"It's horrid without Miss Drummond!" said Mabel. "Nobody seems to know anything, or to be able to do anything while she's away. Even the medicine cupboard is locked up." "That's no loss, I'm sure!" returned Aldred. "Well, as it happens, it is. I've such a splitting headache, I was going to beg for sal volatile." "Perhaps Miss Forster may have some." "I asked her, but she hadn't; and then Mademoiselle came fussing along, wanting to know what was the matter. When I told her I had a headache, she declared it might be the beginning of something infectious, and said that I must sleep in the hospital to-night, and she would examine me to-morrow morning, to see whether a rash had come out. 'Ve cannot be too careful vile Mees Drummond is avay!' she said." "But you're not really going?" "I shall have to. I'd have asked Miss Forster to interfere, but she'd hurried away by that time. I've come to collect my night things now." "What a ridiculous swindle! Can't I go too?" "No; remember, it's a case of isolation!" said Mabel, smiling. "But you'll be afraid to sleep there all alone." "Oh, no, I shan't! Mademoiselle offered to send Hunter--she's generally told off for hospital duty--but I said I'd rather not have her. I'm not a scrap ill; it's only my head." "And Mademoiselle's idiotic nonsense! I never heard of such a silly notion as to pack you off there! She's absolutely mad!" "Well, it can't be helped. There's no one to appeal to. Mademoiselle is as much in authority, I suppose, as Miss Forster, or Miss Bardsley, or anybody else." "The school seems lost without Miss Drummond." Feeling decidedly a martyr, Mabel, taking the various possessions she needed for the night, marched upstairs to the hospital. "If it's anything catchable I'll catch it too!" Aldred called after her. "You're not to be ill up there without me! You may choose measles, or scarlatina, or anything you like; I'm quite agreeable, so long as I can have a share in it!" "It's for Mademoiselle to decide the complaint to-morrow!" laughed Mabel, already half-way down the passage. "I don't mind what it is, so long as she doesn't declare it's suppressed smallpox, and have me re-vaccinated as a precaution. Good night!" Aldred felt injured and aggrieved at her room-mate's banishment. It was really very tiresome and unnecessary of Mademoiselle to have insisted upon it. "She's a Jack-in-office!" thought Aldred. "If she were head of the school, I should ask to be taken away. How particularly slow and stupid it is without Mabel! She's forgotten her bedroom slippers, by the by. I wonder if I dare take them up to her? On the whole, I think I'd better not; I suppose she'll manage without them."