The juniors, and the seniors too, were so excited over this sensational end to the paper-chase that they simply had to spend a considerable time in the common room talking it well over. Meggie, who had seen Miss Perkins taking Monica to the sick-room, was listened to with close attention as she described the incident with relish, concluding: "She wasn't hurt at all—hardly at all, anyway. It was just her nerves, Miss Perkins said. She was very white, and kind of shaking all over."
"What seems so queer to me," remarked Prue, "is how they both managed to get down there. You can understand one slipping over—though that seems rather extraordinary—but not both of them."
Here Olive chimed in. "I heard Glenda say it was Nat who fell in. Monica climbed down the rope after her, but as it wasn't long enough they couldn't get out again."
"Whatever did Monica do that for?" demanded Prue. "I should have thought the most sensible thing to do would be to run to the nearest house for help, or to turn back for the girls who were following them."
Olive shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know what her idea was. Lost her head, I expect, and hardly knew what she was doing."
"Still," said Prue reflectively, "it took a little pluck to slide down that rope. An old well isn't a nice thing to lower oneself into, even if it isn't deep. And I saw that rope, too. It hadn't been used for some years and might easily have been more rotten with age and exposure to the weather than it proved to be," and the other girls agreed that, whatever her faults, the black sheep had pluck.
"Isn't it just like Nat to spoil a good paper-chase by falling into a well!" cried Meggie. "Like her, too, to bob up out of it practically unhurt," and the discussion ended in a general laugh.
The next day went by very quietly. Monica did not appear. She had passed a restless night and the Principal agreed with Miss Perkins that it would be best to continue to keep her in absolute quiet in the sick-room for another day or two.
Everyone was looking forward to Friday morning with mixed feelings, among which apprehension played a large part; for the exam results were to be read out at prayers. At St. Etheldreda's term exam lists were not published till the exams were over and all papers marked. Then it was the Principal's custom to read out the position lists at prayers one morning, and make any comments she thought necessary.
The Fifth were particularly interested in their own results that term. All remembered the boasts of the new girl that she could and would wrest Irene's position from her and occupy it herself, and it was common knowledge that in her zeal for swotting she had decorated the walls of her study with useful tit-bits of information. Someone had pointed out that good though Monica's Latin and English subjects were, her maths were very shaky, while she had only attained a Third Form standard in French. When the exam began, however, it was ascertained that the French difficulty would be no hindrance to Monica, for she would take the Third Form paper, and the marks she obtained for it would be included in her total. As for her weakness at maths, in her zeal for her friend's cause Glenda was unkind enough to suggest that she would probably resort to her previous method of overcoming this difficulty and smuggle a book of theorems into the geometry examination. But, though several girls had watched her closely, no one had detected her cheating this time.