OUR LONG STORY

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1926, Page 21

OUR LONG STORY

WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN?

It started one night when something went wrong with the electric light, and Elmside School was plunged into darkness. It was no use continuing prep, so Miss Dobson said the girls might do as they liked till bedtime. The majority collected in the Gym, but Evelyn went to the rec. to read by the light of one flickering candle. Evelyn was fourteen, and she rejoiced in the nickname of Sherlock Holmes. There were no secrets in Elmside which she could not have unearthed had she given her mind to them. The previous term she had decided to find out Miss Dobson’s age, and, to the amazement of the school she had succeeded! It is true ♦hat a few girls called her Nosey Parker, but Evelyn was extremely proud of her detective abilities.

As she sat reading, she heard somebody creep into the room, but she did not turn her head. A hand was laid on her shoulder, and a voice whispered mysteriously: “Who killed Cock Robin?” “What on earth do you mean, Polly?” The other girl sprang back, and clapped her hand over her mouth. “Evelyn!” she exclaimed in horror. “I

though it was—er —somebody else!” Polly regained her usual calm in an instant, and tried to laugh the matter off. “D’you know, I’ve had “Who’ Killed Cock Robin? ringing in my brain all day,” she giggled. “I just felt obliged to whisper it in your ear! What are you reading?” As Evelyn spoke about her book her mind was working rapidly. For whom had Polly mistaken her? She tried to picture herself sitting there and wondered which girl she resembled. All the girls wore light grey frocks in the evening, so legs and heads were the only things by which one could be distinguished for another. Well, legs were out of the question because Evelyn was sitting on hers. Heads only remained! Evelyn had a mental vision of her own head —sleek and dark, clqsely cropped, resting on a long, white pillar of a neck, but could any other girl in the school boast the like?

“I say, you need no longer sit in darkness, because the light has returned,” cried Rosa, bursting into the room and switching on the light. “Rosa, you’ve had your hair cut short like mine!” exclaimed Evelyn excitedly. “Copy cat!” Now Evelyn was perfectly sure that Polly had mistaken her for Rosa. But why should she whisper “Who Killed Cock Robin?” in Rosa’s ear? The whole of the next day she followed Rosa like a shadow and strained both ears to catch every word which was addressed to her. dust before bedtime a most mysterious thing happened: Kate, one of the seniors, slipped a paper into Rosa’s hand, and Evelyn had the satisfaction of seeing that Rosa looked relieved after she had glanced through it.

As they went to bed, Evelyn distinctly saw Rosa slip something into the waste-paper basket in the hall! True to her Sherlock Holmes reputation, in the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep, she crept down stairs and emptied the contents of the basket into a towel.

But she had few opportunities of examining the wastepaper, because Polly slept in the next cubicle, and she had eyes and ears sharp as needles. Every morning, as she dressed, Evelyn took two or three crumped papers from the bundle and examined them.

“I wish you would stop scrunching those papers,” cried Polly one morning from the other side of the curtains. “It gets on my nerves!” “Nerves—at your age!” scoffed Evelyn. Then she stopped, for, opening ont a piece of paper she saw the words: “Who Killed Cock Robin?”

She found it difficult to pay attention to her work that day, because he words kept dancing before her eyes. Kate had written that note to Rosa, and everything was perfectly clear! It was headeded “Who Killed Cock Robin?”, and ran thus:

“All O.K. Polly's stupid blunder has not roused the suspicions of our Sherlock Holmes, so I think we might meet as usual on Turedays and discuss the important question of Initiation. Tool shed, 820 Key for first arrival under flower pot near third cabbage to right of pear tree. Signed: Sparrow, Fly Rook.”

Evelyn was delighted to find that once again her instinct had been right; there certainly existed in the school a secret society of which she knew nothing. The very word "initiation” spoke of strange and peculiar happenings, and she could not make up her mind whether she would go to the tool shed before the others arrived, or burst in upon them when they were in the middle of their discussion.

"fitter go to the tool shed first.” she decided at last “and hide till they all come in. When they have settled down

I will rise with dignity from behind the potting table and say, in a perfectly hollow voice, ‘I Killed Cock Robin.’ Then we’H see what happens!” At last Thursday evening arrived; it a dark night, but quite fine, and Evelyn, creeping out unseen, made her way to th j pear tree. She had ascertained earlier in the day that the key was under the flower pot, and she no difficulty in finding it and opening the door of the tool shed. In she crept, but sue was obliged to use her electric torch to see where to hide. Good gracious, there was a big sheet of paper pinned to t the wall. Preparations, no doubt; perhaps rules. Evelyn determined read it. Listening breathlessly to hear if anyone was coming, she went across the shed in the dark, flashed her torch on the paper, and read:

A cure for Nosey Parkers. Whisper in their ears, “Who Killed cock Robin?” For once the biter has been bit, and our Sherlock Holmes has given us a good run for our trouble! Then bursts of laughter rang from outside the shed, and Evelyn walked away with as much dignity as she could muster in tne circumstances.