"I don't care! I'm sure if we took votes for the most thrills, my piece would win. I'm going to keep it! Hand it back to me, Gowan! I want to show it to Everard some time. He'd laugh ever so over it. He says my home letters are tame. This would wake him up, at any rate! He'd say his sister was breaking out into an authoress! What sport!"
chapter xxi
Carmel's Kingdom
The day following the secret meeting of the Mafia was one of those devoted to home correspondence. The girls were alloted forty minutes during school hours: they brought their writing-cases into the class-room, and scribbled off as many letters as possible during the brief time allowed. On this particular Wednesday Dulcie was much in arrears; she wrote three letters to Sicily, one to an aunt in London, a short scrawl to Everard, and was beginning "My dear Cousin Clare," when Miss Hardy entered the room in a hurry.
"Jones has to leave half an hour earlier," she announced, "and he wants to take the post-bag now. Be quick, girls, and give me your letters!"
A general scramble of finishing and stamping ensued. Dulcie, who had not addressed her envelopes, folded her loose sheets anyhow, and trusted to luck that the foreign letters were not over-weight.
"I can't help it if they have to pay extra on them," she confided to Carmel. "They look rather heavy, certainly, but I hadn't any thin note paper, you see."
"Douglas will pay up cheerfully, I'm sure!"
"How do you know that his was a heavy one?"