that resurrection of Nature when the
thraldom of winter is over, and beauty comes back to the gray dim world.
The old Greeks felt it, thousands of years ago, and fabled it in their
myth of Persephone and her return from Hades. The Druids knew it in
Ancient Britain, and fixed their religious ceremonies for May Day. The
birds were caroling it still in the hedgerows, and the girls caught the
joyous infection and danced along in defiance of Miss Strong's jog-trot
guide walk. Even the mistress herself, so wise at the outset, finally
flung prudence to the winds, and skirmished through the coppices with
enthusiasm equal to that of her pupils, lured from the pathway by the
glimpses of kingcups, or the pursuit of a peacock butterfly.

"All the same, if we tear round like small dogs, we shall never reach
Dropwick to-night, and I've booked our rooms there," she assured them.
"You don't want to sleep on the heather, I suppose!"

"Bow-wow! Shouldn't mind!" laughed Kitty. "We could cling together and
keep each other warm."

"You won't cling to me, thanks! I prefer a bed of my own."

Nora, having brought a good supply of films for her Brownie camera, was
most keen on taking snapshots. She photographed the company eating their
lunch on a bank by the roadside, with Miss Strong in the very act of
biting a piece of bread and butter, and Ingred with her face buried in a
mug. She even went further. She had been reading a book on faked
photography, and she yearned to try experiments.

"I'm going to give those stay-at-homes a few thrills," she declared. "I
told them we'd have adventures."

Nora expounded her plan to Miss Strong, who was sufficiently interested
in the subject to promise her collusion and good advice. A mock Alpine
scene came first. Nora had brought with her, for this express purpose, a
length of rope, which she wore around her jersey like a Carmelite's
girdle. She took it off now and fastened it round the waists of three of
her schoolfellows, linking them together in the manner of Swiss
mountaineers. Then she found a piece of rock on which were narrow
ledges, and, with the help of Miss Strong, posed them in attitudes of
apparent peril. Really, they were only a couple of feet from the ground,
and a fall would have been a laughing matter, but in a camera they
appeared to be clinging almost by their eyelashes to the face of an
inaccessible crag and in imminent danger of their lives. Nora took two
views, and chuckled with s