"It means first prize, old thing! Won't we give you a clap as you march
on to the platform!" said Iva.
Miss Pollard was determined to do this, her first Speech Day, in style;
the chair was to be taken by a local magnate, and the prizes distributed
by a real live professor from Oxford, who was spending his vacation in
the neighbourhood. There was a tremendous business moving forms and
chairs into the newly-erected hut, and decorating the platform with pots
of plants and ferns. All the pupils were dressed in white and wore their
best hair ribbons. Mavis was feeling sad and sentimental, for it was her
last term. She was to leave 'The Moorings' and concentrate her energies
on music, and on lessons in painting from Mr. Castleton, which would suit
her far better than the strenuous work of the Sixth form. To the girls,
and especially the younger ones, this first public function at school was
not altogether unmixed bliss. They were obliged to sit as quiet as rows
of little angels, packed tightly together on forms without backs, and to
listen to interminable speeches about subjects which they only half
understood, the main points of which seemed to be, however, that Miss
Pollard and Miss Fanny and Miss Mitchell and all the teachers and all the
pupils were much to be congratulated, and everybody must remember that
'Rome was not built in a day.
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