Page:Angela Brazil--the leader of the lower school.djvu/97

Rh think anybody but herself would have dreamed of doing what followed. The outer door of the corridor was standing open, and when the monitress's back was for the moment turned, Gipsy slipped out into the playground. On the opposite side of the quadrangle stood the open window of her classroom, ten feet or so above the ground. The wall of that part of the house was thickly covered with ivy, and in less time than it takes to tell it she was scrambling up with as much agility as the monkey to which Doreen had unfeelingly compared her. A few girls who happened to be standing near the door and witnessed her achievement gasped audibly, but I verily believe Gipsy would have been back before she was missed, had not Maude Helm officiously chirped out:

"Oh, I say! Look at Yankee Doodle!"

Naturally the monitress did look, and fled into the courtyard in pursuit of the runaway. Her outraged face, upturned from below, greeted Gipsy as that irrepressible damsel reappeared at the window waving her Hamlet in triumph.

"Gipsy Latimer, go back down the stairs!" commanded Doreen.

"No, thanks! It's shorter this way, and saves time," returned Gipsy, dropping her book first, then swinging herself out of the window. She came down the ivy quite easily, picked up her Hamlet, smoothed its cover, which had suffered in the fall, and flitted back to her place in the corridor, just as the lecture room door opened to let out the Third Form and admit the Upper Fourth. Doreen followed grimly.