ody without
contracting a certain amount of intimacy, the mere fact of bending your
heads together to store your books and pencils in the same receptacle
promotes confidence. By the end of the third day Lesbia knew the number
of Regina's brothers and sisters and what colour her new costume was
going to be, and Regina had heard the whole story of how Lesbia nearly
went to Canada and didn't. There was not very much reserve about Lesbia.
If she took a fancy to anybody her heart blossomed like a mango in an
Indian conjurer's trick, and she was ready to impart any number of
secrets. To certain impulsive temperaments a new friendship is a great
opportunity. It means a totally fresh start with somebody who will not
be influenced by old impressions, but will take you at your present
valuation, someone to whom you can pour out your own version of your
biography unbiased by other people's opinions, somebody to whom all your
old stories and jokes will be new, and to whom even your last year's hat
will appear quite fresh and worthy of admiration.

Regina was no ordinary girl. That was apparent the moment she had walked
into VA. Her face was too strongly cut for mere prettiness, but her
great grey eyes seemed to hold whole past lifetimes of thought in them.
In manner she was very abrupt. She snapped out her remarks in short
jerks, as if she were firing them from a gun. She moved with the
self-consciousness often noticed in girls of sixteen. The whole of her
atmosphere was intensely "mental". Astrologers would have placed Mercury
and Jupiter for her birth signs. Her brains were so big that she almost
seemed intellectual against her will. She did not want to pose as
clever, and curiously enough seemed to covet most all the specially
feminine characteristics which she rather conspicuously lacked. She
admired Lesbia, much as a boy would, for her pretty hair, her dainty
movements, and the general Celtic glamour that hung about her; she
behaved, indeed, more like a youth in love than an ordinary schoolgirl
chum. Her large soulful eyes would gaze at her idol during classes as if
she were composing sonnets, and she haunted her round the school till
the girls christened her "Lesbia's shadow".

"She's queer, of course, but in a way she's rather a sport," declared
Kathleen, discussing the new-comer in the cloakroom.

"Yes, she's certainly queer. She never does anything in the least like
anybody else," agreed Ermie Hall. "She makes me quite n