favourite, for there were many affectionate greetings between her and
the other girls, and numerous interchanges of home and school news, but
at length she turned to where Lucy and I were standing.

"I think," she said, speaking to me, "that you must be Philippa Seaton.
Mother told me you would be here, and that I was to look out for you. I
suppose this is your cousin Lucy. I'm so glad that we're all to be in
the same class. I hope your bedroom is near mine. Oh! there's the
tea-bell, and we must go, but I shall see you again afterwards."

She walked away, with her arm linked in that of Janet Forbes, and Lucy
and I followed the others to the dining-room, where tea was being
dispensed in an informal manner by Miss Buller and one of the under
teachers. For this first meal there were no special places, and I found
myself sitting at table next to a rather stout, rosy-cheeked girl,
perhaps a year older than myself, whose name appeared to be Ernestine
Salt.

She moved very grudgingly to make room, but she did not speak to me, nor
take any further notice. Lucy and I sat silently watching our thirty
companions. It was all new and strange to us--the fresh faces, the
school-girl chaff, the jokes and allusions to things of which we as yet
knew nothing, and we wondered how long it would be before we could take
our part in that lively conversation.

"I never can eat anything the first night," declared one of the girls,
mopping her eyes rather ostentatiously with a lace-edged
pocket-handkerchief. "I'm always so terribly homesick, and they cut the
bread so thick!"

"Nothing spoils my appetite," proclaimed Ernestine Salt. "I'm so
frightfully hungry, I shall eat your share. I didn't have half
enough sandwiches on the journey, though I bought three oranges
and two jam-tarts at the railway-station as well. Where is the
bread-and-butter?"

As the plate was within my reach, I handed it to her. She looked me
coolly up and down, as if she were taking in every detail of my
appearance, but she did not thank me.

"Oh, never mind manners, just help yourself and shove it on," she said
carelessly. "We do as we like the first evening. Mrs. Marshall will come
down to tea to-morrow, and then it'll have to be prunes and prism."

"Not so loud, Ernestine, I can hear your voice above all the others,"
said Miss Buller, who seemed trying to check the talk that every now and
then threatened to become too uproarious.

A fresh instalment of girls,