And Both Were Young

I saw two beings in the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill...
And both were young—and one was beautiful
The Dream, CANTO II
Lord Byron

MADELEINE L'ENGLE

And Both Were Young

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., INC.

NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1949 BY
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO., INC., N.Y.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

DESIGNED BY MAURICE SERLE KAPLAN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Ninth Printing, February, 1962

To JO

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

The Prisoner of Chillon

"Where are you going, Philippa?" Mrs. Jackman asked sharply as Flip turned away from the group of tourists standing about in the cold hall of the Chateau of Chillon.

"I'm going for a walk," Flip said.

Her father put his hand on her shoulder. "I'd rather you stayed with us, Flip."

She looked up at him, her eyes bright with pleading. "Please, father!" she whispered. Then she turned and ran out of the chateau, away from the dark, prisoning stones, and out into the sunlight that was as bright and as sudden as bugles. She ran down a small path that led to Lake Geneva, and because she was blinded by sudden tears and by the sunlight striking on the lake she did not see the boy or the dog sitting on a rock at the lake's edge, and she crashed into them.

"I'm sorry!" she gasped as the boy slid off the rock and one of his legs went knee deep into the water before he was able to regain his balance. She looked at his angry, handsome face and said quickly, this time in French, "I'm terribly sorry. I didn't see you."

"You should watch where you're going!" the boy cried, and bent down to wring the water out of his trouser leg. The dog, a large and ferocious brindle bull, began leaping up at Flip, threatening to knock her down.

"Oh—" she gasped. "Please—please—"

"Down, Ariel. Down!" the boy commanded, and the bulldog dropped to his feet and then lay down in the path in front of Flip, his stump of a tail wagging with such frenzy that his whole body quivered.

The boy looked at Flip's navy blue coat. "I'm afraid Ariel got your coat dirty. His paws are always muddy."

"That's all right," Flip said. "If I let it dry it will brush off." She looked up at the boy standing very straight and tall, one foot on the rock. Flip was tall for fifteen ("I do hope you won't grow any taller, Philippa dear," Mrs. Jackman kept saying,) but this boy was even taller than she was and perhaps a year older.

"I'm sorry I knocked you into the lake," Flip said.

"Oh, that's all right. I'll dry off." The boy smiled; Flip had not realized how somber his face was until he smiled. "Is anything the matter?" he asked.

Flip brushed her hand across her eyes and smiled back. "No. I was just—in a rage. I always cry when I'm mad. It's terrible!" She blew her nose furiously.

The boy laughed. "May I ask you a question?" he said. "It's to settle a kind of bet." He reached down and took hold of the bulldog's collar, forcing him to rise to his feet. "Now sit properly, Ariel," he commanded, and the dog dropped obediently to its haunches, its tongue hanging out as it panted heavily. "And try not to drool, Ariel," the boy said. Then he smiled at Flip again. "You are staying at the Montreux Palace, aren't you?"

"Yes." Flip nodded. "We came in from Paris last night."

"Are you Norwegian?"

"No. I'm American."

"She was right, then," the boy said.

"Right? About what? Who?" Flip asked. She sat down on the rock at the edge of the water and Ariel inched over until he could rest his head on her knee.

"My mother. We play a game whenever we're in hotels, my parents and I. We look at all the people in the dining room and decide what nationalities they are. It's lots of fun. My mother thought you were American but my father and I thought maybe you were Norwegian, because of your hair, you know."

Flip reached up and felt her hair. It was the color of very pale corn and she wore it cut quite short, parted on the side with a bang falling over her rather high forehead. Mrs. Jackman had suggested that she have a permanent but for once Flip's father had not agreed. "She has enough wave of her own and it suits her face this way," he said, and Mrs. Jackman subsided.

"Your hair's very pretty," the boy said quickly. "And it made me wonder if you mightn't be Scandinavian. Your father's so very fair, too. But my mother said that your mother couldn't be anything but American. She said that only an American could wear clothes like that. She's very beautiful, your mother."

"She isn't my mother," Flip said. "My mother is dead."

"Oh." The boy dropped his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Mrs. Jackman came from Paris with father and me." Flip's voice was as hard and sharp as the stone she had picked up and was holding between her fingers. "She's always being terribly kind and doing things for me and I hate her."

"Watch out that Ariel doesn't drool on your skirt," the boy said. "One of his worst faults is drooling. What's your name?"

"Philippa Hunter. What's yours?" Her voice still sounded angry.

"Paul Laurens. People—" he hesitated, "people who aren't your own parents can sometimes be—be wonderful."

"Not Mrs. Jackman," Flip said. "She makes me call her Eunice. I feel funny calling her Eunice. And when she calls my father 'darling' I hate her. She's the one I got so mad at just now." She looked up at Paul in surprise. "I've never talked about Eunice before. Not to anyone. I shouldn't have talked like that. I'm sorry."

"That's all right," Paul said. "Ariel's made your coat very dirty. I hope it will brush off. You have on a uniform, don't you?"

"Yes," Flip answered, and her voice was harsh because for the moment tears were threatening her again. "I'm being sent to a boarding school and I don't want to go. Mrs. Jackman arranged it all." She looked out across the brilliant expanse of lake, scowling unhappily, and forced the tears back.

"What do you want to do?" Paul asked.

"I want to be an artist some day, like my father. School won't help me to be an artist." She continued to stare out over the water and her eyes rested on a small lake steamer, very clean and white, passing by. "I should like to get on that boat," she said, "and just ride and ride, forever and ever."

"But the boat comes to shore and everybody has to get off at last," Paul told her.

"Why?" Flip asked. "Why?" She looked longingly after the boat for a moment and then she looked at the mountains that seemed to be climbing up into the sky. They looked like the mountains that she had often made up out of cloud formations during the long slow summers in Connecticut, only she was in Switzerland now; these were real mountains; this was real snow on their shining peaks. "Well—" she stood up, dislodging Ariel. "I'd better go back now. Mrs. Jackman will think I'm off weeping somewhere."

Paul shook her hand. His grip was firm and strong. "Ariel doesn't usually take to people the way he has to you. When Ariel doesn't like people I know I'm never going to like them either. He has very good taste. Perhaps we'll meet again sometime."

He smiled and Flip smiled back, murmuring shyly, "I hope so."

"My father and I are going to spend the winter up the mountain somewhere," Paul said. "My mother's a singer and she has to go off on a tour for all winter. They've been wandering about the chateau. They like it because that's where my father proposed to my mother." He smiled again and then his face changed and became so serious that Flip looked at him in surprise. "I don't like it," he explained, "because I don't like any place that's been a prison." Then he said, trying to speak lightly, "Do you know that poem of the English poet, Byron? The Prisoner of Chillon? It's all about a man who was a prisoner in the chateau."

"Yes," Flip said. "We studied it in English last year. I didn't like it much but I think I shall pretend that my school is a prison and I am the prisoner and at Christmas my father will rescue me."

"If he doesn't," Paul said, "I will."

"Thank you," Flip said. "Are you—do you go to school?"

The same odd strained look came into Paul's eyes that had darkened them when he mentioned prisons. "No," he said. "I'm not going to school right now."

"Well ... good-bye," Flip said.

"Good-bye." Paul shook hands with her again. She turned clumsily and patted Ariel's head; then she started back up the path towards the chateau of Chillon.

2

About half way to the chateau she saw her father coming down the path towards her. He was alone, so she ran up to him and caught hold of his hand.

"All right now, Flippet?" Philip Hunter asked.

"Yes, father."

"It's not as though it were forever, funny face."

"I know, father. It's all right. I'm going to pretend that the school is the chateau of Chillon and I'm the prisoner, and then at Christmas you'll come and liberate me."

"I certainly will," Philip Hunter said. "Now let's go find Eunice. She's worried about you."

Eunice Jackman was waiting for them, her hands plunged into the pockets of her white linen suit. Her very black hair was pulled back from her face into a smooth doughnut at the nape of her neck. "Only a very beautiful woman should wear her hair like that," Philip Hunter had told Flip. Now he waved at Eunice and shouted, "Hi!"

"Hi!" Eunice called, taking one hand leisurely out of her pocket and waving back. "Feeling better, Philippa?"

"I can't feel better if I haven't been feeling badly," Flip said icily, "I just wanted to go for a walk."

Eunice laughed. She laughed a great deal but her laugh never sounded to Flip as though she thought anything was funny. "So you went for a walk. Didn't you like the chateau, Philippa?" Eunice never called her 'Flip'.

"I don't like to look at things with a lot of other people," Flip said. "I like to look at them by myself. Anyhow I like the lake better. The lake and the mountains."

Mrs. Jackman looked over at Philip Hunter and raised her eyebrows. Then she slipped her hand through his arm. Flip looked at him, too, at the short, straw-colored hair and the intense blue eyes, and her heart ached with longing and love because she was to be sent away from him.

"Wait till you get up to the school," Mrs. Jackman said. "According to my friend Mrs. Downs, there's a beautiful view of the lake from every window. You're going to adore school once you're there, Philippa."

"Necessities are necessary, but it isn't necessary to adore them," Flip said. She hated herself for sounding so surly, but when she was with Mrs. Jackman she always seemed to say the wrong thing. She stared out over the lake to the mountains of France. She wanted to go and press her burning cheeks against the cool whiteness of the snowy tips.

"Well, if you're determined to be unhappy you probably will be," Mrs. Jackman said. "Come on, Phil," and she patted Philip Hunter's arm. "It's time to drive back to the hotel and have lunch, and then it will be time to take Philippa up to the school. Most girls would consider themselves extremely fortunate to be able to go to school in Switzerland. How on earth did you get so dirty, Philippa? You're all covered with mud. For heaven's sake brush her coat off, Phil. We don't want her arriving at the school looking like a ragamuffin."

Flip said nothing. She reached for her father's hand and they walked back to the tram that would take them along the lake to the Montreux Palace.

While they were washing up for lunch Flip said to her father, "Why did she have to come?"

"Eunice?"

"Yes. Why did she have to come?"

Philip Hunter was sitting on the edge of the bed, his sketch pad on his knee. While Flip was drying her hands he was sketching her. She was used to being sketched at any and all odd moments and paid no attention. "Father," she prodded him.

At last he looked up from the pad. "She didn't have to come. She offered to come since it was she who suggested this school, and it was most kind of her. You're very rude to Eunice, Flippet, and I don't like it."

"I'm sorry," she said, leaning against him and looking down at the dozens of little sketches on the open page of his big pad. She looked at the sketch he had just finished of her, at the quick line drawings of people in the tram, of Eunice in the tram, of sightseers in the chateau, of Eunice in the chateau, of Eunice drinking coffee in the salon of the Montreux Palace, of Eunice on the train from Paris, of Eunice sitting on a suitcase in the Gâre Saint Lazare. She handed the pad back to him and went over to her suitcase filled with all the regulation blouses and underclothes and stockings Eunice had bought for her; it was so very kind of Eunice. "I don't see why I can't stay with you," Flip said.

Philip Hunter got up from the bed and took her hands in his. "Philippa, listen to me. No, don't pull away. Stand still and listen. I should have left you in New York with your grandmother. But I listened to you and we did have a beautiful summer together in Paris, didn't we?"

"Oh, yes!"

"And now I suppose I should really send you back to New York to Gram, but I think you need to be more with young people, and it would mean that we couldn't be together at Christmas, or at Easter. So in sending you to school I'm doing the best I can to keep us together as much as possible. I'm going to be wandering around under all sort of conditions making sketches for Roger's book and you couldn't possibly come with me even if it weren't for missing a year of school. Now be sensible, Flip, please, darling, and don't make it harder for yourself and for me than it already is. Eunice is right. If you set your mind on being unhappy you will be unhappy."

"I haven't set my mind on being unhappy," Flip said. "I don't want to be unhappy."

"Everything's understood, then, Flippet?"

"I guess so."

"Come along down to the dining room, then. Eunice will be wondering what on earth's keeping us."

3

After lunch, which Flip could not eat, they took her to the station. Flip's ticket said: No. 09717 Pensionnat Abelard—Jaman—Chemin de Fer Montreux Oberland Bernois Troisieme Classe, Montreux à Jaman, valable 10 jours. Eunice was very much impressed because there were special tickets for the school.

The train went up the mountain like a snake. The mountain was so steep that the train climbed in a continuous series of hairpin bends, stopping frequently at the small villages that clustered up the mountain side. Flip sat next to the window and stared out with a set face. Sometimes they could see the old grey stones of a village church, or a glimpse of a square with a fountain in the centre. They passed new and ugly stucco villas occasionally, but mostly old brown chalets with flowers in the windows. Sometimes in the fields by the chalets there would be cows, though most of the cows were grazing further up the mountain. The fields and roadsides were full of autumn flowers and everything was still a rich summer green. At one stop there was a family of children, all in blue denim shorts and white shirts, three girls and two boys, waiting for the pleasant looking woman in a tweed suit who stepped off the train. All the children rushed at her, shouting, "Mother! Mother!"

"Americans," Eunice said. "There's quite a considerable English and American colony here, I believe."

Flip stared longingly out the window as the children and their mother went running and laughing up the hill. She thought perhaps Paul and his mother were happy in the same way. She felt her father's hand on her knee and she said quickly, "Write me lots, father. Lots and lots and lots."

"Lots and lots and lots," he promised as the train started again. "And the time will pass quickly, you'll see. There's an art studio where you can draw and paint. You'll be learning all the time."

Eunice lit a cigarette although there was a sign saying NO SMOKING in French, Italian, and German. All the notices were in French, Italian, and German. DO NOT SPIT. DO NOT LEAN OUT THE WINDOW. DO NOT PUT BAGS OUT THE WINDOW. "The next stop's Jaman," Eunice said.

Something turned over in Flip's stomach. I should be ashamed, she thought. I should be ashamed to be so scared.

But she was scared. She had never been separated, even for a night, from her entire family. During the war when her father had been in Europe, her mother was still alive; and then in the dark days after her mother's death Gram had come to live with them; and afterwards, whenever her father had to go away for a few days without her, at least Gram had been there. Now she would be completely on her own. She remembered her mother shaking her once, and laughing at her, and saying, "Darling, darling, you must learn to be more independent, to stand on your own feet. You must not cling so to father and me. Suppose something should happen to us? What would you do?" That thought was so preposterously horrible that Flip could not face it. She had flung her arms about her mother and hidden her head.

Now she could not press her face under her mother's arm and escape from the world. Now she was older, much older, almost an adult, and she had to stand on her own feet and not be afraid of other girls. She had always been afraid of other girls. In the day school she went to in New York she had long intimate conversations with them all in her imagination, but never in reality. During recess she sat in a corner and drank her chocolate milk through a straw and read a book, and whenever they had to choose partners for anything she was always paired off with Betty Buck, the other unpopular girl. And on Tuesdays and Thursdays when they had gym in the afternoon, whenever they chose teams Flip was always the last one chosen; Betty Buck could run fast so she was always chosen early. Flip couldn't run fast. She had a stiff knee from the bad time when her knee cap had been broken, so it wasn't entirely her fault, but that didn't make it any easier.

However, in New York, Flip didn't mind too much about school. She usually finished her homework in her free period so when she got home the rest of the day was hers. If her father was painting in his studio she would sit and watch him, munching one of the apples he always kept in a big bowl on the table with his jars of brushes. Sometimes she cleaned his brushes for him and put them back carefully in the right jars, the blue ginger jar, the huge green pickle jar, the two brass vases he had brought from China. Flip loved to watch him paint. He painted all sorts of things. He painted a great many children's portraits. He had painted literally dozens of portraits of Flip and one of them was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and people had bought some of the others. It always seemed strange to Flip that people should want a picture of someone else's child in their homes.

Sometimes Philip Hunter did illustrations for children's books and Flip had all of these books in her bookshelves; it seemed that she could never outgrow them. They were in the place of honor and whenever she was sick in bed or unhappy she would take them out and look at them. The book he was doing illustrations for now was one which he said was going to be very beautiful and important, and it was a history of lost children all through the ages. There would be pictures of the lost children in the children's crusade and the lost children in the southern states after the civil war and in Russia after the revolution, and now he was going to travel all around drawing pictures of lost children all over Europe and Asia and he told Flip that he hoped maybe the book would help people to realize that all these children had to be found and taken care of.

When Flip thought about all the lost children she felt a deep shame inside herself for her anger and resentment against Eunice and for the hollow feeling inside her stomach now as the train crawled higher and higher up the mountain. She was not a lost child. She would have a place to eat and sleep and keep warm all winter, and at Christmas time she would be with her father again.

Now the train was slowing down. Eunice stood up and brushed imaginary specks off her immaculate white skirt. Philip Hunter took Flip's suitcase off the rack. "This is it, Flippet," he said.

An old black taxi took them further up the mountain to the school. The school had once been a big resort hotel and it was an imposing building with innumerable red roofed turrets flying small flags; and iron balconies were under every window. The taxi driver took Flip's bag and led them into a huge lounge with a marble floor and stained glass in the windows. There should have been potted palms by the marble pillars, but there weren't. Girls of all ages and sizes were running about, reading notices on the big bulletin board, carrying suitcases, tennis rackets, ice skates, hockey sticks, skis, cricket bats, lacrosse sticks, arms full of books. A wide marble staircase curved down into the centre of the hall. To one side of it was a big cage-like elevator with a sign, FACULTY ONLY, in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. At the other side of the staircase was what had once been the concierge's desk with innumerable cubby holes for mail behind it. A woman with very dark hair and bushy eyebrows sat at it now, and she looked over at Eunice and Flip and Philip Hunter inquiringly. They crossed the hall to the desk.

"This is Philippa Hunter, one of the new girls," Eunice said, pushing Flip forward. "I am Mrs. Jackman and this is Mr. Hunter."

The black haired woman behind the desk nodded and reached for a big notebook. Flip noticed that she had quite a dark moustache on her upper lip. "How do you do? I am Miss Tulip, the matron," she said as she began leafing through the ledger. "Hartung, Havre, Hesse, Hunter. Ah, yes, Phillipa Hunter, number 97, room 33." She looked up from the book and her black eyes searched the girls milling about in the big hall. "Erna Weber," she called.

A girl about Flip's age detached herself from a cluster and came over to the desk. "Yes, Miss Tulip?"

"This is Philippa Hunter," Miss Tulip said. "She is in your dormitory. Take her upstairs with you and show her where to put her things. She is number 97."

"Yes, Miss Tulip." Erna reached down for Flip's suitcase and a lock of fair hair escaped from her barette and fell over one eye. She pushed it back impatiently. "Come on," she told Flip.

Flip looked despairingly at her father but all he did was to grin encouragingly. She followed Erna reluctantly.

At the head of the stairs Erna set down the suitcase and undid her barette, yanking her short hair back tightly from her face. "Sprechen sie deutsch?" she asked Flip.

Flip knew just enough German to answer, "Nein."

"Parlez vous Français?" Erna asked, picking up the suitcase again.

To this Flip was able to answer "Oui."

"Well, that's something at any rate," Erna told her in French, climbing another flight of marble stairs. "After Prayers tonight we aren't supposed to speak anything but French. Some of the girls don't speak any French when they first come and I can tell you they have an awful time. I ought to know because I didn't speak any French when I came last year. What did Tulip say your name was?"

"Philippa Hunter."

"What are you? English?"

"No. American."

Erna turned down a corridor, pushed open a white door marked 33, and set the suitcase inside. Flip looked around a sunny room with flowered wall-paper and four brass beds. Four white bureaus beside the beds and four white chairs at the feet completed the furnishings. Wide French windows opened onto a balcony from which Flip could see the promised view of the lake and the mountains. Each chair had a number painted on it in small blue letters. Erna picked up the suitcase again and dumped it down on the chair marked 97.

"That's you," she said. "You'd better remember your number. We do everything by numbers. That was Miss Tulip at the desk; she's the matron and she lives on this floor. We call her Black and Midnight. She's a regular old devil about giving Order Marks. If one corner of the bed isn't tucked in just so or if you don't straighten it the minute you get off it or if a shirt is even crooked in a drawer old Black and Midnight gives you an Order Mark. So watch out for her. Have you got any skis?"

Flip nodded. "They were sent on with my trunk."

"Oh. They'll be in the Ski Room, then. Rack 97. Your hook in the Cloak Room will be 97, too." Erna pulled open one of the drawers in Flip's bureau. "I see you sent your trunk in time. Black and Midnight's unpacked for you."

"That was nice of her," Flip said.

"Nice? Don't be a child. They unpack for us to make sure there isn't any candy or money or food in the trunks, or books we aren't supposed to read, or lipstick or cigarettes. Have you got anything to eat in your suitcase?"

Flip shook her whirling head.

"Oh, well, you'll learn," Erna said. "Come on. I'll find your cubicle in the bathroom for you and we'll see what your bath nights are. Then I'll take you back down to Miss Tulip. I suppose you want to say good-bye to your mother and father."

Flip started to explain that Eunice wasn't her mother, but Erna was already dragging her down the hall. "Himmel, you're slow," Erna said. "Hurry up."

Flip tried to stumble along faster with her long legs. Her legs were very long and straight and skinny, but sometimes it seemed as though she must be bow-legged, knock-kneed and pigeon-toed all at once, the way she always managed to stumble and trip herself up.

Erna pushed open a heavy door. Down one side of the wall were rows and rows of small cubicles, each marked with a number. Each had a shelf for toothbrush, mug, and soap, and hooks underneath for towels. On the opposite wall were twelve cubicles each with a wash basin, and a curtain to afford a measure of privacy. "The johns are next door," Erna said. "Here's the bath list. Let's see. You're eight forty five Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. That's my time, too. We can bang on the partition. Once Black and Midnight found a girl crawling under the partition and she was expelled."

Erna's French was fluent, with just a trace of German in it. Flip had learned to speak excellent French that summer in Paris so she had no difficulty in following it, though she, herself, had nothing to say. But Erna seemed to be perfectly happy dominating the conversation.

"Come on," Erna said. "I'll take you downstairs, and you can say good-bye to your parents. I want to see if Jackie's come in from Paris yet. She's one of our roommates. This is her third year here."

"Jackie what?" Flip asked, for something to say.

"Jacqueline Bernstein. Her father directs movies. Last year he came over to see Jackie and he brought a movie projector with him and we all had movies in Assembly Hall. It was wonderful."

They had reached the big entry hall now and Flip looked around but could not see either her father or Eunice, and at this point even Eunice would have been a welcome face. Erna led her up to the concierge's desk where Miss Tulip still presided.

"Well, Erna, what is it now?" the matron asked.

"Please, Miss Tulip," Erna said, her hands clasped meekly in front of her. "You said I was to show this new girl our room and everything, so I did."

Miss Tulip looked at Erna, then at Flip, then at her note book. "Oh, yes. Philippa Hunter, number 97. Please take her to Mlle. Dragonet, Erna. Her father is waiting there for her."

"Come on," Erna told Flip impatiently.

Mlle. Dragonet's rooms were at the end of the long corridor on the second floor and were shut off from the rest of the school by heavy sliding doors. These were open now and Erna pulled Flip into a small hall with two doors on each side. She pointed a solemn finger at the first door on the right. "This is the Dragon's study," she said. "Look out any time you're sent there. It means you're in for it." Then she pointed to the second door. "This one's her living room and that's not so bad. If you're sent to the living room you're not going to get a lecture, anyhow, though the less I see of the Dragon the happier I am."

"Is she?" Flip asked.

"Is she what?"

"A dragon."

"Old Dragonet? Oh, she's all right. Kind of standoffish. Doesn't fraternize much, if you know what I mean. But she's all right. Well, I've got to leave you now, but I'll see you later. You just knock."

And Flip was left standing in the empty corridor in front of the Dragon's door. She gave a final despairing glance at Erna's blue skirt disappearing around the curve of the stairs. Then she lifted her hand to knock because if her father was in there she didn't know how else to get to him. Besides, she didn't know what else to do. Erna had deserted her, and she would never have the courage to go back to the big crowded lounge or to try to find her room again, all alone. She tapped very gently, so gently that there was no response. She hugged herself in lonely misery.—Oh, please, she thought,—please, God, make me not be such a coward. It's awful to be such a coward. Mother always laughed at me and scolded me because I was such a coward. Please give me some gumption, quick, God, please.

Then she raised her hand and knocked. Mlle. Dragonet's voice called, "Come in."

4

The rest of the day had the strange turbulent, uncontrolled quality of a dream. She said good-bye to her father and Eunice in Mlle. Dragonet's office, and then she was swept along in a stream of girls through registration, signing for courses, dinner, prayers, a meeting of the new girls in the common room ... she thought that now she knew what the most unimportant little fish in a school of fishes must feel like caught in the current of a wild river. She sat that night, on her bed, her long legs looking longer than ever in peppermint candy striped pajamas, and watched her roommates. On the bureau beside the bed she had the package her father had left her as a going away present: sketching pads of various sizes, and a box of Eberhard Faber drawing pencils. There was also a bottle of Chanel No. 5 from Eunice which she had pushed aside.

"You'll have to take those downstairs tomorrow morning," Erna told her. "We aren't allowed things like that in our rooms. You can put it in your locker in the Common Room or on your shelf in the Class Room. They'll be marked with your number."

Flip felt that if she heard anything else about her number she would scream. She was accustomed to being a person, not a number; and she didn't feel like number 97 at all. But she just said, "Oh."

Jacqueline Bernstein, the other old girl in the room, pulled blue silk pajamas over her head and laughed. Flip had noticed that she laughed a great deal, not a giggle, but a nice laugh that bubbled out of her at the slightest excuse like a small fountain. She was a very pretty girl with curly black hair that fell to her shoulders and was held back from her face with a blue ribbon the color of her uniform; and she had big black eyes with long curly lashes. Her body had filled out into far more rounded and mature lines than Flip's. "Remember when old Black and Midnight caught me using cold cream last winter?" she asked Erna. "She'll let you use all kinds of guk like mentholatum on your face to keep from getting chapped, but not cold cream because it's make-up."

Flip looked at her enviously, thinking disparagingly of her own sand-colored hair, and her eyes that were neither blue nor grey and her body as long and skinny as a string bean.—That's just it, she thought.—I look like a string bean and Jacqueline Bernstein looks like somebody who's going to be a movie star and Erna looks like somebody who always gets chosen first when people choose teams.

She hoped her grandmother was right when she said she would grow up to be a beauty; but when she looked at Jackie, Flip doubted it.

The door opened and Gloria Browne, the other roommate, came in. She was English, with ginger-colored permanent-waved hair. Erna had somehow discovered and informed Flip and Jackie that Gloria's parents were tremendously wealthy and she had come to school with four brand new trunks full of clothes and had two dozen of everything, even toothbrushes. "Esmée Bodet says Gloria's nouveau riche," Erna added. "Her father owns a brewery and an uncle in Canada or someplace sent her the clothes because she didn't have the coupons."

"Esmée always finds out everything about everybody," Jackie had said. "I don't know how she does it. She's an awful snoop."

Now Gloria walked to her bureau and took up her comb and started combing out her tangles.

"Use a brush," Erna suggested.

"Oh, I never use a brush, ducky," Gloria said. "It's bad for a permanent."

Jackie laughed. "That's silly."

"Your hair's natural, isn't it?" Gloria asked.

"But yes."

"Have you ever had a permanent?"

"No."

"Then don't say its silly. If you brush a permanent all the wave comes out."

Jackie laughed again and got into bed. "Well, at least you speak French," she said. "At least we won't have to go through that struggle with you."

"Oh, I went to a French school in Vevey before the war." Gloria gave up on her tangles. "This is my fifth boarding school. I started when I was six."

"How are you at hockey?" Erna asked.

Gloria shrugged and said, "Oh, not too bad," in a way that made Flip know she was probably very good indeed.

"How about you, Philippa?" Erna asked.

Flip admitted, "I'm not very good. I fall over my feet."

"How about skiing?"

Gloria pulled a nightgown made of pink satin and ecru lace over her head. "I just dote on skiing. We spent last Christmas hols at St. Moritz."

"I've never skied," Flip said, "but everybody says I'm going to love it."

Erna looked at Gloria's nightgown. "If you think Black and Midnight's going to let you wear that creation you're crazy."

Jackie looked at it longingly. "It's divine. It's absolutely divine."

Gloria giggled. "Oh, I know they won't let me wear it. I just thought I'd wait till they made me take it off. Emile gave it to me for a going away present."

"Who's Emile?" Erna asked.

"My mother's fiancé. He's a Count."

"A Count—pfft!" Jackie laughed.

"He is, too. And he has lots of money, which most Counts don't, nowadays."

"Your mother's what?" Erna asked.

"Her fiancé. You know. The man she's going to marry. Emile is a card. And he gives me wonderful presents. And then Daddy gives me presents so I won't like Emile better than I do him. It really works out very well. I'm just crazy about Emile. Daddy likes him, too."

"Your father!" Jackie squeaked.

"Oh, yes. Mummy and Daddy are still great friends. Mummy says it's the way civilized people behave. She and Daddy both hate scenes. Me, too."

"But don't you just feel awful about it?" Erna asked.

"Awful? Why? I don't expect it'll make much difference to me. I'll spend the summer hols with Mummy one year and with Daddy the next, and as soon as I'm out of school I expect I'll get married myself unless I decide to have a career. I might get Emile to give me a dress shop in London or Paris. I expect he would and I adore being around pretty frocks and things. Isn't it a bore we have to wear beastly old uniforms here? We didn't have uniforms at my last school but there were vile ones the school before."

A bell rang, blaring so loudly that Flip almost fell off the bed. She didn't think she'd ever be able to hear that bell without jumping. It rang for all the classes, Erna had told her, and in the evenings it rang at half hour intervals, announcing the times at which the different age-groups were to put out their lights. For meals one of the maids got in the elevator with a big gong and rode up and down, up and down, beating the gong. Flip liked the gong; it had a beautiful, resonant tone and long after the maid had stopped beating it and left the elevator, you could hear the waves of rich sound still throbbing through the building, and with closed eyes you could almost pretend it was a jungle instead of a school.

"That's our bell," Erna said. "Black and Midnight comes in to put out the light. That's one trouble with being on this floor. She gets to us so soon."

As she finished speaking the door was opened abruptly and Miss Tulip stood looking in at them. She had changed to her white matron's uniform. "Everybody ready?" she asked.

Erna and Jackie chorussed, "Yes, Miss Tulip, thank you, Miss Tulip."

Then Miss Tulip spotted Gloria's nightgown. "Really!" she exclaimed. "Gloria Browne, isn't it?"

Gloria echoed Erna and Jackie. "Yes, Miss Tulip, thank you, Miss Tulip."

"That nightgown is most unsuitable," Miss Tulip said disapprovingly. "I trust you have something else more appropriate."

"That depends on what you call appropriate, please, Miss Tulip," Gloria said.

"I will go over your things tomorrow. Report to me after breakfast."

"Yes, Miss Tulip," Gloria said meekly, and winked at Erna.

"Good night, girls. Remember, no talking." And Miss Tulip switched out the light.

Flip lay there in the dark. As her eyes became accustomed to the night she noticed that the lights from the terrace below shone up through the iron railing of the balcony and lay in a delicate pattern on the ceiling. She raised herself on one elbow and she could see out of the window. All down the mountainside to the lake the lights of the villages lay like fallen stars. As she watched, one would flicker out here, another there. Through the open window she could hear the chime of a village church, and then, almost like an echo, the bell from another church and then another. She began to feel the sense of wonderful elation that always came to her when beauty took hold of her and made her forget her fears. Now she saw the lights of the train as it crawled up the mountain, looking like a little luminous dragon. And on the lake was a tiny band of lights from one of the lake boats.

—Oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! she thought. Then she began to long for her father to show the beauty to. She couldn't contain so much beauty just in herself. It had to be shared, and she couldn't whisper to the girls in her room to come and look. She couldn't cry, "Oh, Erna, Jackie, Gloria, come look!" Erna and Jackie must know how beautiful it was, and somehow Flip thought that Gloria would think looking at views was stupid.—Father, she thought.—Oh, Father. What's the matter with me. What is it?

Then she realized. Of course. She was homesick. Every bone in her ached with homesickness as though she were getting 'flu. Only she wasn't homesick for a place, but for a person, for her father. How many months, how many weeks, how many days, hours, minutes, seconds, till Christmas?

5

She sat in the warm tub on her first bath night and longing for her father overflowed her again and she wept. Miss Tulip entered briskly without knocking.

"Homesick, Philippa?" she asked cheerfully. "I expect you are. We all are at first. But you'll get over it. We all do. But you mustn't cry, you know! It doesn't help. Not a bit. Sportsmanship, remember."

Flip nodded and watched the water as it lapped about her thin knees.

"Almost through?"

"Yes."

"Yes, Miss Tulip," the matron corrected her.

"Yes, Miss Tulip," Flip echoed obediently.

"Well, hurry up, then. Its almost time for the next girl. Mustn't get a Tardy Mark by taking more than your fifteen minutes."

"I'll hurry," Flip said.

"Washed behind your ears?"

"Yes." Flip was outraged that Miss Tulip should ask her such a baby's question. But Miss Tulip with another brisk nod bounced out as cheerfully as she had entered. Flip stepped out of the tub and started to dry herself.

6

They were supposed to start hockey but it rained and Flip's class had relay races in the big gym at the other end of the playing fields from the school. The gym had once been the hotel garage but now it was full of bars and rings and leather horses and an indoor basket ball court where the class above Flip's was playing. Erna and a Norwegian girl, Solvei Krogstad, were captains. Erna chose Jackie, then dutifully chose Gloria and Flip. It was to be a simple relay race. The girls were to run with a small stick to the foot of the gym and back, putting the stick into the hand of the next girl. Flip was fifth in line, following Gloria.

Gloria ran like a streak of lightning. Sally Buckman, the girl behind Flip, was jumping up and down, shrieking, "Keep it up, Glory! Oh, Glory, swell!" She looked like a very excited pug dog.

Gloria snapped the stick smartly into Flip's fingers but Flip fumbled and dropped it. Sally groaned. Flip picked up the stick and started to run. She ran as fast as she could. But her knee seemed stiffer than it ever had before and her legs were so long that she had no control of them and her feet kept getting in their own way. She heard the girls screaming, "Run, Philippa, run, can't you!" Now she had reached the end of the gym and she turned around and started the long way back to Sally Buckman. The girls were jumping up and down in agony and their shouts were angry and despairing. "Oh, Philippa! Oh, Philippa, run!"

Panting, her throat dry and aching, she thrust the stick into Sally's hand, and limped to the back of the line.

After gym she locked herself in the bathroom and read again the letter from her father which had come in the morning's mail. It was a gay, funny letter, full of little sketches. She answered it during study hall, hoping that the teacher in charge would not notice. She drew him a funny picture of Miss Tulip, and little sketches of her roommates and some of the other girls. She told him that the food wasn't very good. Too many boiled potatoes. And the bread was doughy and you could almost use it for modelling clay. But maybe it would help her get fat. She did not tell him that she was homesick and miserable. She could not make him unhappy by letting him know what a terrible coward she was. She looked around at the other girls in the study hall, Sally chewing her pencil, Esmée twisting a strand of hair around and around her finger, Gloria muttering Latin verbs under her breath.

Gloria had whispered to her that the teacher taking Study Hall was the Art teacher. Her name was Madame Perceval, and she was Mlle. Dragonet's niece. The girls called her Percy, and although she had a reputation for being strict, she was very popular. Flip stared at her surreptitiously, hoping that she wouldn't be as dull and unsympathetic as the art teacher in her school in New York. She had finished her lessons early and now that she had written her letter to her father she did not know what to do. She thought that Madame Perceval looked younger and somehow more alive than the other teachers. "I wonder where her husband is?" Gloria had whispered. "Jackie says nobody knows, not even Esmée. She says everybody thinks there's some sort of mystery about Percy. I say, isn't it glamorous! I can't wait for the first Art lesson."

Madame Perceval had thick brown hair, the color of well-polished mahogany. It was curly and quite short and brushed back carelessly from her face. Her skin was burnished, as though she spent a great deal of time out of doors, and her eyes were grey with golden specks. Flip noticed that Study Hall tonight was much quieter than it had been the other nights with other teachers in charge.

She reached for a pencil to make a sketch of Madame Perceval to put in the letter to her father, and knocked her history book off the corner of her desk. It fell with a bang and she felt everybody's eyes on her. She bent down to pick it up. When she put it back on her desk she looked at Madame Perceval, but the teacher was writing quietly in a note book. Flip sighed and looked around. There was no clock in Study Hall and she wondered how much longer before the bell. Erna, sitting next to her at the desk by the window was evidently wondering the same thing, because Flip felt a nudge: she looked over, then quickly took the rolled up note Erna was handing to her. She read it. "How many more dreary minutes?"

Flip reached across the aisle and nudged Solvei Krogstad, who had a watch. Solvei took the note, looked at her watch, scribbled "ten" on the note, and was about to pass it back to Flip when Madame Perceval's voice came clear and commanding.

"Bring that note to me, please, Solvei." Flip was very thankful that she wasn't the one who had been caught.

Solvei rose and walked up the aisle to the platform on which the teachers desk stood. She handed the note to Madame Perceval and waited. Madame Perceval looked at the note, then at her own watch.

"Your watch is fast, Solvei," she said with a twinkle. "There are fifteen more dreary minutes, not ten."

Very seriously Solvei set her watch while everybody in the room laughed.

After Study Hall while they were all gathered in the Common Room during the short period of free time before the bell that sent them up to bed, Gloria said to Flip, "I say, that was decent of Percy, wasn't it?"

Flip nodded.

"Imagine Percy being the Dragon's niece!" Then Gloria yawned. "I say, Philippa, have you any brothers or sisters?"

Flip shook her head.

"Neither have I. Mummy and Daddy didn't really want me, but I popped up. Accidents will happen, you know. They said they were really glad, and I'm not much trouble after all, always off at school and things. In a way I'm rather glad they didn't want me, because it relieves me of responsibility, doesn't it? I always have enough responsibility at school without getting involved in it at home."

Erna and Jackie wandered over. "Hallo, what are you two talking about?"

"Oh—you," Gloria said.

Erna grinned. "What were you saying?"

"Oh—just how lucky we were to get you two as roommates."

Erna and Jackie looked pleased, while Flip stared at Gloria in amazement.

"Are you ever called Phil, Philippa?" Erna asked suddenly.

Flip shook her head. "At home I'm called Flip."

Jackie laughed and Erna said, "Flip, huh? I never heard of anyone being called a name like Flip before."

Gloria began to giggle. "I know what! We can call her Pill!"

Jackie and Erna shouted with laughter. "Pill! Pill!" they cried with joy.

Flip did not say anything. She knew that the thing to do was to laugh, too, but instead she was afraid she might burst into tears.

"Let's play Ping Pong before the bell rings," Jackie suggested.

"Coming, Pill?" Gloria cried.

Flip shook her head. "No, thank you."

She wandered over to one of the long windows and stepped out onto the balcony. The wind was cool and comforting to her hot cheeks. The sky was full of stars and she looked up at them and tried to feel their cold clear light on her upturned face. Across the lake the mountains of France loomed darkly, suddenly breaking into brightness as the starlight fell on their snowy tips. Flip tried to imagine what it would be like when the entire mountains and all the valley were covered with snow.

From the room behind her she could hear all the various evening noises, the sound of the victrola playing popular records, the click, click, click of the Ping Pong ball Erna, Jackie, and Gloria were sending over the net, and the excited buzz of general conversation. Although the girls were supposed to speak French at all times, this final period of freedom was not supervised, and Flip heard snatches of various languages, and of the truly international language the girls had developed, a pot-pourri of all their tongues.

"Ach," she heard someone saying, "I left mein ceinture dans le shower ce morgen. Quelle dope ich bin!"

She sat down on the cold stone floor of the balcony and leaned her face against the black iron rail. The rail felt cold and rough to her cheek. She looked down to the path below where Miss Tulip in her white uniform was walking briskly between the plane trees. Flip sat very still, fearful lest the matron look up and see her.

The bell rang. Out here on the balcony it did not sound so loud. She heard the girls in her class putting books, records, note paper, into their lockers and slamming the doors, and she knew that she would have to come in and follow them upstairs. But not yet. Not quite yet. It would take them a little while to get everything put away. She heard someone else walking along the path below and looked down and recognized Madame Perceval. Madame Perceval stopped just below Flip's balcony and leaned against one of the plane trees. She stood there very quietly, looking down over the lake.

She thinks it's beautiful, too, Flip thought, and suddenly felt happier. She scrambled to her feet and went back into the Common Room just as Gloria and a group of girls were leaving. They saw her.

"Oh, here comes Pill!" Gloria shouted.

"Hello, Pill!" they all cried.

The brief happiness faded from Flip's eyes.

7

Almost the most difficult thing, Flip found, was never being alone. From the moment she woke up in the morning until she fell asleep at night, she was surrounded by girls. She was constantly with them but she never felt that she was of them. She tried to talk and laugh, to be like them, to join in their endless conversations about boys and holidays, and clothes and boys, and growing up and again boys, but always it seemed that she grew clumsier than ever and the wrong words tumbled out of her mouth. She felt like the ugly sister in the fairy tale she had loved when she was younger, the sister whose words turned into hideous toads; and all the other girls were like the beautiful sister whose words became pieces of gold. And she would stand on the hockey field when they chose teams, looking down at her toe scrounging into the grass and pretend that she didn't care when the team which had the bad luck to get her let out a groan, or the gym teacher, Fräulein Hauser, snapped. "Philippa Hunter! How can you be so clumsy!" And Miss Tulip glossed over Jackie's untidy drawers and chided Flip because her comb and brush were out of line. And Miss Armstrong, the science teacher, cried. "Really, Philippa, can't you enter the classroom without knocking over a chair?" And when she fell and skinned her knees Miss Tulip was angry with her for tearing her stockings and even seemed to grudge the iodine which she put on Flip's gory wounds.

—If only I knew a lot of boys and could talk about them, she thought,—or if I was good at sports.

But she had never really known any boys and sports were a nightmare to her.

So in the Common Room she stood awkwardly about and tried to pretend she liked the loud jazz records Esmée played constantly on the phonograph. Usually she ended out on the balcony where she could at least see the mountains and the lake, but soon it became too cold out on the balcony in the dark windy night air and she was forced to look for another refuge. If she went to the empty classroom someone always came in to get something from a desk or the cupboard. They were not allowed to be in their rooms except at bed time or when they were changing for dinner or during the Sunday afternoon quiet period. She was lonely, but never alone, and she felt that in order to preserve any sense of her own identity, to continue to believe in the importance of Philippa Hunter, human being, she must find, for at least a few minutes a day, the peace of solitude. At last, when she knew ultimately and forever how the caged animals constantly stared at in the zoo must feel, she discovered the chapel.

The chapel was in the basement of the school, with the ski room, the coat rooms and the trunk rooms. It was a bare place with rough white walls and rows of folding chairs, a harmonium, and a small altar on a raised platform at one end. Every evening after dinner the girls marched from the dining room down the stairs to the basement and into the chapel where one of the teachers read the evening service. Usually Flip simply sat with the others, not listening, not hearing anything but the subdued rustlings and whisperings about her. But one evening Madame Perceval took the service, reading in her sensitive contralto voice, and Flip found herself for the first time listening to the beauty of the words: "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise. Sing unto the Lord with the harp, and the voice of a psalm ... let the hills be joyful together." And Flip could feel all about her in the night the mountains reaching gladly towards the sky; and the sound of the wind on the white peaks must be their song of praise. The others, too, as always when Madame Perceval was in charge, were quieter, not more subdued but suddenly more real; when Flip looked at them they seemed more like fellow creatures and less like alien beings to fear and hate.

After chapel that evening, when they were back in the Common Room, Flip pretended that she had left her handkerchief and slipped downstairs again to the cold basement. She was afraid of the dark but she walked slowly down the cold corridor, lit only by a dim bulb at the far end, blundering into the trunk room, filled with the huge and terrifying shapes of trunks and suitcases, before she opened the door to the chapel.

Down one wall of the chapel were windows, and through these moonlight fell, somehow changing and distorting the rows of chairs, the altar, the reading stand. Flip drew in her breath in alarm as she looked at the organ and saw someone seated at it, crouched over the keys. But it was neither a murderer lying in wait for her nor a ghost, but a shadow cast by the moon. She slipped in and sat down on one of the chairs and she was trembling, but after a while her heart began beating normally and the room looked familiar again.

She remembered when she was a small girl, before her mother died, she had had an Irish nurse who often took her into the church just around the corner from their apartment. It was a small church, full of reds and blues and golds and the smell of incense. Once her nurse had taken her to a service and Flip had been wildly elated by it, by the singing of the choir boys, the chanting of the priest, the ringing of the bells; all had conspired to give her a sense of soaring happiness. It was the same kind of happiness that she felt when she saw the moonlight on the mountain peaks, or the whole Rhône valley below her covered with clouds and she could lean out over the balcony and be surrounded by cloud, lost in cloud, with only a branch of elm appearing with shy abruptness as the mist was torn apart.

Here in the non-denominational chapel at school she felt no sense of joy; there was no overwhelming beauty here between these stark walls; but gradually she began to relax. There was no sound but the wind in the trees; she could almost forget the life of the school going on above her. She did not try to pray but she let the quiet sink into her, and when at last she rose she felt more complete; she felt that she could go upstairs and remain Philippa Hunter who was going to be an artist; and she would not be ashamed to be Philippa Hunter, no matter what the girls in her class thought of her.

At last she rose and started out of the chapel, bumping into a row of chairs with a tremendous clatter. The noise shattered her peace and she stopped stock still, her heart beating violently; but when nothing else happened, when no one came running to see who had desecrated the chapel, she walked swiftly out on tiptoe. She opened the door and came face to face in the corridor with Miss Tulip in her stiff white matron's uniform.

"Well! Philippa Hunter!"

Flip felt as though she had been caught in some hideous crime. She looked wildly around.

"Where have you been?" Miss Tulip asked.

"In the chapel—" she whispered.

"Why?" Miss Tulip snapped on her pince nez and looked at Flip as though she were some strange animal.

Flip could not raise her voice from a stifled whisper. "I wanted to—to be alone."

Miss Tulip looked at Flip more curiously than ever. "That's very nice, I'm sure, Philippa dear, but you must remember that there is a time and place for everything. You are not allowed in the chapel except during services."

"I'm sorry," Flip whispered. "I didn't know." She looked away from Miss Tulip's frizzy dark hair and down at her feet. It seemed that she had seen more of feet since she had been at school than the rest of her life put together.

"We won't say anything about it this time." Miss Tulip looked at Flip's bowed head. "Your part's not quite straight, Philippa. It slants. See that you get it right tomorrow."

"Yes, Miss Tulip."

"Now run along and join the other girls. It's nearly time for lights out."

"Yes, Miss Tulip." Flip fled from the matron and the musty dampness of the corridor.

But she knew that she would go back to the chapel.

8

The following day Art was the last class of the morning. Madame Perceval had said to the new girls, "I want you to paint me a picture. Just anything you feel like. Then I will know more what each one of you can do."

Flip was painting a picture of the way she thought it must look up on the very top of the snow-tipped mountains, all blues and lavenders and strange misshapen shadows. And there was a group of ice-children in her picture, cold and wild and beautiful. During the first Art Class they had just drawn with pencil. Now they were using water color.

Madame Perceval came over and looked at Flip's picture. She stood behind Flip, one strong hand resting lightly on her shoulder, and looked. She looked for much longer than she had looked at anyone else's picture. Flip waited, dipping her brush slowly in and out of her cup of water. Finally Madame said, "Go on and let's see what you're going to do with it." She didn't offer suggestions or corrections as she had with most of the others, and as she moved on to the next girl she pressed Flip's shoulder in a friendly fashion.

The Art Studio was on the top floor of the building. It was a long, white room with a skylight. There were several white plaster Greek heads, a white plaster hand, a foot, and a skull, and in one corner a complete skeleton which was used only by the senior girls in Advanced Art. The room smelled something like Flip's father's studio and the minute Flip stepped into it she loved it and she knew that Madame Perceval was a teacher from whom she could learn. She chewed the end of her brush and thought fiercely about her painting and her ice-children and then twirled her brush carefully over the cake of purple paint. Now she had completely forgotten the school and being laughed at and her incompetence on the playing fields and being screamed at and left out and pushed away. She was living with her ice-children in the cold and beautiful snow on top of the mountain, as silver and distant as the mountains of the moon.

She did not hear the bell and it was a shock when Madame Perceval laughed and said, "All right, Philippa. That's enough for this time," and she saw that the others had put their paints away and were hurrying towards the door.

There was almost fifteen minutes before lunch and Flip knew that she could not go to the Class Room or the Common Room without losing the happiness that the art lesson had given her and she wanted to go some place quiet where she could read again the letter from her father that had come that morning. She thought of the chapel and she thought of Miss Tulip. It's Miss Tulip or God, she said to herself, and went to the chapel.

In the daylight there were no moving shadows; everything was as white and clean as the snow on the mountain peaks. Flip sat down and read her letter, warmed by its warmth. She was once again Philippa Hunter, a person of some importance if only because she was important to her father and he had taught her to believe that every human being was a person of importance. After she had finished the letter for the third time she put it back in her blazer pocket and sat there quietly, thinking about the picture she had been painting that morning, planning new pictures, until the bell rang. Then she hurried up the stairs and got in line with the others.

Because she was the tallest girl in the class she was last in line, but Gloria twisted around from the middle of the row calling, "I say, Pill, where did you rush off to after Art?"

"Oh—nowhere," Flip said vaguely.

"Nowhere! You must have been somewhere!" Gloria cried. "Come on, Pill, where were you?"

Flip knew that Gloria would persist until she had found out; so she answered in a low voice, "in the chapel."

"The chapel!" Gloria screeched. "What were you doing in the chapel!"

"You mean you went there when you didn't have to go?" Erna asked. Flip nodded.

"What for?"

"Pill, are you nuts?"

They were all looking at her as though she were crazy and laughing at her.

—Oh, please! she thought, I can't even go to chapel to be quiet without its being something wrong.

Kaatje van Leyden one of the senior prefects responsible for keeping order, called out, "Quiet!" and the girls subsided.

But she knew that that would not be the end of it.

Gloria said one morning as they were making their beds and Erna and Jackie had not yet come up from breakfast, "I say, Philippa, you don't mind my saying something, do you, ducky?"

"What?" Flip asked starkly.

"I mean because of us both being new girls and everything, I thought I ought to tell you."

"What?" Flip asked again.

"Well, Pill, if I were you I wouldn't keep running off to chapel, that's all."

Flip smoothed out her bottom sheet and tucked it in. "Why not?"

"The kids think it's sort of funny."

"I know they do." Flip pulled up her blankets and straightened them out.

"How do you know?" Gloria asked.

Flip's voice was tight. "I'm not deaf. Anyhow I heard you laughing in the Common Room with them about it."

"I never did."

"I heard you."

"You eavesdropped."

"I didn't. I walked into the Common Room and I couldn't help hearing. Anyhow, I don't go running off to the chapel. I just go there once in a while. There's nothing wrong with that."

"You know, Pill," Gloria said, cocking her head and looking at Flip curiously, "somehow I never thought of you as being particularly pious."

Flip looked startled. "I don't think I am. I mean, I never thought about it."

"Then what do you go running off to the chapel for? Don't you go there to pray or something?"

"No," Flip said. "At least I usually do say a prayer or something because if I go there I think it's only courteous to God. But I really go there to be alone."

"To be alone?"

"Yes. There isn't any other place to go."

"What do you want to be alone for?" Gloria asked.

"I just do," Flip said. "If you don't know why I can't explain it to you, Gloria."

"You're a funny kid, Pill," Gloria said. "You'd be all right if you just gave yourself a chance."

Jackie and Erna came in then and Gloria turned back to making her bed.

9

Jackie pulled Flip aside one evening after chapel. They waited until everyone had gone into the Common Room; then Jackie pulled Flip into the dining room. The maids had finished clearing away and the tables were already set for breakfast the next morning. Jackie seemed embarrassed and unhappy.

"Philippa, I want to say something to you." They stood under the long box of napkin racks, each little cubby hole marked with the inevitable number. Flip stared at Jackie and waited. Jackie looked away, looked up, over Flip's head, over the napkin racks, up to the ceiling. "I want to apologise to you."

"What for?" Flip asked.

"My mother said I should apologise to you," Jackie said rapidly, still looking up at the ceiling, her hands plunged deep into the pockets of her blue blazer, "about our laughing about your going to the chapel. I always write my mother everything and I wrote her about our thinking it was funny and laughing and she wrote back and said who am I of all people to laugh. She said if you got down on the floor in the middle of the Common Room and bowed towards Mecca I should honor and respect your form of worship."

"Oh," Flip said. She felt that she ought to try to explain to Jackie that it really wasn't a burning question of religion that led her to brave Miss Tulip's annoyance and go to the chapel but she was afraid that Jackie would not understand and might even be angry.

Jackie had finished her uncomfortable quoting from her mother's letter and she looked down at her feet. "So I do apologise," she said. "I'm very sorry, Pill."

"That's all right," Flip answered, embarrassed, but making an effort to sound friendly.

Jackie heaved a sigh of relief. "Well, I've got to go now," she almost shouted. "The others are waiting for me." She tore off and Flip was left standing under the napkin racks.

10

Saturday afternoons they had free time. Most of the girls clustered in the Common Room, talking, shrieking, laughing, playing records. Flip stood by the balcony window thinking that she had been at the school only a few weeks and yet it seemed as though she had been there forever. She felt in her pocket for her father's latest letter that she had already read several times in the peace of the chapel. When she read his letters, those wonderful wonderful letters, full of little anecdotes and sketches, she would look at the drawings of forlorn waifs, ragged and starving, and feel ashamed of her own misery which for the moment at any rate seemed completely unjustified. She had had a letter that morning from Mrs. Jackman, too, written on heavy expensive paper saying that she hoped that Flip had settled down and was happy, and signed, affectionately, Eunice. Flip had read it in the hall by the mail boxes, torn it up and thrown it in the trash basket.

"I love you—u—u—" the phonograph wailed.

"And then he said to me, 'your legs are fascinating'," Esmée was saying.

"He was the most divine boy," she heard Sally saying, "until I heard he had a whole set of false teeth and a toupee."

"During the holidays," Gloria screeched, "I smoke at least a pack of Players a day."

Flip turned away from the window, slipped out of the Common Room, tiptoed through the big lounge, and slipped out the side door when the teacher on duty was busy talking to someone. The air was crisp and a light wind was blowing. She took deep breaths of it and walked swiftly, exulting in the unaccustomed freedom. She climbed the hill behind the school, knowing that as she got into the pine trees clustered thickly up the mountainside she would be safe from detection. She ran until she was panting and her weak knee ached, but soon the trees got thicker and thicker and she dropped down onto the fragrant rusty carpet of fallen pine needles. As soon as she had regained her breath she walked on a little further, rubbing her fingers lovingly over the rough, resiny trunks of the pines. She felt free and happy for the first time since she had been at school. The air was full of piney perfume; the needles were soft and gently slippery under her feet; high above her head she could see the blue sky shining in chinks and patches through the trees; and the sun sifted down to her in long golden shafts like the light in a church. She lay down on her back on the pine needles and looked up and up and it seemed that the trees pierced the sky. Oh, trees, oh, sky, oh, sun, something in her sang. Oh, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And she was happy.

After a while she stood up and brushed and shook the pine needles off her uniform and climbed still further. There was a small clearing where the railroad track cut through on its zigzag way up the mountain. She crossed the track and climbed higher. She did not know where the school bounds ended and forbidden territory began; she had forgotten that there was such a thing as a boundary line, and she kept on pushing up, up the mountain.

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, rushing in her direction with the most hideous baying she had ever heard, bounded a wild beast. Her heart leaped in terror, beating frantically against her chest, then seemed to stop entirely, before she realized that the beast was Ariel.

"Ariel!" she cried. "Oh, Ariel!" as the bulldog knocked her down in the ecstasy of his greeting. "Ariel, please!" The dog began bounding about her, barking wildly, and she lay quietly on the fallen pine needles until he stopped and stood at her feet, sniffing her anxiously.

"Where's Paul?" she asked, and she was amazingly pleased to see the dog's hideous face with the drooling, undershot jaw.

Ariel barked.

Flip sat up; then, as Ariel waited quietly, she stood up, and looked around, but she could see no sign of the boy she had met down by the lake on the morning of the day she came to school.

"Paul!" she called, but there was no answer except from Ariel, who barked again, caught hold of her skirt, released it, bounded up the mountain, then came back and took her skirt in his teeth again.

"But I can't go with you, Ariel," she said. "I have to go back to school."

Ariel barked and tried again to lure her up the mountain.

"I have to go, Ariel," she told him. "I'm sure I'm out of bounds or something, being here. I have to go back to school." Then she laughed at the serious way in which she had been trying to explain to the bulldog, turned away from him, and started back down the mountain. But Ariel pranced along beside her, always trying to head her back up the mountain, catching hold of her skirt or the hem of her coat, tugging and pulling, gently, but persistently.

"Ariel, you can't come back to school with me, you just can't!" Flip tried to push the dog away but he barked, reached up, and caught hold of the cuff of her sleeve.

"Oh, Ariel!" she cried, half exasperated, half pleased because she knew the dog was going to win. "All right!"

And she turned around and headed back up the mountain.

Ariel bounded ahead of her, running on a few yards, then doubling back to make sure she was following. Soon she saw grey slate roof-tops through the trees and as Ariel led her closer she saw that the roof-tops belonged to a chateau. When the trees cleared and Ariel began to crash through the heavy undergrowth she realized that the chateau was old and deserted, for the shutters hung crazily by their hinges; some of the windows were boarded up; and at others the boards had come off and the glass was broken and jagged. Grass and weeds grew wild and high and late autumn flowers bloomed in undisciplined profusion. Birds flew in and out of the broken windows and as she pushed through the weeds they began calling to each other, screaming, someone is coming! Someone is coming!

Her heart beating with excitement Flip pressed forward, following Ariel, who suddenly leaped ahead of her, bounded across the remaining distance to the chateau, and disappeared. Flip pushed after him, calling, "Ariel! Ariel! Wait!" but there was no sound, no sign of life about the chateau except for the birds and the banging of a shutter against the gray stones. She crossed what had once been a flag-stoned terrace to a row of shuttered French windows. One of the shutters was open and hung by one hinge, and all the glass in the window was gone. It was through this opening that Ariel had disappeared. Flip peered in but could see nothing through the obscurity inside.

"Ariel!" she called, then "Paul! Paul!" There was no answer and her words came faintly echoing back to her. "Ariel! Paul! Paul!"

At last she turned and started back to school.

CHAPTER TWO

The Page and the Unicorn

She studied French verbs in study hall that night, but because of her afternoon's adventure school seemed different and she seemed different, and even while she was dutifully memorizing a difficult subjunctive she was thinking about the chateau and about Ariel and Paul, and when she thought about them her heart would lift suddenly and begin to beat rapidly inside her chest so that it seemed like one of the wild excited birds flying in and out of the broken windows of the chateau. She sat at her desk and said, "Please, God, let me see Paul again. Please. Please let me see Paul again."

That night she and Gloria were already in bed, and she was lying there thinking that the next time she could escape from the school she would go back and look for Ariel and Paul again, when Erna and Jackie came in from the lavatory in their pajamas and bathrobes. Gloria was staring critically at Flip's cotton underthings folded over her chair at the foot of her bed.

"I can't stand anything but silk next to my skin," Gloria said. "Mummy's always dressed me in silk. She says she's going to send me some new silk undies from Paris."

"You and Wagner," Flip said. Jackie laughed.

Erna was tapping her foot on the floor impatiently. "Hey, we just remembered," she broke in. "You're new girls and we haven't initiated you yet."

"Oh, Erna," Gloria groaned. "Do we have to be initiated?"

Erna pulled off her barette, pulled her hair back more tightly, and clasped the barette again as she always did when she felt important. "Well, you don't have to be, but it just means we can't accept you if you aren't. You want to be accepted, don't you?"

"Oh, okay," Gloria said. "I suppose we'll survive. Go ahead."

"Do you want to be accepted, Pill?" Erna asked.

Flip answered in a low voice. "Yes."

"Okay. I'll continue. Oh, first you'd better get out of bed and sit on your chairs, please."

Obediently Flip and Gloria sat on the chairs at the foot of their beds. Erna nodded in satisfaction. She stood, hands on hips, looking at them, while Jackie lounged more comfortably on her bed.

"Do you promise to keep our dormitory secrets till the death?" Erna asked.

Flip and Gloria nodded.

"And to do anything we tell you to do during the period of probation?"

Flip and Gloria nodded again.

"Good. Now we want to ask you a couple of questions."

Jackie took over. She sat up, her feet half in and half out of her crimson woolly slippers, dangling over the foot of the bed, and pointed at Gloria. "Who do you like most in the school?"

"You and Erna," Gloria answered promptly.

"I told you she'd say that." Erna nodded at Jackie.

Jackie pointed at Flip. "And you?"

"Madame Perceval."

"Percy? Well, she'll do all right." Jackie kicked one slipper onto the floor and pointed at Gloria. "Where were you born?"

"London."

"Where?"

"London."

"Where?" Erna asked.

"London."

And Jackie asked again, "Where?"

"Oh, Brazil where the nuts come from," Gloria cried in exasperation.

"Where did you say you were born?" Erna asked.

"I've told you three times," Gloria muttered.

"You seem sort of confused." Jackie kicked off the other slipper.

Erna tightened her bathrobe belt. Miss Tulip had taken her over to Lausanne that morning and the gold braces on her teeth had been tightened; her teeth hurt and her voice sounded cross. "If you don't know where you were born we certainly can't accept you. Where were you born?"

"London," Gloria mumbled sulkily.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"It wasn't Brazil?"

"No."

"Why did you say it was Brazil?"

"I don't know."

"You mean you say things and you don't know why you say them?"

"No."

"But that's what you just said."

Gloria wailed, "You're trying to confuse me."

Erna put her hands in the pockets of her bath robe and smiled tolerantly. "Why should we try to confuse you? We're just trying to find out whether or not you're sure where you were born."

"Of course I'm sure."

"Where was it?"

"London."

"All right. We'll let it go this once. But we can't have people in our room saying things without knowing why they say them. So be careful." She turned to Flip. "Okay, Pill. Where were you born?"

"Goshen, Connecticut." Warned by Gloria, Flip answered firmly while Erna and Jackie asked her seven or eight times.

Jackie slipped over the foot of the bed and pushed her feet back into her slippers. She smiled ravishingly at Flip and Gloria. "Well," she told them, "I think you've passed the preliminary examination."

Gloria stood up and stretched. "What's next?"

"You each have to prove yourself."

"How?"

"By some courageous deed. If it's good enough then you can help with the initiation Saturday afternoon."

"The initiation?" Gloria asked suspiciously.

Erna grinned in anticipation and the light flashed on the gold braces on her teeth. "Oh, the big general initiation. All the old girls in our class are going to initiate the new girls who haven't done a magnificent enough deed by Saturday lunch. It was my idea."

Saturday afternoon, Flip thought. That was when I was planning to go look for Paul and Ariel. Well, maybe I can go tomorrow after Quiet Hour though it doesn't give me too much time. I do want to see Paul again. He was nice to me by the lake and I don't think he disliked me. Going off to see Paul would be quite a Deed only I can't tell anyone.

Gloria was smiling a secret pleased smile to herself.

"What's the joke?" Jackie asked, always eager for something to laugh at.

Gloria twined her arms about her ginger colored head and tried to look mysterious. "I was thinking of a Deed."

The door opened and Miss Tulip burst in. "Girls! The Light Bell rang five minutes ago. Just because I wasn't able to get here sooner is no reason for you to be out of bed. Get in at once. Do you all want Deportment marks?"

"We didn't hear the bell, Miss Tulip," they chorussed, making a mad scramble for their beds.

The matron waited until they were lying down and the covers drawn up; then she switched off the light. "Now I don't want to hear another sound from this room or I'll have to report you to Mlle. Dragonet. Good night." And the door clicked shut behind her.

2

Every morning before classes, Call Over was held. All the students gathered in the Assembly Hall and one of the teachers called the roll. On Saturday and Sunday mornings Call Over was held as usual, although it was not followed by lessons. On Saturdays the girls trooped into the Common Room for sewing, and on Sundays they remained in formation and marched from the Assembly Hall down to the chapel.

The morning after Erna's and Jackie's inquisition, Gloria did her Courageous Deed during Call Over. Fräulein Hauser, the gym teacher, was calling the roll. She was considered one of the strictest of all the teachers (though not so strict nor so quickly obeyed as Madame Perceval) and when it was her turn to take Call Over the girls stayed very quietly in their lines, answering smartly as their names were called. It wasn't long, then, this Sunday morning before Flip and most of the girls in her class, and the classes standing near, noticed that Gloria, with an expression of unconcerned innocence, was chewing something. Chewing gum was strictly forbidden and although the girls frequently smuggled it in, none of them would have dared chew openly in the presence of a teacher.

"Anne Badeneaux," Fräulein Hauser was saying, "Moire Beresford, Anastasia Bechman, Hanni Bechman, Lischen Bechman, Jacqueline Bernstein, Esmée Bodet, Ingeborg Brandes, Dorothy Brown, Gloria Browne...." As Gloria answered to her name Fräulein Hauser looked at her sharply. "Gloria Browne," she said.

Gloria, still chewing, answered meekly. "Yes, Fräulein Hauser?"

"You know chewing gum is forbidden?"

"Oh, yes, Fräulein Hauser."

Fräulein Hauser held out her hand. "Come here."

Gloria detached herself from the lines of girls and went up to the platform. "Yes, Fräulein Hauser?"

Fräulein Hauser kept her hand outstretched. "Spit," she said.

Gloria spat, and there in Fräulein Hauser's upturned palm lay a gold plate attached to which were Gloria's four front teeth. Gloria turned around and smiled a brilliant, toothless smile at the assembly.

Fräulein Hauser said icily, "Get back into line. You may report to me immediately after chapel."

"Yef, Fäulein Haufer. May I haf my teef, pleef, Fäulein Haufer?" Gloria lisped. Fräulein Hauser handed her the teeth and Gloria resumed her place in line.

Throughout the entire school shoulders were shaking in ill-suppressed laughter. Erna let out one snort and turned almost purple in her effort to keep the rest of her rapture inside. Tears of mirth were streaming down Jackie's face, and even Flip felt an ache of laughter in her chest. Fräulein Hauser looked at the Assembly coldly. She clapped her hands and the sound cut sharply across their laughter. "Silence!" she hissed, and her face was pale with anger. "Silence!" She stared wrathfully at the girls until their amusement was somewhat controlled. Then she went on with the roll. "Cornelli Bruch, Margaret Campbell, Elizabeth Campbell, Maria Colantuono, Bianca Colantuono, Goia Colantuono, Jeanne-Marie Crougier...."

3

After Call Over they marched down to the chapel where the English chaplain from Territet gave them a sermon, and after chapel Gloria was haled off by Fräulein Hauser and they did not see her until they met in the dining room for Sunday dinner. Gloria stood, looking bloody but unbowed, behind her chair as they waited for Mlle. Dragonet to say grace.

Grace ended, Mlle. Dragonet pulled out her chair, and then all the other chairs in the big dining room scraped across the floor with a sound of ocean waves. Tables were changed weekly but the girls were seated according to classes and the whole of dormitory 33 this week was together, with Solvei Krogstad and Sally Buckman. Miss Armstrong, the science teacher, was at their table for that week, but she had gone down to Montreux to have lunch with a friend who was passing through.

"Thank goodness Balmy Almy's not here!" Erna cried joyfully. "What did old Hauser do to you, Gloria?"

And Jackie was squeaking simultaneously, "How did you do it, Gloria? How did you do it? Tell us quick!"

Gloria clicked her tongue around inside her mouth and suddenly she was grinning with the four front teeth outside her lips. It was a macabre and horrible grimace. Another click and they were back in place.

"You stinker, why didn't you tell us before?" Sally asked, pushing her fingers against the flat little nose that made her look so much like a pug dog.

"I was saving it," Gloria said. "It's my Deed so I can help with the initiation. Will it do?"

"Okay with me." Sally nodded violently.

"What happened to your teeth anyhow?" Erna asked.

"I lost 'em in the blitz. We got bombed out the night before Mummy was going to take me to the country." Gloria rubbed the tip of her tongue over her teeth. "I don't know how I ever used to put up with my own teeth. These are ever so much more useful."

"Daddy sent me back to America before the blitz," Sally said enviously. "I was in Detroit the whole time."

"Alphabet soup!" Gloria cried as plates were put in front of them. "The last letter left in the soup is the initial of the man you're going to marry. Mine is always X. Imagine marrying a man whose name begins with an X! At the last school I was at there was a girl who lost an eye in the blitz, and she had a glass eye she used to take out whenever she got in a row; she'd hold it in her hand and the mistress could never go on rowing her properly. But I think she used to carry it too far. One day at dinner the mistress at the table was rowing her about something and she took her eye out and put it in her glass of water. Now I call that too much. She was heaps of fun, though. She got kicked out the same time I did."

"You got expelled!" Jackie exclaimed. "Ooh, what did you do, Glo?"

"Well, Pam—this girl—and I sneaked out of school one Saturday afternoon and went into town to meet Pam's brothers and of course one of the mistresses saw us and we got bounced. We didn't care, though. It was a beastly school, not half as nice as this one."

"But weren't your parents upset?" Jackie asked.

"Who, Mummy and Daddy? They didn't care. There was only a couple of weeks till the summer hols and they'd have had me on their hands soon enough anyhow and this gave them a good excuse to send me off to stay with some people in Wales for the whole summer. I say, let's play Truth and Consequences, seeing Balmy Almy isn't here."

Erna, Jackie, and Sally agreed vociferously. Flip looked across at Solvei and watched her quietly eating her potatoes. She liked the Norwegian girl who was the Class President and who seemed able to assume responsibility without putting on any airs. Now Solvei said, "Let's wait till after lunch. Black and Midnight's been cocking an ear over here and looking disapproving, and you know how she hates games at the table."

Gloria stuck out her lower lip. "That old minge. Always poking her nose in other people's businesses. Why can't she leave us alone?"

"She has a special 'down' on our class," Sally said. "And she says the middle school's more trouble than the lower and upper schools together. What a dreep. Oh, my golly, will you look! Suet pudding again. You can feel every bite of that stuff hit the soles of your feet five seconds after you've swallowed it. I'd like a good American banana split."

"Here it is dessert," Gloria wagged a finger at Flip, "And Pill hasn't said a single word since we sat down. What's the matter, Pill? Cat got your tongue?"

"No," Flip answered, blushing.

"I don't think I've ever heard Pill say anything." Sally grinned at Flip, but somehow there seemed to be nothing pleasant about the grin. "Can you talk, Pill?"

"Yes," Flip said.

"Well, say something, then."

"There isn't—I don't—I haven't anything to say," Flip stumbled.

"Don't we inspire conversation?" Sally asked. "A lot you must think of us. Does she ever talk in the room?"

Erna was gobbling her suet pudding. "She sometimes answers if you ask her a question, if you insist. Yes, or no. That's all."

"What do you do when you go out on a date, Pill?" Sally asked. "Or don't you ever go on dates? Hi! kids, what kind of a line do you think Pill uses on a boy?"

Flip said nothing.

"Well, what kind of a line do you use, Pill?" Sally persisted. "Maybe you could teach us something. Well, for john's sake say something, can't you!"

"Oh, do leave her alone," Solvei said impatiently. "If she hasn't anything to say she hasn't anything to say."

"But how can someone not have something to say!" Gloria exclaimed incredulously. "There's always something to say. Any time I can't talk I'll be dead."

"Well, maybe Pill's dead," Sally suggested. "How about it, Pill. Are you dead?"

"No," Flip said.

Solvei interfered again in her behalf, but Flip felt that it was only from a sense of duty, that privately Solvei considered her just as much of a 'pill' as the rest of the girls did. "Madame Perceval says your father's an artist, Philippa."

Flip nodded, then said, "Yes. He is."

"How'd Percy know? Did you tell her?" Erna asked.

Flip shook her head. "No."

"Oh, Percy always knows everything about everybody," Jackie said with admiration. "I don't know how she does it. And you can't ever get away with anything with Percy but you never mind how strict she is. Sometimes I think I love Percy almost as much as my mother."

"You have a crush on her," Sally said.

Jackie looked at the grey lump of suet pudding remaining on her plate and turned up her nose in disgust. "I merely have a great admiration for her."

"Oh, for john's sake, Jackie, I was just kidding. Can't you take a joke? Let's change the subject. Tell us a story, Glo. Have you heard any good ones lately?"

"Well, Esmée told me one yesterday," Gloria started.

Solvei broke in, "Not at the table. Save it for the Common Room if you feel you have to tell it."

Flip looked at Solvei in gratitude. Mlle. Dragonet at the head table stood up before Gloria could retort; all the chairs in the dining room were scraped back and the girls filed out.

4

On Sunday afternoons all the girls were supposed to spend a rest period in their rooms, but after the rest period there would be two hours when Flip could try to escape and go back to the deserted chateau. She sat curled up on her bed with the dog-eared calendar she carried around with her in her blazer pocket and looked at the small block of days that was marked off and then at all the days and days that stretched out to be lived through somehow before the Christmas holidays and her father would finally come. Sometimes she was afraid that the Christmas holidays would never be reached. She knew already that the one certain thing in an uncertain world was that time always passed; but as day followed day, each one exactly like the other, she felt that nothing, not even time, could put an end to their unbearable monotony.

—Oh, please God, please, God, make Christmas come quickly, Flip prayed, her hand still moving softly over her dog-eared calendar; and because time did not wheel faster in its vast circle for her she became filled with despair and homesickness and bitterness at her misery and she shoved the book she had brought up with her off the bed so that it fell on the floor with a thud. Across the room Gloria yawned noisily over her required weekly letter to her mother; Erna and Jackie, as usual, were whispering and giggling together. "They're so childish," Esmée was always saying to Gloria, but she was careful to keep on good terms with Jackie because Jackie's father was a movie director.

Flip leaned over and picked up her book, smoothing out its pages in swift apology, and waited for the bell.

5

She hurried out of the room after Quiet Hour, got her coat from the Cloak Room, and started up the mountain. She knew that the others would think she had gone to the chapel. She ran almost until she stood at the edge of the forest where the trees thinned out and mingled with the underbrush that surrounded the chateau, and there was the chateau as it had been the day before, cold and beautiful and deserted. She stood looking at the grey stones and at the birds, her heart thumping; but no Ariel came rushing towards her to knock her down with his greeting, and after a moment she began pushing her way to the chateau, jumping like a startled woods animal each time a twig snapped or the wind moved in the high grasses. Just as she had almost neared the decaying walls of the building she heard a low whine and there was Ariel standing in the shadow of a shutter that hung drunkenly. The shadow seemed to move and she saw that Paul was there, too, holding Ariel by the collar.

"Paul!" she called softly.

For a moment she thought Paul was going to go back into the chateau; then he stepped out of the shadow of the shutter and held out his hand in greeting.

"Oh," he said. "It's you."

She took his hand. "Who else would it be?"

"There are a great many girls in your school, aren't there? And you might be any of them."

"I'm not any of them," she said. "I'm me."

"How did you get here?" he asked, still holding back Ariel who was trying to leap at Flip. "How did you find me?"

Flip retreated a little because it did not seem to her that he really was glad that she had come. "I didn't find you," she said. "Ariel found me. I went for a walk yesterday afternoon and he found me and made me come to the chateau."

"And you came back today," Paul said.

There was neither welcome nor rebuff in his voice but Flip felt that she had been rejected and she said haughtily, "I'm sorry I'm not welcome. I'll leave at once."

"No, please!" Paul cried. "I said I was glad it was you. I was afraid it was someone I didn't know. I came here to be alone and I didn't want just anybody coming around."

Flip said swiftly, "If you wanted to be alone I won't stay, then. I know how it is to need to be alone. I need to be alone, too."

Paul reached out for her hand again. "No, don't go, it's good to see you. I know I sounded inhospitable, but come and sit down." Still holding her firmly by the hand he led her across the terrace to a marble bench half hidden by weeds. "Now," he said, sitting down beside her. "Do you like your school?"

She shook her head. "No. I hate it."

"And you really have to stay? You can't ask your father to take you away?"

"No." She looked down at Paul's hand beside her on the bench. It still held a warm tan from summer, and his fingers were very long and thin and at the same time gave an appearance of great strength. They were blunt at the tips, the nails square and clean. "I couldn't be with father while he's traveling about," she said, "and I had to be somewhere and Eunice suggested this school. Father always seems to do what Eunice suggests about me...."

Her voice trailed off. Paul saw that she was looking at his hand on the bench between them and for a second his fingers twitched the way she had noticed someone's foot would do if you stared at it long enough in a subway or bus or even in the classroom at school. Then he reached down and fondled Ariel.

"Ariel is a beautiful dog," she said politely. "Where did you get him?"

"I found him in the street. He had been hit by a car and left there and his leg was broken. I set it myself and took care of him and now he is fine, he doesn't even limp, and when I showed him to Dr. Bejart—a friend of mine—he said he was a very fine dog."

"But that's wonderful!" Flip cried, gazing admiringly at Ariel. "How did you know about setting a leg?"

Paul looked pleased at her praise. "I intend to be a doctor. A surgeon. Of course I must go to college and medical school and everything first. Right now I don't go to school at all. I am trying to study by myself and my father is helping me but of course I know I must go back to school sooner or later. I think that it will be later." A shadow swept over his face and it seemed to Flip as though the day had suddenly darkened.

She looked up startled and indeed the sun had dropped behind the mountain. She rose. "I have to go. I didn't realize it was so late. If I don't get back quickly they'll miss me."

Paul stood up, too. "Do go, then," he said. "If you're caught they wouldn't let you come back, would they? Will you come back?"

"Do you want me to?" Flip asked.

"Yes. When will you come?"

"I could come next Sunday. But are you sure you want me to? You don't want to be alone?"

"I can be alone all week," Paul said. "Come Sunday, then, Philippa."

She started away but turned back and said tentatively, "At home I'm called Flip ..." and waited.

But Paul did not laugh as the girls at school had done. Instead he said, "Good-bye, Flip."

"Good-bye," she said, and started up the mountain.

6

When she got back to school they had noticed her long absence. Gloria turned from the group by the phonograph and demanded, "Where've you been, Pill?"

"Oh—out for a walk," Flip answered vaguely.

"Out for a walk my aunt Fanny," Esmée Bodet said. "You've probably been mooning down in that chapel again. I think it's sacrilegious."

"Or maybe she was out on a date," Sally suggested. "I bet she was. That would be just like our Pill, wouldn't it, kids? Were you out on a date, Pill?"

"I have to wash my hands before dinner," Flip said; and as she started up the stairs she thought—maybe you'd call it a date at that, Sally!

And she grinned as she turned down the corridor.

By the next Saturday all of the five other new girls in Flip's class had done Deeds. Two of them had made all the seniors Pie beds. One had wangled a big box of chocolates into the Common Room with the help of a cousin who lived in Montreux. Only Flip had done nothing.

Gloria tried to help her. "Maybe you could put salt in Balmy Almy's tea. I have it! You could fill all the sugar bowls with salt!"

Flip shook her head. "Where would I get the salt?"

"Well, let's think of something else, then," Gloria said. "You don't know, Pill! That initiation's going to be something terrific! Maybe you could trip the Dragon up when she comes into Assembly. You're on the end of the line."

Flip shook her head again.

"Well, whatever you do," Gloria warned, "don't do anything like making a pie bed or a booby trap for anyone in our class. They wouldn't like that."

"I won't," Flip assured her. "But I can't think of a Deed, Gloria. I've tried and tried, but I just can't seem to think of anything."—If only I could produce Paul and Ariel, she thought.—That would bowl them over all right.

"I thought you were supposed to have such a good imagination," Gloria said. "I've done everything I can to help you, ducky, so there's nothing else for it. You'll just have to be initiated."

"I expect I'll have to," Flip agreed mournfully and with trepidation.

"I'll do what I can to keep it from being too awful," Gloria promised her magnanimously.

But she was, as Flip had known she would be, one of the most violent of the initiators.

The entire class met after lunch behind the playing fields. It was almost out of sight of the school there; only the highest turrets could be seen rising out of the trees. Erna, Jackie, and Gloria had Flip in tow.

"Don't be scared," Jackie whispered comfortingly. "It's only fun."

"I'm not scared." Flip was vehement. Even if she knew she was a coward she did not want anyone else to know.

It was a grey day with little tendrils of fog curled here and there about the trees. The tips of the mountains were obscured in clouds that looked heavy and soft and like snow clouds. Erna said it was too early for snow as far down the mountain as Jaman, though there might possibly be some in Gstaad, a town further up, where the annual Ski Meet was held. Behind the playing fields was the most desolate spot around the school. It was rocky ground with little life; the grass was neither long nor short; just ragged and untidy and a dull rust brown in color. The only tree was dead, with one lone branch left sticking out so that it looked like a gibbet. Most of the girls clustered about the tree. Flip heard one of them asking, "What do we do?"

"Well, we put Pill through the mill, first," Erna said. "Come on, peoples. Line up." She shoved and pushed at the girls until they got into line, their legs apart, then she gave Flip a not unfriendly shove. "Through the mill."

Flip bent down, held her breath, and started. With her long legs she practically had to crawl on her hands and knees as she pushed through the tunnel of legs, and her progress was slow and her bottom smarting from the slaps. She gritted her teeth and pressed on until she passed between Erna's legs at the head of the line. Erna gave her a resounding smack.

"Good for Philippa," Solvei said. "She didn't yell once."

"She has tears in her eyes," Gloria shouted.

"I have not," Flip denied.

"What are they if they aren't tears?" Esmée Bodet asked.

"It's the wind," Flip said.

"Are you ticklish?" Esmée asked.

"Yes."

Esmée rushed at her and started tickling her.

"Stop! Oh, please stop!" Flip cried.

Esmée tickled even harder and Flip fell to the ground, laughing and gasping hysterically while all the girls shouted with amusement. But although Flip was laughing it was the laughter of torture and she cried out whenever she could catch her breath, "stop, oh, stop—" She laughed and laughed until she could scarcely breathe and tears were streaming down her face.

Finally Erna said, "For heaven's sake stop, Esmée. You've done enough."

Esmée stood up while Flip lay prostrate on the ground, gasping and trying to get her breath back. She felt that now she knew what it must be like for a fish when the fisherman decides it isn't good enough and finally throws it back into the sea.

"Get up," Erna said.

Flip rolled over weakly.

"Come on. Stand up. You've got to prove yourself if you want to pass the initiation."

Flip staggered to her feet.

"All right," Erna said in a business like manner. "Now the inoculation. All the new girls have to be inoculated, not just you, Pill. Did you get the matches, Jack?"

Jackie nodded vigorously, so that her black curls bounced up and down. "Yes, but I only got six, one for each of them. No extras in case of emergencies. Mathilde was in a bad mood and told me to get out of the kitchen or she'd tell Black and Midnight. She acted awfully suspicious. She wanted to know what I wanted with the matches and I told her Balmy Almy wanted them for the Bunsen Burners in the lab, but it didn't seem to satisfy her."

Sally Buckman gave one of the hoarse snorts that made her sound as much like a pug as she looked. "I bet she thought you were going off to smoke. Old stinker. If we could get cigarettes we could get matches."

"What're you going to do with the matches?" One of the new girls asked Erna.

"I told you. Innoculate you."

Jackie embroidered. "You might catch all kinds of dreadful things if you didn't get innoculated. Erna, have you got the antiseptic?"

"Right here." Erna pulled an old tube of tooth paste out of her blazer pocket. Jackie turned up the hem of her skirt and removed a needle which she handed solemnly to Erna.

"Hold out your arm, Gloria," Erna said. "You'd better take off your blazer first."

Gloria's freckled face had turned a little pale, but she rolled up her sleeve gamely and held out her arm. Erna smeared on a little of the toothpaste.

"Now." Erna waved the match. "I'll sterilize the needle." She struck the match on the sole of her shoe ("I know a boy who can strike a match on his teeth," Gloria said) and held the needle in the flame until the point became red. Then she let it cool, brandishing it in the air until the red point disappeared and there was only the black left from the carbon. Gloria turned her head away.

"It's not so bad, Glo," Jackie reassured her. "Erna's going to be a doctor so she knows what she's doing."

Erna gave a quick, professional jab, squeezed, and a round drop of blood appeared on Gloria's arm. Gloria gave a little scream and tears came to her eyes.

"There!" Erna cried. "Now you're all immune. And it's beautiful blood. Look, peoples. Look, Gloria."

But Gloria hated the sight of blood. She glanced quickly at her arm and the small red bead, then turned away. "I have a dress that color," she said in a shaky voice.

"Next," Erna said briskly. "Come on, you, Bianca Colantuono."

One by one the new girls were innoculated until it came to Flip's turn. Then Gloria, completely recovered, cried, "Oh, let me do Pill."

Erna hesitated a moment, then said, "Well, all right, if you want to. But be careful," and handed her the needle and the match.

Flip bared her arm. Gloria struck the match but it flickered and went out.

"Oh, Glory, you sap!" Sally cried.

"I told you to be careful," Erna said, rubbing toothpaste on Flip's outstretched arm.

Jackie's face puckered into a frown. "There isn't another match. Now what should we do?"

Esmée Bodet shrugged and ran her fingers through the reddish hair she wore in a glamorous long bob. "Do it without sterilizing the needle, that's all."

Jackie hesitated. "Maybe it isn't safe. Maybe we'd better do Pill another time."

"I sterilized it good and thorough for the others," Erna said. "It ought to be all right."

"Oh, sure it's all right," Sally cried. "Go on, Gloria."

Flip turned her head away as Gloria took her arm and jabbed at it gingerly with the needle, exclaiming with chagrined surprise, "It didn't go in."

"Try it again," Esmée urged.

Gloria jabbed again. "Oh, blow."

Erna took the needle from her. "Here, stupid. Let me do it."

"Wait a minute Erna. She's had enough," Solvei said.

"No, she has to be properly innoculated," Erna insisted. She took the needle and punched. This time she didn't have to squeeze to draw blood. "I did it kind of hard but it's very good blood, Pill," she said.

"The worst is over," Jackie promised. "You only have one more ordeal to go through."

"So, peoples," Erna said to the other new girls. "You're all through now. All we have to do is finish Pill up and then we'd better get back to the Common Room or someone'll be out to look for us."

"What do we do to Pill now?" they cried.

"We blindfold her and tie her to the tree," Jackie said.

"And gag her, too, don't forget," Gloria added.

"Come on, Pill, over by the tree." Erna gave her a boisterous shove.

Flip looked at the tree and it seemed more like a gibbet than ever, sticking up starkly out of the tall grasses. She remembered reading in a book once about the way you used to see gibbets along the desolate highways in England long ago; and as you drove along you would sometimes see a dead highwayman, black and awful, strung up on one of the gibbets, as a warning to thieves and murderers. She felt that this tree against which she was being forced to stand was like one of those old gallows, and for a shuddering moment her imagination told her it might have been used for that very purpose.

—But no, she reassured herself.—It's only a dead tree and there aren't any lonely highways nearby, only a big school that used once to be a hotel.

"Anything you'd like to say before we gag you?" Erna asked.

Flip shook her head and Sally cried, "Oh, Pill never has anything to say."

Erna tied one handkerchief about Flip's mouth, another about her eyes, and with a rope made of a number of brown woolen stockings knotted together, secured her to the tree. Gloria and most of the English and American girls danced around the tree singing what to Flip was an appalling and fearful song:

Did you ever think when a hearse goes by
That one of these days you are going to die?

The French girls were singing a dreadful song about a corpse being dissected: Dans un amphitheâtre il y avait un macaber ... while Erna and the rest of the girls were for some unexplained reason singing the school song.

When Gloria stopped singing she shouted, "I say, I'm tired of this. Let's go back to school and play ping pong."

"How long should we leave Pill?" Jackie asked.

Erna considered. "Well, let's see."

"Not too long," Solvei put in on Flip's behalf. "She did awfully well during the initiation."

Behind her blindfold and gag Flip felt a glow of pride because she could hear from Solvei's voice that this time she really meant what she was saying.

"Well, fifteen minutes, then," Erna said.

"Fifteen minutes! What are you talking about!" Esmée Bodet cried. "An hour at least."

"Well, half an hour, then," Jackie compromised.

"You're getting off easy, Pill," Gloria told the blind and dumb Flip. "Come on, kiddos. Let's play ping and relax. Me first."

"Second!" "Third!" "Fourth!" came the cries. And, "We can come get Pill in half an hour!" "Race you back to school!"

She heard them tearing off.

She could not move or speak or see. All she could do was hear. Strangely enough, instead of being frightened, she felt an odd sense of peace. By divesting her of any voluntary action they had also divested her of any sense of responsibility. She was free simply to stand there against the tree and think what she chose until they came back. She felt that she had done well during the initiation, far better than she had expected Philippa Hunter to do and far better than they had expected the class Pill to do. She was not, as yet, uncomfortable, and at first it seemed as though half an hour would pass quickly. There was very little noise in the air around her; just a faint murmur in the grasses and occasionally when the wind shifted briefly she could hear a faint far-away burst of voices from the school.

But long before the half hour was over it seemed as though it should have been over. Through her blindfold she could not see the fog that was beginning to straggle in wooly-looking streamers about the playing fields and the grounds; but she could feel the damp seeping through her blazer and skirt and her body grow numb. Erna had bound her tightly and her muscles began to ache from standing and the tautened stockings of the rope dug into the flesh of her wrists and ankles and the darkness became oppressive instead of peaceful. She strained against her bands but could not move them. And now she began to be afraid, to be afraid that they had forgotten her, that no one would remember her, and she would be found there, eventually, when at last someone missed her, frozen to death.

7

But just as her despair turned almost to panic she heard footsteps. There they come! she thought. But it was not the running steps of a group of girls but a single pair of footsteps, walking briskly.

Her heart began to thump and her imagination again thrust her onto an English highway filled with murderers and madmen. Through her gag she panted. At first she thought the footsteps were going to go on by, that whoever it was would pass without seeing her; but then she heard a low exclamation and felt deft fingers untying the blindfold and the gag.

"Well, Philippa," Madame Perceval said, and set to work unknotting the stockings. Flip stepped away from the tree and her stiff long legs buckled under her and she sat down abruptly. Madame helped her up.

"Thank you," Flip whispered.

Madame looked at her and raised her eyebrows mockingly. "You look as though you'd been beset by highwaymen. What happened?"

"It was just an initiation," Flip said. "It was fun, you know."

"Was it fun?" Madame asked.

"Oh—yes."

"And what was supposed to happen next?"

"Oh—they were supposed to come back and get me in half an hour. But I'm sure I'd been there more than half an hour."

"What was the initiation about?" Madame asked. "Or is that a secret?"

"Oh—I don't think so," Flip said. "It was just our class initiating the new girls. I was the only one who really had to be initiated because all the other girls did a Courageous Deed so they were exempt."

"Why didn't you do a courageous deed?"

"I couldn't think of any. The things I thought would be brave I didn't think they would, and I couldn't think of any of the same kind of things the others did."

"Things like what?"

"Things that were funny, too."

"Like Gloria's spitting her teeth into Fräulein Hauser's hand?" Madame Perceval asked with a twinkle.

Flip nodded. "I don't think about things being funny until they are funny. My mother and father always told me my sense of humor was my weak point. It's awful to be born without a sense of humor. Sort of like being born color blind."

"Sometimes you can grow a sense of humor, you know," Madame Perceval told her. "Now I have an idea. Why don't you turn the tables on the girls and not be here when they come for you?"

"That would be wonderful," Flip said. "Only there's no place I'm allowed to go except the Common Room and they're all there. We aren't allowed in our bedrooms and if I hide in the bath room Miss Tulip will come and knock on the door."

"Come along with me to my room," Madame Perceval said. "You're allowed to be there if I invite you."

"Oh—that would be wonderful!" Flip cried. "But—but you were going somewhere."

"Just for a walk, and it's colder than I thought it was. Legs unlimbered?"

"Yes, thank you." Flip grinned and shook out her gangly legs.

"Come along, then." Madame Perceval took her arm in a friendly way and they set out for the school. They walked in silence, Flip desperately trying to think of something to say to the art teacher to show that she was grateful. Every once in a while she stole a look at Madame Perceval's face, and it was serene and quiet and Flip remembered the way she had looked that evening when she leaned against the tree and looked out over the lake.

"We'll go in the back way," Madame Perceval said, "So we'll be sure not to bump into anyone." She took Flip's hand and opened the small back door and together they crept upstairs like two conspirators. Flip felt ecstatically happy.

Madame lived on the top floor of the building near the Art Studio. She was the only person who slept on the fifth floor except for the cook and the maids who were in the opposite wing of the building. Most of the teachers had single rooms distributed about the school among the girls so that there was at least one teacher to each corridor. Madame Perceval had two curious rooms in one of the turrets, and a tiny kitchen as well. She led Flip into her sitting room. It was octagonal; four of the walls were filled with books; the other four were covered with prints. Flip recognized many of her favorites, two Picasso Harlequins, Holbein's Erasmus, Lautrec's Maybe, Seurat's Study for the Grande Jatte, a stage design by Inigo Jones, Van Gogh's Le Café de Nuit, Renoir's Moulin de la Galette. Flip looked at them enthralled.

Madame Perceval smiled. "I like it, too," she said. "It's a hodge podge but I like it. This bit of privacy is the one privilege I ask for being Mlle. Dragonet's niece. Sit down and I'll brew us a pot of tea." She moved the screen away from the grate, stirred up the coals, and added some more. Flip sat down on a stool covered with a patch of oriental rug and stared into the fire. Behind her she could hear Madame Perceval moving about in her tiny kitchen, and then she was aware that the art teacher was standing behind her. "A penny for your thoughts, Philippa," Madame Perceval said lightly.

Flip continued to stare into the fire. "I was thinking how happy I was, right now, this very minute," she said. "And if I could always be happy the way I am now I shouldn't mind school so much."

"Do you 'mind' school so very much?" Madame Perceval asked.

Flip realized that she had expressed herself far more fully than she had intended. "Oh, no," she denied quickly. "I don't think I've ever been anywhere that was so beautiful. And at night I can look down the mountain to the lake and it's like something out of a fairy tale. And when there's a fog and sometimes you can see the Dents du Midi and then they disappear and then you can see them again—that's like a fairy tale, too. And the kids say we go to Lausanne and Vevey and Gstaad and places at half term and we're going to climb the Col de Jaman on Tuesday as the New Girl's Welcome and I expect that'll be beautiful only I'm not very good at climbing...." her voice trailed off.

"Fräulein Hauser says there's something wrong with one of your legs," Madame Perceval said abruptly. "What is it?"

"I broke my knee."

"How?"

"In an automobile accident."

There was something strained and tense in Flip's voice and Madame Perceval went quietly into the kitchen and poured water from the now-hissing kettle into a small earthenware teapot. She brought the teapot into her living room and two delicate Limoges cups and saucers and placed them on the low table in front of the fire by a plate of small cakes.

"Tell me about the automobile accident, Philippa," she said.

Flip took a cup and saucer and stirred her tea very carefully. "It was New Year's Day," she said, and then she didn't say anything for a long time. Madame Perceval sat looking quietly into the fire, her feet on the low brass hearth-rail, and waited. At last Flip said, "Mother and father and I were driving over to Philadelphia to have New Year's dinner with some friends and it began to snow and sleet and rain and everything all at once, and another car was passing a truck and skidded and there was an accident. The people in the other car weren't hurt badly and it was all their fault, but the truck driver was killed." She paused again. Then she said, "and my mother was killed."

Madame Perceval continued to look into the fire but Flip knew that she was listening.

"Father was cut and bruised," Flip continued, "and my knee cap was broken. It's really all right now, though, except it gets sort of stiff sometimes. But I never was any good at running and things anyhow."

The gong for tea began to ring. It reverberated even back into Madame Perceval's room as the maid rode up and down in the skeleton of the elevator. Flip put her cup and saucer down on the table and her hand was trembling. "There's the gong for tea," she said.

"Do you want to go down?" Madame Perceval asked.

"No."

Madame Perceval reached for a telephone on one of the bookshelves; Flip had not noticed it before. "One of the advantages of the school's having been a hotel," Madame said, "is that all the teachers have telephones connected with the switchboard downstairs. I'll call Signorina del Rossi—I think she's in charge today—and tell her to excuse you from tea. We won't tell anyone and we'll have all the girls wondering where you are and that ought to be rather fun."

"Oh—that's wonderful!" Flip cried. "Oh, Madame, thank you."

"Hello, Signorina," Madame said on the telephone. "Madame Perceval." Then she launched into Italian, which Flip did not understand. There was a good deal of laughter, then Madame hung up and took Flip's cup. "All right, little one. Let me give you some more tea."

So Flip sat there and drank tea and ate Madame Perceval's cakes and felt warmth from far more than the fire seep into her.

Madame passed her the cake plate. "Have another. They come from Zürcher's in Montreux and they're quite special. I blow myself to them every once in a while. What do you want to be after you leave school, Philippa? An artist?"

Flip bit into a small and succulent cake, crisp layers of something filled with mocha cream. "I think so. But my father says it's probably just because he paints and he doesn't want me to do anything just because he does it. Anyhow he says he's not at all sure I have enough talent."

Madame laughed and filled Flip's tea cup for the third time. "I like your father's work. Especially his illustrations for children's books."

"Oh, do you know them?" Flip was excited.

Madame reached up to the bookshelves and pulled down a copy of Oliver Twist.

"Oh!" Flip said, "Oh, that's one of my favorites!"

Madame replaced the book. "Mine too. I keep your father's things next to Boutet de Monvel, which shows you how much I think of him."

It was one of the most beautiful afternoons Flip had spent in a long time. She did not once think a dreary or bitter thought, such as, "I'm the most unpopular girl in the school. That ought to make Eunice happy." When the bell rang for dinner and Madame sent her downstairs, for once she was almost eager to get to her place in the dining room. Tables were changed on Thursday, and she was at an unchaperoned table with only Erna from her room this week, but all the girls in the class whispered excitedly as she came in, "Philippa!" "Pill!" "Here she is!" "Where have you been?" "What happened to you?"

She stood decorously behind her chair and waited for Mlle. Dragonet to say grace. Erna burst out as they sat down, "Pill, we've been frantic! We thought you'd been kidnapped or something. If you hadn't come to dinner we were going to tell Signorina you were lost. What on earth happened to you?"

Flip actually grinned. "To me? What do you mean? Nothing."

"Stop being so smug," Esmée Bodet said, tossing her hair back. "I told you she'd just sneaked off somewhere and there wasn't any point worrying about her."

"But how could she just sneak off somewhere!" Erna cried. "We tied her so she couldn't possibly get away."

"That's right," Flip agreed.

"What happened, Pill, what happened?" Erna begged.

"Oh," Flip said airily, "my fairy godmother came and rescued me."

"But where were you during tea? Jackie and I missed tea looking for you and Signorina almost gave us Deportment Marks because we wouldn't tell her what we were doing."

"Oh, I went over to Thônon," Flip told her, "and had tea with a duke."

Erna and the other girls were looking at her with something like respect and for the first time Flip felt that she had triumphed.

8

The next afternoon, after Sunday Quiet Hour, Flip slipped off to the chateau again. Paul was expecting her.

"Hello, Flip!" Paul shouted as soon as he saw her.

"Hello!" she shouted back. She hurried across the rough ground to where he was waiting for her by the loose shutter. But when she reached him they both fell silent, somehow overcome with shyness. Paul ran his fingers over the flaking paint of the shutter and Flip searched about wildly in her mind for something to say. Gloria or Sally or Esmée would know what to say to a boy; they had all been on dates; but Flip could not think of any words that would not sound inane.

Then she looked at Paul's face, at the shadowed eyes and the strong sensitive line of jaw, and the way his mouth was tight as though his teeth were clenched and she felt that the things that Gloria or Sally or Esmée would say to Paul would not be the right things. She knew that they would say them, anyhow, unaware of their wrongness, and that they would think that Paul was handsome and romantic; but as she watched Paul standing there silently she felt with a sudden rush of confidence that he would prefer someone whose words were clumsy and inadequate, but honest, to someone whose words were glib and superficial; and this sudden sureness broke her fear of the silence and she no longer sought frantically for words.

Then, because there was no longer any need to fear the silence she was able to break it. "Where's Ariel?"

"He stayed home with my father," Paul said.

"Are you sure you don't mind because I came back?" she asked. "Because if you'd rather be alone I'll just go on walking somewhere."

"No—no—" Paul said quickly. "I'm sorry. We live alone and sometimes my father goes a whole day without saying anything. Of course some days he talks a great deal and reads to me but I get used to being with someone and not talking."

"Who is your father?" Flip asked. "Where do you live?"

"My father's a professor of philosophy. He used to teach in Lauzanne but now he's at the Sorbonne. At least he's there usually, I mean. This year he's on a Sabbatical leave and he's writing a book. That's why he doesn't talk much. He spends hours in his study and then he comes to the table and I don't think he has any idea what he eats. He just sits there and goes on thinking."

"Where do you live?" Flip asked again.

"At the gate house to the chateau. But I stay over here most of the time and then I'm sure I won't disturb my father and he won't notice me and think I ought to be in school. Besides there's something I want to find out."

"What?"

Instead of answering Paul asked, "Would you like to see the chateau?"

"Oh, yes."

"You aren't afraid of bats and mice and rats and beetles and spiders and things, are you?"

"Why?"

"There are a great many inside."

Flip was afraid of bats and mice and rats and beetles and spiders and things; but she was more afraid of Paul's scorn so she said, "I don't mind them."

Paul looked at her as though he knew that she minded very much indeed; then he slipped behind the shutter into the chateau, laughing back at her and calling, "Come on, Flip."

Flip followed him into a great hall with a fireplace the size of a room. The hall was bare and colder than outside.

"There are rooms and rooms," Paul said. "I've tried to count them but each time I come out with a different number. There are so many little turns and passages. There are all these dozens of rooms and only one bathroom and it's as big as our living room in the gate house. And the tub is the size of a swimming pool. But if you want hot water you have to build a fire in a sort of stove under the tub. Oh, come, Flip, I want to show you something."

Flip followed Paul down a labyrinth of passages into a small round room that must have been in one of the turrets. It had stained glass windows and, unlike most of the rooms, was not completely empty. In the centre of the room was an old praying-chair with a monogram worked into the mahogany. Something was moving in the red velvet of the cushion and she leaned over and there was a tiny family of mice, the babies incredibly pink and soft.

"Oh, Paul!"

"We mustn't disturb them but I thought you'd like to see them. I only found them yesterday," Paul said. "In the spring I'll show you birds' nests. Last spring in Paris I found a sparrow with its wing broken and I took care of it and helped it to learn to fly again and after that it came to my window every morning for crumbs. I kept them in the drawer of my desk and it used to fly in the window and fly over to the desk and jump up and down and squawk until I opened the drawer. I had a cat, too, who'd lost his tail in a fight. The concierge in our house is keeping the cat for me till I come back."

Flip bent over the mice again. "They're so terribly sweet. I don't see why people are afraid of mice."

"They don't know them," Paul said. "People are always afraid of things they don't know. This room used to be the private chapel of the lady of the chateau, Flip, and that prie-dieu is where she used to kneel to pray."

"How do you know, Paul?" Flip asked.

"My father told me. For a man who spends hours just sitting and thinking about philosophy he knows a tremendous amount about anything you can think of to ask him."

Flip crossed to one of the windows and looked out through a pane of blue glass onto a blue world. The sun was beginning to slip behind the mountain and she said, "I have to go now, Paul."

"Will you come next week?" Paul asked.

"Yes, I could come on Saturday next week. I could come earlier in the afternoon if you'd like."

"I'd like it very much," Paul said. "Do you really have to go now?"

"I think I'd better."

"There are so many things I want to ask you. Do you like to ski?"

"I don't know how, yet. But I'm going to learn this winter. Do you like it?"

"More than anything in the world. I never can wait for the snow and they say it will be late this year. Do you like to read?"

"I love it."

"I do, too. Do you like the theatre?"

"Oh, yes."

"So do I. We seem to like a lot of the same things. Maybe that's why I can talk to you. Usually with other people I feel strange and as though there were a wall between us, or as though we were speaking a different language, even when we're really not. I can speak four languages yet I can't talk at all to most people. But you're different. I can talk to you so easily, and this is only the third time we've seen each other."

"I know," Flip said, looking at the mice again instead of at Paul, at the tiny pink babies and at the little grey mother with her bright, frightened eyes. "I can talk to you, too, and I can't talk to anybody at school."

Paul turned away from the mice. "We're disturbing her. She's afraid we might take her babies. Come on. We'd better go downstairs. I don't want you to get into trouble at your school. They'd be very unpleasant if they knew you'd been here."

"You seem to know a lot about girls' schools," Flip said.

Paul started to lead the way back through the maze of corridors. "Institutions in general are similar," he said loftily. Then, "you really will come on Saturday, Flip?"

"Come hell or high water," Flip promised, feeling very bold.

Paul held out his hand to say good-bye and Flip took it. She felt that Paul did not realize that he was shaking hands with the most unpopular girl in the school.

9

She was so excited by the afternoon's happiness that she ran almost all the way back to school. At the clearing of the woods she stopped because she knew that if she went into the Common Room, still panting, her cheeks flushed, someone would notice and try to find out where she had been. She wanted nothing more than to tell someone about Paul; she had always wanted to share her happiness with the world; but she knew that if she was to see him again she had to keep him a secret.

And he wants to see me again! she thought exultantly.—He's not frightening the way I always thought being alone with a boy would be. It was just like talking to anyone, only nicer, and he wants to see me again!

She had seen a tapestry once, in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, of a young page standing with a unicorn. The page was tall and slender with huge dark eyes and thick dark hair, and Paul reminded her of him. He had the same unselfconscious grace and when his hand rested on Ariel's collar it was with the same self-assured nobility that the hand of the page rested on the unicorn's neck. She was pleased and excited that she had thought of the resemblance.—And I can imagine that Ariel's magic like the unicorn, she thought.—After all it was he who brought me to Paul.

10

Tuesday was fine, so Flip's class was taken by Fräulein Hauser and Madame Perceval on the promised trip to the Col de Jaman. From the playing fields at school they could see the Dent de Jaman rising high and white above the Col, and Erna said that in the spring they would climb the Dent itself. It looked very high and distant to Flip and she was just as happy that they were to start with the Col which was the flat high ridge from which the Dent pierced upwards into the sky. It was to be an all day trip. They were to be excused from all classes and would start right after Call Over.

"It's almost worth having new girls," Erna shouted to Jackie, "to get an excursion like this!"

They lined up on the cement walk under the plane trees while Fräulein Hauser called the roll. They did not have to choose partners and this was a relief to Flip because even the most polite girls in the class seemed to her to look annoyed when they were stuck with her, and on Thursday when one of the girls had been in the infirmary with a cold and there had been an odd number in the class, Flip had been left without a partner altogether; and Miss Armstrong, who was taking the walk, had had to say, "Philippa, go walk with Solvei Krogstad and Margaret Campbell."

Fräulein Hauser blew her whistle and they started off. At first they walked along the road that wound up the mountain past the school, passing chalets and farms and an occasional villa. Madame Perceval led the way, with two of the new girls. Fräulein Hauser brought up the rear with Erna and Jackie. Flip straggled along with Gloria and Sally and Esmée Bodet, not particularly wanting to walk with them, wanting even less to walk alone. After a while Madame Perceval turned off the road and they plunged into the shade of the forest and now Flip was able to pull aside and walk by herself without feeling conspicuous. Her feet were almost noiseless as she walked over a deep layer of fallen pine needles and moist leaves and she noticed that even Gloria and her group were walking more quietly. Gloria saw Flip and beckoned, but Flip no longer felt any need to straggle along beside anyone, and continued quite happily to walk by herself, Philippa alone with the forest.

Here the trees were taller and of greater girth than the trees in the woods behind the school and the sun came through them in delicate arrows, piercing the dark iris of Jackie's left eye, bringing out the ruddy lights in Madame Perceval's hair, striking the gold of the braces on Erna's teeth. Then at last they emerged beyond the forest and came out into pasture land. Now, as they climbed, the trees would be below them; when they were high enough the trees would seem like a girdle about the mountains. The rough grass was broken here and there by rocks and the girls would climb onto them and leap off, laughing and shouting. Sometimes they passed cows or goats; constantly Flip could hear the faint ringing of the animal's bells.

Fräulein Hauser blew her whistle. "We will stop here for lunch," she announced.

They sprawled about on the largest rocks, opening their lunches. They had bread and cheese, an apple and an orange, some sweet biscuits, and a little twist of paper containing salt and pepper for the hard-boiled egg in the bottom of the bag. Madame Perceval carried a canteen of coffee and a flask of brandy in case of emergency, and they each had a canteen filled with fresh water from the school.

Flip sprawled on a small rock near Madame Perceval, who was laughing and joking with a group of girls. She smiled warmly at Flip and tried to draw her into the conversation, but Flip sat there shyly, afraid that if she spoke she would say the wrong thing and someone would laugh at her. One of the girls was missing salt and pepper from her package, and Flip offered hers. At the careless "Thanks, Pill," Madame Perceval looked at Flip intently, not missing the quick flush that always came to her face at the use of the nick-name.

After they had finished eating they started to climb again. Now the way became rockier and steeper, and Flip and several of the less athletic girls were panting and ready to flop down on the turf long before they reached the flat plateau of the Col. Flip's throat was dry and aching and her heart thumped painfully against her ribs.

But when they finally reached the summit, she realized that the climb was more than worth it. She dropped on to a patch of rust colored grass; the sky was incredibly blue above her and the Dent de Jaman rose out of the Col like a white castle, like the home of the Snow Queen in Andersen's fairy tale. A small wind blew across her hot cheeks and the ache in her knee dwindled and the sunlight made the old, rusty grass seem almost golden. She closed her eyes and the sunlight flickered over her eyelids and the grass pricked through her uniform into her skin and she rolled over and laid her cheek against a flat grey rock and somewhere, far off, she heard a bird singing.

Although it was not anywhere near tea-time according to the school clock, they had eaten lunch shortly after eleven and Madame Perceval and Fräulein Hauser started handing around packets of marmalade sandwiches. At the sound of the whistle Flip rose and straggled over to the girls surrounding the teachers. She stood on the outskirts, still looking about her at the sky and the mountains and the snow, and feeling that wonderful surge of happiness at the beauty that always banished any loneliness or misery she might be feeling.

Somehow a miscount had been made in the school kitchen when the tea was packed and Solvei and Jackie, and of course Flip, the last one on the outskirts, found themselves without anything to eat for tea. A small chalet stood across the ridge and Madame Perceval said, "I know Monsieur and Madame Rasmée. They're used to serving meals to amateur mountain climbers and I know they could take care of these girls. Suppose I take them over."

"It seems the only thing to do," Fräulein Hauser agreed.

So Flip found herself walking across the rough ground with Madame Perceval, Solvei, and Jackie, her pleasure in this unusual adventure marred by her awareness of the longing glances Jackie cast at Erna, and Solvei at her best friend, Maggie Campbell.

Madame Perceval said a few words to the pleasant woman who met them at the chalet and in a few minutes the girls found themselves sitting at a small table in front of an open fire. They stripped off their blazers.

"All right girls," Madame Perceval said. "Have a good tea and come back as soon as you've finished."

"Oh, yes, Madame." They smiled at her radiantly as she left them. Only Madame Perceval would have allowed them to enjoy this special treat unchaperoned.

"I wish Percy taught skiing instead of Hauser," sighed Jackie. "She's much better."

Solvei nodded. "Once, last winter when Hauser had 'flu, Percy took skiing and it was wonderful."

"She's always one of the judges at the ski meet," Jackie continued, "and then there's Hauser, and the skiing teacher from one of the other schools, and two professional skiers. It's wonderful fun, Pill. There aren't any classes, like today, and we all go up to Gstaad for the meet and have lunch up there and there are medals and a cup and it's all simply magnifique."

Flip thought of the skis Eunice had given her and somehow she felt that she might be good at skiing. And she was happy, too, because suddenly Jackie and Solvei seemed to be talking to her, not at her and around her, and she opened her mouth to tell them about the skis Eunice had given her, skis that had belonged to Eunice but which she had discarded; Eunice did not really care for skiing. Because she doesn't look her best in ski clothes, Flip thought unkindly. "My skis—" she started to say to Solvei and Jackie when suddenly she closed her mouth and she felt the blood drain from her face and then flood it, because there, coming in at the door, was a tall stooped man, and with him, slender and dark, was Paul.

CHAPTER THREE

The Escape from the Dungeon

Paul saw her almost at once and quickly shook his head, and Flip heaved a sigh of relief. Thank goodness, oh, thank goodness, Jackie and Solvei had their backs to the door and had seen neither Paul nor his signal.

But Jackie said, "What's the matter, Pill? You look as though you'd seen a ghost."

Flip pretended to choke and said, "I just swallowed the wrong way. May I have the butter, please, Solvei?"

2

On Thursday Flip received one of the proprietary letters from Eunice that always upset her. Luckily she was assigned to Madame Perceval's table that day, and this special stroke of luck cheered her a little, for Madame Perceval's tact and humor seemed to act like a magnet drawing everyone into a warm circle of friendliness and sympathy. Erna was with her again and said as they sat down after grace, "We seem to stick together like glue, don't we, Pill?"

Flip nodded and grinned, because Erna's tone had been friendly.

During dinner they began discussing their parents. Esmée Bodet's father was a lawyer. Erna's father was a surgeon and had done operations on the battlefields. Polly Huber, an American girl from Alabama who had been at the school for three years, had a father who was a newspaper man, and Maggie Campbell's father taught Greek at the University of Edinburgh.

"And your father's a painter, isn't he, Pill?" Erna asked.

"Yes."

"Well, our house needs painting. Do you think he'd do it cheap for us since I know you?"

All the girls laughed loudly except Flip, who colored angrily and looked down at her plate with a sulky expression.

After dinner when everybody stood up, Madame Perceval said quietly to Flip, "Please wait, Philippa." And all the girls exchanged glances, because that was the tone Madame used when she was not pleased and intended to say so. Flip stood nervously behind her chair and looked down at the table with the empty dessert dishes and the crumbs scattered about and at Madame Perceval's coffee cup with a small amount of dark liquid left in the bottom.

"Philippa," Madame said gravely when they had the dining room to themselves except for the maids who were clearing away, "I haven't seen you a great deal with the other girls but several of the teachers have told me that you are always off somewhere sulking and that your attitude is unfriendly in the extreme."

"I don't mean to sulk," Flip said. "I didn't know I sulked. And I don't mean to be unfriendly. I don't, truly, Madame." If I had been thinking of Paul instead of Eunice I wouldn't have behaved the way I did, she thought.

"When Erna suggested that your father paint her house she was making a joke and you took it seriously and looked hurt and wounded."

"I know," Flip said. "It was stupid of me."

"But you always do it, don't you?"

"Yes," Flip admitted. "I guess I do, most of the time."

"I know you're not happy here, Philippa, but when you make it so easy for the girls to tease you, you can't blame them for taking advantage of it. Girls can be very cruel, especially when they get the idea that someone is 'different'."

"But I am different," Flip said desperately.

"Why?"

"I'm so clumsy and I'm the tallest girl in the class. I'm as tall as lots of the seniors. And I fall over things and I'm not good at athletics, and I wasn't blitzed or underground or anything during the war."

Now Madame Perceval sounded really severe. "I didn't expect to hear you talk quite so foolishly, Philippa. You are tall, yes, but you can turn that into an advantage later on. And perhaps right now you're a little awkward, but you'll outgrow that. Incidentally, have you forgotten that Maggie Campbell's sister, Liz, has a brace on her leg? and she's one of the most popular girls in her class. And as for being blitzed or underground, remember that the girls who are in the difficult and defensive position are the German girls. They've had a hard time of it here, some of them. It wasn't easy for Erna, for instance."

"Yes," Flip persisted stubbornly, "but they were all in it and I wasn't in it at all."

"Neither were the other Americans," Madame said sharply. "I'm beginning to realize what the other teachers meant."

Flip looked as though Madame Perceval had struck her. She pleaded, "Please don't hate me because I've been the—the way I've been. Please. I'll try not to be. I'll try to be different. I do try. I just don't seem to know how. But I'll try harder. And I know it's all my own fault. Truly."

"Very well," Madame Perceval said. "Go on back to the Common Room now until time for Study Hall."

"Yes, Madame." Flip started to leave but when she got to the dining room she turned and said desperately, "Madame, thank you for telling me. I—I guess I needed to be told how awful I am."

For the first time Madame Perceval smiled at her, but all she said was, "All right, Philippa. Run along." And she gave her a little spank.

3

Flip spent the rest of the week waiting for Saturday and sighed with relief when Paul was at his usual place by the shutter when she reached the chateau. Ariel ran dashing to meet her, jumping up and down and barking. I feel as though I'd come home, Flip thought as she waved at Paul.

"Hello, Flip!" Paul called. "Down, Ariel! Down! Come here this instant, sir!"

Ariel went bounding back to Paul who held him by the collar and Flip thought again how much he looked like the page in the tapestry.

"Hello," she said, her heart leaping with pleasure because Paul was so obviously glad to see her. She had dug Eunice's discarded gift of Chanel No. 5 out of her bottom drawer and put a little behind her ears, and had brushed her hair until it shone.

"Come on," Paul urged. "I want to show you something." He went into the chateau and Flip and Ariel followed. They went across the empty hall and up the wide stairs, then down a broad corridor and up more stairs, and it seemed that every time Paul led her down a dim passage there was another flight of stairs at the end. At last he opened a door and started up a very steep, circular iron stairway. Openings were cut in the thick stones of the walls and through them Flip could see the sky, very blue, and puffs of snowy clouds. The stairs were white with bird droppings and Flip could hear the birds just above their heads. A swallow sat on the stones of one of the openings and watched them. Ariel laboriously climbed up three steps, then sat down to wait, a patient expression on his ferocious bulldog's countenance. Flip followed Paul on up. At the top of the stairs was a small platform and more openings looking out over the country on all four sides. The birds flew in and out, scolding excitedly. Flip rushed to one of the windows and there was the valley of the Rhône spread out before her, Montreux and Territet, Vevey and Lausanne, lying in a pool of violet shadows, and the lake like melted silver and across the lake the mountains rising proudly into the sky, with the snow descending further and further down their strong flanks in ever-lengthening streaks.

"Like it?" Paul asked.

"Oh—yes!" Flip breathed. "Oh, Paul—"

"This is my place," Paul said. "I never thought I'd bring anyone here. But I knew you'd feel about it the way I do."

Paul leaned back against the cold stones of the turret wall, his scarlet sweater bright against the grey stone. "Still worrying about that Eunice?"

"I can't help it," Flip said.

"School any better?"

"No."

"Still hate it?"

"Yes."

"Well, I don't blame you. It must be very unpleasant living in an institution."

"I don't think it's the school," Flip told him with unwilling honesty. "I think it's just me. Lots of the girls love it."

Paul shook his head. "I don't think I'd ever like a place where I couldn't leave when I chose."

"I'd like it better," Flip said with difficulty, "if anybody liked me. But nobody does." She leaned her elbows on one of the ledges and stared out over the valley towards the Dents du Midi so that she would not have to look at Paul.

"Why don't they like you?" Paul asked.

"I don't know."

"But I like you."

Flip did not insult him by saying "do you really?" Instead she asked, "Why do you like me, Paul?"

Paul considered. "I knew right away that I liked you so I never bothered to think why. I just—well, I like the way you look. Your eyes are nice. I like the way you see things. And I like the way you move your hands. You could be a surgeon if you wanted to. But you want to be an artist."

"Yes," Flip said, blushing at his words. "I want to paint and paint. Everything in the world. Mostly people, though.

"Paul—" she asked, hesitantly.

"What?"

"It doesn't make you like me any less because—"

"Because what?"

"Because the girls at school don't like me...."

Paul looked at her severely. "You can't think much of me if you think I'd stop liking you just because a few silly girls in school haven't any sense. If they don't like you, it's because they don't know you. That's all."

"It's funny," Flip said, "how you can know someone for years and years and never know them and how you can know someone else all at once in no time at all. I'll never know Eunice. I'll always feel funny with her. But the very first day I saw you I felt as though I knew you, and when I'm with you I can talk.... I'd better go now. It's getting awfully late. See how dark the towns are getting down by the lake."

"Can you come back tomorrow?" Paul asked.

"Yes. I know they'll catch me sooner or later and then it'll be awful, but I'll come till they catch me."

"They wouldn't give you permission to see me if you asked?"

"Oh, no! Nobody except seniors are allowed to see boys—except brothers."

"Well—I'll think of something." Paul sounded so convincing that Flip almost believed he really would be able to work out a plan. "Come on," he said. "Ariel and I'll walk as far as the woods with you but I think it would be dangerous if I went any further. We mustn't run any risk of being seen together."

As she followed Paul down from the tower Flip felt so happy over their friendship that she almost wanted to cry, it was so wonderful. She said good-bye to Paul at the edge of the woods and was nearly back at school when something terrible almost happened. She had cleared the ring of trees and was scurrying across the lawn, when Martha Downs and Kaatje van Leyden came around the corner of the building. Flip saw them and started to hurry towards the side door, but Martha called her. Flip was awed by both of them at the best of times—Martha, the beautiful and popular Head Girl of the school, and Kaatje, the equally popular and formidable Games Captain and Head Monitor; and Flip knew that this was anything but the best of times. She felt as though her guilt were sticking all over her like molasses.

"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" Martha asked.

"Nowhere," Flip answered. "I just went for a walk."

"All by yourself?"

"Yes."

"Couldn't you find anyone to go with you?"

"I wanted to be by myself," Flip said.

"That's all right," Kaatje interposed kindly. "We all like to be by ourselves once in a while. She wasn't breaking any rules."

Flip was sure that they would ask her where she had been, but Martha said instead, "You're Philippa Hunter, aren't you?"

Flip nodded.

"I'm glad we bumped into you," Martha told her. "I've been meaning to look you up. I had a letter a few days ago from a friend of my mother's, Mrs. Jackman."

"Oh," Flip said.

"And she asked me to keep an eye on you."

"Oh," Flip said again. Why did Eunice have to pursue her even at school?

"She said she was a very dear friend of your father's, and that it was through her you had come here."

That's right, Flip thought. It's all because of Eunice.

But she knew she couldn't really blame Eunice and anyhow, now that there was Paul, being miserable while she was actually at the school didn't matter so much any more.

"Everything all right?" Martha asked. "You're all settled and everything?"

"Yes, thank you."

"Anything I can do for you?"

"No, thank you."

"Well, if you ever want me for anything, just come along and give a bang on my study door."

"I will. Thank you very much," Flip said, knowing that she wouldn't. And she went back into the Common Room and sat at the big billiard table, a legacy from the days when the school had been a hotel, and tried to write a letter to her father. But she could not concentrate. Images of Eunice kept crowding themselves into her mind. Eunice. Eunice and her father. Once Eunice had even said to her something about her father being young and probably marrying again—but not Eunice! Please, not anybody, but especially please, not Eunice!

4

The next morning when she woke up, Flip's throat was raw and her head was hot and when she opened her mouth to speak her voice came out in a hoarse croak.

"You'd better report to the nurse," Erna told her.

Flip shook her head violently. "I'm all right. Just getting a cold."

"Sounds as though you'd got one, ducky," Gloria said.

"Oh, well, it's nothing," Flip creaked in a voice like a rusty hinge.

Nothing, she thought, nothing must keep her from going up to the chateau to see Paul.

Fortunately it was Sunday and breakfast was unsupervised; she might have escaped detection if it hadn't been for Madame Perceval. Madame Perceval was planning an art exhibit and, after chapel, she came into the Common Room and walked over to the corner where Flip sat, reading Anna Karenina.

"Philippa," she said as Flip scrambled clumsily to her feet.

"Yes, Madame?"

"I want to use two of your paintings in my exhibit and you haven't signed either of them. Come up to the Studio with me and do it now."

"Yes, Madame," Flip croaked.

"What on earth is the matter with your voice, child?"

"Oh, nothing, Madame, really. I'm just a little hoarse."

"After you've finished signing your pictures you'd better report to Mlle. Duvoisine."

Mlle. Duvoisine was the school nurse and since she was a special friend of Miss Tulip's, Flip rather distrusted her. "Oh, no, Madame, I'm all right, truly. Please, I promise you."

"We'll leave that up to Mlle. Duvoisine. Come along, please, Philippa."

As they walked along the corridor and started up the stairs Madame Perceval said in her pleasant voice, "You've been trying hard, Philippa. Keep it up."

Flip bowed her head and muttered something unintelligible, blushing with pleasure that her efforts had been noticed.

After she had signed her pictures, writing HUNTER carefully in one corner the way her father did, Madame Perceval walked back to the infirmary with her. Mlle. Duvoisine was sitting at the infirmary desk, knitting a heather-colored sweater, and she looked up and dropped a stitch as they approached.

Madame Perceval smiled. "Pick up your stitch," she said. "We can wait."

Mlle. Duvoisine picked up her stitch, rolled up the knitting, put it in a drawer, and said, "There. Now what can I do for you, Madame Perceval?"

Madame Perceval pushed Flip forward. "This child sounds like a frog with a cold and I thought you'd better have a look at her."

"Open your mouth," Mlle. Duvoisine said to Flip. She peered down her throat, said "hm," and pulled her thermometer out of her pocket, popping it in Flip's mouth.

Madame Perceval sat on the desk, opened the drawer and pulled out the sweater. "A work of art," she sighed. "My knitting always looks as though a cat had nested in it."

"My skiing looks as though I had my skis on backwards," Mlle. Duvoisine said. "Radio says snow tonight. What do you think?"

"Smells like it, and it's about time we had some. Fräulein Hauser's been opening the window in the faculty room every ten minutes to sniff the air, and freezing the rest of us to death."

Mlle. Duvoisine drew the thermometer out of Flip's mouth and looked at it. "Well, it's barely ninety-nine, but with that throat and voice I think you'd better come to the infirmary over night, Philippa. You won't be missing any classes. If your temperature's normal tomorrow I'll let you up."

"Oh, please!" Flip begged, dismay flooding her face. "Please don't make me go to bed, please! I feel wonderful, just wonderful, really!" Her voice cracked and almost disappeared.

"I knew the infirmary was referred to as the Dungeon," Mlle. Duvoisine said, "but I didn't think it was considered as terrible as all that. Go get your night things and your toothbrush, Philippa."

"But I'm not sick," Flip protested hoarsely.

Mlle. Duvoisine looked at Madame Perceval and raised her eyebrows. "I don't want any more nonsense," she said briskly. "Go get your things and be back here in ten minutes."

Flip opened her mouth to speak again, but Madame Perceval said quietly, "Philippa," and she turned and ran miserably down the corridor.

"Really!" she heard Mlle. Duvoisine exclaim. "Now what's the matter with the child?"

Oh, dear, Flip thought. Now Madame will think I'm sulking again and Paul will think I've broken my word.

And she gathered up her pajamas and toothbrush and trailed miserably back to the infirmary.

5

When she was in bed with the hot water bottle Mlle. Duvoisine had brought her as a peace offering, she could think of nothing but way after impossible way to let Paul know why she couldn't come to the chateau that afternoon.

"You look as though you had something on your mind, Philippa." Mlle. Duvoisine said when she brought in the lunch tray.

"I have," Flip answered in the strange raucous voice that issued in so unwelcome a manner from her throat. "Please, couldn't I get up, Mlle. Duvoisine? I'm not sick, truly, and I do so hate being in bed."

"What is this nonsense?" Mlle. Duvoisine asked sharply. "You can hear what you sound like yourself. I know you aren't ill, but I have you in bed so that you won't be, and so that you won't give your germs to anyone else. If you dislike me so intensely that you can't bear to be around me, just get well as quickly as you can."

"Oh, no, Mlle. Duvoisine, it isn't that!" Flip protested. "It isn't anything to do with you. I just promised someone I'd do something this afternoon, and I don't know what they'll think if I don't keep my word."

"I can give anyone a message for you, explaining that you're in the infirmary," Mlle. Duvoisine said, and her voice was kind.

"I'm afraid you couldn't, to this person," Flip answered mournfully. "Thank you ever so much anyhow, Mlle. Duvoisine, and I'm sorry to be such a bother."

"All right, Philippa." Mlle. Duvoisine put the lunch tray down and left.

When she brought in Flip's tea she said, "Since you're the only victim in my dungeon at present, Philippa, I think I'll run down to the Faculty Room for an hour. If you want me for anything all you need do is press that button. It's connected with the Faculty Room as well as my desk and Miss Tulip or I will come right away."

"Thank you very much," Flip said. "I'm sure I won't need anything."

"I've filled your hot water bottle for you," Mademoiselle said kindly, and stopped at the window screwing in the top. "It's just beginning to snow. Now Fräulein Hauser and Madame Perceval and all the skiers will be happy. Sure you don't mind my leaving you?"

"Oh, no, Mademoiselle!"

This was the opportunity Flip had not dared hope for. When Mlle. Duvoisine had left she sprang out of bed and got her clothes out of the closet. She dressed without giving herself time to think. If Mlle. Duvoisine were going to be gone an hour she would have just time, if she ran, to get to the chateau, tell Paul what had happened, and get back to the infirmary. That is, as long as she wasn't caught. But she knew that she must not let herself even think about being caught. Desperately she shoved her pillows under the covers so that they looked like someone asleep, peered out the door, saw that the way down the corridor was clear, and pelted for the back stairs. The girls were strictly forbidden to use the back stairs which afforded a means of entrance and exit that could not be detected by the teacher on duty at the desk in the lounge, but Flip was too desperate to care. When she got out the small back door she looked around wildly, and ran for the woods like one pursued. Thank heaven everyone was at tea. When she got in sight of the chateau she was winded, her knee ached, and her hair was flecked with the first falling flakes of snow. She did not see Paul and her heart sank.

"Paul!" Flip cried, her throat dry, her voice coming out in an ineffectual squeak. "Paul!"

There was no answer. She tried to call again but this time her voice seemed to have left her completely and only her lips shaped the syllables of Paul's name. Then she heard the familiar baying bark and Ariel came bounding out of the chateau to meet her, jumping up at her and knocking her down in his pleasure. She scrambled to her feet, hugging him on the way up, and then she saw Paul come running around a corner of the chateau.

"What happened to you, Flip!" he cried. "I thought you weren't coming."

"So did I," Flip croaked, "and I can't stay."

"What's the matter with your voice?"

"I have a cold, they've got me in the infirmary, I managed to escape but I've got to rush back or I'll be caught, I'll come next Saturday unless something awful happens to keep me away." The words came out in one hoarse gasp.

"Flip, you idiot!" Paul cried. "What do you mean by coming here."

"But I said I'd come!" Flip panted. "I've got to get back."

"Not until you rest and get your breath back," Paul commanded. "You'll make yourself really ill."

"But, Paul," Flip wailed, "I've got to get back. If Mlle. Duvoisine finds out I've gone I'll be expelled!" Tears rushed to her eyes.

Paul took her hand and shook his head. "Flip, Flip," he said. "Don't you realize what a little idiot you were to make this dangerous trip just to tell me you couldn't come? You should know that I understand you well enough to know that if you didn't come you'd have a reason. You should never have gotten out of bed and come all this way through the snow. But—" and suddenly his eyes were warm with affection. "It was just like you to do it. Now, go back and take care of yourself."

"I will—good-bye." And she turned back down the mountain.

Flip ran. Going down the mountain was quicker, though not much easier, than coming up had been. Several times she slipped on the wet pine needles and almost fell. The snow was coming more thickly now, and a cloud had folded itself about the school, so that its outlines were lost in grey fuzziness. As she slipped in the small side door she heard someone coming down the back stairs. It was Fräulein Hauser, on her way to the ski room to wax her skis. Flip pressed into the shadows, until Fräulein Hauser passed on down the damp corridor and then Flip suddenly wilted against the wall. But every moment that she was away from the infirmary was dangerous; there was no time for her to lean there limply and catch her breath; so she gave herself a shake and hurried up the stairs. She opened the door at the third floor and peered out. The corridor was empty. She held her breath and ran for the infirmary, and opened the door a crack. Mlle. Duvoisine's desk was unoccupied. She made a mad dash for her room, threw off her clothes, dumped them onto the floor of the closet, and scrambled into bed, pushing the pillows out of her way.

She was safe.

She lay in bed, her heart knocking against her chest. Through the window she could see the snow coming down in great soft white petals. The snow clouds in which the school lay obscured everything. She could not see the Dents du Midi or the lake or even the big elm trees that girdled the school. Everything was a soft grey filled with the gently dropping snow.

She was still a little shaky when Mlle. Duvoisine came in. "All right, Philippa?"

"Yes, thank you, Mlle. Duvoisine." She hoped the hoarseness would account for the breathlessness of her voice.

Mlle. Duvoisine took her pulse. "Good heavens, child, your pulse is racing," she exclaimed, and took Flip's temperature. But the thermometer registered only ninety-nine. Mlle. Duvoisine put her hand on Flip's forehead and Flip was terrified that the nurse would feel her wet hair, but all she said was, "Have you been asleep? Have you too many covers? You seem to be perspiring."

"I'm very comfortable," Flip told her. "The hot water bottle's lovely. I hope you had a pleasant tea, Mademoiselle."

"Yes. Thanks. Everybody's very pleased about the snow though Madame Perceval says it's going to stop soon and there won't be enough for skiing."

"In Connecticut where I was born," Flip said, trying to sound casual so that Mlle. Duvoisine would think she had just been lying in the bed all afternoon, "people talk about the first snowfly. I think that's beautiful, don't you? Snowfly."

"Yes, beautiful," Mlle. Duvoisine said. "Think you can eat your supper?"

"Oh, yes," Flip cried hoarsely. "I'm famished." And she was.

6

Mlle. Dragonet made it a practice to visit the girls in the infirmary, and she came to see Flip that evening, sitting in her erect, stiff manner in the chair Mlle. Duvoisine had drawn up for her. It was the first time Flip had spoken to the principal since the first day of school, and she was very nervous. Mlle. Dragonet held herself aloof from the girls, delegating many duties that would ordinarily have been hers to Madame Perceval, and the bravest of them regarded her with timidity. She conducted a class in seventeenth century French literature for the seniors; she held Morning Exercises in the Assembly Hall; and once a week she presided over a faculty table in the dining room. The little visits to the infirmary were more dreaded than anticipated by the girls, and Flip had forgotten all about the prospect in the other excitements of the day until Mlle. Duvoisine announced Mlle. Dragonet's arrival.

"I'm sorry to hear you aren't well, Philippa," the principal said formally.

"Oh, I'm fine, really, thank you, Mlle. Dragonet," Flip croaked.

"Mlle. Duvoisine tells me you haven't much fever."

"Oh, no, Mlle. Dragonet." Flip looked at the principal and realized with a start that she bore a faint family resemblance to her niece. The thin, aristocratic nose was very like Madame Perceval's, and there was a similarity in the shape of the mouth, though Madame Perceval's had a sweetness that Mlle. Dragonet's lacked. But there was the same flash of humor in the eyes, which were the same gold-flecked grey.

As though reading her thoughts, Mlle. Dragonet said, "Madame Perceval tells me your work in her Art classes is very promising."

"Oh," Flip breathed.

"Your scholastic record is in general quite satisfactory."

"Oh," Flip said again.

"I hope you are enjoying school?"

Flip knew that Mlle. Dragonet wanted her to say "yes," so she answered, "Oh, yes, thank you."

"You are enjoying the other girls?"

"Oh, yes, thank you."

"Sometimes the Americans find our European girls are younger for their years, less sophisticated."

"Oh," Flip said. "I hadn't noticed."

"You have friends you enjoy?"

Flip hesitated; then she thought of Paul, and answered, "Oh, yes, thank you."

Mlle. Dragonet rose, and Flip, with sudden insight, realized that the principal, though so calm and fluent when speaking to a group of girls, was almost as shy as she herself was when confronted with an individual, and these infirmary visits cost her a real effort.

Mlle. Dragonet ran her fingers in a tired fashion over her grey hair. "It has been a long day," she said to Flip, "and now the snow has started and the girls will be happy and we will have numerous sprained ankles from over-enthusiastic skiers. But as long as the girls are happy perhaps that is all right. If anything should ever trouble you, remember you have only to come to me."

"Thank you very much, Mlle. Dragonet," Flip said. "I'll remember."

7

Getting to the chateau was difficult the next Saturday, although Madame Perceval had been right and the snow had stopped and temporarily dashed the skiers' hopes. But enough snow remained on the ground so that Flip put on her spiked ski-boots to help her climb the mountain. Up above her the mountain had a striped, zebra-like look, long streaks of snow alternating with rock or the darker lines of the evergreens. The air was cold and clear and sent the color flying to her cheeks.

Paul greeted her with a relieved shout, crying, "Are you all better, Flip?"

"Oh yes, I feel fine now."

"I was worried about you. I was afraid you might have caught more cold from coming last Sunday. You shouldn't have, you know."

"I had to," Flip said. "I promised."

"I knew something you couldn't help had kept you. Of course I was a little afraid you'd been caught and they were keeping you from coming. Did you have any trouble getting here today? What will you do when there's a real snow, Flip? You'll never be able to make it."

"I'll make it," Flip assured him. "Where's Ariel?"

"He's home with my father. Flip, I—I've done something that may make you angry."

"What?"

"Well, I got to thinking. It's so terribly cold in the chateau; I'm sure that's why you caught cold, and I didn't think we should go back there in the damp today so I told my father about you. He won't give us away, Flip, I made him promise."

"Are you sure?" Flip asked anxiously.

"Quite sure. My father would never break his word. Anyhow he's a philosopher and things like girls schools and rules and regulations and things don't seem as important to him as they do to other people. He told me to bring you home with me and he said he'd fix some real hot chocolate for us. So come along."

Flip followed Paul over the snow, past the chateau, and down an overgrown driveway. Grass and weeds and bits of stubble poked up through the snow and it did not look like much of a snowfall here though the drifts had seemed formidable enough on her way up the mountain from school.

A tall, stooped man, whom Flip recognized as the one she had seen Paul with in the chalet on the Col de Jaman, met them at the door to the lodge. Ariel came bounding out to welcome them noisily.

"My father," Paul announced formally. "Monsieur Georges Laurens. Papa, my friend, Miss Philippa Hunter."

Georges Laurens bowed. "I am happy indeed to meet you, Miss Hunter. Come in by the fire and get warm." He led them into a room, comfortable from the blazing fire in the stone fireplace, and gently pushed Flip into an easy chair. She looked about her. Two beautiful brocades were hung on the walls and there were what seemed like hundreds of books in improvised bookshelves made of packing cases. Two or three lamps were already lit against the early darkness which had settled about the mountain side by this time of the afternoon, and Flip saw a copper saucepan filled with hot chocolate sitting on the hearth.

"Flip's afraid you'll let the cat out of the bag, papa," Paul said.

Georges Laurens took a long spoon, stirred the chocolate, and poured it out. He handed a cup to Flip and pushed Ariel away from the saucepan. "Watch out, you'll burn your nose again." Then he turned to Flip. "Why should I let the cat out of the bag? You aren't doing anyone any harm and you're giving a great deal of pleasure to my lonely Paul. In fact, I like so much the idea of Paul's having your companionship that my only concern is how to help you continue your visits. As soon as we have a heavy snow you won't be able to climb up the mountains through the woods to us, and in any event someone would be sure to find you out sooner or later and you would be forbidden to come if nothing else. These are facts we have to face, isn't that so?"

"Yes, that's so," Flip said.

"She has to come," Paul said very firmly.

Georges Laurens took off his heavy steel-rimmed spectacles and wiped them on his handkerchief. Then he took the tongs and placed another log on the fire. "My suggestion is this: Why don't I go to the headmistress of this school and get permission for Miss Flip to come to tea with us every Saturday or Sunday afternoon. That would be allowed, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know," Flip said. "Esmée Bodet's parents are spending a month in Montreux and she has dinner with them every Sunday. But Paul's a boy and we're not allowed to have dates until we're Seniors."

"I think if I were very charming," Georges Laurens refilled her cup with hot chocolate from the copper saucepan, "I could manage your headmistress. What is her name?"

"Mlle. Dragonet," Flip told him. "We call her The Dragon," she said, then added, remembering the visit in the infirmary, "but she's really quite human."

Georges Laurens laughed. "Well, I shall be St. George, then, and conquer the dragon. I will brave her in her den this very afternoon."

"And now I suggest that you get back to your school and tomorrow we will have a proper visit, and I will come for you and bring you over." He held out his hand. "I promise."

8

It never occurred to Flip that on this last forbidden trip to the chateau she might be caught. Luck had been her friendly companion in the venture and now that the visits to Paul were about to be approved by authority, surely fortune would not forsake her. But, just as she came to the clearing where the railroad tracks ran through the woods, she saw two figures in warm coats and snow boots and recognized Madame Perceval and Signorina del Rossi. She darted behind a tree, but they had evidently caught a glimpse of her blue uniform coat, for Signorina put a gloved hand on Madame Perceval's arm and said something in a low voice, and Madame Perceval called out sharply,

"Who is it?"

Flip thought of making a wild dash for safety, but she knew it would be useless. They were between her and the school and they would be bound to recognize her if she tried to run past them. So she stepped out from behind the tree and confronted them just as a train came around the bend. In a moment the train was between them; she was not sure whether or not they had had an opportunity to recognize her in the misty dark; the school uniforms were all identical and there were dozens of girls with short fair hair. Now was her chance to run and hide. They would never find her in the dark of the woods and the train would give her a good chance to get a head start. But somehow, even if this meant that she would never be given permission to see Paul, she could not run like a coward from Madame Perceval, so she stood very quietly, cold with fear, until the train had passed. Then she crossed the tracks to them.

"Thank you for waiting, Philippa," Madame Perceval said.

She stood, numbly staring at the art teacher, her fingers twisting unhappily inside her mittens.

"Did you know you were out of bounds, Philippa?" Madame Perceval asked her.

She shook her head. "I didn't remember where the bounds were." Then she added, "but I was pretty sure I was out of them."

Signorina stood looking at her with the serene half-smile that seldom left her face even when she had to cope with the dullest and most annoying girls in her Italian classes. "Where were you going, little one?"

"Back to school."

"Where from?"

"I was—walking."

"Was it necessary to go out of bounds on your walk?" Madame Perceval asked coldly. "Mlle. Dragonet is very severe with girls who cross the railroad tracks."

Flip remembered the walk on which she had first met Ariel, and how, somehow, it had been necessary to go up, up, the mountain. "I wanted to climb."

"Were you alone?" Madame Perceval looked at her piercingly but the dark hid the girl's expression. When she hesitated, Madame pursued, "Did you meet anyone?"

"Yes," Flip answered so low that she could scarcely be heard.

"You'd better come back to the school with me," Madame Perceval said. She turned to Signorina. "Go along, Signorina. Tell them I'll come when I can."

In silence Flip followed Madame down the mountain. When she slipped on a piece of ice and her long legs went flying over her head, Madame helped her to pick herself up and brush off the snow, but she said nothing. They left the trees and crossed the lawn, covered with patches of snow, and went into the big Hall. Madame Perceval led the way upstairs, and Flip followed her, on up the five flights and down the hall to Madame's own rooms. Madame switched on the lights and when she spoke her voice was suddenly easy and pleasant.

"Sit down, Philippa." Flip's spindly legs seemed to collapse under her like a puppy's as she sat on the stool in front of the fire. "Now," Madame went on. "Can you tell me about it?"

Flip shook her head and stared miserably up at Madame, "No, Madame."

"Who did you go to meet?"

"I'd rather not say. Please."

"Was it anybody from school?"

"No, Madame."

"Did anybody at school have anything to do with it?"

"No, Madame. There wasn't anybody else but me."

"And you can't tell me who it was you went to meet?"

"No. I'm sorry."

"Philippa," Madame said slowly. "I know you've been trying hard and that the going has been rough for you. I understand your need for interests outside the school. But the rules we have here are all for a definite purpose and they were not made to be lightly broken."

"I wasn't breaking them lightly, Madame."

"Once a girl ran away and was killed crossing the railroad tracks. They are dangerous, especially after dark. You see they are placed out of bounds for a very good reason. And if there's anybody you want to see outside school it's not difficult to get permission. If you were one of the senior girls I might think you were slipping away to meet one of the boys from the school up the mountain. But I know that's not the case. I don't like having to give penalties and if you'll tell me about it I promise you I'll be as lenient as I can."

But Flip's thoughts were rushing around in confusion, and she thought, if I tell now they'll never give me permission to see Paul.

So she just shook her head while she continued to stare helplessly at the art teacher.