e a fine collection of Old Masters was on loan. It was the first
time Winona had seen paintings by world-famous artists, though she had
often pored over reproductions of their works in _The Studio_ or _The
Connoisseur_. She felt that the experience added another window to her
outlook on life.

"I wish I'd the talent to be an artist!" she thought. "There are so many
things I'd like to do! Oh, dear! Painting and music (both beyond me
utterly) and physical culture and poultry farming, and Red Cross
nursing, and I probably shan't do any of them, after all! I want to be
of solid use to the world in a nice interesting way to myself, and I
expect I'll just have to do a lot of stupid things that I hate. Why
wasn't I born a Raphael?"

"How do you think you've got on altogether?" Garnet asked Winona, as,
thoroughly tired out, the two girls traveled homeward to Seaton at the
end of the third day's examination.

"Um--tolerably. Better, perhaps, than I expected, but that's not saying
much. And you?"

"I never prophesy till I know!"

But Garnet's dark eyes shone as she leaned back in her corner.

CHAPTER XIX

The Swimming Contest

Once the examinations were over, Winona's spirits, which had been
decidedly at Il Penseroso, went up to L'Allegro. The strain of coaching
Garnet had been very great, but the relief was in corresponding
proportion. She felt as if a burden had rolled from her shoulders. There
was just a month of the term left. The Sixth would of course be expected
to do its ordinary form work, but the amount of home study required
would be reasonable, quite a different matter from the intolerable grind
of preparation for a University examination. The extra afternoon classes
with Miss Goodson were no longer necessary, leaving a delightful period
of leisure half-hours at school. Winona intended to employ these
blissful intervals in cricket practice, at the tennis courts, in helping
to arrange the museum, and in carrying out several other pet schemes
that she had been forced hitherto to set aside. Bessie Kirk had made a
good deputy, but it was nice to take the reins into her own hands once
more, and feel that she was head of the Games department. She coached
her champions assiduously. At tennis Emily Cooper and Bertha March stood
out like planets among the stars. They had already beaten Westwood High
School and Hill Top Secondary School, and hoped to have a chance
against Binworth College, of hitherto invincibl