A Popular Schoolgirl

spering

retiring to the bungalow-but the plain prose of the proceeding was yet to come, and there were certainly many disadvantages to be faced. Mr. Saxon was worried about business affairs; he was a proud, sensitive man, and felt it a great "come down" to be obliged to resign Rotherwood, and the social position it had stood for, and confess himself to the world as one of the "newly poor." It was humiliating to have to walk or take a tram where he had formerly used his ca

ly office instead. Father and son did not get on remarkably well together. Mr. Saxon, like many parents, pooh-poohed his boy's business efforts, and would sometimes-to Egbert's huge indignation-point out his mistakes before the clerks. H

tisfied with a provincial degree. The thirty-mile motor ride to and from Birkshaw soon lost its charm, and the difficulties of home study in the evenings were great in a bungalow with thin partition walls and a family not always

vague as to any special bent or taste. The war-time occupations which had tempted her imagination were no longer available, and Careers for Women did not attract her, even if family funds had run to the necessary training. So, for the present, she stayed at home, go

hurt her to relinquish Rotherwood, and it grieved her-for the girls' sake-that most of her old acquaintances in Grovebury had not troubled to pay calls at Wynchcote. The small rooms, the one maid from the Orphanage, the necessity of doing much of the housework herself, the difficulties of shopping on a limited purse, and her husband's fretfulness and fault-finding, might have soured a less unself

wn wastes of heather and bracken, listening to the call of the curlews or to the trilling autumn warble of the robin, perched on the red-berried hawthorn bush. Kind Mother Nature could always soothe her spirits, and send her back with fresh coura

lugubrious person!" said Ingred once. "It would b

ay just as well get all the fun out of the little dai

the very pitch of a nasal voice. She was a rough, good-tempered girl, devoted to Minx, the cat, and really kind if anybody had a headache or toothache, but quite without any sense of discrimination: she would show a traveling hawker into the drawing-room, and leave the clergyman standing on the

a maid-servant howling popular songs in the next room. According to all accounts he loathed noise and couldn't even stand the crowing of a cock. I should call that bit of eloquence just bunkum. If the orphan doesn't s

you can, but you might as well try to stop the brook! She's quiet for five minutes then bursts out into

night I sl

r on the par

th to tak

to stop he

ard from Rut

t. "We three are taking sandwiches, and going for a good old tramp over the moors. W

a headache," ad

make some extra sandwiches and put another apple in the basket. With mother out, the orpha

in fact!" ad

to go-to escape the voice of the s

at are a few old bones to Red Ridge Barrow? Yo

iving way gracefully; "and there mayn't

lay among the bracken, like fairies' washing hung out to dry. There was a hint of hoarfrost under the bushes. The air had that delicious invigorating quality when every breath sets the body dancing. It was too late in the year for flowers, though here and there a little gorse lingered, or a few buttercups and hawkweeds. After about an hour of red haziness the s

taken them. The local guide-book mentioned some prehistoric menhirs and a chambered b

their lunch by the side of the path that led to the summit. The boys had wished to mount to the to

oicing the general feeling of the family

r, poor darling!" qualified Quenrede. "I don't see how

ne seems about as possible a

," said Hereward, fingering his camera. "Hurry up

ndwiches at the rate you do

as silent. Traditions of the neighborhood explained the menhirs as twelve giants turned into stone by the magic powers of good King Arthur, who, in defiance of the claims of the isle of Avalon, was supposed to be buried in a hitherto unexplored chamber of the large green mound that stood near. Sometimes, so the story ran, the giants whispered to one another, and any one who came there alone at daybreak on May morning might glean much useful informat

doubtfully. "I'd really like to try it, only the b

otograph the cromlech. You'd ha

all

o

again wha

iggest stone-the Giant King, he's called-and throw a pebble into the little pool below. You count the bubbles that come up-one for A, two for B, &c.

I'll try for fun! The Giant King won't

he old gray stones. There is a vein of superstition in the most modern of minds, and she was probably following a custom that had come down the ages from the days when our primitive ancestresses clothed themselves in skins and twisted their prehistoric locks with pins of mammoth ivory. In and out and in and out, with Ingred, like an atten

s another! It's 'J'! It's going to be 'J,' old sport! Ar

a stranger of the opposite sex, garbed in tweed knickers and leather gaiters. One glance was enough. The next second she turned, and

t down on a clump of heather and im

etic audience of one. "Ingred! That man knew what I was doing! I saw the horrid

er to be laughed at. Quenrede's newly-

, sticking in hair-pins as well as she could without a mirror. "Do

prospect,"

tually in close and apparently familiar conversation with Athelstane and Hereward, who we

gre

een

are you

er, and her gloves on. She bowed instead of shaking hands when Athelstane introduced Mr. Broughten, a fellow-student of his college; it seemed a more grown-up and superior attitude to adopt. She

ained. "He's got a candle with him-we were duds not to brin

n stone. Inside was a kind of central hall with three rudely-constructed chambers le

get permission, but it's a big job. You don't want to bring the barrow down on your head, and be buried in th

pearance. Their conductor, with a side glance at the bunch of flowers-which Quenrede ignored-made some reference to the Giant King stone and his whispering companions: he was evidently well ve

OK NICE-YOU DO REALLY,

you needn't be afraid anybody would mistake you for a flapper. Why, Harry Scampton actually asked Hereward the other day if you were married! By th

orted Queenie. "I've told you already