“Hasten slowly” time occurred every day, and occupied the hour immediately following each midday meal. The name had originated after the utterance of an apt remark by one of the middle school girls who had discovered that the hour’s rest enforced by rule at St. Benedick’s was not waste of valuable time after all, but tended rather, in the end, to help towards a fuller use of energy. To new pupils hailing from other and perhaps more “go-ahead” schools it was something of a surprise to find that from two o’clock to three every one of the middle and junior girls was required to endure or enjoy an hour’s _dolce far niente_--stretched out in summer time on the lawns, and in winter time on rugs in the Oak Hall. Of all the strange ways of school Betty had found this one, at first, the hardest to bear. Lying perfectly still on a sunny lawn during the first two afternoons her thoughts had travelled homewards at an alarming pace. She had longed to be up and “doing something.” And to know that sixty minutes of this home-sick time was ahead of her daily until the end of term seemed more than she could bear. On the third day, however, to her vast surprise, she had fallen asleep in the middle of a torturing thought as to whether Auntie had remembered to get those shoes of Jan’s both soled and heeled, and had wakened in amazement to find Gerry at her side while the church clock struck three. But after that experience the spell had been broken somehow; Betty had grown to look forward to the “hasten slowly” hour as one of the most restful in her restful days. It was a good time to repeat the Guide law and the promises, sleepily and more sleepily until they almost changed to dreams. It was a good time to think thoughts that, otherwise, the business of the day might have ruled out altogether. Betty thought of the fairy piper music sometimes in this hour; and remembered what Sybil had said, and wondered. On this particular afternoon she had been thinking curiously, quietly, and almost lovingly of her strange secret adventure in the witch’s cottage. And she had decided--had quite decided--that the adventure there was one of the things Sybil had meant. “Some things are loveliest when they are kept secret,” the head girl had said. “Things that sometimes happen when one is alone. It takes the bloom off them to talk of them.” Betty remembered every word, though she had not understood at the time what the words could mean. Now she was beginning to understand, though; so she told herself. For if she were to tell any one, the telling, somehow, would spoil her adventure-memory. That secret of the witch’s cottage--which had seemed so desolate outside, but which, inside, had been beautiful, cared for by some strange, mysterious magic--was her own. Perhaps the piper of dreams was connected with it. Perhaps----