retty, and have such good clothes--and a carriage--and everything!
They might be as stuck-up as anything! I think it's just _nice_ for
them to be so sweet!" persisted Sylvia.

"I don't call it bein' sweet," said Judith, "to watch Teacher every
minute and smile all over your face if she looks at you and hold on to
her hand when she's talkin' to you! It's silly!"

They argued all the way home, and the lunch hour was filled with
appeals to their parents to take sides. Professor and Mrs. Marshall,
always ready, although occasionally somewhat absent, listeners to
school news, professed themselves really interested in these new
scholars and quite perplexed by the phenomenon of two beautiful
dark-eyed children, called Camilla and Cecile Fingal. Judith refused
to twist her tongue to pronounce the last syllable accented, and her
version of the name made it sound Celtic. "Perhaps their father
is Irish and the mother Italian or Spanish," suggested Professor
Marshall.

Sylvia was delighted with this hypothesis, and cried out
enthusiastically, "Oh yes--Camilla _looks_ Italian--like an Italian
princess!"

Judith assumed an incredulous and derisive expression and remained
silent, an achievement of self-control which Sylvia was never able to
emulate.

The Fingal girls continued to occupy a large space in Sylvia's
thoughts and hours, and before long they held a unique position in
the opinion of the school, which was divided about evenly between the
extremes represented by Sylvia and Judith. The various accomplishments
of the new-comers were ground both for uneasy admiration and
suspicion. They could sing like birds, and, what seemed like
witchcraft to the unmusical little Americans about them, they could
sing in harmony as easily as they could carry an air. And they recited
with fire, ease, and evident enjoyment, instead of with the show of
groaning, unwilling submission to authority which it was etiquette
in the Washington Street School to show before beginning to "speak a
piece."

They were good at their books too, and altogether, with their quick
docility, picturesqueness, and eagerness to please, were the delight
of their teachers. In the fifth grade, Sylvia's example of intimate,
admiring friendship definitely threw popular favor on the side of
Camilla, who made every effort to disarm the hostility aroused by her
too-numerous gifts of nature. She was ready to be friends with the
poorest and dullest of the girls, never aske