ther girls, who had never expected her to keep Rona in her bedroom,
were inclined to poke fun at the proceeding.

"Your bear cub will need training before you teach her to dance," said
Stephanie Radford tauntingly.

"She has no parlour tricks at present," sniggered Addie Knighton.

"Are you posing as Valentine and Orson?" laughed Gertie Oliver. Gertrude
had been Ulyth's room-mate last term, and felt aggrieved to be
superseded.

"I call her the cuckoo," said Mary Acton. "Do you remember the young one
we found last spring, sprawling all over the nest, and opening its huge,
gaping beak?"

In spite of her ignorance and angularities there was a certain charm
about the new-comer. When the sunburn caused by her sea-voyage had
yielded to a course of treatment, it left her with a complexion which
put even that of Stephanie Radford, the acknowledged school beauty, in
the shade. The coral tinge in Rona's cheeks was, as Doris Deane
enviously remarked, "almost too good to look natural", and her blue eyes
with the big pupils and the little dark rims round the iris shone like
twinkling stars when she laughed. That ninnying laugh, to be sure, was
still somewhat offensive, but she was trying to moderate it, and only
when she forgot did it break out to scandalize the refined atmosphere of
The Woodlands; the small white even teeth which it displayed, and two
conspicuous dimples, almost atoned for it. The brown hair was brushed
and waved and its consequent state of new glossiness was a very distinct
improvement on the former elf locks. In the sunshine it took tones of
warm burnt sienna, like the hair of the Madonna in certain of Titian's
great pictures. Lessons, alack! were uphill work. Rona was naturally
bright, but some subjects she had never touched before, and in others
she was hopelessly backward. The general feeling in the school was that
"The Cuckoo", as they nicknamed her, was an experiment, and no one could
guess exactly what she would grow into.

"She's like one of those queer beasties we dug up under the yew-tree
last autumn," suggested Merle Denham. "Those wriggling transparent
things, I mean. Don't you remember? We kept them in a box, and didn't
know whether they'd turn out moths, or butterflies, or earwigs, or
woodlice!"

"They turned into cockchafer beetles, as a matter of fact," said Ulyth
drily.

"Well, they were horrid enough in all conscience. I don't like Nature
study when it means hoarding up creepy-crawlies.