one cannot sob and eat a large Chelsea bun at the same
time.

Judith ate slowly and carefully, set her lips, and kept back the
miserable lump. The chocolate was still to finish, and Jane began an
interminable story of a canoe trip in Algonquin Park, but before it was
nearly ended, tired Judith was fast asleep.

CHAPTER II

IMPORTANT THINGS

JUDITH never forgot morning prayers on the first day of school at York
Hill. In some miraculous way the throng of girls, who crowded the
corridors before nine o'clock, formed in lines at the doors of their old
classrooms, new girls were piloted to a special position, and when the
prayer-bell rang, an orderly procession, beginning with the little
"Removes" and ending with the serious and important-looking Sixth Form,
filed into Big Hall and took their places.

The beautiful arching Gothic windows, the soft music from the pipe
organ, the dignity of the high, oak-beamed ceiling, all this to Judith's
beauty-loving mind was curiously satisfying. The service was short but
reverent; a hymn, the reading of the lesson, the prayers for the day,
and then the Head Mistress was reading out the promotion of old girls
and the placing of new girls.

Form Five A was announced; "Judith Benson, Josephine Burley, Sally May
Forsythe, Joyce Hewson, Nancy Nairn, Frances Purdy"--Judith's cheeks
glowed as the list was read. Five A! How pleased Daddy would be, and how
glad she was that she had stuck to the hated mathematics this summer!
And to be in Nancy's form, what joy!

Then followed a busy morning; new books piled high on the waiting desk,
new teachers, each seemingly more interesting than the last, new rules
to be learned, new girls to meet.

Judith was quite ready for buns and milk at eleven-thirty and enjoyed
her fifteen minutes in the open, and by the end of the morning she was
both tired and stimulated, for she found that she was required to think
for herself in order to take part in the discussions. There was to be a
written test to-morrow on the books which had been set for Form Five A's
summer reading and Judith had thought that she was prepared for it. But
as Miss Marlowe proceeded with her keen questioning, Judith began to
wonder if she knew anything at all about "The Idylls of the King." Miss
Marlowe had a way of saying, when answers were given, "Yes--yes--what do
_you_ yourself think?" which Judith, accustomed to teachers who had
spoken with a voice of authority, found disco