proved right or wrong. Connie Camden was the jolliest little romp
imaginable. She was not at all pretty, and wore her lank, colourless
brown hair cut short like a boy's, but she had frank grey eyes, and
though she was continually getting into scrapes, her honest,
straightforward ways atoned for much that was lacking in other
respects. She was one of a large family, and had three sisters in the
school, all with the same reputation for endless jokes and high
spirits. Nina Forster, a graceful, delicate-looking child of ten,
spoilt by her weak mouth and indecisive chin, was generally lost in
adoration of some favourite among the bigger girls. Her friendships
were of the briefest, but very hot while they lasted, and she seemed
able to change her affections so easily from one object to another
that she had a different idol nearly every week. Jessie Ellis, whose
plain, freckled little face could look almost pretty when she smiled,
had been placed in the third class solely because she was too big to
remain any longer in the Kindergarten. She was dull at lessons, having
a poor memory and a lack of any power of grasping a subject; she was
the despair of Miss Arkwright, and took her seat placidly at the
bottom of the form as regularly as Marian Woodhouse occupied the top.

Sylvia was excused from preparation on this first evening, and was
taken instead by Miss Coleman to unpack her box and arrange her
drawers.

Heathercliffe House had been specially built for a school, and was so
designed that, instead of long dormitories or curtained cubicles,
there were rows of small bedrooms, each intended to accommodate two
girls. The one which Sylvia was to share with Linda Marshall stood at
the end of the upper corridor. It was a pretty little room with a pink
paper, and a white-enamelled mantelpiece. The furniture was also in
white enamel, and consisted of a washstand, two chests of drawers, and
a large wardrobe fixed into the wall, containing two separate
compartments with a drawer for best hats at the bottom of each. The
beds had pink quilts to match the paper, the jugs and basins were
white with pink rims, while even the mats on the dressing table were
made of white muslin over pink calico.

Sylvia looked round with approval. She had expected school to be a
bare, cheerless place, but this was as dainty as her own room at home.
The walls were hung with pictures in oak frames, there was a small
bookshelf beside each bed where Bibles and