ch was
sometimes apt to astonish people. If she took the trouble to evolve a
plan she generally succeeded in carrying it out.

Now on this particular afternoon when she went alone to The Tamarisks
she had a very special scheme in her head. She had struck up an
immensely hot friendship with a Scottish girl named Ailsa Donald, whose
tastes resembled her own. Dona was in No. 2 Dormitory and Ailsa in No.
5, and it was the ambition of both to be placed together in adjoining
cubicles. Miss Jones sometimes allowed changes to be made, but, as it
happened, nobody in No. 2 was willing to give up her bed to Ailsa or in
No. 5 to yield place to Dona, so the chums must perforce remain apart.
They spent every available moment of the day together, but after the
9.15 bell they separated.

Dona had asked each of her room-mates to consider whether No. 5 was not
really a more sunny, airy, and comfortable bedroom than No. 2.

"The dressing-tables are bigger," she urged to Mona Kenworthy. "You'd
have far more room to spread out your bottles of scent and hairwash and
cremolia and things."

"Thanks, I've plenty of room where I am, and my things are all nicely
settled. I'm not going to move for anybody, and that's flat," returned
Mona.

Dona next tackled Nellie Mason, and suggested warily that No. 5, being
farther away from Miss Jones's bedroom, afforded greater opportunities
for laughter and jokes without so much danger of being pounced upon. Her
fish, however, refused to swallow the tempting bait, and Beatrice
Elliot, whom she also sounded on the subject, was equally inflexible.

Most girls would have accepted the inevitable, but Dona was not to be
vanquished. She had a dark plan at the bottom of her mind, and consulted
Elaine about it that afternoon. Elaine laughed, waxed enthusiastic, and
suggested a visit to a bird-fancier's shop down in the town. It was a
queer little place, with cages full of canaries in the window, and an
aquarium, and some delightful fox-terrier puppies and Persian kittens on
sale, also a squirrel which was running round and round in a kind of
revolving wheel.

Elaine and Dona entered, and asked for white mice.

"Mice?" said the old man in charge. "I've got a pair here that will just
suit you. They're real beauties, they are. Tame? They'll eat off your
hand. Look here!"

He fumbled under the counter, and brought out a cage, from which he
produced two fine and plump specimens of the mouse tribe. They justifie