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the school-room, where she discovered Serena curled up on the window-seat. She was not reading, or employing herself in any way, and she looked as if she had not yet fully recovered from her rebuff of the morning. Darcy had insisted that she ‘ rest ’ for half an hour after lunch, but Mallory had already made up her mind while ascending the stairs that this was an unnecessary indulgence which would very shortly be stopped. She was not anxious to come to grips with Darcy so very soon after her arrival, but there were many things which, in her opinion, would have to be revised and gone into, and a nine-year-old girl being, ordered to withdraw to her room and lie down on her bed for half an hour after lunch was one of them.
    So far as she had been able to discover, there were very few books in the school-room, either for pleasure or for the purpose of educating a youthful mind. Copies of the Wind in the Willows, Edward Lear ’ s Nonsense Rhymes, and Alice Through the Looking-Glass were on a shelf beside the fireplace, together with some very well thumbed and definitely childish books, but that was all. “ We ’ ll have to discuss this matter with your uncle when he comes back and get him to buy you some new books, ” Mallory, standing in front of the book-case, remarked to her pupil.
    Serena looked up at her without betraying very much interest.
    “ There are heaps and heaps and heaps of books in the library, ” she said, “ and Uncle Raife gave me permission to take whatever I want from there. But they are all so old, and so dull, except one or two, which I rather liked. ”
    “ And what were those? ” Mallory asked, with curiosity.
    “ There was one called East L ynne, and another ” —she named a somewhat sensational Victorian novel which had been popular in its day— “ which I thought rather silly, very silly ... ”
    “ Upon my word, Serena, ” Mallory exclaimed, amazed that so little real supervision had ever entered into the child ’ s life, “ do you mean to tell me that no one —no one —has ever organized your reading, and that you were allowed to take books of that sort out of the library? And to bring them up here ?”
    “ Why, of course, ” Serena answered mildly, her glorious eyes a little perplexed, and inclined also to twinkle slightly. “ But I mostly read them in bed, and kept them under my pillows so that they would be handy. ”
    “ And Darcy said nothing about them? ”
    Serena shook her head.
    “ Why should she? ”
    Mallory gave it up. But this going to bed at six o ’ clock at night after a day which included little exercise and staying awake until midnight, if she felt so disposed, was another of the things which would have to be stopped. She foresaw that the battle of wills with Darcy would have to be sooner than she, personally, would have wished.
    “ Well, now, ” s he said, “ as it ’ s a wet afternoon, and you have literally no school books, we ’ ll have a nice wholesome game of Ludo until tea-time, and then afterwards, If you ’ re good, we ’ ll dip into some of the Nonsense Rhymes. And tomorrow I ’ ll find out what you do know about such straightforward subjects as history, geography and arithmetic. ”
    Serena sprang up to get the Ludo board.
    “ I can tell you how many wives Henry the Eighth had, but I ’ m no good at arithmetic, ” she admitted candidly. “ And if we ’ re going to have the Nonsense Rhymes, do let us have the one about ‘ Bingy Bongy Bo ’ . ” And she started to recite:
    “ In the middle of the woods
    Lived the Bingy Bongy Bo,
    Two old chairs and half a candle,
    One old jug without a handle,
    These were all his worldly goods,
    In the middle of the woods. ”
    “I said after tea, ” Mallory remarked quietly, deliberately setting forth the Ludo men.
    After dinner that night she felt oddly restless. Serena was in bed, and she had no one at all to talk to. She supposed that if she wished she could have gone downstairs and talked