aney Miller, was a great contrast, with her blond curls,
her rosy cheeks, and simple well-fitting dress of blue serge. Her every
movement, too, was as full of grace as Cordelia Burr's was exactly the
reverse. Everything seemed to go well with Janey; everything seemed to
go ill with Cordelia. She spilled her cocoa, she dropped her knife, she
crumbled her gingerbread, and she clattered her cup and saucer.
Certainly she was not a very pleasant person to sit near. But Janey
tried to conceal her annoyance, and succeeded very well, until at the
end of the meal Cordelia, in her headlong haste in leaving her seat,
tipped over a glass of water upon her neighbor's pretty blue dress. This
was too much, for Janey, and it was little wonder that she jumped up
with an impatient exclamation, nor that she declared to Eva and Alice a
little later that Cordelia ought to be ashamed of herself for being so
careless, and that she did wish she didn't have to sit next to her.

"I suppose, though, I shall have to sit there until the end of this
term; but there's _one_ thing I'm not going to do any more,--I'm not
going to dance with her. She doesn't keep step, and she _does_ dress
so!" concluded Janey.

"Yes, she does dress dreadfully; and to think it's her own fault. She
chooses her things herself," said Eva.

"No!" exclaimed Janey.

"Yes, she does; her mother is 'way off somewhere, and Cordelia gets what
she likes."

"And she doesn't know any better than to like such horrid things!
Sometimes she looks as if she'd lived with wild Indians!"

"That's it; that's it, I forgot!" shouted Eva. "She _has_ lived 'way off
out in a Territory on an Indian reservation. Her father is an army
officer of some kind."

"Young ladies, young ladies, look at your clocks!" suddenly called a
voice outside the door.

"Why, goodness, it's bedtime!" whispered Janey. "Good-night,
good-night."

The next afternoon, when the Sunday classes were in session in the great
hall, Janey, who was not in the same class with Eva and Alice, wondered
as she looked across at them what they could be talking about that
seemed so interesting. This is what they were talking about: Alice, in
her clever exact way, had told Miss Vincent the whole of that little
Saturday-night talk concerning the good Samaritan. Miss Vincent smiled
when Alice told of Eva's odd simplicity of application; but as Alice
went on and presented Eva's perplexity and her plea for girls of her
age,--their lac