authority from your father and mother to allow you to accept
invitations."

"But I _know_ they'd let me! Oh, Miss Todd, I simply _must_!"

"That's for me to decide, Diana, not you, and I say 'no'."

Mistress and pupil looked at each other squarely. Miss Todd's mouth was
set in a firm line. Evidently she considered that she was fighting a
campaign against Diana, and she meant to carry this outpost. Diana had
the sense to realize her defeat. She drooped her lashes over her eyes.

"May I send a note to Cousin Cora?" she asked in a strangled voice.

"You can if you wish, and I'll write to her myself, and explain that it
is against our rules."

Murmuring something that sounded dangerously like "Strafe rules!" Diana
darted upstairs for blotting-pad and fountain-pen. She frowned hard
while she scribbled, thumped the envelope as she closed it, then ran
down to give it into the personal charge of the chauffeur. She would
have added some comments for his benefit, had Miss Hampson not been
standing upon the doorstep.

"You're not coming, miss?" enquired Thompson civilly, but with evident
astonishment.

"_No!_" grunted Diana, turning indoors and clumping down the hall past
Miss Todd's study with footsteps heavy enough to justify the demand for
felt slippers.

She was too angry at the moment to mind what happened, and the
Principal, who was wise in her generation, allowed her to stamp by
unchallenged.

At tea-time, at preparation, at evening recreation, and at supper Diana
sat with a thunder-cloud on her face. When she went to bed it burst. She
squatted in a limp heap on the floor and raged at fate.

"I'm sorry, but you're really making a most fearful fuss!" said Loveday,
whose sympathy and sense of fitness were playing see-saw. "It's one of
the rules of the school that we don't go away for odd holidays. We may
have Friday to Monday at half-term, but even Mrs. Gifford never let
anyone off in the middle of the week to stay a night. You're only served
the same as everybody else. Why can't you take it sporting?"

"You don't understand!" wailed Diana, mopping her moist cheeks.

"Do get up from the floor, at any rate. It looks so weak to be huddled
up like a bundle of rags. You haven't brushed your hair yet. Don't be a
slacker, Diana!"

Thus morally prodded, Diana rose dejectedly, put on her bedroom
slippers, and took the hair-brush which her room-mate handed. She did
not like to be called a slacker, particularly by Love