ropriate background was moorland and heather and gray
loch, and driving clouds and a breeze with fine mist in it, that would
make you want to wrap a plaid round your shoulders and turn to the
luxury of a peat fire. Quite unconsciously she suggested all these
things. Peachy once described her as a living incarnation of one of
Scott's novels, for she was steeped in old traditions and legends and
superstitions, and could tell tales in the gloaming that sent eerie
shivers down the spines of her listeners, or would recite ballads with a
swing that took one back to the days of wandering minstrels. She was not
a girl to make a fuss over anybody, and she did not greet Irene with the
least effusion, but her plain "If you're a friend of Peachy's I'm glad
to see you," was genuine, and better than any amount of gush. Jess
undoubtedly had her faults; she was what her chums called "too
cock-sure," and she was apt to be severe in her judgments, flashing into
the righteous wrath of one whose standards are high, but her very
imperfections were "virtues gane a-gley," and she was a considerable
force in the molding of public opinion at the Villa Camellia.

If Jess, calm, canny, and reliable, stood for the spirit of the North,
attractive, persuasive, fascinating little Delia Watts represented the
South. She came from California, and was as quick and bright as a
humming-bird, constantly in harmless mischief, but seldom getting into
any serious trouble. Her highly strung temperament found school
restrictions irksome, and she was apt to blaze out into odd pranks which
in other girls might have met with sterner punishment. But Miss Morley
had a soft corner for Delia, and, though she did not exactly favor her,
she certainly made allowances for her excitability and her strongly
emotional disposition.

"Delia's like a marionette--always dancing to some hidden string," the
teacher remarked once to Miss Rodgers. "She mayn't be strong-minded but
she's immensely warm-hearted, and if we can only pull the love-string
she'll act the part we want. You can't force her into prim behavior;
she's as much a child of nature as the birds, and if you clip her wings
altogether you take away from her the very gift that perhaps God meant
her to use. Let me have the handling of the little sky-rocket, and I'll
do my best to keep her within bounds, but she's not the disposition to
'be made an example of' or to be set on the 'stool of repentance.' Five
minutes with De