The two who were generally at the bottom of most of the mischief were Winnie Osborne and Joyce Coleman, nicknamed by Iva "the firebrands". Under Miss Pollard's gentle rule their escapades sometimes got rather out of bounds, but they had a wholesome respect for Miss Fanny, who did not often interfere with the management of the boarders out of school hours, but who dealt out discipline if she happened to catch anybody tripping.
Among the silliest of the boarders was Nita Howard, a child who was a born gossip, and who sometimes made trouble by repeating conversations or remarks which she had overheard, and which she had very much better have kept to herself. Nita had no discretion. Miss Pollard often told her her tongue was too long, and certainly on many occasions it got herself and her chums into scrapes. One evening, just after it grew dark, she came running into the recreation-room in a state of much excitement.
"I've got news for you, girls?" she chirped.
"No! What?" exclaimed Mamie and Alison, her particular friends, looking up with interest from the scrap-books that they were engaged in making.
"Well, I'll tell you then," said Nita, sitting down by the table and lowering her voice. "The ghost has been seen again in Poplar Lane!"
"I say, shut up there, Nita," murmured Nesta, who was painting at the same table. "Do you want those kids in umpteen fits?"
Nita beckoned her chums away from the vicinity of the smaller children in question, so that she might continue her thrilling story in private.
"It has really!" she assured them in a whisper.
"O-o-h!" came in a horror-stricken chorus. "How do you know?"
"I've just heard Bella telling Cook. It's Bella's evening out, and she went down the back carriage drive into Poplar Lane to take a short cut to meet a friend, and just when she got under the shade of the trees she saw something all in white coming towards her. She shrieked and ran straight back to the house, and she says she daren't go out again, even though her own cousin is waiting for her at the other end of the lane."