The Jolliest School of All

E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Emmy, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/)
Author of The Luckiest Girl in the School, The Princess of the School, A Popular School Girl, Schoolgirl Kitty, Marjorie's Best Year, etc.
A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Published by arrangement with Frederick A. Stokes Co. Printed in U. S. A.
Copyright, 1922, by Frederick A. Stokes Company
All Rights Reserved
Dedicated to THE MANY CHARMING AMERICAN GIRLS WHOM I HAVE MET and to THOSE UNKNOWN SCHOOLGIRLS OVER THE ATLANTIC TO WHOM THIS LITTLE BOOK CARRIES MY HEARTIEST GREETINGS
'YOU MEAN THINGS!' RAGED PEACHY

In a top-story bedroom in an old-fashioned house in a northern suburb of London, a girl of fourteen was kneeling on the floor, turning out the contents of the bottom cupboards of a big bookcase. Her method of doing so was hardly tidy; she just tossed the miscellaneous assortment of articles down anywhere, till presently she was surrounded by a mixed-up jumble of books, papers, paint-boxes, music, chalks, pencils, foreign stamps, picture post-cards, crests, balls of knitting wool, skeins of embroidery silk, and odds and ends of all kinds. She groaned as the circle grew wider, yet the apparently inexhaustible cupboards were still uncleared.
Couldn't have ever believed I'd have stowed so many things away here. And, of course, the one book I want isn't to be found. That's what always happens. It's just my bad luck. Hello! Who's calling 'Renie'? I'm here! Here! In my bedroom! Don't yell the house down. Really, Vin, you've got a voice like a megaphone! You might think I was on the top of the roof. What d'you want now? I'm busy!
So it seems, commented the fair-haired boy of seventeen, sauntering into his sister's room and taking a somewhat insecure seat upon a fancy table, where, with hands in pockets, he regarded her quizzically. Great Scott, what a turn out! You look like a magician in the midst of a magic circle. Are you going to witch the lot into newts and toads? Whence this thusness? You won't persuade me that it's a fit of neatness and you're actually tidying. Doesn't exactly seem you , somehow!