Free A Harum-Scarum Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil Page B

her. With the seniors in general she was no favourite. She had more than one skirmish with the prefects, and was commonly regarded as a firebrand, ready at any moment to set alight the flame of insurrection among turbulent intermediates and juniors.
    "Diana's at the bottom of any mischief that's going!" proclaimed Geraldine one day, after a battle royal over an absurd dispute about the tennis-court.
    "And the worst of it is, she makes Wendy just as bad!" agreed Hilary warmly.
    "Wendy wasn't exactly a saint before Diana came," put in Loveday.
    "Oh, you always stand up for Diana! I can't think what you see in her--a cheeky little monkey, I call her!" Geraldine was still ruffled.
    "She has her points, though."
    "She'll get jolly well sat upon, if she doesn't take care," muttered Geraldine, who held exalted notions as to the dignity of prefects.
    It was at the beginning of the second week in October that Miss Todd, in whose brain ambitious projects of education for the production of the "super-girl" had been fermenting, announced the first of her radical changes. She had not undertaken it without much consultation with parents, and many letters had passed backwards and forwards on the subject. Most, however, had agreed with her views, and it had been decided that at any rate the experiment was to be tried. Pendlemere, which so far had concentrated entirely on the Senior Oxford Curriculum and accomplishments, was to add an agricultural side to its course. There was to be a lady teacher, fresh from the Birchgate Horticultural College, who would start poultry-keeping and bee-keeping on the latest scientific principles, and would plant the garden with crops of vegetables. She could have a few land workers to assist her, and the girls, in relays, could study her methods. Miss Todd, who in choosing a career had hesitated between teaching and horticulture, snatched at the opportunity of combining the two. She was bubbling over with enthusiasm. In imagination she saw Pendlemere a flourishing Garden Colony, setting an educational example to the rest of the scholastic world. Her girls, trained in both the scientific and practical side of agriculture in addition to their ordinary curriculum, would be turned out equipped for all contingencies, either of emigration, or a better Britain. She considered their health would profit largely. She explained her views to them in detail, painting rose-coloured pictures of the delights in store for them in the spring and summer. The girls, very much thrilled at the prospect, dispersed to talk it over.
    "Is Pendlemere to be a sort of farm, then?" asked Wendy.
    "Looks like it, if we're to keep hens and bees, and grow all our own vegetables! Bags me help with the chickens. I love them when they're all yellow, like canaries. Toddlekins hinted something about launching out into a horse if things prospered."
    "A horse! Goody, what fun!" exulted Diana. "I just
adore
horses! Bags me help with stable-work, then. I'd groom it instead of learning my geography or practising scales. I say, I call this a ripping idea!"
    "Don't congratulate yourself too soon," qualified Magsie. "You'll probably find the geography and the scales are tucked in somehow. All the same, I think it sounds rather sporty."
    "It will be a change, at any rate, and we'll feel we're marching with the times."
    "When does the 'back-to-the-land' teacher come?"
    "On Friday, I believe."
    Miss Chadwick, the graduate of Birchgate Horticultural College, who was to run the new experiment, arrived at the end of the week, and brought two students as her assistants. They were a fresh, jolly-looking trio, with faces rosy from open-air work, and serviceable hands which caused a considerable flutter among those of the school who went in for manicure. At tea-time they talked gaily of onion-beds, intensive culture, irrigation, proteids, white Wyandottes, trap-nests, insecticides, sugar-beets, and bacteria. Miss Todd, keenly interested, joined in the conversation