Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/101

Rh "Directions in case of Fire", and had examined the chute with intense interest.

"I'd just love to go sliding down it out of our bedroom window," she exclaimed. "It would be almost as much fun as toboganning."

"Rather freezing work on these sharp nights. There was ice on the puddles this morning," said Dilys. "No fire-drill practice for me, thank you! I prefer to stop snug in bed."

"You've no spirit of adventure in you," returned Gipsy.

"I've got sound common sense instead, and that's what you don't possess, Yankee Doodle!"

"All the same, that summons is going to come off, by hook or by crook!" said Gipsy to herself. "It would be a kindness to the school to give it a chance to see whether it's prepared for emergencies. Gipsy Latimer, I guess you'll have to be the philanthropist! But you've no need to flaunt your noble deed. 'Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame', in fact."

If Gipsy, before she went to bed that night, contrived to tie a long piece of string to the bell chain in the passage, and to secure the other end to her bedpost, she did not blazon the fact abroad, and the string was so neatly laid against the edges of skirting board and under mats that nobody happened to notice it. At 3 a.m., when the whole of Briarcroft was wrapped in deepest slumbers, there suddenly came the great clang-clang of the fire bell, resounding and echoing through the quiet house. Everybody woke in a hurry, and the head of each dormitory at once switched on the electric