skance at the whole business, and whose wife was hovering about
with a broom to sweep up bits, vetoed the suggestion so emphatically
that the Vicar, wavering with a strong balance towards ancient custom,
hastily and regretfully decided in the negative. Neither would Miss Todd
allow them to be strewn upon the schoolroom floor, although Diana
ventured to suggest the advisability of practical study of mediaeval
methods.

"There are some things best left to imagination," replied the Principal
dryly. "For instance, there would be no need to dispense with forks, and
let you hold mutton bones with your fingers at dinner, in order to
demonstrate fourteenth-century manners, nor to bleed you every time you
had a toothache, to test ancient practices of medicine. If you're so
very anxious to skip a few hundred years, I have, in an old Herbal, a
prescription to cure 'swimming in ye heade and such like phantasies'. It
consists mainly of pounded snail-shells, mixed with boiled tansy and
snippings from the hair of an unbaptized infant born between Easter and
Michaelmas. Any one who wishes has my permission to try it."

"No, thank you!" said Diana, screwing up her mouth. "Unless," she added
hopefully, "I might go out and gather the tansy. We saw some growing on
the way to Fox Fell."

"There's a fine clump at the bottom of the garden, so you needn't go out
of bounds to get it," replied Miss Todd, glancing at her pupil with eyes
that clearly saw through all subterfuges.

The Principal was determined that Diana and Wendy, having deliberately
broken a rule, should suffer the just consequences, and she did not
intend to remit one jot or tittle of the punishment she had inflicted.
"Bounds" at Pendlemere were sufficiently extensive to allow ample
exercise, and any farther excursions must be deferred till the end of
the appointed fortnight.

Diana, looking at the exeat list which hung in the hall, shook her head
at sight of her own name scored through with a blue pencil.

"Just to think that removing my boots and stockings for ten short
minutes should have cut me off from going to Glenbury," she
philosophized. "I was only 'laving my feet', as the poets say. Nymphs
always did it in classical times. Indeed, I don't suppose they ever had
boots and stockings to take off, so they could paddle as they pleased."

"They had a warmer climate in Greece," sniffed Wendy, who had a bad cold
in her head as the result of her paddling; "and I suppose th