For the Sake of the School Part 27

"Yes; but I couldn't do it, my good child. Being in the Sixth doesn't make me a magician."

"We tried a little bit at home," pursued Edie. "We had a book that told us how; only I never could manage it quickly. People always saw how I did it."

"Rona's the girl for that," suggested Hattie Goodwin.

"Is she? Come here, Rona, I want you. Can you really and truly do conjuring?"

"Oh, not properly!" laughed Rona. "But when I was on board ship there was a gentleman who was very clever at it, and I and some boys I'd made friends with were tremendously keen at learning. We got him to show us a few easy tricks, and we were always trying them. I could manage it just a little, but I'm out of practice now. You'd see in a second how it was done, I'm afraid."

"Oh, do show us, just for fun!"

"What do you want to see?"

"Oh, anything!"

"The vanishing coin?"

"Yes, yes. Go ahead!"

"Then give me two pennies or shillings, either will do."

The audience who had cl.u.s.tered round looked at one another, each expecting somebody else to produce a coin. Then everybody laughed.

"We haven't got so much as a copper amongst us! We're a set of absolute paupers!" declared Doris. "Can't you do some other trick?"

"There is nothing else I could manage so well," said Rona disconsolately. "This was the only one I really learnt."

"Can't it be done with anything but coins?"

"Something the same size and round, perhaps?"

"My pendant?" said Ulyth, fetching the trinket from the bench. "It's just as big as a penny."

"Yes, I could try it with this and another like it. Give me Stephanie's."

"No, no! You shan't try tricks with mine!" objected Stephanie indignantly.

"I won't do it a sc.r.a.p of harm."

"Oh, Stephie, don't be mean! She'll not hurt it. Here, Rona, take it!"

exclaimed several of the girls, anxious to witness the experiment.

Stephanie's protests and grumbles were overridden by the majority, and Rona, in her new capacity of wizard, faced her audience.

"It'll be rather transparent, because you oughtn't really to know that I've got two pendants," she explained apologetically. "Please forget, and think it's only one. I must put some patter in, like Mr. Thompson always used to do. Ladies and gentleman, you've no doubt heard that the art of conjuring depends upon the quickness of the hand. That's as it may be, but there is a great deal that can't be accounted for in that way. Ladies and gentlemen, you see this coin--or rather pendant, as I should say. I am going to make it fly from my left hand to my right.

One, two, three--pa.s.s! Here it is. Did you see it go? No. Well, I can make it travel pretty quickly. Now we'll try another pretty little experiment. You see my hand. It's empty, isn't it? Yet when I wave it over this desk Miss Stephanie Radford's pendant will be returned to its place. Hey, presto! Pa.s.s! There you are! Safe and sound and back again!"

Stephanie took up her treasure and examined it anxiously.

"This isn't mine!" she declared.

"Rubbish! It is."

"I tell, you it isn't! Don't I know my own work? This is Ulyth's. What have you done with mine?"

"Vanished under the wizard's wand," mocked Rona.

"Give it me this instant!" cried Stephanie angrily, shaking Rona by the arm.

Rona had been standing upon one leg, and the unexpected a.s.sault completely upset her balance. She toppled, clutched at Doris, and fell, b.u.mping her head against the corner of the table. It was a hard blow, and as she got up she staggered.

"I feel--all dizzy!" she gasped.

An officious junior, quite unnecessarily, ran for Miss Lodge, magnifying the accident so much in her highly coloured account that the mistress arrived on the scene prepared to find Rona stretched unconscious. Seeing that the girl looked white and tearful, she ordered her promptly to bed.

"It may be nothing, but any rate you will be better lying down," she decreed. "Go downstairs, girls, all of you. n.o.body is to come into the studio again to-night."

"Rona had my pendant in her hand all the time," grumbled Stephanie to Beth as she obeyed the mistress's orders. "She dropped it as she fell.

I've put it back safely, though, and I don't mean to let anybody interfere with it. I shall complain to Miss Bowes if it's touched again."

CHAPTER XVII

A Storm-cloud

Rona woke up next morning without even a headache, in Miss Lodge's opinion "justifying the prompt measures taken", but according to the girls, "showing there had been nothing the matter with her to make such a fuss about". Breakfast proceeded as usual, and afterwards came the short interval before nine-o'clock school. Now on this day the contributions to the Art exhibition were to be packed up and dispatched by a special carrier, and Stephanie, as a budding metalworker, ran upstairs to the studio to take one last peep at her exhibit. She flew down again with white face and burning eyes.

"Girls!" she cried shakily. "Girls! Somebody's taken my pendant! It's gone!"

"Why, nonsense, Stephie; it can't be gone! It was there all right last night."

"It's not there now. Ulyth's has been put in its place, and mine's vanished. Come and see."

There was an instant stampede for the studio.

"It's probably on the bench," said Doris. "Some people are such bad lookers. I expect we shall find it directly."

"You can't find a thing that isn't there," retorted Stephanie with warmth.

Doris considered herself an excellent looker, and, in company with a dozen others, she searched the studio. Willing hands turned everything over, hunted under tables, on shelves, and among shavings, but not a sign of the pendant could they find.

"Are you sure this one isn't yours?" asked Ruth, coming back to the exhibits.

"Certain! I know my own work. This is Ulyth's; and there's the mistake she made that disqualified it."