“D’you know,” said Morvyth, flopping down disgustedly on to a form, and addressing an interested audience of three; “d’you know, my children, that I consider these two new girls the very limit?”

“Absolute blighters!” agreed Raymonde hastily, “I was thinking so myself only this morning. I can’t decide which is the worst.”

“Not a pin to choose between them!” commented Aveline with a yawn.

“I gave Cynthia Greene credit for shyness during the first twenty-four hours,” continued Morvyth. “I thought in my own mind, ‘the poor thing is suffering, no doubt, from home-sickness and general confusion, and we must be gentle with her’, but I kept a wary eye upon her, and I’ve come to a conclusion. It’s not shyness—it’s swank!”

Ardiune nodded her head approvingly.

“Swank, and nothing else,” she confirmed. “I know something about it too, for I heard her expounding to her own Form this morning. It almost made me ill. I had to take a run round the garden before I felt fit again. It seems she’s come from some much smaller school, where she’s been the head girl and show pupil, and the rest of it. She said the younger ones had all looked 22 up to her, and the Principal had treated her as a friend, and that she’d always worked hard to keep up the tone of the place.”

“O Sophonisba!” ejaculated Raymonde. “Well, it strikes me we’ve got the tone of this school to look after. We can’t allow Fourth Form kids to bring those notions and run them here. She won’t find herself queen of this establishment!”

“Hardly!” chuckled Aveline.

“Aren’t her own Form attending to the matter?” enquired Morvyth.

“Naturally. They’re giving her as bad a time as they know how, but they don’t make much headway. She tells them she fully expects to be ragged, and she simply won’t believe a word they say. They haven’t taken her in once yet.”

“That’s because they’re not skilful,” said Raymonde thoughtfully. “They don’t do the thing artistically. There’s a finesse required for this kind of work that their stupid young heads don’t possess. I’m not sure if it wouldn’t be philanthropic to help them!”

“Set your own house in order first!” grunted Ardiune. “You’ll have your hands full with Maudie Heywood.”

“I’m not going to neglect Maudie; don’t alarm yourself! She’s the best specimen of the genus prig that I’ve ever come across in the course of my life. She ought to have a Form all to herself, instead of being plumped into the Fifth. I see dangerous possibilities in Maudie. Do you realize what she did this morning? Learnt the whole of that wretched poem instead of only the twenty lines that were set us.” 23

“I heard Gibbie complimenting her, and thought she’d get swelled head.”

“Swelled head indeed! It’s the principle that’s involved. Don’t you see that if this girl goes and learns whole poems, Gibbie’ll think we can do the same, and she’ll give us more next time. It’s raising the standard of work in the Form.”

“Great Minerva! So it is!”

“We’ll have to put a stopper on that,” urged Aveline indignantly.

“There are a good many things that have given me spasms since I came back,” proclaimed Raymonde. “They’re things that ought to be set right. What I vote is, that our set form ourselves into a sort of Watch Committee to attend to any little matters of this sort. It would be a kindness to the school.”

Ardiune chuckled softly.

“By all means! Let us be the Red Cross Knights, and go out to right the wrong. We’ll attack Duessa straight away, and teach her to mend her morals. You’ll let Val be in it?”

“Rather! And Fauvette and Katherine. Seven’s a mystic number. You know there were the Seven Champions of Christendom, and there are the Seven Ages of Man, and the Seven Days of Creation, and seven years of apprenticeship, and—and––”

“Seven deadly sins!” suggested Aveline cheerfully. “And the Seven Vials—and––”

“Well, anyhow it’s always seven, so we’ll make ourselves into a society. We’ll have a star with seven rays for our secret sign. It has a nice occult kind of smack about it. When we chalk that mark upon anybody’s desk, it means we’ve 24 got to reform her, whether she likes it or whether she doesn’t.”

“She probably won’t,” twinkled Ardiune.

“Then the sooner she submits the better. She’ll find it’s no use fighting against fate—otherwise the Mystic Seven!”

“We’ll start business with Cynthia Greene to-morrow,” decided Aveline.

Fauvette, Valentine, and Katherine were duly informed of the existence of the new society and their initiation thereinto. They offered no objections, and indeed would have been prepared at Raymonde’s request to join a Black Brotherhood, or a Pirates’ League with a skull and cross-bones for its emblem. A special committee meeting was held to discuss the matter of Cynthia Greene.

“It needs finesse,” said Morvyth. “She’s been to school before, and she’s up to most dodges. Naturally she comprehends that her own Form are trying to rag her.”

“That’s where we come in,” agreed Raymonde. “We’re going to pose as philanthropists. One or two of us have got to take Cynthia up. We’ll make her realize, of course, how very kind it is of Fifth Form girls to befriend a lonely junior.”

“And having taken her up—what then?” queried Fauvette.

“Bless your innocence, child! Why, we’ll let her down with a run!”

“Are we all in it?”

“No; it would be too marked. Best leave the affair to Aveline and me. You others must stand aloof and look disinterested but sympathetic. I’ll speak to her at lunch-time.” 25

During the mid-morning interval, therefore, Raymonde singled out her victim. Cynthia was standing slightly apart from her Form, consuming thick bread and butter with an air of pensive melancholy, and twisting a pet bracelet that adorned her wrist. Raymonde strolled up casually.

“Getting on all right?” she began, by way of opening the attack. “I say, you know, I thought I’d just speak to you. I expect you’re having a grizzly time with those wretched juniors. They’re a set of blighters, aren’t they?”

“I do find them a little trying,” admitted Cynthia cautiously, “especially as I was head girl at my old school.”

“Rather a climb-down from Senior to Junior, isn’t it? Why didn’t Miss Beasley put you in the Fifth?”

“My mother asked her to, but she said as I was only thirteen it was quite impossible. It’s all right. I expect to be ragged a little at first. I’ll live it down in time.”

Cynthia’s expression of patient resignation was almost too much for Raymonde, but she controlled her countenance and continued:

“They’ll respect you all the more afterwards, no doubt.”

“I hope so. We didn’t rag new girls at The Poplars. I always made a point of showing them they were welcome. It seemed only fair to Miss Gordon. She was more like a personal friend than a teacher, and she looked to me, you see, to keep up the tone of the school.”

“She must be lost without you!”

“I think they’ll miss me,” admitted Cynthia, 26 with a little fluttering sigh of regret. “The girls all subscribed before I left and gave me this bracelet as a keepsake. It’s got an inscription inside. Would you like to look at it?”

Cynthia had unclasped her treasure, and handed it with an assumed nonchalance for Raymonde’s inspection. On the gold band was engraved: “To Cynthia Greene, a token of esteem from her schoolfellows.”

“Highly gratifying!” gurgled Raymonde.

“It was sweet of them, wasn’t it? Well, I tried to do my best for them, and I’ll do my best for this school too when I get the chance. I’m in no hurry. I’m content to wait, and let the girls come round.”

“Quite the best plan. In the meantime, if there are any little tips I can give you, come to me.”

“Thanks awfully! I will. I’d have done the same by you if you’d been a new girl at The Poplars.”

Raymonde retired bubbling over with suppressed mirth.

“That girl’s the limit!” she reported to her confederates. “For calm self-complacency I’ve never seen anybody to equal her. The idea of imagining me as a new girl at her wretched pettifogging old school! Oh, it’s too precious! She’d patronize the Queen herself! The Poplars must be executing a war-dance for joy to have got rid of her. Probably they’d have subscribed for more than a bracelet to pass her on elsewhere!”

“So she’s waiting patiently till she wins the school,” hinnied Aveline. “Poor angel! Did you notice her wings sprouting, or a halo glowing round her head?” 27

“I think we can put her up to a few tips,” chuckled Ardiune.

“It would only be kind,” gushed Raymonde. “The sort of thing she must have done herself hundreds of times to many a poor neglected new girl at The Poplars. The bread she cast upon the waters shall be returned to her.”

“With butter on it!” added Aveline.

“She can swallow any amount of butter,” observed Raymonde. “She evidently likes it laid on thick. Suggestions invited, please, for kind and disinterested advice to be administered to her.”

“Professor Marshall comes to-morrow,” volunteered Aveline.

“The very thing! Ave, you old sport, you’ve given me an idea! Now just prepare your minds for a pretty and touching little scene at the beginning of the mediÆval arts lecture. No, I shan’t tell you what it is beforehand. It’ll be something for you to look forward to!”

The staff at Marlowe Grange consisted of Miss Beasley, Miss Gibbs, and Mademoiselle, but there were several visiting masters and mistresses who had attended at the former house, and were now to continue their instructions at the school in its present quarters. Among these Professor Marshall was rather a favourite. As befitted a teacher in an establishment of young ladies, he was grey-haired and elderly, and, as the girls added, “married and guaranteed not to flirt,” but all the same he was jolly, had a hearty, affable manner, and a habit of making bad jokes and weak puns to break up the monotony of his lectures. It was decidedly the fashion to admire him, to snigger indulgently at 28 his mild little pleasantries, and to call him “an old dear.” Some of the girls even worked quite hard at their preparation for him. He had written his autograph in at least nineteen birthday books, and it was rumoured that, when the auspicious 10th of March had come round, no less than fourteen anonymous congratulatory picture post-cards had been directed to him from the school and posted by stealth. Having already improved their minds upon a course of English Classics and Astronomy, the school this term was booked for culture, and devoted to the study of the fine arts of the Middle Ages. A few selected members of the Sixth had been told off to search through back numbers of The Studio and The Connoisseur for examples of the paintings of Cimabue and Giotto, and the large engraving of Botticelli’s “Spring,” which used to hang in Miss Beasley’s study, now occupied a prominent position on the dining-room wall to afford a mental feast during meal-times.

Raymonde, anxious not to overdo things, left Cynthia to herself for the rest of the day; but the following morning, after breakfast, she seized an opportunity for a few words with her.

“You won’t mind my giving you a hint or two on school etiquette?” she observed casually. “You see, there are traditions in every school that one likes to keep up, and of course you can’t find them out unless you’re told.”

“I’d be very glad,” gushed Cynthia gratefully. “We’d a regular code at The Poplars, and I used to initiate everybody. They always came straight to me, and I coached them up. I can’t tell you how many new girls I’ve helped in my time!” 29

“Well, you’re new yourself now,” said Raymonde, detaching Cynthia’s mind from these reminiscences of past service and bringing it up to date. “Professor Marshall’s coming to-day, and you’ll have to be introduced to him.”

“Oh dear! I’m so shy! I wonder what he’ll think of me?” fluttered Cynthia.

“Think you’re the sickliest idiot he ever met!” was on the tip of Raymonde’s tongue, but she restrained herself, and, drawing her victim aside, whispered honeyed words calculated to soothe and cheer, adding some special items of good advice.

“Thank you,” sighed Cynthia. “I won’t forget. Of course, we never did such a thing at The Poplars, but, if it’s expected, I won’t break the traditions of the school. You can always depend upon me in that respect.”

Precisely at 11.30 the whole of the school was assembled in the big hall awaiting the presence of their lecturer. Professor Marshall, who had been regaling himself with lunch in Miss Beasley’s study, now made his appearance, escorted by the head mistress, and apparently refreshed by cocoa and conversation. The girls always agreed that his manners were beautiful. He treated everybody with a courtly deference, something between the professional consideration of a fashionable doctor and the dignity of an archdeacon. After Miss Gibbs’s uncompromising attitude, the contrast was marked. He entered the room smiling, bowed a courteous good morning to his pupils, who rose to receive him, and placed a chair for Miss Beasley with gentlemanly attention.

The Principal, radiant after showing off her new quarters, refused it with equal politeness. 30

“No, thank you, Professor. I’m not going to stay. I have other work to do. You will find your class the same as before, with the addition of two new girls. Maude Heywood—come here, Maudie!—and Cynthia Greene. I hope they’ll both prove good workers.”

Maudie Heywood, blushing like a lobster, stepped forward and thrust three limp fingers for a fraction of a second into the Professor’s large clasp, then thankfully merged her identity among her schoolfellows. Cynthia, who was behind her, smiled bewitchingly upwards into the florid, benevolent face of her new instructor, then, falling gracefully upon one knee, seized his hand and touched it with her lips.

The sensation in the room was immense. The Professor, looking decidedly astonished and embarrassed, hastily withdrew his hand from the affectionate salutation. Miss Beasley’s eyes were round with horror.

“Cynthia!” she exclaimed, and the tone of her voice alone was sufficient reproof.

The luckless Cynthia, instantly conscious that her act had been misconstrued, retired with less grace than she had come forward, and spent most of the lecture in surreptitiously mopping her eyes. As she walked dejectedly down the corridor afterwards, she was accosted by Hermione Graveson, a member of the Sixth.

“Look here!” said Hermione briefly. “What prompted you to make such an utter exhibition of yourself just now? I never saw anything more sickening in my life!”

Cynthia’s tears burst forth afresh. 31

“It wasn’t my fault,” she sobbed. “I didn’t want to do it, but I was told it was school etiquette and I must.”

“Who told you such rubbish?”

“That girl with the dark eyes and a patriotic hair ribbon.”

“Raymonde Armitage?”

“I believe that’s her name.”

Hermie shook her head solemnly.

“New girls are notoriously callow,” she remarked, “but I should have thought anybody with the slightest grain of sense could have seen at a glance what Raymonde is. Why, she’s simply been playing ragtime on you. Did you actually and seriously believe that the girls at this school were expected to go through such idiotic performances? Don’t believe a word Raymonde tells you again.”

“Whom shall I believe? Everybody tries to stuff me!” wailed the injured Cynthia. “I never treated anybody like this at The Poplars.”

“Trust your common sense—that is, if you happen to have any; and, for goodness’ sake, don’t snivel any more. Wipe your eyes and take it sporting. And, wait a moment. If you want a bit of really good, sound advice, don’t mention The Poplars again, or the fact that you were head girl there, and the idol of the school, and the rest of it. You’re only a junior here, and the sooner you find your level the better. We’re not exactly aching to have our tone improved by you! And, look here! Take that absurd keepsake bracelet off, and lock it up in your box, and don’t let anybody see it again till the end of the term. There! go and digest what I’ve told you.” 32

Having settled with Cynthia Greene, it now remained for the Mystic Seven to turn their attention to the matter of Maudie Heywood. The situation was growing acute. Maudie had been ten days at the Grange, and in that brief space of time she was already beginning to establish a precedent. She was a tall, slim girl, with earnest eyes, a decided chin, and an intellectual forehead. Work, with a capital W, was her fetish. She sat during classes with her gaze focused on her teacher, and a look of intelligent interest that surpassed everyone else in the Form. Miss Gibbs turned instinctively to Maudie at the most important points of the lesson. There was a feeling abroad that she sucked in knowledge like a sponge. Nobody would have objected to her consuming as much as she liked of the mental provender supplied had she stopped at that. Maudie unfortunately was over-zealous, and finding the amount of preparation set her to be well below the limit of her capacity, invariably did a little more than was required. Her maps were coloured, her botany papers illustrated with neat drawings, her history exercises had genealogical tables appended, and her literature essays were full of quotations. This was all very exemplary, and won golden opinions from Miss Gibbs, but it caused heartburnings in the Form. It was felt that Maudie was unduly raising the standard. Miss Gibbs had suggested that other botany papers might contain diagrams, and had placed upon the class-room chimney-piece a book of poetical extracts suitable for use in essay-writing.

“If we don’t take care we’ll be having our prep. doubled,” said Aveline uneasily. 33

It was decided to reason with Maudie before taking any more active measures. The united Seven tackled her upon the subject.

“I promised Mother I’d work,” urged Maudie, in reply to their remonstrances.

“But you’ve no need to work overtime,” objected Ardiune. “We don’t mind how hard you swat during prep., but it isn’t right for you to be putting in extra half-hours while the rest of us are in the garden. It’s stealing an advantage.”

“It’s a work of supererogation,” added Katherine.

Maudie wrinkled up her intellectual forehead anxiously.

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

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

“Oh, that wouldn’t be fair!” Maudie’s tone was of shocked virtue.

“It’s more unfair to heap burdens on the rest of your Form.”

“I’m bound to do my best.”

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

Maudie shook her head sadly. Her grey eyes gleamed with the enthusiasm of the martyr spirit. 34

“I can’t promise anything,” she sighed. “Something within me urges me to work.”

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

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

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

“That girl’s destined for the cloister,” said Aveline pityingly. “She’s evidently thirsting to live her life by rule. Mark my words, she’ll eventually take the veil.”

“No, she’ll pass triumphantly through College and come out equal to a double-first or Senior Wrangler, or something swanky of that kind, and get made head mistress of a high school,” prognosticated Ardiune.

“In the meantime, she won’t swat any more to-night!” grinned Raymonde. “Wait for me here, girls; I’ve got to fetch something.”

Raymonde performed her errand with lightning 35 speed. She returned with a lump of soft substance in one hand, and a spirit-lamp and curling-tongs in the other. Her chums looked mystified.

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

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

“It will have hardened by the time Maudie has finished her constitutional among the flower beds,” she giggled. “I’ll guarantee when she comes back she won’t be able to open her desk.”

“It’s only right for her to feel the pressure of public opinion,” decreed Ardiune. “We’re working in a good cause.”

“But we’re modest about it, and don’t want to push ourselves forward,” urged Raymonde. “I vote we go for a stroll down to the very bottom of the orchard, near the moat.”

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

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

“Almost too good,” agreed Miss Gibbs, who was perhaps beginning to find out that Maudie’s 36 exercises took twice as long to correct as anybody else’s, and thus sensibly curtailed her teacher’s leisure. “The child is so conscientious. In my opinion she needs to concentrate more on physical exercise. I should like to see her in the tennis courts instead of copying out reams of poetry.”

“Yes,” said Miss Beasley, looking thoughtful. “Her activities perhaps need a little adjustment. We mustn’t allow her to neglect her health. She looks over-anxious sometimes for a girl of fifteen.”

“She is always such a calm, self-controlled, well-regulated child,” remarked Miss Gibbs appreciatively.

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

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

“I think you’re forgetting yourself, Maudie,” returned the Principal. “It is hardly good manners to enter my study so abruptly and to speak in this way to me. If you wish to please me, I should much prefer you to spend your leisure time at games instead of lessons. To-morrow evening I hope to see you playing tennis. If you ask the cook for a screw-driver you’ll probably be able to wedge open your desk easily. But in future you’ll be 37 wiser to confine your work to the preparation hours. The bow must be unstrung sometimes, or your health will suffer. If you join with the other girls at their games you’ll soon get to know them, and feel more at home here. Try to be sociable and make yourself liked. Part of the training of school life is to learn to accommodate yourself to a community.”

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

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

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

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