Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/224

212 "That's quite likely. I've thought of that too. Well, I mean to go to some of the shipping offices, and see if they'll give me a post on a South African liner as assistant stewardess. Don't look so frightfully aghast! It's work I could do very well, though it wouldn't be pleasant. I've travelled so much about the world that I'm absolutely at home on board ship. I know all the ins and outs of voyaging, and I'm a splendid sailor, never seasick in the least. I could make myself most uncommonly useful. I'd buy a packet of hairpins and tuck up my hair so that I'd look much older, and I believe they'd engage me, because it's so difficult sometimes to meet with assistant stewardesses. I'm nearly fifteen now, and I'd rather earn my own living like that than stay here at Briarcroft on Poppie's charity. American and Colonial girls are never ashamed to work. When I get out to Cape Town, I'll go to the headmistress of the school where I stopped three months. She was a trump, and I believe she'd help me to find Dad."

So bold a plan almost took Meg's breath away, yet its ambitious daring appealed strongly to her schoolgirl imagination. She had absolutely no knowledge of the world, and the scheme which an older person would have instantly vetoed sounded to her inexperienced young ears not only perfectly feasible, but delightfully enterprising and romantic. She entered into it with enthusiasm, absolutely certain that anything that Gipsy proposed must be right. Having worshipped her friend for so long, she could not believe her idol's judgment would be at fault.

"I'll tell you what we'll do!" she exclaimed. "Let's