"Couldn't have ever believed I'd have stowed so many things away here. And, of course, the one book I want isn't to be found. That's what always happens. It's just my bad luck. Hello! Who's calling 'Renie'? I'm here! Here! In my bedroom! Don't yell the house down. Really, Vin, you've got a voice like a megaphone! You might think I was on the top of the roof. What d'you want now? I'm busy!"
"So it seems," commented the fair-haired boy of seventeen, sauntering into his sister's room and taking a somewhat insecure seat upon a fancy table, where, with hands in pockets, he regarded her quizzically. "Great Scott, what a turn out! You look like a magician in the midst of a magic circle. Are you going to witch the lot into newts and toads? Whence this thusness? You won't persuade me that it's a fit of neatness and you're actually tidying. Doesn't exactly seem you, somehow!"
"Hardly," replied Irene, with her head inside a cupboard. "Fact is, I'm looking for my history book. I can't think where the wretched thing has gone to. School begins to-morrow, and I haven't touched my holiday tasks yet; and what Miss Gordon will say if I come without those exercises I can't imagine. I'm sure I flung all my books into this cupboard, and, of course, here's the chemistry, which I don't want, but never so much as a single leaf of the history. Don't grin! You aggravate me. I believe you've taken it away to tease me. Have you? Confess now! It's in your pocket all the time?"
Irene looked eagerly at the bulging outline of her brother's coat, but her newly formed hopes were doomed to disappointment.
"Never seen it! What should I want with your old history book? I've finished for good with such vanities, thank the Fates!"
"Don't rub it in. It's a beastly shame you should be allowed to leave school while I must go slaving on at Miss Gordon's. Ugh! How I hate the place! The idea of going back there to-morrow! It's simply appalling. A whole term of dreary grind, and only a fortnight's holiday at the end of it. Miss Gordon gives the stingiest holidays. If my fairy godmother could appear and grant me a wish I should choose never, never, never to see St. Osmund's College in all my life again. I'd ask her to wave her magic wand and transport me over the sea."
Irene spoke hotly, flinging books about with scant regard for their covers. Her slim hands were dusty, and her short, yellow hair as ruffled as her temper. There was even a suspicion of moisture about the corners of her gray eyes. She rubbed them surreptitiously with a ball of a handkerchief when her head happened to be inside the cupboard. She did not wish Vincent to witness this phase of her emotions.
"Every girl ought to be provided with a decent fairy godmother," she gulped. "If mine did her duty she'd come to rescue me now. Yes, she would, and be quick about it too!"
How very seldom in the course of an ordinary life such wishes are granted! Not once surely in a million times! Yet at that identical moment, almost as if in direct answer to her daughter's vigorous tirade, Mrs. Beverley entered the room. There was a sparkle of excitement in her eyes, and her whole atmosphere seemed to radiate news. She ran in as joyously as a girl, clapping her hands and evidently brimming over with something she was about to communicate.
"Why, Mums! Mums—darling! What's the matter?" asked Irene. "You look as if you'd had a fortune left you. Tell us at once."