opped behind her. "I
hope he was properly impressed." Then catching sight of her reflection
in a long mirror opposite, she wilted into an attitude of abject
despair. A loop of milliner's wire, from which the ribbon had slipped,
stood up stiff and straight in the bow on her hat. She proceeded to put
it back in place with anxious pats and touches, exclaiming in an
anguished whisper,

"Oh, _why_ is it, that whenever I feel particularly imposing and Queen
Annish inside, I always look so dishevelled and Mary Annish outside!
Here's my hat cocked over one eye and my hair straggling out in wisps
like a crazy thing. I wonder what Hawkins thought."

Hawkins, on his way up stairs was spelling out the name on the card he
carried. "Miss Mary Ware, Phoenix, Arizona."

"Humph!" was his mental exclamation. "From one of the jumping hoff
places." Then his mind reverted to the several detective tales that made
up his knowledge of the far West. "'Ope she doesn't carry a gun 'idden
hon 'er person."

Now that the first ordeal was over and she was safely inside the doors
of Warwick Hall, the new pupil braced herself for the next one, the
meeting with Madam Chartley. She wouldn't have been quite so nervous
over it if she had been sure of a welcome, but the catalogue stated
distinctly that no pupils could be received before the fifteenth of
September, and this was only the twelfth. She had the best of reasons
for coming ahead of time, and was sure that Madam Chartley would make an
exception in her case when once the matter was properly explained. The
friends in whose care she had travelled from Phoenix had expected to
spend several days in Washington, sight-seeing, and she was to have been
their guest until the opening of school. But a telegram met them calling
them immediately to Boston. She couldn't stay alone at a strange hotel,
she knew no one in the entire city, and there was no course open to her
but to come on to school.

It was easy enough for her to see why she might not be welcome. There
was a vigorous washing of windows going on over the whole establishment,
a sound of carpenters in the background and a smell of fresh paint and
furniture polish to the fore. Everything was out of its usual orbit in
the process of getting ready for the opening day.

Lying awake the night before in the upper berth of the hot Pullman car,
Mary had carefully planned her little speech of explanation, and had
rehearsed it a dozen times since. But now