That Mysterious Miss Manners

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 84, 10 April 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

That Mysterious Miss Manners

"A MESSAGE—for me?" she f\ hazarded, her voice shaking; and the prefect nodded. "Yes, you are to go to Miss Furnival's study, Penelope," she said. There is a man waiting to see you there." I caught Naomi's questioning gaze as Penelope literally bolted out of the room, and, throwing caution to the winds, I broke prep hour's most sacred rule and voiced an inquiry: "Is it—a detective, Nay?" Naomi's eyes were bright with excitement. "I shouldn't be surprised. Oh, Di, I'll expire before the end of prep! An hour still to go! I'll never be able to endure the suspense—" "Nftomi and Diana, take an order mark each," came the prefectorial decree. "And, Diana, go and sit in that desk by the window. I've been watching you, and neither you nor Naomi has done a stroke of work for the last half-hour. You will both put in 45 minutes' detention while the others are free after tea to-night." I moved to obey—Clemence Hardy was the one prefect even the most daring hesitated to defy—and was just going to sit down when the door opened, and in walked the parlourmaid once more. « "Will Miss Naomi Finch and Miife Diana Bullough please go to Miss Furnival'a study at once?" she asked, and without waiting for Clemence's sanction, Naomi and I sped like souls possessed.

In the headmistress' study we found, besides Mm Furnival herself, Penelope, looking pale, but tense with suppressed excitement, and a tall, grave-eyed young man whose

CHAPTER 111,

eyes were the replica of Penelope's own. No need for us to be told that this was Michael Dare, Penelope s and I was champing with impatience long before Miss Furnival satd frith a funny little smile in her eyes: "We have rather an extraordinary story to tell you, Naomi and Diana, and a3 it will take time, we will all have tea in here together. Diana, will you ring the bell, please?" Ten minutes later, over the most marvellous tea we'd had since Christmas Day itself, Miss Furnival told us a story which, for sheer wonder, beat anything we had ever heard.

A young man engaged in perilous Secret Service work, sent as emissary to Kussia, where, after a series of deadly dangerous adventures, he succeeded in rescuing from the revolutionists some plans worth a king's ransom. His return to England, in hourly danger of death; dogged at every turn by enemies who were determined to wrest hiij booty from him; a trick by which he outwitted them; treachery, which revealed his secret; an attempt to steal thg plans, and a brilliant ruse which frustrated that attempt—a ruse in which a young school girl played a gallant | part. That was the etory our head-

A STORY OF WESTHELMSTONE SCHOOL.

mistress told us, and as we listened Naomi and I were conscious of a feeling of intense admiration, and of intense shame, too, for our horrible suspicions.

For Michael Dare was the young man who had .faced death unflinch" ingly a hundred times; he it was who had guarded the precious documents with his very life, who had sought shelter in the lonely fastnesses of Westlielmstone Grange. And when his enemies had found htm out, and were hounding him to death, it was Penelope, his sister, who had come to his assistance, undaunted in the face of the most terrible risks. Now, the danger over and the plotters captured, brother and sister were able at last to reveal their secret. "I knew that it was hopeless to try to conceal the plans in the Grange," Michael Dare explained. "Those wretches would—and did— search every corner. When Penelope came forward with her brilliant suggestion, 1 jumped at it. She had hit on the one way of saving the situation—no one would suspect a 16-year-old school girl—and I tell you that I owe everything to Penelope's pluck. She must have suffered torture during these two days that those brutes have been at large, and, sister of mine though she is, I say this—if she hadn't thought of the idea of my going to Westhelmstone Grange, if she hadn't taken the

whole brunt of Saturday's adventure on her shoulders, our country would to-day be at the mercy of an army of fiends who were out for its destruction. She's the pluckiest little soldier IVe ever had the good fortune to meet, and—Pen, old lady, will you shake hands with your very humble and very grateful friend, Letitia Manners?"

It took Naomi and me quite five minutes to get over that announcement, and poor Mr. Dare must have got sick of being stared at and bombarded with questions. He convinced us at last, however; and it was marvellous how he co.uld suddenly assume Miss Manners' voice and style of walking. And' then Naomi, whose curiosity is only exceeded by mine, fired off another question. "What did you do with the plans, Penelope?" she asked, her eyes glowing with admiration. "Do you mean to say you actually dared to carry tliem about for nearly two whole days, knowing that those—those awful people were after them? Wherever on earth did you hide them ?" Penelope laughed, and the sudden roguish expression on her face made her almost pretty. "I know you hate red hair, Diana," she said to me "but even that has its uses sometimes! Look!" She began to untie her hair ribbon, and Naoir.i and I gasped as we drew close to ier. For under the bow, shielded by the thick mass of hair drawn untidily over her ears, was a tiny flat metal cylinder, held in place by two strands of hair fixed with hair elides. It was a hiding-place no one would ever have guessed at, and —well, do you wonder any longer why Naomi, Sue, Peggy, Joan and I vie with one another for Penelope's special friendship? The whole school is so proud of her that to be seen talking to her is the ambition of every First Former from the day of her arrival. But—whisper it softly! —she seems to like Naomi and me best! So what more need be said? THE END.