?"

"Why, I told you! We are going to walk."

"Yes, but what _for_? Are you going to the shops, or going to see
somebody? I can't see _any_ sense in just stupid walking, without any
object. And you didn't tell me who was going."

"You didn't give me a chance. Well, Rose Barclay is going, and two other
freshmen whom I don't think you know, Clara Fair and Ethel Bird--and
Lobelia Parkins."

"Peggy Montfort! why _do_ you go with that little animal? I've told you
before that I could not, for the honour of the corridor, have you seen
with a creature that looks like that. Let her go with Colney Hatch if
she wants company; they'd be two of a kind."

"Colney Hatch is one of the brightest girls in school, Miss Cortlandt
says so!"

"Very likely; but that doesn't make her a fit associate for you, my
Veezy-vee. You never seem to understand about different sets. I want you
to belong to the smart set, and you won't."

"Do the Owls belong to it?" demanded Peggy, turning red.

"Peggy, how dense you are! The Owls don't belong to any set because they
won't. Of course they could belong to any set they pleased."

"Does Grace Wolfe belong to it?"

"The Goat? Why, she used to; but she's so awfully queer, you know; the
Goat has grown too awfully queer for anything. She stays by herself
mostly, ever since she cut loose from the Gang. And Vivia is gone," she
wailed, "and Blanche Haight,--Blanchey was not very nice, but her gowns
fitted like a seraph's, and the style to her hats was too perfectly
killing for anything, you know it was. And now there isn't any one, not
a single soul, that I care to talk to about clothes. I've had my pink
waist done over, and it's simply dandy--the sweetest thing you ever saw
in your life; and nobody cares. I am so unhappy!"

"I haven't seen that new hat you told me about!" said Peggy, with a
happy stroke of diplomacy. If any one had told Margaret Montfort that
her Peggy would ever develop a talent for diplomacy she would have
opened her eyes wide indeed; but one learns many things at
boarding-school.

Viola brightened at once.

"No! didn't I?" she cried, her whole manner changing. "Would you like to
see it, Peggy? It is really too cute for anything, it just _is_! What
makes you shut up your mouth that way?"

"Oh, nothing! Well, yes, it is something. You won't mind if I tell you?
Well, I used to say 'cute,' and Margaret showed me what bad English it
was, and how silly it sounded. So I made up my mi