room. The subject for
the first hour was arithmetic. Winona read over her paper slowly. She
felt capable of managing it, all except the last two problem sums, which
were outside her experience. She knew it would mainly be a question of
accuracy.

"I'll work them each twice if I've only time," she thought, starting at
number one.

An hour is after all only made up of sixty minutes, and these seemed to
fly with incredible rapidity. The teacher on the platform had sternly
reproved a girl guilty of counting aloud in an agitated whisper,
threatening instant expulsion for a repetition of such an offense, but
with this solitary exception nobody transgressed the rules. All sat
quietly absorbed in their work, and an occasional rustle of paper or
scratch of a pen were the only sounds audible. At precisely five minutes
to ten the deity on the platform sounded a bell, and ordered papers to
be put together. She collected them, handed them to another mistress,
then without any break proceeded to deal out the questions for the next
hour's examination. This was in geography, and here Winona was not on
such sure ground. Granted that you are acquainted with certain rules in
arithmetic, it is always possible to work out problems, but it needed
more knowledge than she possessed to write answers to the riddles that
confronted her. She had never heard of "The Iron Gates," could not place
Alcona and Altona, was hazy as to the whereabouts of the Mourne
Mountains, and utterly unable to draw an accurate map of the Balkan
States. She scored a little on Canada, for she had learnt North America
last term at Miss Harmon's, but with Australia and New Zealand she was
imperfectly acquainted. She wrote away, getting hotter and hotter as she
realized her deficiencies, winding up five minutes before the time
allotted, in a flushed and decidedly inky condition.

At eleven a short interval was allowed, and the candidates thankfully
adjourned. Outside in the corridor they compared notes.

"Well, of all detestable papers this geography one is the limit!"
declared an aggrieved voice.

It was the girl who had said that she always mixed Madras and Bombay,
and who had studied her text-book up to the last available moment.
Apparently her eleventh hour industry had not sufficed to tide her over
her difficulties.

"It was catchy in parts," agreed the owner of the swastika, "but I liked
one or two questions. I just happened to know them, so I bowled ahead.
That's what comes of wearing a mascot!"

"Don't crow too soon!" laughed the girl with the fair pigtail.
"Remember, there are four other exams. to follow. Your luck may leave
you at any moment."

"Don't mention more exams.! I feel inclined to turn tail and run home!"
declared another.

"There's the bell! Don't give us much time, do they? Now for the torture
chamber again! Brace your nerves!"

"I wonder if most of them have done better or worse than I have!"
thought Winona, as she took her seat once more at No. 10 desk. "A good
many were grumbling, but that sandy-haired girl in the spectacles said
nothing. No more did the one with the red hair-ribbon. Of course they
might be feeling too agonized for words, but on the other hand they
might be secretly congratulating themselves."

It was not the moment, however, for speculation as to her neighbors'
progress. The next set of questions was being distributed, and she took
up her copy eagerly. Her heart fell as she read it over. Her knowledge
of English history was not very accurate, and the facts demanded were
for the most part exactly those which she could not remember. The dread
of failure loomed up large. She could only attempt about half of the
questions, and even in these she was not ready with dates. Then suddenly
Percy's advice flashed into her mind. "Write from a romantic standpoint,
and make your paper sound poetical." It seemed rather a forlorn hope,
and she feared it would scarcely satisfy her examiners, but in such a
desperate situation anything was worth trying. Winona possessed a
certain facility in essay writing. Prose composition had been her
favorite lesson at Miss Harmon's. She collected her wits now, and did
the very utmost of which she was capable in the matter of style.
Choosing question No. 4, "Write a life of Lady Jane Grey," she proceeded
to treat the subject in as post-impressionist a manner as possible. The
pathetic tragedy of the young Queen had always appealed to her
imagination, and she could have had no more congenial a theme upon which
to write, if she had been given free choice of all the characters in the
history book.

"'Whom the gods love die young,'" she began, and paused. It seemed an
excellent opening, if she could only continue in the same strain, but
what ought to come next? Her thoughts flew to a painting of Lady Jane
Grey, which she had once seen at a loan collection of Tudor portraits.
Why should she not describe it? Her pen flew rapidly as she wrote a
word-picture of the sweet, pale face, so round and childish in spite of
its earnest expression; the smooth yellow hair, the gray eyes bent
demurely over the book. Her heroine seemed beginning to live. Now for
her surroundings. A year ago Winona had paid a visit to Hampton Court,
and her remembrance of its associations was still keen and vivid. She
described its old-world garden by the side of the Thames, where the
little King Edward VI. must often have roamed with his pretty cousin
Jane: the two wonderful ill-starred children, playing for a brief hour
in happy unconsciousness of the fate that faced them. What did they talk
about, she asked, as they stood on the paved terrace and watched the
river hurrying by? Plato, perchance, and his philosophy, or the
marvelous geography-book with woodcuts of foreign beasts that had been
specially printed for the young king's use. Did they compare notes about
their tutors? Jane would certainly hold a brief for her much-loved Mr.
Elmer, who, in sharp contrast to her parents' severity, taught her so
gently and patiently that she grudged the time which was not spent in
his presence. Edward might bemoan the ill-luck of his whipping-boy, who
had to bear the floggings which Court etiquette denied to the royal
shoulders, and perhaps would declare that when he was grown up, and
could make the laws himself, no children should be beaten for badly said
lessons, and Jane would agree with him, and then they would pick the red
damask roses that Cardinal Wolsey had planted, and walk back under the
shadow of the clipped yew hedge to eat cherries and junket in the room
that looked out towards the sunset.

Winona had warmed to her work. Her imagination, always her strongest
faculty, completely carried her away. She pictured her heroine's life,
not from the outside, as historians would chronicle it, a mere string of
events and dates, but from the inner view of a girl's standpoint. Did
Jane wish to leave her Plato for the bustle of a Court? Did she care for
the gay young husband forced upon her by her ambitious parents? Surely
for her gentle nature a crown held few allurements. The clouds were
gathering thick and fast, and burst in a waterspout of utter ruin.
Jane's courage was calm and hopeful as that of Socrates in the dialogues
she had loved.

        "... your soul was pure and true,
    The good stars met in your horoscope,
    Made you of spirit, fire and dew."

quoted Winona enthusiastically. Browning always stirred her blood, and
threw her into poetical channels. She cast about in her mind for any
other appropriate verses.

    "Ah, broken is the golden bowl, the spirit gone for ever,
    Let the bell toll--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river.
    Come, let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung,
    An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young,
    A dirge for her, the doubly dead, in that she died so young."

"So they finished their foul deed, and laid her to rest," wrote Winona,
"the earthly part, that is, which perishes, for the true part of her
they could not touch. Farewell, sweet innocent soul, of whom the world
was not worthy. To you surely may apply Andre de Chénier's tender lines:

    "'Au banquet de la vie à peine commencé
    Un instant seulement mes lèvres out pressé
    La coupe en mes mains encore pleine.'

Vale, little Queen! May it be well with thee! Ave atque vale!"

Winona glanced anxiously at the clock as with a hard breath she paused
for a moment and laid down her pen. Her theme had taken her so long that
she had only ten minutes left for the other questions. There was no
romantic side to be expressed in these, so she scribbled away
half-heartedly. Her uncertain memory, which had readily supplied
quotations from Browning or Edgar Allan Poe, struck altogether when
asked for such sordid details as the names of the Cabal ministry, or
the history of the Long Parliament. The bell rang, and left her with her
paper only half finished. At one o'clock the candidates were given an
hour's rest, and a hot lunch was served to them in the dining-hall. At
two they returned to their desks, and the examination continued until
half-past four. Winona found the questions tolerable. She did fairly,
but not at all brilliantly. Her brains were not accustomed to such
long-sustained efforts, and as the afternoon wore on, a neuralgic
headache began, and sent sharp throbs of pain across her forehead. It
was so irksome to write pages of Latin or French verbs; she had to
summon all her courage to make herself do it. The last hour seemed an
interminable penance.

At half-past four, twenty-one rather dispirited candidates filed from
the room.

"Well, thank goodness it's over! I never want to write another word in
my life. My hand's stiff with cramp!" exclaimed the girl with the red
hair-ribbon to a sympathetic audience in the passage.

"It was awful! I didn't answer half the questions. My swastika isn't
worth its salt. I shall give it away!" mourned the owner of the mascot.

"They expected us to know so very much; we should be absolute
encyclopaedias if we had all that pat off at our fingers' ends!" sighed
the girl with the fair pigtail.

"How did you get on?" Winona asked the ruddy-haired girl, who was wiping
her spectacles nervously.

"Oh, I don't know. It's so hard to tell. I answered most of the
questions, but of course I can't say whether they're right or wrong.
Wasn't the Latin translation just too horrible? I yearned for a
dictionary. And some of the French grammar questions were absolute
catches!"

"We went on too long," said Winona. "It would have been much better to
spread the exam, over two days."

"Do you think so? I'd rather have 'sudden death' myself. It's such a
relief to feel it's finished. It would be wretched to have to begin
again to-morrow. I hardly slept a wink last night for thinking about it.
I'm going to try and forget it now."

Winona nodded good-by to her fellow candidates, and took her leave. How
many of them would she see again, she wondered, and which among all the
number would have the luck?

"Certainly not myself," she thought ruefully. "I know my papers weren't
up to standard. I believe that red-haired girl will be one. She looked
clever!"

Winona had spent the preceding night with Aunt Harriet, who offered to
keep her until the result of the examination should be published, but
the prospect of spending a week of suspense at Abbey Close was so
formidable, that she had begged to be allowed to return home, excusing
herself on the plea that she would like to be with Percy during the
remainder of his holidays. It was a very subdued Winona who reached
Highfield next afternoon.

"Hello, Tiddleywinks! You've lost the starch out of you!" Percy greeted
her. "Did they say they wouldn't have you at any price?"

"The result won't be out till the fifteenth, but I expect I've failed,"
answered Winona gloomily.

"Buck up, young 'un! Look at yours truly! I fail nine times out of ten,
and do I take it to heart?"

Winona laughed in spite of herself. Percy's complacency over small
achievements was proverbial. But she had higher ambitions, and the cloud
of depression soon settled down again. Her temper, not always her strong
point, displayed a degree of irritability that drove her family to the
verge of mutiny.

"Really, Winona, I don't remember you so fractious since you were
cutting your teeth!" complained her much-tried mother.

The days dragged slowly by. Winona had never before realized that each
hour could hold so many minutes. On the morning of the 15th she came
down to breakfast with dark rings round her eyes.

"I shall be glad to be put out of my misery!" she thought, as the
postman's rap-tap sounded at the door.

Mamie made a rush for the letter-box, and returned bearing a foolscap
envelope addressed to:

                                   MISS WINONA WOODWARD,
                                             Highfield,
                                                  Ashbourne,
                                                    nr. Great Marston.

Winona opened it with trembling fingers. But as she read, her face
flushed and her eyes sparkled.

"I have much pleasure in informing you" (so ran the letter) "that the
Governors of the Seaton High School have decided to award you a
Scholarship tenable for two years...."

In silence she passed the paper to her mother.

"Congratulations, dear child!" cried Mrs. Woodward, clapping her hands.
"It's the unexpected that happens!"

"Oh, my goodness!" ejaculated Percy. "You never mean to tell me that
Tiddleywinks has actually been and gone and won!"




CHAPTER III

Seaton High School


The autumn term at Seaton High School began on September 22nd. On the
21st Winona set forth with great flourish of trumpets, feeling more or
less of a heroine. To have been selected for a scholarship among
twenty-one candidates was a distinction that even Aunt Harriet would
admit. In the brief interval pending her departure, her home circle had
treated her with a respect they had never before accorded her.

"I hope you'll do well, child," said her mother, half proud and half
tearful when it came to the parting. "We shall miss you here, but when
you get on yourself you must help the younger ones. I shall look to you
to push them on in life."

There is a certain satisfaction in the knowledge that you are considered
the prop of the family. Winona's eyes glowed. In imagination she was
already Principal of a large school, and providing posts as assistant
mistresses for Letty, Mamie and Doris, that is to say unless she turned
her attention to medicine, but in that case she could be head of a
Women's Hospital, and have them as house surgeons or dispensers, or
something else equally distinguished and profitable. It might even be
possible to provide occupation for Godfrey or Ernie, though this was
likely to prove a tougher job than placing the girls. With such a
brilliant beginning, the future seemed an easy walk-over.

Mrs. Woodward was exulting over the fact that she had engaged Miss Jones
when she did, and that Winona's school clothes were all made and
finished. There had been a fluster at the last, when it was discovered
that her mackintosh was fully six inches too short for her new skirts,
and that she had outgrown her thick boots, but a hurried visit to Great
Marston had remedied these deficiencies, and the box was packed to
everybody's satisfaction. There was a universal feeling in the family
that such an outfit could not fail to meet with Aunt Harriet's approval.
The first sight of the nightdress case and the brush-and-comb bag must
wring admiration from her. They had been bought at a bazaar, and were
altogether superior to those in daily use. As for the handkerchief case,
Letty had decided that unless one equally well embroidered were
presented to her on her next birthday, she would be obliged to assert
her individuality by showing temper.

Winona walked into the dressing-room of the High School on September
22nd with a mixture of shyness and importance. On the whole the latter
predominated. It was a trifle embarrassing to face so many strangers,
but it was something to have won a scholarship. She wondered who was the
other fortunate candidate.

"I expect it will be that red-haired girl with the spectacles," she
thought. "I believe she answered every question, though she was rather
quiet about it."

She looked round, but could not see the ruddy locks, nor indeed any of
the companions who had taken the examination with her.

"Hunting for some one you know?" asked a girl who had appropriated the
next hook to hers.

"Yes, at least I'm not sure whether she'll be here or not. I believe her
name's Marjorie Kaye."

"Never heard of her!"

"There are heaps of new girls," volunteered another who stood by.

"I wondered if she'd won a County Scholarship," added Winona.

"Ask me a harder! I tell you I've never heard her name before."

"I've won the other scholarship."

Winona's voice was intended to sound very casual.

"Indeed!"

Her neighbor was taking off her boots, and did not seem as much
impressed as the occasion merited.

"Oh! so you're one of the 'outlanders,'" sniggered another. "It's a sort
of 'go into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in'
business."

"I suppose we shall be having Council School Scholarships next!" drawled
a third.

They were friends, and went off together without another glance at
Winona. She followed soberly, wondering what she ought to do next. She
had a vague idea that the winner of a scholarship should present herself
at the Head Mistress' study to receive a few words of encouragement and
congratulation on her success. At the top of the stairs she met the
mistress who had presided over the examination. The latter greeted her
unceremoniously.

"Winona Woodward, you've been placed in V.a., first room to the
right, round the corner. You'll find the number on the door."

Other girls were hurrying in the same direction. Winona entered with
what seemed to her quite a small crowd. Everybody appeared to know where
to go, except herself. She stood in such evident hesitation that one,
more good-natured than the rest, remarked:

"You'd better seize on any desk you fancy, as quick as you can. They're
getting taken up fast, if you want a front one!"

Winona slid into the nearest seat at hand, and appropriated it by
placing her note-book, pencil-box, ruler, atlas and dictionaries inside
the desk.

The room was filling quickly. Every moment fresh arrivals hurried in and
took their places. Marjorie Kaye was nowhere to be seen, but in the
second row sat the dark-eyed girl with the red ribbon in her hair. She
turned round and nodded pleasantly.

"So she's got the other scholarship!" thought Winona. "I shouldn't have
expected it. I'd have staked my reputation on the sandy-haired one.
Well, I suppose her answers weren't correct, after all. I'm rather glad
on the whole it's this girl; she looks jolly."

At that moment Miss Huntley, the form mistress, entered and took the
call-over, and the day's work began. Each girl was given a time-table
and a list of the books she would require, and after that, class
succeeded class until one o'clock, with a ten minutes' interval for
lunch at eleven. The conclusion of the morning left Winona with a
profound respect for High School methods. After the easy-going routine
of Miss Harmon's it was like stepping into a new educational world. She
supposed she would be able to keep pace with it when she got her books,
but the mathematics, at any rate, were much more advanced than what she
had before attempted. As she walked down the corridor, the girl with the
red hair-ribbon overtook her, and claimed acquaintance.

"So you're Winona Woodward? And I'm Garnet Emerson. We had the luck,
after all! I'm sure I never expected to win. It was the greatest
surprise to me when the letter arrived. Yes, five of the other
candidates are at school, but they've been put in IV.a., and
IV.b. Marjorie Kaye? You mean that girl in spectacles? No,
she's not come. I heard her say that if she didn't win she was to be
sent somewhere else. Where are you staying? With an aunt? I'm with a
second cousin. She's nice, but I wish they'd open a hostel; it would be
topping to be with a heap of others, wouldn't it? We'd get up acting in
the evenings, and all sorts of fun. Well, perhaps that may come later
on. I shall see you this afternoon, shan't I?"

"Yes, I'm coming for my books. It's too late to stop and get them now."

Afternoon attendance at the High School was not nominally compulsory.
All the principal subjects were taken in the morning, but there were
classes for drawing, singing or physical culture from half-past two
until four, and practically very few girls had more than one free
afternoon in a week. Any who liked might do preparation in their own
form room, and many availed themselves of the permission, especially
those who came from a distance, and stayed for dinner at the school.
When Winona first examined her time-table she had not considered its
demands excessively formidable, but before she had been a week at Seaton
she began to realize that she would have very few spare moments to call
her own. Miss Bishop believed in girls being fully occupied, and in
addition to the ordinary form work, expected every one to take part in
the games, and in the numerous societies and guilds which had been
instituted. Winona found that she was required to join the Debating
Club, and the Patriotic Knitting Guild, while a Dramatic Society and a
Literary Association would be prepared to open their doors to her if she
proved worthy of admission. So far, however, she considered that she had
enough on her hands. The demands of her new life were almost
overwhelming, and she lived from day to day in a whirl of fresh
experiences. It took her some time even to grasp the names of the
seventeen other girls in her form. Audrey Redfern, her left-hand
neighbor, was friendly, but Olave Parry, at the desk in front, ignored
her very existence. She gathered that Audrey, like herself, was a
new-comer, while Olave had attended the school since its foundation; but
she did not realize the significance of this in the difference of their
behavior to her. The fact was that the three new girls in the form were
on probation. The others, who had come up from the Lower School, and
were well versed in the traditions of the place, were not willing to
admit them too quickly into favor. They talked them over in private.

"Audrey Redfern seems a decent enough little soul," said Estelle
Harrison. "There's really nothing offensive about her, to my mind.
Garnet Emerson I rather like. I fancy she could be jolly. I'm going to
speak to her in a day or two, but not too soon."

"What do you think of Winona Woodward?" queried Bessie Kirk.

"Much too big an opinion of herself. Began bragging about her
scholarship first thing. She needs sitting upon, to my mind."

"She's pretty!"

"Yes, and she knows it, too!"

"Well, she can't help knowing it. I call her most striking looking. Her
eyes are lovely, though I never can make out whether they're dark gray
or hazel under those long lashes. Her hair's just the color of bronze,
and such a lot of it! It beats Joyce Newton's hollow; besides, Joyce has
absolutely white eyelashes."

"Like a pig's!" laughed Hilda Langley. "I agree with you that Winona's
pretty, but I don't think she'll ever be a chum of mine, all the same."

The result of the stand-off attitude on the part of the rest of the form
was the cementing of a close friendship between Winona and Garnet. It
seemed natural for the holders of the two County Scholarships to become
chums, also they found each other's society congenial. It marked a new
epoch for Winona. She had had few friends of her own age. She had been
the eldest pupil at Miss Harmon's small school, and her sisters were so
much younger than herself that their interests were on a different plane
to her own. Garnet, with her merry brown eyes, eager and enthusiastic
nature, and amusing tongue, seemed a revelation.

The two girls spent every available moment together, and soon waxed
confidential on the subject of their home affairs.

"We're all named after precious stones," said Garnet. "Pearl, my eldest
sister, is classics mistress at a school; Jacinthe is studying for a
health visitor, Ruby is at a Horticultural College, and Beryl is
secretary at a Settlement. Aren't there a lot of us? All girls too, and
not a single brother. I'm the baby of the family! I'd like to go to
Holloway, if I can get a scholarship, but that remains to be seen.
Meanwhile two years at the High's not so bad, is it? I expect I'm going
to enjoy it. Aren't you?"

"Yes--perhaps. If the rest of the form were nicer, I might."

"Oh, they'll come round! We can't expect them to take us to their bosoms
straight off! We're goods on approval."

"We've as much right here as they have!" grunted Winona.

"But they were here first, and of course that always counts for
something. We shall have to show that we're worth our salt before we get
any footing in the form. The question is how best to do it."

Winona shook her head. It was beyond her comprehension.

"I had a few tips from Jacinthe," ruminated Garnet. "She was Captain the
last year she was at school, so she ought to know. You see, we've to
steer between Scylla and Charybdis. We mustn't push ourselves forward
too violently, or they'll call us cheeky, but on the other hand, if
we're content to take a back seat, we may stay there for the rest of the
term. Comprenez vous? It's a matter of seizing one's chance. I've an
idea floating about in my mind. Do you happen to be anything extra
special at singing, or reciting, or acting?"

"I haven't had much practice at acting, but I can play the guitar.
Mummie taught me. She lived in Spain for three years when she was a
girl, and learnt there."

"The very thing! How perfectly splendid! I play the mandoline myself,
and the two go so well together. Did you bring your guitar with you?"

"No. I didn't think I should have any time for it."

"But you could write for it, couldn't you?"

"Oh, yes! Mummie would send it to me."

"Well, this is my idea. You know next week there's to be a big general
meeting of the whole school to choose a Games Captain. So far the games
department here is rather in its infancy. I've been making enquiries,
and there isn't such a thing as a form trophy. There certainly ought to
be, to spur on enthusiasm. I'm going to pluck up my courage, tackle one
or two members of the Sixth, and suggest that after the meeting we hold
a sing-song, and take a collection to provide a form trophy. I don't
believe anybody's ever thought of it."

"Ripping! But what exactly is a sing-song?"

"Oh, just an informal concert. I thought if you and I played the
mandoline and guitar together, it would make a good item. I see two of
the prefects coming along over there, I believe I'll go and ask them."

"I admire your courage!"

Garnet returned in a few minutes, tolerably well satisfied with her
mission.

"I believe the idea will catch on," she announced. "Of course I couldn't
expect them to say 'yes' immediately. They were very cautious, and said
they would put it to the form. I've sown the seed at any rate, and we
must wait for developments."

Apparently Garnet's proposition proved acceptable to the Sixth, for the
very next day a notice was pinned on the board in the hall:

        "There will be a General Meeting of the School on Tuesday,
        October 4th, at 3 p.m., for the purpose of electing a Games
        Captain.

        "The meeting will be followed by a Symposium, when a collection
        will be taken, the proceeds of which will be devoted to the
        purchase of a form trophy.

        "Performers kindly submit their names without delay to M.
        HOWELL, as the program is being made up."

Garnet was one of the first to read the notice, and she started off at
once to the Sixth Form room. She sought out Winona on her return.

"So my little scheme's come off!" she beamed. "You bet the Sixth will
take all the credit for evolving it, but I don't care! I've put our
names down for a mandoline and guitar duet, and said we'd be ready to
help with any accompaniments they like. Meg Howell just jumped at that.
It seems Patricia Marshall and Clarice Nixon are going to sing a Christy
Minstrel song, and she thought our instruments would add to the effect
no end. I tell you we shall score. Did you write for your guitar?"

"Yes, I expect it will be sent off to-day."

"Then we must begin and practice. I've got a topping duet that's quite
easy. Can you come home with me after school to-morrow for half an hour
or so? I know my cousins will be glad to see you. Then we might try over
one or two things, and see how they go."

"It will be all right if I tell Aunt Harriet I shall be late," agreed
Winona.

The instrument arrived the same evening, so she was able to keep her
promise to Garnet next day. Fortunately they had only one class that
afternoon, and were able to leave school at half-past three. Garnet's
cousins lived within a short tramcar ride. They were musical people, and
sympathized with her project. Garnet led Winona into the drawing-room,
and began without waste of time.

"Let me look at your guitar! Oh, what a beauty! What's the label inside?
Juan Da Costa, Seville! Then it must be Spanish. I suppose they're the
best. My mandoline's Italian; it was made in Milan. We must tune them
together, mustn't we? Can you read well? This is the book of duets. I
thought this Barcarolle would be easy, it has such a lovely swing about
it. Here's the guitar part."




CHAPTER IV

The Symposium


By the aid of diligent practicing in private, and several rehearsals at
Garnet's house, the girls at last got their duet to run smoothly. Garnet
was frankly pleased.

"The two instruments go so nicely together! A mandoline's ever so much
better played with a guitar accompaniment than with the piano. I say,
suppose we were to get an encore!"

"I don't suppose anything of the sort."

"Don't be too modest. It's as well to be prepared."

"I'm not going to practice anything more, so I warn you."

"Well, take something you know, from your own book. This song. I could
play the air very softly on the mandoline, and we'd both sing it. That
won't give you any extra trouble."

"It isn't the trouble so much as the state of my fingers. They're
getting sore. If I let a blister come, I shan't be able to play at all."

"Then for goodness' sake don't play any more to-day, and soak your
fingers in alum when you get home."

The general meeting on Tuesday was a very important event, for it marked
the opening of the winter session of games and guilds. During the first
week or ten days of the autumn term the girls had enough to do in
settling into the work of their new forms, but now October was come
everybody began to think about hockey, and to consider the advisability
of beginning rehearsals for various Christmas performances.

"I always hate the end of September," proclaimed Grace Olliver. "It's so
fine, and the geraniums are still so fresh in the park, that you're
deceived into thinking it's still summer, yet when you try to play
tennis, you find the courts horrible, and you cut up the grass in half
an hour. I'm glad when the leaves all come off, and you know it's
autumn, and you look up your hockey jersey, and think what sport you had
last winter over 'The Dramatic.' I'm fond enough of cricket, but I'd
really rather have winter than summer. On the whole, there's more going
on."

"I'm glad Margaret Howell's head of the school," replied Evelyn
Richards. "She's A1 at all the guilds, though I don't think she's much
chance of being elected Games Captain."

"All the better. It's quite enough for Margaret to act head. She's good
enough at that, I admit. Makes an ideal president. But a girl who's
literary isn't generally sporty as well. It stands to reason she can't
do both properly."

"Meg doesn't want to be Games Captain; it's not in her line,"
volunteered Beatrice, Margaret's younger sister. "She told me to tell
you all to vote for Kirsty Paterson."

"Kirsty's topping!"

"What's this Symposium we're to have after the meeting?" asked Grace.

"Why, I don't exactly know," laughed Evelyn. "I looked 'symposium' up in
the dictionary, and it said: 'literally a drinking together; a merry
feast; a convivial party.' I don't know what we're going to drink,
unless we bring lemon kali and pass it round, like they used to do the
loving cup in the Middle Ages!"

"I suppose it'll be just a kind of concert. But how about the
collection? What are we supposed to give?"

"Anything you like, from a penny upwards," replied Beatrice. "Meg
calculated that two hundred and six pennies would be seventeen and
twopence, and some girls will probably give more, so she thinks we're
sure of a sovereign, and that ought to buy a decent trophy, something to
begin upon, at any rate. One must make a start."

"Right you are! A penny won't break the banks of even the First Form
babes, and millionaires can give their half-crowns, if they're so
disposed!"

Punctually at 3 p.m. on the following Tuesday, the whole school
assembled in the gymnasium. No mistress was present, for on occasions
such as this Miss Bishop believed in self-government. She could trust
her head girl and prefects, and had armed them with full authority.
Winona anticipated the meeting with excitement and curiosity. It was
altogether outside her experience. She had never in her life attended
such a function. Garnet, whose elder sisters had been at large schools,
had sketched an outline of what was likely to take place, but even
Garnet's information was second-hand. Though she had now been exactly a
fortnight at Seaton, Winona still felt more or less of a new-comer. She
had hardly spoken to any one outside her own form, and knew the names of
comparatively few of her two hundred and five schoolfellows. Without
Garnet she would have been quite at a loss how to steer her course in
this great ocean of school life; she thankfully accepted her friend as
pilot, and for the present was content to follow her lead. The two girls
presented themselves in the gymnasium in good time, and took their seats
among the other members of V.a. The front bench was occupied by
a row of ten-year-olds who had come up this term from the Preparatory,
and who sat squeezing each others' arms, highly impressed with the
importance of their remove. Behind them Form II., a giggling crew rather
more _au fait_ with the ways of the school, effervesced occasionally
into excited squeals, and were instantly suppressed by a prefect. The
Third and Fourth, which comprised the bulk of the girls from twelve to
fifteen, occupied the middle of the hall, a lively, self-confident and
rather obstreperous set, all at that awkward age which is anxious to
claim privileges, but not particularly ready to submit to the authorized
code. Every one of them was talking at the extreme pitch of her voice,
and the noise was considerable. Patricia Marshall and Clarice Nixon
looked at each other and frowned ominously, but as the hands of the big
clock pointed almost to three, they judged it better not to interfere,
and the din continued.

At the stroke of the hour, Margaret Howell strode on to the platform.
She was a tall, fine-looking girl of seventeen, with bright hazel eyes,
regular features, and a thick brown plait that fell below her waist. Her
ready powers of speech, clear ringing voice, brisk decisive tone, and a
certain personal magnetism showed her to be that _rara avis_, a born
leader. It was fortunate indeed for the school that its headship this
year should have fallen to Margaret. The need for a firm but judicious
hand on the reins was great. During the two previous years of the
school's existence the self-government had been in a state of evolution.
For the first year, when everybody was new together, comparatively
little could be done. The school must find itself before it began to
form its private code of laws. In the second year ill-luck had raised to
the post of honor Ivy Chatterton, a clever but most untactful girl,
whose quick temper had brought her into constant collision with her
prefects. Many were the squalls which had swept over the school, of so
serious a nature sometimes as almost to wreck several of the guilds. The
younger girls, following the example of their elders, had quarreled
hotly, and indulged in an incredible amount of petty spite, and
altogether the current tone had been anything but desirable. Miss
Bishop, who had seen, to her sorrow, this downward trend, had welcomed
the advent of Margaret, believing her to have the ability to cope with
difficult situations, and at the same time to have the grit and
self-control not to allow her head to be turned by her elevation to
office.

"You will have a great responsibility: I am giving you unusual power,
and I trust that you will make the highest use of it," she had said to
the girl, during a certain quiet ten minutes' talk in her study, and
Margaret had held herself very straight, and had answered: "I'll do my
level best, Miss Bishop!"

All eyes were now fixed on the head girl as she stood in the center of
the platform, ringing the bell for silence. The clamor subsided as if by
magic, and in the midst of a dead hush she began her speech.

"Girls! We've been back now for a whole fortnight--time for most of us
to shake down into our places, isn't it? The school year's fairly
started, and we've met together this afternoon to talk about a number of
things that are of very great importance to us all. You all know that a
school--to be worth anything--has two sides. There's the inside part,
with classes and prep. and exams.--what's generally called the
'curriculum'--that's managed by the mistresses. And there's the outside
part, the games and sports and concerts and guilds--that's run by the
girls themselves. Now I think, if we arrange well, we ought to be able
to look forward to three very jolly terms. Everything depends upon
making a good start. I've been getting to know how they manage in
several other big schools, and I propose that we frame our code by
theirs. What we want first of all is a feeling of unity and public
spirit. Each girl must make up her mind to do all she can to push on the
'Seaton High.' We want to win matches, and have a good sports record,
and generally build up a reputation. Slacking at games must be out of
the question. Everybody must buck up all round. Those who aren't playing
themselves can show their interest by attending the matches. It makes
the greatest difference to an eleven to know that their own side is
watching their play, and ready to cheer them on. There's nothing so
forlorn and depressing as to see whole rows of the enemy's school hats
on the spectators' benches, and only half-a-dozen of one's own--yet
that's what happened when we played Harbury last spring. No wonder we
lost! I'm going to ask you presently to elect a Games Captain, and then
I want you to support her loyally for the whole of the year. Let her
feel that she can depend upon you, and that instead of getting together
scratch teams, her difficulty will be how to choose among so many crack
players. But as you know, games are not the whole of our business
to-day. We have our guilds to consider as well. I want to put these upon
a good and firm basis. Last winter we didn't quite know where we were
with them, did we? At present we have 'The Dramatic Society,' 'The
Debating Club,' 'The Literary Association,' and 'The Patriotic Knitting
Guild.' We might very well add a 'Photographic Union' and a 'Natural
History League.' They ought all to be run on the same lines. Each must
have a President, a Secretary, and a Committee of eight members, who
will undertake the business of the Society, and settle all its events.
Any difficulty or dispute must be referred to the Prefects' meeting, the
decision of which shall be final. Each guild must draw up a list of its
own rules; these must be submitted first to the Prefects, then, if
passed as satisfactory, they must be written in the minutes book, and
strictly adhered to. I want you all to realize that this school is still
in its infancy. It's a baby of only two years! But a very promising
baby! It's we who are going to make its history. So far we can't say it
has had any annals; in the future it must show a whole splendid list of
achievements and successes. Years afterwards, when it's the most famous
school in the county, we shall be proud to have had the privilege of
taking our share in pushing it on, and our names may be handed down to
long generations of girls as those who founded its best traditions."

Margaret paused, quite out of breath with her long speech. A storm of
applause rose from the audience; the girls clapped and stamped, a few
even cheered. Margaret had touched the right string. The idea of making
school history appealed to them, and they were ready to respond with
enthusiasm to her appeal. Even the ten-year-olds were eager to show
their zeal. Winona had never taken her eyes off the speaker. It was a
new gospel to her that she was one of the great community, bound to help
the common weal. The realization of it stirred her spirit; her
imagination danced ahead, and performed prodigies. Suppose she could do
something wonderful for the school, and leave her name as a memory to
others? The vision gleamed golden. It would be worth living to
accomplish that.

"Not half a bad speech!" murmured Garnet approvingly by her side.

Winona started, and came back from the clouds.

"I think it's--just immense!" she answered with a long sigh of
admiration.

Margaret was again ringing the bell for silence.

"I'm glad to find you all agree with me," she announced. "Now I want us
to get solidly to business, and elect a Games Captain. You remember I
asked each to nominate a candidate, and I find that more than two-thirds
have handed in the same name--that of Kirsty Paterson. I therefore put
Kirsty up for election. It's only fair that I should first go over her
qualifications for the office. She was our best center forward last year
at hockey, and our best bowler at cricket. She's a thoroughly steady and
reliable player herself, and--this is most important--she's able to
train others. You know from experience that she's fair and just, and
she's tremendously keen. I feel sure that in her hands the games would
prosper, and we'd soon show some improvement. Will all those in favor of
electing Kirsty kindly stand up?"

There was such a general rising among the girls that most presidents
would have considered the matter settled. Margaret, however, liked to do
things strictly in order.

"Thanks I Will you please sit down again. Now those against the election
kindly stand."

A certain section in the school had intended to vote against Kirsty, but
when they saw themselves so enormously outnumbered, they changed their
minds. To belong to a minority often means to be unpopular, and it is
wise to go with the stream. After all, Kirsty was a thoroughly eligible
and desirable candidate. So though a few neighbors elbowed each other,
nobody rose.

Margaret waited a moment.

"Do I understand that you're all in favor? Then the motion is carried
unanimously. I'm very glad, for I think Kirsty will make an ideal
captain. Let's give three cheers for her. Are you ready? Hip-hip-hip
hooray!"

The girls responded with full lung power. Some even began to sing: "For
she's a jolly good fellow!" and there was a general outcry of "Speech!
Speech!" The blushing Kirsty--a bonny, rosy, athletic looking
lassie--was seized by her fellow prefects, and dragged, in spite of her
protests, to the front of the platform. Kirsty had been born north of
the Tweed, and in moments of excitement her pretty Scottish burr
asserted itself.

"It's verra kind of you to elect me," she began. "I'm afraid I'm no hand
at making speeches. I preferr deeds to worrds. We'll all put ourr
shoulderrs to the wheel, and win forr the school, won't we? I hope we'll
have a splendid yearr!"

At that she retired amidst rapturous applause. Margaret again rang the
bell for silence, and proceeded with the business of the meeting, which
was to elect the officers for the various societies and guilds. This
being satisfactorily settled, she turned to affairs of lighter moment.

"I'm sure you'll all agree that it is very desirable for us to have a
form trophy, for hockey, at any rate. Perhaps by next summer we'll get
one for cricket as well. It will spur us on to have a little wholesome
competition amongst ourselves. As I announced on the notice board, we
are now going to give a short entertainment, at the close of which a
collection will be taken for the object I have just mentioned. I hate
begging, so give what you like, but of course it depends on your
generosity this afternoon what kind of a trophy we are able to buy. The
first item on our program is a piano solo by Hester King."

Hester was one of the best music pupils in the school. She had a good
crisp touch and considerable execution, and led off the concert with a
sprightly tarantella. A violin solo followed, by Sibyl Lee, a member of
V.b., who was rather nervous, but acquitted herself fairly well
on the whole.

"I thought I'd break down," she confided to her friends. "The sight of
all those eyes staring at me quite put me off. I don't wonder blind
musicians are generally successes, they can't see the audience. Well,
never mind, I've done my bit, at any rate!"

The next on the list was a song from Annie Hardy. She had chosen "Keep
the Home Fires Burning," and rendered it with great effect, the whole
room joining with enthusiasm in the chorus. It took so well that there
were shouts of "Encore!" and Annie came back smiling to give "Khaki
Boys," which roused her audience to an even higher pitch of patriotic
fervor. A recitation, "Our Hockey Match," by Agnes Heath, was felt to be
particularly appropriate to the occasion. It was a very good "school
piece," humorous as well as exciting, and Agnes had enough dramatic
ability to do justice to it. Her own form in particular stamped lustily.
The prefects motioned her forward again, but she shook her head. The
clapping redoubled. Agnes, escorted to the front by Margaret, bowed and
announced:

"Fearfully sorry not to oblige, but this is absolutely the only thing I
know, and it's too long to say all over again!"

There was a general laugh, and the audience settled itself to enjoy the
next item on the program. Margaret was signaling to Winona and Garnet,
and the pair slipped from their places, and made their way to the
platform.

"I'm all upset! I hope I shan't break down!" whispered Winona.

"Nonsense! A duet's not so bad as a solo. You'll get on all right. Do
for goodness' sake brace up!" implored Garnet. "If you muddle your
accompaniment you'll spoil my part. You'll surely never go and fail me!"

The instruments had been put under the piano. Patricia Marshall handed
them forth, and sounded the notes for them to be tuned. Clarice Nixon
was placing chairs and music-stands. Garnet was tolerably composed, but
Winona was suffering from a bad attack of that most unpleasant malady
"stage fright." She would have given worlds for a trapdoor in the
platform to open, and allow her to subside out of sight. No such
convenient arrangement, however, had been provided for the use of
bashful performers, the planks were solid, and guaranteed not to give
way under any circumstances. There was nothing for it but to take her
seat in full view of the audience. There were slightly over two hundred
girls in the room, but to Winona's fevered imagination there appeared to
be thousands. She wondered how she could ever have had the folly to
place herself in such a public situation. Garnet was sounding a few
notes and looking at her to begin. For one dreadful moment the room
whirled. Perhaps Margaret saw and understood; she laid her hand on
Winona's shaking arm, and whispered encouragingly:

"Go on! Don't mind the audience. Just remember that you're playing for
the form trophy!"

A sudden revulsion of feeling swept over Winona. All the school
patriotism aroused within her by Margaret's speech surged up to meet the
crisis. She was no longer an isolated atom, a girl fresh from home, and
on trial before the critical eyes of her new form, but a unit in the
great life of the school, bound to play her part for the good of the
whole, and specially pledged not to fail Garnet in this emergency. Self
faded in the larger vision. The color flooded back into her face. She
made a desperate effort, and struck the opening chords.

As her friend had reminded her, a duet was quite a different matter from
a solo. Directly the mandoline part began, her confidence returned. She
tried to think that she was only playing an accompaniment for Garnet.
The piece was not difficult, it was in D, quite the easiest key for the
guitar, with very few accidentals or high positions. She took courage,
and struck her strings crisply, so that the tone rang out well. Her
instrument was a good one, very true and mellow, and her mother had
taught her the liquid Spanish touch which showed it to its best
advantage. Garnet also was doing her best. Her plectrum vibrated evenly
and rapidly, and the metallic twang, her gravest fault, was not nearly
so evident as usual. The audience, unfamiliar with these particular
instruments, was not hypercritical, and so long as the players kept well
together, and sounded no discords, their skill was judged to be
excellent. The Barcarolle had an attractive swing about it, and a
romantic suggestion of gondolas and lapping water and moonlight
serenades. As the last notes of the air on the mandoline died away,
Winona swept her thumb over the strings of her guitar in a tremendous
final chord. It had quite a magnificent and professional effect. There
was no mistake about the applause; it was simply clamorous.

"Stand up and bow!" whispered Margaret, nudging the unaccustomed
performers. "That's right! Bow again! It's most clearly an encore. Have
you brought anything else with you? Good biz! Don't waste any more time,
then. We're rather late."

The song that Winona had chosen was a bright little Irish ditty, with a
catchy tune and lively accompaniment. Garnet played the air softly on
the mandoline, and the two girls sang in unison, keeping strictly
together, and pronouncing very plainly, so that the point of the amusing
words should not be lost. The audience shrieked with laughter, and would
have demanded a further encore, had not Margaret pointed to the clock,
and shaken her head firmly. There were other items on the program and
time was going all too fast.

Another violin solo, a recitation and a Highland fling followed; then
the concert wound up with a Christy Minstrel song from several members
of the Sixth. This last was the triumph of the afternoon. Patricia
prided herself on her preparations. She had placed a newspaper inside
the grand piano over the strings, and when the hammers struck against it
the effect of the accompaniment was exactly that of a banjo. She had
borrowed two sets of castanets, a pair of cymbals, and a triangle, and
with these loud-sounding instruments she and her companions emphasized
the chorus. Garnet and Winona helped with mandoline and guitar, so the
general result was quite orchestral. During the performance of this
chef-d'oeuvre some of the prefects went round with collecting bags,
which were passed along the benches.

    "Come, my dark-eyed honey,
    And help to spend my money,"

chanted the minstrels lustily, and the audience smiled at the
appropriateness of the words.

It was felt that the Symposium had been an enormous success. The girls
were quite loath to leave, and dispersed slowly from the gymnasium. Many
eyes were turned on Winona and Garnet as they carried their instruments
down from the platform. "Who are they?" every one was asking, for so far
their names were not known outside their own form. "The two County
Scholarship holders," somebody replied, and the information was passed
on.

Next morning, Margaret proudly posted up the result of the collection,
which amounted to £2 13_s._ 7_d._--a very substantial sum in the
estimation of the school.

"It ought to be sufficient to buy a cup!" she triumphed. "Miss Bishop
has promised to send for some catalogues, so that we can look up the
prices. We shall start the season well, at any rate. Kirsty's almost
ready to stand on her head! I never saw any one so elated!"

"Except yourself!" smiled Patricia.

"Cela va sans dire, camarade!"

Garnet and Winona, walking down the High Street together after the
performance, also compared notes.

"It was fine! I do admire Margaret. Mustn't it be splendid to be head of
the school?" sighed Garnet enviously.

"Do you think so? Yes, I suppose it is, but if I had my choice, I'd a
dozen times over rather be Games Captain," answered Winona.




CHAPTER V

Aunt Harriet


It is high time now that we paused to consider a very important person
indeed in this story, namely Miss Harriet Beach, but for whose
invitation Winona would never have attended Seaton High School at all.
Aunt Harriet was what is generally known as "a character," that is to
say, she was possessed of a strong personality, and was decidedly
eccentric. Though her age verged on sixty she preserved the energy of
her thirties, and prided herself upon her physical fitness. She was
tall, with a high color, keen brown eyes, a large nose, a determined
mouth, and iron gray hair. In her youth she must have been handsome, and
even now her erect figure and dark, well-marked eyebrows gave her a
certain air of distinction. She was a most thoroughly capable woman,
reliable, and strongly philanthropic: not in a sentimental way, however;
she disapproved of indiscriminate almsgiving, and would have considered
it a crime to bestow a penny on a beggar without making a proper
investigation of his case. She was a tower of strength to most of the
charitable institutions in the city, a terror to the professional
pauper, but a real friend to the deserving. Her time was much occupied
with committees, secretarial duties, district visiting, workhouse
inspection and other public interests. She was apt indeed to have more
than her share of civic business; her reputation for absolute
reliability caused people to get into the habit of saying "Oh, go to
Miss Beach!" on every occasion, and as she invariably proved the willing
horse, she justified the proverb and received the work in increased
proportions.

Like most people, Aunt Harriet had her faults. She was apt to be a
trifle overbearing and domineering, she lacked patience with others'
weaknesses, and was too doctrinaire in her views. She tried very hard to
push the world along, but she forgot sometimes that "the mills of God
grind slowly," and that it is only after much waiting and many days that
the bread cast upon the waters returns to us. She prided herself on her
candor and lack of "humbug." Unfortunately, people who "speak their
minds" generally treat their hearers to a sample of their worst instead
of their best, and their excessive truthfulness scarcely meets with the
gratitude they consider it deserves. Miss Beach's many estimable
qualities, however, overbalanced her crudities, her friends shrugged
their shoulders and told each other it was "her way," "her heart was all
right." Though she might give offense, people forgot it, and came to her
again next time they wanted anything done, and the universal verdict was
that she was "trying at times," but on the whole one of the most useful
citizens which Seaton possessed.

If there was one person more than another who wore out Miss Beach's
patience it was her niece and goddaughter, Mrs. Woodward. She had a
sincere affection for her, but their two personalities were at
absolutely opposite poles. She admitted that Florita was amiable,
well-meaning, and thoroughly affectionate, but for the rest she
considered her weak, foolishly helpless, liable to extravagance, a poor
housekeeper, and a perfect jelly-fish in her methods of bringing up her
family. In vain did Aunt Harriet, on successive visits, preach firmness,
order, consistency and other maternal virtues; her niece would brace
herself up to a temporary effort, but would relax again directly her
guest had departed, and the children--little rogues!--discovered at a
remarkably early age that they could do pretty much as they liked. The
Woodwards always dreaded the advent of Aunt Harriet, her disapproval of
their general conduct was so manifest. By dint of urging from their
mother they made extra attempts at good behavior before the august
visitor, but they were subject to awful relapses. Mrs. Woodward, on her
side, considered she had her trials, for her aunt had a habit of
arriving suddenly, giving only a few hours' notice by telegram, and she
could not forbear the suspicion that her revered godparent wished to
surprise her housekeeping and catch her unprepared. On one occasion,
indeed, when the family came down--rather late--for breakfast, Aunt
Harriet was discovered sitting on the rustic seat outside the
dining-room window. She explained that she had taken the 5 a.m.
workmen's train and had come to spend a long day with them, but not
wishing to disturb the house at too early an hour she had remained in
the garden enjoying the view until somebody arrived downstairs. In
spite of her rather angular attitude, Miss Beach was a very kind and
generous friend to her widowed niece, and she was the one person in the
world to whom Mrs. Woodward naturally thought of turning in time of
trouble. Aunt Harriet's advice might not always be palatable, but it was
combined with such practical help that there seemed no alternative but
to follow it.

Miss Beach, though not a rich woman, was possessed of very comfortable
private means. She lived in an old-fashioned house just opposite the
Abbey, and her windows looked out on a view of towers and cloisters and
tall lime trees, with a foreground of monuments. To some people the
array of tombstones would have proved a dismal prospect, but she
declared it never distressed her in the least. She prided herself
greatly on the fact that she had been born in the house where her
father, grandfather and great-grandfather had also come into the world
and spent their lives. Except for an occasional expedition to Highfield,
she rarely left home. All her interests were in Seaton, and she became
miserable directly if she were away from her native city.

The little Woodwards had never regarded it as much of a treat to go and
stay at 10, Abbey Close. The restraint which the visit necessitated
quite neutralized the afternoon at the cinema with which their aunt
invariably entertained them. The fine old Chippendale furniture had to
be treated with a respect not meted out to the chairs and tables at
home, boots must be scrupulously wiped on the door-mat, bedrooms left
tidy, and books and ornaments were to be held altogether sacred from the
ravages of prying young fingers.

Winona had taken up her residence there with somewhat the feeling of a
novice entering a nunnery. She was not quite sure how she and Aunt
Harriet were going to get on. To her great relief, however, things
turned out better than she expected. Miss Beach received her with
unusual complacency, and the two settled down quite harmoniously
together. The fact was that Winona, a visitor with nothing to do, and
Winona a busy High School girl, were utterly different persons. It is
one thing to wander round somebody else's house and feel bored, and
quite another to hang up your hat, realize you are part and parcel of
the establishment, and occupy yourself with your own business. Once she
had fallen into the swing of work at school Winona began to appreciate
the orderliness of her aunt's arrangements. It had never seemed to
matter at home if the breakfast were late and she arrived at Miss
Harmon's when the clock had struck nine, but at "The High" it was an
affair of vital importance to be in her seat before call-over, and she
daily blessed the punctuality of Aunt Harriet's cook. It was also a
great boon to be able to prepare her lessons in quiet. Her family had
never realized the necessity of silence during study hours, and she had
been used to learn French vocabularies or translate her Latin exercises
to a distracting accompaniment of Ernie's trumpet, Dorrie's and Mamie's
quarrels, Godfrey's mouth organ, and Letty's strumming upon the piano.

"It would have been utterly impossible to do my prep. at home!" she
thought sometimes. "I'd no idea what work was like before I came to
Seaton 'High'! It would do those youngsters good to have a drilling! I
wish they could have been in the Preparatory. No, I don't! Because then
I should have had them here, and it would have been good-by to all
peace. On the whole things are much better as they are."

Miss Beach was so extremely busy with her own multifarious occupations
that she had not time to see very much of her great-niece. She made
every arrangement for her comfort, however, and caused the piano to be
moved into the dining-room for the convenience of her practicing. She
had always had a tender spot for Winona, whom she regarded as the one
hopeful character in a family of noodles. She talked to her at meal
times about a variety of subjects, some of them within her intelligence,
but others completely--so far--above her head. She even tried to draw
her out upon school matters. This, however, was a dead failure. Winona,
most unfortunately, could not overcome her awe for her aunt, and refused
to expand. To all the questions about her Form, her companions,
teachers, lessons or new experiences, she replied in monosyllables. It
was a sad pity, for Miss Beach had really hoped to win the girl's
confidence and prove a temporary mother to her, but finding her advances
repulsed she also shrank back into her shell, and the intimacy which
might have existed between them was postponed to future years. Young
folks often fail to realize what an interest their doings may have to
grown-up people, and how their bright fresh outlook on life may come as
a tonic to older and wearier minds. It never struck Winona to try to
amuse or entertain her aunt. At her present crude stage of development
she was incapable of appreciating the subtle pathos that clings round
elderly lives, and their wistful longing to be included in the
experiences of the rising generation. Shyness and lack of perception
held her silent, and the empty corner in Aunt Harriet's heart went
unfilled.

Saturday and Sunday were the only days upon which Winona had time to
feel homesick. Her mother had at first suggested her returning to
Highfield for the week ends, but Miss Beach had strongly vetoed the
project on the justifiable ground that even the earliest train from
Ashbourne on Monday mornings did not reach Seaton till 9.30, so that
Winona would lose the first hour's lesson of her school week. She might
have added that she considered such frequent home visits would prove
highly unsettling and interfere greatly with her work, but for once she
refrained from stating her frank opinion, probably deeming the other
argument sufficient, and willing to spare Mrs. Woodward's feelings.

Letters from Highfield showed little change in the usual conduct of
family affairs. The children were still attending Miss Harmon's school,
though they were to leave at Christmas.

"We are late nearly every day now you are not here to make Ernie
start," wrote Mamie, almost as if it were an achievement to be proud of.
"He locked the piano and threw the key in the garden, and we could none
of us practice for three days. Wasn't it lovely? Letty pours out tea if
mother isn't in, and yesterday she broke the teapot."

The chief items of news, however, concerned Percy. That young gentleman,
with what Aunt Harriet considered his usual perversity, had sprained his
ankle on the very day before he ought to have returned to school. He had
been ordered to lie up on the sofa, but Winona gathered that the
doctor's directions had not been very strictly carried out. She strongly
suspected that the patient did not wish to recover too quickly. Whether
or not that had been the case, Percy was now convalescent, and was to
set off for school on the following Friday. Longworth College was not a
great distance, and as Percy would have to pass through Seaton on his
way, Aunt Harriet invited him to break his journey there and spend the
night at her house. She had a poor opinion of the boy's capacity, but
having undertaken a half share in his education she felt an increased
sense of responsibility towards him, and wished to find an opportunity
of a word with him in private.

Winona hailed her brother's advent with immense joy. Even so flying a
visit was better than nothing. Letters were an inadequate means of
expression, and she was longing to pour out all her new experiences. She
wanted to tell Percy about the Symposium, and her friendship for Garnet,
and the chemistry class, and the gymnasium practice, and to show him
her hockey jersey which had just arrived. She had so long been the
recipient of all his school news that it would be delightful to turn the
tables and give him a chronicle of her own doings at the Seaton "High,"
which in her opinion quite rivaled Longworth College.

To the young people's scarcely suppressed satisfaction, Miss Beach went
out after tea to attend an important meeting, leaving her nephew and
niece to spend the evening alone together. They had never expected such
luck. As it was Friday Winona had no lessons to prepare for the next
day, and could feel free for a delightful chat. She flung herself into
Aunt Harriet's special big easy chair by the fireside, and lounged
luxuriously, while Percy, boy-like, prowled about the room.

"Well, I'm glad you're jogging along all right," he remarked when his
sister's long account came to a pause. "Though please don't for a moment
compare your blessed old High School to Longworth, for they're not in
the same running! Aunt Harriet hasn't quite eaten you up yet, I see?"

"She's not such a Gorgon as I expected. In fact she's been rather
decent."

"The dragon's sheathed her talons? Well, that's good biz. You went off
as tragic as Iphigenia, heroically declaring yourself the family
sacrifice."

"Did I?" Winona had almost forgotten her original attitude of martyr.
Three weeks had made a vast difference to her feelings.

"If you can peg it out in comfort with the dragon so much to the good.
Shouldn't care to live here myself though. It's a dull hole. Number 10,
Abbey Close wouldn't be my choice of a residence."

"Well, it's not likely you'll ever have the chance of living here!"
retorted Winona, taking up the cudgels for her adopted home.

"I don't know about that," returned Percy. "The house belongs to Aunt
Harriet. She'll have to leave her property to somebody, I suppose, when
she shuffles off this mortal coil. I'm the eldest son, and my name's
Percy Beach Woodward. That ought to count for something."

"Aunt Harriet's not going to die yet," said Winona gravely. "I think
it's horrid of you to talk like this!"

"Oh, I don't wish the old girl any harm, but one may have an eye to the
future all the same," was the airy response. "D'you remember Jack
Cassidy who was a pupil at the Vicarage? His aunt left him five thousand
pounds."

"Yes, and I heard he's muddling it away as fast as he can. Mary James
told me. Her father's guardian of part of his property until he's
twenty-five, you know."

"He's a topper, is Jack! He's promised to take me for a day sometime to
Hartleburn, when the races are on. Now don't you go blabbing, or I'll
never tell you anything again!"

"Mr. Joynson said--"

"Oh, for goodness sake shut up! A boy of sixteen isn't going to be
bear-led by an old fogey like Joynson. He has the mater far too much
under his finger and thumb for my taste. If you want to be chums with
me, don't preach!"

Winona was silent. Her brother's infatuation for the Vicar's scapegrace
ward was the affair of a year ago. She had hoped he had forgotten it.
His escapades at the time, in company with his hero, had caused his
mother to seek the advice and guidance of her trustee.

"Some one was telling me the other day that old oak furniture is worth a
tremendous lot of money now," continued Percy, his eye roving round the
room with an air almost of future proprietorship. "If that's so these
things of Aunt Harriet's are a little gold mine. There was an account of
a sale in the newspaper, with a picture of a cupboard that fetched two
hundred pounds. It was first cousin to that!" nodding at a splendidly
carved old piece which faced him.

Miss Beach's household goods were inherited from her great-grandfather,
and included some fine specimens of oak, as well as rare Chippendale.
Winona was too young to be a connoisseur of antiquities, but she had the
curiosity to rise from her chair and join Percy in his inspection of the
article in question.

"I tell you they're as alike as two peas!" he declared. "Same shape,
same sort of carving, same knobs at the end! The reason why I remember
the thing is that the buyer found a secret drawer in it after he'd got
it home, with some old rubbish inside, and there was a lawsuit as to who
owned these. He claimed he'd bought the lot with the cupboard, but the
judge made him turn them up to the family of the original owner. That
was why there was a picture of the cupboard in the newspaper. It put an
arrow showing the place of the secret drawer. I wonder if there's one
here, too? I'm going to have a try! By Jove, there is!"

A vigorous pull had dislodged a drawer in a very unexpected situation.
Winona would certainly never have thought of its existence, nor would
Percy, if the newspaper had not given away the secret. He looked eagerly
inside.

"No treasures hidden in here! Absolutely nothing at all, except this
piece of paper."

"Perhaps Aunt Harriet has never found it out," ventured Winona.

Percy did not answer immediately. He was reading the writing on the
paper.

"You bet she has!" he cried at last, flushing angrily. "I never thought
she'd much opinion of me, but I call this the limit! It's going where it
deserves!" and acting on a sudden impulse he flung the cause of offense
into the fire.

For a moment Winona did not realize what he had done. By the time she
reached the hearth the paper was already half consumed. She made a
snatch at it with the tongs, but a flame sprang up and forestalled her.
She had just time to read the words "last Will and Testament of me
Har--" before the whole sank into ashes. She turned to her brother with
a white, scared face.

"Percy! You've never burnt Aunt Harriet's will?"

Ashamed already of his impetuous act the boy nevertheless tried to bluff
the matter off.

"It was an abominable shame! When I'm named Beach after her too! I
wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't read it myself!" he blustered.

"Read what?"

"I shan't tell you! Look here, Win, you must promise on your honor that
you'll never breathe a word about this."

"Perhaps Aunt Harriet ought to know."

"She mustn't know: _mustn't_, I tell you! I say, Win, I'm not at all
sure that what I've just done isn't a chargeable offense--I believe they
call it a felony. You wouldn't like to see me put into prison, would
you? Then hold your tongue about it! Give me your word! Can you keep a
secret?"

"I promise!" gasped Winona (Percy was squeezing her little finger nail
in orthodox fashion and the agony was acute). "I promise faithfully."

She was in a terrible quandary. Her natural straightforwardness urged
her to make a clean breast of the whole affair. Had she been the actual
transgressor she would certainly have done so and faced the
consequences. But this was Percy's secret, not her own. He was no
favorite with his aunt, and so outrageous an act would prejudice him
fatally in her eyes. The hint about prison frightened Winona. She knew
nothing of law, but she thought it highly probable that burning a will
was a punishable crime. Suppose Aunt Harriet's rigid conscience obliged
her to communicate with the police and deliver Percy into the hands of
justice. Such a horrible possibility must be avoided at all costs. The
sound of a latch-key in the door made her start. In a panic she rushed
to the old cupboard and pushed back the secret drawer into its place.
When Miss Beach entered the dining-room her nephew and niece were
sitting reading by the fireside. Their choice of literature might
perhaps have astonished her, for Percy was poring over Sir Oliver
Lodge's "Man and the Universe," while Winona's nose was buried in
Herbert Spencer's "Sociology," but if indeed she noticed it, she perhaps
set it down to a laudable desire to improve their minds, and placed the
matter to their credit. Percy took his departure next morning, and
Winona saw him off at the railway station.

"Remember, you've to keep that business dark," he reminded her. "Aunt
Harriet must never find out. She's been jawing me no end about
responsibility, and looking after the kids and supporting the mater and
all that. Rubbed it in hard, I can tell you! Great Juggins! Do I look
like the mainstay of a family?"

As Winona watched his boyish face laughing at her from the window of the
moving train she decided that he certainly did not. She sighed as she
turned to leave the station. Life seemed suddenly to have assumed new
perplexities. Percy's act weighed heavily on her mind. It seemed such a
base return for all Aunt Harriet was doing on their behalf. She longed
to thank her for her kindness and say how much she appreciated going to
the High School, but she could not find the words. Theknowledge of the
secret raised an extra barrier between herself and her aunt. So she sat
at lunch time even shyer and more speechless than usual, and let the
ball of conversation persistently drop.

"Fretting for her brother, I suppose," thought Miss Beach. "She can talk
fast enough with friends of her own age. Well, I suppose an old body
like myself mustn't expect to be company for a girl of fifteen!"

She was too proud to let the hurt feeling show itself on her face,
however, and propping up the newspaper beside her plate, she plunged
into the latest accounts from the Front.




CHAPTER VI

A Crisis


Winona had been more than a month, nearly five weeks indeed, at the
Seaton High School. In the first few days of her introduction to
V.a. she had told herself that the difficulty of the work
consisted largely in its newness, and that as soon as she grew
accustomed to it she would sail along as swimmingly as Garnet Emerson,
or Olave Parry, or Hilda Langley, or Agatha James. Most unfortunately
she found her theory acted in the opposite direction. Closer
acquaintance with her Form subjects proved their extreme toughness. She
was not nearly up to the standard of the rest of the girls. Her Latin
grammar was shaky, her French only a trifle better, she had merely a
nodding acquaintance with geometry, and had not before studied
chemistry. Her teacher seemed to expect her to understand many things of
which she had hitherto never heard, and was apparently astounded at her
ignorance. Winona puzzled over her text-books during many hours of
preparation, but she made little headway. The royal road to learning,
which she had fondly hoped to tread, was proving itself a stony and
twisting path.

"_You_ seem to get on all right?" she said wistfully to Garnet one day.

"Why, yes. Of course one has to work," admitted her friend. "Miss
Huntley keeps one up to the mark. But one must expect that in
V.a. They don't put scholarship holders in the Preparatory."

"I was all at sea in math. this morning."

"You were rather a duffer, certainly. The problems weren't as difficult
as the ones they gave us in the entrance exam. If those didn't floor
you, why couldn't you work these?"

"But they did floor me. I barely managed half the paper. I reckoned I'd
failed in it."

Garnet looked surprised.

"Then your other subjects must have been extremely good to make up for
it. I was told that we should probably stand or fall by maths. You were
ripping in everything else, I suppose? Scored no end?"

Winona did not answer the question. She was conscious that none of her
papers could have merited such an eulogium. She envied Garnet's grasp of
the form work. Try as she would, her own exercises and translations were
poor affairs, and her ill-trained memory found it difficult to marshal
the enormous number of facts that were daily forced upon it. Miss
Huntley at first was patient, but as the weeks wore on, and Winona still
wallowed in a quagmire of amazing mistakes, she grew sarcastic. The girl
winced under some of her cutting remarks. Apparently the mistress
imagined her failure to be due to laziness and inattention, and sooner
than confess that she could not understand the work, Winona was silent.
She never mentioned the long hours she spent poring over her books in
Aunt Harriet's dining-room. After all, it was better to be thought idle
than stupid. But it was humiliating to feel that she was counted among
the slackers of the Form, while Garnet was already winning laurels. The
contrast between the two scholarship holders could not fail to be
noticed.

Miss Huntley (privately known to the Form as "Bunty") was a clever, but
rather remorseless teacher. She had been on the staff since the opening
of the school two years before, and she was determined at all costs to
maintain the high standard inaugurated at its foundation. She was
herself the product of High School education, and knew to the last
scruple how much to require from girls in V.a. To those who
appeared to be really trying their best she was ready to give
intelligent help, but she had no mercy for slackers. She was possessed
of a certain amount of dry humor, greatly appreciated by the form _en
bloc_, though each quaked privately lest, through some unlucky slip, she
might find herself the object of the smart but withering satires.
Despite her strictness, "Bunty" was popular. She was an admirable tennis
player, and a formidable champion in a match "Mistresses _v._ Girls."
Her strong personality fascinated Winona, who would have done much to
gain her approval. So far, however, she was entirely on Miss Huntley's
black list.

Matters came to a crisis over a difficult bit of Vergil. Latin was,
next to mathematics, the most painfully wobbling of Winona's shaky
subjects. She had puzzled in vain over this particular piece of
translation. The words, indeed, she had found in the dictionary, but she
could not twist them into sense.

"Old Vergil's utterly stumped me to-day!" she mourned to Garnet, as they
met in the dressing-room before nine o'clock. "If Bunty puts me to
construe anywhere on page 21, I'm a gone coon. I'm feeling in a blue
funk, I can tell you."

"Poor old bluebottle! Don't wrinkle up your forehead like that--you're
making permanent lines! It's a bad trick, and just spoils you."

"I can't help it when I'm worried!"

"Then don't worry."

"Oh, it's easy enough for you; you don't have to receive the vials of
Bunty's scorn."

Winona hoped against hope that the difficult page might fall to somebody
else's turn. Miss Huntley took no particular order, but selected girls
at random to construe the lesson. In a Form of twenty it was possible
not to be chosen at all. Winona kept very quiet, so as not to attract
the mistress' attention. Marjorie Kemp and Olave Parry had already
translated half of the fatal page, with tolerable credit. Miss Huntley's
eye was wandering in the direction of Irene Mills. Winona dared to
breathe. Then, alas! alas! Some unlucky star caused the mistress to look
back towards the middle of the room. In a spasm of nervousness, Winona
jerked her elbow, and away went her pencil-box, clattering on to the
floor, and dispersing its collection of pens, pencils, nibs and other
treasures beneath the neighboring desks. There was a dead silence, and
the culprit was instantly the center of attention.

"A clumsy thing to do! Leave those things where they are! You can pick
them up after the lesson," observed Miss Huntley grimly. "Go on now with
the translation."

Winona's hot face had been hidden under Audrey Redfern's desk. She rose
reluctantly. Her confusion made the hard passage seem twice as
difficult. Even the words which she had carefully looked up in the
dictionary and learned by heart escaped her fickle memory. She stumbled
and floundered hopelessly, getting redder and redder with shame. Miss
Huntley preserved an ominous silence, and did not attempt to help her
out.

"That will do!" she said, at the end of about eight lines. "After such a
complete exhibition of incompetence we won't inflict any more of your
bungling upon the form. We must see if we can find a way of sharpening
your wits. Your brain seems to have been lying fallow since you came to
school! You will report yourself to Miss Bishop at four o'clock this
afternoon."

The rest of the morning passed like a bad dream to Winona. It was a rare
event for a teacher to send a girl to the head mistress. The prospect of
the coming interview made her cold with apprehension. She avoided Garnet
at one o'clock, and hurried out of the dressing-room without speaking
to any one. She had a wild project of pleading a headache, and begging
Aunt Harriet to let her stop at home for the rest of the day. But then
to-morrow's explanations would be infinitely worse. No, it was better to
face the horrible ordeal and get it over. As it happened, Miss Beach had
gone out to lunch, so that leave of absence was an impossibility. Winona
ate her early dinner alone.

"Aren't you well, miss? Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?"
asked Alice the housemaid, noticing that the pudding was unappreciated,
and divining that something must be amiss.

"No, thanks! I'm in a hurry, and must fly off to school as quickly as I
can. It's my early afternoon."

Winona had a music lesson at a quarter past two on Thursdays. It was
always rather a rush to get back in time for it. She crammed her "Bach's
Preludes" and "Schubert's Impromptus" automatically into her portfolio,
and started. It was only when she was half-way down Church Street that
she remembered she had left her book of studies on the top of the piano.
Needless to say, her lesson that day was hardly a success. In the
disturbed state of her mind she was quite incapable of concentrating her
attention on music. Miss Catteral looked surprised at her wrong notes
and imperfect phrasing.

"I shall expect to find some improvement in this 'Impromptu' next week,"
she remarked. "Have you practiced your hour daily? You must take these
bars, which I have marked, separately, and play each twenty times in
succession, slowly at first and then faster, and remember here that it
is the left hand which gives the melody, and the right is only the
accompaniment. I thought you had sufficient music in you to appreciate
that! The way you thumped out those chords was painful. I am not pleased
at all."

Miss Catteral so rarely scolded that Winona felt doubly humiliated. It
was all a part and parcel of the general ill-luck of the day. She
fetched her drawing-board, and went to the art class. Here at least she
would have peace for an hour, though every one of the sixty minutes was
bringing her nearer to her dreaded interview. At four o'clock, with a
horrible sinking feeling in her heart, and a trembling sensation in her
knees, she knocked at the door of the head-mistress's study, and entered
in response to the "Come in!" which followed. Miss Bishop looked up from
some papers, motioned her to a chair, and went on writing for several
minutes. To Winona it seemed worse than waiting at the dentist's. The
suspense was ghastly.

At last the Principal paused, laid down her pen, and blotted her pages.

"Come here, Winona Woodward," she said quietly. "I wish to have a
straight talk with you."

Miss Bishop's eyes were her most striking feature. They were large and
clear, but the pupils were unusually small, appearing mere black specks
in the midst of a wide circle of blue. This peculiarity gave her a
particularly intense and penetrating expression. Winona, standing at
attention beside the desk, dropped her own eyes before the steady,
searching gaze.

"Miss Huntley's report of your work is not at all satisfactory," began
Miss Bishop. "I have been watching your progress since you joined the
school, and I cannot think you are trying your best. At first, when you
were totally new to your Form, I suspended judgment, but you have been
here nearly half a term now--quite long enough to accustom yourself to
our methods. I confess I am greatly disappointed. I had hoped for better
things from the holder of a County Scholarship."

Winona remained silent. She could think of nothing to say in
self-defense.

"It must be sheer lack of grit and effort," continued Miss Bishop. "I
cannot understand how a girl who did so remarkably well in the entrance
examination can rest content with such a low record. How long do you
take over your preparation?"

"Until my aunt sends me to bed," replied Winona, in a very subdued
voice. "I spend the whole evening at my lessons."

Miss Bishop looked puzzled.

"Then the work must be too difficult for you. If that is the case, I
must remove you to V.b."

V.b. was notorious in the school as a refuge for incompetence.
It was mainly composed of girls of sixteen and seventeen who could not
reach the standard of the Sixth, and who went by the nickname of "owls"
or "stupids." The prospect of being relegated to such an intellectual
backwater spread palpable dismay over Winona's face. Miss Bishop smiled
rather grimly.

"We can't win honors without paying the price! You must know that
already by experience. I conclude that you studied hard for the
Scholarship examination? Well, your Form work requires equally close
application. Here is Miss Huntley's report: 'French, weak; Latin,
beneath criticism; mathematics, extremely bad.' Yet in all these three
subjects you gained a high percentage in the entrance examination. I
have your papers here--yes, Latin 85, French 87, mathematics 92"
(rapidly turning over the pages), "it is simply incredible how you have
fallen off."

Winona was gazing at the sheets of foolscap in the Principal's hand.

"Those aren't my papers," she faltered.

"Certainly they are. They're marked with your number, 11."

"But I wasn't number 11, I was number 10."

Miss Bishop stooped, opened a drawer in her bureau, and took out a book.

"Here it is in black and white," she replied. "No. 11, Winona Woodward."

Winona's shaking hands clutched the edge of the bureau. In a flash the
whole horrible truth was suddenly revealed to her. Until that moment she
had almost forgotten how she and the ruddy-haired girl had collided at
the door of the examination-room, and dropped their cards. In picking
them up, they must have effected an exchange. She remembered that she
had been too agitated to notice her number until after the accident had
happened. She now related the circumstance as best she could. Miss
Bishop listened aghast.

"What number did you say you took in the examination-room? Ten? That is
entered in my book as Marjorie Kaye. I have the rest of the candidates'
papers in this bundle. Let me see--yes, here is No. 10. Is this your
handwriting? Then I'm afraid there has been a terrible blunder, and the
scholarship has been awarded to the wrong girl."

The Principal's consternation was equalled by Winona's. To the latter
the ground seemed slipping from under her feet. She tried to speak, but
failed. A great lump rose in her throat. For a moment the room whirled
round.

"This set of papers, No. 10, was marked so low as to be out of the
running," continued Miss Bishop. "It is a most unfortunate mistake, and
places the school in an extremely awkward position. I must consult with
the Governors at once. Pending their decision, it will be better not to
mention the matter to anybody. You may go now."

Winona managed somehow to get herself out of the study, to put on her
hat and coat, and to walk home to Abbey Close. Her aunt was still
absent, for which she was intensely thankful, and ignoring the tea that
was waiting on the dining-room table, she rushed upstairs to her
bedroom. Her one imperative need was to be alone. She must face the
situation squarely. Her world had suddenly turned topsy-turvy; instead
of being the winner of the County Scholarship, she was among the
rejected candidates. In her heart of hearts she had always marveled how
her indifferent papers could have scored such a success. She wondered
this explanation had never occurred to her before. All this time she had
been wearing another girl's laurels. What was going to happen next? She
supposed the scholarship would be taken from her, and given to its
rightful owner. And herself? She would probably be packed home, as Percy
had prophesied, "like a whipped puppy." Possibly Aunt Harriet might
offer to pay her fee as an ordinary pupil at the High School, but in
either case the humiliation would be supreme.

Winona dreaded returning home. In spite of the difficulty of the work,
the High School had opened a fresh world to her. She could never again
be content with the old rut. Miss Harmon's dull lessons would be
intolerable, and life without Garnet's friendship would seem a blank.
The companionship of her three little sisters was totally inadequate for
a girl who was fast growing up. She shrank from speculating how her
mother would receive the bad news. Mrs. Woodward was one of those
parents who expect their children to gain the prizes which they were
incapable of winning for themselves. She had claimed a kind of
second-hand credit in her daughter's triumph. Winona knew from past
experience that so keen a disappointment would involve a string of
reproaches, regrets and fretting. She would probably never hear the
last of it. The family hopes had been pinned upon her success, and to
frustrate them was to court utter disgrace. For the present she must
live with this sword of Damocles hanging over her head, but she hoped
the Governors would decide the matter speedily, and put her out of her
misery.

There is one virtue in a supreme trouble--it dwarfs all minor griefs.
Percy's secret, which had been felt as a continual burden, seemed to
sink into comparative obscurity, and the worry of school work and the
dread of Miss Huntley's sarcasm were mere flies in the ointment. Winona
never quite knew how she got through the week that followed. It stayed
afterwards in her memory as a period of black darkness, a valley of
humiliation, in which her old childish self slipped away, and a new,
stronger and more capable personality was born to face the future. She
had resigned herself so utterly to the inevitable, that when at last
Miss Bishop's summons came, she was able to walk quite calmly into the
study. The Principal was seated as usual at her bureau; Winona's
entrance examination papers lay before her. Her manner was
non-committal; her blue eyes looked even more penetrating than usual.

"You will have been wondering what was going to happen about the matter
of the scholarship," she began.

"Yes, Miss Bishop," answered Winona meekly. She did not add that she had
spent eight days in a mental purgatory.

"I of course placed the facts before the Governors, and we at once
communicated with the parents of Marjorie Kaye. We find, however, that
in the meantime she has been elected a scholar of the Maria Harvey
Foundation, and will therefore be unable to accept this scholarship. Her
papers and those of Garnet Emerson were the only ones of outstanding
merit. In re-examining the remaining eighteen we find a uniform level of
mediocrity. As regards your set of papers, the general standard is low,
with one exception. We consider that your essay on Lady Jane Grey shows
an originality and a capacity for thought which may be worthy of
training. On the strength of this--and this alone--the Governors have
decided to allow you to retain your scholarship. In so doing they are
perfectly within their rights. They did not undertake to grant free
tuition to the candidate who scored the highest number of marks, but to
the one who, in their opinion, was most likely to benefit by the school
course. It was a matter to be settled entirely at their discretion. I
have carefully re-read your papers, and compared them with your form
record, and I come to the conclusion that you are backward and
ill-instructed in many subjects, but that you are not idle or stupid. I
shall make arrangements for you to have special coaching in mathematics,
Latin and chemistry until you can keep up with the rest of the Form. I
find your reports for history and English literature are good, which
confirms my opinion that you do not lack ability. You will need to work
very hard, especially at those subjects in which you are so deficient,
but I trust you will soon show a marked improvement, and thus justify
the decision of the Governors. Are you prepared to try?"

"I don't know how to thank you--I'll do my very best!" stammered Winona,
quite overcome by this unexpected _dénouement_.

"Then that is all that need be said. Miss Lever will take you every day
from 3.30 to 4.15 for private tuition. Mark that on your time-table, and
go to her this afternoon in the Preparatory Room. You may tell Miss
Garside that I am disengaged now, and at liberty to speak to her."

Winona left the study with very different feelings from those with which
she had entered. Her spirits were so high that she wanted to dance along
the corridor. She could hardly believe her good fortune. Those great and
important gentlemen, the Governors, had actually approved of her essay
to the extent of allowing it to stand as her qualification for the
Scholarship! She blessed Lady Jane Grey, and Edgar Allan Poe, and
Browning, and André de Chénier, and the happy chance that had made her
combine them all. She was glad she had paid that visit to Hampton Court,
and that she had seen Lady Jane Grey's portrait, and had been able to
describe both. Life was going to be a very exhilarating business, now
her position in the school was once more secure.

"I'll show them how I can work," she thought. "They shan't be sorry that
they let me stay after all! Oh, I am in luck! Yes, I'm the luckiest girl
in the school!"




CHAPTER VII

An Autumn Foray


Winona felt that she now started life at the High School on an entirely
new basis. Miss Bishop and Miss Huntley understood her limitations and
judged her accordingly. It was not by any means that they lowered their
standard, but that they appreciated her difficulty in keeping up with
the Form and gave her credit for her hard work. And hard work it
undoubtedly was. She would get up early in the morning to revise her
lessons before breakfast, and would sit toiling over books and exercises
in the evenings till even Aunt Harriet--indefatigable worker
herself--would tell her to stop, and wax moral on the folly of burning
the candle at both ends. The coaching from Miss Lever was of inestimable
value. It supplied just the gaps in which she was deficient, and gave
her an adequate grasp of her three toughest subjects. Slowly she began
to make headway, she saw light in mathematical problems that had before
been meaningless formulæ, chemistry was less of a hopeless tangle, and
Vergil's lines construed into understandable sentences instead of utter
nonsense. It was only gradual progress, however. She had much ground to
cover before she caught up the Form. She was plodding, but not a
brilliant all-round scholar like Garnet. The fact was that Winona was
only clever in one direction: in the realm of imagination her mind ran
like a racehorse, but harnessed to heavy intellectual burdens it proved
but a sorry steed.

It was fortunate for both her health and her spirits that head work did
not represent the only side of school activities. Miss Bishop was wise
enough to lay much stress on physical development. A ten minutes' drill
was part of the daily routine, a gymnasium practice was held twice a
week, and Wednesday afternoons were devoted to hockey. In addition to
this the girls played tennis on the asphalt courts during the winter and
spring terms, whenever the weather was suitable, and basket ball was
constantly going on in the playground. Athletics was decidedly the
fashionable cult of the school. Kirsty Paterson, as Games Captain, made
it her business to see that nobody slacked without justifiable cause.
She would break up knots of chatting idlers, and cajole them forth to
"cultivate muscle" as she expressed it, while her keen eye was quick to
note anybody's "points" and employ them for the general benefit.
Kirsty's jolly, breezy manner and strict sense of justice made her an
admirable captain. She was highly popular with juniors as well as
seniors, for she took the trouble to organize the games of the little
girls as carefully as those of their elders.

"It's insane short-sighted policy to neglect the kids," was her creed.
"Now's the time to be training them. Get them thoroughly well in hand
and make them understand what's expected from them, and in four or five
years' time they'll be crack players. Yes, I know it's looking far
ahead, and we prefects won't be here to see the result, but the school
will reap the benefit some day and that's the main thing to aim at. I'm
proud of my cadets and, in the future, when they're winning laurels for
the Seaton High, perhaps they'll remember I started them on the right
track. 'Keep up the standard all round' is going to be the motto while
I'm Captain."

To Winona athletics and organized games came as a revelation. She had a
slim wiry little figure and was a good runner, with a capacity for
keeping her breath, and had also a considerable power of spring, all of
which stood her in good stead both in the hockey field and in the
gymnasium. Though Kirsty said little, she could feel her efforts were
being watched and approved, and the knowledge gave her a tingling sense
of satisfaction. It was delightful to feel that she was a factor in this
big school, and that she was doing her bit--however insignificant--to
help up the athletic standard. In physical agility Winona was superior
to Garnet. She could beat her easily at tennis, and there was already a
wide gap between their gymnastic achievements. It was a fortunate
circumstance, for it just balanced their friendship, and put them on a
footing of equality which would have been otherwise absent. Garnet, so
manifestly first in Form work, possessed of greater confidence and
_savoir faire_ in school life and older in experience for her years than
Winona, might have monopolized the lead too entirely, had she not been
obliged to yield the palm of outdoor sports to her friend.

Garnet was, in truth, just a trifle inclined to "boss." She liked
Winona, and wanted her for a chum, but she loved to lay down the law and
to constitute herself an authority upon every possible subject. There
was no doubt it was owing to her initiative that the two
scholarship-holders were gaining a position for themselves in the
school. As Garnet had foreseen, the part they had taken in the Symposium
won them favorable recognition. To be singled out as soloists and to
have the honor of playing an accompaniment for the prefects had raised
them above the common herd, and though a few were jealous, more were
ready to extend the hand of good fellowship. In their own Form they were
living down the prejudice which had at first existed against them. Hilda
Langley and Estelle Harrison were not very friendly and influenced Olave
Parry and Mollie Hill against them, but these formed a minority, and the
bulk of the girls seemed to have decided in their favor.

With the enormous demands made on her time by her home preparation,
Winona did not venture to join many of the school guilds. She would have
liked immensely to put her name down for election to the Dramatic
Society, the Debating Club and the Literary Association, but these all
required rather strenuous brain work from their members, and in the
circumstances she knew it would be folly to take them up. At some future
date, when her ordinary subjects proved less of a burden, she promised
herself the pleasure of being numbered among that select clique known
as "The Intellectuals," but for the present her motto must be "grim
grind." The Patriotic Knitting Guild seemed more feasible. She paid her
subscription, received her skeins of khaki wool, and started mittens to
fill up odd moments. She found the knitting a soothing occupation, it
could be taken up and laid down so easily; it often went to school with
her, and would come out during the interval, or while she was waiting
for a class. The Photographic Union was beyond her, for as yet she had
no camera, but she thought she was justified in joining the Natural
History League. This society did not for the present demand papers from
its members, but contented itself with encouraging the collection of
objects for the school museum. Its main activities would be during the
summer term, though a weather record was kept throughout the year, and
any nature notes that were worthy of being written down were duly
chronicled in the Field Book. Linda Fletcher and Annie Hardy, two of the
prefects, were the leading spirits in the League. Linda was great on
entomology, and, having a brother who was interested in the subject, had
been out "sugaring" in his company in August and September, and had
secured some fine specimens of moths. She had boxes full of chrysalides
which she fondly hoped would emerge in the spring into perfect insects,
and she had made quite a good little collection of beetles. Annie was
more interested in botany, she pressed flowers and leaves, dried fruits
and seed vessels, and made praiseworthy efforts at preserving funguses
in bottles, though these latter attempts were not always attended with
the success they deserved, as they were apt to acquire a gamey odor, to
which her mother very naturally objected, and she would be obliged
disconsolately to turn them out into the dust-bin.

November happened to be a particularly fine month at Seaton. There had
been little rain, and no high winds to blow the leaves away. Though the
trees in the city were bare, those in the country round about remained
almost in their October glory, and in sheltered woods some were still
green. The persistent sunshine encouraged the Natural History League to
plan an excursion for its members, and after a consultation with Miss
Lever, the Botany mistress, Linda pinned up the following announcement
on the school notice board:--

NATURAL HISTORY LEAGUE.
An Autumn Foray will be held on Saturday next, visiting Monkend Woods
and Copplestone Quarry. Members will meet at station for the 12.45 train
to Powerscroft, returning by the 5.30 from Chartwell. Tea at farm-house.
Walking distance five miles. Leaders: Miss Lever, Linda Fletcher and
Annie Hardy. Those intending to join kindly give their names to the
Secretary on Wednesday at latest.

                                        L. FLETCHER,

                                                   _Hon. Sec._

The prospect of a ramble was alluring. Winona was a country lover, so
she forthwith secured Aunt Harriet's permission for the outing and
placed her name upon the list.

"I don't think there'll be more than a dozen of us altogether," said
Linda, "but really a small party's more manageable than a big one, and
I'll undertake we enjoy ourselves. Miss Lever can get permission for us
to walk through the private part of the woods--there's no shooting this
autumn, you know--so that will be simply glorious, and she says we ought
to find some fossils in the quarry, if we've luck. I hope the weather
will keep up. Don't forget to take a vasculum or a basket, and a hammer
for fossils, and be sure you put on strong boots. The tea will probably
be eightpence a head. Miss Lever is writing beforehand to the farm to
make arrangements."

Garnet also was to join the excursion and she promised to call for
Winona, so that they might walk to the station together. The latter had
an early lunch, and was ready dressed and waiting for her friend by
twenty minutes past twelve. Garnet's tram was late, and by the time she
reached Abbey Close the clock pointed to the half-hour.

"I'm frightfully sorry! You must think me a Juggins, but it wasn't my
fault!" she apologized. "We shall have to sprint, but we'll just do it."

The girls set off at a tremendous pace along the Close and down the
Abbey avenue, but it was difficult to keep the same speed through the
town, where the streets were thronged with country people who had come
in for the Saturday market. They got along as best they could, walking
first on the pavement and then on the road, dodging round stout females
bearing baskets, avoiding hooting motors, and finally making a dash down
a back street that led to the railway bridge. They clattered down the
steps to the booking office, secured their tickets and rushed on to the
platform. The hands of the big clock were at 12.45 exactly, the guard
was about to wave his green flag. They were too late to look for their
party; they simply pelted towards the nearest carriage, a porter opened
the door and they scrambled in just in the very nick of time.

"Oh, thank goodness! Thank goodness!" gasped Garnet. "I thought we'd
miss it! I never had such a run in my life before! Oh! It's given me a
stitch in my side!"

"They've put us in a first!" exulted Winona, breathlessly. "We have it
all to ourselves! What luck! Hope they won't make a fuss about our
tickets when we get out!"

"It was the porter's fault. He opened the door. We'll ask Miss Lever to
explain. I suppose the others are further along somewhere in the train.
I wonder if they saw us get in?"

"If they didn't, it will be a surprise packet for them when we turn up."

"Yes, they'll have made up their minds we're left behind."

The two girls leaned back, enjoying the luxury of traveling in a
first-class compartment. They felt the excursion had begun well as far
as they were concerned. Their satisfaction was short-lived, however.
When they neared Barnhill, the train, instead of stopping, rushed
through the station at thirty-five miles an hour. Garnet turned to
Winona in utter consternation.

"Oh, good-night!" she ejaculated. "I verily believe we've gone and got
into the express!"

They saw at once how it had happened. The 12.40 fast train to Rockfield
must have been five minutes late. In their hurry they had mistaken it
for the stopping train, which probably had been drawn up behind it in
the station.

"Well, this is a pretty go!" agreed Winona. "We shall be carried on to
Rockfield and have to come back."

"We shall miss the ramble! Oh, it's the limit of hard luck--to see
ourselves whizzing through Powerscroft!"

"I say, I believe we're stopping after all!"

They let down the window and looked out. They were still about a mile
from Powerscroft, but the train drew up, probably in obedience to an
adverse signal. Then the girls did a terrible and awful thing. They
never remembered afterwards which suggested it, probably the idea
occurred to both simultaneously, but in defiance of the law of the realm
and the rules of the railway company, they opened the door of the
carriage and climbed down on to the line. There were some railings near,
and they scrambled over these and dodged down an embankment into a
coppice before anybody in the train had time to give an alarm. They
hoped their flight had not been noticed, but of that they could not be
sure. They hid behind some bushes until they heard the train rumble
away.

"That was the smartest thing we've ever done in our lives!" chuckled
Garnet. "I believe we could be fined about ten pounds each if they
caught us!"

"Let us hurry on and try to find the road," said Winona, who was rather
frightened at her own temerity, and had a nervous apprehension lest a
guard or a signalman or some other railway official might even now be in
pursuit and arrest them on a charge of breaking the law.

After crossing a field they struck a path which led them eventually into
a by-lane.

"I know where we are," affirmed Garnet. "I bicycled this way once.
Monkend Woods are in that direction, and if we turn to the left and
through this village we shall get there sooner than the others, I
believe, and be waiting for them when they arrive. Their train won't
have reached Powerscroft yet."

"We'd better step out all the same," urged Winona.

Fortunately Garnet possessed the bump of locality. Her recollection of
the district was correct, and after a brisk walk of about a mile they
found themselves in the high road close to the wood, and sat down on a
wall to wait. Their fast train and short cut had given them an
advantage: it was nearly half an hour before they spied the rest of the
party strolling leisurely up the hill with baskets and vasculums. The
surprise of the League at seeing them was immense, and naturally there
were many inquiries as to how they had thus stolen a march upon their
friends.

"Oh, we came in an aëroplane!" said Garnet jauntily. "It just dropped us
in the field over there. Very pleasant run, though a little chilly in
the clouds!"

She was obliged to own up, however, in answer to Miss Lever's inquiries,
give a precise account of their adventure, and cry "peccavi."

"Of course Dollikins had to be orthodox and preach a short sermon," she
confided afterwards to Winona, "but I'm sure she'd have done the same
thing herself in the circumstances. I could see admiration in her eye,
although she talked about running risks and the possibility of broken
necks."

Miss Lever, otherwise Dollikins, from the fact that her Christian name
was Dorothy, held high favor among the girls. She was brisk and jolly,
decidedly athletic, and a first-rate leader of outdoor expeditions. She
had called at the gamekeeper's cottage _en route_ and shown the letter
of permission from the owner of the property, so that the party was able
to explore the wood with a clear conscience, despite the trespass notice
nailed on to the gate. And what a delightful wood it was! To enter it
was like stepping into one of Grimm's fairy tales. An avenue of splendid
pines reared their dark boughs against a russet background of beeches;
everywhere the leaves seemed to have donned their brightest and gayest
tints, as if bidding a last good-by before they fell from the trees. The
undergrowth was gorgeous: bramble, elder, honeysuckle, briony, rowan,
and alder vied with one another in the vividness of their crimson and
orange, while the bracken was a sea of pale gold. There were all sorts
of delightful things to be found--acorns lay so plentifully in the
pathway that the girls could not help scrunching them underfoot. A few
were already sending out tiny shoots in anticipation of spring, and
these were carefully saved to take home and grow in bottles. A stream
ran through the wood, its banks almost completely covered with vivid
green mosses, in sheets so thick and compact that a slight pull would
raise a yard at a time. Some resembled tufted tassels, some the most
delicate ferns, and others showed the split cups of their seed-vessels
like pixie goblets. Annie Hardy, whose experienced eyes were on the
look-out for certain botanical treasures reported to grow at Monkend,
was searching among the dead twigs under the hazel bushes, and was
rewarded by finding a clump of the curious little birds-nest fungus with
its seeds packed like tiny eggs inside. Some orange elf-cups, a bright
red toadstool or two, and a few of the larger purple varieties that had
lingered on from October made quite a creditable fungus record for the
League, and specimens of wild flowers were also secured, a belated
foxglove or two, a clump of ragwort, some blue harebells, campion,
herb-robert, buttercup, yarrow, thistle, and actually a strawberry
blossom. The leaders had brought note-books and wrote down each find as
reported by the members, taking the specimens for Miss Lever to verify
if there were any doubt as to identification. Animal and bird life was
not absent. Shy bunnies whisked away, showing a dab of white tail as
they dived under the bracken; a splendid squirrel ran across the path
and darted up an oak tree, a wood-pigeon whirred from a pine top, a
great woodpecker, scared by their approach, started from the bushes and
flew past them so near that they could see the green flash of its wings
and the red markings on its head, while a whole fluttering flight of
long-tailed tits were flitting like a troop of fairies round the hole of
a lichen-covered beech.

Miss Lever was as enthusiastic as the girls; she climbed over fallen
tree trunks, grubbed among dead leaves, jumped the brook and scaled
fences with delightful energy. It was she who pointed out the heron
sailing overhead, and noticed the gold-crested wren's nest hanging under
the branch of a fir, a little battered with autumn rain, and too high,
alas! to be taken, but a most interesting item to go down in the
note-books. The girls could hardly be persuaded to tear themselves away
from the glory of the woods, and would have spent the whole time there,
but Miss Lever had other plans.

"Come along! We've scared the pheasants quite enough," she declared. "My
mind is set on fossils, and if we don't go on to Copplestones at once we
shall be caught in the dark, or miss our tea or our train or something
equally disagreeable."

The quarry was only half a mile away, and it proved as interesting as
the wood. Being Saturday afternoon the men were not working, so they had
the place to themselves, and wandered about examining heaps of shale,
and tapping likely-looking stones with their hammers. Garnet and Winona
knew nothing of geology, so they listened with due meekness while the
instructed few discoursed learnedly on palæozoic rocks, stratified
conglomerates and quartzites. They rejoiced with Miss Lever, however,
when she secured a fairly intact belemnite. It was the only good find
they had, though some of the girls got broken bits of fossil shells.

"The fact is one needs a whole day to hunt about in this quarry, and my
watch tells me we ought to be going," said Miss Lever. "Who feels
inclined for tea?"

Everybody felt very much disposed, so the procession started off
cheerfully for the farm close by, and the nature-lovers were soon hard
at work consuming platefuls of bread and butter, jars of jam, and piles
of plum cake.

"Sixteen varieties of wild flowers, seven various specimens of fungi,
nine different sorts of berries, twelve species of birds noticed, also
rabbits and squirrel, one bird's nest and one perfect fossil--not a bad
record for an autumn foray!" said Linda, proudly consulting her
note-book.

"Especially when you remember we're well on in November!" added Annie.
"It will be something to enter in the League minutes book."

"I'm afraid it's the last ramble we shall get this year," said Miss
Lever, "but I've one or two nice little schemes on hand for the spring,
so the League must look forward to next April. Will any one have any
more tea? Then please make a move, for it's time we were starting."

"Good old Dollikins!" murmured Linda as the girls put on their coats.
"She's A1 at a foray. Got something ripping for next season in her head.
I can tell by the twinkle in her eye. She'll ruminate over it all
winter, and drop it on us as a surprise some day. Oh, thunder! Yes, we
ought to be starting! Come along, you slackers, do you want to be left
standing on the platform with a couple of hours to wait for the next
train? Then sprint as hard as you can!"




CHAPTER VIII

Concerns a Camera


Winona went home at Christmas with a whole world of new experiences to
call her own. Her first term had indeed been an epoch in her life, and
though the holidays were naturally welcome, she felt that she could look
forward with pleasure to the next session of school. Her family received
her with a certain amount of respect. The younger ones listened
enviously to her accounts of hockey matches and symposiums, and began to
wish Fate had wafted their fortunes to Seaton. They had left Miss
Harmon's little school, and next term were expecting, with some
apprehension, a governess whom Aunt Harriet had recommended. Winona, who
after thirteen weeks at Abbey Close found the home arrangements rather
chaotic, could not help privately endorsing Miss Beach's wisdom in
instituting such a change. Poor Mrs. Woodward had been greatly out of
health for the last few months, and kept much to her bedroom, while the
children had been running wild in a quite deplorable fashion. Letty, who
ought to have had some influence over the others, was the naughtiest of
all, and the ringleader in every mischievous undertaking. Having
occupied the position of "eldest" for thirteen weeks, she was not at all
disposed to submit to her sister's authority, and there were many
tussles between the two.

"You'll _have_ to do as your governess tells you, when she comes!"
protested Winona on one particularly urgent occasion.

"All right, Grannie!" retorted Letty pertly. "I'll settle that matter
with the good lady herself, and in the meantime I'm not going to knuckle
under to you, so don't think it! You needn't come back so precious high
and mighty from your High School, and expect to boss the whole show
here. So there!"

And Winona, who aforetime had been able to subdue her unruly sister,
found herself baffled, for their mother was ill, and must not be
disturbed, and Percy, who might have been on her side, would only lie on
the sofa and guffaw.

"Fight it out, like a pair of Kilkenny cats!" was his advice. "I'll
sweep up the fragments that remain of you afterwards. No, I'm not going
to back either of you. Go ahead and get it over!"

Percy had grown immensely during this last term. He was now seventeen,
and very tall, though at present decidedly lanky. The Cadet Corps at his
school absorbed most of his interests. He held emphatic opinions upon
the war, and aired them daily to his family over the morning paper.
According to his accounts, matters seemed likely to make little progress
until he and his contemporaries at Longworth College should have reached
military age, and be able to take their due part in the struggle, at
which happy crisis the Germans would receive a setback that would
astonish the Kaiser.

"Our British tactics have been all wrong!" he declared. "I can tell you
we follow things out inch by inch at Longworth, and you should just hear
what Johnstone Major has to say. Some of those generals at the Front are
old women! They ought to send them home, and set them some knitting to
do. If I'd the ordering of affairs I'd give the command to fellows under
twenty-five! New wine should be in new bottles."

The younger children listened with admiration to Percy's views on war
topics, much regretting that the Government had not yet obtained the
benefit of his advice. Godfrey even hoped that the war would not be over
before there was a chance for precept to be put into practice, and
already, in imagination, saw his brother in the uniform of a Field
Marshal. Winona smiled tolerantly. She took Percy's opinions for what
they were worth. If his school report was anything to go by, he had
certainly not won laurels at Longworth this term, in the direction of
brainwork, and the headmaster's comment: "Lacking in steady
application," had probably been amply justified.

Winona was not altogether happy about Percy, these holidays. Jack
Cassidy was spending Christmas at the Vicarage, and claimed much of his
time, and the influence was not altogether for good. Young Cassidy had
already given the Vicar, his guardian and former tutor, considerable
trouble. At twenty-two he had run through a large proportion of the
money which had come to him at his majority, though fortunately he could
not touch the bulk of his property till he should be twenty-five. At
present he was waiting for a commission, and amusing himself as best he
could in the village until the welcome missive should arrive. For lack
of other congenial companions he sought Percy's society. Neither Mr.
James, the Vicar, nor Mrs. Woodward realized how much the two young
fellows were together, or they certainly would not have encouraged the
intimacy. Winona, who was just old enough to recognize certain
undesirable features, tackled Percy in private.

"Mother wouldn't like your going into 'The Blue Harp,' and playing
billiards with Jack!" she remonstrated. "You were there hours yesterday.
Doesn't it cost a lot?"

"Oh, Jack pays for it! At least he settles with old Chubbs. I have a bit
on the score, of course, but he says that can wait a while. I'm
improving, and I'll beat him yet, and win my own back."

"You promised mother you wouldn't bet again, after what happened last
Easter."

"Now don't you go jaw-wagging!"

"Well, I must say something! If Mr. Joynson--"

"Old Joynson may go and boil his head! I'm seventeen now. Look here,
Win, if you're going to turn sneak--"

"Sneak, indeed! Do I ever tell your secrets? Think what you did at Aunt
Harriet's!"

Percy changed color.

"You've not breathed a word about that?"

"Of course I haven't, but I'm always terrified that she'll find out."

"It was a rocky little business. I say, Win, I was looking up wills in
'Every Man his Own Lawyer.' If Aunt Harriet died intestate all her
estate would go to her next-of-kin, and that's Uncle Herbert Beach out
in China. The mater wouldn't have a look-in, because her mother was only
Aunt Harriet's half-sister. Uncle Herbert would just get the lot. She
ought to make another will at once."

"Had you better tell, then?" faltered Winona.

"Tell? Certainly not! But you might very well suggest it to her. You've
plenty of opportunities, as you're living there. Bring the conversation
round to wills, and ask casually if she's made hers."

"Oh, I couldn't!"

"Yes, you could. You ought to do it, Winona. The mater stands to lose
everything as it is. It would probably make Aunt Harriet look inside the
drawer, and then she'd see her paper was gone."

"And suspect us!"

"Why should she know we'd had anything to do with it? The servants might
have been rummaging. I certainly think it's your duty, Win, to take some
steps."

It was rather fine to hear Percy preaching duty on a subject in which he
was so plainly a defaulter. Winona at first indignantly repudiated the
task he wished to impose upon her. Nevertheless, the idea kept returning
and troubling her. She was sure Aunt Harriet ought to know that the will
had been destroyed, and if it was impossible to tell her outright, this
would certainly be a means of putting her on the track. Winona's whole
soul revolted from the notion of speculating upon possible advantages to
be gained from a relative's death. She would rather let Uncle Herbert
inherit everything than interfere for herself. But for her mother it was
a different matter. Aunt Harriet might wish her goddaughter to receive
part of her fortune, and to conceal the destruction of the will might
mean depriving Mrs. Woodward of a handsome legacy. How to make Miss
Beach realize the loss of the paper without getting Percy into trouble
was a problem that might have perplexed older and wiser heads.

Meanwhile it was holiday time, and there were many more pleasant
subjects to think about. Winona's Christmas present had been a small
hand camera, the very thing for which she had longed during the whole of
the past term. She contemplated it with the utmost satisfaction. Now she
would be able to join the Photographic Club at school, to go out on some
of the Saturday afternoon expeditions, and to have a few of her prints
in the Exhibition. She could take snap-shots of the girls and the
classroom, and make them into picture postcards to send to her mother,
and she could make a series of home photos to hang up in her bedroom at
Abbey Close. There seemed no limit indeed to the possibilities of her
new camera. She guarded it jealously from the prying fingers of the
younger members of the family.

"Paws off!" she commanded. "Anybody who interferes with this Kodak will
quarrel with me, so I give you full and fair warning! Oh, yes, Dorrie!
I dare say you'd just like to press the button! I'd guarantee your fairy
fingers to smash anything! It's 'mustn't touch, only look' where this is
concerned. No personal familiarities, please!"

December and January were scarcely propitious months for the taking of
snap-shots, but Winona attempted some time exposures, with varying
results. It was difficult to make the children realize the necessity of
keeping absolutely still, and they spoilt several of her plates by
grinning or moving. She secured quite a nice photo of the house,
however, and several of the village, and promised herself better luck
with family portraits when the summer came round again. She turned a
large cupboard in the attic into her dark-room, and spent many hours
dabbling among chemicals. She had urgent offers of help, but rejected
them steadfastly, greatly to the disappointment of her would-be
assistants. Her sanctum became a veritable Bluebeard's chamber, for to
prevent possible accidents she locked the door, and kept the key
perpetually in her pocket during the day time, sleeping with it under
her pillow at night. In the summer she meant to try all kinds of
experiments. She had visions of rigging up a shelter made of leaves and
branches, and taking a series of magnificent snap-shots of wild birds
and animals, like those in the books by Cherry Kearton, and she
certainly intended to secure records of the sports at school. In the
meantime she must content herself with landscape and still life. "I'll
have one of the de Claremont tomb, at any rate," she resolved.

The de Claremont tomb was the glory of Ashbourne Church. It was of white
marble, and beautifully sculptured. Sir Guy de Claremont lay represented
in full armor, with his lady in ruff and coif by his side. Six sons and
four daughters, all kneeling, were carved in has relief round the side
of the monument. Long, long ago, in the Middle Ages, the de Claremonts
had been the great people of the neighborhood. They had fought in the
Crusades, had taken their part in the wars of the Barons, had declared
for the White Rose in the struggle with the House of Lancaster, and cast
in their lot for the King against Oliver Cromwell. The family was
extinct now, and their lands had passed to others, but a few tattered
banners and an old helmet still hung on the wall of the side chapel,
above the tomb, testifying to their former achievements. From her seat
in church Winona had a good view of the monument. She admired it
immensely, and had often woven romances about the good knights of old
who had carried those banners to the battle-field. She felt that she
would like to secure a satisfactory photo. She started off one morning
at about half-past eleven, when the light was likely to be best.

It was a sunny day, and wonderfully bright for January. She had meant to
go alone, but the children were on the look-out, and tracked her, so she
arrived at the church door closely followed by Letty, Mamie, Godfrey,
Ernie and Dorrie. She hesitated for a moment whether to send them
straight home or not, but the church was a mile from Highfield, and the
mill weir, a place of fascination to Ernie, lay on the way, so she
decided that it would be safest to let well alone.

"They're imps, but they'll have to behave themselves decently in
church," she said to herself.

At present the conduct of the family was exemplary. They walked in on
tip-toe, and talked in whispers. Mamie, indeed, cast an envious eye
towards the forbidden ground of the pulpit, into which it was her
ambition some day to climb, and wave her arms about in imitation of the
Vicar, but she valiantly restrained her longings, and kept from the
neighborhood of the chancel. Letty took a surreptitious peep at the
organ, and was disappointed to find it locked, as was also the little
oak door that led up the winding staircase to the bell tower. She
decided that the parish clerk was much too attentive to his duties.

"Come along over here, can't you?" said Winona suspiciously. "Leave
those hymn-books alone, and tell Dorrie she's not to touch the font, or
I'll stick her inside and pop the lid on her. Go and sit down, all of
you, in that pew, while I take the photo."

The family for once complied obediently, if somewhat reluctantly. It was
better to play the part of spectators than to be left out of the
proceedings altogether. In the circumstances they knew Winona had the
whip-hand, and that if she ordered them from the church there would be
no appeal. They watched her now with interest and enthusiasm.

It took her a long time to fix her camera in good position. It was
difficult to see properly in the viewfinder, and she wanted to be quite
sure that when the head of Sir Guy was safely in the right-hand corner,
his feet were not out of the picture at the left, to say nothing of the
ten kneeling children underneath.

"It's impossible to get the wall above if I'm to take the inscription on
the monument," she declared, "and yet I mustn't leave out the old helmet
on any account. I shall take it down, and put it at the bottom of the
tomb while I photograph it. It ought to come out rather well there."

Rejecting eager offers of help from Mamie and Ernie, Winona climbed up
on to the stately person of Dame Margaret de Claremont, and managed to
take the helmet from the wooden peg on which it was suspended. She posed
it at the foot of the monument, on the right hand side.

"There's a splendid light from this window--full sunshine! I think if I
give it five minutes' exposure, that ought to do the deed. Now don't any
of you so much as cough, or you'll disturb the air."

The family felt _that_ five minutes the very limit of endurance. The
moment it was ended they dispersed to ease their strained feelings.
Letty and Ernie walked briskly up the nave. Mamie went to investigate
the stove. Winona herself took the camera to the opposite side of the
church to photograph a Jacobean tablet. Six-year-old Dorrie remained
sitting on a hassock in the pew. She had a plan in her crafty young
mind. She wanted to examine the helmet, and she knew Winona would be
sure to say "Paws off!" or something equally offensive and
objectionable. She waited till her sister was safely out of the way,
then she stole from her cover, grabbed the helmet, and returned to the
shelter of the pew. It made quite an interesting and fascinating
plaything in her estimation. She amused herself with it for a long time,
until she heard Winona's voice proclaiming that if they didn't trot home
quickly they'd be late for dinner, whereupon she popped it under the
seat, and joined the others. Winona, of course, ought to have replaced
it on its peg on the wall, but her memory was far from perfect, and she
completely forgot all about it.

The whole thing seemed a most trivial incident, but it had an amazing
sequel. On Saturday afternoons Mrs. Fisher, the caretaker, always came
to sweep and tidy up the church in preparation for Sunday. She was a
little, thin, sharp-nosed, impulsive woman, and just at present her
nerves were rather in a shaky condition for fear of Zeppelins. She lived
in perpetual terror of bombs or German spies, and always slept with half
her clothing on, in case she should be forced to get up in a hurry and
flee for her life. On this particular Saturday afternoon Mrs. Fisher, as
was her wont, washed the pavement of the nave, and then took her broom
and her duster into the side chapel. Nobody sat there as a rule, so she
did not give it very much attention. She flicked the duster over the
monument, hastily swept the floor in front, and was just about to turn
away, having done her duty, when she caught sight of something under
the seat of a pew. She put her hand to her heart, and turned as white as
her own best linen apron. She divined instantly what it must be. With
great presence of mind she stole softly away on tip-toe. Once outside
the church she indulged in a comfortable little burst of hysterics. Then
she felt better, and went to tell the parish clerk. Before evening the
news had spread all over the village.

"It was brought in a motor car," Mrs. Pikes at the shop informed her
customers, "and Wilson's little boy says he heard them talking German."

"There was a foreign-looking sort of a chap rode past our house on a
bicycle the other day," volunteered the blacksmith's assistant.

"You never know where you are with strangers in war time," said another.

Everybody agreed that it was a mercy Mrs. Fisher had seen it when she
did, and they were glad the church was a goodish way from the village.

The Woodward family generally started off for service almost directly
after the bells began to ring. On the following Sunday morning, however,
they were considerably perplexed. The familiar "ding-dong, ding-dong"
which ought to have been pealing forth was not to be heard. They
listened in vain, and consulted all the clocks in the house.

"It's certainly after ten," said Mrs. Woodward. "I'm afraid something
must have happened! I hope Mr. James isn't ill. Well, we'd better go at
any rate, and see what's the matter."

So the family, which was ready in its best Sunday garments, sallied
forth. Ashbourne Church stood a whole mile away from the village, in a
lonely spot with only a couple of cottages near it. The Woodwards took a
short cut across the common from Highfield, so that they did not pass
any houses or meet any neighbors by the way. They arrived at the church
to find the door locked, and the Vicar and his family standing in
consternation outside. Mr. James hailed them with relief.

"So it _is_ Sunday!" he exclaimed. "I began to think we must have
mistaken the day! I can't understand what's the matter. Nobody's here
except ourselves. What's becomes of Stevens?"

It was certainly an unprecedented circumstance to find choir,
congregation, organist, organ-blower, bell-ringer and verger all
conspicuous by their absence. Mr. James went to the cottages near to
make inquiries as to the cause. The first was locked up, but by knocking
long and loudly at the door of the second, he at last succeeded in
rousing Jacob Johnson, a deaf old man of eighty-three.

"Nobody come to church!" he repeated, when after some difficulty and
much shouting the situation had been explained: "Well, 'tain't likely
there should be! I'm told there's a German bomb there, one of the
dangerous sort for going off. Some men brought it yesterday in a motor
car. Spies of the Kaiser, they were. It may explode any minute, they
say, and wreck the church and everything near. The Greenwoods next door
locked up the house, and went to their aunt's in the village. My
daughter came over here asking me to go home with her, but I said I'd
stay and risk it. At eighty-three one doesn't care to move!"

"Where is this bomb?" asked Mr. James.

"In a pew nigh the old monument, so I'm told." At this juncture Jack
Cassidy, who when the church was first found to be locked had
volunteered to run back to the Vicarage and fetch the Vicar's own key,
now arrived after a record sprint.

"Give me a bucket of water, and I'll go and investigate," said Mr.
James.

He came out of the church in the course of a few minutes, holding in his
hand--the old helmet!

"This is the nearest approach to a bomb of any description that I've
been able to discover," he announced. "I'm going to carry it to the
village to convince the wiseacres there. Perhaps Stevens will pluck up
courage to ring the bell for afternoon service. If not, I'll ring it
myself."

Winona's share in the business might have remained concealed but for the
indiscretion of Mamie, who by an incautious remark gave the show away
entirely.

"You little silly!" scolded Winona afterwards. "What possessed you to go
and say anything at all? Mr. James will never forgive me! I could see it
in his eye. And Mrs. James was ice itself! I've never felt so horrible
in all my life. If you'd only had the sense to keep mum, they might
never have found out. You kids are the most frightful nuisance! If I'd
had my choice given me when I was born, I wouldn't have been an eldest
sister."




CHAPTER IX

The School Service Badge


Settling down at Abbey Close after a month at Highfield was like
transferring oneself from a noisy farmyard to the calm of the cloister.
The house was so near to the Minster that it seemed pervaded by the
quiet Cathedral atmosphere. When Winona drew up her blinds in the
morning, the first sight that greeted her would be the grey old towers
and carved pinnacles, exactly opposite, where the jackdaws were
chattering, and the pigeons wheeling round, and the big clock was going
through the chimes and striking the hour of seven. There was a
particular gargoyle at the corner of the transept roof which appeared to
be grinning at her across the road, as if some imp were imprisoned in
the stone image, and were peeping out of its fantastic eyes. Winona had
grown to love the Minster. She would go in whenever she had ten minutes
to spare after school. The glorious arches and pillars, the carved choir
stalls, the light falling through the splendid rich windows on to the
marble pavement, all appealed to the artistic sense that was stirring in
her, and gave her immense satisfaction. But even the beauty of the
Cathedral was as nothing when the organ began to play. Mr. Holmes, the
organist, was a great musician, and could manage his instrument with a
wizard touch. In the afternoons, between four and five o'clock, he was
wont to practice his voluntaries, and to listen to these took Winona
into a new world of sound. He was a disciple of the extreme modern
school of music, and his interpretations of Debussy, César Franck,
Medtner and Glazounow came to her as a revelation. The glorious weird
harmonies, the strange, unaccustomed chords of these tone-poems stirred
her like the memory of something long forgotten. As Anglo-Indians, whose
knowledge of Hindustani faded with their childhood, yet start and thrill
at the sound of the once familiar language, so this dream-music brought
haunting elusive suggestions too subtle to be defined. It held a
distinct part in Winona's development.

The girl was growing up suddenly. In the almost nursery atmosphere of
Highfield, with nothing to stimulate her faculties she had remained at a
very childish stage, but now, with a world of art, music, science and
literature dawning round her she seemed to leap upward to the level of
her new intellectual horizon. It is a glorious time when we first begin
to reap the inheritance of the ages, and to discover the rich stores of
delight that master minds have laid up for us to enjoy. Life was moving
very fast to Winona; she could not analyze all her fresh thoughts and
impressions, but she felt she could no more go back to her last year's
mental outlook than she could have worn the long clothes of her
babyhood. She was sixteen now, for her birthday fell on the 20th of
January. Somehow sixteen sounded so infinitely older than fifteen! There
was a dignity about it and a sense of importance. In another year she
would actually be "sweet seventeen," and a member of that enviable
school hierarchy the Sixth Form!

Winona could have made herself thoroughly happy at Abbey Close but for
the shadow that existed between herself and Aunt Harriet. Percy's secret
was a perpetual burden on her conscience. At meal times she would often
find her eyes wandering towards the oak cupboard, and would start
guiltily, hoping Miss Beach had not noticed. The more she thought about
the subject the more convinced she became that she ought to give some
hint of the state of affairs, though how to do so without implicating
her brother was at present beyond her calculations. One day, however, a
really hopeful opportunity seemed to arise. A case of a disputed will
was being tried at the Seaton Sessions; the defendants were friends of
Miss Beach's, and after reading the account of the proceedings, Aunt
Harriet laid down the local paper with a few comments.

"I suppose people ought to make their wills very fast and firm," said
Winona. It was seldom she ventured on an independent remark. As a rule
she left her aunt to do the talking.

"Undoubtedly. Nothing causes more trouble than carelessness in this
respect."

"Ought we all to make wills?"

"If we have anything to leave it's advisable."

"Ought I?"

"Well, hardly at present, I should say!"

"Ought mother?" Winona was growing redder and redder.

"No doubt she has done so."

"Have you made yours, Aunt Harriet?"

The horrible deed was done, and Winona, crimson to the roots of her
hair, felt she had, metaphorically speaking, burnt her boats.

Miss Beach stared at her as if electrified.

"What do you want to know for?" she asked, suspiciously. "I think that's
decidedly my business and not yours!"

Winona collapsed utterly, and murmuring something about preparation,
fled to her bedroom.

"There! I've just gone and put my foot in it altogether!" she groaned.
"I've no tact! I went and blurted it out like an idiot. She'll never
forgive me! Oh, why can't I go and tell her the whole business, and then
she'd understand! I do hate this sneaking work. Percy, you wretched boy,
I'd like to bump your head against the wall! It's too bad to land me in
your scrape! Well, I suppose it can't be helped. I've said it, and it's
done. But I know I'll be in disgrace for evermore."

Certainly Aunt Harriet's manner towards Winona, after this unfortunate
episode, was stiffer than formerly. She was perfectly kind, but the gulf
between them had widened. They still discussed conventional topics at
meal-times, or rather Miss Beach made leading remarks and Winona said
"Yes," or "No," for such a one-sided conversation could hardly be termed
discussion. The girl felt it a relief when, as often happened, her aunt
took refugein a book. Occasionally Winona would pluck up courage to
relate news from her home letters, but of her school life and all her
new impressions and interests she scarcely spoke at all. Judging from
the children's correspondence the new governess at Highfield, after a
stormy beginning, was making some impressions upon her wild little
pupils.

"I hated her at first," wrote Mamie, "but she tells us the most lovely
fairy tales, and we're learning to model in clay. I like it because it
makes such a mess. Ernie smacked her yesterday, and she wouldn't let him
do his painting till he'd said he was sorry."

Winona laughed over the letters, picturing the lively scenes that must
be taking place at home.

"Do the kids a world of good!" she commented. "They were running to
seed. Even I could see that, as long ago as last summer, and I don't
mind confessing, quite to myself, that I was fairly raw then. I didn't
know very much about anything till I came to the 'Seaton High.'"

Winona's second term was running far more smoothly than her first.
Thanks to Miss Lever's coaching she could now hold her own in her Form,
and though she might not be the most shining light, at any rate she was
not numbered among the slackers.

Her progress was marked in more quarters than she suspected. Margaret
Howell had had the Scholarship winners under observation ever since
their arrival. As head girl she made it her business to know something
about every girl in the school. "The General," as she was nicknamed, was
universally voted a success. She and Kirsty Paterson between them had
organized a new era of things. Every one felt the "Seaton High" was
waking up and beginning to found a reputation for itself. The various
guilds and societies were prospering, and following Margaret's pet motto
"Pro Bono Publico," had exterminated private quarrels and instituted the
most business-like proceedings and the strictest civility at committee
meetings. Already the general tone was raised immeasurably, and public
spirit and school patriotism ran high. To encourage zeal and
strenuousness, Margaret and Kirsty had laid their heads together and
decided to found what they called "The Order of Distinguished School
Service." Any girl who was considered to have performed some action
worthy of special commendation or who had otherwise contributed to the
general benefit, was to be rewarded with a badge, and her name was to be
chronicled in a book kept for the purpose.

The very first to gain the honor was little Daisy Hicks, a Second Form
child, who won 9,400 marks out of a possible 10,000 in the Christmas
exams, so far the highest score known in the school. Agnes Heath, who
wrung special praise from the doctor who conducted the Ambulance
examination, and Gladys Vickcrs, whose photograph of the hockey team was
published in the Seaton _Weekly Graphic_, were also placed upon the
distinguished list, having substantially helped the credit of the
school. The badge was only a rosette made of narrow ribbons, stitched in
tiny loops into the form of a daisy, with a yellow disk, and white and
pink outer rays. If meant very much, however, to the recipient, who knew
that her name would be handed down to posterity in the school
traditions, and every girl was immensely keen to earn it.

A new institution in the school this term was the foundation of a
library. It had been a pet project of Margaret's ever since her
appointment as head prefect. Just before the Christmas breaking up she
had called a general meeting and begged everybody after the holidays to
present at least one contribution.

"It may be a new book or an old one," she had explained, "but it must be
really interesting. Please don't bring rubbish. Give something you would
enjoy reading yourself and can recommend to your friends."

The response to her appeal had been greater than she anticipated. Nobody
failed to comply, and some of the girls brought several books apiece. A
start was made with three hundred and forty-one volumes, which was
regarded as a most creditable beginning. For the present they were piled
up in the prefects' room until shelves had been made to receive them.
Miss Bishop had given the order to the joiner, but owing to the war it
might be some time before the work was finished.

Meanwhile Margaret decided that the books ought to be catalogued and
labeled, so that they would be quite ready when the bookcases arrived.
She cast about for helpers in this rather arduous task, and her choice
fell upon Winona, who happened to have a spare half-hour between her
classes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Winona, immensely flattered,
accepted the responsibility with glee, and was put to work under the
"General's" directions. She thoroughly enjoyed sorting, dusting, pasting
on labels, and making alphabetical lists.

"I shouldn't mind being a librarian some day in a big public library,"
she assured Ellinor Cooper, her fellow-assistant.

"You'd have to be quicker than you are at present, then," remarked
Margaret dryly. "They wouldn't think you worth your salt if you spent
all your time reading the books. Buck up, can't you? and get on!"

At which Winona guiltily shut "Shirley" with a bang and turned her
attention to the paste-pot.

While Margaret was cultivating the intellectual side of the school,
Kirsty was carefully attending to her duties as Games Captain. Her work
among the juniors prospered exceedingly. They were taking to hockey with
wild enthusiasm and gave evidence of considerable promise. As most of
them were free at three o'clock, they got the chance of playing almost
every day. Kirsty was extremely anxious that these practices should be
properly supervised. She was too busy herself to take them personally,
so she was obliged to delegate the work to anybody who had the spare
time.

"The girls I want most are all at classes or music lessons," she
lamented. "Not a single one of the team's available. Winona Woodward,
I've been looking at your time-table, and find you've two vacant
half-hours. Wouldn't you like to help?"

"Like! I'd sell my birthright to do it!" gasped Winona. "But I'm
fearfully sorry; I'm cataloguing for Margaret!"

"Then I mustn't take you away from the General! It's a nuisance though,
for you'd have done very well, and I don't know who else I can get."

Winona considered it was one of the sharpest disappointments she had
ever gone through.

"Oh, the grizzly bad luck of it!" she wailed to Garnet. "It would have
been idyllic to coach those kids. And it would have given me such a leg
up with Kirsty! To think I've lost my chance!"

"I suppose Margaret might get some one else to do cataloguing?"

"I dare say: but I couldn't possibly ask her, and I'm sure Kirsty won't.
No, I'm done for!"

School etiquette is very strict, and Winona would have perished sooner
than resign her library duties. She felt a martyr, but resolved to smile
through it all. Garnet contemplated the problem at leisure during her
drawing lesson, and arrived at a daring conclusion. Without consulting
her friend she marched off at four o'clock to the prefects' room, a
little sanctum on the ground floor where the minutes' books of the
various guilds and societies were kept, and where the school officers
could hold meetings and transact business.

As she expected, Margaret was there alone, and said "Come in" in answer
to her rap at the door. The members of the Sixth kept much on their
dignity, so it was rather a formidable undertaking even for a Fifth Form
girl to interrupt the head of the school. Margaret looked up
inquiringly as Garnet entered.

"Yes, I'm fearfully busy," she replied to the murmured question. "What
is it? I can give you five minutes, but no more, so please be brief."

Thus urged, Garnet, though greatly embarrassed, did not beat about the
bush.

"I've come to ask a frightfully cheeky thing," she blurted out. "Kirsty
wants Winona to coach the kids at hockey, and Winona's cataloguing for
you, so of course she can't--and--" but here Garnet's courage failed
her, so she paused.

"Do you mean that Winona would prefer to help with the juniors?"

"She'd be torn in pieces rather than let me say so, but she's just crazy
over hockey. I hope I haven't made any mischief! Win doesn't know I've
come."

"All right. I understand. I'll see what can be done in the matter,"
returned the General, opening her books as a sign of dismissal.

Garnet was not at all sure whether her mission had succeeded or the
reverse, but the next day Margaret sent for Winona.

"I hear Kirsty wants you for a hockey coach. Just at present I think
games are of more importance in the school than the library, so please
report yourself to her, and say I've taken your name off my list. You've
done very well here, but I'm going to lend you to Kirsty for a while."

Winona was so astounded she hardly knew whether to stammer out
apologies, gratitude, or regrets, and was intensely relieved when the
head girl cut her short kindly but firmly, and sent her away. She lost
no time in seeking out the Games Captain.

"Very decent of Margaret," remarked Kirsty. "It's got me out of a hole,
for I couldn't find anybody else with that special time free. You'll do
your best I know?"

"_Rather_!" beamed Winona ecstatically.

Under her tuition the children's play improved fast. Kirsty said
little--she was not given to over-praising people--but Winona felt she
noticed and approved.

Among the season's fixtures perhaps the most important was the match
with the Seaton Ladies' Hockey Club that was to come off on March 7th.
Their opponents possessed a fair reputation in the city, so it would
behove the school to "play up for all they were worth," as Kirsty
expressed it. It would be a glorious opportunity of showing their
capabilities to the world at large, and demonstrating that they meant to
take their due place in local athletics.

Three days before the event, Kirsty appeared in the morning with the air
of a tragedy queen.

"What's the matter?" queried Patricia. "You've a face as long as a
fiddle!"

"Matter enough! Barbara Jennings is laid up with influenza! What'll
become of the match I don't know. It makes me feel rocky. Where's
Margaret? I want to confab. Did you ever hear of such grizzly luck in
your life?"

At five minutes past eleven, when Winona was eating her lunch in the
gymnasium, Kirsty tapped her on the shoulder.

"I've something to tell you, Winona Woodward. You're to play for the
School on Saturday instead of Barbara."

Winona swallowed a piece of biscuit with foolhardy haste. She could
scarcely believe the news, so great was its magnitude. To be asked to
fill a vacant place in the team was beyond her wildest dreams.

"Thanks most _immensely_!" she stammered, with her eyes shining like
stars.

Through the next few days Winona simply lived for Saturday. To be able
to represent the School! The glorious thought was never for a moment
absent from her mind. She even ventured to tell Aunt Harriet the honor
that had been thrust upon her, and was astonished at the interest with
which her information was received.

On the Saturday afternoon the High School turned up almost in full force
to view the match; juniors were keen as seniors, and the children whom
Winona had coached were wild with excitement. The field was packed with
spectators, for the Ladies' Club had brought many friends. It was even
rumored that a reporter from the Seaton _Weekly Graphic_ was present.
The High School team in navy blue gymnasium costumes, bare heads and
close-plaited pigtails, looked neat and trim and very business-like. "A
much fitter set than we showed last year!" murmured Margaret with
satisfaction. All eyes were riveted on the field as the two opponents
stood out to "bully" and the sticks first clashed together. Winona, her
face aglow with excitement, waited a chance to run. A little later her
opportunity came: she dashed into the masses of the opponents' force,
and with one magnificent stroke swept the ball well onward towards the
goal.

"Oh! how precious!" shouted the girls.

Nobody had imagined Winona capable of such a feat. She at once became
the focus of all eyes. It had not occurred to the High School that there
was a real possibility of their winning the match. They had expected to
make a gallant fight and be defeated, retiring with all the honors of
war. Perhaps the Ladies' Club team, who had come to the field secure of
victory, began to feel pangs of uneasiness under their white jerseys.
The situation was supreme. The score had become even. Could the School
possibly do it? That was the question. All looked to Winona for the
answer. She was playing like one inspired. She had not realized her own
capacities before: the wild excitement of the moment seemed to lend
wings to her feet and strength and skill to her arm. One heroic,
never-to-be-forgotten stroke, and the ball was spinning between the
posts. It was a magnificent finish. Frantic applause rose up from the
spectators. The High School cheered its champions in a glorious roar of
victory. The Ladies' Club team were magnanimous enough to offer
congratulations, and their captain shook hands with Winona.

"Glad to see how your standard's gone up!" she remarked to Kirsty
aside. "That half-back of yours is worth her salt!"

Kirsty was literally purring with satisfaction. Last year the High
School had been badly beaten in more than half its matches. This was
indeed a new page in its records.

On Monday morning Winona received a message summoning her to the
prefects' room. She found Margaret, Kirsty, and the other school
officers assembled there.

"Winona Woodward," said the head girl, "we have decided to present you
with the School Service Badge, in recognition of your play on Saturday.
It is felt that you really secured the match, and as this is our first
great victory we consider you deserve to have it recorded in your favor.
Your name has been entered in the book. Come here!"

Winona turned crimson as Margaret pinned the daisy badge on to her
blouse.

"I--I've been only too proud to do what I can!" she blurted out. "Thanks
most _awfully_!"




CHAPTER X

A Scare


The Spring Term came to a close with a very fair number of hockey
successes to be placed to the credit of the Seaton High School. Compared
with last year's record it was indeed a great improvement, and Kirsty
felt that though they had not yet established a games reputation, they
at any rate showed good promise of future achievements. She hoped to do
much in the cricket and tennis season, though she certainly acknowledged
there was much to be done. The cricket so far had been such a
half-hearted business that she doubted the advisability of making any
fixtures.

"I believe we'd just better train up for all we're worth," she said at
the committee meeting. "It'll take ages to lick an eleven into shape.
What we want is to get a cricket atmosphere into the school. You can't
develop these things all in a few weeks. You've got to catch your kids
young and teach them, before you get a school with a reputation. I feel
with all the games that we're simply building foundations at present at
the Seaton High. This term especially is spade-work. I'll do all I can
to get things going, but it will be the Games Captain who comes after me
who'll reap the reward."

"Can't you stay on another year?" suggested Patricia.

"Wish I could for some things, but it's impossible. No, I'll do my bit
this term, and then hand over the job to my successor. As I said before,
what we want now is a good start."

Kirsty was a capital organizer. She soon recognized a girl's capacities,
and she had a knack of inspiring enthusiasm even in apparent slackers.
She worked thoroughly hard herself, and insisted that everybody else did
the same. Her motto for the term was the athletic education of the rank
and file. It was really very self-sacrificing of her, for she might have
gained far more credit by concentrating her energies on a few, but for
the ultimate good of the school it was undoubtedly far and away the best
policy to pursue. The training of a number of recruits may not be as
interesting as the polishing up of champions, but in time recruits
become veterans, and a school in which the standard of the ordinary play
is very high has a better general chance than one that depends on an
occasional _solitary_ star. So even the little girls were strictly
supervised in their practices, and both cricket and tennis showed
healthy development.

The Governors and the head mistress were anxious that the games
department should prosper, and gave every encouragement. There were a
larger number of tennis courts provided than fall to the share of most
schools, and each form had its allotted times for play. Athletics were
indeed compulsory, every girl being required to take her due part,
unless she were excused by a medical certificate.

Winona worked with the utmost enthusiasm. As a Fifth Form girl she had,
of course, to be rather humble towards the Sixth, but she felt that
Kirsty approved of her. It was never Kirsty's way to praise, and she
could be scathing in her remarks sometimes, but Winona did not mind
criticism from her captain, and acted so well on all the advice given
that she was making rapid strides. In pursuance of Kirsty's all-round
training policy, she was not allowed to specialize in either tennis or
cricket this summer, but to give equal energy to both. So she practiced
bowling under Hester King's careful supervision, and played exciting
sets while Clarice Nixon stood by to watch and score.

The games appealed to Winona more than any other part of the school
curriculum. She did fairly well now in her Form work, but she knew she
could never be clever like Garnet, and that it was extremely unlikely
that she would win laurels on her books. She had promised Miss Bishop
that she would try to do credit to the school in return for her
scholarship, and to help to raise its athletic reputation seemed her
most feasible method of success.

"I could never get a College Scholarship, however I tried," she thought,
"but--I won't say it's probable, but it's just possible that I might do
something some day in the way of winning matches. Miss Bishop would be
pleased at that!"

The early summer was delightful at Seaton. The park opposite the school
was full of tulips and hyacinths, and the long avenue of trees in the
Abbey Close had burst into tender green foliage. Winona studied her
home lessons sitting by her open bedroom window with a leafy bower
outside, and an accompaniment of jackdaws cawing in the old towers of
the Minster. She loved this window and the prospect from it. There was a
romantic, old-world flavor about the gray pile opposite, its carvings
and cloisters and chiming bells seemed so peaceful and so far removed
from modern trouble. Sometimes indeed the whirr of a biplane would
disturb the quiet as an airman flittered like a great dragon-fly over
the city, reminding her that medieval times were past; while a bugle
call from the neighboring barracks emphasized the fact that the world
was at war. Not that Winona was likely to forget that! Every day in
school the Peace Bell prayer was read at noon, and she might see
regiments of recruits marching up or down the High Street on their way
to their training grounds. Nearly every girl in V.a. had some
relation at the front, and though Winona could not boast of anybody
nearer than a third cousin serving "somewhere in France," she looked for
news as eagerly as the rest.

"It must be glorious to get letters from the trenches," she said half
wistfully one day to Beatrice Howell, who was exulting over a pencil
scrawl written by her brother in a dug-out. "I half wish----"

"No, you don't!" snapped Beatrice. "It's a nightmare to have them in the
firing line! Be thankful your brother's still safe at school."

On the subject of Percy, Winona was far from easy. He had let fall one
or two hints during the Easter holidays which confirmed her previous
suspicion that he had got into a wrong set at Longworth College. He had
written to her twice already this term, wanting to borrow money, and
suggesting that, without mentioning his name, she should ask Miss Beach
to lend it to her. With such a request, however, Winona had utterly
refused to comply.

"Aunt Harriet has been so decent to us I can't begin to sponge on her,"
she wrote back. "Besides, she'd want to know what I wanted such a lot
for, and then all the mischief would be out!"

Apparently Percy was offended, for his usual weekly letter did not
appear. Winona only laughed, expecting he would soon get over his fit of
sulks. She was utterly unprepared for the sequel. One day she received a
note from him written on Y.M.C.A. paper and headed "Horminster." It ran
thus:

"DEAR WIN,--I'd got into such an altogether grizzly hole that
there was only one way out, and I've taken it. I am at present a member
of His Majesty's Forces, and if you want to write to me address: Private
P. D. Woodward, 17th Battalion, Royal Rytonshire Fusiliers, Horminster.

                                   "Your affectionate brother,

                                                      "PERCY."

  "P.S.--You can tell the mater if you like."

Winona, in a great state of excitement, showed the note to Aunt Harriet,
who telegraphed the information to Mrs. Woodward. The latter had just
heard from Percy's housemaster of his disappearance, and was greatly
relieved to have news of his whereabouts. The runaway was below military
age, and his mother's first impulse was to apply for his immediate
discharge. But from this course her best friends dissuaded her. The
headmaster of Longworth College and Mr. Joynson, her trustee, were
unanimous in counseling her to leave the boy alone, and Aunt Harriet
cordially agreed with them.

"Let the lad serve his country!" she wrote to her niece. "He is tall for
his age, and if the Military Authorities have accepted him, well and
good. It seems to me the one thing in the world that is likely to steady
him and give him that sense of responsibility that hitherto he has so
signally lacked. You will make the mistake of your life if you keep him
back now."

It seemed funny to Winona to imagine Percy, so young and boyish,
actually in His Majesty's uniform. He had not yet got his khaki, but he
promised to have a photo taken as soon as ever he was in military garb,
and she looked forward to showing the portrait of her soldier brother to
the girls in her Form. She began a pair of socks for him at once. I
regret to say that Winona's patriotic knitting had languished very much
during the last two terms, but this personal stimulus revived her ardor.
She even took her sock to the tennis court, and, emulating the example
of Patricia Marshall and several other enthusiasts, got quite good
pieces done between the sets. She would have taken it to cricket also,
but Kirsty had sternly made a by-law prohibiting all knitting on the
pitch since Ellinor Cooper, when supposed to be fielding, had
surreptitiously taken her work from her pocket and missed the best catch
of the afternoon, to her everlasting disgrace and the scorn of the
indignant Games Captain.

Kirsty was keen at present upon each Form having its own Eleven, and had
arranged some school matches as trials of skill. The first of these,
Sixth _v._ Fifth, was fixed for the following Saturday afternoon.
Winona, to her ecstatic and delirious delight, had been elected captain
of the combined V.a. and V.b. Eleven, and she was looking forward to the
contest as one of the events of her life. She was aware that on its
success or failure might hang much of her future athletic career at
school, and she was determined to show of what stuff she was made. She
urged her team to make heroic efforts, and got all the practice in that
was available. On the Thursday afternoon she gave everybody a final
drilling. On Friday the pitch would be the property of the Lower School,
so this was the last opportunity of play before the match.

"If any of you muff the ball or do anything stupid, I'll never forgive
you!" she assured her Eleven. "The Sixth are A1 at fielding, so for
goodness' sake don't disgrace our Form. Beware of Patricia's bowling. It
looks simple, but it's the nastiest I know. I'd rather have Kirsty's any
day, because at least you know what to expect from her, and you're on
your guard. Don't try to be clever too soon; it's better not to score at
all during the first over than to run any risks. Evelyn, you were a
mascot to-day! I hope you'll play up equally well on Saturday. By the
by, Joyce, I really can't compliment you on your innings. What were you
thinking of to make that idiotic blind swipe?"

"I don't know!" returned Joyce dolefully. (She was sitting on the fence
looking decidedly crestfallen.) "I'm afraid I'm rather rocky to-day,
somehow."

"Got nerves? Girl alive! Do brace up!"

"No, it's not nerves. My head's been aching all the week, and I've a
pain across my chest, and I keep shivering. I suppose I must have caught
cold. It'll be a grizzly nuisance if I can't play on Saturday!"

"You _must_ play!" urged Winona. "We've got to beat the Sixth or perish
in the attempt! You go home at once, and get some hot tea, and go to bed
afterwards if you don't feel better. You may stop in bed all to-morrow
if it'll do you good!"

"Thank you, Grannie! Perhaps I will go home now. I really am feeling
rather queer."

"She looks queer, too," said Bessie Kirk to Winona, as they stood
watching Joyce's retreating figure. "I thought she was going to faint a
while ago. It'll be a hideous nuisance if she has to be out of it."

"Our best bowler! It's unthinkable!" groaned Winona.

"It's hard luck, but I'm certain Joyce won't play on Saturday," said
Mary Payne.

The team was feeling rather down at the prospect.

"We may throw up the sponge if Joyce is off!" mourned Olave Parry.

"Shut up, you bluebottle!" snapped Winona, decidedly out of temper.
"Joyce may be absolutely well again by Saturday, and if she isn't
Marjorie Kemp must take her place. Do be sporting! You'll never win if
you make up your mind beforehand that you're going to lose!"

When Winona walked into _V.a._ on the following morning she looked
anxiously in the direction of Joyce's desk, but the familiar check dress
and amber pigtail were not to be seen. Little groups of girls were
standing in clusters, talking in apparent consternation.

"Well! Have you heard the news?" asked Garnet, stepping forward to meet
her friend.

"No. What's the damage? You're looking very down in the dumps!"

"Joyce Newton has developed small-pox!"

"Nonsense!" exploded Winona.

"It's perfectly true," said Garnet, with severe dignity in her voice.
"One only wishes for Joyce's sake that it wasn't! The news has only just
come. Helena Maitland knows about it. She lives next door, and saw the
doctor's car at the Newtons' gate this morning."

"I told you Joyce looked queer yesterday!" said Bessie Kirk.

"Suppose we all catch it!" shuddered Freda Long.

"Don't! It's too horrible!"

There was a feeling of utter consternation among the girls as the bad
news was discussed. They wondered what was going to happen.

"Miss Bishop is telephoning to the Medical Officer of Health,"
volunteered Olave Parry, who had been downstairs to seek fresh
information.

Just then Miss Huntley came into the room, though it was not yet nine
o'clock. She went at once to her desk and took the call over.

"What's going to happen about Joyce?" one or two of the girls ventured
to ask her.

"I don't know yet. I expect we shall all be put into quarantine. Miss
Bishop is making arrangements. In the meantime we will go on with our
work."

It was wise of Miss Huntley to begin the English Language lesson, for
though every one was of course very abstracted, it gave some ostensible
occupation. Before the hour was over Miss Bishop sailed into the room.
She looked pale and anxious, but spoke with her usual calm dignity.

"Girls," she announced, "you have heard of the very difficult situation
in which the school is placed. I have rung up Dr. Barnes, the Medical
Officer of Health, and he tells me that the whole of _V.a._ must be
regarded as 'contact cases.' That means that as Joyce has been amongst
you, it is possible for any of you to develop the disease. In order to
avoid the spread of infection throughout the city, you will have to be
most carefully kept apart. I have sen

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