ne, a fair-haired girl of about the same age
as herself, cried persistently and unrestrainedly, burying her face in
the window curtain, and refusing all comfort, though her companions
pressed chocolates, caramels, mint rock, jujubes, and walnut toffee upon
her with well-meant sympathy.

"Oh, do stop, Avis! You make the place quite damp. No one would think it
was your fourth term. I hope you've brought a macintosh pillow, if
you're going to turn on the waterworks like this. Wipe your eyes, and
have a peppermint cream. I always take them when I feel homesick.
There's nothing does one so much good."

The speaker was a merry, bonny-looking girl of perhaps fifteen, with
bright brown eyes, a clear complexion, a freckled nose, very white
teeth, and curly brown hair tied with a red ribbon. Patty thought she
must surely have spent all her pocket money at the confectioner's before
she came away--such endless packets of sweets came out of the Gladstone
bag which she held on her knee, and disappeared with such startling
rapidity that Dr. Hirst looked on in horror.

"I got hold of my eldest brother," she explained to a companion. "I told
him I shouldn't be allowed a solitary chocolate drop at The Priory, and
how I should be simply yearning even for treacle toffee. He laughed, and
said I should have a good time before I got there, at any rate, so we
went into town, and he bought me absolutely anything I wanted. Have
another caramel, Winnie? It's no use keeping them. Miss Rowe'll
confiscate them all if she finds them in my bag. You won't have the
chance of any more sweets for thirteen weeks, remember!"

"Not unless she can manage to get up a cough," said a girl whom the
others addressed as Ida, "and it depends whether you like Miss Lincoln's
cough drops or not. I think they're hateful myself, and taste like
medicine, but Dorothy Dawson loves them. She made her throat quite sore
one day last term with trying to cough all through the history class,
and Miss Lincoln didn't give her any after all. She only told her to go
and take a glass of water. Dolly was so disgusted! No, thanks, Enid! I
really can't manage another. There are limits, you know, even for me."

"But we simply must finish them up."

"Then finish them yourself."

"She'll be ill if she does," said the short, rosy-faced girl called
Winnie. "I don't believe you've stopped eating sweets, Enid, since you
got into the train. You'll have a horrible headache to-morrow, see i