The girls dropped from the palings, and dived into the plantation just before Miss Robinson, on her way to the kitchen garden, passed the spot. If she had looked through a crack in the boards she would have seen Larry walking away, but happily her suspicions were not aroused. Marjorie and Dona strolled leisurely towards the hockey field. The latter was aggrieved, the former highly indignant. "It's absurd," groused Marjorie, "if one can't see one's own brother, especially when Mother had written to say we might. We had to see him somehow, and I think it's a great deal worse to be obliged to go like this and talk over palings than to meet him in the drawing-room. It's just like Norty's nonsense. She's full of red-tape notions, and a Jack-in-office to-day because the Empress has left her in charge. I feel raggy." "So do I, especially to miss the cafe. I hope Larry won't forget to send those sweets." CHAPTER XII The School Union The last few days of the term were passing quickly. The examinations were over, though the lists were not yet out. To both Marjorie and Dona they had been somewhat of an ordeal, for the Brackenfield standard was high. When confronted with sets of questions the girls felt previous slackness in work become painfully evident. It was horrible to have to sit and look at a problem without the least idea of how to solve it; or to find that the dates and facts which ought to have been at their finger-ends had departed to distant and un-get-at-able realms of their memory. "I can think of the wretched things afterwards," mourned Dona, "but at the time I'm so flustered, everything I want to remember goes utterly out of my head. I really knew the boundaries of Germany, only I drew them wrong on the map; and in the Literature paper I mixed up Pope and Dryden, and I put that Sheridan wrote _She Stoops to Conquer_, instead of Goldsmith." "I'm sure I failed in Chemistry," groused Marjorie. "And the Latin was the most awful paper I've ever seen in my life. It would take a B.A. to do that piece of unseen translation. As for the General Knowledge paper, I got utterly stumped. How should I know what are the duties of a High Sheriff and an Archdeacon, or how many men must be on a jury? Even Mollie Simpson said it was stiff, and she's good at all that kind of information. I wonder they didn't ask us how many currants there are in a Christmas pudding!" "There won't be many this year," laughed Dona. "Auntie was saying currants and raisins are very scarce. Probably we shan't get any mince pies. But I don't care. It'll be lovely to be at home again, even if the Germans sink every food ship and only leave us porridge for Christmas."