Chapter 6

The year wore on, and the long winter evenings set in. The
studious young ladies at Alton College, elbows on desk and hands
over ears, shuddered chillily in fur tippets whilst they loaded
their memories with the statements of writers on moral science,
or, like men who swim upon corks, reasoned out mathematical
problems upon postulates. Whence it sometimes happened that the
more reasonable a student was in mathematics, the more
unreasonable she was in the affairs of real life, concerning
which few trustworthy postulates have yet been ascertained.

Agatha, not studious, and apt to shiver in winter, began to break
Rule No. 17 with increasing frequency. Rule No. 17 forbade the
students to enter the kitchen, or in any way to disturb the
servants in the discharge of their duties. Agatha broke it
because she was fond of making toffee, of eating it, of a good
fire, of doing any forbidden thing, and of the admiration with
which the servants listened to her ventriloquial and musical
feats. Gertrude accompanied her because she too liked toffee, and
because she plumed herself on her condescension to her inferiors.
Jane went because her two friends went, and the spirit of
adventure, the force of example, and the love of toffee often
brought more volunteers to these expeditions than Agatha thought
it safe to enlist. One evening Miss Wilson, going downstairs
alone to her private wine cellar, was arrested near the kitchen
by sounds of revelry, and, stopping to listen, overheard the
castanet dance (which reminded her of the emphasis with which
Agatha had snapped her fingers at Mrs. Miller), the bee on the
window pane, "Robin Adair" (encored by the servants), and an
imitation of herself in the act of appealing to Jane Carpenter's
better nature to induce her to study for the Cambridge Local. She
waited until the cold and her fear of being discovered spying
forced her to creep upstairs, ashamed of having enjoyed a silly
entertainment, and of conniving at a breach of the rules rather
than face a fresh quarrel with Agatha.

There was one particular in which matters between Agatha and the
college discipline did not go on exactly as before. Although she
had formerly supplied a disproportionately large number of the
confessions in the fault book, the entry which had nearly led to
her expulsion was the last she ever made in it. Not that her
conduct was better--it was rather the reverse. Miss Wilson never
mentioned the matter, the fault book being sacred from all
allusion on her part. But she saw that though Agatha would not
confess her own sins, she still assisted others to unburden their
consciences. The witticisms with which Jane unsuspectingly
enlivened the pages of the Recording Angel were conclusive on