“Not much she hasn’t!” said a cheerful voice—and the three girls sprang up with exclamations of delight as a fourth whirled suddenly into their midst, laughing.
“Robin!—you didn’t manage it?”
“You weren’t caught?”
“Tell us what happened!”
“Easiest thing ever,” said Robin Hurst cheerfully, sitting down on the thick carpet of pine-needles. “I waited until the front-door bell was going every two minutes and Eliza was marking time between rings in the hall, and then I slipped into the servery. Cookie was up to her eyes in hot scones: just as she was brooding over the cooking of a great oven-trayful I dodged into the pantry—and oh, girls, you should have seen the cream-puffs!”
“Cream-puffs—wow!” said Annette.
“They were just waiting for me—two big blue dishes full. It seemed a sin to leave any, so I didn’t. That little suit-case of yours just held them all, Annette, darling—it’ll be a bit creamy, but I’ll clean it for you.”
“And nobody saw you?”
“Not a soul. It didn’t take two minutes. I shot up the back stairs just as Eliza came out—she was too full of importance to glance upwards, and tennis-shoes are nice quiet things. We’ll have a gorgeous supper to-night—and I’ll show Ruby Bennett I’m not as scared as she tried to make out.”
She laughed defiantly, tossing her hat from her mane of bright red hair. Even though shingled, Robin Hurst’s hair was a defiant mop, resisting all her efforts to make it resemble the sleek demureness of her schoolfellows’ heads. Its very colour was defiant: no such head of flame had ever before enlivened the sober rooms of Calton Hall. It blazed round a narrow delicate face, with clear pale skin that made its owner furious by its trick of blushing at the slightest provocation. Until humourously-inclined schoolgirls had found that the pastime was dangerous, it had been considered rather good fun to make Robin blush—to see the quick wave of colour surge to the very roots of her hair, and even down her neck. That was two years ago, when she had been a new girl, shy and uncertain of herself. Now that she was nearly sixteen, no one took liberties—it was too much like jesting with gunpowder.