It is not very often we get what we want, but on this occasion Fortune waved a fairy wand and gave Merle the luck she coveted. It happened that the cook at Bridge House developed a sore throat, and Dr. Ramsay, having his suspicions, had the drains examined and found them to be in an exceedingly wrong condition. It was necessary to take them up at once, and as the process would probably be unpleasant, Mrs. Ramsay arranged for the girls to stay at 'The Moorings' until everything was once more in good sanitary condition. "You can't be too careful where young people are concerned," was her motto. "Mavis is so marvellously well now that we don't want to run any risks, and Merle, too, strong though she is, will be better out of the way of drains. We elders can take our chance." To be temporarily transformed into boarders was a novel experience for the girls. To Merle it meant an opportunity for making a much more intimate acquaintance with her idol Miss Mitchell, with whom she would now be at close quarters. To sit at the same table with her for meals seemed an unspeakable privilege. Merle was at the age for enthusiastic hero-worship, and in her eyes the popular mistress almost wore a halo. That she bestowed no particular tokens of favour made the devotion none the less, because it gave an added incentive for trying to win at least a glance or a smile. Though Merle's schoolgirl affections centred in Miss Mitchell, whose modern, up-to-date, twentieth-century methods and opinions entirely appealed to her, Mavis was glad to see something more of Miss Pollard and Miss Fanny. She had loved 'The Moorings' best as it was a year ago, a little 'homey' school, where the classes had been like working with a private governess. She immensely admired the two sweet, grey-haired sisters, with their refined, cultured atmosphere and beautiful, courteous, dignified manner. They seemed the epitome of the nineteenth century, and marked a different era, a something very precious that was rapidly passing away. If flowers are the symbols of our personalities she would have set them down as rosemary and lavender. They had withdrawn almost entirely from teaching, so that the day-girls now saw little of them, but in the hostel they still reigned supreme, and kept to their old custom of amusing the youngest boarders for half an hour before bedtime. The elder ones, owing to the large amount of preparation required under the new regime, could very rarely find time now to come and join this pleasant circle, which met in quite an informal manner in Miss Pollard's room. To Mavis it was a bigger attraction even than tennis, and she would give up her turn at the courts, or would hurry over her home-work, in order to creep in among the juniors for that cosy half-hour. "Have you written down any more Devonshire folk-tales?" she asked once. "I do so love your stories of the neighbourhood. It makes the pixies seem almost real when you tell about them!"