lain
or pretty, beamed with satisfaction when she had won a genuine peal of
laughter from the two dejected Prescotts.

"We'd better go down now. To-night of course everything is more or
less topsy-turvy. My trunk, I think, must be still out in Kokomo,
Indiana, or some such place. I don't even expect to see it for another
month or so. But _I_ don't mind. I'm a regular child of nature
anyway--it's just Amelia who's pernickety about our appearing in full
regalia every night for dinner. Amelia is Leland, of course. She's
tremendously keen on preserving a refining influence about the school,
and I think she looks on me as a rather demoralizing factor. There
goes the gong."

The three went down-stairs together, Charlotte linking herself between
Nancy and Alma.

As if by magic, the din of a few moments before had been lulled. The
fifty or sixty girls had gathered in the large reception room, where a
wood-fire was blazing up a huge stone chimney, and where Miss Leland,
wearing a dignified black evening dress, was seated in a pontifical
chair, chatting with eight or ten of her charges, with the air of a
gracious hostess. All the voices had sunk to a lower key.

"Is everyone here?" She looked about her, and closing the book she had
been toying with led the way into the dining-room beyond, where the ten
or twelve small tables, with their snowy covers, and softly shaded
candles gave the room more the appearance of a quiet restaurant than
the ordinary school refectory.

Charlotte Spencer sat with Nancy at a table near Miss Leland's; while
Alma found herself separated from her sister, and relegated to another
table where she was completely marooned among five strange girls.

Charlotte introduced Nancy to a sallow maiden with prominent front
teeth, named Allison Maitland, to a statuesque brunette named Katherine
Leonard----

"The school beauty," was her brief comment. "And this is Denise Lloyd,
sister of Mildred, my roommate. Hope we have soup."

"Are you any relation to Lawrence Prescott, who goes to Williams?"
asked the beautiful Katherine, turning to Nancy with a slightly
patronizing air. Nancy vaguely disclaimed a kinship that might have
won her Miss Leonard's interest, and thereby quickly lost some of it.

"No, she's not, she says," said Charlotte. "Is he a beau of yours?
'Yes,' replied the girl, a soft blush mantling her damask cheek.
'Naturally he's a beau of mine. Who isn't?' and with this keen retor