Thanks for the explanations regarding buns. I can well imagine eating raisin buns with butter though I usually add a bit of honey too. It's still not what my cake-loving me would order at a café or tea shop
.
I've now finished the first book.
There's something I stumbled upon the evening of the day that the girls found the dog:
When she heard the telephone bell ringing that evening she was quite sure that it was the police ringing up the Head Mistress. But it wasn’t.
I've always imagined the phone to be in Miss Theobald's office but would that bell be heard by the girls? Or was the/another phone in the hall?
Something else:
Matron proved unexpectedly good at providing a real meal in one of the plays, instead of the pretend-one that Hilary had arranged for.
The book was published in 1941. There are never any hints of food scarcity in the book (quite the opposite) but this sounds a bit like it.
Regarding the chapter "A shock for Isabel": That chapter is missing in the German translations. I think it was in the Japanese series that was broadcast in Germany but back then I didn't know that it was in the original book - after all adaptations on the TV often stray from the books. So I only knew that it was what Blyton wrote when I read the English book as an adult.
The girls must have been very trustworthy if the exam papers are in the (not locked) rooms the evening before. It doesn't really make sense to me though except that it was needed for the story. Miss Roberts could have just brought the papers with her the next day.
Interestingly at Malory Towers the exam papers in the second book are locked in (though not with success as the key to the lock was right there
).