evidently formed the entrance into another
room, judging by the buzz of laughter and conversation from beyond that
the thick red curtain failed to stifle. The bookshelves on the two
remaining walls were made of plain oak; so were the desks and chairs that
stood neatly arranged round the room in rows. There were also plain oak
benches in the warm chimney-corners, and plain oak window-seats in the
bowed recesses, while the floor was made of the same wood and was left
quite bare, except for a rug in front of the hearth. A pot or two of
chrysanthemums, some blue china on the over-mantel, and one or two
hammered metal lamps that hung from the beams in the ceiling, were the
only ornaments in the room; and the whole effect was so simple and so
clean that Barbara, fresh from the dingy old schoolroom in which she had
passed her life until now, was obliged to forget everything else for the
moment and just stare round her. Then her eyes rested again on the
girls who were scattered in groups about the room, and the expectant
look on her face became a little wistful.

There seemed to be thirty or forty of them all together; and from the
noise on the other side of the curtain Babs concluded that there were as
many, or more, in the room beyond. They all talked without ceasing,--all
at once, it seemed to Barbara,--about their Christmas holidays and their
Christmas presents, about the parties they had been to and the pantomimes
they had seen, about the girls who were not back and the girls who were,
about everything, in fact, except the child by the door, who had been
waiting all her life for this moment. What did it matter to them that
she should go through a few seconds of embarrassment? They had all been
through the same, in their time; and it was not to be supposed that they
should make things any easier for future generations of new girls. So
they went on babbling about their own affairs, and Barbara went on
expecting some one to come and put an end to her discomfort. But nobody
came.

Slowly, she began to feel conscious, just as she had done when she
first met Jill, that there was something odd about her appearance. In
spite of the extra inch or two on the bottom hem of her frock, and the
temporary smoothness that a vigorous application of a wet brush had
produced on her hair, Babs saw with a kind of dismay that she was not made
in the same pattern as the crowd of neatly dressed girls before her.
None of them wore her hair loose