"Made it ourselves!" exploded Cathy from above. "Only Father's old suit stuffed with hay! And you thought you had done for him! I think I could tell you who sent that letter if you were to ask me!"
"Come down, you young wretch!" said Edward. "If you let yourself drop, I'll catch you. Well, of all the sells I've ever had in my life, this is about the biggest. So you wrote that precious letter, did you? It was uncommonly smartly done, too! And as for this countenance, it's simply ripping!"
And he burst into a roar as he picked up the head of our decapitated house-breaker.
I really think the boys laughed as much as we did, for they were good-natured enough not to mind a joke at their own expense.
"You've jolly well taken us in for once," said Dick. "And I give you the credit for it. I didn't think you girls could have got it all up so neatly. You've scored no end, and I suppose now you'll be satisfied, and cry quits about the antiquities."
CHAPTER VIII
A BREAKING-UP PARTY
"What has this day deserved? What hath it done
That it in golden letters should be set
Among the high tides in the kalendar?"
CATHY and I went back to school with much regret. After the freedom of our life at Marshlands it seemed difficult to settle down again to the strict discipline of The Hollies, with Miss Percy's manifold rules and regulations. It was exciting, nevertheless, to meet our friends once more, and to hear the accounts of their holiday rambles and sea-side adventures. We made quite a little round amongst the various bedrooms, admiring Janet's new pictures, helping to arrange Olave's books, partaking of Blanche's hospitable offers of cheese-cakes and chocolate, bewailing the lengthened hours of the time-table, and all chattering like a flock of sparrows.
In her quiet, undemonstrative way, Lucy was glad to see me again. I think she had found the holidays a little dull without me, and she listened rather wistfully to my rapturous accounts of my visit to Marshlands. She told me all the home news—how the baby had already learnt to walk, Frank had gone to school, and Cuthbert was in knickerbockers; how the old baby had been shorn of his curls, and Dorothy had begun lessons. My little porcelain tea-service had, alas! been broken (Blair ought not to have allowed the children to play with it), there was a new carpet in the school-room, and Mary was learning the violin. We talked in whispers for a long time after we were in bed, till Miss Percy, overhearing us, bounced in with such dire threats of penalties to be worked out on the following Saturday afternoon, that we were obliged to defer our interesting conversation until the morning.