ould not follow her more spontaneous friend's lead, she certainly never
balked or betrayed her. The other girls had christened them Positive and
Negative and they certainly lived up to their names.

The girls whom Peggy and Polly had discussed so frankly the night after
their arrival all roomed in the West Wing. Stella in her own large,
handsome room, for her father was manager of an immense railroad system
in the middle West. Rosalie Breeze and oh "cursed spite!" Isabel
Boylston--"_Is_-a-bel," as she pronounced it,--roomed together and
squabbled incessantly. At least, Rosalie did the squabbling, _Is_-a-bel
affected the superior, self-righteous air which acted upon Rosalie's
peppery temper as a red rag upon a bull. It was Miss Sturgis, of course,
who had advised placing them together. Isabel was a great favorite of
Miss Sturgis, and Rosalie was the reverse.

Mrs. Vincent had not entirely approved the arrangement, but the school
was unusually crowded this year and two of the girls' parents had
insisted upon single rooms for their daughters. Juno Gibson, from New
York, had announced very positively that unless she could have a room
to herself in Columbia Heights School she would pack her three trunks
and go elsewhere, and Papa Gibson was not in the habit of disputing his
daughter's will or wishes unless they conflicted with his own. In this
matter he didn't care a straw, so Miss Juno was not compelled to have "a
dozen girls eternally under foot and ruining my clothes by crowding the
closets full of theirs."

Lily Pearl, "Tootsy-wootsy," as her companions had dubbed her, roomed
with Helen Gwendolyn Doolittle, "Cutie," and a sweet, sentimental pair
they made, though Helen spent every possible moment with the latest
object of her adoration, Stella Drummond, for whom she had instantly
conceived an overwhelming infatuation; a pronounced school-girl "crush."

Of the other girls in the school only a passing glimpse need be given.

Saturday afternoons were always perfectly free at Columbia Heights, and
the girls could do practically as they chose. There was one rule, or
rather the absence of it, which had appealed very strongly to Mrs.
Harold and gone a long way toward biasing her choice in favor of the
school. If the girls wished to go into the city--that is, the girls in
the Sophomore, Junior and Senior grades--to do shopping or make calls,
they were entirely at liberty to do so unattended by a teacher, though
Mrs. Vincent