"Perhaps Miss Birks is right," said Romola, "because, you see, some of us might give nicer presents than the others, and perhaps there'd be a little jealousy; and at any rate, comparisons are odious."

"Miss Birks has limited the subscriptions to a shilling each," commented Deirdre.

"Then let's take our list now. I'll write down our names, and you can tell me the amounts."

For such an object everyone was disposed to be liberal--everyone, that is to say, except Gerda Thorwaldson. When she was applied to, she flatly refused.

"Don't you want to join in the present to Ronnie?" gasped Romola, in utter amazement.

"Why should I?"

"Why, because we're going to tea at the Castle; and Ronnie is Ronnie, and Mrs. Trevellyan will be pleased too!"

"I don't know Mrs. Trevellyan."

"Well, you soon will. You'll be introduced to her on Wednesday. She always says something nice to new girls--asks them where their homes are, and if they've brothers and sisters, and how old they are--and if she finds out she knows their parents or their friends she's so interested. And she has such a good memory for faces! She actually recognized Irene Jordan, although she'd never seen her in her life before, because Irene is so like an aunt, a Miss Jordan who is a friend of Mrs. Trevellyan's."

Gerda had turned a dull crimson at these remarks. She kept her eyes fixed on the floor, and made no reply. What her inward thoughts might be, no one could fathom.

"Isn't your name to go down at all, then, on the list?" asked Romola, with considerable impatience.

"No, thanks!" replied Gerda briefly, turning awkwardly away.

Wednesday arrived, and perhaps even Ronnie hardly welcomed his birthday more than did his friends at the Dower House. His present--a toy circus--had arrived, and had been on exhibition in Miss Birks's study, and everybody had agreed that it was the very thing to please him. At three o'clock the girls went to change their school dresses for more festive attire, and were more than ordinarily particular in their choice of preparations.

"How slow you are, Gerda Thorwaldson!" said Deirdre, whose own immaculate toilet was complete. "You haven't put on your dress yet. Why don't you hurry?"

"You needn't think we'll wait for you," added Dulcie.

Instead of replying, Gerda calmly donned her dressing-gown, and, volunteering no explanation, went out of the room and shut the door behind her.

She walked downstairs to Miss Birks's study, and, tapping at the door, reported herself.

"May I, please, stay at home this afternoon?" she begged. "I'm afraid I don't feel up to going out to tea to-day."

"Not go to the Castle? My dear child, I hope you're not ill? Certainly stay at home, and lie down on your bed if your head aches. Nettie shall bring your tea upstairs. I'm sorry you'll miss so great a treat as a visit to Mrs. Trevellyan's."

Gerda made no comment; but as she was habitually sparing of speech, her silence did not strike Miss Birks as anything unusual. It was time to start, and the Princ.i.p.al had her nineteen other pupils to think about, so she dismissed the pseudo-invalid with a final injunction to rest.

Gerda did not return to her bedroom till she was perfectly sure that Deirdre and Dulcie had left it. She had no wish to run the gauntlet of their inevitable criticisms, or to be questioned too closely on the nature of her sudden indisposition. She loitered about the upper landing until from the end window she saw the whole school--girls, mistresses, and Princ.i.p.al--file down the drive and out through the gate in the direction of the Castle. Then, going to her dormitory, she rang the bell, and lay down on her bed.

"Would you mind bringing my cup of tea now, Nettie, please?" she asked, when the housemaid appeared. "And then I should like to be left perfectly quiet until the others come back."

"Of course I'll bring it, miss," said the sympathetic Nettie. "Nothing like a cup of tea for a headache. The kettle's on the boil, so you can have it at once. I won't be more than a minute or two fetching it."

Nettie was as prompt as her word. She returned almost directly with the tea, and arranged it temptingly on a little table by the bedside.

"Shut your eyes and try and go to sleep when you've drunk it," she recommended. "You'll perhaps wake up quite fresh. It is a pity you couldn't go with the other young ladies to the Castle. They were all so full of it--and Master Ronnie's birthday, too! I know how disappointed you must feel."

Gerda finished her tea far more rapidly than is usual for invalids with sick-headaches; then, instead of taking Nettie's advice and closing her eyes, she rose and put on her school dress, her coat, and her cap. She opened the door and listened--not a sound was to be heard. The servants must surely be having their own tea in the kitchen, and no one else was in the house. With extreme caution she crept along the pa.s.sage and down the stairs. The side door was open, and as quietly as a shadow she pa.s.sed out and dodged round the corner of the house. A few minutes later she was running, running at the very top of her speed across the warren in the direction of a certain rocky creek not far from St. Perran's well.

When the girls returned at half-past six, full of their afternoon's experiences, they found Gerda lying on her bed, with the blind drawn down. There was an almost feverish colour in her cheeks.

"We'd a ripping time!" Dulcie a.s.sured her. "A splendid 'Natural Objects'

compet.i.tion. I nearly got a prize, but I put 'snake-skin' down for one, and it was really a piece of the skin of a finnan-haddock. Emily Northwood won the first, with sixteen objects right out of twenty, and Hilda Marriott was second with fourteen. I might have known that specimen was fish scales.

"Ronnie was delighted with his circus," added Dulcie. "He gave us each a kiss all round. And Mrs. Trevellyan was so nice! She was sorry you couldn't come, and hoped she'd see you some other time. By the by, how's your headache?"

"Rather better. I think I'll get up now," murmured Gerda. "I haven't touched my Latin to-day."

"Plucky of you to come and do prep. If I had a headache, wouldn't I just make it an excuse to knock off Virgil!"

It was getting near to the end of February. The days were lengthening visibly, and the sun, which only a month ago had appeared every morning like a red ball over the hill behind the Castle, now rose, bright and shining, a long way to eastward. In spite of occasional spring storms, the weather was on the whole mild, and every day fresh flowers were pushing up in the school garden. The warren, attractive even in winter, was doubly delightful now primrose tufts were venturing to show among the last year's bracken, and the gorse was beginning to gleam golden in sheltered stretches. The girls were out every available moment of their spare time, rambling over the headland or haunting the sea-sh.o.r.e. For most of them the latter provided the greater entertainment.

They had discovered a new occupation, that of salvaging the driftwood, and found it so enthralling that for the present it overtopped all other amus.e.m.e.nts. The high spring-tides and occasional storms washed up quant.i.ties of pieces of timber, and to rescue these from the edge of the waves, and carry them into a place of safety, became as keen a sport as fishing. Quite a little wood-stack was acc.u.mulating under the cliff, and the girls had designs of carrying it piece by piece to a point on the top of the headland, and there building a beacon of n.o.ble proportions to be fired on Empire Day amid suitable rejoicings.

It was exciting work to skip about at the water's edge, grasping at bits of old spars or shattered boards. The sea seemed to enjoy the fun, and would bob them near and s.n.a.t.c.h them away in tantalizing fashion, sometimes adding a wetting as a point to the joke. To secure a fine piece of wood without getting into the water was the triumph of skill, attended with considerable risk, not to life or limb, but to length of recreation, for Miss Birks had laid down an inviolable rule that anybody who got her feet wet at this occupation must immediately return to school, change shoes and stockings, and desist from further attempts on that day. One or two of the girls were lucky enough to possess india-rubber wading boots, with which they could venture to defy Father Ocean and rob him of some of the choicest of his spoils, but they were the highly-favoured few; the rank and file had to content themselves with the ordinary method of swift s.n.a.t.c.hing with the aid of a hockey stick.

Two days after Ronnie's birthday party a strong wind and squall during the night had furnished material for more than usually good sport, and the whole school betook itself to the beach to try to reap a harvest.

Laughing, joking, squealing, the girls pursued their quarry, enjoying the fun all the more for the accidents of the moment. Evie Bennett dropped her hockey stick, and nearly lost it altogether. Romola Harvey slipped and fell flat into a pool of water; and many other minor mishaps occurred to keep up the excitement until the catch of the year was secured, a large piece of timber which it took the united efforts of all arms to drag successfully up the beach. Deirdre and Dulcie at last, grown reckless ventured a risky experiment on their own account, with the result that a wave caught them neatly, and gave them the full benefit of sea-water treatment.

"Oh, you're done for. Go back at once!" commanded Jessie Macpherson, the head girl, whose office it was to see that the rule about changing shoes was duly observed.

"Sea-water doesn't hurt," protested the chums.

"Your feet are wet through, so back you trot this instant. Do you want me to report you?"

Very loath to leave the sh.o.r.e, Deirdre and Dulcie were nevertheless bound to obey, so they toiled regretfully up the steep path from the cove, casting a lingering eye on their companions, who were still hard at work.

"Where's Gerda?" asked Dulcie. "She's not down there, and now I think of it, I haven't seen her for the last half-hour or more. Did she get wet?"

"I really didn't notice. I suppose she must have, and been sent back. We shall probably find her in the garden."

The two stepped briskly over the warren, their shoes drying on their feet with a rapidity which made them disparage Miss Birks's excellent rule about changing.

"It's just her fuss--we should have taken no harm," said Deirdre. "I say, surely that's Ronnie's laugh. I'd know it anywhere. Where is the child?"

The girls were pa.s.sing close to the high wall which separated the Castle grounds from the warren, and as it seemed more than probable that Ronnie was inside, playing in the garden, they managed with considerable effort, and the aid of some strong ivy, to climb to the top and peep over. Here a most unexpected sight met their gaze.

On the gra.s.s, under a tamarisk bush, sat Gerda with Ronnie on her knee.

She had evidently made friends with the little fellow to a great extent, for he seemed very much at home with her, and the two were laughing and joking together in the most intimate fashion. It was such an absolutely new aspect of Gerda that Deirdre and Dulcie were dumb with amazement.

When, at the Dower House, had she laughed so gaily, or talked in so animated and sprightly a fashion? No shy, reserved, taciturn recluse this; her eyes were shining, and her whole face was full of a bright expression, such as the others had never seen there before.

"Hallo, Gerda! What are you doing here?" called Deirdre, finding speech at last.

Gerda dropped Ronnie, and sprang to her feet with a sharp exclamation.

No one could have looked more utterly and egregiously caught. She stood staring at the two faces on the top of the wall, and offered no explanation whatever. Ronnie, however, waved his hand merrily.