gs that count so much with fastidious
schoolgirls. She approved of each one of them from their broad silk
shoe-laces to the pink tips of their carefully manicured finger-nails.

As the boat swung around a bend in the river, bringing the castle-like
building into full view, a chorus of delighted exclamations broke out
all along the deck. The four girls hung over the railing with eager
faces.

"Look, Lloyd, look!" cried one of them, excitedly. "Peacocks on the
terraces! It's the finishing touch to the picture. We'll feel like Lady
Clare walking down those marble steps. There surely must be a milk-white
doe somewhere in the background."

"Oh, Betty, Betty!" was the laughing answer. "You'll do nothing now but
quote Tennyson and write poetry from mawning till night."

"They're from Kentucky," thought the girl in blue. "I'm sure of it from
the way they talk."

As the boat glided slowly along, Lloyd threw her arm around the girl
beside her, with an impulsive squeeze.

"Kitty Walton," she exclaimed, "aren't you _glad_ that the old
Lloydsboro Seminary burned down? If it hadn't, we wouldn't be on ouah
way now to that heavenly-looking boahding-school!"

The sudden hug loosened Kitty's hat, held insecurely by one pin, and in
another instant the strong breeze would have carried it over into the
river had not the girl in blue caught it as it swept past her. She
handed it back with a friendly smile, glad of an opportunity to speak.

"You are new pupils for Warwick Hall, aren't you?" she asked, when Kitty
had laughingly thanked her. "I hope so, for I'm one of the old girls.
This will be my third year."

"How perfectly lovely!" exclaimed Kitty. "We've been fairly crazy to
meet some one from there. Do tell us if it is as fine as it looks, and
as the catalogue says."

"It is the very nicest place in the world," was the enthusiastic reply.
"There are hardly any rules, and none of them are the kind that rub you
up the wrong way. We don't have to wear uniforms, and we're not marched
out to walk in wholesale lots like prisoners in a chain-gang."

"That's what I used to despise at the Seminary," interrupted Lloyd. "I
always felt like pah't of a circus parade, or an inmate of some asylum,
out for an airing. Keeping in step and keeping in line with a lot of
othahs made a punishment out of the walk, when it would have been such a
pleasuah if we could have skipped along as we pleased. I felt resentful
from the moment the gong rang for