A Girl in Spring-Time

CHAPTER ONE.

THE DAY BEFORE THE HOLIDAYS.

It was the day before the midsummer holidays, and the girls of the first
form were sitting together in the upstairs school-room at Milvern House,
discussing the events of the term, and the prospective pleasures of the
next few weeks. Lessons had been finished in the morning, the afternoon
had been given up to packing, and now they were enjoying a delightfully
unsupervised hour of rest.

A tall, slim girl was standing by the table, turning out the contents of
a desk, and filling the waste-paper basket with fragments of paper. The
other pupils watched the movements of the small hands, and the sleek,
dark head with unconscious fascination. There was something
delightfully trim and dainty about Bertha Faucit. Her hair was always
neat, her actions deliberate and graceful; she reminded one irresistibly
of a sleek, well-nurtured pigeon pluming its wings in the sunshine, with
a very happy sense of its own importance