That cheery young American took the matter more seriously than Irene expected. There was a very kind little heart hidden under her bubbles of fun.
"I'll call a meeting of the Camellia Buds right now," she declared. "I guess we don't want any of those poor babes crying their eyes out. Talk of homesickness! You should have seen me my first week here. I brought four dozen pocket-handkerchiefs to school with me and I used them all. It's not good enough! Prefects, did you say? Humph! I don't call Rachel exactly laid out for this job. Bring your biscuits to the 'Grotto' at interval, and we'll have a powwow about it."
There was a twenty-minute mid-morning break between classes, during which the girls ate lunch and amused themselves as they pleased in the house or grounds. The biscuits, three apiece, were laid out in rows on the dining-room table together with each pupil's glass of milk. As Irene ran in to take her portion she heard a scrimmage going on at the other end of the room. Several small girls were quarreling loudly, and above the noise came Désirée's piping, high-pitched voice:
"I haven't had a biscuit for days and it isn't fair."
"What's all this about?" asked Irene, striding into the crowd just in time to see Mabel and another member of the Transition pass, laughing, through the lower door.
There was a babel in reply.
"Those big girls come and grab our biscuits!"
"It's a shame of them!"
"There ought to be three apiece!"
"And there never are!"