400th Post: Susan at School frontispiece

As the 400th post on this blog that I started almost a year ago, it's a pleasure to post this beautiful frontispiece from Susan at School. My mum always finds it difficult to find a Christmas present for me. When I saw that this first edition of Susan at School was going for a song at Richard Roberts Bookseller in Kilmarnock, just down the road from my mum's house in Annbank, Ayrshire, I asked her to snap it up for me. And it arrived today. A marvellous drawing of Susan and Tessa in the school library at St. Ronan's discovering a mysterious map inside a book. The dialogue goes:
""Hallo," she [Susan] said, "it's a sort of map. I don't remember seeing this in the book. What d'you think it is?"
Tessa leant over her shoulder. "It looks like a plan of some kind," she said. "There's a house and an orchard and gardens-"
"It's a plan of this house," said Susan, "it's St. Ronan's! Gosh, that's very interesting!"
And the mystery begins. I love both the stories set at St. Ronan's, and it's interesting that both frontispieces are of the school library...