ed it;
and this time there were no half-measures about it. At tea-time, and
again at the supper table, the girls on either side of her turned their
backs upon her and talked busily to their other neighbours; and in the
playroom afterwards she found herself just as scrupulously avoided. It
was decidedly an uncomfortable state of things for the new girl, as it
was meant to be by those who were responsible for making it; but somehow
the new girl did not seem to mind it half so much as they would have
expected. All the evening she sat in the corner of the juniors' room
by herself, and any one would have said from the look on her face that
she did not care whether the others spoke to her or not. Now and then
she smiled, as she sat there with her elbows perched on her knees and
her chin supported on her hands; and the whole time her look of supreme
unconsciousness never left her.

'She's hardened, that's what she is,' declared Jean, glancing in her
direction. This she said to keep up her own resentment against the new
girl, which was unaccountably beginning to cool.

'She thinks it's grand to pretend not to care,' added the faithful
Angela. This, indeed, was the prevailing opinion among the children
of the junior playroom; and it was not comforting to their pride.

All the while, Barbara guessed nothing of the comments she was provoking
by her manner. It was enough for her that she had got away once more
into her fairy kingdom, and that Kit and the magician and the old
fairy godmother had just turned out all the princesses who were called
schoolgirls, and had shut the gates in their faces.

It was a very weary little new girl who went up to her bed that evening
after prayers. She was almost too tired to think over the events that
had been crowded into the last twenty-four hours, almost too sleepy to
realise that this was the close of her first day at school, the day she
had thought would be the happiest day in her life. Perhaps it was a good
thing she was not able to think too much about anything, at the end of
that first day at school. The moment Fraeulein had turned out her light,
she went off into a dreamless sleep that might have lasted unbroken till
the morning, had not something occurred most strangely to break it.

She did not hear the small pebbles that were thrown up, one after
another, at her window; it would have taken more than that to rouse
her from her first sleep, though once a handful of mould and gravel t