FENTON SCHOOL

"I beg your pardon," Annie Darlington said, finally looking up from where she was kneeling on the stone floor, her hands full of the grimy edge of Sally Eddington's woollen peptic.

She was stitching up the hem of the offending garment so that it wouldn't drag on the ground as the child walked. Her concentration on the task, which she was attempting to perform while six-year-old Sally was still wearing the petticoat, had prevented her from hearing the first part of the message the headmistress had sent.

"It's your guardian," Margaret Rhodes said importantly. "Come to take you home for Christmas."

"How nice for you, Sally," Annie said. She took one very large and hurried stitch and then looped the needle through and tied a quick knot. She broke the thread with her teeth before she added, "I didn't know you were leaving today."

In all honesty she hadn't even known Sally had a guardian. Annie distinctly remembered that the little girl had spent the previous holiday at school. There were only a handful of Students who did that, and since Annie herself had always been one of them she certainly knew who others were. And most of their stories as well.

The loss of a mother, usually in childbirth with the next, too quickly conceived baby. A father's remarriage, perhaps. Or his uninterest.

Annie supposed she herself might fall into the later category, but her father's uninterest was something she had stopped thinking about a long time ago. She was actually grateful for the upbringing he had provided her, even if it had never included his presence. And just this week Mrs Kemp had offered her a teaching position here for the next school year.

Then she would never have to leave, Annie thought contentedly, automatically straightening Sally's skirt and smoothing with her hands the carrot-coloured frizz that surrounded the little girls freckled face.

"But I'm not," Sally said, her eyes round at the thought.

"Not her, you big silly," Margaret said. "It's you he's come for."

Annie turned her head, looking full at Margaret for the first time. "For me?" She repeated in astonishment.

"And Mrs. Kemp says you mustn't keep him waiting."

Annie opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it again. After all, whatever was going on, it offered to be different from her normal afternoon routine of wiping noses and hearing lessons.

Either the girls were having a joke or there had been some mistake in who had been called for. In either case, going along would prove more entertaining than what she was presently doing. If it were a Prank, then the others would enjoy a laugh at her expense, nothing she was averse to. And if it weren't, the mistake would probably have been straightened out by the time she reached the headmistress's office. Until then...

"Well, of course I won't keep him waiting," Annie said cheerfully. "Come from London, I suppose."

"I don't know about that," Margaret confided, "but he arrived in a bang-up rig with four of the primest bits of horseflesh I've ever seen."

"If Mrs. Kemp hears you talking like that, my girl," Annie warned, "You'll be banged-up rig."

She lightened the rebuke with a smile and then ran down the wide hallway with the younger girl at her heels. Not setting a good example, Mrs. Kemp would have said, especially for someone about to become teacher.

Since the headmistress wasn't by to say it, however, Annie didn't see any reason not to run off the excess energy the recent weather's confinement had produced.

She would be so glad when spring arrived around the woods and fields were again available for roaming.

She slowed to a sedate walk as she neared the open door of the school's office. Working by feel, she tucked a few tendrils of hair back into neat coil from which they managed to escape and straightened the shoulders if her linsey-woolsey dress, brushing her hands over her bodice. Then she cast a quick glance behind her to evaluate Margaret's appearance, knowing that in Mrs. Kemp's opinion it, too, could usually be improved upon.

She was right. The younger girl's flannel pinafore was unbuttoned. Annie turned and, still walking backwards, attempted a couple of quick adjustments to the ten-year-old's attire.

Margaret's widening eyes should have been a warning, but she didn't notice them until it was too late. Annie backed something quite solid and heard a soft gasp of response.

Someone, she realized belatedly when she whirled around. someone very tall. And dressed in what even