son instead," said
Lizzie Lonsdale. "She looks rather grim."

"Perhaps she's remembering she's a year older to-day," returned Beth
Broadway.

"How old is she, do you think?" giggled Addie Knighton.

"That, my child, is a secret that will never be divulged. I dare say
you'd like to know?"

"I should, immensely."

"Then you won't be gratified, unless you go to Somerset House and hunt
her name up in the register of births. Even then you'd find it
difficult, for you don't know her Christian name, only her initial."

"Yes; she never will write more than 'M. Teddington' in anybody's
birthday-book. M might stand for Mary or Martha or Margaret or
Millicent or anything. Doesn't even Miss Bowes know?"

"If she does she won't tell. It's a state-secret."

"Well, never mind; we call her Teddie, and that will do."

Many were the ingenious devices which the girls had adopted for trying
to find out both Miss Teddington's Christian name and her age. They
spoke of historic events that had happened before their parents had been
born, fondly hoping she might betray some memory of them and commit
herself. But she was not to be caught; she treated all events, however
recent or old, from a purely impersonal standpoint, and left them still
in the dark as to whether she was an infant in arms at the time or an
adult able to enjoy the newspapers. On the subject of names she was
indifferent, and would express no opinion on the relative merits of
Mary, Martha, Margaret, Millicent, Marion, Muriel, Mona, or Maud.

"It's either plain Mary, or something so fearfully fancy she won't own
up to it," decided the girls.

In whatever decade Miss Teddington's birthday placed her, this year she
was certainly in the prime of life and energy as concerned the school.
Her keen eyes noticed everything, and woe betide the slacker who thought
to escape her, and dared bring an unprepared lesson to class. Her
sarcasms on such occasions made her victims writhe, though they were apt
to be witty enough to amuse the rest of the form. Though, like John
Gilpin's wife, she was on pleasure bent to-day, she never for a moment
forgot she was in charge, and kept turning to see that everybody was
following, and nobody straggling far off in the rear.

It was a three-mile walk from The Woodlands to the snowdrop
meadows--first along the high road, with an occasional short cut across
a field or through a spinney, then down a deep, narrow lane past a farm,
where the sigh