?" she demanded. "Then, Rona Mitchell, you ought to be
ashamed of yourself. Go and pick them up at once, and put them inside
your basket. What do you think the field will look like if more than
fifty people strew it with orange-peel and sandwich-paper! We don't come
here to spoil the beautiful spots we have been enjoying. I should be
utterly disgraced if the school behaved like a party of cheap-trippers.
Woodlanders ought to respect all natural scenery. I thought you would
have learnt that by this time, but it appears you haven't. Don't forget
it again."

Much crushed, Rona collected the peel, and, wrapping it carefully in her
piece of sandwich-paper, put it in the very bottom of her basket, under
a layer of catkins. The girls had brought bobbins of thread with them,
and were making their snowdrops into little bunches, with ivy leaves and
lambs'-tails from the hazel. A few lucky explorers had even found some
palm opening on the sallows. Several had nature notes to contribute.
Nellie Barlow and Gladys Broughton had seen a real weasel, and plumed
themselves accordingly, till Evie Isherwood capped their story by
producing the remains of a last year's chaffinch's nest she had found in
a tree.

"If I said I'd seen a snake, should I be believed?" whispered Rona.

"Certainly not. Everyone knows that snakes hibernate; so don't try it
on," returned Ulyth, laughing.

"Half-past two. We must be going back at once, girls, or there won't be
time to send off your snowdrops," said Miss Teddington. "Pack your
baskets and come along."

CHAPTER X

Trespassers Beware!

The girls left the snowdrop field with reluctance, though they realized
the necessity for hurry. Nearly everyone wished to dispatch her spoils
home, and unless the boxes were sent very early to the post-office the
chances were that there would not be time for the postmaster to stamp
them officially, and that they might languish somewhere in the
background of the village shop until next day, and consequently arrive
at their destination in an utterly withered condition.

The school scrambled back along the top of the wall, therefore, with
what haste the brambles and hazel-bushes allowed them, splashed
recklessly among the pools of the flooded lane, and regained the high
road with quite record speed. Ulyth, walking with Lizzie Lonsdale, had
left Rona in the rear. Rona, owing to her intimacy with Ulyth, tried to
tag on to V B, often receiving snubs from some o