wanted to!"

"Nor I to you. It's horrid to say good-bye, and think of school without
you, but you'll write to me, won't you, Tom? You will promise to write
regularly?"

"Indeed, I won't! Fifty odd girls implored me to write to them, and
it's too big an order. No, my dear Fuzz, I shall have no time to tell
you how busy I am. Here we part, and we must leave it to fate or good
fortune when we meet again. Bless you, my infant! Perk up, and be a
credit to me."

"But--but--how am I to know, how am I to hear what happens to you? I
_can't_ say good-bye and let you fade away completely, as if we had
never met. It's horrible. You _must_ let me know!"

"Look in the newspapers. You will see my doings recorded in the Public
Press," replied Tom, as she skipped into the carriage. Rhoda looked on
blankly, her heart sinking with a conviction that Tom did not care; that
it was nothing for her to say good-bye and part without a prospect of
reunion. She was too proud to protest, but, waving her hand, turned
abruptly away and walked out of the station. The train lingered,
however, and the temptation to take one more peep became too strong to
be resisted, so she ran along the path for twenty or thirty yards, and
peered cautiously through a gate from which a sight of the carriage in
which her friend sat could be commanded. Tom had leant back in her
seat, and flung her hat on one side; her little eyes were red with
tears, and she was mopping them assiduously with a ball-like pocket
handkerchief!

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

SCHOOL AGAIN.

School again, and no Tom! The house-parlour with no manly figure to
lean with its back against the mantelpiece, and jingle chains in its
pocket; the dining-hall with no one to make faces at the critical moment
when a girl was swallowing her soup, or to nudge her elbow as she lifted
a cup to her lips; the cubicle with no magenta dressing-jacket whisking
to and fro--it was ghastly! The girls could not reconcile themselves to
their loss, and the first fortnight of the term was one of unalloyed
depression. No one dared to joke, for if she did her companions
instantly accused her of "apeing Tom" and snubbed her for the feebleness
of the attempt; no one dared to be cheerful, lest she should be charged
with fickleness, and want of heart. And Irene, the beautiful, reigned
in Tom's stead! It would have been a difficult post for any girl to
have succeeded Thomasina Bolderston, but, curious thoug