Illustrated by John CampbellIllustrated by John Campbell

The Jolliest School of All By Angela Brazil --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Thank you for checking out this book by Theophania Publishing. We appreciate your business and look forward to serving you soon. We have thousands of titles available, and we invite you to search for us by name, contact us via our website, or download our most recent catalogues. Getting no response to her calls, the speaker, a pretty fair-haired girl of fifteen, flung her brown holland cooking-apron over her head, and ran out across the farmyard into the lightly-falling rain. She peeped into the cart-shed, where the hens were scratching about among the loose straw. Certainly Peggy was not there. She searched in the kitchen garden, but there was nothing to be seen except the daffodils nodding their innocent heads under the gooseberrybushes. Round through the orchard she sped, bringing down a shower of cherry-blossom as she brushed against the low-growing trees, and greatly disturbing a robin, who was feeding a young family in a hole in the ivy, but without any sign of the truant. Here and there Lilian ran, hunting in all Peggy\'s favourite haunts—now peeping into a hollow yew-tree, now peering at the top of a ladder, now rummaging in the tool-shed, then back through the sandquarry into the stack-yard, where there was a very good chance that the young lady might be hidden away in some snug little hole among the hay. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

CHAPTER I Gipsy Arrives One dank, wet, clammy afternoon at the beginning of October half a dozen of the boarders at Briarcroft Hall stood at the Juniors\' sitting-room window, watching the umbrellas of the day girls disappear through the side gate. It had been drizzling since dinner-time, and the prospect outside was not a remarkably exhilarating one. The yellow leaves of the oak tree dripped slow tears on to the flagged walk, as if weeping beforehand for their own speedy demise; the little classical statue on the fountain looked a decidedly watery goddess, the sodden flowers had trailed their heads in the soil, and a small rivulet was running down the steps of the summer house. As the last two umbrellas, after a brief and exciting struggle for precedence, passed through the portal and the gate was shut with a slam, Lennie Chapman turned to her companions and heaved a tragic sigh. "Isn\'t it withering?" she remarked. "And just on the very afternoon when we\'d made up our minds to decide the tennis championship, and secured all the courts for the Lower School. I do call it the most wretched luck! I\'m a blighted blossom!" "We\'ll never persuade the Seniors to give us all the courts again!" wailed Fiona Campbell. "They said so emphatically that it was only to be for this once." "I believe they knew it was going to be wet!" growled Dilys Fenton. "You don\'t think if it cleared a little we might manage just a set before tea?" suggested Norah Bell half hopefully. "My good girl, please to look at the lawn! Do you think anyone in her senses would try to play on a swamp like that?" "It\'s getting too late in the year for tennis," yawned Hetty Hancock. "Don\'t believe we shall get another game at all. We\'d better resign ourselves." "Resign ourselves to what?" asked Daisy Scatcherd. "Why, to leaving the championship till next summer, and to not going out to-day, and to sitting stuffing here and moaning our bad luck, and feeling as cross as a bear with a toothache—at least, that\'s how I feel: I don\'t know what the rest of you do!" "I should like to have gone home with the day girls," sighed Dilys Fenton. "No, you wouldn\'t!" snapped Norah Bell. "You know it\'s jollier to be a boarder; we do have some jolly times, even if it does rain. You can\'t expect it always to keep fine, and as for——" "Oh, Norah, don\'t preach! We must have our growls—it lets off steam. I think it\'s the wretchedest, miserablest, detestablest, most altogether sickening afternoon that ever was—there!" "If only something would happen, just to cheer us up a little!" said Lennie Chapman, opening the window rather wider and putting her head out into the rain. "What do you want to happen?" "Why, something exciting, of course—something interesting and jolly, and out of the common, to wake us up and make things more lively." "You\'ll fall out of the window if you lean over like that, and that would be lively, in all conscience, if you were picked up in fragments. Come in; you\'re getting your hair wet." "Let me alone!...

Leopold Classic Library is delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive collection. As part of our on-going commitment to delivering value to the reader, we have also provided you with a link to a website, where you may download a digital version of this work for free. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. Whilst the books in this collection have not been hand curated, an aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature. As a result of this book being first published many decades ago, it may have occasional imperfections. These imperfections may include poor picture quality, blurred or missing text. While some of these imperfections may have appeared in the original work, others may have resulted from the scanning process that has been applied. However, our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. While some publishers have applied optical character recognition (OCR), this approach has its own drawbacks, which include formatting errors, misspelt words, or the presence of inappropriate characters. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with an experience that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic book, and that the occasional imperfection that it might contain will not detract from the experience.

The story of proud, high-spirited, independent Dorothy Greenfield and Alison Clarke, a spoiled rich girl, students at Avondale College who are thrown together by a strange chain of circumstances. Dorothy eventually wins her place among the girls and discovers the true circumstances of her birth.

"If I\'d known!" groaned Winifred Cranston, otherwise Wendy, with a note of utter tragedy in her usually cheerful voice. "If I\'d only known! D\'you think I\'d have come trotting back here with my baggage? Not a bit of it! Nothing in this wide world should have dragged me. I\'d have turned up my hair—yes, it\'s quite long enough to turn up, Jess Paget, so you needn\'t look at it so scornfully; it\'s as nice as yours, and nicer! Well, I tell you I\'d have turned up my hair, and run away and joined the \'Waacs\' or the \'Wrens\', or have driven a motor wagon or conducted a tramcar, or scrubbed floors at a hospital, or done anything—anything, I say!—rather than stay at the Abbey without Mrs. Gifford." "It\'s pretty stiff, certainly, for the Head to go whisking away like this," agreed Magsie Wingfield, sitting on the other shaft of the wheelbarrow. "And without any notice either! It leaves one gasping!" "Stiff? It\'s the limit! Why didn\'t she give us decent warning, instead of springing it on to us in this sudden fashion? I feel weak!" "There wasn\'t time," explained Sadie Sanderson, who, with Violet Gorton and Tattie Clegg, occupied, in a tight fit, the interior of the wheelbarrow. "It was all done at a day\'s notice. Geraldine\'s been telling me the whole history." "Well?" "Mr. Gifford got suddenly exempted, and was made Governor of some outlandish place with an unpronounceable name in Burma. He telegraphed to Mrs. Gifford to join him at Marseilles, and go out with him. So she went—that\'s the long and the short of it!" "Went and left her school behind her," echoed Vi. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

CHAPTER I THE MOATED GRANGE “Here they are!” “Not really!” “It is, I tell you!” “Jubilate! You’re right, old sport! Scooterons-nous this very sec! Quick! Hurry! Stir your old bones, can’t you?” The two girls, who had been standing in the ruined watch-tower that spanned the gateway, tore down the broken corkscrew staircase at a speed calculated to imperil their necks seriously, and reached the bottom at the identical moment that a motor char-à-banc rounded the corner and drew up in front of the entrance. Sixteen jolly faces were grinning under sixteen school hats, and at least a dozen excited voices were pouring forth a perfect babel of exclamations. “How ripping!” “Oh, I say!” “This is top-hole!” “What a chubby place!” “I’d no idea it would be like this!” “Oh, hold me up! This child’s knocked me over entirely!” The opening day of a fresh term is always more or less of an event, but this particular reunion was a thrillingly important occasion, for during the Easter holidays the school had removed, and the girls were now having their first peep at their new quarters. The vision that greeted them through the old gateway was certainly calculated to justify their ecstatic remarks. A grassy courtyard, interspersed with box-edged flower beds and flagged footpaths, led to a large, gray old Tudor house, whose mullioned diamond-paned windows, twisted chimney stacks, irregular moss-grown roof, ivied bell-tower, stone balls and carved porch offered the very utmost of the romantic and picturesque. The change from the humdrum, ordinary surroundings of their former school was supreme. Miss Beasley had promised them a pleasant surprise, and she had undoubtedly kept her word. The sixteen new arrivals grasped their handbags and small possessions, and set off up the flagged pathway with delight written large on their countenances. Raymonde Armitage and Aveline Kerby, in virtue of half an hour’s longer acquaintance with the premises, trotted alongside and did the honours. “Yes, it’s topping! Regular old country mansion sort of a place. Might have come straight, slap-bang out of a novel! You should see the Bumble Bee! I can tell you she’s pleased with life! Buzzing about no end! Even the Wasp’s got a smile on! Fact! You needn’t look so incredulous. I’m not ragging.” “It’s true,” confirmed Raymonde. “The Wasp’s quite jinky to-day. Actually said ‘my dear’ to me when I arrived. Of course, Mother was there, but even then it gave me spasms. Gibbie, of all people in this wide world, to call me ‘my dear’! I nearly collapsed! ‘Goodness! what next?’ I thought. ‘Wonders will never cease!’” “Gibbie’s certainly not given to trotting out pet names, even before parents,” chirruped Morvyth Holmes. “Perhaps she’s striking out a new line, and we shall all be ‘Darling’ and ‘Sweetest’ now!” “Don’t you alarm yourself! She couldn’t twist her tongue round them. I’d think she was pining away to an early death if she did!...

Excerpt: ...Miss Jackson must have bought it. I always wondered what had become of it. It\'s such a dear little cupboard." "Oh! I\'m sorry if we\'ve sneaked it away from you." "Never mind. It\'s not your fault; I\'d rather Katrine had it than anyone else. I\'m glad to see it again, and to know that somebody\'s got it who\'ll value it." 148 CHAPTER XI Waterloo Day The girls at Aireyholme were nothing if not patriotic. They followed the course of national events with keenest interest. In common with most other schools they had sent their quota of knitted garments to the troops, and they kept collecting-boxes for both Prince of Wales and Belgian Relief Funds. These enterprises were good as far as they went, but not nearly sufficient to satisfy their martial spirit. "We\'re not making any sacrifices," declared Viola Webster impressively. "We don\'t realize the war enough. We\'re letting our Allies outstrip us. If we were Serbian or Russian we should be doing far more." "What sort of things?" queried Hilda Smart. Hilda was practical to a fault, though Viola liked vaguely to generalize. "Oh! patriotic things, you know." (Viola was rather cornered when it came to matter-of-fact explanations.) "Tearing up our gymnastic costumes for lint, and --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Notice: This Book is published by Historical Books Limited (www.publicdomain.org.uk) as a Public Domain Book, if you have any inquiries, requests or need any help you can just send an email to publications@publicdomain.org.uk This book is found as a public domain and free book based on various online catalogs, if you think there are any problems regard copyright issues please contact us immediately via DMCA@publicdomain.org.uk

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition. --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

A Fourth Form Friendship - A School Story is presented here in a high quality paperback edition. This popular classic work by Angela Brazil is in the English language, and may not include graphics or images from the original edition. If you enjoy the works of Angela Brazil then we highly recommend this publication for your book collection.

This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.