It was on such an occasion that Squint Hennessy and I were making our way back from Church on a summer evening, feeling particularly good after a stirring address from the curate, a favourite of ours. At peace with the world, we each lit a “Woodbine” to light us and cheer us on our way home. By ill-luck Miss Mersham, the numismatics mistress, met us half-way, and threatened to report us if we did not put out our cigarettes immediately. Squint was at the top of her form that evening: “report if you like, Golly,” she said, “but we’ll make you repent of it if you do.” Miss Mersham was ill-advised enough to lay information against us, and each of us had a quarter of an hour’s “talking to”: special emphasis was laid, I remember, on the crime of setting a bad example to our mistresses. We wept floods of tears, and for the next three days did everything to make the informant’s life intolerable to her. We brought frogs into class, put lamp-black on to her duster, squirted her with water-pistols—in a word, we behaved as high-spirited girls will behave when they are smarting under a sense of injustice. Finally, I remember, we put a large bust of Artemis in her bed. The next day she seemed curiously silent, and when we came out of preparation at half-past six the terrible rumour went round—Miss Mersham had run away! It was a memorable night when the whole school wandered over the Downs, till nearly two in the morning, searching for the truant mistress. Squint and I in particular were inconsolable; our action had been merely thoughtless, and neither of us had really felt vindictive: it terrified us to think that our victim was now running the risk of expulsion as the result of our heedless behaviour. She was, in the end, caught by a porter at Swindon, and sent back to Biston Hall; and we all cheered lustily when Miss Montrose announced her intention, after considering the circumstances carefully, of retaining her on the staff. She became one of our most popular mistresses, and did so well that, three years later, she was enabled to leave the profession altogether. I do not know what became of Squint: some of my other friends I have managed to keep up with, at least by correspondence. “Fatty” Macdonald became manager of a bank in Sheffield; Tulip Hawkesley went on to the stage as Yvette Dombrowski; Wynefryde Banks married well and went into her father-in-law’s business; Jane Palliser, our star goal-keeper, was later captain of a P. & O. “liner.” But no one fulfilled her early promise like Juliet Savage, once well-known as the editress of the _Spectator_ in the fifties. It was with me that she undertook her first journalistic venture, the _Bilston Hall Rocket_, which ran into four numbers and attracted a good deal of attention among our fellow-pupils. I have still the old copies by me; the List of Contents from a single issue will give some idea of its character: THE BISTON HALL ROCKET