"Let's try for the school team this year, Isobel." Gyp sat up very straight. "Don't you remember how Capt. Ricky talked to us last year about doing things to build up the school spirit?"
Isobel yawned. "It's too hot to think of doing anything right now! Miss Grimball's always talking about school spirit as though we ought to do everything for that. This is my last year—I'm going to just see that Isobel Westley has a very good time and the school spirit can go hang!"
Gyp looked enviously at her valiant sister. Isobel was everything that poor, overgrown, dark-skinned Gyp longed to be—her face had the pink and white of an apple blossom, her fair hair curled around her temples and in her neck, her deep-blue eyes were fringed by long black lashes; she had, after much practice, acquired a willowy slouch that would have made a movie artist's fortune; she was the acknowledged beauty of the whole Lincoln school and had attended one or two dances under the chaperoned escort of older boys.
"Here comes Graham," cried Tibby from the window. She leaned out to hail him.
Graham Westley, who had, through the necessity of defending, for fifteen years, an unenviable position between Isobel and Gyp, developed an unusual amount of assertiveness, was what his uncle fondly called "quite a boy." But the dignity of his first long trousers, at one glance, fell before the boyish mischievousness of his frank face.
His sisters deluged him now with questions.
"Why don't you go out there and look at it yourselves?" But he was too enthusiastic about the new school to withhold his information. The living room and the old library had been built into one big room for a reference library; the classrooms were no end jolly; the billiard room had been enlarged and was to be an assembly room. A wing had been added for an indoor gymnasium. He and Stuart King had climbed way to the tower, but the tower room was locked.
"I remember—mother and Uncle Johnny said that Uncle Peter's papers and books had been put up there. Mother wouldn't have them here."
"Isn't it funny," mused Gyp as she balanced on the footboard of her bed. "Everybody hated old Uncle Peter, he was such a cross old thing, and nobody ever wanted to go to Highacres, and then he turns it into a school and we'll all just love it and make songs about it——"
"And celebrate Uncle Peter's birthday with an entertainment or something," broke in Graham. "Maybe they'll even give us a holiday—to show respect to his memory. Hurrah for old Bones!"