ing on the morrow; and Jill
at least ought to know whether the boys' idea of school was right or
wrong. So, just after tea, on her last evening at Crofts, the child
swallowed her natural distrust of her cousin, which, after all, had
arisen chiefly from their mutual shyness of each other, and started in
search of her.

Jill was in the conservatory, arranging the flowers for the dinner-table;
and Barbara's shyness returned, as the trim, neat figure came walking
towards her, along the rows of chrysanthemums. She glanced down at her
crumpled pinafore and sighed desperately. Being dragged up a dusty
ladder into a cobwebby lumber-room by Wilfred had not proved the best of
treatments for a pinafore that really had been clean a couple of hours
ago. But Jill suddenly came out in a new light. With no teasing schoolboys
to overhear her, she felt that here, at last, was a chance of making
friends with her odd little tomboy of a cousin.

'Have you come to help me with the flowers?' she asked, with such a
friendly smile, that Babs cheered up at once. She forgot all about her
crumpled pinafore, and went straight to the point.

'No, I didn't come for that,' she answered simply. 'I came to ask you
about--about school.'

'Ah!' said Jill, suddenly picking chrysanthemums at a great rate.
'Supposing you tell me what you think about it yourself?'

Her mother's words were running in her head: 'Do your best to understand
the poor little soul!' and Jill wondered what she could tell her that
would not upset her notions of school too cruelly.

'Oh, well,' replied Babs, 'of course, _I_ think it's going to be
beautiful; but the boys--the boys are so funny about it, and it's
made me all in a muddle inside. Do you think the boys _know_?'

'Perhaps not,' said Jill, and she strolled away along the rows of
chrysanthemums. It seemed a shame to spoil the child's illusion; and yet,
when she thought of this quaint little untrained object being dropped in
the middle of the girls at Wootton Beeches----

Barbara had followed her up closely, and she suddenly interrupted her
reflections. 'You know what a girls' school is like, don't you, Jill?' she
continued appealingly. 'I wish--I _do_ wish you would tell the boys they
are all wrong about it. They _are_ wrong, aren't they?'

There was a suspicion of a doubt in the last words that struck Jill as
being rather pathetic. She put her bunch of chrysanthemums down, and drew
Barbara towards her. 'You see, Bab