Copyright, 1917,

To E. A.

REGIMENT OF WOMEN

[3]

[3]

REGIMENT OF WOMEN

CHAPTER I

The school secretary pattered down the long corridor and turned into a class-room.

The room was a big one. There were old-fashioned casement windows and distempered walls; the modern desks, ranged in double rows, were small and shallow, scarred, and incredibly inky. In the window-seats stood an over-populous fish-bowl, two trays of silkworms, and a row of experimental jam-pots. There were pictures on the walls—The Infant Samuel was paired with Cherry Ripe, and Alfred, in the costume of Robin Hood, conscientiously ignored a neat row of halfpenny buns. The form was obviously a low one.

Through the opening door came the hive-like hum of a school at work, but the room was empty, save for a mistress sitting at the raised desk, idle, hands folded, ominously patient. A thin woman, undeveloped, sallow-skinned, with a sensitive mouth, and eyes that were bold and shining.

They narrowed curiously at sight of the new-comer, but she was greeted with sufficient courtesy.

"Yes, Miss Vigers?"

Henrietta Vigers was spare, precise, with pale, twitching eyes and a high voice. Her manner was self-sufficient, her speech deliberate and unnecessarily correct: her effect was the colourless obstinacy of an elderly mule. She stared about her inquisitively.

"Miss Hartill, I am looking for Milly Fiske. Her mother[4] has telephoned——Where is the class? I can't be mistaken. It's a quarter to one. You take the Lower Third from twelve-fifteen, don't you?"

[4]

"Yes," said Clare Hartill.

"Well, but—where is it?" The secretary frowned suspiciously. She 

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