“I can’t see myself getting in front of you,” said Dorothy. “You seem to know all there is to be known about most things.”
“In short, she is the beginning and end of wisdom,” laughed Hazel. “But we must get to work, or by this time next week we shall find ourselves at the bottom of the Form.”
“What a row there is in the next study,” said Dorothy. “Don’t you wonder that Dora puts up with such a riot, and she the head girl?”
“The noise is not in the next study,” said Jessie, who had opened the door and gone out into the passage to see where the noise came from. “It is Rhoda and her lot who are carrying on. They do it most nights, only they do not usually make as much noise as this. I suppose they are taking advantage of the mistresses having gone to Ilkestone for that lecture on Anthropology; Dora has gone too, so there is no one up here to keep them in order to-night.”
“Well, shut the door, kid, and drag the curtain across it to deaden the noise. We have to get our work done somehow.” There was a sound of irritation in Hazel’s voice; she had badly wanted to go to the lecture herself, but she knew that she dared not take the time. If she had been free like Dora she would have gone, and not troubled about the fear of dropping in her Form; but in view of her position as an aspirant for the Mutton Bone, she dared not run the risk.
There was silence in the study for the next hour. Sometimes a girl would get up to reach a book, or would rustle papers, or scrape her chair on the floor; but there was no talking, until presently Jessie pushed her chair back, and rising to her feet, declared that she was going to bed, simply because she could not keep awake any longer.
“I am coming too,” said Hazel. “I am doing no good at all, just because I keep dropping asleep; I suppose it is because it has been so windy to-day. Are you others coming now?”
Margaret said that she would go—and indeed she was so pale and heavy-eyed that she did not look fit to stay up any longer; but Dorothy said that she wanted to finish the Latin she was doing for next day, and would stay until she had done it.
When the others had gone she rose and turned out the gas fire, fearful lest she might forget it when she went to bed, and there was a considerable penalty waiting for the girl who left a gas fire burning when she left the room.
The upper floor had grown strangely still. The Upper Fifth had gone downstairs to bed some time ago. There were no mistresses in their private room, which to-night was not even lighted. The noise in the third study had died away, and there was a deep hush over the place.