It was an unfortunate truth that Miss Gibbs was not very popular at the Grange. She was clever, conscientious, and well-meaning, and preserved a high ideal of girlhood. Much too high for practical use, so her pupils maintained.

“This isn’t a school for saints!” grumbled Valentine one day. “If we followed all Gibbie’s pet precepts we should have halos round our heads.”

“And be sprouting wings!” added Raymonde. “A very uncomfortable process too. I expect it would hurt like cutting teeth, and it would spoil the fit of one’s blouses. I don’t want to be an angel! I’m quite content with this world at present.”

“I’m so tired of developing my capabilities!” sighed Fauvette. “One never gets half an hour now, just to have fun.”

Miss Gibbs, who aspired to a partnership in the school, was deeply concerned this term with the general culture and mental outlook of her charges. She had attended an educational congress during the Easter holidays, and came back primed with the very latest theories. She was determined to work on 60 the most modern methods, and to turn her pupils out into the world, a little band of ardent thinkers, keen-witted, self-sacrificing, logical, anxious for the development of their sex, yearning for careers, in fact the vanguard of a new womanhood. Unfortunately her material was not altogether promising. A few earnest spirits, such as Maudie Heywood, responded to her appeals, but the generality were slow to move. They listened to her impassioned addresses on women’s suffrage without a spark of animation, and sat stolidly while she descanted upon the bad conditions of labour among munition girls, and the need for lady welfare workers. The fact was that her pupils did not care an atom about the position of their sex, a half-holiday was far more to them than the vote, and their own grievances loomed larger than those of factory hands. They considered that they had a very decided grievance at present.

Miss Gibbs, acting on the advice of a book entitled Education out of School Hours, was determined that every moment of the day should be filled with some occupation that led to culture. She carefully explained that the word “recreation” meant “re-creation”—a creating again, not a mere period of frivolity or lotus-eating, and advocated that all intervals of leisure should be devoted to intellectual interests. She frowned on girls who sauntered arm-in-arm round the garden, or sat giggling in the summer-house, and suggested suitable employments for their idle hands and brains. “Never waste a precious minute” was her motto, and the girls groaned under it. Healthy hobbies were all very well, but to be urged to ride them in season 61 and out of season was distinctly trying. One well-meant effort on Miss Gibbs’s part met with particular disapproval. She had decided to take the girls on Saturday afternoons to visit various old castles, Roman camps, and other objects of historical and archÆological interest in the neighbourhood. On former similar occasions she had been in the habit of delivering a short lecture when on the spot; but, noticing that many of the girls were so distracted with gazing at the surroundings that they were not really listening, she determined that they should absorb the knowledge before visiting the place. She wrote careful notes, therefore, upon the subject of their next ramble, and giving them out in class, ordered each girl to copy them and to commit them to memory.

The result of her injunction was an outburst of almost mutinous indignation in Form V.

“When does she expect us to do it, I should like to know?” raged Morvyth. “There’s not a moment to spare in prep., so I suppose it will have to come out of our so-called recreation! Look here, I call this the very limit!”

“Saturday afternoon’s no holiday when we’ve got to go prowling round a wretched Roman camp!” mourned Valentine. “What do I care about ancient earthworks? If they were modern trenches, now, with soldiers in them, it would be something like! There’ll be nothing to see except some mounds. I suppose we shall have to stand round and listen while she holds forth, and look ‘intelligent’ and ‘interested’.”

“I don’t know whether she’s going to hold forth herself,” said Aveline. “I hear she’s invited several 62 people from an archÆological society to meet us there, and probably one of them will do the spouting—some wheezy old gentleman with a bald head, or an elderly lady in a waterproof and spectacles. One knows the sort!”

“Oh, good biz!” exclaimed Raymonde. “If visitors are coming, Gibbie’ll have to talk to them, and she won’t have so much time to look after us. She’s welcome to the bald old boys! Let her have half a dozen if she wants!”

“You forget you’ve got to listen to them.”

“Oh, I’ll listen! At least I’ll look serious and politely absorbed. That’s all that’s expected.”

“In the meantime we’ve these wretched notes to copy,” groused Katherine.

“Have we? I don’t think so! I’ve got an idea. Maudie Heywood’s sure to make a most beautiful copperplate copy; we’ll borrow hers, and just skim them over to get a kind of general acquaintance with the subject, sufficient to show ‘intelligent interest’. Gibbie won’t be able to question us with those other people there.”

“But suppose she asks beforehand to see our notes?”

“I’ve thought of that. We’ll each copy out the first page, and stick some old exercise sheets behind it. She’ll never find out.”

The Mystic Seven looked at their leader in admiration. They considered that on such occasions her resourcefulness amounted to genius. They followed her advice, and copied the front page only of the notes, placing underneath some portions of Latin translation or historical essay. Aveline underlined her title with red ink, Morvyth ruled a neat 63 margin, and Fauvette tied her sheets together with a piece of the blue baby ribbon which she used for threading through her underclothes. On the outside, at any rate, their copies looked most presentable.

It was only the Fifth Form who were accorded the privilege of the ramble. They were Miss Gibbs’s special charge this term, Miss Beasley devoting herself to the Sixth, and Mademoiselle looking after the Juniors. The Fifth hardly appreciated receiving the lion’s share of Miss Gibbs’s attention. They complained that she tried all her educational experiments upon them. They were ready, however, the whole ten of them, on Saturday afternoon, clad in the neat school uniform, brown serge skirt, khaki blouse, scarlet tie, and burnt-straw hat. Miss Gibbs viewed them with approval. Each had slung over her shoulders a vasculum for botanical or other specimens, and each carried in her hand a copy of the notes. They looked business-like, healthy, well trained, and alert with intelligence, altogether an excellent advertisement for the school and its modern methods.

The camp was about a two-mile walk from the Grange, so the Form had at least the satisfaction of obtaining exercise. As Valentine had prophesied, it consisted of some mounds in the middle of a field, where, to Fauvette’s infinite discomposure, some cows were grazing. The members of the ArchÆological Society had already arrived, and came forward to greet Miss Gibbs. There was a large stout gentleman, with a grey moustache and bushy overhanging eyebrows; also a little thin gentleman with a pointed beard and an argumentative 64 voice; a tall lady with a high colour, who carried a guide-book, and a short-sighted younger man, who was trying to spread out an ordnance map. These seemed to be the principal members of the party, though there were a few stragglers.

“Professor Edwards—my girls!” said Miss Gibbs, introducing the Form en bloc to the leader for the afternoon.

The stout gentleman smiled blandly, and murmured some suitable remark about the value of acquiring antiquarian tastes while still young.

“I had perhaps better read my short paper before we inspect the remains,” he added.

“Goody! He surely isn’t going to disinter any dead Romans to show us, is he?” whispered Katherine.

“Bunkum!” replied Ardiune. “Nothing as thrilling as that, don’t you fear!”

Miss Gibbs smiled encouragingly to the Form, and beckoned them to draw nearer. They arranged themselves in a respectful semicircle, with attentive eyes fixed on the lecturer, and copies of notes rather conspicuously flaunted.

He discoursed exhaustively on the subject of Roman camps in general, and the girls listened with receptive faces, but minds wandering upon more modern themes. Morvyth was speculating whether it would be possible to purchase chocolates on the way home, Fauvette was planning her next party frock, and Aveline was wondering whether there would be jam or honey for tea that day.

“Before I ask you to take a personal survey of the earthworks,” concluded the Professor, “I should like to have Miss Gibbs’s opinion as to the 65 exact position of the entrance and the approximate date of construction. She has, I know, made a study of this branch of archÆology.”

“My ideas are embodied in my notes,” purred Miss Gibbs. “Perhaps you would not mind reading the paragraph. I lent them a short time ago to Mrs. Gladwin.”

Professor Edwards turned expectantly; but the tall lady, who a moment before had been at his elbow, had strayed away, papers in hand, and was not available for reference.

“My girls all have copies of the notes. Pass yours, Ardiune,” smiled the mistress.

The luckless Ardiune blushed scarlet, but dared not disobey.

“The passage occurs about the middle,” prompted Miss Gibbs, as the Professor fumbled with the pages. “May I find it for you? Why, surely there must be some mistake! This is French! Valentine, your copy, child!”

With an even more crimson countenance Valentine tendered her manuscript, which consisted of last week’s essay on Comets. Miss Gibbs, with a growing tightness round her lips, inspected Raymonde’s extracts from Chaucer, and Katherine’s translation of Virgil, before Aveline had the presence of mind to hand up Maudie Heywood’s copy. It is unwise for a mistress to show temper before visitors, and Miss Gibbs, with admirable self-control, mastered her feelings and read the paragraph calmly. During the discussion which followed, the girls availed themselves of an invitation from the short-sighted gentleman to inspect the earthworks, and thankfully fled to the farthest limits of the 66 field. They knew, of course, that it was only putting off the evil hour, and further events justified their forebodings. Miss Gibbs preserved an ominous silence on the way home, and after tea summoned the Form to their class-room, where she went into exhaustive details of the whole business.

“I’m disgusted with you—utterly disgusted!” she declared. “It seems of little use to spend time in attempting to give you intellectual interests. Those girls who did not copy the notes will stay in now and write them. I shall look at them all at eight o’clock.”

“It means a good solid hour’s work,” whispered Raymonde to Ardiune. “Tennis is off to-night. Strafe the old camp! I wish the Romans had never lived!”