Katharine stood on the platform at Paddington, looking round anxiously. It had been a most awful rush, but you expected that with Aunt Luce. She was a dear thing; but so vague!
When Mother had written to say that she wanted Katharine to go to boarding-school now that she was fourteen, Aunt Luce had said, ‘Oh, of course! That school where her great friend used to be a mistress. Now where was it? The Chalet School! That was it! I’ll write tomorrow.’
Unfortunately, by the time tomorrow came, she had been seized with a fresh inspiration for a picture which drove everything else out of her head; and when, a week later, her niece asked casually what the school had said about having her, Aunt Luce had shrieked with horror. She had never thought of it again!
‘How does one find out which school it is?’ she had asked helplessly.
Eventually, she had written to an educational agency and discovered three Chalet Schools—one in Sussex; one on an island off the coast of South Wales; one at Tanswick in Pembrokeshire. To be on the safe side, all three were written to.