Fairies and Felicitations (Scholars and Sorcery) by Eleanor Beresford Page A

that cut me out. They are both looking past me, right in the middle of them, and it makes me uncomfortable, somehow. Why don’t they just say what they mean? My brothers don’t do all this silent talking with their eyes, even the twins, who can do thought-to-thought communication. It’s just silly girl stuff.
    “Of course, you were off putting your baby to bed and you missed the excitement,” Cecily says.
    “Excitement?”
    “The arrival of the fashion plate,” Esther says, as if that explains everything.
    Cecily giggles, suddenly looking much younger than a Senior Prefect should. “Well, at least, she looked that way to us. If she hadn’t been wearing a Fernleigh uniform, I would have assumed she was a grown up sister of one of the girls, or even a mistress. Too well dressed for a mistress, I suppose.”
    “Gym slip by way of Paris,” Esther says in her slow, honeyed voice with its undercurrents of malice. I don’t always like her as much, when she talks like this, all sidelong, somehow. “It’s a work of beauty, let me tell you. And her hair, permanent waved by the very best London stylists—not that I expect you could tell one way or the other,” she added, her gaze lighting on my hair.
    I shrug off the comment. I have no use for spending hours primping and preening my hair, like Miss Evans, or Esther, for that matter, especially since when it’s any kind of length my hair forms ringlets, which take so much time to keep neat. Crop it short, and then there’s no fuss.
    “Oh, well. She’ll settle in well enough, no matter how expensive the uniform is,” I say. I’m not as interested in the new girl as they seem to be; I’ve already dismissed her as not my type. “Miss Carroll won’t put up with any nonsense.” Miss Carroll is the Headmistress of Fernleigh Manor, but she’s also the Head of our House, one of the advantages - or disadvantages, depending on how you look at it - of being in School House. For all that, she’s not a bad sort. Not precisely the kind that you’d want to curl up on a stool by her knee and tell her your secret troubles, but pretty decent.
      We head toward the Sanatorium. My trunk is already at the school, sent on by train—I could hardly bring it myself on Ember—and we just need Matron to confirm we have a clean bill of health before finding out our assigned dormitories for the year. And, of course, to assign our studies. School House Sixth Formers get studies shared two to a room, rather than a common room—another point of favouritism over the other Houses, I suppose. We don’t get to choose our study-mates, but Miss Carroll usually tries to assign girls to their particular friends, which means that Esther and Cecily will be put together, and I—I don’t know. Whoever is left over, I suppose. Probably Valerie, unless she’s been put with the new girl, who seems more likely to be her soul-mate than I would be.  
    I have a vague hope that I’ll have a study to myself, although I suppose there’s not much chance of that. Not that I dislike the other girls, but living in a group is hard enough, without spending more time one-on-one with a girl that I’m not close with. I wish there was a study big enough for three girls, but then, even with their arms companionably in mine, I don’t know that Esther and Cecily would actually find three comfortable company. There are limits to how much you want even your own particular pet around.  
    Esther breaks into my thoughts. She obviously hasn’t exhausted the subject of the new girl. “But, my dear girl, you have no conception of how honoured we are. Fernleigh Manor is, at last, attracting girls of the right class.” She’s smiling, in a not particularly nice way. Lips tucked in at the corners in a way that somehow makes the faint points at the tip of her ears seem sharper. “This vision of beauty—her name is Diana, Diana Struthers, a very suitable name—is, we are reliably informed, the daughter of Mary Bing,