"I'll give you fair warning next time—if I'm ever so foolish again!" she laughed in reply. "I don't see how I'm to do it on the rink at Kirkton!"
"I'll go and look after you, just as a safeguard, if you'll tell me when you intend skating there. I'm due back at my diggings in a week. I always get Saturday afternoons free, you know."
Mildred left Castleford with regret, even though she was returning to her own dear Meredith Terrace.
"It's not that I don't love home best, Tantie," she was careful to assure Mrs. Graham. "But I've got fond of Westmorland too. There's one thing that's a supreme satisfaction to me—they say I saved Violet's life; and if I really did, it's surely some little return to Uncle Darcy and Aunt Geraldine for their kindness last summer. I always felt they were hurt at my leaving them, and I wanted to do something to make up. I'm so glad I got the opportunity—it mightn't come again in fifty years!"
CHAPTER XX
A Musical Scholarship
The Spring Term at St. Cyprian's was a stormy one in several respects. The weather during the end of January and beginning of February was atrocious, and resulted for Miss Cartwright in a touch of pneumonia, which laid her aside for a while from her work. The College without its Principal was like a sheepfold without a shepherd; and though the teachers did their best, everybody felt the lack of the strong guiding hand that was accustomed to hold the reins. No sooner was Miss Cartwright back at her post than several girls developed mumps, and a strict period of quarantine followed for any companions who had been in their vicinity—an unexpected holiday which their parents deplored, and they themselves scarcely appreciated, as they were barred from all social intercourse until the due number of days had expired. Owing to this misfortune, and to a scare of measles at Newington Green, all Alliance matches and functions were postponed till the various schools could show clean bills of health, and even the making of charity garments was for the time prohibited.
The girls missed the Alliance meetings dreadfully. They had scarcely realized until now what an intense interest the League supplied, and how extremely flat the term felt without the pleasant competition of the other schools. They were constantly wondering how Templeton's hockey was progressing; if the new photographic club at Marston Grove had held its first exhibition; whether the Anglo-German had really taken up painting on satin; and how the High School Nature Study Union prospered.