Ruey Richardson—Chaletian #978926

It was the night before term began at the Chalet School. Tucked up cosily in her little white bed in the pretty room which her guardians, Dr. and Mrs. Maynard, had bestowed on her when they brought her home to their house, Freudesheim, Ruey Richardson was wakeful for once in her life. She was trying to make up her mind whether or not she really looked forward to the school after all.
It is true that it was somewhat late in the day for this; but until that evening, Ruey had not fully realized exactly what going to boarding-school as opposed to day-school would entail in the way of rules governing out-of-school hours. She had been distinctly startled when Len, the eldest of the Maynard family—by a short thirty minutes or so—and about to become a bright and shining light in Form Va, remarked out of the blue, “We shan’t be sitting around out of bed like this tomorrow night. We all go early then. After that, though, you and Margot and the rest of us will have till nine-fifteen, Ruey—I mean,” conscientiously, for Ruey was still new to the Middle Europe way of naming the hours, “twenty-one-fifteen.”