onde to Ardiune.
"Tennis is off to-night. Strafe the old camp! I wish the Romans had
never lived!"

CHAPTER VI

A Midnight Scare

Miss Gibbs's plans for the enlargement of her pupils' minds ran over a
wide range of subjects from archaeology to ambulance. As they expressed
it, she was always springing some fresh surprise upon them. Like bees,
they were expected to sip mental honey from many intellectual flowers.
They had dabbled in chemistry till Ardiune spilt acid down Miss
Gibbs's dress, after which the experiments suddenly stopped. They had
collected fruits and seed-vessels, had studied animalculae through the
microscope, and modelled fungi in plasticine. Stencilling,
illuminating, painting, and marqueterie each had a brief turn, and
were superseded by raffia-plaiting and poker-work. Miss Beasley
suggested tentatively that it might be better to concentrate on a
single subject, but Miss Gibbs, who loved arguments about education,
was well prepared to defend her line of action.

"There is always a danger in specialization," she replied. "You can't
tell how a girl's tastes will run till you give her an opportunity of
proving them. My theory is, let them try each separate craft, and then
choose their own hobbies. One will take naturally to oil-painting,
another may find clay or gesso her means of artistic expression. Some
minds delight in pure Greek outline, while others revel in the
intricacies of Celtic ornament. Again, a girl with no aesthetic sense
may be enraptured with the wonders of the microscope, and those who
find a difficulty in mastering the technical terms of botany may yet
excel in the extent of their collections of specimens. Who would have
imagined that Veronica Terry would develop an interest in geology? I
had always considered her a remarkably dull child, but her fossils
formed the nucleus of the school museum. I have hopes at present that
one or two of my girls are developing tastes that will last them for
life."

It was one of Miss Gibbs's pet theories that not only should her
pupils have the opportunity of sampling arts, handicrafts, and
scientific pursuits, but that they should in every respect cultivate a
wide mental horizon. She was fond of suggesting emergencies to them,
and asking how they would act in special circumstances.

"Imagine yourself left a widow," she had once propounded, "with three
small children to support, and a capital of only three hundred pounds.
How would you e