She jumped up and kissed them all round, then glanced hastily at her watch. 'It strikes me,' she said gravely, 'that if somebody looks out of the window in five minutes' time, somebody will see something in the garden.'
She was just going out of the room, when an exclamation from Barbara called her back. 'Why,' she said, 'you haven't told us about Angela's scarlet fever yet!'
'No more I have,' said the head-mistress, and she took the thermometer to the window and examined it. Angela tried rather feebly to recover her resigned expression, which she had completely dropped in the last few minutes; and her school-fellows exchanged a look of apprehension.
'Poor Angela!' said Miss Finlayson, pensively, as she dipped the thermometer into a glass of water.
Angela put her hand to her head, and the other two closed round her sympathetically.
'I am truly sorry for you,' continued Miss Finlayson, returning the thermometer to her pocket and sighing deeply.
The triumvirate gazed at her in a scared fashion.
'Is she--is she going to have scarlet fever, _really_?' asked Barbara, anxiously.
Miss Finlayson walked slowly across the room, shaking her head. She turned when she reached the door, and her eyes twinkled. 'I am afraid not,' she said, and they heard her laughing to herself as she ran downstairs.
The triumvirate had very little time to congratulate Angela on her escape before their attention was caught by a loud 'Coo-ey!' from the garden below. Certainly 'quorranteen' was full of diversions this afternoon.
'Kit! Kit! That's Kit!' shouted Babs, and a series of flying leaps took her across to the window. In another minute the sash was flung wide, and she was leaning out as far as the laws of balance allowed her. She was right about the 'Coo-ey!' for there on the lawn below stood her favourite brother, and by his side stood Jill and Auntie Anna.
'Well, well,' said the old lady, leaning on her blue-knobbed cane and looking more like a witch than ever, 'and what is the meaning of this, I should like to know? A fine lot of trouble you're giving people with your tricks, you young monkey!'
'Oh, it's all right,' Babs assured her; 'we've made it up with Finny, and she's not a bit cross, and next time we're going to think first, and we're never going to pay a bit of attention to the old Canon till we're grown up. Then we shan't make any more mistakes, she says.'