he whole school knew of its existence, but
nobody had troubled before to land on its few yards of surface. It was
well hidden by the boat-house, so that any operations there were not
visible from the garden or orchard. The rest of the intermediates,
admitted with many cautions of silence into the secret, approved
whole-heartedly; the form squatted in a circle on their territory,
linked little fingers, and pledged themselves into a sort of Crusoe
Society. Everybody felt that the first thing to be done was to hold an
inauguration feast. They borrowed the bucket, filled it with coal and
coke from the greenhouse, and carried it successfully over the plank to
the island.

"So far so good!" purred Diana. "We've got our fire!"

"But not our feast!" qualified Wendy.

"We shall have to be jolly careful to dodge those juniors," advised
Jess. "If they see us carrying out cups they'll be on the scent
directly."

"We mustn't risk it. Besides, Barker would be sure to catch us in the
pantry, and make a clamour if we took cups; we must manage without
things from the house."

"There's a large biscuit-tin lid in the hen-yard," suggested Sadie. "If
we washed it very well, it would do as a frying pan."

"Good biz!"

"What could we fry?"

The commissariat question was indeed the problem of problems. The
village was unfortunately out of bounds, so that, except on stated
occasions, when they were escorted by a mistress, the girls were unable
to do shopping "on their own". There are ways, however, of crawling
through even the most barbed-wire fence of rules.

"Toddlekins never told us we weren't to ask anybody else to do shopping
for us," said Wendy demurely. "When you've not been told not to do
anything, you're not disobedient if you don't do it--oh! I'm getting
rather in a muddle, but you know what I mean."

They did, and they grinned approval.

"There's a little boy working on the next farm," continued Wendy. "I've
smiled and waved to him over the hedge sometimes. I believe he'd do
_anything_ for me. If you can stump up some cash, I'll get him to run an
errand for us. He's picking stones out of the field at this present
moment--at least, to be absolutely truthful, he was, ten minutes ago,
and I don't suppose he's stopped. If I go to the orchard fence I can
call to him."

The circle looked at Wendy with admiration. They had not before realized
the riches of her resourcefulness. Each promised to contribute sixpence,
and told