the commotion,
must be very popular.

"Cathy, you darling, are you _really_ to be ours? What precious
luck!--Josephine and Jane, and--yes--two new girls--Judith Benson in
twenty-five and Sally May Forsythe in twenty-one."

There was a knock at the door and a clear voice said, "May I come in?"

Judith opened her door and straightway lost her heart when the newcomer
smiled a welcome. Catherine was adored by every beauty-loving girl in
the School, for she had beauty of a rare type--a slender, graceful body,
a well-set little head crowned with a big braid of softly waving dark
brown hair, and haunting, black-lashed Irish blue eyes.

"Isn't she simply lovely?" whispered Nancy after Catherine had gone to
her own room. "And she's just as good as she looks. Oh, goody, I'm _so_
glad she's our prefect!"

Miss Marlowe put her head in the door to say good-night just before the
"Lights out" bell rang, and then Judith was at last alone. She was
bewildered by the mass of new impressions; the twinkling of the
trainman's lanterns as she looked out of her berth in the early
morning; the cold, chilly touch of homesickness when she followed the
porter out of the Pullman; Aunt Nell's welcome; the exciting shopping;
the first glimpse of the school set high on the hill; Aunt Nell's little
sermon; Nancy's merry eyes; the Babel of voices in the gymnasium;
Catherine Ellison's beautiful face; her mother's proud good-bye, "I can
trust you, Judy, darling--"

Suddenly Judith realized that Mother and Daddy were many hundreds of
miles away, that Aunt Nell had gone, and that she was alone, alone with
these hundreds of strangers. The thought terrified her: the ache in her
throat grew intolerable: she would have to sob and disgrace herself.

There was a rustling of paper on the other side of the partition, and
then--

"Catch," said Josephine in a hoarse whisper, and something dropped on to
Judith's bed.

"Catch," came in a shriller whisper from the other side, and a second
something followed.

Judith groped for them in surprise and discovered a chocolate bar and a
huge sticky Chelsea bun wrapped in tissue paper.

"Promised Cathy we wouldn't have a picnic to-night," said Nancy, "but we
didn't say that we wouldn't sit up in bed like little ladies and partake
of some light refreshment."

Sheer surprise made it possible for Judith to say, "Thank you." A moment
ago she would have felt one word was an impossibility and then--oh,
blessed bun!--