go abroad on a wedding tour. Otherwise I
won't have him!" announced Phillipa with great solemnity at which they
all laughed.

"Young ladies do you know it is time to go out for exercise," said Miss
Arran.

"Oh, let us go over to Crawford House," cried Zay. "Why, you will hardly
know it. The two parlors are to be thrown into one--a regular drawing
room, and I'm to have the prettiest study off of my bedroom. I have to
decide what color I shall have them done in."

"We'll all help you."

"I just can't have blue and I like it so, but it is the one idea of
blondes, therefore I avoid it."

"It seems Miss Boyd's favorite color," said Louie. "And she's not so
very blondy, either."

CHAPTER V

ZAIDEE

They were the usual lot of girls in a sort of hubbub together. With the
exception of the Kirklands they were not taking life seriously as yet.
They studied and sang, painted, wrote verses, sometimes were caught on
trigonometry and occasionally made awful translations in Latin and
French. They changed their ideals, they vowed friendship and fell out
with each other, they were spiteful and willful and sweet and penitent,
and if "a boy's will's the wind's will," a young girl's will in the
unformed years is not much better.

Phillipa Rosewald was a sort of leader. A kind of charming girl with
many varieties, fascinating, making you like her when she chose and then
giving you pin pricks instead of caresses. Before she put on long
dresses boys were quarrelling about her and she seemed to sandwich love
affairs in with her lessons; she had fine taste in dressing, she could
tie a bow, or trim a hat, or furbish up an evening waist in a manner
that filled her comrades with envy, and she was a fairly good scholar as
well.

But Zaidee with her graciousness and sweet temper won all hearts. Every
one was eager to have some little claim upon her. Her mother's sad
accident and her father being one of the survivors of a fierce Indian
battle made her a sort of heroine. She was not quite an angel but very
human and with the peculiar sweetness that always disarms criticism.

And although it was considered a rather aristocratic school there were
the usual feuds and bits of jealousy inseparable from a crowd of girls,
the days in the main passed delightfully, and now they were all
interested in the rehabilitation of Crawford House, the coming of the
young midshipman and the lovely mother who at last had an almost
miraculous restora