lk into the
cups. Glance where she would, she met bright, kindly smiles, and her
friend on either side looked after her wants in the kindest of manners.
Pixie did not know their names, so she addressed them indiscriminately
as "darlin'," and was prepared to vow eternal friendship without waiting
to be introduced.

"Do you always speak French at meals?" she asked under cover of the
general conversation a few minutes later, and the reply was even worse
than her fears.

"We are supposed to speak it always, except in the quarter of an hour
before tea, and on Sundays, and holidays. But of course, if you do not
know a word you can ask Mademoiselle, or look it up in a dictionary, and
the new girls get into it gradually. Miss Phipps is a darling; she
can't bear to see a girl unhappy, and of course it is difficult to get
into school ways when you have been taught at home. I have been here
for two years, and am as happy as possible, though I cried myself sick
the first week. If you do what you are told and work hard, you will
have a very good time at Holly House."

Pixie looked dubious.

"But aren't you ever naughty?" she asked anxiously. "Not really bad,
you know, but just mischeevious! Don't you ever play tricks, or have
pillow fights, or secret suppers up in your room, or dress up as bogeys
to frighten the others?"

"Certainly not!" Eleanor Hopton was a proper and dignified young lady,
and the straightness of her back was quite alarming as she frowned
dissent at the new-comer. "Frighten people, indeed! Do you not call
that naughty? It's a wicked and dangerous thing to do, and you would be
punished severely if you attempted it. I have read of people who died
of fright. How would you feel if you played bogey, as you call it, to
startle one of the girls, and she had a weak heart and died before your
eyes? You would feel pretty miserable then, I should say."

"I would so! I'd get the fright myself that time. But suppers, now,--
suppers don't hurt anyone!" urged Pixie, pushing aside one objectionable
proposition and bringing forward the next with unconscious generalship.
"Don't you ever smuggle things upstairs--sausages and cakes, and
sardines and cream--and wake up early in the morning--early--early,
before it is light--and eat them together, and pretend you are ladies
and gentlemen, or shipwrecked mariners on desert islands, or wild
Indians, or anything like that, and talk like they talk, and dance about
t