"Did you ever see such an extraordinary conglomeration of queer things?"

said Annie. "I wonder they didn't tidy the house up before they went. No wonder n.o.body would take it! And look, girls! They've actually left a whole bathful of old letters! Somebody has begun to tear them up, and not finished. They ought to have burnt them. Just look at this piece! It has a lovely crest on it."

"Oh, has it? Give it to me; I'm collecting crests," cried Deirdre, commandeering the sc.r.a.p of paper. "It's a jolly one, too. I say, are there any more? Move out, Annie, and let me see!"

"Look here," remonstrated Barbara; "I don't think we ought to go rummaging amongst old letters. It doesn't seem quite--quite honourable, does it? They are not ours, Annie. I wish you'd stop! No, Gerda, don't look at them, please! Oh, I say, I wish you'd all come away! Let's go.

Miss Harding will think we're drowned in the river, or something; and at any rate she'll scold us no end for being so long. Do you know the time?"

There was certainly force in Barbara's remarks. Their ten minutes' leave had exceeded half an hour, and Miss Harding would undoubtedly require a substantial reason for their delay.

"Oh, goody! It's four o'clock!" chirruped Betty. "I'd no idea it was so late! We don't want to get into a row with Miss Birks. I believe I hear Romola shouting in the road. They've come to look for us!"

"We'd best scoot, then," said Annie, and flinging back the letters into the bath, she turned with the rest and clattered downstairs.

Miss Harding, grave, annoyed, and justly indignant, was waiting for them on the bridge. She received them with the scolding they merited.

"Where have you been, you naughty, naughty girls? You're not to be trusted a minute out of my sight! I gave you permission to go straight to the bottom of the hill and back, and here you've been away more than half an hour! What were you doing in that garden? You had no right there! Come along this instant and walk before me, two and two. Miss Birks will have to hear about this. A nice report to take back of your afternoon's work at map drawing!"

Map drawing! They had forgotten all about the maps. The girls looked at one another, conscience-stricken; and Deirdre, with an awful pang, realized that she had left her note-book on the mantelpiece of the dining-room. She had been disposed to t.i.tter before, but she felt now that the affair was no joking matter.

"Miss Harding mustn't know we've been inside the house," she whispered to Gerda, with whom in the hurry of the moment she had paired off.

"No one's likely to tell her, and she couldn't see us come out of the window from where she was standing," returned Gerda.

"We shall get into trouble enough as it is. I didn't think Miss Harding would have cut up so rough about it. I say, just think of leaving those old letters all lying about! I got one--at least it's a sc.r.a.p of one--with a lovely crest, a boar's head and a lot of stars--all in gold."

"What!" gasped Gerda. "Did you say you found that on a letter?"

"Well, it's a piece of a letter, anyway."

"Oh, do let me see it!"

"Is Miss Harding looking? Well, here it is. Be careful! She's got her eye on us! Oh, give it me back, quick!"

Gerda had turned the sc.r.a.p of paper over and was glancing at the writing on the other side. She reddened with annoyance as Deirdre s.n.a.t.c.hed back her treasure.

"Let me see it again!" she pleaded.

"No, no; it's safe in my pocket! Better not run any risks."

"You might give it to me. I'm collecting crests."

"A likely idea! Do you think, if I wanted to part with it, I'd present it to you? No, I mean to keep it myself, thanks."

"I'd buy it, if you like."

"I don't sell my things."

"Not if I offered something nice?"

"Not for anything you'd offer me," returned Deirdre, whose temper was in a touchy condition, and her spirit of opposition thoroughly aroused. "We don't haggle over our things at the Dower House, whatever you may do in Germany."

Gerda said no more at the time, but at night in their bedroom she returned once more to the subject.

"You won't get it if you bother me to the end of the term," declared Deirdre, locking up the bone of contention in her jewel-case and putting the key in her pocket.

"What do you want it for so particularly, Gerda?" asked Dulcie sharply.

"Oh, nothing! Only a fancy of my own," replied Gerda, reddening with one of her sudden fits of blushing, as she turned to the dressing-table and began to comb her flaxen hair.

CHAPTER VI

Ragtime

If there was one thing more than another that the girls of the Dower House considered a particular and pressing grievance it was a wet Sat.u.r.day afternoon. They were all of them outdoor enthusiasts, and to be obliged to stop in the house instead of tramping the moors or roaming on the sea-sh.o.r.e was regarded as a supreme penance. On the Sat.u.r.day following the mapping expedition there was no mistake about the rain--it seemed to come down in a solid sheet from a murky sky, which offered absolutely no prospect of clearing.

The overflowing gutter-pipes emptied veritable rivulets into a temporary pond on the front drive; the lawn appeared fast turning into a mora.s.s; and even indoors the atmosphere was so soaked with damp that a dewy film covered banisters, furniture, and woodwork, and the wall-paper on the stairs distinctly changed its hue. In VB cla.s.sroom the girls hung about disconsolately. There was to have been a special fossil foray that afternoon under the leadership of a lady from Perranwrack, who took an interest in the school, and who had thrown out hints of a fire of driftwood and a picnic tea among the rocks.

"It's so particularly aggravating, because Miss Hall has to go up to London on Monday and won't be back for weeks, so probably she won't be able to arrange to take us again this term," grumbled Romola.

"It's too--too _triste_!" murmured Deirdre in a die-away voice, arranging a cushion behind her head with elaborate show of indolence.

"Weally wetched!" echoed Dulcie lackadaisically, sinking into the basket-chair with an even more used-up air than her chum.

"Good old second best!" laughed Betty. "Whom are you both copying now?

Have you been gobbling a surrept.i.tious penny novelette? I can generally tell your course of reading from your poses. These present airs and graces suggest some such t.i.tle as 'Lady Rosamond's Mystery' or 'The Earl's Secret'. Confess, now, you're imagining yourselves members of the aristocracy."

"I believe the penny novelettes are invariably written in top garrets by people who've never even had a nodding acquaintance with dukes and d.u.c.h.esses," said Barbara. "The real article's very different from the 'belted earl' of fiction. The Clara-Vere-de-Vere type is extinct now. If you were a genuine countess, Deirdre, you'd probably be addressing hundreds of envelopes in aid of a philanthropic society, instead of lounging there looking like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. Don't glare!

I speak the solemn words of truth."

"You make my he--head ache," protested Deirdre with half-closed eyelids, but her complaint met with no sympathy. Instead, several strong and insistent hands pulled her forcibly out of her chair and flung away the cushion.

"I tell you we're sick of 'Lady Isobel' or whoever she may be. For goodness' sake be somebody more cheerful if you won't be yourself. Can't you get up an Irish mood for a change? A bit of the brogue would hearten up this clammy afternoon."

"Oh, isn't it piggy and nasty!" exclaimed Annie, stretching out her arms in the agony of an elephantine yawn. "I want my tea! I want my tea! I want my tea! And I shan't get it for a whole long weary hour!"

"Poor martyr! Here, squattez-ici on the hearth-rug and I'll make you a triscuit."

"What on earth is a triscuit?"

"Oh, you're not bright or you'd guess. It's a biscuit toasted nicely brown and eaten hot. Don't you twig? A biscuit means 'twice cooked'; therefore if it's cooked again it must be a triscuit. That stands to reason."

"Is it to be a barmecide feast? I don't see your precious biscuits."

"'"I've got 'un here," sez she, quite quiet-like,'" returned Betty, who was a Mrs. Ewing enthusiast, and quoted Dame Datchet with relish. "Half a pound of cream crackers, and I mean to be generous and share 'em round. Don't you all bless me? Now the question is, how we're going to 'triscuit' them."