can't see one's own brother,
especially when Mother had written to say we might. We had to see him
somehow, and I think it's a great deal worse to be obliged to go like
this and talk over palings than to meet him in the drawing-room. It's
just like Norty's nonsense. She's full of red-tape notions, and a
Jack-in-office to-day because the Empress has left her in charge. I feel
raggy."

"So do I, especially to miss the cafe. I hope Larry won't forget to send
those sweets."

CHAPTER XII

The School Union

The last few days of the term were passing quickly. The examinations
were over, though the lists were not yet out. To both Marjorie and Dona
they had been somewhat of an ordeal, for the Brackenfield standard was
high. When confronted with sets of questions the girls felt previous
slackness in work become painfully evident. It was horrible to have to
sit and look at a problem without the least idea of how to solve it; or
to find that the dates and facts which ought to have been at their
finger-ends had departed to distant and un-get-at-able realms of their
memory.

"I can think of the wretched things afterwards," mourned Dona, "but at
the time I'm so flustered, everything I want to remember goes utterly
out of my head. I really knew the boundaries of Germany, only I drew
them wrong on the map; and in the Literature paper I mixed up Pope and
Dryden, and I put that Sheridan wrote _She Stoops to Conquer_, instead
of Goldsmith."

"I'm sure I failed in Chemistry," groused Marjorie. "And the Latin was
the most awful paper I've ever seen in my life. It would take a B.A. to
do that piece of unseen translation. As for the General Knowledge paper,
I got utterly stumped. How should I know what are the duties of a High
Sheriff and an Archdeacon, or how many men must be on a jury? Even
Mollie Simpson said it was stiff, and she's good at all that kind of
information. I wonder they didn't ask us how many currants there are in
a Christmas pudding!"

"There won't be many this year," laughed Dona. "Auntie was saying
currants and raisins are very scarce. Probably we shan't get any mince
pies. But I don't care. It'll be lovely to be at home again, even if the
Germans sink every food ship and only leave us porridge for Christmas."

The last day of the term was somewhat in the nature of a ceremony at
Brackenfield. Lessons proceeded as usual until twelve, when the whole
school assembled for the reading of the examination lists