"I'd give ten thousand pounds to find out!"
But though speculation might run rife in the school and a hundred different theories be advanced, there was not the slightest means of verifying a single one of them. Ghosts, smugglers, or a family skeleton were among the favourite suggestions, and the girls often amused themselves with even wilder fancies. From the outside the secluded room presented as insuperable a barrier as from within; heavy shutters secured the window and guarded the secret closely and jealously from all prying and peeping. That uncanny noises should apparently issue from this abode of mystery goes without saying. There were mice in plenty, and even an occasional rat or two in the old house, and their gnawings, scamperings, and squeakings might easily be construed into thumps, bumps, and blood-curdling groans. The girls would often get up scares among themselves and be absolutely convinced that a tragedy, either real or supernatural, was being enacted behind the oak door.
Miss Birks, sensible and matter-of-fact as became a headmistress, laughed at her pupils' notions, and declared that her chief objection to the peculiar clause in her lease was the waste of a good bedroom which would have been invaluable as an extra dormitory. She hung a thick plush curtain over the doorway, and utterly tabooed the subject of the mystery. She could not, however, prevent the girls talking about it among themselves, and to them the barred room became a veritable Bluebeard's chamber. At night they scuttled past it with averted gaze and fingers stuffed in their ears, having an uneasy apprehension lest a skeleton hand should suddenly draw aside the curtain and a face—be it ghost or grinning goblin—peer at them out of the darkness. They would dare each other to stand and listen, or to pass the door alone, and among the younger ones a character for heroism stood or fell on the capacity of venturing nearest to the so-called "bogey hole".
Though Miss Birks might well regret such a disability in her lease of the Dower House, she was proud of the old-world aspect of the place, and treasured up any traditions of the past that she could gather together. She had carefully written down all surviving details of the Franciscan convent, having after endless trouble secured some account of it from rare books and manuscripts in the possession of some of the country gentry in the neighbourhood. Beyond the dates of its founding and dissolution, and the names of its abbesses, there was little to be learnt, though a few old records of business transactions gave an idea of its extent and importance.
Dearly as she valued the fourteenth-century origin of her establishment, Miss Birks did not sacrifice comfort to any love of the antique. Inside the ancient walls everything was strictly modern and hygienic, with the latest patterns of desks, the most sanitary wall-papers, and each up-to-date appliance that educational authorities might suggest or devise. Could the Grey Nuns have but returned and taken a peep into the well-equipped little chemical laboratory, they would probably have fancied themselves in the chamber of a wizard in league with the fiends of darkness, and have crossed themselves in pious fear at the sight of the bottles and retorts; the nicely-fitted gymnasium would have puzzled them sorely; and a hockey match have aroused their sincerest horror. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis—"the times are changed, and we are changed with them!" Though we have lost something of the picturesqueness of mediaeval life, the childlike faith of a childlike age, the simplicity of a nation only groping to feel its strength, we have surely gained in the long years of growth, in the gradual awakening to the thousand things undreamt of by our forefathers, and can justly deem that our lasses have inherited a golden harvest of thought and experience from those who have trod before them the thorny and difficult pathway that leads to knowledge.
Such were the picturesque and highly-appreciated surroundings at the Dower House, and now a word on that much more important subject, the girls themselves.
Miss Birks only received twenty pupils, all over fourteen years of age, therefore there was no division into upper and lower school. Five elder girls constituted the Sixth, and the rest were placed according to their capabilities in two sections of the Fifth Form. Of these Vb was considerably the larger, and containing, as it did, the younger, cruder, and more-boisterous spirits, was, in the opinion of the mistresses, the portion which required the finer tact and the greater amount of careful management. It was not that its members gave any special trouble, but they were somewhat in the position of novices, not yet thoroughly versed in the traditions of the little community, and needing skill and patience during the process of their initiation. Almost insensibly the nine seemed to split up into separate parties. Romola Harvey, Barbara Marshall, and Elyned Hughes lived in the same town, and knew each other at home; a sufficient bond of union to knit them in a close friendship which they were unwilling to share with anybody else. The news from Springfield, their native place, formed their chief subject of interest, and those who could not understand or discuss it must necessarily be in the position of outsiders. Evie Bennett, Annie Pridwell, and Betty Scott were lively, high-spirited girls, so full of irrepressible fun that they were apt to drop the deeper element out of life altogether. It was difficult ever to find them in a serious mood, their jokes were incessant, and they certainly well earned the nickname of "the three gigglers" which was generally bestowed upon them.
Until Christmas, Deirdre Sullivan and Dulcie Wilcox had rejoiced in the possession of a bedroom to themselves, a circumstance which had allowed them the opportunity of cultivating their friendship till they had become the most exclusive chums in the whole of the school. Deirdre, the elder by six months, was a picturesque, rather interesting-looking girl, with beautiful, expressive grey eyes, a delicate colour, and a neat, slim little figure. Dulcie, on the contrary, much to her mortification, was inclined to stoutness. She resembled a painting by Rubens, for her plump cheeks were pink as carnations, and her ruddy hair was of that warm shade of Venetian red so beloved by the old masters. It was a sore point with poor Dulcie that, however badly her head ached, or however limp or indisposed she might feel, her high colour never faded, and no pathetic hollows ever appeared in her cheeks.
"I get no sympathy when I'm ill," she confided to Deirdre. "On that day when I turned faint in the algebra class, Miss Harding had said only an hour before: 'You do look well, child!' I wish I were as pale and thin as Elyned Hughes, then I might get petted and excused lessons. As it is, no one believes me when I complain."
Dulcie, who possessed an intense admiration for her chum, struggled perpetually to mould herself on Deirdre's model, sometimes with rather comical results. Deirdre's romantic tendencies caused her to affect the particular style of the heroine of nearly every fresh book she read, and she changed continually from an air of reserved and stately dignity to one of sparkling vivacity, according to her latest favourite in fiction. With Deirdre it was an easy matter enough to assume a manner; but Dulcie, who merely copied her friend slavishly, often aroused mirth in the schoolroom by her extraordinary poses.