"Why, you don't mean to say a kid like you's in the Second Principia
already?" said a big girl, and held up, incredulously, Smith's black
and red boards. "Wherever did YOU learn Latin?"

In the reediest of voices Laura was forced to confess that she had
never learnt Latin at all.

The girl eyed her in dubious amaze, then burst out laughing. "Oh, I
say!" she called to a friend. "Here's a rum go. Here's this kid brings
the Second Principia with her and doesn't know the First."

Several others crowded round; and all found this divergence from the
norm, from the traditional method of purchasing each book new and as it
was needed, highly ridiculous. Laura, on her knees before her shelf,
pretended to be busy; but she could not see what she was doing, for the
mist that gathered in her eyes.

Just at this moment, however, in marched Maria Morell. "Here, I say,
stop that!" she cried. "You're teasing that kid again. I won't have it.
Here, come on, Kid--Laura Tweedledum come and sit by me for supper."

For the second time, Laura was thankful to the fat girl. But as
ill-luck would have it, Miss Chapman chanced to let her eyes stray in
their direction; and having fingered her chain indecisively for a
little, said: "It seems a pity, doesn't it, Miss Day, that that nice
little girl should get in with that vulgar set?"

Miss Chapman liked to have her opinions confirmed. But this was a
weakness Miss Day did not pamper; herself strong-minded, she could
afford to disregard Miss Chapman's foibles. So she went on with her
book, and ignored the question. But Miss Zielinski, who lost no
opportunity of making herself agreeable to those over her, said with
foreign emphasis: "Yes, indeed it does."

So Laura was summoned and made to sit down at the end of the room,
close to the governesses and beside the very big girls--girls of
eighteen and nineteen, who seemed older still to her, with their
figures, and waists, and skirts that touched the ground.

Instinctively she felt that they resented her proximity. The biggest of
all, a pleasant-faced girl with a kind smile, said on seeing her
downcast air: "Poor little thing! Never mind." But when they talked
among themselves they lowered their voices and cast stealthy glances at
her, to see if she were listening.

Supper over, three chairs were set out in an exposed position; the big
bell in the passage was lightly touched; everyone fetched a hymn-book,
one with music in it being handed to