The Distinguished Person bestowed a geography prize upon a quaking junior.
“I wonder does their mother ever confuse them?’ she pondered.
“Oh, quite often, she has told me. The only person who never fails to know them apart is a small brother who bluntly says that he fails to see any likeness between them!”
“Dear me!” said the Distinguished One faintly. “How uncanny!” She gave away the next prize with a bewildered air that the recipient imagined was inspired by the spectacle of so much learning.
Visitors, distinguished and otherwise, vanished at the end of the prize-giving. Day-girls bade farewell to the boarders, exulting in the thought that to them the morrow would bring release from early rising and racing for trains and trams. Jean and Jo were the centre of a cheerful crowd—sorrow at parting lost in the overwhelming joy of the Christmas holidays. Their arms ached with shaking hands when the last farewells had been said, and they found themselves trooping with the other boarders to Miss Dampier’s supper.
It was at these farewell suppers that Miss Dampier showed that she fully understood the impossibility of making a decent tea on speech-night, and the consequent need of later nourishment. The nourishment she provided was of a kind that made the most irresponsible junior wonder if up till now she had not misjudged her head mistress. Moreover, she presided with a pleasant tact, bidding every one help herself, and restricting her conversation to teachers and seniors until it was evident that even the hungriest could eat no more. Then she moved about among her guests, with an understanding word for each; and those who were not coming back found themselves singled out for a special little chat and a few words that lay warm at their hearts long after they had gone away.
“Somehow, I don’t feel as if it were really good-bye to you, twinses,” she said; and Jean and Jo found nothing strange in the unfamiliar sound of the familiar school nickname on the Head’s lips. “It’s more as though you were going home on a visit—a long one, perhaps, but it may happen that you will come back.”
“Oh—we’d love to, Miss Dampier. Do you think there’s really any chance?”
“One never knows. Luck turns quickly in Australia.”
“O—o—oh!” said the twins, and looked longingly at each other. School had never seemed so desirable as on this last night. It was a gay and delightful place, with not even the spectre of an irregular verb or an early-morning bell: full of pleasant people and understanding teachers. They caught at the hope of returning to it.