Three schoolfellows scheme to find the money that will keep one of them at school, and the scheme ends in a cheque that should never have been written. L. T. Meade wrote more than two hundred books, mostly for girls, and invented the modern school story alongside Angela Brazil. The moral pressure here is applied by the friends rather than the mistresses, which is why it still works. Fifty-two plates by painters including Millais and Wilkie carry the same themes of youth, letters and moral pressure that drive the story.