"If you would spend less time on drawings, and more on the subject-matter of your exercises, Patty Hirst, I should be better satisfied with your work." "It's so difficult to remember all those long, hard botanical terms," Patty complained afterwards to Jean. "I love the flowers, and I like to paint them and learn their English names, but I don't care in the least if their stamens are hypogynous or their cotyledons induplicate! I think it spoils them to pull them to pieces. They look so much prettier just as they're growing!" The painting of a spray of honeysuckle which Patty did for Winnie was so beautifully done, that it was greatly envied by the other girls, all of whom begged for contributions to their own albums, and kept the little artist quite busy on half-holidays, or in any other leisure moments which she could spare. It was such a pleasant occupation that Patty did not grudge the time spent over it, and she was magnanimous enough to forget old grievances and to allow even Vera Clifford, Maud Greening, and Kitty Harrison to have specimens of her work, though Enid said they did not deserve it. "They wouldn't any of them sit next to you when we were playing games last night," she declared, "and they were quite rude, and left you out altogether in the proverb questions. I think it is very cool of them to ask you. As for Muriel, I wonder she can bear to look at the lovely poppies you painted in her book, when she treats you so horridly." It was Patty's birthday on the 24th of October, and for fully a week before that event she could not help noticing an unusual amount of mystery in the conduct of her friends. Several of them would be talking together with the greatest animation, and would drop suddenly into silence on her arrival. Enid twice began a sentence and stopped in the middle at a warning glance from Jean; and once, when Patty came unexpectedly into the classroom, there was a scuffle, the lid of Winnie's desk was banged down violently, and Winnie herself, together with Avis Wentworth and Cissie Gardiner, looked extremely conscious, as though they had been almost caught in some act which they wished to keep a secret. Patty wondered mildly why Enid seemed so anxious to ascertain whether she preferred red or blue, and whether she did not think a bright colour was always nicer than black; and she could not understand why her friend should one day be poring over a catalogue from the Stores, nor why she shut it up in such a hurry, remarking rather pointedly that Miss Lincoln had lent it to her. "It's a queer book to choose!" laughed Patty. "I thought you were halfway through 'A Chaplet of Pearls'? I shouldn't think it's very amusing to read lists of groceries and household linen." "On the contrary, I find it most interesting," replied Enid. "I never knew before how much shopping one could do at the Stores. They seem to have a department for everything."