REGIMENT OF WOMEN [Illustration: Publisher's Device] THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO REGIMENT OF WOMEN BY CLEMENCE DANE 'The monstrous empire of a cruell woman we knowe to be the onlie occasion of all these miseries: and yet with silence we passe the time as thogh the mater did nothinge appertein to us.' JOHN KNOX, _First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women_. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1922 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1917. Norwood Press: Berwick & Smith Co., Norwood, Mass., U. S. A. To E. A. Here's Our Book As it grew. But it's Your Book! For, but for you, Who'd look At My Book? C. D. REGIMENT OF WOMEN CHAPTER I The school secretary pattered down the long corridor and turned into a class-room. The room was a big one. There were old-fashioned casement windows and distempered walls; the modern desks, ranged in double rows, were small and shallow, scarred, and incredibly inky. In the window-seats stood an over-populous fish-bowl, two trays of silkworms, and a row of experimental jam-pots. There were pictures on the walls--_The Infant Samuel_ was paired with _Cherry Ripe_, and Alfred, in the costume of Robin Hood, conscientiously ignored a neat row of halfpenny buns. The form was obviously a low one. Through the opening door came the hive-like hum of a school at work, but the room was empty, save for a mistress sitting at the raised desk, idle, hands folded, ominously patient. A thin woman, undeveloped, sallow-skinned, with a sensitive mouth, and eyes that were bold and shining. They narrowed curiously at sight of the new-comer, but she was greeted with sufficient courtesy. "Yes, Miss Vigers?" Henrietta Vigers was spare, precise, with pale, twitching eyes and a high voice. Her manner was self-sufficient, her speech deliberate and unnecessarily correct: her effect was the colourless obstinacy of an elderly mule. She stared about her inquisitively. "Miss Hartill, I am looking for Milly Fiske. Her mother has telephoned----Where is the class? I can't be mistaken. It's a quarter to one. You take the Lower Third from twelve-fifteen, don't you?" "Yes," said Clare Hartill. "Well, but--where is it?" The secretary frowned suspiciously. She was instinctively hostile to what she did not understand. "I don't know," said Clare sweetly. Henrietta gaped. Clare, justly annoyed as she was, could not but be grateful to the occasion for providing her with amusement. She enjoyed baiting Henrietta.