ith
you. I've been wanting a bosom friend, so I'll just pick one of you out.
Let me see"--running her vacant eyes over the group and singling out
Wendy--"I may as well choose you as anybody. Are you ready to be my
chum?"

Wendy flushed scarlet, and, jumping up from the grass, brushed some dead
leaves from her dress.

"It's too soon to think about chums yet," she returned. "You haven't
even told us your name, and you don't know ours. Where do you come
from?"

"That means, I suppose, that you don't want me for a friend!" rasped the
creaking voice. "Don't you like the look of me? What's wrong with me
now? Please tell me, for I'd really like to know. I'm just crazy to make
friends."

In huge embarrassment Wendy and her companions stared at the
extraordinary stranger. She bore their united gaze without flinching.
She even turned round slowly, so that they might have an adequate view
of her foolish profile, protruding lips, and retreating chin.

"Do tell me what's wrong with me?" she repeated.

No one volunteered a criticism, and for another whole minute there was
dead silence. Then a brisk voice remarked:

"Would this style suit you better now, I wonder?"

The girls caught their breath in amazement. The stooping, slouching
figure had suddenly straightened itself up, the protruding lips had set
into a small, neat mouth, the receding chin had come forward, and the
vacant eyes were twinkling with mirth. Instead of a half-idiotic, and
wholly unattractive, specimen of girlhood, a very charming little
personality stood before them. The transformation was so utter that at
first the audience simply gaped, then with one accord they exploded into
laughter and words.

"Oh, I say!"

"You fraud!"

"I really thought you were dotty!"

"How _did_ you do it?"

"You looked too awful for words!"

"You haven't told us your name yet!"

"Can you do it again?"

The stranger curtsied, dropped her jaw, set her eyes in a glassy stare,
and, resuming the creaking voice, bleated forth:

"Thank you! Thank you for welcoming me! I'm called Miranda Jane Judkins,
and I come from Conic Section Farm, Squashville, Massachusetts. Which of
you wants to chum with me? Don't all speak at once!"

"Oh, for goodness' sake drop that awful face! It absolutely gives me
spasms!" hinnied Magsie. "It's the very image of a village idiot who
used to terrify me when I was a kiddie. Don't look at me with those
horrid eyes! I shall have a fit!"

"Look