"Sweetest thing I've ever seen!" agreed Dona.
"Poor little chap! I wonder if he'll ever grow up," said Elaine thoughtfully. "I wish we'd asked where he lives, and we might have sent him some picture post cards."
"I'm afraid 'The Enchanted Palace' wouldn't find him," laughed Marjorie. "We must try to come here another Wednesday."
But the next fortnightly half-holiday was wet, and after that the days began to grow dark early, and Aunt Ellinor suggested other amusements than walks on the cliffs, so for that term at any rate the girls did not see Eric again. He seemed to have made his appearance suddenly, like a pixy child, and to have vanished back into Fairyland. There was a link between them, however, and some time Fate would pull the chain and bring their lives into touch once more.
CHAPTER V
Autographs
The Brackenfielders, like most other girls, were given to fads. The collecting mania, in a variety of forms, raged hot and strong. There were the Natural History enthusiasts, who went in select parties, personally conducted by a mistress, to the shore at low tide, to grub blissfully among the rocks for corallines and zoophytes and spider crabs and madrepores and anemones, to be placed carefully in jam jars and brought back to the school aquarium. "The Gnats", as the members of the Natural History Society were named, sometimes pursued their investigations with more zeal than discretion, and they generally returned from their rambles with skirts much the worse for green slime and sea water, and boots coated with sand and mud, but brimming over with the importance of their "finds", and confounding non-members by the ease with which they rapped out long scientific names. Those who had caught butterflies and moths during the summer spent some of their leisure now in relaxing and setting them, and pinning them into cases. It was considered etiquette to offer the best specimens to the school museum, but the girls also made private collections, and vied with one another in the possession of rare varieties.
The Photographic Society enjoyed a run of great popularity. There was an excellent dark room, with every facility for developing and washing, and this term the members had subscribed for an enlarging apparatus, with which they hoped to do great things. As well as these recognized school pursuits, the girls had all kinds of minor waves of fashion in the way of hobbies. Sometimes they liked trifling things, such as scraps, transfers, coloured beads, pictures taken from book catalogues or illustrated periodicals, newspaper cuttings or attractive advertisements, or they would soar to the more serious collecting of stamps, crests, badges, and picture post cards. In Marjorie's dormitory the taste was for celebrities. Sylvia Page, who was musical, adorned her cubicle with charming photogravures of the great composers. Irene Andrews, whose ambition was to "come out" if there was anybody left to dance with after the war, pinned up the portraits of Society beauties; Betty Moore, of sporting tendencies, kept the illustrations of prize dogs and their owners, from The Queen and other ladies' papers. Marjorie, not to be outdone by the others, covered her fourth share of the wall with "heroes". Whenever she saw that some member of His Majesty's forces had been awarded the V.C., she would cut out his portrait and add it to her gallery of honour. She wrote to her mother and her sister Nora to help her in this hobby, with the consequence that every letter which arrived for her contained enclosures. Her room-mates were on the whole good-natured, and in return for some contributions she had given to their collections they also wrote home for any V.C. portraits which could be procured. As the girls were putting away their clean clothes on "laundry return" day, Irene fumbled in her pocket and drew out a letter, from which she produced some cuttings. She handed them to Marjorie.
"Mother sent me five to-day," she said. "I hope you haven't got them already. Two are rather nice and clear, because they're out of The Onlooker, and are printed on better paper than most. The others are just ordinary."