"Then I'll give you an additional five minutes. But be quick, and no chatter, please."
At the appointed time the girls had eaten sufficient. With the food Daisy's spirits were reviving. She tugged the bell-rope so violently that it came down in her hand.
"For that show of temper," said Miss Pinchin, "you will learn, locked into your bedroom, twenty lines of Paradise Lost."
"Never heard of it," whimpered Daisy.
"If you cry, I shall make it forty. Remember, both of you girls, that you are in Discipline—not a pleasant place—but uncommonly wholesome. Ah, Dawson, send a man to put up that bell-rope again. Remove the breakfast things and send Miss Adelaide Marsh in here."
"If you please, madam," said Dawson, "the young ladies' barber has just called."
Miss Pinchin's black eyes gleamed. "Ah, that will do nicely," she said. "I will take the young ladies into Penitence for the operation."
"I haven't made up the room yet, ma'am."
"I'm sorry for that, but Crew has no eyes for anything but her business."
Crew, the barber, was a woman therefore. Hateful creature! The girls might have used their eyes to some effect had it been a man, but a woman—they really felt in despair.