The presentation to Maddy was to take place after voting; Miss Craigie, taken into confidence, had promised to arrange that Maddy should be in the kindergarten playroom, even if she had to drag her there, directly the election was over. The "counting" only concerned the retiring officers, Ingrid and Gabrielle, out of all the girls, and Gabrielle had delegated to Joey her position of spokesman and presenter of the dispatch case and list of subscribers. There would be no time if they waited till after dinner, she said; the "Old Girls" who always came to the Christmas Breaking-Up would surround Maddy, and leave no one else a chance to speak to her.
So the Lower School, with the exception of its Head, surged towards the kindergarten playroom, as soon as they left Queen's Hall, Joey only pausing to seize the dispatch case, with the enormous list of names in all hand-writings tied to its handle and fluttering out from it like a great black and white banner, and to bring it along with her.
Miss Craigie had kept her promise faithfully. "Maddy" was there in the kindergarten with her, rusty as to front, and shabby as to dress as ever, but somehow younger, Joey thought, than she had been on that dreadful day when Joey asked her to "amuse" the class with stories of the Franco-Prussian War.
Maddy looked round, surprised, as the Lower School poured in, and made a hasty movement towards the farther door. Maddy was known to loathe a noise! But Miss Craigie held her arm firmly and gave her no opportunity of flight. The Lower School fell into an immense horseshoe, in treble rows, the little ones in front, then the next size, then the tallest. Maddy and Miss Craigie were left inside.
Clare scuffled to the piano, and struck a chord, and the Lower School crashed joyfully into the "Marseillaise," all singing at the tops of their voices. Maddy bore it, though some of the pronunciation was, to say the least of it, eccentric, and Rhoda Watson, who had about as much music in her as a cow, was shrieking into her left ear half a tone flat throughout.
Joey advanced the moment that the music stopped. "Please, Mademoiselle, we learnt that for you," she said, "to show we're your friends, if you'll have us, just as France and England are friends, for ever and ever. We're frightfully sorry you're going away, and will you please accept this dispatch case, with a lot of love from the Lower School?"
"That's the list of us," she added hastily, as the huge paper nearly obscured the dispatch case altogether. "I'm sorry it's such an outsize, but you see some of the kids write so large, and we all wanted to sign."
Mademoiselle de Lavernais took the dispatch case from Joey. There was a queer look in her tired black eyes for a moment. "Thank you, Joey, I would not have the paper smaller," she said.
She stood quite silent for a moment; then began to speak in her level voice that had hardly a hint of foreign pronunciation about it.