hear you."

"I don't care if she does."

"I want to know what she's doing."

"I can tell you, then," said Chatty Burns, in a whisper that was more
audible by far than her ordinary voice.

"What?"

"Crying! New girls always cry, and some old ones too, if you take
Pauline as a specimen."

"I'm not crying now!" protested Pauline indignantly. "And how can you
tell that the new girl is?"

"I'm as certain as if I'd proved a proposition in Euclid. Why should
she have drawn her curtains so closely? If she's not lying on her bed,
with a clean pocket-handkerchief to her eyes, I'll give you six
caramels in exchange for three peppermint creams!"

"Then you're just mistaken!" cried a voice from the end cubicle. The
chintz curtain was pulled aside, and out marched a figure with so
jaunty an air as to banish utterly the idea of possible homesickness or
tears.

It was a girl of about fifteen, a remarkably pretty girl (so her
schoolmates decided, without an instant's hesitation), and rather out
of the common. She had a clear, olive complexion, a lovely colour in
her cheeks, a bewitching pair of dimples, and a perfect colt's mane of
thick, curly, brown hair. Perhaps her nose was a little too tip-tilted,
and her mouth a trifle too wide for absolute beauty; but she showed
such a nice row of even, white teeth when she laughed that one could
overlook the latter deficiency. Her eyes were beyond praise, large and
grey, with a dark line round the iris, and shaded by long lashes; and
they were so soft, and wistful, and winning, and yet so twinkling and
full of fun, that they seemed as if they could compel admiration, and
make friends with their first glance. The girl walked across the room
in an easy, confident fashion, and stood, with a broad smile on her
face, beaming at the seven others seated on Maisie's bed.

"Why shouldn't I pull my curtains?" she asked. "If I'd been pulling
faces, now, you might have had some cause for complaint. You look
rather a nice set; I think I'm going to like you."

The girls were so surprised that they could only stare. It seemed
reversing the usual order of things for a new-comer, who ought to be
shy and confused, to be so absolutely and entirely self-possessed, and
to pass judgment with such calm assurance upon these old members of St.
Chad's, some of whom were already in their third year at Chessington
College.

"Perhaps I'd better introduce myself," continued the stranger. "My name
is Honor Fi