Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/23

24 gravely, "but have you no work to do this morning?"

"Oh, very well"; the round, pink face of Gladys clouded over, and she tossed her head. "Just as you please, miss, I'm sure. I can take a hint as well as anybody. I never intrude and I never say a word more than needful. If my room's preferred to my company I never linger. But oh, I say, miss, have either of you noticed the new baker's boy? He's just like a picture, blue eyes and golden curls, six feet high and four medals, and he can talk French. He says lots of it. I don't know exactly what it means, but he has such expressing eyes."

"Gladys, begone!" cried Jane; "but before you go just tell us when we're to go to the Head."

"I've told you a dozen times, if once," said Gladys reproachfully, "that you're not to lose a moment. I shouldn't even wait to comb my hair or powder my nose if I was you, miss. She's waiting for you in her own room, and I was to tell you to go down at once. And my advice is, you go and get it over. Because why . . ."

They found the Headmistress in her sitting-room—the room so well adapted to the beguiling of parents, the room so tasteful and yet so learned-looking—books, flowers, autotypes from Watts and Burne-Jones, busts of Mozart and Socrates; "all kinds of cultivated tastes catered for" as Jane used to say.

The Head was not looking pleased. She held in her hand three letters, and said, "Be seated," without looking at her pupils. Then she tapped one of the letters, the open one, on the neat fumed-oak writing-table before her, looked out of her window, and asked:

"Had you any idea of this?"

"What?" Jane asked. "Of what," corrected the Head mechanically "Perhaps you had better read your letters." She handed a square hand-made envelope to each. There was the sound of torn and rustling paper. The canary in the window rustled sympathetically among his sand and groundsel.