Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Janet Blenkinship and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was made using scans of public domain works in the International Children's Digital Library.) HOLLOWMELL: OR, A SCHOOLGIRL'S MISSION. BY E. R. Burden. GLASGOW: JOHN S. MARR & SONS, 51 DUNDAS STREET. 1881. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. MINNIE'S PLAN 5 II. ITS DEVELOPMENT 19 III. PREPARATIONS 29 IV. THE FIRST ESSAY 44 V. AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR 54 VI. A DISPUTE SETTLED 78 VII. MONA'S DEFEAT 94 VIII. A SUCCESS 115 IX. THE END 121 [Illustration] HOLLOWMELL: OR, A SCHOOLGIRL'S MISSION. CHAPTER I. MINNIE'S PLAN. "Why, wherever _can_ my books be?" exclaimed Minnie Kimberley in a vexed tone, as she hunted up and down the schoolroom, opening now one cupboard, then another, now a desk, and again diving down to peer under some out-of-the-way table or form; for places which one would think the most unlikely, were certain to be the places where Minnie's books would at length be discovered. "I can't make it out," she continued, her bright face clouded over with vexation, "somehow or other my books always _do_ manage to get lost." "Perhaps if you could manage to put them back in your desk when you had done with them, instead of leaving them lying just wherever you happen to be, they might manage to stay there," suggested Mona Cameron, a tall young lady, who sat near the window sewing, and who had more than once been disturbed by Minnie's voyage of discovery. "Oh, I've found two of them!" cried Minnie, emerging from beneath a distant table, her hands black with dust, and herself nothing abashed by Mona's rather sarcastic speech. "I wonder, now, whether I shall be able to hunt up the others before Mab finishes her music!" "O, Mabel Chartres is away," volunteered one of the other girls, "I heard her come down fully ten minutes ago." "That can't be," replied Minnie, "she must have come in here for her things before she went away." "Not at all, seeing she carried them up to the music-room with her that she might save time; I heard her say she wanted away soon."