Girls -- England -- Juvenile fiction; High schools -- England -- Juvenile fiction
"You absolute mascot! Do you think you really can manage it?"
"Bring me some gilt paper and some thin cardboard to school to-morrow,
and I'll try at any rate. Don't blame me if I fail."
Lesbia was innately artistic, and her slim fingers had that creative
faculty which belongs to the born craftswoman. She suspended the
stencilling of VA, which Laura Birkshaw had unwillingly yielded back to
her, and, borrowing Miss Lightwood's book on _Celtic Art_, retired on
Tuesday afternoon to the Studio, and set to work, with gilt paper,
cardboard, fine scissors, seccotine, a bottle of 'Stickphast' and a
paste-brush. She used her time to such advantage that when Phillis came
from rehearsal she was able to astonish her with the following articles:
1. A gilt coronet cut in a floral pattern, with holes in the
sides, on the backs of which were pasted pieces of coloured
gelatine paper to represent jewels, the whole mounted on
cardboard and stiff.
2. A Celtic necklace cut out of gilt paper, with the top mounted
on a band of thin muslin to prevent tearing.
3. A large Celtic brooch, five inches in diameter, studded, like
the coronet, with gelatine jewels, and neatly sewn on to a
safety-pin.
Phillis was in raptures.
"They're topping!--A 1!--Scrumptious!" she exulted. "Oh, you really are
clever. I can't think how you did it. Where's Miss Lightwood? I must
show them to her _at once_. Let me put them on. I'll be very careful and
not break the necklace."
The result of Lesbia's ingenuity was what she might have expected:
everybody who was taking a major or minor part in the song-drama
clamoured for Celtic jewellery. Miss Lightwood, as stage manageress,
declared it was the one thing, needful for the production of what she
called "local atmosphere". She appealed to Miss Tatham, and represented
the matter so strongly that the Principal actually excused Lesbia's
afternoon lessons for the whole last week of term and set her to work in
the studio instead, turning out torcs and chaplets. It was interesting
to be the manufacturing goldsmith of the school theatricals, and, though
she grew rather tired of the snip of scissors and the scent of gum, she
toiled away womanfully until even the veriest page-boy in the
performance had a brooch to hold his tunic together.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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