"Well, you look a bit green... But you'd better not report to Matron in case you've got something catching, and they keep us all from going home."

Peter sat back and crumbled her bread. Her throat felt a little tight, and she was conscious of the thumping of her heart as she wondered whether all these other girls with whom she had spent most of her life loved their homes as much as she did. And Peter was well aware that she had an unusual home. There were only three other girls at the Castle who, like herself, had no mother, and that made a difference, of course. But nobody else lived in a tiny, isolated cottage at the top of a lonely valley in the Shropshire hills, with a dear old Daddy who was in charge of one of the reservoirs which supplied the Midland cities with water. Only Joanna, at the end of the next table, had a pony, and although Peter had never seen it, she was sure that it was a most expensive, purebred animal, and not at all like her precious, sure-footed mountain pony, Sally.

Peter had never found anyone who knew as much about the country as she did; nobody who loved birds and wild things in the same way; nobody who had climbed the hills and picked bilberries higher than the streams began, and nobody who would steal out with her at night to watch the stars swing across the blue-black sky.

All this did not mean that Peter was not happy at school - she was. She had many friends, but no one special friend, and not until the Mortons had come to Witchend last summer had she ever preferred anyone else's company to her own. Now, of course, after their amazing adventure together, they would always be very special friends, and she was longing to meet them all again tomorrow. She was just wondering whether there would be a letter from David this morning when the headmistress rose from her place and reduced one hundred and sixty girls and a large staff to silence. She gave out a few notices, and then, after the grace, the girls filed out of hall to go to their own houses.

In Pollards, the morning letters were always put out on the mantelpiece in the hall, and as Peter was first in, she had to rummage through quite a big pile before she found two for her. The first was unmistakably from her father, and she was surprised he had found it necessary to send her a second letter this week, for she had had one the day before. She wondered what he had forgotten to tell her, but examined the other envelope first.