ve been perfect bricks in giving me my wish and
sparing me for three whole years! The least I can do is to go home and
do a turn for them. I fail to see where the waste comes in!"

"All you have learned--all you have studied--all you have read--"

"Just so! I hope it will make me a more interesting companion for them.
And for myself! I've got to live with myself all the days of my life,
remember, and I do _not_ wish to be bored!"

"You have such power, such capacity! You might do some work for the
world!"

"I intend to. What's the world made up of, after all, but a number of
separate homes? As a matter of ordinary common sense isn't it best to
work in one's _own_ home, rather than in a strange one?"

Margaret threw out her hands with a pretty appealing gesture, and her
companions stared at her in silence, apparently too nonplussed to reply.
Before they had time to rally to the attack, however, a startling
interruption had occurred.

With a suddenness and violence which made the cocoa-drinkers jump in
their seats the door burst open, and the figure of a girl in evening
dress precipitated herself into their midst. Her light skirt was thrown
over her shoulders, revealing an abbreviated white petticoat; her eyes
were fixed with a deadly determination; regardless of the occupants of
the room or of the articles of furniture scattered here and there, she
flew at lightning speed to the window, closed it with a resounding bang,
leaped like a cat at the ventilator overhead, banged that also, and with
one bound was out of the room, the door making a third bang in her wake.

Darsie gasped in dismay. She herself had been transfixed with
astonishment, but her companions had displayed a marvellous self-
possession. Margaret had wrapped her arms round the cocoa-table to
protect it from upset, another girl had steadied the screen, a third had
obligingly lifted her chair out of the way; but no sign of alarm or
curiosity showed upon their faces, which fact did but heighten the
mystery of the situation.

"Is she--is she _mad_?"

The second-year girls laughed in chorus. From afar could be heard a
succession of bang, bang, bangs, as if in every study in the house the
same performance was being enacted. Margaret nodded at the Fresher with
kindly reassurance.

"Only the fire drill! They've had an alarm, and she's told to shut off
draughts. Very good going! Not more than five or six seconds all
told!"

"There isn't