"Miss Kingsley made me promise on my honour not to tell a single soul."
"I couldn't have helped telling. Think of having that secret all the evening, and not giving me the least teeny weeny atom of a hint, even! I wonder you could keep it in! The girls are pleased—most of them. Betty says you're a sport, and Mabel King says she feels she's going to worship you, and Nora Hyland said I was a lucker to have you for a sister. Of course a few of them had plumped for Vivien, and let off steam, but they'll soon get over it. Vivien looked like a thunder cloud. She won't forgive you in a hurry! You may look out for squalls in her quarter. Hallo, here's Rosemary come to meet us. I must tell her the news. She knows already? Why, you said it was a secret! Well, you are mean to have told Rosemary and not me! I'm not friends with you any more, so there!"
Lorraine answered her sweet-faced elder sister's look of enquiry with a nod of comprehension.
"Yes, it's all un fait accompli," she replied, "and on the whole I think the school has borne it beautifully. Come along, Cuckoo, don't pout! Rosemary must have some secrets I can't tell to the family baby. Remember, you score in other ways. It's luck to be born youngest."
The three girls turned in at a gate and walked up a flower-bordered drive to a comfortable ivy-covered house. "Pendlehurst" was a modern house, and in Lorraine's opinion not at all romantic, but, with the exception of herself, the Forrester family was not particularly given to romance. Her father, in choosing a residence, had paid more attention to drains, number of bedrooms and hot-water facilities than to artistic beauty or æsthetic associations. He was a practical man with a bent towards mathematics, and counted the cubic space necessary for the requirements of seven children to be the matter of most importance. He had an old-established practice as a solicitor in the town, and had lived all his life at Porthkeverne. Of the large family of children only the three youngest remained at home. Richard and Donald were at the front, in the thick of the fighting; Rodney was in training for the Air Force, while Rosemary, anxious also to flutter from the nest and try her wings in the world, was to go to London to study singing at a College of Music. Her term began a little later than Lorraine's, so the two girls had still a few days left to spend together. They ran upstairs now to their joint bedroom, where packing was in progress. A big box stood under the window with a bottom layer of harmony-books and music tightly arranged. To Rosemary it meant the fulfilment of a long-cherished dream. As she looked at it, her imagination skipped three or four years and showed her a golden vision of herself—in a pale pink satin dress with a pearl necklace—standing on a concert platform and bowing repeatedly to the storm of applause which had greeted her song.
"I can't tell you how hard I'm going to work," she confided. "I shall just practise and practise and practise. I know that wretched theory will rather stump me, but I'll wrestle with it. There'll be such a musical atmosphere about the place, it can't help inspiring one."
"The hostel will be fun, too," said Lorraine, going down on her knees to inspect the dainty afternoon tea service that was being rolled up for safety in soft articles of clothing. "I can just picture you in your room, making a cup of cocoa before you go to bed."
"And having in a few friends. It'll be the time of my life! I always wanted to go to boarding school, but this will be even better, because in a way I shall be my own mistress. I never thought I'd work Dad round to it. I've been in a sort of quiver ever since he said 'yes'. Who's there?" (as a loud series of rappings resounded on the door). "Oh, I can't have you children in here just now! Go away!"
"We must come in!" urged Monica, following up her words by a forcible entrance. "There! there! Don't get excited! You'll welcome us when you know what we've come for! Chips and I have brought you a present. We thought you'd like to pack it now."
Mervyn, otherwise "Chips", an overgrown boy of thirteen, was embracing a large parcel, which he plumped on the floor and unfolded. It contained a fretwork basket, stained brown and still rather sticky with varnish. The corners fitted indifferently, and the handle was slightly askew.