CHAPTER IX.
A FRESH DISCOVERY.
aturday had come round again, and as the children started for school that morning not one of them guessed what an eventful day it was going to prove. Meeting in the road outside the Pines on their return, they passed together through the gate, and along the drive.
"Hooray!" exclaimed Guy, swinging his bundle of books round and round at the end of the strap. "No more work till Monday! I thought I should have been kept in for Cæsar to-day, but I just happened to get an easy bit with words I knew."
"It's a wonder you ever know anything," remarked Ida, who was rather fond of reproving other people. "You are always drawing, or cutting up pen-holders with your knife, or doing something of that kind, when you ought to be preparing your work. Elsie's getting just the same. She sat staring at the wall all yesterday evening, and the consequence was that this morning she got both lessons returned. She's getting such a little funk, too, that she won't go up to bed alone, but waits on the stairs till I come."
"Oh, what a cram!" exclaimed Elsie, rather feebly.
"It's not a cram," returned her sister. "You know it's perfectly true, and you look under the bed too, expecting to find a hidden robber, I suppose."
In a playful manner Brian caught hold of Elsie by the back of the neck, much in the same way as he might have done a small boy at the Grammar School, but with perhaps a lighter touch.