"A Mrs. Boyd, a pale little nonentity, but she darns in the most elegant
fashion you ever saw. She had to bring her daughter you see, and the
daughter is to be a teacher--is a sort of charity scholar, looks after
the laggards in the evening, but she keeps her place pretty well. Of
course she lives over on that side," nodding her head.

"See here," began Phillipa, "that girl has puzzled me with an elusive
resemblance to somebody, Zay, it really is you. Her hair and eyes are
darker, she's larger every way, she is not such a peerless maid--"

"I shouldn't feel complimented by that! Oh the idea! A girl from--well
somewhere from the wild and woolly west--"

Much as Phillipa Rosewald loved her friends and she confessed to adoring
Zaidee, she never stopped at a little fling.

"The compliment, of course, is to Miss Boyd. She has a temper of her
own, you can catch a flash of it in her eyes, and I dare say her iron
rule is what makes her mother so meek. She pets up that Nevins girl who
is a--well they are called Beauty and the Beast. How she managed to
slip in here puzzles me."

"That girl is my horrid familiar, my _bete noire_. She has the room next
to mine and you ought to see it. Miss Davis marked her down for
untidyness, and Mrs. Barrington put her on a diet, her complexion was so
horrid, but she manages to get a lot of sweets and chocolates. And the
way she dresses! A modiste in New York sends her clothes and told her
the color of one's frocks must match the hair or the eyes, and no one
could match those gray blue green eyes, so it has to be the hair."

"I wouldn't want that dull brown hair. I don't suppose she ever brushes
it. At home the maid looked after her. The mother is traveling for her
health, and they are very rich."

"Oh, is she making a confidante of you, too?" laughed May Gedney. "I
thought it rather funny at first, I didn't believe half she said, but
her father is quite an important man in banking circles it seems, and
there are diamonds galore, but he wouldn't let her wear only that
diamond birthday ring at school. She was wildly in love with Miss Boyd
but the girl was too hard hearted to return it. She is a regular icicle
and stony hearted and all that! Yes, her heart is irretrievably gone
about the girl. They did have a kissing match one night but they don't
do it any more in public! I don't know what they do in private, but the
Boyd shut down on gifts which almost broke her heart, and she had spent
t