"Anyhow, I vote we adjourn this meeting," said Cupid, recovering from a
fresh cough and splutter. "Or old Gurley'll be coming in to put me on a
mustard plaster.--As for you, Infant, if you take the advice of a chap
who has seen life, you'll keep your ideas to yourself: they're too
crude for this elegant world."

"Right you are!" said Laura cheerfully.

She was waiting by the gas-jet till M.P. had folded her last garment,
and she shuffled her bare feet one over the other as she stood; for it
was a cold night. The light out, she hopped into bed in the dark.

XXI.

But the true seal was set on her regeneration when she was invited to
join the boarders' Literary Society; of which Cupid and Mary were the
leading spirits. This carried her back, at one stroke, into the swing
of school life. For everybody who was anybody belonged to the society.
And, despite her friendship with the head of her class, Laura still
knew what it was to get the cold shoulder.

But this was to some extent her own fault. At the present stage of her
career she was an extraordinarily prickly child, and even to her two
sponsors did not at times present a very amiable outside: like a
hedgehog, she was ever ready to shoot out her spines. With regard, that
is, to her veracity. She had been so badly grazed, in her recent
encounter, that she was now constantly seeing doubt where no doubt was;
and this wakeful attitude of suspicion towards others did not make for
brotherly love. The amenity of her manners suffered, too: though she
kept to her original programme of not saying all she thought, yet what
she was forced to say she blurted out in such a precise and blunt
fashion that it made a disagreeable impression. At the same time, a
growing pedantry in trifles warped both her imagination and her
sympathies: under the aegis of M. P., she rapidly learned to be the
latter's rival in an adherence to bald fact, and in her contumely for
those who departed from it. Indeed, before the year spent in Mary's
company was out, Laura was well on the way towards becoming one of
those uncomfortable people who, concerned only for their own salvation,
fire the truth at you on every occasion, without regard for your tender
places.--So she remained but scantly popular.

Hence, her admission to the Literary Society augured well.

Her chief qualifications for membership were that she could make
verses, and was also very fond of reading. At school, however, this
tas