"In three weeks I hope to be on the land, and driving a milk-cart with a piebald pony," said Patsie cheerfully.
"But why a piebald pony?" asked Dorothy, in a puzzled tone.
"Why? Because people are so superstitious about them, and it would be such sport to come careering down the street and see folks suddenly bending to touch their shoes, and know they were all having wishes. I'd feel like a fairy godmother, or Father Christmas. I've got my land costume, and it's no end! I wanted to turn up in it to-day to show you all, only Mother wouldn't let me."
"Violet's sewing very hard, making clothes for me to take to London," vouchsafed Claudia. "She's been a perfect trump lately! Beata and Romola are to start school here in September. They're fearfully excited."
"And little Monica will be in the Fourth Form," said Lorraine. "I wonder who will be monitresses in our place, and whom Miss Kingsley will choose for head girl?"
"Whoever your successor may be, she won't make a better head girl than you, Lorraine," said Patsie heartily. "We haven't said much, but we've appreciated you all the year. You've been a sport!"
"I? Why? I've done nothing for the school, I'm afraid—not nearly as much as I wanted to do."
"We didn't want a paragon," returned Patsie. "You've been yourself, and that was quite good enough. On the whole it's been a ripping year."
There is very little more to tell. How Rosemary and Lorraine and Claudia prospered at their work in London; how Margaret Lindsay took a studio in town for the winter, and joined them at their hostel; how Morland went to the front, did a splendid unselfish deed, and won the D.C.M., are all beyond the limits of a school story, and in the borderland of the bigger world of grown-up life. But, when Lorraine in days to come looks back upon the old fun at Porthkeverne, I think she will emphatically decide that whatever happiness or success she may win afterwards, she never spent a jollier, livelier, more light-hearted, and altogether satisfactory time than the year she was Head Girl at The Gables.