By this time they had reached the door of the gym. As she put her last query Kitty turned and faced Duane, looking her straight in the eyes. The head prefect's expression did not change; save for a slight curling of her lip, not a muscle in her face moved. "What's the good of asking me? I was never clever at guessing riddles," and with that she pushed the gym door open and walked in without taking any further notice of Kitty. "Failed dismally in the first round between us, Kitty, my child," muttered Kitty to herself. "I didn't get much out of her, did I? And yet, it only makes me more certain that she knows something about it, in spite of her denials. An absolutely innocent girl would have been decent over it and met me half-way. She was hardly polite to me, and our head prefect has such beautiful manners as a rule. Well, she evidently intends to let me pay the piper." Changing her mind suddenly, she turned away from the gym without entering and went back to the seclusion of her own study. The rest of the evening passed very quietly in Carslake's, everyone being busy with prep, and there was little public discussion of the Richoter affair. Even in Dormitory A after bed bell had gone, Hilary summarily put a stop to a tentative attempt on the part of the juniors to raise the subject. The next day, the Richoter candidates heard the pleasing intelligence that the Rev. R. Carstairs, who was keenly interested in the science prize and who always had a hand in its organization, had invited them all to spend the day at his house, punting on the river and picnicking on its banks, with his lovely garden and strawberry beds placed at their disposal. Naturally the nine girls in question, having received permission to go, did not hesitate in accepting this generous invitation. With the absence of these senior girls, two of whom were head prefects and several others prefects, the houses felt themselves suddenly free from a good deal of the control exercised over them out of lesson hours. Sheerston's and Carslake's were without a head, and even Vanda West, at that disturbing time, felt the loss of Eileen's steady support. Consequently, the girls were a little out of hand that day, and Vanda and Phyllis Knight, of Green's, were powerless to check the conviction that ran like wildfire round the school, that Kitty Despard was known by the seniors to be the girl who had meddled with the balances. One rumour even said that she had been seen coming out of the First Form room on her way to the lab with a piece of plasticine in her hand.