"For a beginning we must try to draw her out. Oh, don't ask her questions about her German sympathies, that's too clumsy! She'd see through that in a moment. Let's work the conversation round to military matters and munitions, and get the girls to tell all they've heard of news from the front, and watch whether Norty isn't just snapping it up." "Wouldn't that be letting her get to know too much?" "Well, one's obliged to risk something. If you're over-cautious you never get anything done." "Yes, I suppose you're right. We'll try on Sunday evening after supper. She always comes into the sitting-room for a chat with us then." Chrissie seemed to have taken up the matter with the greatest keenness. She was evidently in dead earnest about it. Marjorie was agreeably surprised, and on the strength of this mutual confidence her old affection for her chum revived. Once more they went about the school arm in arm, sat next to each other at tea, and wrote each other private little notes. St. Elgiva's smiled again, but the girls by this time were accustomed to Marjorie's very impulsive and rather erratic ways, and did not take her infatuations too seriously. "Quarrelled with Winifrede?" enquired Patricia humorously. "I thought you were worshipping at her shrine at present." "Marjorie is a pagan," laughed Rose Butler. "She bows down to many idols." "I should call Winifrede a more desirable goddess than Chrissie," added Irene. "Go on, tease me as much as you like!" declared Marjorie. "You're only jealous." "Jealous! Jealous of Chrissie Lang! Great Minerva!" ejaculated Irene eloquently. It was about two days after this that Marjorie, passing down the corridor from Dormitory No. 9, came suddenly upon Chrissie issuing out of Miss Norton's bedroom. Marjorie stopped in supreme amazement. Mistresses' rooms were sacred at Brackenfield, unless by special invitation. Miss Norton was not disposed to intimacy, and it was not in the knowledge of St. Elgiva's that she had admitted any girl into her private sanctum. "Did Norty send for you there?" questioned Marjorie in a whisper. "Sh, sh!" replied Chrissie. "Come back with me into the dormitory." She drew her friend inside her cubicle, looked round the room to see that they were alone, then patted her pocket and smiled. "I've got them!" she triumphed. "Got what?" "Norty's foreign letters, or some of them at any rate." "Chris! You never went into her room and took them?" "That's exactly what I did, old sport! I'm going to look them over, and put them back before she finds out." Marjorie gasped. "But look here! It doesn't seem quite--straight, somehow." "Can't be helped in the circumstances," replied Chrissie laconically. "We've got to outwit her somehow. It's a case of 'Greek meets Greek'. How else are we to find out anything?" "I don't know." The idea of entering a teacher's bedroom and taking and reading her private correspondence was intensely repugnant to Marjorie. Her face betrayed her feeling.