“Look here!” said Hermie to Raymonde two days later, when the latter was helping the monitress to put away the wood-carving tools; “what’s the matter with Cynthia Greene? She’s behaving in the most idiotic fashion—goes mincing about the school, and sighing, and even mopping her eyes when she thinks anybody’s looking at her. What’s she posing about now?”

“She says she feels lonely—and fair-haired and blue-eyed—at least that’s what she wrote inside her strawberry basket,” volunteered Raymonde.

“What in the name of the Muses do you mean?”

Raymonde explained. The monitress listened aghast.

“Well, I call that the limit!” she exploded. “The little monkey! Why, Gibbie would slay her if she knew! Such an atrociously cheeky, unladylike thing to do, and putting her address here at the Grange! Bringing discredit on the school! I don’t suppose whoever finds it will take any notice.”

“She’s hoping for an answer,” said Raymonde. “I believe she’s just yearning to be mixed up in a love affair.” 166

“At thirteen!” scoffed Hermie. “The silly young blighter! I’d like to shake her!”

“If you do, she’ll be rather pleased than otherwise,” returned Raymonde. “She’ll pose as a martyr then, and say the world is unsympathetic. I’m beginning to know Cynthia Greene.”

“I believe you’re right!” said the monitress thoughtfully.

Sentiment was not encouraged at the Grange. Miss Beasley very rightly thought that girls should keep their childhood as long as possible, and that premature love affairs wiped the bloom off genuine later experiences. The school in general assumed the attitude of scoffing at romance, except in the pages of the library books. It was not considered good form to allude to it. Tennis or hockey was a more popular topic.

“So Cynthia’s trying to run the sentimental business,” mused Hermie. “It’ll spread if we don’t take care. It’s as infectious as measles. I’m not going to have all those juniors wandering about the garden, reading poetry instead of practising their cricket—it’s not good enough. Yet it’s difficult for a monitress to interfere. As you say, Cynthia would take a melancholy pride in being persecuted. Look here, Raymonde, you’re a young blighter yourself sometimes, but you don’t go in for this kind of rubbish. Can’t you think of some plan to nip the thing in the bud before it goes further? You’re generally inventive enough!”

“If I might have a free hand for a day or two, I might manage something,” admitted Raymonde with caution.

“I’d tell the other monitresses to let you alone. 167 I don’t mind how you contrive it, as long as you knock the nonsense out of the juniors. Cynthia Greene of all people, too! The former ornament of The Poplars, who used to keep up the tone (so she says) and set an example to the rest. What is she coming to? I should think they’d want that bracelet back, if they knew!”

The Mystic Seven had a special Committee Meeting before tea, and pledged one another to utmost secrecy. The result of their confabulations seemed satisfactory to themselves, for they parted chuckling.

The next morning, when Cynthia Greene went to her desk to take out a lesson book, she found inside a letter addressed to herself. She opened it in a whirl of excitement. It was written in a slanting, backward kind of hand, with a very thick pen. Its contents ran thus:

“Dear Miss Cynthia,

“Being the fortunate recipient of the card placed in a strawberry basket, and bearing your name, I am venturing to answer it. I, too, am lonely, and long for friendship. I admire blue eyes and fair hair; I myself am dark. I should like immensely to meet you. Could you possibly be at the side gate of your garden shortly after seven this evening? I shall arrive by motor, and walk past on the chance of seeing you.

“Yours respectfully but devotedly,
“Algernon Augustus Fitzmaurice.”

The conduct of Cynthia during the course of the day was extraordinary. She exhibited a mixture 168 of self-importance and fluttering anticipation that was highly puzzling to her companions. She refused to explain, but dropped sufficient hints to arouse interest. It was presently whispered among the juniors that Cynthia had received a love-letter from somebody highly distinguished and aristocratic.

“Did it come by post?” asked Joan Butler.

“No, of course not. Gibbie would never have given it to her if it had. Cynthia found it inside her desk. She doesn’t know who put it there. It’s most mysterious.”

For the day, Cynthia was a heroine of romance among her Form. She played the part admirably, wearing an abstracted expression in her blue eyes, and starting when spoken to, as if aroused from daydreams. She mentioned casually that she believed the family of Fitzmaurice to be an extremely ancient one, and that its members were mentioned in the Peerage. As there was no copy of that volume in the school library, nobody could contradict her, and her audience murmured interested acquiescence. When asked whether they preferred the name of Algernon or Augustus, their opinions were divided.

At first the juniors were sympathetic, but by the end of the afternoon the goddess of envy began to rear her head in their midst. Cynthia’s manner had progressed during the day to a point of patronage that was distinctly aggravating. She openly pitied girls who did not receive private letters, and spoke of early engagements as highly desirable. She missed two catches when fielding at cricket, being employed in staring sentimentally at the sky instead of watching for the ball. 169

“Buck up, you silly idiot, can’t you? You’re a disgrace to the school!” snarled Nora Fawcitt furiously.

Cynthia sighed gently, with the air of “Ah-if-you-only-knew-my-feelings!” and twisted the ends of her hair into ringlets. After tea, in defiance of all school traditions, she changed her dress and put on her best slippers. She appeared in the schoolroom with a bunch of pansies pinned into her belt.

Preparation was from six to seven, and was supposed to be a period of strenuous mental application. That evening, however, Cynthia made little progress with her Latin exercise or the Wars of the Roses. Her Form mates, looking up in the intervals of conning their textbooks, noted her sitting with idle pen, gazing raptly into space or glancing anxiously at the clock. Though she had not confided the details of her secret, her companions felt that something was going to happen. Romance was in the atmosphere. Several of the juniors found themselves wishing that clandestine letters had appeared in their desks also. When the signal for dismissal was given, and the girls trooped from the schoolroom, Cynthia mysteriously melted away somewhere. Ardiune, walking round the quad. five minutes later, accosted Joan Butler, Janet Macpherson, Nancie Page, and Isobel Parker, who were sitting on the steps of the sundial reading Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s Poems of Love.

“If you’d like a little sport,” she observed, “come along with me. You may bring Elsie and Nora if you can find them. I promise you a jinky time!”

The juniors rose readily. None of them were 170 really very fond of reading, but Cynthia had lent them the book earlier in the day, with a few pages turned down for reference. They flung it on to the stone step, with scant regard for its white cover. Ardiune led her recruits hastily to the back drive, and bade them hide behind the thick laurel and clipped holly bushes that backed the border.

“Somebody you know is coming to keep an appointment, and will get a surprise,” she volunteered.

They had hardly taken cover when Cynthia Greene appeared, strolling along the drive. She advanced to the gate, leaned her elbow on it, and, posing picturesquely, glanced with would-be carelessness up and down the back lane, and coughed.

At this very evident signal a figure emerged from the shelter of the opposite bushes and strode to the gate. The juniors gasped. They had all taken part in last Christmas’s term-end performance, and they easily recognized the hat, long coat, and military moustache of the school theatrical wardrobe, the only masculine garments permitted at the Grange. Cynthia, being a new-comer, was not acquainted with them. Her agitated eyes merely took in a manly vision who was accosting her politely, though without removing his hat.

“Have I the pleasure of addressing Miss Cynthia Greene?” asked a deep-toned voice.

Cynthia, utterly overcome, giggled a faint assent.

“I am Algernon Augustus. Delighted to make your acquaintance! You’re the very girl I’ve always longed to meet. I can’t describe my loneliness, and how I’m yearning for sympathy. Fairest, loveliest one, will you smile upon me?” 171

What Cynthia might have answered it is impossible to guess, but at that critical moment the hat, which was several sizes too large, tilted to one side, and allowed Raymonde’s hair to escape down her back. Cynthia’s agitated shriek brought a crowd of witnesses from out the laurel bushes. They did not spare their victim, and a perfect storm of chaff descended upon her.

“Did it go to meet its ownest own?”

“Did you call him Algernon, or Augustus?”

“Did he tell you his family pedigree?”

“Where’s his motor-car, please?”

“Is the engagement announced yet?”

“I think you’re a set of beasts!” whimpered Cynthia, leaning her head against the gate and sobbing.

“If you hadn’t been such a silly idiot you wouldn’t have been taken in by such a transparent business,” returned Raymonde, pulling off her moustache. “Look here, we don’t care about this sickly sort of stuff, so the sooner you drop it the better. Gracious, girl! Turn off the waterworks! Be thankful Gibbie didn’t scent out your romance, that’s all! If the Bumble knew you’d put that card inside that strawberry basket, she’d pack up your boxes and send you home by the next train. Crystal clear, she would!”

For at least a week after this, Cynthia Greene suffered a chastened life, and shed enough tears to make her pocket-handkerchiefs a conspicuous item in her laundry bag. She began to wish that the names of Augustus and Algernon could be expunged from the English language. Her Form mates hinted that she might receive a present of 172 Debrett’s Peerage on her next birthday. If she missed a ball at tennis, or slacked a little at cricket, somebody was sure to enquire: “Thinking of him?” She found a picture of two turtle-doves attached to the pin-cushion on her dressing-table, and drawings of hearts and darts were scrawled by unknown hands inside her textbooks. Moreover, she lived in constant dread lest somebody should have really found the card inside the strawberry basket, and should send an answer by post, which would fall into the hands of Miss Beasley. The prospect of expulsion from the school haunted her.

Fortunately for her, nobody troubled to notice her request for correspondence, the basket of strawberries having probably found its way to some snuffy individual at a greengrocer’s stall, who took no interest in the loneliness of blue-eyed, fair-haired damsels. As for her volume of Poems of Love, Hermie confiscated it until the end of the term, and recommended a Manual of Cricket instead.