Wendy even went further, and proffered friendship.

"You're just the jolly kind of girl I like," she explained. "I think we
might have some topping times together, and wake up the school. Things
are apt to get a little dull sometimes."

Diana nodded intelligently.

"I know. It was just the same at my last school. Everyone got into a
sort of stick-in-the-mud mood, and one felt it was only _kind_ to stir
them up. I guess I did it!"

"I shouldn't wonder if you did," twinkled Wendy. "I vote we make an
alliance, and, if one of us thinks of any rather ripping rag, she just
tells the other, and we'll play it off together."

"Right you are! Let's shake on it!" agreed Diana, extending a small,
slim hand, with a garnet birthstone-ring on the middle finger.

The little American did not fit into her niche at Pendlemere without
encountering a certain amount of what her schoolmates considered
necessary discipline for a novice. She had to go through an ordeal of
chaff and banter. She was known by the sobriquet of "Stars and Stripes",
or "The Yank", and good-natured fun was poked at her transatlantic
accent. She took it good-temperedly, but with a readiness of repartee
that laid the jokers flat.

"One can't get much change out of Diana," commented Magsie, after an
unsuccessful onslaught of teasing.

"I think she's a scream," agreed Vi.

The baffling part of the new schoolmate was that her powers of acting
were so highly developed that it was impossible to tell whether she was
serious or playing a part. She "took in" her teasers times out of
number, and in fairness they deserved all they got. Towards the end of
the first week she came into the intermediate room one morning fondling
a letter.

"From Paris," she vouchsafed. "Dad and Mother have got anchored at last.
The journey must have been a startler. Paris is so full of Americans,
it's like a little New York."

"Why do you call it 'Parr-is'?" sniggered Sadie.

"It's more like the French than your way of saying it, at any rate,"
retorted Diana smartly. "This letter's been four days in coming
through."

"You might give me the stamp."

"Certainly not. You don't deserve it. I wish I were in Paris, too. Yes,
I shall call it 'Parr-is'. I'm beginning to want some of my own folks."

"I've never met any Americans, except you," volunteered Vi. "What are
they like?"

"What do you imagine they're like?"

"Like the pictures of 'Uncle Sam', with a limp shirt front, and a big