ow appears to you
in another light when you have taken time to think it over?"

Stung by this suggestion Cora threw all caution to the winds. Her black
eyes flashed once more. She even stamped her foot as she pointed her
finger at Nancy.

"I tell you what it is, Madame Schakael!" she cried. "I won't stay in
the same dormitory with that girl another day. If you make me I'll write
home to my mother."

"And your reasons?" asked Madame Schakael, quite calmly.

"She is a perfect nobody!" gasped Cora. "She came here from a charity
school. She's never lived anywhere else but at that school. She doesn't
know a living thing about herself--who she is, what her folks were, why
they abandoned her----"

Possibly Madame Schakael said something. But, if so, neither of the
three heard what it was. Yet Cora suddenly stopped in her
tirade--stricken dumb by the expression on the principal's countenance.

The little lady's face was ablaze with emotion. She raised a warning
hand and it seemed as though, for a moment, she could not herself speak.

"Girl! Who has dared tell you such perfectly ridiculous things? What is
the meaning of this wrangle in Pinewood Hall? I am amazed--perfectly
amazed--that a girl under my charge should express herself so cruelly
and rudely, as well as in so nonsensical a manner.

"To put you right, first of all, Miss Rathmore, Miss Nelson's position
in life is entirely different from what you seem to suspect. She is an
orphan. I understand; but Mr. Henry Gordon has a careful oversight of
her welfare, and he pays for her education out of funds in his hands for
that purpose, and I am instructed to let her want for nothing. She is
not at all the friendless object of charity that you have evidently been
led to believe.

"The Higbee Endowment School in which Miss Nelson has been educated is
by no means a charitable institution. It is a much better school than
the one in which you were taught previous to coming to Pinewood, Miss
Rathmore; I can accept pupils from Higbee into my freshman classes
without any special preparation.

"I had no idea that girls under my charge would be so cruel as you seem
to be toward Nancy Nelson. Corinne! what does it mean?"

"I'm afraid I have let it go too far, Madame," responded the senior,
gravely. "But you know, these freshmen have got to learn to fight their
own battles. _I_ had to when I came."

"Yes, yes; that is all right," said the principal, waving her hand. "But
reme