SUSAN’S SILVER LINK

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20278, 21 August 1937, Page 21 (Supplement)

SUSAN’S SILVER LINK

(Continued from last week.) Susan altered ‘Box No.’ to ‘Study No. 12* (the study she shared with Felicity), then sent the thing off to Lucinda for a joke, and. forgot all about it. If she had not felt tired and ruffled, she would have remembered that Lucinda had hardly any sense ot humour; she would have remembered that The Thistle was hard up for copy; she would have remembered other jokes that had turned queer for want of a little forethought, hi the days before she had become an old campaigner In the art of ragging. But she remembered none of these things—and was staggered to see her advertisement grinning up at her when she opened her copy of The Thistle on the day of its appearance. She found Lucinda as quickly as ■he could. “Well, you are a chump 1“ she cried. “Fancy going and sticking this ini ( You didn't suppose I meant you to,! did you?” “Why, yes,” answered Lucinda, ! blinking at her. “Didn’t you? I thought It so nice of you to want to give advice to people 1“ Susan had to laugh at that, and soon saw the only the funny side' of such an advertisement appearing in tho usually so decorous The Thistle. She wondered whether any one would j actually apply at the' study for advice i —oh. In fun, of course. Probably f not. A little chaff, perhaps, from I her fellow seniors, but no actual 1m- I pertinence— But what was this knock on the study door that evening, when she and . Felicity were wdrking at their Prep ? “ Come in," she shouted, and in : walked Miss Cubit. ! “ I have come for some sympathy,” | the Head Mistress announced gravely, j Susan and Felicity, who had of , course Jumped to their feet on her j entrance, stood staring blankly at her, ' their mouths gaping as though they hoped for buns to be thrown into them. “Sympathy, Miss Cubit?” gasped Susan. “ Sympathy,” Cupid repeated. “ Sympathy—“ the silver link, the silken tie, which heart to heart and mind to mind, In body and In soul can bind.” I saw your advertisement In The Thistle, and thought I would apply. No one needs sympathy more than I. May I sit down?’’ Feeling about as comfortable as a salamander at the North Pole, Susan moved forward a chair for the Head Mistress, who took It and sat down. ** Thank you,” said Miss Cubit. “ And now, do you ask me questions, or do your clients generally pour out their troubles to you unprompted?” “My clients, Miss Cubit?” echoed Susan. “ Please don’t repeat everything I say,” protested that astonishing woman. “ There’s no need to protraot what Is, after all, only an ordinary business Interview. That reminds me: T' I shall be glad If you will forget, for the time being, that I am your Head Mistress. Sympathise with me, and advise me. as though I were any other of your clients. We can then be perfectly frank with each otheiv—and I need not bother to add that nothing you say will afterwards be used as evidence against you.” Susan grinned at that, and immediately began to rally. The first shock was over, and she was rapidly growing used to the situation, even beginning to appreciate It. If Cupid really meant what she said (and didn’t CupU always mean what site said?) mierht there not be a bit of fun to be got out of It? Miss Cupid’s 'attention was now j drawn to Felicity, who was fidgeting j as though she had been sitting on a i cactus. , ~, , ~ I “ Have I made a mistake? she said, i iiiiiiiiiiimmmimimiimminimimiiii

BY JOCELYN OLIVER.

“ Which of you Is it that is to knot the silken tie?” “No, It’s me—l, all right,” said Susan quickly. “But Fel —my —my assistant,’’ she looked at Miss Cubit, to see bow she would take thin response to her own lead, and received a little nod in return, “ will stay with us, if you please. She — she is sometimes helpful.” “ Very well,” agreed the Head Mistress, while Felicity tried to hide herself in the corner farthest away from her. “Now shall 1 begin?” “Jf you please,” said Susan. She sat down opposite Miss Cubit, and assumed an expression of expectant pleasure, such as she imagined a professional sympathiser would don. “Where you feel it most?” she inquired, and thought that this sally produced a twinkle in Cupid’s cold eye—but she could not be sure. “ I am a head mistress,” Miss Cubit told her: “not of Life’s University, where you had the good fortune to receive an education, but of Thistleburgh School, in the county of Shropshire. I have under me a set of prefects who are some of them lazy, some of them stupid, some of them flighty, and all of them Inefficient and with no proper sense of their position.” “ Oh." cried Susan, while Felicity. In sympathy, curled her legs round and round those of her chair, till they looked like corkscrews. She wa» in an agony of uneasiness for her friend, wondering where this extraordinary scene would end. “ Their slackness Is having a most deleterious effect upon the: rest of the school,” Miss Cubit continued relentlessly. “ There was recently a very grave breach of school rules —or what would have been a breach of school rules, had the rules anticipated such 1 Inane buffoonery—so grave that its consequences might have’ been more ! far-reaching than I care to picture. In view of the gravity of the matter, I was forced to adopt an attitude of considerable severity towards the’ whole school, hoping that this would lead the culprit to come forward. What has been the result? A hostile atmosphere, which it is impossible to ignore. Complaints have reached me from almost every one of the mistresses, of Idleness, of indolence, of sloth. You would naturally suppose that my prefects would throw their weight on to the scale's, using every atom of influence they have in the school to avert what -is already very nearly a crisis, but do they do so ? they do not. What do they do? They spend their time in compiling entirely frivolous contributions for the school magazine.” She paused, and drummed her Angers on tlie table beside her. “Well, those are some', of my troubles,” she concluded. “ I shall now be glad of your sympathy.” Now during this tirade, Susan had been doing some hard thinking. It had been impossible to beard Cupid in cold blood, to voice the' opinion of the school in a deputation, and to tell her how unfair everybody thought she had been—out of the question. But now that the Head Mistress had come here’ in what she had assured them was an unofficial position, now that the usual relationship between mistress and girl had been temporarily shelved, would it not, perhaps, bo possible to lay those things be’fore her? It was entirely a matter of j getting used enough to the new situa- : tion, so that one did not fee! solfj conscious, afraid: for that Cupid had : meant that nothing one’ said would afterwards be held against one there I could be no doubt: one didn’t doubt 1 Cupid. Might it not be a heaven-sent j opportunity, if only one had the conrt (To be continued.) iißiiimimmiimiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiimii