“I wish I’d the talent to be an artist!” she thought.  “There are so many things I’d like to do!  Oh, dear!  Painting and music (both beyond me utterly) and physical culture and poultry farming, and Red Cross nursing, and I probably shan’t do any of them, after all!  I want to be of solid use to the world in a nice interesting way to myself, and I expect I’ll just have to do a lot of stupid things that I hate.  Why wasn’t I born a Raphael?”

“How do you think you’ve got on altogether?” Garnet asked Winona, as, thoroughly tired out, the two girls traveled homeward to Seaton at the end of the third day’s examination.

“Um—­tolerably.  Better, perhaps, than I expected, but that’s not saying much.  And you?”

“I never prophesy till I know!”

But Garnet’s dark eyes shone as she leaned back in her corner.

CHAPTER XIX

The Swimming Contest

Once the examinations were over, Winona’s spirits, which had been decidedly at Il Penseroso, went up to L’Allegro.  The strain of coaching Garnet had been very great, but the relief was in corresponding proportion.  She felt as if a burden had rolled from her shoulders.  There was just a month of the term left.  The Sixth would of course be expected to do its ordinary form work, but the amount of home study required would be reasonable, quite a different matter from the intolerable grind of preparation for a University examination.  The extra afternoon classes with Miss Goodson were no longer necessary, leaving a delightful period of leisure half-hours at school.  Winona intended to employ these blissful intervals in cricket practice, at the tennis courts, in helping to arrange the museum, and in carrying out several other pet schemes that she had been forced hitherto to set aside.  Bessie Kirk had made a good deputy, but it was nice to take the reins into her own hands once more, and feel that she was head of the Games department.  She coached her champions assiduously.  At tennis Emily Cooper and Bertha March stood out like planets among the stars.  They had already beaten Westwood High School and Hill Top Secondary School, and hoped to have a chance against Binworth College, of hitherto invincible reputation.  The match would not take place for a fortnight, which gave extra time for practice.  In cricket, Betty Carlisle had come to the front at bowling, while Maggie Allesley and Irene Swinburne were heroines of the bat.  It is inevitable that some girls should overtop the rest, but Winona would not on that account allow the others to slack.  She knew the importance of a high general average of play, and urged on several laggers.  She thoroughly realized the importance of fielding, and made her eleven concentrate their minds upon it.

“We lost Tamley on fielding,” she affirmed, “and if we’ve any intention of beating Binworth, we’ve just got to practice catching and throwing in.”