Category: Children & Young Adult Reading

The Leader of the Lower School: A Tale of School Life

ONE dank, wet, clammy afternoon at the beginning of October half a dozen of the boarders at Briarcroft Hall stood at the Juniors' sitting-room window, watching the umbrellas of the day girls disappear through the side gate. It had been drizzling since dinner-time, and the pros...

Chapters

15. Chapter 15

AFTER the delightful three weeks spent with the Gordons, Gipsy felt that so pleasant an experience of English home life made it doubly difficult to return to Briarcroft. No news...

19. Chapter 19

MR. GORDON had been most seriously concerned at the news of Gipsy's unauthorized flight, and considering the part which his daughter Meg had played in helping her to escape, he...

18. Chapter 18

She tore along at the top of her speed, until she had put a considerable distance between herself and Briarcroft; then, panting and almost breathless, she slackened her pace, an...

7. Chapter 7

WHEN the novelty of her introduction to Briarcroft had somewhat faded, and the excitement of the Lower School mutiny had subsided, Gipsy began to find the life more than a trifl...

14. Chapter 14

EASTER was drawing very near, and the school was to break up for more than three weeks. Gipsy, to her intense delight, had been asked to spend the holidays with the Gordons, and...

9. Chapter 9

GIPSY spent the Christmas holidays at Briarcroft. Miss Poppleton went away to Switzerland, to refresh her tired mind with the winter sports; but Miss Edith stayed behind, to cou...

10. Chapter 10

"HEARD the news?" enquired Barbara Kendrick one afternoon towards the end of February, lounging into the Juniors' recreation room with a would-be casual air, and whistling a jau...

3. Chapter 3

BRIARCROFT HALL was a large private school which stood on the outskirts of the town of Greyfield, close to the border of the Lake District in Cumberland. It was a big, rather ol...

5. Chapter 5

GIPSY ran upstairs to the classroom with a feeling of intense satisfaction. So far all had gone well. She had succeeded in arousing a spirit of righteous wrath and resistance th...

11. Chapter 11

EACH Form at Briarcroft had its own teacher, but in addition there were a certain number of visiting masters and mistresses who came out from Greyfield to give lessons at the sc...

8. Chapter 8

THOUGH Gipsy was accustomed to try to enjoy herself in any place where circumstances chanced to fling her, and though she had contrived to settle down fairly happily at Briarcro...

17. Chapter 17

MEG rushed to the lecture hall just in time to enter unobtrusively among a crowd of other girls, and to take her seat for afternoon call-over without attracting special notice f...

12. Chapter 12

THE Spring Term was passing rapidly, and Gipsy had now been nearly six months at Briarcroft. It felt a very, very long time to her since the first evening when she had introduce...

16. Chapter 16

MISS POPPLETON, having, as she deemed, successfully detected Gipsy in her misdoings, was determined to force her into making a full confession. The girl's repeated denials she r...

1. Chapter 1

ONE dank, wet, clammy afternoon at the beginning of October half a dozen of the boarders at Briarcroft Hall stood at the Juniors' sitting-room window, watching the umbrellas of...

6. Chapter 6

THE events narrated in the last chapter had made an epoch in Briarcroft history. Henceforward the Lower School meant to manage its own affairs, and it set to work at once to set...

13. Chapter 13

GIPSY had called the General Meeting of the Magazine department of the Guild because she honestly wished her journal to be a representative organ for the whole of the Lower Scho...

2. Chapter 2

INTO the fourteen years of her life Gipsy had certainly managed to compress a greater variety of experiences than falls to the share of most girls of her age. She had been a tra...

4. Chapter 4

A LARGE school is a state in miniature. Quite apart from the rule of the mistresses, it has its own particular institutions and its own system of self-government. In their speci...