CHAPTER VI

The year wore on, and the long winter evenings set in. The studious
young ladies at Alton College, elbows on desk and hands over ears,
shuddered chillily in fur tippets whilst they loaded their memories with
the statements of writers on moral science, or, like men who swim upon
corks, reasoned out mathematical problems upon postulates. Whence
it sometimes happened that the more reasonable a student was in
mathematics, the more unreasonable she was in the affairs of real life,
concerning which few trustworthy postulates have yet been ascertained.

Agatha, not studious, and apt to shiver in winter, began to break Rule
No. 17 with increasing frequency. Rule No. 17 forbade the students
to enter the kitchen, or in any way to disturb the servants in the
discharge of their duties. Agatha broke it because she was fond of
making toffee, of eating it, of a good fire, of doing any forbidden
thing, and of the admiration with which the servants listened to her
ventriloquial and musical feats. Gertrude accompanied her because she
too liked toffee, and because she plumed herself on her condescension to
her inferiors. Jane went because her two friends went, and the spirit
of adventure, the force of example, and the love of toffee often brought
more volunteers to these expeditions than Agatha thought it safe to
enlist. One evening Miss Wilson, going downstairs alone to her private
wine cellar, was arrested near the kitchen by sounds of revelry, and,
stopping to listen, overheard the castanet dance (which reminded her of
the emphasis with which Agatha had snapped her fingers at Mrs. Miller),
the bee on the window pane, "Robin Adair" (encored by the servants),
and an imitation of herself in the act of appealing to Jane Carpenter's