A silence followed, and the girls looked pensively at one another. The atmosphere seemed charged with romance. The ringing of the first bell for supper brought them back with a disagreeable thud to reality. They had not yet changed their dresses, and a wild scramble ensued. Whether a mistress in the bonds of Cupid would overlook such details as unpunctuality was an experiment too risky to be tried. They passed on their information in the course of the evening, and by 11.30 next morning even the day girls had digested the news.
Miss Hopkins could not understand the changed attitude which the school suddenly adopted towards her. There was an undercurrent of something inexplicable. The girls gazed at her in form with a kind of tender interest. If she toyed with the locket on her watch-chain, they visibly thrilled. Once, when she dropped a letter from her pocket, Irma, who picked it up, actually blushed as she handed it back. When the twelve gates of Jerusalem were mentioned in the Scripture lesson, Laura Talbot asked whether a jasper stone was ever used as an engagement ring in Hebrew times. Being a practical, sensible sort of person, Miss Hopkins decided that the war—that national bond of union—was bringing her into closer touch with her pupils. The girls, meanwhile, were discussing a possible wedding present, and wondering who would be her successor as mathematical mistress.
Several of them were already beginning to work little good-bye souvenirs for her. They hustled them out of the way in a hurry if she chanced to come into the room. For at least a fortnight nothing happened, and speculations were rife.
"Why doesn't she wear an engagement ring?" asked Mona Bardsley.
"Doesn't want to publish it yet, I suppose," opined Minnie Selburn.
"Do you think she'll be leaving at Christmas?"
"One can never tell."
"Has Tommiekins said anything?"
"Not a word."
One Thursday afternoon an event happened. Irma, looking out at the fifth-form window, watched a masculine form walk up the drive and ring the front-door bell. She instantly identified him with the stranger whom she had seen in the study with Miss Hopkins.