Principals of an annual argument on the
subject, felt they had scored for this year at any rate, and were
certainly one holiday to the good.

There was no question at all as to where they should walk. Every 21st
January, weather permitting, they turned their steps in the same
direction. On certain portions of the marsh, near the river, grew fields
of wild snowdrops, and to go snowdropping before February set in was as
much an institution as turning their money when they first heard the
cuckoo, or wishing at the sight of the earliest white butterfly. As a
matter of fact, though the delicate fiction of asking for the holiday
was preserved, it was such a _sine qua non_ that the cook was prepared
for it. She had baked jam tartlets and made potted meat the day before,
and was already cutting sandwiches and packing them in greaseproof
paper. Every girl at The Woodlands possessed a basket, just as she owned
a penknife or a French dictionary. It was equally indispensable. She
would carry out her lunch in it, and bring it back filled with flowers,
berries, or nature specimens, as the case might be. Each was labelled
with the owner's name, and hung in a big cupboard under the stairs. Some
of the girls also used walking-sticks with crooked handles, which were
found convenient weapons for hooking down brambles or branches of
catkins.

Shortly after ten o'clock the school started, every Woodlander bearing
her basket, containing sandwiches, two tartlets, an orange, and a small
enamelled drinking-mug. There were to be no camp-fires to-day, so cold
water from the stream would have to suffice, and would make tea all the
more welcome when they returned home. It was quite a fine morning, with
sudden gleams of sunshine that burst from the clouds and spread in
long, slanting, golden rays over the valley; just the kind of sky the
early masters of landscape painting loved to put in their pictures, with
a background of neutral tint and a bright, scraped-out light in the
foreground. The little solitary farms stood out white here and there
against the green of the fields, the pine-trees on the hill-sides showed
darkly in contrast to the bare larches. Cwm Dinas was inky purple
to-day, but Penllwyd was capped with snow. Miss Bowes, who was not a
good walker, had not ventured to join the expedition, but Miss
Teddington strode along at the head of the party, chatting to some of
the Sixth Form.

"I'm sure she's wishing she were giving a Latin les