Immediately after the lesson, on the next French day, Gwen Williams sauntered in the direction of the Ramsays.

"Do you go out for walks with that Penruddock boy from Grimbal's Farm?" she asked rather insolently.

"Do you mean Bevis Hunter?" Mavis's voice was iced politeness.

"Yes. I told Mother, and she was surprised! Does your uncle know?"

Merle was on the point of bursting out, "It's not your business!" but her more discreet sister gave her a hasty poke.

"It was Uncle David who sent us out with Bevis," answered Mavis with stately dignity. "He thinks very highly of him, and so do we. I've never met anybody who knows so much about natural history, or who can tell us more about excavations and prehistoric mounds and things. He was curator of the school museum when he was at Shelton College."

Gwen gazed at Mavis as if she were speaking an unknown language.

"It's a matter of taste of course," she replied. "I shouldn't care to go about with the boy from the Penruddocks' Farm."

She walked away, leaving sad heart-burnings behind her. The Ramsays had been very simply brought up at home, and were accustomed to judge people merely by whether they liked them or not, and knew little of worldly standards. Bevis, with his jolly, merry ways, and his intense love of nature, seemed a far pleasanter companion than Gwen or her brother Tudor. Intellectually he was more than the equal of those who despised him, and his romantic story suggested many possibilities.

"Bevis might be anybody," ventured Mavis.

"I don't care who he is, he's our friend," fumed Merle stoutly.

"Rather, and we'll stick to him in spite of all the Glyn Williamses in the world. It really doesn't matter to us what Gwen thinks."

Fortunately for the Ramsays, Gwen only came to school twice a week, but to their sorrow Opal was there every day. Lately she had been growing more and more out of hand. She had begun to adopt a patronizing attitude towards Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny, called them "poor old dears", quizzed their clothes, their manners, and their methods of teaching, and voted them hopelessly slow and out of date. There is a certain phase in girls who are growing up at which they are fiercely critical of their elders. As a child Opal had immensely admired her two godmothers, and had been proud of their many accomplishments. Now, because she too had acquired a certain skill in music and painting, she rather looked down upon their talents. She thought her own superior, forgetting that though a well-taught girl may seem clever at sixteen, there is no guarantee that she will go on developing in the same ratio, and will therefore be a genius at the age of thirty-seven.

The fact was that Opal ought long ago to have been sent away to a boarding-school, where she would have found her level among other girls of her own age, and have been thoroughly sat upon by elder ones. Her position of prime favourite at The Moorings was bad both for herself and for everybody else. The juniors, encouraged by her example, began to evade rules, and to do many things they had never dreamt of before. Miss Fanny, finding them unusually troublesome, puzzled over the reason. She decided there must be bad influence somewhere, but it never struck her to fix the blame upon Opal. She was always ready with an excuse where her god-daughter was concerned.

Among other subjects which Miss Fanny taught at The Moorings was the piano. She was a very good and correct musician, and had studied under an eminent master of her day. Perhaps her fault as a teacher was that she concentrated too much on the technique to the exclusion of the artistic element. She would stop a pupil every few bars to correct errors in touch or the position of the hands, and was such a martinet over these details that the spirit of the piece was often entirely lost. Merle, who liked to dash away and get a general impression of a composition, oblivious of a few wrong notes, chafed terribly under this severe rÉgime.

"It knocks all the poetry out of the music," she complained. "I hardly know what tune I'm playing when Miss Fanny is watching my hands like a cat watching a mouse, and that abominable metronome is tick-tack-tick-tacking on the top of the piano! How I hate the beastly thing. I'd as soon recite Shakespeare to a metronome as play Chaminade. It would be just as sensible. Music, to my mind, is like reciting, you want to hurry up some phrases and to linger on others, not go pounding on like a pianola or a piece of clockwork! Tick-tack-tick-tack—Ugh! I hate it!"

Opal, who also suffered from the metronome, chimed in with her side of the grievance.

"My cousin learns from Mr. Jardine, the best teacher in Burchester, and she never uses one!"

"I don't see why we need. I wish somebody would break the wretched old thing, or lose it, or otherwise dispose of it. They'd have my blessing I'm sure."

The juniors, who had gathered round to listen, giggled at Merle's heroics. It was rather nice to hear elder girls grumbling.

"Why don't you do it yourself," piped Betty Marshall.

Merle, just for fun, seized the object of her invective from the top of the piano, and opening the window placed it outside upon the sill. "It may stay there and tick-tack to the birds if it likes," she declared. "If I had my way it would never come back again. Yes, I mean it."

The juniors laughed again as they ran from the room, and Merle, also laughing, lifted the unfortunate metronome inside and placed it back on the piano. She and Opal chased the smaller ones along the passage, and caught them, squealing with delight, in the cloakroom.

"You little pussies, I'll tickle you!" cried Merle, swinging Posie Andrews off her feet and tucking her under one arm, while she made a grab at Florrie Leach.

The children, wild with fun, danced about like so many imps.

"It's Nicky Nan Night to-night," twittered Betty as she jumped and pranced. "We're all Nicky Nans. Look at us!"

"Hooray! It's Nicky Nan Night," shouted the others.

"Heavens, so it is. I'd completely forgotten!" said Opal.

She stood for a moment as if thinking, then she suddenly ran back to the schoolroom. She was only gone a moment or two, but she returned to the cloakroom with a curious look of amusement on her face.

"What have you been up to?" asked Merle, eyeing her suspiciously.

"Ah! Wouldn't you just like to know?"

"You've been doing something!" "Indeed! How clever we are all of a sudden. Are you clairvoyante may I ask?"

"Not at all, but I know Opal Earnshaw. You're pluming yourself no end."

Opal broke into a fit of delighted giggling, but refused all explanations, and slamming on her hat rushed away home, leaving the juniors still dancing about the cloakroom like pixies and loudly proclaiming: "It's Nicky Nan Night. We're all Nicky Nans!"

"What on earth is Nicky Nan Night?" asked Merle rather crossly, but nobody troubled to answer, so she struggled into her coat and joined Mavis, who was waiting at the door, and forgot all about the matter directly.

Later on in the evening, however, she began to understand. Durracombe was a little old-world place, and had preserved many quaint and curious customs from ancient times. One of the most extraordinary of these was a kind of carnival held by the boys of the town at the beginning of the season of Lent. As soon as it was dusk they commenced to prowl about the streets wearing black paper masks and carrying turnip lanterns. They were supposed to represent imps of darkness, or perhaps will o' the wisps, and their chief sport was to ring door bells, or rat-tap with knockers, and then run away. Mavis and Merle, hearing repeated peals from the surgery bell, were amazed that Jessop did not answer it, till she explained it was merely a ruse of the Nicky Nans, and that nobody in Durracombe who knew their tricks would respond to such a summons. She offered however to take the girls out for ten minutes to look at the fun; so they donned coats and scarves and issued into the dim High Street. It was a moonless night, which made things all the better for such a saturnalia. In the distance a cluster of lights began to dance about, and presently up ran half a dozen little urchins, disguised in masks and waving turnip lanterns pierced with holes for eyes and mouths, so that the candles shining through them gave them the appearance of gruesome goblins. The children had indeed vied with one another as to which could produce the most horrible looking turnip head, and part of the sport was to hide in dark alleys and suddenly to exhibit the lanterns to unwary passers-by, to try to raise a scream. The small imps careered round and round, prancing and giving an occasional yell of "Nicky Nan". The girls laughed in much amusement, and Jessop, who had witnessed the custom from her youth up, felt in her pocket for some pennies, and threw them into the road to be scrambled for.

Presently came the noise of a tin-kettle band, and down the High Street marched a procession carrying "Jack o' Lent", a grotesque figure on the lines of a Guy Fawkes, stuffed with straw and wearing a mask and an old top hat. The Nicky Nans flew to join their fellows, showing their lanterns like the wise virgins in the parable, and the Guy was escorted by quite a crowd of leaping dancing will-o'-the-wisps, who added squeals and whistling to the din made on the old tea-trays and pans. They crossed the bridge to a field on the farther side of the river, where a bonfire had been built. Upon this Jack o' Lent was carefully hoisted, and a match was put to the straw. The Ramsays, hurried indoors by Jessop lest Mavis should catch cold, watched the scene from Aunt Nellie's bedroom window, and had a fine view of the flames blazing up, and the Nicky Nans prancing round in a circle, waving their weird turnip lights.

On this one night in the year the town's children were veritable Devonshire pixies. By immemorial custom they were licensed to carry away brooms, pails, or any objects which people were so foolish as to leave unguarded outside their houses. These they pounced upon and bore off as booty, exhibiting them the next morning in the pound, whence they might be redeemed by their owners for a fee varying from a penny to sixpence, according to their value. As the proceeds went to their football club, the Nicky Nans were naturally anxious to pick up every trifle which they could possibly find lying about, and every house and garden in the town was visited for that purpose. The matron, who missed her scrubbing-brush or her bucket, knew what Pucks and Robin Goodfellows had been flitting round in the darkness, and made a visit to the pound to recover her lost property, paying the price with a good-natured remembrance of the fun of her own young days.

Mavis and Merle, on their way to school on the morning following the saturnalia, peeped into the pound, a walled enclosure intended for the detention of lost cows or strayed sheep, and saw half a dozen of the boys, still wearing masks, guarding quite a collection of treasures and chaffing some of the owners over the gate. Evidently they had had a most successful evening, and the funds of their football club would be replenished.

"Little wretches. They're as light-fingered as elves," remarked Merle. "They've even taken the pots of geraniums off people's window-sills."

"I shall never forget them dancing in a mad circle round the bonfire," laughed Mavis, as the pair passed on.

When the pupils at The Moorings assembled that morning for call-over, Miss Fanny entered with a look upon her face which everybody at once mentally registered at stormy. Her "Good morning, girls!" was cold. She never noticed the vase full of flowers which the boarders had arranged upon her desk, and she took the names, as if she were reading a list of criminals, in a deep sad voice without an atom of her usual geniality. When this first preliminary was finished she turned to what was evidently the pressing business on her mind.

"Girls!" she began. "A very unpleasant thing has happened in the school. The metronome is missing from the piano. None of the boarders has interfered with it. Can any of you day girls tell what has become of it?"

A look of much astonishment passed round the assembled faces. On several it was even mingled with relief. To get rid of the metronome did not seem an unmixed evil. Perhaps Miss Fanny noted the expression. She paused for a whole solemn minute, then spoke again in a yet sterner voice.

"I put every girl in this room on her honour to tell what she knows."

There was a stir among some of the younger children, a bending together of heads, and a faint whispering like the buzzing of bees, then Betty Marshall held up her hand.

"Please, Miss Fanny, there's a metronome just like ours in the pound. Posie and Florrie and I saw it as we came to school."

"In the pound!" Miss Fanny's voice quivered with amazed indignation.

"Yes, the Nicky Nans had taken it."

"But surely no boy would dare to venture into our schoolroom. It's outrageous! I shall have to complain to the schoolmaster if they go beyond bounds like this. To take it off the piano!"

Posie and Betty glanced doubtfully at one another as if uncertain whether to explain further. Then Posie held up a chubby hand.

"Please, Miss Fanny, it wasn't on the piano; it was outside on the window-sill."

"On the window-sill! Who put it there?" The teacher's voice had reached crescendo.

Posie wriggled and looked uncomfortably at Betty and then at Florrie, finally in a rather tremulous whisper she murmured:

"Merle Ramsay."

Merle stood up at once with flaming cheeks.

"I put the metronome outside the window for a minute, Miss Fanny, but I didn't leave it there. I put it back upon the piano."

Miss Fanny glared hard, first at Merle, and then with a kind of comprehensive sweeping glance over the whole school.

"Can any other girl volunteer any information?"

There was dead silence. Opal was rather ostentatiously sharpening the point of her pencil. The teacher's gaze came back to a focus on Merle.

"You had no business to interfere with the metronome at all. I certainly consider it your fault that it has been taken. In future I can't have you day girls staying in the schoolroom after four o'clock. You must leave directly you've put your books away. Go to your forms now, girls! We've wasted too much time already."

Merle stumped off, feeling extremely cross. She was absolutely certain that Opal, who had run back last thing into the schoolroom, must have put the metronome outside on the window-sill, knowing that the Nicky Nans would be sure to carry it off. At 'break' she taxed her with it. But Opal simply laughed, and went on eating biscuits.

"Don't set all the work of the Nicky Nans down to me," she declared. "It's a pity they didn't keep the metronome. Miss Fanny will trot down to the pound and pay her sixpence and get it back, and it will be tick-tacking again on the piano as gaily as ever, unless some of those priceless kids have chanced to break it."

"But you put it outside for them?" persisted Merle.

"I? I never do naughty things!"

"Don't you? It strikes me you tell the biggest fibs of any girl I've ever yet come across. I call you the absolute limit," said indignant Merle as she flounced away.