Part 3 (2/2)

”We must get at the soft spot in Miss Walters' heart,” decided Gowan.

”Pick a bunch of early violets if you can find them, lay them on her study table, talk about flowers and nature for a little while, then ask if we may have a quiet little party in our bedroom to-morrow afternoon, with cakes at our own expense.”

”Quiet?” queried Lilias.

”Well, of course you couldn't call it rowdy, could you? We'll send you to do the asking. Those dimples of yours generally get what you want, and on the whole I think you're the pattern one of us, and the most likely to be listened to.”

Tea at Chilcombe Hall was a quite informal meal. It partook, indeed more of the nature of a canteen. The urns were what the girls called ”on tap”

from four to four-thirty, and during summer any one might take cup, saucer, and plate into the garden, provided she duly brought them back afterwards to the dining-hall. Special permission for a bedroom feast was therefore not very difficult to obtain, and Lilias returned from her interview in the study with her dimples conspicuously in evidence.

”Well?” asked the interested circle in the Blue bedroom.

”Sweet as honey!” reported Lilias. ”She said 'Certainly, my dear!' We may each ask one friend, and we may spend two s.h.i.+llings amongst us on cakes, if we give the money and the list of what we want to Jones this afternoon, because he's going into Glazebrook first thing to-morrow morning.”

”Only two s.h.i.+llings!” commented Gowan.

”It will go no way!” pouted Bertha.

”Well, I can't help it. Miss Walters said 'Two s.h.i.+llings' most emphatically.”

”You might have stuck out for more! Those iced cakes are always half a crown!”

”I didn't dare to stick out for anything. I was so afraid she'd change her mind, and say 'There's good plain home-made cake with your schoolroom tea, and you must be content with that,' like she did to Nona and Muriel.”

”We could get twelve twopenny cakes for two s.h.i.+llings,” calculated Dulcie; ”but if there are eight of us, that's only one and a half apiece.”

”Best get eight twopenny iced cakes, and eight penny buns,” suggested Bertha, taking pencil and paper to write the important order.

”Right-o! Only be sure you put _pink_ iced cakes, they are so much the nicest.”

”Whom shall we ask? It won't be much of a beano on two s.h.i.+llings. Still, they'll be keen on coming, I expect.”

Noreen, Phillida, Prissie, and Edith, the four finally selected favorites, accepted the invitation with alacrity. Bedroom tea-parties were indulgences only given to winners of three weeks' dormitory records, so the less fortunate occupants of the Brown and Rose rooms were really profiting by the tidiness of their hostesses. The Blue Grotto was placed in apple-pie order on the afternoon of the fourteenth of February. A white hemst.i.tched cloth and a bowl of snowdrops adorned the center table, and the cakes were set out on paper doilies. Both hostesses and guests were in the dining-hall by four o'clock, awaiting the appearance of the urns, and each bore her cup of tea and a portion of bread and b.u.t.ter and scones upstairs with her.

It was a jolly party round the square table, and if the cakes were not too plentiful, they were at least voted delicious. The girls carried down the cups when they had finished, shook the table-cloth out of the window, carefully collected crumbs from the floor, so as to preserve their record for neatness, then gathered round the table again for an hour's fun before the bell should ring for prep.

”It's a Valentine party, and I've got a ripping idea,” said Gowan.

”We'll put our names on pieces of paper, fold them up, shuffle them and draw them; then each of us must write a valentine to the one we've drawn. We'll shuffle these, and one of us must read them all out. Then we must each guess who's written our valentines.”

”Sounds rather brainy, doesn't it?” objected Noreen. ”I don't think I'm any hand at poetry!”

”Oh! you can make up something if you try. Valentines are generally doggerel.”

”Need it be quite original?” asked Edith.

”Well, if you really _can't_ compose anything, we'll allow quotations.”

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