“The Bumble won’t let you.”
“I shan’t ask her!”
“Then how’ll you get it?”
“Oh, trust me! I’ll manage it somehow. I’m not generally easily circumvented when I set my mind upon anything. I’ve a plan already.”
“Have you? What is it?”
“Ah, that would be telling!” laughed Raymonde. “Perhaps my pen will come floating in through the window!”
“You mad creature! I don’t believe you’ll really get it!”
“Wait and see!”
The Fifth Form possessed a little upstairs room at the Grange which they called their sanctum. It held a piano, and was mainly used for practising, but the girls sometimes studied there out of preparation hours. Its principal article of furniture was a large, old-fashioned bureau, which Miss Beasley had bought among other things when she 255 took over the house. She had given every girl in the Form one of its drawers, together with a key, so that each could have a place in which to keep any special treasures locked up.
As Raymonde sat in the sanctum that afternoon alone, trying to apply her mind to memorizing certain axioms of Euclid, Veronica came bustling in.