_Frontispiece_ 239

"SHE OPENED THE DOOR CAUTIOUSLY" 35

"I KNOW WHAT MONICA WAS GOING TO SAY" 93

AN UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT 139

THE SECRET DOOR 202

CHAPTER I

Nora's News

It was the first week of the summer term at Winterburn Lodge. Afternoon
preparation was over, and most of the girls had left the classroom for a
chat and a stroll round the playground until the tea-bell should ring.
From the tennis court came the sounds of the soft thud of balls and a
few excited voices recording the score; while through the open windows
of the house floated the strains of three pianos, on which three
separate pieces were being practised in three different keys, the
mingled result forming a particularly inharmonious jangle.

On a bench in the corner by the swing two yellow heads and a brown one
might be seen bent in close proximity over a rather dilapidated atlas.
Their respective owners were apparently making a half-hearted endeavour
to hunt out a list of towns upon the map of England, and were amusing
themselves between whiles with the pleasant, though somewhat
unprofitable pastime of grumbling.

"I hate geography!" declared Lindsay Hepburn. "If we could be taken a
picnic to each of the places, there'd be some sense in it; but to have
to reel off a string of tiresome names that don't mean anything at all
to you--I call it stupid!"

"It's such a fearfully long lesson, too!" agreed Cicely Chalmers
dolefully. "Miss Frazer might have set us a shorter one for the first!
It's really too bad of her to make us begin with two pages and a half in
a new book! I'm sure I shall never get it into my head, if I try till
midnight."

"I wonder why things always seem so much harder to learn when one's just
come back after the holidays?" propounded Marjorie Butler with a
melancholy yawn.

"I don't know. I suppose because it all feels so horrid. It's perfectly
dreadful to think what a huge time it is until we can go home again."

"Thirteen whole weeks! And every one of them will be exactly the same:
lessons with Miss Frazer or Mademoiselle, an hour's practising, a walk
in the park or along the Surrey Road, and a game of tennis when you can
manage to get hold of the court. There's never anything different,
unless Miss Russell takes us to a