Her Royal Highness the Princess Elisaveta Margherita, Crown Princess of Belsornia, sat on a grass bank and sang lustily one of the old English folk-songs. Anything less like the traditional princess it would have been hard to imagine. She wore a frock which had begun the day as a fresh pink linen, but which now looked only fit for the rag-bag, since she had torn it across the front of the skirt, and it was stained with blueberry juice from throat to hem. Her arms and legs were brown as a gipsy’s, and a scratch adorned her small, freckled nose. Her hair was scattered wildly over her shoulders, and she was engaged in undoing a knot in her hair-ribbon with fingers that would have been the better for a good scrubbing. Above her, sat her great friend, Joey Bettany, together with ‘the Robin,’ as Joey’s small adopted sister was affectionately known; Juliet Carrick, a ward of Jo’s elder sister, Madge Russell; and Grizel Cochrane. The last named, once a pupil of the Chalet School which Mrs Russell had founded at the Tiernsee nearly five years previously, had now returned to be a mistress in the annexe the authorities were establishing at the Sonnalpe for delicate children.