man-Smith, I did
say 'the hive', my sense of poetry being more highly developed than my
love of exact science. You needn't lift your eyebrows, it's not a
pretty habit."

"Who's going to make the deputation?" asked Fauvette.

"You, for one. You're our strongest point. You look naturally affectionate
and clinging and docile, and ready-to-be-taught-if-taken-the-right-way,
and easily led, and all the rest of it. You'll burble forth something
pretty about wanting to have an expedition with our Principal in our
midst, and mention what a wet day it was last year, and how disappointed we
all were."

"Look here, I'm not going to do all the talking, so don't think!"

"Oh, we'll support you! But I'm just giving you a few leading lines to
work upon. We'll take Maudie Heywood with us; she got ninety-five
marks out of a hundred last week, which ought to go for something!"

"Then Magsie and Muriel had better come too. It won't do to let the
Bumble think the whole idea has originated with us."

"Right you are! The more pattern pupils we can scrape together, the
better."

At five o'clock the deputation presented itself at the door of the
study, and was received graciously by the Principal, though she
declined to commit herself to an immediate answer, promising to think
the matter over and to let them know later on.

"Which means she daren't say 'yes' till she's asked leave from
Gibbie!" declared Raymonde, when the delegates were out of ear-shot of
the sanctum. "Fauvette, child, you did splendidly! I'd give five
thousand pounds to have your big, pathetic, innocent blue eyes! They
always bowl everybody over. I envy you at your first grown-up dance.
You'll have your programme full in five minutes, like the heroine of a
novel."

Raymonde's supposition was not altogether mistaken, for that evening,
after the school had gone to bed, Miss Beasley, Miss Gibbs, and
Mademoiselle sat up talking over the proposed expedition. Miss Gibbs
vetoed the idea entirely.

"The girls have not been behaving well enough to justify any such
indulgence," she maintained impressively. "Their conduct on the stairs
yesterday was disgraceful. Better make them stick to their lessons."

Mademoiselle, whose mental scales always tipped naturally towards the
side of pleasure, thought it was a beautiful idea of the dear girls
to want to give their headmistress a fete on her anniversary. So sweet
to go upon the water, and while the weather was so pleasant! It w