A Modern Tomboy by L.T. Meade

Lessons were not to begin until the following morning, and the six boarders were feeling in consequence a trifle disconsolate. They did not know what to do with themselves. They had explored the place the day before. They had visited the kitchen-garden and the flower-garden, and the paddocks and the shrubberies and the lawns, and they had wandered down towards the river. There seemed to be nothing special to do. The tennis-lawn was not properly mowed for tennis, and anyhow the net was not out, and there seemed to be no croquet-ground anywhere. In consequence, there was nothing whatever to do but to pace up and down under the shadow of the trees a little way from the house.

Rosamund Cunliffe walked with Phyllis Flower, Jane Denton with Agnes Sparkes, and Laura Everett with her special friend and factotum, Annie Millar. They were all good-natured, kind-hearted girls, ready to make the best of things; but as they walked now, pacing up and down, Rosamund suddenly stopped, faced round, and addressed the rest of her companions.