“Yes,” Miss Gibbs grudgingly conceded. “They’ll miss their Latin preparation that evening,” she added.
“And their French,” sighed Mademoiselle. “But what will you?” with a little shrug. “It is not every day that our Principal makes a birthday! As for me, I am glad I bought my new sunshade.”
The announcement of the forthcoming water excursion was received with great rejoicings. Ever since the beginning of the term the school had thirsted to go upon the river. They had been taken for an occasional walk along its banks, and had greatly envied the young men and maidens who might be seen punting up its willowy reaches.
“That’s what I’m going to do directly I’m grown up!” Fauvette had confided to her chums. “I’ll buy a white boating costume, exactly like that girl’s with the auburn hair, and lean against blue cushions while He rows. He’ll have to have brown eyes, 180 but I’ve not quite decided yet whether he shall have a moustache or not. On the whole I think I’ll have him clean shaven.”
“And tall,” prompted Raymonde, to whom Fauvette’s prospective romances were a source of perennial interest.
“Yes, tall, of course, with several military crosses. He’s the one I’m going to like the best, though there’ll be others. They’ll all want me to go and row with them—but I shan’t. I don’t mean to flirt.”
“N—no!” conceded Raymonde a little dubiously. “Don’t you think, though, it might be rather good for him not to let him see you were too keen? Of course I don’t want you to break his heart, but––”
Fauvette shook her yellow curls.
“It’s not right to trifle with people’s hearts,” she decided, with all the authority of an experienced reader of magazine stories. “If you pretend you don’t care for them, they drive their aeroplanes recklessly and smash up, or expose themselves to the enemy’s fire, or get submarined, before you’ve had time to tell them you didn’t really mean to be cold. I’m not going in for misunderstandings.”
Raymonde glanced at her admiringly. With those blue eyes and fluffy curls it all seemed so possible. She felt that she should look forward to her chum’s inevitable engagement almost as much as Fauvette herself. It would be as good as a Shakespeare play, or one of the best pieces on the kinema. But these rosy prospects were still in the dim and distant future; the present was entirely prosaic and unromantic. Whatever punting excursions Fauvette might enjoy in years to come, this particular water party would be quite unsentimental, 181 conducted under the watchful eyes of Miss Beasley and Miss Gibbs, with boatmen well over military age to do the rowing. For the first time for four years the Principal’s birthday morning was gloriously fine. The pupils placed the usual bouquet of flowers opposite her seat at the breakfast table, together with a handsomely bound volume of Ruskin’s Stones of Venice. She thanked them with her customary surprise and gratitude, and assured them, as she did annually, what a pleasure it was to her to receive so kind a token of their esteem.