"Ah yes! Put it all on to the pixies; they've broad shoulders," twinkled Uncle David, as he helped himself to more bacon.
"It's like the Mad Hatter's tea-party," grunted Mavis, moving farther down the table to avoid the wet patch, which had spread in her direction.
Certainly Merle seemed pixie-led, for everything went wrong. When she put on her boots she broke her boot-lace, and had to piece it with a big knot which ran into her instep and hurt her. She struggled into her coat, slammed on her hat, and tore out after Mavis, who had already started; but when she was half-way along the High Street she discovered that she had forgotten one of her books and had to run back for it. It was in the summer-house, at the bottom of the garden, where she had left it the day before, and as she scurried up the steps she stumbled and fell, and grazed her knee. She picked herself up, looked ruefully at the injured limb, seized her book, and rushed away, limping slightly on one leg, and grousing hard. She was late for school, though, in spite of her best efforts, and only slipped into the big classroom just when Miss Pollard was closing the register.
"Where have you been, Merle?" inquired Miss Pollard in the most scholastic manner she knew how to adopt.
"I forgot my history and went back for it—I'm very sorry," gasped Merle, much out of breath with running.
Opal smiled, and counted over the books which she held on her lap with the air of one who is thinking to herself: "Other people don't forget their things!" Merle, by this time thoroughly cross, frowned at her darkly. There was something so aggravatingly smug about Opal; all her peccadilloes were well hidden, and never came under public and official notice. She took advantage of her position, too; for, as the girls filed out of the room, she stroked Miss Pollard's arm caressingly as she passed, a token of affection which Merle, who admired the head mistress after yesterday's tea-party, would have loved to bestow but did not dare.
The pixies would not let Merle alone that morning. They jerked her pen, so that she made blots on her exercise, they whisked dates out of her memory, and put wrong figures into her sums. When it came to literature lesson they must have deliberately absconded with her copy of Julius Cæsar. She hunted for it in vain.
"I know I left it in my desk yesterday," she assured Miss Fanny, who was waiting to take the class and chafing at the delay.
"You ought to have your books ready. Be quick and look again. It's probably underneath something else," urged the mistress impatiently.
Merle seized a top layer of textbooks and essay paper and dumped them down on the floor, the more readily to burrow deeper into the rather mixed and miscellaneous collection in her desk.