"It looks queer!" she commented. "Yes, more than queer! I always set Miss Norton down as a pro-German. Those foreign letters ought to be investigated. I wish I could get hold of some of them. It's our duty to look after this, Marjorie. You're patriotic? Well, so am I. We may be able to render a great service to our country if we can track down a spy. We'll set all our energies to work."
"What are we going to do?" asked Marjorie, much impressed.
"Leave it to me, and I'll think out a plan of campaign. These things are a battle of brains. She's clever, and we've got to outwit her. Who were those foreigners she was talking to in the hotel, I should like to know?"
"That was just what I thought."
"For a beginning we must try to draw her out. Oh, don't ask her questions about her German sympathies, that's too clumsy! She'd see through that in a moment. Let's work the conversation round to military matters and munitions, and get the girls to tell all they've heard of news from the front, and watch whether Norty isn't just snapping it up."
"Wouldn't that be letting her get to know too much?"
"Well, one's obliged to risk something. If you're over-cautious you never get anything done."
"Yes, I suppose you're right. We'll try on Sunday evening after supper. She always comes into the sitting-room for a chat with us then."
Chrissie seemed to have taken up the matter with the greatest keenness. She was evidently in dead earnest about it. Marjorie was agreeably surprised, and on the strength of this mutual confidence her old affection for her chum revived. Once more they went about the school arm in arm, sat next to each other at tea, and wrote each other private little notes. St. Elgiva's smiled again, but the girls by this time were accustomed to Marjorie's very impulsive and rather erratic ways, and did not take her infatuations too seriously.
"Quarrelled with Winifrede?" enquired Patricia humorously. "I thought you were worshipping at her shrine at present."