She'd understand." "I hope it won't need that," fluttered Lizzie nervously.
The girls were not allowed out of the house after preparation, so any excursions into the garden were distinctly against the rules.
Feeling very culpable at thus breaking the law of the school, Ulyth and Lizzie crept quietly from the cloak-room door soon after eight had struck.

It was not yet dark, but the sun had sunk behind the hills, and the garden was in deep shadow.

They passed the tennis-courts and the rose parterre, and ran down the steps into the herbarium.

Just at the outskirts of the shrubbery a small figure was skulking among the bushes.
At the sound of footsteps it gave a low, peculiar whistle, then advanced slightly from the shadow and stood at attention, as if in mute challenge of the new-comers.

Irene Scott, for it was she, was evidently on sentry duty.