!'"

"Gibbie's certainly not given to trotting out pet names, even before
parents," chirruped Morvyth Holmes. "Perhaps she's striking out a new
line, and we shall all be 'Darling' and 'Sweetest' now!"

"Don't you alarm yourself! She couldn't twist her tongue round them.
I'd think she was pining away to an early death if she did! You'll
hear plenty of plain, straight, wholesome talking-to before you're
half an hour older, my child, or else I'm entirely mistaken."

"_You_ will, old sport, unless you've mended your ways," chuckled
Morvyth. "Are you a reformed character this term, may I ask? Come back
with a certificate for good behaviour--no vice, gentle in harness, a
child can drive her, etcetera?"

"Help! The school would die of dullness if I did! You'd be positively
bored to tears. No, we all have our talents, and I consider my mission
in life is to keep things humming and cheer you all up. I may do it at
some personal sacrifice, but----"

"Personal thingumjig!" interrupted Valentine Gorton.

"But it is!" persisted Raymonde, her dark eyes dancing. "You don't
know how disinterested I am. Gibbie can't row us all at once, and when
I draw fire on myself I save you. See? I'm a kind of scapegoat for the
school. Everybody's sins are stuck on to me. Gibbie lets forth the
vials of her wrath, the storm's over, she feels better, and nobody
else is much the worse."

"Not even you--you heroic victim?"

"Bless you, child, I'm as used to scolding as eels to skinning.
Neither the Bumble Bee nor the Wasp worry me. I let them both buzz. It
seems to please them! Indeed, I think they expect it. When one's got a
reputation, one's bound to live up to it."

Raymonde Armitage would certainly not have won a medal for exemplary
behaviour, had any such prize been offered at the school. There was no
harm in her, but her irrepressible spirits were continually at
effervescing point, and in fizzing over were liable to burst into
outbreaks of a nature highly scandalizing to the authorities. As
regarded Miss Beasley, the Principal, though she upheld discipline
firmly, it was an open secret that she had a sneaking weakness for
Raymonde. "The Bumble Bee rows Ray, but she likes her," was the
general verdict. With Miss Gibbs, however, it was a different matter.
The humour of a situation never appealed to her. She frankly
considered her troublesome pupil as a thorn in the flesh, and perhaps
gave her credit for more than she really deserved in the