The Pi Sisters at Malory Towers

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE PI SISTERS FALL ILL

As Doris said, Alicia had really meant what she said. Her initial annoyance towards the Pi Sisters now became total hatred, and she wasted no opportunity to make them uncomfortable and irritated.

The first day, the Pi Sisters dove into their beds, only to discover that the sheets ripped in half! The girls had secretly made apple-pie beds before they entered, just a little taster for what was to follow!

Doris and Fanny stared at their destroyed sheets in shock.

'Golly,' said Fanny. 'This means more mending, otherwise Matron will scold us. And you know how unused to mending we are, coming from an aristocratic background.'

'Yes...' agreed Doris slowly. She was still bitter at Fanny about the 'two Gretels', and being the smarter of the two twins, she had anticipated that the girls would make them apple-pie beds. Little did Fanny know, but spiteful Doris had replaced her own bedsheets with Fanny's spare set, so Fanny had to do two batches of mending while Doris had none! Instead, Doris spent her time buffing her nails and admiring their polish while Fanny became red and flustered with yards of mending.

And so the girls' pranks continued, along with a most brutal Coventry treatment. Since the Pi Sisters weren't talking to each other after the mending incident, they found that they had become silent for days on end! Unless they raised their hands in class to answer a question (which rarely ever happened, for the Pi Sisters were rather featherheaded), nobody wanted to hear their voices.

'I do feel the stirrings of a headache coming along,' Doris thought to herself after a few days. 'I wish I had some of that expensive rose water that Mummy uses to cure headaches, but Malory Towers only has nasty sewage water from the ocean.'

Meanwhile, Fanny was feeling the effects of the girls' treatment herself. 'Ohh, I'm seeing double. Blow this headache!' she mumbled.

Both girls soon decided that Matron's nasty medicines were rather bearable in comparison to such a painful headache, and so they both made their way to the San.

Matron immediately started fussing over them. 'Heavens!' she exclaimed after feeling their hot foreheads. 'Get to bed at once, and I shall just bring you some of my special black tonic.'

She left to bring the medicine, and the Pi Sisters stared glumly at the ceiling. 'We do so hate this awful school!' they thought.