Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/206

194 to ask permission for the excursion to be regarded as the annual treat of the Guild, and particularly to request that all officers should be present and wear their badges.

"Done Poppie for once, I believe!" triumphed Dilys. "She can't have the cheek to keep our Secretary at home. The Guild would mutiny."

"She's made such a fuss of the Guild, she's bound to allow us some latitude," agreed Hetty.

"Then on Saturday week Gipsy shall get one treat, if she doesn't get another all this term."

But before Saturday week something happened.

Among the various rules of Briarcroft, one of the strictest was that which forbade any boarders to go outside the grounds without first obtaining special permission from Miss Poppleton. The day girls at the school wore the regulation sailor hat with a plain band of navy-blue ribbon, but the boarders, to distinguish them from the others, had a navy band with a white stripe in it. They were extremely proud of these stripes, which they regarded as a badge of superiority, similar to the gold tassels which, many years ago, were worn by the sons of the nobility on their college caps at Oxford. The hats were of course very well known in the neighbourhood, and nobody who lived anywhere near the school could possibly mistake the Briarcroft "sailor".

Now it came to Miss Poppleton's ears, through the medium of one of those malicious little birds who have a reputation for carrying inconvenient pieces of information, that on several evenings, just at dusk, a girl who wore a boarder's hat had been seen to leave the