r general
favourite than Mr. Browne; everybody appreciated his affable manner
and bland smile, and the little jokes with which he punctuated his
remarks.

The girls always felt that it made a change to have anybody coming in
from the outside world. The one disadvantage of a boarding-school is
that mistresses and pupils, shut up together, and seeing one another
week in, week out, are rather apt to get on each others' nerves. At a
day school the girls take their worries home at four o'clock, and the
mental atmosphere has time to clear before nine next morning; but,
when there is no home-going until the end of the term, little trifles
are sometimes unduly magnified, and a narrow element--the bane of all
communities--begins to creep in. To do Miss Beasley justice, she made
a great effort to combat this very evil, and to run her school on
broad lines. She recognized the necessity of letting the girls mix
sometimes with outsiders. In a country place it was impossible to take
them to concerts or entertainments, but they occasionally joined the
rambles of the County Antiquarian Society or the local Natural History
Club.

It occurred to Miss Beasley that it would be an excellent plan to
throw open some of Professor Marshall's lectures to residents in the
neighbourhood, asking those people who attended to stay to tea
afterwards, thus giving her girls an opportunity of acting as
hostesses, and entertaining them with conversation. A short course of
four lectures on geology was announced, and quite a number of local
ladies responded to the invitation. The girls received the news with
mixed feelings.

"Rather a jink!" ventured Ardiune. "It'll be queer to see rows of
strangers sitting in the lecture room! Did you say we've to give them
tea when the Professor's done talking?"

"Yes, and talk to them ourselves too, worse luck! I'm sure I shan't
know what to say!" fluttered Aveline.

"Oh, the monitresses will do that part of the business!" decided
Raymonde easily. "We'll stand in the background, and just look
ladylike and well-mannered, and all the rest of it."

"Will you, my child? Not if the Bumble knows it! She's nuts on this
afternoon-tea dodge! (I don't care--I shan't put a penny in the slang
box--Hermie isn't here to listen and make me!) Gibbie told me that
we're all to act hostesses in turn. We're to be divided into four
sets, and each take a time."

"Help! How are you going to divide twenty-six by four? It works out at