[Gutenberg 36874] • A Girl in Spring-Time

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.