The Grange certainly contained ample space for interests of every description. The old farm buildings made sheds for carpentry and wood-carving, or any other work that was too messy for the schoolrooms. Under the direction of Miss Gibbs, some of the elder girls were turning the contents of a wood pile into a set of rustic garden seats, and other industrious spirits had begun to plait osierwithes into baskets that were destined for blackberry picking in the autumn. The house itself was roomy enough to allow hobbies to overflow. Miss Beasley, who dabbled rather successfully in photography, had a conveniently equipped dark-room, which she lent by special favour to seniors only, on the understanding that they left it as they found it. Miss Gibbs had taken possession of an empty attic, and had made it into a scientific sanctum. So far none of the girls had been allowed to peep inside, and the wildest rumours were afloat as to what the room contained. Batteries and other apparatus had been seen to be carried upstairs, and those scouts who had ventured along the forbidden upper landing reported that through the closed door they could hear weird noises as of turning wheels or bubbling crucibles. It was surmised in the school that Miss Gibbs, having found a congenial mediæval atmosphere for her researches, was working on the lines of the ancient alchemists, and attempting to discover the elixir of life or the philosopher’s stone. One fact was certain. Miss Gibbs had set up a telescope in her solitary attic. She had bought it second-hand, during the holidays, from the widow of a coastguardsman, and with its aid she studied the landscape by day and the stars by night. The 40 girls considered she kept a wary eye on watch for escaped Germans or Zeppelins, and regarded the instrument in the light of a safeguard for the establishment.
“Besides which, anything’s a blessing that takes Gibbie upstairs and keeps her from buzzing round us all the time,” averred Raymonde.
“She’s welcome to keep anything she likes in her room, from a stuffed crocodile to a snake in a bottle!” yawned Fauvette. “All I ask is that she doesn’t take me up and improve my mind. I’m getting fed up with hobbies. I can’t show an intelligent interest in all. My poor little brains won’t hold them. What with repoussé work and stencilling and chip carving, I hardly ever get half an hour to enjoy a book. My idea of a jinky time is to sit by the moat and read, and eat chocolates. By the by, has that copy of The Harvester come yet? Hermie promised to get it for the library.”
The girls at the Grange had fashions in books, and at present they were all raving over the works of Gene Stratton Porter. Even Raymonde, not generally much of a reader, had succumbed to the charms of Freckles and A Girl of the Limberlost. The accounts of the American swamp forest fascinated her. It was a veritable “call of the wild.”
“I’d give anything—just anything—to get into such a place!” she confided to Fauvette. “I’d chance even the snakes and mosquitoes. Just think of the trees and the flowers and the birds and the butterflies! Why don’t we have things like that in England?”
“I expect we do, only one never gets to see 41 them. There’s a wood over there on the hill that looks absolutely top-hole if one could go into it. Hermie said the other day that the Bumble Bee had buzzed out something about taking us all for a picnic there some day. It would be rather precious.”
Raymonde shook her head reflectively.
“Picnics are all very well in their way, but when you turn about thirty people together into a wood, I fancy the birds and butterflies will give us a wide berth. Freckles found his specimens when he was alone. You can’t go naturalizing in a crowd! Look here! Suppose you and I go and explore. I’ll be the Bird Woman, and you can be the Swamp Angel.”
“Oh, what a blossomy idea! But what about Gibbie? Can we dodge her?”
“We’ll wait till she’s shut herself up in her attic, and then we’ll scoot. Between tea and prep.’s the best time, especially now prep.’s been put later.”