She turned over. Then she slept.
Sleep also was deep, too deep, at Rainham Parva. It weighed on the girl like a mulch. At five o'clock Louie could hardly drag herself out of it. She fumbled at her loosened belt and pulled out her watch. Five! The tea-gong must have gone.
Well, perhaps tea would rouse her.
She felt by the side of the bed for her slippers, rose, touched her hair as she passed the glass, and went drowsily downstairs.
As Mrs. Lovenant-Smith and Miss Harriet always took tea in their own or one another's rooms—which, for that matter, the students also were permitted to do if they chose—the meal was a noisier one than either lunch or supper. Louie heard one of Burnett Minor's several voices as she pushed at the door. The child saw Louie's face in the opening and sprang up.
"Here she is—give it to me—I'm going to read it myself——" she cried.
Burnett Minor always wanted to read it herself—"it" usually being one of the sublimer passages from the current number of the "Pansy Library" or an especially choice one from an office-boys' periodical. Louie smiled languidly now as the girl snatched a booklet from Elwell's hand and gave tongue.
"I've punctured your back tyre, Causton, but Mac has some solution and we'll mend it after tea—and I'm always to do my hair like this, Harris says—do look at it, isn't it stunning?—and now—aha!" (somebody had made a grab for her book). "Thought you'd got it, didn't you, Elwell? Now I'll read it first and then show her the picture, and that reminds me, Mac, you've never given me my 'Jack Sheppard' back that I lent you——"
Louie reached for a chair. She yawned again.
"Do give me a cup of tea, somebody. I hope the watering's all done, for I'm not going to do any. What's the child got now? If it's 'Maria Martin' or 'Irene Iddesleigh,' I think I know them by heart."