"I'm the worst off," sighed Marjorie. "I've got to spend Saturday afternoon pen-driving, and it's the match with Holcombe. I'm just the unluckiest girl in the whole school. Strafe it all! It's a grizzly nuisance. I should like to slay myself!" To Marjorie no punishment was greater than being forced to stay indoors. She was essentially an open-air girl, and after a long morning in the schoolroom her whole soul craved for the playing-fields. She had taken up hockey with the utmost enthusiasm. She keenly enjoyed the practices, and was deeply interested in the matches played by the school team. The event on Saturday afternoon was considered to be of special importance, for Brackenfield was to play the First Eleven of the Holcombe Ladies' Club. They had rather a good reputation, and the game would probably be a stiff tussle. Every Brackenfielder considered it her duty to be present to watch the match and encourage the School Eleven. Marjorie would have given worlds to evade her punishment task that Saturday, but Mrs. Morrison's orders were as the laws of the Medes and Persians that cannot be altered, so she was policed to the St. Elgiva's sitting-room by Miss Norton, and provided with sheets of exercise paper and a copy of Bacon's _Essays_. "I shall expect it to be finished by tea-time," said the mistress briefly. "If not, you will have to stay in again on Monday." Marjorie frowned at the threat of further confinement, and settled herself with rather aggressive slowness. She was in a pixy mood, and did not mean to show any special haste in beginning her unwelcome work. Miss Norton glared at her, but made no further remark, and with a glance at the clock left the room. All the girls had already gone to the hockey-field, and Marjorie had St. Elgiva's to herself. She opened the book languidly, found Essay XIX, "Of Empire", and groaned. "It'll take me the whole afternoon, strafe it all!" she muttered. "I wish Francis Bacon had never existed! I wonder the Empress didn't tell me to write an essay on Aeroplanes. If I drew them all round the edges of the pages, I wonder what would happen? I'd love to do it, and put Captain Devereux's picture at the end! I expect I'd get expelled if I did. Oh dear! It's a weary world! I wish I were old enough to leave school and drive a transport wagon. Have I got to stop here till I'm eighteen? Another two years and a half, nearly! It gives me spasms to think of it!" She dipped her pen in the ink and copied: "It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear." "I agree with old Bacon," she commented. "Only I've got great heaps of things to desire, and the one I want most at present is to go to the hockey match. I wish his shade would come and help me! They didn't play hockey in his days, so it would be a new experience for him. Francis Bacon, I command you to give me a hand with your wretched essay, and I'll take you to the match in return!"