terror here--you simply won't be allowed to have
it! Have you _no_ idea what school-life is like?"

"No," said Betty; "and what is more, I don't want you to tell me. Dickie
darling, I'd let you pinch my finger if it would do you any good.
Sylvia, what use are you if you can't feed your own spider? If Fan won't
oblige her cousins when she knows the ways of the house, I presume you
have a pair of legs and can use them? Go to the kitchen at once and get
a piece of raw meat."

"I don't know where it is," said Sylvia, looking slightly frightened.

"Well, you can ask. Go on; ask until you find. Now, be off with you!"

"You had better not," said Fanny. "Why, you will meet all the girls
coming out of the different classrooms!"

"What do girls matter," said Betty in a withering voice, "when Dickie is
hungry?"

Sylvia gathered up her courage and departed. Betty laid the glass box
which contained the spider on the dressing-table.

If Fanny had not been slightly afraid of these bold northern cousins of
hers, she would have dashed the box out on the balcony and released poor
Dickie, giving him back to his natural mode of life. "What queer dresses
you are wearing!" she said. "Do, please, change them before lunch. You
were not dressed like this when I saw you last. You were never
fashionable, but this stuff----"

"You'd best not begin, Fan, or I'll howl," said Betty.

"Hush! do hush, Fanny!" exclaimed Hester. "Don't forget that we are in
mourning for darling auntie."

"But have you really no other dresses?"

"There's nothing wrong with these," said Hester; "they're quite
comfortable."

Just at that moment there came peals of laughter proceeding from several
girls' throats. The room-door was burst open, and Sylvia entered first,
her face very red, her eyes bright and defiant, and a tiny piece of raw
meat on a plate in her hand. The girls who followed her did not belong
to the Specialities, but they were all girls of the upper school. Fanny
thanked her stars that they were not particular friends of hers. They
were choking with laughter, and evidently thought they had never seen so
good a sight in their lives.

"Oh, this is too delicious!" said Sibyl Ray, a girl who had just been
admitted into the upper school. "We met this--this young lady, and she
said she wanted to go to the kitchen to get some raw meat; and when I
told her I didn't know the way she just took my hand and drew me along
with her, and said, 'If you posses