"Three cheers for Miss Kaye!" called Mr. Cameron. "Those who feel they have had a jolly time may join me, and those who don't had better go to bed. Hip! Hip! Hooray!"
And among all the laughing, clapping girls there were none who responded more heartily than Linda and Sylvia.
CHAPTER X
Sylvia's Birthday
Nina Forster was obliged to remain in bed for several days, but Hazel Prestbury came into school on the following morning, rather red about the eyes, and a little sulky. She was sorry, not so much for her fault, as for being found out, and she blamed herself for her own stupidity.
"I might have known some tiresome person would see us out of a window," she thought. "Miss Kaye always manages to get to hear everything."
She felt that the other girls disapproved of her. Marian spoke her mind freely on the subject, and even gentle Gwennie did not appear too anxious to sit next to her. Linda avoided her as much as possible, keeping strictly to Sylvia's company, and, though Connie Camden, who never thought about anything, was as friendly as ever, it did not quite make up for the general coldness of the rest. The girls were too kind to send her to Coventry, but Hazel felt she had lost her former position in the class. It was a severe wound to her pride, for she had liked to be considered a leader, and had always been pleased to see how easily the others had accepted her opinions and suggestions; as the eldest she had possessed a good deal of influence, and her greatest punishment was to find it gone.
November crept on fast, and the days seemed to grow rapidly shorter and shorter. It was chilly now in the mornings, and those whose hard fate it was to be obliged to practise before breakfast grumbled at stiff fingers and cold toes.
"I never know whether I like it or not," said Sylvia. "I hate it when I'm in bed, and feel I'd give all the world not to have to get up so early; but when it's done it's so nice to think you won't have to do it at four o'clock. I wish one could learn music without practising."
"And French without verbs," groaned Linda, looking at her exercise, nearly every line of which showed red-ink corrections in Mademoiselle's neat foreign handwriting. "I think some people are born bad at languages, and I'm one of them. I never can understand properly what Mademoiselle is saying, and then she gets cross and says I don't attend."