ided up into small families according to bedrooms!" added Hester
Wilson.

The bedrooms at Chilcombe Hall were rather a speciality. They were
large, and were furnished partly as studies, and girls had their own
bookcases, knick-knacks, and pretty things there. As the house was
provided with central heating, they were warmed, and a certain amount of
preparation was done in them each afternoon. Miss Walters' artistic
faculty had decorated them in schemes of various colors, so that they
were known respectively as The Rose, The Gold, The Green, The Brown, and
The Blue Bedrooms. Lilias and Dulcie Ingleton, Gowan Barbour, and Bertha
Chesters, who occupied the last-named, considered it quite the choicest
of all. They had each made important contributions to its furniture, had
clubbed together to buy a Liberty table-cloth, had provided vases in
lovely shades of turquoise blue, and had worked toilet-mats, nightdress
cases and other accessories to accord with the prevailing tone. "The
Blue Grotto," as they named their dormitory, certainly had points over
rival bedrooms, for it looked down the garden towards the river, and
had the best view of the sunset. Moreover, it was at the very end of the
corridor, so that sudden outbursts of laughter did not meet the ears of
Miss Hardy quite so easily as from the Rose or the Brown room.

The work of the spring term had been in full swing for nearly a month,
when Gowan Barbour, looking at the calendar--hand-painted, with blue
cranesbill geraniums--suddenly discovered that next morning would be the
festival of St. Valentine.

"Could anything be better?" she exulted. "We've won the record for
tidiness three weeks running, so we're entitled to a special indulgence.
I vote we ask to bring tea up here, and have a Valentine party. Don't
you think it would be rather scrumptious? I've all sorts of ideas in my
head."

"Topping!" agreed Dulcie, pausing in the act of tying her hair ribbon to
consider the important question, "specially if we could get Miss Walters
to let us send to Glazebrook for a few cakes. I believe she would, if we
wheedled!"

"What about visitors?" asked Lilias. "It would be much more of a party
if we had a few of the others in."

"We don't want a crowd, or we might as well be in the dining-hall,"
objected Bertha.

"Well, of course we shouldn't ask the whole school, naturally, but
perhaps just Noreen and Phillida!"

"We must get at the soft spot in Miss Walters' heart," de