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The first few weeks passed, and soon the fourth-formers, those who had come up from the third form, felt as if they had always been in the fourth form! They looked down on the third-formers, and as for the second- and first-form girls, well, they were very small fry indeed. No fourth-former would have dreamed of taking any notice of them.

The summer term was always a nice one. There was tennis, and there was swimming. Angela proved to be an unexpectedly good swimmer, deft and swift. Alison, who disliked the water, did her best to shine in it in order to try and keep up with her beloved Angela.

Claudine frankly hated the water. She entirely refused to go in, much to the games-mistress’s annoyance.

“Claudine! What is the use of coming to an English school if you do not learn the good things in it?” she said.

“Swimming is not a good thing,” said Claudine. “It is a horrible thing, wet and cold and shivery. And I do not like your habit of playing so many games. Tennis is also silly.”

As no one could undress Claudine by force, she did not go into the water. The others teased her by splashing her as much as they could. The games-mistress saw that sooner or later Claudine would be pushed in, fully-dressed, and she sent her back to the school.

Claudine’s tennis was even worse than Carlotta’s. Carlotta had never managed to play properly. She was still very wild and uncontrolled in games, and the tennis ball was quite as likely to drop into the middle of the distant swimming-pool as over the tennis net! But Claudine did not even attempt to hit the ball!

“This is a so-silly game,” she would say, and put down her racket and go off by herself.

“But Claudine, it’s your tennis-practice time. You must come,” Hilary would say.

“I must not,” was Claudine’s reply, and that was that.

Angela played a neat and deft game. She always brought her three beautiful rackets out with her, in spite of every one’s teasing. Pauline was jealous of them. She tried to pay Angela out by being spiteful.

“I’ve two or three more rackets at home,” she said in a loud voice. “But it isn’t good manners to bring more than one to school. My mother says that would be showing off. No well-bred person shows off.”

Nobody liked Angela’s conceit, but nobody liked Pauline’s spite, either. In fact, few people liked Pauline for, rich and grand as she made out her people and her home to be, she was a plain and unattractive girl—unlike Angela, who was really lovely. Nobody could help looking at the angel-faced Angela without admiration and pleasure. Alison thought she was the prettiest girl she had ever seen.

Eileen was moderately good at both tennis and swimming. She was moderately good at her lessons too. She took a liking to Alison, for some reason or other, and was very upset when Alison showed her far too plainly that she had no time for her.

“Why can’t you sometimes walk with me when we go out in the afternoons?” Eileen said to Alison. “You can’t always walk with Angela. And why do you always refuse when I offer you sweets? They won’t poison you!”

“I know,” said Alison, coldly. “I just don’t want them, that’s all. And I don’t particularly want to walk with you, either.”

“I suppose Angela told you not to!” said Eileen, angrily. “You haven’t got any mind of your own, have you? Whatever Angela thinks, you think! Whatever Angela does, you do! You’re even trying to grow your hair the way she grows hers—down to your shoulders and curled under. Well, you look a perfect fright like that!”

Alison was very offended. She looked coldly at Eileen.

“Well, if you want to know, Angela doesn’t approve of you, and as she is my friend, I respect her wishes. Anyway, I don’t approve of you, either. You’re a tell-tale!”

Eileen walked away, her face scarlet with rage. Alison’s last hit had gone home. Eileen ran to her mother with tales, and there was nothing the fourth form did that the new Matron did not know about.

Worse than that, if Eileen told her mother that some one had been horrid to her, the Matron soon saw to it that that some one was called to her room, and shown a huge rent in one of her bed-sheets to mend, or holes in her games stockings, or buttons off vests.

“I believe she makes the holes on purpose and pulls the buttons off herself!” raged Angela, who had been given three stockings to darn in her spare-time. “I’ve never darned a stocking in my life. What’s a matron for if she doesn’t keep our things mended?”

“Well, it is the rule at St. Clare’s that we do some of our own mending,” said Pat. “But I must say, Angela, I can’t think that you made all those enormous holes in your stockings! I’ve never seen you with a hole yet.”

“Oh, I know I didn’t make them,” said Angela, trying in vain to thread a needle with wool. “How do you make the wool go through the needle’s eye? I’ve been trying to thread this for ages.”

The girls laughed. Angela had no idea how to double over the end of the wool and thread the darning-needle in the right way. Alison took the needle and stocking away from her.

“I’ll do your darning, Angela,” she said. “Don’t worry. I bet it’s that tell-tale Eileen that ran to her mother about something you said or did—and so Matron gave you this work to do out of spite.”

Alison darned the three stockings—not very well, it is true, because darning was not one of Alison’s gifts. But Angela was grateful, and was so sweet to Alison that the girl was in the seventh heaven of delight.

Pauline was the next to get into trouble with Matron. She, like Angela, turned up her nose at Eileen, and would have no more to do with her than she could help. When she told Bobby one morning that she had a sore throat, Eileen overheard. She went off out of the room, and in a short while Pauline was sent for.

“I hear you have a sore throat, Pauline,” said Matron, with a thin-lipped smile. “You should report to me at once. Eileen felt worried about you, and told me. It was very kind of her. I have a gargle for you here, and some medicine.”

“Oh, my throat is much better now,” said Pauline in alarm. And it was—but Matron was not going to let her off. She made poor Pauline gargle for ten minutes with a horrible concoction, and then gave her some equally nasty medicine to drink.

Pauline went back to the others, angry and afraid. She glanced round the room to make sure that Eileen was not there.

“Eileen’s been telling tales again,” she said. “She told her mother I’d got a sore throat—and I’ve just been having an awful time. I feel quite sick. I know Eileen told Matron she didn’t like me, and that’s why Matron gave me such a beastly time.”

“We’ll have to be careful what we say and do to Eileen,” said Alison, scared, for she hated medicine of any sort. “Perhaps we’d better be friendlier.”

“I shall not be friendlier,” said Claudine. “That is a girl I do not like.”

And, far from being friendlier, Claudine really seemed to go out of her way to be rude to Eileen! The result was that Matron came down heavily on Claudine, and gave her a whole basketful of mending to do!

“You have torn the hem of both your sheets,” she told Claudine. “And you have holes in all your stockings, and you need a patch in one of your vests. You are a very naughty, careless girl. You will do most of this mending yourself, as a punishment.”

Claudine said nothing. She took the basket of mending and put it on top of her locker. At first the girls thought she would simply forget all about it, and refuse to do it, as she refused to do other things. But, to their surprise, Claudine took down the mending and settled herself in a corner of the common room to do it.

Bobby watched her needle flying in and out. “I say—you do sew beautifully!” she said. “You really do! And your darning is as good as embroidery. It’s beautiful.”

“I like sewing and darning,” said Claudine. “We are always taught that well in France. You English girls are clumsy with your needles. You can bang all kinds of silly balls about, but you cannot make a beautiful darn!”

“Claudine, put that mending away now, and come out and swim,” said Susan. “It’s such a nice sunny day.”

But nice sunny days did not appeal to Claudine at all. “I can see the sun out of the window,” she said, sewing away hard. “Leave me. I like sewing.”

Bobby stared hard at the bent head of the little French girl. Then she gave a chuckle.

“Claudine, you like sewing a whole lot better than you like swimming and games, don’t you?” she said.

“Yes,” said Claudine. “Sewing is very okay, I think.”

The others laughed. Claudine always sounded funny when she brought American slang into her speech.

“I believe this is all a little trick of Claudine’s,” said Bobby. “She wants to have a real excuse for getting out of games! We all know we have to give up games time if we have mending to do—and Claudine has made Matron give her a punishment that will get her out of games, and give her something to do instead that she really likes!”

Miss Ellis came into the room. “Hurry up and go out, girls,” she said. “Don’t waste a minute of this nice fine day. Claudine, put away your sewing.”

“I’m sorry, Miss Ellis, but Matron said I was to do my darning and mending before I could go to play with the others,” said Claudine, looking up with big innocent dark eyes. “It is very sad—but I suppose I must do this, Miss Ellis?”

“Hmm,” said Miss Ellis, not at all taken in by the wide-open eyes. “I’ll have a word with Matron.”

But Matron was quite insistent that Claudine had been careless, and must mend her things, so Miss Ellis left the girl to her sewing. And Claudine had a very nice time, sewing away happily in a corner of the sunny room, hearing the shouts of the girls in the swimming-pool. She had no wish whatever to join them!

“Horrible wet cold water!” she thought to herself, and then looked up as she heard footsteps coming into the room. It was her aunt, Mam’zelle.

“Ah, ma petite!” said Mam’zelle, beaming. “So you are here. Let me see your sewing. It is beautiful! Why cannot these English girls sew? Where are the others?”

“In the water,” said Claudine, in French. “Always they are in the water, or hitting a ball, these English girls. Me, I prefer to sew, ma tante!”

“Quite right, little Claudine!” said Mam’zelle, who, for all her years in England had never been able to understand why English girls liked cold water, hitting balls, and running madly about. “You are happy, my little one?”

“Yes, thank you, ma tante,” answered Claudine demurely. “But I am a little dull. Does nothing ever happen in these English schools?”

“Nothing,” said Mam’zelle. But she was wrong. Things did happen—and they were just about to!