“Look here, I’m not going to do all the talking, so don’t think!”
“Oh, we’ll support you! But I’m just giving you a few leading lines to work upon. We’ll take 178 Maudie Heywood with us; she got ninety-five marks out of a hundred last week, which ought to go for something!”
“Then Magsie and Muriel had better come too. It won’t do to let the Bumble think the whole idea has originated with us.”
“Right you are! The more pattern pupils we can scrape together, the better.”
At five o’clock the deputation presented itself at the door of the study, and was received graciously by the Principal, though she declined to commit herself to an immediate answer, promising to think the matter over and to let them know later on.
“Which means she daren’t say ‘yes’ till she’s asked leave from Gibbie!” declared Raymonde, when the delegates were out of ear-shot of the sanctum. “Fauvette, child, you did splendidly! I’d give five thousand pounds to have your big, pathetic, innocent blue eyes! They always bowl everybody over. I envy you at your first grown-up dance. You’ll have your programme full in five minutes, like the heroine of a novel.”
Raymonde’s supposition was not altogether mistaken, for that evening, after the school had gone to bed, Miss Beasley, Miss Gibbs, and Mademoiselle sat up talking over the proposed expedition. Miss Gibbs vetoed the idea entirely.
“The girls have not been behaving well enough to justify any such indulgence,” she maintained impressively. “Their conduct on the stairs yesterday was disgraceful. Better make them stick to their lessons.”
Mademoiselle, whose mental scales always tipped naturally towards the side of pleasure, thought it 179 was a beautiful idea of the dear girls to want to give their headmistress a fête on her anniversary. So sweet to go upon the water, and while the weather was so pleasant! It would be an event to be remembered for ever in their young lives, when sterner lessons might be forgotten; at which remark Miss Gibbs sniffed, but restrained herself. Miss Beasley vibrated for some minutes between the practical and the ideal aspects thus presented to her, but finally decided in favour of the latter.
“It seems ungracious to refuse when they wish it to be my birthday treat,” she said rather apologetically. “The poor children would be so disappointed. We might make a clear mark-book a necessary condition.”