“I can’t tell you now,” said Joan hastily. “I am afraid some one might catch a word, and it is serious. I’ll tell you to-morrow when we are resting after a bout of tennis.”
“To-morrow? Do you think I am going to wait until then? Come along into the prep room—the Upper Fifth are not at work to-night. See, there is no one here. We will sit over by the window, then only the sparrows can hear what you have to say. Now, then, out with it; I hate to wait for anything.”
“Rhoda had to leave off using cribs—that is why she left off coaching us,” said Joan, jerking her shoulders up in a way peculiar to her in moments of triumphant emotion.
“Cribs wouldn’t be of much use in a good bit of our work,” said Daisy scornfully. “For instance, what sort of a crib could you use to remember one of old Plimsoll’s lectures?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” snapped Joan. “There are plenty of things we have to do where cribs would be useful—Latin, French, mathematics—oh! heaps of things. It was Rhoda who had that old book of Amelia Herschstein’s that was found in the No. 1 study among Dorothy’s things.”
“I was quite sure of that.” Daisy nodded and chuckled in delight. “I was not quite so fast asleep as I was supposed to be that night, and I knew that Rhoda had been out of the room, although she did go and come like a cat. But what I want to know is what made her have Amelia Herschstein’s book in her possession. Did she find it anywhere about the premises, do you think?”
“Now, in the name of common sense is it likely that a book of that sort would be left lying round for any girl to pick up and use if she felt so inclined?” Joan fairly snorted with disgust at Daisy’s want of understanding. “That book was in the school because Rhoda brought it here. I never could imagine why she chose to stuff it among Dorothy’s things, except from blind spite, because, of course, she has had to work much harder since she has had to do without its help.”
Daisy looked the picture of bewilderment. “How did it come about that she had the book at all?” she gasped, staring open-mouthed at Joan.
“Ah! do you know what I found out last vac?” Joan pursed up her mouth in a secretive fashion. She nodded her head, and looked wise, and so smug with it all, that Daisy forgot the dignity due in one of the Sixth, and actually fell upon her, cuffing her smartly, while she cried, “Out with it, then, or I will bang your head against the window-frame until you see stars and all that sort of thing.”
“Don’t behave like a Third Form kid if you can help it, and, for pity’s sake, don’t make such a noise, or some one will spot us, and then we shall get beans for not being at work,” protested Joan, wresting herself free from the rough grip of Daisy, and patting her hair into place. Joan was beginning to revel in being nearly grown-up, and she was very particular about her hair being just right.