out of the room.

But she left Nancy Nelson feeling almost as though she had deliberately
deceived the senior. Would Corinne Pevay have been so friendly--and
kissed her--if she had been aware that Nancy was just "Miss Nobody from
Nowhere?"

After a little, however, the new girl opened her handbag and took out
her toilet articles and her, nightgown, robe, and slippers. She arranged
the brushes, and other things on the dressing table, and hung her robe
and gown in their proper place.

It was now nearly nine o'clock. She understood that, during term time,
at least, the freshman class were to be in bed at nine; and even the
seniors must have their lights out at ten o'clock.

She read the list of rules through carefully. They did not seem hard, or
arbitrary. Miss Prentice had been strict, indeed. To Nancy these
"commandments" seemed easily kept.

There were two small desks in the room. Nancy examined the one upon her
own side of the study and found only stationery, blank books, pencils,
and pen and ink. There were no books.

But she ventured to look in the other desk, which was not locked, and
saw that here were several text-books, evidently to be studied by the
freshmen this first year.

In each book was written the name of Cora Rathmore. It was an erect,
angular handwriting, and somehow Nancy drew from it that she would not
like the owner of the books.

And yet she wanted to like her. Nancy longed for a real chum. She wished
that her suspicions might prove to be unfounded, and that her roommate
might be a jolly, open-hearted girl who would like her, and----

"Well! perhaps you don't know that that is _my_ desk?" snapped a voice
suddenly, behind her.

Nancy dropped the book, startled. She wheeled to see confronting her,
just within the room, the black-eyed, thin-faced girl who had seemed on
the train to be Grace Montgomery's chief friend.

"Well! haven't you got anything to say?" demanded the sharp-voiced girl.

"Why, I wondered what our books were going to be like----"

"Now you know. Keep out of my desk hereafter," interposed the other
girl. "And please to inform me what you're doing in here, anyway?"

"Why, I--I have been chummed with you--if you are Cora Rathmore," said
Nancy.

"_You?_" shrieked the other. "No! it's not so! I won't have it! I was
just going to get my books and go to Grace's room----"

"Oh, I know nothing about _that_," said Nancy, hastily. "I only know
that Miss Pevay brought me to