"Don't!" implored Loveday, almost hysterically. "Oh, suppose your face were to stick like that! You'd look the most abominable little Pharisee. I'd hate you!"
"You like your pixie-girl best? Then, that settles it! Now, if you ever scold me again about anything, I'll put on the Pharisee face; so I warn you. You've got to choose between them. Yes, I know I'm a handful—I always have been—but, perhaps, it's good for you, Loveday mine: develops your character, and makes you more patient and persevering, and—and——"
"You're the cheekiest little imp on the face of the earth!" interrupted Loveday. "Get up, this minute, and come and finish your own work. I've something else to do besides unpack for you. If Miss Hampson comes and finds my box still half full——"
"She'll say how slow you've been, and what a nice, tidy child Diana is! Don't try to look 'proper', Loveday! It doesn't suit your style of beauty. Yes, put my collars away, too, or I shall only crush them. There! Very well done! First prize for order! I think you're absolutely topping, if you ask me!"
All that evening, and all the next morning, Diana's spirits continued to fizz. She might possibly have worked them off out-of-doors, but the British climate was against her; once more the fells were swathed in their familiar garments of mist, and the rain came pitter-pattering down on the roof of Pendlemere Abbey, and falling from the eaves in a monotonous drip, drip, drip. It was drawing afternoon, and promptly at half-past two intermediates and juniors would be due in the studio to go on with the various copies and models on which they were engaged. It was now shortly after two o'clock, and the school was amusing itself for the half-hour between meal-time and lessons. During that brief interval Diana, so to speak, "popped her cork".
"Hallo, America! You're looking rather weedy, standing on one leg like a marabou stork!" quizzed Sadie. "What's the matter with you?"
"Your beastly, abominable British climate!" retorted Diana. "It goes on rain, rain, raining till I'm fed up. I want to get away somewhere, and see something different from just school. I wasn't born for a convent!"
"I should think not!" chuckled Vi.
"But I'm in one, and I'm tired of it! I'm tired of you all! Yes, I mean what I say!"