School re-opened on January 18, and Sylvia found herself driving up to the well-known door with very different feelings from those she had experienced on her first arrival there. On the whole she was quite pleased to be back again, to meet all her friends, and compare notes about the holidays. There was one change in the third class which, however it might affect others, seemed to Sylvia a decided improvement. Hazel Prestbury had left. An aunt residing in Paris had offered to take her for a time to give her the opportunity of special study in French and music, and her parents had arranged for her to go at once, sending Brenda, a younger sister, to Heathercliffe House in her place. Brenda was a very different child from Hazel, and had soon sworn eternal friendship with Connie Camden, so that at last Sylvia felt she had her dear Linda absolutely and entirely to herself. "I don't know how it is," said Nina one chilly February evening when the members of the third class were gathered round the high fireguard in the playroom, "there never seems half so much fun going on in the spring term. In the autumn we have Hallowe'en and the fifth of November and the Christmas party, and in the summer there are picnics and the shore, and the sports, and the prize-giving; but unless Miss Kaye takes us a long walk there isn't anything to look forward to now until Easter." "And that's eleven whole weeks off," groaned Connie. "I wish it had come early this year." "It wouldn't make any difference if it did," said Marian; "Miss Kaye keeps to the term. We should only have to spend Easter at school, and go home as usual in the middle of April." "That would be horrid. Why should she?" "Because it would make too long a summer term, and because she likes our holidays to be the same as those of the boys' schools." "I hadn't thought of that. Of course it would be no fun to go home if Percy and Frank and Bertie and Godfrey weren't there. Still, I wish terms were a little shorter, or that something nice would happen." And Connie ruffled up her hair with both hands as an expression of her discontent. "Couldn't we do something just amongst ourselves?" said Sylvia. "Not the whole school, but our class." "There isn't anything new," said Brenda, "unless someone can invent a fresh game. We're getting tired of table croquet." "I don't mean exactly a game. Suppose we were each to write a story, and then have a meeting to read them all out." "Start a kind of magazine?" said Marian. "That's a good idea. We could put our tales together into an old exercise book, and perhaps paste pictures in for illustrations, and make up puzzles and competitions for the end." "Oh yes, that would be lovely!" cried the others. "Like _Little Folks or The Girl's Realm_." "But look here," said Linda. "The second class mustn't hear a word about it. They'd only make dreadful fun of us, and it will be ever so much nicer if we keep it a secret."