se in the room, and with
her head bent over the keys, she was playing for herself. Little by
little, the other girls stopped talking. She did not notice that at
all. Nancy listened to her playing in astonishment. It was far beyond
anything like ordinary schoolgirl facility. It was full of genuine
talent and poetry, now smooth and lyrical, and again as capricious and
impish as some of her own moods.

She raised her head, and looked at Nancy with an absent-minded smile.

"Like music?" Nancy nodded.

"I believe you really do. You aren't just saying so, are you? Well, I
like you--ever so much. Listen, don't get the idea that everything I
say is meant to be funny--sometimes--I'm very serious--you wouldn't
believe it, would you?"

CHAPTER IX

A QUARREL

You had your choice, at Miss Leland's, between studying, and doing what
the large majority of the girls did; namely, making friends, reading
novels during your study periods, and leaving it to Providence to
decide whether you passed your examinations or not. The teachers were
lenient souls, with the exception of Miss Drinkwater, the Latin
teacher, who was unreasonably irritable when her pupils came to class
armed with the seraphic smiles of ignorance, and a number of convincing
excuses, which invariably failed to convince Miss Drinkwater. In
consequence, very few of the girls pursued their studies in that
classic tongue longer than the first month. "What point was there in
doing so?" they argued coolly; none of them had any aspirations toward
college, and nearly all of them harbored a dread of learning anything
that might show on the surface, and thereby discourage the attentions
of the college youths which were of infinitely more importance in their
eyes, as indeed, in the eyes of their fond mothers, likewise, than the
attainment of the scholarly graces.

Miss Leland's was one of those schools instituted primarily to meet the
necessity of our young plutocrats for mingling with their own peculiar
kind--"forming advantageous connections," it is called--the question of
education was secondary if not quite negligible. The daughters of
steel magnates came from Pittsburgh to meet the daughters of railroad
magnates from New York, and incidentally to meet one another's
brothers, at the small social functions which Miss Leland gave
ostensibly for the purpose of developing in her charges an easy poise
and the most correct drawing-room manners.

The girls,