ter all not much comfort to be
offered. School in holiday time was a lonely substitute for home.
Priscilla, whose father was a naval officer, and whose home was a
peripatetic affair, had become inured to the experience; but this
particular year, she was gaily setting out to visit cousins in New
York--with three new dresses and two new hats! And Patty, whose home was
a mere matter of two hours in a Pullman car, was to be left behind; for
six-year old Thomas Wyatt had chosen this inopportune time to come down
with scarlet fever. The case was of the lightest; Master Tommy was
sitting up in bed and occupying himself with a box of lead soldiers. But
the rest of the family were not so comfortable. Some were quarantined
in, and the others out. Judge Wyatt had installed himself in a hotel and
telegraphed the Dowager to keep Patty at St. Ursula's during the
holidays. Poor Patty had been happily packing her trunk when the news
arrived; and as she unpacked it, she distributed a few excusable tears
through the bureau drawers.

Ordinarily, a number remained for the holidays,--girls whose homes were
in the West or South, or whose parents were traveling abroad or getting
divorces--but this year the assortment was unusually meager. Patty was
left alone in "Paradise Alley." Margarite McCoy, of Texas, was stranded
at the end of the South Corridor, and Harriet Gladden of Nowhere, had a
suite of eighteen rooms at her disposal in "Lark Lane." These and four
teachers made up the household.

Harriet Gladden had been five years straight at St. Ursula's--term time
and vacations without a break. She came a lanky little girl of twelve,
all legs and arms, and she was now a lanky big girl of seventeen, still
all legs and arms. An invisible father, at intervals mentioned in the
catalogue, mailed checks to Mrs. Trent; and beyond this made no sign.
Poor Harriet was a mournful, silent, neglected child; entirely out of
place in the effervescing life that went on around her.

She never had any birthday boxes from home, never any Christmas
presents, except those that came from the school. While the other girls
were clamoring for mail, Harriet stood in the background silent and
unexpectant. Miss Sallie picked out her clothes, and Miss Sallie's
standards were utilitarian rather than aesthetic. Harriet, with no
exception, was the worst dressed girl in the school. Even her school
uniform, which was an exact twin of sixty-three other uniforms, hung
upon her