Gerry nodded. “That’s Sybil. She’s the head of our patrol. She’s head girl too this term of the school. Our patrol is the Daisies. I’m in it; and Mona and Irene as well. We’ve got four patrols at school, you know; there are the Buttercups and the Cowslips and the Foxgloves as well as us. I don’t see how you can possibly be in our bedroom without being a Daisy; but, you see--” Gerry’s tone broke off in rather a worried note. “Oh, I do hope--” began Betty feverishly, just as silence fell suddenly upon the room as Miss Stewart tapped on the table. “Girls, go straight to the Oak Room, as you always do on the first day. Miss Carey is ready for you now.” Perhaps the Oak Room had been used in the early days as a banqueting hall, for a musicians’ gallery ran round the four walls overhead. Perhaps stately family festivals, banquets, and ceremonial feasts had taken place here in years gone by. But for all that, the old pictures still hanging on the walls seemed to look down tolerantly on the girls of to-day as they entered. But perhaps, too, it was the sight of them all--young, gay, simple-hearted, and with life stretching so invitingly before them--standing in the room that held so many echoes of the past, which made the headmistress when she entered pause for a moment and look down at them quietly before she spoke. Scarcely an opening speech could her words be called, for her words were, as usual, few. But even before Miss Carey had opened her lips some of the waiting girls had felt themselves under the influence of what she had come to say. Slight and straight she stood there; somehow, in her quiet and gentle but forceful dignity, she seemed, as always, with her understanding appreciation of the beauty of things past, and with her power to see beauty in things present, to be a link between the house which had belonged to yesterday and the girls of to-day. “_Festina lente._” (It was the school motto that she took as her text--“Hasten slowly.”) She spoke of the old house which sheltered them. “We could not have a happier setting for a school with our motto,” said Miss Carey. “Every day that we spend here should teach us more of what our motto means. Years and years have passed as it has stood here, and its beauty has grown. ‘_Festina lente_’ seems to me to have been its motto too. No fuss; no undue haste; until now, in the full beauty of its age, it has given us shelter, and we can learn here the lesson which is so difficult to learn in the busy world of to-day.