curling
hair and soft dark eyes, which at the present moment were bent in
elaborate scrutiny on the paper before her. Rhoda noticed that it was
the advertisement page at which she was looking, and suspected a pre-
occupation kindred to her own. She coughed slightly and ventured a
gentle question--

"Is this your first term at school?"

The dark-eyed girl turned a fleeting glance upon her, so fleeting that
it seemed as if she had never altered her position, and replied
monosyllabically:

"Yes."

"You are going up, like me, for the first time?"

"Yes."

"And you have never been to school before?"

"Yes."

"I mean a boarding school. A big school like this, on all the new
lines?"

"Yes."

This was disconcerting! What _did_ she mean? It was her first term,
she was a new girl, and yet she had been up before! What was the girl
thinking about! She might really trouble herself to say more than one
single word.

"But you said--I understood you to say--"

Brown Eyes turned fiercely upon her, and fairly snapped in indignation.

"I don't care what I said, or what you understood. Can't you _see_ I
want to be quiet? Can't you leave me alone? If I am a new girl, I
don't want to howl before all the others, do I! Very well, then! don't
make me talk! Read your book, and let me read mine."

"I _beg_ your pardon!" said Rhoda, in her most stately manner. She took
up her magazine obediently, but now it was more impossible than ever to
read it, for she was tingling with mortification. Such a snub from a
stranger, and when she was trying to be friendly too! It would be a
long time before she troubled Brown Eyes again. Her thoughts went back
regretfully to Ella, the loyal, the sympathetic, the faithfully
admiring. If Ella were only here now, how different it would be! Why
had she not thought of it before, and asked her parents to pay Ella's
fees, so that she might have the solace of her presence? They would
have done it gladly, but, alas! Ella could not have been spared from
home. She had to help her mother; to be governess as well as pupil,
teaching the younger children for part of every day. No! Ella was
impossible; but the craving for companionship grew so intense that it
even conquered the dread inspired by her other companion, and
strengthened her to make yet another effort.

The train had just left a station whose name was familiar in her ears,
and she realised that they had crossed the boundar