The few days left were chiefly occupied with what the girls called "scratch lessons", just something to keep them employed until the lists were out. A good deal of latitude was allowed to those rehearsing for the various performances, and though Gwen could not claim that excuse for exemption, she managed to make a little work spin out a long way without incurring reproof. She was tired with the strain of the term; it had needed much effort to keep up with the rest of the Form, and the daily bus journey and walk to and from home were all extra exertion. She had grown enormously in the last few months--"grown out of all conscience", said Beatrice, who sighed ruefully over boots too small and skirts too short--and she had become so pale and lanky and angular in the process that Winnie unfeelingly compared her to a plant raised in a cellar. Her unlucky hands and feet seemed bigger than ever, and more inclined to fidget and shuffle, and to her bad habit of wrinkling up her forehead she had added a nervous blink of her eyes. "Winnie Gascoyne is charming," confided Miss Douglas to a fellow mistress, "and Lesbia is about the loveliest child I've ever seen. I can't imagine why Gwen should vary from pretty to plain continually. But she does." Unfortunately, Gwen's temper suffered in exact proportion to her increased inches. She was snappy at school and snarly at home, difficult to please, and ready to take offence at everything. Probably a week's rest in bed, on a feeding diet and a good tonic, was what her tired body and irritable nerves required, but nobody had the hardihood to make such a suggestion. Except in cases of dire necessity, the Gascoynes did not indulge in the luxury of medical advice or chemist's bills, so Gwen perforce did without a doctor, and the medicine he would most undoubtedly have prescribed for her. So far from thinking of rest, she was making plans sufficient to fill five holidays instead of one; even she herself laughed sometimes at the largeness of her projects compared with the brief month in which she was to carry them out.