oods
beyond. Lesbia's aesthetic soul felt that that view would compensate for
many disagreeable things that would probably happen in the course of
the coming year. She was not particularly clever at lessons, and might
expect future squalls. To look over such a landscape would be a comfort
after Miss Pratt's chidings. Miss Pratt had a reputation in the school
for tartness of manner, though she was an excellent teacher. Her voice,
sharp-clipped, business-like, and unconciliatory, grated upon Lesbia,
who was very sensitive to sounds. Poor Lesbia was at the difficult age
when we are sensitive in many respects. The trouble was that most people
called her "thin-skinned". There are always two ways of describing the
same characteristic. But as Lesbia, with all her faults and virtues, is
going to be our heroine she had better have a chapter quite to herself.

CHAPTER II

The Oldest Pupil

Though Lesbia Ferrars might not be gifted with a good memory, or a
mathematical brain, or a talent for languages, or even a great capacity
for work, or any other special attribute to place her among the stars of
her form, in one solitary respect she could always score over the rest
of the school. She was the oldest pupil. Not indeed in years--there is
an immense shade of difference between oldest and eldest--for she was
not yet sixteen, while Rose Stirling and Mabel Andrews in the Sixth were
approaching their eighteenth birthdays. She happened to have been longer
at the school than anybody else. She had joined as a tiny child, and the
contemporaries of her first year had all left. Even Theodora Johnson,
the head girl, who could boast a nine years record, had to yield
precedence to Lesbia in a question of "oldest inhabitant". It was a
point upon which Lesbia prided herself immensely. Ever since she had
been the baby of the kindergarten she had loved the school with a great
loyalty, and was prepared to stand up for its merits against all
detractors. It had become such a point of honour with her that she was
almost stubborn about it, and would have waged its battles as blindly as
the traditional cavalier who fought for the crown though it hung in a
bush.

Lesbia, at fifteen and three-quarters on the great clock of life, was a
rather picturesque little person, slim and not over-tall, with large
dreamy eyes that held shining sparks when she laughed, and brown hair
with a curl in it, and teeth that seemed more like a first set than a
sec