“We didn’t know it was you!” murmured Raymonde, forbearing to explain that they had taken their mistress for a ruffian.
Fauvette said nothing. She was looking horribly conscious and caught. Miss Gibbs glared at the guilty pair, and, telling them curtly to come along, led the way back.
Such a serious breach of school discipline was naturally visited with heavy consequences. For the next three days Raymonde and Fauvette spent their recreation hours indoors, copying certain classic lines of Paradise Lost. They were debarred from the purchase of chocolates or any other form of sweetstuff for the period of a month, and made to understand that they were under the ban not only of Miss Gibbs’s, but also of Miss Beasley’s displeasure.
“I never thought of that wretched telescope,” mourned Fauvette. “Just imagine Gibbie spying on us all the time! She must have watched us scramble over the palings into the wood. It’s worse than second sight! And then for her to 50 come gallivanting out after us in that swanky mackintosh! It gave me spasms!”
“We’d a jinky time, though, first. It was worth being caught afterwards,” maintained Raymonde candidly. “And, you know, in secret the Bumble Bee was rejoiced to see that bog bean. She won’t admit it, of course, but I know it’s the discovery of the term. It’s recorded in the Nature Note-book, and the best piece was pressed for the museum. My own private opinion is that both the Bumble and the Wasp will go buzzing off to that Limberlost, exploring on their own, some day, and I don’t blame them. It’s a paradise!”
“Most top-hole place I’ve ever been in in my life!” agreed Fauvette, sighing heavily. “I say, I call it rather appropriate of the Bumble to have made us copy out Paradise Lost!”