"That, my child, is a secret that will never be divulged. I dare say you'd like to know?"
"I should, immensely."
"Then you won't be gratified, unless you go to Somerset House and hunt her name up in the register of births. Even then you'd find it difficult, for you don't know her Christian name, only her initial."
"Yes; she never will write more than 'M. Teddington' in anybody's birthday-book. M might stand for Mary or Martha or Margaret or Millicent or anything. Doesn't even Miss Bowes know?"
"If she does she won't tell. It's a state-secret."
"Well, never mind; we call her Teddie, and that will do."
Many were the ingenious devices which the girls had adopted for trying to find out both Miss Teddington's Christian name and her age. They spoke of historic events that had happened before their parents had been born, fondly hoping she might betray some memory of them and commit herself. But she was not to be caught; she treated all events, however recent or old, from a purely impersonal standpoint, and left them still in the dark as to whether she was an infant in arms at the time or an adult able to enjoy the newspapers. On the subject of names she was indifferent, and would express no opinion on the relative merits of Mary, Martha, Margaret, Millicent, Marion, Muriel, Mona, or Maud.
"It's either plain Mary, or something so fearfully fancy she won't own up to it," decided the girls.
In whatever decade Miss Teddington's birthday placed her, this year she was certainly in the prime of life and energy as concerned the school. Her keen eyes noticed everything, and woe betide the slacker who thought to escape her, and dared bring an unprepared lesson to class. Her sarcasms on such occasions made her victims writhe, though they were apt to be witty enough to amuse the rest of the form. Though, like John Gilpin's wife, she was on pleasure bent to-day, she never for a moment forgot she was in charge, and kept turning to see that everybody was following, and nobody straggling far off in the rear.
It was a three-mile walk from The Woodlands to the snowdrop meadows—first along the high road, with an occasional short cut across a field or through a spinney, then down a deep, narrow lane past a farm, where the sight of a new-born lamb (the first of the season) caused great excitement. Some of the girls, who loved old superstitions, pretended to divine their luck by whether it was standing facing them or otherwise when they first caught a glimpse of it; but, the general verdict deciding that it was exactly sideways, they found it impossible to give any accurate predictions for the future.