had beautiful hair, but that was all;
yet she could not help seeing that she was a very vision of loveliness
beside the sallow, puny, almost deformed aspect of her poor little
neighbour. She coloured deep with angry sympathy, but Lobelia only
smiled, a wan little smile.

"You see!" she said. "It's no use, Peggy."

For all answer, Peggy threw her arms around the shrinking figure, and
pressed it in a warm embrace. "I don't care!" she cried. "I don't say
you are pretty, you poor little thing, but just remember that you are my
friend, and if anybody dares to meddle with you again, they'll have to
reckon with me, that's all. And now I must go, or I shall lose all the
drill. Cheer up, Lobelia, and don't sit here and mope, mind! and if you
have any more trouble, just knock on the floor, and I'll be up in half a
quarter of a jiffy. Good-bye, dear!" and off she ran, feeling that at
least she had left some degree of comfort and cheer behind her.

Soon, however, came something that put Lobelia Parkins and her troubles
out of Peggy's head for the time. Bertha Haughton was not at the
gymnasium, but when Peggy came back to her own room after an hour of
rapture, she found a note pinned on her pincushion.

"DEAR PEGGY:--Study _hard_, please, and get
through before this evening. The Snowy Owl is
going to give us a Grand Tell about the wedding
she has been to, and we both want you to come,
too. I'm going to speak to Miss Russell, but
you'd better ask her, too; it will be all
right, for the Snowy has asked permission,
anyhow. Eight o'clock, just after reading; be
sure to come on time!

"Affectionately,
"BERTHA."

It was hard to study through that lovely afternoon, when the other
girls, or most of them, were out-of-doors, playing tennis or
basket-ball, and their voices came in at the window in every tone of
joyousness and delight. It was very hard to study the detested rhetoric
and history, but Peggy was strong in her good resolve, and bent steadily
over her books, trying her very best. Once, indeed, came a sore
temptation, when a ball struck her window lightly, and, going to look
out, she saw Grace Wolfe standing below.

"Come out, Innocent!" said the Scapegoat, in her deep, musical tones.
"Come and sport with me!

"The ship is ready and the wind blows fair,
And I