was_ trying to do, while Alma tenderly mopped
Nancy's wet cheeks with her own little, soaking handkerchief.

"I--I say! You two aren't _howling_, are you?" inquired a drawling,
utterly amazed voice from the doorway. The two girls looked up, their
hostile expressions plainly asking whose business it was if they _were_
howling--but promptly their hostility vanished.

A very tall, astonishingly lank girl was standing in the doorway, feet
apart, and hands clasped behind her back, regarding them amiably
through a pair of enormous, bone-rimmed goggles. Every now and again,
she would blink her eyes, and screw up her face comically, while she
continued to smile, showing a set of teeth as large and white as
pebbles.

"You were saying something about being expelled. Are you expelled
already? _Ex plus pello, pellere pulsi pulsum_--meaning to push out,
or, as we say in the vernacular, to kick out, fire, bounce. Miss
Drinkwater likes us to note the Latin derivations of all our English
words, and I've got the habit. You two seem to be lachrymosus, or
blue--by which I take it that you are new girls. I sympathize with
you, although I am an ancient. Two years ago this very night, I wept
so hard that I nearly gave my roommate pneumonia from the dampness.
How-do-you-do?" With this unconventional preliminary, accompanied by
one of the friendliest and most disarming grins imaginable, the
newcomer marched over to the bed and shook hands vigorously.

"My name is Charlotte Lucretia Adela Spencer. Really it is. You must
take my word for it. But I only use the 'Charlotte.' The others I
keep in case of emergency. I room next door, with Mildred Lloyd--who,
incidentally, is a perfect lady, while _I_ am not. I was born in the
year 1903, in the city of Denver, Colorado--but of that, more anon.
It's tremendously interesting, but if _you_--is your name Alma?--if you
don't get your coiffure coifed, you'll miss out on our evening repast.
Wiggle, my dear, wiggle!"

Thus urged, Alma "wiggled" accordingly; and while she carefully washed
her tear-stained face, and put up her hair, their visitor, sprawling
across the bed, kept up a running fire of ridiculous remarks, all
uttered in her peculiar, dry, drawling voice, and punctuated with the
oddest facial contortions. Yet, in spite of her nonsense, there was
very evidently a good deal of real sense, and the kindest feeling
behind it, and her singular face, too unusual to be called either p