THE term had just entered its third week. Grainne was finally starting to feel that she knew the Chalet School routine well enough to release her breath and take things more calmly. It had taken all this time to accomplish, for that same routine could seem horrendously complicated to the new and uninitiated!

First there had been the dormitory routine of bedmaking and cupboard keeping to master- and Grainne was no tidier than most girls of her age. Then there had been the various language rules- both those relating to the French and German days and the ‘slang’ rules of which she had been aquainted by Cecil, Celine, Rosita, and another friend of theirs, one Dorothy Woodward. To their amazement, this particular rule did not faze the new girl as much as they had expected. She had never been in the habit of using a great deal of slang, and was all the more relieved that this was the case when she heard the penalty for using forbidden language in the school. She was however more anxious about German days in particular.

"What happens if we don’t speak German then?" she asked nervously, being only too aware that her knowledge of that language was basic, to put it kindly.

"Fines!" Cecil returned succinctly.

Grainne looked even more horrified. "But I don’t know any except words like for meals and- and ‘Herr’ and ‘Frau’ and ‘Fraulein’!" she wailed.

"They’ll take that into consideration," Dorothy interjected soothingly. "The first two weeks, anyhow," she amended gloomily. "After that, if you don’t do it, you’ll get fined same as the rest of us!"

Grainne looked grimly determined. "In that case, I’ll have to do some serious studying!" she declared.

"Can’t," Rosita said laconically.

"I can’t? What do you mean?"

"Rules is rules, my love! Remember I told you on the ramble that they’re nuts on health here? Well, they say that we work hard enough when we are working, so we shouldn’t need to work at other times."

Grainne looked even more confused at this involved explanation, and Cecil grinned. "She means that we work hard in lessons and prep time, but we can’t touch our school work during our free time. That make more sense?"

Grainne agreed morosely that that did indeed make sense, and relapsed into silence as she considered how she was to make any kind of academic prowess on German days, but Cecil and Co., who had decided to adopt her into the ‘Crew’ refused to allow any kind of moping, and she found herself being drawn into their many and various ploys.

As it happened, their friendliness made things less difficult for her than they might have been. All four were of long standing in the school, and Cecil at least spoke German as fluently as she did English, while Celine was only too happy to assist the new girl in mastering her own language. Between the two of them, as well as the private coaching arranged by the Head, she soon found that she could at least get by on French and German days, which alleviated that anxiety.

When the language obstacle was removed, the Staff found her to be a good and conscientious worker in all subjects, although as Miss Wilmot, head of Maths, said, she would never be a mathematician. Her ‘bent’ was decidedly for the Arts and Humanities side of the curriculum, and Miss Yolland, who was responsible for Art and Design throughout the School, reported that her drawing skills were excellent.

As a result of all of this, by the beginning of the third week of the term, Grainne was starting to feel considerably more comfortable with her new life. She still fretted from time to time about the cause of her sudden withdrawal from Holy Family, but as the days went by and she became increasingly integrated within the Crew, she had even less time to devote to this. Consequently, she fell into the habit of brooding on it at night after Lights Out. Not unnaturally, this affected her sleep, and it was not long before the School’s beloved domestic tyrant noticed it.

She appeared at the doorway of Daffodil one morning before Prayers.

"Is Grainne O’Malley here?"

The other girls exchanged glances. What had Grainne been doing?

"I’m here, Matron," the new girl admitted. Inwardly she was shaking. The Crew had taken an almost malicious pleasure in informing her of the ways and habits of ‘Matey’ as she was affectionately known.

"Come with me."

Once they had arrived at San, Matey turned to her latest victim.

"What’s the matter with you?" she demanded.

Grainne flushed to the roots of her hair. "N-nothing, Matron."

"That’s nonsense!" Matey said trenchantly. "If you asked me, I’d have said you weren’t sleeping."

The look on Grainne’s face gave her away.

"Aha! So I’m right. Why, Grainne?" Matron did not mean to sound accusing, but to the new girl, it sounded as if she was implying that Grainne was deliberately attempting to sabotage the minimum of eight hours sleep a night that was decreed by the School authorities. Therefore, Grainne only muttered something incomprehensible. Matron decided to leave it for the moment. She was new, after all, and sometimes the altitude of the Gornetz Platz did wreak havoc with sleeping patterns.

"Hmph. Well, you may report to me every night for the next week before you go to bed, and I’ll give you a soothing draught. Hopefully once you get into a regular sleeping pattern, that will become unnecessary. Off you go then. And don’t forget to come to me this evening!" and with that Matron dismissed the new girl, who left thankfully.

"What did Matey want?" Cecil demanded as the two made their way to their form room following Prayers.

"She wanted to know why I’m not sleeping," Grainne admitted.

Cecil looked at her new friend with keen black eyes. "You do look rather all in," she said after a moment. "I’m not surprised Matey yanked you in for questioning! What’s your problem anyhow?" she added casually, as they entered Upper Iva.

Even if Grainne had wanted to explain, the current circumstances made it impossible. In some ways she was intensely private, and friendship such as that offered by Cecil and her gang was still a very new thing to her, and she found it difficult to trust. So now, she merely murmured something that Cecil did not catch, and went swiftly to her desk, just as the bell rang. To Grainne’s relief, Mrs Entwistle was prompt that morning, and Cecil had no more opportunity to question her, and indeed, in the process of the morning, forgot all about it, especially since Break brought a new interest.

Marjorie Graves, the form prefect, had elected to examine the form’s notice board that morning whilst they were queued up waiting to be released into the garden. What she saw drew a squawk from her, but she could say no more until they had reached the garden, and collected their milk and biscuits.

"What was that in aid of?" Cecil demanded as she made herself comfortable under a tree. It was barely eleven, and the day was already almost unbearably hot.

"We’re down for an ‘Evening’ the first Saturday back from Half Term," the older girl told her- Marjorie was far and away the oldest girl in Upper Iva, but a bad illness during the previous year had made it necessary for her to repeat the year instead of going into Inter V. Luckily, she and Cecil had known each other all their lives, so the drop was less upsetting than it might have been, much to the relief of all concerned. Marjorie was more volatile than her placid younger sister Lois, and more than one person had expected fireworks.

"So? That still- let me see- another five weeks ahead. That’s plenty of time!"

"That’s all you know," Marjorie jeered. "Auntie Hilda visited Mummy last weekend, and she told her that Half Term was to be early this year."

"Really? Funny she didn’t tell Mamma, then. But then she’s been away so much the Head prob’ly didn’t have the chance. And you know it’s supposed to be ‘Miss Annersley’ in school!" This last was said with such an appearance of virtue that there was some excuse for Marjorie’s wrathful response.

"Sez you!" she retorted, risking a fine in the process. "You’re not so careful about it yourself, Cecil Maynard, so suppose you leave it alone, and get on with what we were talking about!"

"I still don’t see why you’re fussing," Cecil protested. "It’s still several weeks ahead. All the time in the world!"

"But I want to do something really good this time," Marjorie wailed. "Mummy said that Auntie- or the Head, since you’re so fussy!- told her we had an Evening this term and she’d come and see it- Mummy, I mean!"

"What do you think yourself?" Celine asked at this point. Marjorie and Cecil usually got on well, but they were both leaders within the form, and they could and did clash from time to time.

"I don’t know," Marjorie replied crossly. "But something different, so no tableaux, or dancing or progressive games, please!"

Fortunately for those of the form sitting nearby, the bell for the end of Break rang, and they had to go, but Marjorie was not to be denied. She approached their form mistress immediately, and begged that that lady might allow them to use the room later that day to discuss it. Mrs Entwistle, with the comment that she was pleased they were starting to think about the Evening in plenty of time- at which Marjorie looked smug, and Cecil conscious- was only too happy to agree, and that evening found them assembled in their form room, ready for discussion.

Their form prefect opened the meeting by repeating the injunction she had made to Cecil earlier, and this had the understandable effect of limiting the scope considerably. After some arguing, the form eventually settled on a combination of music and tableaux- with a difference, as Cecil said with a chuckle. Upper Iva were a very musical form this year, and they had found to their delight that the resident singing talent was augmented by the new Irish girl, whom ‘Plato’ had pounced on with joy. Grainne herself had been startled when Mr Denny had given her his views on her voice and it’s training requirements. She had sung in choir at her previous school, but Holy Family did not believe in encouraging personal vanity by allowing girls to develop their artistic and dramatic talents, so nothing had been said to her before. Consequently, the still shy Grainne found herself in demand for the Evening, and she protested as vigorously as she could, but to no avail.

The form, by and large, enjoyed musicals, both in the cinema and at the theatre when they were home. Their plan was to ‘stagger’ the entertainment, first by providing silent tableaux meant to represent scenes from various musicals, which the guests would then have to identify correctly. Secondly, various members of the form would sing, with the others joining in as required, several of the more obscure songs from the musicals, and once again, the audience would have to identify both the title of the song, and the musical from which it had been taken.

The final part of the planned entertainment was the best, in the view of the form. They were quite prepared to bet that since all blanks in forms *had* to be filled, some of the guesses would be wild in the extreme. They then intended to utilise this by dividing their guests into groups, each with at least one member of Iva to ‘assist’. The groups would then have to use their earlier responses to form the basis of a drabble story. All available phrases, no matter how ridiculous, had to be included, but none could be used more than once. As Upper Iva anticipated a range of responses to this last activity, they also planned to hand out a range of prizes. Once that had been settled, Marjorie gathered the papers on which she had been scribbling their ideas, and rose to her feet.

She beamed at them. "Congrats, mes amies! I think we’ve really done it this time. And the best of it is," she stopped to smirk, "that they’ll think at first that we’re being really boring and ‘safe’- and then we’ll land them with this!"

The form giggled appreciatively at this. "I wish Mamma could be here for this," Cecil said longingly when they had regained their collective composure. "She loves the musicals!"

"She’s not coming?" Marjorie sounded dismayed. It was most unusual for Joey Maynard to miss an Evening of this kind.

Cecil shook her head. "She’s gone back to Paris to do some more research for her latest. Papa was jolly pleased when she said she wanted to go. You know how ill she was last year!"

Cecil’s own coterie looked grave. They did indeed know. "But she’s much better now," Celine said consolingly. "It’s an awful shame she can’t make it, but just think by not putting pressure on her, we’re contributing to her next book!"

Dorothy grinned. "Mebbe Cecil can convince her to include us in the dedication," she giggled, as they restored the room to the pristine order that was expected. Cecil laughed, and with her hand tucked chummily in the crook on Grainne’s arm, she led them out of the room and back to the Senior Middle Common Room.