‘After all, he must have found it rather lonely without a princess, and I can’t find a princess,’ she reflected out loud.
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Jean.
‘Hadn’t we better go back to Jill?’ added Angela, impatiently.
Barbara gave a start. ‘What a silly duffer I am!’ she cried joyfully. ‘Of course, there’s Jill; and she’s been there all the time!’
‘Yes, she has,’ said Jean, bluntly, ‘and it’s time you remembered it, for she must be tired of waiting for us by this––’
Barbara interrupted her with another remark–rather a mournful one this time.
‘It never comes right,’ she sighed. ‘Now, I’ve got a princess without a prince!’
CHAPTER XIV
PREPARING FOR THE DISPLAY
Dr. Hurst did not call again at the little house in the garden, and the triumvirate came out of quarantine in due course, very little subdued by their eight days’ imprisonment, and more on the alert than ever for any piece of excitement that might come their way. The junior playroom, having passed an exceedingly dull and uneventful week during their absence, welcomed their return with joy; and it was perhaps fortunate for the internal affairs of Wootton Beeches that there was going to be a gymnastic display to absorb the energies of its wilder spirits. As the days rolled on and the end of the term drew nearer and nearer, the conversation on both sides of the curtain became almost entirely limited to the one topic of the Canon’s prize; and those who were not among the chosen competitors for it spent the best part of their time in watching the others practise in the big gymnasium, and in disputing hotly the various chances of the claimants. Miss Finlayson had settled that the six morocco-bound volumes offered by her uncle should be divided into two prizes, one for the senior and one for the junior division of the school; and while it was generally agreed that Margaret Hulme would carry off the first, the discussion in the junior playroom as to the winner of the second was endless. Most of the girls were agreed that Charlotte Bigley and the three members of the triumvirate shared equal chances, on the whole, of being successful; and a great deal would depend, it was said, on the exercises chosen for competition. For, until a week before the great day, nobody knew what the exact programme was to be. ‘It’s one of Finny’s dodges,’ Charlotte Bigley declared, ‘because she wants us to be good all round, and not to grind at one or two things just for the sake of the prize. It’s like the prize-giving in the Christmas term; we never know what the prizes are going to be for, till after the exams. are over.’