insisted upon calling her Tommy. She was the first girl in Cherry
Court School who had dared to adopt a nickname for any of her
companions, and Florence, who had begun by being indignant, could not
help laughing now as the saucy creature fixed her with her bright eyes.

"What are you frowning at, Tommy? Aren't you glad, too, that the
holidays are so near?"

"No, I am not--I hate the holidays," replied Florence Aylmer. As she
spoke Mabel took one of Kitty's hands, gave it a slight squeeze, it was
a sort of warning pressure. Kitty looked up at her with a startled
glance, then she glanced again at Florence, who was looking down.
Suddenly Florence raised her face and returned the girl's gaze fully.

"I have no home like the rest of you," she said; "my mother is very
poor and cannot afford to have me at home."

"Then where are you going to spend the holidays?" said Kitty; "do say,
dear old Tommy, where--where?"

"Here probably, or wherever Mrs. Clavering likes to take me," replied
Florence; "but there, don't talk of it any more--I hate to think of it.
We have three weeks still to be happy in, and we'll make the best of
that."

"Do you know, Mabel," asked Mary Bateman, now bending forward, "if Mrs.
Clavering has yet decided what the programme is to be for the 25th?"

"I think she will tell us to-night," replied Mabel; "she said something
about it this morning, didn't she, Alice?"

"Yes, I heard her talking to Mademoiselle Le Brun. I expect we shall
hear at tea-time. If so we will meet in the oak parlor, and Mrs.
Clavering will have her annual talk. She is always very nice on those
occasions."

"She is nice on every occasion--she is an old dear," said Kitty.

"Why, Kitty, you don't know her very well yet."

"She is an old dear," reported Kitty; "I love her with all my heart,
but I should like beyond words to give her a right good shock. I
cannot tell you girls, how I positively tremble to do it. At prayers,
for instance, or still more at meals, when we are all so painfully
demure, I want to jump up and utter a shout, or do something of that
sort. I have suppressed myself hitherto, but I really do not know if I
can go on suppressing myself much longer. Oh, what is the matter,
Edith--what are you frowning at?"

"Nothing," replied Edith King; "I did not even know that I was
frowning. I was just thinking how nice it was to be trained to be
ladylike and to have good manners and all that. Mrs. Clavering