zzling me! His face is so absolutely familiar. I
_know_ I've seen him before, somewhere, and yet, for the life of me, I
can't remember where. It's one of those aggravating half-memories that
haunt one. I'd like to try throwing down a stone to attract their
attention."

"I shouldn't on any account. Let's leave them to it, and go and find a
place to take our sketch. We shall lose this effect of sunshine, if
we're not quick. Madame Bertier doesn't interest me enough to make me
waste valuable time in watching her flirtations."

"But I wish I could remember who the man is!" ruminated Lorraine, with
knitted brows.

"He's certainly not worth bothering your head about! Come along and
sketch!"

CHAPTER XII

The Sensation Bureau

"Look here!" said Vivien one day in recreation time, "I think this
school's a very second-rate sort of show. We're a set of blighters!"

She was sitting on a form in the gymnasium, in a decidedly pessimistic
frame of mind, eating a piece of hard oatcake.

"It's as dry as chumping chaff!" she confided dismally. "I don't like my
lunch!"

"In these days of rations there's never even a scrap of margarine to
spare, let alone butter!" groused Audrey, who was also in a mood to mop
up sympathy. "I bring biscuits every morning, but they're not what
biscuits used to be."

"Nothing is."

"What's wrong with the school, though?" asked Lorraine, with somewhat of
the irritation of a nurse when her pet fledgeling is unduly criticized.
"It seems to be jogging along all right, as far as I can see."

"There you've hit the nail on the head exactly. It's jogging, and I
hate things to jog. I like them to go with a swing. The Lent term's
always as dull as ditch water."

"We have our societies----" began Lorraine, but Vivien interrupted her
impatiently.

"Oh, yes! Those precious societies! I know! Every one was keen at first,
and then they slacked. They always do! Don't talk to me! I'm blue!"

"Are we down-hearted? No!" jodelled Patsie, throwing up her last bit of
biscuit, and trying to catch it in her mouth like a terrier. "I say,
Vivien, you silly cockchafer, why don't you buck up? If the school's
dull, then for goodness' sake do something to make it more lively,
instead of sitting and looking like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. What
the Muses do you want?"

"Something to happen."

"What? An elopement? A fire? A burglary? Tell me the sort of sensation
you're craving for, and we'll try to accom