led Diana.

CHAPTER VII

Land Girls

With the bond of such a secret between them, Diana and Loveday cemented
a firm friendship. To be sure, Loveday's conscience, which was of a very
exacting and inquisitorial description, sometimes gave her unpleasant
twinges like a species of moral toothache; but then the other self which
also talked inside her would plead that it was only sporting to screen a
schoolfellow, and that no one but a sneak could have done otherwise. She
sincerely hoped that Diana had escaped notice both going and returning,
and that no busybody from the village would bring a report to Miss Todd.
If the matter were to leak out, both girls would get into serious
trouble--Diana for running away, and her room-mate for aiding and
abetting her escapade. That she was really in some danger on her account
gave Loveday an added interest in Diana. She began to be very fond of
her. The little American had a most lovable side for certain people, on
whom she bestowed the warmth of her affection, though she could be a
pixie to those who did not happen to please her. With the seniors in
general she was no favourite. She had more than one skirmish with the
prefects, and was commonly regarded as a firebrand, ready at any moment
to set alight the flame of insurrection among turbulent intermediates
and juniors.

"Diana's at the bottom of any mischief that's going!" proclaimed
Geraldine one day, after a battle royal over an absurd dispute about the
tennis-court.

"And the worst of it is, she makes Wendy just as bad!" agreed Hilary
warmly.

"Wendy wasn't exactly a saint before Diana came," put in Loveday.

"Oh, you always stand up for Diana! I can't think what you see in her--a
cheeky little monkey, I call her!" Geraldine was still ruffled.

"She has her points, though."

"She'll get jolly well sat upon, if she doesn't take care," muttered
Geraldine, who held exalted notions as to the dignity of prefects.

It was at the beginning of the second week in October that Miss Todd, in
whose brain ambitious projects of education for the production of the
"super-girl" had been fermenting, announced the first of her radical
changes. She had not undertaken it without much consultation with
parents, and many letters had passed backwards and forwards on the
subject. Most, however, had agreed with her views, and it had been
decided that at any rate the experiment was to be tried. Pendlemere,
which so far had concentrated